Strange Music (31 page)

‘So, that's one more reason to come to London!' She looked provocatively at her husband, who did not rise to it. Instead he asked, ‘Why does it worry you – this Eric Brandon's positivism?'

‘Because I think he's a bad influence on Felix Breit, the sculptor, who is a very dear friend of mine. An artist – especially an artist like Felix – needs to experience things from the inside outwards. It's nothing like a scientist's experience, which is from the outside inwards.'

‘Get him to look at Leonardo's anatomical drawings,' Yasmin said. ‘In fact,
any
of Leonardo's engineering drawings and inventions. And then make him compare them to the drawings in an anatomy textbook or any engineering drawing. Long before he puts pen to paper, Leonardo understands the flayed human corpse – he probably flayed it himself! So the drawing starts from that understanding and works its way outward to the external appearance, refined to one particular viewpoint. But the
whole anatomy
is not sacrificed
to
that viewpoint.'

‘Oh!' Faith was ecstatic. ‘You simply must visit us when you're next in London. You
do
visit London, I hope?'

‘As a matter of fact,' Rowhani said casually, ‘we were thinking of making a visit quite soon. We must set up a research unit – jointly with Manutius – and go through all the British Library catalogues of Persian material . . . and the British Museum—'

‘And the Chester Beatty collection—'

‘Naturally. And also to look up old friends—'

‘Especially old Philip!' Yasmin said.

‘Yes, indeed.' He turned to Faith. ‘Philip Anderson – d'you know him by any chance?'

‘He's a keen swimmer,' she said, thinking: Lord, how fake this sounds . . . and why are we bothering, anyway? And, more worryingly, why did no one tell me that Yasmin would be part of the script?

‘I didn't know that,' Rowhani replied; he was far more convincing than she felt herself to be.

‘I'm a member of the Lansdowne Club – just off Berkeley Square, you know. My husband and Philip often indulge in races in the club swimming pool before joining me for lunch at the poolside buttery. And, as a matter of fact, I'm glad you reminded me – he gave me a letter for you.' She fished in her bag. ‘Yes, here it is.'

He took it and made at once for the door, saying, ‘I'd better see if he wants an immediate reply.'

Left alone, Faith and Yasmin smiled self-consciously at each other. ‘What an unconvincing rigmarole,' Faith said.

‘Well, it was intended for a restaurant or some other public space.'

‘I wasn't told you'd be part of it.'

‘I wasn't intended to be part of it, but the moment I set eyes on your photograph—' Seeing Faith's surprise, she said, ‘Oh, yes, Alexander sent your photograph ahead of you, and the moment I saw it, I said to Baqer: “I'm coming, too!”' She smiled a very feline smile. ‘You see, I know the
thatness
of my husband and I know the
whatness
of him, too!'

Monday, 5 November 1951

Fritz flapped a none-too-clean napkin at the tablecloth until Fogel at last told him to stop it and go away.

‘They must be the rudest waiters in London,' Alex commented.

‘New York is worse,' Faith assured him. ‘Last time I was there I had an incomprehensible menu shouted at me by an ex-tobacco-auctioneer posing as a waiter, who finished – without pausing for breath – “makeyaminduplady.”'

‘Something still bothering you, Wolf?' Alex asked.

Fogel nodded. ‘Ben Gurion. In one way we want his intimate cooperation for
Land of Promise
. It opens so many doors. But, in another way, we want mainly a go-between. We must sell this book in America—'

‘Will that be difficult? Surely not?'

‘Because of the big Jewish population . . . not longer poor?' Fogel turned to Faith. ‘Explain to him our problem.'

‘They are rich. They are liberal. But they are
American
liberal, which is not socialist. Ben Gurion is a socialist. I met him just a few days after he managed to put together this new coalition, after eight months of squabbling over religious education. That squabbling – it doesn't go down well. The Jews in America want only positive thoughts . . . successes . . . struggles and battles, yes, but always with positive outcomes. We think it would be better in the long run if we had a go-between, someone we can talk to frankly about the market for this book, who can then rephrase it in the most tactful way for Ben Gurion.'

‘A buffer zone,' Alex commented. ‘How appropriate.'

‘We need impartial advice on this,' Fogel said. ‘And when I hear the word “impartial” I think of the
BBC
. You have a correspondent there, yes?'

Alex nodded. ‘P.J. Kennedy. But I'm not sure what his contract would allow in the way of—'

‘Just advice,' Faith explained. ‘He must know all the ins and outs of their politics. He could give us a few names? I must admit, I have forebodings about this book. Weizman once complained that every Jew wanted to be president of Israel . . . My complaint is that every Jew I met is certain that he has the one true, unchallengeable account of Erez Israel. And I'll give you an extreme example. One ultra-orthodox religious Jew I spoke with – no names, no pack drill – told me to read Jeremiah sixteen because it proves that Hitler was an instrument of God's will and the
Vernichtung
was precisely foretold in chapter sixteen. “It is we Jews who should be ashamed of the
Vernichtung
,” he said, “not the Germans. They were the righteous instruments of God's wrath and should hold their heads high.” Our editors will have to cope with everything between that extreme and its opposite. However . . .' she added in the glum silence that followed, ‘here's an idea that has just occurred to me . . .' She turned to Fogel. ‘You remember how when you were doing
Forward!
and
Illustrated Britain
you went inside various branches of British industry – steel . . . transport . . . shipbuilding – and explained how they worked—'

He chuckled. ‘And how they
didn't
work. Ernest Bevin told me we made nationalization much easier for Labour. I told it to Shinwell at Bevin's funeral and he agreed. Why?'

‘Well, Manutius has pioneered a new type of publishing, partly out of commercial necessity but also to make books genuinely international. I look at books published before the war – illustrated books on science, engineering, history . . . anything – and I
cringe
. I curl up inside with embarrassment at how parochial they are. But now, just because we have to have simultaneous printing in eight, nine, ten different languages to pay for the colour and the design and research, we are forced to think internationally. And we've been doing it so long now that it's second nature. We do it automatically. And that's a revolution.
You
have done this, Wolf. You started a revolution in your own backyard. We have radio documentaries and
TV
documentaries on Fleming and penicillin, Whittle and the jet engine, Baird and television – even though his system was hopeless and never worked properly. So wouldn't it make a fascinating documentary to follow the progress – the
international
progress – of one of Manutius's books?'

Faith knew something was wrong when Fogel decided to walk the half-mile back to the office rather than take a taxi. ‘This idea is a disaster,' he said, breaking a long and ominous silence. ‘The more I think about it, the more terrible it is.'

‘You were happy enough back there when I first—'

‘Because you flatter me. “
You
have done this, Wolf. It's
your
revolution in
your
own courtyard!” But now I say no. Manutius survives . . .
I
survive . . . because it's a mystique all round how we work.
Anyone
can hire artists, designers, editors. Why don't they? Because they think Wolf Fogel has a crystal ball or a guardian angel or something they can never have, and so—'

‘But you do! Slow down, for God's sake! Who else can pick up the phone and get Bertrand Russell, Julian Huxley . . . Gerald Barry . . . Boyd-Orr . . . to listen and say yes?'

‘This is not a crystal ball – this is my point.'

‘It's half a crystal ball. Or a magic bullet – that's a better name for it. You're probably not even aware of the other half.'

For fifty paces he maintained a stubborn silence but was at last compelled to ask, ‘What other half?'

‘Think back to the Iranian embassy party – how many other publishers do you know who would immediately think
book contract
when they hear that a four hundred and fiftieth anniversary of a distant country is almost
ten years
in the future? And that
still
isn't the full “other half.”'

Again she waited until he felt compelled to ask – only fifteen paces this time.

‘Russell, Huxley, and Barry and so on are yesterday's trophies, but you're still bagging the next generation. Alan Bullock, A.L. Rowse, F.R. Leavis, Ritchie Calder . . . you've got them all sniffing the Manutius bait. You're worried that if we were in a documentary on how international co-production works, every other publisher in the world could use it as a textbook on how to do it? They'd fall flat on their faces, because they'd only see the physical process and the costs. They'd see nothing of all those background costs – the network of contacts, the bait, the Hampstead parties, the
snish-snish
of keeping a hundred streams of information flowing just for the sake of the one we can exploit. They wouldn't even know where to start.'

‘Some of them would.'

‘Never! They are
English
publishers. Europe exists in a different dimension of space-time for them. They'd have night terrors at the thought of having to collaborate with just
one
other European publisher. Imagine telling them that their editor would have to work with editors from Hachette, Sansoni, Ullstein, Bonniers . . . and half a dozen more. They'd say “Thank God we still have the Empire,” and so they'd leave the field to us. Besides, we've got a ten-year head start on them.'

They were nearing the office by now and, for the moment, he seemed to have run out of objections. But long experience had taught her that logic alone never went very far with Fogel. She judged it time for a distraction. ‘Alex and I went cubbing in Gloucestershire last weekend,' she said. ‘And Felix asked us to say hello to a sculptor friend of his who lives in Cheltenham, John Bowes. And through him we met a man I think we – meaning Manutius – ought to cultivate.'

‘Go on.' Fogel's tone said she still had not won him over.

She continued as they walked up Rathbone Mews. ‘If I say he's a mathematician who worked in Operations Research in the war, that he's a friend of Laura Riding and Robert Graves, that he wrote a marvellous study of William Blake published by Secker, which is already in its third printing, and that he's now in charge of research at the National Coal Board, I wouldn't even be scratching the surface. He's a remarkable man – a truly renaissance man.'

Fogel paused at the main entrance door. ‘His name?'

They entered the building and rang for the lift.

‘His family came to England when he was twelve, just after the Great War. He learned English mainly through Shakespeare but he told me he still didn't think it good enough when he was about eighteen and in a public lavatory near Fleet Street and he recognized the great G.K. Chesterton struggling to do up his flies, which were out of reach under that enormous belly.'

The lift arrived and they started the ascent. ‘His name?' Fogel asked again.

‘He says that to this day he regrets not offering to help the poor old fellow.'

Fogel drew an exasperated breath to ask one last time but she cut him short with: ‘His name is Jacob Bronowski.'

Rather than waste the breath, he said, ‘We give him lunch next time he comes to Coal Board head office. I still don't want your documentary spies.'

‘How did it go after lunch with Fogel?' Alex asked as they drove back in the Bentley to the Dower House that evening. ‘I saw you
walking
back with him – is that a good sign?'

‘He wasn't happy with my suggestion for a documentary.'

‘Oh? He seemed to like it at lunch.'

‘That's a thing with Fogel. He'll work like a slave to secure a contract with some big overseas publisher but then – as soon as it's signed and sealed . . . bang! Down comes a cloud of gloom and he's thinking of ways to tweak it even more to our advantage. Or even break it. He hates being fettered.'

Alex considered this awhile and then said, ‘But what's “being fettered” about being the star of a documentary on the
BBC
?'

‘Exactly! I couldn't see it, either. I've been turning it over all afternoon and I think it's part of the same thing but in a more complex way. Remember when I was trying to describe him to Bronowski? I had a fleeting intuition of this . . . problem or whatever you'd call it. Fogel's innermost fear is that he'll lose control. A contract is something that takes control away from him and hands it over to the law. A
TV
documentary on the
BBC
might create such interest and bring in so much new business that Manutius would have to expand. Inevitably then there'd be so many layers of management and such a formal structure that he'd lose control. Or he'd lose the sort of control he enjoys now, where he just picks up the phone and says, “Come!” And where he can praise you for something on Friday and bawl your head off for the same thing on Tuesday.'

‘So! He doesn't want Manutius to expand, eh!'

She sighed. ‘Yes. He doesn't want expansion. That was what was gnawing away at the back of my mind when we were with Bruno last weekend. I suppose I've only dared admit it to myself today.' He drew breath to speak but she cut him short: ‘And I know what you're going to say next, my darling. And you may very well be right. But the question is – do I stay and fight it?
Force
the business to expand? Because I really do want to be a big fish in a big pond. Or—'