Doctor Criminale (50 page)

Yes, photographs are hard to read. But the two looked happy, definitely happy, together (‘Aren’t they happy, I remember this before,’ I recalled from Lausanne, ‘When he
left Gertla for Sepulchra’). Was this why Ildiko had sent it, to show me she had cared for Criminale much more than I might think? Or was the reason rather more Hungarian? Was she telling me
that people who have once been happy together – as the two of us had – later do strange things to each other, maybe betray each other? Then something odd struck me; in Budapest, I
remembered, Ildiko had made a lot of the fact that she had never been in the West, and that I was taking her there on her very first journey. But this New York photograph clearly dated from well
before our trip. It all seemed very meaningful but very baffling, like quite a lot else in the story of Criminale. Maybe the point was somewhere else, not in the letter, not in the photographs, but
in the simple fact that she had written it at all. For what the letter had done was to send me off to Norwich, make me lecture, and so start telling the story of Bazlo Criminale. And if that was
what she wanted, well, it worked, and has kept on working – as you can now see very well.

That brings me more or less to this day, this very day – or rather to the day I sat down to start recording this Criminale story, not, of course, this day now when, with
the world still changing, I finish it, certainly not the day when you choose, in your own good time, to read or deconstruct it. A few late if not last things are probably worth saying. Re
Criminale: his lost suitcase never was recovered, I believe, which means that every trace has been lost of the novel that should have followed
Homeless
. The series about the Great Thinkers
of the Age of Glasnost was never made, and I suppose never will be. Eldorado TV failed to pass the so-called ‘quality threshold’ and lost its broadcasting franchise to the Australians
in October 1991. Nada Productions returned to the nothingness from which, I imagine from its name, it must have been born, having mislaid quite a lot of several people’s money over the course
of the Criminale project. On the other hand the Vienna Staatsoper is flourishing, especially after Lavinia’s visit to the city. Lavinia in fact did quite well, getting a job in Munich with
the European Television Union. Ros, I see from my TV screen, is working regularly for the ‘Late Show’. In fact I saw her name roll on the credits for the 1991 Booker, which this time I
watched in the comfortless comfort of my own homeless home.

In the matter of Euro-fraudulence, as on other things, Cosima Bruckner proved completely correct. On the high, beflagged thirteenth floor of the Berlaymont Building, it was officially agreed
that – with 1992 at stake, a difficult summit coming at Maastricht, currency union and a new era beginning, the Eastern European dimension coming to the boil, and so on – certain small
financial problems of the past were much better forgotten. Otto Codicil’s name was briefly touched with scandal, but it did him no harm at all, or maybe some good, in Vienna, where he still
teaches, or does not teach, his students. His book,
Empirical Philosophy and the English Country House
, appeared this year and caused a small stir in Oxbridge mental circles. It was also
held responsible for a significant upsurge in British tourism; apparently people really like to see where other people think. I gather that Gerstenbacker, his great work, which will never be known
as his, finished, has been looking for a post in some European university where he can find some obliging assistants who will do for him what he has so selflessly done for others. Professor Massimo
Monza’s famous, flamboyant column still flourishes in
La Stampa
, where his late-Marxist readings of such things as the films of David Lynch or the rise of the miniskirt attract great
attention. Gertla Riviero’s work has an ever-rising reputation in Argentina, both as avant-garde discovery and a sound hedge against inflation.

Cosima Bruckner’s talents were not entirely neglected at the Euro-centre of things. In the city of Setaside, her fraud investigations were indeed set aside, but it proved an important step towards Euro-promotion. As she says herself, fraud is simply a
sideshow in the European bureaucratic programme, and she has risen to far greater heights. Working from the
cabinet
of the Deputy-President (Jean-Luc Villeneuve), she has become responsible
for many matters to do with the successful implementation of the year 1992: the year of elections everywhere, of world upheavals, of the Barcelona Olympics, of Expo 92 and the Seville celebrations
of the great discoveries of Columbus, who found a New World Order just 500 years ago. No wonder, as Spain booms, and Portugal takes over the presidency of the European Community, Iberia has become
the centre of current attention. The Heads of State are meeting in Lisbon soon, and don’t worry, I shall be there.

This brings me to a matter I am not too keen to discuss, for obvious reasons: my improving relations with Cosima Bruckner. I’m on a Euro-beat these days, and I actually visit her quite
frequently. She has rented a fine (if under-furnished) apartment in Lisbon, up in the old town, under the castle of São Jorge and with a fine view of the River Tagus and Pombal’s
glorious neo-classical city. About Cosima I now see I made a good many mistakes – but then I did about a large number of things. For instance, in my own contemporary opinion, there is nothing
wrong with black leather trousers, or her sternly shy ways. As for Cosima’s conspiratorial vision of life, which I once found excessive, I now have another view; we have conspiracy theories
because people conspire, just as we have plots because people plot, and fictions because people are always inventing things, if only to put life in some imaginary yet necessary order. So I’ve
now come to agree with her that our two worlds, mine of books and late-modern thinkers, hers of power and fraud, are not so far apart after all. In the obscure, unstable world of the Age of
Glasnost, unlikely things interconnect, interface and intercourse far more often than I imagined. I can even see it in myself.

But I shouldn’t like you to think that these odd snatches of event and these poor scraps of wisdom are all I took away from my confused, confusing quest for Bazlo Criminale. How to
explain? The problems of an ordinary young man, not particularly good at life, not much good at love either, pretty ignorant of the past, rather too soaked in living in the present, not greedy but
needing to earn a crust, should not be underestimated. Times change, and I suppose we all live between two worlds – the old bitter human history with its fair share of crimes and wrongs, the
bland and apparently historyless present, which serves us well enough. Our own times never seem to have a name, but we are all made by something: we find and fight the particular ghosts of our day.
They say we live in a renascent period, a time of quickening, an age of the new. Well, here I am, ready, a good Euro-person, in my green tracksuit and my Reebok trainers.

One day I met a good and famous man who was almost certainly bad. He came from somewhere in the past to tell one kind of story, and I am here to tell another. He was the writer, and I was the
reader – though, as I read him, I couldn’t help thinking he was reading me. He was a doyen of culture; I was an on-the-hoof consumer of it. When he spoke, he summoned great powers; I
tried to listen, but I heard only so much, for ours, you know, is an age of noise. He was a monumental statue; I was a pigeon in the park. He belonged to a finished era; I come from one that seems
hardly to have got started yet. I chased him, for a time, but there are other things to do with life than walk in the dirtied tracks of other people’s stories. I can’t say I’ve
totally given up the quest for Bazlo Criminale. Perhaps that is because, as he told me, his story is also somehow mine. Now and then I wonder, if I was ever put to it, whether I or anyone like me
could summon up greater moral powers than he did and didn’t in his own particular day. I know at best this is doubtful, at worst a vain delusion, usual in every new generation before it
really sees the size of its job. If history (which we now call lifestyle) should happen to come calling, demanding a signature or a commitment, I should probably sign anything, like most of us. As
far as I can see (which is not very far), few of us have worked up enough of a self to resist giving in, giving up, going over. Naturally I would always be tolerant, sceptical, permissive,
pragmatic, good-hearted, open, late liberal. I would also assume nothing is true or certain; no ideology, philosophy, sociology, theology any better than any other. Life for me would therefore be a
spectacle, a shopping mall, an endless media show, in which everything – amusing or grotesque, erotic or repulsive, heroic or obscene, sentimental or shameful – is an acceptable
world-view, and anything could happen. There would be no great wisdom, and no great falsehood. A mule would be the equal of a great professor. Or so, I seem to remember, they say in Argentina.

M
ALCOLM
B
RADBURY
is a well-known novelist, critic and academic. He set up the famous creative writing
department of the University of East Anglia, whose students have included Ian McEwan and Kazuo Ishiguro. He is the author of seven novels:
Eating People is Wrong
(1959);
Stepping
Westward
(1965);
The History Man
(1975), which won the Royal Society of Literature Heinemann Prize;
Rates of Exchange
(1983), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize;
Cuts
(1987);
Doctor Criminale
(1992); and
To the Hermitage
(2000). He has also written several works of non-fiction, humour and satire, including
Who Do You Think You
Are?
(1976),
All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go
(1982) and
Why Come to Slaka?
(1991). He is an active journalist and a leading television writer, responsible for
Porterhouse
Blue
(Channel 4),
Cold Comfort Farm
(BBC TV), many TV plays and episodes of
Inspector Morse
,
A Touch of Frost
,
Kavanagh QC
and
Dalziel and Pascoe
. He lives in
Norwich, travels a good deal, and was awarded a knighthood in the year 2000.

Also by Malcolm Bradbury in Picador

FICTION

Eating People is Wrong

Stepping Westward

The History Man

Rates of Exchange

Cuts

To the Hermitage

NON-FICTION

Who Do You Think You Are?

All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go

Why Come to Slaka?

First published 1992 by Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd

This edition published 2000 by Picador

This electronic edition published 2011 by Picador
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ISBN 978-0-330-52574-9 EPUB

Copyright © Malcolm Bradbury 1992

The right of Malcolm Bradbury to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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