The History Man

by Malcolm Bradbury

  'It's called Brute Force,' says the girl. 'The devious workings of the totalitarian mind,' says someone. 'You're trying to confuse me and fuck up my head,' says someone else. Empty glasses prod at Howard, as he passes on his way to the kitchen to fetch more bottles.

  In the crush, a hand plucks at his sleeve. He looks down into the face of a thin, dark-eyed girl; it is one of his students, called Felicity Phee. 'I have a problem, Dr Kirk,' she says. Howard pours some wine into her glass, and says, 'Hello, Felicity. What's wrong this time?'

  'I always have a problem, don't I?' says Felicity. 'That's because you're so good at solving them.'

  'What is it?' asks Howard. 'Am I a sexist?'

  'I doubt it,' says Howard, 'with your radical record.' Felicity is well known for keeping advanced company; she appears now cleaner, now dirtier, now saner, now more psychotic, according to the group she happens currently to be running with. 'I'm in a hang-up,' says Felicity. 'I'm tired of being lesbian. I'd like to be with a man.'

  'You were very anti-male last time we talked,' says Howard. 'Oh, last time we talked,' says Felicity, 'that was last term. I was coming to terms with my sexuality then. But now I've found that my sexuality isn't the one I've come to terms with, if you can see what I mean.'

  'Oh, I can,' says Howard. 'Well, that shouldn't be a problem.'

  'Oh, it is, Dr Kirk, Howard.' says Felicity Phee. 'You see, the girl I'm with, Maureen, says it's reactionary. She says I'm collapsing into a syndrome of subservience. She says I have a slave mentality.'

  'She does,' says Howard. 'Yes,' says Felicity, 'and, I mean, I couldn't do something reactionary, could I?'

  'Oh, no, Felicity,' says Howard. 'So what would you do?' says Felicity. 'I mean, if you were me, and belonged to an oppressed sex.'

  'I'd do what I wanted to,' says Howard. 'Maureen throws shoes at me. She says I'm an Uncle Tom. I had to talk to you. I said to myself, I have to talk to him.' 'Look, Felicity,' says Howard, 'there's only one rule. Follow the line of your own desires. Don't accept other people's versions, unless you believe them true. Isn't that right?'

  'Oh Howard,' says Felicity, kissing him on the cheek, 'you're marvellous. You give such good advice.' Howard says: 'That's because it so closely resembles what people want to hear.'

  'No, it's because you're wise,' says Felicity. 'Oh, boy, do I need a flat male chest for a change.'

  He goes through into the kitchen. It is filled with people; a male human leg protrudes from under the table. A baby lies asleep in a carrycot on top of the refrigerator. 'Is it your view that there is a constant entity definable as virtue?' asks the Pakistani thought leader of the advanced priest, in front of the globular wallpaper. The record player roars; the booming decibels, the yelps of a youthful pop group on heat, bounce round the house. Howard takes some of the bottles of wine, dark red in the glass, and uncorks them. A stout, maternal girl comes into the kitchen and picks up a baby's bottle, which has been warming in a saucepan on the cooker. She tries the contents by squirting them delicately onto her brown arm. 'Oh, shit,' she says. 'Who's Hegel?' says a voice; Howard looks up, and it is the bra-less girl who had come to his office that morning. 'Someone who…' says Howard. 'It's Howard,' says Myra Beamish, standing beside him, her wig tipped slightly to one side, laughing enormously. She has her arm around Dr Macintosh, who still holds his bottle. 'Oh, Howard, you give great parties,' she says. 'Is it going well?' asks Howard. 'Oh, great,' says Myra, 'they're playing "Who am I?" in the living-room. And "What are the students going to do next?" in the dining-room. And "I gave birth at three and at five I was up and typing my thesis" in the hall.'

  'There's also a thing called "Was it good for you, too, baby?" in the guest bedroom,' says Macintosh. 'It sounds like the description of a reasonable kind of party,' says Howard. 'How does someone as beastly as you manage to make life so nice for us?' asks Myra. 'It's zap,' says Howard. 'It's zing,' says Myra. 'It's zoom,' says Macintosh.

  Howard picks up the new bottle, and returns to the livingroom. He bears the libation about, hoping for transfiguration to follow. 'Is his vasectomy reversible or not?' asks someone. 'Tell him you're coming to Mexico with me,' says someone. A fat girl with chopped-down hair, lying on the floor, looks up at Howard and says: 'Hey, Howard, you're beautiful.'

  'I know,' says Howard. Across the room Barbara is ministering with nuts and pretzels. 'All right?' asks Howard, approaching her. 'Good,' says Barbara. He carries the bottle over to a corner of the room, where, in a cluster, stands a group of bearded Jesuses and dark, sunglassed faces, students from the Revolutionary Student Front. They look aggressive and they stand in a rather tight circle; 'We only want to destroy them,' Peter Madden is saying in a loud voice. 'It's not personal.' Somewhere in the middle of the circle is a human figure, smaller than the others. It wears a white hat. 'Can I ask you just one wee question?' asks the figure in the middle, in a female, faintly Scots voice. 'Don't you think that politics is really just about the lowest form of human knowledge? Lesser than morals, or religion, or aesthetics, or philosophy. Or anything that's concerned with real human density?'

  'Christ, look,' says Peter Madden, who stands there in his gunmetal sunglasses, 'all forms of knowledge are ideological. That means they are politics.'

  'Are reducible to politics,' says the female voice. 'Can be rendered down, like soup.' Beck Pott is there, in a combat uniform with a 'Rocket Commander' patch sewn onto the shoulder, and with a white silver peace symbol hanging on a chain around her neck; she turns and finds Howard behind her, coming with the bottle. 'Who is this crazy doll?' she asks. 'She says we don't need a revolution.'

  'There are people who think like that,' says Howard. 'I don't understand them,' says Beck Pott. 'There have to be,' says Howard; 'if there weren't, we wouldn't need a revolution.'

  'You're right there, Howard,' says Beck Pott, 'right.' Howard offers the bottle to the girl in the middle of all this; she wears a blue trouser suit and a neat scarf, and is much too formal for the party. 'A wee drop,' says the girl. 'If you're not the solution,' says Peter Madden, 'you're part of the problem.'

  'It would be terribly arrogant of me to believe I was the solution to anything,' says the girl. 'Or you, too, for that matter.'

  Howard turns, with his bottle, and goes back through the house, to the gaunt, flowerless Victorian conservatory at the back of it. The pink sodium lights of Watermouth shine in through its glass roof; this is now the only illumination. The place booms with violent sound. Dancers sway their bodies; a baby, high up in a papoose-rig, jogs on the back of a noisy daddy. The German girl in the see-through blouse has started, in a corner, with a group of men around her, to take it off. She lifts it upward, over her head, and it whirls in the air above them for a moment. It is hard to get through the crowd. 'Who's Hegel?' says someone. It is impossible now quite to tell who are faculty, who students, who strangers, who friends. The social mix has remixed itself. The music thumps in the half-dark; bodies gyrate, and minds are sacrificed to beat. The Catholic priest's Ouspenskyite companion is close by him, on the floor, demonstrating bodily positions from an exercise she has recently learned. The German girl has joined the dancing, and is gyrating in front of him, her big breasts bouncing, a mobile Aryan sculpture of the New Woman. 'This is heuristic, ja?' she says to Howard. 'ja,' says Howard. 'Gesundheit.' Howard looks at the moving spectacle; as he watches, he sees the silvery twirl of a glass as it spins from a hand and crashes to the floor. The fragments disappear under the busy feet. 'Are all these persons intellectuals?' asks the Pakistani thought leader of the Catholic priest. 'The orgy is replacing the mass as the prime sacrament,' says the priest. 'Is this an orgy?' asks the Pakistani. 'There are better,' says the priest. But not for Howard; what he sees in front of him is man free, free of economic timidity, sexual fear, prescriptive social norms, man cocky with the goodness of his own being. Now food, drink, and Barbara all seem to have disappeared, but no matter. The party is now totally self-governing, feeding on its own being.

  He
walks back through the house. The party is busy everywhere; everywhere, it seems, but by the wall in the living-room, where a large circle of space has cleared around the dark girl in the trouser suit and the white hat, who stands, one leg crossed over the other, holding up a veined marble egg that is part of the mantelpiece decor, and inspecting it with a fastidious expression. Her air is that of a figure in a Victorian painting, portraying, in rococo fashion, innocence. Her clothes have a formality which makes it impossible to judge her age, and therefore guess whether she is a teacher or a student. Howard takes the bottle over to her, and puts it to her glass. 'Just a very, very tiny drop,' says the girl. 'Enough.'

  'Come along and meet some people,' says Howard; he puts his hand on her arm. The arm, surprisingly, resists. 'I've met some,' says the girl, 'now I'm digesting them.'

  'Are you enjoying yourself?' asks Howard. 'I'm enjoying myself fine,' says the girl. 'I'm enjoying some of the other people as well.'

  'But not all of them,' says Howard. 'I'm very discriminating,' says the girl. 'What's your name?' asks Howard. 'Oh, I'm invited,' says the girl. 'Everyone's invited,' says Howard. 'Oh, that's good,' says the girl, 'because I wasn't invited. I was brought by someone who's gone.'

  'Who's that?' asks Howard. 'He's a novelist,' says the girl. 'He's gone home to write notes on it all. Were you invited?'

  'I invite,' says Howard, 'I'm the host.'

  'Och,' says the girl, 'you're Dr Kirk. Well, I'm Miss Callendar. I've just joined the English Department. I'm their new Renaissance man. Of course I'm a woman.'

  'Of course,' says Howard. 'That's good, because I like women.'

  'Aye, I've heard about that,' says Miss Callendar, 'I hope you're not wasting any of your valuable time trying to get after me.'

  'No,' says Howard. 'Good,' says Miss Callendar, holding up the marble egg, and looking at it. 'I just love small objects like this, I could hold it for hours. Am I keeping you from your party?'

  The party booms around them. Howard stares at Miss Callendar, who is somehow outside it. She leans against the mantelpiece, her white hat shading solemn, dark brown eyes that look back at him. Behind her, over the mantelpiece, is a domed, round mirror; Howard sees that they are both reflected in it, on the tilt, portrayed at a foreshortened angle, as in some conscientious modern film. There is her dark head, capped with its white decorated hat, the nape of her neck, her tapering long blue back; there is himself, facing her in the adversary position, his economical, fierce-eyed features staring; beyond them both is a realm of space, and then the moving mannequins of the party. 'You were in a fight with the revolutionaries,' says Howard. 'That's my trouble at parties,' says Miss Callendar, 'I get into fights.'

  'Of course,' says Howard, 'for perfectly good reasons these kids don't trust anyone over thirty.'

  'How old do you think I am?' asks Miss Callendar. 'I don't know,' says Howard, 'you're disguised by your clothes.'

  'I'm twenty-four,' she says. 'Then you ought to be one of them,' says Howard. 'How old are you?' asks Miss Callendar. 'I'm thirty-four,' says Howard. 'Oh, Dr Kirk,' says Miss Callendar, 'then you oughtn't.'

  'Oh,' says Howard, 'there's also the question of right and wrong, good and bad. I choose them. They're on the side of justice.'

  'Well, I can understand that,' says Miss Callendar. 'Like so many middle-aged people, you're naturally envious. All this youth charms you. I'm sure you'd allow it anything.' Howard laughs; Miss Callendar says, 'I hope you don't think I'm rude.'

  'Oh, no,' says Howard. 'For the same reason, I'd allow you anything.' In the corner of his eye, Howard sees the movements of the party; hands are touching breasts, partners are transacting, couples are disappearing. 'You would?' says Miss Callendar. 'I thought you were trying to make a rebel out of me.'

  'I am,' says Howard. 'But what could I rebel about?'

  'Everything,' says Howard. 'There's repression and social injustice everywhere.'

  'Ah,' says Miss Callendar, 'but that's what everyone's rebelling about. Isn't there anything new?'

  'You have no social conscience,' says Howard. 'I have a conscience,' says Miss Callendar. 'I use it a lot. I think it's a sort of moral conscience. I'm very old-fashioned.'

  'We must modernize you,' says Howard. 'There,' says Miss Callendar, 'you won't allow me anything.'

  'No,' says Howard. 'Why don't you let me save you from yourself?'

  'Och,' says Miss Callendar, 'I think I know just how you'd go about that. No, I'm afraid you're too old for me. I never trust anyone over thirty.'

  'What about men under thirty?' asks Howard. 'Oh, you're prepared to vary, if necessary,' says Miss Callendar. 'Well, I don't trust many under it, either.'

  'That doesn't leave you much room for manoeuvre,' says Howard. 'Well, I don't manoeuvre much, anyway,' says Miss Callendar. 'Then you're missing out,' says Howard. 'What are you frightened of?'

  'Ah,' says Miss Callendar, 'the new man, but the old techniques. Well, it's been very nice talking to you. But you've got a lot of people here to look after. You mustn't waste your time talking to me.' Miss Callendar puts the marble egg back in the basket on the mantelpiece. 'They're looking after themselves,' says Howard. 'I'm entitled to find my own enjoyment.'

  'Oh, I could hardly claim to be that,' says Miss Callendar, 'you'd do much better elsewhere.'

  'I also ought to save you from your false principles,' says Howard. 'I may need it one day,' says Miss Callendar, 'and if I do, I'll promise to let you know.'

  'You need me,' says Howard. 'Well, thank you,' says Miss Callendar, 'I take your offer of help very kindly. And Mrs Kirk's offer to take me to the family-planning clinic. You all offer a real welcome at Watermouth.'

  'We do,' says Howard. 'An entire service. Don't forget.'

  Howard walks back into the party; Miss Callendar remains standing by the mantelpiece. Someone has gone out and found more to drink; there is a more subdued air now, a softer sexual excitement. He passes through the bodies, face to face, rump to rump. He inspects the scene for Flora Beniform; there are many faces, but none of them hers. Later on, he is up in his own bedroom. There is deep and utter silence here, except for the sound of an Indian raga, playing on a record player in the corner. The curtains are pulled shut. The spotlight over the bed has been moved from its usual down-facing position, and made to shine upwards at the ceiling; some coloured material, the pink of what is probably a blouse, has been wrapped around it. The bed, with its striped madras cover, has been pushed away from its central place, and is in a corner of the room, under the window. Around the room in the quiet, a circle of people are sitting or lying, touching or holding each other, listening to the rhythm and movements of the music. They are a group of formless shapes, with heads jutting, hand: reaching out, held together by arms that thread from one shape to the next. Joints are passed from hand to hand; they light with a red glow as someone draws, and then they fade. Howard takes in the wordless words of the music; he lets his own room grow stranger and stranger to him. Barbara's housecoat and her caftan, hanging on the hook behind the door, change colour and transpose into pure form. The shine of the misshapen handles on the old chest of drawers, bought in a junk shop when they were furnishing the house, become a focus of colour, a bright, mysterious knot. The wine and the pot make rings inside his head. There are faces that take shape and dissolve in the watery light: the faces of a girl with freaked green eye-rings and white powdered cheeks, of a boy with a skin that is the shade of wet olive. A hand waves idly near him, at him; he takes the joint; retains the hand, turns to kiss the unsexed face. His mind relishes ideas, which rise like smoke, take shape as a statement. The walls shift and open. He gets up and goes, past hands and bodies and legs and hips and breasts, onto the landing.

  He opens the door of the toilet. There is a run of water, and a voice that says: 'Who's Hegel?' He shuts it again. The house is quieter now, the party dissipated from its noisy social centre into numerous peripheries. He goes down the stairs. Macintosh sits there, and next to him Anita
Dollfuss and her little dog. 'The baby,' says Howard. 'It hasn't started yet,' says Macintosh, 'they think it was all some kind of false alarm.'

  'But there is a baby in there?'

  'Oh, yes,' says Macintosh, 'there's one there all right.'

  'There's a rumour that Mangel's coming here to lecture,' says Howard. 'Good,' says Macintosh, 'I'd like to hear what he's got to say.'

  'That's right,' says Howard. In the living-room the faces have all changed; none of them does he recognize. A six-foot woman lies asleep under a five-foot-six coffee table. A man comes up and says: 'I was talking to John Stuart Mill the other day. He's gone off liberty.' Another man says: 'I was talking to Rainer Maria Rilke the other day. He's gone off angels.' Howard says, 'Flora Beniform?'