Eating People is Wrong

by Malcolm Bradbury

  ‘I’ll bet you are,’ said Emma. She went over to Dr Masefield at the tea urn: ‘Is there anything I can be doing?’ she asked. ‘Just mingle, I think, if you would,’ said Dr Masefield jovially, looking up.

  ‘I think the English nation is much ashamed that it has imprisoned its great national bard, Oscar Vilda,’ said someone at her side. It was the stout German, who knew when he was on to a good thing.

  ‘Who?’ asked Emma.

  ‘Oscar Vilda,’ said the German. ‘As told in the “Ballad of Reading Goal”.’

  ‘Jail,’ said Emma. ‘Jail; not goal.’

  ‘Write down, please,’ said the German, taking a piece of paper from his overcoat pocket; Emma did as she was bid.

  Professor Treece passed at a trot. ‘Make them take their overcoats off,’ he said. He stopped and came back, painfully aware of his task, which was a word for everyone. ‘Good afternoon, Herr Schumann,’ he said. ‘I hope you’re going to share Miss Fielding with the rest of us.’ He caught Emma’s eye and blushed. ‘Oho, no,’ said the German. ‘As you say, finders, keepers. She is my captive.’

  ‘Well, Miss Fielding, the long vacation appears to have invigorated you a great deal. How do you do it?’ went on Treece jovially.

  ‘I went to Italy and got drunk every day on chianti; it’s very therapeutic,’ said Emma.

  ‘Italy,’ said Treece, who had a far from Lawrentian vision of that country; he regarded it rather as a place where all moral law had long since been overthrown and where a degenerating race was having its last frantic fling. ‘Were you all right?’

  ‘More or less,’ said Emma.

  ‘Did you go to Rome?’

  ‘We did,’ said Emma.

  ‘There are a great many things of architectural interest in Rome,’ said Treece, ‘and the railway station is one of them.’

  ‘I have been to Rome,’ said Herr Schumann. The tale he was about to divulge was, however, never told, for at that moment a sudden commotion occurred in a far corner of the room; a Negro student, in an excess of nerves, had spilled a cup of tea over a reader in economics. ‘My word! Eborebelosa!’ Treece said; and he hurried off.

  ‘You are enjoying this party?’ inquired the German. ‘Yes,’ said Emma. ‘I think it is a very good party,’ said the German. ‘It is permitted to kiss these girls?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Emma. ‘It’s only the middle of the afternoon, isn’t it?’ ‘You tell me when is the time,’ said the German.

  ‘I must go and talk to somebody else,’ said Emma, and went over to a group of Indian students gathered in a corner. As soon as she announced her name, a sharp silence fell over the group. Their former animation turned to a comatose contemplation of each other’s shoes. ‘You are a tall woman,’ said someone politely. Silence fell again.

  ‘“Midwinter spring is its own season”,’ said one of them, a nun, suddenly. ‘You know this quotation, of course, and how pertinent are those words, for now as you see, the sun is shining.’ She pointed to the window.

  ‘It is of T. S. Eliot,’ said a voice at Emma’s side; it was the German, who had followed her over. ‘“Lean, lean on a garden urn . . .” You know this too?’

  Suddenly all the Indians began quoting Eliot. ‘A hard coming we had of it,’ cried one. ‘There were no tigers,’ intoned another contrapuntally.

  ‘In India,’ said the nun; all the others fell silent, ‘the work of Mr Eliot is very much respected; he is translated; and many people have written his thesis for his doctorate on inclinations of his work.’

  ‘In Germany too,’ said Herr Schumann.

  ‘I am a graduate, of course, though it is true I have not yet received my degree certificate, and I too hope to write a doctor’s thesis on the work of your distinguished poet, though he was born in the United States of America, as I expect you know. You understand his work is open to many interpretations. I am a Christian, and his work is open to Christian interpretations.’

  ‘Yes, so they tell me,’ said Emma.

  Herr Schumann turned to Emma and, with an ostentatious bow, said, ‘You permit I bring you a cup of tea.’ ‘Yes, please,’ said Emma, feeling a little tired. ‘And for you also,’ said the German to the nun.

  ‘Yes, please, and it will be interesting to reflect that the leaf of the tea we are about to drink comes from my own country, and perhaps indeed has been picked by a member of my numerous family. One of the best poets of the part of India from which I come – it is in the north – is at this moment at your Oxford University writing a thesis on the Oriental imagery of the poems of T. S. Eliot, and on the influence of the Upanishads. He has been in correspondence with Mr Eliot himself.’

  ‘Here is your tea,’ said a voice from behind Emma.

  ‘And he tells me,’ went on the nun, ‘in a letter that Mr Eliot has shown him the greatest courtesy.’

  There was a violent tug at the back of Emma’s dress. ‘Here is your tea,’ said Herr Schumann. ‘Thank you,’ said Emma, taking it.

  ‘You have been to Germany, then?’ asked the nun of Herr Schumann. ‘I am from Germany,’ said Herr Schumann. ‘What is your reason for coming here?’ asked the nun. ‘It is to learn the English language and to study the literature,’ said Herr Schumann. ‘Germany has many poets,’ said the nun pleasantly. ‘There is Goethe and Heine and Rilke, to name only a few. It is very good of you to come to England, of course, since you were fighting it only a few years ago. It is very civilized of all of us to forget this so easily. I think we are all very developed persons.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the German. ‘I see you are a nun. I would very much like to be a nun. There are many advantages. Of course, one would have to be a woman.’

  Emma suddenly saw once again amid the press the face of Professor Treece, mouthing something in her direction. ‘Ah, Miss Fielding,’ she heard him say distantly. ‘There are . . .’ and at once his voice was miraculously magnified; he had somehow reached her side ‘. . . some people I want you to meet. Try and get them sitting down on chairs,’ he added. ‘Everyone’s standing up, and it’s making things very difficult.’

  Suddenly he was high up in the air, standing on a chair. ‘Hello, hello,’ he shouted. ‘Why doesn’t everyone sit down? It’s so much more comfortable.’ No one did; indeed, those who were sitting down became embarrassed about it and stood up. Emma felt Treece’s disgrace hardly. Like most people who speculate about the moral problems of human relationships, Treece was really much worse at them than those who are not moved to cogitate; in his care to offend no one, to be honest and true to all, he moved about in a sort of social badlands, where nothing ever really grew. Intention was all. Sympathy for all these people, for being foreigners – lay over the gathering like a woolly blanket; and no one was enjoying it at all.

  Foreign students’ parties were things that, notoriously, didn’t go well; with Treece, to whom disaster was the normal resolution of parties, they went, of course, disastrously. And so at this point on the present occasion there came a striking interruption; and people did not blame life, which could bring such interruptions, but Treece, for not foreseeing them. A group of Negroes, who had been chatting quietly in one corner, dressed in their native robes, had to pray to Allah – or someone like that – in ten minutes’ time and wanted to know where there was a consecrated room. ‘We have no consecrated rooms,’ said Treece, embarrassed. No consecrated rooms! Here, said the world, is a man who gives a party for foreign students and fails to provide a consecrated room. One of the party offered to consecrete one; all he needed, he said, was a room; he could do the rest. ‘Boiling water is necessary,’ he said. Luckily, Viola Masefield had a kettleful. It was finally settled that the Senior Common Room should be consecrated; one felt that there was nowhere worthier of it.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ said Treece to Emma when they had all gone. ‘One can’t foresee everything, can one? What I was saying was, if I remember rightly, that . . . yes, I want you to meet one of our friends from Nigeria, a Mr Eborebelosa. He’s rathe
r a difficult case, I’m afraid; he’s already spilled a cup of tea over someone in the Economics Department . . .’

  Then, suddenly, they all streamed in again, at the trot, the whole consecrating group. There were dogs’ hairs in the Senior Common Room. ‘But we never have dogs in the Senior Common Room, they must be off people,’ said Treece, ‘since people are all we have there.’

  The Negroes consulted for an anxious moment, and then resolved to do it in the grounds; and they picked up their kettle and sallied forth. The passing traveller, wending his way along Institution Road, would have been refreshed that day with a strange sight – the sight of a group of Negroes, in long robes, ceremonially pouring hot water over one another and making obeisance on the flagstones of the courtyard.

  Meanwhile Treece, trying hard to salvage what he could from the wreckage of the occasion, was endeavouring to introduce Emma to Mr Eborebelosa. ‘I’d like you to meet . . .’ he said tentatively. ‘No, no,’ said Mr Eborebelosa, looking down. Treece turned to Emma and explained in a low voice that Eborebelosa disliked meeting people and had been closeting himself in lavatories to avoid it. Emma, grasping the problem and sincerely wanting to do something to help Treece, approached Mr Eborebelosa again, smiling a generous smile, and his agitation grew so intense that the tea began to splash out of the cup in his hand. Emma gently took it from him, just in time, for Eborebelosa became, suddenly, loose-limbed, stepped backward a pace or two, and fell over on to his bottom. Emma took his arm and helped him to his feet. He was shivering all over. ‘Socially maladept,’ Treece’s phrase for him, seemed a ridiculous understatement. ‘How are you liking England?’ asked Emma sweetly. ‘Not, not,’ said Mr Eborebelosa. ‘But you haven’t seen very much of it, have you?’ she rebuked him. Eborebelosa tried to work up a scrap of indignation: ‘Yes, London, Tilbury dicks,’ said Mr Eborebelosa. ‘Docks,’ said Emma. ‘Dicks,’ said Eborebelosa.

  ‘This is a good party, I think?’ said a voice by her side; it was of course Herr Schumann. ‘But when do we have the intoxicating liquors?’

  ‘Leave me alone for a bit, Herr Schumann,’ said Emma. ‘Can’t you see I’m busy with my friend Mr Eborebelosa?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Herr Schumann. ‘Oho. So that is the way the wind is blowing? That is what brews, I see.’

  ‘I have friend?’ said Mr Eborebelosa, beaming all at once. He capered about for a moment.

  ‘You have no taste,’ said Herr Schumann. ‘I would have given you cakes, chocolates, food of all natures; you have been very unwise. I have many friends in positions of great responsibility to whom I should introduce. Beware. Life will slip you by.’

  ‘I am son of a chief,’ said Mr Eborebelosa. ‘I will give you a goat.’

  ‘In England, how shall she use a goat? In Europe there is no place for goats. We do not ride on them, we do not drink the milk; goats are defunct. We have gone past the goat. Culture has trod on.’

  ‘Now, Herr Schumann . . .’ said Emma.

  ‘Aha, so,’ said Herr Schumann. ‘You are his friend, yet you allow him to think he can purchase with goats. “I want typewriter, how many goats?” You are poor friend, dear woman, I tell you so.’

  ‘You would like to wear the clothes of my country,’ said Eborebelosa to Emma.

  ‘This is white woman . . .’ said Herr Schumann; and then, catching a glint in Emma’s eye, he stopped. ‘So, what for do I beat myself to death? Women you must not trust.’

  Schumann withdrew in a huff, and Emma and Eborebelosa talked pleasantly on, Emma occasionally proffering the teacup to him so that he might take a sip; soon he calmed down and was able to hold it himself. By the time everyone was ready to disperse, after a hard afternoon, Mr Eborebelosa was becoming enthusiastic about Emma’s smile. ‘I like this smile,’ he kept saying, ‘Do it more.’ Emma, a thoroughly amiable personality, obliged, and Treece kept looking over at the two of them suspiciously as empty grins kept shining forth on Emma’s face. Afterwards, Treece came up and congratulated her on her handling of what he called ‘a difficult case’. ‘I feel really sorry for him,’ said Emma. ‘It’s simply impossible, of course, to respond fairly to him; there’s just no common ground.’ ‘Oh,’ said Treece sharply. ‘I wouldn’t have thought that was true. Indeed, you seem to have disproved it.’ ‘Well, it’s like talking to children,’ said Emma. ‘You get some pleasure out of doing it, but you never really feel you’re exhibiting any part of yourself; just exercising in a void, and that just isn’t good enough for you yourself.’ ‘Oh, you expect too much from life,’ said Treece, adding with a sweet smile. ‘You’re just like me.’

  Poor, poor Treece, thought Emma; for she loved to sympathize. Poor man, he has tried to show us all that foreigners aren’t funny; but they are. After all, there was one thing that every Englishman knew from his very soul, and that was that, for all experiences and all manners, in England lay the norm; England was the country that God had got to first, properly, and here life was taken to the point of purity, to its Platonic source, so that all ways elsewhere were underdeveloped, or impure, or overripe. Everyone in England knew this, and an occasion like the present one was not likely to prove that things had altered. I have lived in England, was the underlying statement, and I know what life is like. What you wanted to say to Treece, under such circumstances, was what Machiavelli told his prince: it is necessary for a man who wishes to maintain himself, to learn how not to be good, and when or when not to use this knowledge; here was a time when one withdrew. It was only Treece who could believe that the destiny of nations was being forged in such small and seedy rooms, with no carpet on the floor, and wooden benches for seats. As for the rest of us, we are unerringly provincial, Emma had to concede; this is just the Midlands, and we don’t have to carry the burden of things like that out here.

  II

  Treece wished that he did not have to stare, all the time, at pretty women; sometimes it seemed to him his one overriding interest. It was not that he willed it like that; it was something that was drawn out of him, and it was in consciousness of facts such as this that he sometimes had to concede that perhaps Freud might be right, and there was a bit of the irrational in man after all. It was the following Saturday, and the occasion was a meeting of the town’s Literary Society, a group of fanciful persons who met monthly to discuss the prosecution of good literature. If an atmosphere of seediness hung over the Society, it was not because of the weakness of its membership; the persons who attended were all worthy personages, not without status in the town, and not without performance; no, the trouble was that, as in all literary discussion, there comes a point where the critical has to give way to personal fondnesses, personal friendships, and this was the point at which the society had stalled. Nowadays, there, nobody said what they thought, for they knew whom they liked, and whom they loathed, and whose toes they wished to spare, and whose to stamp upon. Today, the meeting was addressed by a local writer of children’s books, a stout and hearty personality whose suit looked as though it had been made from the skin of a donkey; and it was this person that Treece had come to introduce. There were people who, in such a context, could introduce, and there were those who could not; Treece was so oppressively one of those who could, none better; so he nearly always did. The room was a big one, and wintry sunlight lay in big pools on the old Victorian carpet; the audience, scattered about the room in armchairs, shimmered in the half-dark of the place; and time seemed to move indolently, slower than the tick of the clock, while the writer spoke on, talking of Piaget and infantile communication. And in the front row, eager, intense, lips half-parted as if in pleased surprise, sat Mrs Rogers, mother of three boys, wife of an accountant, a contributor of short stories to Woman’s Journal, a delight to look upon. It was enough that she existed, felt Treece; he asked no more of her than that. Bronzed, fair, finely dressed, she came each month, and said nothing, and smiled brightly, and scattered approving interest about her; she was a motherly woman, and Treece loved motherly women. He thought of Mallarmé, who h
ad written, surely, about her:

  Votre très naturel et clair

  Rire d’enfant qui charme l’air.

  And the talk went on, and Treece thought, with a little giggle to himself, and with a sense of discovery: Why, women are much more interesting than anything, and I don’t even know why.

  The speaker stopped, and Treece thanked him, and asked for questions. ‘I just want to say that I think you’re a very interesting man,’ said a woman from the back. Someone else then asked how many people Enid Blyton were. Mrs Rogers smiled, and said how interesting it all had been, and how all mothers were often frightened to think of the hands they left the writing of children’s books in, but now that she’d seen the speaker, she would have no qualms about letting her children read his work. After this a lady at the back, with a long-drawling voice, said from beneath a large flowerpot hat: ‘Well, I read one of your things, and I didn’t like it.’ ‘Why not, madam?’ said the speaker, a little put out; he was the sort of man that always called ladies ‘madam’, and it brought in the aroma of an ancien régime; one thought of Wells and Bennett and a sort of literary society which was gone – gone, no doubt, for good. ‘I don’t know why,’ said the woman in the flowerpot hat. ‘I just didn’t like it.’ Treece thanked the speaker and brought the meeting to a close. Mrs Rogers beamed sweetly at him as he did so.

  It was the custom for the members of the literary society then to retire to the lounge of the Black Swan Hotel, where they took tea together. Shepherding their speaker fondly, they made their way there in cavalcade, past Dolcis and Woolworths and Sainsburys. In the lounge of the hotel were huge leather armchairs that looked like cows; you wouldn’t have thought it odd if someone had come along to milk them. Here they sat and looked at each other. The lady in the flowerpot hat sat down beside Treece and sighed deeply. ‘It’s terrible to be abnormal,’ she said, and heaved another sigh. ‘Did you have an unhappy childhood?’ ‘I had an unhappy maturity,’ said Treece. ‘I had a frankly bloody childhood,’ said the woman. ‘Tell me, do you like this hairstyle? Be frank: I can have it done again somewhere else.’