The Red Queen (30 page)

Jan van Jost says that China had been difficult and that, no, he does not know the Korean peninsula, and that is why he is here.

‘I used to think,’ he says, with an apologetic smile, ‘that I would visit every country in the world before I died. Now I know that is not true. But at least I can add South Korea to the list. To tell you truly, I would like to visit North Korea also, but I gather this is not yet possible. I saw the President in the Blue House yesterday, and he tells me in five years I can surely go to North Korea. But that is too far away.’

She wonders why he wants to go to North Korea. He is a man of the left, but not that far left, surely. She is impressed that he has met the President in the Blue House, which she correctly assumes must be the South Korean version of the White House. This is fame. She is sitting next to fame.

‘In the hotel foyer,’ she says, as he seems to begin to withdraw from her into an inward and melancholy mode of reflection, ‘there are leaflets about trips to the Demilitarized Zone. I was a bit surprised. You can visit the Infiltration Tunnel and the Anti-Communism Hall.’

‘Really?’ He seems to perk up at this bizarre information. ‘How extraordinary!’

She is flattered by his interest and digs around in her shoulder bag. Yes, here is the leaflet. Visit the DMZ, the most heavily fortified border on the planet! See the tanks and propaganda! See the Freedom Bridge and the flora and fauna that thrive in this vast deserted region in the absence of all humankind! Peace and tension coexist upon the border! A nature reserve created by conflict! Through a telescope you can watch the North Koreans go about their daily life!

Jan van Jost is fascinated by this brochure – he is a sociologist, is he not? – and he is pleased when she says he can keep it. There are plenty more, she assures him, on the concierge’s desk. She is pleased when he tucks it away carefully in his Armani breast pocket. And the sociologist in him is clearly also taken by the fantastic apparel of the couple of tour guides who now board the bus. These young women are improbably dressed in shiny gold-and-turquoise uniforms, and their oddly cut and strangely draped trouser-skirts are far, far too short. Their brown legs are long and look painfully naked, and they wear peculiar and playful little hats upon their heads. Babs Halliwell is embarrassed for them, and she can see that they are embarrassed for themselves.

Jan van Jost is the soul of courtesy. He speaks gently to these overexposed young women, as they wait by his elbow at the front of the coach for the driver to start the engine. What is this colourful costume? he wishes to know. It is historical costume of Koryo period, says one of the girls. No, no, mutters the other, it is Unified Silla period. Koryo, says the first. Silla, says the second. Koryo, says the first. Not very authentic costume anyway, says the second girl, in conciliation. They both smile, nervously. They are college girls, not courtesans, although they appear to be dressed as courtesans. They seem overawed by van Jost, yet at the same time on the verge of insubordinate laughter. Do they know who he is? Have they read his books? Or does his unmediated aura shine undimmed across all boundaries and all frontiers? He does his best to put them at their ease. They look very charming, whatever their costume is meant to represent, he tells them, gallantly. They blush.

The coach careers round Seoul, and over a bridge towards the Expo. Those seated further back cannot see much because of the darkly tinted windows, but Babs and Jan get a good view of traffic jams, skyscrapers, sculptures, bronze statues, street traders, medieval gates and medieval walls. The girls give a lively commentary through a megaphone on aspects of Seoul ancient and modern, on Korea’s success in the World Cup, on the Koreans’ passionate love for their football team’s coach, the Dutch hero Guus Hiddink who had led their team to such an unexpected victory. We love all Dutch people now, they needlessly assure van Jost, who accepts the compliment gracefully.

Babs Halliwell is not quite sure why they are on the way to visit the Expo, and she is not much clearer when they arrive there and clamber out of their coach. The exhibition, or exposition, appears to be a cross between a theme park and a trade fair. The international and multicultural gaggle of sociologists, evolutionary biologists, evolutionary psychologists, social psychologists, behavioural economists and clinical experts straggles bewildered round its stands and its marquees. They are shown the most modern electronic technology juxtaposed with faithful reconstructions of old tea-shops. They are introduced to displays of traditional weaving and knot making and bamboo pyrography. They watch a craftsman engaged in
dancheong
ornamental painting, using vivid shades of blue, crimson, yellow, white and black. They follow obediently as Miss Silla and Miss Koryo usher them smartly round a big tent displaying upon illustrated panels the long history of Confucianism. The conflicting answers of these two ladies to the questions of their flock spread further confusion. Babs, a compulsive tourist, is fascinated by everything, including the amicable disputes of the guides. She wonders if they know anything about the Crown Princess, and is wondering whether to raise her from the dead when she finds that she is being herded into a darkened auditorium. Anxious not to get lost, she sticks close to her group, and finds herself sitting, once again, next to van Jost.

Side by side, in the darkness, they obediently watch the screen, as it fills with images of temples and parks and palaces and lakes and mountains. It is a three-D, virtual-reality travelogue of exceptional virtuosity. Professor van Jost and Dr Halliwell, side by side in their dark green velvety upholstered armchairs, travel together weightlessly through time and space: they ascend pine-forested peaks, plunge through precipitous waterfalls, abseil up torrents of frozen granite, and swim underwater amongst the roots and beneath the leaves of lotus and lily. They march along ramparts and spirit roads, and creep into underground chambers. Bodiless, they pass through paper screens into inner courtyards and secret lacquered rooms. Armies of bowmen take harmless aim for them, temple bells ring for them, red-bridled high-stepping horses prance for them, painted constellations glimmer in a dark blue vault for them. It is kitsch and yet it is enchanting. Towards the end of the display, in a spectacular grand finale, a host of large multicoloured butterflies flies out from the screen towards them. One of them settles on the shoulder of Dr Babs Halliwell, and Jan van Jost, astonished, reaches out his hand to touch it. His hand passes through it, for it is not there, it is a hologram hallucination, and his hand comes to rest on the real fleshly viscose-clad shoulder of Babs Halliwell. The butterfly departs, but his hand rests there for a moment on the thin fabric and the firm flesh, and she looks at him, and he looks at her, and there, in the darkened cinema, their eyes meet, and they both smile shyly, like lovers in the dark, joint captives of illusion. His eyes seem to hers to be full of film-star tears.

The lights go up, to an appreciative murmuring from the audience and a little naively enthusiastic applause. It had been a wonderful show! Miss Silla and Miss Koryo, now walking hand in hand, smile proudly as they lead their docile scholars back towards their waiting coach. Professor Jan van Jost and Dr Barbara Halliwell walk side by side, not hand in hand, but something has passed between them, and they take their seats for the homeward journey side by side as though they were lovers, as though they were man and wife.

As the coach crosses the broad Han River, from south to north, from new Seoul to old Seoul, Babs Halliwell says to Jan van Jost, ‘I came to this conference because I wanted to hear you speak. I wanted to see you, in the flesh.’

This was not true, and it is not true, but it has a truth somewhere in it.

Jan van Jost smiles ruefully, and looks down modestly. Then he looks at her again, eye to eye.

‘You come too late,’ he says, ‘for I have nothing to say.’

She takes this in.

‘Then I come to hear you say nothing,’ she says. ‘Nothing will be enough.’

He is about to speak once more, when Miss Koryo leans over, and taps him anxiously on the shoulder with her megaphone. She and Miss Silla have been whispering feverishly together, and now Miss Koryo says, ‘Please, Professor van Jost, we have decided the costume is not Silla or Koryo. It has features from Unified Silla, but it is a fantasy costume. But we want to say, women in the Silla kingdom had very high social status.’

‘The Silla kingdom was 57
BC
to
AD
935,’ says Miss Silla helpfully, discreetly consulting a clipboard on her knee. ‘Koryo period not so good for women, and the Yi dynasty, worse still. But Silla, this was a good time for women in this land.’

‘And now is another good time for you,’ says van Jost, generously and genially.

‘Please, Professor,’ says Miss Koryo, emboldened, ‘please sign my programme!’

‘And mine, please, if not too much trouble!’ says Miss Silla.

Graciously, he signs. Heavily, he sighs. He is the Prince of Mournful Thoughts, the Prince of the Leaden Casket. Babs Halliwell is proud to sit by his side. She does not ask for his signature, although she almost wishes that she could bring herself to do so. For he is very, very famous.

She wonders if he will come to listen to her paper on ‘Dying by Lot’ at four-thirty that afternoon. She does not think he will. And he does not. Or if he does, she cannot see him. She looks for him, as she takes her place on the platform and adjusts the microphone and pours herself a glass of water, but she does not think that he is there. She can see various supportive and admonitory presences: both Peter Halliwell’s extennis partner, Bob Bryant, and her putto minder are conspicuous in the second row, as well as other delegates with whom she has conversed during the conference. She peers beyond them, into the middle distance. The lighting in the main body of the hall is dim: he may be there, perhaps, hidden away at the back? She does not know if she wants him to be there, or not. She has fallen under the spell of Jan van Jost. She has fallen pointlessly and passingly in love with him. She wishes to charm him, as he has charmed her. But then, she wishes to charm any audience. She wishes every member of her audience to fall in love with her. She is vain, and she enjoys displaying herself to the admiration of strangers.

Is the auditorium full enough? Has she been boycotted because she is a woman? This, as she has been so many times warned, and as dear Dr Oo has confirmed, remains a sexist society, where women academics continue to suffer from discrimination, and she is prepared to be insulted by a poor attendance. But the room seems to be respectably full. Although she is an inferior woman, she is also something of a freak and a peep show. On the Western circuit, she is well known as a lively and controversial speaker. She has debated controversial issues on the radio. She has appeared, effectively, on television. Her lofty stature, such a disadvantage in some social situations, is an asset now. She draws herself up to her full height, adjusts her large tortoiseshell-rimmed varifocal glasses, and launches herself upon her discourse.

Her paper goes down well enough. She delivers it professionally, with practised timing. Her material is dramatic. Unlike Dr Oo’s stories of patient stroke patients, her case histories deal with the extreme and rare, with the frontiers of experiment, with the philosophical and ethical aspects of moral decisions made in medical uncertainty. Her histories are the stuff of headline news. She has lived through melodrama, and this is her profit from it. She has the right. She is licensed by misfortune. This is not exploitation; it is a legitimate display of scholarship and abstraction.

She does not, of course, mention the death of her own child, Benedict, but there is no doubt in the mind of Bob Bryant that the personal dilemma which had years ago directed the nature of her research has also informed her argument and the intensity of her delivery. She speaks of bone-marrow disorders, of transplants and donor banks and bone-marrow registers, of chemotherapy and gene therapy, and of the possibility that gene therapy may cause more cancers than it cures. She speaks of current research in Paris and London. She discusses the ethical position of parents who choose to have a second child, a ‘saviour sibling’, in the hope of providing a suitable matching donor for the first. She speaks of the geographical distribution of certain conditions, and of the mismatching geography of available remedies, either traditional or experimental.

Her discourse is learned and informative. As she nears her final written paragraphs, she wonders which of her shock alternative endings she will select. She has two up her sleeve, one or the other of which she will deliver freestyle, without notes, with as much eye contact as she can force upon her audience. Thus, they will remember her and what she has said. She likes to be remembered.

In her first shock ending, she will discuss the placebo dilemma. She will reveal that she herself is at this moment full of a mixture of chemicals which may or may not be a placebo, and which may or may not be affecting her bone density. Dr Babs Halliwell has gone in for medical risk in a big way. She is a volunteer. She has offered her body to a group of colleagues as a laboratory for tests on a drug, which, it is hoped, will help to develop a cure for osteoporosis. The clinical trials are in mid term, and the results are expected in several months’ time.

Shall she confide this information? No, it is too risky and too personal. It might be considered bad form. And she cannot locate Jan van Jost in the gloom of the back rows.

She opts for and embarks upon the second story.

Her second ending is the case history of a woman whom she knows personally, a mother of four and a successful lawyer. After some months of suffering from fatigue and mysterious aches and pains, this woman was unexpectedly discovered in early middle age to have a rare bone-marrow disorder. When a name was given to her malady, she immediately contacted her doctor sister in Toronto, who proved not only to be a matching donor, as one might hope, but also, against any calculable odds, to be one of the world authorities on this rare condition. So she received from her sister expert advice and some comfort, as well as a bone-marrow transplant.

(The long-term outcome of the transplant is still nervously awaited, and at the moment does not look good, but Dr Halliwell, in her lecture, does not mention this.)