Authors: Michael Frayn
But where
was
he?
And where was the real Dr. Wilfred?
And which of them was going to be standing up to give the Fred Toppler Lecture in two hours’ time?
And if neither of them was, then?
The first thing she had to do, obviously, was to tell Mrs. Toppler what had happened. And to do it before she read out the eulogious introduction that Nikki had written for her to someone who wasn’t Dr. Norman Wilfred at all. Or even to someone who
was,
supposing he should suddenly turn up, if Mrs. Toppler thought he
wasn’t.
Or to no one at all.
But how
could
she tell her, when it would finish her career? Not that she wanted to become director of the Fred Toppler Foundation just at the moment. Or to remain there in any capacity.
Or to be anywhere else on this earth.
* * *
Behind the screens around the new swimming pool the contractors were still working, apparently oblivious of any aspect of European civilization but the financial penalties for failure to complete on schedule. They were contributing to the intellectual life of the community, however, because Chris Binns, the foundation’s writer in residence, gazing out of the window of his room in Epictetus watching the dump trucks emerging from behind the screens, had at last had the idea for a poem.
He had been struggling to find a subject for some time. He obviously had to write
something
while he was here. If you went to be writer in residence somewhere you had to come back with more than just a suntan and a jar of the local honey. You were supposed to have written a poem, or preferably a whole sequence of poems. Something that alluded to the local landscape, certainly. But not, obviously, just saying how blue the sky was, and how nice the bougainvillea looked. It had to be something that crept up on the place obliquely. Obscurely. Ironically. Something that referenced bits of the place’s history and mythology that no one else knew about. That needed footnotes, and that would provide material for the thesis that a PhD candidate somewhere would one day be writing about you. He could see the thesis more clearly than he could see the poem. “This haunting and elusive work was written during a summer that Binns spent on the island of Skios, and interweaves the crisis of creative barrenness and existential purposelessness from which he was at that time suffering with the vibrant local resonances of…”
Of what, though? This was the problem. Of blue seas and purple bougainvillea? Of all the vibrant local resonances that had already been interwoven with his predecessors’ spiritual crises each year since this place had been open?
Now, however, he seemed to have cracked it. The poem was going to revolve around the figure of Athena. His idea was that the contractors digging out the new swimming pool had hit upon the site of the temple that was supposed to have been dedicated to her, and in some kind of half-hinted, largely incomprehensible way disturbed the goddess’s spirit. Since, as he had discovered from his researches on the Internet, she was the goddess not only of wisdom but of civilization, which was what the foundation was dedicated to, he could see considerable ironic possibilities opening up here. Wearing her helmet and chiton (whatever a chiton was—he could look it up later), carrying her shield, and accompanied by her traditional attendance of serpents, she would emerge from behind the screens and join in the life of the foundation. She might go to a class on Greek mythology. Take off her chiton and sunbathe. Come to one of Chris’s creative writing classes and read him some little epic or tragedy she had written.
This was the idea, but the actual words to express it he hadn’t yet found. It was difficult to concentrate in this place when for so much of the time there was nothing going on. And then suddenly, just as you were getting used to that, there was. A bird flying past the window. Another dump truck emerging from behind the screens around the construction site. The sun sinking ostentatiously towards the horizon. Right now, for example, here on the path below him Nikki was hurrying by, in her crisp white shirt, clipboard in hand, on her way from one mysterious importance to another. The sight of her reminded him of something. What it reminded him of most strongly and distractingly, of course, was herself. Or of Athena, perhaps, in her crisp white chiton, shield in hand. But also of something else. Something she had said.
A lecture? Someone giving a lecture? Someone asking a question?
* * *
In the Temple of Athena the two waiters by the buffet finished filling the hundred flutes with champagne. The string quartet picked up their bows. The headwaiter ushered Mrs. Toppler and Mr. Papadopoulou to their positions facing the entrance. Mrs. Toppler looked in her bag one last time to check that she had the texts of her introduction and her speech of thanks.
She closed her bag and nodded at the headwaiter. The headwaiter nodded at two of the underwaiters, who picked up heavy trays of charged glasses and took up their positions on either side of the entrance. First violin nodded at his colleagues.
Stream upon stream of tiny rising bubbles. Bar upon bar of serene singing notes. The endless pause before something happens.
Nikki, waiting in the shadows, settled a calm but concerned look on her face, and seized her chance. She stepped bravely forward.
“Mrs. Toppler,” she said. “Listen…”
But just at that moment the first guests walked into the temple. “Dickerson! Davina!” said Mrs. Toppler. “I might have known you’d be the first!”
37
One by one and two by two the tall flutes of champagne vanished from the waiters’ trays. One by one and two by two they wandered among the ruins in the gathering dusk, trying to find other glasses of champagne to talk to, keeping themselves pleasantly occupied by refracting in their pale sparkling depths the torches already flaring around the masonry, the riding lights on the yachts along the waterfront below, and the silently laboring right arms of the string quartet.
“So romantic!” said Rosamund Chailey to Darling Erlunder.
“You feel any moment you might see Agamemnon’s fleet sail over the horizon!” said Russell Pond to Mrs. Comax.
“Or Athena come round with the canapés!” said Mrs. Comax.
“And here’s Nikki, our very own goddess, instead!” said Chuck Friendly.
“Nikki, this is all
so
divine! But where is our Apollo? Our heavenly Dr. Wilfred?”
“I’m just looking for him myself,” said Nikki.
“We all have so many questions we want to ask him!” said Morton Rinkleman.
“So have I,” said Nikki. She moved on.
“Poor Nikki,” said Mrs. Comax. “She looks just
desperate
!”
“Such a load she’s carrying on those lovely young shoulders of hers!” said Mrs. Friendly.
* * *
A flute of champagne and a plate of canapés sailed head high through the guests still getting out of taxis and limousines in front of the lodge. “Oh, Nikki!” said Elli. “That’s so sweet of you! I think everyone has forgot me, sitting here in my box like a doll in a shop and nobody wants her.”
“You haven’t seen Dr. Wilfred, have you, Elli?” said Nikki. “Our lecturer? He hasn’t phoned, by any chance?”
“Oh my God!” said Elli. “He’s not here?”
“I can’t find him.”
“But it’s nearly time!”
“I know.”
“He’s got lost again! This great brain, and he can’t find his way from the guest room to breakfast! He phones me. ‘All I can see is goats,’ he says.”
“Anyway, if he phones now, or if you see him…”
“I call you at once, Nikki. Oh my God!”
Yes, oh my God, thought Elli, as Nikki hurried away again. She loses the great man just before his lecture—she never gets to be director! And what happens to me? I never get to be Mrs. Fred Toppler’s PA, and I’m stuck here in this glass box forever!
* * *
“Sixty-three euros,” said Stavros. “I take a credit card. Not a problem.”
There were no overworked glass doors here, only a striped barrier pole and uniformed security staff. No obesity, no sunburn, only slim and distinguished-looking people presenting gilt-edged invitation cards with raised italic print. Dr. Wilfred had finally arrived at his destination.
“Invitation,” said the security man.
“I’m your lecturer,” said Dr. Wilfred. “Your guest of honor.”
“No invitation?” said the security man. “No admission.”
* * *
“Sixty-nine euros,” said Spiros. “I accept Visa and MasterCard. No problem.”
“Wait here,” said Oliver. “I’m coming back. I’m just fetching my passport.”
“Invitation,” said the security man.
“You’re Giorgios, right?” said Oliver. “You saw me before. Nikki’s guest, remember?”
“No guest come in,” said Giorgios, “only he have invitation.”
* * *
The first security man looked dubiously through Dr. Wilfred’s passport, and then through the text of his lecture.
“I haven’t got an invitation to the lecture,” said Dr. Wilfred, “because I am the lecturer. It’s me who is giving the lecture for which the invitations have been issued. This is the lecture I am giving.”
He was surprising himself once again by the patience and politeness he was managing to display. The security man turned back to the beginning of the lecture and began slowly to turn all the pages over again.
“I know it says I am in Kuala Lumpur,” said Dr. Wilfred. “Or Western Australia. But they are deleted. I am here, in Skios. I shall put that in before I start.”
He couldn’t help noticing that there was someone else who was also being refused admission by one of the other security people. Also no invitation, and in his case no passport or lecture to offer in lieu.
“Come,” said the security man. Still holding Dr. Wilfred’s passport and lecture he led the way towards some kind of lodge or gatehouse. Dr. Wilfred kept very close to him, never taking his eyes off the lecture.
* * *
“I’m so sorry, Dr. Wilfred!” a familiar voice called out to Oliver from the darkness. “We’re going to miss your lecture!”
Mr. and Mrs. Chuck Friendly, the second-richest couple in the state of Rhode Island, were emerging from the pedestrian gate beside the barrier, on their way out with a couple of companions.
“We were really looking forward to it!” said Mrs. Friendly.
“I have to fly back to the States,” said Chuck.
“A sudden summons!” said Mrs. Friendly. “Right out of the wide blue yonder!”
“So, Dr. Wilfred, why aren’t you in there drinking champagne with all the rest of them?”
“No invitation,” said Oliver. “They won’t let me in!”
Mr. and Mrs. Friendly both laughed. “I love it!” said Mr. Friendly. He fetched out his wallet. “Here’s his invitation,” he said to Giorgios and slipped something into Giorgios’s shirt pocket.
Giorgios shrugged and waved Oliver in.
“Let’s hope we meet again!” said Chuck Friendly to Oliver. “I have a number of ideas about the possibility of creating something out of nothing that are remarkably consonant with yours, and I greatly look forward to exploring them with you!”
He raised his arm to wave good-bye, and Oliver couldn’t help noticing the gleam of the handcuffs that connected him to one of his companions.
* * *
The young woman behind the screen inside the lodge finished the phone call she had been making and looked at the passport and the lecture that the security man was holding.
“Dr. Wilfred!” she said. “It’s you! You’re here! Hi! I’m so happy! We talk, talk, talk on the phone, but I never see you! Where you been? You get lost again? You get eaten from goats? Nikki’s going crazy! I call her.” She dialed as she talked. “You just got time to change! You know where to find your room? No, you don’t! You’re going to get lost again! You’re going to phone me—‘Where am I?’
“Wait—I get you a buggy … Nikki! He’s here!”
38
“Dr. Wilfred!” cried Mrs. Comax. Oliver was trying to slip past the Temple of Athena unobserved, since he was no longer Dr. Wilfred, but merely Oliver Fox on his way to recover his passport and go. Everyone, though, was just at that moment beginning to emerge from the temple to move on to the agora for dinner, and now that Mrs. Comax had spotted him he was caught and surrounded.
“Oh, Dr. Wilfred!” The name pressed in upon him from all sides. “We’ve all been looking for you, Dr. Wilfred! We thought you’d despaired of us poor simpletons, Dr. Wilfred, and abandoned us!”
Oliver wondered whether to confess the truth to them, now that the game was over, but no one had believed him when he had tried before, and it scarcely seemed worth the effort of trying again, or the social disruption it would entail, since as soon as he had fetched his passport he would have vanished from their lives. And since, after all, at any moment the real Dr. Wilfred would almost certainly show up and do the job for him.
* * *
There was a young man just coming out of Parmenides as Dr. Wilfred approached it. He was wearing three-quarter-length orange skateboarding trousers and a plum-colored T-shirt that bulged obsequiously at Dr. Wilfred as he passed. All thought of him went out of Dr. Wilfred’s mind, though, when he opened the door of the guest suite. Another guest was obviously already in occupation. There were clothes scattered everywhere—shirts, trousers, underwear. On the luggage rack a suitcase lay open, with more clothes tumbling from it like fruit from a cornucopia, so profusely that it took Dr. Wilfred a moment to see that it had a red leather address tag.
He stood stock-still for a moment, then put his passport and the text of his lecture carefully down on the desk and opened the flap of the luggage tag. “Dr. Norman Wilfred,” it said. The name smiled up at him like a reflection in a mirror. It was
his
suitcase. He picked up a handful of the scattered shirts and underpants. The patterns on the shirts were old friends. They were
his
shirts. The underpants were pure silk. They were
his
underpants. He and his lost luggage had been reunited. It was not some other guest who was occupying the room. It was himself.