The View From Abroad

Madeline: It always leaps out at me...

Frances: What does?

Madeline: When you read in the paper: "American lives have been lost..."

Frances: Oh yes.

Madeline: Their politicians always put on that tone of special shock.  "The situation endangers American lives."  As if American lives were automatically different from any other kind, in a different category, a different category of life...

Frances: But isn't that what they believe?

Madeline: That's how they are.  Because they're richer than everyone else, so they have to insist that their dramas are more significant. (Madeline shakes her head.) And my God, all that behavior in restaurants...

Frances: What behavior?

Madeline: Even here, even on the island, you hear them in restaurants...

Frances: Who?

Madeline: Americans.

Frances: Oh.

Madeline: "Does this chicken have skin on it?" What's all that about?

Frances: You tell me.

Madeline: This incredible fear.  This terror. What's the waiter meant to say?

Frances: I don't know.

Madeline: "No, this chicken never had a skin. This chicken shivered skinless in its coop at night, just pure flesh and feathers, terrified it might one day give an American a calorie."

Frances: Well, quite.

Madeline: I mean, somebody tell me: are the two connected? How are they connected? At once the most powerful people on earth and now it appears the most fearful...

Frances: Perhaps that's why.

Madeline: The most risk-averse.  (Madeline is emphatic, summing up.)  Life with all the life taken out of it. 

Frances: Perhaps they just feel they have more to lose.

     Madeline looks at her, unforgiving.

Madeline: Well, they don't.

Frances: Of course not.

Madeline: They'll die like we die.

Frances: Well, yes.  (Frances frowns slightly.)  I mean, not quite.

Madeline: Oh, maybe with a few more drips attached...

Frances: That's what I meant...

Madeline: Yes, with a few more monitors, perhaps.  Jumping up in their beds like rubber dolls when the electrodes are applied. A couple more weeks of gibbering half-consciousness.  Parked for a while in some chemical waiting room.  Yes, they'll get that.  Electronically bestowed.  Death delayed but not denied.  But finally, no. They'll lose what we lose.  (Madeline nods bitterly.)  Take it from me. 

The Breath of Life
David Hale
Faber & Faber Limited
2002