Rates of Exchange (43 page)

II

Over the days that follow, Petworth finds himself once more in a quite familiar world, following a quite familiar course. He is a visiting lecturer again, with a busy life:
events come and go away, and so do the people in them, none of them characters in the world historical sense. A small battered car with a faceless student driver in it comes to the hotel in the
morning, to take him and his guide through the streets of Glit and out to the campus of the university, a new university, out of town on a scoured and treeless hill. The pourers of concrete have
poured and poured; the buildings sit straight and squat in the rounded mountain landscape. Like most new universities, it is, inside, a place of exposed pipes and frankly steaming ducts, and with
numbers instead of names on all the doors. He walks along corridors where posters flap and the tiles have begun to crack; a small professor, a shy man called Professor Vlic, appears from behind a
bookstack and greets him. ‘And your poetic laureate? It is still the excellent John Masefield?’ asks Professor Vlic, leading him into a very tiny study, with three miniature easy chairs
and a coffee table, ‘I always please to see a visitor from Britain. And your British disease, you still have it? Or does it go away and everyone likes again to work? Your Iron Lady, how does
she? Does she perform, does she make her miracle?’ It is lecture talk, and Petworth talks it; Professor Vlic dispenses coffee from a coffee-maker; a canary in a cage hangs tweeting from the
bookcase. ‘We hope you stay with us all day, we like to use you,’ says Professor Vlic, ‘In the morning I allow you an hour and some questions. I make a short speech to introduce,
just some nice things of you. Our students perhaps not like yours, a little quiet, it is not their language. Of course they look forward much to your conference. You have your paper, do we go
there?’

A little later, Petworth finds himself in a great auditorium, which rakes backward into gloom and darkness; smudged student faces sit there, gloomy too. At the back, at the end of a row, sits a
man who is holding up a newspaper,
P’rtyuu Populatuuu
; for a moment Petworth thinks of Plitplov, but Glit, surely, is too far away for even that mobile man. A line of short stout lady
professors sits in the front row, thinking Marxist thoughts and knitting. At the podium, a long introduction unfolds from Professor Vlic, in the language he still does not know, though a name
roughly resembling his own sounds now and again, as, it seems, Petworthim does this, Petwortha once did that. The desks creak, and there is a wind blowing through the room. Taking a lecture from
his briefcase, a piece on the difference between ‘I don’t have’ and ‘I haven’t got’ which has won some international acclaim, Petworth goes to the podium and
begins to speak. The faces here seem darker, browner than they were in Slaka; the man with the newspaper does not put it down. The faces strive to look as if they are listening; at the end of the
lecture there is only one question. ‘I believe Marx was very pleased with the British Darwin because he destroys the telegogu and establishes at last a critical Utopia,’ says one of the
ladies in the front row, putting down her knitting; ‘I believe so,’ says Petworth. At the end of the session, when Petworth is led out, the students all stand up, except for the man
with the newspaper. ‘I hope you take some lunch with us and we make a dialogi,’ says Professor Vlic, ‘Most of our professors are women, as you see, and they have very good ideas
and also some babies, so their day is difficult. Perhaps you talk to them now and this afternoon.’

Petworth is taken through the tiled corridors to the cafeteria, where he eats a cold bad lunch of a familiar kind off a tray at a plastic-topped table: ‘And do you believe, as Boehme did,
that there is one deep level of speech that sounds below all languages?’ asks one of the short, stout lady professors. ‘I enjoy very much your bog,’ says another of the lady
professors. ‘My bog?’ says Petworth. ‘Your excellent bog,’ says the lady, ‘Of course I have read it.’ In the afternoon, there is a faculty seminar, where the
short stout lady professors continue with their knitting and their thoughts. ‘Tell me please, Prifusorru Patwat,’ says one of the ladies, ‘You know perhaps that somewhere at
around the dawn of our experimental century arosed a crucial question, not first time, but dominating all since; that question I refer is so. What is the relation between the objective and
historical world, which our scientists and men of physics view as reality, and the inward world of the seer, do you say perceiver, the psychic ego, from which place only may such a world be known?
As you know, the reconciliations of these thoughts have been many, from Hegel to Marx to Freud and your own Wittgenstein, who was not yours truly. Now, do you tell me, how do you reconcile this
ultimating question?’ ‘Also,’ asks another lady, ‘Do you think it is possible to reconcile the reception-aesthetic of an Iser with a Lukacsian Hegelianism?’ Perhaps we
should leave Petworth for a moment and find the toilet as he deals with these questions, and other such matters that, in seminar rooms throughout the world, faculties discuss with visiting
speakers: the poverty of the library; the folly of the university administration; the lunacy of a ministry that institutes an educational reform but fails to have it ready when term starts, so that
the students are not told and the books do not come and classes must be cancelled and the students protest and the police come and the poor faculty are compelled to remain at home working on their
own research. ‘You have given us excellent afternoon and I like if you please to dine you this evening,’ says Professor Vlic, as he leads Petworth out of the seminar room and toward the
battered car, in which, after going back once for his briefcase, and again to collect the offprint of an article by one of the lady professors, Petworth retums to his small old hotel by the
river.

So Petworth works, by the day, by the evening. That night at eight, Professor Vlic comes to the hotel with a gloomy elderly lady. ‘My wife,’ he says, ‘She does not speak at all
English. She will sit very quietly. She has a magazine.’ ‘Won’t it be boring for her?’ asks Petworth, at the table under the umbrella by the river. ‘Not at all,’
says Professor Vlic, ‘She eats. And perhaps your guide will say some things to her. I hope you have tried all our nice foods, very good in Glit. There is a typical thing, a cream of cucumber
made with the chords of a yog, or do you like perhaps to eat a brain? I hope you try our things. And how is your monetarism? You think it is working? I think now money is not making sense any more.
All our economies are wrong, capitalist and socialist. Of course our disasters are more rational, we plan them better. And yet everywhere people seem to have some riches. New clothes, a television
receptor, perhaps a little car. Even our people here have many possessions. But I wonder, do these things represent what truly we desire, or does money make us take them? I have an apartment to sit
in, a car to go in, am I happier man? I do not laugh any more, my worries are bigger. You have been in United States?’ ‘Yes,’ says Petworth. ‘Is it as Tennessee Williams
portrays, a decadent nation?’ asks Professor Vlic, ‘Always people lying in hot tubs? And everyone divorcing to be singles? Did you take an analyst while you are there, to get your head
straight? It looks quite a straight head to me. Did you go to a sex shop? And what do you buy there, I don’t even know what they sell. Do they have topless seminars now in the universities,
the topless physics, the topless mathematic? How is your ego and your id? Look, I now recommend the cake eskimo. It is a specialism of this place. If you like, I will ask them for it.’
‘Thank you,’ says Petworth. ‘Oh, so sorry,’ says Professor Vlic, after a long conversation with a sad waiter, ‘It is eaten all. A fruit instead, perhaps? He has one
orange.’

It has been a usual day, and the one that follows promises to be much the same. The battered car comes, and Petworth gets in it to travel to the university; in the same gloomy auditorium he
stands to lecture on the Uvular R. The audience is smaller today, perhaps because the Uvular R is of less pressing interest, perhaps because of the gloomier weather, or because of the presence of a
rival attraction – for somewhere outside there seems to be a noise of students shouting, and even the occasional celebratory bang. But the man with the newspaper has not failed to come, and
today he looks even more like Plitplov than ever; for in some moment of curiosity he lets the newspaper slip, to reveal a neat white sports shirt of the kind that Plitplov wears, though others wear
them too, and in any case it could be an optical illusion. Later, as they walk to the university cafeteria, a window or two seems to have caved in in the corridor, perhaps as a result of the
morning’s celebrations, and in the air there lingers a strange smell of acrid smoke. After lunch there is another faculty seminar, and Professor Vlic, evidently a liberal soul, says he wants
it to be even more of a dialogi; he insists on explaining what a dialogi is. ‘In dialogi,’ he says, as they sit in the small seminar room, from which it seems possible to hear the sound
of firecrackers going off, ‘each partner must be considered consenting person and no one should be subservient and no one on top. Of course in dialogi different partners will have different
priority and the objects of attention will not be quite the same. But if dialogi shall work well, and be a true coming together, the different elements will be fit to the satisfaction of both
partners. A tendency toward individuation exists in dialogi, but should be criticized. Our aim is not partial dialogi, but whole dialogi. Now I call you to begin.’

The dialogi goes on most of the afternoon; afterwards, Professor Vlic leads him out to the battered car in the car park. Round about, the broken glass seems quite wide-spread, there are a few
steaming canisters about, and several khaki vans with wire mesh over their windows and shadowy people sitting inside stand round the university. ‘Has something happened?’ asks Petworth.
‘Oh, it is just a small thing,’ says Professor Vlic, ‘I think there has been just a little demonstration about our languages. You know, we have here so many, of the north and the
south, of the Indo and the Turkish. All of them confuse, but all of them like to be the main language of the country, which is why now is a tiny problem.’ ‘I thought there was a
language reform,’ says Petworth. ‘One reform, and some people ask always for more,’ says Professor Vlic, ‘Well, it is a little problem, and we solve it quite quickly. Your
lecture is very good, and tonight we like to thank you. Please to be our guest at a special faculty dinner at a restaurant in the town. Your guide, also, please. Now the man takes you back. The
policemen will let you through, it is arranged. If you can be ready at eight we collect you and take you to a very nice place.’ There is time to change in his innocent quiet room overlooking
the river; there is time to take a little pleasure in his pleasant visit to Glit. Then he sits with Marisja Lubijova in the hotel lobby until a very small car containing four of the short stout
lady professors, who now wear bright flowered dresses and carry large handbags, stops and takes them off, through the cramped, quiet old streets of Glit, to an ancient timbered restaurant
somewhere. Inside the restaurant, the Restaurant Nada, many are gathered together, the faculty faces of the day, and there is laughter; hands pat Petworth’s arms, smiles flash in his face,
and he is steadily pushed toward a seat in the centre of the table.

‘Here is a white wine, here a red, here a juicy if you like it,’ says Professor Vlic, who sits in the place opposite him. And down the table, to either side, stretch the long rows of
lady professors, smiling and laughing, gossiping and talking. The restaurant has a low ceiling, and pots of flowers hang from it; a goat is looking curiously in through the window at the long,
bottle-laden table where, in two happy rows, the learned people sit, chatting as, at faculty dinners, faculty diners do. ‘I have read your great poet of debunkery, Philip Larking,’ says
a stout lady to Petworth’s right, ‘I like to visit him and talk to him for three days and make a thesis.’ ‘Do you know also a campus writer Brodge?’ asks a lady to his
left, ‘Who writes
Changing Westward
? I think he is very funny but sometimes his ideological position is not clear.’ ‘You like it, Glit?’ asks a lady across the table,
‘Really it is very pleasant, except in the earthquakes. Then our buildings fall down and it is not so amusing.’ ‘Oh, my English, I wish it was gooder,’ says another lady
across the table, ‘Your language, so difficult. Always those sentences that appear correct, but you must not say. I swimmed. This is the lady I want to eat.’ ‘And some things you
may say in Britain but not at all in the United States,’ says the lady to his right, ‘Elevator, not lift. Hood, not bonnet.’ ‘When you visit the United States,’ says
the lady beyond her, leaning toward him, ‘You should not say to a lady, please may I stroke your pussy. It is quite correct, but it has a meaning that is not intended. But I do not know what
it is.’ ‘Oh, you don’t know it?’ asks the lady beyond, ‘Then I will tell you.’ Laughter spreads down the table; a sizzling pot of strange food appears on the
table in front of him; more, and more, of an unusual wine is poured.

There are voices, strange voices, singing in Petworth’s head, the words of an English that is not quite English, English as a medium of international communication. He is well attended,
and the ladies all lean toward him; he talks himself, of Sod’s Law and Hobson’s Choice, of laughing like a drainpipe and not having a sausage, the happy small talk of the passing
linguist. ‘I have been in Wales, that was very dark,’ says a lady across the table. ‘You are in Glit,’ says the lady next to him, ‘Here always a strong oral tradition,
we like to tell the stories.’ ‘Oh, yes, we are famous of it,’ says the lady beyond. ‘I believe you have some very bad inflations,’ says the lady on the other side,
‘We have some here also, but they are not the same.’ ‘Do you like to hear one of our stories?’ ‘The one about the tailor?’ ‘No, the one about the
shah.’ ‘In Wales there are many teashops, always closed.’ ‘Each partner in a dialogi should be considered a person and consenting always to the part.’ ‘Do you
think Larking likes to see me for three days?’ ‘Once in a certain kingdom, not ours, there lived a shah.’ ‘A tzar?’ ‘It is a wine made from a grappa that a frost
has bitten.’ ‘Here ours is a Marxist inflation, caused not at all by the entrepreneurial processes of capitalism but by the workings of economic laws.’ ‘The shah had a
beautiful fair wife, a great hareem, a big Turk slave and a fine black horse.’ ‘I have been to a place called Rhyl where always is showing the film
Going With the Wind
.’
‘Oh, don’t they love you?’ whispers, in his ear, his guide Marisja Lubijova, as she makes her way out of the room, toward the lavatory or wherever, ‘Oh, aren’t you
success? And how much you like to enjoy it.’ Petworth looks up, and sees her walking away, swinging her shoulderbag.