by Tim Parks
Halfway back around the left hemisphere, though on the second floor now, Sneaky-tottie again took my arm and this time began to marvel at my not being at all nervous. Are you going to quote them somebody? she asked seriously. Despite her youth, the strong chin gives an impression of strength. I just can’t believe Vikram letting us down like this, I told her. The bromazepam was fading. He’s the only one has all the facts in the end. He would have been useful.
It then appeared that on the podium there would be the Avvocato Malerba, Dimitra, the Honourable, perhaps Right Honourable, Owen Rhys, and then beside him myself with her on my other side. She was to prompt me if I ran into trouble. The bromazepam was more or less gone. In the audience there would be the Petitions Committee and the other lectors and the students.
We filed into an auditorium, a rather large auditorium with rising banks of blue upholstered seats, semicircular in three segments, shelving down to where the polished wood floor emerged like a last stretch of bright sand before the monstrous battleship of an apparently ebony conference table bristling with microphones. The Petitions Committee was late. We filed in and sat down, fussing with the arrangement of the places, each appropriately provided with notepad and pen, mineral-water bottle and sparkling glass upturned on white napkin. The Petitions Committee had got involved in another meeting. An emergency meeting apparently Looking up as I crossed the polished floor I saw that one upper wall of the amphitheatre was a glass panel with desks behind and head-phoned figures, mostly female, looking down at us. The interpreters, Owen Rhys told me. The nodding of the big head was clearly a default setting. Wonderfully skilled people, he nodded enthusiastically, and I thought: Your speech, which you haven’t planned or prepared at all, is to be translated instantly into seven or eight or nine languages for the benefit of the several and single members of the Petitions Committee, who quite rightly cannot be expected to be as proficient in English as in their native tongues. This was perfectly reasonable. But all at once, waiting for her to return from whatever she had suddenly gone to say to the blonde secretary at the back of the auditorium, I became extremely anxious at the thought of this sophisticated and expensive infrastructure being called upon to disseminate a speech which I knew would be worth absolutely nothing in any language. The world is full of fantastic infrastructures, I thought, quite inappropriately, full of extraordinary machinery — telephones faxes E-mail automatic translation radio TV satellites fibre-optic cables - all dedicated to transmitting propagating broadcasting speeches messages that are worth absolutely nothing. What will Philadelphia have to say to New York? I remembered someone having once said when some technological milestone was passed. The sort of quote you read in an encyclopaedia. Vikram Griffiths himself produced one of the most fatuous speeches, I thought, on a luxury coach equipped with an admirable PA system which made it perfectly possible for me, slightly right of centre on the back seat as we sped towards the heart of Europe, to hear every mispronounced, mistakenly inflected, hypocritical word of it. We are overwhelmed by the sophistication of the machinery that propagates our hypocrisy, I thought. Just as our ancient buildings are neutralized, nullified, by the sophisticated technology we have used to clean and illuminate them. The machinery encourages the hypocrisy, I thought. The drivel. Surely Vikram Griffiths would never have spoken such drivel if not into a microphone. Surely the people who speak on our radios and TVs would never utter the idiocies they do if they were not on the radio or TV, if they faced the funeral crowd Pericles faced when he said the last word that ever need be said about democracy and about those who have died in a just cause. What drivel was I myself about to produce, I wondered, into the microphone before me, to have dubbed and transformed into seven or eight or nine languages for the several and sundry members of the Petitions Committee, who still hadn’t arrived almost thirty minutes after the appointed time? Amazingly, both the Honourable Rhys and the Avvocato Malerba were showing great interest in Dimitra sandwiched between them, her Greek face a picture of bright cosmetic truculence as she explained to the Honourable Owen about the business of the spy. The spy! Then she arrived on the other side of me and whispered in my ear, lt’s to do with Bosnia.
What?
She sat down and I was shocked as always by the numbing effect of her presence, her perfume. Looking away to avoid eye contact, I caught sight of Peppy-tottie among the chattering students. What on earth was I going to say?
Their emergency meeting is to do with Bosnia, she said.
Could Vikram be back? I wondered, determinedly looking away. To save me. Clearly they weren’t shagging if Peppy-tottie was around. My eyes scanned the auditorium. Faking a collapse would be no problem at all, I thought. With her beside me it would be no problem at all to appear to be struck down by some kind of stroke or seizure. On the contrary. Then call on Dr Griffiths. Let him do the speech. No, the notion, I suddenly realized, overwhelmed by the effect of her presence, of your calmly asking her for a little guidance, a little help with the opening words of your address, is perfectly crazy. You’re not even able to talk to her, to sit next to her. So why on earth did you set up this situation where she was to prompt you, to answer your questions? The only question you will ever be able to ask her, I told myself, is Why? Why? And if she asks you, Why what? God knows what damage you may do. Not a trace of the bromazepam left, I thought. Perhaps that was the problem. If she asks you, Why what? God knows what may happen. You should have taken more bromazepam, I thought. Trembling, I turned my glass over and filled it with water.
So it’s fair enough their being late, she was saying. Then she actually leaned across the table and made an announcement into her microphone. The Petitions Committee were late because they were hearing somebody addressing them on Bosnia. Our sufferings could hardly be compared with those of the children of Bosnia, she said into the microphone to the chattering students on the Euro-blue seats of the auditorium. So we were perfectly happy to wait. Looking all around, I was aware that the Honourable Rhys didn’t even lift his head as she made this announcement, so busy was he with Dimitra s spy. Clearly the emergency meeting was not something he had felt duty-bound to attend. And if Vikram Griffiths wasn’t shagging Peppy-tottie, where was he? I wondered. Outside with his dog? The hotel proprietor wouldn’t have the creature. The coach driver likewise. Certainly there was no trace of him here. But now she was saying to me that sometimes she felt ashamed.
What?
All the suffering going on there, she was saying. She had a slim black dress on that turned her cleavage to cream. It’s so outrageous we haven’t done anything to stop it. The perfume was L’Air du Temps, It makes me feel ashamed, she said. Ashamed of my material wealth. My comforts, my easy life. You know. Her ear-rings were the golden scorpions of her birth-sign. Ashamed of being European. You know what I mean? For some reason she was proud of her birth-sign. As she was proud of being French. People are dying, she said, and we’re worried about the conditions of our contract. The golden creatures had ruby eyes. People are dying, she insisted, and we’re sitting here worrying about our terms of employment. Thus the woman, I thought, determinedly looking away, but still picking up a familiar rattle of bracelets as she pushed back her hair, with whom you had the most intense relationship of all your life. People are suffering, she was saying. It makes you wonder how many of us really have a proper perspective on life. And she said this, it occurs to me now, sitting here in the Meditation Room, so-called, perhaps twenty-four hours afterwards, my body assuming that attitude frequently referred to as an attitude of prayer, though this is not a place of worship, head bowed, hands clasped together, though I am not a believer - she said this as if I myself, as official representative of the lectors’ union, had been somehow responsible for stirring the inappropriate rancours of the threatened but always comfortable lectors, as if she were the only person in the world with the sensibility to appreciate that our suffering, or perhaps she meant my own suffering, was as nothing to that of the unfortunate children of Bosnia.
Really we live pretty well She wears pink lipstick when she dresses in black. I mean in comparison with those kids being slaughtered and starved every day. You know. And she never fails, which is something I love, to have the fingernails match. I love that. While our institutions - I love that feminine attention to detail, to their own sense of themselves as objects of beauty - are doing nothing but cast about for a fig-leaf to drape over the shame of their selfish nonintervention. It’s outrageous. We go into the Gulf when it’s a question of keeping our cars running. But do we bother about the children of Sarajevo? Not at all. It makes me so ashamed.
Thus her speech, and probably there was more of it, in French no doubt, though recalled now, by myself, here in the Meditation Room, after all that has happened, in English, following a process not unlike that which my own speech was about to undergo at the hands of seven or eight or nine interpreters. And I recalled that during the Gulf War we drove out into the hills above Como once and made love in her husbands BMW Series 7.
Maybe you should make some statement to that effect, at the beginning, she said. I mean, to make it clear that we’re aware that our own sufferings are nowhere near on the same level. You know. And then it would set the right tone. Because we mustn’t come across as shrill or …
I had turned to look straight at her. I had turned against my will. I was looking into her eyes. I said how pointless it was to make comparisons.
What?
You can’t compare suffering with suffering, I said. Then I realized I was back in the territory of the phone-call to my daughter. Philosophical niceties. It was dangerous to be looking in her eyes. To cover my tracks, I casually remarked that Vikram Griffiths, for example, was totally obsessed by the fear of losing his job and being unable to meet his commitments, to maintain his child. He was desperately afraid of losing this key card in the custody case with his manic-depressive first wife. His superior ability to support the child. Vikram could think of nothing else, I said. Vikram was a haunted soul. I had seen that clearly enough yesterday evening. All his high spirits were just so much desperation. To tear his mind away.
But surely you can’t…
II faut cultiver notre jardín, I said.
But when I see those children on television, she began, and think how we …
I reached under the table, gripped her leg at mid-thigh and dug the nails in fiercely. Her cry was immediate, but immediately stifled. The others were chattering about the spy. Our eyes met. I said there was no discrete unit of measure as far as suffering was concerned.
You’re sick, she said.
I hate you.
She laughed her French laugh, of old, tossed her hair. Oh come on, I was only talking about Bosnia.
Precisely, I said. Only.
What do you mean, precisely? Only?
Work it out.
You’re shaking, she said.
Then she said I must swallow my pride and go and see someone. She put her hand over mine still on her thigh. And what she meant was an analyst.You’ve got to make this speech any moment now, she said. For Christ’s sake think about that. Think about other people instead of yourself for a change. Our jobs are at stake. Jerry, please. Grow up!
Things should never be compared, I said. It wasn’t me had started talking about Bosnia. One lost all sense of things when one compared them, I said. They had to be savoured one by one. And you could only really savour the things that were yours, not other people’s. You had to savour them for what they were. Who’s looking after Stephanie while you’re away? I asked.
If you cultivated your own garden at all, she said, you’d know that she was going to Suzanne after school and then sleeping with her grandparents. Suzanne’s so wonderful, she added. You’re so lucky to have such a lovely daughter. I can’t understand why you don’t see each other more often.
Thus the woman for whom I left my wife.
I see her more often than you do, she said.
It’s her birthday today, I said. I was totally in love with her again. Jealous beyond all comparison.
I know, she said, I gave her a present. Then I asked her what she had given and discovered she had given my daughter underwear. All girls of that age love nice underwear, she said. They love to fantasize themselves. You know? But all I knew was that she was wearing stockings and suspender belt. Her tottie-gear. I’d felt them. She said: Suzanne’s got such a stunning body. She asked, What did you give her?
I leafed through the three typed pages of the notes she and Georg and Dimitra had put together for the speech I was about to deliver. Then my hand clasped her thigh again. The finger-nails cut right through the silk. They sank into the skin. This time she didn’t cry out. The door swung and the Petitions Committee filed in. She gasped, Jerry! And thinking about this now, sitting here in the Meditation Room, when really I should be thinking of other things, and most particularly when I should be asking myself whether there wasn’t something I might have done to prevent what was perhaps already happening, it occurs to me how completely she had freed herself from me. To the extent that she could allow herself to play with my violence, my ineptitude. Though at least I hadn’t asked her whether there was anything between her and Suzanne. To the extent that later that day she would even be able to suggest we spend one more night together, for old time’s sake. When I withdrew my hand, she held on to a finger for a moment.
The Committee filed in. People in their fifties and sixties, men in suits and spectacles, one with a limp, then a token woman of sober elegance. Talking amongst themselves in fragments of various Indo-European languages, they ambled to their seats on the front row, where one took a light-hearted swipe at a fly. Perhaps with a sheaf of papers from Bosnia. The tall man limping was intent on a plastic cup which steamed. Thus the Petitions Committee. Thus my perception of the Petitions Committee, brimming with unpleasant emotions, deprived of all bromazepam, still casting about for Vikram Griffiths, hoping for a saviour.
The Vice-president, who hadn’t seen fit, or hadn’t been able (because of us?) to attend the emergency meeting on Bosnia, now stood up and introduced us. We were foreign-language lectors from the University of Milan. We were representing both the European lectors at our own university and those at universities all over Italy. It was our contention, the Honourable Owen Rhys said blandly, head nodding with ritual conviction, that, contrary to articles 7 and 48 of the Treaty of Rome, we were being treated differently from Italian citizens. Unfairly, that is. Our case would be presented briefly by Dr Jeremy Marlowe, a British lector who had taught English at the University for over twelve years. After which we would be submitting an official and thoroughly documented petition signed by more than four hundred lectors presently working in various regions of Italy.
It was at this point that it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen the petition itself. Not since I signed it. Who has the petition? I whispered to her as I stood up to speak. The look on her face, her French face, her razzled face Vikram Griffiths had said, but handsome, was one of alarm. And she actually said, Oo la la! As when once she imagined she heard her husband’s car arriving while we were making love in his second or third or fourth house up in the mountains. Above Selva di Val Gardena. But it was only the technician come to prepare the swimming-pool for summer. Now things were far more serious. She closed her eyes theatrically, as one receiving appalling news. From Sarajevo perhaps. From Bihac. Vikram has it, she said. Vikram had the petition itself, the papers and signatures. Then, as I pulled and pushed at my microphone, she was walking round behind me to whisper to Dimitra, who swiftly vacated her seat, so that as I began to speak the Greek woman was already striding swiftly, unpleasantly somehow, up the aisle between two banks of seats with chattering students.
Ladies and gentlemen, I said. Members of the Committee. I spoke softly, shakily, wondering what I would say, but the microphone carried my voice right around the auditorium, magnifying its tremors and nerves, while three or four of those in the front row adjusted their headsets the better to
pick up their translations. From the back, on her feet, Heike the Dike smiled with great warmth, great encouragement. Likewise Sneaky-tottie. The door banged and Dimitra had gone. In search of our petition.
Ladies and gentlemen, you have just left a meeting where you have discussed the grave and worsening situation in Bosnia. I coughed. I looked down and looked up. We can hardly claim that our poor problems today can in any way compare with those.
Beneath the desk, I felt a hand lightly caress my thigh as she returned to her seat. I breathed deeply, waiting for the words.
No, it would be ridiculous to draw comparisons, I said, between ourselves and that war-torn population. On the other hand, one can hardly ignore the fact that the situation that I shall now briefly describe to you is nothing other than an infinitely milder form of the same thing: the desire by one group, one majority ethnic group, language group, to deny full rights and privileges of citizenships European citizenship, to another group.
Thus the drivel the microphone drew from me, the interpreters above were interpreting for me. There were knitted brows on the bowed head of the token woman member of the European Petitions Committee as one hand pressed an earpiece of her headset and the other scribbled on a slip of headed paper. Barnaby Hilson nodded approval. And sitting here in the Meditation Room it is perfectly clear to me now that one need only open one’s mouth in a public situation and the words will come. You will do what is asked of you. Bromazepam or no bromazepam. Orthodoxy is in the air. That is the truth. In the patterns of speech. The inertia of what you hear around you every day will take you through. Will write your speeches and your books. Will even explain to your wife why you’re leaving her. Why hadn’t I understood this before? Why had I worried so much about everything I said? Why had I fought so hard, stupidly criticizing the book my daughter gave me (swim with the tide, she had told me), stubbornly refusing to accept that her gesture of friendship to Georg was indeed a gesture of human friendship? After all, she did come back to me. Why hadn’t I simply said what was required of me? The words that are in the air. The water-words. Some comment on us all belonging to the human race. Under the table she touched my leg again.
