The Best of Michael Moorcock

by Michael Moorcock

  I reached Toronto at eleven o’clock in the evening, local time, took a taxi to a downtown hotel and turned on the television to discover that Confederation troops and tanks were invading China while Indian forces, with some British and American divisions already stationed there, were moving towards the Chinese border. A newsflash brought the information that both CIS and EC countries had lent their support to India and that China and her allies were expected to capitulate very soon.

  Early the next day I found myself in a pleasant suburban street of tall, Victorian wooden houses, birch-trees and maples and soft lawns, ringing the bell of my contact, Mr. Belko. An angry girl, a pudgy seventeen, came to the door. She was wearing a blue dressing gown.

  “Mr. Belko is expecting me,” I told her.

  She was triumphant. “Mr. Belko left an hour ago.”

  “Where did he go? Would you mind?”

  “To the airport. Hadn’t you heard? It’s World War Three!”

  For a moment I was amused by the inevitability of her remark; the assumption, moreover, of the inevitable event.

  “You look beat,” she said. “Are you a diplomat?”

  “Not really.”

  She grew to feeling guilty. “Come in and have some coffee.”

  “I accept. Thank you.”

  Her mother was at breakfast in the large, modern kitchen. “Dubrowski,” I said, removing my hat. “I am so sorry . . .”

  “Vassily’s left. Janet told you?”

  “Yes.” I unbuttoned my overcoat. Janet took it. I thanked her. I sat down at the table. I was brought a cup of that Western coffee which smells so good but does not taste of anything. I drank it.

  “Was it important?” asked Janet’s mother.

  “Well...”

  “To do with the crisis?”

  I was not sure. I waved a palm.

  “Well,” said Janet’s mother, “you’re lucky to be here, that’s all I can say.”

  “You think there will be a full-scale war?” I accepted sugar from the young girl’s hands.

  “Let them fight it out,” said Janet’s mother. “Get it over with.”

  “It will involve Canada.”

  Janet’s mother buttered some toast. “Not directly.”

  “Are you Ukrainian, too?” said Janet.

  “Too?”

  “We’re Ukrainians.” Janet sat down beside me. I became aware of her warmth. “Or at least momma and poppa are.”

  I looked at the woman in the housecoat with her dyed red hair, her makeup, her American way of slouching against the table. I wondered if I were not enduring some kind of complicated test.

  “I came over in 1947,” said Janet’s mother. “From England. We’d been deported during the German occupation and when the allies arrived we managed to get to England. Fedya was born here. Are you Ukrainian?”

  I began to laugh a little. It was a feeble titter, but it was the first spontaneous expression of emotion I had had in years. “Yes,” I said. “I am.”

  “We haven’t really stayed in touch much,” said Janet’s mother, “with the Community here, you know. Janet’s been to some meetings. She sees more of the old people than we do. She’s a Nationalist, aren’t you, dear?”

  “Convinced,” said Janet.

  “Canadian,” I asked, “or Ukrainian?” I was genuinely confused.

  Janet took this well. She put youthful fingers on my sleeve. “Both,” she said.

  When I returned to my hotel I found a note telling me to go to our embassy. At the embassy I was ordered to fly direct to Moscow on the next Aeroflot flight. There I would be briefed about my new rôle. By the time I reached Moscow, Allied troops were already withdrawing from China and an agreement was being negotiated in the United Nations. I was given a Ukrainian passport and told to return to London.

  My brief stay in Moscow had made me homesick. I would have been grateful for a holiday in the country for a week or two. I have yet to have my dream fulfilled. A month after I got back, the real War broke and I, in common with so many others, began to taste the euphoria of Armageddon.

  Leaving Pasadena

  I was asked by the woman why I had no pity. She sat on the floor, her elbow resting upon a couch, her head in her hand. She had not wept. Her anguish had tempered her eyes: they glittered with unvoiced needs. I could not touch her. I could not insult her with my compassion. I told her that pity was an inappropriate emotion. Our world was burning and there was no time for anything but rapid action. Africa and Australia were already gone. The clouds and the contamination were a matter of anxiety to those who survived. She told me, in slow, over-controlled syllables, that she was probably dying. She needed love, she said. I told her she should find someone, therefore, whose needs matched her own. My first loyalty was to my unit. I could not reach my hand to her. Any gesture would have been cruel.

  The other two women came into the room. One had my bag. “You still don’t know where you’re going?” said the blonde, Julia. Her fashionably garish cosmetics appeared to give her face the lustre and texture of porcelain.

  I turned my back and walked into the hallway. “Not yet.”

  Julia said: “I’ll try to look after her.”

  As I got to the front door of the apartment, the brown-haired woman, Honour, said: “You pious bastard.” She wore no make-up. Her face was as pale as Julia’s.

  I accepted her accusation. I had at that moment nothing left but piety and I would not dignify it with words. I nodded, shook hands with them both. I heard her mumbling some despairing question from the room, then I had walked down the white steps of the Pasadena condominium, crossed the courtyard with its silenced fountain, its poised cherubs, brilliant in the sun, and entered the car which had been sent to collect me. I was leaving California. That was all I had been told.

  My chief had a rented house in Long Beach, near the marina. We drove to it through avenues of gigantic palms until we reached the almost deserted freeway. Vehicles kept well apart, considering the others warily. Only government people had official driving permits; anyone else could be psychotic or a criminal.

  Long Beach was still populated. There were even people sailing their yachts into the harbour. The Pacific threat seemed to bother the people only as much as they had been bothered by the threat of earthquakes. The houses were low and calm, divided by shrubs and trees, with neat grass. I saw a man riding a pony across his lawn. He waved sardonically at the car. Groups of women stared at the limousine with expressions of contempt. We found my chief’s house. The chauffeur went to tell him we were there. He came out immediately.

  As he stopped to join me, the chief said: “You look bad. You should sleep more.”

  I told him, dutifully, about the woman. He was sympathetic. “There’s a war on. It’s how it is in war.” Naturally, I agreed with him. “We are fighting for their good, after all,” he added.

  We drove to a military airfield. Both Soviet and U.S. planes were there. We went immediately to our Ilyushin, and had scarcely settled in the uncomfortable seats before we took off.

  My chief handed me a passport. It had my real name and a recent photograph. “You’re officially with the liaison staff, at last,” he said. “It means you can report either to the Americans or to us. Nothing will be kept back. Matters are too urgent now.” I expressed appropriate surprise.

  I looked down on Los Angeles; its beaches, its fantasies. It was like setting aside a favourite story as a child. We headed inland over mountains, going east.

  “The Third World War has already been fought,” said my chief, “in the third world, as the Americans call it. Why else would they call it that? This is actually the Fifth World War.”

  “What was the Fourth?” I asked.

  “It was fought in the country of the soul.”

  I laughed. I had forgotten his sentimentality. “Who won?”

  “Nobody. It merely prepared us for this.”

  There were clouds beneath us. It seemed to become calm as the altitude en
couraged deafness. I could hardly hear his next remark: “It has sharpened our wits and deadened our emotional responses. War is a great relief, eh? A completely false sense of objectivity. The strain to remain grown-up is too much for most of us.”

  It was familiar stuff from him. I unfastened my seat-belt and walked clumsily along the plane to where a Cossack sergeant served at a small bar. I ordered some of the Finnish vodka we had recently acquired. I drank the glass down and returned to my place. Four high-ranking officers in tropical uniforms were arguing in the seats behind me. One of them was of the opinion that we should begin full-scale rocket attacks on major Chinese cities. The others were for caution. The bombing had, after all, been stopped. Most of the civilised countries were still unharmed.

  My chief began coughing. It was that dry noise usually associated with smoke inhalation. He recovered himself and in answer to my concerned expression told me that he was probably getting a cold. “We should be in Washington soon. All this travelling about is bad for the constitution.” He shrugged. “But life is never easy. Even in wartime.”

  An official car met us at the airport. It bore the arms of the President. We passed the monstrous neo-classical buildings which celebrated that naïve eighteenth-century rationalism we all now regretted and from which we seemed to be suffering at present. We arrived at a modern block of government offices. In the elevator my chief told me not to show surprise at whatever we discussed. He believed that we were thought to know more than we had actually been told.

  A bland, smooth-faced man in a light-coloured suit introduced himself as Mansfield and offered us deep, black chairs. He asked us about our journey, about California, and told us of the people living along the West Coast. “People learn to identify their homes with their security. When something like this happens . . . Well, we all know about the Jews refusing to leave Germany.”

  “Your newspapers contradict themselves,” said my chief. He smiled. “They say there is little to fear.”

  “True.” Mansfield offered us Lucky Strike cigarettes which we accepted. My chief coughed a little before he took a light.

  “We think you’ll have more success in Venezuela.” Mansfield returned the lighter to his desk. “They are suspicious of our motives, naturally.”

  “And not of ours?” My chief continued to smile.

  “They could believe your arguments better. They are not too sure if the alliance will maintain itself. You might be able to persuade them.”

  “Possibly.”

  “They can’t stay neutral much longer.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because someone will attack them.”

  “Then perhaps we should wait until that happens. It would be easier to liberate them, eh?”

  “We need their oil. This freeze of theirs is pointless. It does nobody any good.”

  “And why do you want us to go?”

  “The Russians?”

  “No.” My chief waved a hand at me. “Us.”

  “We have to contact their intelligence first. After that the politicians can sort things out.”

  “You’ve made arrangements?”

  “Yes. It was thought best not to meet in Caracas. You’ll go to Maracaibo. It’s where the oil is, anyway. Most of their oil people want to sell. We’re not certain of the attitudes you’ll find, but we understand that there is a lot of pressure from that side.”

  “You have material for us?”

  Mansfield lifted a folder from his desk and showed it to us.

  Although my chief seemed to be taking the meeting seriously, I began to wonder at the vagueness of its content. I suspected that our going to Maracaibo would have no effect at all. We were going because it was something to do.

  I resisted an urge, when we reached our hotel in Maracaibo, to telephone the woman and ask how she was. It would do her no good, I decided, for her to hear from me. I knew that, in other circumstances, I would have loved her. She had done me several favours in the course of my work, so I was also grateful to her. The sense of gratitude was the only indulgence I allowed myself.

  My chief walked through the connecting door into my room. He rubbed his eyebrows. “I have a meeting with a member of their intelligence. A colonel. But it is to be a one-to-one thing. You’re free to do what you like this evening. I have the name of a house.”

  “Thank you.” I wrote down the address he gave me.

  “It will do you good,” he said. He was sympathetic. “And one of us might as well enjoy the pleasures of the town. I hear the whores are of a high quality.”

  “I am much obliged to you.” I would go, I thought, only because I had no wish to stay in my room the whole time. His giving me leave confirmed my suspicion that there was no real reason for us being in Maracaibo.

  The town, with its skyscrapers and remnants of Spanish-style architecture, was well-lit and relatively clean. I had once been told that “Venezuela is the future.” They had been experimenting with different energy sources, using their oil income to develop systems which would not be much dependent on oil. But Maracaibo seemed very little different, save that the lake itself, full of machinery and rigging, occasionally gave off mysterious puffs of flame which would illuminate buildings and create uncertain shadows. There was a stink of oil about the place. As I walked, local map in hand, to the address my chief had given me I saw one of their airships, built by a British firm at Cardington, sail into the darkness beyond the city. Venezuela had been perhaps the last country to associate romance with practical engineering.

  I reached the house. It was large and fairly luxurious. The décor was comfortable and lush in the manner of some of the more grandiose family restaurants I had visited in Pasadena. There was a pianist playing similar music to his American counterpart. There was a bar. I sat down and ordered a Scotch. I was approached by a pretty hostess who wore a blonde wig. Her skin was dark and her smile was wide and seemed genuine. In English she said that she thought she had seen me there before. I told her that this was only my second visit to Maracaibo. She asked if I were Swedish. I said that I was Russian. She kissed me and said that she loved Russian people, that they knew how to enjoy themselves. “Lots of vodka,” she said. But I was drinking Scotch; was I an émigré? I said, from habit, that I was. Her name was Anna. Her father, she said, had been born in South London. Did I know London? Very well, I said. I had lived there for some years. Anna wondered if Brixton were like Maracaibo. I said there were some similarities. We look for familiarity in the most unlikely circumstances before we accept what is strange to us. It is as true of travellers as it is of lovers.

  Anna brought a girl for me. She had fine black hair tied back from her face; a white dress with a great deal of lace. She looked about sixteen. Her makeup was subtle. She pretended to be shy. I found her appealing. Her name was Maria, she told me. She spoke excellent English with an American accent. I bought her a drink, expecting to go to her room, but she said she would like to take me home, if that suited me. I decided against caution. She led me outside and we drove in a taxi to a street of what seemed to be quiet, middle-class apartment buildings. We climbed two flights of stairs. She opened a well-polished wooden door with her key and we entered an apartment full of quality furniture in subdued good taste. I began to suspect I had been picked up by a schoolgirl and that this was her parents’ home. But the way she moved in it, getting me another Scotch, switching on the overhead fan, taking my jacket, convinced me that she was the mistress of the place. Moreover, I knew that she was actually older than sixteen; that she cultivated the appearance of a teenager. I began to experience a reluctance to go to bed with her. Against my will I remembered the woman in Pasadena. I forced myself towards that belief that all women were, after all, the same, that it satisfied them to give themselves up to a man. The whore, at least, would make money from her instincts. The woman in Pasadena came by nothing but pain. We went into the bedroom and undressed. In the large and comfortable white bed I eventually confessed that I was in no haste to
make love to her. I had been unable to adjust my mood. I asked her why she had shaved her pubic hair. She said that it increased her own pleasure and besides many men found it irresistible. She began to tell me her story. She had been, she said, in love with the man who introduced her to prostitution. Evidently she was still obsessed by him, because it required no great expression of interest from me for her to tell me the whole story. It was familiar enough. What she said, of course, was couched in the usual sort of sentimentality and romanticism. She mentioned love a great deal and her knowledge that, although he did not say so, he really loved her and cared for her and it was only right, because she loved him, that he should be allowed to be the way he was. He had many other girls, including, I gathered, a wife. Initially Maria had, in the manner of despairing women, attempted to make of herself an improved piece of capital: she had dyed her hair, shaved her pubis, painted her face and nails. The girl-whore is always highly valued wherever one goes in the world. I gathered that while the man had appreciated the gesture he had told her that he intended to continue seeing other women. All this was depressing, for I was never particularly interested in economics. I found myself moralising a trifle. I told her that maturity and self-possession were in the end more attractive qualities to me. They guaranteed me a certain kind of freedom based on mutually accepted responsibility. She did not understand a word, of course. I added that a woman’s attempts to use a man as her context were thoroughly understood by me. I had my loyalties. But, like most men, I was not able to be either a woman’s nation or her cause. Maria made some attempt to rouse me and then fell back. She said that it was her bad luck to pick up a bore. She had thought I would be interesting. She added that she did not feel she could charge me much. I was amused. I got up and telephoned the hotel. The chief had not yet returned. I said that I would stay longer in that case. She said that she would enjoy my company, but I would have to be more entertaining. Eventually I achieved a reasonable state of mind and made love to her. She was soft, yielding and foul-mouthed. She was able to bring me to a more than satisfactory orgasm. As I left, she insisted that I telephone her the next day if I could. I agreed that I would if it were at all possible.