Doctor Criminale

by Malcolm Bradbury

  So, I thought, leaning on the rail and looking out over the great black lake, they’d all gone: Ildiko Hazy, the beautiful Miss Belli, and the confusing, the enigmatic Bazlo Criminale. For a moment I wondered if they could all have gone together, but that made no sense, no sense at all. What I knew was that my trail had died. I might have forty thousand pounds sitting in my wallet, but I had come to the end of the quest for Bazlo Criminale. I’d asked the wrong questions. I’d found an obscure solution, and it was really no solution at all. The life, the loves, the friends, the enemies, the plot, the design – none of them had shape or sense. I was stuck, blanked out, gapped, aporia-ed, no idea what to do next. There was one thing I could do: go to Cosima Bruckner. Perhaps she would explain everything. On the other hand, she’d also doubtless relieve me of my wallet at the same time. Then I remembered the person who, in trouble, I was always supposed to turn to, the one who’d brought me here in the first place. I went back to the lobby of the Hotel Beau Rivage Palace, found a telephone, and called the Delphic oracle in Vienna.

  This time Lavinia was there in her room. I could hear an operatic tape playing in the background, glasses tinkling somewhere, the sound of German chatter. I began talking; she cut me off. ‘Look, I’m afraid there’s bad news, Francis,’ she said, ‘I tried calling you at Barolo but they deny you even exist.’ ‘Of course they do,’ I said, ‘Barolo was weeks ago, I’m here in Lausanne.’ ‘You’re so damn hard to keep up with,’ said Lavinia, ‘Even when I’m sober.’ ‘All right, what bad news?’ I asked. ‘I’m sorry, Francis,’ said Lavinia, ‘But it’s all off.’ ‘What’s off?’ I asked. ‘The Criminale programme,’ said Lavinia, ‘It’s finite, kaput. We’re not doing it any more.’ ‘You don’t mean bloody old Codicil . . .’ I asked. ‘He’s nothing to do with it,’ said Lavinia, ‘He’s come back to Vienna, by the way, absolutely furious, according to dear old Franz-Josef. Isn’t that right, Franz-Josef darling?’ I could hear fond chatter at the other end; I interrupted. ‘If it’s not Codicil, who?’ I cried.

  ‘Eldorado TV, that’s who,’ said Lavinia, ‘They’re cancelling all their arts programming. Apparently they’ve had it up to here with Thinking in the Age of Glasnost.’ ‘They can’t have, Lavinia,’ I said, ‘This Criminale story is fantastic. It’s got secret police chiefs, obscure Swiss bank accounts, it’s got everything.’ ‘Nice try, Francis,’ said Lavinia, ‘Sorry, though, it’s just no good. Philosophy’s too far upmarket. The Eldorado franchise is up for renewal, so they’ve decided to explore the wonders of cheap television.’ ‘What wonders of cheap television?’ I asked. ‘Well, the first wonder would be if anyone was fool enough to watch it at all,’ said Lavinia, ‘Sorry, darling, but things are changing.’ ‘An era has ended,’ I said. ‘Exactly,’ said Lavinia, ‘So your work is done. Just get to the nearest airport and buy a ticket back to London. Don’t ask for any more of the recce budget, by the way, there isn’t one. Apparently quite a lot of the production costs have disappeared down the plughole in Vienna. God knows how, you know how frugal I am.’

  ‘You mean I’m finished again, I don’t have a job?’ I asked. ‘Well, not if I wrote your contract properly, you don’t,’ said Lavinia. ‘I bet you did, Lavinia,’ I said. ‘Believe me, I’m as sorry as you are, darling,’ she said, ‘I haven’t seen so much good opera for yonks.’ ‘Thank you very much, Lavinia,’ I said, putting down the phone. The frock-coated receptionist, watching me, bowed. Yes, it was the end. Lavinia, I knew, had written my contract properly; after all, people signed anything for Lavinia. And there I stood, no job, no income, no future, no prospects, nothing to investigate, nothing truly found out. All I had was a massive credit-card debt at home and a wallet in Lausanne stuffed with funny money. I had not found a plot, and the world seemed no better: history was in disorder, the universe was going nowhere, and the new era that had started about ten days ago already seemed to be coming rather suddenly towards its end.

  I went back into the brasserie bar, among the beautiful people, sat down and ordered another beer. I felt . . . well, I felt strangely pure, as if I had suddenly grown up, emerged from something, passed from deep smart youthful wisdom into a perfect adult innocence. I had been deceived, I had been betrayed; but I also had it in my power to betray others. Perhaps I had learned something, after all, from Bazlo Criminale – that thoughts and deeds never come to us plain, pure, and timeless, but are born in conflict and deception, shaped by history, grow from obscurity, misfortune, and evasion. They are slippery and inexact, contradictory and subject to sudden change; they are just like life itself. In fact I never felt closer to Criminale than I did at that moment. And I began to wonder what, if he were in my circumstances, which were probably just the sort of circumstances he always had been in, he would do next.

  As for what I did next . . . well, if you had tried to trace me the next morning (supposing, say, you were writing my life story, a few years from now – but why should you, I am no great philosophical elephant, only an investigative flea?), then you would have found me in the manager’s office at . . . well, let’s, for purposes of fiscal secrecy, just call it the Crédit Mauvais of Lausanne. I had entered the bank with a perfectly simple request. However, to my surprise a quiet cashier had taken me behind the counter, ushered me to a hidden glass-fronted lift, unlocked its door with a key on his chain, and ridden me up to the very top floor of the building, where I sat in a suite with splendid designer furniture and a perfect long view of the lake. Now Herr Stubli, the manager, was staring at me over his gold-rimmed half-spectacles. ‘A special numbered account?’ he enquired, Then I am afraid I must ask first if you don’t mind it just a few little questions.’

  ‘I thought in Swiss banks it was no questions asked,’ I said. ‘We are discreet, of course, but this is no longer quite true exactly,’ said Herr Stubli, ‘I am afraid in these difficult days when banking is so political a little more is asked even of a Swiss bank. We like to be quite careful. After all we may soon join the Europe Community. This money you mention, it is all cash?’ ‘Yes, it is,’ I said. ‘And it came by you how?’ asked Herr Stubli. ‘Well, it was just a windfall,’ I said. ‘Bitte?’ asked Stubli, ‘Eine Windfalle?’ ‘A windfall is when apples fall off trees,’ I said. ‘Ah, ja, ja,’ said Herr Stubli, ‘It was an agricultural transaction. Kein problem! But I do need your identity, please. We must have a name, a signature.’ ‘Yes, of course,’ I said, ‘It’s Francis . . . It’s Franz Kay.’

  Herr Stubli stared at me over his spectacles. ‘Ja, I understand,’ he said finally. ‘Very well, I will put you down as Mr K. Willkommen to our excellent services. If you can make me one little signature here, and here, also here.’ ‘There’ll be no enquiries?’ I asked. ‘No, this is Schweiz, we are always very honest here,’ said Herr Stubli, ‘Your affairs could not be put into a safer place. Now, the guard will take you below, and you can deposit all these Windfalle you like to. And if there is anything else, if you like perhaps to start a small private company, we have some very useful arrangements of this kind.’ ‘Not just yet, I’m only just starting,’ I said, ‘Thank you very much, Herr Stubli.’ ‘And thank you also very much, Mr K.,’ said Herr Stubli, shaking my hand, ‘You will please to know you join many excellent and famous customers.’

  Just a little later on that December morning, K. left the bank and walked into the Lausanne street. He looked round. All seemed normal, except that two men washing a window seemed to glance at him in a peculiar way, and a young man who oddly resembled Hans de Graef was taking photographs further down the street. Carrying his small amount of luggage, K. hurried to the railway station, where he boarded an express which took him directly to Geneva International Airport. Here he bought some cheese, a new overcoat, and a club-class ticket on the noon flight to London. He was last seen going through passport control, one of a long line of people, quite evidently no longer looking for Doctor Bazlo Criminale.

  13

  In 1991 I found myself in Buenos Aires . . .

  In the April of
1991 I found myself, believe it or not (certainly I hardly could), in the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires, no longer looking for Bazlo Criminale in any way whatever. The visit came at the end of a long row of disorienting and inconsequential events that happened, as it happened, pretty much like this. When I got back to London from Lausanne, life took a definite turn for the worse. Lavinia, of course, had written my contract properly, so effectively that I not only found myself jobless, redundant, superfluous, in excess of requirements, but also due no money at all from the Criminale Project. The whole affair dissolved into legal bitterness, with very expensive letters from even more expensive solicitors flying this way and that. To make matters worse, Lavinia had evidently passed on to Ros some scurrilous rumour, probably from Codicil via Gerstenbacker, that my stay at Barolo had not been entirely celibate, which meant that I never saw Ros or her little town house behind Liverpool Street station ever again.

  But these were only a few of my worries. Though my trip seemed to me to have taken years, my flat, in the basement under the basement, had actually been empty only a few weeks. But as home it proved to be no home at all. Cats were squatting in the bedroom; many of the contents, including my Amstrad word-processor and CD player, had departed, taken off either by local thieves or good friends with big pockets who knew exactly where I hid the key. In a few weeks, the whole world had changed; and so had I. Thanks to the Great Thatcherite Economic Miracle, Britain was now enjoying a deep recession. War fever was growing worse, international shuttle diplomacy was proving useless with Saddam and his moustaches, and con­flict seemed certain. Newspapers were folding by the handful, and jobs in the media were disappearing – unless you were the kind of journo who didn’t mind being targeted by smart bombs while being chased by Baghdad security police, or living in a fox- or camel-hole in the desert under fire and strict military censorship.

  So my problems mounted, and all this took me a long way away from the fortunes (or presumably now the lack of them) of the great philosopher Bazlo Criminale. From time to time, I did spare a thought or two for the Great Thinker of the Age of Glasnost. Was he off touring the world, his funds severely depleted, with the splendid Miss Belli? Or had he perhaps returned to Barolo, Sepulchra, and the Great Padrona, or gone home to his apartment in Budapest? But if I thought of him now and again, of Ildiko Hazy I thought quite frequently. This was not only because I missed her – though I did, very much – but also because I had plenty of explaining and compensating to do with the various credit-card companies who had risked their capital in loaning me plastic. Fortunately the funds so safely invested in the Credit Mauvais in Lausanne proved more than enough to cover the problem. In fact it was to them I owed my survival over the next couple of months, when I felt deserted by everyone and everything.

  Now and again I thought I might hear something of Ildiko.-Of course I had no address for her, and she had none for me. But there were other possible ways of finding out what happened to her. In fact day after day I checked the newspapers, half-expecting to see Ildiko waving at me through the bars of some Euro-police van, or illustrating some report on a great fraud perpetrated on the unsuspecting gnomes of Lausanne. The papers were filled with financial fraudulence; it was turning into the great international sport. Half the world’s brokers and investment bankers were apparently spending Yuletide behind bars that year. Indeed that Christmas it seemed that everyone everywhere was beginning to think – like me —just a little bit Hungarian.

  So Yuletide, season of paranoia and general ill-will, seemed that year to be turning even gloomier than usual. But then the winebar I’d once worked for in Covent Garden hired me back, and I picked up several commissions for New Musical Express and various other learned journals. Then one night, as I whizzed round the winebar, clad in butcher’s apron, dispensing a fatal mixture of cheesecake and Spumante to some big-spending and fast-vomiting seasonal office party or other, one of the group picked himself up from the floor and affably recognized me. He was a journo ex-colleague who had been convinced by drink that he was a friend of mine, and he advised me of a job he had just been interviewed for and had chosen to turn down. I followed his lead, got an interview, and found myself in work again, hired to slave on the literary pages of yet another new paper, this time not a Serious Sunday, but an Almost Serious Daily of vague intellectual pretensions.

  Here, as the Gulf War exploded, smart bombs dissolved con­crete bunkers and the entire Saudi desert caught fire, I did what I did best. I opined, I interviewed, I columnized, I reviewed, I freebied. After television, it came as a great relief; as I told you, I am really a verbal person, not a visual person. And I had learned just a few things during my quest for Bazlo Criminale. I wrote more soberly, more thoughtfully, less aggressively than before. What’s more, Ros in her wisdom had proved perfectly right: my Booker Prize TV appearance had done me a power of good. Though the winning novel had been virtually forgotten (except in the USA, where it sold millions), everyone remembered the little prick at the Booker. Publishers chased me, all the Fionas gladly wined and dined me, and gave me interesting literary stories, which I made even more interesting and printed, and I took advantage of all the new writerly acquaintances I had made at Barolo.

  Then the Gulf War ended, in a final sickening explosion of horror, genocide, exile, starvation and global pollution, and suddenly, in the gap between crises, the world started reading books again. With the mess of a new conflict to resolve, it now came time to settle an older one, the Falklands/Malvinas War. In April the resumption of Anglo-Argentine cultural relations was to be pronounced. Some government agency thought it would be good for my newspaper to cover the event, and a freebie flight was made available. The event was to be declared at the Buenos Aires Book Fair, the Frankfurt of Latin America, where all the readers and writers of South America gathered once a year. My Arts Editor saw that this meant we could not only cover an important cultural moment but bring our wise readers up to date on the current state of Magical Realism as well. Selflessly – or rather because she was midway through some foetid love affair that it was dangerous to interrupt – she turned the assignment down, and passed it on to me.

  And so, once again, I made my way to Heathrow, to board the Saturday overnight flight, BA to BA. By now, having travelled rather more lately, I was getting smart enough to realize that sixteen-hour long-haul flights on jumbo jets are not as amusing as all that. In fact these things are roughly the modern equivalent of the old Greek slave galleys, except even those poor sweating creatures, chained in rows, were spared the ultimate indignity of having to watch an inflight movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger in it. So, turning on the overhead light, I devoted my trip to a quick skim-read of the great Magical Realists, Borges and Marquez, Carpentier, Cortazar and Fuentes, writers wise enough to know that history and reality deserved to be treated with a sense of wry absurdity. Inflight gins and tonics helped my Spanish considerably, and while my bodily fluids drained away into the aircraft pressure system, and Schwarzenegger moved like a mad violent buffoon round the silent screen in front of me, I read. My neighbours complained about the overhead light. But tough titty, I told them; I’m a verbal person, not a visual person.

  We stopped and refuelled in Rio de Janeiro, a row of metal gastanks seen in a glum dawn. Then we flew on south, over the pampa, across the wide gaping mouth of the River Plate, and down to Epeiza airport. Spring was autumn, there was a sub-tropical humidity. Argentina is not famous for its economic management (but then who is these days?). As I found when I got to immigration, the country had changed not only the value of its currency but even the name of it, without informing the cashier at my newspaper. There was therefore a lot of fussy trading to do before I could even enter the country, hire a taxi, and get myself driven into central Buenos Aires, some distance away. At last, though, I found myself being taxied into the city over a badly potholed, broken-down highway. Stalls sold balloons by the roadside, signs announced the electoral virtues of Menem, billboards proclaimed the Malvinas e
ternally Argentine. Snubnosed, bright-painted buses, broken-down farm trucks, veered from lane to lane to avoid the potholes as we rode between shanty-towns and scrubby pampa.

  Then, suddenly, we were out of the pampa and on the great boulevards of a distinguished, monumental city. It was Sunday morning, time of peace. On the fine Avenida 9 de Julio every­thing was quiet. There were green parks filled with tropical trees and plants, squawking with green parrots. Vast marble statues stood everywhere, to conquistadores and generalissimos, to Columbus and Belgrano and San Martin and the Independence of 1810. I sat in a café over coffee and croissants; my jetlag cleared, my mood changed. Sandor Hollo, I remembered, had called Budapest the Buenos Aires of Europe. By the same token, Buenos Aires was the Budapest of Latin America, a European city that was not built in Europe at all. Its fine early modern buildings – ministries and synagogues, merchants’ palaces, great apartments, grand banks – had evidently been designed for some other site or country entirely, and then set down on strange soil amid sub-tropical vegetation, European tastes and cultural dreams laid over a world of lost history and chaotic libertarian adventuring.