The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday

by Alexander McCall Smith

  To begin with, there was Dove’s choice of the words you may be familiar with: that may have sounded innocuous, but was in reality a piece of naked condescension. Of course she would be familiar with the Trolley Problem, one of the most famous thought experiments of twentieth-century philosophy—and twenty-first-century philosophy, too, as the problem continued to rumble along, as everyone knew. Everyone professionally involved in philosophy, that is, and that included Isabel. To suggest that she may be familiar with it was to imply ignorance on her part; what Dove should have written was you will of course be familiar with. That was the principal insult.

  Then there was the lie. Dove said that his paper was being sought after by other editors, but how could he say that, given the strong convention that one did not submit the same paper to two journals at the same time? And even if he had, and one or two other editors had accepted it, then why would he now submit it to her? It might be that he considered the Review of Applied Ethics to be more prestigious than the other journals involved, but if that were the case, then surely he would have submitted it to the Review first, or at least simultaneously. No, Dove was lying, and the reason for his lie was that he was trying to bounce Isabel into accepting an article that was much sought after. Well, she thought, I will not be bounced.

  Finally, there was Dove’s sally about having been treated badly in the past. It was true that Isabel had dismissed him from the editorial board, along with his co-plotter, the ridiculously named Professor Lettuce, but she had done so only because he and Lettuce had conspired to remove her from the editorship. That was why she had decided to buy the Review and clean out the Augean stables. So he was in no position to claim that he had been treated badly; the composition of her editorial board was entirely up to her, and she had decided that it would include neither Dove nor Lettuce. They had been informed of this decision and thanked for their past contribution; as conspirators they could hardly complain.

  She turned to the paper which accompanied Dove’s letter: “Taking the Trolley One Stop Further: A Reexamination Along Different Lines.” That, thought Isabel, is a mixed metaphor: stops and lines were different features of trolleys, and it was confusing to bring them both in. Dove was trying to be clever, in an elegant, postmodernist way, but she was not impressed.

  She read past the title page, which was followed by a page-long summary.

  “A trolley car,” wrote Dove, “is careering out of control down a slope. Ahead of it on the line are five people who have been tied there by a mad philosopher. You, however, realise that by flicking a switch you can divert the trolley onto a spur line. There is one person standing on the line. If you flick the switch, one person will be killed; if you do nothing, five will die. Do you flick the switch?”

  I have never had any doubt as to what I would do, thought Isabel. I would flick the switch. It was perfectly simple. Unless, of course, Dove and Lettuce were among the five—She stopped herself. That was an uncharitable thought, and she realised that she should not think it. But the delicious, childish fantasy came back.

  “It is not so simple,” Dove continued. “Since Philippa Foot first posed the problem, a number of writers have examined it in greater detail, most notably Judith Jarvis Thomson, who changed the conditions of the thought experiment by taking out the spur line and introducing an innocent fat man. This fat man is on a bridge directly above the trolley line. If he is toppled from the bridge directly in front of the trolley, his bulk will be sufficient to stop it and therefore save the five people farther down the line.

  “For many, that changes the nature of the problem, in that the fat man was never at risk until you toppled him over the parapet. Your intervention there is different from your intervention in flipping the switch. In this paper I explore that distinction and introduce another complication: the fat man is not innocent at all, but a serial killer who has a few good years of murder ahead of him. Does this make it easier to throw him over the bridge?”

  Yes, thought Isabel. Of course it does. I would not hesitate to throw a serial killer off a bridge, provided I was sure that this was the only way of stopping him. For a moment she imagined herself locked in a struggle with a fat man on a bridge, in much the same way as Sherlock Holmes wrestled with Moriarty above the Reichenbach Falls. Holmes toppled over, and she feared that she would, too, which was not the way the thought experiment was meant to end.

  “No,” continued Dove. “We have no right to take upon ourselves a godlike power to save the lives of others. In this paper I examine why this almost counterintuitive conclusion is right.”

  Isabel flicked through the pages that followed. Here and there a phrase caught her eye: we must respect the moral luck of others and moral desert cannot be allowed to determine life-and-death decisions. Oh, can it not? thought Isabel. She, for one, disagreed with that profoundly. We did not all have an equal right to life; she would have no compunction in saying that those who did some good for humanity should be preferred when it came to saving lives. If she was in a lifeboat and had only one place available, she would reach out to rescue Mother Teresa rather than Idi Amin, if both nun and dictator were in the water at the same time. And Mother Teresa, had she been in the boat, would surely make a similar choice, if she were faced with a drowning Idi Amin and a vaccine-research scientist. She would regret it, no doubt, and express sympathy for the floundering dictator, but surely she would do it.

  She laid the paper down on her desk. The dilemma of the bystander at the switch was a difficult one, but there were other situations which seemed every bit as uncomfortable, even if they did not involve issues of life and death. And amongst these was the immediate question of what she should do with Dove’s paper. If she were petty, she would send it back to him with a straightforward rejection. She might even say something cutting, such as I regret that your paper does not meet the exacting standards of the Review. I do hope that you find another home for it. But that would be so cheap, so childish. No, she would have to send it out to referees, and at the end of the day she felt that she would have to publish it. If she did not, then Dove would have proved his point and would conclude that she had been swayed in her editorial decision by personal animosity towards him. She would not let that happen; Dove would be treated in exactly the same way as any other person who submitted a paper to the Review. He would be given equal treatment, which is exactly what he deserved.

  Sometimes, thought Isabel, it is very difficult being a philosopher. How much easier it would be to be Jamie, who did not agonise over things, or Grace, who largely accepted things, or even Charlie, who did not yet know what things were.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ISABEL DID NOT SEE Jamie that evening. There was an unspoken understanding between them that he would be in charge of Charlie’s bath and they would both then share the hour or so of play that came before bedtime. Then she and Jamie would have dinner together, going over the day’s events, discussing Charlie and his doings and achievements, which were as wondrous to both of them as such things always are to parents. That evening, though, Jamie was involved in a rehearsal for a concert that he was to play in the following night at the Queen’s Hall, and that was where she was to see him next.

  On the evening of the concert, she found him in the Queen’s Hall bar, sitting at a table by himself, nursing a large glass of orange juice and paging through an opera magazine. He rose to greet her, and they exchanged a kiss on the cheek. His hand, though, touched the side of her neck gently, a gesture that she found strangely intimate. It was all so new, even if it had been going on for more than two years now; so precious—so unlikely, too, but it had happened.

  She sat down beside him. They were early—the concert was not due to start until half past seven, forty minutes away. In the background, in the green room that gave directly off the bar, they heard one of the singers warming up.

  “Listen to this,” he said. “There’s a bit here about a performance of Lohengrin. Leo Slezak, the Czech tenor, was due to get onto a swan
and sail off the stage. Unfortunately one of the stagehands sent the mechanical swan off before he had time to get onto it. So Slezak turned to the audience and sang, in German, When does the next swan leave?”

  They both burst out laughing. “I can understand the view that Wagner’s inherently ridiculous,” Isabel said. “Even when the swans run on time.”

  Jamie nodded. “But there are plenty of operas that one can’t really take seriously. I’ve always had difficulty with Pagliacci. Everybody seems to die onstage. I know it’s tragic, but somehow one would have thought that at least one or two of the principal singers would be left standing.”

  He slipped the magazine into the small music case he had with him and turned to Isabel. “I’m sorry about the other night. I wasn’t—”

  She interrupted him. “I’m the one who should say sorry. I dragged you there.”

  “It’s not that I dislike these dinner parties,” Jamie continued. “It’s just that the people at that one…” He shrugged. “The chemistry wasn’t there. You know how sometimes things just zip along. I didn’t feel it.”

  “I know,” said Isabel. “I could tell.” He had obviously not enjoyed himself, which had slightly surprised her, as she thought everybody else had.

  He smiled. “Anyway, let’s not talk about it. This concert…” He trailed off.

  Isabel knew there were occasions when Jamie did not look forward to a performance, and the shrug that he gave revealed that this was one.

  “What is wrong with it? It looks interesting enough.”

  He drew an imaginary line on the table, a casual, invisible doodle that she assumed divided the evening’s offering into two. “Some of the pieces are interesting. The others…well…” He reached for the programme that Isabel had bought in the lobby. “Here. This new piece. Melisma for the Return of Persephone. It’s rubbish. I just don’t like it. This is only the second time it’s been played, which surprises me. Once would have been enough. Or too much.”

  Isabel was surprised by this comment. Musicians could backbite, but Jamie, she thought, was not like that; he was usually gentle. Something had irritated him profoundly for him to say this. “Somebody must like it,” she said mildly. “It must have some merit, otherwise…”

  Jamie shook his head. “You’ve got a touching faith in the way these things work, Isabel,” he said. “Merit doesn’t come into it.”

  He was in an odd mood, she decided. “All right,” she said. “But don’t let it worry you. And I’ll try not to catch your eye during the performance.”

  He had glanced at his watch, and she decided that it would be better to leave him by himself. She rose to her feet, explaining that she was going to go to her seat in the hall, where she would read the programme notes. He said yes, that was a good idea; he would see her afterwards and they would go back to the house together. Had she brought her car? She had, and had parked it conveniently behind the hall, outside the small, secondhand bookshop that specialised in science fiction. A bassoon was not an easy instrument to carry, and on the occasions when Jamie played the contrabassoon, difficulties of transport could become acute. The contrabassoon had eighteen feet of wood and metal tubing, and required a case that was almost six feet in length. Some contrabassoonists, Jamie had pointed out, were considerably smaller than their instruments—though this was not the case with him.

  “Maybe they’re compensating for being so small,” he had once suggested. “A tiny tuba player must feel much bigger than he really is.”

  Isabel thought this was possible; she had noticed small men in immense cars and sometimes there did appear to be a connection. Yet one had to be careful with observations of this type; it was very easy to be uncharitable, and then to regret it, as she had been, and done, once, when on holiday in Spain with John Liamor and they had been talking about ostentatious cars and inadequate drivers. They had been sitting in a pavement café, and at that moment an immense Mercedes-Benz had entered the plaza and had drawn to a halt near them. And Isabel had said: “Yes, now look at him. He’s making up for something.” John Liamor had said, “Yes, obviously.”

  Then the driver had got out of the car and raised himself with difficulty onto his two artificial legs.

  THE PIECE that aroused Jamie’s disdain came immediately before the interval. Before the concert began, Isabel had the opportunity to read the programme notes and the composer’s biography. “Although not yet thirty, the American composer Nick Smart has attracted considerable attention for his bold and original compositions for both voice and chamber ensemble. In Melisma for the Return of Persephone, this talented young composer, currently spending a year as composer in residence at the University of Edinburgh, applies a technique of Gregorian chant to explore the vowels of Persephone’s name. Mr. Smart will be conducting his piece this evening.”

  Isabel smiled to herself. Jamie did not like pretentiousness; and that, she thought, was why he had taken against Melisma. She could understand that: the greatest beauty, she felt, was to be found in simplicity. Ornamentation had its place, but that place was a small one. And what, she wondered, had Persephone to do with it? It was unfortunate that Hades had seized Persephone and taken her into the underworld; Demeter was rightly distracted, as anyone would be in the circumstances, but…The concert was about to begin. She snatched a last glance at the small photograph of Nick Smart, printed alongside his biography. A young man smiling at the camera, captured against a background of a college building, it seemed, somewhere old, in the new way that buildings are old in the United States, and…She peered at the photograph; the lights were dimming in the hall. Yes, he looked remarkably like Jamie. It was uncanny.

  There were four short pieces before Melisma began. Jamie played in the first two, and then slipped back onto the stage shortly before the outgoing conductor welcomed Nick Smart to the podium. Isabel watched as a lithe figure, clad in the crumpled black linen suit favoured by composers, ascended the steps at the front and shook hands with the man who now passed him his baton. So that was Nick Smart; although Isabel was in the third row from the front and therefore able to see the stage quite well, it was difficult to make out very much about the composer from behind. But even then, she thought that had Nick Smart been sitting at the bassoon rather than Jamie, she would not have known the difference.

  Melisma began. Isabel closed her eyes and tried to follow the direction of the music, but it soon defeated her. The possibility of resolution was raised from time to time, but then quickly dashed as an unexpected chord intruded. Miasma, thought Isabel; this is a miasma. Miasma for the Confusion of Persephone. Jamie would appreciate that, she thought.

  She looked in Jamie’s direction. It seemed that there was little for the contrabassoon to do in the early stages of the piece, but, towards the end, when the prospect of Persephone’s release drew closer, there were rumbling bassoon sounds on the lower notes of the register, signifying, Isabel imagined, the depths of Hades from which the unfortunate girl would shortly be released. She suppressed a smile. Hell, she thought, was more likely to be a place of white noise, the noise favoured by torturers, than a place of contrabassoon pedal notes. Or would Hell be an endless loop of boy bands or rap? Either would be torture.

  Of course, the abolition of Hell meant that such thoughts were now the merest fantasy. Isabel was agnostic as to what, if anything, lay in store for us after this life; that there was a world of spirit seemed to her to be a possibility that we should not exclude. Consciousness was an elusive entity about which we knew very little, other than that it came into existence when certain conditions were present—a sufficient mass of brain cells operating in a particular way. But could we really say much more than that about where it was located and whether it could survive in other conditions? The fact that a plant grew in one place did not mean that it could not grow in another. And if something lay behind this consciousness, orchestrated it and the conditions that produced it, then why should we not call this something God?

  She closed her
eyes. The key in which the music was now being played suggested that Persephone was out of the underworld and that flowers and grain were returning. She opened them. A few energetic bars more and the music suddenly came to an abrupt, unresolved end. No resolution. That is so counterintuitive, thought Isabel. And if a composer does not resolve a piece then the applause should be similarly incomplete. One hand would be aimed at the other, but would stop short of actual contact: unresolved clapping.

  Yet the applause was enthusiastic—thunderously so. Isabel looked about her at the faces of her fellow concertgoers; many were smiling enthusiastically. Of course, one had to be careful about reading too much into that; people could smile with relief at the end of an unsatisfactory piece, and even applause could be provoked by sheer joy at being released from something one does not like. But this audience, she thought, meant it.

  She did not go into the bar at the interval, as she knew that Jamie liked to socialise with his fellow musicians and she would leave him to do that. So she went the other way, to the front of the hall, and stood outside for a few minutes, enjoying the evening air. Others were doing the same, and she recognised some of them. There was a man she saw in Cat’s delicatessen from time to time; there was a couple with their emaciated, earnest-looking teenagers; there was the young woman who worked in the fund-raising office of the university; and a few others. Isabel listened. Everybody, it seemed, was talking about Melisma for the Return of Persephone. “Really remarkable,” said the man from the delicatessen to the woman standing at his side. “I’ve heard something by him before. He’s going places, I think.”

  “Yes,” said the woman. “Very…” She left the word hanging.