The Call-Girls (3 page)

Some of the participants had arrived on that Sunday afternoon by the bus; others drove up in hired cars. There were to be only twelve of them, an unusually small number for an interdisciplinary symposium, but Solovief had insisted that this was the optimal figure which still allowed for constructive discussion – much to the distress of the International Academy of Science and Ethics, which acted as sponsor.

The Academy, financed by another repentant tycoon, was run by public relations experts who believed that the prestige of a symposium, and of the handsome volume in which its proceedings would subsequently be published, was proportionate to the number of illustrious speakers. They liked to cram forty to fifty papers into a five-day conference, which put the participants into a condition not unlike that of punch-drunk boxers, and left no time for discussions – although the discussions were the declared primary purpose of the whole enterprise. ‘I am afraid,' the harassed chairman would say, ‘that the last three speakers have exceeded their allotted time, so we are running behind schedule. If we want to get some lunch before the next paper, we must postpone the discussion to the end of the afternoon session.' But when the last paper of the afternoon session had at last been delivered, it was time for cocktails.

‘Twelve is my limit,' Solovief had declared to the Director
in Charge of Programmes of the Academy. ‘If you want a circus, you must get yourself a ringmaster.'

‘But you have left out some of the most obvious people in their fields.'

‘Are we aiming at the obvious?'

‘Twelve papers in five days,' the Director had mused. ‘That leaves eighteen to twenty hours for discussions, which have to be tape-recorded. Transcribing the tapes costs a lot of money.'

‘If you are not interested in discussion, there is no point in the meeting.'

‘Your logic is impeccable,' the worried Director had said, ‘but I have learnt from fifteen years of experience that discussions tend to degenerate into games of blind man's buff. That is why I prefer a well-organized circus, where everyone performs his act amidst polite applause.'

‘What is the point of it?'

‘Parkinson's Law. Foundations have to spend their funds. Sponsors must find projects to sponsor. Programme directors must have programmes to direct. It's a
perpetuum mobile
which circulates hot air. Hot air has a tendency to expand. For one of the most brilliant atomic physicists of our time, you are astonishingly naive.'

Solovief let him go on without saying a word. His shaggy brows and the heavy bags under his eyes were in odd contrast with their incurably innocent expression. He was unable to explain to the Director – though Gerald Hoffman was not a bad sort as Foundation officials went – how he felt about this conference, the sense of desperation which impelled him to organize it, and his suspicion that it might be a harebrained project.

‘… However,' Hoffman went on, ‘you win, as usual. Twelve you wanted, twelve it shall be, same number as the apostles. But for Chris' sake change the title. We can't call a symposium just “SOS”, full-stop. Or maybe you wanted even an exclamation mark. It's undignified, sensationalistic, unacademic, apocalyptic, we might as well call it “The Last Trumpet”.'

‘Or “The Four Riders”. That would convey the idea of the circus.'

‘For Chris' sake, be serious for a moment. How about “Strategies for Survival”?'

‘No. It sounds like computer-war-games about second strikes and overkill. Call it “Approaches to Survival”.'

‘Fine. Make it “Scientific Approaches”.'

‘I don't know what “scientific” means. Do you? Just “Approaches”.'

‘All right then. APPROACHES TO SURVIVAL.' Hoffman wrote it down with a sigh of resignation and relief.

There was a pause. Hoffman noticed that Solovief's thick athletic shoulders were beginning to show a stoop. And yet women used to be mad about him – including Mrs Hoffman, ha-ha. It was, she explained, because of that darkly rugged face which reminded her of the Don Cossacks (but what about those heavy eye-bags?) and because of that deep voice with its faint Russian accent (which, she said, reminded her of Chaliapin). Solovief squashed his cigar, messing up a whole ashtray, and rose to go. Then he changed his mind, sat down again and asked in a casual voice:

‘Do you think it is worth while?'

The Director looked at him in surprise, then made a careful study of the condition of his own cigar.

‘You ought to know best,' he said at last. ‘If anybody else had suggested assembling twelve wise guys – even the wisest guys in their fields – to work out a plan to save the world, I would have told him that he was a crackpot and to go and get lost.'

Solovief played with a pencil on Hoffman's desk.

‘Perhaps you would have done me a favour by saying that.'

‘Perhaps, but you are not a crackpot. So what's at stake? At worst you will have wasted our money and your time.'

‘And at best?'

‘Don't ask me to exert my imagination – I haven't got one. That's your department.'

And so the project had got under way.

One of the approved rituals of all congresses, conferences, symposia and seminars is the get-acquainted cocktail party on the evening before the formal proceedings start. In this case getting acquainted was hardly necessary as most of those present knew each other from similar occasions in the past. Cocktails had been announced on the programme for 6 PM, and, with a few exceptions, the participants arrived on the dot. Including wives, secretarial staff and observers representing the Academy, there were about thirty people standing around uneasily in the recreation room, balancing their glasses of sherry or Scotch, and exchanging reminiscences of the last occasion they had met. Most of them seemed to be unaware of the magnificent Alpine panorama that beckoned through the plate glass of the French windows. At this early stage, the atmosphere was rather formal. But all knew that it would predictably and almost without transition become noisy and high.

‘You would think a bunch of suburbanites just out of Sunday Chapel,' Harriet Epsom remarked loudly to Tony. ‘It's the fault of the wives. Keep away from academic wives. They are a species apart – dowdy, poisonous and always tired. What from – I ask you?'

H.E. herself looked certainly neither dowdy nor tired. She was leaning on a heavy walking stick with a rubber end, and wore a mini-skirt of some exotic material, revealing a pair of formidable thighs, made more fascinating by the blue veins wending their way through valleys of gooseflesh.

‘Look at them – worn out and wilting. What wears them out so?'

‘Maybe their husbands?' Tony suggested tentatively.

‘You have got a point there. But scientists fall for just this type of little martyr.'

‘Beware of generalizations,' fluted a voice behind her. She gave a little jump. Claire Solovief, who had overheard her last remark, planted an affectionate kiss on Harriet's ruddy
cheek with too much powder on it. ‘I am not worn out and I don't aspire to martyrdom,' she declared. ‘How would you describe me, Tony?'

‘A – ravishing Southern belle,' Tony, whose gallant vocabulary was limited, blurted out and blushed.

‘Silly boy.' Claire was slightly taken aback, and at the same time pleased. She had just turned the corner of forty, and could still look ravishing on her fair days, but unfortunately she had become a grandmother just a fortnight before they had left Harvard. Why had she gone and married Nikolai when she was eighteen and he twice as old? And why had Clairette, their daughter, gone and married at eighteen a surgeon twice as old? It must be running in the family, she thought – all written in those little genes.

‘You are a snake in the grass – sneaking up on me like that,' said Harriet with unexpected amiableness; she had a soft spot for Claire.

‘And now I am going to take Brother Tony away from you,' Claire said. ‘He hasn't met most of the people yet.' This in fact had been the purpose of her butting in.

‘Take him and good riddance,' snorted Harriet. ‘But I wish you could protect me from Halder.'

There was, however, no known protection against Professor Otto von Halder. His wild white mane bobbing high above the madding crowd, every inch a King Lear, he was approaching them with his inimitable gait, a combination between goose-stepping and deer-stalking. One could not help glancing at his legs – moccasins, tartan stockings, hair, knobbly knees, more hair, khaki shorts, in that order. ‘Hallo, all and everybody,' he bellowed. ‘When men and mountains meet, great things shall be done!'

But in the meantime Claire, by an adroit manoeuvre, had managed to steer Tony away in the opposite direction, pretending not to have seen or heard von Halder's approach. ‘Well done,' said Tony when they were out of range. ‘I felt like a steamer being towed by a nimble tug.'

‘I learnt that technique from Daddy,' said Claire. ‘He was in the Foreign Service, but his real job was to act as a diplomatic
chucker-out at receptions when people stayed too long.… Anyway, you have met Halder before. He is an exhibitionist, but not as silly as he sounds, so don't be taken in by his
enfant terrible
act.'

‘It isn't that,' said Tony. ‘But I have read his book on
Homo Homicidus,
and I don't agree with him.'

‘Nor does Nikolai. Watch out, there is Valenti, so let's head in the opposite direction. I wish Nikolai hadn't invited Valenti. There is something sinister about his Valentino looks, if you will excuse the pun. And that silk handkerchief in his breast pocket.'

‘Isn't he supposed to be a wizard among neuro-surgeons, with a Nobel prize to his name?'

‘I know. He is also the greatest Lolita-chaser alive. He gives me the creeps.' She steered Tony towards short, dumpy Dr Wyndham with his large bald head and dimples in the cheek, who was listening patiently to whatever it was that the tall girl with the shaven neck was explaining to him. ‘This is Brother Tony, who will represent the Almighty at the Symposium,' Claire broke in. ‘Tony, this is Dr Wyndham, who, as you know, will turn all our future grandchildren into geniuses. And Dr Helen Porter, who will save them from the horrors of early toilet-training.'

‘Every Christian mother will bless you for your endeavours,' Tony said solemnly to Helen Porter. ‘But I didn't realize we had another lady on the Symposium – besides Dr Epsom, I mean.'

‘I am not a Participant,' said Dr Porter. ‘Harriet just brought me along as a sort of lady's companion.'

‘Poor little you,' said Claire. ‘Nikolai may relent and admit you to one of the sessions as a Discussant.'

‘I protest, protest, protest,' said Horace Wyndham, all dimples and titters, spreading his palms. ‘I don't wish to be torn into little pieces by a Kleinian.'

‘I have always wanted to meet a Kleinian,' said Tony.

‘Why?'

‘Because I like the idea that we all start life as paranoiacs and then change into depressives.'

‘That isn't much of a joke, you know,' said Helen, and turned her attention pointedly to Wyndham. ‘You were saying a moment ago…'

Claire and Tony moved on. ‘I seem to have been snubbed,' Tony said cheerfully.

‘She is a bitch. But bright … Hallo, Professor Burch. Have you met…?'

‘He sat next to me in the bus,' Burch said without enthusiasm.

‘He has just been snubbed by that Kleinian bitch.'

‘I did not know that a Kleinian had been invited,' said Burch. ‘Had I known, I would have had to reconsider my acceptance. Solovief has the most peculiar ideas.'

‘She hasn't been invited. She's only a kind of camp-follower brought by Harriet.'

‘Why do you dislike Kleinians?' asked Tony. ‘Do you dislike them in particular or do you dislike all Freudians in general?'

‘I wouldn't know the distinction,' said Burch, peering sharply over his gold-rimmed half-lenses, ‘any more than I am interested in the disputes between Jansenites and Jesuits. I happen to be a scientist and as such concerned with observable behaviour. Show me a slice of your super-ego under the microscope and I will believe in its existence.'

‘I don't care about the super-ego or the castration complex,' said Tony, ‘you can have them both. But in your books you also deny the existence of the mind, don't you?'

‘I can look at a piece of brain tissue under the microscope. Show me a piece of mind under the microscope and I will believe in its existence. If you cannot do that I must regard the existence of a mind, as something distinct from the brain, as a gratuitous hypothesis which has to be eliminated.'

‘But a brain is merely a lump of matter, and I am told that matter has been de-materialized by the physicists into little whirlpools of energy or whatnot.'

‘You are repeating a favourite argument of the scientifically semi-literate.'

Tony changed his tack. ‘Take hypnosis. Does it not show the power of mind over matter?'

‘Hypnosis is a variant of a scientific technique called conditioning. It demonstrates observable changes in behaviour, due to the conditioning of the subject's responses.'

‘But I have seen a hypnotist make warts on an old woman's face disappear in a week. Do you call a wart a behaviour?'

‘I certainly don't call a wart a behaviour, and I have no time for mumbo-jumbo. Can you cure this?' he pointed to a leathery, lentil-shaped excrescence residing on his chin.

‘I am not a hypnotist. But I think the chap I mentioned could…'

‘I told you I have no time for hocus-pocus …' Claire wondered how Tony, for all his cheerfulness, would take a second snub, when fortunately she saw Nikolai approaching – his big head with the thick, greying hair lowered like a charging bull's, but in slow motion. Or was ‘fortunately' the right word? She knew as a fact – however indignant Professor Burch would be at such a suggestion – that Niko infallibly sensed when she needed him, whether he was at the other end of a crowded room or at a conference on the other side of the Atlantic. ‘You are quarrelling already?' he asked, putting a fatherly hand with a hard grip on Tony's shoulder.