‘Well, “elitist” is just a worn-out Marxist term of abuse, isn’t it? Designed to banish thought. I’m trying to establish some sort of historical perspective.’
‘Historical perspective is itself a luxury. People with empty bellies care nothing for yesterday or tomorrow.’
He sighed and raised his glass to her, without sipping, lowering it again to say, ‘We are not people with empty bellies, you and I, so we must cultivate those perspectives. Don’t try to bludgeon me with fake compassion for the starving. You call my background “deeply privileged”; I see it as carrying deep responsibilities — responsibilities for civilized enjoyment as well as duties. Yes, I have good fortune. That is because I have spent most of my life maintaining those values I live for.’ He made a dismissive gesture. ‘I do not expect you to accept those values as worth maintaining; perhaps you would rather destroy them, since they are those shared by many in my social stratum — among them, during his lifetime, Aldous Huxley.’
He had made his point. Now he drank.
Looking down at her hand resting on the table, she said, ‘You evidently did not care for my paper this afternoon.’
Making a slight effort, he said, ‘We’re off duty now.’
She put fingers to her delicate lips and said, ‘I see you do not want to argue. I wonder why that is?’
‘I see you want to argue.’
As they both chewed olives, she said, ‘However beastly you may find my politics, I am not a dedicated Women’s Libber. Not exactly.’
He said nothing to that, having learnt that either approval or disapproval of such statements provoked argument.
After a short silence, she said, ‘Before I was into stylistics, I worked in neurosurgery in Los Angeles. That was when I was fresh out of college, apart from a trip to Mexico, where I saw for myself the poverty and injustice suffered there under American imperialism.’
She went on, and he continued to look at her, but her words no longer penetrated to his senses. He thought about her being a neurosurgeon, and saw her character differently, regarded her not just as a woman parroting ideology, but as someone vulnerable and dedicated. About her remarkable face, the sharp planes cutting back from her nose, there was something of the scalpel; but he detected a sensitivity previously hidden from him, perhaps a sensitivity to things to which he remained blind. Her priggish phrase about Mexicans suffering under American imperialism represented some genuine experience of pain and distancing which she could interpret only in terms of political theory.
She was saying, ‘Perhaps you know the name of Montrose Wilder. He was very distinguished in his field. It was a privilege to work with him. A good surgeon. Also a good man.
‘When I began as a trainee under him, he had a patient aged about forty, who had been involved in a shooting incident and was suffering from a parietal lesion of the brain. Her name was Dorothy, and she was severely dysphasic.
‘Montrose stimulated her hippocampus with an electrode. Dorothy suddenly cried out. She told us that she saw her mother in an orange dress — she relived that forgotten time — her mother in an orange dress walked down a hillside towards her, carrying a basket full of apples. The mother was smiling and happy.
‘Afterwards, Dorothy cried a lot. Her mother had died when she was five, and she had lost all conscious memory of her. The electrode had allowed her to relive that fragment of life when she was an infant, untouched by trouble. She was grateful. The memory was a gift from a happier world. A land of lost content…’
She looked down at her hands. ‘I think I can see now, as I’m telling it to you, that Dorothy perceived a linkage between the mother’s death when she was five and the attempt of a drunken and jealous lover to murder her at the age of forty. All succeeding messes flowed from that first mess…’ She bit her lip.
He said something sympathetic. Ajdini ignored him, lighting another ‘Drina’ and gazing into the recesses of the room.
‘I thought of Dorothy when you spoke about souls. If you have looked into living brains, seen the vulnerable exposed hemispheres, you think ever after in terms of electrical impulses, not of souls.’
‘Supposing you look more deeply and see both physiological apparatus, and electrical impulses as God’s handiwork?’
‘Do you do that?’
He laughed.’ No. But I wish I could. I am in the anomalous position of believing in souls yet not in God.’
‘So art’s a comfort, eh?’ She was smiling. ‘Not that we don’t need comforting.’
‘Art’s many things, isn’t it? A comfort for me, a source of argument for you?’
A warmth in her smile, as she responded to his teasing, touched something inside him. ‘In the face of such large questions, really art in the twentieth century has little to say. After Kafka — nothing worth having. The Theatre of the Absurd.’
She indicated the bust which impersonally supervised their conversation. ‘Do you think this cross-eyed general is elevated to the Absurd? Just a few pencil lines make a difference.’
‘They do to any of us.’
‘Will you have dinner with me, please? If I promise not to convert you to Marxism.’
‘I’d love to, but I have to go out.’ Looking at his watch, he added, ‘Now.’
He noted her immediate curiosity, and added, ‘I have an appointment. Perhaps tomorrow evening.’
‘Are you going to a brothel? I hear there are plenty in Ermalpa. Because of the poverty.’
Laughing, he said, ‘No, nothing like that.’
‘Oh, don’t be all English and bashful. If you are going, can I come with you? I won’t spoil your enjoyment, but I’d like to talk to the women.’
‘Die Spitze might like that but I wouldn’t. I’m not in the habit of taking ladies to brothels. For one thing, it’s too much like taking coals to Newcastle…’
She gave him a long look, estimating him. ‘You hardly need to pay for your women, I imagine, Mr Squire.’
He drank the last of his vodka. ‘Women don’t enter into my plans for this evening, unfortunately. Perhaps things will improve in that respect tomorrow.’
Leaving the hotel, Squire was immediately enveloped in the hot evening noise of Ermalpa’s traffic. He stood for a moment, reminded of nights in Rio de Janeiro, where a similar mechanical frenzy had prevailed. Something in the Latin temperament caused drivers to project an extended body-image into their machine, converting it to something between a penis and a clenched fist.
He moved suddenly, turning down side streets which he had memorized from his map, down the Via Scarlatti, down the Via Archimede — very dark and crooked, the Via Archimede — through the Piazza O. Ziino, into the modest avenue next to the Giardino Inglese where the British Consulate stood.
As he walked through the warm evening, Squire thought over what he had said to Ajdini; as ever, he had hedged on the question of religion. One could never get free of religion, yet wasn’t it all out of date?
Some three years ago, when Squire was still collecting material for ‘Frankenstein’, he and Teresa had visited the Britannic Centre for Demystified Yoga, to interview its founder, Dr Alexander Saloman. They drove across London to St John’s Wood, where the centre was, and found themselves at a Lebanese house. Two Arab women in white robes, complete with yashmaks, were leaving the building as they entered. A dark man in dark glasses wearing a snappy blue suit was on guard, and let them only reluctantly through a mahogany door.
Inside, all was heavy and sumptuous and dark. Large black plastic sofas, upholstered with the wet-look, greeted them. On the walls hung claymores, nineteenth-century sporting prints, and musical instruments from some obscure corner of the East. A gilded lift took them grandly up to the second floor, and to an audience with Dr Alexander Saloman. Teresa held Squire’s arm.