David Lodge - Small World

by Author's Note

  “Oh, Angelica!” Persse exclaimed. “Never mind the verbal texture. Remember how the poem ends: And they are gone: ay, ages long ago Those lovers fled away into the storm.

  Be my Madeline, and let me be your Porphyro!”

  “What, and miss the rest of the conference?”

  “I can wait till tomorrow night.

  Awake! Arise! my love, and fearless be,

  For o’er the southern moors I have a home for thee.”

  Angelica giggled. “It would be kind of fun to re-enact the poem tomorrow night. There’s actually going to be a medieval banquet.”

  “I know.”

  “You could hide in my room and watch me go to bed. Then I might dream of you as my future husband.”

  “Suppose you didn’t?”

  “That’s a risk you’d have to take. Porphyro found a way to make sure of it, I seem to remember,” Angelica said dreamily, gazing out across the moonlit snowfields.

  Persse looked doubtfully at her exquisite profile—the perfectly straight nose, the slight, unmanning droop of the underlip, the firm but gently rounded chin. “Angelica—” he began. But at that moment they heard the sound of the lift approaching the top floor. “If that’s Dempsey again,” Persse exclaimed, “I’ll push him down the Lift shaft.” He hurried back to the landing and adopted a challenging posture, facing the doors of the lift. They opened to reveal the figure of Philip Swallow.

  “Oh, hallo McGarrigle,” he said. “I’m looking for Miss Pabst. Robin Dempsey said she might be up here.”

  “No, she’s not,” said Persse.

  “Oh, I see,” said Philip Swallow. He seemed to be considering whether to push past Persse and investigate for himself, but to decide against it. “Do you want to go down?” he said.

  “No, thank you.”

  “Oh, well, goodnight then.” Philip Swallow took his finger off the “Hold” button, and the doors closed.

  Persse hurried back to the walkway. “That was Philip Swallow,” he said. “What the blazes do all these old men want with you?”

  But there was no reply. Only moonlight filled the glassy space. Angelica had gone.

  So, by the next morning, had Persse’s inscription of her name upon the landscape. The wind had changed direction during the night, bringing a warm rain which had melted and washed away the snow. Drawing back the curtains of his bedroom window, Persse saw damp green lawns and muddy flowerbeds under low, scudding rainclouds. And there, splashing through the puddles in the carpark, was the surprising figure of Morris Zapp, clad in a bright red track suit and training shoes, a dead cigar clenched between his teeth. Quickly pulling on a sweater, jeans, and the tennis shoes that served him for slippers, Persse ran out into the mild morning air and soon overtook the American, whose pace was in fact rather slower than normal walking.

  “Good morning, Professor Zapp!”

  “Oh, hi, Percy,” Morris Zapp mumbled. He took the cigar butt from between his teeth, inspected it with faint surprise, and tossed it into a laurel bush. “You jogging too? Look, don’t let me hold you back.”

  “I would never have guessed that you were a runner.”

  “This is jogging, Percy, not running. Running is sport. Jogging is punishment.”

  “You mean you don’t enjoy it?”

  “Enjoy it? Are you kidding? I only do this for my health. It makes me feel so terrible, I figure it must be doing me good. Also it’s very fashionable these days in American academic circles. Success is not just a matter of how many articles you published last year, but how many miles you covered this morning.”

  “It seems to be catching on over here, too,” said Persse. “I can see another runner in front of us. But surely, Professor Zapp, you don’t have to worry about success? You’re famous already.”

  “It’s not just a question of making it, Percy, there’s also keeping it. You have to remember the young men in a hurry.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Have you never read Cornford’s Microcosmographia Academica? I have whole chunks of it by heart. ‘From far below you will mount the roar of a ruthless multitude of young men in a hurry. You may perhaps grow to be aware of what they are in a hurry to do. They are in a hurry to get you out of the way.’ “

  “Who was Cornford?”

  “A Cambridge classicist at the turn of the century, under the spell of Freud and Frazer. You know Freud’s idea of primitive society as a tribe in which the sons kill the father when he gets old and impotent, and take away his women? In modern academic society they take away your research grants. And your women, too, of course.”

  “That’s very interesting,” said Persse. “It reminds me of Jessie Weston’s Ritual and Romance.”

  “Yep, it’s the same basic idea. Except that in the Grail legend the hero cures the king’s sterility. In the Freudian version the old guy gets wasted by his kids. Which seems to me more true to life.”

  “So that’s why you keep jogging?”

  “That’s why I keep jogging. To show I’m not on the heap yet. Anyway, my ambitions are not yet satisfied. Before I retire, I want to be the highest paid Professor of English in the world.”

  “How high is that?”

  “I don’t know, that’s what keeps me on my toes. The top people in this profession are pretty tightlipped about their salaries. Maybe I already am the highest paid professor of English in the world, without knowing it. Every time I threaten to leave Euphoric State, they jack up my salary by five thousand dollars.”

  “Do you want to move, then, Professor Zapp?”

  “Not at all, I just have to stop them from taking me for granted. There’s no point in moving from one university to another these days. There was a time when that was how you got on. There was a very obvious pecking order among the various schools and you measured your success by your position on that ladder. The assumption was that all the most interesting people were concentrated into a few institutions, like Harvard, Yale, Princeton and suchlike, and in order to get into the action you had to be at one of those places yourself. That isn’t true any more.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “No. The day of the individual campus has passed. It belongs to an obsolete technology—railways and the printing press. I mean, just look at this campus—it epitomizes the whole thing: the heavy industry of the mind.”

  They had reached a summit which offered a panoramic view of Rummidge University, dominated by its campanile (a blown-up replica in red brick of the Leaning Tower of Pisa), flanked on one side by the tree-filled residential streets that Persse had walked through the previous evening, and on the other by factories and cramped, grey terraced houses. A railway and a canal bisected the site, which was covered by an assemblage of large buildings of heterogeneous design in brick and concrete. Morris Zapp seemed glad of an excuse to stop for a moment while they viewed the scene. “See what I mean?” he panted, with an all-embracing, yet dismissive sweep of his arm. “It’s huge, heavy, monolithic. It weighs about a billion tons. You can feel the weight of those buildings, pressing down the earth. Look at the Library—built like a huge warehouse. The whole place says, ‘We have learning stored here; if you want it, you’ve got to come inside and get it.’ Well, that doesn’t apply any more.”

  “Why not?” Persse set off again at a gentle trot.

  “Because,” said Morris Zapp, reluctantly following, “information is much more portable in the modern world than it used to be. So are people. Ergo, it’s no longer necessary to hoard your information in one building, or keep your top scholars corralled in one campus. There are three things which have revolutionized academic life in the last twenty years, though very few people have woken up to the fact: jet travel, direct-dialling telephones and the Xerox machine. Scholars don’t have to work in the same institution to interact, nowadays: they call each other up, or they meet at international conferences. And they don’t have to grub about in library stacks for data: any book or article that sounds interesting they have Xeroxed and re
ad it at home. Or on the plane going to the next conference. I work mostly at home or on planes these days. I seldom go into the university except to teach my courses.”

  “That’s a very interesting theory,” said Persse. “And rather reassuring, because my own university has very few buildings and hardly any books.”

  “Right. As long as you have access to a telephone, a Xerox machine, and a conference grant fund, you’re OK, you’re plugged into the only university that really matters—the global campus. A young man in a hurry can see the world by conference-hopping.”

  “Oh, I’m not in a hurry,” said Persse.

  “You must have some ambitions.”

  “I would like to get my poems published,” said Persse. “And I have another ambition too personal to be divulged.”

  “Al Papps!” Morris Zapp exclaimed.

  “How did you guess?” Persse asked, astonished.

  “Guess what? I just said that’s Al Papps running ahead of us.”

  “So it is!” The figure Persse had glimpsed earlier was indeed Angelica, she must have taken some detour, and had now reappeared on the path ahead of them, scarcely a hundred yards distant.

  “That sure is some girl! She looks like a million dollars, has read everything you can name, and she can really run, can’t she?”

  “Like Atalanta,” Persse murmured. “Let’s catch her up.”

  “You catch her up, Percy, I’m pooped.”

  Morris Zapp soon fell behind as Persse accelerated, but the distance between himself and Angelica remained constant. Then she gave a quick glance over her shoulder, and he realized that she was aware of his pursuit. They were descending a long sloping path that led to the halls of residence. Faster and faster grew the pace, until both were sprinting. Persse narrowed the gap. Angelica’s head went back, and her black hair streamed out behind her. Her supple haunches, bewitchingly sheathed in a tight-fitting orange track suit, thrust the tarmac away from under her flying feet. They reached the entrance to Lucas Hall shoulder to shoulder, and leaned against the outside wall, panting and laughing. The driver of a taxi that was waiting by the entrance grinned and applauded.

  “What happened to you last night?” Persse gasped.

  “I went to bed, of course,” said Angelica. “In my room. Room 231.”

  Morris Zapp laboured up, wheezing stertorously. “Who won?”

  “It was a dead heat,” said the cab driver, leaning out of his window. “Very diplomatic, driver. Now you can take me back to St John’s Road,” said Morris Zapp, climbing into the taxi. “See you around, kids.”

  “Do you usually jog by taxi, Professor Zapp?” Persse inquired.

  “Well, I’m staying with the Swallows, as you know, and I didn’t fancy running through the streets of Rummidge inhaling the rush-hour. Ciao!” Morris Zapp sank back into the seat of the taxi, and took from a pocket in his track suit a fat cigar, a cigar clipper and a lighter. He was busying himself with this apparatus as the taxi drew away.

  Persse turned to address Angelica, but she had disappeared. “Was there ever such a girl for disappearing?” he muttered to himself in vexation. “It’s as if she had a magic ring for making herself invisible.”

  Somehow, Angelica eluded Persse for the rest of the morning. When, after showering and dressing, he went to the Martineau Hall refectory for breakfast, he found her already seated at a fully occupied table, next to Dempsey. She was not a member of the little caravan of conferees who, with a conspicuous lack of enthusiasm, and buffeted by occasional squalls of rain, made their way down the hill from the halls of residence to the main campus for the first lecture of the morning. Persse, having watched them depart, and waited in vain for a few extra minutes, finally hurried after them, only to be overtaken by Dempsey’s car, with Angelica in the front passenger seat. The pair contrived, however, to be late for the lecture, tiptoeing in after the proceedings had begun. Persse paid little attention to the lecture, which was about the problem of identifying the authentically Shakespearian portions of the text of Pericles, being preoccupied himself with the problem of exactly what Angelica had meant by her proposal, the night before, that they should re-enact “The Eve of St Agnes”. By pointedly telling him the number of her room that morning, she seemed to have confirmed the arrangement. What he was not sure of was how she read the poem. Failing to spot her in the crush at the coffee break, Persse hurried over to the University Library to consult the text.

  He skimmed quickly through the early stanzas about the coldness of the weather, the tradition that maidens who went fasting to bed on St Agnes’ Eve would see their future husbands in their sleep, the abstractedness of Madeline, with this intention in mind, amid the feasting and merrymaking in the hall, the secret arrival of Porphyro, risking his life in the hostile castle for a glimpse of his beloved, his persuading of the old woman, Angela, to hide him in Madeline’s bedroom, Madeline’s arrival and preparations for bed. Persse lingered for a moment over stanza XXVI-Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees, Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one; Loosens her fragrant bodice: by degrees Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees —and, with flushed cheeks, read on through the description of the delicacies Porphyro laid out for Madeline, his attempts to wake her with lute music, hovering over her sleeping figure; Madeline’s eyes opening on the vision of her dream, and her half-conscious address to Porphyro. Then came the crucial stanza: Beyond a mortal man impassioned far At these voluptuous accents, he arose, Ethereal, flushed, and like a throbbing star Seen ‘mid the sapphire heaven’s deep repose; Into her dream he melted, as the rose Blendeth its odour with the violet— Solution sweet.

  It was all very well for Morris Zapp to insist upon the indeterminacy of literary texts: Persse McGarrigle needed to know whether or not sexual intercourse was taking place here—a question all the more difficult for him to decide because he had no personal experience to draw upon. On the whole he was inclined to think that the correct answer was in the affirmative, and Porphyro’s later reference to Madeline as his “bride” seemed to clinch the matter.

  This conclusion, however, only pitchforked Persse into another dilemma. Angelica might be inviting him to become her lover, but she would not allow him to make her his bride, not in the immediate future anyway, so a contingency had to be thought of, distasteful and unromantic as it was. Probably it would never have occurred to Persse McGarrigle if the sad story of his cousin Bernadette had not been fresh in his mind, together with the censorious comment of Morris Zapp: “It makes me mad to hear of girls getting knocked up in this day and age.” Accordingly, though he shrank inwardly from the task, he set his features grimly and set off in search of a chemist’s shop.

  He walked a long way, to be sure of not being observed by any stray members of the conference, and eventually found, or rather lost, himself in the city centre, a bewildering labyrinth of dirty, malodorous stairs, subways and walkways that funnelled the local peasantry up and down, over and under the huge concrete highways, vibrating with the thunder of passing juggernauts. He passed many chemist’s shops. Some were too empty, some too full, for his comfort. Eventually, impatient with his own pusillanimity, he chose one at random and plunged recklessly inside.

  The shop appeared to be deserted, and he looked rapidly around for the object of his quest, hoping that, when the chemist appeared, he would be able merely to point. He could not see what he was looking for, however, and to his dismay a young girl in white overalls appeared from behind a barricade of shelves.

  “Yis?” she said listlessly.

  Persse felt throttled by his embarrassment. He wanted to run and flee through the door, but his limbs refused to move. “Kinoielpyew?” said the girl impatiently.

  Persse stared at his boots. “I’m after wanting some Durex, please,” he managed to mutter, in strangled accents.

  “Small meedyum or large?” said the girl coolly.

  This was a turn of the screw Persse had not anticipated. “I thought they were all the one size,” he
whispered hoarsely.

  “Nah. Small meedyum or large,” drawled the girl, inspecting her fingernails.

  “Well, medium, then,” said Persse.

  The girl vanished momentarily, and reappeared with a surprisingly big box wrapped in a paper bag, for which she demanded 75p. Persse snatched the package—it was also surprisingly heavy—from her, thrust a pound note across the counter, and fled from the shop without waiting for his change.

  In a dark and noisome subway, decorated with football graffiti and reeking of urine and onions, he paused beneath a lightbulb to inspect his purchase. He withdrew from the paper bag a cardboard box which bore on its wrapper the picture of a plump, pleased-looking baby in a nappy, being fed something that looked like porridge. The brand-name of this product, displayed in large letters, was “Farex”.

  Persse walked broodingly back towards the University. He had no inclination to return to the shop to explain the mistake, or to make a second attempt at another chemist’s shop. He took the frustration of his design to be providential, an expression of divine displeasure at his sinful intentions. On a broad thoroughfare lined with motorcar showrooms, he passed a Catholic church, and hesitated for a moment before a notice board which declared, “Confessions at any time.” It was a heavensent opportunity to shrive himself. But he decided that he could not in good faith promise to break his appointment with Angelica that night. He crossed the road—carefully, for he was undoubtedly in a state of sin now—and walked on, allowing his imagination to dwell voluptuously on images of Angelica coming to her bedroom in which he was hidden, Angelica undressing under his very eyes, Angelica naked in his arms. But what then? He feared that his inexperience would destroy the rapture of that moment, his knowledge of sexual intercourse being entirely literary and rather vague as to the mechanics.

  As if the devil had planted it there, another notice, printed in bold black lettering on flame-coloured fluorescent paper, caught his eye: THIS CINEMA IS A CLUB SHOWING ADULT FILMS WHICH INCLUDE THE EXPLICIT AND UNCENSORED DEPICTION OF SEXUAL ACTS. IMMEDIATE MEMBERSHIP AVAILABLE. REDUCED RATES FOR OLD AGE PENSIONERS.