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

  ‘Professor Burch, may I ask you a question?’ Horace Wyndham piped up with an apologetic titter. ‘When you talk of “predicting and controlling behaviour”, do you include the types of activity which in common parlance are referred to as, well – literature – or playing the harp?’

  ‘Most certainly. We refer to these activities as verbal behaviour and manipulative behaviour, specifying in the latter case the materials or media of the manipulations involved. Both the verbalizer and the manipulator act in response to stimuli from the environment and are controlled by the contingencies of reinforcement.’

  ‘Thank you, Professor Burch,’ Wyndham said; and later on it was generally agreed that this had been the moment when the symposium began to divide into two camps. However, the only overt signs of the incipient split were some clearings of throats and shufflings of feet. All took it for granted that Burch – as could be expected – had made a monumental ass of himself. The majority – later on to be referred to as the Nikosians – thought what a clever bastard Solovief was to invite the most extreme, rigid and orthodox representative of a school of thought to which he was known to be passionately opposed; a school of thought which, though in slightly watered-down versions, still dominated the philosophical outlook of the scientific community. The others, however, who basically shared that outlook, but preferred to express it in less provocative and more circuitous terms than Burch, understood just as well that Nikolai had invited him as a kind of fall-guy who would reduce their position to absurdity, and resented this as a cheap trick – ‘positively Machiawellisch’, Halder later remarked.

  The uneasy pause was ended by Harriet, who had listened to Burch with an air of patient exasperation, occasionally turning her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Mr Chairman,’ she suddenly bellowed, ‘I cannot see what on God’s earth Professor Burch’s excursion into ratology has to do with your introductory remarks about the mess we are in, and the urgency of the situation. I gather from the programme that Professor Burch will read a paper about “recent advances in operant conditioning of lower mammals” in the morning session on Thursday, so I suggest we control our impatience to hear about that subject and discuss now your proposal to form a committee of action.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ Tony said half aloud, and blushed.

  ‘You need not worry,’ Burch said drily. ‘I believe my remarks were relevant to the points under discussion, but I do not intend to pursue them at this stage.’

  Dr Valenti lifted a carefully manicured hand: ‘With your permission, Mr Chairman.’ He was not only strikingly handsome, with his dark, insinuating eyes and faintly ironic expression, but also had a pleasantly melodious voice. ‘I am of the opinion, Mr Chairman, that Professor Burch’s illuminating remarks about the necessity of social engineering are of great importance to the problems outlined in your admirable opening discourse. But I would like to ask you, my dear colleagues around the table, who all share this worry about the future, whether we think that it is too Utopian to look for remedies not only in the domain of social engineering, but also perhaps in neuro-engineering – to use a term which I diffidently proposed at the last Chicago Symposium …’

  Sir Evelyn Blood, who up to now had been lost in some gloomy day-dream, seemed to come to life:

  ‘It’s a horrible term which frightens the wits out of me.’

  Valenti smiled. ‘We are a horrible race, living in horrible times. Perhaps we should have the courage to think of horrible remedies.’

  ‘What exactly do you mean by “neuro-engineering”?’ Blood asked, fixing his bloodshot eyes on him.

  ‘I shall have occasion to elaborate on it in my humble presentation at our fifth session.’

  Claire, sitting demurely in her upright chair, wondered whether anybody else had also noticed a strange little pantomime during that exchange. Next to her, Miss Carey sat in front of a small folding table with the tape-recorder on it. When she heard Sir Evelyn’s remarks to Valenti coming through her earphones, she frowned with such sudden violent anger that the plastic strap holding her earphones in place slid forward and she was just able to catch it. It made a grotesque impression, as if she were clutching a hat in a gust of wind, until at last she pushed the strap back among the wisps of grey hair, in front of the stacked bun. But already earlier on, Claire had watched with fascination the violent changes of expression in Miss Carey’s thin-lipped, worn face, which she seemed unable to control. She certainly looked more like a patient than a research assistant, Claire thought.

  It was Horace Wyndham’s turn; his brief intervention in the discussion was wrapped in apologetic titters and giggles. He deeply sympathized, he said, with the sense of urgency in Solovief’s opening remarks which, as a private individual, he fully shared, in spite of the shamefully sheltered life he was privileged to lead in the academic backwaters of Oxbridge. But however guilty he felt about this, his own field of research by its very nature could not provide any instant remedies or short-term solutions. That field of research was concerned with babes in the cradle – starting with the first week after birth – and with methods of developing their intellectual and emotive potential in unorthodox ways. He ventured to think that in a sense the sorry state of affairs in which humanity had landed itself was partly or mainly due to its splendid ignorance of these methods. The price paid for civilization was the loss of instinctual certainties as guides of behaviour – with the result that civilized man was adrift like a navigator who has lost his compass and is blind to the stars. We eat too much and copulate too rarely, or perhaps the opposite is true; we impose toilet training too late or perhaps too early; mothers are over-protective or under-protective, too permissive or too prohibitory, who knows what is best for that helpless creature in its cot? We only know the results, the finished adult products, which make this society as dismal as we know it to be. His own cherished and perhaps foolish hope was that the answer to man’s predicament would emerge literally from the cradle – from the particular field of research to which he had referred. There might even be signs of a possible break-through in the near future if certain recent experiments were to be confirmed-experiments which could be reported in his paper at a forthcoming session of the conference. But even if the results were to be positive, as he hoped, even so the beneficial effects would be slow, very slow to make themselves felt – and they could hardly be a fitting subject for an Einstein letter to Mr President or Her Majesty the Queen …

  Burch fought a brief battle with himself, trying to keep his mouth shut in dignified silence, and lost. Peering sharply over his lenses at Wyndham, he said: ‘You object to the term social engineering. Is not what you are trying to do exactly that?’

  ‘Oh no. I wouldn’t call that engineering. I would rather call it officiating – to the newborn.’ Smiling guilelessly, Wyndham looked rather like a dimpled baby himself.

  There was some polite laughter, and the discussion seemed to be grinding to a halt when, with his infallible instinct for timing, Bruno Kaletski went into action.

  ‘Mr Chairman, with your permission …’ He raised his left hand while his right, which had been busily taking notes all the time, continued to do so. Solovief nodded at him without enthusiasm, but Bruno went on to finish whatever he was writing with an expression of utter concentration, thus creating an expectant silence that lasted nearly twenty seconds. Then he put down his monogrammed fountain pen with an air of accomplishment:

  ‘Mr Chairman, it seems to me that there is considerable confusion regarding the scope and aims of this conference, and the ways and means of achieving them. Speaking in my humble capacity as a social scientist – or a scientifically orientated student of society, if you prefer that label – the reason for this confusion seems to me obvious …’ He paused, took a few quick steps to the blackboard standing against the wall, and picked up a piece of chalk. ‘The reason is that we are all suffering from controlled schizophrenia…’ He wrote on the blackboard in small, neat capitals: CONTROLLED SCHIZOPHRENIA. ‘No personal offence ??
? or offences, plural – is or are meant, of course.’ He wrote under the previous line: NO OFFENCE. ‘The term is offered as a metaphor, but not purely as a metaphor. Schizophrenia, loosely speaking, means a split mind. Our minds are split…’ With a dramatic vertical stroke of the chalk he divided the blackboard into two halves. ‘On the one hand, we lead, as our friend Wyndham so aptly remarked, sheltered academic lives, pursuing our scientific quests sub specie aeternitatis – in the sign of eternity, as it were …’ He wrote on the left half of the blackboard: SUB SP. AET. ‘But pure research has no direct bearing on the ills that plague our threatened mankind. The distant galaxies we probe with our radio-telescopes won’t feed the starving millions, nor bring freedom to the oppressed millions. Even applied research in the biological and social sciences is always based on long-term projects, always taking for granted that we have plenty of time before us, that the next generation will continue where we have left off and bring our modest endeavours to a fruitful conclusion. But ay, there is the rub …’ He paused and wrote on the same line as SUB SP. AET., but on the right half of the blackboard: TOMORROW!? … Yes, my friends, the other half of the split mind knows that there may be no tomorrow, so we feel tempted to let the galaxies look after themselves and let eternity look after itself, and concentrate all our energies, quests and endeavours on the task of ensuring that there should be a morrow. But would that not be another kind of betrayal – the abandonment of what some of us regard, if I may use that term, as our sacred mission? So we are caught between the Scylla of complacency’ (he tapped hard on the left side of the blackboard) ‘and the Charybdis of panicky hysteria’ (tap on the right side). ‘Some of us try of course in our modest ways to heal the split by devoting part of our time and energy – and if I may say so, even more time and energy than we can afford – to the common weal, by trying to foster mutual understanding between races and nations through organizations such as UNESCO, the Peace Council, the President’s Advisory Council, the Civil Liberties Board, the Conservation Society, and similar bodies to which I have the honour to belong and the privilege to contribute my modest share, either in an executive or an advisory capacity; and if I may enlarge for a moment on the practical aspects…’

  Once launched, Bruno could no more be stopped than the engine of a motor car whose owner had locked himself out. He went on and on, mostly about his own modest contributions (which in fact were considerable) to the work of these illustrious bodies. He had been talking for fifty-two minutes when Solovief, who had been waiting for a gap, said in a weary voice: ‘It’s time for lunch, Bruno, if you don’t mind.’

  Bruno glanced at his watch with a slightly dazed look and became genuinely contrite. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled, while his hands were nimbly engaged in stuffing papers into his case, ‘one does get so carried away.’

  His momentary confusion made him look quite endearing, but they knew that at the first opportunity he would be off again.

  2

  When Sir Evelyn Blood had once been asked by a woman journalist at a literary cocktail party whether he found his surname an embarrassment and had ever thought of changing it by deed poll, he had answered with the calculated candour which he found so useful in dealing with the Press: ‘As a poet I cannot hope that many people will read my works, but I can at least hope that they will remember my name. Do you think the names of Auden, Thomas or Eliot mean anything to the rabble? But Blood is a household word with them.’

  ‘Do you mean,’ the somewhat dumb lady had insisted, ‘that they read you because of your name?’

  ‘Nobody reads me, dear lady. But every bugger in this country knows my name.’

  That was no empty boast, and rather an understatement. Although nobody ever quoted a line by Blood, for he was not the quotable sort of poet, he enjoyed an international reputation, was invited to lecture at American, Indian and Japanese universities, and no international symposium was complete without his rumpled, but imposing presence. He was knighted at sixty by England’s gracious Queen (who was said to have grown pale with anger when Blood asked her before the accolade whether it would hurt), and was generally considered as the Call-Girl Laureate.

  He had arrived late on the previous evening by hired car, which he intended to charge to his travelling expenses. He was also late for lunch. At the entrance to the dining-room he paused for a moment, surveying the scene, his huge bulk nearly filling the door-frame, apparently unaware of the discreet academic stares, appraising him in his capacity as ambassador from the other culture. Then he got into motion, carrying that bulk on rather shuffling feet, but not without a certain elephantine dignity. He did not hesitate in his choice of a seat, but advanced with unwavering purposefulness, as if attracted by a magnet, to a table at which young Tony had been sitting by himself, gobbling with relish his soup, in which two fist-sized Knödls stood out like volcanic islands.

  ‘I shall have to drink my soup cold,’ Blood said, inspecting the Knödls. He talked with an outrageous, plaintive, U-plus drawl; it was impossible to know whether it was meant as a parody or to be taken at face value. ‘Had to rush to the loo. Always before meals. It seems my bowels will only open at the immediate prospect of a refill. Most interesting, but inconvenient. Pavlovian conditioning, our idiot-savants would call it… You a virgin?’

  Blood’s shock-tactics were well known, but Tony had not encountered them before. He blushed:

  ‘I have a dirty mind,’ he said.

  ‘Masturbation problems?’

  ‘That’s hardly a problem any longer.’

  ‘Ambidextrous?’

  Now Tony was really outraged, though he knew one should never be. He pretended to be busy with the Knödls.

  ‘You misunderstood my question. It was meant metaphorically, not literally.’

  ‘I am afraid I don’t follow you.’

  ‘I meant the fantasies. Hetero or homo?’

  ‘Oh, hetero, I suppose.’

  ‘That’s bad, in your position. Fornication is mortal sin. Buggery is only venial sin. As for me, I am queer as a kipper. Everybody knows it.’

  ‘I can’t see kipper as a metaphor…’

  ‘That’s because you are lacking in poetic imagination.’ He laughed. Tony had expected Sir Evelyn’s laughter to be, like the rest of him, of Falstaffian dimensions. It turned out to be more like a series of dry sneezes. But it fitted somehow with the smallness of the features – small mouth, small nose, small eyes in the big, round, red, fat face.

  ‘How did you like this morning’s session, Sir Evelyn?’ he asked politely.

  ‘Snoozed through most of it. That sleek dago woke me up when he talked about neuro-engineering. It stuck in my gizzard.’

  Mitzie, the sulky brunette, arrived with Sir Evelyn’s soup and Knödls. He ordered a bottle of Neuchâtel. ‘Big bottle?’ Mitzie asked. ‘Indeed a full bottle, Schötzchen’ he said, looking as if he intended to pinch playfully her bottom. Mitzie did not appreciate the Schötzchen, but gave Tony’s glass an extra wipe with her napkin, looking into the distance. ‘I don’t think I shall attend the afternoon session,’ Blood said. ‘There is supposed to be some wrestling competition in the village for those juicy farm boys. Like to come with me? Of course you won’t. Good little boys must go to school.’

  ‘You permit me to join you?’ The black-haired, raven-faced man with a French accent, who had just come in, sat down opposite Tony.

  ‘A purely rhetorical question,’ said Blood. ‘You know that I can’t refuse, Petitjacques, however much I hate your yellow guts.’

  Professor Raymond Petitjacques turned his raven smile on Tony. ‘He says “yellow” because he thinks I am a Maoist, and he says “guts” because he is always preoccupied with his entrails. But he is an extremely lovable man.’ He filled his glass with Neuchâtel.

  ‘That’s what the frogs call Cartesian lucidity,’ Blood said, addressing himself to Tony. ‘A propos, Petitjacques, if you want wine, you can order your own bottle.’

  ‘That would be an instance of
what Veblen called the conspicuous waste of the affluent society, because I shall drink only one glass.’ He turned to Tony. ‘Do not have more of this acid beverage if you have your liver at heart, so to speak.’

  ‘A mixed metaphor cannot be excused by a lofty “so to speak”,’ drawled Blood.

  ‘Concerning frogs,’ Petitjacques said to Tony, ‘our cher Maître is out of date. My compatriots have long stopped sucking delicious frog-thighs soaked in garlic, and have been coerced into consuming hot dogs and hamburgers by the imperialistic coca-colonizators. Mon cher, c’est fini.’

  ‘Don’t you dare call our dear little Brother “my dear”,’ said Blood.

  ‘The connotation is different. I may call even you “mon cher” without incurring undue risks. And as regards Cartesian lucidity you are even more out of date. Cartesian dualism has long been replaced by the Hegelian trinity of thesis-antithesis-synthesis, reflected in Marxist-Leninist dialectics. This in turn has been re-interpreted in the philosophy of Chairman Mao, but also amalgamated with the existentialism of Sartre and the structural anthropology of Levi-Strauss. So you see…’

  ‘I don’t see a bloody thing,’ Blood said, inspecting the substantial plate of stewed meat that Mitzie had banged down in front of him. ‘It’s goulash,’ he stated.

  ‘Do you mean the dish or the philosophy?’ Tony asked.

  ‘Both.’

  ‘You are right, a goulash,’ Petitjacques confirmed enthusiastically. ‘We are cooking a very hot and piquant ideological stew. It will burn your mouth.’

  ‘Monkey chatter.’

  ‘Perhaps. But the young baboons have shown that they mean business when they invaded the citadels of so-called learning.’

  ‘And shitted all over the place. What’s that to do with structural anthropology?’

  ‘It is appropriate. You have not read Levi-Strauss.’

  Blood stared at him. ‘You will be surprised. I had a go. Pure jabberwocky. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I had another go. The dialectics of boiled, roast and smoked food – the contrast between honey and tobacco – the parallel between honey and menstrual blood – hundreds of pages of inane verbal jugglery – it’s the biggest hoax since the Piltdown skull, and you lap it up – like honey.’