David Lodge - Small World

by Author's Note

  “I’m sorry,” said the chairman. “I cannot accept a question from someone who is not a member of the Conference.”

  “Well I’m a member,” said Morris Zapp, rising to his feet beside Persse, “so let me ask it: did Professor von Turpitz read McGarrigle’s manuscript for Lecky, Windrush and Bernstein, or did he not?”

  There was mild uproar in the auditorium. Cries of “Shame!”

  “Point of order, Mr Chairman!”

  “Answer!” and “Let him speak!” with equivalent ejaculations in various other languages, could be distinguished in a general babble of conversation. The chairman looked helplessly at von Turpitz, who seized the microphone, delivered an angry speech in German, pointing a black finger menacingly at Persse and Morris Zapp, and then stalked off the platform.

  “What did he say?” Morris demanded.

  Persse shrugged. “I don’t speak German.”

  “He said he wasn’t going to stay here and be insulted,” said Miss Maiden from behind them, “but he looked distinctly guilty to me. You were quite right to stand up for yourself against the Black Hand, young man.”

  “Yeah, this is going to get around,” said Morris Zapp, rubbing his hands together. “This is not going to help von Turpitz’s reputation one little bit. Come on, Percy, I’ll buy you another Bols.”

  Morris’s jubilation did not, however, last for long. In the bar he spotted a folded copy of the Times Literary Supplement sticking out of Persse’s jacket pocket. “Is that the latest issue?” he asked. “Mind if I take a look at it?”

  “I shouldn’t if I were you,” said Persse, who had read it on the plane to Amsterdam.

  “Why not?”

  “Well, it contains a rather unfriendly review of a book of yours. By Rudyard Parkinson.”

  “That asshole? The day I get a good review from him, I’ll know I’m washed up. Let me see.” Morris almost snatched the journal from Persse and, with trembling fingers, flicked through the pages until he located Parkinson’s review. “But this is all about Philip Swallow’s book,” he said, frowning, as he ran his eyes up and down the columns of print.

  “The bit about you is at the end,” Persse said. “You’re not going to like it.”

  Morris Zapp didn’t like it. When he had finished reading the review, he was silent for a few moments, pale and breathing heavily. “It’s a limey plot,” he said at length. “Parkinson is pushing his own claim to the UNESCO chair under cover of praising Philip Swallow’s pathetic little book on Hazlitt.”

  “Do you think so?” said Persse.

  “Of course—look at the title: The English School of Criticism.’ He should have called it ‘The English School of Genteel Crap.’ May I borrow this?” he concluded, standing up and stuffing the TLS into his pocket.

  “Sure—but where are you going?”

  “I’m gonna look over my paper for tomorrow morning—see if I can work in some cracks against Parkinson.”

  “I didn’t know you were giving a paper.”

  “How else could I claim my conference expenses? It’s the same paper that I gave at Rummidge, slightly adapted. It’s a wonderfully adaptable paper. I aim to give it all over Europe this summer. You want to take a stroll round the town tonight?”

  “All right,” Persse said. They made arrangements to meet. As soon as Morris Zapp had disappeared, the lean leathery figure of Michel Tardieu slid into the vacant space beside Persse in the curved, upholstered bar alcove.

  “A most dramatic intervention,” he said, after introducing himself. “Do I infer that you are a specialist in the work of T. S. Eliot?”

  “That’s right,” said Persse. “I did my Master’s dissertation on him.”

  “You may be interested, then, in a conference some Swiss friends of mine are organizing this summer.”

  “I’m not sure what my movements will be this summer,” said Persse.

  “I expect to attend this conference myself,” said Michel Tardieu, putting his hand on Persse’s knee beneath the table.

  “I’m looking for a girl, you see,” said Persse.

  “Ah,” shrugged Tardieu, removing his hand. “C’est la vie, c’est la narration. Each of us is a subject in search of an object. Have you by any chance seen a young man in a black velvet suit?”

  “No, I’m afraid I haven’t,” said Persse. “If you will excuse me, I have to go now.”

  Outside the Sonesta the sky was blue again, and the late-afternoon sun shone on a rinsed and gleaming city. Persse took a canal ride in one of the sleek Plexiglass-covered tourist launches that slid through the narrow waterways and threaded the bridges at what seemed reckless speed, almost grazing each other as they passed in opposite directions, crackling commentaries in four languages from their loudspeakers. Once he glimpsed a girl walking across a bridge a hundred yards ahead who, from that distance, looked like Angelica, but this, he knew, was a mirage produced by his own desire. When the boat reached the bridge, the girl had disappeared.

  Later that evening, when the canals were long black mirrors laid flat between the trees and the streetlamps, Morris conducted Persse on a stroll around the red light district, a maze of little streets near the Nieuwemarkt. It was, as Morris had promised, a far more extraordinary and shocking spectacle than anything Soho offered, and almost too much for an innocent young man from County Mayo to comprehend. In each brightly lit window sat a prostitute, dressed for her trade in some slinky gown or filmy neglige, boldly eyeing the passersby for possible custom. These were veritably streets of sin, the objects of men’s lust being frankly displayed like goods in a shop window. You had only to step inside and settle the price, and the woman would draw thick heavy curtains across the casement and satisfy your desire. Two things prevented this traffic in female flesh from seeming simply sordid. The first was that the interiors of the houses were spotlessly clean, and furnished in a cosy petit-bourgeois style, with upholstered chairs, embroidered antimacassars, potted plants, and immaculate linen turned down on the bed that could usually he glimpsed at the rear. The second thing was that all the women were young and attractive, and in many cases were passing the time in the homely occupation of knitting.

  “Why do they do it?” Persse wondered aloud to Morris Zapp. “They look such nice girls. They could be married and raising families instead of selling themselves like this.” He did not like to catch the women’s eyes, not so much because he feared falling under the spell of their allure as because he felt slightly ashamed to be observing their self-exposure while remaining safely wrapped in his own virtue.

  Morris shrugged. “Maybe they’re planning to settle down later. When they’ve made their pile.”

  “But who would marry a… girl who had done that for a living?”

  Morris moved ahead of Persse on the narrow, crowded pavement, and tossed his reply back over his shoulder. “Perhaps he wouldn’t know.”

  The streets were becoming increasingly crowded by pedestrians, most of whom seemed to be window-shopping tourists like themselves, rather than serious customers. There were even couples, courting or married, to be seen amid the throng, walking arm-in-arm, grinning and nudging each other, deriving a cheap erotic thrill from the ambience of sexual licence. For some reason this depressed Persse more than any other component of the scene, and made him feel sorrier for the girls in the windows.

  And then he saw her, in a house with a low red door and the number 13 painted on it. Angelica. There was no question that it was Angelica. She was sitting in the little parlour, not at the window, but on a chaise-longue beside a standard lamp with a rose-coloured shade, and she was painting her nails with nail-varnish, concentrating so intently on the task that she did not look up as he stood on the pavement and stared in through the window, thunderstruck. Her long dark hair was loose about her shoulders and she wore a black dress of some shiny material cut low across her bosom. The nail varnish was scarlet. When she extended her hand to examine the effect under the lamp it looked as though she had dipped her fingers
in fresh blood.

  Persse walked on in a daze. He felt as though he were drowning, fighting for breath. He cannoned blindly into other, protesting pedestrians, stumbled over a kerb, heard a squeal of brakes, and found himself sprawled over the bonnet of a car whose driver, leaning out of the window, was shouting angrily at him in Dutch or German.

  “‘Tis pity she’s a whore,” Persse said to the driver.

  “Percy, what the hell are you doing?” said Morris Zapp, materializing out of the crowd that was observing this incident with mild interest. “I’ve been looking all over for you.” He took Persse’s arm and steered him back to the pavement. “Are you OK? What d’you want to do?”

  “I’d rather be on my own for a while, if you don’t mind,” Persse said.

  “Ah ha! You saw something that took your fancy in one of those windows back there, huh? Well, I don’t blame you, Percy, you’re only young once. Just do me a favour, if the girl offers you a condom, forget the Pope, wear it for my sake, OK? I’d hate to be the occasion of your getting the clap. I think I’ll go back to the hotel. Ciao.”

  Morris Zapp squeezed Persse’s bicep and waddled away. Persse retraced his steps, rapidly, purposefully. Morris had put an idea into his head, a way of relieving his feelings of bitterness, betrayal, disgust. He would burst into that cosy, rose-tinted little parlour and demand “How much?” How much did the elusive maiden he had wooed and pursued along the paths and corridors of Rummidge, without winning so much as a kiss, how much did she charge for opening her legs to a paying customer? Was there a discount for an old friend, for a poet, for a paid-up member of the Association of University Teachers? Rehearsing these sarcasms in his head, imagining Angelica starting up from the chaise-longue, white-faced, aghast, clutching at her heart, he pushed his way through the shuffling crowds of voyeurs until he found himself outside the house with the red door. Its curtains were drawn.

  Persse felt physically sick. He leaned against the wall and dug his nails into the hard gritty surface. A group of British youths passed, four abreast, yelling a football song, dribbling an empty beer can before them. One caught Persse a glancing blow with his shoulder, but Persse made no protest. He felt numb, blank, not even anger was left.

  The chanting of the English yobbos faded as they turned a corner and the street became momentarily quiet and empty. After a few minutes the red door opened and closed again behind a young man who stood for a moment, adjusting his tight black trousers. Persse recognized him as the companion of Michel Tardieu. He looked furtively to left and right, then sauntered off. Light fell across the pavement as the curtains were drawn back inside the front room. Persse moved out of the shadows and looked in. A pretty Eurasian girl in a white petticoat smiled at him encouragingly. Persse gaped at her. He examined the door of the house: red, and with number 13 painted on it. He had made no mistake. He returned to the window. The same girl smiled again, and with a sweep of her eyes and a tilt of her head invited him to enter. When he did so, she greeted him with a smile and some unintelligible words of Dutch.

  “Excuse me,” he said.

  “You American?” she enquired. “You like to spend some time with me? Forty dollar.”

  “There was another girl in here just now,” said Persse.

  “She gone. She babysitter. Don’t worry, I give you good time.”

  “Babysitter?” Hope, relief, self-reproach surged in Persse’s breast.

  “Yeah, I got kid upstairs. Don’t worry, he sleeps, don’t hear a thing.”

  “Angelica is your babysitter?”

  “You mean Lily? She’s a friend, helps me out sometimes. I told her to draw the curtain, but she don’t bother.”

  “Where has she gone? Where can I find her?”

  The girl shrugged, sulky. “I dunno. You want to spend some time with me or not? Thirty dollar.”

  Persse took a hundred-guilder note out of his wallet and put it down on the table. “Where can I find Lily?”

  With the speed and dexterity of a prestidigitator, the girl picked up the note, folded it with the fingers of one hand, and tucked it into her décolletage. “She works at a cabaret, Blue Heaven, on the Achterburg Wal.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Turn right at the end of the street, then over the bridge. You will see the sign.”

  “Thanks,” said Persse.

  He raced along the street like a hurley player, jinking through the crowds and the traffic, juggling the ball of his confused emotions. For one dizzy moment he thought he had discovered Angelica in some totally innocent, totally benevolent occupation, a secular sister of mercy ministering to the prostitutes of Amsterdam. That had been wishful thinking, of course. But if Angelica wasn’t just a babysitter, she wasn’t a whore either—how could he ever have dreamed that she was? His shame at having entertained such an idea, however plausible the circumstantial evidence, made him readier to accept the fact that she performed in nude revues. He couldn’t approve of it, he hoped to persuade her to give it up, but it didn’t fundamentally affect his feelings for her.

  He swerved round the corner of the street and raced across the bridge; saw blue neon letters trembling in the black water, and leapt three steps at a time down to the canalside cobbles. Some people queuing for admission to the Blue Heaven turned their heads and stared as Persse came thudding up to the entrance and skidded to a halt, panting, in front of the foyer. It had an illuminated façade, rather like a small cinema, on which the programme was advertised in moveable letters. “LIVE SEX SHOW,” it stated, in English. “SEE SEX ACTS PERFORMED ON STAGE. THE REAL FUCKY FUCKY.” On the pillars supporting the entrance canopy there were photographic stills of the performance. In one of them Angelica, naked, kneeling, was being mounted from behind by a hairy young man, also naked, and grinning. She looked exactly as she had done in what he had thought, till now, was a hallucination in the Rummidge cinema. He turned on his heel and walked slowly away.

  What did Persse do next? He got drunk, of course, like any other disillusioned lover. He bought a half-litre of Bols in a stone bottle at a liquor store and went back to his pension and lay on the bed and drank himself into insensibility. He woke next morning under a burning electric light bulb, uncertain which was worse, the pain in his head or the taste in his mouth, though neither was a patch on the ache in his heart. He had an open return ticket to Heathrow. Without bothering to enquire into the availability of flights, he checked out of the pension and took a bus to Schiphol airport, staring vacantly out through the window at the depressing environs of Amsterdam; factories, service stations and greenhouses scattered over the flat and featureless landscape like jetsam on a beach from which the tide had gone out and never returned.

  He secured a seat on the next plane to London, and sat for an hour in the lounge next to the departure gate, not reading, not thinking, just sitting; the vacancy and anonymity of the place, with its rows of plastic moulded seats facing a huge tinted window framing blank sky, suited the zero state of his mind and heart. The flight was called, he shuffled aboard, past mechanically nodding and smiling cabin staff, the plane rose into the air like a lift, he stared through a porthole at a cloudscape as flat and featureless as the landscape below. A tray of food wrapped in polyfilm was placed before him and he consumed its contents stolidly, without any sensation of taste or aroma. The plane dumped him on the ground again, and he walked through the endless covered ways of Heathrow, so long their lines seemed to meet at the horizon.

  Only Club class seats were available on the next flight to Shannon, but he cashed another traveller’s cheque and paid the extra without demur. What did he need to husband his money for now? His life was laid waste, his occupation gone. The summer stretched before him barren as a desert. He had two hours to wait before his flight was called. He dragged his feet to St George’s chapel. His petition was still pinned to the green baize board, curling slightly at the edges: “Dear God, let me find Angelica.” He ripped the paper from its securing thumbtack, and crumpled it in his fi
st. He went inside the chapel, and sat for an hour in the back pew, staring blankly at the altar. On his way out he left another petition on the noticeboard: “Dear God, let me forget Angelica. Lead her from the life that degrades her.”

  He sat for another half an hour in another anonymous waiting area, and shuffled in line aboard another airplane, past mechanically nodding and smiling cabin crew, and took his seat. The airplane rose like a lift into the air and he stared through the porthole at another featureless prairie of cloud. Another tray of tasteless, odourless food was placed on his lap, with a complimentary half bottle of chilled claret, because he was travelling Club class. But this time there appeared to be some deviation from the monotonous routine of flight. Persse, sitting in the forward section of the plane, observed much coming and going of the cabin crew through the curtain that screened the door to the flight deck. It gradually penetrated his dulled and apathetic sensibility that the three hostesses were alarmed about something.

  Sure enough, the captain came on the intercom to inform the passengers that the plane had burst a nosewheel tyre on takeoff, and they would therefore be making an emergency landing at Shannon, where fire and rescue services were standing by. A murmur of apprehension passed through the cabins at this announcement. As if he had heard it, the captain tried to reassure the passengers, explaining that he did not doubt that he would be able to land safely, but emergency procedures were obligatory following a tyre burst—in case, he added, there should be a further burst (which was perhaps explaining too much). Shortly before landing, the passengers would be instructed to take off their shoes and adopt the recommended posture for emergency landing. The cabin crew would demonstrate, and give advice and help where needed.

  In fact the cabin crew themselves looked in need of advice and help. Seldom had Persse seen three young women who looked more frightened, and gradually their fear communicated itself to the passengers. The terror of the latter was intensified by some violent turbulence which the aircraft encountered as it began its descent. Though this had absolutely nothing to do with the burst tyre, some unmechanically-minded passengers drew the opposite conclusion and emitted small screams of fear or pious ejaculations as the aircraft bucked and staggered in the air. Some pored over the plastic cards giving safety instructions tucked into the back of every seat, with coloured diagrams of the plane’s emergency exits, and unconvincing pictures of passengers gaily sliding down the inflatable chutes, like children on a playground slide. Others, operating on the belt-and-braces principle, rooted out life-jackets from beneath their seats and practised putting them on. The air hostesses ran distractedly up and down the aisle, dissuading people from inflating their life jackets and fending off urgent orders for strong drink.