Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

All Right. Good Night. (Excerpt)

2022; The MIT Press; Volume: 44; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1162/pajj_a_00633

1537-9477

Helgard Haug,

A play about disappearance and loss.Concept, text, direction by Helgard Haug (Rimini Protokoll).Translated by Lyz Pfister. Music by Barbara Morgenstern.A production of Rimini Apparat. In co-production with HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin), Volkstheater Wien, The Factory Manchester, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, PACT Zollverein.Funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds as well as Berliner Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa. Performing rights: schaefersphilippen Theater and Medien GbR.In the spring of 2014,the father gets on a plane.A Boeing 777.A big machine.He’s one of 239 peoplefrom 14 countries on board.“An international mix of nationalities.”Often, a differentiation is made betweenthe 12 flight crew and 227 passengers.The one group wears comfortable clothes,the other a uniform.The one group mainly sits,the other paces the aisles.Pushing something,carrying something.Sometimes they standand demonstratewhat to do in the case of cases—an emergency.Turbulence.Loss of cabin pressure.In the unlikely event.Will the oxygen masksdrop from overhead?Will the adults secure their own masksbefore assisting their children?Will “mayday, mayday” resound?Will people look over their shoulders?Because the nearest exitmay be behind them.Will the life vests dowhat they’re supposed to?Will it be possible to rememberthe flight crew’s practiced gestures?The flight is fromKuala Lumpur to Beijing.I imagine the father getting on board.In the middle of the night.He doesn’t like to fly.From now on,I’ll call him “the father.”The Boeing.The machine.Better to keep it impersonal:the plane.It’s ready to depart.Everyone’s buckled up.Everything’s stowed, packed away.The captain has requested49,100 kg of fuel for this flight.That’s enough to last7 hours and 31 minutes.The scheduled flight timeis 5 hours and 34 minutes.Reserves are alwayspart of the calculations.The flight isn’t fully booked.The hold not completely full.Luggage, mail, mangosteens,“technical devices” like semiconductors …Ground: “Good morning.Pushback and start approved.Runway 32R. Exit via Sierra 4.”MH370: “Pushback and start approved.32R. Exit via Sierra 4.POB 239.”POB, as I now know,stands for “Persons On Board.”239 POB.The machine rolls to the airfield.Every path has a name.Every position a designation.A combination of letters and numbers.Findable, retrievable, locatable.Lights blink, arrows point the way.Even the sky has roads.At 0:36, the tower in Kuala Lumpur gives the pilotthe go over frequency 118.8 MHz.“370 cleared for takeoff, 32R, good night.”The plane speeds up.The plane goes even faster—and lifts off.Look out.Watch the world rush by in wonder.There are no more people—just symbols.And systems.On board, the usual rituals:Cross arms, or maybe fold hands?Make the sign of the cross?Read? Overhead light on.More air? Vent on.Sort elbow space with the neighbors.Slip off shoes. Breathe deep.But the father stays on the ground.He isn’t on that plane.Yet the flight of MH370sounds so much like his own story.What begins here and lasts another 8 yearsis an increasing uncertainty I’ll try to capture.A journey into uncertainty.A disappearance.I’m here now.Yes, you’re here now.And now here.Now you’re here.Back on the ground,the plane is passed on:from area control sectorto area control sector.It’s tracked.Quick call-ins.Quick confirmations.The plane checks in now and again.As if to steadily say:Here I am.The father has his bases covered.Had a building built in which to livewith others in his old age.Growing old in solidarity;that’s his wish.The father has moved inon the ground floor.There’s also a living complexfor dementia patients on the ground floor.Ten people live here, supervised.They eat a meal prepared for themtogether around a large table.At night, they sleep in their own rooms.If ground control hasn’t heard from the planein an hour, it sends what’s known as a “ping.”Usually, the plane answers.That’s called a “handshake.”When we visit in the garden,we hear the people with dementia.One of the residents cries “WaWaWaWaWa,”pausing only for breath.“He once ran a bank,” the father says.Now he has just the one syllable.Now I’m here.Yes, now you’re here.And now here.And now you’re here.We’re here.It’s like a person being passedfrom hand to hand.Like carefully treading the riverbed?Now we’re here.Always accompaniedby the radio’s crackle.When we visit, we sit in the gardenand look up. The Frankfurt Airport is close.We watch in amazement as one planeafter the other streaks across the sky.Always in regular intervals.Like a thread of pearls.Controlled. Guided.The plane continues to climb.It passes from radar station to radar station,frequency sector to frequency sector.Beneath it now,the palm oil plantations of Malaysia.Its flight path is from north to east.He has four children by two women.The father.I’m the younger of the two oldest.That’s how he’d introduce me.Eyes full of mischief,savoring the confusion.We, the children,all notice little changes.Brief moments of sharpened focus,inexplicable short-term memory glitches.Inconsistencies. Contradictions.And small little gaffes.We, the siblings,decide to set up checkpoints.We write protocols about points of contactthat happen, and those that don’t.“At eleven years and nine months,the Boeing wasn’t particularly old,” I read.The MH370.The father is nearly seven times older.Playing football with the grandson, he’s unsure—as if he could tumble any moment.I take a picture.Capture the moment.The arms treading air,the right leg thrown all the way up.Later, I noticethat he’s wearing slippers.On the grandson’s birthday,we find 4 cards in the mailbox.The contents are nearly identical,every envelope bearing a special stamp.The grandfatherhas sent fourfold birthday wishes.The grandson is puzzled, but pleased.“Better than nothing,” he says.The passengers swallow and yawnto relieve pressure; their hearing is muffled.But now the in-flight entertainment systemis up and running.A new picture hangs over his table.He’s bought himself an oil painting.It depicts a flower-strewn pathleading into the distance.We look at it and speak softly for a long timeabout the path into the unknown.He says, “I hope the path is like that.”The words are all clear. All there.Someone opens the flight mapon the display.The passengers can followthe plane’s journey on their screens.Now we’re here.The father gives a speechon his birthday.He speaks bluntly about his lifeand about ageing.“What remains is humiliationand depression,” he says.“How about pride?”a daughter-in-law shouts out.Everything comes to a standstill.Below no longer the palm oil plantations,but swathes of water.The plane keeps flying north to east.A talk with his partner:The father has become withdrawn.He drinks too much and is often confused.New words are spoken:ambulatory care.The thought he might needto rely on help is new.The plane weighs 223 tons,is 63 meters long, 18 meters highand has a wingspan of 60 meters.Something so large, so heavy,can’t just disappear from our world.So we think.Such a massive thing.A call with the father around 9 p.m.:He says, “Good morning.”He says he’s already awake,but still in bed.The conversation goes in circles.What are you going to do now?How are you?How’s the family?What are you going to do now?Yes.What am I going to do now?What are we going to do with you now?Air traffic control prepares the handoverfrom Malaysian to Vietnamese airspace.It’s scheduled for 01:22at the IGARI waypoint.The father is impatient.He complains about one child to the other.No one calls him.Everything is a mess.It’s all been poorly organized.When the plane hits 10,700 meters,Lumpur Radar tells MH370to take up communicationwith Ho Chi Minh City.Never in Vietnam; often chantedHo Chi Minh: “Ho-Ho-Ho Chi Minh!”The father moved to Frankfurt in the 70s.To a shared-flat bachelor pad.The three men had left their bourgeois liveswith wives and children behind.Every Saturday, another proteststreamed along the street below.“Ho-Ho-Ho Chi Minh!”If we children weren’t dragged along,we folded paper airplanesfrom pages emblazonedwith “Peace Without Weapons”and watched from the windowas they soared elegantly down.At exactly 01:19:30, the pilot of MH370signs off from Malaysian airspace.“All right. Good night,” he says.That’s what’s later reported. Often.It’s there for the reading. From many sources.On a walk, the father sayshe’s beginning to notice his forgetfulnessmore and more.At first he’s coherent; it’s only after a whilethat he begins to repeat himself.I see what happensif I give the same answer.I see what happensif I give different answers.I try to find ways out of the loop,but can’t.Every sentence on its own makes senseWhole sections are logical, comprehensible.It’s only as a whole that they crumble,mocking each other.Is it just old age and totally normal?“An interesting mix of clarity and confusion,”is what I write my siblings.What we know of the pilotis that he’s experienced: 18,000 flight hours.The father has removed his smoke detector.The naked cables dangle from the ceiling.“The damn thing was beeping,” he says.A sign the batteries are nearly empty.Relief, when the detectoris back on the ceiling with fresh batteries.“Things like that overwhelm me,” he says.Lucid and alert, he says:“I wonder if I’m notin the early stages of dementia.”He makes plans.If it is dementia, he’ll put himselfon the list for the dementia flat.It’s a relief to talk about it.He says shame has made him withdrawn.Now he wants to be with people.He also says he can’t figure outhow to get online.Yet there’s so muchyou can find out online:Two-thirds of the 227 passengersare Chinese citizens.Amongst them is a group of 19 artists.They’d had an art opening in Kuala Lumpur.The painter Liu Rushengenjoys painting birds and flowers.Medications are administeredto stimulate blood flow to the brain.The doctor says he should keep jogging,learn Spanish, eat healthy and take antidepressants.They’ll use imaging methods.Slice his brain with CT scans.An appointment is madeat the memory clinic.He’s to be accompaniedby a trusted person.Answers will be assessed.He often manages to evade questions.To deflect. To answer a questionwith another question.Chandrika is also on board.She’s from Chennai, India.She’s on her wayto a conference in Mongolia.MH370 passes the IGARI waypoint,as scheduled.Here I am.As scheduled.Drinks are being distributed on board.Bloody Mary?Five seconds later,the airplane icon blinks out.39.13 minutes after takeoff, at exactly 01:21:13,MH370’s radar signal disappears.Now I’m gone.“Damn it all!” the father exclaimed,when he got angry.And: “All hail the peanut gallery.”Eventually, ground control in Ho Chi Minh Citywonders why the plane never checks in.No “Here I am.”No “ping.” No “handshake.”The controller on duty hesitantly askshis colleague in Kuala Lumpur: “Where is it?”He tries to reach the plane:“Where are you? Check in!”No answer.Where are you?Kuala Lumpur tells Ho Chi Minh Citythat MH370 is over Cambodia.Vietnam asks Cambodia.Cambodia knows nothing.You should have been here.But you’re not here.Where are you?Eventually, its absenceover Chinese airspace is noticed.Another query is made.Only then is theRescue Coordination Center notified.“Only then,” it’s later said.In Chennai, Narendran’s phone rings early.His wife’s colleague is on the line.“The plane never arrivedin Beijing,” she says.And: “You should turn on the news.”40 planes and 24 ships had been sentto search the surface of the South China Sea.“Maybe she wasn’t on the plane,”Narendran thinks.Pictures of the familiestravel the world.Blank-faced they standin the Beijing Airport arrivals hall.For a long time, the information boardsays MH370 is “delayed”“Cancelled” wouldn’t have been right.“Vanished” wasn’t in the program options.No plane, no wreck: nowhere.Towards evening,Narendran’s phone rings once more.Malaysia Airlines confirms:Chandrika was on board the missing plane.He calls the news “a cold comfort”“I was the last to find out,”says Ghyslain Wattrelos.He himself was in the airbetween Paris and Beijingwhen MH370, with his wife and two of his kidson board, disappeared from the radar.After landing, still buckled up,he receives a friend’s text—he’s so terribly sorry to hear about his family.He doesn’t understand.What would a lookinside his head reveal?Layer by layer.Maybe deposits.Between and within the nerve cells.Both disrupt communication.Block exchange.“An unstoppable process,”say the doctors.An about-face.It seems the plane appeared on a different radarshortly after it went missing.To have reached this position,it would’ve needed to turn aroundand fly back towards Malaysiaalong the Thai border.Where are you going?Did it happen willingly?Alarm? No alarm was triggered.Now the Malacca Straitis being searched.Intelligence gets involved: MI6, the CIA,the FBI and the Chinese secret service.Maritime patrol aircraft are dispatched.They probe and prod the sea like a body.For hours.You must be here somewhere.We can do a Mini-Mental State Examination.An MMSE. I’d ask: Father, what’s today’s date?What season is it?What year is it?What day of the week is it?What month is it?What state are we in?What city are we in?What neighborhood are we in?What building are we in?On which story are we?Where are you?4 days after the disappearance,more ships with underwater microphones depart.Their goal is to find the flight recorder.A CSMU: A Crash-Survivable Memory Unit.As big as a shoebox and bright orange.Even though it’s colloquially calleda “black box.”On it is written:“FLIGHT RECORDER DO NOT OPEN.”The batteries last 30 daysbefore they stop transmitting a signal.Then it’s nothing but a silent boxon the ocean floor.And the Indian Ocean is massive.And deep.8,047 meters at its deepest point.Ghyslain Wattrelos writesto his missing wife and children.Messages. Daily. Maybe they’ll get themwherever they are.But we don’t doa Mini-Mental State ExaminationI’m not brave enough to askmy father questions. It feels like an insult.Instead, I ask him to tell methe Christmas story.Suspiciously, he asks, “Do you thinkI don’t know it?” and launches in.Still no sign of wreckage.Could the plane still be intact?Hijacking, hostages,an emergency landing …They must be on oneof the 16,000 uninhabited islands.New satellite data has turned up.MH370 is said to havechanged directions once more.It began flying south again—for hours.All that’s there is water.Miles and miles of nothing,with Australia in the far distance.The search in the South China Sea is pausedand moved to the southern Indian Ocean.A shift of multiple thousandsof kilometers.You have to be here.But where?Australia beginscoordinating the search.We’ll find you.The families are relieved.Or I can say three words:apple, lamp, table.And ask you to remember them.Apple, lamp, table.So you can say them back to me laterin that same order.Into this hopeful mood, Malaysia Airlinessends a message to the family members:“We regret to inform youthat the plane crashed with no survivors.The flight ended in the Indian Ocean.”“Liars! Liars!” screams a family memberin front of the cameras. Others break down.First responders are on the scene.First aid is rendered.It’s hard to take.Two months later,Malaysia releases the satellite data.“Manipulated and incomplete,”say people familiar with the search.Voices, who know just how it was,grow loud:The Russians hijacked the planeand hid it in Kazakhstan.The Americans navigated itto a secret base.The North Koreansmade the plane “disappear.”The Iranians took the plane hostage.2,500 kilometers west of Perth in theSouth Indian Ocean, the search continues.With combined strength.An oil slick is discovered.The pilot’s last words are corrected.Or was it the co-pilot who spoke?It wasn’t “All right. Good night.”It was “Good night,Malaysia Three Seven Zero.”The voice is analyzed.Are there hidden clues?Analysists say the voice sounds relaxed,not as if it were under pressure.The pilot’s brother says,“That’s not my brother’s voice.”A spot opens up in the dementia flat.Is this the right time to move?The father turns it down.Vehemently.What’s he supposed to do therewith the WaWaWaWaWa man?He’s too independent still.True.But not so independentthat the worries aren’t unfounded.But it’s his own free will.His choice.“It would be better if he moved in,”say those closest to him.But he won’t be convinced.Doesn’t remember his plan.“There’s nothing you can dountil something happens,” says the doctor.Something has to happen.