Skios: A Novel (15 page)

“
Phoksoliva,
” he said. “Fox? Yes? Oliver? Oliver Fox?”

“Oh,” she said, in a rather different tone, “you know him, do you?”

For everything there was always a rational explanation, a perfect causal ancestry, if only you could find it.

“
Know
him?” he said. “I
am
him.”

*   *   *

More tables had been dragged across to join up with Dr. Wilfred’s in the shade of the great plane tree. The faces around them craned forward over the coffee and green tea so as to catch every word he was saying.

And gradually, as he spoke, he felt the adrenaline beginning to drain out of his veins. It was all getting too easy. The insubstantial fingerholds and crumbling toeholds on which he had been balancing his way up the cliff so far were broadening out from one moment to the next. It was becoming more and more like walking up a staircase. He saw another route opening up to one side with intriguing new dangers.

“Why are you sitting here listening to all this? I’ll tell you. It’s because you believe I’m Dr. Norman Wilfred. But
why
do you believe I’m Dr. Norman Wilfred?”

There was a silence. They gazed at him, waiting to be told. Sitting waiting on her chair behind him, Nikki gazed at the back of his head, also waiting.

“Because it’s in the brochure,” said Chuck Friendly eventually. “‘The Fred Toppler Lecture will be given this year by Dr. Norman Wilfred, the distinguished etc., etc.’”

“But perhaps Dr. Norman Wilfred, the distinguished etc., etc., is someone else. Perhaps I’m not Dr. Norman Wilfred.”

Various people laughed.

“Nikki goes to the airport to meet Dr. Norman Wilfred,” said Dr. Norman Wilfred. “She holds up her sign—‘Dr. Norman Wilfred.’ And I see it. I’ve just got off the plane. I’m looking for my taxi. I’m not Dr. Norman Wilfred at all. I’m someone called … I don’t know … Fox, let’s say. Oliver Fox.”

“I’m confused,” said Morton Rinkleman. “Who’s Oliver Fox?”

“Oliver Fox is me,” said Dr. Norman Wilfred. “Only as I stand there, looking round for someone holding up the name ‘Oliver Fox,’ I see this sign saying ‘Dr. Norman Wilfred.’ And the name catches my fancy. So I take a look at the person who’s holding the sign…”

He looked round and saw Nikki.

“Oh, and here she is.”

She smiled at him.

“She seems to be smiling at me,” said Dr. Norman Wilfred. “So I smile back at her. ‘Dr Norman Wilfred?’ she says.

“And suddenly I think it might be fun to be Dr. Norman Wilfred for a bit. The idea just comes into my head. Out of nowhere.

“And next thing I know, I’m here talking a lot of nonsense, and everyone’s listening respectfully and taking it all seriously. Why? Just because they think I’m Dr. Norman Wilfred.

“So here we are—we’re making it all up as we go along. It’s like a random mutation in a gene. If I tell you the truth, that I’m Oliver Fox, then consequences follow from that. No one sits here listening to me. No one even lets me through the gate. So the world goes on its way without my being here saying all this.

“And if I say I’m Dr. Norman Wilfred, then the world goes another way. Oliver Fox—Dr. Norman Wilfred—what does it matter? Heads/tails. Strawberry/vanilla. But who knows what the consequences will be? It’s like the famous butterfly in Brazil. It just happens to flap its wings, and that sets off an escalating chain of consequences that ends up with a tornado in Nebraska. I say this—you say that—someone says something else—and there are consequences. The consequences will have consequences, and in three weeks’ time the Dow Jones will suddenly plunge forty-seven points.”

People laughed, and stirred uneasily in their seats.

“Or else the NASDAQ will gain fifty-three points.”

They laughed again, and looked happier.

“And it’s not just me doing this,” said Dr. Norman Wilfred. “We’re all in this together. I said I was Dr. Norman Wilfred. But you believed me. So between us we have determined the whole future course of the universe.”

He sat back, and took a sip of coffee. Everyone around the table did likewise.

“That’s so true,” said Mrs. Comax. “People take everything on trust.”

“Someone’s only got to say, ‘Hey, guys, I’m an expert,’” said Mr. Chuck Friendly, “and next thing he’s operating on the president’s brain; he’s running the space program.”

“Or no one says anything,” said Mrs. Chuck Friendly, “but people just
think
someone’s a genius, or whatever, and they don’t even know why they ever thought so in the first place!”

“We’re all such fools!” said Morton Rinkleman.

“How do you know I’m Harold Fossett?” said Harold Fossett.

“How do
you
know you’re Harold Fossett?” said Morton Rinkleman.

“Hey, how
do
I know I’m Harold Fossett?” said Harold Fossett.

“Who, indeed, am I?” said a distinguished Indian guest whose name and job description nobody had grasped, and got no answer.

“Are any of us, in fact, anybody?” said somebody.

They all sipped their coffee and green tea, and looked at one another with new interest and respect, delighted with the idea that they might none of them be who they said they were, their delight rooted in their absolute confidence that they were.

“OK,” said Mr. Erlunder. “I’m
not
Mr. Erlunder! I’m
Mrs.
Erlunder!”

“That makes two of us,” said Mrs. Erlunder. “Unless I’m you.”

“I’m George Washington,” said Russell Pond. “I cannot tell a lie.”

“I’m a freshwater crayfish,” said Alf Persson, the Swedish theologian.

“I’m a sunspot,” said Suki Brox.

“I’m Professor Norbert Ditmuss,” said Professor Norbert Ditmuss.

“And Wellesley Luft is Wellesley Luft,” said Nikki, before Professor Ditmuss could expand on this. “And Wellesley Luft is waiting to interview Dr. Wilfred for the
Journal of Science Management
.”

Dr. Wilfred got to his feet and inclined his head. Some of the others also got to their feet, and everyone else got to his or her feet and applauded, apart from the curmudgeonly K. D. Clopper, who still thought it was all bunkum, and Wilson Westerman, who was worrying about what Frankfurt had been doing since he last looked at his phone.

“He’s actually not arriving for ages yet,” murmured Nikki as she maneuvered Dr. Wilfred away from various people who rather pressingly wanted to continue the conversation.

“You were saving me from Professor Ditmuss again?” said Dr. Wilfred.

“Just in case you really aren’t Dr. Wilfred,” said Nikki.

He felt a sense of triumph. He had climbed the most exposed pitch yet and survived. If he could do that he could do anything. Except that there wasn’t anything left to do. Apart from the lecture. His sense of triumph began to fade.

“I’ll send Mr. Luft up to your room, shall I? You might want to have that little siesta of yours first while I’m fetching him.”

“You’re going to be holding up your sign again? Just make sure he
is
Mr. Luft, though, and not somebody else. One somebody else is quite enough.”

She stopped and looked round, then gave him a very swift kiss.

“Quite enough for me,” she said. “Anyway,
you’ll
know if it’s not him. He’s an old friend of yours. He’s interviewed you three or four times before.”

“Has he?” said Dr. Wilfred. The dark depths below him reached tinglingly up into his knees again. “So let’s see if
he
thinks I’m Dr. Wilfred.”

27

“But you’re
not
Oliver Fox,” said Georgie finally, after the shimmering hot silence of the afternoon had gone on and on. “You’re Wilfred somebody.”

She was on the lounger again, with the towel in place around her middle, but now she had turned onto her back. She evidently felt that after all this time she knew him well enough. He, likewise, felt that after all this time he knew her well enough to take an occasional look, particularly since she seemed to have her eyes closed behind her dark glasses, though her two breasts, sprawled softly outwards, had still not seized his imagination as strongly as those two small and now concealed moles.

“Take a good long look, if you’re going to,” she said. “You’ll do something to your neck, twitching back and forth like that. Why did you tell the taxi driver you were Oliver Fox?”

“I
didn’t
tell the taxi driver I was Oliver Fox,” said Wilfred.

“Well,
someone
did. He told me he’d driven you here. Oliver Fox. He said you were waiting for me.”

Wilfred tried to remember exactly how the conversation had gone.
Phoksoliva … Euphoksoliva …
Yes, of course.

“It was
him,
” he said. “The taxi driver.
He
told
me
.”

“The
taxi driver
told you were Oliver Fox? What, and you believed him? And you’re a famous scientist, are you, Wilfred? What else have taxi drivers told you?”

*   *   *

The afternoon went hotly on and on. A small cloud was created out of empty air, moved slowly across the sky, and dissolved again, exhausted, before it got anywhere.

“What I don’t understand,” said Wilfred—no,
Dr.
Wilfred, he was
Dr.
Wilfred—“is that this pal of yours is supposed to be coming in a taxi. He’s not renting a car? How are you proposing to get around?”

“What, to art galleries? Famous cathedrals and so on?” She laughed. Little soft trembles ran through her breasts, like almost imperceptible waves in a calm summer sea. “I don’t suppose he was thinking of getting around very much.”

No, of course not, thought Dr. Wilfred. Art galleries and famous cathedrals were probably not what either of them had at the forefront of their minds.

“Haven’t you got a girlfriend, Wilfred?” she said. “No? What—just a wife? Or no wife, even?”

He was not going to get drawn into a discussion of his own domestic arrangements. In any case, what he was thinking about was the still unmade bed in the villa. They would get out of it sometimes, he thought. To sunbathe, perhaps. Take a dip in the pool. What else? Nothing. Back to bed again. Yes, why should we need a car? Or rather
they
. Why would they need a car?

“Food, though,” he said. “Meals. Groceries. You weren’t planning to live on a loaf of frozen bread and a packet of frozen peas all week?”

“I don’t know what the arrangements are. I suppose Oliver’s thought of something.”

There was a silence while they both thought about the possible contents of Oliver’s thinking.

“Or probably not, actually,” she said. “I don’t think he thinks. Not that sort of thinking. Just something comes into his head and—woof!—he does it.”

Woof, he does it. Of course. Woof, they both do it. Dr. Wilfred suddenly found this feckless pair and their brainless pleasures profoundly distasteful.

“No business of mine, of course,” he said, “but what about this other friend of yours?”

“Patrick? He’s in Turkey.”

“He’s in Turkey. Oh. So as soon as Patrick turns his back you’re off with
this
one, are you?”

“What do you mean? It’s not like it’s, you know, a regular arrangement! I’ve only met him once! For about five minutes!”

You heard this kind of thing about young people these days, thought Oliver, thought Wilfred, thought Dr. Wilfred, but you never really believed it until you actually came face to face with one of them.

“Only met him once?” he said. “For five minutes? Oh, that’s all right, then.”

“Well, you’ve got to be spontaneous, haven’t you? You’ve got to go along with things. Anyway, we’ve sent each other lots of texts.”

Lots of texts. Of course. Plus sliced bread and frozen peas. Or rather, now, no sliced bread and no frozen peas.

Then back to bed.

*   *   *

There was another small cloud overhead … He closed his eyes. When he opened them there was no cloud.

“Now I come to think about it,” said Georgie, “I see why he hasn’t shown up yet. It’s just like you said—there’s a perfectly logical explanation. It’s because he hasn’t bothered to listen to his messages. He doesn’t know I’m here. He thinks I’m arriving this evening.”

The two moles, the sliced bread, and the unmade-up bed all vanished from Dr. Wilfred’s head as he took in the implications of this. “You mean … he may not come until
this evening
? But that’s when my lecture is! I need the taxi before then! I need the taxi now!”

“You’ll just have to relax and have a day off. I shouldn’t worry. They’ll think of something else to do. People often don’t turn up for things.”

He saw the faces in the hall. Distinguished faces, important faces—people who had flown from Athens and even farther afield for the Fred Toppler Lecture. He heard the eager anticipatory hum die away as someone stepped up to the lectern to introduce him.
Not
to introduce him, though. To explain that for reasons beyond their control … Or that Dr. Norman Wilfred was unfortunately indisposed … Or quite frankly that no one knew where he was. He had simply failed to show up.

And where he would be was here, toasting sliced bread with some entirely irresponsible young woman who didn’t seem to think it mattered whether people honored their professional obligations or whether they simply sloped off and jumped into bed with people they’d only known for five minutes. Not that she would be jumping into bed with
him,
of course, because at that moment she would be jumping into bed with someone else, and what he himself would be jumping into, if anything, would be the taxi that had brought the man she actually was jumping into bed with; and he would be on his way to run into the lecture hall, even more embarrassingly than if he had never shown up at all, just as everyone left.

“Though of course,” said Georgie, “now I’m thinking,
Why
hasn’t he bothered to listen to his messages? And I know why—because he had to hang around for half an hour with nothing to do, and he went into a bar, and he saw some woman, and he brushed the hair out of his eyes and gave her his ridiculous grin, and now he won’t be coming this evening, or tomorrow, or all the rest of the week.”