Incredible Bodies

by Ian McGuire

  ‘The Vice-Chancellor?’

  The Crocodile snorted. ‘Dennis Sloze.’

  Zoe frowned; Dennis Sloze was the dusty and timid little man who took minutes at meetings of Senate. She had never heard him speak.

  ‘Exactly,’ the Crocodile continued. ‘Dennis Sloze could fire me tomorrow. How, I do not know. The procedures would remain a mystery, but I would go without a whimper because I understand how power works – that is the advantage I have.’

  ‘Over Mordred?’

  The Crocodile nodded.

  ‘I am not myself a powerful man, but I know that power exists. I can sense its presence. I can at my best align myself with its requirements. I can serve it. The Digital Faculty was not anyone’s idea. It emerged autonomously from the structures: if you read the minutes you can see it taking shape. It is rather beautiful – faculty committees, school boards, Dean’s planning groups, campus-wide strategy huddles – pieces are added, patterns emerge. It fell to me to deliver, to push it through, but I am just an effect of the system, a vessel through which it will pass.’

  ‘So you’re unstoppable.’

  ‘Let us not get carried away. We are not in the realm of metaphysics here. There may yet be blockages, bottlenecks, flaws in the system. Power finds its way without concern, unfortunately, for individuals. Our preferences, yours and mine, are not important. It takes the path of least resistance.

  ‘And are you meeting any resistance?’

  The Crocodile fell silent for a moment.

  ‘There is a difficulty. I may need Morris Gutman.’

  It was Zoe’s turn to lean back and look at the ceiling. Even in the Dean’s office the cornices were clogged with dust; the cleaners really were intractable. She was trying to restrain the smirk which almost always, these days, appeared on her face whenever Morris Gutman was mentioned. He was proving to be one of her more enjoyable affairs. The potential she had glimpsed in LA was quickly, rather more quickly than she had anticipated, being fulfilled. Intellectually he was coming on in leaps and bounds, and sexually some of his suggestions were remarkable.

  ‘Morris,’ she said, ‘might surprise you.’

  ‘Has he surprised you?’

  The Crocodile patted his moustache. The tips of his loafers twitched a little. Nothing, Zoe remembered, escaped the Crocodile.

  ‘Let’s just say, he’s never disappointed.’

  ‘Ah.’ The Crocodile lit a panatella. The blue smoke rose and settled over the dust-caked cornices. ‘Could you get the fan?’ he asked.

  Zoe leaned over and pressed a switch above the desk. An extractor fan began to hum loudly.

  ‘These resistances?’ Zoe asked.

  ‘Yes. It’s Bernard Littlejohn and Darian Cavendish.’

  ‘A peculiar combination.’

  ‘But a surprisingly effective one. Bernard, it seems, actually reads Faculty minutes. Of course, I have tried as far as I can to make them inaccessible – the locked filing cabinet, the misnumbered room – and as a secondary precaution to bury any matter of note, such as the Digital Faculty Proposal, beneath a weighty rubble of trivia: Estates and Buildings, Health and Safety, Office Supplies … you can imagine. My intention being, as usual, to begin consultations only after the important decisions have been made. But Bernard, it seems, is tenacious. His research skills are really quite impressive, which is unusual these days.’

  ‘He’s old-school. Where does Darian come in?’

  ‘She has the ear of the VC, while Bernard, as you know, has the ear of no one.’

  ‘But the VC isn’t in charge.’

  ‘No he isn’t, but in this instance it might be enough. The other faculties are salivating over our virtual status – the benefits are blindingly obvious. Any sign of weakness or complication on our part and they will pounce.’

  ‘Where does Morris come in?’

  ‘He’s our man on the inside. His history as a temporary lecturer makes him acceptable to that lot. They still see him as one of the downtrodden and disgruntled.’

  ‘Not Darian, not after the kicking he gave her at the interview.’

  The Crocodile smiled faintly at the memory.

  ‘True, but if anyone knows the dirt on Darian it will be Bernard. If we can get to Bernard, it will all fall apart. The Digital Faculty will be ours.’

  ‘I hate to be vulgar, Donald, but what’s in this for me?’

  The Crocodile nodded as though he had been expecting this. Before answering he took another draw on the now-stubby panatella.

  ‘Geographically,’ he said, ‘the Digital Faculty is nowhere, which means, of course, it is everywhere. And since the Research Hub will be officially located within the Faculty,’ he paused, ‘I think you can imagine the rest.’

  She could. Zoe Cable smiled and closed her eyes for a moment. Behind the whirr of the fan and the fumes of the Crocodile’s cheap cigar, she could hear the the lapping of the kidney-shaped pool, smell the whiff of mesquite. Coketown in California. Globalisation – it truly was a beautiful thing.

  Chapter 18

  Early June: the examinations period. Around campus the students were panicking. They were discovering assignments which were long overdue. They were cursing their own laziness, blaming the malign influence of their housemates and desperately calculating the percentages that had already been irretrievably lost to them through absenteeism, incompetence and drug-induced amnesia. In the Vodafone Memorial Library, lecture notes were changing hands for ridiculous prices, pages were being slashed from books with razor blades, books were being hidden, stolen, deliberately lost. Scandalous references to Declan Monk’s sexuality were being gouged into student carrels; fights were breaking out in the computer clusters; the rules against food, drink and mobile phones were being openly and recklessly flouted. The librarians stood on the sidelines like UN peacekeepers: impotent, fearful, dreaming of caravans in Normandy.

  One afternoon, Morris Gutman went into the department to collect his exam scripts. The corridors of the Arts Faculty were all but deserted. Bright red ‘Examination in Progress’ signs were everywhere. A wild-eyed, sweating student sprinted past Morris without acknowledgement. Near the notice-boards a woman was sitting on the floor, weeping. It was like a contaminated area, the scene of some unpleasant man-made catastrophe. Inside the office the Furies were in an excellent mood. This was their favourite time of year. No one understood the examinations process like they did. They conducted its rituals and guarded its secrets like the votaries of an ancient blood religion.

  ‘Greetings Morris,’ chimed Mabel as he entered. The room was piled high with bundled examination booklets.

  ‘I’m looking for my scripts,’ he said.

  ‘Of course you are. Let’s see, “History of Critique,” “Story of the Ode”, “Aspects of the Augustan Age”, “Misogyny and the Novel”.’ She pulled the requisite bundles from the pile without hesitation.

  ‘How has it been so far?’ ventured Morris.

  ‘Madness,’ she replied cheerfully, ‘utter madness. But what can we expect? There’s so little understanding.’

  Morris looked blank.

  ‘Of the examination process. It’s been terribly devalued. In Professor Doppet’s day the examination period was the consummation of the academic year.’

  ‘The absolute pinnacle,’ concurred Joan from behind a flood wall of padded envelopes.

  ‘But now,’ Mabel went on, ‘with continuous assessment, take-home papers, open-book exams, multiple choice, it’s a diminished thing.’

  ‘It still seems quite intense to me,’ said Morris.

  Mabel was obviously cheered. ‘We do our best,’ she said. ‘We do our best.’

  ‘Any problems with my scripts?’ asked Morris as he squeezed them into a quite sizeable cardboard box. All eyes turned to Heather.

  ‘Candidates 01342 and 99661 failed to appear for the “History of Critique” exam,’ she recited apparently from memory. ‘01342 discontinued studies on March the fifth following an unfortunate inci
dent in Dalton Street car park. 99661 has no known excuse – investigations are ongoing. There was a fainting in “The Story of the Ode”, it is indicated on your mark sheet. In “Misogyny and the Novel”, candidate 00189 was forced to write with his left hand after supergluing together the middle and index fingers of his right hand. There is a medical note on file.’

  ‘I bet you a pound to a penny that was self-inflicted,’ said Joan.

  ‘Of course it was,’ said Mabel, ‘but where’s your proof?’

  ‘Even if there is no proof, he should have marks deducted for stupidity. An exam’s a test of intelligence after all.’

  ‘But not of common sense,’ corrected Mabel.

  ‘Very true,’ said Joan. ‘And just as well for this lot. They’d all fail miserably if it was.’

  ‘Products of the finest public schools and they can’t find the Shackleton Gymnasium. We had one in here claiming it wasn’t on Apollo Street.’

  ‘Well you can imagine how surprised we were to hear that,’ said Joan.

  ‘Quite. We explained that if a building was to be demolished and rebuilt in a different and apparently hidden location, it was normal university practice to inform secretarial staff of this fact in advance. We could only apologise for what had clearly been a clerical oversight and suggest he seek redress at the office of the Dean.’

  ‘We believe he actually went there.’

  ‘Irony is a foreign language to them.’

  ‘English is a foreign language to them.’

  Morris Gutman regained the hallway. His cardboard box was dishearteningly heavy. Although he was now on a permanent contract, he would not be able to unload the worst of his teaching until they hired a new temporary lecturer next year. As it was, Declan Monk had offered to surreptitiously rejig the marking allocations so as to shift most of his marking burden on to Bernard Littlejohn and Nigel Qwerty – who, as officially ‘research inactive’, were in the academic equivalent of internal exile and would have to put up with whatever they were given -but Morris had declined the offer.

  Within the department things had changed immeasurably for Morris in the months since the interview: he now had a pigeonhole rather than a shoebox, a nameplate rather than a Post-it note. The professors invited him to lunch rather than asking him to do the photocopying, and his opinion, so far as he could tell, was not entirely rejected. Yet he still felt a certain solidarity with Bernard and the rest of the lumpen academiat. Despite his growing confidence in the fictional, performative nature of self-hood, he had to admit that certain experiences cut deep. The pains of his temporary lectureship were not entirely eradicated by the pleasures (considerable and varied as they were proving to be) of permanency, and he was not yet up to shafting Bernard.

  At that moment, Bernard himself came around the corner pushing a trolley-load of exam scripts.

  ‘The worst is not, Morris,’ he said mournfully as he drew level, ‘so long as we can say this is the worst. That’s what I try to tell myself. You know what really pisses me off though?’

  Morris shook his head. Bernard picked out a script and pointed to a small yellow sticker, issued by the Disability Support Office, which was attached to the front.

  ‘Dyslexia. We had another word for it in my day: thick. You know me, Morris, I don’t wish to be harsh. I love them dearly, but we’re giving English degrees to people who can’t read and write. Let me put it to you this way: if I were unfortunately paraplegic – wheelchair bound – I would hope not to be discriminated against. I would be vociferous in my support for ramps and so on, but I would not, and this is my point Morris, I would not expect to play inside right for Coketown United. There is a certain perversity in my opinion in pursuing a career in literary criticism when you are unable to spell Wordsworth. It is not a popular opinion, I know, but I’ll leave it with you.’

  ‘Something to ponder,’ Morris said vaguely. Despite his resolve against guilt, he was feeling a little troubled by the obvious discrepancy in their marking loads. Bernard looked down at his trolley.

  ‘No Morris,’ he said, the faintest of tremors in his voice, ‘in answer to your unspoken question, it is not mathematically possible for me to complete my marking within the time allocated by our esteemed chairman, His Holiness Declan ‘the Mad’ Monk. Or to be exact, it is possible, according to my calculation, only if there are thirty-seven hours in each day. I have asked His Holiness if this miraculous adjustment might be forthcoming and he rather surprisingly berated me as an obstructionist. Apparently, my relentless negativity is a hindrance both to myself and the Department.’

  Morris shook his head in sympathy. ‘I thought I had it bad,’ he said.

  ‘You’re flavour of the month. Off to Los Angeles with Zoe Cable, very tasty. Enjoy it while it lasts, Morris. You deserve it, mate, but watch your back. Once you get past fifty round here it’s Brave New World. Which reminds me…’ Bernard crouched very slightly and his tone became noticeably secretive. ‘There’s something I wanted to ask you about. Come into my office, quick.’

  Bernard’s office was dark and book-clogged. There were shelves on every wall and double-rows of sun-faded books on every shelf. Above a cracked horsehair sofa there was a brown and brittled poster advertising ‘The Art of the Victorian Teapot’, Coketown Art Gallery, Mar–June 1979. The blackboard was covered with a hand-chalked genealogy of the offspring of Zeus.

  ‘Their ignorance of Greco-Roman culture is mind-bending,’ said Bernard, noticing Morris’s interest. ‘They think Nike is a shoe. Of course they refuse to read anything longer than a paragraph, so what can you expect? I tell them to read Childe Harold – they tell me they can’t manage it, poor dears, it’s too long. Too long? It’s only four hundred sodding stanzas. They’re too busy getting pissed and shagging each other, which is fair enough of course, but I say do it in your own time. A week before exams they’re knocking at my door asking for clues. Clues? This is poetry, not hunt the bloody thimble.’

  ‘Bernard, was there anything in particular?’ Morris asked. Sitting in that office made Morris uncomfortable: it reminded him too closely of teenage visits to his grandmother in the Crystal Valley Rest Home in Ashby de la Zouch. There was that same rummage-sale smell of geraniums and incontinence, that same sickly atmosphere of bitterness and fear. ‘The conversations in there,’ his mother had once commented on the slow train back to Rotherham, ‘are about as strained as the fruit.’

  ‘Yes there was,’ said Bernard. ‘Sorry for blabbing so.’ He put on his reading glasses and plucked from the slew of papers on his desk a copy of the last Faculty minutes. ‘Do you happen to have read these?’

  ‘Faculty minutes? Of course not. No one reads them. Declan specifically advised me to bin them on arrival – they’re an irritating formality.’

  Bernard’s expression hardened. His face took on a look of unwonted efficiency. ‘Interesting. For the last six months, they have not been distributed at all. It took me two weeks to get hold of this copy. Two weeks, I might add, in which I was subjected to a concerted campaign of misinformation, a campaign directed, I have reason to believe, from the very highest office in this Faculty. I finally had to employ my own locksmith.’

  ‘The Crocodile?’ Morris asked.

  Bernard raised his hands.

  ‘I make no accusations, but yes, it has that bastard’s claw-prints all over it.’ He handed him the minutes. ‘Pages thirty-two to thirty-six, please read them in your own time. I have other copies. They’re proposing to computerise us all. Put us on the World Wide Web. To be honest, Morris, the details escape me; for me modum will always be the accusative of modus, but I can read between the lines. It’s a ploy: those of us without keyboard skills will go to the wall.’

  ‘They’ll have to consult.’

  ‘Consultation? I’ve been to those meetings before. Old Donald’ll smile in your face and the moment you turn around he’ll have his fist halfway up your colon and he’ll be working you like a glove puppet.’

  ‘There’s always
retraining I suppose.’

  ‘Yes. They had that in Red China I believe.’

  ‘So what are you planning?’

  ‘I’ve told old Darian, and as soon as the VC returns from his latest imperialistic adventure – this time it’s Bahrain, I believe -she’ll be in his office playing merry hell. Until then, I thought a letter from concerned Faculty members.’

  ‘Are there any concerned Faculty members?’

  ‘That’s a problem,’ Bernard agreed. ‘This place is like Pentonville; people fear reprisals if they speak out. They’re frightened His Holiness will come to their door late at night and render them research inactive.’

  As Bernard talked, Morris flicked through the minutes. Outside the window a blanket of fog was being pierced by bright spokes of sunlight.

  ‘Have you seen paragraph six yet?’ Bernard asked. ‘That’s where they mention tactical restructuring prior to full digitalisation. The vile language of bureaucracy, Morris. Clothe sin with gold. And to think the Crocodile once wrote a half-decent article on Swinburne.’

  Morris looked up at Bernard’s drawn, doggish face. He was wearing a burgundy blazer and a black, open-neck shirt. He had a suntan, a thin grey beard and chest hair; there were clear remnants of the louche sexiness which twenty-five years before had made him a hot property, a lecturer of famous passion and sincerity, a bedder of progressive undergraduates, a penner of well-regarded letters to the TLS. When had things gone wrong for Bernard, Morris wondered? When had he stopped floating with the tides of history and started backstroking frantically against them? Should his decline be dated from the Crocodile’s accession to power, or were there signs even before that? His ugly divorce from Hortense, for example, or the death of his mentor Marcus Grunwald? Not to mention the larger historical forces at play: feminism, Margaret Thatcher, the end of the working class, the decline of county cricket. Yes, as a cultural signifier Bernard was significantly over deter mined. But one thing was certain. Not eternally certain, of course, not certain in the Platonic or even Cartesian sense (cocksureness, Zoe called that), but temporarily certain, certain for a particular time and place (Coketown, 3 June 2001), certain so far as the multiplicities of history and language would allow: Bernard was teetering on the edge, and he knew it. He was staring into the void – only terror would have driven him to such precipitous action. In any less severe circumstances his courage would have failed him, Morris was sure. He would have hunkered down, drawn in his tentacles and prayed that the Crocodile found another victim. But the truth was there were very few alternative victims left to choose from. When it came to dead wood, these days Bernard’s name was perilously high in the list.