Life in the West

by Brian Aldiss

  ‘This is a quartz watch. Not a quartz digital but what we have learnt to call a quartz analogue. It caters for a public who respect accuracy, but who wish to combine living with precision with living with tradition. You notice that the numerals are Roman, just like the numerals on the grandfather clock in the hall of this house. In spite of its twentieth-century interior, this watch aspires to a Georgian exterior, reminding us each time we look at it of a more gracious, less time-devoured age.

  ‘If you think that makes this watch an example of bad taste, then you are merely being old-fashioned and a little conventional. Good and bad taste are of the past; all that is left us now is multivalent tastes.

  ‘Even the Seiko Multi-Mode LC Digital Quartz World Timer, last seen heading for Rangoon, subscribes to a twenty- four-hour clock system, with sixty minutes in each hour, passed down to us by Babylonian astronomers and refined by Sumerian mathematics some thousand years before Christ.

  ‘The façade of this Georgian house represents a triumph of order and symmetry, but order and symmetry are always under threat. We are a species in evolution and not in equipoise. Consequently, we remain uncertain about numbers. Perhaps that is why we find watches so talismanic; watches appear to have numbers if not time well under control. But numbers continue to give us trouble, not least in matters involving currency. Half the people on the globe cannot understand why sufficient money cannot be printed for everyone. Indeed, the world’s present monetary systems have been outgrown, though we struggle on with them, just as previous monetary systems — whether barter or mercantile or purely commercial — have had to be abandoned for more sophisticated infrastructures.

  ‘A Frenchman’s word for eighty is “quatre-vingts”, or “four twenties”, which betrays the spoor of an ancient numerical system, possibly Celtic, based on twenty, such as Mayan and Aztec cultures once used. Our LCD watch uses “Arabic” numerals. Like almost the whole of modern arithmetic, and the decimal system itself, Europe owes its numerals to the Arabs and Indians. The mathematical systems on which our civilization continues to function were not even possible to visualize until we had got rid of the Roman system of numeration.

  ‘The Roman letter-numeral system is now used in few places — at the start of books and films, for example, to remind us rightly that we are confronting something which owes little to originality and much to tradition.’

  Squire pushed open the door of the house to enter. He used his right hand, so that his shirt and jacket sleeve fell back to reveal an LCD watch on his wrist. It showed the time in Roman numerals, seconds, minutes, hour, and date. The dial stretched right round his wrist.

  ‘Perhaps one day Seiko will produce a watch like this for those specialists who still study the first lingua franca of Europe, Latin. Taste may please itself; it is judgement which is answerable to others.’

  The door swung wide. As the focus zoomed in on the hall, a grandfather clock standing there began to strike twelve in stately tones.

  The girls and the dog, all strangely excited, were installed in her mother’s small town house.

  She had used the pretext of going down to the shops for groceries to walk on her own. The sun shone. The pavements were hot and dusty. Tourists stood about in appropriate clothes, some of them licking ice-cream cones. She wore no coat, and felt absurd carrying her mother’s stiff shopping-basket. A boy ran up and asked her what the time was. She felt out-of-character, exposed to the world, and could scarcely answer the lad.

  Although her open-work shoes were unsuited to walking, she walked. She chose the meaner streets. No one would recognize her, although her father had been a town councillor. The desperation of her thoughts drove her on, an endless disquisition tormented her forward. Someone she passed, staring curiously into her face, reminded her that her lips were moving, in protest, explanation, or accusation.

  By the River Witham she stood, staring at its dull pent surface, thinking of all the reasons why she hated rivers, towns, and especially rivers in towns, with their strong flavours of poverty, affliction, distress, aimlessness, winter, death. Backing away, she ran from the water and her thoughts. She walked among trees, glad of a small wilderness, though scarcely conscious where she went. Her father had walked her here with her younger sister, long ago, when they were safe in their innocence. He had been amusing then, amusing and kind: boring only to her adult perceptions.

  She blundered into a tree, feeling the dusty bark under her finger-tips, calming herself a little before continuing in a less distraught fashion. So this was what freedom was like. Painful and bewildering though it was, at least she was away from Pippet Hall; she was her own self. A doubt crossed her mind — perhaps she would not care for her own company. She found even the silences of the leafy grove an anguish.

  Sun shone ahead on a small gravelled clearing, where a bust stood on a central pillar. She went and sat down on an oak bench, sliding off her shoes, lying back so that sunlight poured into her closed eyes and open mouth.

  After a while, she took note of her surroundings. She stared at the bust on its pillar. There was an inscription underneath; it read:

  In Memory of Ernest Albert Davies

  1896-1977

  Councillor

  He fought for and Saved this Pleasant Place

  *

  Erected by his Fellow Citizens

  *

  Her father had spent years fighting both town council and a supermarket chain, who wished to level North Wood and make commercial use of the site. Her mother had written to her, telling her of the ceremony, only a few days ago; she had scarcely taken it in at the time, with more urgent things to occupy her.

  Now she sat and gazed at the metal representation of her father’s face. He looked sternly beyond her. A thrush alighted on his head.

  Setting the empty shopping-basket down beside her on the gravel, she began to weep for all that was bygone.

  6

  Putting Our Socialist Friends to Rights

  Ermalpa, September 1978

  By pulling back one curtain, the room could be sparingly filled with morning light. Objects were revealed but, casting no shadows, scarcely acquired reality.

  He had slept naked. He put on a pair of blue swimming trunks and stood in the middle of the room in tadasana. He breathed slowly, concentrating on the expelled breath, letting the lungs refill automatically, letting air return like a tide, to the abdomen, the ribs, the pectorals; then a pause and a topping-up with still more air. Then a pause and the controlled release.

  He went into trikonasana, straightening and locking his legs with, first his right fingers at his right ankle and his left arm raised, and then, second, his left fingers at his left ankle and his right arm raised, head always turned up towards the lifted thumb, knees locked.

  After some while, he went into various sitting poses, concentrating on parvatasana and, to keep his abdominal muscles in trim, navasana. Finally, he went into a recuperative pose, the sarvangasana, with his feet high above his head and toes hanging down. He breathed gently, without strain, staying as he was, hanging in the air, for about fifteen minutes, before relaxing into savasana, eyes closed, brain inactive.

  When he returned to the world, he reflected as always with gratitude on the brief refuge of meditation. Nothing could reach him there, neither his own follies nor the follies of other people. The paradox was that he had banished God by discovering Him through the disciplines of yoga; what he had come upon was a timeless region at the back of his own skull: a small chamber shaped by countless generations of blood and perception. It had been there awaiting him all the time. It was as close as he would ever get to Eternity.

  Putting on yachting shoes and draping a towel round his neck, he went down through the hotel, still empty of guests, and took a slow swim up and down the outdoor pool. Only one other delegate of the conference was there, an Italian whose name Squire did not remember. They nodded to each other and wished each other good morning as Squire did six lengths and a few dives. As he
went back to his room, an aroma of coffee reached his senses.

  He felt well prepared to face Thursday and the second full day of the conference.

  The dining room of the Grand Hotel Marittimo was full of fresh flowers. Sunshine poured in the far end of the chamber, and the fatherly waiters were moving unhurriedly about their business.

  Thomas Squire settled himself at a table with d’Exiteuil, who had managed to find himself a copy of Le Monde, the two Frenzas, Cantania, and the Romanian delegate, Geo Camaion. The latter nodded silently at Squire and continued to eat sausages and tomatoes. Gianni and Maria Frenza were chattering happily to each other over plates of fried egg and bacon. Gianni wore a silk sweater; his shaggy black hair, streaked with grey, reached to its collar. His wife looked attractive; she wore a plain brown dress to match the heavy dull gold of her hair. Squire observed that d’Exiteuil frequently gazed at her from behind his newspaper.

  Squire ordered continental breakfast from a paternal waiter. He was finishing his orange juice when Geo Camaion, who had reached the toast stage, leaned forward, and remarked in French, ‘I found your speech of yesterday, Mr Squire, charmingly insular, as we expect your countrymen always to be.’

  He was a small neat man with good features and a nobly furrowed forehead. He spoke in such a friendly way that only a tapping finger on the cloth revealed his inner tension.

  ‘In what respect did you find it insular?’ Squire asked.

  ‘We don’t expect the English to understand that there are other people in the world — other poets, for instance, than Shakespeare, and other film actors than Errol Flynn.’

  The croissants were not good, tasting too oily. Squire wiped his fingers on his napkin and said,’ Surely you fellows haven’t been locked behind your frontiers for so long, Mr Camaion, that you have forgotten that Errol Flynn was Tasmanian, not English? Talking of people being locked in, I hear that your President Ceaucescu has finally allowed Peter Doma to leave his native land. Is that so? Wasn’t Doma persecuted because he complained about the police system in Romania?’

  ‘Doma! Doma was a client of propaganda hostile to our country!’

  ‘I see. Won’t there be more hostility to your country now that you have shown how you persecute an individual, and even his dog, if he happens to disagree with the way things are run? Aren’t I right in believing that Doma was even attacked because his wife was Jewish?’

  Camaion’s eyes went very round. ‘How dare you? Isn’t anti-Semitism rampant in the United Kingdom?’

  ‘It may exist, lingeringly, I suppose. It certainly isn’t official policy.’

  The Romanian wiped angrily at his face and rose, flinging his napkin at the table. ‘More insular and anti-internationalist remarks, just as one might expect!’ He marched from the room.

  Maria Frenza said — in Italian, but Squire understood the remark — ‘Fortunately the foreign gentleman had finished his meal before walking off.’

  An uncomfortable silence fell at the table. Squire poured himself another cup of coffee.

  D’Exiteuil said, with forced brightness, ‘We shan’t have a conference left if we start an international slanging match.’

  ‘He made an error,’ Squire said. ‘Two in fact. Flynn was one. And I don’t believe I mentioned Shakespeare in my speech. The Russian did that.’

  ‘Well, you know, Tom, he’s after all only an unimportant critic in a small department in the university in Bucharest, he doesn’t carry much weight. You don’t have to eat him.’

  ‘Your complaint is mine, Jacques. He’s only an unimportant critic in a small department in Bucharest University. Had he been Arthur Koestler, let’s say, I would have deferred to him. But Koestler would not have spoken as this man did.’

  ‘All the same, you mustn’t exactly blame him, you know, for the sins of his government. We’d really all be in the soup if that — ’

  ‘Jacques, old chum, pass me over the rolls, will you, and let me enjoy my breakfast. I had no intention of upsetting your apple-cart, and actually I am sorry I broke out as I did.’

  Not wishing anyone to see how upset he was by this episode, he retired to his bedroom until it was time to go down to the first session of the day at nine o’clock. He felt to blame over the Camaion affair. He knew that Camaion — a little man, as d’Exiteuil said — was personally piqued because Squire had ignored him at the opening ceremony, or had seemed to ignore him. As Squire now recollected, too late, he had encountered Camaion only a few months earlier at a seminar in Paris. He had forgotten the man’s face. His bad memory was at fault. In fact, during the Paris occasion, Camaion had made complimentary remarks in public concerning Squire’s work.

  At the recollection, a rare blush of shame crept to his cheeks. Some people, and by no means the most contemptible, feel slights very keenly.

  From what Squire had been told, in words that now came back clearly, Geo Camaion was quite a brave man. Moreover, Squire had said insulting things about Romania. No matter that they were true. Romania was one of the most authoritarian regimes in the Eastern bloc, yet Squire admired President Ceaucescu’s independent stand against Soviet domination. Even at an unimportant conference like this, for Romania to suffer any disgrace could always be seized on in some way by her enemies, of which she had many; or Camaion himself could find his position undermined, and perhaps a worse man set in his place.

  A few minutes of thought persuaded Squire that he should apologize to the Romanian as soon as possible.

  When he went downstairs, the foyer was already filling with delegates, many of them indulging in a last smoke before entering the conference hall. By covert glances, by gazes hurriedly switched elsewhere as they encountered his, Squire saw that news of the exchange at the breakfast table was spreading, had spread.

  Herman Fittich, a rolled newspaper under his arm, came up cheerfully and said, ‘I learn that you have been putting some of our socialist friends to rights this morning. I can’t say I found that tit-bit of news entirely depressing.’ He made it plain by his manner that he did not intend to refer to the photograph of Pippet Hall he had produced the previous evening.

  Squire smiled uneasily. ‘The Romanian called me insular. As one who lives on an island, I’m bound to resent the remark, just as liars hate being called liars.’

  ‘Or communists communists. I wouldn’t have said people practised living on islands, the way other people practise lying or practise communism. You can live on an island and do other things, whereas if you are a liar or a communist, it’s pretty well a full-time occupation.’

  Squire smiled again, this time with real humour. ‘Then again, if you live on an island, you can stop it just by catching a plane.’

  ‘That’s because we have yet to invent airlines which will fly you from moral turpitude.’ They both began to laugh, walking together into the conference hall. ‘Moral Turpitude — sounds like rather a nice little place, perhaps a desert island in the New Hebrides, named after Sir Harry Turpitude of His Majesty’s Navy.’

  Slowly, the delegates took their allotted places. Some paused to scrutinize themselves in the tall gilded mirrors, perhaps on the watch for falsehood. Squire sat and chatted to Rugorsky, his neighbour on his left. To his right, d’Exiteuil and Frenza talked together with their heads close, breathing cigarette smoke at each other. Frenza now wore a jacket over his silk sweater. The Ermalpan delegates settled along the left-hand side of the conference room, as neat as a row of starlings perching on a fence. Carlo Morabito was among them.

  At ten minutes past nine, d’Exiteuil rose. Smiling and gesticulating, he made a few general announcements before handing over to Frenza. Frenza removed his heavy spectacles and looked round the room, his face set as if he had something unpleasant to announce. Instead, he made a semi-private joke about the drinking habits of the hotel manager, and the delegates laughed and relaxed, twitching at ties and pens. Frenza then introduced the first speaker of the morning’s session, Professor Georgi Kchevov. Frenza said that perhap
s the most remarkable feature of this, the First International Congress of Intergraphic Criticism, was the way in which it had been possible to receive contributions from both the West and the East. He felt that this represented a genuine drawing together in the brotherhood of nations, and that here in this congress they could symbolize, among their other important business, a growing unity and understanding and unionism worldwide. He was more than pleased to introduce Professor Georgi Kchevov to address them.

  Fittich shot Squire a look across the table while this speech was in progress. It was usual for the chairman to introduce each speaker with a brief listing of their credentials, their institution, their previous contributions, their specialization. Kchevov evidently had no credentials of this kind.

  Whilst Frenza talked, Kchevov polished his gold-rimmed spectacles. He rose now, putting them rather awkwardly in place, and then picked up his papers. He smiled at everyone and began to address the assembly in resonant Russian. Squire took note of this; on more than one occasion outside the conference hall, he had overheard Kchevov talking perfectly fluent Italian. But presumably it was politic that Russian should be heard officially at the conference. It seemed to present the interpreters with some problems. A full minute after Kchevov had begun his oration, the female voice of the interpreter came over the headphones, speaking with a hesitancy which in no way matched what Kchevov was saying.

  ‘Yes, accordingly, on the present problems before us — facing us, I should say — I can bear in mind the remark of Delegate Thomas Squire that we in fact explore the familiar, so to say. That’s the hope to come up to — with a different picture than the one that we had before.

  ‘We must look ahead concisely, and without being merciful. It’s enough to know that many things will not be, where for instance people are exploited with bare bread. They stand in rows now. We can’t decide. We have decided. Only the collapse awaits. Leading countries are condemned.