Rates of Exchange

by Malcolm Bradbury

  It is gloomy in the British Council office, with its dark old corners, on this exceptionally bleak day. The rain falls outside; and the sunshine is not shining in Petworth’s heart either. He knows and has read the stories, of frontiers and guardposts, spies and imprisonments, beatings and treacheries, that we delight ourselves with in this dark world; and perhaps if he were a stronger character than he is, or is said to be, he would protest now that he does not really wish to be put into one. But then he knows he is not being put into one, rather a version of the old and familiar story, the lecturer’s tale, with stock theme and minor variations. He drinks the coffee, the lady blows smoke: ‘Well, I think that’s really it,’ she says, ‘It’s all common sense. No currency deals, no buggery, no political statements, no private talks, in bedrooms or public places, no documents, towel over the mirror. And do watch the ladies; I think you get the point.’ ‘Yes, I think so,’ says Petworth, ‘Beware of foreign parts.’ ‘Exactly,’ says the lady, ‘And just one more thing. We’d like a brief report when you get back. Purely on academic matters, state of the universities, and so on. Don’t make your notes while you’re there, of course, keep them in your noddle and then jot them down when you’re back in, where is it, Bradford?’ ‘Yes, Bradford,’ says Petworth. ‘Well,’ says the lady, standing up, and walking him toward the door of the dark office, ‘Have a marvellous time, enjoy yourself. And do let us know when you return safely.’ ‘I will,’ says Petworth, ‘If I do.’ ‘Well, of course you will,’ says the lady, ‘It’s a terrific experience. Georgina, he’s going.’ ‘Bye,’ says the secretary, picking up the file from the desk, ‘Sorry about the coffee.’

  And so, his face looking a little bleak, and not unlike the day, Petworth walks, in his damp mackintosh, out of the dark British Council office and across the corridor toward the rickety British Council lift, which stands waiting. At the back, a sign forbids more than six people to travel in it at once; ten laughing Japanese, blue airline bags hanging over their shoulders, cameras round their necks, beckon, excitedly to him to get inside. He steps into the elevator, as if into an unwanted future; around him, the Japanese now all begin to press conflicting buttons at the same time, with the result that the lift jogs up, jogs down, and visits every single floor in the building before it descends at last to street level, where Petworth, Helpful Hints for British Businessmen held in his hand, steps out into Davies Street, amid the decorations and the gloom, and past the newspaper seller at the tube station, who is advertising some new strike for the summer silly season, to go on about his business, find his visa, check his ticket, make his plans. And it is in consequence of all these arrangements, or the lack of them, that he now finds himself in the dusty airport concourse of the airport at Slaka, standing against a pillar near the door marked noi va, his luggage tumbled by his feet, while the great crowd bobs around him, and the clock on the wall ticks away the time.

  And away the time goes; it is thirty minutes since he came through the door, thirty minutes in which nothing has happened. The puce and magenta tag still dangles from the briefcase at his feet, a sterile sign, a meaningless meaning; the crowd mills, and faces swim into existence and then fade again. The other passengers of Comflug 155, the besuited men, the elderly ladies, have all long since come through the doors behind, to be welcomed and kissed, hugged and enfolded, laughed over and given flowers, taken off through the crowd, led through the exit doors, hurried off into the forecourt, removed into life. But nothing of this sort has happened to him; there has been no meeter to meet him, no greeter to greet him. Outside, beyond the dusty glass, the red sun has been steadily slipping down, and most of the blue buses in the parking lot have long since been driven away; in the coming dusk, the golden onion has ceased to be golden, but has begun to turn toward a shade of black. From Petworth’s face too a certain glow has gone: the confident expectation he wore as he came out from the arrivals labyrinth has turned to doubt, and even to a tiny touch of fear. Things, of course, should be well; there is an organization behind all this. For somewhere, if the typist of the grey letter in his pocket has got matters clear, and translated the information correctly, if the dates are accurate and the British and Slakan calendars analogous, if he has himself comprehended all facts correctly and those with whom he has been dealing have done the same, then he should be passing now from the hands of Davies Street to the hands of Stalingradsimutu, from the closed file of the British Council to the open one of the Min’stratii Kulturi Komitet’iii

  On the other hand, it is apparent that certain things could have gone wrong. He has, after all, come on a flight that, thanks to the Heathrow strike, many thought would not take off at all; he has come on a plane that has descended two hours late, and on top of that he has been delayed for an hour in the labyrinth of entry; he has arrived on an arrangement which, if one closely inspects – and by now he has very closely inspected – the grey letter, actually appoints no specific places of rendezvous, means of contact, type of encounter. The chances for confusion are many, and confusion in these matters is not unknown, even when travelling with the British Council, which he is not. The clock ticks on; he has been here forty minutes; the crowds, the noise, the dust rage around him in the long concourse. Airport lobbies all over the world are, if one passes through them quickly, as one usually does, much the same anywhere; but the more time one spends in them, the more minor variations grow apparent. Thus, at Schiphol, Amsterdam, there is a Diamond Shop; at Frankfurt one may find Dr Muller’s Sex Shop; so in either place one may pick up that last-minute present she has always wanted. And other airports, when recalled offer a similar infinitude of delights; bars and banks, radio shops and ski shops, shoe-shine parlours and fast-food outlets, souvenir stalls and bookstores. By comparison, the arrivals hall at Slaka is simplicity itself; its services are minimal. There is, to one end, under the clock that ticks away his time, a small kiosk, displaying some pens, a few postcards, and some copies of P’rtyii Populatiii, with a sign over it saying Litti. In the centre, there is another stall, with a girl in a blue uniform behind it, writing on a form; the sign over this says COSMOPLOT. At the further end is a third stall, marked AVIS; it has a notice on it saying, in English, ‘We Try Harder,’ and no one on duty.

  Beyond this, there is nothing. There is, for example, no telephone kiosk, from which, if he had money, he might call the Min’stratii Kulturi Komitet’iii on Stalingradsimutu and declare his arrival, though even that would presumably be unprofitable, since, as Helpful Hints for British Businessmen helpfully hints, banks, offices, and state trading organizations are closed on Saturdays and on Sundays, the day that this is. There is no place to get money, no bank or change desk (camb’yii) to which he can turn for local currency, though, if there was, it would, this being Sunday, probably be closed anyway. Having no money, there is no way he can take the airport bus to the Comflug offices in the city (no check-in facilities) where it is just possible that his meeter might even now be waiting, nor take a taxi to Stalingradsimutu, where he might find a guard or a porter who could find a host or a receiver who could find a hotel, or just sit on the steps. There is no place marked Information, where he might get some, or even Enquiries, where he might try to. Another sort of man might do something; grow angry, take action, leave arrivals and go to departures, there to try to change his return ticket and get back on the flight back to London, if there is one, or even go back through the door marked NOI VA and ask for assistance. But Petworth, in his dogged way, knows the sort of story he should be in, and he is prepared to wait and let it come to him: a story not of frontiers and guardposts, spies and imprisonments, beatings and treacheries, but a simple story, commensurate with his talents and limitations, a story of small hotels and large lecture rooms, of faculty lounges where grey professors talk about incomprehensible educational reforms which are hardly worth comprehending anyway, since they will be transformed again within the year, and bright girl assistants discuss the deeply dull theses they mean to write, and of occasional evening rec
eptions where, drink in hand, Petworth can chatter brightly on about matters of common fascination, Hobson’s Choice and Sod’s Law, birds in the hand and frogs in the throat, a story of, in short, everyday life.

  And so he stands there in the lobby of Slaka airport, with fifty minutes gone since his arrival, his luggage at his feet, with no meeter, no greeter, no money, no city, no hotel, no food, no bed, no lectures, no professors, no, in a sense, future. A fresh flow of passengers, men in dark suits, women in dark dresses, entire families of six or seven, all dressed in their Sunday best, a complete football team in their blue blazers, streams out through the door marked NOI VA. He turns to see; when he turns back, someone is standing in front of him. It is a small unshaven man, in dirty black trousers, grey shirt, exposed braces, a small denim cap. He smiles at Petworth, with a twisted smile: ‘Private Tacs,’ he says, bowing slightly. It seems to Petworth that Private Tacs is an odd emissary; but messages come everywhere in strange packets, and this is a proletarian country. ‘Petworth,’ says Petworth, holding out his hand. The man does not take it: he shakes his head. ‘You like private tacks to Slaka?’ he says, ‘I take dollar, Anglisch pount, very cheap rate.’ ‘I see,’ says Petworth, temptation flowering suddenly in his mind; a path to survival opens before him. ‘You like stay private house?’ asks the man, ‘Very cheap, dollar only, pount.’ Temptation grows, but currency offences are crimes against the state, attracting the most severe penalties: ‘No, thank you,’ says Petworth, standing solidly against his wooden pillar. ‘Okay,’ says the man, stepping back and disappearing, with a magical rapidity, into the crowd. A hope come, and then gone again, Petworth leans sadly back against the wooden pillar, staring up at the clock, which has now ticked away an entire hour since his arrival here.

  But now another plane must have come in, for in front of him the crowd mills and eddies frenziedly; he stands there with his feet protectively set over his luggage as the people press busily by. Then in the mass a space appears; in the space he sees, some little distance away, someone standing there, halted, looking across, smiling at him questioningly. It is a lady, in her middle years; she wears a big black coat with a fake fur collar. Petworth smiles faintly in return; the lady looks and twists her hair, which appears to be a large blonde wig. Again it is not the sort of emissary that Petworth has expected, but letters come in strange envelopes, and this is a different land, under another ideology; he raises an eyebrow. The lady, smiling a little more, begins to step toward him through the crowd; as she does so, she allows her coat to fall open, revealing a very low-cut dress struggling to hold in a very large bust. Petworth stares; the lady, coming closer, puckers her mouth in the gesture of a kiss. It is now that Petworth suspects temptation of another kind; the whores in the main hotels and nightclubs should be avoided at all costs. The lady comes close now, wreathed in a pall of distinct scent; now she pushes her arm through his. ‘Chaka, chaka?’ she says. ‘Sorry, my mistake,’ says Petworth, trying to retrieve his arm, ‘I thought you were . . .’ ‘Chuka, chaka, na?’ asks the lady, ‘For dollar, very cheap?’ ‘Na, na,’ says Petworth firmly, this is not what he has come so far to exchange. ‘Ah,’ says the lady making a moue, ‘Very nice.’ ‘I’m sure,’ says Petworth, getting his arm free, ‘But I’m an official visitor.’ The lady goes into the crowd; exhausted by his temptations, Petworth leans back against the pillar. He is tired of false messages, and wants only a true one. Then he looks up, and realizes that it has very probably come.

  For there, standing in front of him, smiling politely toward him, is a far more probable emissary: a middle-aged man with grey in his hair, refinement in his face, wearing a smart rectangular suit, with an honour of some sort in the buttonhole, and over the suit a topcoat, which is loosely draped over his shoulders. ‘Feder,’ says the man, looking at him. ‘Ah, Petworth,’ says Petworth. ‘Please, Feder,’ says the man. ‘From the Min’stratii Kulturi?’ asks Petworth. ‘Ah, Min’stratii Kulturi Komitet’iii?’ says the man, ‘Man, na. Feder? Cueta?’ ‘I don’t understand,’ says Petworth. ‘Ah,’ says the man, raising a finger; then he lifts his hand into the air, and seems to scribble with it. ‘Oh, you have a message for me?’ asks Petworth. ‘Na, na, not a message,’ says the man, scribbling again in the air. ‘A letter?’ asks Petworth. ‘Na,’ says the man, shaking his head. ‘You have a book?’ says Petworth, ‘A story, a history?’ ‘Na, ma,’ says the man, encouragingly. ‘A poem, a play, a novel,’ says Petworth. ‘How you write?’ says the man, ‘Für schriften?’ ‘A pencil, a brush,’ says Petworth. ‘Na, stylo,’ says the man. ‘What, a pen?’ asks Petworth. ‘Da, da,’ says the man, with delight, ‘A pen. Please, your pen.’ ‘Ja, ja,’ says Petworth, agleam with the glow of literate contact, and he reaches into his pocket and produces his silver Parker ballpoint: an old travelling companion, and the true author of so many of his lectures. ‘Ah, da,’ says the man, gratefully, taking the pen, ‘English so hard. I do not really speak. So, slibob. In our tongue, thank you.’ And then the man bows, smiles, holds up the silver pen, and moves off into the crowd with it. The afterglow of literate contact remains with Petworth for a moment; then, ‘Here, my pen,’ he shouts, hurrying off after the loose overcoat, which is disappearing, with some rapidity, around the corner of the kiosk that is marked COSMOPLOT.

  Another new flight has evidently come in: a busy new flow of passengers – old ladies, men in ties, an entire orchestra carrying their instruments in cases – streams from the doors marked NOI VA and blocks Petworth’s way as he hurries in pursuit. Petworth stumbles over double basses, falls over euphonium cases; when he reaches the corner of the stall marked COSMOPLOT, the man in the topcoat has quite disappeared. The stall is decorated with posters of peasants dancing in blousy costumes, the women in trousers, the men in skirts; of a market place with a high clock tower in it; of pinnacled castles high on crags in some Transylvanian wonderland, where all stories are said to start. The girl in the blue uniform still writes away behind the desk at her document; as Petworth comes up to her, she looks up with suspicion. ‘Did you see a man go by, with an overcoat over his shoulders?’ Petworth asks, breathing hard. ‘A man? You want a man?’ asks the girl. ‘He’s taken my pen,’ says Petworth. ‘Oh, yes?’ says the girl, returning to her document, ‘Do you say a man has taken your pen? Well, I hope you do not want to borrow a pen of me. I have only one pen, and it is an official one.’ ‘No,’ says Petworth, ‘I don’t want your pen. I want to find that man and get mine back.’ ‘Oh,’ says the girl, ‘Do you tell that this man steals your pen?’ ‘He took it away from me,’ says Petworth. ‘Well, it is not my business,’ says the girl, ‘I am not policeman. You must go to that policeman over there and make a document, if you like to.’ The girl points – with her pen, not his pen – to one of the blue armed men, who stands a little way away from the Cosmoplot desk, his Kalashnikov automatic rifle over his shoulder, talking to a girl in a grey coat, with a shoulderbag.

  ‘Yes, I see,’ says Petworth. ‘Of course, if you do this, you will spend many hours at the police house, and they will make very many questions of you,’ says the girl, ‘Perhaps it is not so important, just for one pen.’ ‘It was a Parker,’ says Petworth. ‘Also I wonder if that man truly steals your pen,’ says the girl, still writing, ‘In our country such crimes are not permitted. Perhaps he likes to think you gave it to him. Perhaps if they ask him he tells you try to change it for something illegal, for dollar. Often when such things happen it is best to buy a new pen. You can buy one at this place over here, do you see it, it is marked Litti? There they can sell you pen. Now, do you see how busy I am? I must write on my document with my pen.’ ‘I don’t suppose,’ says Petworth, struck with an idea, ‘you’ve had any messages for me? My name’s Petworth. I’m an official visitor, and I’ve not been met.’ ‘Are you turstii?’ asks the girl. ‘Am I thirsty?’ asks Petworth. ‘No,’ says the girl, tapping with her pen on the desk, ‘Are you turstii? Do you make here a tour by Cosmoplot?’ ‘No,’ says Petworth, ‘I’m an official vi
sitor.’ ‘Then, please, not here,’ says the girl, ‘Here for turstii only.’ ‘You can’t suggest any way I can get in touch with my hosts?’ asks Petworth, pleadingly. ‘Not here,’ says the girl, bending her eyes to her writing, ‘You are in wrong place. And now you see I am busy.’ For a crowd of large middle-aged women, most of them with dyed blonde hair and garish plastic luggage, have suddenly swarmed around the stall, picking up leaflets and asking many questions in Russian. ‘Well, thank you,’ says Petworth hopelessly, turning back into the crush.

  An hour and a quarter has passed now since he first came through the door marked NOI VA, a door which opens again, to emit many more new passengers: elderly men, young ladies in headscarves, a whole bevy of priests in cowls, wearing grizzled patriarchal beards. Petworth stands, looking two ways: somewhere ahead of him in the crush is his silver pen, somewhere behind him his piled luggage, the blue suitcase the briefcase of lectures, his yellow Heathrow bag, his grey overcoat. Beyond the moving throng is the pillar where he has stood for so long, waiting for his meeter to meet him, his greeter to greet him. Jostling the old men, pushing at the priests, he pushes his way back to his territory. The pillar still stands there, with a space around it; it is only his luggage – the suitcase, the briefcase, the yellow bag, the grey coat – which has gone. He looks around, walks to the next pillar, walks back, and knows the low point of human fortune. He is here, in a foreign country, under a changed ideology; but, like some old car abandoned on the motorway, he has been stripped of all his functional equipment. He has no money, no hotel, no friends, no contacts, no pen, no property, no lectures, no books, no clothes, and, in a sense, no future at all. For a moment he thinks, not knowing what to do. ‘You will spend many hours at the police house, and they will make very many questions of you,’ the Cosmoplot girl has said, but questions are all that are left. Petworth turns and walks slowly through the moving flow of people, the black-dressed ladies, the darksuited men, the priests in their orthodox robes, toward the armed man with the Kalashnikov, and the police house where they ask the questions.