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

For some reason this caused a protracted outburst of hilarity, in which Harriet and Halder also participated. Blood looked at the assembly with baleful eyes. ‘Schoolboys will be schoolboys,’ he remarked darkly.

  Harriet resumed her argument with an attack on another fashionable theory which Halder had played up: that the origin of war could be found in the biological urge displayed by some animals to defend at all costs their own stretch of land or water. It was, she contended, a thoroughly misleading analogy. The wars of men, with rare exceptions, were not fought for the individual ownership of bits of space. The man who goes to war actually abandons his home and family which he is supposed to defend, and does his shooting far away from them; and what makes him do it is not the biological urge to defend his personal acreage of farmland or meadows, but – to say it once more – his devotion to symbols derived from tribal lore, divine commandments and sacred causes. Wars were fought not for territory, but for words.

  ‘Ach so. You mentioned flags. Now it is words.’

  ‘Flags are optical slogans. Anthems are musical slogans. But man’s deadliest weapon is language. He is as susceptible to being hypnotized by slogans and symbols as he is to infectious diseases. And when there is an epidemic, the group mind takes over. It obeys its own rules, which are different from the rules of conduct of individuals. When a person identifies himself with a group, his critical faculties are diminished and his passions enhanced by a kind of emotive resonance. The individual is not a killer; the group is; and by identifying with it, the individual becomes one. This is the infernal dialectic reflected in man’s history. The egotism of the group feeds on the altruism of its members; the savagery of the group feeds on the devotion of its members. The worst of madmen is a saint run mad, as one of our poets said…’

  ‘Blake?’ ventured Tony, who had sat as still as a little mouse.

  ‘Pope,’ grunted Blood. ‘He had his moments.’

  ‘To conclude, Mr Chairman,’ said Harriet. ‘It seems to me that the disasters of our history are mainly due to our irresistible urge to become identified with a group, nation, Church or what have you, and to espouse its beliefs uncritically and enthusiastically. If Dr Valenti and his colleagues could come up with some synthetic enzyme which would make man immune against suggestibility by slogans, the demagogues would go out of business, and half the battle for survival would be won. Valenti and his friends have given us drugs for brain-washing, to induce hallucinations and psychotic states at will. Now they should concentrate on the opposite task and find a paregoric which makes sailors immune against the siren’s song and the masses against the barking of politicians. When they have found it, let them put it into the tap-water, like the chlorine which protects us against typhoid and whatnot. I am serious. If the big brass want our advice, this is what I would tell them. Everything else is rot.’

  There were beads of sweat on Harriet’s powdered brow and upper lip. She had worked herself into a kind of controlled fury which had stopped even Halder’s ironic interruptions. Claire, sitting behind her with the other auditors, leaned forward and patted Harriet’s bare and ample shoulder.

  After a few seconds’ silence, Dr Valenti lifted a well-manicured hand, but Bruno got in first. He had missed his chance in the morning session to demolish Halder, but Harriet as a target would do just as well. He was not sure, he informed Mr Chairman, whether Dr Epsom had spoken in earnest, or, to put it in a different way, whether she had intended her proposal to be taken into serious consideration …

  ‘You bet I did,’ snapped Harriet.

  In that case, continued Bruno, he would venture to remind his illustrious colleagues of his own modest contribution to the opening discussion, its traces still visible on the blackboard, which nobody had bothered to erase. The vertical dividing line he had chalked on the board, to symbolize the assembly’s split mind, was still there, and also the words CONTROLLED SCHIZOPHRENIA – NO OFFENCE; and SUB SP. AET. – TOMORROW!? Bruno stabbed at each of them with a piece of chalk. He was sorry, nay distressed, to have to remind the conference of his warning against the dangers of falling into one of two opposite errors: (a) complacent aloofness, versus (b) panic and hysteria. Dr Epsom’s appeal to the pharmacological industry to solve the problems of mankind appeared to him as an example of (b) – but while his lips smoothly uttered this damning phrase, his right hand pointed at the words ‘NO OFFENCE’. Taking into account both the predicament of mankind in general which the day’s two speakers had described in such eloquent, albeit biased, terms – his hand pointed again – and in particular the conflicts currently raging in the Near, Middle and Far East, with their imminent threat of escalation – regarding which he had received some confidential information just an hour ago; taking into consideration both the long-term problems and the acute crises, it seemed to him more important than ever to keep a cool head and arrive at judgments and recommendations – if recommendations there were to be – which struck a measured balance between detached reasoning and vigorous action. Such action, however, must assign first priority to measures designed to enhance mutual understanding between governments and nations by means of increasing the information-flow through the national and international agencies instituted for that purpose…

  ‘… Information-flow regulated by appropriate feedback mechanisms,’ John D. John interjected earnestly.

  ‘Quite right. We are, however, fortunate enough to dispose of some feedback mechanisms in our electoral system, the various advisory bodies assisting government, and international bodies such as the Security Council and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, commonly referred to as UNESCO…’

  Solovief rapped the table. ‘Excuse me, Bruno, but you have said all this during our first discussion, and you will have the opportunity on Friday…’

  Kaletski froze, the chalk still in his raised hand. He looked pathetic and contrite – the prodigy stopped in the act of showing off. ‘Sorry, Niko,’ he said quite humbly, ‘one does get so carried away…’ They all had a feeling of déjà vu.

  Solovief was unmoved. ‘I think Dr Valenti had something to say.’

  Valenti rose in a single, smooth movement. ‘All I would like to say at this stage is that I agree with the main points of Dr Epsom’s diagnosis. I hope you will allow me to entertain you on Friday with a little experiment that seems to speak in favour of it.’ He sat down as gracefully as he had got up.

  Blood gave a kind of grunt. ‘Don’t see why you have to be so bloody enigmatic’

  Valenti smiled at him agreeably, but said nothing.

  It was Wyndham’s turn to raise a pudgy hand. He declared himself to be in agreement with much of what Harriet had said. He too believed that aggressivity was a stress-reaction, not a primary instinct. He too agreed with the necessity of making a distinction between personal behaviour, which under normal conditions was by and large peaceful, and group-behaviour, which was dominated by emotions and tended to affirm, in aggressive ways, the group’s customs, traditions, language and beliefs, rejecting with passionate scorn the customs and beliefs of all others. This paradox was perhaps the main reason why the human race had made such a mess of its history. But where was one to look for the roots of the paradox? Dr Epsom had singled out as a primary cause man’s suggestibility – his readiness to accept the traditions and beliefs of the group and become hypnotized by them. At this point he, Wyndham, had a further hypothesis to offer. The human infant had to endure a longer period of helplessness and dependence than the young of any other species. One might speculate that this early experience of total dependence was at least partly responsible for the tendency of our species to submit to authority, whether it was wielded by individuals or groups, and its suggestibility by doctrines and symbols… ‘Brainwashing starts in the cradle,’ Wyndham concluded with an apologetic giggle.

  Unexpectedly, Burch concurred. It was, he said, a great satisfaction for him that ‘the eminent pediatrician’, as he called Wyndham, realized the importance of early condi
tioning – and thus, by implication, subscribed to the doctrine of social engineering – in other words, the prediction and control of human behaviour by positive and negative reinforcements. But he was interrupted by von Halder, suddenly shouting in Latin: ‘Quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? Who will control your controllers and engineer your engineers?’

  Burch, John D. John junior and Harriet all talked heatedly at the same time. Miss Carey shook her grey bun in despair and fiddled with the tape-recorder’s dials. Solovief rapped the table with his lighter. His deep voice took over:

  ‘Professor Burch seems to have misunderstood the two previous speakers. Harriet and Wyndham did not wish to improve early conditioning, but to abolish it. Put it this way: the first suggestion the hypnotizer imposes on the subject is that he should be open to the hypnotizer’s suggestions. The subject is being conditioned to become susceptible to conditioning. The helpless baby is put in the same position. It is turned into a willing recipient of beliefs. The actual belief-system which is then shoved down its throat is a matter of chance. The hazards of birth alone determine the newborn’s ethnic and religious loyalties; never mind on which number the roulette ball settles, he must live and die for that number. Pro patria mori dulce et decorum est, whichever the patria into which the stork dropped you. Halder says man’s tragedy is to be a born killer. Harriet says his tragedy is to be a glutton for credos for which he must kill and get killed in unselfish devotion…’

  ‘I wonder,’ Tony blurted out, blushing, ‘whether devotion is such a dirty word as Dr Epsom makes it out to be.’

  ‘None of your holy eyewash,’ growled Blood.

  ‘Do I have to dot my i’s for the sake of juveniles?’ Harriet snapped at Tony. ‘I was talking of misguided devotion. But, to quote this abominable Halder, who is the custodian of the guides? Who decides whose is the right and whose the wrong devotion? The Irish Catholics or the Irish Protestants? Indians or Pakistanis? Trotskyists or Stalinists? The devotee is father to the fanatic.’

  ‘You mean,’ Tony ventured, ‘that the criteria of logical judgment do not apply, because devotion and loyalty are guided by emotion and not by reasoned argument?’

  ‘I am glad the penny has dropped at last,’ said Harriet.

  Blood gave one of his rhino-like grunts. ‘I smell a rat,’ he announced. ‘There is an unholy plot being hatched to vaccinate the newborn against the virus of belief. Will you need separate vaccines against tribalism, fetishism, Maoism, perchance aestheticism?’

  ‘Buffoon,’ Harriet said contemptuously.

  ‘I would have thought,’ giggled Wyndham, ‘that a single vaccine would be enough.’

  ‘And pray, what would it do? Abolish faith, loyalty and passion, turn us into computerized robots?’

  ‘On the contrary, dear Sir,’ Dr Valenti said soothingly. ‘What we are earnestly searching for is a method to eliminate the schizophrenic condition reflected in mankind’s deplorable history, or, to express it in your terminology, to reconcile the separate and hostile domains of passion and reason.’

  ‘You frighten me,’ growled Blood. ‘By Priapus, you do – though it must be admitted that I frighten easily. You may regard this as a personal aside, or a statement on behalf of that other culture which I have the doubtful honour to represent here. However, on one point at least I find myself in agreement with our formidable Dr Epsom: wars are fought for words. That was neatly put. As a professional juggler with words, I am aware that they are man’s most deadly weapon. I need not remind you of that maniac with the Chaplin moustache, a native of these bucolic regions, whose words were more powerful agents of destruction than thermo-nuclear bombs; or of the chain-reaction which the words of a certain shopkeeper in Mecca released from Asia to the Atlantic. The word Allah consists of three phonemes and has caused so far an estimated thirty million deaths, with more to come. If you are making an inventory of the causes of the human predicament, you must give top priority to language. It is the heady poison which destroys our species.’

  ‘So we must abolish language,’ Halder said, slapping his knee in merriment. ‘We must include that proposition in our message.’

  ‘But that message,’ said Tony, ‘was delivered long ago: “Let your communication be Yea, yea; Nay, nay; for anything beyond that cometh from the devil”. Matthew five, thirty-seven.’ He blushed again, as if he had uttered an obscenity.

  ‘Well roared, lion,’ said Blood, glancing at Tony with pink lover’s eyes.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ Solovief broke in, ‘mankind renounced language a long time ago – if by language you mean a method of communication for the whole species. Other species do possess a single system of communication by sign, sound or odour, which is understood by all its members. Dolphins travel a lot, but when they meet a stranger in the ocean they need no interpreter. Mankind is split into three thousand different language groups. Each language acts as a cohesive force within the group and as a divisive force between groups. Maharat hates Gujurat, Walloon despises Fleming, upper-class Englishman sneers at dropped aitches, and friend Blood detests our jargon…’

  Language, he continued, seems to be the main agency that made the disruptive forces triumph over the cohesive forces throughout the history of the species. One might even ask whether the term ‘species’ was applicable to man. Halder had pointed out that animals had a built-in inhibition against killing con-specifics; yet it might be argued that Greeks killing Barbarians, Moors slaughtering Christian dogs, Nazis exterminating Untermenschen did not consider their victims to be members of their own species. Man displayed much greater variety in physique and behaviour than any other creature – except for the products of artificial breeding – and language, instead of bridging over these differences, erected further barriers. It was significant that in an age when communication-satellites made it possible for a message to be heard by the entire planet, there existed no planet-wide language which could also make it understood. It seemed even more paradoxical that the various international bodies, mentioned by Professor Kaletski, had never discovered that the simplest way to promote understanding was to promote a language that was understood by all…

  Kaletski’s right hand shot into the air. ‘If I may interrupt, Mr Chairman, we have a sub-committee…’

  ‘You have a sub-committee,’ Solovief boomed, ‘for studying the possibilities of an improved Esperanto which last met eighteen months ago, and was unable to agree whether its proceedings should be conducted in English or in French.’

  ‘Then you are better informed than I am,’ said Bruno, peeved. ‘I can assure you that I shall make inquiries into the matter at the proper quarters.’

  ‘Good luck,’ said Niko.

  Blood raised the predictable objection that he did not intend to read Verlaine in Esperanto; Solovief reassured him that he need not worry, quoting as a precedent the happy co-existence of native vernaculars and Latin as a lingua franca in mediaeval Europe.

  He went on to say that if a message was to emanate from the conference, it should urge that the matter be given high priority on the international agenda. Even the most awkward customers in the United Nations would have to agree that a shared world needed a shared language.

  And there the discussion ended for the day.

  4

  ‘Today was a little better?’ Claire wrote. ‘At least Niko is again taking an active interest, though it is difficult to see how seriously he – and the others – take the whole enterprise. Some bits and pieces emerged during the discussion, small parts of the jig-saw which is meant to show what ails Man, but they do not add up to much, or am I too dumb? Or is the patient suffering from as many different diseases as there are diagnosticians? Niko talked about the need for a language understood by all nations, but we do not even have a language which would enable specialists in different fields to understand each other.

  ‘The news from Asia is frightening. On the brink once more. A small fringe benefit: the tourists are packing their bags and the mountains are less crowde
d. Always look on the sunny side of things – that’s Claire, yours truly …’

  She never mentioned in her letters the boy in the paddy-field, whose image haunted Niko and her – like a pain which one sometimes forgot, but which was always there. They generally avoided talking about it.

  Thursday

  Professor Burch’s lecture on Thursday morning was a fiasco. Niko might have cunningly hoped that this would happen, but now he regretted having invited him. And yet Burch occupied one of the most coveted chairs in the United States, his text-books were mandatory reading, and the particular brand of psychology which he represented had recently been shown, by a nation-wide poll among students, to be by far the most popular.

  His lecture was called ‘The Technology of Behaviour’ and most of his time was taken up by showing lantern slides of rats in boxes learning to press a lever to obtain a food pellet, and of pigeons being trained to strut around in figures of eight. The reward was called a positive reinforcer, withholding the reward a negative reinforcer, the rate at which the creatures responded was recorded by electronic equipment, and the whole procedure was called operant conditioning. At the first mention of this term Blood gave a leonine yawn and Niko gently rapped the table. In the last three minutes of his talk Burch proclaimed, without further ado, that the method he had demonstrated was applicable, with only minor technical modifications, to the control of human behaviour – which obeyed the same elementary laws as that of pigeons and rats. All that the technology of behaviour needed to solve the problems of mankind were scientifically controlled schedules of positive and negative reinforcements. To talk about good or bad, freedom, dignity and purpose was antiquated poppycock. If a message was to be sent to the White House, it should strongly recommend that the teaching machines invented by Professor Skinner, the founder of behavioural engineering, should be made mandatory in schools on an international scale, and their programme be done in the international language advocated by Professor Solovief.