Authors: Malcolm Bradbury
‘Wasn’t it nice?’ asks big, blonde Katya Princip, sitting beside him in the small orange taxi, her arm through his, ‘You see now why I like so much that place. I hope you
like the next one.’ ‘I’m sure I shall,’ says Petworth. The taxi is driving toward the city, at some speed; loud honkings from the other traffic surround them. ‘Here
our drivers do not look behind,’ says Katya Princip, ‘They look always forward, into the socialist future. Look, here on the hill, the castle. This is where you are going this
afternoon, so please remember just what it is like. Inside is big and dark, and there are many small rooms of stone. You have been in castles before, I think. In the rooms, the nice metal suitings
for the very little soldiers, with plumes in the helms, and on the wall some pictures of all the old battles. Then you see some old guns and a wine press. Then downstairs some cold prisons with no
windows, for the tourists, not for them to live in, just to look at. We do not treat our tourists so badly. There is fine exhibition of our Slakan past, with many maps and drawings of the old
invasions. Upstairs the bedroom of Bishop Vlam. You know he was, what do you call him, a man who likes too much the ladies.’ ‘A rake?’ asks Petworth. ‘That is a rake?’
asks Princip, ‘Then what do you clean the leaves with?’ ‘Another rake,’ says Petworth. ‘So, two rakes,’ says Princip, ‘This one has a fine bedroom with a
bed of four posts. Or perhaps now three posts, he was very rough with his ladies. He put them down a hole also, remember the hole. So, do you see it all?’ ‘I think so,’ says
Petworth. ‘Good,’ says Princip, ‘Well, now you have been there, so we go somewhere quite different. I think I tell this driver to slower, don’t you? He is running over much
too many people.’ Princip leans forward to talk to the driver; Petworth stares out at the cityscape of urban Slaka, where in grey and khaki the people walk, in the day’s sun, and the
streets flicker past. He stares, feeling separate, pleasurably hijacked; as he does so, a certain small thought occurs to him.
It is the curious thought that he is happy. He is, for a brief spell, in the company of a woman, blonde, batik-clad Katya Princip, whom he finds gay, and amusing, and beautiful, and whose gaiety
makes him feel gay too. But there is more to it than that; for Dr Petworth, sitting there in the foreign taxi in the foreign city, clutching his lecture, is not a man much used to feeling that he
exists. Over the years he has grown older, seen some greying of the hair, watched his teeth deteriorate and be on occasion extracted, lost his youthful humour, grown more anxious and solitary, felt
some centre in him, some ground of being where value ought to be, grow fragile and dissipate. The world about him, as he has come to know more of it, has grown not more real, but less, and life not
more living but a parody of itself. People have become repetitions of people already known, desires become an absurd biological urgency, vague therapeutic hungers for variation and complication.
The wife who was once everything seems slight now, a drifting mysterious presence and absence; women who appear in his days and dreams as possible lovers have not tugged him with the necessary
intensity of emotion. The objects of will have deteriorated, like his teeth; he has trouble in summoning up enough substance to be, to stir, to feel, to say. He has come to feel contentless,
wordless, not there, grown more used to inner absence than to presence. But now, though he knows he should not be here, though he thinks with anxiety and guilt of the three lost diners, talking
about him somewhere in any one of a dozen possible restaurants, though he can think of no adequate explanation for himself when explanation is needed, he feels a curious small sense that exist is
what he does.
‘This taxi driver is very interesting,’ says Katya Princip, the presumed source of these emotions, turning towards him, ‘He tells me he is no more in love with his wife.’
The taxi driver, a big hairy man, turns and nods. ‘He has seen me and now he loves me, and he wants me to go and take some drinks with him. I explain no, I am busy with my lover, you do not
mind I say that?’ ‘No,’ says Petworth. ‘But now he wants to kill himself,’ says Princip, ‘Sometimes people are like that here.’ The taxi stops, in the
middle of a quiet urban street with linden trees along it, and behind the trees rows of old high balconied apartment buildings; the driver turns and speaks volubly to Princip. ‘Do you please
get out, my dear,’ says Princip, ‘I come to you in a minute. I just have some more words with him.’ Petworth gets out and stares up and down the street: no one walks in it, and
the doors are all shut. ‘So,’ says Katya Princip, climbing out of the taxi, ‘I think I persuade him not to do it. I take a drink with him tomorrow. Often such things happen to me,
I don’t know why, of course. Well, we just walk a little, and we are there.’ ‘Where?’ asks Petworth. ‘Where we are going,’ says Princip, ‘I think you are
liking some coffee. We go to a place we can get some. It is called my apartment.’ ‘Ah,’ says Petworth. ‘I look at you and I think you are very tired,’ says Princip,
‘Perhaps you need a rest and a shower, before you do your next thing. I will make you some terrible coffee and give you an awful cake. It is just here, we go in this door. Press the button
and the machine opens it. Now we go in quickly, I do not want everyone to see you. I am smuggling you, Petwit.’
They enter a dark lobby, with a lift in a cage at the end of it. ‘Come inside it, quickly,’ says Princip, ‘Look, I show you how it works, in case you come here again to see me.
I hope another time you will want to, do you think so? Look, in this box on the wall you must put in a small coin, ten butt’uun. If you do not do it, the machine does not march. If you do,
well, pouff, there it goes.’ In the clanking cage, they rise up together through the building. Princip is close against him; stone landings float past, lined with closed wooden doors.
‘Now here is my floor, the top,’ says Princip, ‘Aren’t we lucky, there is no one to see us. Now, where is my key, and then I make you disappear again.’ They step out
onto the stone landing, and Princip puts her key to a blank wooden door. ‘When it is open, go quickly inside,’ she says, ‘We do not like the world to know all the things we
do.’ The door opens; inside is a small narrow hall, a hall so narrow and small it is hard to know whether it has been designed to increase human intimacy, or entirely prevent it. The walls
press them together: ‘You see, you are come,’ cries Princip, laughing, her face just below his, ‘I hope you don’t think this is all I have. There is some more apartment
inside.’ In the tight space, it is difficult not to find one’s arms around the person with whom one is pressed; Petworth’s, certainly, are now round Princip’s waist.
‘Oh, Petwit,’ says Princip, gently removing his hands, ‘Don’t you know I brought you here for a rest? Of course; you must be tired after such a lecture. Do you like also to
be a rake? You are such a thin one, perhaps really a rake of the other kind.’ ‘I like you,’ says Petworth. ‘Oh, yes, I understand it,’ says Princip, ‘I also to
you. But I am a little bit elusive, my dear. I like to talk a bit with you. And we have so much time, isn’t it nice? All the afternoon, and for us to stay together. Unless you like better to
go to the castle? Do you prefer it better?’ ‘No, I like to be here with you,’ says Petworth. ‘Well, you have good sense,’ says Princip, ‘Now come inside and I
show you my flat.’
7 – OPER.
I
It is, this room that Petworth now steps into, a small, tight room, short of space for human endeavour. But human endeavour has been here, and humanized it: two antique chairs
stand to either side of a fine wide modern sofa, which elegantly fits into the bookshelves on the wall, a wall on which hang three modern paintings of violent and erotic concept, and two small
ikons. The rest of the wallspace is taken up with bookshelves, from which many hundreds of volumes tumble; and books, too, lie scattered on the tables and on the large wide desk standing by the
window, on which sits also a telephone, a typewriter, a jumble of loose papers which flutter in the small draught that comes through the curtains above. ‘Well, my dear, I hope you don’t
expect a special place,’ says Princip, taking off her white scarf, ‘Here in my country, the apartments are small, the heat is bad, the telephone usually does not march, the men do not
mend a thing when it makes wrong. Of course, you do not have such problems in your country.’ ‘I suppose not,’ says Petworth. ‘Really, do you say so?’ asks Princip,
laughing, ‘You think I have not been there? Don’t you know I was in London once?’ ‘You were?’ asks Petworth. ‘My dear, of course. Perhaps I saw you even in the
street, and did not know it. If it was so, would it not be sad? But I think you have those problems too. Especially at my hotel. Some things grow the same all over the world, I think. It is a time
when life is not so easy. Well, it is not so good, but I hope you like. Do you like these paintings of my friends? And my nice antiquated chairs? Do you know they are from before the revolution?
Some of those things still exist. And my desk where I work, do you like it? Here is the private place where I make all those books. Oh, they are made here in my nice place, but then of course I
must go to the world and put them to the market. That is the hard thing, to go to the market. To please those people at the Union. To value their wise criticisms. Well, you don’t come here to
criticize me, I hope.’
‘No,’ says Petworth, ‘I like your room.’ ‘Well, it has a good taste,’ says Princip, ‘Or so I try. And, for a time, it is ours all. No one else comes. We
have it for today. So please sit down, my dear, take a nice chair, make some music with the player, take off your shoes. And do you know what I do now? I go to the kitchen just to make you some
coffee and bring you some cake. That is what you came for, I think, well, you must be served.’ Princip goes into the kitchen; Petworth walks about the small, cramped room, evidently living
room, study, and bedroom, for a nightgown lies under the sofa pillow. ‘What do you look at?’ calls Princip from the kitchen, ‘I hope you don’t read what I write. It is very
private, until it is finished. But of course, you do not know my language. In a minute maybe I will teach you some.’ ‘So many books,’ says Petworth, looking in the bookshelves,
where the unbound volumes with their Cyrillic titles lie. ‘Yes, every day I read them and I become some more a person,’ says Princip, ‘Look please in the street. Does anyone
watch?’ ‘Watch the flat?’ asks Petworth. ‘Of course,’ says Princip, ‘Don’t you know this is a main work for many people? To sit there in cars and watch the
others? And I am a writer, not reliable, often they like to watch me for a while. Also to photograph me now and again, and make list of who my friends are. Of course perhaps it does not mean
anything. It comes in useful perhaps for some later day, when I am not any more a person to invite to an official lunch and meet a nice foreign visitor.’ Petworth goes to the window and leans
over the typewriter, where a page of unknown words spirals out; beyond the net curtains the street is quiet and empty, except for one parked car.
‘There’s just one car,’ he says. ‘Is it a black one?’ asks Princip. ‘Yes,’ says Petworth. ‘And do you see someone in it?’ asks Princip.
‘I can’t tell,’ says Petworth. ‘Yes, of course,’ says Princip, ‘It is a state of mind, you know, to be watched. We like, don’t we, to see our lives from
the inside. But if you are watched you see them from the eyes of those others. You can’t remember any more if you have really an inside, or if the inside is already the outside. You become
like an actor, or those girls in a dress photograph, what do you call?’ ‘A model,’ says Petworth. ‘Well, perhaps now we are all so,’ says Princip, ‘Perhaps the
inside was always just a little illusion, a false secret. But we like that secret, don’t we? And then, one day, they stop you perhaps, and take you to a place. They do not arrest you, it is
just for a day and night, to ask you some little questions. So you can help a little the state. They are often nice, with cigarettes and drink. But they open your file and it is fat and everything
is there, the notes and the pictures. And they tell you what you are and what you do. They know more than you, they remember everything, the things you don’t ever remember that you did, but
you did them. They tell it, you say, “It is not me, I am not like that, I was never there.” And they tell: “Yes, it is you, really you, the other is your illusion.” They
have made your story, a bad novel, and you are in it for ever. And here is what is strange. You begin to agree it, because it fits, because it has your images, your voice in a tape. You begin to
confess it, yes, I am like that, how well you know me. And they are right, because in all of us is a doubt, that we do not know ourselves at all. We all feel a bit guilty to exist. And this they
know very well. To be is the crime we commit, and anyone will confess it. Don’t you think you would do the same?’ ‘Yes,’ says Petworth.
‘Well, I am nearly ready,’ says Princip, ‘Put on please some music, my dear. Do you see my records player? Do you know how to make work that thing? I expect you are a little
bit a mechanical person.’ ‘Yes, I can do it,’ says Petworth, finding the machine and switching it on. ‘You cannot read my books, but of course you can hear my music, that is
a language we can all know,’ says Princip, ‘Do you find my records? What do you pick?’ Petworth sifts through the shelf of records in the bookcase; most of the covers are in the
language he does not know. ‘Do you like the classical or the modernismus?’ asks Princip, ‘There are both.’ ‘Classical,’ says Petworth, ‘Here’s some
Mozart.’ ‘Oh, do you like?’ asks Princip, ‘Well, he is civilized. Now do you sit down and take off your shoes.’ The courtly music comes through the speakers; a civil
guest, Petworth sits on the sofa-bed, and removes the shoes from his feet. ‘And now here is your awful coffee, your terrible cake,’ says Princip, coming in in her batik dress, carrying
a silver tray, ‘Also a little peach brandy that will make you better. I hope you do not mind to fatten a bit. I think it is good, really you are too thin. But I think in the West the thin is
very popular.’ Princip sits down with him on the sofa, and hands him a plate: ‘I am sorry I am so long,’ she says, ‘But I do not make many foods. I like to eat in a
restaurant, with my friends. But it is nice to have a friend who is here with me. I think you are one now. We make a little risk, but I think it is worth it. It is only what civilized people do, to
make the frontiers go a little bit away. I think you would give me tea if I meet you in London.’