Rates of Exchange

by Malcolm Bradbury

  ‘I am sorry I do not have a nice little bedroom for you to lie in,’ says Princip, back in the sitting room, ‘Here for everyone only so many metres of space. I am lucky, I am approved writer, I have certain privileges. But only so much space, others are not so lucky even. My sofa is my bed, I make magic and it changes. Look, I just press here and now you have a bed to lie on. Lie, please, it is very comfortable. You must make strong again. Remember, you are only just started here. There are many more things for you to do in my country. Oh, our music has stopped. Were we so long at the shower? Well, I put some more on before I come to you, what do you like better, the woods or the strings? Here is some army songs, I don’t think you like to hear that. Here is Vivaldi, here Janaek? Do you like charming or sad? Of course, you told me your taste, it is Vivaldi for you. Now I come to you, my dear. Are you warm? No, don’t move, I just like to kneel here and look down at you. So thin, really there is not much of you. Your nice wet hairs, a thin white chest, so neat the thigh, is that what you call it, and what a good present for me in the middle. You know, you are just a little bit beautiful, Petwit. And me, do you like me? I am very good at the top, I think, but perhaps too fat for you at the stomach. Here we think a fatness there is just a little erotic. That is our cultural characteristic, but not so much in the West. All the ladies flat like a table, don’t forget I have been there. Well, in any case, my dear, my weigh goes down. So perhaps I please you more when we meet again, do you think? Do you believe it, we meet again? Or do you go home away soon to your country and forget all about me? Yes, I think you do, it is natural.’

  ‘No,’ says Petworth, lying there on the sofa which has so magically become a bed, his head against books, looking up at Princip, big over him as she leans on one elbow to stare down into his face. ‘Oh, listen, you are so sure,’ says Princip, ‘Well, I am not. There is a world out there, my dear Petwit, do you forget it? Of course we have made a very nice exchange, each one gives the other something, all so simple. Oh, such nice touchings and chattings, but they do not last long, not like history. Sex is good, but is not information. Here, you see me, I look at you, and what do I know? I know you have a sad wife, I think you are sad too, perhaps you have many problems. I know you are not character in the world historical sense, I try to make you better, but I don’t think I do. You are confused, you are good person, you have a desire, or you would not come with me, you are a little bit in my heart. And you look at me, and what do you know, I could be anyone, your good witch or your bad. You know I have had four husbands, and I have written a book you could not read. Now you know I have a body that you can read, it has been your book and you have read it in a certain way, for the pleasure. Well, I hope it was a good pleasure, but did you learn much, do you think you will pass the examination? Well, perhaps it does not matter. Often the best relations are between the peoples who do not know each other so well. Perhaps it is silly that people get to know each other very well, often it is nothing but disappointment. Who is ever as interesting as ourselves? Who can love us enough to drive away all the lonely and the terror? And to be known, that is often dangerous, especially in my country. No, I think I am a thing that happens to you once, in a foreign place, not a part of time, not a part of your true life.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ says Petworth, ‘You’re more than that.’ ‘Well, of course, it is possible to reach in a sudden into a soul, and find a friend,’ says Princip, ‘This is what I felt when I saw you at the awful lunch of Tankic. Such an apparatchik, I know that kind. Did you know at once I wanted you then, I felt an ache? Perhaps you made me a little foolish, you know I did not behave well. But something happened, I wanted you in my life, I wanted to give you a story, make you a character. And I think you wanted that too, you are not a character, not yet, but there is something in your eyes, always looking. Yes, we liked each other, I believe that. Of course we did, or we would not do these things. But what is liking when it is so easy? Oh, we made the bad world go away for a minute, that really is what love is for, but when it comes back, we have of course to live in it. Make all the loves you like and you still do not escape. Most lives are a prison, here in my country of course, you know, but I know also in yours. Do not forget, I have been there. If yours is not, you are very lucky. And all the lovings in the world, they do not make these things go away. The sad wife in your bed at home. The black cat that waits outside, did you see it? The water that dries here on your skin that is like me going away. Oh, yes, my dear, we have made our nice secret, all so natural. But of course it is not so natural. As my grey father Marx tells, it is also cultural and ideological, economical and sexual. It is part of all the systems, and each time you choose or you do, you enter one of them. I make you a certain kind of man, you make me a certain kind of woman. What a nice bed this would be if it was not in the world, but it is. Petwit, do you listen, do you go to sleep?’

  ‘No,’ says Petworth, ‘I listen very carefully.’ ‘But you don’t like what I say,’ says Princip, ‘No, this is why love is sad, this is why people after love lie on beds like we do, and do not feel happy. My dear, excuse me, please. In my country, after an event, we make always an analysis. That is our cultural characteristic. But you see, my dear, I want to give you a better sense of existence. Petwit, you know, to exist, that is not so very fantastic. Any fool can do this. All that is needed is for two people to make the nice little secret, just like you and me, and pouf, another in the world. I don’t think this happens this time, Petwit, don’t look so bad, of course I make a certain protection. But so we come into existence. And the problem is not to exist at all, it is to make importance of it. We are not just stones that sit in a field. I don’t think so. Are you a stone, Petwit? I am not. Don’t we have to find a desire, make a will? Don’t we go always somewhere toward something? Of course to do it is hard as well as nice, it is even dangerous. No teacher is pure. No witch is safe. Oh, Petwit, my dear, I upset you. Now, I see it, you are the one who is sad. Well, perhaps I meaned it. Not to hurt you but to learn you. Stay quite still, please, one minute, I just do something to you. Do you like it? I kiss your feet. It is something we do here. Perhaps not in your country? Well, it was worth your travels. Oh, Petwit, you go soon, I don’t like it. I wish I could keep you here for always. Perhaps you do not wish it also. Well, remember, a witch is not so easy to lose. I will not be far away when you go into the forest. And even if you do not come back, you will not really forget me.’

  ‘I won’t,’ says Petworth, ‘I really won’t.’ ‘Listen, I think I tell you just one more story,’ says Princip, ‘Not a very interesting story, it is just about me, a true story, how I became writer. I was married then, with one of my husbands, not the best one. It was the one I told you, the minister, the apparatchik. He sat all the day in an office, with fat secretary, he drove inside the official cars with the curtains, he was high in the party, at all the meetings, he came home each night nice in a dark suit. I was student then, I read many books, I was clever. I studied with him his work, I advised his awful decisions, all those corrupt things. But always he told, please, be a good wife, an apparatchik must have a good wife. Well, he was not such good man, but I was pretty good wife. I made the dinner parties, I sat at the table, not this one here, of course then there was an apartment, very good, I said amusing things, I spoke in Russian and English, I talked the music and the art. Not the politics of course, oh no, not permitted. Well, on a certain night, he brought round our table some very important men, to talk about a national affair. I knew all about these things then, I listened, I understood, I wanted to say something. Well, I made mistake, I began to talk. These men, they were not so bad, they listened quite politely. But they turned round and round their glasses, they looked at each other in a certain way, I knew of course they want me to stop. Well, at first the things I said were sensible, but then they became foolish, because, you see, they were not wanted. But I knew if I stopped they would all turn right away, and I did not want it, so I could not stop. My face was red, but I
talked and talked, and then I got up from there and ran to the door and outside, and always still talking. I went out into the park, and I waited till the cars came for those men. Then I turned back to my husband, he stood in the room in his nice suit, and so angry. Do you know what he told me?’

  ‘No,’ says Petworth. ‘He told, when you give a party again, you say nothing, never again do you speak in this way,’ says Princip, ‘Well, he came home the next day in his nice suit, and I expect he called for me, but I was not there. I was somewhere else, with someone else, and already I was writer. I could not live in a world where you think words you cannot speak. Of course, if people make of reality a prison, then others will wish to escape from it. I wrote down my words, the nonsense and the not nonsense, the words I could speak and the words I was trying to learn to speak, the words that were not yet words. I learned then a certain sense of existence. This is what I thought. But in case you think it is easy, no, it is not, because those words are like love, they do not go out of history. I feel toward the free, but I am not free. And no one is free, which is why the words are as sad as the love. My life is not better, but it is mine. I am sorry, my dear, really it is a very dull story. The others were much better. It is boring to be true.’ ‘What happened to your husband?’ asks Petworth. ‘This one, the apparatchik?’ asks Princip, ‘Oh, there was a political change in my country. What was right was now wrong. Who was in now was out. Well, we had been given some nice privileges. We builded a nice dacha, a little house, out in the forest, not so far from here. One day he went there in his nice suit, and he shot himself. He was allowed to be a hunter and to keep a gun. It was better for him than a trial and a prison. This also is remembered about me, by those who do not like me. For him, I am afraid I was not such good witch. For you, I hope I am much better. Now you see why I can tell so much about history. I have learned in the best places.’

  ‘Should we have done this?’ asks Petworth, looking at her, as they lie there in the small room, where a faint wind blows the net curtains, and rustles the papers on the desk, and the light begins to fade down in the sky beyond. ‘Now you think you commit a crime against the state,’ says Princip, ‘Now you wish it had not happened. Well, it is not a real offence, even under Marx. Not if you do it with a good ideological attitude. Of course, if you find your position is not correct . . .’ ‘Well,’ says Petworth, looking at their bodies infolded into each other, ‘It looks quite good to me.’ ‘I think so,’ says Princip, laughing, ‘Perhaps you like to improve it some more? You see now I know how to teach you.’ ‘Yes,’ says Petworth. ‘Then I will help you,’ says Princip, ‘I told you you had many things still to do in my country. Hold me so, see me please as a comrade-ofarms of the struggle. Think with your mind you build a great and startling project. Feel with your heart you reach the great laws of human universality. Know with your strong you contribute to the historic advance of the proletariat.’ Live grey eyes are staring into his face; a body beside him is a fundamental mass with a living motion; there are hands on his own body, drawing its shape and design, drawing it out of shape and design. ‘Yes, something is happening to you, do you feel it,’ says Katya, eyes, hair, flesh leaning over him. ‘Oh, Katya,’ says Petworth, looking at the face, alert, moving, the eyes open, reaching out to touch the mass and feel its architecture, the bone order beneath the fleshly pads, ‘Katya.’ ‘Oh, Petwit, do you remember my name?’ says Princip, ‘You have not said it before. Do you call me a person? Well, perhaps I am Katya, someone like that, but please, it is not the person, it is cause that matters. Take me into yourself, do you do it better if I come on top of you, don’t you say?’

  There is a body elevated above him, shaped against the light. ‘Petwit, now I am magicking you,’ says Princip, ‘I will take you somewhere, on a nice journey, I am your guide.’ ‘Oh,’ says Petworth, ‘Oh my god.’ ‘Petwit, please, no god,’ says Princip, swinging the top of her body across his face, ‘Don’t you know our task is secular? Try please to relate your subjective to your objective, your spirit to history. In this way you will grow free of errors. Yes, I am your guide, we make it together, our special journey. Do you remember Stupid, do you think you know now how he climbed the tower, perhaps he did what you do, perhaps he found the witch was the princess also. Well, I am your sex princess, I am witching you, I am taking you where you cannot go, think of a word you do not know, I am that word, try to understand it, do you come nearer?’ Above him is skin in its long planes, hollowed here, puffed there, the outward thrust of breasts, the inward tuck of the navel, the feel of an intricate yielding crease. ‘Yes, you come nearer,’ says Princip, ‘is there a meaning, is there a place, you go into that place, I put you in that place, you come there and I come there with you, and we are together. You don’t have a sad wife, you have me only, no other, all the bodies are my body, do you feel it happen, I do, you do, I know you do, yes, yes.’ There is light and dark, inside and outside, arrest, explosion, light following dark, a room of books where curtains blow. ‘Wasn’t it my best story?’ says Princip, ‘Didn’t I magic you nicely?’ ‘It was better,’ says Petworth. ‘Of course,’ says Princip, ‘Only one thing wrong.’ ‘What’s that?’ asks Petworth. ‘Look at you,’ says Princip, ‘Nowhere to pin on you your medal. Petwit, do you think we found a place that is ours?’ Petworth leans up; with a dull, dragging, mechanical note, the telephone on the desk under the blowing curtains begins to ring.

  ‘Oh, no,’ says Princip, looking at him, ‘Who is this? Quick, go please and put on clothes. Wait, what is time?’ ‘Time?’ asks Petworth. ‘On your watch,’ says Princip. ‘It’s a quarter to six,’ says Petworth, hurrying, heart beating, into the bathroom. The steam is fading slowly off the green mirror, a naked Petworth refracts emptily at him, the pipes in the tub rattle and groan, Katya Princip’s batik dress swings loose on the hook behind the door. Dressing quickly, tugging up clothes, he can hear, beyond the thin wall, the stop and start of a voice, in rapid irregular conversation in the language he still does not know. Telephones and time are of this world; something in the world, half-remembered, presses on him, a worry. In the other room, the telephone clicks down; then Princip, big, naked, her face sad, stands in the door. ‘Oh, Petwit, be quick, you must go now,’ she says, ‘Someone comes here soon, I cannot stop it. Find please my dress.’ ‘Here,’ says Petworth, handing it to her, watching her body scurry, become disorderly, as she pulls it onto her. ‘Oh, why don’t we have time?’ she says, ‘And now you will go away, and perhaps I will not see you again.’ ‘We have to,’ says Petworth, ‘I’m back in Slaka in ten days.’ ‘Ten days, it is long,’ says Princip, ‘And things will happen on your journey, perhaps you will not want then to see me. And you have not been good visitor today, they will watch you, it will not be easy. Oh, I know how it is done, they will make you suddenly busy, they will change your programme. Or they will perhaps invite me to make a little journey from the town. All of a sudden they need my new book, go, please, to the dacha for writers in the country, it is all arranged. For people not to meet, that is easy to fix, we are experts. Wait, your hair, borrow please this comb, you must not look like that when you go. Oh, look, you are in my mirror, I wish I keep you in there. I have a love for you, Petwit, I don’t know why, and no time to say it.’ ‘I have it too,’ says Petworth.

  ‘Come quickly, help me, we must turn back the bed,’ says Princip, drawing him back into the small room, ‘Oh, Petwit, do you truly want to see me again? Even if it is so hard and so foolish?’ ‘Yes,’ says Petworth, as the bed becomes a sofa again. ‘Well, you make good decision,’ says Princip, ‘It is foolish and it is right. So how do we arrange, how? Well, look, I write down a telephone for you to ring. It is not this one here, another. When you ring there, do not speak, wait till I answer. If another one answers, still do not speak, put it back, wait a time and then try again. If I answer, talk like we make a small business. Do not try the number more than two times, always people listen, they might interest in you. Do you understand all this? It is
very important.’ ‘Yes, I understand,’ says Petworth, ‘But if I don’t reach you, is there another way? Can I come here?’ ‘No, never come here, you understand that?’ says Princip, ‘There is the coffee house, you remember it, you know I go there. Oh, I hope you come back, I hope you find me, but now I know you will. You see, I did not finish the story of Stupid. Oh, look at you, Petwit, so intense and sad. Are you always so?’ ‘No,’ says Petworth. ‘Only in your spare time,’ says Princip, ‘It will be all right.’ ‘Yes,’ says Petworth. ‘Oh, Petwit,’ says Princip, holding him, ‘Well, I have put you in my story, you know. And I give you the stone, do you wear it? And here, from my pot, one flower, not for you, for your guide. And a coin to pay the lift, you know how to use. I cannot come with you, but Wang’luku, that is easy to find. You walk here to the end, then go three streets to the right, you will see before you Hotel Slaka. And on your journey in the forest, think I am with you, not far away.’ ‘I will,’ says Petworth. ‘Go now, quickly,’ says Princip, opening the door of the flat, ‘Be always careful, my dear. Oh, the lift is here, go, I watch you.’