Collected Columns

by Michael Frayn

  And what most people are going to call you is Lord What’s He Called, the One Who Used To Be What Was His Name, Only He Got the Sack.

  (1995)

  The manual writer’s manual

  Congratulations! You are a highly-qualified expert in various scientific fields, and you have just been engaged by some leading electronics corporation or software manufacturer to write the instruction manual and Help files for their product. This simple step-by-step guide will assist you to get the most out of your career.

  This is an interactive programme. Convenient gaps have been left between the various sentences so that you can stop and go back at any point if you have not understood.

  Lesson 1. The purpose of this lesson is to calm your fears about the difficulties of the subject, and to foster a sense of optimism about the work in hand. So:

  a. Unscrew the top of your fountain pen. (If you are intending to write your manual on a word-processor, open the instruction manual supplied.)

  b. Test that there is ink in the pen. (For word-processor users: read the opening sections of the manual, which you will find are encouragingly simple to understand.)

  c. Feel rather pleased with yourself. Wonder why anyone ever thought there was much to writing instruction manuals for leading electronics corporations and software manufacturers.

  Lesson 2. The purpose of this lesson is to help you preserve some sense of mystery in your manual. (Hint: for many of your readers technology is taking the place of traditional religious belief. In the past they might have been reading the Scriptures, now they are dependent upon your work to learn an attitude of respect towards the deeper unknowability of the universe, and of deference towards authority – particularly yours!) So:

  a. Unscrew the top of your fountain-pen again, if you replaced it at the end of Lesson 1, and

  b. Suddenly introduce some quasi-hieratic protocol. If this should cause problems, maximise the heuristic opacity of the procedure by ellipsis or recursiveness in the hermeneutics. The sudden contrast with the somewhat pleonastic exegesis adumbrated in the prolegomena …

  (Yes, I haven’t forgotten it’s an interactive programme, and I can see you’ve got your hand up. Just wait till we get to the end of the sentence.)

  … will induce in the neophyte a characteristic disorientation and frustration similar to the feelings notoriously engendered in a child by the unpredictable alternation of maternal love and punishment.

  All right. You’re confused. Don’t worry! You can go back to the beginning at any point. So …

  Congratulations! You are a highly-qualified expert in various scientific fields, and you have …

  What …? Oh, you understood that bit … You mean further on? All right …

  Unscrew the top of your fountain-pen…

  No? You don’t mean quasi-hieratic protocol …? Oh, I see … No – not the slightest objection to explaining. A quasi-hieratic protocol is an expression introduced into the discourse by the initiate without vouchsafed profane signification, with the intention of preserving sacerdotal prerogative. All right …?

  What do I mean by an expression introduced into the discourse etc…? I mean an expression such as quasi-hieratic protocol.

  No, I’m sorry – I’m not going to explain it again. I’ve already given you a simple ostensive self-referential formulation which I should have thought was comprehensible to a child of 3√8 … Yes, certainly – it’s an interactive manual. But interactivity doesn’t mean constant interruption! It doesn’t mean asking about things that I understand perfectly well.

  Now where was I? Yes – and you might like to note this – I was telling you to maximise the heuristic opacity of the procedure by ellipsis or recursiveness in the hermeneutics … And before you open your mouth again, please don’t ask me what heuristics and hermeneutics are! Look them up for yourself! You’re a big grown-up scientist!

  No, no – I’m not going to tell you where to look them up …! All right, then, don’t whine – under Epistemology. For heaven’s sake! Come on …!

  Where’s Epistemology? How should I know? In the back of the book somewhere. In the index. You want me to write the index for you, as well as everything else? Somebody else is doing that! Some specialist index-writer …! No, I don’t look to see what he’s put in his index … No, he doesn’t read the text before he writes the index. He’s an index-writer, not a manual-reader … What does he put in his index? The same as any other writer puts into what he writes! Whatever comes into his head! Which in his case I should think is more probably words like ‘fountain-pen’ and ‘congratulations’, because if I know anything about index-writers he’s as baffled as you are.

  Keep calm, keep calm! There’s no need to raise your voice! They did explain to you in the shop, did they, that you need at least a degree in semantics to run this programme …? They didn’t? Oh, I see. Never mind, press on, do the best we can with the material we’ve got. So, just check that you have taken the top off your fountain-pen … Right, good, well done, don’t shout. Now, simply bring the nib of the fountain-pen into contact with the paper – right? – and introduce the crypto-hieratic whatever it was!

  What? Speak up … I know, I know – I said quasi-hieratic before. I’ve changed my mind … What’s the difference? That’s my business. It’s my mind I’ve changed, not yours. I know what I’m talking about …

  Look, don’t scream at me! This is the way manuals are written! I can’t change the system! Pull yourself together! You’re behaving in a most extraordinary manner. Lying down and drumming your heels on the floor like that! This may be an interactive programme, but interactive doesn’t mean screaming abuse, and it doesn’t mean hurling the manual across the room. It affords me a certain pleasure to watch you, it’s true – but interactive goes both ways, you know. No pudding for you this evening unless you stop this tantrum. My word, even if I did know what pseudo-hieratic whichwhats are I shouldn’t tell you now, not after the way you’ve behaved.

  I mean proto-hieratic … Or rather hiero-proleptic … No … What am I talking about? You’re getting me confused now!

  Don’t snivel. You’ll see the point of all the suffering you’ve endured in the course of your education when you go out into the world at the end of it and make your own pupils’ lives a misery in their turn.

  (1994)

  The meteorological school

  All afternoon the great fleets of slow-moving summer cumulus were coming up out of the south-west, solid and intricately moulded, touched in places with a hot coppery burnish, gravely pacing the immensity of the steppe. Sergei lay in the long grass and watched them, thinking about Anton Fyodorovich’s house in Ryazan Province …

  That’s how one of my great unwritten novels starts. Another begins:

  The fog crept among the houses and patrolled the streets like the spies and pickets of an occupying army. All the sounds of the city were muted by its grey presence. Familiar landmarks loomed strange and menacing as one walked about, as if no old loyalty could be taken for granted under the new dispensation. Somewhere out in the great grey limbo in one of the open squares, Van der Velde caught the raw wetness of the air in his throat, and coughed. ‘Damn this fog,’ he said …

  And another:

  Just before noon a fine, warm, soaking rain began to fall, turning the dusty grey slates on the roof of the church a glossy black, and whispering monotonously in the topmost branches of the elms. The rain covered Mrs Morton-Wise’s spectacles with a film of fine droplets, making it increasingly difficult for her to see from where she stood what was happening on the other side of the churchyard …

  That’s how they start, and that’s how they stop. I’m all right on the measured periods describing the weather. It’s the entry of Sergei, Van Der Velde, Mrs Morton-Wise, and the rest, that puts the curse on them.

  Who are these people, anyway? I’m not sure that I’m terribly interested. If Van der Velde’s not fat he’s thin, if he hasn’t got good digestion he’s got bad digesti
on. All right, let’s say he’s thin with bad digestion. He hates his father, say; he marries a depressive heiress who deceives him with an art dealer; he’s accused of supressing the truth about conditions in a desiccated coconut factory. I don’t know. Maybe he writes a novel about a fat man with good digestion who runs off with the wife of a schizoid bicycle designer … So what? How can I write fine prose about people’s digestive troubles and bicycle designers’ wives?

  The weather – that’s what I want to write about. What immensely evocative stuff weather is! Whenever I look out of the window and observe the meteorological condition of the day I can feel the grand periods pulsing in the blood, the nostalgic phrases ringing in my head. Whenever I look at the typewriter and see a blank piece of paper, the thin Atlantic cloud-wrack starts to scud across it immediately.

  I dare say I’m not the only one. Anyone with a liberal education and a maritime climate probably feels the same. English novelists on the whole keep the reader fairly continuously informed about the temperature, humidity and wind velocity in which their man reveals his inner nature and gets the girl.

  Most of my literary tastes were formed by the twin volumes of prose passages for translation into and out of French which we used in the sixth form at school – not surprisingly, since translation is one of the few occasions on which one is obliged to examine prose in close and intimate detail. I believe my addiction to meteorological romanticism is no exception. All the extracts seemed to be about nocturnal storms, the ending of great droughts, or summer nights spent out of doors in warm airs and brilliant starlight, and by the time one had looked it up in Mr Mansion’s invaluable French dictionary and decided whether the mist rising from the reed-beds as the dusk drew on was brume, embrun, brouillard, brouillasse or brumasse, the meteorological subtleties had made a considerable impression on one’s subconscious.

  One can of course revert to the weather pretty frequently during a novel (for instance, I can see that a day of gathering oppression, followed by a terrible nocturnal thunderstorm and a clear, sparkling morning, are going to take our minds off Sergei some time in the near future). But between whiles it’s people, people, people. Before I can make a career for myself as a novelist (and is there any other honourable career for an arts graduate?), the people problem will have to be solved. Either I shall have to collaborate with someone who’s good with people but lost when faced with the fine, steaming drizzle from the iron-grey overcast, or I shall have to found the meteorological school of novel writing.

  It happened in painting. Once upon a time such weather and landscape as there was occurred only in portraits, fitted in very small between the subject’s left ear and the frame. But the weather and the landscape expanded, and the heads shrank in the steadily increasing rainfall, until eventually the sun shone and the snow fell upon insignificant little fellows in the middle distance, or upon no one at all.

  Now it’s happening in the novel. Take what some critics consider the greatest of my unwritten works in this genre, ‘My Sun, My Sun.’ This is a ruthless and entirely uninhabited exposure of a high-pressure system centred over the Azores, which on a trip to Southern Ireland meets a weak trough of low pressure moving down from Iceland. Their encounter is tempestuous, and a cold front is born, which brings a routed cavalry of storm clouds trooping in from the sea, with scattered showers like torn banners streaming in the wind …

  And so on. It’s one of the saddest things in the world that so much which is a pleasure to write is a pain in the neck to read.

  (1964)

  Money well changed

  No more Wechsel. The last of the summer Cambio. The real sadness of the Single European Currency is that it would mean the end of European moneychanging as we know it.

  I recall many delightfully unhurried exchanges of currency and traveller’s cheques all over Europe, many delicious stews of noughts and decimal points, many entertaining failures to have my passport with me or to remember that banks close for lunch. But if I had to select just one occasion to recall in the bleak years ahead it would be a certain Monday morning in late June at the Banque de France in Laon.

  Laon, appropriately enough, is at the crossroads of Europe. It’s in the Aisne, in Northern France, situated just off the motorway that runs from Strasbourg and Germany to the French Channel ports, at the point where it crosses the N2 from Paris to Brussels. Whichever road you’re on you can see it coming from miles off – two ancient Gothic cathedral towers perched on a fortified hilltop islanded in the great agricultural plain. Two stars in the Michelin – three for the nave of the cathedral – wonderful views.

  This charming town was full of sunshine and the bustle of market day when we found ourselves in need of a little financial refreshment there. We were on our way back from South Germany, and we needed a little more French currency to see us through to Calais. We had it in mind to change some forty pounds’ worth of left-over German marks, together with a £20 sterling traveller’s cheque. The Banque de France seemed like a good choice for our custom. Its appearance was discreetly imposing, its name suggested solidity and extensive reserves. We were right. The feast of fine banking that ensued was worth another three stars in the Michelin. I was so impressed that I made a complete note of it, course by course, from the moment we pressed the yellow button beside the heavily-armoured front door.

  1 A red light comes on to indicate that our application for entry is being considered. We are instructed to wait for a green light before attempting to push the door.

  2 The green light comes on, and we enter, to be confronted by a second door, with a second yellow button. A second red light comes on, while our credentials are examined all over again.

  3 We pass through the second door, and enter a great hall divided by a counter. On the other side of the counter are a dozen or so employees of the bank. On this side is a spacious emptiness occupied only by us. We are the only people in Laon to have passed both tests.

  4 We advance towards the counter and the waiting staff. We choose the nearest clerk, on the righthand side of the bank, and present our £20 traveller’s cheque, our passport, and our 130 Deutschmarks. The clerk examines the cheque. She examines the passport, then takes a printed form and writes down by hand the number of the passport, together with my name and address. She examines the fifty Deutschmark note, then the three twenties, then the ten and the two fives. She goes away to consult the bank’s files.

  5 She comes back and performs various computations upon a small pocket calculator. The calculator is for some reason balanced half on and half off a ledger, so that it gives to the touch like a pudding. She writes down by hand on the printed form the quantities of sterling and Deutschmarks involved, the rates for each currency, and the two subtotals in francs. She performs another wobbly computation, and writes down the total. So far, a dignified but not unusual display of traditional handcraft moneychanging.

  6 But this is merely the amuse-gueule before the meal proper. The clerk takes the form she has filled up, together with the passport, the traveller’s cheque, and the seven Deutschmark bills, to a more senior-looking woman, who has drawn-back grey hair and steel-rimmed spectacles. She checks the two multiplications and the addition. She re-examines the passport, the traveller’s cheque, and the German banknotes, and returns them to the clerk. Everything is in order. The clerk returns to the counter and hands us back our passport. She retains the traveller’s cheque – but she hands back our Deutschmarks. What?

  7 She indicates a male cashier in a small fortified enclosure a kilometre or two away on the lefthand side of the great hall. Of course. A division of functions familiar from many such occasions in the past.

  8 We walk across to the cashier. The clerk, on the other side of the counter, also walks across to the cashier. We are holding the passport and the returned DM 130, she is holding the £20 traveller’s cheque and the form she has filled up, as checked and authenticated by her senior. We wait for the cashier to take the Deutschmarks through the front of the
security grille, she waits for the cashier to open a special window in the back of it and take the traveller’s cheque and the form.

  9 The clerk returns to her post on the righthand side of the bank.

  10 The cashier examines the traveller’s cheque once again, then consults another set of files. He reworks the computations on the completed form. He takes the seven Deutschmark bills from us, and examines them again in their turn – first the fifty, then the three twenties, then the ten and the two fives. They all apparently pass muster once again. Nothing has changed, in this rapidly changing world, since they were first examined and re-examined on the righthand side of the bank.

  11 Or has it? The cashier is evidently shaken by a sudden doubt. How about the exchange rates? Some fair amount of time has now gone by since they were checked and double-checked on the other side of the bank. There may have been dramatic developments in the markets since then. The Federal Government may have fallen. The pound may be soaring even as the Deutschmark goes into free fall. He looks up both the rates again. Nothing has happened. Pound and mark alike are rock steady.

  12 This steadiness in the markets makes a pleasing contrast with the cashier’s pocket calculator, which is balanced, half on and half off a ledger, just like the clerk’s, so that it gives like a second, helping of pudding as he punches each button, and recomputes all the computations that he has just reworked manually.

  13 There is evidently something a little unsettling about the result of this fourth trip through the sums. I suspect the trouble is that the new results are exactly the same as the earlier ones, which may of course tend to confirm them, but which may on the other hand suggest the possibility of systemic error in the bank’s methodology for multiplication and addition. The cashier summons a second cashier, who goes through all the rates and calculations for a fifth time. I notice that he too keeps the calculator balanced half on and half off the ledger as he works. Sponge calculatrice is obviously a spécialité de la maison.