Cretan Teat

by Brian Aldiss

  He turned a serious face towards her. It dissolved at once into a smile. The secretary too looked up and smiled, then turned back to her computer. He said, ‘Darling, I’m afraid I’m going to be rather entangled with the law case for the next month. We have to pin down Nentelstam while we have the chance. Can’t let them get away.’

  ‘Of course.’ She smiled back at him. ‘Call me if there’s anything I can do. Would you like some coffee?’

  ‘Renate will get us some when we need it.’

  ‘I’m feeling terribly upset, by the way.’

  ‘Of course, of course. It was upsetting.’

  Kathi retreated. At nine that evening, she called Langstreet to watch the TV interview with Clifford.

  At one point, the interviewer said, ‘Obviously, you must have been aware that there was some danger involved in visiting Crete, in which your grandfather had been notoriously active.’

  Clifford was pale but composed. ‘Although I knew that my grandfather had been part of the invasion of Crete, it was hardly in the forefront of my mind. Why should it have been? Whatever he did, it was nothing to do with me. And Crete is a peaceful and pleasant place.’

  ‘It obviously wasn’t very peaceful where you were concerned.’

  ‘The men who captured me did not harm me. They made it clear that I was a decoy. It was my father – who is as innocent as I – they were after. My relations with these men was, on the whole, good.’

  ‘Nevertheless, in the rescue operation, one of them was shot. Wasn’t that the case?’

  ‘That was rather different. He was young and foolish. He had a knife at my stepmother’s throat.’

  ‘Obviously you will not wish to return to Crete after this experience, will you?’

  ‘Possibly not. But the background to what happened is that that part of Crete is very poor. It’s a pleasant area, nevertheless, full of interesting Byzantine churches. They rely on tourism. No one should be put off making a visit by what happened to me.’

  ‘You’re saying, however, that obviously you and your family won’t return there?’

  ‘Well, not for a while…’

  ‘Thank you, Clifford Langstreet.’

  When Cliff returned to the apartment, his father clapped him on the shoulder, telling him he spoke well. Kathi kissed him. She asked if he had enjoyed the interview.

  Cliff said, ‘Do you remember when the buzz-word was “clearly”? Now the interviewers prefer “obviously”.’

  At which point, the phone rang. It was Vibe to speak to Cliff.

  ‘Ask her to join us here,’ Kathi said, quickly.

  But Vibe had a job in Stockholm. She could not manage to visit Switzerland because she had to work. Everyone, it seemed, had to work. Cliff flew back to England to his administrative job in Coutts’ bank. Archie was in court every day, following the progress of the WHO’s lawsuit against Nentelstam, and working hard in his study by night.

  Kathi, at a loss, took coffee with her friends in the morning, visited the cinema in the afternoon, and wept in the evening.

  Chapter Six

  I took the opportunity to speak to Kathi myself. By this time I had shed my annoying false moustache.

  ‘Kathi, I have been writing about you for some while, yet I really do not know the sort of woman you are. You are brave, yes, sensible, sensuous; but what lies beneath those qualities I have no idea. At present, you are extremely upset, understandably.’

  ‘Obviously. I don’t feel inclined to talk, either.’

  ‘Of course. But I’m not sure I understand the nature of your marriage to Archie, for instance. Can you tell me something about yourself?’

  She reached for a cigarette and lit it. She sighed deeply.

  ‘I suppose I can give you some facts regarding my upbringing, if you are interested. As to the nature of my marriage…Well…You often hear people saying that the nature of so-and-so’s marriage is a mystery. Isn’t that because the bond between two people is always something of a mystery – not least to the couple themselves? I have a great compassion for Archie. I see how he wants constantly to confirm his Englishness. Yet we live too rarely in our England houses. He lives much of his time here, in a German-speaking world.’

  ‘You love him?’

  ‘Of course. Obviously.’ She smiled, self-consciously ‘being interviewed’. She stubbed out the cigarette after two puffs.

  ‘Does this contradiction annoy you in any way?’

  ‘Oh, aren’t we all full of contradictions? We may never resolve them. Accidents of birth – the period in which we were born… If you want to know something of my life, well, for a start, I was born in Hungary, into a rich Magyar-Jewish family. Or the family had been rich. The Second World War was a turning point for us, as it was for the Langenstrasses, though in a milder way.

  ‘At least we escaped most of the pogroms. My father had influence. Besides, as you probably know, the destruction of Hungarian Jews was a pretty on-off-on affair, compared with the merciless treatment of them elsewhere. I mean the destruction, as opposed to the persecution… You may know that Hungarian Jewish communities survived intact until 1944. Then the fate of the Jews depended on whether the Prime Ministers were pro-Nazi or only reluctant collaborators. Even before that, definitions of what constituted Jewishness changed, because of the struggle between the Catholic Church and Germany.

  ‘My father was in the wine trade, together with his brother and cousins. Others of the family were in the armaments business. Slowly, they were being disbarred from such professions, and so times became harder. Both my parents were arrested in July of 1944 and sent to a ghetto in the city of Szeged, where they died. Then that peasant boy’s head being shot off…’

  She shivered in horror, and clasped her hands between her knees.

  ‘My uncle Antal saved me from death. He had rejected Judaism and married a Catholic woman with good connections. He managed to purchase train tickets by bribery for me, my aunt, and himself. So we arrived by terrific good fortune in the port of Trieste, after a three-day journey. At one point, we were saved from arrest only by a fortuitous Allied air raid, which occurred at the city of Zagreb, where we had to change trains. My memory of those times remains vivid.

  ‘Uncle got us at last to Rome. If you remember, Italy had changed sides in the war, and now fought with the Allies against the Nazis. Everything was in a terrible muddle, but at least there was no more persecution of the Jews. We lived out the war in one room, a little attic room. I was fortunate in getting a part-time job in an art gallery. I honour my auntie, who could have remained safely in Budapest. But she loved uncle – and me. She took care of us.’

  ‘No rows in that little attic room?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, there were some, of course. “Obviously”. Uncle Antal was distressed. He longed for news of the family, but most of them had died natural deaths, or were in hiding, or had been killed. It was very sad. After the war was over, Aunt Marie wanted to return to Hungary. Then we received news that mother and father had died of starvation and pneumonia in the Szeged ghetto. Uncle mourned the death of his beloved brother. Oh, how he cried. I couldn’t bear to see and hear a grown man crying like that. So ugly! Only later did I believe that he cried for the whole world.

  ‘I was by then adolescent. I couldn’t stand uncle’s grief! He refused to go back to Hungary. I backed him up in that, because I had met an Italian boy.

  ‘I wanted to stop being a Jew, stop being Hungarian, stop all that, forget the past. I wanted to live.’

  ‘You went to school in Rome? What was that like?’

  ‘You mean racially? It was okay. There was a mixed bunch of kids, all nations. It was funded by the Catholic Church and run by nuns. I think I quite enjoyed that time, because there was no threat – none of the threats we had previously lived under.’

  ‘What was your state of mind at that time?’ I asked.

  Kathi paused a moment, thinking, gazing down at the coffee table as if the past were embedded in it.

/>   ‘No doubt I was what used to be called a “crazy mixed-up kid”. But I think I was pretty happy. I lived in a world of change. We all did. Surrounding us was the excitement of Rome beginning to glitter again, to start a new life. Fashion shows, smart clothes, new cars, flashy science fiction magazines, strange movies – you remember Fellini’s La Strada? Oh! – and cops in astonishing uniforms, gaudy shops with gaudy façades – all that sort of thing. Oh, and art. Not only the great Renaissance painters but also the Futurists and the new breed of poster artists. It was colourful, intense, sexy… I became promiscuous. Promiscuity meant being alive, being modern.’

  ‘What did you get up to?’

  Kathi smiled at me. ‘I know something of your past. I know you’re a dirty old man! I’m not telling. Except that I jumped into bed with other girls as well as boys. I didn’t care. Later, I became ashamed of the things I got up to.’

  ‘That was after you met the Reverend Archie, I suppose.’

  Her look seemed to blend sauciness and sarcasm. ‘Sex is a bit of a mystery, isn’t it? Isn’t that why you still keep on writing about it, despite your age?’

  I put a finger to my head and shot myself with it. ‘Touché!’

  ‘I think I fell for Archie because he was so clearly a good, moral man. And my opinion of myself was not good.’

  She lapsed into a silence, musing, which I did not disturb. She now seemed almost happy, talking about her Italian past. I saw how well her dress fitted her, the fabric tight and firm over her bosom, looser about her throat. She appeared at ease within the garment, just as I had always seen her at ease within her life.

  ‘How did you come to meet Archie?’

  ‘As I believe I told you, my uncle had been a wine merchant in Budapest, on quite a grand scale. He picked up the trade again in Rome. He met an English army officer in the Intelligence Corps, a man named Graham Flower. Flower had money. Between them, they created a trade in Chianti with the UK. The English had been starved of wine during the war. They bought Antal-Flower Chianti by the shipload. It seemed they couldn’t get enough Chianti in those post-bellum years.

  ‘Soon, uncle and Flower were able to buy their own ship, an old tramp steamer, which for some years shipped all the wine to England. It was on that ship I came to England.’

  ‘You and your aunt?’

  Kathi looked sorrowful. ‘Auntie Marie stayed in Rome. She could not face the cold and wet of England, she said. Of course, with global warming, it hasn’t been too bad in recent years. She became an artists’ model and later married one of the artists. We still keep in touch. I see her once a year, either in Rome or by the lakes. Como is our favourite lake. It’s still so pretty.’

  ‘So what happened then? After you got to England?’

  ‘I didn’t like London at first. Then I got a job in a firm of lawyers and there I met Archie. He was kind to me – kind and scrupulous. He was married. Married to a rather bitchy Englishwoman, a woman called Rosemary. But Archie and I had something in common. A big thing. We were both displaced persons.’

  I laughed. ‘Displaced but adaptable. I suppose you have to be. What happened then?’

  ‘Through Archie I got to know England well. The south coast, the Cotswolds…’

  ‘You like the Cotswolds?!’

  She paused and looked at me, smiling quizzically.

  ‘Why are you interested in all this? You listen so patiently. You’re not displaced.’

  ‘In a way I am. My father was in foreign service. He was with the British Embassy staff in Manilla when I was born. Mother was interested only in the social life. She was American. I was brought up by a Polynesian nursemaid. My parents used to dump me on her when they flew back to England for leave. I resented that bitterly. So I consider myself deserted. Several times deserted. Somehow, I’ve never fitted into English life. But let’s hear more about you, Kathi. Archie divorced Rosemary and married you – how long did that take?’

  ‘Divorce wasn’t so easy in those days… Anyhow, at last he was free. So was Rosemary. She got massive damages off poor Archie. Took all his Matisses. All she left him with was a set of novels by a terrible sporting writer called… Er, not Striptease – Surtees.’

  ‘Surtees? Never heard of him.’

  ‘Almost directly after the decree nisi, she went off and married a member of the so-called aristocracy, Basil Fanthorpe de Vere.’

  ‘Good God,’ I said. ‘I know Rosemary de Vere. Met her in Greece.’

  She gave me a searching look.

  ‘Really? Did you like her?’

  ‘As a matter of fact – I shouldn’t tell you this – I shat on her.’

  We both burst into peals of laughter.

  ‘Obviously,’ Kathi said.

  And then (all narratives contain ‘and thens’) the ikon arrived from Agios Ioannis, well fortified with bubble wrap and cardboard. Kathi unwrapped it with care. She took the precious thing over to the window to study it.

  The immaculate stasis of the painting penetrated her. Austere Agia Anna cradled the infant Christ with her head slightly to one side, as if in submission to a will greater than hers. Age was indicated – hinted at – by shadows under Anna’s eyes, the shades mortality brings, as early indicators of its intentions. With her left arm and hand she steadied the babe, while her right, with its long fingers, steadied her modest teat, barely revealed in its freedom from her gown. This gown was rendered in a dull brick-red. Its folds were painstakingly depicted. The infant Christ was wrapped like a cocoon in swaddling bands. The babe gazed up contentedly at Anna. Both figures were haloed. They stood out from the golden background, representing heaven. Monaché Kostas had worked well, secure in the depths of the Mesovrahi Gorge.

  A tear ran down Kathi’s cheek. The religious symbolism meant little to her. It was the trust and dependency of the child which touched her. Archie had not wished for a child by her. His career had come first.

  Gaining this ikon had been paid for by her presiding nightmare. Again and again, the youth abducting her had his head blown off in her face. The splatter of blood and jelly remained to taint her mind. Yet here was the babe before her, sinless…

  Kathi carried the ikon into Langstreet’s study. Langstreet sat at his desk, examining it carefully. He took a magnifying glass from a drawer to pursue the detail before looking up at Kathi.

  ‘Yes, it is of excellent quality. A real original!’

  ‘But, Archie, it is actually a forgery, isn’t it?’

  He made a slight dismissive gesture. ‘There’s not another ikon of Agia Anna suckling Jesus extant, is there?’

  She had to admit it was true. She had communicated on the internet with churches in Greece, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey. No one admitted knowledge of such an ikon.

  ‘Now we have it, are we going to use it?’ she asked.

  ‘Use it? We’ll see. Thank you for showing it to me. What do you want us to do with it? Send your monk some dollars, will you? I must study this batch of papers.’ He indicated the muddle before him on the desk. ‘Tomorrow, Nentelstam plans to bring in witnesses to support the quality of their product.’

  The Nentelstam Corporation had engaged a raft of able lawyers, chief among whom was the chubby-cheeked and seemingly amiable Günter Schlechter. Schlechter was a master of obfuscation. Every day, he brought to court a fresh set of statistics which proved that the products of the Nentelstam Corporation brought benefit and joy wherever they were purchased. Schlechter called into question the findings of the World Health Organisation, and of small lobbying groups such as Baby Milk Action.

  Over the ensuing months, the trial consisted of complex evidence, brought forward by both sides, for and against the correct formulae for commercial infant milks. Research had indicated that infants who were not breast-fed required long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids such as were present in cod liver oil. The extent to which such LCPUFA assisted the development of visual and brain tissue was the subject of heated debate. So the hearings dragged on.

/>   Kathi could not endure the protracted battle. She returned alone to England, to the Langstreet apartment in Kensington. There she sought counselling from an old psychiatrist friend, Lulu Geismar. She was a resilient woman. Gradually the nightmare of Frasas faded. (But still the trial in Geneva continued.)

  Günter Schlechter claimed that no statistically significant research had been done on the subject of infant intelligence. He rejected out of hand the claim that the Corporation put pressure on mothers in the Third World to abandon breast-feeding in preference for their formula milks, in order to boost their enormous profits. The Corporation simply met demand with supply; they advertised in competition with rival companies. For many mothers in difficulties – many cases were adduced – Nentelstam’s milk formulae proved essential, and saved many lives.

  The tide of evidence began to turn against the prosecution.

  Langstreet, the man who had brought the case – the culmination of his term of office in WHO – sat at the back of the courtroom every day, and every night went over the next day’s presentation with his legal team. He was swallowed up by the proceedings.

  His wife, however, pursued a different objective, the one the tabloid newspapers called ‘The Case of the Cretan Teat’. Kathi had recovered her fighting spirit. Armed with faithful colour reproductions of the ikon, she approached the leading art magazines in Germany, France, Britain, Holland and the USA. Within the folder containing the artwork went a brief article describing the discovery of this beautiful lost religious work, and its startling significance.

  In every case, the story was taken up, although published results were slow to appear. However, Kathi (aided by her secretary) sent out a second and larger wave of colour reproductions. Accompanying these went an article stressing a different aspect of the story. This article stressed the poverty of Crete, where the ikon had been discovered in a practically derelict chapel in an olive grove. It suggested that the story of the grandmother suckling the infant Jesus should be better known, in particular because it demonstrated the unity of the Holy Family.