Before the chairman could get to his feet and ask whether there were any questions, one of the perpetual students was already on his and asking. He was a grey-black man, tall and rangy in a slightly unravelled raglan sweater, with three neat fish-shaped scars on either cheek.
‘Professor Stein. Sir, to what extent, sir, can the arguments you have just presented, sir, be held seriously. In view of the fact’, particular emphasis on ‘fact’, ‘that such arguments have themselves been present in other cultures during the end of other eras. Does not the fact, sir, that this is not the first time that people have believed they had the power to destroy their own world to some extent invalidate your argument? Well, sir, what do you think of that?’
The cicatrised African sat down as abruptly as he had stood up. There was an uncomfortable pause. Professor Stein was straining forward. From the expression on his face it was quite clear that he hadn’t heard a word the African had said. At length the chairman leant forward and whispered into his ear. Stein nodded several times and then rose to his feet.
‘I think the answer is no. As to why, the answer is that although previous cultures have thought that they possessed the power to destroy the world themselves, they in fact didn’t. We are dealing in this instance with a reality which can be empirically verified.’
I was aware of Jim batting about in the seat next to me. He was sweating profusely and his long, mechanical arms gripped the back of the seat in front of him as if he wanted to rip it off the ground and throw it at the podium. Jim didn’t give the African a chance to respond to Stein’s reply — he was on his feet.
‘Professor Stein. You say that the difference between this and previous eras is that humankind now possesses the real ability to destroy the world in which we live — and that this fact means that the wilder manifestations of millenarianism are unlikely to occur as we move towards the 21st century. However, could this lecture itself not be said to be an even wilder manifestation in its own right? This surely is the first era in which the historically literate have felt free to say “Well, in the past people got over-excited about the millennium and expected Armageddon and all sorts of other terrible things, but we’re beyond that.” Is this not the purest form of hubris? Do you not agree that there is an aching feeling in our society, people are desperately waiting for something — anything to happen! Look at these people,’ Jim swept an arm around the lecture theatre to embrace the ancient Fabians and the perpetual students, ‘aren’t they waiting for something to happen? I don’t think your lecture, your calm, measured reasoning will serve to dampen down the great currents of expectation which are bound to flow with increasing strength throughout the population. Well, what do you think of that?’
Jim sat down, still quaking and sweating. I wasn’t sure that what he had said could altogether be classified as a question. However, Stein seemed to be taking it seriously enough. As Jim sat down, the Professor set down his pen and scrutinised us.
‘What you say has a good deal of emotional force, young man. And I think you may be right — but only in a very limited sense. The involutions of thought and reflection you draw our attention to are just that: thought and reflection. They bear no real relation to the motivation of the great mass of people. A few years ago when the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks had ground to a halt and before the rise to power of the current General Secretary, there seemed to be some real cause for alarm and the manifestation of some fringe political groupings was undoubtedly millenarian, but now, pshaw! All the political crises of the past forty years have served only to underline the fact that the dialectic imposed by technological advancement is irrefutable, unstoppable; more primary than thought itself. Although you express yourself eloquently, young man, I am more inclined to view the seeming irony you draw our attention to as a perception of marginalised youth, contemplating the grey power of middle age. It is an attitude rather than a timely perception. And perhaps for that reason it is all the more to be admired.’
Jim didn’t wait for the end of Stein’s answer. He was already disappearing through the brown swing-doors. It was left for me to inch my way out of the row of seats where we were sitting, grating past, and offering my bunched crotch to a number of disapproving faces. The last thing I saw as I went out the door was the chairman doodling with a finger on the dusty tabletop.
Jim was pacing back and forth in the lobby, in front of a noticeboard covered with a tatter of posters, flyers and hand-lettered advertisements. A flyer for next week’s open lecture was prominently displayed. ‘An authoritative exposition of recent developments in the Quantity Theory of Insanity’. Obviously the School’s policy was to offset one dull, minority interest lecture, against another, popular, general interest one. It was strange, it hadn’t really occurred to me before, but for a culture that was supposedly unaffected by the end of an era we certainly showed a lot of interest in esoteric theories. Jim shot an angry glance at me and shrugged. ‘I didn’t expect anything better from him.’
‘Oh, I don’t know, it didn’t seem like such a bad lecture to me. Admittedly I dozed through a lot of it.’
‘Oh yes, Stein is clever all right, but he just doesn’t understand. He’s an academic. Even if he does study contemporary events, he still renders them microscopic by looking at them through the wrong end of his theoretical telescope. Waiting isn’t like that. It’s an immediate, physical experience. If he saw Carlos in action, then he’d understand.’
Jim turned on his heel and walked off towards the exit. From behind I noticed how strange he looked, with his long muscular torso and silly little legs. He reminded me for a moment of nothing so much as a PG Tips chimp. His millenarian rants could easily have been a voice-over. Perhaps the real Jim had just been going, ‘Ooh, ooh, ooh! Ahh! Ahh!’ His tartan shirt was coming out of his trousers and the collar was dandruffy. He wasn’t looking after himself. I followed him out through the lobby feeling guilty, as if Jim had heard my thoughts about him.
Outside on the pavement. In the cold, dark, night-time canyon of Houghton Street, I found Jim standing with the two couriers I’d seen him with at lunch. Ginger was expostulating as I came up, while the character with the triangular hairdo stood back, arms folded. They were all too preoccupied to notice me. I heard the following:
‘Carlos doesn’t want anyone else in on it. Carlos couldn’t give a fuck about anything but the job.’
‘But he’s exactly the kind of person we need to convince. Sooner or later Carlos will need to reveal himself… and then …’
‘And then, cobblers!’
‘I’m not waiting around to listen to this bollocks.’
This was hairdo. He had a peculiar falsetto voice for such a large man. As he voiced the sentiment, he picked his helmet up off the saddle of his bike and pushed it down over his head, with a hermetic ‘plop’. This was effectively the end of the conversation. Ginger put his helmet on as well. And without any farewells the two of them turned over their engines and peeled off, out on to Aldwych. Leaving behind an acrid smell.