The Red Queen (33 page)

The French cuisine remains the greatest in the world, says van Jost, who reveals that his mother had taught French and English in a Dutch secondary school. Their pretty Korean guide says she is a Buddhist and a vegetarian. Not all Buddhists are vegetarians, but she is a vegetarian. She does not eat chicken or pig or cat or dog, though she does eat a little fish.

Their small talk wanders to stories of the raw and the cooked, of the pure and the impure. Van Jost has met Lévi-Strauss many times, it seems. (Babs had thought Claude Lévi-Strauss had been dead for decades, but it seems that he is still in the land of the living. Peter Halliwell’s father had been acquainted with Lévi-Strauss. Had Jan been acquainted, therefore, with Peter Halliwell’s father? She does not ask.) They discuss taboos and multicultural eating habits and the things they could not, would not be induced to eat. They speak of that classic work
Green Eggs and Ham
, and the well-deserved global popularity of its author, the American children’s writer and educationalist Dr Seuss. Yes, his work is certainly well known in South Korea, says their Buddhist guide. It is used in schools as an English primer with much success. Then they speak of globalization. Jan says his next conference is entitled ‘The Risk of Globalization, or the Globalization of Risk’. It is to be held in December on El Hierro, which is, he tells them, the most westerly and least visited of the Canary Islands. ‘A little winter sunshine for all of us pale professors,’ says van Jost, with a dry white smile. ‘I think I can give the same paper as I gave yesterday. It is a multipurpose paper. I can add Prince Sado to my text, perhaps. “The Leaden Casket and the Rice Chest”.’

‘I suppose,’ says Babs, ‘that if you wanted to, you could spend your entire year going from one conference to another?’

‘I could,’ he says, ‘if I did not feel obliged to finish my next book. But it may be that I will never finish my next book. And what would that matter? There are too many books in the world already.’

Babs does not particularly want to talk about his next book, or indeed about any of his books, because she is uneasily aware that she has never actually read any of them. She has read bits of some of them, and she has read bits of other people’s books about them, and she has had many interesting conversations about them, but she has never sat down with one of her new hero’s seminal world-famous volumes and read it through from cover to cover. She knows what he stands for, and what he writes about, but her knowledge of his ideas has percolated into her consciousness indirectly, from non-textual sources. It has permeated her by osmosis; it has reached her by convection currents. She is a fraudulent disciple. This makes her feel morally uncomfortable, and anxious to change the subject. Moreover, she is also by now physically uncomfortable: sitting cross-legged for hours has been bad for her circulation, and if she doesn’t get up soon she will have an attack of deep-vein thrombosis, and Dr Oo will have to carry her off to hospital. She wriggles, and heaves, and rearranges her long legs. She notes that her trousers are by now looking very crumpled. They were not designed for this kind of usage. Time to get back to the Pagoda Hotel and the twinned bed and the trouser press, thinks Dr Halliwell.

She is beginning to recall that this evening in Seoul there will be a British Council function at which she will be expected to say a few words. Time to get back to modern times.

Dare she ask Jan if he intends to be so gracious as to attend the British Council buffet dinner, to which he will surely have been invited? No, she dare not. She feels humble, and wishes she had read at least one of his books right through. But he is smiling, still, as they stagger to their feet, and revive their blood flow, and smooth down their crumpled garments. She is immensely impressed to discover that there will be no haggling over the bill because Jan van Jost had mysteriously pre-paid it. He is a man of the world, a gentleman. She is suddenly sure that he will be there this evening.

And, indeed, several hours and a couple of conference papers later, there he is, at her elbow, the
chevalier sans peur et sans reproche
. He has attended the British Council reception, and listened respectfully to her few well-chosen public words of gratitude for hospitality received. Babs is beginning to think that perhaps he has an end in view. Babs knows a thing or two about men, and this man is behaving like a man with a purpose. By now, she also knows a few more things about him in particular, though she is not clear whether these facts have reached her through general conference gossip or from Bob Bryant or from other sources. Van Jost, she is by now aware, has been several times married, and his current wife is said to be Spanish. That would figure. He lives in Paris and in Seville – or possibly Barcelona?

And here he is, by her side, as he had been at the Dutch Embassy, ready to escort her to the minibus that awaits to return them to the Pagoda Hotel. He sits himself down by her, and says, in a quietly attentive and intimate tone, ‘It has been a long day, but a good day. I am so grateful to you and Dr Oo for this morning. It was a very unusual expedition.’

She assures him that she had enjoyed every minute of it, and was very pleased that he had been able to come.

‘I still have your book by the Crown Princess,’ he says.

She is keenly aware of this, and badly wants to get it back, but she bides her time and says nothing.

‘Perhaps you would like to come up to my room for a nightcap when we get back, and I can return it to you?’ he suavely and it would seem tentatively suggests.

‘That would be very nice,’ says Dr Babs Halliwell, with a decorum that entirely conceals what can only be described as a sense of triumph.
Wow!
is what she is thinking. It is an almost wholly pleasurable thought, with only the slightest tinge of shame attached to it.

‘I’m in Room 1712,’ he says, discreetly. ‘The year that Rousseau was born. The year of the publication of Pope’s
Rape of the Lock
. The year before Diderot was born.’

And, to calm her nerves, he proceeds to demonstrate to her the little
Dictionary of Dates
that he keeps in his palmtop. He says he uses it constantly as an aide-mémoire. She tells him that her room number is 1517, and together they discover that this was the year that Magellan sailed on his first voyage, and the year that Martin Luther nailed his theses on the church door at Wittenberg. She agrees with him that his date dictionary is a very amusing bit of software. It is largely Eurocentric, he says, and he has found few Korean dates in it. It has nothing on the Koryo period, and nothing on the Silla. The Imo Incident of 1762 is not recorded in it, though it has one or two entries noting the
kapsin
coup of 1884, the death of the last queen of Korea in 1895, the Japanese annexation in 1910, and the North’s invasion of the South in 1950. But nevertheless it is interesting and sometimes useful. He confides that he has selected the date of the great Lisbon earthquake of 1755 as his PIN. She does not tell him about 7777 and her disaster with Dr Oo’s suitcase. But maybe, quite soon, she will. She feels all manner of indiscretions mounting up on her.

Dr Oo’s room number, which she remembers well, is 1529, which seems to be the year that the Turks had reached the gates of Vienna. She checks this discreetly, but does not divulge it or comment upon it, for fear that Jan van Jost will think she is a scarlet woman, familiar with too many hotel bedrooms. She has not led a chaste life, but she is not a libertine, and does not wish to be taken for one.

They part, politely, in the dimly lit lobby: she says she is off to powder her nose, and will join him in ten minutes. He makes a slight bow: ‘Room 1712,’ he reminds her. ‘The birth of Rousseau,’ she responds.

Is that her putto minder, watching her, making sure she goes liftwards to her bed? Or is it some other spy, sitting darkly in the shadows?

In 1517, she does indeed powder her nose, which is looking much less offensive than it had appeared in the aeroplane toilet. She is looking good. As she brushes her bright brown and streaked yellow hair, and adjusts her underwear, and sprays herself with eau de Cologne, she congratulates herself on having drunk very little alcohol at the reception. She had been too nervous about speaking her few words of thanks to accept more than one glass of wine. She never drinks and speaks, or drinks and drives. But now she can accept a nightcap. She wonders what he will offer her? The prospect of a nightcap with the legendary van Jost is almost too exciting. Is he a man, as other men are?

She taps on his door, and he is there, immediately, in wait for her. She had been right about his accommodation. He occupies a suite: he greets her in the hallway of a large room with two large settees, an armchair or two, several occasional tables, a desk with a fax machine and various other unidentifiable executive items upon it, and a large TV set. A folding double door, slightly open, reveals a further room which contains his king-sized bed. There are vases of flowers, and bowls of fruit. And there, on a Victorian-style polished wood cocktail cabinet, is a silver tray, with various half bottles of spirits, and a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket.

‘Now,’ he says, in a firm and friendly manner, ‘you must sit yourself down, and make a decision.’

She wonders what he is about to propose: is he about to be frontal? But no, all that he now says is, somewhat quizzically, ‘You have to decide whether you would like champagne, or some other drink. The champagne is there, and it is chilled. But it may well be that you do not like champagne. Or that you think it is too late at night for champagne.’

Babs Halliwell, who has seated herself as instructed, is finding this scene immensely enjoyable. It is like being in a movie with a nice old-fashioned script. It is a movie, and she is the heroine.

Now, the fact is that there is nothing Babs wants less, at this point of time, than a glass of champagne. Unless, of course, it be an aphrodisiac with a bottled snake in it. Champagne is glamorous, but it is also fizzy and full of wind. It may be that Jan van Jost is longing for a glass of champagne – had he texted through to room service for it on his palmtop while she was powdering her nose? – but if so, he will have to drink it on his own. She wants something short and straight and stiff. She peers past him, as he hovers by the silver tray, and says, firmly, ‘No, I don’t think I’d like champagne. I’d like some of that J&B, please.’

He looks pleased with her decision and, indeed, he utters or mutters the words ‘Thank God for that!’ Would she like ice, or water, or soda? No, she’d like it just as it comes.

He pours her a few fingers of pale Scotch, into a cut-glass tumbler, and hands it to her. She watches with interest to see what he will select for himself. He appears to pause for a moment, then reaches for a bottle of gin. He extracts a few cubes of ice from the ice bucket, and carefully pours over them a large quantity of the transparent slightly viscous liquor. He does not add any mixer. Then he settles himself down, at her elbow. They are sitting on separate items of furniture, she in an armchair, he on the end of a settee, but they are adjacent.

‘You see,’ he says, as he raises his glass in a gesture towards a salutation, ‘in the matters of spirits, I conform to the national stereotype. And so, it seems, do you.’

He takes a sip from his glass, and she takes a sip from hers. They both put their identical glasses down, side by side, on the glass-topped table, next to a fruit bowl.

‘It was good of you to reject the champagne,’ he says, after a short pause. ‘If you had chosen the champagne, I should have felt obliged to drink some myself. And I am very much happier with a glass of Hollands. As it is, maybe we are both suiting ourselves.’

‘I hope so,’ she says.

They both take another sip.

‘Are you always so well mannered?’ she enquires.

‘I see no virtue in bad manners,’ he says. ‘I was brought up to behave correctly.’

‘Well, it’s very pleasant to be with someone so polite,’ she says.

‘It is very pleasant to be with you,’ he says, and again gives a little bow towards her.

‘Thank you,’ she says.

‘I wanted to say to you,’ he says, ‘but so far have lacked the occasion – I wanted to say to you that I found your paper very interesting.’

This is unexpected.

‘I didn’t think you heard me,’ she says.

‘Oh, yes, I came to hear you. Did you not see me? I sat at the back in the shadows. I wished to sit quietly and without people talking to me.’

‘I didn’t see you,’ she says. Then, a little more boldly, ‘I looked for you, but I didn’t see you.’

‘You speak very well,’ he says. ‘It was a beautiful paper.’

This gives her pause. ‘Beautiful’ seems a very strange word for him to use in this context. It is true that he is a foreigner, and that possibly he may mean something more everyday, like ‘fine’ or ‘good’: but this she doubts, for up to this point his use of the English language has been more deliberate and accurate and refined than her own. So why should he stumble now? She does not believe that he has stumbled: he means something particular by this remark, and he will shortly, no doubt, expand upon it. She takes another sip of her J&B, her mind by now in turmoil. Maybe she has mistaken his agenda? She is, of course, immensely flattered that he had taken the trouble to attend her paper, but at the same time she is confused and disappointed. She is aware that her awareness of disappointment reveals that she had expected this assignation to end in bed, and that she had been looking forward to this denouement. Can it be her mind that he is after, and not her body? Is he intent on a heavy late-night discussion of triage, fatality, uncertainty and bone-marrow disorders? And if so, is she up to it?