Life in the West tsq-1

by Brian W Aldiss

  He glanced up at the gesticulating woman framed in her window. In the hard blue sky above the street, an intense point of light gleamed. It moved to one side, stopped, then suddenly accelerated in an arc and vanished behind the shaggy pediments of the Via Enrico Stabile.

  It could have been an aircraft reflecting the sun; in which case, its power of acceleration was unthinkable. Even if it was much nearer the rooftops, it was amazingly silent and fast. And what was it?

  ‘I think I’ve just seen a flying saucer,’ Squire said, trying to keep his voice calm.

  His two companions made a few jokes as he tried to describe what he had seen. ‘I know it sounds ridiculous — I speak in the vein of one who confesses to an idiocy…’

  ‘Well, it’s always an embarrassing situation to be the sole possessor of a bit of truth,’ said Fittich consolingly. ‘I remember once I saw ball lightning when I was walking in the Tyrol with a friend. We were in our chalet for the night and not drunk, when this globe about the size of a goldfish bowl entered at the open window. It was completely silent, which was eerie.’

  ‘So was my You-Foe,’ said Squire, glancing upwards again.

  ‘It did a tour of the room while we sat petrified, and eventually floated out of the window. I jumped from my bed and watched it sail down among the trees. My girl friend said we should tell no one, but I was then young and foolish in the pursuit of truth, and rashly recounted the incident to my scientific colleagues at the university. They of course assured me that ball lightning did not exist because it contravened natural laws. These days, I believe that ball lightning is quite acceptable, like much else that was once regarded as heresy.’

  They walked slowly up the street. Morabito said, ‘Italians will believe anything. Sicilians especially are very superstitious people. They can believe in the Virgin Mary, UFOs, witchcraft, Marxism, fascism, and Santa Claus all in one breath.’

  ‘Why should there not be flying saucers?’ Fittich asked. ‘After all, if there is only one true sighting among thousands which are observation balloons or clouds or passing aircraft, then they exist. It only needs one. One’s the miraculous number. The devil only has to appear once for his existence to be verifiable.’

  ‘Wishes shape disbeliefs as well as beliefs, Herman. I believe I just saw a machine, a product of super-technology. A couple of centuries ago, I would have believed I saw a flying man, or a witch on a broomstick. We’re too inclined to think of the imagination as an independent function, whereas it is a function like vision, which can be controlled.’

  ‘You may actually have seen a product of super-technology. Why not? Believe your vision, believe your imagination. Wasn’t it your Professor Haldane who said that the universe is stranger than we imagine or than we can imagine? That’s why I enjoy science fiction as a side-line, because those chaps really try to imagine the unimaginable.’

  Squire gave him a questioning look. ‘So you do believe in You-Foes?’

  The German gestured. ‘I think maybe I do. But to declare it so publicly would make a further and perhaps lethal dent in my academic reputation. There are as many orthodoxies today as ever there were, and one defies them at one’s peril.’

  They fell silent. As they were turning the corner into the Via Milano, Morabito said, ‘All this area by the docks was pounded flat by the British in World War II. It has all been rebuilt rather well, because of massive infusions of American dollars after the war.’

  ‘I remember we gave it a pounding,’ Squire said. ‘This coast commanded the convoy route to Malta and India. There were German batteries here, and landing fields for Stuka squadrons. We blasted the whole place.’

  ‘It certainly was a rather lively time, during the career of our mutual friend Adolf,’ Fittich remarked.

  He walked at a steady pace, his hands hanging by his sides. Morabito walked rapidly, throwing his shoulders in front of him as his gaze darted from one side to the other. As they came within the shade of the Grand Hotel, he flung a furtive glance upwards.

  ‘At least whatever you saw did not drop any bombs,’ he said.

  On the marble steps which divided the inner part of the foyer from the outer stood Frank Krawstadt, smoking and pacing nervously.

  ‘There’s my colleague,’ said Fittich. ‘He’s not a bad chap, despite his politics, and I must give a little moral support. He’s our next speaker.’

  ‘I’ll see you later,’ Squire said. They smiled and nodded at each other.

  Jacques d’Exiteuil came up beaming with Selina Ajdini and two of his fellow-countrymen. He clapped Squire on the back. ‘How are you, Tom? You didn’t have lunch? A walk on the sea front? Isn’t everything going so well?’

  ‘I was just telling Mr Squire how all this area of Ermalpa was pulverized by the British during the war,’ Morabito said.

  ‘Ah, the British were doing brave things then, while France was under a cloud of shame,’ d’Exiteuil remarked cheerfully, shaking his copper-coloured head. ‘You were all Churchills then, Tom, isn’t it? I still see a bit of Churchill in you, for instance when you tried to cut short our Russian friend this morning. And at breakfast with poor Camaion — who by the way has much of interest to impart about new restlessness among intellectuals in Bucharest.’

  Ajdini said brightly, ‘Churchill embodies — in his body, I mean — much that we think of as positive British virtues. Sturdy independence, good vowel sounds, etcetera, etcetera.’

  She looked very trim; d’Exiteuil was keeping close to her. The blue spectacles had been removed, so that her blue eyes were unimpeded; at their corners were lines Squire had not noticed earlier. She gazed at Squire in a friendly yet impudent way, as the astute mind behind them speculated on the world. That enquiring look, the uncluttered countenance, the thinly smiling lips, gave a meaning to the ritual of the conference.

  ‘Did you enjoy Comrade Kchevov’s talk this morning, Miss Ajdini?’ Squire asked, moving fractionally closer to her and clutching his lapels so that his knuckles almost grazed the front of her blouse.

  She nodded, and the heavy shoulder bag swung in Squire’s direction. ‘There was a positive contribution of Marxist science against the philosophizing of Sigmund Freud and his followers. I happen to agree entirely that we are incomplete and cannot make any contribution to society, even a political one, without imagination. Granting that, the miraculous can occur. Of course, it was formulated in a rather unorthodox way. I was reminded of Gurdjieff, both in the mixture of practicality and foxy divination and in “the objective of producing an interesting and beautiful object”.’

  He marvelled. Even whilst distressing him by her appreciation of the rubbish Kchevov had talked, she was quoting a statement by Gurdjieff which he had appended as motto to his book and used in his speech.

  ‘The miraculous does occur,’ he said. ‘Nor need we go in search of it. Sometimes it comes in search of us. As an example which springs readily to mind, I have just seen a You-Foe over Ermalpa.’

  The Frenchmen laughed heartily. One said, ‘I do not think that Sir Winston Churchill would commend himself to such miracles.’

  Ajdini was also laughing, perhaps merely at the unexpectedness of his remark. ‘You must say we are officially in search here of the miraculous. What we want is a sign, like the early Christians. And it has been — what is that biblical word? — vouchsafed to you.’

  Again subtle flattery, not unmixed with subtle mockery? He said, ‘Perhaps we can discuss the religious implications when we meet tonight for dinner, if you still remember our arrangement. I’d prefer the miraculous in some other guise.’

  In his room, he opened up the slats of his jalousie, allowing a little light to stripe the gloom. He intended to do some yoga, but the beer in the cafe had made him drowsy. Stripping down to his underpants, he sat on the side of the bed and began to make a few notes. Presently, he lay back and fell asleep.

  The afternoon session began only five minutes behind time. Gianni Frenza introduced Krawstadt briefly and Krawstadt rose, loo
king nervous. The female voice of the interpreter on Channel Three delivered her version of his paper, which was entitled ‘Pinball Machines: Sublimated Coin Warfare.’

  ‘So far at this date, the SPA organization and also Intergraphic Studies magazine have shown severe neglect of a glaring and coloured example of a commercial form of machine-and-art in a combination. It is a pinball table, familiar to all of us. A cult of functionality. Its object is to transfix with emotion a person who will then surrender money for no reward at all. Thus the pin-table makes an epitome of capitalist economy in its late stage and will be valued to future students when they come to study this aspect of Americanized and so-called cosmopolitan culture from the early angers of the twentieth century.’

  Here Krawstadt cleared his throat and looked furtively about at the audience, as if to check that it had not disappeared. From a distance, he resembled a healthy young man, his slender figure lending strength to the illusion. Closer inspection revealed that his slenderness was the gauntness of ageing. There was a strong frosting of grey among the yellow hairs of his beard, a bald pate gave his head an eroded appearance; even the red of his cheeks was no sign of health but the pitting and inflammation of a long- term psoriasis.

  ‘…I am a professor in residence of popular culture. I have some various degrees. Thus I am curator of the newly established Pinball Research Museum at Gottingzell University in Western Germany. There we have an investiture of over five hundred machines — which are being got in working arrangement by mechanics — representing battery-operated and pre-solenoid models even as far back as 1930 to the present day. Here we see a principle often operative, where an artifact purely of commerce becomes through such market factors as scarcity into a realm of connoisseurship, that is the province of the art historian and exponent of the lives of the people.

  ‘Only during the slump, which is a feature of capitalist economy in gearing the society towards mass-military enterprises, can this little gaudy trap developed from the French bagatelle be born.

  ‘One way of saying it is that this pinball table is an article of commercial exploitation which nowadays contains two elements in bright colours, namely the what we call the Playfield and the Backflash. Usually, the Backflash will have on it a moving score where often vast figures without meaning are available — obtainable to the participant. The Playfield may have such devices as Thumper Bumpers, Roll-About Buttons, Flippers, etc., all brought into action by a plunger which will propel balls precipitated by the insertion of a coin.’

  This could go on for ever. Perhaps there is a law about rubbish going on for ever.

  It’s up to me to behave myself. It was stupid to speak to Camaion as I did at breakfast. Everyone’s perfectly friendly and agreeable.

  Old Fittich producing that photograph of Tess as he did has upset me. When he took the shot, I must have been in retreat in the Travellers’ Club. Matilda Rowlinson was looking after the house. What was Tess doing there that day? And with that little bugger Jarvis. I could kill him.

  When I get back to London next week, I’ll have to do something decisive; everything is going downhill fast. In the old days, I’d have taken up my gun and settled the problems that way.

  Churchill… Do they think they’re flattering me? At least the old man had plenty of guts and the ability to take decisions. They weren’t always the wrong decisions, either.

  ‘Backflash and Playfield are united in a theme. Like a bright-coloured flower seeking to attract insects, the manufacturers create many scenes of pop art, drawing for subject-matter upon all types of the decadence of their culture. Most manufacturers are Jewish and based in Chicago. Such scenes may be of rock and roll music, negro musicians, hill-billies, teenage sexuality, railroads, space antics, or many science-fantasy scenes such as time-travel, robots, and future warfare. Also gambling, the turf, pool, baseball, or film stars and of course the exploitation of female figures (as in Gottlieb’s Majorettes), and funny animals, children of a Walt Disney style, and all other races, in heavy ethnic humour of a Judaic kind.

  ‘Whatever degrades, it will do.

  ‘Also some mythology of an auto-mechanistic kind, designed to attract perhaps those sectors of the populace believing in astrology. An example is from the firm of Bally, called Fireball, where a demonic figure in red encourages extravagance, and such imaginary old gods as Wotan and Odin may be released to flash up giant scores via mushroom bumpers, which signify a mushroom nuclear attack of favourite militaristic thinking. This table has a big reputation, and may once be regarded as a classic masterpiece of the 1970s comparable with, say, a landscape by Maxfield Parrish.

  ‘Internally, these machines are elaborate. Its circuits and sub-assemblies are very elaborate, resembling the kind of thing in a Saturn rocket. This technology is a different sort of war game, aimed at nothing less then enslavement of the masses when they escape from their work of the day. We appreciate their beauty as of that of the deadly pitcher plant or rafflesia. They are worthy of a serious study as metafiction or socioeconomic artform.’

  Krawstadt continued. Manufacturers’ names punctuated his talk like a roll call of the illustrious dead. Burrows Automatics, Hardings, Rock-Ola, Gottlieb, Genco, Bally, Williams, Chicago Coin. The Hall was silent, the delegates slumped back in their chairs or sprawled forward over the green baize. Some smoked cigarettes, taking a long while over the gestures of flipping the box, tamping the tobacco, flicking the lighter into action, performing the first inhalation; others doodled with frowning concentration. Some stared at the speaker, some at the ceiling, some into a mysterious beyond.

  The paper concluded with Krawstadt pointing out that growing political awareness would perceive that pinball machines were analogues of the capitalist system in decline. Beneath a bright veneer of religion or mythology or sex was merely a cold solenoid-operated system set up by cosmopolitan forces against which no one could win, designed to keep the working classes enslaved.

  When Frenza called for questions, Albert Russell Cantania stood up. This representative of the USA was still in his twenties; his book Form Behind Formula had already made him powerful in academic circles. He was compactly built, with a lock of hair that drooped over his tanned face. He brushed the hair from his forehead as he started to speak.

  ‘I guess our colleague Krawstadt who has just spoken knows his subject pretty well. Maybe he even has a connoisseur’s love of pinball. But I wondered during the time he was talking if he ever got round to slipping a quarter into one of those machines and playing, just for the hell of it. Maybe his politics wouldn’t let him, the way puritan morality stops a lot of other killjoys from playing.’

  There was a stir in the conference chamber. Those sprawling tended to sit up, those sitting up to sprawl.

  ‘In my time, I’ve played a lot of pinball, the way I’ve played a lot of poker. I must have dropped a whole lot of dollars on pinball, like I have on poker. More on poker. But there is one factor our colleague neglected to mention. You play voluntarily, because you want to play. There’s no state or federal law saying a man has to play pinball; no one sticks a gun in your back. Another factor, okay, you put a coin in, but you get enjoyment in return. Why not mention enjoyment? Enjoyment is what you get out of pinball machines.

  ‘Pinball machines need skill, they need a quick eye. Exercise of skill and speed yields enjoyment. There’s no law against enjoyment either, not where I come from.

  ‘All this talk of exploitation is crazy. You want something, you pay for it; you don’t want it, you don’t pay. That principle is so basic, and goes back so far beyond the Neolithic revolution in agriculture, that it has nothing to do with politics or morals. I’d say it was a law of nature, human nature. You want a stalk of corn to grow, you plant aseed. No seed, no corn. Everyone ought to get that clear in their heads.

  ‘I mentioned the pinball-table industry in my book, Form Behind Formula. I said then and I’ll say it again now that pinballs obey the law of supply and demand which drives a vast enter
tainment industry. Look, pinballs are like a pop song or a paperback novel or a movie or a TV programme — anything to which the general public has easy access. Nobody will ever subsidize them the way opera is subsidized, so they depend purely on popular appeal. That’s the basic fact of life — satisfy the public. Happily, in a democracy, there’s a big diverse public which gives a lot of artists a living. Some are better than others, some more limited in appeal, some succeed by fulfilling formulas, some by subtly breaking them.

  ‘Same with pinball machines. Let me ask Mr Krawstadt why he thinks Bally and Chicago Coin and the others go on turning out so many models if the whole operation is just a big con foisted on the public? Why isn’t there just one standard model which goes on for ever, or maybe gives you an extract from one of Lenin’s longer speeches if you put your quarter in?

  ‘The answer, the simple answer, is that people like playing pinball, they enjoy it, and they demand variety. They like their playtables and backflashes big and bright and brassy. They play while consuming a beer, and in a capitalist society they generally have a spare dollar in their pocket they can lay out on entertainment.

  ‘One further point before I sit down. As I understand it, we are here to further the objectives of the Society for Popular Aesthetics — with which I heartily concur, by the way — in raising the cultural estimation of mass art, or future culture, or whatever you want to call it. The sort of attitude we are fighting against is the elitist one which declares that a best-selling paperback is ipso facto lousy, a song millions sing is ipso facto lousy, a movie that turns a profit is ipso facto lousy. The corollary of that attitude says that the novel scarcely anyone reads, the song nobody wants to sing, the movie people stay away from in droves, has to have something special which makes it real art. We fight such pernicious attitudes.

  ‘How is it any different for Krawstadt or whoever to point to all these enjoyable things and say they are merely market devices to put the boot in on the proletariat? All this Leftist crap we’re getting handed is just as damned much an enemy of enjoyment as the old structure of aesthetics we’re trying to kick out. For God’s sake, leave politics out of this and get down to proper scholarship, proper appreciation. Else we’ll make ourselves a laughing stock.’