Suddenly Petitjacques, who had followed the proceedings in silence, with at most a contemptuous grin, spoke up: ‘This idea I like very much. It is surrealiste, it is absurd, and therefore it is good.’
‘As you realize,’ said Niko, ‘Valenti gave us a deliberate parody of his project, perhaps he realized that to speak seriously would have meant wasting his breath. For once I agree with Petitjacques: the surrealistic world which we have created cries out for surrealistic remedies. Man, biologically speaking, is an artefact, only capable of existing in an artificial environment. I think our only choice is to make it even more artificial in a positive sense. To survive as a species we shall have to change the chemistry – the whole metabolism of the planet’s biosphere. Nothing short of that will do. Sermons won’t help.’
‘No, no,’ Halder shouted. ‘What we need are more sermons, but not about pin-cushions and alchemy and changing the metabolism of Faustus’ Erdgeist. Sermons about peace, more education, more ab-reaction, more co-operation. It is a pity Kaletski has left us in the lurch. What about that message now? Kaletski should have drafted it…’
Halder obviously was so incensed about the rejection of his Therapy by Hate that he even forgot his loathing for Bruno. He lifted his arms in a routine prophetic gesture. ‘If only, if only, people would listen to the voice of reason …’
‘The point is, they won’t,’ snapped Niko. ‘If they did, we wouldn’t be here, wasting our time talking in circles. I am fed up with this “if only” philosophy. “If only” the lion would lie down with the lamb, all would be well. There is an old Russian saying: “If my grandmother had four wheels she would be an omnibus …”’
‘Mr Chairman,’ said Halder, vibrant with emotion, ‘I move that you finish your summing up and we then proceed to discuss the Resolution, or message, that is expected from us.’
Niko made an effort to pull himself together. Where had he gone off the rails? When he had let himself be carried away by the idea of ‘biological tampering’. If there was a road to survival, it pointed in that direction. But did he really believe in that ‘if’? The familiar, nagging pain had returned. He made a gesture as if brushing a cobweb from his face.
‘I must apologize,’ he continued in a calmer voice, ‘if I have laid too much emphasis on one, still hypothetical way out of the impasse into which mankind has manoeuvred itself. Other remedies have been suggested by other speakers, which are still vivid in our memories, so I shall not tire you by recapitulating them. With some of these suggestions, such as Halder’s and Burch’s, I am unable to agree, while with others, such as Wyndham’s and Tony’s, I am in full sympathy. But they are long-term remedies, and historical time is a tricky dimension – it does not flow at uniform speed, it is accelerating like a river approaching a cataract. It took two thousand years until the dream of Icarus was realized by the Wright brothers’ first aerial hop, but only sixty-five years from there to the moon. If the danger to our species is as urgent as in our more lucid moments we know it to be, but in our more relaxed moments tend to forget – then we must have the courage – and the imagination – to seek solutions on a planet-wide scale …’ He seemed to have finished, paused, then went on briskly:
‘… In conclusion, may I remind you of that famous Einstein letter that I mentioned in my opening remarks – and which was meant to serve as an inspiration for this conference.’ The dreaded moment had come. ‘And so I invite you to make your suggestions regarding the proposed message.’
He leant back in his chair. He had done what he could. In the ensuing silence, the church-bells started booming once more, with heavy irony it seemed. The sky over the mountains was an impeccable blue, the glaciers looked more inhuman than ever.
At last Harriet spoke up:
‘Mr Chairman, I move that we send no message.’
Burch rasped: ‘Mr Chairman, I move that we appoint an editorial committee which will prepare a concise and impartial summary of the various proposals that have been discussed, and request a substantial allocation of research funds.’
‘Burch is right,’ said Blood. ‘Asking for funds proves your respectability.’
‘Mr Chairman,’ said Halder, ‘I move that we all stop making bad jokes.’
‘Mr Chairman,’ said John D. Jr, ‘I second Professor Burch’s proposal.’
Petitjacques repeated his dumb show with the Scotch tape. Niko almost sympathized with him. There was another pause; then the swing-door opened and Gustav made one of his dramatic entries, saluting in semi-military fashion, and handing a telegram to the Chairman. Wyndham giggled: ‘Hermes, messenger of the gods.’
‘Reply paid one thousand words,’ Gustav declared solemnly, and stalked out.
Niko glanced through the text and his face creased into a grimace of disbelief. ‘Reply paid a thousand words,’ he repeated. ‘Hermes got it right. And what perfect timing. It is from Bruno; his proposed draft for our message. Here we go …’
He started reading it out:
‘“Mr President…”’
Petitjacques shot up, stood to attention, and sat down again, Scotch-taped from nose to chin.
‘“Mr President, in this crucial hour when the powerful armies of your country are preparing for action to defend the freedom of your people and indeed of the whole planet, we, representatives of diverse branches of the sciences and arts, wish to assure you and your government of our unanimous and unqualified support…” It goes on and on, but that’s the gist of it.’
‘Mr Chairman,’ Burch said solemnly, ‘I move that the draft be adopted.’
‘I second that,’ said John D. Jr.
Petitjacques tore the Scotch tape off and said fervently: ‘Merde.’
Niko’s feeling of unreality increased. He inadvertently fell into French: ‘Mais ce n’est pas sérieux
‘Mr Chairman, I veto the draft,’ said Harriet. ‘It is a political statement, and as such outside the terms of reference of this conference.’
There were loud murmurs of consent. ‘I agree,’ Niko said curtly. ‘The draft is off the agenda. Where does that leave us?’
With the exception of Burch and John D. Jr, the call-girls felt so relieved not to have to take a political stand that they hardly realized the full implication of Bruno’s message. The atmosphere improved. Wyndham raised a pudgy hand – it had often been raised, with soothing effect, at similarly critical moments in the history of Oxbridge diplomacy:
‘It seems, Mr Chairman, that we have two proposals before us: Dr Epsom’s “No message”, and Professor Burch’s Editorial Committee. But you need at least three people to make a committee, and I doubt whether any three of us would be able to agree on the desirability of the various proposals that have been made, or on the priorities to be assigned to them. If you feel the same way, then the only alternative seems to be: No message. Yet our message, for what it is worth, is already in existence – I mean in the recorded proceedings of the conference. Mr Chairman, I move that this record be published without delay, and the resulting volume be regarded as the only authentic message emanating from this conference, which will enable the interested reader to make his own choice among the various “Approaches to Survival” offered to him…’
There was a general sigh of relief. Wyndham’s proposal was adopted without further discussion. That was the end of the Einstein letter; Wyndham’s experienced diplomacy had killed it painlessly. Niko avoided looking at Claire; he felt too numbed to experience regret. He had always known that the conference was a hare-brained idea, and that the famous letter would never materialize. How silly to have talked to Claire about conspiratorial midnight sessions, like a schoolboy. It did not matter. C’est pas sérieux…
It was nearly six o’clock, and the magnetic field of the cocktail room next door began to exert its influence. Niko still had a, few technical announcements to make about honorarium cheques and travel arrangements. Tomorrow there would be a special bus leaving for the valley at 11 AM. Before that, there would be a special mass
said in the village church – if anybody happened to be interested. Then he brought the symposium unceremoniously to a close.
4
It was a night of private post-mortems.
Otto von Halder had invited Hansie and Mitzie to a glass of beer at the Hotel Post. He had tried to get Hansie – the creamy blonde – alone, but she would only go if Mitzie came too. Halder was in an expansive mood, full of Lebens-freude. Bruno’s resolution had been defeated, Valenti had made a fool of himself, and Niko was a sick, ageing man. During dinner at the Kongress-cafeteria the radio had been full on, so that all could listen to the news. The contradictory reports about the Asian conflict and the chances of its escalation filled him with the familiar, guilty excitement. But why feel guilty? It was a natural abreaction, and after all, the situation was not of his doing. He entertained the two maidens with the kind of risqué stories which had been so popular in his student years. Hansie giggled dutifully, while Mitzie, the brunette, kept looking sullen. Both had an astonishing capacity for beer. When they absented themselves to the ladies’ toilet – together, as was fitting – Halder briefly fell asleep, then rather gruffly asked for the bill and staggered home behind the two girls who walked, arm in arm, three steps ahead of him, gleefully preparing their detailed account of the evening for Gustav. They were both devoted to Gustav who had skimmed the cream off both of them several years ago.
Horace Wyndham and Hector Burch were again the last ones at the bar, getting sloshed – Burch in the brisk and purposeful frontiersman manner, Horace according to the principle that the slower you go the farther you get. They were discussing the war in a desultory fashion, Burch taking a patriotic, Wyndham a philosophical line, on the tacit understanding that whatever happened, the groves of academe at Harvard and Oxford would never be defoliated. After the third highball Burch abruptly reverted to his obsession – little Jenny’s collection of plaster-casts. ‘You a pediatrician,’ he mused, ‘I guess it’s only natural…’
But Wyndham was unable to give him moral support. His conscience troubled him about Niko. He wondered whether Niko was, after all, right with his brutal proposals for tampering with the biosphere – as if it hadn’t already been tampered with! But his instinct and upbringing recoiled from the idea of putting his signature under such a wild document. And what difference would it make anyway?
Harriet Epsom was sitting in front of her dressing-table, taking off her make-up with the thoroughness of a picture-restorer cleaning an antique landscape. She too was plagued by guilty feelings towards Niko. She was, in fact, half convinced by his arguments – but then why had she kept her big mouth shut? Perhaps because his proposals sounded altogether too Orwellian to her liberal, humanist mind. But if there was really no other way? To hell with the liberal humanist mind – look where it has got us…
There was a knock at the door and Helen Porter walked, or rather floated in, in a cloud of scent. She wore semi-see-through purple pyjamas and her neck was freshly shaven. She made straight for Harriet’s bed and covered herself with the voluptuous eiderdown.
‘At last,’ said Harriet, calmly completing her restoration work. ‘Couldn’t you think of it earlier?’
‘And what about your gamekeeper with the waxed moustache?’
‘That was a mistake,’ Harriet admitted bravely. ‘He hurried as if he had to catch a train. Before you could say Jack Robinson it was all over.’
Raymond Petitjacques lay neatly tucked up in his bed, indulging in his secret vices: he was munching a chocolate pralinée, of which a whole box stood on his bedside table, and reading Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers.
John D. John Jr, having completed his twenty press-ups on the bedroom floor, was computing a mental balance-sheet of Valenti’s experiments. He had been particularly impressed by the effects of electrodes implanted in the pleasure centres of the hypothalamus and by the possibilities it opened for erotic self-stimulation, for sex without tears. On the one hand, of course, it deprived the act of the element of interpersonal interrelationship which was supposed to provide part of its enjoyment. On the other hand, these interpersonal interrelationships were the source of untold complications and neurotic entanglements which interfered with one’s work. Moreover, the electrodes would enable couples who insisted on such relationships to stimulate each other by radio from distant places without sharing a bed. The method also opened unlimited possibilities for adulterous stimulations. John had a vision of Claire with electrodes implanted under her chestnut hair, and went happily to sleep with it.
Dr Valenti had recovered his peace of mind. He installed his portable prie-dieu, hung the antique silver crucifix over the bed and said his evening prayers. He remembered the fleeting smile on Niko’s face during the birth-control discussion: Niko had understood. So what? Sir John Eccles, Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine, was a Catholic too.
He felt slightly guilty about having described the experiment with the mental stabilizer in such mocking tones. But he had been provoked almost beyond endurance. And he did not feel justified in telling them that the experiment was actually on its way. Soon after his return the team would have received and tabulated the first results. Then we shall see … However, one must beware of the sin of intellectual pride. He was pining to go to confession. Father Vittorio loved to hear about the electrodes, and hoped to have one day Jesus needles implanted in all his flock. Everybody seemed to have needles on the brain nowadays …
Tony was unable to go to sleep. The soothing alpha-waves failed to make their appearance. He had so much looked forward to this symposium and was bitterly, childishly disappointed. He had no right to judge – but what a vanity fair. And the most painful disappointment had been Solovief himself, on whom Tony had set such high hopes. His arguments had been lucid and logical, but somehow they had failed to convince Tony. Perhaps Niko had even failed to convince himself. Perhaps the reverberations of that archaic lower brain were too strong for the thin voice from the roof to prevail.
He longed to be back at his Order’s retreat high up in the Atlas – that cool mountain in a hot country – and watching Brother Jonas gently making the roulette ball stop at the pre-assigned number – playing a game with Newton’s laws. To what purpose? To what purpose did that cameo-cutter in Pompeii, of whom Blood had talked during dinner, go on busily carving his little figure while the lava approached and the ashes engulfed him?
Sir Evelyn Blood, his elephantine bulk propped up in bed, a Victorian night-cap on his balding head, was leafing through a glossy magazine with photographs of athletic-looking male nudes, and at the same time trying to compose a poem. He had two vague images floating in his mind, which he tried to juxtapose in a kind of verbal collage. The first was that cameo-cutter who carried on with a job for which there would never be a buyer. And yet, lo, the cameo was preserved, of priceless value now, and so was its mummified maker, dug out from under the ashes. The second image was a topical version of Balthazar’s feast. During dinner at the Kongress-cafeteria there had been a moment when they had all frozen, listening to a news announcement on the radio – staring at the loudspeaker on the wall spelling out its mene tekel. Then the two images fused into a comic cartoon: the loudspeaker burst open, spewing fire and brimstone, burying alive the whole damned assembly of call-girls. But it was a cartoon, not a poem.
No good. He composed a haiku instead:
‘After the thunderclap
the raindrops chatter
discussing the event.’
Writing haikus was relaxing, like doing crossword puzzles. He would send it to one of the weeklies, pretending it was a translation from a sixteenth-century Zen master. Twenty quid.
* * *
The Soloviefs were sitting on the balcony of their room, silver-plated by moonlight. Niko was explaining the laws of reflection and refraction, as illustrated by looking at the moon through the cylindrical lens of a glass filled with Scotch and water, while Claire was more interested in the colour effects. They were not discussing the
symposium, nor the boy in the paddy-field, nor Niko’s nagging pains. They were waiting for Hoffman, the Director in Charge of Programmes at the Academy. He had sat through the sessions unobtrusively in the row of chairs without armrests along the wall. He was still busy settling some administrative matters with the staff, but he had asked whether he might join the Soloviefs for an ‘informal’ drink when he had finished.
‘I love the way Americans use the word “informal”,’ said Niko. ‘They ask you to an informal dinner and it turns out to be a banquet for fifty with three after-dinner speakers. Soon the Justice Department will send out invitations to watch an informal execution in the electric chair.’
‘Or an informal sex orgy,’ said Claire.
‘I can hardly face him.’
‘He is a nice, harmless sort of guy.’
‘And I have let him down.’
‘They have.’
‘I have, they have, we have, you have. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in the limits of our imagination. When I have a hangover, I cannot recall the joys of getting drunk. When I am drunk, I cannot evoke the feel of tomorrow’s hangover. Honestly, Claire, when you have stuffed yourself with knödls, can you conjure up, by any effort of your proud imagination, the sensation of being hungry?’
Claire shuddered. ‘Don’t talk knödls to me.’
‘The same impotence of our imagination makes us incapable of believing in tomorrow’s apocalypse, even though we can hear the black horses stamping their hoofs. When the 1939 war started, everybody was given a gas-mask, but people used the containers as luncheon baskets and left the mask at home. And everybody had to put up blackout curtains, but it was just a game. The law of inertia applies also to the imagination – we cannot believe that tomorrow will be different from today. In this respect sages are no better off than fools. As our symposium so brilliantly demonstrated …’
‘I am glad,’ Claire said, ‘that you do not blame yourself alone.’