David Lodge - Small World (16 page)

“I mean, you can see the problem,” says Ronald. “It’s a perfectly natural mistake. I mean, why does ‘a bit of spare’ mean sex?”

“I don’t know,” says Irma, turning a page. “You tell me. You’re the writer.”

“Page 93, 2 down. ‘Enoch, ‘e went spare.’ Does this mean Enoch went to get a spare part for his car? You’ve got to feel sorry for the bloke. He’s never been to England, which makes it all the more difficult.”

“Why does he bother? I can’t see the Japanese being interested in reading about sex life in the back streets of Dudley.”

“Because I’m an important figure in postwar British fiction, that’s why. You never did grasp that fact, did you? You never could believe that I could be considered literature. You just think I’m a hack that turns out TV scripts.”

Irma, used to Ronald Frobisher’s little tantrums, reads blithely on. Frobisher crunches angrily on toast and marmalade and opens another letter. “Listen to this,” he says. “Dear Mr Frobisher, We are holding a conference in Heidelberg in September on the subject of the Reception of the Literary Text, and we are anxious to have the participation of some distinguished contemporary writers such as yourself… You see what I mean? It could be quite interesting, actually. I’ve never been to Heidelberg. Some kraut called von Turpitz.”

“Aren’t you going to rather a lot of these conferences?”

“It’s all experience. You could come as well, if you like.”

“No thanks, I’ve had enough of traipsing around churches and museums while you chew the fat with the local sycophants. Why are all your fans foreigners, these days? Don’t they know that the Angry Young Man thing is all over?”

“It’s got nothing to do with the Angry Young Man thing!” says Ronald Frobisher, angrily. He opens another envelope. “D’you want to come to the Royal Academy of Literature do? It’s on a boat this year. I’m supposed to be giving away one of the prizes.”

“No, thanks.” Irma turns another page of the
Guardian
. A jet drones overhead, on the flightpath to Heathrow.

Fog at Heathrow, which caused TWA Flight 072 from Chicago to be diverted to Stanstead, has suddenly cleared, so the plane has turned back and is making its approach to Heathrow from the east. Three thousand feet above the heads of Ronald and Irma Frobisher, Fulvia Morgana snaps shut her copy of
Lenin and Philosophy
and puts it away, along with her kidskin slippers, in her capacious burnt-orange suede shoulderbag by Fendi. She eases her feet into the cream-coloured Armani boots, and fastens them snugly round her calves, taking care not to snag her tights in the zips. She gazes haughtily down at the winding Thames, St Paul’s, the Tower of London, Tower Bridge. She picks out the dome of the British Museum, beneath which Marx forged the concepts that would enable man not only to interpret the world, but also to change it: dialectical materialism, the surplus theory of value, the dictatorship of the proletariat. But the pseudo-gothic fantasy of the Houses of Parliament, propping up the top-heavy bulk of Big Ben, reminds the airborne Marxist how slow the rate of change has been. The Mother of Parliaments, and therefore the Mother of Repression. All parliaments must be abolished.

“Ooh, look, Howard! Big Ben!” exclaims Thelma Ringbaum, nudging her husband in the back row of the economy class.

“I’ve seen it before,” he says sulkily.

“We’ll be landing in a minute. Don’t forget the duty-free liquor.”

Howard gropes under his seat for the plastic bag in which there are two fifths of scotch, purchased at O’Hare airport, which have travelled approximately eight thousand miles since they were distilled, and are now within a few hundred of their place of origin. A muffled thud announces that the undercarriage has been lowered. The Tristar begins its descent to Heathrow.

Morris has already landed at Heathrow, and is gobbling ham and eggs and toast, sitting on a high stool at the counter of the Terminal One Restaurant, with Philip Swallow’s
Hazlitt and the Amateur Reader
propped up against the sugar bowl. It is greed, not urgency, that makes him eat so fast, for he has two hours to wait before his flight to Milan is due to depart. Licking the butter from his fingers, he opens the book, which has, unsurprisingly, an epigraph from William Hazlitt: I stand merely upon the defensive. I have no positive inferences to make, nor any novelties to bring forward, and I have only to defend a common sense feeling against the refinement of a false philosophy.

Morris Zapp sighs, shakes his head, and butters another slice of toast.

In Cooktown, Queensland, Rodney Wainwright is chewing his dinner with more deliberation, partly because he has a loose molar and the chops are overdone, partly because he has no appetite. “Jesus Christ, it’s hot,” he mutters, dabbing at his forehead with his serviette. “Language, Rod,” Bev murmurs reprovingly, glancing at their two children, Kevin aged fourteen, Cindy aged twelve, who are gnawing their bones zestfully out of greasy fingers. Rodney Wainwright’s paper on the future of criticism has not gone well in the past three or four hours. He covered two sheets of foolscap, then tore them up. The argument remains blocked at, “The question is therefore, how can criticism…” Shadows are long on the rank lawn. The boom of the waves carries through the open casement. On the beach, no doubt, at this very moment Sandra Dix, her wet bikini exchanged for faded sawn-off jeans and clinging tee-shirt, is turning over freshly caught fish on a hot gridiron.

In Helicon, New Hampshire, Desiree Zapp sleeps, breathing heavily, and dreams of flying—swooping and soaring in her nightgown in a clear blue sky above the multitudinous pine trees.

Philip Swallow wakes for the second time this morning, and touches his genitals lightly, swiftly, a gesture of self-reassurance performed every morning since he was five years old and his mother told him that if he didn’t stop playing with his willie it would drop off. He stretches out beneath the sheets. Where Hilary was, there is a cooling hollow in the mattress. He looks at the clock on the bedside table, rubs his eyes, stares, blasphemes and jumps out of bed. Hurrying downstairs, he passes his son, Matthew, on his way up.

“‘Ullo, our Dad,” says Matthew, whose current humour it is to pretend to be a working-class youth from the North of England.

“Shouldn’t you be at school?” Philip coldly enquires.

“Trooble at t’pit,” says Matthew.

“Industrial action by the Association of Schoolmasters.”

“Disgraceful,” says Philip, over his shoulder, “University teachers would never strike.”

“Only because no one would notice,” Matthew calls down the stairs.

Arthur Kingfisher sleeps, curled spoonwise around the shapely back and buttocks of Ji-Moon Lee, who, before they retired, prepared for him a pipe of opium. So his dreams are psychedelic: deserts of purple sand with dunes that move like an oily sea, a forest of trees with little golden fingers instead of leaves that caress the wayfarer as he brushes against them, a vast pyramid with a tiny glass elevator that goes up one side, down the other, a chapel at the bottom of a lake, and on the altar, where the crucifix should be, a black hand, cut off at the wrist, its fingers splayed.

Siegfried von Turpitz now has black gloves on both of his hands. They grip the steering wheel of his black BMW 635CSi coupe, with 3453 cc Bosch L-jetronic fuel-injection engine and five speed Getrag all-synchromesh gearbox. He holds the car to a steady one hundred and eighty kilometres per hour in the fast lane of the autobahn between Berlin and Hanover, compelling slower vehicles to move over not by flashing his headlights (which is forbidden by law) but by moving up behind them swiftly, silently and very close; so that when a driver glances into a rear-view mirror which only moments ago was empty save for a small black dot on the horizon, he finds it, to his astonishment and terror, entirely filled by the dark mass of the BMW’s bonnet and tinted windscreen, behind which, under a skullcap of flat, colourless hair, floats the pale impassive visage of Siegfried von Turpitz—and, as fast as the shock to his nerves permits, such a driver swerves aside to let the BMW pass.

In the rather old-fashioned kitchen of the high-ceilinged apartment on the Boulevard Huysmans, Michel Tardieu grinds coffee beans by hand (for he cannot bear the shriek of a Moulinex) and wonders idly why Siegfried von Turpitz should have wanted so urgently to speak to Jacques Textel that he tried to phone him at 7.30 in the morning. Michel Tardieu is himself acquainted with Textel, a Swiss anthropologist who once occupied the chair at Berne, but moved into international cultural administration and is now somebody quite important in UNESCO. It is time, Michel reflects, that he and Textel had lunch together.

As he finishes the grinding, he hears the front door of the apartment slam. Albert, ravishing in dark blue woollen blouson and the tight white Levis that Michel brought him back after his last visit to the States, comes in and dumps on the kitchen table, with a distinctly sulky air, a paper bag of croissants and rolls, and a copy of
Le Matin
. Albert resents this regular early morning errand, and complains about it frequently. He complains now. Michel urges him to look upon the chore in the light of modern narrative theory. “It is a quest,
cheri
, a story of departure and return: you venture out, and you come back, loaded with treasure. You are a hero.” Albert’s response is brief and obscene. Michel smiles good-humouredly, pouring boiling water into the coffee-filter. He intends to keep Albert to this matutinal duty, just to remind him who pays for the coffee and croissants, not to mention the clothes and shoes and coiffures and records and ice-skating lessons.

In Ankara, Akbil Borak has at last arrived at the precincts of the University, some ninety minutes after leaving home, thirty of which were spent queuing for petrol. Crowds are converging on the campus, walking indifferently in the roadway and on the pavements. Sounding his horn at frequent intervals, Akbil nudges his way through this stream of humanity that parts in front of the Deux Chevaux and meets again behind. He spots a vacant space on the pavement and mounts the kerb to park. The stream of pedestrians breaks and scatters momentarily, then swirls again around the stationary vehicle. Akbil locks his car and walks briskly across the central square. Two rival political groups of students, one of the left, the other of the right, are engaged in heated argument. Voices are raised, there is pushing and scuffling, someone falls to the ground and a girl screams. Suddenly two armed soldiers come running in their heavy boots, firearms levelled at the trouble-makers, shouting at them orders to disperse, which they do, some retreating backwards with their arms raised in surrender or supplication. It was not like this at Hull, Akbil reflects, as he takes cover behind a massive statue of black iron representing Kemal Ataturk inviting the youth of Turkey to partake of the benefits of learning.

Akira Sakazaki has typed his last question, for the time being, to Ronald Frobisher (a tricky one concerning the literal and metaphorical meanings of
crumpet
and its relation to
pikelet
), addressed, sealed and stamped the letter ready for mailing tomorrow morning, popped a TV dinner into the microwave oven, and, while waiting for it to cook, reads his airmail edition of the
Times Literary Supplement
and listens to Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto on his stereo headphones.

Big Ben strikes nine o’clock. Other clocks, in other parts of the world, strike ten, eleven, four, seven, two.

Morris Zapp belches, Rodney Wainwright sighs, Desiree Zapp snores. Fulvia Morgana yawns—a quick, surprisingly wide yawn, like a cat’s—and resumes her customary repose. Arthur Kingfisher mutters German in his sleep. Siegfried von Turpitz, caught in a traffic jam on the autobahn, drums on the steering-wheel impatiently with the fingers of one hand. Howard Ringbaum chews gum to ease the pressure on his eardrums and Thelma Ringbaum struggles to squeeze her swollen feet back into her shoes. Michel Tardieu sits at his desk and resumes work on a complex equation representing in algebraic terms the plot of
War and Peace
. Rudyard Parkinson helps himself to kedgeree from the hotplate on the sideboard in the Fellows’ breakfast-room and takes his place at the table in a silence broken only by the rustle of newspapers and the clinking and scraping of crockery and cutlery. Akbil Borak sips black tea from a glass in a small office which he shares with six others and grimly concentrates on The
Spirit of the Age
. Akira Sakazaki strips the foil from his TV dinner and tunes his radio to receive the BBC World Service. Ronald Frobisher looks up “spare” in the
Oxford English Dictionary
. Philip Swallow bustles into the kitchen of his house in St John’s Road, Rummidge, avoiding the eye of his wife. And Joy Simpson, who Philip thinks is dead, but who is alive, somewhere on this spinning globe, stands at an open window, and draws the air deep into her lungs, and shades her eyes against the sun, and smiles.

Two

THE job of checkin clerk at Heathrow, or any other airport, is not a glamorous or particularly satisfying one. The work is mechanical and repetitive: inspect the ticket, check it against the passenger list on the computer terminal, tear out the ticket from its folder, check the baggage weight, tag the baggage, ask Smoking or Non-smoking, allocate a seat, issue a boarding pass. The only variation in this routine occurs when things go wrong—when flights are delayed or cancelled because of bad weather or strikes or technical hitches. Then the checker bears the full brunt of the customers’ fury without being able to do anything to alleviate it. For the most part the job is a dull and monotonous one, processing people who are impatient to conclude their brief business with you, and whom you will probably never see again.

Cheryl Summerbee, a checker for British Airways in Terminal One at Heathrow, did not, however, complain of boredom. Though the passengers who passed through her hands took little notice of her, she took a lot of notice of them. She injected interest into her job by making quick assessments of their characters and treating them accordingly. Those who were rude or arrogant or otherwise unpleasant she put in uncomfortable or inconvenient seats, next to the toilets, or beside mothers with crying babies. Those who made a favourable impression she rewarded with the best seats, and whenever possible placed them next to some attractive member of the opposite sex. In Cheryl Summerbee’s hands, seat allocation was a fine art, as delicate and complex an operation as arranging blind dates between clients of a lonelyhearts agency. It gave her a glow of satisfaction, a pleasant sense of doing good by stealth, to reflect on how many love affairs, and even marriages, she must have instigated between people who imagined they had met by pure chance.

Cheryl Summerbee was very much in favour of love. She firmly believed that it made the world go round, and did her bit to keep the globe spinning on its axis by her discreet management of the seating on British Airways Tridents. On the shelf under her counter she kept a Bills and Moon romance to read in those slack periods when there were no passengers to deal with. The one she was reading at the moment was called
Love Scene
. It was about a girl called Sandra who went to work as a nanny for a film director whose wife had died tragically in a car accident, leaving him with two young children to look after. Of course Sandra fell in love with the film director, though unfortunately he was in love with the actress taking the leading role in the film he was making—or was he just pretending to be in love with her to keep her sweet? Of course he was! Cheryl Summerbee had read enough Bills and Moon romances to know that—indeed she hardly needed to read any further to predict exactly how the story would end. With half her mind she despised these love-stories, but she devoured them with greedy haste, like cheap sweets. Her own life was, so far, devoid of romance—not for lack of propositions, but because she was a girl of old-fashioned moral principle, who intended to go to the altar a virgin. She had met several men who were very eager to relieve her of her virginity, but not to marry her first. So she was still waiting for Mr Right to appear. She had no very clear image of what he would look like except that he would have a hard chest and firm thighs. All the heroes of Bills and Moon romances seemed to have hard chests and firm thighs.

The man wearing the tweed deerstalker didn’t look as if he had these attributes—quite the contrary—but Cheryl took an instant liking to him. He was a little larger than life, every line in his figure slightly exaggerated, like a cartoon character; but he seemed to know it himself, and not to give a damn. It made you smile just to look at him, swaggering across the floor of the crowded terminal, with his absurd hat tilted forward, and a fat cigar clenched in his teeth, his double-breasted trench-coat flapping open on a loud check sports jacket. Cheryl smiled at him as he hesitated in front of the two desks servicing the Milan flight, and, catching this smile, he joined the line in front of her.

“Hi,” he said when his turn came to be attended to. “Have we met before?”

“I don’t think so, sir,” said Cheryl. “I was just admiring your hat.” She took his ticket and read the name on it: Zapp M., Prof.

Professor Zapp took off his deerstalker and held it at arm’s length. “I bought it right here in Heathrow just a few days ago,” he said. “I don’t suppose I’ll need it in Italy.” Then his expression changed from complacency to annoyance. “Goddammit, I promised to give it to young McGarrigle before I left.” He slapped the hat against his thigh, confirming this limb’s lack of firmness. “Is there anywhere I can mail a parcel from here?”

“Our Post Office is closed for alterations, but there’s another one in Terminal Two,” said Cheryl. “I presume you would like a seat in the smoking section, Professor Zapp? Window or aisle?”

“I’m easy. The question is, how am I going to wrap this hat in a parcel?”

“Leave it with me. I’ll post it for you.”

“Really? That’s very sweet of you, Cheryl.”

“All part of the service, Professor Zapp,” she smiled. He was one of those rare passengers who noticed the name badge pinned to her uniform, or, having noticed it, used it. “Just write your friend’s name and address on this label, and I’ll see to it when I go off duty.” While he was occupied with this task, she scanned the seating plan in front of her, and ran through on the computer display the list of passengers who had already checked in. About a quarter of an hour ago she had dealt with an extremely elegant Italian lady professor, of about the right age—younger, but not too young—and who spoke very good English, apart from a little trouble with her aspirates. Ah yes, here she was: MORGANA F. PROF. She had been very particular, requesting a window-seat in the smoking section as far forward as possible on the left-hand side of the plane. Cheryl didn’t mind this; she respected people who knew what they wanted, as long as they didn’t kick up a fuss if it wasn’t available. Professor Morgana had looked as if she was capable of kicking up a royal fuss, but the occasion had not arisen. Cheryl had been able to accommodate her exactly as requested, in row 10, window seat A. She now removed the sticker from seat 10B on the seat-plan in front of her, and affixed it to Professor Zapp’s boarding pass. He gave her his hat, with the label and two pound notes tucked into one of the flaps.

“I don’t think it will cost that much to send,” she said, reading the label: “Percy McGarrigle, Department of English, University College, LIMERICK, Ireland.”

“Well, if there’s any change, have a drink on me.”

As he spoke they both heard a small, muffled explosion—the sound, distinctive and unmistakable, of a bottle of duty-free liquor hitting the stone composition floor of an airport concourse and shattering inside its plastic carrier bag; also a cry of “Shit!” and a dismayed, antiphonal “Oh, Howard!” A few yards away, a man and a woman were glaring accusingly at each other across a loaded baggage trolley from which the plastic carrier bag had evidently fallen. Professor Zapp, who had turned his head to locate the origin of the fatal sound, now turned back to face Cheryl, hunching his shoulders and turning up the collar of his raincoat.

“Don’t do anything to attract that man’s attention,” he hissed. “Why? Who is he?”

“His name is Howard Ringbaum and he is a well-known fink. Also, although he doesn’t know it yet, I have rejected a paper he submitted for a conference I’m organizing.”

“What is a fink?”

“A fink is a generally despicable person, like Howard Ringbaum.”

“What’s so awful about him? He doesn’t look so bad.”

“He’s very self-centred. He’s very mean. He’s very calculating.

Like, for instance, when Thelma Ringbaum says it’s time they gave a party, Howard doesn’t just send out invitations—he calls you up and asks you whether, if he were to give a party, you would come.”

“That must be his wife with him now,” said Cheryl.

“Thelma’s all right, she’s just fink-blind,” said Professor Zapp. “No one can figure out how she can stand being married to Howard.”

Over Professor Zapp’s shoulder, Cheryl watched Howard Ringbaum gingerly pick up the plastic carrier bag by its handles. It bulged ominously at the bottom with the weight of spilled liquor. “Maybe I could filter it,” Howard Ringbaum said to his wife. As he spoke, a piece of jagged glass pierced the plastic and a spout of neat scotch poured on to his suede shoe. “Shit!” he said again.

“Oh, Howard!”

“What are we doing in this place, anyway?” he snarled. “You said it was the way out.”

“No, Howard, you said it was the way out, I just agreed.”

“Have they gone yet?” Professor Zapp muttered.

“They’re going,” said Cheryl. Observing that the passengers waiting in line behind Professor Zapp were getting restive, she brought their business to a rapid conclusion. “Here’s your boarding card, Professor Zapp. Be in the Departure Lounge half an hour before your flight time. Your baggage has been checked through to Milan. Have a pleasant journey.”

Thus it was that about one hour later Morris Zapp found himself sitting next to Fulvia Morgana in a British Airways Trident bound for Milan. It didn’t take them long to discover that they were both academics. While the plane was still taxiing to the runway, Morris had Philip Swallow’s book on Hazlitt out on his lap, and Fulvia Morgana her copy of Althusser’s essays. Each glanced surreptitiously at the other’s reading matter. It was as good as a masonic handshake. They met each other’s eyes.

“Morris Zapp, Euphoric State.” He extended his hand.

“Ah, yes, I ‘ave ‘eard you spick. Last December, in New York.”

“At the MLA? You’re not a philosopher, then?” He nodded at
Lenin and Philosophy
.

“No, cultural studies is my field. Fulvia Morgana, Padua. In Europe critics are much interested in Marxism. In America not so much.”

“I guess in America we’ve always been more attracted by Freud than Marx, Fulvia.” Fulvia Morgana. Morris flicked rapidly through his mental card index. It was a name he vaguely remembered having seen on the title-pages of various prestigious journals of literary theory.

“And now Derrida,” said Fulvia Morgana. “Everybody in Chicago—I ‘ave just been to Chicago—was reading Derrida. America is crazy about deconstruction. Why is that?”

“Well, I’m a bit of a deconstructionist myself. It’s kind of exciting—the last intellectual thrill left. Like sawing through the branch you’re sitting on.”

“Exactly! It is so narcissistic. So ‘opeless.”

“What was your conference about?”

“It was called, ‘The Crisis of the Sign’.”

“Oh, yeah. I was invited but I couldn’t make it. How was it?” Fulvia Morgana shrugged her shoulders inside her brown velvet jacket. “As usual. Many boring papers. Some interesting parties.”

“Who was there?”

“Oh, everyone you would expect. The Yale hermeneutic gang. The Johns Hopkins reader-response people. The local Chicago Aristotelians, naturally. And Arthur Kingfisher was there.”

“Really? He must be pretty old now.”

“He gave the—what do you call it—keynote address. On the first evening.”

“Any good?”

“Terrible. Everybody was waiting to see what line he would take on deconstruction. Would ‘e be for it or against it? Would ‘e follow the premises of ‘is own early structuralist work to its logical conclusion, or would ‘e recoil into a defence of traditional humanist scholarship?” Fulvia Morgana spoke as though she were quoting from some report of the conference that she had already drafted.

“Let me try and guess,” said Morris.

“You would be wasting your time,” said Fulvia Morgana, unfastening her seat belt and smoothing her velvet knickerbockers over her knees. The plane had taken off in the course of this conversation, though Morris had hardly noticed. “‘E said, on the one hand this, on the other hand that. ‘E talked all around the subject. ‘E waffled and wandered. ‘E repeated things ‘e said twenty, thirty years ago, and said better. It was embarrassing, I am telling you. In spite of all, they gave ‘im a standing ovation.”

“Well, he’s a great man. Was a great man, anyway. A king among literary theorists. I think that to many people he kind of personifies the whole profession of academic literary studies.”

“Then I must say that the profession is in a very un’ealthy condition,” said Fulvia. “What are you reading—a book on ‘Azlitt?”

“It’s by a British friend of mine,” said Morris. “He gave it to me just yesterday. It’s not the sort of thing I usually go for.” He felt anxious to dissociate himself from Philip’s quaintly old-fashioned subject, and equally archaic approach to it.

Fulvia Morgana leaned over and peered at the name on the dust jacket. “Philip Swallow. I know ‘im. ‘E came to Padua to give a lecture some years before.”

“Right! He was telling me about his trip to Italy last night. It was very eventful.”

“‘Ow was that?”

“Oh, his plane caught fire on the way home—had to turn back and make an emergency landing. But he was OK.”

“‘Is lecture was not very eventful, I must say. It was very boring.”

“Yeah, well, that doesn’t surprise me. He’s a nice guy, Philip, but he doesn’t exactly set your pulse racing with intellectual excitement.”

“What is the book like?”

“Well, listen to this, it will give you the flavour.” Morris read aloud a passage he had marked in Philip’s book: “He is the most learned man who knows the most of what is farthest removed from common life and actual observation, that is of the least practical utility, and least liable to be brought to the test of experience, and that, having been handed down through the greatest number of intermediate stages, is the most full of uncertainty, difficulties and contradictions.”

“Very interesting,” said Fulvia Morgana. “Is that Philip Swallow?”

“No, that’s Hazlitt.”

“You surprise me. It sounds very modern. ‘Uncertainties, difficulties, contradictions.”Azlitt was obviously a man ahead of his time. That is a remarkable attack on bourgeois empiricism.”

“I think it was meant to be ironic,” said Morris gently. “It comes from an essay called ‘The Ignorance of the Learned’.”