‘So now, very serious, please, my dear,’ says Lubijova, ‘Lift the glass, make the stare. See how I think of you: I like you, you are fine, I want you for my bed. Now drink, straight to the throat. Yes, that is very good, Comrade Petwurt. Your selfcriticism is excellent, that time perfect. And now I think we are very good friends, don’t you say?’ ‘I think so,’ says Petworth. ‘And also now I know some things about you, like a friend,’ says Lubijova, ‘You drink, you smoke, you like darks. Well, of course, you said your Lottie is a dark. And your marriage is not so easy for you. And you like to go to Cambridge, and meet a certain good old friend. And you like to make some travels.’ ‘Yes,’ says Petworth. ‘And perhaps all is not so well with you in your relations,’ says Lubijova, ‘Well, that is like here, we are fond of our families, we like to be close. But our marriage, not so good. I do not think our men like really the ladies. Of course they like to bed, but for other things they like better to be with men. Well, our apartments are small, and there is not so much time when people are together, but perhaps they do not really like us. For you perhaps it is different.’ ‘Perhaps a little,’ says Petworth. ‘Do not move quickly,’ says Lubijova, dropping her voice suddenly, ‘But please take a small look in the next alcove. Do you see some trousers? Did you ever see some like that before?’ Petworth turns slowly; at the bend of the alcove, a leg is swinging in and out of view. It is a leg in black trousers with chalk white stripes; a male handbag lies on the end of the table. ‘Perhaps,’ says Petworth. Lubijova reaches into her shoulderbag, and takes out a spectacle case, from which comes a pair of redframed spectacles; large, they cover the top part of her face. ‘Comrade Petwurt,’ she says, looking over them severely, ‘I think we must make our business. Here, please, inspect your programme.’
Lubijova hands Petworth another grey letter, much like the one he has in his pocket, and bearing the same insignia from the Min’stratii Kulturi Komitet’iii. Headed ‘Vyag’na Priffisorim Petworthim,’ it is clearly the plot of his days, the plot he has wanted. It records an orderly destiny; this Petworthim is evidently going to be a busy fellow. Few hours of his waking life are unfilled with some form of activity: lecturing and meeting, travelling and sightseeing. Here he is visiting a Min’stratii, there a kloster; here he makes reformist didaktik recommendation at a Fakult’tii Fil’gayiim, there he attends an oper. His days are mobile and moving; here he goes by car to Glit, there by train to Nogod, then by train to Provd. It is, to Petworth, a likeable story, lively, familiar, harmless, well suited to his talents. ‘Please read it very carefully,’ says Lubijova, looking at him over the spectacles, ‘We make here our proposals. You can object and ask for changes, but tell me now at this time. Or else it is our contract, and you must do it.’ Yes, it’s fine,’ says Petworth, putting it down on the table. ‘Do you look at it carefully?’ asks Lubijova, staring at him, ‘Please notice, all days are taken care of. All the places you attend have good academies. All are very nice. Glit has towers on an old castle. In Nogod you can see an old kloster with paintings, and forest with hirsch. Provd is modern, and has a fine steelwork.’ ‘Good,’ says Petworth. ‘You come back to Slaka for our day of national rejoicerings, you saw those flags,’ says Lubijova, ‘You make seven lectures and go to four places. It is clear?’ ‘Yes, it’s excellent,’ says Petworth.
Over her spectacles, Lubijova is staring at him in exasperation. ‘It is all right, four places, you don’t want three?’ she asks, ‘You accept all those titles for your lectures? You have brought them with you? You don’t like to change them? No places you want to go are not included? There are no people you like to meet who are not in your programme?’ ‘No,’ says Petworth. ‘Really?’ asks Lubijova, ‘And you don’t wish another day of quiet to yourself? You don’t like to ask for some more pleasures, as some fishing? Perhaps you do not like this oper, Vedontakal Vrop? It is sung only in our language and takes five hours. Perhaps you have some criticisms of our procedures?’ ‘No,’ says Petworth. ‘Then I expect you have many questions?’ says Lubijova. ‘Well, not really,’ says Petworth. ‘Comrade Petwurt,’ says Lubijova, looking at him crossly, ‘Do you really pay attention? I think all the time you are looking at those lovely ladies. You know you must do all these things? Then why aren’t you difficult, like all the others?’ ‘Well, I’m happy,’ says Petworth, ‘I like being organized. I’m pleased my days are full. I like not being on my own. It’s all very satisfactory.’ ‘And so you accept it?’ asks Lubijova. ‘I look forward to it,’ says Petworth. ‘It is good, I also,’ says Lubijova, ‘You know I shall go to all of these places with you! Or perhaps you object?’ ‘No, I’m pleased,’ says Petworth. ‘It is as well,’ says Lubijova, ‘To go without a guide is not permitted. You know, for me it will be very interesting. So, do we finish our business? Do you like now to order a drink?’
With much prompting, Petworth orders two drinks from the red-checked waitress; she brings them, along with a small saucer with the bill. Lubijava picks up the bill: ‘Did you invite me?’ she asks, holding it up to Petworth, ‘Do you like to pay?’ ‘Oh, yes,’ says Petworth, ‘But I haven’t any money.’ ‘Of course,’ says Lubijova, ‘That is because you do not make your business properly, you forget something. Now you see why you need so much a guide. Here is some money for you, in this envelope. I wait you to ask for it. No, Petwurt, please, please, don’t put it in your pocket. Count it now, and sign me you receive it.’ So, onto the tablecloth, Petworth pours the money from the envelope: there is a stout wad of paper vloskan decorated with images of muscular men wielding sledgehammers, and yet more muscular women tending vast machines; there is a jingling handful of silver and copper bittiin. ‘Is it enough? Do you manage?’ asks Lubijova, ‘You know your hotels are paid already.’ ‘I expect so,’ says Petworth, ‘Of course I don’t know the rate of exchange.’ ‘All right Petwurt, look, I explain you,’ says Lubijova, ‘This little one is one bittii, with it you can have one box of matches, or a nice postcard. Here the blue one, one vloska, with that you may take twenty times the tram, or buy eight kilo of tomatoes, or six loaves of bread, or perhaps a book. Now show me how you pay this bill. Oh, Petwurt, fifty vloskan for two drinks? No, just put there two of the blue ones. Also a small silver one for the girl. It is not permitted here to tip, but they are angry if you do not. And now, do you sign this paper for your money? Oh, what a nice silver pen, I hope you look after it. Nobody steals in my country, but often such things disappear. So, now we really finish our business. Put please away the money, in your pocket, good boy. And I take off my glasses. Has he gone now, that one?’ Petworth peers into the next alcove, and sees it is vacant, except for an empty glass and a full ashtray: ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Do you think your good friend follows us?’ asks Lubijova, ‘Perhaps he is mad, that man.’ ‘Was it really him?’ asks Petworth.
‘I don’t know, but now I think we make one more toast,’ says Lubijova, her glasses off, smiling at him, ‘Comrade Petwurt: to a good journey between us, amity and concord.’ ‘Yes,’ says Petworth, ‘A good journey together.’ ‘And even if you do not think it, because of that airport, you will find I am very good guide. Perhaps a little bit strict with you; but really, Petwurt, I think you are someone who needs a guide. What do you do now? I think you must eat. In Slaka are many good restaurant, but on a first night it is best to stay at the hotel. There is a place upstairs, the best to eat is ducks. The word for this is crak’akii, just like a duck makes. Can you say it?’ ‘Crak’akii,’ says Petworth. ‘Yes, you are quite good,’ says Lubijova, ‘Now you must improve. Only he who speaks survives. I hope you will. Well, now is late, do we go?’ They walk out, past the caravan bar, where the barman glowers and one of the blondes turns to give Petworth a bright smile. They climb the stairs to the lobby, busy with new travellers: a crowd of turbanned Sikhs talks to the lacquered-haired girl at the desk. ‘Remember, Petwurt,’ says Lubijova, halting to button her coat, ‘Go to that bitch there in two hour, and make sure she gives back to you your passport. At eleven, please ri
ng your Lottie, and give the love of Plitplov. And now can I leave you? Do you remember all these things?’ ‘Of course,’ says Petworth, ‘And what happens tomorrow?’
‘Oh, Comrade Petwurt, already you are a problem to me,’ says Lubijova, looking at him, ‘Did you read at all your programme? Does any of that stay in your head?’ ‘Travelling abroad is confusing,’ says Petworth. ‘Especially I think to you,’ says Lubijova, ‘So, I come at nine, to this place. I take you to the Min’stratii, where is an official welcome. Put on your nice suit, if you have one. Remember to take first your breakfast, or must I come here to help you with that too? Drink your milk up, eat nicely your egg, Comrade Petwurt?’ ‘No, I’ll manage,’ says Petworth. ‘I know I am mad to leave you,’ says Lubijova, shaking her head, ‘But you are not all my life, you must live sometimes on your own. Or, if you don’t like it, you can go back to those lovely ladies.’ ‘Well, no, I think it’s best to be cautious,’ says Petworth, putting his finger to his nose. ‘Yes, I think so,’ says Lubijova, laughing, ‘I ask in the morning whether you have been good.’ Then she turns and goes out past the doorman, out into the dark square, where the signs flash. Petworth watches a moment, as a lighted pink tram turns the corner; in her long grey coat, she runs towards it, and jumps aboard, going to whatever kind of life she lives in the dark city. The tram’s tail-light fades, and Petworth turns too, following through the lobby the signs that lead him toward the Restaurant Slaka.
IV
It is over an hour later, and Petworth still sits in the vast, chandeliered dining-room of the hotel, awaiting, as he has long awaited, the meal he has once ordered. It is a grand room, with some sixty tables, each spread with white tablecloths, which cast up a damp smell of recent laundering in the water of some brackish river. The tables are laid, creating an atmosphere of vast vacancy, for all but six of them are empty. Nonetheless the maître, in the way of maîtres, has chosen to seat Petworth in a dark corner, under a noisy air vent, and next to the smells of the kitchen. The doors from the kitchen open frequently, to let out black-suited waiters who carry peppermills ceremonially about the great room, carefully avoiding all contact with the diners. ‘Crak’akii,’ Petworth has said, some time ago, to one of these, as he passed incautiously close to the table. ‘Negativo,’ the waiter has said, stopping, shaking his head, and removing most of the cutlery from the table. ‘Na?’ Petworth has said. ‘Na,’ the waiter has said, ‘Kurbii churba, sarkii banatu. Da?’ ‘Da,’ Petworth has said. ‘Tinkii?’ the waiter has said. ‘Tinkii?’ Petworth has asked. ‘Da, tinkii,’ the waiter has said, pointing to Petworth’s glass, ‘Pfin op olii?’ ‘Well,’ Petworth has said, ‘Pfin.’ ‘Da, pfin,’ the waiter has said, raising his peppermill and entering the kitchen. He has not, since then, appeared again, though others have, carefully curving their paths away from his table. The cloth on the table in front of him steams faintly; on it is a small stand holding the flags of twenty nations, none of them his own. The door to the kitchen now opens, and the waiter appears, comes over to his table, takes away the flags, and disappears again.
Petworth sits, waiting, as travellers do: waiting for wonders to happen, drinks to come, adventures to occur, the surprising lover that comes from nowhere, the dark coach that suddenly stops to pick one up, those things that travel always seems to promise and never seems to give. The table is vacant in front of him; opposite is a single empty chair. In the middle of the room is a small podium; on it has appeared the typical orchestra, five frilly-sleeved gipsies who have been trilling violins without enthusiasm, occasionally looking at their watches. Now, as he waits, they are joined by someone, evidently the folkloric songeress, a lady with a curve of hair from a fifties film that falls down tantalizingly over one eye. She has very red lips; she wears a frilly wide ballgown, cut down to the bosom, which lays bare the stately square shoulders of some other, older era. Taking the microphone, her lips in a sulky pout, she begins to sing, some dark and ancient ballad. She half-weeps, half-chants, dipping her knees, tossing her hair; her breasts enlarge with breathed-in air, and then subside. The performance is imperfect, the gestures are clumsy, but the song she sings is of vacancy and emptiness, and there is vacancy and emptiness in Petworth, too, as he sits there, a personless person. There are few to hear, but he hears, admitting that, on a dull Sunday night, in a distant foreign city, when one is alone beneath new stars and a different ideology, in an empty grand duckless restaurant, there is something finally very convincing about a songeress who sings of pain and agony, lovelessness and betrayal and neglect. She looks at him, and their eyes meet; the black-suited waiter appears from the kitchen, bearing a filled plate, and a bottle of red pfin.
Petworth starts to eat; the song goes on. The songeress looks over at him, and she sings, evidently, of the treachery that is in every fondness, the emptiness and brutality that hide in love, the inevitability of the loneliness beyond affection; eating the kurbii churba, which could be hotter, but can reasonably be recommended, he listens and thinks of graffitistrewn London, of the long flight, the dark labyrinths of arrival, the neglect in the lobby, the great spaces of his hotel bedroom. The plate empty, the waiter replaces it with another; the songeress replaces her song too, singing now, it seems, of infidelities, the lies and deceits of love, the pains of selfexcoriation. Picking at the sarkii banatu, rich, but possibly over-spicy for the average Western palate, sipping the pfin, which has a reasonable bouquet but is somewhat light on the tongue, he attends and thinks homeward, to his bleak wife, that dark anima, in her chair in the garden, and then of a strange bird-like face, the face of Plitplov, a face that watches and spreads unease. ‘Kaf’ifii?’ asks the waiter, taking away his plate; ‘Da,’ says Petworth, his linguistic confidence growing, ‘Da.’ On the podium, the folkloric songeress, with a very bright, brittle number, tossing her long skirt high up over frilly pants as she sings, her sultry expression amended, concludes her act. At the table Petworth ends his with a cup of kaf’ifii which consists of heavy grounds sunk muddily down into blackened water, and should be avoided by the visitor at all costs. The songeress throws her arms wide, dips, smiles, takes her applause, and disappears; Petworth claps, looks at his watch, sees that it is nearly eleven and time for his telephone call home, signs, with his Parker ballpoint, the bill, and goes out into the lobby.
There is ill-lit gloom in the lobby, too, much changed since he left it. The lights are mostly doused, the crowds gone. ‘Change money?’ whispers a listless voice from behind a dark pillar; in the red plastic chairs, just one man, big-hatted, in a grey raincoat, sits in the half-dark and stares out into the silent square beyond the windows. No trams move; the dark city moves quietly in itself, a place of dangers and treacheries, courages and cowardices, deceits and late-night arrests. Under one small lamp, the lacquered-haired girl sits alone at the desk marked R’GYSTRAYII, reading a book; she does not look up as Petworth approaches. ‘Slibob, passipotti?’ says Petworth. ‘Ha?’ says the girl. ‘Petworth, passipotti,’ says Petworth. ‘Na,’ says the girl. ‘Na passipotti?’ asks Petworth, surprised. ‘Pervert, is still at police,’ says the girl. ‘When?’ asks Petworth. ‘In the morrow,’ says the girl, ‘Always in the morrow, your guide knows it.’ ‘She asked for it tonight,’ says Petworth. ‘She likes to impress you,’ says the girl, ‘Our police, very thorough. You have key?’ ‘Da,’ says Petworth. ‘Go to your bed, come again in the morrow,’ says the girl, turning over the pages of her book. The big-hatted man has turned around to stare at Petworth; he walks over to the vacant dark cavern of the elevator, and gets into the gloomy mirrored interior. He presses the button, and the doors begin to close; then, suddenly, there is a commotion, a hand in the closing space, and the doors are tugged open again. Two people stand there. One, in a shining gold dress, is one of the dark-haired whores from the Barr’ii Tzigane; she has white make-up painted round her dark eyes, and carries a jangling key. The other is an armed man, not now armed, a soldier, in a high-necked uniform and black leather boots that come up to the knee,
in cavalry fashion. The man’s hand is on the girl’s rump. The couple get in, laughing and teasing; they press the button, and the lift begins to ascend.
Bumping and grinding, the lift goes up the inner hole of the building. Petworth sees, from the console above the door, that it has passed his floor and is going higher, up to the top of the hotel, where he has not yet been. A musky perfume comes off the body of the girl, a leathery sweat from that of the man. Then the doors come open, and the couple get out. Petworth stands there, as the doors gape, and sees, for a moment, a view of a large room, where many men are working. It is a technological room, like a recording studio; tape recorders reel, and video monitors flicker, showing blue images of hotel corridors, moving figures, rooms just like his own. Then the doors shut, Petworth descends, and steps out, when they open again, onto a corridor just like the one on the screens. In the corridor are the dull wall lights, and the elderly floormaid, who rises and watches, just as other people watch, as he goes to his mahogany door. He unlocks the door, and goes in. The hat-rack in the anteroom looms in the half-dark like a sharp thorny tree; in the bedroom beyond, the noise of the bathroom hisses, and the lights of table-lamps leave grotesque shadows of darkness in the corners and on the walls. The room is not as it was; someone has been in. They have lit the lamps, drawn the velvet curtains, uncovered the bed to expose the duvet. His blue suitcase lies open; on the bed his pyjamas have been laid out, with careful elegance, in the shape of a flattened man, the arms and the legs splayed, as if this is someone who has been steamrollered while being searched. Mirrors glint, the lights of cars flash crazily on the ceiling, the wardrobe door is shut and will not open. Petworth stands and stares, thinking of big-hatted men in the lobby, floormaids in the corridors, ears in the walls, bugs of an unnatural kind in the roses, cameras in the glass, watchers in the roof.
Rates of Exchange Page 13
