Life in the West tsq-1

by Brian W Aldiss

The question was translated into Italian, and Maria Frenza replied that she understood the hug of the bear to be very enjoyable if one was a lady bear.

  This made Rugorsky laugh. He threw his head downwards rather than upwards to laugh, so that his mirth was directed towards the empty coffee cup. Then, with a dextrous movement surprising in one so heavy, he grasped Maria Frenza round the waist and had her sitting on his knee the next moment. He buried his snout in her crop of dark tawny hair.

  ‘You see, I promote you to be a lady bear, with full territorial privileges!’

  She laughed politely, making the best of it.

  D’Exiteuil dithered a bit, nodding his head from side to side and playing his fingers on the table top. ‘I’m sorry I have no lady to offer you,’ he said to Squire.

  ‘I’m content, though I’d also enjoy getting my arm round that slinky waist. Perhaps I see politics in everything these days, Jacques, but here before our eyes is a lampoon on statesmanship in the manner of Gillray. You will have to stand in for, say, Harry Truman. Rugorsky and I are Stalin and Churchill, at the conference table at Potsdam. Maria is Eastern Europe, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany. You have allowed the bear to grab Maria. See how warmly it embraces her — and how she cannot help responding because she was born that way…’

  James Gillray’s pen depicts a crowded cartoon scene. Bright colours and fountains of words issuing from every mouth add to the congestion.

  Four principal characters are grouped about a table, which has been laid for a feast and is partly covered by maps and bodies. The scene is a butcher’s shop. Carcasses hang from hooks at the rear of the shop, labelled ‘Jews’, ‘Gypsies’, ‘Finns’, ‘Serbs’, ‘Indians’, and so on. Blue-and-white striped aprons hang by the door, which sports the name of the firm, ‘The Big Three, Pork Butchers and Slaughterers, Potsdam’.

  Winston Churchill sits on the left of the picture. He is depicted as a grotesque drunken baby, his eyes small and piglike, a filthy cigar shaped like a factory chimney causing smoke to pour from his mouth and ears. The cigar is labelled’ British Miners’. The ashen countenances of miners are visible in the wreaths of smoke which coil above Churchill’s cap.

  The British warlord wears an absurd ill-fitting uniform which bulges over his massive belly. His posterior is covered by a great baby-napkin, made from old Union Jacks, and bulging with excreta, some of which, labelled ‘Dominions’, oozes from the folds of the napkin to the floor. The boots on his feet are tanks. His face is red and mottled with greed as he stretches over the table to grasp at a portion of Signora Frenza.

  The signora is firmly within the grasp of the great Russian bear. The bear is massive and hairy, and dominates the whole right-hand side of the cartoon. It has Stalin’s features: his stiff upstanding scalp hair, his full moustache, his heavy features and brown eyes, his foul pipe. Blood drips from the pipe, while from its pungent smoke, coiling above the head of the animal generalissimo, emerge wan faces of his victims, labelled ‘Intellectuals’, ‘Peasants’, ‘Engineers’, ‘Soldiers’, and so on. He does not sit on a throne, like Churchill, but on a model of the Kremlin, from the windows of which Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Bucharin, and others peer hopelessly.

  The bear wears on its upper portions a white tunic, buttoned to the throat and decorated with many medals. Covering its lower portions are military trousers, the flies of which have burst open to reveal — thrusting from amid black fur — a penis of terrifying proportions, the head of which is an ICBM. The bear is about to plunge this weapon into the vagina of Maria Frenza, which has opened in a silent scream. Hence the title of the print, appended in Gillray’s rapid lettering below the picture, ‘Love and Peace Prevail again in Europe, 1946.’

  Maria Frenza is labelled ‘The Eastern Territories’. Dragged across the table towards the terrible embrace, skirts in disarray, she creates a diagonal across the picture. Various parts of her anatomy, tastily displayed, are labelled from north to south. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, forming her three breasts, burst from an iron corsage. Poland forms her shoulders and arms, Czechoslovakia her trunk, Hungary her hips, Romania her lower abdomen, the protruding delta of the Danube forming the pudendum threatened by the bear’s weaponry, and Bulgaria her plump legs and knees.

  Pouncing to rescue her across the table — on which carcasses of a revolting feast remain — Churchill has grasped a plump portion of the woman’s anatomy exposed by the disorder of her shift, her left buttock, labelled ‘Yugoslavia’. Under his grasp, it has broken away from the rest of the body. Trieste is revealed as a rosy anus.

  Other extraordinary figures are present in the butcher’s shop. The emaciated corpse of Adolf Hitler lies under the table, where a cur labelled ‘History’ is gnawing its ribs. A little Emperor Hirohito, with an admiral’s hat and a monkey’s face, swings from a billowing red velvet curtain. Behind Churchill, wearing a lounge suit from the pockets of which money leaks, crowned by an oversize version of the hat named after him, is a cadaverous Anthony Eden. Behind Stalin, green of face, wearing pince-nez, is an enormous Beria, carrying an axe-and-sickle; next to him, slant-eyed, small, with the-hindquarters of a jackal, Molotov fawns about his master’s chair.

  More shadowy figures lurk at the sides of the print. A ragged and unshaven Italy holds out its paw in a beggarly gesture. General de Gaulle sticks his enormous nose through a potted aspidistra to watch the proceedings unobserved. Franco looks on, chuckling. Various generals surge from behind the plush curtain: Marshal Zhukov, General Eisenhower, and General Montgomery are particularly prominent, all rattling weapons at each other.

  But the most outstanding figure is the one holding the middle of the stage and standing behind the table between Churchill and Stalin. Although it wears two-tone shoes, a polka-dot bow tie, and a jaunty cap, it is a robot. Its eyes whirl and glaze, steam issues from its nostrils, in its mighty lower jaw stainless steel teeth champ. Its body is formed from turbo-generators, cooling pipes, and printed circuitry. Round its neck is a label reading ‘President Truman, Made in Missouri, USA’. Secretary of State Byrnes, evidently carved out of wood and clad only in the American flag, squats on the robot’s right shoulder.

  Truman is saying: ‘We Won the War! To perdition with these Little Countries! We’ll rid the world of the spectre of British Imperialism and then we’ll put the Old World to rights with our Yankee Ingenuity. Stalin’s an honest man, let him have his fun and then we’ll get him when he’s exhausted!’

  Stalin is saying: ‘We Won the War! Now to Win the Peace! These two hyenas, Churchill and Truman, secretly love me (and so I can deceive them) because I have complete power while they have to be elected. One’s senile, one’s bloodless — I keep young with bloodbaths every night!’

  Churchill says: ‘We Won the War! Stalin is such a Nice Man and I hope he likes me, but these Yankees don’t see that we have to stamp out Communism now or else we shall all have to bend to that dreadful Weapon. I wish Adolf was alive and on my side. Adolf knew What was What!’

  The Eastern Territories cry: ‘Oh my Goodness! Oh No, oh Yes! What’s a poor girl to do? As if the Huns weren’t randy enough! We planted the seeds of Socialism long ago — now they’re coming to Coition!’

  Zhukov is saying: ‘Go on, Joe, give her a stiff bit of Dialectic!’

  Montgomery is saying: ‘If only Eisenhower and Paton had seen sense, Prague, Berlin, and Vienna would have been completely in our hands and the Russians nowhere.’

  Eisenhower is saying: ‘Pity the Limeys would not take orders. Now the war has unfortunately finished, we’ll have to teach them to toe the line through trade. I hope they make me President.’

  Byrnes is saying: ‘If only the robot would make some more atomic bombs, we could teach the Bear a few manners. After all, this is a Thanksgiving dinner!’

  Eden is saying: ‘If this drunken old fool Winston plays his cards right, Russia and America will go to War with each other, and the World will be safe for the British Upper Classes again!’

&n
bsp; Mussolini (hanging upside down from one of the butcher’s pegs with his throat cut) is saying: ‘I’m glad I’m out of it! Things are just beginning to get rough!’

  Two little girls, daintily dressed in white muslin, both wearing white gloves and clutching parasols, are examining the Gillray cartoon. One of them, perhaps an elder sister, is explaining the meaning of the allegory to the smaller child.

  The smaller child, looking up trustingly with a sweet smile, says, ‘I see, so the three nasty men are changing the Course of History, is that right?’

  ‘That is correct, dear,’ says the older child, smiling in her turn. ‘Which proves incidentally that the load of obsolete rubbish sometimes referred to by brain-washed imbeciles of the Left as “Marxist Science” is no more of a science than astrology, because they pretend that individuals cannot influence the tide of history.’

  ‘Oh dear, I’m afraid that I am such a silly,’ sighs the smaller child, prettily. ‘Cos I thought that astrology was a science. Perhaps I’m guilty of Left Wing sympathies. Anyhow, I think I understand the picture quite well now. Only — ’

  ‘Well, dear? Only what?’

  ‘Why does it all have to be so nasty?’ She opens her eyes wide in a winning way, causing dimples to form in her cheeks.

  ‘It’s about bloody power, isn’t it? And power is nasty, isn’t it? Cos someone always gets hurt, don’t they?’ She reinforces the lesson by swinging her parasol savagely against the younger child’s head, until the muslin is stained red and the little smiling face no longer recognizable. Blood covers children and cartoon alike.

  9. How to get to Ostrow Lomelsky

  Singapore, Spring 1977

  The shooting in Singapore was finished; tomorrow, the unit would be flying on a Singapore Airlines jumbo jet back to the UK.

  Grahame Ash and his team were taking it easy by the swimming pool of their hotel, or shopping in Orchard Road. Squire had hired a power boat which, like a taxi, came with a driver, a Chinese called Sun.

  The boat cut through the waters of the harbour, skimming between ocean-going freighters in an exhilarating mingle of spray, sun, and shadow. Squire and the Sex Symbol, Laura Nye, laughed with enjoyment as the warm winds of speed fanned their cheeks. They roared past industrial islands. Ahead were the Roads, the glittering waterways which had brought wealth to Singapore, peppered with islands, many of them crowned with a ragged top-knot of palm trees.

  Sun brought them to a small island, curving the power boat in so that a feather of water grew behind them and the craft touched silver sand broadside on. The two Europeans jumped out.

  ‘Oh, it’s gorgeous,’ Laura exclaimed. ‘Just gorgeous!’

  ‘Paradise. Shall we do a Gauguin and stay forever?’

  ‘I can’t believe we’re flying home tomorrow. Let’s have a swim straight away.’

  They had not got the beach entirely to themselves. A large group of Chinese was sitting by rocks some yards away, laughing and eating ice cream. In the other direction, a noisy crowd of Caucasians, men and women, were kicking a football about. Just off the beach, embowered in brightly flowering trees and shrubs, a beach cafe stood; the sound of its music drifted faintly down the beach. Frank Sinatra-type music.

  Squire and Nye went behind a thicket of bamboo and slipped out of their clothes. A minute later, they were yielding to the embrace of the waters. More intensely than on land, they merged with the amniotic flow which pervades and unifies all life. In the cells of their bodies, surges of current corresponded with the waves that broke above their heads.

  After the swim, they nestled together in a hollow in the sand. He pressed himself to her.

  ‘My tits are still a bit painful from the sunburn.’

  ‘I’ve got to see you when the series is over, Laura. Things aren’t just going to end. I need you too much. We’ll work out something.’

  ‘You know we won’t, Tom. There’s your wife and children, and I’ve got Peter. This is just an episode out of time. Don’t let’s spoil this precious day. Make love to me, go on.’

  ‘At least we’ve still got the Los Angeles trip ahead of us.’

  He rubbed the sand from his hand on his chest and felt her welcoming vagina. Sighs of pleasure escaped them both.

  ‘Never mind a bit of sand. It’ll add to the pleasure.’

  ‘Oh, you luscious creature, I could fuck you forever.’

  He slid into her and they lay side by side, scarcely moving, mouths together, tongues linked. He swung a leg over her upper thighs for a better grip, and began to work, feeling sweat run in little channels between their arms and bodies. Flies tickled their burning skin. Little rivulets of sand trickled under their buttocks and shoulders.

  They were moving powerfully when something struck Squire in the small of his back. He swung round. A black-and-white beach ball lay beside them.

  ‘Bugger!’ he said.

  Laura sat up and grabbed for a towel just as a man with a stomach protruding from a Bermuda shirt ran up panting to reclaim the ball.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you,’ he said, laughing. He scooped up the ball, booting it down the beach and calling to his friends, ‘Look where you’re kicking, will you? You’re ballsing up other people’s romances.’

  Squire and Laura looked at each other and laughed.

  ‘Australians,’ he said. The football party had moved nearer.

  They were sitting up and had come apart. She held his juicy penis in her hand and gave it a few rubs, smiling down at it.

  ‘I’ll deal with this later. It was nice while it lasted, but that sports fan has broken me mood.’

  He grabbed her suddenly, rolling her in the sand, giving her a playful bite in the crutch and coming up with his chin bearded with sand.

  ‘Come on, cover up all the delicious steaming flesh and I’ll buy you a drink.’

  Holding hands, they trudged through the yielding sand to the cafe. On the tiled floor, shade and light lay tied together like smouldering twigs, as rattan screens overhead fended off the brilliant sunshine. They sat companionably together at the bar, and ordered drinks from the barman, a gin and Seven-Up for Laura, a Tiger for Squire.

  The bar was unoccupied except for a bald man in shorts smoking a cigar and drinking lager. He scowled as he drank. The only other person present was a woman. The woman sat alone at a table by the bald man. Stripes of light and shade ran over her. She had dyed blonde hair and wore red checked slacks and a black bikini top from which plenty of puckered pink flesh bulged. From her attitude of complete boredom as she stared out at the sea it was apparent that she was married to the bald man. She smoked. Her smoke rose up in stripes and filtered through the rattan bars. Frank Sinatra on cassette sang ‘The Good Life’, with plenty of backing from Nelson Riddell.

  The man at the bar leaned forward and pointed the hot end of his cigar at Squire.

  ‘I can know from your voice that you are not from Australia,’ he said.

  ‘True.’ To Laura, Squire said, ‘I saw a likely-looking Malay restaurant just two blocks from the hotel where we could have lunch. Then a siesta?’

  ‘I don’t believe that I could eat any lunch.’

  The bald man said, ‘Maybe you can know from my voice that I am from Sydney. You from America, you two?’

  ‘Wrong guess, chum. England.’

  The bald man was astonished. ‘England, eh? You don’t sound English, does he, Tinka?’

  This last remark was addressed to the semi-blonde woman. She turned her head slightly, waved a slow hand by swivelling it on her wrist, but did not deign to answer.

  ‘What you do in a place like this?’ the bald man asked Squire. ‘You live here? Your girl — you English too, darling?’

  ‘Where are we having the party tonight, Tom?’

  ‘Grahame’s got an open-air place in mind which someone recommended to him. Jenny’s booked a table.’

  ‘Grahame’s an old sweetie pie.’

  The bald man moved over and said, ‘Mind if I join you? Can I bu
y you some drinks? I always am glad to speak with English people. My sister has married an English man in the Air Force.’

  Seeing that the man was not going to be put off, Squire and Laura turned their attention on him.

  ‘Were you born in Australia?’ Laura asked.

  He groped in the pocket of his shirt, brought out a cigar case, took a card from it with clumsy fingers and offered it to them.

  ‘Is me,’ he said proudly, as they read ‘Andrej Joachimiak: Computers, Micro-Processors’. ‘Andrej Joachimiak. I and my firm make the only Australian computer in the world. No one else.’ Over his heavy mid-European accent a few flimsy Australian vowels had been laid.

  ‘You manufacture computers?’

  Joachimiak screwed one of his temples with what looked like an awkward but nevertheless determined attempt to touch his brain with his finger.

  ‘Know-how. Is all in here. I can make a great success. I am a real know-all.’

  ‘And were you born in Australia?’ Laura asked again. ‘Is Joachimiak an Australian name?’

  ‘Ah-hark, the lady is a little curious about me, yes. I know, I know it, all lady are detracted by success. Well, I tell you, lady, I was not born in Sydney but in Ostrow Lomelsky. You know Ostrow Lomelsky? Maybe you been to Ostrow Lomelsky?’

  Suddenly, he appeared to have lost interest in the conversation.

  He turned and lumbered back to his wife, who had produced a paperback entitled Growing Old Today and was glaring at one of its pages.

  She was smoking continuously. Her cigarettes and lighter lay on the table beside her empty glass. Joachimiak grasped the lighter and blunderingly relit his cigar.

  ‘Can I buy you another lager?’ Squire asked the man.

  ‘A brandy. I want brandy. That is kind of you. I’d like to shake your hand, mister. First bit of kindness I’ve had all day. People don’t care any more, do they?’

  He shook hands with Squire as the barman delivered three fresh drinks. Sinatra was singing ‘What Now My Love’.

  Joachimiak edged round Squire so as to be able to address Nye face to face, and returned to his previous question. ‘You maybe been to Ostrow Lomelsky?’