The Wisdom of Crocodiles

by Paul Hoffman

  ‘It’s not so small,’ he said quickly. ‘I’ve got another seven shops. Two in London, five around the country. You’d be doing their books as well . . . if I hire you.’

  ‘You’ve had a lot of applications, then, from qualified accountants with a knowledge of tax law? The rates must be good.’

  He laughed. ‘What if I do hire you and we don’t get on?’

  ‘Then I’ll leave. I don’t need the job that badly. It’s just that it suits me to work around here three days a week. Is there any reason why we shouldn’t get on?’

  ‘It depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  He looked at her frankly. ‘We don’t sell just books here we sell . . . adult books.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said flatly. ‘The pornography in the basement, you mean?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, without surprise. ‘The pornography in the basement is what I mean. Not a problem, then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There might be another.’

  ‘And what would that be?’

  ‘Me.’

  ‘You have a problem?’

  ‘No, but I might be a problem for you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t put up with any nonsense.’

  ‘We’ve already got something in common, then, because neither do I.’

  ‘I swear a lot. I believe in bollockings.’ He said this with the unaffected openness of a Christian declaring his simple faith. ‘It’s the bollocking at Hat’s that keeps things smooth, keeps my Jag on the road and the mortgage paid on my six-bedroom house. You see?’ he said triumphantly. ‘It’s not such a small business. Let me show you WHAT I MEAN!’ He raised his voice and looked accusingly in the direction of a pony-tailed assistant, who was just heading for the basement carrying a stack of magazines wrapped in sheets from the Guardian. The young man was grinning at Jane in what he clearly took to be an irresistibly attractive manner. As his boss’s voice reached him, his face fell and the cockiness vanished.

  ‘For example,’ said the man menacingly, ‘take that grinning pony-tailed git over by the stairs who’s insulting a possible new employee who ought to be given MORE FUCKING RESPECT! I must be a fucking saint, and why? Because I let you fuckin’ insult me every fucking day, Gordon. Why are you taking thirty-nine copies of the TV fucking Times downstairs? Is this a fucking joke? Then tell me, because I could do with a laugh. I need one because I have to put up with brain-dead dickheads like you. UN-BE-LIEV-ABLE!’

  He switched his attention from the luckless Gordon to Jane. ‘If you don’t whip a horse it won’t win, will it?’ he said amiably. ‘Well, do you think you can take me talking to them like that?’

  ‘You can hang, draw and quarter them for all I care,’ lied Jane, shaking but covering it well. ‘Just don’t try talking like that to me.’

  An expression of appalled surprise crossed his face. ‘I respect people who use their brains. I used my brain and I worked hard. That’s how I’ve got seven shops. You’ve got to have intelligence. If you don’t have intelligence, you’re a fucking non-runner. If you don’t put the effort in, you get fuck all out. These lads here, they’d do fuck all every day if I let them. I give ’em a lesson, the kind of lesson their useless bloody teachers never respected them enough to teach ’em.’ He noticed Jane’s reaction. ‘Yeah, I respect ’em. The more I give a lad a bollocking, the more I respect him, and the more I care about teaching him to do a decent job. I feed my lads my philosophies and inspiration. They listen to what I tell them, take their bollockings, stop being the fucking losers they were when I gave them a job, then in a few years leave here, open their own place. At the end of the day you have to lead from the front. When I say “fucking move your arse, baby” they can’t question it, cos I can always do it better.’ He looked at her jauntily, as if knowing that any contradiction was implausible. ‘Now the books,’ he said. ‘I can’t be doing with the books and I can’t be doing with Schedule E and that useless shitehawk Cronin at London Provincial 8 – so I won’t give you any grief. If you do a proper job I can show respect. Mrs Fitzgerald, who used to do the books, she died. I always showed her respect. We got on like a house on fire. You don’t rip me off, I’ll show you respect . . . you’ll show me respect. Are you going to rip me off?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then the job’s yours, if you want it.’

  ‘Perhaps we should try it out for a month.’

  ‘Suits me.’

  ‘Fifteen pounds an hour and extra if you want advice on tax.’

  ‘Fifteen?’ he said incredulously. ‘Mrs Fitz only got nine.’

  ‘Well, when Mrs Fitzgerald gets back from the dead she can organise payment of the fine for late submission of your VAT returns.’

  He looked stunned then laughed. ‘I can see we’re going to get along.’ He looked over at a bookshelf behind Jane. ‘Gordon! I told you to put the Fontana Modern Masters next to the fucking dictionaries. If you don’t want to do what I ask, just fucking tell me and I’ll fucking do it myself.’ He turned back to Jane, smiling. ‘Monday OK for you?’ He held out his hand. ‘Trevor Hat, by the way.’

  ‘Ah . . . Jane Percy,’ she replied, having the presence of mind to use her maiden name.

  Out in the street, Jane felt dazed. Her apparent coolness during the most bizarre conversation she had ever engaged in had been a product of her marriage. Geoff was a patient man whose bad temper only showed itself in trivialities. Generally calm, and always so when something important had gone wrong, he would lose his temper at not being able to find a shirt or because they were eating chicken for the third time that week. In the early years she had placated him but what had been infrequent became more regular and she eventually realised there was a connection. Nervously she began shouting back at him and to her surprise he seemed happy to accept this. Afterwards she wasn’t sure what had stopped her shouting back before: fear that he’d hit her, leave the room and never come back or another act of epic and unalterable awfulness? It seemed absurd in hindsight. In time she simply refused to show that he was having any impact on her at all. An explosion about food would be met with an indifferent observation to the effect that he could make the dinner himself next time. Eventually he stopped these rants altogether, except as a kind of private joke between them. Without such practice, the conversation with Trevor Hat would have frightened the life out of her.

  She told her office that she wanted to go part-time for a month, or possibly two. She didn’t care how they reacted. She was a difficult-to-replace specialist who could easily get a job in twenty other firms. When it was clear that she had no intention of telling them why she wanted the time off, and indeed seemed to be daring them to protest, they simply agreed. She handed over the more straightforward projects she was working on to her junior colleagues and concentrated her efforts on the more complex few she could still deal with part-time. For a while she was going to have a secret life.

  ‘Thank you, Lucy.’

  Lucy Bradd had just dumped the last of four heavy files marked Barlow Clowes onto Winnicott’s desk, having taken away eight even heavier files marked Guinness 1, 2 and 3. He thanked her again and looked down at the witness statements on his desk. Still she did not move.

  ‘Is there anything I can do for you, Lucy?’

  ‘There is actually, Mr Winnicott.’

  ‘Won’t you sit down?’

  She sat and took a deep breath. ‘I know this may seem trivial, Mr Winnicott. It’s about the water cooler.’ He began to speak but she was not to be interrupted. ‘I’ve been to see Mr Gribben and I’m . . . he wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘What seems to be the problem?’

  She stiffened with indignation.

  ‘They’ve put the one on this floor next to my desk.’ She stopped, her mouth tight.

  ‘And this is a problem because?’

  ‘Well,’ she said, with considerable feeling, ‘you can imagine. People keep coming and getting water from it.’

  He looked at her blankly
. ‘I see,’ he said at last.

  Winnicott’s obvious incomprehension only annoyed her further.

  ‘Look, Mr Winnicott, I’m not an hysterical old woman. I keep being interrupted. They don’t just come and get water, they meet each other. They talk. They meet people from other departments they otherwise wouldn’t come across and they talk. I’m trying to work.’

  Winnicott was relieved. Her objections seemed reasonable or at least comprehensible. This was not another inscrutable problem. ‘Can’t it be moved somewhere else?’

  ‘Mr Gribben said that there is nowhere else.’

  ‘Really? What about that space by the back stairs?’

  ‘He says it would be a fire risk if it was put there.’

  ‘How in God’s name can a four-gallon bottle of water be a fire risk?’

  She sighed irritably. ‘It’s the cooler that’s the problem, not the water. The back stairs door . . . it’s a fire door. He said fire regulations mean it can’t go there.’

  ‘There must be somewhere else.’

  ‘He said there isn’t.’

  Winnicott sighed. ‘Let me talk to him. I’m sure there’s a way of sorting this out amicably.’

  She relaxed a little, her anger softened by half-suspicion.

  ‘I hope so, Mr Winnicott. But I want to make it clear that I do take this very seriously.’

  ‘Most certainly. I can see that. I understand.’

  When she’d gone, he picked up the phone and dialled an internal number. A woman’s voice answered.

  ‘This is George Winnicott. I’d like to see Boyd Gribben. Is he available?’

  ‘He’s out at a meeting, Mr Winnicott.’

  ‘I see. Tomorrow morning at . . .’

  ‘He’s at a conference all day tomorrow.’

  ‘When is he available?’

  ‘There’s eleven on Thursday.’

  ‘Ten thirty.’

  ‘He has a meeting at ten thirty.’

  ‘I’d be grateful if he’d change it.’

  There was a long pause. ‘Of course, Mr Winnicott.’

  David Hendrix regarded Anne Levels with a curiously pleasurable set of mixed emotions. He knew he was being charmed, a quality that instantly put him on alert. When speaking on the subject of charm he would always quote Camus (at least he thought it was Camus but he was too lazy to chase it up): charm can get you to say Yes even before you’ve been asked the question. He put up his defence: inquisitorial and stern.

  ‘You’re sure confidentiality won’t be a problem, Anne?’

  ‘Absolutely. Information can come into your system from NEMO but it can’t go out. All I want to do is get someone who doesn’t know about computers and who handles a lot of complex human problems to use the system and see if it comes up with anything of use. It may not. I can’t promise this won’t be a waste of your time, David.’

  ‘I just want to be sure that my patients are protected.’ David Hendrix drew in a deep breath, as if squaring up to a mild phobia. ‘So, show me what it can do. But let me warn you, I’m hopeless at typing – two fingers.’

  ‘A colleague of mine will come and set you up in a few days with a voice recognition system. You’ll never need to type again if you don’t want to.’ Her smile was that of a siren luring innocent sailors to their doom. But what was so compelling about her charm, he decided, was that she didn’t take you for a fool. She let you know she was being charming. Even more dangerous, then. But the thought of never having to type again was an effective bribe. Ah, the pleasure, he thought, of surrender to the will of another.

  She gestured to the monitor. ‘We use what we call microtheories to keep the mass of knowledge in NEMO in some form of order. NEMO can treat a specific set of assertions as a theory, so the sentence “It’s the job of the Prime Minister to organise the running of the country” could be considered part of a microtheory on the nature of government. The major advantage of using the microtheory approach is that it allows for local consistency without requiring global consistency. Assertions within a microtheory must be consistent, but they needn’t be consistent with those of another microtheory.’

  ‘I’m sorry, you’ve lost me. I need an example.’

  ‘Do you have any particular interests?’

  He laughed. ‘I’m ashamed to say that I’ve always loved horror films.’

  Anne typed for a moment then turned to him. ‘Ask it a question – but nothing too obscure.’

  Hendrix sat next to her and began typing.

  Who was Dracula?

  The reply was instantaneous.

  A vampire.

  It was definitely not a human voice, but neither was it the toneless metallic sing-song he had been expecting from the other computer voices he had heard on the television. He typed again.

  Do vampires exist?

  No.

  He laughed with delight.

  ‘You see, Dracula and vampires can exist together in the microtheory in NEMO concerning Bram Stoker or horror films,’ said Anne, ‘but not in one of its modern scientific microtheories. So in time it’ll always be able to distinguish the imaginary from the real. Ask it what will happen if Dracula drops an object made of glass.’

  Hendrix typed and the reply was, again, instantaneous:

  It will shatter . . . break . . . fragment . . . smash . . . splinter . . . crack . . . rend . . . disintegrate . . . crumble . . .

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Anne, laughing. She typed for a few seconds and looked at him, blue eyes shining. ‘Ask it something else. Something difficult.’

  Hendrix regarded the computer warily. ‘If it’s tricky it’s not going to blow up or anything? Suppose I ask it the meaning of life?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  He typed, What is the meaning of life?

  There was a long pause. Eventually NEMO replied.

  Perhaps we could deal with that later, Mr Hendrix.

  ‘Tell it you want an answer now.’

  He typed as he was told.

  There was another long pause.

  I’m sorry, Mr Hendrix, I cannot give you an answer at this time.

  Anne looked at him. ‘It’s just a more than usually complicated set of programs, David. It can’t get confused. It knows things in the way that all computers know things – without knowing that it knows. It can come up with things that can amaze you with its apparent intelligence, but it’s just a computer. When people talk about artificial intelligence the word to remember is artificial. Its ignorance is staggering. Ask it where George Washington was on the fifteenth of January 1788.’

  Hendrix typed the question in slowly.

  The reply was immediate: George Washington was in Valley Forge at that time, Mr Hendrix. Would you like an analysis of the importance of his leadership in holding together his troops during a period of severe hardship and the political as well as military significance of his success after the failures of Germantown and Brandywine?

  Hendrix looked at her, waiting for a response.

  ‘Ask NEMO to tell you where Washington’s left leg was on the fifteenth of January 1788.’

  Hendrix, bemused, did as he was told.

  There was another long pause before NEMO answered.

  Perhaps we can discuss that later, Mr Hendrix.

  ‘Tell it you want the answer now.’

  Hendrix typed. There was another pause.

  I do not have the answer at this particular time, Mr Hendrix.

  Anne laughed. ‘Just a demonstration of what NEMO is not, David. Let’s try an area where it might be useful. What was the last thing you read about professionally?’

  Hendrix looked across the desk. He nodded at an open book covered with a great deal of scribbling. ‘That – Frank Lasch on the connection between story telling and dreams.’

  She shrugged. ‘Ask away.’ Hendrix considered for a moment then began typing as Anne’s mobile went off. He typed. What is a story for?

  The reply was immediate – a long and complicated description of the
structural problems surrounding the attempt to prevent the Leaning Tower of Pisa from falling down.

  Anne switched off the phone. ‘Damn!’ she said.

  Hendrix turned to look at her. ‘What’s the matter?’

  She sighed. ‘Just bad luck, really. I’m afraid you’re talking at cross-purposes.’ She was standing just behind Hendrix and leant across him, stretching to reach the keyboard. As her breast brushed against his cheek he felt an almost static charge. She stood upright and laughed. ‘Have you got a dictionary – an OED?’

  He went over to his bookshelf and returned with an ancient copy. She checked under S and moaned again, showing him. ‘See. We use the OED as the basis for defining words for NEMO. You can spell storey as in the eighth storey of a building in two ways – storey and story. It picked up your use of the word, accessed the two spellings from the OED and related it to the last context in which it used the term.’ She shut the book with a snap. ‘NEMO is being used by the Department of Structural Engineering at Imperial College. For the last five years they’ve been trying to stop the Leaning Tower of Pisa from falling down. NEMO thought you were asking it about the storeys of the tower.’

  The Story of the Tower

  The hedgehog knows one big thing but the fox knows many small things. The human hedgehog is a visionary and everything is defined by his ideals. The twentieth century was the age of the absolutist hedgehog and his big idea – the age of men who were ready to help us towards a better world with a gas chamber or a bullet in the head. We must pray that Reynard the fox will be our hero and our king, a pensive champion whose way of thinking is diffuse, who works on many levels and is able to deal with doubt, uncertainty, complexity and flux. In the twenty-first century let our engineers be prudent and supple like the fox, let them examine, sniff, investigate. But like the fox they must, as well, be quick to strike. Prudent and decisive does it, boys and girls. Find them, these men and women, find them in the factories and in the offices; search them out in mill and forge and building site. Then beg or steal their fire.

  And if the fox is not to be the spirit of the age? Then it will be the crocodile.

  Louis Bris, The Wisdom of Crocodiles