The Call-Girls: A Tragi-Comedy With Prologue and Epilogue

by Arthur Koestler

  ‘And sometimes he is both,’ Wyndham giggled. ‘Even, with due respect, our dear Nikolai seems today to be inclined …’

  ‘Your dear Nikolai,’ Solovief said, unsmiling, ‘is not a Galileo, but he knows at least as much about physics as any undergraduate. And any hopeful undergrad will tell you that the motto of modern physics is, to quote the great Niels Bohr, “the madder the better”. I admit that some of the notions suggested by Tony’s psi factor make one’s hair stand on end. But they sound a little less preposterous in the light of the equally wild concepts of subatomic physics. Let me remind you, once more, that we don’t turn a hair at the notion that an electron can be in two places at once, that it can race for a while backward in time, that space has holes in it, that mass can be negative and that the materialist’s matter ultimately consists of vibrations emitted by non-existent strings. I am sometimes tempted to take at face value Eddington’s epigram that the stuff of the world is mind-stuff; or Jean’s offhand remark that the universe looks more like a thought than a machine. So why should your hair react differently when you listen to Tony and when you listen to me?’

  ‘You are a loss to poetry,’ said Blood.

  ‘Forgive my stubbornness,’ Wyndham piped up, ‘but even if you succeeded in convincing me that these puzzling phenomena are real, I can’t for the life of me see their relevance to the strategy of survival, or the message that is supposed to emanate from this conference.’

  Tony looked questioningly at Niko, who merely shrugged his massive shoulders. So Tony had to soldier on. ‘I haven’t got even the beginnings of a precise answer to your precise question,’ he said. ‘Assuming, hopefully, that we should succeed in stabilizing the phenomena and getting them under conscious control – the outcome of such a break-through would still be quite unpredictable. Instead of an answer, I can offer you only an analogy. The Greeks knew that when they rubbed a piece of elektron, that is, amber, with a silk cloth, it acquired the curious virtue of attracting flimsy objects. But they regarded this as a freak phenomenon which could not be fitted into the frame of orthodox Aristotelian physics and was therefore unworthy of attention. For the next two thousand years electricity was ignored. Only in the late eighteenth century did it gain admission into respectable scientific laboratories, and this eventually led to a revolution which transformed the world. But nobody at the time could have foreseen to what consequences it would lead. If Dr Wyndham’s question had been put to Galvani or Volta, they would have been at a loss for an answer, and would probably have said that they were just playing games with frogs’ legs and Leyden jars. Not in their wildest dreams could it have occurred to them that the freak phenomenon they were investigating would turn out to be the ultimate constituents of matter, and the source of all power and light…’

  ‘So you are dreaming, young man, that this psi factor will change the world and reveal the secret of the universe?’ Halder’s hair seemed to bristle with static electricity.

  ‘Dreams,’ Tony said coyly, ‘are private property. However,’ he continued, ‘one cannot a priori rule out the possibility that we live submerged in an ocean of psi forces – a sort of psycho-magnetic field – of which we are unaware, as we are unaware of electric fields. When we have come to grips with it, this might lead to a new Copernican revolution. It may not change the world, but it may change our outlook on the world. I thought you agreed that such a change was our most urgent need.’

  ‘Do you mean,’ asked John D. John, ‘that it might lead to the up-opening of new systems of communication channels? From the point of view of information theory this may be a welcome project so long as it is not counterproductive.’

  ‘Amen,’ said Tony, ‘If you wish to put it that way.’

  ‘I would rather put it this way,’ said Solovief. ‘Our main trouble is that we no longer have a coherent world-view – neither the theologian nor the physicist. God is dead, but materialism is also dead, since matter has become a meaningless word. Causality, determinism, the clockwork universe of Newton, have been buried without ceremony. Tony’s friends may be crazy, and that is why they appeal to me. Perhaps that alpha-wave machine will turn out to be the new Leyden jar.’

  ‘So do you suggest,’ Harriet said drily, ‘that we ask Congress for a research allocation to discover whether that saint, whose name I cannot remember, did indeed levitate over the head of the Spanish Ambassador?’

  In view of her known devotion to Niko, Harriet’s sarcasm was the more effective – and wounding; it expressed the general dismay of the assembly at the revelation of Niko’s unexpected cranky side.

  ‘That would not be a bad idea,’ Niko said, calmly. ‘Particularly since, as I said, the military seem to have already cottoned on to the idea. Now I think it is time for cocktails.’

  The meeting broke up in general embarrassment, as if they had been shown a very blue film.

  4

  Bruno Kaletski had been recalled to Washington.

  He had been absent from Tony’s lecture, and had spent most of the afternoon in the glass telephone cage of the Kongresshaus, waiting for calls which never got through, or if they did, were cut off instantly by exchange Fräuleins on the verge of nervous breakdowns. He did, however, put in a hurried appearance at the cocktail party to say his farewells before Gustav drove him down to the valley, where he was to take the night train to the nearest airport. He managed to shake hands with everybody, two people at a time, not omitting the staff, his arms crossed as if dancing a quadrille, yet without dropping the bulky briefcase under his elbow. Then he was gone – a small, bustling figure, touching in his naive self-importance, exasperating and disarming at the same time.

  All other American participants had received telegrams from their Consulate advising them not to prolong unduly their sojourn abroad in view of the international situation, and of possible dislocations in transport. Through the plate-glass windows the village looked dark and deserted; now that the tourists were gone, the natives were economizing on electricity. The Kongresshaus stood out under the stars, a blazing, lonely lighthouse.

  The call-girls milled around a little sheepishly in the cocktail room, waiting for the gloom to lift with the second or third martini. A few – mainly staff – were listening to the news on the radio, but most of them did not bother. The Soloviefs stood by themselves in a corner. They were, for once, left alone, as nobody was anxious to continue the discussion about Tony’s hare-brained Order, or Niko’s defection and flight into the occult darkness.

  ‘Do you think this time it’s really serious?’ asked Claire.

  Solovief shrugged expressively.

  ‘I put the same silly question to Bruno before he left. Do you know what his answer was? He grabbed my arm just above the elbow – he always does that; gripped hard, looked deep into my eyes, and said: “It all depends – I can say no more.” ’ Solovief took a fresh glass of martini from the tray that Hansie offered, without emptying the previous one.

  ‘Have I ever asked you,’ asked Claire, ‘whether you take Bruno seriously?’

  Niko made a grimace. ‘It all depends,’ he said. ‘They have in these parts a national hero – der kleine Moritz, a sort of counterpart to Alice, but a more cynical little brat. And they have a saying: history is made just as der kleine Moritz imagines it.’

  ‘Then what is serious?’

  ‘Don’t you know? A toothache is serious. When it is really bad you forget to worry about the future of mankind. But it does not work the other way round.’

  ‘Then I am all for toothaches. Have you got one?’

  There were times when he had to be treated like a child, and they both played their roles as best they could.

  By dinner-time spirits had risen again. Gustav had arranged with the proprietor of the Hotel Post, now without a single customer, for a folkloristic cabaret show to be put on specially for the call-girls. It was all very jolly; the fire-brigade did their best with yodelling and mutual arse-slapping; at one stage von Halder joined in and earned
enthusiastic applause. His stomping and sweating had an almost professional touch; he was taking it really seriously.

  Friday

  The last morning session of the Symposium was devoted to Dr Cesare Valenti’s presentation. It was expected to provide some dramatic entertainment, and it did.

  He had the self-confidence characteristic of famous surgeons, and he was also an accomplished showman. His manner was both self-assured and reassuring to patients; and his cheerfully encouraging smile made everyone feel like a patient.

  Valenti started by paying a handsome compliment to Tony, whose command of such recondite matters as alpha rhythms and intention waves had seemed to him, Valenti, most remarkable. He was in full sympathy with Tony’s line of research which, if he understood rightly, aimed at the attainment of levels of consciousness or states of mind far superior to the humdrum routines of everyday existence. His own work as a neuro-surgeon had a more modest aim: to restore patients suffering from some disorder of mind or brain to just that normal, humdrum routine. He wished to confess, however, from the start, his strong suspicion that a certain type of mental disorder was endemic in the human species; and that if some form of mass-therapy was not discovered fairly soon, the said species would come to an end. But he wished to demonstrate first some recent advances in methods of individual therapy, ‘and to discuss the problem of mankind at large at the end of my chatter’. (Valenti’s English was as carefully polished as were his finger-nails, but it retained some minute rugosities, such as the failure to distinguish between ‘talk’, ‘chat’ and ‘chatter’.)

  ‘To begin with, I shall show you a film of a very strange bull-fight, although some of you may have seen it already. It was made by my eminent colleague Dr José Delgado of Yale University in the middle 1960s. The animal you will see is a so-called “brave bull”, a race specially bred for its ferociousness. Unlike a tame bull, which reacts indifferently to human beings, a brave bull will launch a deadly attack at first sight of a person. As you will presently see…’

  Valenti made a graceful sign to the ubiquitous Gustav, who had been waiting at the back of the room. He deftly let down the projection screen, activated the automatic window-blinds and set the projector whirring. An empty bullring appeared, basking in the sun, with no spectators or fighters in view. Then a lonely man entered the ring, dressed in jeans and a polo-neck sweater. Instead of a weapon, he carried a small instrument which looked like a portable radio set with a rod antenna. Next, a very nasty-looking bull was let into the arena. No sooner had it caught sight of the Professor than it started trotting towards him, then broke into its characteristic express-train charge. When the bull was but a few yards away and it seemed that the Professor could only be saved by a miracle, the miracle materialized. The camera showed in close-up the Professor’s fingers nimbly turning a switch, on his radio. Its horns now only a few inches from the Professor’s abdomen, the bull came to an abrupt halt, as if he had hit an invisible wall, then slowly turned away, as if thoroughly bored. The Professor activated another switch and the bull went ‘moo’. This action was repeated ten times and each time it went ‘moo’. The bull had become as meek as a lamb.

  Valenti signalled to Gustav, the window-blinds went up as if by another act of magic, the mountain panorama returned to its rightful place, and Valenti continued his lecture:

  ‘You have seen one of the many applications of the technique known as electrical stimulation of the brain, or ESB for short. The bull has several electrodes – thin platinum needles – permanently implanted at various depths in specific areas of its brain. The electrodes are connected to a micro-miniaturized radio transmitter/receiver – a “stimoceiver” – fixed with dental cement to the animal’s skull. This apparatus enables the experimenter to receive information about activities in the animal’s brain, but also to stimulate activity in any chosen area by minute electric impulses controlled by radio. In the little drama that you have just seen, Professor Delgado brought the bull to a sudden stop, then made it turn to one side, by activating electrodes in the motor cortex on the roof of the brain, and at the same time stimulating those centres deep down in the mid-brain which inhibit aggressive emotions. He was able to control not only the bull’s movements, but also to change abruptly its mood from violence to docility…’

  Over the last decade, Valenti continued, electrical stimulation of the brain by radio-controlled, implanted electrodes, had been applied to rats, cats, monkeys, dolphins, crickets and bulls. It was found possible by this method to control the animal’s movements and postures; to evoke rage, fear and docility; amorous and maternal comportment or its opposite. Gustav was called into action once more as Valenti demonstrated in a series of brief scenes what the sagacious electrodes could do. Playful cats were suddenly turned into savage tigers by stimulating their lateral hypothalamus, and just as suddenly became purring pets again. A monkey was shown gobbling a banana with evident relish. When it was half-way through it, the experimenter was seen pressing a button. The monkey instantly stopped chewing, took the banana out of its mouth and threw it away. Valenti commented: ‘This time the impulse acted on the caudate nucleus’, and he pointed with his stick at an anatomical chart on the wall, where that small nucleus appeared like an orange pip deeply embedded in the pulp. Then a cat was shown lapping milk and suddenly stopping, its tongue hanging out, all motion frozen in the position in which the animal had been caught by the current. Monkeys were shown who, though previously indifferent to female advances, were turned into sex-maniacs of athletic prowess. Lively chimpanzees were made to fall asleep within thirty seconds through stimulation of the septal area. Female rhesus monkeys, who spend most of their time affectionately nursing and grooming their babies, were made to lose all interest in them and reject their pitiful approaches, so that they had to take refuge with some other mother; inhibition of the maternal instinct lasted for about ten minutes after each mid-brain stimulation.

  The last film was a hilarious sequence preceded by the title THE TAMING OF A DICTATOR. The dictator in question was an ill-tempered creature called Nero, undisputed boss of a colony of about a dozen monkeys living in a large cage. Half of the cage was Nero’s personal territory which no lesser mortal was allowed to enter – the others had to live crowded together in the farthest corner of the cage. The boss also enjoyed the customary privileges of precedence in matters of sex and food. His authority was maintained by making threatening gestures and sounds at any sign of insubordination; even glaring at the culprit was often sufficient to terrorize him, while his subjects dared only to steal furtive glances at the boss.

  Came the day when Nero was taken out of the cage, given an anaesthetic, and electrodes were implanted. When he woke up, all he knew was that a little box had grown out of his skull like a bump which could not be removed, and to which he soon became accustomed; the electrodes in the brain do not make their presence directly felt. But within a single hour from the start of their activation Nero was forced to abdicate his rule. Radio-stimulation of the caudate nucleus was applied for five seconds per minute. With each stimulation Nero’s facial expression became more peaceful and benign, the threatening gestures and glances vanished, the growls ceased – and his subjects were quick to read the signs. Within that hour they lost their fear of the boss, invaded his territory and crowded him without any sign of respect.

  It seemed too good to be true. It was. ‘This, my friends, is only the first act of the drama,’ Valenti commented. ‘Now watch Act Two.’

  It was short and sad. The radio-signals to Nero’s caudate nucleus were stopped. Within ten minutes he was the boss again. As minute after minute passed and the electrodes remained inactive, Nero’s ferocious glares, the baring of teeth and pawing of the floor reappeared; as a result, the citizens of the short-lived democracy resumed their cringing and retreated to their safe corner.

  ‘But now,’ Valenti announced, ‘watch for Act Three. It is the best of all.’

  Though the apparent transformation of Nero’
s character had been gradual, the most dramatic changes in his behaviour had occurred during the critical five-second periods of actual stimulation, at intervals of a minute. While the electro-stimulation lasted, he looked like a Yogi in samadhi. After Nero’s return to power, the experimenter played a new trick on him. He installed, in a conspicuous position inside the cage, a lever. When the lever was pressed down, it automatically triggered off a five-second activation of the electrodes in Nero’s brain, and made him temporarily docile again. One clever monkey – a female called Dolores – soon discovered that pressing the lever had this wonderful effect on the boss. Whenever Nero threatened her, she pressed the lever, instantly inhibiting his aggressive demeanour. She even got into the habit of staring straight into Nero’s eyes – which before the advent of the lever had been considered as lèse majesté. Nero remained Boss, but he was no longer the absolute ruler, for Dolores learnt not only to block his attacks directed against herself but also against others, and to press the lever whenever Nero became ill-tempered.

  ‘… And so,’ Valenti concluded, ‘that little colony of monkeys lived happily ever after. And here ends my little parable, to use Dr Caspari’s expression. But it is time now to proceed from animals to humans. In a few minutes I shall have the pleasure of giving you a live experimental demonstration of radio-controlled behaviour in a human being. But first I must go through the, routine of the usual reassurances – like the air hostess putting the safety-belt on – though in this illustrious company there is hardly any need for it…’

  Valenti proceeded to explain, in a slightly bored voice, that the implanting of electrodes into human brains was of course only done for therapeutic purposes; the new scientific insights gained by applying the method were a welcome bonus, nothing more. Thousands of patients all over the world were going about their business with twenty to forty electrodes permanently anchored in their brains. They were implanted under local anaesthesia and could remain in place for years, without causing any discomfort. The brain is insensitive to touch, it can be cut, frozen, cauterized, without the patient being aware of it; it is so well protected inside the skull that it needs no sensory- or pain-receptors. Neurosurgeons have for a long time been in the habit of operating on conscious patients who keep chattering with the doctor and feel no pain while the affected parts of their brain are excised. But the earlier methods of lobotomy, leucotomy or electro-shock therapy were sheer butchery compared with the use of the delicate electrode needles. They were connected to sockets cemented to the patient’s skull, which could be hidden by a bandage, or a wig, or some elaborate coiffure. The disorders thus treated included epilepsy, intractable pain, insomnia, severe anxiety and depression, uncontrollable violence and some forms of schizophrenia. Some cases were treated in outpatients’ departments where they received electric brain stimulation at regular intervals; others carried in their pockets portable stimulators which enabled them to activate the electrodes when they felt an attack of pain, or of violent rage coming on. Needles implanted in the so-called pleasure centres of the hypothalamus gave patients a feeling of euphoria or of erotic arousal which sometimes ended in the psychic equivalent of an orgasm.