No Laughing Matter (41 page)

All these girls with their cheap printed frocks in the streets, even though they did look tired, tore the balls out of him. That was why he was always so randy here – none of that awful cash display which made bourgeois women into profit charts, none of that superfluous display which choked the life out of sexual desire, making women whores without the harlot’s honesty. Now here…. He went to his private bathroom. He turned the worn-washered brass tap of the old wooden cased bath, tepid water groaned and gurgled and gushed in spasms as fierce as if it had been at boiling point. This was the only luxury he ever craved for here, as a well known friend of the Soviet Union he could indulge it. He lowered himself into the
lukewarm
water so delicious on this sticky evening. But not for long, mopping his dripping body, in his old Jaeger buff dressing gown, he answered the knocking at the door.

‘It’s me. Mary Parr.’

As he looked at her standing there with her heavy amber earrings and amber necklace, her dyed black hair done in earphones so dead and scurfy that one felt that, if they were lifted, moths would fly out
of them, her dreadful arch smile as she took in his deshabille, he almost shut the door in despair. But then for all the absurd artiness and girlishness of her manner which made listening to her interventions at the congress more embarrassing than watching the positively last appearance of some grisly old worn out opera singer, she had yet produced since 1898 (yes 1898, God, she must be quite sixty) a series of books of somewhat excess enthusiasm but remarkably good sense on that stamping ground of bores and cranks – woman’s role in society. Now she sat herself firmly in his solitary chair so that,
standing
, he felt more the silliness as well as the discomfort of being wet and naked beneath his old gown.

She fussed as usual with an absurd cigarette holder and lady spy black cigarettes so that he began to shiver as much with impatience as wetness. But then she surprised him.

‘I’m their special star, you know,’ she said. ‘Not really political. Just what they call a modern thinker. My name adds a whole colour band to the anti-fascist spectrum. And I’m glad to do it. We
intellectuals
can’t stand aside any longer. But I don’t want to add a band to the wrong rainbow. That’s why I want to know why you’re
surprised
at these absences. I don’t know the place like you do, but I came prepared for some, what shall we say, disappearances. And these aren’t even that. Just non-appearances. Or am I being naïve? What do you know? Why are you fussing?’

He looked around the room. He must have seemed more worried than he realized, for she said: ‘What’s that about? I’ve got you out of your bath, haven’t I? Is that face cos you’re wet or because there’s some sound equipment in the room? Well, if there is I’m glad they should know what I have to say. And if there isn’t …’

‘I’ve not felt happy in Leningrad this time, Miss Parr, though it’s my favourite Russian city. I’ve missed many friends at the conference and many more whom I’ve wanted to see in their private homes. Of course, as they say, it’s August. It’s pleasing to see how the success of the second five year plan is making possible the summer holiday habit. It wasn’t so when I was here two years ago. On the other hand the telephone system is not so good. I’ve been cut off many times and so many numbers appear to be unobtainable.’

‘I see. More non-appearances than is reasonable even in
revolutionary
circumstances. Well, I envy you having so many unavailable friends. However I must judge as I find. I don’t think I’ve ever been
so charmingly entertained. As Kelvin Douglas said to me, “What other nation in the midst of one of the world’s greatest economic experiments would have time to think of baskets of fruit in their gues’ bedrooms?”’ She winked at him. As she talked she was writing. ‘And this is the nation itself that’s had this charming little thought. There is, you know, a little ticket on my basket of fruit “in admiration from the Russian people”. So that proves it, doesn’t it?’ Her voice sounded more than ever like a little girl trying to sound sophisticated.

She passed to him what she had written.

‘That’s my London address, by the way, for that article you
promised
to send me.’

She had written her address and some lines lower had added: ‘I want to know for myself if possible.’

‘And,’ he said, tearing off this sheet from her pad, and writing on the next sheet, ‘this is the name of that book of Maurice Dobb’s we were speaking of, in case I forget to give it to you.’ He wrote the title indeed, but beneath, ‘No one will speak, they’re all too
frightened
.’

To his amusement, she tore off this piece of his message and
swallowed
the tiny piece of paper.

‘I’m a great reader of light fiction,’ she said, laughing. ‘Insomnia, you know, but who can sleep well with Hitler on the doorstep?’

She got up from the chair, ‘Well, you’ve not really convinced me. And I suppose we’ll all be signing a joint statement tonight.’

‘I
will
,’
he said, and added immediately, ‘I
won
’
t
.’

She seemed to understand, for she stopped at the door, her many bangles jangling. ‘I expect you to squire me to this delicious banquet tonight.’

Before he got back into his bath he took her address from his dressing gown pocket and tore off the message. He was about to flush it down the lavatory, when he divided the small strip into two and swallowed both pieces. He laughed and said under his breath, ‘Infectious paranoia’. But he thought with disgust as he splashed in the cool water that they were mockingly parodying the same scene that people were enacting in mortal terror from Tokyo through Moscow to Munich.

The long eighteenth-century gallery with its baroque carving, its mirrors and chandeliers, was like the scene of some Victorian academic
banquet. So, with similar pomposity, jocosity, verbosity, and hideosity must Carlyle and Tennyson, Herschel and Huxley, George Eliot, Miss Nightingale, Baroness Coutts, Mrs Lynn Linton, Sir Theodore Martin, Matthew Arnold, and Ebenezer Prout, or any Victorian mixed bag of worthies, have degraded often and often with their tedious hypocrisy, solemnity and greed many and many a beautiful English eighteenth-century drawing-room. The men, in particular, in their drab dress and huge bulk, were a Lytton Strachey sketch for a circle of Inferno; and the tables groaning with caviar and sturgeon and blinis and whipped cream and crayfish and fruit from the Crimea and ice puddings and pies of pigeon, pies of duck, pies, for all one knew, of Russian bears, all waiting to be washed down with Georgian wine. The whole banquet united Queen Victoria with her Tudor ancestors. That indeed was what it was; for despite the short hair and dresses of the women, the talk of
hydroelectric
dams, and the great scientific and industrial projects of the twentieth century, the conformities and the hypocrisies of these social gatherings were mid-Victorian, while the appetites, the terrors, and the vast, empty laughter that hid the terrors, belonged to the court of bluff King Joe.

Mary Parr, who appeared to have met the banquet’s sartorial demands by exchanging amber for jade, twisted and swayed her skinny old hips for all the world like a Mata Hari playing out her last brave act. She came in on Quentin’s arm, the great spy coolly flirting with her handsome firing squad. As he listened to her he despaired. Even her supposedly sophisticated remarks were
imitations
of what had been said a hundred times at the functions during the week. ‘Caviar again,’ she drawled, ‘Isn’t it naughty of me, but do you know I get a tiny bit tired of caviar.’ And, ‘Oooh! Do have some of this sturgeon. It’s so deliriously tender. I think it must be virgin sturgeoa.’ And so on.

Seeing Andrée Paulhard farther down the room, drinking her
champagne
with such seductively sulky contempt, made Mary’s stale gushing twice as intolerable; he needed all his sense of duty to remain by her side. At last after what seemed an endless series of flirtations between her long jade holder and the cigarettes of Soviet notabilities whose eyes were on younger women, she consented to be taken away from the buffet, shrugging her shoulders and smiling as though she were humouring Quentin’s jealous passion. Zemskova was
standing
at one of the long windows that looked out on the courtyard where lamps caught fitfully the open mouths of thegreat stone dolphins.

‘Zemskova, this is Mary Parr.’

She who, two years ago even, would have been excited if a little amused by this contact with a famous figure from outside the bars, turned towards them, now a little apprehensive, as she shook hands and expressed her admiration for Miss Parr’s
Life
of
Mary
Woll
stonecraft
.

‘A friend of mine, Mr Dorchenko, translated it into Russian. I think he did a very good job.’

‘Oh, I should so like to meet him and thank him. Translations of one’s work into languages one doesn’t know are so mysterious. What a pity this is our last evening. He’s not here, I suppose.

‘Oh, no, Mr Dorchenko lives in Moscow.’

‘Can you give me his address? I’ll write to him.’

‘I think he is away now, Miss Parr.’

‘Oh,’ Mary paused for a second, then took it in her stride. ‘Like Mrs Ratikin and Professor Yudenich?’

‘A little,’ said Zemskova, very quietly, but she looked as though she would like to cleave her way out from between the two English guests. Mary had met half the test by herself, but nevertheless he decided he must complete it for her.

‘Perhaps Miss Parr should keep asking for her translator as you told me to ask for our absent delegates.’

He had expected some alarm from Zemskova, it was the sorry price he reckoned on in order to secure Mary’s credence. What came was a moment’s open terror. Mary realized the cause before he did.

‘Yes,’ she said, drawling loudly, and putting her hand on the old woman’s shoulder, perhaps to steady her, ‘the thing is to have a large spray of artificial flowers, or some women prefer leaves, just pinned across the shoulder here to the bosom.’

‘Oh, we should think that too artificial. Shouldn’t we, Sukhanoya?’

She had been there out of nowhere as he had put his question to Zemskova.

‘I am sure whatever fashions Miss Parr follows are becoming. But we prefer simple lines, you know, Miss Parr. We are a very simple people, aren’t we, Mr Matthews? Will you all come please to the other reception room now? Our dear friend Mr Kelvin Douglas is going to say a few words.’

The few words were many. Unctuous, Quentin thought, and
devious
. But, at least, Douglas was consistent with his morning opinion: ‘… These have been only some of the problems and of the answers that happen to have stood out for me in a week of invigorating talk. I think that too many of us who have been brought up in the
atmosphere
of Western social democracy with its individualistic, laissez faire liberal roots have an ingrown belief that only disagreement, what we tend to call “healthy disagreement”, can be invigorating. But I wonder how many of my colleagues from Britain and the United States, from France and from German democracy in exile have felt with me this week that when we socialists and progressives have a chance to get our thoughts in order in the atmosphere of socialist achievement, of socialism in action which we breathe here in the USSR, then what becomes the source of good health is not disagreement but concord, for many of us the concord that comes from humility in face of socialist solutions tried out and proven.’

Quentin, looking round, saw that to their Marxist hosts the shape and tone of Douglas’ words were as unfamiliar and meaningless as that sermon of a Free Kirk minister which they resembled. The utility of Kelvin Douglas, however, they recognized and honoured with a variety of lively, high minded and sometimes surprisingly sentimental expressions on their large, smooth, very naked faces.

‘We who come from the Western democracies have every day before us the tragic experience of seeing how the peoples’
determination
to throw back the Fascist aggressors in Abyssinia and China, to destroy the infamous racism of Hitler and his crew, is constantly weakened and cheated by the self interest, the vacillation, the
stupidity
and the treachery of our own capitalist governments. We social scientists know what a socialist world could be like. Here we see much of it in action…. Fascism whatever its cause will never conquer against the implacable will of the people. It is above all, comrades, the spectacle of our unity here that we offer as a
demonstration
of the determination of intellectuals everywhere to unite in rejecting the return to the Dark Ages … to offer defiance to Hitler, Mussolini and the Japanese war-lords and their jackals Mosley, De La Rocque, Doriot and the rest … and to make a last appeal to our own rulers to show themselves in action what they profess to be – lovers of peace and freedom ….’ (Quentin to make clear his to-
the-death
defiance of Chamberlain and Co. clapped loudly.)

Kelvin Douglas said, ‘I’m very glad to have the support of my good friend Quentin Matthews. Most of us academics and administrators would consider his expert knowledge of housing a life time’s work, but Matthews has to take on the world of foreign affairs as well and enrich our daily lives with his courageous, stimulating newspaper articles.’

Here there was some special applause from Mr Kursky, his wife and other Soviet representatives; Sukhanova even patted Quentin on the back.

‘Bravo, Mr Matthews,’ she said.

He cursed at having caught his foot in so obvious a trap. But now they were silent as Kelvin Douglas, selecting a lozenge, indicated that he was approaching his peroration.

‘Mark the occasion indelibly … not only a blue print for the foundation of a new organization … many steps yet to take for the formation of a secretariat and administration … for myself can think of no happier headquarters than … generously offered by our hosts … suggested name World International Federation of Social and Allied Scientists …, have heard the Russian but will not insult that beautiful language … no doubt fated to go the way of all fine names … already accustomed to the familiar friendliness of WIFSAS … but the charter to which I now appeal to you to subscribe is above all a challenge to the Fascist dictators … a fitting and memorable
conclusion
to …’