The Call-Girls (22 page)

‘Fire ahead,' Niko said wearily. He had already decided that whatever was going to be said, he would put up no defence.

‘I want to say to you, my dear Nikolai, that in the course of my duties I have had the privilege of listening to a considerable number of interdisciplinary congresses and conferences; but never before have I had the good fortune to listen to deliberations more brilliant, stimulating and pertinent to our times than during your symposium. It was great, simply great, to have a confrontation between people like Brother Caspari and Professor Burch…'

‘Was there a confrontation?'

‘Of course there was. I am sure that when the proceedings. appear in print, they will have the same stirring effect which they had on me as an honest Joe and simple administrator. In the name of the Academy I wish to express to you our gratitude and sincere admiration …' He solemnly took a measured sip from his glass.

There was a short, uncomfortable, or perhaps informal silence. Claire said:

‘That was nice, Jerry.'

Niko said: ‘Did you rehearse it?'

‘You are incurable,' said Hoffman, and did not understand why Claire flinched. ‘Always frivolous. One wouldn't believe you take things seriously.'

‘I am an incurable playboy,' said Niko. ‘But now, if you'll excuse me I'll go to bed. It was a memorable day.'

But the memorable day had not yet come to an end. Shortly before midnight there was a commotion in the Kongresshaus. Gustav, who slept in the basement, alert even in his sleep, was woken by a confused racket in the Conference Room, and the smell of some acrid, particularly nasty fumes. Donning his Army greatcoat, which made an impressive dressing-gown, he rushed to the Conference Room, where a dismal sight awaited him. The large stack of tape-recordings, neatly piled up by Claire, was a mass of flames which were just on the point of catching the curtains. On her lonely chair in the corner Miss Carey was watching the display with a saintly smile. There was a thin trickle of blood coming from under her bun, and there were some tiny bits and pieces of electronic equipment and dental cement in her lap. Next to her stood several cans containing some liquid. Meeting Gustav's glance, she explained sweetly, as if talking to a child, that she had not been sure whether the tapes were inflammable, so she had had to douse them with paraffin.

‘We call it
petroleum
,' Gustav said severely, busily tearing down the curtains before they went up in flames.

‘No, petrol is what we put in motor cars,' Miss Carey explained patiently. ‘It is explosive – that would never have done.'

Fortunately Gustav was able to summon two members of the fire-brigade from Mitzie's and Hansie's bedrooms. They quickly and competently dealt with the emergency, but the taped proceedings of the Symposium ‘Approaches to Survival' had been transformed into black cinder.

The Soloviefs had decided to stay on for another day and walk in the mountains now that the tourists had gone.

The others were leaving on the bus at 11 AM. Gustav would take them to the railway station in the valley, from where a train would take them to the airport. Harriet and von Halder were due at a symposium on ‘Man and His Environment' in Sydney, Australia; Petitjacques was due at a Group-Encounter Live-In at Big Sur, Calif; Valenti had to attend a neurological congress in Rio de Janeiro, and Blood a PEN Congress in Bucharest. They would pay his return air-fare from London which, added to his return fare to Schneedorf, left him with a profit of some fifty pounds.

In view of the international situation, however, nobody could be sure whether they would reach their destination. This added a certain nervousness to the melancholia which always befell the call-girls at the moment of departure. However much they got on one another's nerves, each symposium grew into a kind of club or family, with its daily routines, its gossip and private jokes. Now it was all coming to an end, and each was again on his or her own. They would not have minded going on for another week.

There were only about ten minutes left. The yellow bus was waiting at the steps of the Kongress-terrace. The Soloviefs were sitting on their balcony, watching the loading of the luggage. Soon Niko would have to go down to do the farewell honours.

‘I have been thinking,' said Niko.

‘You have?'

‘I thought of a riddle. Tell me the only effective consolation which could be offered a man who knows that he is
going to be hanged tomorrow morning at nine o'clock sharp.'

‘You tell me.'

‘The prison governor enters the condemned man's cell and says to him: “We are very sorry, but we have to advance the time set for your execution by thirty minutes. We have just been informed that at nine o'clock the earth will collide with a comet and explode.”'

‘Not a very nice riddle.'

‘But true …' He hesitated, then said very gently: ‘I wanted you to know that I no longer care.'

Gustav got into the driver's seat of the bus and honked three times. He was considering whether to get deliberately stuck in one of the spiky virgins to give his passengers a last thrill.

Claire lightly brushed the back of Niko's hand. ‘You must go down.'

‘To thank them for their valuable contributions – informally.'

Niko clattered down the stairs and took up his position at the plate-glass entrance door – from where he had emerged at the arrival of the bus six days earlier to welcome them on board. Was it only six days? Time enough for the Lord to create a cosmos out of chaos, time enough for man to reverse the process by pressing a few buttons and throwing a few switches. Had it started already? He could not care less.

They were filing out, one by one, cluttered with over-night bags, cameras and attaché cases. A tape-recorder cassette was bulging out of Halder's pocket: it contained his lecture, which he had dug out of the ashes – the only one that had miraculously escaped the flames.

They shook hands with Niko each in turn, putting their baggage on the cement floor while the ceremony lasted.

Harriet kissed him with great aplomb on both cheeks. ‘Judas pecked at only one,' said Niko. ‘Rot,' said Harriet, and to his embarrassment, she shed some outsized tears.

Halder tried his vice-like grip which left most people's
hands numb for a few minutes, but he had forgotten' that Niko had spent years exercising on the piano.

Wyndham tittered: Tony blushed; Petitjacques put his index-finger across his lips – perhaps indicating that words were meaningless; Niko began to see his point. Blood, looking at him with bloodshot eyes, said with unexpected mildness: ‘It was not quite such a bad circus as you think.'

Dr Valenti eased Miss Carey through the door with a hand under her elbow, but it looked more like a gallant gesture than one of support, for Miss Carey seemed to have recovered her former serenity, and the grey bun on her head looked as tidy as ever – the doctor probably carried a repair kit, including dental cement, in his elegant leather briefcase.

Burch and John D. John Junior walked past in earnest discussion, hardly stopping to shake hands in a perfunctory way. They came last, with the modesty becoming to the victors.

As Harriet and Wyndham were getting into the bus, they both turned to wave farewell to the massive figure in the rumpled dark suit standing, alone, at the Kongresshaus door.

‘He looks ill,' said Wyndham.

‘He looks like the captain of a sinking ship,' said Harriet, ‘determined to go down with it.'

‘Relax,' said Dr Grob.

‘How can a man relax when the chimeras are after him?' complained Anderson, fidgeting on the couch.

‘Relax, relax,' said Dr Grob. ‘Close your eyes. Tell me the first word that comes into your head.'

‘Chimera,' said Anderson.

‘You are not properly relaxed,' said Dr Grob with a patient, hardly audible yawn. ‘Try again.'

‘Chimeras,' said Anderson. ‘They are after me. They are after you too. Only you don't realize it, because you yourself suffer from a low-grade chimeric infection – grade three, I should say, or maybe grade four. The infection produces a blind spot, so you cannot see them.'

‘Look,' said Dr Grob. ‘Who is the patient here, and who is the doctor?'

‘That is what I don't know,' Anderson said doubtfully.

‘Then why do you come to me and pay me a hundred dollars an hour?'

‘To talk about chimeras,' said Anderson. He thought for a while, then nodded. ‘Yes, that is the purpose.'

‘All right then,' said Dr Grob. He stopped taking notes, put his pen away, and leaned back in his chair. ‘What is a chimera? Animal, vegetable or mineral?'

‘It is difficult to decide,' said Anderson. ‘Everybody knows that the Greek chimeras had lions' heads, goat bodies and serpents' tails. But they are also in the brain.'

‘In whose brain?'

‘In yours, for instance. I believe it is only a low-grade infection, but if you don't take care it will spread and eventually
you will turn into a full-blown chimera yourself. Anyway, you need a haircut.'

Dr Grob looked furtively into the mirror concealed in the top-drawer of his desk, and for a moment tried to visualize himself with a lion's head. The idea was not unpleasant; whatever people say, a lion is a noble animal. As for the goat and the serpent's tail, they were obviously products of his patient's sick imagination.

‘Can't you think of anything but the chimeras? It is an obsession, you know,' he said gently.

‘Of course it is,' Anderson said. ‘How can you not be obsessed with chimeras when they are after your blood?'

‘Well, that doesn't get us anywhere,' Dr Grob said, wondering whether he should take on this patient or not. But most patients nowadays were obsessed with chimeras, and he had to make a living. His parlour was full of beautiful stuffed lions, and they cost a lot of money.

‘No, it doesn't,' said Anderson. ‘Not until I succeed in convincing you that in a world which is being taken over by the chimeras to be obsessed with chimeras is a healthy, normal state of mind.'

‘An obsession can never be called normal,' said Dr Grob.

‘Do you deny that the chimeras exist?' asked Anderson.

‘Well – yes, and no,' Dr Grob said patiently. ‘I do not question the facts. We are faced with a genetic mutation on a statistically significant scale, which has produced some of the phenomena to which you refer in such unscientific and wildly exaggerated terms. It is further admitted that some of the mutants seem to be carriers of an unusual type of virus which effects similar transformations in the infected person. That's all. The rest is fantasy – and that's where psychotherapy comes in.'

‘But you yourself have caught the infection,' Anderson repeated stubbornly, thumping the side of the couch with his fist.

‘All right, then, I am infected,' said Dr Grob quietly. ‘Tell me who in your opinion is not.'

‘Everybody is. Only the grades vary. There are seventeen
grades. In the higher grades the blind spot expands, and the infectee can no longer see the changes in himself and in others. A chimera looks to another chimera like a normal person.'

‘All right, you have explained all this to me before. Who, in your opinion, is not infected?'

‘I am not.'

‘Is it not rather strange that you are the only one?'

‘It is a tragedy. I would be much happier if I developed a blind spot.'

‘But if you are the only sane person, why do you want treatment?'

Anderson looked at the doctor slyly.

‘I told you I would be much happier if I too had a blind spot. Just a tiny one. Life would be much pleasanter…'

‘You mean you came to me, not to be cured, but to be made mentally insane?'

‘Not exactly insane. Just a tiny blind spot. Life is unbearable when you see clearly what's going on around you.'

‘Most extraordinary,' said Dr Grob.

‘Look,' said Anderson in growing agitation. ‘Supposing that time were speeding up in our part of the universe by some relativistic quirk. Then all the clocks would be ticking faster and faster, and our pulses would quicken at the same rate, so no clockmaker or physician would be aware of what's happening. See?'

‘No, I don't,' said Dr Grob gruffly.

‘But how can you help me if you don't understand?' Anderson shouted. ‘The infection is spreading faster and faster. What do you intend to do?'

‘I intend to cure you,' said Grob, ‘because that is my job. Integration of the personality. Adjustment to society. Accept your fellow beings, and they will accept you. Co-operate. Learn to respond in a positive way.'

‘What is the positive way?'

‘The opposite of the negative way,' said Dr Grob, and rose awkwardly from his chair. His head with the tumbled mane seemed top-heavy. ‘I am afraid the hour is up, but
before you go I want you to meet my assistant. He takes over when I am on vacation.'

He pressed a bell, and a blond young man with a toothy smile came in. ‘This is Dr Miller,' introduced Grob. ‘One of the most promising therapists of the younger generation.'

Dr Miller advanced to shake hands with the patient. Anderson took a quick jump, cowered behind the couch for protection, and looked at Dr Miller with wild, staring eyes. The two doctors exchanged a glance, and Dr Miller quietly left the room.

‘Well, well,' said Dr Grob. ‘I am sorry I upset you. Did you see anything unusual in Dr Miller?'

‘But of course,' said Anderson, refusing to emerge from his shelter behind the couch. ‘How can you not see that he is almost a full-blown chimera? You must have a grade ten infection after all.'