The Experimentalist

by Nick Salaman

  Beyond her, the elevators came and went with a deprecating noise like a butler’s cough as the doors opened. When you stepped inside TOJI’s head office, she observed, you knew you had arrived but you regretted that you had not checked your face for a smudge from breakfast, or a splatter from lunch. It made you regret the slightly worn suit you had put on that morning when the light was low, or the skirt that was too long and crumpled, because you had come to a place where everything was perfect.

  ‘Can I help you?’ said Jeannine.

  Marie checked her mouth for a crumb, and left.

  A week later, she and Margot went through similar emotions, though modified by a sense of entitlement since they were going to see the Big Cheese, as they entered the TOJI offices at the appointed hour. Margot had given her a biscuit she said she had made to give her confidence. Marie ate it with her coffee in the café before they set out. It began to make her feel rather odd, though not unpleasantly. In fact, she felt full of confidence walking up to Reception where Jeannine presided.

  ‘Hello,’ said Marie. ‘We’ve come to…’

  Jeannine held up her hand. It was a polite gesture but firm. Her telephone was ringing. She picked it up. ‘Yes, Reception?’ She held her hand up throughout her telephone conversation as though Marie were an approaching car which should not pass.

  ‘Certainly, Mr Corvino. I understand. See to it myself. Bye now. Yes?’

  This last was addressed to Marie.

  ‘We have come to see Mr Middleburg.’

  ‘You have an appointment?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of course.’

  It was inconceivable to enter such a place without one.

  ‘Forgive me one moment. Mercury.’

  A motorbike messenger with the name on his bomber jacket had come through the door.

  ‘You are late, Mercury. Take this package, please, to Tuggards. Mr Drench is waiting for it now. Yes?’ She was addressing Marie once more.

  ‘Lavell and Garraway. We have an appointment with Mr Middleburg,’ Marie told her again.

  ‘Ah yes. One moment.’ She lifted her hand once more as if stopping an approaching express, and lifted another telephone. ‘Tamara? Ah, good. I have a Miss Lavell and Miss…?

  ‘Garraway.’

  ‘Miss Caraway. Yes? Very good. I’ll send them up.’

  She replaced the receiver and looked at Marie and Margot as if they were the luckiest people in the world. ‘Mr Middleburg will see you now. Tenth floor, straight ahead.’

  ‘Garraway,’ said Margot.

  As they left the lift, which ushered them in and ushered them out with the same deprecating cough, they were met with an apparition in the shortest skirt imaginable and legs that kept soaring higher than human ever climbed before. In fact, as Margot said afterwards, if you ever had the temerity to reach beyond the verges of the skirt, you would have to ensure a good supply of oxygen both for the climb and the descent. The apparition spoke.

  ‘Hello, I’m Tamara,’ she said, exuding Chanel. ‘Very lovely to see you. This way, please.’ She wafted them down a long, dark corridor, stopped at a heavy door with no name on it, and knocked.

  ‘Come.’

  Tamara opened the door and a great surge, a blast, of light from the huge window powered in upon them. They could not see. Only the light spoke. After a while, their eyes grew a little accustomed to the dazzle and they managed to discern their host. Maybe it was a trick of the light but Middleburg seemed to have grown, swelled, since Marie had last seen him. He sat, shining and prodigious, behind his vast desk which glimmered like a sea, a shining ocean. His head, bent low over something he was examining, seemed like a bathysphere about to plunge to unimaginable depths.

  He looked up and smiled. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘My favourite person. Marie, how long has it been? And who is this?’

  ‘An old friend,’ she said. ‘Margot Garraway.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Middleburg, not with a great deal of pleasure. ‘I remember. Now, let me recall. Why are you here?’

  ‘You asked me to come,’ said Marie.

  ‘Indeed. Your poor father’s bequest to you must be activated on the occasion of your next birthday,’ Middleburg continued. ‘There will be a presentation to you. His share, of course, is less now than it was because of the expansion and capital enlargement of the business. It all started after the war with a company called Messinger which was a conduit, if you like, for one or two of the German scientists and doctors who had been working in Germany on the physiological, psychological and physical problems of aviation: altitude tolerance, cold endurance, the speed of sound, wound control, the limits of stress and so on. It fitted in very well with the research requirement of the Government which is why we came over here, but new opportunities arose, the longer we stayed. As a result of our focussed researches and experiments, quite different products were also suggested. Toothpastes, cosmetics, skincare, detergents, polishes, health products… And soon we found we needed a business distinct from the more serious activities of Messinger’s to deal with the consumer side of things. That is where The Other Judas, Inc, or TOJI, came in.

  ‘It started as a charitable non-profit organisation, which made us famous, but it was unsustainable. We had to become more commercial and we now range from household products and beauty care – our Bonjour Sagesse range sells all around the world – to automotive products, babycare, hotels and travel. Our search is on for the next best thing to eternal youth. These are the companies you are getting into.’

  ‘I am not so much concerned with my share of anything as with the fate of my father and the interest you seem to have taken in my life.’

  ‘Not interest so much as care. We have tried to take care of you because your father could not. After all, I am a second cousin, somewhat removed, but I am still your family. I am all the family you have.’

  There seemed no point in pursuing the discussion at this particular point. Middleburg would only enjoy her discomfiture. She found herself holding her hand up to shade her eyes, so intense was the light she was looking into. She recalled a line of some poet, could it be Eliot, about looking into the heart of light. She thought, if only that light could be shed on one’s heart! There was Joe and there was David. She rather doubted that Middleburg had a heart; rather, a huge, pulsating bank account.

  ‘Do you think you could draw the blind a little?’ she asked the new, inflated Middleburg.

  ‘Of course.’ He did not move. Nor did she. There was a knock at the door. ‘Come.’

  The lovely Tamara entered with a teapot and three cups, also a plate piled with chocolate Olivers.

  ‘They come from Fortnums,’ said Middleburg, noting their glances. ‘As does the tea.’

  ‘And Tamara as well?’ asked Margot.

  ‘Tamara comes from San Diego.’

  Tamara busied herself pouring the tea and offering the Olivers, which Margot had no difficulty refusing although Marie was feeling slightly sick, which made her angry.

  ‘Where is my father now?’ asked Marie, trying to catch him out.

  ‘Thank you, Tamara,’ said Middleburg, clearly not wanting to air such matters in front of the girl.

  ‘Could she…?’ Could she draw the blind a little, Marie was going to say, but Tamara was halfway across the three-mile carpet. The apparition let herself out.

  ‘We understand that your father died some time ago in prison, just as his friend, the jailbird Felipe, is now also dead. The privations they suffered finally killed them.’

  The news of the certainty of her father’s death came as no surprise to Marie but she would not let it show at this stage. It was difficult anyway to feel shock over someone she had never met, who had merely introduced his person to her mother whom she had not met either. She decided to ask Middleburg another question that had perplexed her.

  ‘Why did you want to marry me?’

  Margot looked at her curiously. Marie had told her much of her story, but not this.

 
; ‘I had grown fond of you,’ he said. ‘You are an attractive young woman. After all I had done for you, I hoped that your affection might grow too, but it was not to be. You wanted to be free. At last you were well enough to go. I had to respect that. Though there are some pressing reasons why you might wish to review your decision. These I will divulge in due course.’

  Marie clenched her fingers slightly and leant forwards in her chair. Why did he have to talk like the pedantic schoolmaster in The Browning Version?

  ‘The papers I have been given suggest that someone systematically set out to rob my father, to lead him astray, to tempt him with drugs and finally to get him arrested and put away, so that they could control the money and the company,’ said Marie.

  ‘The papers you have been given were all forgeries.’

  ‘What would be the point of such a fabrication?’ asked Margot. ‘Who would have done such a thing? To what end?’

  ‘To make trouble. To cause confusion. To start a lawsuit. To divert your attention. To tell a good story. To make money. To blackmail. People are always forging papers. That’s why forgers are so busy. Very popular in prison, I am told, is a forger.’

  ‘But these were very specific papers, some of them very old, and all pointing to the fact that someone – possibly you yourself – had done my father out of his fortune, by hoodwinking him, by playing on his loneliness and scholarship, by surrounding him with evil people and feeding him the worst kind of drugs.’

  ‘Well, well, well,’ chuckled Middleburg, ‘you’ve certainly been playing paranoia poker. Do you really think I, we, would go to those lengths to get a measly million or two from such an unreliable little bookworm as your father? He begged us to look after him. He begged us to look after you. He was in a bad way. That is why you are here, now, sitting in that chair, because I do not want to do you harm. I want you to take what is yours: a share in the company I have created. It is a bigger company now because we have an affiliation with an outfit in which the Government has an interest, a firm started here by German scientists like me who, at the war’s end, were deemed by the army to be doing work of national importance. Because of government interest, it is vital that our shareholders and vice-presidents are well documented and everything is done by the book.’

  ‘I’ve heard of companies like that,’ said Margot. ‘Wernher von Braun: what goes up must come down. When the US Army was briefed to gather these useful enemies in, it was called Operation Paperclip. That paperclip stuck in my mind.’ You acquired a lot of information at Merrymaids if you kept your brain open.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Middleburg, springing out of his chair like a pinball and pinging heavily about the room, almost sitting in this chair and now that, flirting with them before tearing himself away and round the room again. ‘Come round in a week or two, and we’ll drive you to Château Cauchemar and I’ll give you the special guest tour of the castle. We do have coach tours that come by arrangement so we have a good presentation. Our French Bluebeard tour is remarkably popular, but our bestseller is the California Nightmare, a tour based on the horrors that went on in the beatnik days and hippie nights of the fifties and of course even today – we mustn’t forget Mr Manson and his young ladies who cast a shadow.’

  ‘Too close for comfort,’ said Margot.

  ‘You insist your daddy was not guilty,’ Middleburg continued, still fixing Marie in his gaze, ‘but please keep an open mind. Come along over and I’ll give you something to think about. Like, who was your father, this wronged hero of yours? Did he ever exist? Is he perhaps not another myth, like Bluebeard and Red Riding Hood; one of those things you pick up on the way through childhood, but have to let go along with fairies and Father Christmas as you grow to maturity. Yes, we have to leave the fairy stories behind and turn to the grown-up ones, as we ourselves grow up and grapple with the true nature of life. We are all engaged in an experiment, are we not? That is, this thing called existence. Here it is, spread out for us as on a table. Time is our Bunsen burner, experience and the world are our volatile ingredients and our bodies are the test tubes which we must take care of, for they are easily cracked. What is real and what is hearsay? What are we? Who are we? How much life can we take? What is the purpose of the experiment and will we ever find it out?’

  He was more worked up than Marie had ever seen him. His face was flushed, his eyes blazed. The effect was serious and disturbing.

  ‘I have evidence of my father,’ said Marie. ‘It proves he was real. I suspect you know very well who robbed him of his fortune, and used the money to start their own business.’

  ‘You think you have evidence, but have you empirical proof? All you have is rumour, what people have written, and for what end? You follow a path of likelihood when the truth is that life can follow a path of unlikelihood, a path – how did he put it in the “The Road Not Taken”? – a road unfrequented, which is just as valid as the one you think you know, perhaps more so. We are all part of God’s experiment, if you can call him God, and where it will end God knows. Don’t assume … anything.’

  Middleburg had finally arrived back at his own chair behind the desk. He vibrated for a moment and sank back between its arms like a ball finding home on a pinball machine.

  ‘And now,’ he said, ‘it’s back to work. The experiment, if we can call it that, goes on for all of us and I must say goodbye. Duty calls, as I am sure it does for you. I look forward to seeing you at Château Cauchemar. Ah, Tamara…’

  The secretary entered as if summoned by magic – but perhaps he had pressed a button – and Marie and Margot got up from their chairs.

  ‘Goodbye,’ they said, as they left. ‘Thank you for the tea.’ Merrymaids set great store by politeness.

  Tamara took them down the passage again with its carpets thick as a polar bear’s pelt, pressed for the lift and, when the doors parted, smiled and invited them to have a nice day, which they duly echoed.

  ‘Well…’ they exclaimed simultaneously, and laughed like schoolchildren as the doors closed.

  ‘Did you know your father?’ Marie asked, finally.

  ‘My father? Of course,’ said Margot.

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘He was around. Went off to work. Read stories at bedtime. Bought me a bike. Took us on holidays, that sort of thing. Dropped me off at parties. Sometimes even collected us.’

  ‘Sometimes collected you?’

  ‘I had a very ordinary childhood. Too ordinary, I used to think.’

  ‘Lucky you.’

  ***

  Next afternoon, she took tea in the Cake N Coffee on Olive Street with Joe and Margot. She had invited David to turn up as well, but he was late. She chatted to the other two while they waited and turned over recent events in her mind. Was she in love with David again or was she not? The memory of him letting her down still troubled her. Eventually he arrived, untroubled by his unpunctuality and even giving, very slightly, the impression – which some people can do – that he was doing them a favour by coming.

  At any rate, she wasn’t sleeping with him again just yet. They sat in the café, drinking Jackson’s English Afternoon Blend, served very weak the way the Americans like it, but out of a china teapot: the English way.

  First, one subject had to be taken out and shaken.

  ‘Never give me a hash biscuit without telling me again,’ she told Margot.

  ‘Gee, I thought you knew. Like, it would calm you down. Sorree.’

  ‘Never mind it now. I wondered why Middleburg seemed so elusive. He looked strange, puffed up and amorphous like the Old Man of the Sea. Didn’t you think?’

  ‘That was the biscuit.’

  ‘Oh. Well. Thanks a lot. First question, then: do I – or do we – go to Château Cauchemar to see whatever it is he has up his sleeve? He said he had evidence that made a compelling case against my father.’

  ‘I think we should see what he’s got,’ said Joe. ‘Although, with all his resources, he can turn evidence on its head. B
ut let’s see it anyway.’

  ‘If I’m going to be part of this,’ said David, ‘wouldn’t it be better if I introduced myself as soon as possible? Why don’t I go up with Marie to the castle? Or would that confuse him?’

  ‘I hope so. He’s too damn unconfused at the moment. I think you should go with one of the boys,’ Margot told Marie.

  ‘Not me, I’m afraid,’ said Joe. ‘Next week’s busy. Wine business again. Wine & Spirits Show in San Diego.’

  ‘Thank you, anyway,’ said Marie. ‘You are all very kind.’

  ‘Over to you, David?’ asked Margot. ‘Are you free?’

  ‘I’ll make myself free.’

  Marie could see he was grumpy. She had been trying to make things up to Joe because she felt sorry for him now David was around. The contrariness of life made it certain that the less attention she paid David, the keener her old lover became. How little he knew her! And how easy it was to let misunderstanding grow from a thicket into a hedge and then an impenetrable wall ten foot high. How fragile life is, she thought, how precarious and alarming! Fate plays with people just as Middleburg plays with me: as if we are taking part in someone else’s game, whose rules are unclear and whose outcome is dark, and we deal with the reality of uncertainty whichever choice we make. She felt sorry for David because he probably had thoughts like that too. She felt sorry for all of them, but not for Middleburg. He didn’t have thoughts like that. He was above all that sort of thing, was Felix Middleburg, fishing away in the dark river.