A Whistling Woman (43 page)

The camera had moved away from Eva, whose long sentences trailed like underwater weeds amongst the beginning of Frederica's froth. Frederica's face smiled out at the Vice-Chancellor, modern, trivial, and reassuring.

Lady Wijnnobel could not resist the inevitable question. “Virgo, are you?”

“Does that surprise you?”

“No, no. I knew you were Virgo.”

“And what is the Virgo character?”

“She is closed in herself. She is focused inwards, and shuts off the outside world. She is innocent and without dark wisdom. There is a price to pay for this dreaminess, in general.”

Gander joined in, and challenged Eva to diagnose his own position on the Zodiac. He was correctly—according to him—told he was Sagittarius, warhorse and archer, animal and semi-divinity, two beings in one. Lady Wijnnobel had lipstick on her teeth. The conversation trickled into the runnels of many, many, previous human conversations, and was duly brought to an end.
The Vice-Chancellor thought hopefully that it could have been much worse. Given that it had happened at all. Better not to count in his head how many millions was it of people would have seen her. It was of course possible, even probable, that what she said made more sense to them than anything he himself might ever say about the algorithms of the Universal Grammar. He thought with his usual pleasure of Noam Chomsky's example of a perfectly grammatical, perfectly meaningless sentence. “Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.” He always associated it with Sir Charles Sherrington's more ornate, and not meaningless metaphor for thought. “The brain is an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern.” He thought he would include both in his opening remarks for the Conference. Poetry struck out of everything like sparks from flint. The forms of astrology were not privileged, were indeed worn, overhandled coinage. He smiled at the gallant banality of Frederica Potter and her multiplied simpering virgins on mugs. And their juxtaposition, oh yes, with the cats' teeth, and the fishbones, and the stars, and, he was afraid, his wife's teeth, and the jagged edges of her necklace-thing. In a glass box. A new metaphor.
Meanwhile, since his wife was in London, and not at his side, he could sit and read a book. He took up the one he was currently reading. As was everyone else, he had discovered.

Artegall said, “Just because it is written in books, doesn't mean it
isn't real. The books say take notice of every little detail, how every stone
lies, how every twig is broken. They have drawings of how sand is disturbed, and how deep fast footprints differ from light springing ones.”

“They can't do smells,” said Mark. “You can't describe a smell, so's
anyone would recognise it, if they didn't know it.”

“You'd be surprised,” said Artegall. “They've got lists of honeys that
resemble each other—ones like wine, ones like roses, ones like heathers,
ones like primroses ... They've got lists of rotting fishes and which you
can still eat and which you shouldn't ...”

“You've got to begin by knowing a rose, or a rotten fish, though.”

“That's the point,” said Artegall. “In the schoolroom, there was neither one nor the other. Only the words. I liked the words. But out here,
there's the things, and of course they're different, but you've got to
admit, the words have helped. Now and then.”

Mark had to admit grudgingly that Artegall's knowledge of tracking
and fishing had in fact proved extremely useful.

The Vice-Chancellor read on. It was a good story. He could feel things looming, in the world outside. He read on.

Chapter 23

The Conference opened without problems on 15th June. Gerard Wijnnobel welcomed the guests in the University Theatre in the Central Tower, and made a brief speech on the Idea of a University. There was then a welcoming party in the great Hall of Long Royston, where the television people mingled with the assembled scholars. The students had finished their exams. Some had gone home, and some were attending the Conference. The assembled scholars smiled benignly at the little group of protesters organised by Nick Tewfell, with placards denouncing the unjust tyranny of exams. Inside, there were very acceptable Nordic open sandwiches, red and white wine, and a summery fruit punch. Hodder Pinsky and Theobald Eichenbaum were both there, and were not speaking to each other. Frederica was pleased that Pinsky recognised her. He was standing by a pillar, under the minstrels' gallery, himself a gleaming pillar, ice-blond head, blue glasses, ice-blue shirt, off-white linen jacket and trousers.

Wilkie pointed out Eichenbaum. He was short and very broad, standing close to the ground on thick legs. He was not fat, he was big-boned, and very muscular. His skin was tautly wrinkled all over, and tanned, no doubt because he spent most of his working life out of doors. He wore heavy owlish glasses, and had very thick white hair which pushed into a very thick, fanning white beard, surrounding full, complicated lips. He was a walking legend. His work on wolf-packs, domestic dogs, foxes and jackals contained a series of classic descriptions of the behaviour of beasts in the wild and under domestication. He had also worked on the learning patterns, parental and sexual behaviour, mating rituals and displacement activities of generations of domestic fowl and wild quail. He lived by a lake, in a German forest, and had a famous wood hut to which he retired to think, surrounded by animals who thought he was a kind of stag, or goose, or fox, or rabbit, or crow, or chicken, or wood-god. He could always think up a way of studying a behaviour pattern but did not bother with scientifically controlled experiments. He was unmarried, and kept his assistants, it was said, at a distance.

He was criticised more and more frequently for believing that human beings, like all other creatures, were full of an energy he called aggression, in English, and “so-called Evil,”
sogenannte Böse,
as Lorenz did, in German. It was said that he believed that this force was nature, and its suppression was damaging to animals, including the human animal. He had no time for those who believed in universal gentleness, or the possibility of teaching lions to lie down with lambs (unless the lions were denatured). And he preferred nature to nurture. As an explanation, and, it was said, as a state of being. There were photographs of him taken from a distance, wandering naked amongst his thickets and trees, his tanned hide blending with the bark, his brush of hair gleaming. Children were told stories about the man who spoke to the creatures. Social scientists told other tales, of intolerance and lack of understanding of human society or community.
Frederica saw Luk Lysgaard-Peacock, standing below the plaster frieze of the Death of Actaeon. He was talking to Jacqueline Winwar and Lyon Bowman: all wore cocktail smiles. Jacqueline was even thinner, and even more handsome. She was wearing a very plain nutmeg-brown mini-dress, which could only be worn by someone very confident of having a trim body, which she now had the right to be. She wore a soft scarlet buckled belt, resting on her hips. Frederica tried to guess the current relations between the three scientists, and couldn't. She walked up, anyway. She knew them all. She was pleased to see them.

Her arrival seemed to act as a signal for Bowman and Jacqueline to move away. This left Luk, who looked, and was, cross. He had had a difficult time, and was suffering from unexpected but intense stage-fright about his controversial paper. Shortly after Frederica's spring visit, John Ottokar had disappeared. He had not turned up to work one morning, had not turned up the next morning, and never turned up again. His room was found to be cleared of anything personal, such as clothes, razor and toothbrush—his books and slide-rule were still in their shelves. Luk prompted Abraham Calder-Fluss to ask Elvet Gander if the missing computer-scientist was in Dun Vale Hall. He had to do this, because Dun Vale Hall had ceremoniously closed its gates, when the Pale was completed, and had cut off the telephone. Gander appeared to be still coming in and out, as indeed was Canon Holly; they were both still scheduled to give papers at the Conference. But a resolutely dejected small group of members—mostly Quakers, crestfallen founders of the Spirit's Tigers, had shaken hands, it was told, and walked away from the locked gate towards the moorland. One or two more appeared, not saying much, during the next few weeks, and took trains back to the south. On the other hand, walkers were seen making their way with satchels and staves over the moorland, long-hairs and seekers, from Calverley and further afield. They were welcomed in. Some came out again. Elvet Gander told Abraham Calder-Fluss that there was no need to worry about John Ottokar. He was indeed inside, he was safely inside. Calder-Fluss asked whether he should consider he had resigned, or was on sick leave, or
what
? Gander said, he is certainly in need of help, that is my professional opinion. He will find himself in there, that is my personal opinion. You must do as you think fit about the salary.
Luk at the time was more concerned at the hiatus in his figures than at the possible spiritual fate of either or both Ottokars. He tried—with some success, but not enough—to persuade Marcus Potter to sort out some of the distributions and equations. Marcus was also helping Jacqueline, whose giant neurones were producing new bursts of action potential, and Christopher Cobb, who was giving a paper on learning in songbirds, especially chaffinches. Cobb, who ran the Centre for Field Studies in the moors, and was a world authority on ants, had branched out into birdsong, and had been working with some research students in the University's new animal behaviour centre. He was even less mathematical than Luk, and even more beleaguered by the approach of the Conference. He knew Eichenbaum slightly, and revered his work—with qualifications, and caveats, of a scientific nature. He was not a political animal. He did need computer help.

On top of that, the Hearers had enclosed what Luk was accustomed to think of as “his” snail populations, although he knew very well that the land they were on belonged to Lucy Nighby, and the snails belonged, if to anyone, to themselves.

Luk marched up to the front gate of the drive leading to Dun Vale Hall. Two very thin young men, with very long lank hair, in white overshirts, were, so to speak, languidly guarding it. Luk explained about the snails. He explained about the length of his study. Geese gathered behind the guardians, spread their white wings experimentally, serpentined their sharp heads on their necks, and spoke like abrupt trumpets. The young men said he could not come in, and ceased to listen.

A letter to Gander, and a letter to Lucy Nighby, produced no reply. Luk reasoned that the perimeter could not all be always guarded. He made his snail observations at dawn. He did some prowling—his snail-infested wall was unfortunately
near
the place where Gunner had kept his motor bike, and the hen-battery had been. Luk reasoned that the buildings might still be in use, and tried to peer through knot-holes in the fence. He heard hens running and bustling, and peewits, but no human movement. It was not a concentration camp. It would not have an armed guard and a watchtower. He came back before dawn with a saw and a shovel, and managed to remove a slightly split plank, making a hole he could slip through, replacing the plank behind him. He prospected. Farm-birds ran wildly out of his way. The buildings were dusty-windowed and their doors swung. Next day, he returned before dawn, with a back pack. He had to park some distance away, and had to carry his things over a hilltop, on rough ground. But no one had touched his entry point, and after a time, he felt it was safe to make regular dawn raids, to record snail movements, to put dabs of fresh blue, to count. All this filled him with a kind of irritated energy.

In some dark part of his soul, he put the absence of John Ottokar down to Frederica Potter, ignoring any part he himself, let alone Paul-Zag, might have played.

He had also seen the astrology episode of
Through the Looking-Glass
. His mood had veered back from cautious benignity to a semiautomatic hostility.

Frederica did not know whether to mention John Ottokar, whose absence was heavily present. She smiled her television smile at Luk, and said she was greatly looking forward to hearing his paper on sex. Luk glowered. Frederica said even more brightly that she hoped he would consider recording a personal interview. Sex was a topic that would be certain to interest the viewers. Luk said that he regretted the presence of the television, which trivialised things. And worse. Worse? said Frederica, behind her bright mask.

“Look what you did to the Vice-Chancellor. You should be ashamed. Letting that woman make a fool of herself—and him—in front of millions. Disseminating a package of dangerous lies.”

Frederica received an image of floating fungal spores over a pristine landscape. From one of those puffballs that exploded. She became combative, the more because she was, of course, disturbed about the Vice-Chancellor, who had been kind to her, in his way.

“Come on. There's nothing wrong with astrology. It's a sort of popular poetry. It lets people think in metaphors. Make lists and categories. People enjoy that. It's beautiful in its way.”

“No it isn't. It's fabrications, and untruths, and it does harm, because it prevents people from thinking. That woman's dangerous.”

“She's absurd. But I thought she—she stood up for herself.”

“It's like looking through a window covered with disgusting cobwebs and saying, that's what the sky's like,” said Luk.

“Well, you're the scientist. If the cobwebs're there, you have to be interested in them. You can't say they're not there. Been there for centuries.”

Luk was briefly baffled. He rallied.

“No, no, they're obscene, unreal forms of thought.”

“Our brains made them.”

“But they're
dead
forms. They're so much less interesting than—real things.”

“Reality's what you think it is.”

“No it isn't. It's what is. You're too clever to give me that one.”

“It wasn't my idea to put her on the programme. It was Wilkie's, he's got a streak of anarchic naughtiness. And he was right, we've had hundreds of letters, people are hungry for all these things, astrology and alchemy and spiritualism ...”

“That's why—”

“Don't go on. I do know. I hate Elvet Gander, too. He's much more dangerous than she is, because he isn't obviously
mad
.”

The shadowy forms of John Ottokar and Paul-Zag shimmered between them.

Luk said “I've had sleepless nights getting my paper together. It's too long. It's not wholly coherent.”

Frederica felt it would be presumptuous to try to console him, or to say anything anodyne, it'll be all right, or anything like that. She said well, she would be there to hear it. Unless the students disrupted everything.

“So far, there's only been placards, and a suspiciously docile little demo.”

Nick Tewfel, who had organised the demo, was visiting Deborah Ritter, Greg Tod, Waltraut Ross and Jonty Surtees. He knew that the demo was only the beginning, and he suspected uneasily that there were things about which he had not been told. The room in the cottage had changed: it was not that it had been swept for action, it was simply more cluttered. Four very large objects, like bedrolls, or stooks, stood against one wall, covered with old blankets. Greg Tod's working-table was covered with copies of a cyclostyled, stapled document. He and Waltraut Ross were bundling them together.

“We got them,” said Surtees. “I was afraid they wouldn't be on time.”

They were translations of extracts from Theobald Eichenbaum's “brown” paper of 1941,
Helder und Herde,
which was based on Francis Galton's chapter, in
Inquiries into Human Faculty
entitled “Gregarious and Slavish Instincts.” Eichenbaum's paper was an exploration of the herding, flocking, and shoaling behaviour of creatures who found safety in masses. It observed the effects on predators of the massing and wheeling of the bodies of potential prey. It also, following Galton, took up both the comparison of the intelligence of wild and domesticated cattle and a comparison with civilised, or domesticated, human beings. Galton had argued that humans had inherited what he perhaps unfortunately called a “slavish” attitude—a shrinking from responsibility, an incapacity to think independently—from some gregarious primeval ancestor. He believed that democracy, and careful breeding of intelligent men (eugenics), would increase responsibility. Galton believed that modern domesticated cattle were more independent than wild ones because the more aggressive and wilful had not been “pruned” from the edge of the herd by lions and leopards, but had propagated themselves. Eichenbaum had subtly switched the emphasis—or anyway the language—and had used phrases derived from the vocabulary of National Socialism, to suggest that there were superior and inferior races of cattle (and men), some of whom were heroes, and some of whom were born to be the slavish herd, or to be eliminated.

Greg Tod had written an eloquent preface to the selective document, which was printed on what he called “shit-brown” paper. The preface which began “Has a man like this any ‘right' to be heard in a free society?,” explained with rhetorical hammering every suspect term, and its political overtones. Sideswipes were taken at Galton and the evil of eugenics and selective breeding. Connections were drawn between Eichenbaum's admiration for the rituals of aggressive combat in wolf-packs, Prussian sabre-fights, and SS initiation rituals. The whole was illustrated with a cartoon image done by Ross of Eichenbaum with a slavering wolf-head on a puny poodle-rump (an allusion to the famous breeding experiment) surrounded by swastikas.