by Philip Kerr
‘One would first require guidance as to how the words “murder” and “decent” are to be used. For instance, I can demonstrate very easily how any murderer should not be punished. Let us accept that the definition of a murderer is someone who has killed someone else, having intended to kill them, and in the full knowledge that neither society, nor indeed the victim, wished it. Thus, if Brown murders Green and serves a period of punitive coma, or imprisonment, after which he is returned to normal society, he still remains a murderer. So you see it is not always true that a murderer should be punished.’
Jake looked at the pictophone screen and nodded at Jameson Lang. ‘I’d like to introduce you to someone,’ said Jake into the mouthpiece of the telephone. ‘This is Sir Jameson Lang, Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University. I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve asked him to join in our discussion.’
‘Frankly, Jake,’ Wittgenstein said coolly, ‘I’m a little surprised that you should cheat like this. Bringing a prompt - really it’s a bit thick. But naturally I’m also flattered to be talking to the professor. I know his work well. The novels that is.’ He sniggered. ‘I can’t think of any philosophical work he’s ever done.’
‘Hello,’ said the professor, hesitantly. ‘The example you were describing just now relies on improper philosophical grammar. Specifically your use of the word “should” punish. However, quite apart from the semantic issue here, the chief inspector is quite right: there is a universal standard which applies to the character of one’s acts.’
‘My turn to get semantic, Professor. It depends on what you mean by the word “universal”. Speaking of the character of my acts, you mean only the character which they will seem to have from an ordinary point of view, under the ordinary conditions of inquiry, such as asking the ubiquitous man on the Clapham omnibus. Assuming there was still such a thing as the Clapham omnibus.
‘But you see, Professor, I might have decided not to adopt his standard. I might have decided to adopt the standard of a South American headhunter, or an existential hero from a novel by Camus, or an anarchist maybe, perhaps even a right-wing vigilante, an extreme feminist, or a modern-day Maldoror. Could be I’ve decided to adopt all their standards put together. You see, their judgments as to the character of my acts have just as much right to be considered valid as some hollow, stuffed men from the dead, cactus land of Clapham. So you would have to deny that in themselves my acts have only one character, otherwise you would be guilty of bias.’
‘But that is what society is all about,’ said Lang. ‘A bias towards a commonly held standard of what is right and wrong.’
‘That does not give us the truth about my acts. Only the appearance of truth. For thousands of years, when a man took another man’s property it was called theft. But for almost a century, in certain parts of the world this sort of thing was legitimised by the name of Marxism. Tomorrow’s political philosophy might sanction murder, just as Marxism once sanctioned theft. You talk about the standard of a decent society, Professor Lang. But what kind of society is it that regards a President of the United States who orders the use of nuclear weapons to kill thousands of people as a great man, and another man who assassinates a single President as a criminal?’
‘If you’re referring to President Harry Truman,’ said Lang, ‘he acted to end the war. To save lives. Using the bomb was the only way to stop an even greater loss of life.’
‘What I am doing is born of the same motive: to prevent an even greater loss of life.’
‘But it’s not your position to make such a choice. It sets a bad example in society.’
‘You sound like a moral conservative, Professor.’
‘Perhaps so. But naturally you must accept that in the eyes of the society you seem to say you reject, you must be caught and punished.’
‘Must?’ He laughed. ‘No, I accept only the possibility.’
‘You claim you’re acting to save human life. Therefore you must surely accept that reverence for human life is the foundation of morality.’
‘No, only worthwhile human life.’
‘And what is the criterion of that?’
‘In most cases, the subjective feeling that life continues to be worthwhile.’
‘Well don’t you think that the men you killed had the feeling that their lives continued to be worthwhile?’
‘Very probably, they did.’ His voice darkened a little as he added: ‘But of course, they could have been wrong. Suppose Einstein had received some bad news about his wife and had lost the will to live. Would one not feel a certain obligation to remind him of how worthwhile a life his was? Would his own view of the worth of his own existence be the ultimate standard?’
‘Yes, you’re right there,’ admitted Lang. ‘One would feel such an obligation as you describe.’
‘Then surely you must admit the possibility that there are some who might overestimate the worth of their own existences?’
‘Logically I have to, I suppose. But I don’t see how such a thing could easily be demonstrated.’
‘Suppose that such a person was putting the lives of others at risk by clinging tenaciously to his own. Couldn’t it be demonstrated then?’
‘It might be.’
‘Would you not feel justified in eliminating such a person?’
‘It would depend on the circumstances,’ said Lang. ‘On how clearly evident was the risk to other people. I see what you’re driving at, but I don’t accept that yours is as clear cut a case as the one you’re describing.’
‘What criteria do you think would be acceptable in arriving at such a decision?’
‘I suppose it would be an objective standard. An estimation of what the reasonable man would do in similar circumstances.’
‘A subjective estimation of an objective standard?’ Wittgenstein uttered a little chuckle. ‘That sounds interesting. Don’t you think that I might have tried to consider the case of my brother VMN-negatives objectively? And that I arrived at the conclusion that the risk to other people is demonstrable?’
‘I quarrel with that demonstrability.’
‘But, Professor, it was already demonstrable when I killed my first victim. From that moment on there was a clear and evident risk that others like me might do the same.’
‘No, no, no,’ Lang said irritatedly. ‘You’re trying to prove the cause from the effect. You’re telling me that a murder you committed proves there was risk of others like you committing murder. I don’t accept your use of the a posteriori argument.’
Wittgenstein chuckled. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to, Professor, at least for the moment, anyway. It’s time for me to go.’
‘Please wait a minute,’ said Jake.
‘I can’t, I’m sorry. We’ll continue our little discussion another time. My next victim has turned up a little earlier than I had expected. Oh yes, I promised to give you his Lombroso-given name, didn’t I? Well, it’s René Descartes. And now I really must be about the eviction of a god from its machine.’
‘Wait — ’ repeated Jake and the professor in unison. But Wittgenstein was gone.
‘He wasn’t bullshitting,’ said Detective Sergeant Jones. ‘We traced the call onto the Injupitersat, and from there to the London area. It’s impossible to be more precise than that with a satellite phone.’
Jake shook her head with irritation. ‘We should have figured he would use something like that.’
‘Satellite phones are expensive, ma’am. Not to mention the fact that they’re also illegal.’
‘Yes. But that could also mean we might just be able to find out where he got hold of one. Supposing you wanted to buy a satellite phone, where would you go?’
Jones pursed his lips. ‘Only one place to go for that kind of thing. Tottenham Court Road.’ He shook his head. ‘Be a bastard gettin’ some of those blokes to talk, mind, if he did buy one there.’
‘Yes, you’ll have to guarantee them immunity against prosecution. You’d better let me sort that side of it out
with the DPP’s office.’
‘By the way,’ Jones said carefully. ‘Was he right about your perfume, ma’am?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Jake. ‘He was right. But I can’t for the life of me think how I could have met him.’
‘You sure they didn’t mention your perfume in that magazine article?’
‘Perfectly sure.’
‘Perhaps he was just winding you up.’
‘Yes. Perhaps.’ Jake smiled thinly. Somehow she didn’t think so.
‘Want me to organise you a bodyguard? Just in case he does want to meet you.’
Jake thought for a moment. She didn’t think one of her male colleagues would have asked for a bodyguard: not unless their families had been threatened. She shook her head.
‘I don’t think so. After all, he didn’t actually threaten me. And anyway, I have my gun.’
This gets easier every time.
Descartes left the advertising agency in Charlotte Street where he worked and walked south towards the New Oxford Street shopping mall.
From St Giles’ Circus to Bond Street, a glass canopy rose ten metres above the tree line, covering two storeys of shops, restaurants, foreign exchange tills, cinemas, building societies, exhibitions and market stalls selling every variety of trinket, craft and souvenir, and all to the apparently endless noise that was generated by the mall’s many guitarists, jugglers, clowns and dancers, each of whom wore his or her determination to be entertaining like three stripes on a sleeve.
Descartes crossed from the mall’s Rathbone Street entrance to the Soho Square exit, where a group of policemen, armed and armoured, lolled nonchalantly within spitting distance of their riot-vehicle, swinging their billy clubs and flirting with the prostitutes. Sidestepping one of the mall’s patrolling sandwich-board automata (Eat at Jo’s Sushi Bar/ Bath yourself brown, with Soldebain/ Only a cunt would drink a can of Canberra, said the small, fat robot), I followed him.
He was a hateful-looking figure, dressed in baggy, colourful clothes like one of the stupid clowns on the mall, his hair ludicrously short at the sides and long and sticking up on top, and carrying a clear plastic briefcase that allowed one an uninterrupted view of his newspaper, his cigarettes, his hand-held computer, his television and videotapes for the train-ride home. Probably he had just finished writing some crass piece of advertising copy for hamburgers, or a Protonic washing powder, or some brand of threadbare jeans. Yes, he looked like the style-conscious type to be writing a jeans commercial. Cogito ergo sum? I should bloody well think not, I said to myself as I left the mall. If you had one thought in your VMN-deficient head you wouldn’t work for the hucksters.
He crossed the well-kept gardens of the square and then headed down Dean Street, pausing only to look in the window of a small bookshop, before ducking into a performing sex club.
For a short while I stood in front of the place, looking in the yellowish window at a collection of black-and-white photographs which depicted an unlikely sample of the girls who were supposed to be performing inside. It wasn’t that they were too attractive to be exhibiting their naked bodies, merely that the pictures themselves looked so old, as if they had been taken ten or fifteen years before, when women still wore their hair that way, or had breasts that shape.
‘Live sex show, just starting,’ barked the florid-faced hippo seated behind the toughened glass of the box-office. ‘Only twenty-five EC. The hardest show in London, sir.’
I counted five bills in front of him and retrieved a pink ticket from a roll the size of a dinner plate. The stairs creaked like falling timber as I stepped gingerly down into the bowels of the club. The girl on stage had just finished removing her knickers and was twirling them on the end of her finger, almost as if she had been trying to fan herself, because it was hot in there.
‘Afternoon, mate,’ she chirped, catching sight of me as I peered forward, looking for Descartes.
He wasn’t difficult to spot, seated as close to the blanket-sized stage as possible, his hair a recognisably ridiculous silhouette against the bright spotlights.
I sat immediately behind him, although I don’t suppose he would have noticed. He was much too busy watching the girl as she began to apply a large handful of Vaseline first to her backside, and then to the larger end of a champagne bottle. Surely not, I thought and found myself almost immediately contradicted as she squeezed the bottle inside herself until only the cork remained visible.
A thing is identical with itself. A useless proposition which nevertheless requires an effort of imagination. It is as if in imagination we put a thing such as a champagne bottle into its own shape and saw that it fitted. At the same time, we look at a thing and imagine that there was a blank left for it and that now it fits into it exactly. But this is something else entirely.
The obscenity of it was almost laughable. She drew the bottle inside herself and then pushed it out again. An inner process which stands in need of outward criteria. A human being defecating a champagne bottle.
René Descartes sat rigidly in his seat, not moving his head and, it seemed, hardly daring to breathe. Was this, I wondered, part of his basic quest for the self? Were his senses deceiving him now, concerning things which seemed hardly perceptible? Did he think that this was a dream in which he saw even less probable things than do those who are insane in their waking moments? Was he thinking that in reality he was at home, lying undressed in bed?
He could have been forgiven for thinking that this was some nightmare he was inhabiting. The woman grunted a little and then she giggled as she grasped the neck of the bottle and, with a horrible sucking noise, pulled it right out of her anus. It was like watching a patient, etherised upon a table, performing some surgery upon herself. The apparent impossibility of what she was doing and the sense of astonishment which I felt seemed to underline the dream-like aspect of the whole situation. To my surprise I found myself holding out my hand in front of me, as if to perceive it. What happens in sleep could not surely appear so clear, nor so distinct as this. But of course, Descartes knew that sleep deceives by the ingenuity of its illusions, that there are no certain indications by which we may clearly distinguish wakefulness from sleep. From death, even.
For a moment I was lost in astonishment. My astonishment could almost have persuaded me that I was indeed dreaming. The bottle disappeared inside the woman again. She squeezed it back a little and then vacuumed it back once more.
A dream then. Even better. It was easier for us both that way. I drew the gas-gun from my shoulder-holster and reflected that I could hardly miss. All the same, if I say ‘The gun is aiming at point p on the back of Descartes’s head’, I’m not saying anything about where the shot will hit. Giving the point at which it is aiming is a geometrical means of assigning its direction. That this is the means I use is certainly connected with certain observations (projectile parabolas, etc.) but these observations don’t enter into our present description of the direction.
‘Do it,’ said the voice.
I froze with surprise. Who had spoken? Descartes? Nietzsche? God?
‘Yeah, go on, do it,’ it said again.
The girl squealed, almost imperceptibly. I heard other cries of wild encouragement.
‘All right,’ I said and lifted the gun barrel until it was just a few centimetres from the back of his head.
The girl kneeling on the stage hauled the bottle out of her ass and stood up to take a bow. Small explosions of applause surrounded me as the audience showed its appreciation. Everyone except Descartes. But I don’t suppose anyone noticed. Holstering my gun again I made my way upstairs to the light.
Like him I dread awakening from this slumber. Just in case the laborious wakefulness which would follow the tranquillity of this repose should have to be spent not in daylight, but in the excessive darkness of the difficulties which have just been discussed.
It’s true, no one has interfered with my freedom. My life has drained it dry. A lot of fuss about nothing. This life had been given to
me for nothing. And yet I would not change. I am as I was made. But I can still savour the failure of a life. After all, I have attained the age of reason.
But what kind of reason have I to assume that my gun will fire if my finger pulls the trigger? What kind of reason to believe that if I fired it at a brother’s head it would blow his brains out? When I ask this, a hundred reasons present themselves, each drowning the voice of the others. ‘But I have already done it myself innumerable times, and as often heard of others doing the same. Why only the other day there was an article in a magazine written by a former Mafia hitman who used to shoot his victims in the head while they were eating their soup.’ (Well, at least I have the decency not to interfere with a man’s lunch.)
Reason is first in Nature, created that Man may investigate and perceive, and it is to be distinguished from Sensibility and Understanding. Of course it has a very natural tendency to overreach itself, to overstep the limits of what may be experienced, and all inferences which would carry us across the slippery ground are fallacious and worthless.
And yet ... the same mind that is capable of reason also produces monsters.
There is an engraving by gorgeous Goya in which various creatures of eternal night hover menacingly above the head of a sleeping man - perhaps Goya himself: certainly there are few artists who can rival his monstrous imaginings. These monsters in the engraving are, of course, symbolic. The real monster, as Hobbes tells us (and, for that matter, Freud), is Man himself — a savage, selfish, murderous brute. Society, says Hobbes, exists so that man may leave his brutish nature chained up at home, that he may aspire to something greater.
But if Man’s original state is to be asocial and destructively rapacious, then if he aspires to go beyond this state, does he grow nearer to God, or does he find himself growing further away?
For my own part I find the aspects of my character which are solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short are far stronger than those civilising constraints which are imposed by society. I find that I understand, only too well, those who are at war against the world.
