#TORMENT OF THE STYX CHEST PROFESSIONAL#

The backpack was barely squeezable into the overhead compartment, and several seated passengers were watching him like falcons on the prowl, as he moved items about to make room for his own not shoving or abusing in any way, but clearly shifting boundary-markers that others had staked out.

My about-to-be seat companion was standing in the aisle, sweating in a manner that suggested anxiety rather than the weather (at this time of year Toronto is temperate). Having secured priority boarding through my executive club miles, I was already seated when the remaining passengers began to clutter up the economy class cabin. Suffice it to say, he continued not to smoke this cigarette throughout the flight. It’s the oral and the digital activity I need, not the nicotine.” I find the best way is to keep one in my mouth unlighted. I’ve been trying to give up for years but haven’t managed it. He took out a cigarette and, smiling as he did so, stated categorically: The one that he removed from it as he sat down, no doubt intending to read it but never in fact opening it throughout the flight, was a novel entitled “Journeys on the Silk Road”, by an Indian writer I guessed, one Abhay Aditi. His hand-luggage consisted of a guitar in a plastic case and a back-pack of the sort schoolchildren use, brimful of books as far as I could tell. It was only later that I registered that both cords and T-shirt were of natural silk, of Peace Silk to be precise far finer quality than my tie. His cords and T-shirt (his armpits extruded an odour that was not entirely pleasant) were of the same jet blackness. His jet-black beard reached down his chest as far as his jet-black hair reached down his back and yes, there was a pony-tail. My companion must have been in his early forties. My hand luggage consisted of a lap-top computer, a leather briefcase, and (an act of nostalgia I suppose for a literary career I had long ago abandoned as beyond my reach) a copy of Gide’s “Travels In The Congo”, which diaries so influenced Joseph Conrad when he was writing “Heart of Darkness”.

#TORMENT OF THE STYX CHEST PROFESSIONAL#

Suffice it to say that I was sixty-two at the time, turned grey and, having become a respectable professional in my middle-age, was wearing a grey suit, a pale blue shirt and a formal tie – and yes, silk I recognise the need to note that it was silk. And besides, it was only a coincidence from my perspective, for he cannot possibly have known that he might turn into me in twenty years, whereas I could see plainly who I had been those twenty years before. This seeming coincidence is anyway irrelevant to my story, so forgive me if I don’t explore it any further. He was also a sceptic of such proportions, such philosophical dedication, as to make my own doubts and questionings seem amateurish though he was also, quite probably, the only truly happy man I ever met. So I shall simply state that the fellow who took the aisle seat adjacent to my window seat, on the long-haul flight from Toronto to Tel Aviv, was the spitting image of myself when I was his age, and that this seeming doppelganger was a perfectly explainable coincidence – I just don’t have that explanation at hand to share it with you. When newspaper headlines announce the discovery of a gene that predetermines character, or proof that extra-terrestrials wrote the Bible, I turn to the fiction reviews. When radio phone-ins discuss alien abductions and past-life experiences, I change channels. When I watch magicians perform their amazing stunts, I look for the trickery, and smile with smug self-satisfaction when I discover it. In general, mystical and magical experiences inspire me to scepticism, not awe. In this satirical tale, Candide cultivates his garden and Zarathustra finds peace on his mountain-top, and Thomas Neinsager turns out to have been a Jasager all along.Įxcerpt: From Chapter One: Journeys Outwards Or perhaps those terms are not correct, for underneath the phobias, Thomas Neinsager believes himself to be the happiest, the most contented man alive. What he recounts is the tale of that previous journey, the one that turned him into a hermit and a misanthrop. To pass the time, and to help him deal with all his phobias, he talks, unceasingly, to the poor unfortunate who found himself in the seat beside him on the plane. But now he has been obliged to travel, to collect the remains of his dead sister from Canada and take them to Israel for her funeral. Of leaving home at all, except to do the shopping, and even that could be ordered in over the phone or via the Internet. Thomas Neinsager did travel once, and hated it.

Torment of the styx chest