A Very Persistent Illusion

by L. C. Tyler

  The gentleman was sitting by the closed stove – an imposing blue and white Dutch-tiled cylinder eight feet high – in the far corner of the room. The heat generated by this piece of modern technology reached as far as the doorway, but that was still not enough to melt the snow that covered the small leaded panes of the chamber’s only window. The mid-day light in the room, diffused by this translucent covering, was watery, yellowish and not quite of this world. The gentleman’s black shoulder-length hair was untidy as though he had been running his fingers through it constantly all morning, which, as it happened, he had been. His long, mulberry-coloured dressing gown was tied carelessly with a cord and his bare feet were sticking straight out in the direction of the warmth. His nose was large and slightly misshapen. His beard was trimmed in what seemed to the waiter an excessive and rather effeminate way. In his hand was a bright red ball of wax, which he clutched to his chest as if it had, for him, greater importance than just any ball of wax.

  The gentleman seemed at first to be staring at the stove itself, but the waiter then saw that he had his eyes closed as if trying hard to remember something of great consequence. But, reasoned the waiter, nothing as consequential as this fine midday repast. He coughed in an attention-drawing way, and was then obliged to brush his hand swiftly across the ham to remove the resulting specks of spittle. Fortunately the gentleman’s eyes were still shut.

  This new guest was a rum old cove and no mistake, the waiter decided. He’d pitched up a few days before, saying he needed a room for the night, but the heavy snowfalls, the prospect of impassable winter roads and a frozen and unnavigable river had kept him here. Some were saying he was a soldier. Some were saying he was a schoolmaster. Some were saying he was a Jesuit. Some said he was French, at the very least, and that his name was De Something or Des Something, as French names tended to be. He was foreign anyway, which meant they could charge him just that little bit more.

  ‘Allez-vous en,’ said the gentleman, without looking up.

  The waiter, who did not speak foreign, even for cash, just blinked and stood his ground.

  ‘I said: go away,’ repeated the gentleman, still preoccupied.

  ‘You ordered ham,’ said the waiter, taking the opportunity to inspect it again for any residual bodily fluids. It looked good enough. ‘You said to bring a plate of ham to your room later. It’s later now.’

  The gentleman rubbed his hand across his face and, turning, slowly focused his dark and now open eyes on the plump, greasy individual before him. The waiter smelt faintly, but not altogether unpleasantly, of wood-smoke, rancid goose fat and sour wine: the scent of one who spends much of his time around the kitchen and is not too concerned about spillage.

  ‘Sit down,’ the gentleman commanded, without even a passing reference to the ham. ‘On that stool.’

  A schoolmaster then, thought the waiter with a sigh. He sat down obediently, holding the battered pewter platter awkwardly a little way in front of him. He was not entirely comfortable, but for the moment it was better than being sent out by the cook into the icy streets to buy half a dozen scrawny chickens.

  ‘I should like your views as a philosopher,’ said the gentleman.

  ‘I’ll do my best, Your Worship,’ said the waiter, unsure of himself but hoping that playful banter might increase the size of his tip. ‘Though I must admit I haven’t had much time for philosophy of late; I tend to specialize more in washing pots, running errands and getting beaten by the cook. Also taking ham to gentlemen in their chambers, who then apparently don’t want it. And accepting a trifle for my trouble, if the gentlemen are kind enough. Still, I’ll try anything once.’

  ‘Look at the plate in front of you,’ said the gentleman, blandly sidestepping any pecuniary digressions. ‘How do I know that is ham?’

  ‘Of course it’s ham. It’s what you ordered. When you get your bill it will say: “Plate of Ham, one florin. Excluding service.”’ The waiter winked.

  ‘So that’s the only way I’ll know it’s ham – because that is what it says on the bill?’

  In this inn, yes, thought the waiter. ‘Well, it looks like ham, doesn’t it?’ he said encouragingly.

  ‘But our eyes can deceive us, can they not?’ asked the gentleman. ‘Have you never thought that you saw your friend Hans in the distance, and then approaching closer the person proved to be a total stranger?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I don’t know anyone called Hans,’ said the waiter.

  ‘Fritz?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Otto?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Wilhelm?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Heinz?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Adolph?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ulrich?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Engelbert?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Leopold?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Wolfgang Amadeus?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Who the hell do you know, then?’

  ‘Carl. Though I don’t know him that well.’

  ‘All right – have you never thought that you saw your casual acquaintance Carl in the distance, and then approaching closer . . . et cetera et cetera?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the waiter. ‘Yes, I’ve done that, and I do get your general drift. I agree our eyes can deceive us but—’

  ‘So, next, does that object on the plate smell like ham, eh?’

  The waiter cursed under his breath. So that was what this was all about. He’d told the cook that the ham was off, but would he listen? Just give it to him, the cook had said; the French will eat anything – snails, frogs, tripe – nothing’s too odd or smelly for them. Now they were in deep trouble, and it would not be just the cook who ended up in the pillory in the main square for serving rotten meat. And winter was a bad time to spend a day outdoors with your neck between two planks of cold, hard wood.

  ‘If you’ve changed your mind,’ he began, ‘we’ve got some very good beef . . .’

  But, strangely, the gentleman was just pressing ahead with his lecture. ‘How do I know this little red ball is wax?’ asked the gentleman.

  So it wasn’t about the ham then. ‘That’s best sealing wax, that is,’ said the waiter, on slightly firmer ground with nonperishable items.

  ‘Of course. And I can tell that it is wax because it is hard and round and smells like wax and makes a certain sound when I tap it. But if I melt it in front of this stove it will no longer be hard or round or make the same noise – and yet it is the same wax as before.’

  ‘Obviously,’ said the waiter. ‘That’s how it is with wax. Ham’s a bit different, of course. Leave ham in front of a warm stove – as this probably was, in fact – and—’

  ‘You see,’ the gentleman continued, ignoring the interesting parallels between philosophy and grocery, ‘all of our senses can deceive us – sight, hearing, smell, touch. We can have dreams so vivid that we believe them to be real. How can you tell now that you are awake rather than dreaming?’

  ‘I could pinch myself,’ offered the waiter, generously.

  ‘But how would you know that you were not dreaming the pain?’

  ‘I could kick myself as well. That would hurt more.’

  ‘You could dream that too.’

  ‘I could gouge both my eyes out with an auger.’

  Yes, why don’t you try that? thought the gentleman. That might be an interesting experiment in practical philosophy.

  ‘Sir, you are clearly an empiricist,’ said the gentleman. ‘We have to assume, however, that the dream you are currently having is so vivid that you can experience, or think you experience, all of the pains and pleasures that you would when awake. Have you experienced pleasure while you were asleep?’

  ‘Might have done,’ said the waiter guardedly.

  ‘You see, when we are dreaming we simply cannot tell we are dreaming, even if the very thought should occur to us in our
dream. Perhaps you have had a dream where you dreamt you were dreaming, then dreamt you had woken up?’

  ‘How did you know that?’ asked the waiter.

  ‘Everybody has that one,’ said the gentleman with a dismissive wave of the hand. ‘Of course, eventually we do awake from sleep, but there is another sort of dream from which many do not – I mean madness. You will have seen wretches dressed in rags who believe nonetheless that they are emperors wearing purple robes, holding the world in their sway. Or that their heads are pumpkins or that they are made of glass. So I sit here looking at that ham, thinking I am in a warm room in a hostelry in Neuburg, close to the frozen Danube, but I could be dreaming or I could be mad.’

  ‘I’m mad too, then, because that’s where I think I am. Actually, I’ve never been anywhere else, except Oberhausen, which frankly is not worth the journey. They smell funny and overcharge you for bad food. Now Paris, say, or Peru . . . I’d be prepared to believe they don’t exist, never having seen or wanted to see either, but Neuburg is the real thing. And Oberhausen, to the extent I can tell. I’m not sure you’re right about madmen thinking they are made of glass though. The ones I have met have just looked at me sideways and talked to themselves. They never mentioned what sort of clothes they thought they were wearing, and I never thought to ask. Of course, if one of them said he wasn’t sure he existed, then I’d take that as proof that he was a loopy as a . . . But from the way that Your Excellency is tapping that ball of wax on the table, I fear that I may have missed Your Excellency’s point.’

  ‘My point,’ said the gentleman, transferring the ball of wax quickly to his other hand and taking a deep breath, ‘was simply that madmen are also often deceived about reality. The purple robes, pumpkins and so forth and so forth were merely examples of things madmen might imagine. I don’t spend a lot of time talking to the mentally deranged. Usually.’

  ‘And my point,’ said the waiter, keeping a careful eye on the ball of wax, just in case it started tapping again, ‘is that I am not mad. Hence, what I say is true and you may accept my word that you are not mad and that you are a fortunate guest in the best inn in Neuburg.’

  ‘Thank you for that reassurance. But even that does not provide the certainty I require. I understand what you appear to be saying to me, but perhaps you too are a figment of my imagination.’

  ‘Or maybe you’re a figment of mine,’ muttered the waiter, who had been called various things but never previously a figment.

  The gentleman snapped his fingers (the hand that no longer held the ball of wax). ‘Exactly!’ he exclaimed. ‘Now you are starting to make progress in philosophy.’

  ‘So, now I am a philosopher, I can’t be certain of anything then? Not that it’s cold?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or that there is daylight through that window?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or whether this ham is off?’

  ‘I could smell the ham was off as soon as you brought it into the room, you idiot. But from a purely philosophical viewpoint – no.’

  ‘So, apart from the ham – sorry about that – there’s nothing we can be certain of?’

  ‘I can doubt everything except one thing. Do you know what that is?’

  ‘You said: it’s the ham.’

  ‘The one thing that I cannot doubt is doubt itself. For the doubt to exist there must be something or someone to do the doubting. Dubito ergo sum.’

  ‘Is that French?’

  ‘Latin. “I doubt therefore I am.” Or perhaps “think” would be better. Cogito ergo sum: “I think, therefore I am.” But – and I’ll work out the exact phrase later – the one thing I can be certain of is my own existence. On that solitary rock of certainty, my friend, it is possible to construct a whole new philosophical system. Or at least it would be if I didn’t have my train of thought broken by people bringing me rancid ham.’

  ‘Well, fancy that,’ said the waiter, who had known all along that he existed and did not need a philosopher to tell him. ‘The cook, however, will be starting to doubt my existence, so if you will excuse me, Monsieur De . . .’

  The gentleman either did not notice or did not care that the waiter had forgotten his name. He offered no assistance in any case.

  ‘So, if you’ll excuse me, Monsieur Des . . . Anyway,’ said the waiter as he backed through the doorway, still clutching the plate of ham, ‘the cook is preparing chicken for supper tonight, which I am sure will compare favourably with anything you would find in Paris.’

  The door closed none too softly.

  ‘I doubt that,’ said Descartes.

  3

  Euston Road, 20 April this Year

  My first objective on a Monday morning is to get from Great Portland Street station to my office without meeting any of my staff. I do not actively dislike any of them (though I am not sure why I shouldn’t) but from the moment the first of them engages me in conversation, the weekend is over and the working week has begun. By sneaking from the train and keeping close to the tiled wall as I follow the crowd up the smooth concrete steps, I can sometimes delay the start of Monday by a good ten minutes. Today, however, I am out of luck. I have hung back to avoid June (not strictly speaking my staff, but very likely to talk to me all the same) only to feel a tap on my shoulder. It is Narinder, my International Assistant.

  ‘Hello, Chris, I thought it was you,’ he says triumphantly. He looks so pleased I almost feel sorry for him.

  ‘No, it’s somebody else. That’s me over there,’ I reply.

  Narinder looks puzzled for a second, then says: ‘Always joking, eh, Chris?’

  I agree that I have made a joke and that I am in fact more or less where I appear to be. He smiles. I actually quite like Narinder, even if he has just shortened the weekend.

  Narinder got the job of International Assistant because the selection panel thought that, coming from India or thereabouts, he must know something about international affairs. Actually, he was born in Romford and has never been further than Benidorm, which he hated.

  ‘Good weekend?’ I ask. It’s the standard question being asked all over central London at this instant. Most people are replying: ‘OK, and yourself?’

  Narinder, however, is saying: ‘Awful, man, just awful. My parents are on at me again about going and staying with my auntie and uncle in Amritsar for a month, you know? What do I want to go there for? I won’t know anyone. It’s too hot. There’s no McDonald’s. And it will be all my annual leave taken in one go. I’ve got other things to do, man. Know what I mean?’

  I can take this town or leave it, but Narinder is a Londoner, born and bred. He can survive only on proper English food – curry, pasta, pot noodles, kebabs, hamburgers, French fries. He thinks Glasgow is ‘abroad’.

  ‘There’s probably a McDonald’s in Amritsar,’ I say, thinking of McDonalds that I have encountered in Hong Kong, Bangkok, Oslo and even Paris.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Probably.’

  For a moment it looks as though this might be enough to clinch the deal; then he shakes his head. ‘No, I’m not going to risk it.’

  This is his joke, just as mine was mine. Narinder’s quite funny in his own quiet way. There’s certainly a risk in going to Amritsar, and we both know what it is, because we’ve talked about it before. It has nothing to do with hamburgers.

  But I just nod. I too am against unnecessary risks.

  We have reached the traffic lights and conversation stops abruptly as we run across the road before the traffic starts moving again. When I was younger I used to have this theory that, if you ran across just as the lights were about to change and if you could get to the other side before the stationary red figure replaced the green walking one, then Everything Would Be All Right. What ‘Everything’ was varied, of course, from time to time. The earliest ‘Everything’ that I can recall had something to do with an incomplete geography project that I had to hand in that afternoon. Later it encompassed job applications, England winning the World Cup
and completely successful contraception. It worked for the geography project (the teacher was absent with flu that afternoon) but its predictive value subsequently was patchy (England inexplicably did not win the World Cup in spite of a number of successful crossings). This time we get across just before the pedestrian lights change, so everything will clearly be All Right for one or other of us.

  The Royal Society for Medical Education is in one of those improbably big white houses overlooking Regent’s Park. My office, with a sign on the door saying: ‘Director of External Affairs’, is on the highly prestigious first floor, along with such big cheeses as the President and the Secretary. The library and lecture theatre are on the ground floor. Lesser departments such as Continuing Professional Development and Examinations, and also some of the committee rooms, occupy the upper floors. IT is obviously in the basement. But I am on the highly prestigious first floor. My staff are clustered around me, their desks packed tightly but randomly into a sort of outer office that must once have been half of a grand drawing room – Narinder (International), Fatima (my PA), Jon (Press) and now Lucy (Parliamentary Officer). As I exchange a few cheerful words with each, Monday settles on my shoulders like a damp and malodorous horse blanket. I want to weep at the tedium and pointlessness of the next five days, but what I actually say is: ‘OK, boys and girls – team meeting at zero nine thirty precisely. Be there or be square. Let’s kick Monday in the pants.’

  I close my door behind me, groan, slump into my chair, groan again and switch on my computer. As it boots up I try to think of any good reason why I should invite Lucy into my office for a one-to-one discussion on anything. I can’t. I scan the BBC website for parliamentary news items but there is nothing that might remotely concern the cool and wacky world of medical education. Nothing at all. As usual the external world seems unaware of our activities or even our existence. Explaining what the Society does, how necessary we are, why academic medicine would crumble if we did not offer grants, run our courses and our diploma examination, lobby tirelessly for medical education and so on and so on – explaining all of that is my job. And, like I say, the entire planet seems unaware that we exist. Excellent. Well done, Chris.