Foreign Constellations

dried potato peel— bramble leaves—rose-petals . . . even plain grass. Anything to stave off the pangs. Coming back from Moscow we boiled our boots and the leather harness left over after we’d eaten the horses, brewed something warm with the illusion of nourishment.”
“I heard about people boiling boots,” the policeman said. “Thought it was a joke.”
“Not so funny when it happens to you,” said the pilot. “Like I say, we’d finished the horses. Deprived of fodder and constantly exposed, they died in great numbers. Often men did not wait until the horses had fallen to devour them . . . A stray horse was instantly killed and dismembered almost living: unlucky animal who moved a few steps away from his master . . . A lot of fights got started over who was to have what bit.”
Cold—unspeakable terrible cold—seemed to reach into the chopper. It was so completely numbing, one could not even shiver.
Eventually the policeman was able to say, “I get the feeling we here are—well, you’d have to call us lucky, I guess.”
“Sure. You’re very lucky. Only thing apt to delay your daily rations is a bunch of people half out of their minds and armed with shotguns they have no more shells for. While in Africa . . . You said you didn’t hear the news today?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, they had to ground the UN relief flights. Seems Zaire got paranoid. Decided they aren’t getting enough relief and all their neighbours are getting so much they’re planning to trade it to Europe and buy arms in order to invade. So they dusted off their ground-to-air missiles—they got these good ones made in Switzerland—and started shooting down the UN planes. Pilots won’t fly the missions any more, and do you blame ’em?”
“That’s terrible!”
“Not so much terrible as typical. In L.A., you know, they’d put up a rick of oranges and apples, put gasoline over it and set fire to them. Vegetables were being destroyed and everything. To keep the price up. But there were great queues of guys in soup lines. Nobody had a dime.” The pilot shook his head. “It’s the ‘I-don’t-want-it-you-can’t-have-it’ syndrome. See it all the time in spoiled kids.”
“I guess maybe it’s as well Berendt did away with himself,” the policeman said. “Whether he jumped into his converter or not. If he was alive he’d be the world’s most disappointed man.” He hesitated. “Funny, you know. Talking to you makes me think about him as a person for the first time. Always before I’ve had this impression of him as—well, close to a saint. Spent his whole life for the sake of others and it isn’t his fault his dream never came true.”
From the back of the cabin, a snorting noise. They looked behind and found the sergeant was awake.
“I’ve been listening to you, Jacobson,” he said, pushing his blocky torso upright. “Spinning these crazy lies to someone who’s no more than a kid—it’s disgusting. Hear me? What you said about Ireland: it’s not true. I got family in Ireland and they just wrote me and said you can buy butter without a ration card. Natural butter! Can’t do that here, can you? Does that sound like starvation?” Aside to the policeman. “And I just saw this TV report about Paris, too. And they are not burning food in L.A.—lies, all of it!”
The pilot winked sidelong at the policeman, who was bewildered.
“As for Berendt!” The sergeant leaned forward, hands on the back of the pilot’s seat and clenching tight as though he would rather have gripped the other’s throat. “Berendt did not jump into his own machine and there is not a little of him in everything that comes out of a converter and it’s a load of blasphemous nonsense. I wish you weren’t civilian personnel—I’d like to sort you out the way you deserve.”
With a final glare he slumped back and concluded, “Out with you, boy. You’ve had enough of this bastard’s yarn-spinning.”
Confused, the policeman opened the door to the rain and jumped down. Approaching were a group of men under an umbrella: the food chemist, an escorting officer and the bodyguard.
“They’re coming back!” he called to the pilot, who also clambered down.
And said very softly, almost without moving his lips but contriving to make himself heard perfectly: “So maybe Yakov Berendt didn’t wind up in a food-converter. But I’ll tell you who did. The guy I used to fly around before this one. And soon’s I get the chance he’ll be the next.” With ever so slight an inclination of the head. “Like I said, we need to make sure it’s the right two-thirds of mankind we dispose of. Thanks to Berendt we have the means to make them useful for a change. Tell people that. Tell people you can trust.”
He clapped the younger man on the shoulder, then went on loudly, “Did everything go off all right, sir?”
“Perfectly, thank you, Joseph,” said the important passenger. “Though it took longer than I expected. I hope you weren’t too bored.”
“Not at all, sir,” said the pilot. “Not at all.” And made to help the fat man up the ladder.
For several minutes after the chopper had taken off the policeman was in a kind of daze. Extraordinary images kept flashing through his mind: some ludicrous, like a pan full of boots being boiled, and others ghastly, like an emaciated child licking a whitewashed wall.
And that parting remark. To be taken seriously? Surely it must be some sort of sick joke!
He was recalled to the present by the roaring noise of the soup-tanker as it ground to a halt among cheers from refugees and soldiers alike. It was a tradition to signal its arrival in that fashion. Automatically the young policeman started to join in.
And checked.
He looked at the bulky tanker with the loaf-nets dangling from it, thought of the grass and leaves and twigs and roots it would carry in those nets when it left here and returned to its base in the