Rates of Exchange (49 page)

A familiar gilded onion dome appears on the skyline; there are aircraft beacons in the flat wide fields that spread out to the jagged horizon. On the airport concourse stand the blue armed men;
one of them comes up to the taxi when it stops in an unpermitted place, but Mari Lubijova, a good guide still, is persuasive. They go into the departure building, wooden, low, a little bigger than
the building into which, two weeks ago, he came. The crowds mill, with their luggage; ‘Change money, change money,’ says someone, clutching his arm a trifle desperately, in the press.
There is a stall marked
LITTI
, another marked
TYP
’
ICHII
, another marked
COSMOPLOT
, in the
centre, with a girl in a green uniform writing at it. Long lines wait at the two small, slow check-in desks. ‘Do you like to check now?’ asks Marisja Lubijova. ‘I think
there’s just time for a cup of coffee,’ says Petworth, putting down his luggage by the Cosmoplot desk, and looking for a sight of a crisp white sports shirt, a natty pair of trousers,
but there is nothing of that sort to be seen at all. ‘Oh, do you like?’ says Marisja, ‘It is this way, and, yes, you have time.’ His luggage left by the Cosmoplot stand,
Petworth pushes through the crowd after Marisja. But, suddenly, there is a commotion behind them; one of the blue armed men comes urgently through the crowd, pushing aside priests in robes, old
ladies with cardboard boxes, shouting and waving his gun. ‘Oh, Petwurt, what do you do now?’ asks Marisja, stopping, ‘Oh, really, how do you do it, he tells you forget again your
luggage. It is not permitted to leave it, you must go back. Really, you are hopeless, don’t you say so? Maybe I should come to England with you. I do not know how you can live at all without
me.’ ‘No,’ says Petworth.

He walks back to the Cosmoplot stall, where his bags stand, apparently undisturbed; and that is hardly surprising, for another blue armed man stands firmly over them, legs astride. ‘You
see how our militias like to look after you,’ says Marisja, ‘Now they like you to check it at once. Our people here do not steal, but they do not like anything to happen to you. You are
our important visitor.’ So, an important visitor, firmly flanked by two armed men, Petworth is led to the head of the queue at check-in, while the other passengers stand patiently, casting
only the smallest and most oblique of glances at the business being conducted. The green Cosmoplot girl takes his ticket and both his bags; slowly and painfully, she writes LHR on two baggage tags,
fixes them to the luggage, and puts it behind her. ‘That is good,’ says Lubijova, ‘Now you will not see them again until you must show what you have at the
donay’ii
.
That is your boarding pass, put it please in your pocket, one where you will find it, or you will be in Slaka all your life. I don’t mind, but perhaps you do. And your passport, you have it?
And what about your moneys? You know you must not take any vloskan out of the country?’ ‘I’d better give it all to you,’ says Petworth, reaching in his pocket for the
finished money, useless for further exchange. ‘Oh, Petwurt, are those your riches?’ asks Marisja, laughing, ‘Don’t you know you have left only five? This is not too much.
Perhaps a hundred tram tickets, or thirty loaves of bread. I think you can keep that in case you have some duties on your souvenirs. Our
donay’ii
, very strict. And I hope you
don’t take any forbidden things. Antiquities, any ikons? They will not like you if you have such things.’ ‘No, I don’t,’ says Petworth. ‘Well, now if you like,
we take our cup of coffee, with no worries,’ says Marisja, ‘I do not like to say goodbye to you, do you understand?’

Petworth understands, but something is happening to him; under the strange dulling grammar of airports, all feeling except a sense of anxiety begins to go. The announcements come through the
loudspeakers, in a confusion of languages; words become part of the endless web of multilingua that runs through the head like a dream. The flight-boards are fluttering, signs turning toward
redundancy; the city that two weeks has built in his mind no longer seems close. The coffee cloys and does not taste like coffee; the people already begin to look strange. ‘Attenzie,
slibob,’ says a girl over the loudspeakers, ‘The flucht of BA to London now boards after all formalities.’ ‘My flight,’ says Petworth. Facing him at the counter, her
features looking paler and more tense than he has ever seen, Marisja Lubijova is looking at him. ‘Petwurt, Petwurt,’ she says, ‘Oh, it is goodbye. And there is no way to say it,
really, no words that can be right. Do you know any? I don’t. But you remember our custom?’ ‘Your custom?’ asks Petworth; but his words choke, as two warm arms come round
his neck, his face goes down, he is tugged forward into two soft breasts that are pressed forward at him, into him. ‘Thank you,’ says Petworth, ‘My very good guide.’
‘Cam’radakii,’ says Mari, adding a kiss, ‘For me you really are. And I hope for you I am a little bit also.’ ‘You are,’ says Petworth; but the crowd is
moving, toward the labyrinth of departure, and he must move with them, to get on his flight, and ahead there is an armed man, holding his gun out over a black line across the floor, and beyond
there is a row of small curtained stalls, and a sign that says
IDENTAY
’
II
. He looks back, and sees that he has already gone through a gate that
Marisja Lubijova cannot pass; she stands behind it, waving, shouting ‘Goodbye, comrade Petwurt.’ He turns and waves and shouts goodbye; the armed man nudges him lightly with the gun, to
move him forward.

And then he is again in the familiar labyrinth of the airport, the boxes that follow on from boxes. In the booth marked
IDENTAY
’
II
, where
four armed men sit, they look at his passport, and one of the men tears away the rest of his visa. In the booth marked
GELDAY
’
II
, his unfilled
document causes doubt and much inspection; but ‘Ned vloskan, turnii off’icayii min’stratam culturam komitetam,’ says Petworth; ‘Ah, da, va,’ says the man,
stamping the document and letting him through. Caught in the grammar of airports, already less a subject and more an object, Petworth walks on, into the larger hall beyond, marked
DONAY
’
II
. At the end of it, many uniformed men work in supermarket aisles, tipping out luggage, checking pockets and wallets. The tagged flight luggage is
stacked on trolleys at the entrance to the hall, to be identified and carried to the inspection. The blue suitcase, the battered briefcase, sit there; and, as Petworth picks them up, anxiety
strikes him, an anxiety like the anxiety that has been with him throughout his tour, an anxiety not unlike that which has been with him all his life, but an anxiety incremented, made intense, so
that, if one was looking for a word to describe it, as a linguist should, then perhaps the word would be: terror. He puts the bags down in front of one of the uniformed men, who looks at him, and
begins to open them: first the blue suitcase, with its jumble of dirtied shirts, discarded underpants and used socks, its torn best suit, split past the crotch, its small scatter of peacemaking
presents, its scrap of handmade embroidery, its well-wrapped glass decanter from
MUG
, the sum of his travelling being. But not quite the full sum, for there is also his
briefcase, with his lectures and writings and notes, his mature reflections on the Uvular R, his comprehensive version of English as a medium of international communication. The case falls open,
and there are the books, Lyons and Chomsky, Fowler and Princip,
Transformational Grammar and Nodu Hug
; and the crumpled, beaten papers, held together with their rusting paperclips; and, in
the middle, a thick bright wad of new paper, shining in its cleanliness, the story of Stupid.

And Petworth now thinks that he knows the end of the story of Stupid, and that it is here, where the uniformed man stands fumbling into the bags, unfolding, unwrapping, unpacking, scattering.
For Petworth can see very clearly that not all the people who are lining up in expectation of taking this flight are going onward, into the departure lounge further on; some are being turned back,
some being led off into side rooms for further questioning, some being inspected by more senior officers who come from a room at the back. And it is one of these that is being called by the
uniformed man now; he walks over, in his blue shirt, and stares into the two jumbled bags. ‘Something wrong?’ asks Petworth. ‘You don’t speak our language?’ says the
man. ‘No,’ says Petworth, ‘Not really.’ ‘Yes, a thing wrong,’ says the man. ‘What is it?’ asks Petworth. ‘You don’t know?’ says the
man, ‘You make an offence.’ ‘What offence?’ asks Petworth. ‘This,’ says the man, reaching into the luggage, and picking up the glass decanter that Petworth has
bought in
MUG
, ‘Not for export.’ ‘No?’ says Petworth. ‘No,’ says the man, holding the decanter up high, as if to examine the texture of
the glass; it slips, as if by mistake, though it does not seem to be a mistake, from his fingers, and smashes to the floor. On the tiles, glinting, lie the broken pieces of the elegant, crafted
construction; Petworth stares at them. ‘You don’t know it is not permitted?’ asks the man. ‘No,’ says Petworth, ‘I’m sorry.’ ‘You will know
when you come again,’ says the man, going back into his office.

And Petworth walks on, into the small departure lounge, where a strained and clearly depleted band of passengers stands, wiping their heads with handkerchieves and waiting for the London flight.
There are some hard chairs and even a small duty-free shop, selling vodka and rot’vitti, hand embroidery and glass decanters, curiously like the one that has just been shattered in
DONAY
’
II
. But this does not detain Petworth, for the room has mesh-covered windows, and beyond them is the tarmac, where there stand the blue
buses, the tank carriers, the rows of lined-up planes. One of the planes is in British Airways livery; it is an ancient Trident, the union flag flaking rather on its tail; that does not matter, for
Petworth would like to be on it. But there is a wait, a long wait, as passengers filter through into the tiny lounge. Then, suddenly, a green stewardess comes through and goes to the locked door;
she picks up a microphone. ‘Attention, slibob, here is flugzig informato,’ she says, ‘Soon the flight to London of BA boards at a certain gate. For security, all baggages,
including hand ones, shall be identified and placed on the cart before is boarded the bus. To take baggages into the plane is not permitted.’ She unlocks the door; Petworth steps outside,
puts the old, heavy burden of his luggage onto the trolley, and gets inside the blue bus. Soon it is juddering him across the concrete to the stand where the Trident waits. He goes up the steps,
into the round cabin where a concealed tape plays, for some reason, ‘Way Down Upon the Swanee River.’ ‘Hello sir,’ says an affable stewardess in a familiar uniform;
‘This way, please,’ says another, with gloves on, leading him down the cabin to seat 21
D
.

‘Thank you,’ says Petworth, sitting down, ‘Thank you very much.’ Fastening his lap-strap, he leans across the passenger between him and the window, in 21
E
, and looks out through the globed glass. Beyond it, no distance at all away really, is the tarmac, with on it a few flight-handlers working at their familiar tasks, and a crowd of
armed men, with long flared topcoats and boots up to the knee in cavalry fashion. Beyond them are the lined-up planes on their stands; beyond them one can see, white in the sunlight, the wooden
terminal buildings, with their tightly closed doors, the signs above them saying
OTVAT
. On the roof of the building is an area where people stand and wave; they are, most of
them, dressed in a certain formality, the women in bulky cotton dresses, the men in Sunday suits, though it is in fact Saturday. The plane windows are curdled from flight, so that it is not easy to
project distances, or identify anyone exactly. But it does seem that, among the waving wavers, one of them, tall and dressed in grey, could well be Marisja Lubijova, her hand in the air. There are
more men than women, and they look indistinguishable; but there is one, much further along, right at the end of the row, in natty sports shirt and trousers, who might possibly be Dr Plitplov,
though this could well be an optical illusion. But, however hard one looks, there is no one there at all resembling the brilliant, batik-clad magical realist novelist Katya Princip. Beyond are the
trees that line the airport perimeter, and poking up into the sky amongst them a golden onion, the spire-dome of a church; and beyond that is, as is well-known, the city, with its hotels and bars,
its museums and cathedrals.

And inside is the cabin. On the forward bulkhead are lighted signs, saying
FASTEN SEAT BELTS
and
NO SMOKING
. It smells faintly of cleaning fluid,
though no one has cleaned out the seat-pockets or the ashtrays. Petworth is old, old enough to remember the days when all British air captains had names like Hardy, and Frobisher, and Savage, just
as all stewardesses seemed to come from county families and served, as it were, from the sideboard. But things change; it is not quite so on today’s flight
BA
231. The
gloved stewardess who is now checking his lapstrap has acne. ‘Well, ladies and gentlemen, this is your Captain, Captain Smith,’ says a voice over the intercom, ‘We’ve got
what they call a gatehold here, that means something or other’s got to be sorted out. We’d serve you a drink, but local regulations don’t allow it. I’d like to introduce
your steward today, Mr Maggs, and your delightful stewardesses Babs and Shirlene. Let’s hope the delay won’t be long, and we’ll soon be pushing off.’ ‘Isn’t that
typical Slaka?’ says the passenger who sits between Petworth and the window, in 21
E
. It seems to Petworth that the man, who wears a suit and striped tie, and has a
smell of rot’vitti strongly on his breath, is familiar; that indeed he closely resembles the man who was led off by the khaki soldiers on the day of Petworth’s arrival, two remote weeks
ago. ‘They let you all on so they can take you off again,’ says the man, ‘Just to create a false sense of security. I’ve seen it, I’ve seen it. Fifty get on, only
forty fly. I’m here often, I sell scalpels.’ ‘Do you really?’ asks Petworth. ‘Oh, yes,’ says the man, ‘One of those fields in which they respect our
British know-how.’ ‘Do they?’ asks Petworth. ‘It’s an interesting job,’ says the man, ‘I like travel. The only problem is, they have no idea how to do
business. For instance, you can never find anybody there who’s actually empowered to buy anything. You have a very nice time, sitting in cafés talking over coffee and brandy; then you
find you’re with completely the wrong chap. They’re a little bit elusive, if you know what I mean.’ ‘Yes, I do,’ says Petworth. ‘Oh, look,’ says the man,
tapping the window, ‘This is what all the fuss is about.’