The Squire Quartet. Brian Aldiss
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the miraculous number. The devil only has to appear once for his existence to be verifiable.’
‘Wishes shape disbeliefs as well as beliefs, Herman. I believe I just saw a machine, a product of super-technology. A couple of centuries ago, I would have believed I saw a flying man, or a witch on a broomstick. We’re too inclined to think of the imagination as an independent function, whereas it is a function like vision, which can be controlled.’
‘You may actually have seen a product of super-technology. Why not? Believe your vision, believe your imagination. Wasn’t it your Professor Haldane who said that the universe is stranger than we imagine or than we can imagine? That’s why I enjoy science fiction as a sideline, because those chaps really try to imagine the unimaginable.’
Squire gave him a questioning look. ‘So you do believe in You-Foes?’
The German gestured. ‘I think maybe I do. But to declare it so publicly would make a further and perhaps lethal dent in my academic reputation. There are as many orthodoxies today as ever there were, and one defies them at one’s peril.’
They fell silent. As they were turning the corner into the Via Milano, Morabito said, ‘All this area by the docks was pounded flat by the British in World War II. It has all been rebuilt rather well, because of massive infusions of American dollars after the war.’
‘I remember we gave it a pounding,’ Squire said. ‘This coast commanded the convoy route to Malta and India. There were German batteries here, and landing fields for Stuka squadrons. We blasted the whole place.’
‘It certainly was a rather lively time, during the career of our mutual friend Adolf,’ Fittich remarked.
He walked at a steady pace, his hands hanging by his sides. Morabito walked rapidly, throwing his shoulders in front of him as his gaze darted from one side to the other. As they came within the shade of the Grand Hotel, he flung a furtive glance upwards.
‘At least whatever you saw did not drop any bombs,’ he said.
On the marble steps which divided the inner part of the foyer from the outer stood Frank Krawstadt, smoking and pacing nervously.
‘There’s my colleague,’ said Fittich. ‘He’s not a bad chap, despite his politics, and I must give a little moral support. He’s our next speaker.’
‘I’ll see you later,’ Squire said. They smiled and nodded at each other.
Jacques d’Exiteuil came up beaming with Selina Ajdini and two of his fellow-countrymen. He clapped Squire on the back. ‘How are you, Tom? You didn’t have lunch? A walk on the sea front? Isn’t everything going so well?’
‘I was just telling Mr Squire how all this area of Ermalpa was pulverized by the British during the war,’ Morabito said.
‘Ah, the British were doing brave things then, while France was under a cloud of shame,’ d’Exiteuil remarked cheerfully, shaking his copper-coloured head. ‘You were all Churchills then, Tom, isn’t it? I still see a bit of Churchill in you, for instance when you tried to cut short our Russian friend this morning. And at breakfast with poor Camaion – who by the way has much of interest to impart about new restlessness among intellectuals in Bucharest.’
Ajdini said brightly, ‘Churchill embodies – in his body, I mean – much that we think of as positive British virtues. Sturdy independence, good vowel sounds, etcetera, etcetera.’
She looked very trim; d’Exiteuil was keeping close to her. The blue spectacles had been removed, so that her blue eyes were unimpeded; at their corners were lines Squire had not noticed earlier. She gazed at Squire in a friendly yet impudent way, as the astute mind behind them speculated on the world. That enquiring look, the uncluttered countenance, the thinly smiling lips, gave a meaning to the ritual of the conference.
‘Did you enjoy Comrade Kchevov’s talk this morning, Miss Ajdini?’ Squire asked, moving fractionally closer to her and clutching his lapels so that his knuckles almost grazed the front of her blouse.
She nodded, and the heavy shoulder bag swung in Squire’s direction. ‘There was a positive contribution of Marxist science against the philosophizing of Sigmund Freud and his followers. I happen to agree entirely that we are incomplete and cannot make any contribution to society, even a political one, without imagination. Granting that, the miraculous can occur. Of course, it was formulated in a rather unorthodox way. I was reminded of Gurdjieff, both in the mixture of practicality and foxy divination and in “the objective of producing an interesting and beautiful object”.’
He marvelled. Even whilst distressing him by her appreciation of the rubbish Kchevov had talked, she was quoting a statement by Gurdjieff which he had appended as motto to his book and used in his speech.
‘The miraculous does occur,’ he said. ‘Nor need we go in search of it. Sometimes it comes in search of us. As an example which springs readily to mind, I have just seen a You-Foe over Ermalpa.’
The Frenchmen laughed heartily. One said, ‘I do not think that Sir Winston Churchill would commend himself to such miracles.’
Ajdini was also laughing, perhaps merely at the unexpectedness of his remark. ‘You must say we are officially in search here of the miraculous. What we want is a sign, like the early Christians. And it has been – what is that biblical word? – vouchsafed to you.’
Again subtle flattery, not unmixed with subtle mockery? He said, ‘Perhaps we can discuss the religious implications when we meet tonight for dinner, if you still remember our arrangement. I’d prefer the miraculous in some other guise.’
In his room, he opened up the slats of his jalousie, allowing a little light to stripe the gloom. He intended to do some yoga, but the beer in the café had made him drowsy. Stripping down to his underpants, he sat on the side of the bed and began to make a few notes. Presently, he lay back and fell asleep.
The afternoon session began only five minutes behind time. Gianni Frenza introduced Krawstadt briefly and Krawstadt rose, looking nervous. The female voice of the interpreter on Channel Three delivered her version of his paper, which was entitled ‘Pinball Machines: Sublimated Coin Warfare’.
‘So far at this date, the SPA organization and also Intergraphic Studies magazine have shown severe neglect of a glaring and coloured example of a commercial form of machine-and-art in a combination. It is a pinball table, familiar to all of us. A cult of functionality. Its object is to transfix with emotion a person who will then surrender money for no reward at all. Thus the pintable makes an epitome of capitalist economy in its late stage and will be valued to future students when they come to study this aspect of Americanized and so-called cosmopolitan culture from the early angers of the twentieth century.’
Here Krawstadt cleared his throat and looked furtively about at the audience, as if to check that it had not disappeared. From a distance, he resembled a healthy young man, his slender figure lending strength to the illusion. Closer inspection revealed that his slenderness was the gauntness of ageing. There was a strong frosting of grey among the yellow hairs of his beard, a bald pate gave his head an eroded appearance; even the red of his cheeks was no sign of health but the pitting and inflammation of a long-term psoriasis.
‘… I am a professor in residence of popular culture. I have some various degrees. Thus I am curator of the newly established Pinball Research Museum at Gottingzell University in Western Germany. There we have an investiture of over five hundred machines – which are being got in working arrangement by mechanics – representing battery-operated and presolenoid models even as far back as 1930 to the present day. Here we see a principle often operative, where an artifact purely of commerce becomes through such market factors as scarcity into a realm of connoisseurship, that is the province of the art historian and exponent of the lives of the people.
‘Only during the slump, which is a feature of capitalist economy in gearing the society towards mass-military enterprises, can this little gaudy trap developed from the French bagatelle be born.
‘One way of saying it is that this pinball table is an article