Rates of Exchange

by Malcolm Bradbury

  It is crowded at the airport at Nogod, when the taxi delivers them there the following morning. At the two check-in desks long lines contend. ‘It is impossible,’ says Marisja Lubijova, ‘Wait here, please, I go to try to make you some arrangements. You don’t go away? I don’t lose you again?’ ‘No,’ says Petworth, standing, as he has stood before, his back next to a pillar, his luggage tumbled at his feet. Around him, the crowd bustles in its unending business; faces, foreign, unfamiliar faces, but more familiar than they were once, surface for a moment and then disappear into the press. At the end of the concourse, a big clock ticks: a stall says LUTTU, another COSMOPLOT. Back in an old metaphysics of Petworthian absence, Petworth waits. The airport smells of carbolic soap; signs say NOKU ROKU, but everywhere the sweet scent of Balkan tobacco prevails. Buses stop outside the concourse, and the crowd thickens and thickens; there is no noise of planes taking off. Then, after a very long time, he sees Lubijova pushing back through the crowd toward him. ‘There is a small confusion,’ she says, ‘Perhaps it is not so small. All want to go to Slaka and the planes do not come so it is not possible. But a plane comes tonight and I think we go on it. You see, they treat you like a very important visitor. You don’t mind to wait? They will send away most of these people. They think their tickets are good but they are not.’ In a small crowded bar looking out toward the tarmac, Petworth sits out the afternoon, drinking rot’vuttu. ‘You can tell always the usual travellers by Comflug,’ says Marisja, sitting opposite, ‘They bring their binoculars, to look at the under of those planes when they land. Then if it does not look right, they make change of the flight. But it is no use today.’

  Airports are indeed much the same the world over: Heathrow last week, Nogod now. A few unwarmed planes wait on the tarmac, a few people are allowed to go to the exit gates, a flight or two, during the afternoon, takes off. Night begins to fall, the landing strip lights up, then the big beam of a landing light is switched on in the sky. ‘We go to the gate now, this is our plane,’ says Marisja Lubijova, ‘You must carry on all your bags, we do not check them. Perhaps it is better I explain you. It is not because you are important visitor we go on this flight. I know the stewardess who takes it, I teach her some English. And she is mistress of the captain, so we get a place. Here it is always best to know somebody. Don’t you think I am good guide?’ They push out to the plane in a great crowd; at the steps, a long-legged green stewardess in a hard hat greets Marisja Lubijova, and embraces her. ‘Here is my friend,’ says Lubijova. ‘Yes, it is your friend,’ says the stewardess, ‘Please walk the steps, and at top go right, not left.’ At the top of the steps, the passengers with them turn into the forward cabin, where the stewardess seats them in neat rows, as if packing a box of people. But to the right is a green curtain, and the long-legged stewardess lifts it: ‘Please, in here,’ she says. Petworth walks through; behind the curtain is a curious world. For the rear cabin seems filled to the brim with green stewardesses, lolling in most of the available seats. In their Comflug uniforms, they come in many kinds: some are young and some quite elderly; some are blonde, and some are arabesque; there are thin-faced ones with flashing eyes and big-boned ones with wide flat features. There is an off-duty look to them; their horse-rider’s helmets are up on the rack, their shoes are scattered about the cabin floor. The bulkhead signs say LUPU LUPU and NOKU ROKU, but their belts are unfastened and an aromatic haze of cigarette smoke blows above their heads.

  Petworth sits in a row with two young green stewardesses; Marisja Lubijova is found a seat on the other side of the aisle. The stewardess next to Petworth says something to him, in the language he has still not succeeded in grasping; ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand,’ he says. ‘English?’ says the girl, ‘He is English.’ ‘English? Is he English?’ say the three girls in the row behind, rising to look at him. ‘Do you like a Russ cigarette?’ asks the girl next to him, ‘Do you like to take some vodka?’ ‘Yes, thank you,’ says Petworth. ‘I learn English,’ says the girl, ‘I like to make flight to the West.’ ‘I also learn it,’ says the girl in the seat beyond. Outside, the engines fire, and begin to roar; there is an announcement over the intercom. ‘Do you like that cigarette? Do you like that vodka?’ asks the girl next to him, ‘We buy them in Russ.’ The plane is taxiing; the lights of Nogod disappear in the windows. ‘Is that where this flight has come from?’ asks Petworth. ‘Tashkent,’ says the girl, ‘We are all off duty in Tashkent. It is nice there, at the autumn. You go, you goed?’ There comes the great rush into airspeed; Petworth puffs on his cigarette. ‘We say: you have been,’ he says, never less than a pedagogue, ‘No, I haven’t been.’ ‘Oh, you should have been, when you have chance,’ says the girl, ‘I know you like.’ ‘Vulu suftu’un burdu pumfluttu,’ says a female voice over the intercom., ‘Plaz’scu otvatu ummerg’nucuna proddo flugsu’froluku.’ One of the girls, holding a paper cup of vodka, stands and does a little mocking dance, pointing at the exits; the others applaud and raise their cups to her. ‘Have a nice day, I hope you enjoy your flight,’ says the girl next to Petworth, ‘Here, more vodka, you like?’ ‘Yes, I do,’ says Petworth. ‘This is a nice man,’ says the stewardess. ‘What a nice man,’ says a girl in the row behind.

  ‘Yes, he is very nice man, I like,’ says the long-legged stewardess, standing up in the aisle, smiling at him, ‘He is your man?’ ‘Oh, please,’ says Marisja Lubijova, ‘I am his guide, that is all. He makes a tour.’ ‘Oh, yes, I believe you, his guide,’ says the stewardess, ‘Listen, I like to ask him something. Do you interpret?’ ‘Oh, Petwurt, listen, this is nice, you have invitation,’ says Lubijova, after a moment, ‘She tells how she is the mistress of the captain who flies our plane. Well, it is this man’s birthday and she likes to be with him. They make a party in the cockplace, what do you call it?’ ‘The cockpit?’ asks Petworth. ‘There,’ says Marisja, ‘And she likes to take you there because you are visitor here and such a nice man.’ ‘To the cockpit?’ asks Petworth. ‘Yes, they are making there some celebratings,’ says Marisja. ‘But this is a Russian plane, and I’m a Western visitor,’ says Petworth, ‘I’m sure it’s not permitted.’ ‘But here is party,’ says the long-legged stewardess, ‘Everyone likes party.’ ‘Is it a good idea?’ asks Petworth. ‘Well, that man cannot leave his cockpit, you would not like that,’ says Marisja, ‘I think we must go to him. It is a very nice invitation. Come, we are going.’ ‘You said I couldn’t even photograph railway engines,’ says Petworth, but the stewardess beside him is pushing him up, and Marisja Lubijova holding wide the green door-curtain. Led by two stewardesses, Marisja and Petworth pass down the long aisle of the plane. The passengers, the men in hats, the women in headscarves, sit pressed together in tight rows, just as Petworth had been on his journey from London, a journey that now seems long ago; they look up, displaying a little curiosity, but not too much, as they all walk up the plane to the door of the pilot’s cabin.

  The cockpit seems curiously small and very technical; beyond its windows, up ahead, a great black darkness lies. But inside all is comfortable and cheery; the pilot sits in his seat, his co-pilot beside him, each holding plastic cups of peach brandy; the flight engineer, behind, takes, to save space, the second stewardess onto his knee. It is cramped, but the pilot rises very civilly, to shake Petworth by the hand, and then he shakes the other hands too, as explanations are made. ‘Tells this is a new plane from Russia,’ Lubijova says, ‘Tells he likes to show you how to fly it.’ In front of the plane, in the moonlight, the great massed bulk of mountains rises; the pilot pulls levers and ratchets for Petworth, who nods very politely. ‘He asks if you like to sit down and fly it,’ says Lubijova. ‘Very easy,’ says the long-legged stewardess. ‘I don’t think I’d better,’ says Petworth, looking at a mountain top very close to the wing. ‘You like rot’vuttu?’ asks the stewardess. ‘Oh, yes,’ says Petworth. It is hard to pass drink around the overcrowded cockpit, but somehow it is managed, and when the long-legged stewardess sits on the knee of the pilot, and Marisja L
ubijova on that of the co-pilot, there is more or less room for everyone. A flash of lightning illuminates the mountains; the captain raises his cup and says to Petworth, in English: ‘Welcome, amity and concord.’ ‘Indeed,’ says Petworth. ‘Also amity and Boeing, amity and Tupolev,’ says the co-pilot. It is a very good party, with much laughter: ‘Now we all sing a little song for a birthday,’ explains Marisja Lubijova, ‘I don’t think you have it in your country.’ But all good times come to an end; a grid of lights appears on the horizon. ‘Slaka, my friend,’ says the pilot, tapping Petworth’s arm and pointing. Petworth recognizes the jagged cup of mountains, spots, even, the orange pollution on the horizon. Handles are being pushed; something heavy bangs in the wing. ‘He asks do you like to land it?’ asks Marisja Lubijova, amid much laughter. ‘Next time,’ says Petworth, laughing too, looking forward into the night.

  The world in front looks like a great black hole. In the hole it seems impossible to perceive a destination, except that there are lights, lights growing in size, lights becoming so big that they seem to be on collision course with the plane. There seems no sense in continuing in this direction, but the direction continues; something slaps up at them out of the darkness, with a white line on it, and the plane bounces and rocks. Brakes come on, machinery groans; there is a well-lit runway ahead. And, standing there in the cockpit, he bounces too, his brandy spilling into technical parts that other brandies cannot reach. There has been fear in him, he knows, and the fear will not go away. For now the big Ilyushin turns, taxis in slowly through the airport lanes. And even at night it is possible to see that quite a number of armed men are standing about at various points on the tarmac: clustered around the other planes that stand in line on the apron; gathered waiting on the stand to which the small van with a sign on it saying HIN MIM that has appeared out of the darkness leads the great aircraft. A flight handler waves his lighted bats to bring the plane into parking position; blue buses begin to move from the ill-lit terminal; the armed men cluster round. The engines cut; steps are wheeled up to their side. ‘Tells he hopes you enjoyed it,’ says Marisja Lubijova, rising from the lap of the co-pilot, ‘Tells he was very pleased to see you.’ Through the windows, it is possible to see the passengers getting off, and going to the blue buses that will take them to the door marked INVAT. The pilot shuts down the plane; led by the long-legged stewardess, Marisja and Petworth, the flight engineer and his companion, walk through the now empty cabin of the Russian jet.

  At the bottom of the steps, four of the armed men who wait around planes wait around the plane as Petworth descends with his companions, his hair awry. He should not be here; it is not right. He expects, perhaps even feels he deserves, disaster, a quick arrest. But the officer of the party salutes him, the flight engineer nods, and they go not toward the drab terminal building and the door marked UNVAT but to a quite different entrance, where there is a pleasant room, and the green stewardesses are there again, and there is another drink, and a number of warm embraces from the scented girls, with their wheeled flight-bags, and their neat neck-scarves, and then they are all on the forecourt where the blue-armed men walk, and Marisja puts him into an orange taxi, which is soon on the long straight road to Slaka. ‘Oh, it is Pervert,’ says the lacquered-haired Cosmoplot girl at the Hotel Slaka, ‘Passipotti.’ ‘Now, dolling,’ says Marisja Lubijova. ‘I know, I know, he needs it,’ says the girl, ‘Tomorrow, it is late. I give you same room.’ And late it is, as Petworth goes up in the lift, along the corridor past the floormaid, and into the massive bedroom where the cupids frolic on the ceiling and the tram gantries flash through the curtains. He looks down through the window, where, somewhere, Marisja Lubijova goes, disappearing into the mysterious life she has in Slaka; he turns toward the big duvetted bed.

  9 – NATKULT.

  I

  With time to spare in Slaka, a lecturer with no more lectures to give, a tourist with nothing better to do than to tour, Petworth spends the next two days wandering the city – that idyll of north and south, west and Turkish, with its fine residences of stone and its rectorates of Baroque accretion. The events of the political world trouble him, he senses worry in the air; but everything in Slaka seems quiet. Waking in the morning in the all too familiar big bedroom, going down to breakfast, he stops each day in the lobby at the stall marked LUTTU to buy the red-masted party newspaper, P’rtyuu Populatuuu, hoping to find out a fact or two. Intens’uu activuu, mass’ufu manufestu say the headlines he reads over his pig-bacon and yurt. But though he is a linguist, though he has been in this country ten days now, and has promised to try the language in order to read Katya Princip’s book, still in his luggage, the words below the headlines still do not manage to yield a sense. When Marisja Lubijova, in her grey coat, arrives in the lobby after breakfast, looking as formal as she did on the first day of his visit, he tries to find out from her what is happening. ‘Oh, comrade Petwurt, I hope you don’t worry,’ she says reassuringly, sitting down in one of the red plastic chairs in the lobby, ‘There is just a very small confusion, in a few universities, so we do not ask you to give your lectures there. But that is nice, now you have time to look around Slaka, and go to the Wicwok shops. They open again the castle, and you have not been to the National Gallery. Of course perhaps you could change your ticket and go home before, but that is not so easy, they are such bureaucrats here. And then you miss our day of National Culture, and you do not want that! Look, I have brought you a nice guide-book in English, we will find you some nice thing to do.

  So Petworth finds some nice things to do. He goes to the advanced glass-blowing factory, and to the National Gallery, where the frenzies of Post-lmpressionism and Fauvism and the work of the national Expressionist painter Lev Pric subside into the tidy narrative economies of socialist realism. He goes to the castle – ‘this time really the castle,’ says Marisja Lubijova, toiling by his side – of Bishop ‘Wencher’ Vlam (1675–1753, according to the guidebook), filled with fine armour and displays of Slakan history, great wooden furniture and elegant bedsteads. ‘Here the Bishop likes to have his pray,’ says Mari Lubijova, looking round a large, ornate, plastered bedroom, ‘I think he liked to have every girl in the city. You see how God works for some.’ He goes to the Wicwok shop, to look at Scotch tweeds and tartans, and to the heimat shop, to look at, and buy, fine hand-made embroidery, woodcarving, a small pot or two. He goes to parks where old people sit, and children play in groups under the regard of fat nannies in big, deep skirts. He goes to the great department store, MUG, where the people go to inspect the prospect of shopping, and manages to buy there, with some of his remaining vloskan, a big glass decanter, finely made. He makes a visit to the puppet house; he goes to the museum of old pianos. On some trips, Marisja Lubijova comes with him; sometimes, busy with her own unknown life in Slaka, she does not. He learns how to use the trams, buying tickets from the stalls marked UTTU; he begins to make in his mind a rough map of the city, though it must be admitted that, when there is no guide to describe it, no voice to tell its story, Slaka does not seem very different from any city anywhere else. The pink trams clatter, the men go by in khaki, the women in headscarves; the crowds stand outside the cinema in a bleak line, waiting to see something called Yups. And if there are troubles, vague drummings of disturbance, then life seems normal. From time to time, using the greasy telephones in the stand-up cafeterias where he catches a snack lunch, he tries to find out more, attempting to reach Mr Steadiman, at the Embassy, at home; but for some reason the telephone links seem to be severed. And once in a while, with great caution, he tries the number that has been given him by Katya Princip; but the telephone rings and rings in what, even down the imperfect apparatus, seems to be an empty room.

  But on the third day, when he rises, and goes down to the lobby, to collect on his way to breakfast, the red-masted newspaper, he senses that something has changed. Then, over the slow breakfast, he sees what the change is, a perfectly small one: P’rtyuu Populatuuu has become P’rtyii Populatiii ag
ain. The fresh breakfast menu has gone from the table, to be replaced by a very old one, food-stained but in the words he had begun to learn when he arrived; the food is the same; and when he goes back upstairs to his room, to get ready for the events of this national day, men are lowering down from the opposite building the big neon sign that says SCH’VEPPUU. Over the square, the flags wave, for today’s day of National Culture; Marisja Lubijova, when she arrives in the lobby, wears a red carnation in her lapel, and seems full of excitement. ‘Well, it is your last day, and our day of happy rejoicering,’ she says, ‘It will be a good day, are you ready? Do you excite about our parade? I expect they will find a fine place for you.’ They leave the hotel to go out into packed and busy streets: ‘Oh, such a crowd on our special day,’ says Marisja Lubijova, ‘I hope I don’t lose you again. But I think you know the way now to Plazsci P’rtyii.’ ‘Wasn’t it once called Plazscu P’rtyuu?’ asks Petworth. ‘Oh, was it really?’ asks Marisja Lubijova, ‘I don’t remember. Of course our language is a little bit difficult.’ ‘Well, perhaps there was just a little confusion,’ says Petworth. But they come to the great square, whatever its name, and it has turned into a solid mass of people, standing, pressing, moving, eddying. The armed men who are everywhere are everywhere: ‘Push, push,’ says Marisja, excitedly, ‘We have a special seat, of course. And now do you see how well we love our writers and our teachers?’ And evidently they do, for it is clear that the people have come in their thousands: the soldiers and the waiters, the city-dwellers and the peasants from the countryside, the old men and women and the schoolchildren, the tourists from the first world, and the second, and the third, and however many more there are – they have all come and are standing together in the square.