But perfection has one problem, as Ildiko and I found the first night, when our lovemaking was interrupted by Mrs Magno’s mechanical arrival. No matter how well protected, perfection is never eternally safe. Even here in paradise the scholars and writers suffered constant annoyance. There were the attempted intrusions of the tourists, occasional curiosity from the press. There was the endless irritating mechanical whine from Italian motorscooters on the autostrada across the lake; even from time to time a tempestuous Alpine storm, which could bring down trees, sink small boats, and send the paperwork and thought of days flying across the studio. But these interruptions were as nothing compared with the one for which the villa and the Magno Foundation was itself responsible: the coming of the great international conferences which the villa was also famous for hosting – like the congress on Literature and Power that had brought Ildiko and myself into their perfect domain.
At these times, Barolo showed its other face. The place where Pliny thought and Byron swam changed from perfect peace to world-shattering tumult. World leaders poured in: heads of state holding some mini-summit, foreign ministers of the European Community meeting in off-the-record session, negotiators trying to halt some tribal war, American peace missions dreaming of uniting Palestinians and Israelis, disarmament buffs trying to stop the spread of chemical weapons. With them came security teams and hangdog retinues. The place grew hellish with the sound of clattering photocopiers, chattering interpreters, motorbike couriers who came flying up to the villa with news of the collapse of some government or country, the clickety-clacking of helicopters, especially when Mrs Magno chose, as she often did, to revisit her paradisial domain. Meals were ruined with toasts, after-dinner speeches, and endless announcements – especially if the conference organizer happened to be Professor Massimo Monza, Mrs Magno’s favoured consultant. Then the resident scholars would retire, hurt, to their rooms. The newcomers would see them just occasionally, wandering like monks observing vows of silence and solitude, praying that this too would pass, like all the false glories of the world, and Barolo would return to the state of pristine perfection for which it was always intended.
*
But visiting conferees, too, expected their own share of paradise. And over the days that followed Criminale’s edgy, difficult speech, we began demanding ours. Carefully steered by Monza, the conference began to acquire what, wiser and older now, I see is a familiar congress sensation – the strange feeling that no other world exists, this is the one human reality, that problems left behind were never real problems anyway, that every convenience, pleasure and delight is yours by absolute right. Then conference personalities begin to emerge, conference friendships – more than friendships – begin to develop, conference hostilities begin to grow: in our case, between French and Italians, Indians and British, novelists and poets, postmoderns and feminists, critics and creators, writers and politicians, and, of course, visiting conferees and the regular scholars.
Yet there was always Bazlo Criminale, who proved to be the one reconciling figure. He was resident scholar and conference visitor. He was writer and politician, critic and creator. He was with us, but more than us; he was almost the spirit of the place itself. If his opening speech had at first disappointed, it had the desired effect of setting us disputing about the coming crises of the Nineties. On this everyone had a prophecy and an opinion, but they always checked it with Criminale. If East fell out with West, South with North, Marx with Freud, he understood both angles, and had a suggestion or a solution. He expressed internationality, he was the spirit of contemporaneity. He was of his time, he was also eternal. And he never seemed mean, hostile, parti pris. His presence, even when it was his absence, always somehow blessed the occasion. If he was the grand authority, he was also kindness itself. He was benign to everyone, he seemed to listen to anybody. Whatever you said to him, he responded. ‘Good, that is good, that is interesting,’ he would say reflectively, ‘But now let me put this point back to you. Let us suppose . . .’
I soon saw that I could never have a better opportunity than here to read, see, and study the nature of Bazlo Criminale, and I began to map his daily life and follow him. The congress day started early, especially if you were Criminale. He always rose close to dawn, like a monk called by matins, and worked for an hour or so in the lighted window of his suite in the villa. Then, if the weather permitted (and at the start of the congress it did), he went out and wandered the landscape, of which Barolo had no shortage, evidently sorting his mind. The grounds were vast: a maze of plant-lined walks and rocky climbs, each finally leading to a shrine, a formal glade, a trysting place, a chapel, a belvedere or pier with a view. In the early morning they were his. In one of these spots you could generally find him, posed to perfection: Criminale in a dappled glade, Criminale in a prospect of flowers, Criminale gazing on a mountain view, Criminale beside a statue of Jove, Criminale by a balustrade, Criminale thinking.
As I’ve told you, I’m not myself a morning person. Nor, as it turned out, was Ildiko, who in any case seemed, rather oddly, to have no great desire to intrude on Criminale now she had caught up with him. As she explained to me, she wanted to wait for the right moment to approach him on the small publishing matter that bothered her. But, while she turned irritably over in the great emperor bed, and dived back into sleep again, I made a point of rising early, just as the great man himself did. I may have been in paradise, and Ildiko made it more paradisial; there was no doubt of that. But I also had a job to do. I also took to walking, or sometimes jogging, in the grounds in the early morning; often, of course, I saw Criminale. From time to time we would exchange a passing word or two, as one congress visitor to another. But he hardly noticed me; he was plainly abstracted. Meanwhile I observed him. In fact with each passing day of the congress I felt I was coming just a little closer toward understanding the Great Thinker of the Age of Glasnost.
Breakfast at Barolo was a movable feast, but I made a point of taking it at the same time as Bazlo Criminale. It was a meal no less perfect than the others; the coffee was ideally brewed, the breakfast rolls were marvels of bakery. Each crackled like twigs, and split open to reveal, inside, an airblown, conch-like spiral of nothingness, a grotto-like core as ornate as those on the hillside above. ‘Once more quite a perfect morning,’ he would say, coming in, sitting down, his square features suggesting without vanity that he had already done as much thinking since sun-up as the rest of us would manage in a year. The other members of the congress, emerging from their various residences within the villa or around the estate, would sit down near him, as if he were a natural magnet: Martin Amis, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Susan Sontag and the others would gather round in unaccustomed silence as he began to talk. Then, after a while, Sepulchra would come sailing in. ‘Coffee, dearling?’ she would say, and Criminale would turn for a moment and watch her pour the hot milk, until, with the lift of one of his fine, gold-ringed fingers, he would give her the signal to stop.
Meanwhile, as the group around him grew bigger, Criminale would begin to chase some complicated or curious line of thought. I sat a little way off, at rimes even jotting down the odd note in my notebook. I began to see a pattern or two. For instance, Criminale would often mention Lukacs, as if that relationship was obsessive. ‘We know of course he was man of many contradictions,’ he would say, ‘He had the mind of a Hegel, the historical sense of a Napoleon . . .’ ‘Dearling, that man would not have given one backside glance if all of his friends were shot,’ Sepulchra would interrupt, ‘Eggs two?’ ‘Yes, two,’ Criminale would say, ‘He sacrificed individuals to thought, yes. But he also considered it better to live under the very worst of communism than under the best of capitalism. Let us ask: Why?’ ‘Dearling, because they gave him good job and nice apartment,’ Sepulchra would say, ‘Do you need clean spoon?’ ‘Because he truly believed in the progress of history, the great work of the philosophical idea, and he wanted to be there at history’s making,’ said Criminale. ‘He sold hi
s soul,’ Sepulchra said, ‘Now dearling, please, talk less, eat your eggs two.’ And Criminale would smile, look round, and say to the others, ‘Now you know why God or maybe history gave men wives. So that, whenever they wished to interpret an important thing, there would always be a dialectic opposite there to correct it.’ ‘Eat, or you will die,’ Sepulchra would say, ‘Then you will blame me.’
After breakfast, carrying a cup of coffee, Criminale would always retire to the lounge. I wouldn’t be far behind, keeping my observer’s distance; he was the great man, I the nonentity. Here he would go round the room and gather up all the papers that lay there: Oggi, La Repubblica, Le Monde, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, The International Herald Tribune, The New York Times. News, the world of big events, seemed a world away from Barolo, and the papers were often a day old at least by the time they arrived. It made no difference; Criminale would sit down and impatiently gut them for world news like some tough old journalist, keeping up an audible commentary. All things seemed to interest him. ‘I see the Russians claim there is an international plot to destabilize their economy,’ he would say, ‘We know that. It is called Marxism.’ Or, ‘Another piece about the enigma of Islam. Why is Islam always thought such an enigma? After all, they chador their women, but we all know very well what is underneath, I think.’ Or, ‘They are asking again who killed Kennedy. We know who killed Kennedy. Why do we all love these theories of conspiracy? What is wrong with the end of our nose?’
I watched: the thinker was dealing with the world. Next he would turn to the book reviews. He seemed especially fond of the bestseller lists (‘Hip and Thigh Diet doing well again,’ he would say, ‘Why is it only fatties who read?’), perhaps because he was quite frequently on them, though he showed no great vanity about the many mentions of his own name. Afterwards it would be the financial pages, which he read like some old man in a café, running his fine fat finger down lists of share prices, checking on bids and takeovers, frauds and scandals. ‘Insider trader put inside,’ he would say, ‘Isn’t it coals to Newcastle? What else? Drugs money laundered, offshore accounts seized, bankers jailed, junk bonds worthless, of course, or they wouldn’t be junk. What a wonderful world, money. All the sins of the world are there. How lucky we have philosophy.’ ‘You can say this of money because you have some,’ Sepulchra would observe, sitting in the chair beside him, combing her hair and reading some glossy magazine. ‘Marxist,’ Criminale would say. ‘Same of you,’ Sepulchra would say.
Lastly Criminale would turn to the advertisement pages, which for some reason seemed to give him the greatest delight. ‘Sale at Bloomingdales,’ he would suddenly announce, ‘Sepulchra, look, a big deal on bras I think would very much interest you.’ Sepulchra, in the chair beside him, would look up and say, ‘I have enough of those thing to last at least two lifetime.’ ‘Not like these,’ he would say, ‘Ah, special offer on garden recliners.’ ‘No garden,’ Sepulchra would say. ‘Ninety-nine cents off tin of peas,’ he would say, ‘Life of Michael Dukakis reduced. Ah, shopping, shopping, shopping.’ ‘You seem very interested in shopping,’ I risked saying once, looking up from some article on the growing Gulf crisis that I was reading. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘At the theoretical level only.’ ‘He never buys a thing,’ said Sepulchra. ‘You see, now sexual eroticism is exhausted, this is the one eroticism we have left.’ ‘You think sexual eroticism is exhausted?’ I asked. ‘Naturally,’ said Criminale, turning over the pages, ‘Women are upping their ante, isn’t that what you say, and in any case we know so much about the body now it has nothing,else left to give. But shopping, now that is different.’
‘How is it different?’ I asked. ‘I read the other day a book, Postmodernism, Consumer Culture, and Global Disorder, described as an account of the joys and sorrows of the contemporary consumer in an age of world crisis. Half the people of the world starve or fight each other. Meanwhile where is the new life conducted? In the shopping mall. On the one hand, crisis and death, on the other the joys of the meat counter, the sorrows of the pants department. When we reach a certain point of wealth, everyone asks, where do I find myself? The answer? Hanging on a peg in the clothes store, newest fashion, designer label, for you reduced by thirty per cent. Why is there trouble in Russia? Because they have not yet invented the store.’ ‘Never mind the thing to put inside it,’ said Sepulchra, reaching in her jangling handbag for some powder compact or other. ‘They have not even discovered money,’ said Criminale, ‘They still barter goods for goods. That is why they want to become American. They too like to be born to shop.’
I felt somewhat baffled. At times like this Criminale and Sepulchra looked not like great philosopher and mate, but like some semi-geriatric couple, two fond old-timers on a holiday cruise. They bickered, spatted and then agreed, in what seemed almost a mockery of connubial bliss. For a trendy world thinker, a man endlessly snapped with one arm round some chic topless model or world leader, this seemed extremely odd. I remembered my treatment, thirty sparkling pages that everyone believed in and nobody had read. In this, the erotic adventures and mysterious loves of Bazlo Criminale appeared crucially. Nothing in all I had read and thought prepared me for anything like Sepulchra, who, sitting there jangling, would suddenly begin tapping at her watch: ‘Dearling, time for congress,’ she would say. ‘Oh, really, time for congress?’ Criminale would say, infinitely mild, ‘So do I go today, or do I don’t?’ ‘Of course you go, my dearling,’ Sepulchra would say, heaving him up, ‘People have come right across world to hear you.’ ‘I don’t think so, it is free tickets they like,’ Criminale would say, ‘Very well, very well, I know my duty. You always teach me my duty. See you, little sexpot. I just go up to the room a minute.’ The only odd thing was that, after all this fuss, when we all began gathering in the upstairs conference room, Criminale would always prove absent.
We would go in, sit down. Five-channel interpretation headsets waited for us in wooden boxes as we entered. On the wide tables, small national flags, nameplates, notepads and pencils, bottles of mineral water and colas, stood ready. So did a panoply of video-recorders, overhead projectors and other technological facilities; no modern conference can function without them, and there was nothing of which Barolo was short. The day’s business was about to begin. The writers would gather on one side of the room, chatting together with that spirit of mutual suspicion which is so often their stock-in-trade, and makes the idea of an international republic of letters such an absurd notion. The politicians would gather on the other – ministers of culture, financial advisers, representatives of international cultural commissions, all embracing each other across vast political frontiers with such a warmth of diplomatic civility that it made the very idea of modern war and conflict seem ever more absurd. If we want world peace, the great mistake we make is letting our leaders back into their own countries. The smart thing would be to keep them at conferences, permanently abroad.
Now Monza would enter, clapping his hands at the top of the table, and we would be off once more into his world of announcaments. Then he would extol the virtues of dialoga – it was for dialoga we had come, our dialoga was now going very well – and introduce, and then constantly interrupt, the various speakers lined up for our pleasure. We sat in our headsets, which hummed with multi-linguality; imported translators sat in glass boxes and rendered the proceedings pan-European. The papers started, first one by a writer, then one by a politician. Monza would listen birdlike, check them all with his stopwatch (‘One more minuta!’), as if this were some Olympic event in speed paper-giving, then halt the flow and demand that we all immediately engage in our ‘great common dialoga’.
But wait a minute: where was the man I had come for? Had he disappeared yet again? I would glance anxiously out of the windows, and there he’d be – sitting outside huddled in some gazebo, his great ship Sepulchra beside him. What was he doing? Dictating; he was talking rapidly, she was taking it down in a notebook. If anyone approached – a gardener, a butler with coffee – she would stand up,
like some farmer’s wife, and flap at them, as if shooing away geese. Criminale would keep talking on; you would see her scrabbling again for her notebook, then writing furiously. Maybe that said what this marriage was all about: prophet and amanuensis, master and slave. Then I noticed I was not the only one in the conference room looking up from some statement about the welfare of humankind, the protection of the eco-system and the excessive importance of literary prizes to glance out of the window. Yes, Criminale was absent, but also almost present, ever reassuring.
And sure enough, when we broke for drinks before lunch, Criminale would be there – concerned, interested, benign and thoughtful. Now he was a far more public self, the international thinker. ‘Certainly I intended to be present,’ he would say, as we gathered on the chill of the terrace, ‘However a few thoughts of great urgence occurred to me suddenly. But you had I expect a very good morning. It was an excellent dialogue? Now tell me everything. I do not wish to miss a word of it.’ So he’d pass right round the gathering, speaking to everyone, sharing every interest, picking each brain. ‘You know the architectonics of pure sound are infinite, did we know it,’ you could hear him saying to some music specialist, They take us into conceptions we cannot imagine, better than any spaceship. By the way, I like this suit.’ Or, ‘You are a minister of culture, oh really? I do believe the fact that there are so many ministers here, leaving so little room for writers, is proof positive of the seriousness with which literature is nowadays taken. It raises my heart, really.’
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