Doctor Criminale

by Malcolm Bradbury

  Certainly we realized at once that this was no ordinary conference, held in a cafeteria with a cooking smell in the background. The Barolo instructions impressed from the start. They explained we should arrive on a certain day (it was the next one), at a certain time (14.30), at a certain place (Milan Central railway station), where a formal reception committee would receive all congress members. One hundred people, the documents warned, would be attending. The Villa Barolo was far too remote, its deliberations far too demanding, its security far too intense, to allow for other joining arrangements, and those who did not follow the instructions precisely would not be admitted. The villa was isolated, indeed islanded, and could not be reached by car; the nearest parking space was probably ten miles away. There were also no landing facilities for personal planes, helicopters, or private yachts, other than those belonging to the members of the Magno Foundation itself.

  This didn’t greatly concern us, but we did realize that, once we had reached Barolo, a good deal would be done to ensure our intellectual strenuousness, our convenience and comfort. The working languages of the congress were English, Italian, French and German; full interpretation facilities would be provided. Fax machines and photocopying facilities would be made available. ‘Fruit in our rooms,’ said Ildiko, seeing that Apricots and Apples would also be on offer; I explained this was computing equipment. All papers would be photocopied and made avail­able in advance (‘That is silly,’ said Ildiko, ‘Why go?’) and the full proceedings would later be published by a distinguished university press in the USA. In the intervals of our delibera­tions, a heated pool was available for informal discussions (‘Oh, that is why go,’ said Ildiko). So would tennis, riding, boating on the lake. Guests were advised to bring appropriate clothing for cold and wet days (the weather, unlike almost everything else, could unfortunately not be guaranteed) and stout shoes for walking the extensive private grounds. Dinner jackets were not obligatory, but formal clothes were needed for the evening, when orders, decorations and Nobel medals could be worn.

  There were also some special instructions for the press. Media attention was not encouraged, but since this was a historic and international event some coverage was permitted. To avoid inhibiting discussion, members of the press were expected to be discreet, and observe the congressional ‘off the record’ convention, which meant all statements were unattributable. Stories should be checked with the Secretariat before being filed. Press packs would be issued on arrival; special press badges would be worn. Accommodation for organizers and main speakers would be provided in the Villa Barolo itself; other participants, including the members of the press, would watchtowers and belvederes that lay within the confines of the extensive and beautiful grounds.

  ‘But I thought nobody in your West took writing seriously,’ said Ildiko, as we checked through all the documents in my room, ‘I thought all your writers starved, except of course for Jeffrey Archer. I thought that was why your writers envied ours so much, when we were always putting them in prison.’ ‘Nobody in the West does take writing seriously,’ I said, ‘What they take seriously are conferences. That’s what hotels are for. Shall I send back a cable to say we accept?’ ‘Of course, it’s wonderful, and Criminale will be there,’ said Ildiko, ‘Do you like me to go for some train tickets? Now may I have your dollar?’ She held out her hand; I gave her some. ‘This is not very much,’ said Ildiko, ‘I also have to live when I get there.’ ‘It looks as though the Magno Foundation will take care of that,’ I said.

  ‘Really, I hope you are not going to be mean, or this will not be such a good trip,’ said Ildiko, ‘You do like to take care of me in the West? Remember I have never been there.’ ‘Never?’ I asked. ‘No, of course,’ said Ildiko, ‘Before the change I was not allowed to travel. To travel you must be very reliable. I was not so reliable. That is how it was in those days.’ ‘I understand,’ I said. ‘But you do please to go with me, I hope?’ ‘Of course, Ildiko,’ I said. ‘I found you the way to Criminale, no?’ ‘You did,’ I said. ‘And I think you do like me a bit, yes?’ ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Then you let me have that hundred-dollar note, all right?’ ‘All right,’ I said.

  And so, very early the next morning, Ildiko and I were to be found, on one of the railway stations at Budapest, with our light load of luggage. Alas, it was not Gustave Eiffel’s splendid creation, but the plastic-tiled cavern at which I had arrived a couple of days earlier. Soon we were aboard the international train that was going to take us south and west toward the great Barolo Congress. We went through places with names like Szekesfehervar and Balatonszentgyorgy, past great long lakes and mountains that shone with snow and ice. We crossed Hungary into Yugoslavia, passed through the mountains, came to Zagreb, quiet as a mouse then, though terrible times came since. Waiters flitted in dining car, bottles of wine rattled against the windows. Meanwhile Ildiko and I stood in the second-class corridor of the crowded train, and ate crusty ham baguettes grabbed through the train window from platform vendors. It was, as things turned out, the last modest meal we were to consume for quite a few more days.

  And then, suddenly, our train emerged from the shadow of the Alps, and we found we had crossed not just one but several frontiers. We had moved from north to south, from east to west, from shadow into a world of brighter light and Mediterranean noise. At Villa Opicina we crossed the Italian frontier, where immigration checked our papers and the armed financial police examined our currency; after all, we were now entering the great new world of European Monetary Union. We stopped again in Trieste, where James Joyce and Italo Svevo wrote (and God bless both of them). Then slowly, as if uncertain of its destination, our train dragged across the plains of the Udine, of Friuli, of Lombardy, passing through or around ancient cities, capitals of old independent states, and crossed through ricefields, oilfields, battlefields. At one point we changed, and came, a little ahead of time, into the great central railway station in Milan, where we were hoping that someone or other was waiting to meet us.

  And indeed someone was. Even before our train had come to a total halt, there were men in dark suits running down the plat­form, waving signs outside the train windows that said on them, in fine printing, ‘Barolo Congress’. As soon as we stepped down, frankly a little shamefacedly, from the second-class coach, they took our graceless baggage – Ildiko’s bright-coloured student backpack, my carry-on bag from Heathrow, an absurdly modest offering – and put it on great luggage carts, before directing us to a conference desk in the station concourse, where we could see a great banner waving, announcing ‘Barolo Congress’. ‘Tell them I am your secretary or something,’ murmured Ildiko, as we got closer. ‘Of course,’ I said.

  Then suddenly, as we came nearer, a battery of photographers came forward, and started flashing cameras at us. A uniformed band in the background rallied, and began blaring brassy music towards us. When we reached the decorated desk, a small neat near-bald man, in his middle years, stood there, arms out. For some reason he wore a dark-blue blazer and a British regimental tie. He listened to my name, then greeted me effusively. ‘Ah, bene, bene, bene,’ he said, tucking his arm in mine, ‘The British press are here. We are truly honoured. You are the firsta, by the way. Oh, I am Professor Massimo Monza.’ ‘Ah, Professor Monza,’ I said, ‘I’d like to introduce my companion, Miss Ildiko Hazy.’ Monza took one long look and then seized and kissed several of her fingers. ‘What a beauty,’ he said, ‘And if you like beauties, please meeta my excellent assistants, Miss Belli and Miss Uccello. It is their taska to satisfy you in everything.’

  Miss Belli and Miss Uccello were also standing behind the desk, behind piles of wallets and papers. They were brilliant dark-haired girls who both wore very bright smiles and very expensive designer dresses. Gucci scarves were tucked into their extremely open cleavages; rich gold bangles clanked on their well-tanned forearms; their dark hair fell over their dark eyes. ‘Ecco, press pack!’ cried Miss Belli, handing me a wallet. ‘Prego, lapel badge!’ cried Miss Uccello, coming
forward to pin plastic labels to our breasts. ‘Now if you don’t mind to wait only ten minute,’ said Miss Belli. The main party will be arriving from the West on the blasted Euro-train,’ said Miss Uccello. Then after we will go in limos to the lago,’ said Miss Belli. ‘And you will see the great Villa Barolo, which always through history was the great home of poets,’ said Miss Uccello. ‘I think it must be very nice there,’ said Ildiko. ‘Ah, si, si,’ cried Miss Uccello, ‘Bella, bella, molto bella.’ ‘Si, si, si, bellissima,’ added Miss Belli.

  Exactly ten minutes later, a vast transcontinental express, pulled by a magnificent streamlined, snubnosed electrical mon­ster, one of those great trains that tie the vast European Community ever and ever more closely together, slid slowly down the platform of Milan Central station. Milan immedi­ately responded. The men in the dark suits bustled down the platform, holding up their signs to the compartment windows. The press photographers ran forward, jostling and fighting to capture the perfect picture. The brass band began marching down the platform, playing a rousing tune. Then, slowly, the great writers of the world, the literary diplomats and the serious critics, the select members of the Barolo Congress that in later years would be considered so memorable and so seminal, began to debouch onto the platform. Their great valises and folded clothes-bags were piled onto great carts and hurried away. While cameras flashed, they streamed towards us. ‘Keep a watch for Criminale Bazlo,’ said Ildiko.

  We watched them come. First came a group of American Postmodernists, not so young-looking these days; one of them was very nearly bald, another had his spectacles bricolaged together with sticking plaster, and looked far more like a Dirty Realist, another, in a dark-blue Lacoste sport shirt and white trousers, carried a set of golf-clubs and waved copies of his books at the cameras. Behind them followed a more youthful group of American feminists, with very short bristle haircuts, designer dungarees, and very upfront and affirmative expressions; by the time they reached the end of the platform, they were ahead. Then there was a very hesitant group of young writers from Britain, wearing extremely thick coats and woollen winter scarves. All of them were peculiarly tiny, and several of them came from the new multi-ethnic generation; when their lapel-badges were affixed, they proved to have names like Mukerji, Fadoo and Ho. The French were there in force: there were distinguished elderly Academicians, wearing small honours sewn into their lapels, and then younger authors of both sexes decked out in dark sunglasses and enormous baggy four-breasted suits. There were German writers from either side of the border that had just come down, still not comfortable with each other, though to the external eye they appeared entirely alike, all carrying small handbags dangling from their wrists and wearing black leather jackets.

  Then from various countries of Eastern Europe there were several formerly dissident writers, in little forage caps, looking extremely confused about exactly what, these days, they were dissenting from. From Russia came a great hulk of a writer, six foot six tall at the very least, named Davidoff. He was accompanied by a flamboyant, yellow-haired woman, as vast, generous and capacious as the Russian steppes, as red-cheeked, bright-lipped and multi-layered as a Russian matrioshka doll, and dressed in an extraordinary electric purple, named Tatyana Tulipova. There was a lady Japanese writer in a pink kimono. There were black African writers in multi-coloured tribal robes, who laughed a lot, and a tall thin writer from Somalia who walked as over sand-dunes with the aid of a long cleft stick. There were tanned and muscular young academics from Southern California, carrying their tennis rackets; there were mean-looking dark-clad theoretical critics from Yale, carrying grey laptop computers and looking about nervously from side to side. There was, in fact, everything in the modern writing game except for Bazlo Criminale. Of him there was no sign. ‘Maybe he has his own train,’ said Ildiko.

  So, shaking hands, chatting, laughing, frowning, embracing, renewing old congress friendships or old conference hostilities, the notable writers of the world gathered round the reception desk in the concourse, while the citizens of Milan set aside their normal daily cares and gathered round to watch the spectacle. From small bald Professor Monza the writers received warm handshakes and backslaps; from the laughing, ebullient Signorinas Belli and Uccello they received friendly embraces and large leather wallets. Then suddenly, leaping on his chair and clapping his hands together, Professor Monza began shouting. ‘Attenzione! Achtung bitte! Quiet please! An announcament!’ ‘Professor Monza is the crown prince of announcements,’ said Miss Belli to me. ‘Your cars are now awaiting!’ announced Professor Monza, ‘Pleasa now follow the behinds of Misses Belli and Uccello!’ There was pleased laughter. ‘Maka your way to the entranca! I will see you all again at the Villa Barolo! Then I will make some more announcements! It is very importanta you listen for all announcaments!’

  The writers of the world then began to march in a line through the concourse, down the escalators, towards the entrance to the station. And here a great cortege of dark limousines stood waiting, each one with a dark-suited driver beside it. The writers piled in, group by group, nation by nation. Then, as motorcycle outriders stopped the city traffic, the grand procession began moving through the streets of Milan, rather like some state funeral at which, however, the mourners had failed to observe the basic rule of solemnity, and were laughing, leaning out of the windows, and waving from car to car. We passed the wonderful designer shops of Milan, in the arcaded streets; Ildiko stared out of the window entranced. ‘But I thought Italy was a very poor country,’ she said. ‘Not any more, not since it joined the European Community,’ I said, ‘It’s one of the richest countries of Europe. At least, this part is.’ ‘Oh, good,’ said Ildiko, ‘I like it. Oh, what shops!’

  Probably because of our subordinate press status, we had been put in the very last car. This proved fortunate, because it meant we found ourselves in the ebullient company of Signorinas Belli and Uccello. Fine-looking girls of a familiar, and expensive, Italian type, they flashed their eyes a lot, laughed a good deal, and happily explained to us what a whole lot of blasted fun this whole blasted congress was going to be. ‘Professor Monza has prepared it for many month,’ said Miss Belli, ‘I suppose you have both heard of Professor Monza?’ ‘I don’t know him,’ said Ildiko. ‘He is not known in my country.’ ‘But he is just our very best-known professor!’ cried Miss Uccello, ‘He has his own column in La Stampa!’ ‘His own arts programme on Radio Italiana, Ecco Bravo!’ cried Miss Belli. ‘He writes experimental novels of Sicily!’ cried Miss Uccello. ‘And edits the famous magazine Soufflé, you know it?’ cried Miss Belli, ‘All about literature and food!’ ‘Also he drives a Porsche,’ said Miss Belli. ‘He has a very beautiful, very rich wife,’ said Miss Uccello, ‘Of course he keeps her at his villa in the campagna.’ ‘He has the best collection of South American art in Italy,’ said Miss Belli. ‘In short he is very blasted famous and very blasted rich,’ said Miss Uccello.

  ‘And he is a professor, he teaches as well?’ asked Ildiko. Misses Belli and Uccello laughed. ‘Well, when the universities are open, he sometimes visits us,’ said Miss Belli, ‘In Italy the universities are not open so often.’ ‘You’re his students?’ I asked. ‘Well, we make our theses with him,’ said Miss Uccello. ‘So what do you study?’ asked Ildiko. ‘Signs, we study signs,’ said Miss Belli. ‘Mostly the film Casablanca, do you know it?’ asked Miss Uccello, ‘That has very interesting signs.’ ‘We look at it from a semiotic Marxist perspective,’ said Miss Belli. ‘You mean, Professor Monza is a Marxist?’ I asked. ‘Of course, he is a leading Italian intellectual,’ said Miss Uccello. ‘A very rich Marxist, that is the best kind to be,’ said Miss Belli, ‘Never be a Marxist and also poor.’ ‘He takes us out on his yacht at the weekends and we discuss the theories of Gramsci,’ said Miss Uccello, looking at Miss Belli and giggling. ‘It’s right,’ said Miss Belli, giggling too, ‘We call it, topless Gramsci.’

  Milan was well behind us now, and we were proceeding north, back toward the slopes of the Italian Al
ps; the white peaks rose ahead of us, backlit with a roseate afternoon glow. Even with winter coming, various perfumed fragrances blew in on us from the Lombardy countryside, with its red farmhouses and verdant gardens – though these were as nothing compared with the expensive musky perfumes that wafted from the bodies of the delightful Signorinas Belli and Uccello, who sat in the seats in front of us. ‘So that’s Monza,’ I said, ‘But what happened to Doctor Criminale? I didn’t see him at the station.’ ‘At the station, naiou,’ said Miss Belli, ‘Of course not, he is at the villa, preparing his great speech for the close of the congress.’ ‘Has he been there a little while?’ asked Ildiko. ‘Already three, four day,’ said Miss Uccello, ‘He likes to come there often, because it is a good place for him to write. My mount of Olympus, that is how he calls it.’ ‘He’s alone?’ I asked. Miss Belli and Miss Uccello turned to each other and laughed. ‘No, not alone,’ said Miss Belli finally, ‘La Stupenda is with him.’

  ‘La Stupenda?’ I asked. ‘His wife Sepulchra,’ said Miss Uccello, ‘We call her La Stupenda.’ Ildiko turned to me. ‘You remember her,’ she said, ‘I showed you her nude photographs in Budapest.’ ‘Her blasted nude photo!’ cried Miss Belli joyously, falling with tears of laughter into the arms of Miss Uccello. ‘Non possibile!’ cried Miss Ucello, wiping her eyes. ‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘You don’t know her?’ asked Miss Belli, ‘This lady is like a great battleship.’ ‘She charges all round and fires at people all the time, always ready for the attack,’ said Miss Uccello. ‘That poor man,’ said Miss Belli, ‘Really we feel so sorry for him.’ ‘How does such a nice man marry such a woman!’ asked Miss Uccello. ‘Oh look,’ said Miss Belli, ‘Here we are at the blasted lake!’ ‘And now we must go on the blasted speedo!’ said Miss Uccello. The car stopped, in the long line of cars; the driver descended, and opened the doors for us; we all got out.