The Call-Girls (8 page)

Burch fought a brief battle with himself, trying to keep his mouth shut in dignified silence, and lost. Peering sharply over his lenses at Wyndham, he said: ‘You object to the term social engineering. Is not what
you
are trying to do exactly that?'

‘Oh no. I wouldn't call that engineering. I would rather call it officiating – to the newborn.' Smiling guilelessly, Wyndham looked rather like a dimpled baby himself.

There was some polite laughter, and the discussion seemed to be grinding to a halt when, with his infallible instinct for timing, Bruno Kaletski went into action.

‘Mr Chairman, with your permission …' He raised his left hand while his right, which had been busily taking notes all the time, continued to do so. Solovief nodded at him without enthusiasm, but Bruno went on to finish whatever he was writing with an expression of utter concentration, thus creating an expectant silence that lasted nearly twenty seconds. Then he put down his monogrammed fountain pen with an air of accomplishment:

‘Mr Chairman, it seems to me that there is considerable confusion regarding the scope and aims of this conference, and the ways and means of achieving them. Speaking in my
humble capacity as a social scientist – or a scientifically orientated student of society, if you prefer that label – the reason for this confusion seems to me obvious …' He paused, took a few quick steps to the blackboard standing against the wall, and picked up a piece of chalk. ‘The reason is that we are all suffering from controlled schizophrenia…' He wrote on the blackboard in small, neat capitals: CONTROLLED SCHIZOPHRENIA. ‘No personal offence – or offences, plural – is or are meant, of course.' He wrote under the previous line: NO OFFENCE. ‘The term is offered as a metaphor, but not purely as a metaphor. Schizophrenia, loosely speaking, means a split mind. Our minds are split…' With a dramatic vertical stroke of the chalk he divided the blackboard into two halves. ‘On the one hand, we lead, as our friend Wyndham so aptly remarked, sheltered academic lives, pursuing our scientific quests
sub specie aeternitatis
– in the sign of eternity, as it were …' He wrote on the left half of the blackboard: SUB SP. AET. ‘But pure research has no direct bearing on the ills that plague our threatened mankind. The distant galaxies we probe with our radio-telescopes won't feed the starving millions, nor bring freedom to the oppressed millions. Even applied research in the biological and social sciences is always based on long-term projects, always taking for granted that we have plenty of time before us, that the next generation will continue where we have left off and bring our modest endeavours to a fruitful conclusion. But ay, there is the rub …' He paused and wrote on the same line as SUB SP. AET., but on the right half of the blackboard: TOMORROW!? … Yes, my friends, the other half of the split mind knows that there may be no tomorrow, so we feel tempted to let the galaxies look after themselves and let eternity look after itself, and concentrate all our energies, quests and endeavours on the task of ensuring that there should be a morrow. But would that not be another kind of betrayal – the abandonment of what some of us regard, if I may use that term, as our sacred mission? So we are caught between the Scylla of complacency' (he tapped hard on the left side of the blackboard)
‘and the Charybdis of panicky hysteria' (tap on the right side). ‘Some of us try of course in our modest ways to heal the split by devoting part of our time and energy – and if I may say so, even more time and energy than we can afford – to the common weal, by trying to foster mutual understanding between races and nations through organizations such as UNESCO, the Peace Council, the President's Advisory Council, the Civil Liberties Board, the Conservation Society, and similar bodies to which I have the honour to belong and the privilege to contribute my modest share, either in an executive or an advisory capacity; and if I may enlarge for a moment on the practical aspects…'

Once launched, Bruno could no more be stopped than the engine of a motor car whose owner had locked himself out. He went on and on, mostly about his own modest contributions (which in fact were considerable) to the work of these illustrious bodies. He had been talking for fifty-two minutes when Solovief, who had been waiting for a gap, said in a weary voice: ‘It's time for lunch, Bruno, if you don't mind.'

Bruno glanced at his watch with a slightly dazed look and became genuinely contrite. ‘Sorry,' he mumbled, while his hands were nimbly engaged in stuffing papers into his case, ‘one does get so carried away.'

His momentary confusion made him look quite endearing, but they knew that at the first opportunity he would be off again.

When Sir Evelyn Blood had once been asked by a woman journalist at a literary cocktail party whether he found his surname an embarrassment and had ever thought of changing it by deed poll, he had answered with the calculated candour which he found so useful in dealing with the Press: ‘As a poet I cannot hope that many people will read my works, but I can at least hope that they will remember my name. Do you think the names of Auden, Thomas or Eliot mean anything
to the rabble? But Blood is a household word with them.'

‘Do you mean,' the somewhat dumb lady had insisted, ‘that they read you because of your name?'

‘Nobody
reads
me, dear lady. But every bugger in this country knows my
name
.'

That was no empty boast, and rather an understatement. Although nobody ever quoted a line by Blood, for he was not the quotable sort of poet, he enjoyed an international reputation, was invited to lecture at American, Indian and Japanese universities, and no international symposium was complete without his rumpled, but imposing presence. He was knighted at sixty by England's gracious Queen (who was said to have grown pale with anger when Blood asked her before the accolade whether it would hurt), and was generally considered as the Call-Girl Laureate.

He had arrived late on the previous evening by hired car, which he intended to charge to his travelling expenses. He was also late for lunch. At the entrance to the dining-room he paused for a moment, surveying the scene, his huge bulk nearly filling the door-frame, apparently unaware of the discreet academic stares, appraising him in his capacity as ambassador from the other culture. Then he got into motion, carrying that bulk on rather shuffling feet, but not without a certain elephantine dignity. He did not hesitate in his choice of a seat, but advanced with unwavering purposefulness, as if attracted by a magnet, to a table at which young Tony had been sitting by himself, gobbling with relish his soup, in which two fist-sized
Knödls
stood out like volcanic islands.

‘I shall have to drink my soup cold,' Blood said, inspecting the
Knödls.
He talked with an outrageous, plaintive, U-plus drawl; it was impossible to know whether it was meant as a parody or to be taken at face value. ‘Had to rush to the loo. Always before meals. It seems my bowels will only open at the immediate prospect of a refill. Most interesting, but inconvenient. Pavlovian conditioning, our idiot-savants would call it… You a virgin?'

Blood's shock-tactics were well known, but Tony had not encountered them before. He blushed:

‘I have a dirty mind,' he said.

‘Masturbation problems?'

‘That's hardly a problem any longer.'

‘Ambidextrous?'

Now Tony was really outraged, though he knew one should never be. He pretended to be busy with the
Knödls.

‘You misunderstood my question. It was meant metaphorically, not literally.'

‘I am afraid I don't follow you.'

‘I meant the fantasies. Hetero or homo?'

‘Oh, hetero, I suppose.'

‘That's bad, in your position. Fornication is mortal sin. Buggery is only venial sin. As for me, I am queer as a kipper. Everybody knows it.'

‘I can't see kipper as a metaphor…'

‘That's because you are lacking in poetic imagination.' He laughed. Tony had expected Sir Evelyn's laughter to be, like the rest of him, of Falstaffian dimensions. It turned out to be more like a series of dry sneezes. But it fitted somehow with the smallness of the features – small mouth, small nose, small eyes in the big, round, red, fat face.

‘How did you like this morning's session, Sir Evelyn?' he asked politely.

‘Snoozed through most of it. That sleek dago woke me up when he talked about neuro-engineering. It stuck in my gizzard.'

Mitzie, the sulky brunette, arrived with Sir Evelyn's soup and
Knödls
. He ordered a bottle of Neuchâtel. ‘Big bottle?' Mitzie asked. ‘Indeed a full bottle,
Schötzchen
' he said, looking as if he intended to pinch playfully her bottom. Mitzie did not appreciate the
Schötzchen,
but gave Tony's glass an extra wipe with her napkin, looking into the distance. ‘I don't think I shall attend the afternoon session,' Blood said. ‘There is supposed to be some wrestling competition in the village for those juicy farm boys. Like to
come with me? Of course you won't. Good little boys must go to school.'

‘You permit me to join you?' The black-haired, raven-faced man with a French accent, who had just come in, sat down opposite Tony.

‘A purely rhetorical question,' said Blood. ‘You know that I can't refuse, Petitjacques, however much I hate your yellow guts.'

Professor Raymond Petitjacques turned his raven smile on Tony. ‘He says “yellow” because he thinks I am a Maoist, and he says “guts” because he is always preoccupied with his entrails. But he is an extremely lovable man.' He filled his glass with Neuchâtel.

‘That's what the frogs call Cartesian lucidity,' Blood said, addressing himself to Tony. ‘
A propos,
Petitjacques, if you want wine, you can order your own bottle.'

‘That would be an instance of what Veblen called the conspicuous waste of the affluent society, because I shall drink only one glass.' He turned to Tony. ‘Do not have more of this acid beverage if you have your liver at heart, so to speak.'

‘A mixed metaphor cannot be excused by a lofty “so to speak”,' drawled Blood.

‘Concerning frogs,' Petitjacques said to Tony, ‘our
cher Maître
is out of date. My compatriots have long stopped sucking delicious frog-thighs soaked in garlic, and have been coerced into consuming hot dogs and hamburgers by the imperialistic coca-colonizators.
Mon cher, c'est fini
.'

‘Don't you dare call our dear little Brother “my dear”,' said Blood.

‘The connotation is different. I may call even you “
mon cher
” without incurring undue risks. And as regards Cartesian lucidity you are even more out of date. Cartesian dualism has long been replaced by the Hegelian trinity of thesis-antithesis-synthesis, reflected in Marxist-Leninist dialectics. This in turn has been re-interpreted in the philosophy of Chairman Mao, but also amalgamated with the
existentialism of Sartre and the structural anthropology of Levi-Strauss. So you see…'

‘I don't see a bloody thing,' Blood said, inspecting the substantial plate of stewed meat that Mitzie had banged down in front of him. ‘It's goulash,' he stated.

‘Do you mean the dish or the philosophy?' Tony asked.

‘Both.'

‘You are right, a goulash,' Petitjacques confirmed enthusiastically. ‘We are cooking a very hot and piquant ideological stew. It will burn your mouth.'

‘Monkey chatter.'

‘Perhaps. But the young baboons have shown that they mean business when they invaded the citadels of so-called learning.'

‘And shitted all over the place. What's that to do with structural anthropology?'

‘It is appropriate. You have not read Levi-Strauss.'

Blood stared at him. ‘You will be surprised. I had a go. Pure jabberwocky. I couldn't believe my eyes. I had another go. The dialectics of boiled, roast and smoked food – the contrast between honey and tobacco – the parallel between honey and menstrual blood – hundreds of pages of inane verbal jugglery – it's the biggest hoax since the Piltdown skull, and you lap it up – like honey.'

Blood's face had gone the colour of Burgundy, and his eyes were bulging.

‘I didn't know that you were that much interested in anthropology,' Petitjacques said. ‘I shall not hesitate to admit that the great man has a tendency to go off the rails. It is the Gallic tradition. But that is not the reason why the young baboons are attracted to him. It is the message he derived from his analysis of Greek mythology: “If Society is to go on, daughters must be disloyal to their parents, and sons must destroy their fathers.”'

‘And you are on the side of the baboons. An intellectual pimp.'

‘I am on the side of History. And History is on our side.'

‘I heard that rigmarole in my own baboon-days in the
nineteen-thirties. But in those days the makers of History were supposed to be the so-called revolutionary proletariat. Today it's the hairy baboons.'

‘I am on the side of the baboons. But the situation is different. Your generation in the Pink 'Thirties was pathetically naive. You rejected your own society, but you believed in Utopia – five-year plans and balalaikas. You had a double motivation: revulsion against the
status quo
and devotion to an ideal – attraction and repulsion, a negative pole and a positive pole, a magnetic field. We only believe in the negative pole. No mirages. No illusions. No programmes. Just NO.
Nada, no, nix,
and down with the pigs, and
merde
.' He grinned in an amiably Mephistophelian way.

‘What do you call this philosophy? Merdology? To my mind you are nothing but a clown,' Blood declared.

‘Who is speaking?' said Petitjacques.

‘We are all phoneys. But some of us are more phoney than others.'