by Tom Sharpe
‘More than some did,’ said the lecturer, looking grimly at the backs of the retreating Principals. ‘You can have the whole lecture. I’ve got it on hard disk and can print it out any time.’
The Bursar went back to his hotel room and read the lecture very carefully. He didn’t fully understand the financial jargon, but as far as he could make out, the man was arguing that benefactors had the right to control the educational policy of establishments they’d funded. It might well have been entitled ‘He Who Pays the Piper Calls the Tune’. It was not a doctrine the Bursar found at all unreasonable. All he wanted was funds.
On the way back to Cambridge by train he read the lecture several more times and memorized its more salient points. Next day in his office he altered two letters in one word on the title page and removed the author’s name and made several copies.
The following Wednesday at 12.30 precisely he entered the headquarters of Transworld Television Productions near St Katherine’s Dock and was surprised to find himself confronted by Mr Kudzuvine. He was standing behind the reception desk and appeared to have grown a ponytail. He also seemed to have developed a sizeable pair of breasts. On the other hand he was wearing the same blue dark glasses, light brown polo-neck and black blazer with chrome buttons. Even more disconcerting was the sight of two more Kudzuvines, this time without ponytails or breasts, coming towards him through a metal frame that looked just like an airport metal-detector.
‘I’ve come to see Mr Hartang,’ the Bursar told the person – he could see now that it was definitely female – behind the counter.
She checked the computer screen and handed him a plastic card. ‘If you will just follow the brothers,’ she said. The Bursar turned to find the two large men just behind him. The next moment he was emptying his pockets of any metal objects and his briefcase had disappeared through an X-ray machine. Neither of the men spoke and it was only when he was through the metal-detector and was filling his pockets again that Karl Kudzuvine appeared. He too was wearing dark glasses, brown polo-neck, white socks and moccasins. ‘I got to apologize, Mr Professor sir,’ he said as the Bursar was hustled into a tiny photographic booth and a Polaroid was taken of him, ‘but we get a lot of terrorist threats on account some of the series we’ve made like on the rainforest and wildlife and whales and baby octopuses. You know.’
The Bursar didn’t but it was clear that Karl Kudzuvine was determined to tell him. ‘You know they eat baby octopuses some places like Spain mainly. Places like that. They don’t even give them their youth and growing up and all. We done a series on baby octopuses one time …’ He paused for a moment and checked the plastic card with the microchip and the Bursar’s photograph on it. The Bursar was about to say that baby octopuses were delicious when Kudzuvine went on, ‘Had a lot of trouble. Threats and all. So now we got to check out identities anyone enters the building. You got your ID now. Like you can come in no trouble. OK?’
They went across to an elevator and Kudzuvine pressed the button for Floor I. As the lift shot up ten floors, according to the indicator above the door, the Bursar had the terrible idea that something had gone badly wrong with the thing and that he was about to die. But the elevator stopped and Kudzuvine spoke to a microphone and a camera in a corner of the roof. ‘K.K. and Professor Bursar Guest to Executive Suite Zero,’ he said. The very next moment the lift dropped – plummeted was the way the Bursar would have described it if he’d had time to think and hadn’t been so alarmed – to some other floor which didn’t register at all on the indicator. Again Kudzuvine spoke to the camera. The doors opened and the Bursar stepped out into a large office with an enormous glass-topped desk and some very small and heavily glassed windows. The room was almost entirely bare of furniture except for a number of green leather chairs and a huge sofa. The floor appeared to be made of marble, and there were no rugs. Behind the desk a small man who looked almost exactly like everyone else he had seen in the building and who wore a brown polo-neck sweater, dark blue glasses, white socks and moccasins and what appeared to be a rather ill-fitting wig, got up and came round to greet him.
‘I am so pleased you could come,’ he said in an almost reedy voice. ‘I hear from Karl here your ideas most interesting and I have so much wanted to discuss the question of funding institutions of the highest learning with you. Do come and sit down.’ He led the way to the green leather sofa and patted one end to indicate that that was where the Bursar was to sit.
‘It is very kind of you to invite me,’ the Bursar said and hoped he was about to quote the parts of the lectures he had memorized correctly. ‘It is just that I feel there has been too much stress laid upon the avoidance of influential input on the part of fund-providers. As fund raisers we are not in any position to … either morally or realistically to decide the intended educational provisos of benefactors. Research should be orientated towards the social needs of industry and …’
At the far end of the sofa Edgar Hartang nodded agreement, his eyes invisible behind the blue glasses. ‘I think what you say is so very right,’ he said. ‘My own life has, I am sorry to have to admit, been without formal education and it is perhaps for that reason I feel the need to make my little contribution to the great institutions of learning such as your famous … er … college.’
The Bursar decided he was hesitating for the name. ‘Porterhouse College,’ he said.
‘Naturally. Porterhouse College is well known for its high standards of …’ Again Hartang paused and for a moment the Bursar almost said ‘Cuisine’. He couldn’t for the life of him think of any other high standards Porterhouse might possess, except perhaps on the river and in sport. But Hartang was already ploughing on with platitudes and clichés about his hopes and intentions and the need to establish relationships, meaningful relations to the mutual benefit of all concerned and caring institutions like … like Porterhouse.
The Bursar sat mesmerized by it all. He had no idea what the man was talking about except that he appeared to be inclined to make a financial contribution. At least the Bursar hoped so. He couldn’t be sure, but a man who could be so concerned about the fate of forests and baby octopuses to the point where he had to take extreme measures to protect himself from the murderous attentions, presumably, of Amazonian lumberjacks and Spanish fishermen, had to be amazingly philanthropic. Or mad. Some of his utterances suggested the latter, and one in particular he was never able to forget or begin to understand. It had to do with ‘the need to create an ephemera of permanence’. (In fact the expression or concept or whatever it was did not simply stick in the Bursar’s bemused memory, it positively lodged there and made itself so thoroughly at home that in later life the Bursar would suddenly start from his sleep and alarm his wife at three o’clock in the morning by demanding to know how in God’s name ephemera could be made permanent when by definition they were precisely the opposite. Not that the Bursar’s wife, who had been to Girton and was a dreadful cook, could help him. And it certainly did nothing for his peace of mind to be told the statement was a paradox. ‘A paradox? A paradox? Of course it’s a bloody paradox. I know it’s a fucking paradox,’ he screamed at her. ‘I’m not stupid. What I want to know is what that appalling man was … what meaning he attached to the statement.’ ‘Perhaps he didn’t mean anything in particular,’ his wife said sensibly, but the Bursar would have none of it. ‘You didn’t meet him,’ he said. ‘And I’m telling you he meant something.’)
But at the time the Bursar merely sat looking attentively into the dark blue glasses and nodding occasionally while part of his mind wondered why a man as obviously rich as Edgar Hartang should wear such an obviously cheap wig. He was even more puzzled when the lunch trolley was wheeled in and he found himself obliged to eat five enormous courses of what was evidently the tycoon’s idea of ancienne cuisine while Hartang himself toyed with the most delicate plates of nouvelle. Even the wine, a very heavy Burgundy, was rather too rich for the Bursar and he glanced several times almost enviously at his host’s bottle of V
ichy water. But at least the clarity of Hartang’s conversation improved over the meal.
‘I guess you must be wondering why it is that I choose to dress in the same informal way as everyone else who works here at Transworld Television Productions.’ He paused and sipped his mineral water.
‘The thought had crossed my mind,’ the Bursar agreed, though he was still more preoccupied with that damned wig. It was such a very obvious one.
Edgar Hartang blinked weak eyes and smiled softly. ‘Okay, I’ll tell you,’ he said and cocked his head to one side in the process, partly dislodging the wig which tilted to the left. ‘I don’t choose to dress like them. I permit them to dress like me. I have always liked the polo. Most comfortable, and, of course, silk. And the colour has taste with the black blazer. I designed the buttons myself. They are embossed with the Transworld logo. You see a little tree?’
The Bursar peered at one of the tycoon’s buttons and saw what looked like a small bush.
‘So tasteful,’ Hartang went on. ‘And of course the polo is of silk.’
The Bursar had already heard that. ‘And the blazer is naturally of cashmere. White socks so clean and fresh. And for the feet the ethnically correct American moccasin shoes which are again so comfortable. I like it for myself and what is good for me is good for my staff.’ Again he paused and waited for the Bursar to approve.
‘What a nice touch,’ said the Bursar and immediately regretted it. Edgar Hartang’s vocabulary might be curiously eclectic and his accent uncertain, but it was clear that he was having difficulty distinguishing between ‘nice touches’ and ‘soft’ ones. He took off his glasses for a moment and this time the Bursar didn’t think his eyes were weak.
‘You think a nice touch?’ Hartang asked. ‘You think so?’
‘I meant of course it is a delightful idea. I am sure very few men in your position would have been so considerate.’
‘None of them would,’ Hartang insisted. ‘None.’
‘None,’ said the Bursar, sensing agreement was obligatory.
For a time he was left to eat in silence while the great man made some calls to Hong Kong, Buenos Aires and New York and sucked what looked like an antacid tablet. It was only when the Bursar had finished an unpleasantly sticky jam tart, which played havoc with his dentures, and was drinking his coffee that Hartang announced his intentions. ‘I got to see you again next week to discuss the funding requirements. Karl will coordinate with you and the accountants. I do not involve myself in details. Only in end outcomes. Like it has been a great pleasure meeting with you. We talk about funding requirements next week.’
And before the Bursar could say anything by way of thanks, he had disappeared through a small door in the wall disguised as a mirror. Karl Kudzuvine was waiting with the elevator. ‘Same time same place and don’t forget your ID,’ he said. ‘And the College account print-outs.’
‘Print-outs?’
‘Sure. We got to see what we’re getting. Okay?’
‘Well, actually we …’ the Bursar began, but he was already being helped into a taxi which he directed to Liverpool Street Station. The whole experience had been most peculiar and a little disturbing. All the same the Bursar could congratulate himself. He might not – he certainly didn’t – know what on earth was going on, but at least he seemed to have got some extremely rich and eccentric man, whose national, racial or linguistic origins he hadn’t begun to fathom, interested in Porterhouse, and the repeated use of ‘funding requirements’ augured well.
*
During the following week he made a number of enquiries about Transworld Television Productions and Mr Edgar Hartang and, while some of the answers were reassuring, others were less so. TTP had been a small television and publishing company which had started off making educational and religious cartoon movies mainly for the US market, but had suddenly broadened its activities with the advent of satellite TV and what must have been an enormous injection of capital though the source of the funding was unknown. The company was a private one and owned by some sort of trust which operated through Lichtenstein and possibly the Cayman Islands and Liberia. In short no one – certainly no one the Bursar could ask – no one knew who Edgar Hartang was, where he came from, or even where his home was. In London it was thought he had an apartment in the Transworld Centre, but since he invariably travelled incognito and by private jet what he did outside Britain was a mystery. What Transworld Television Productions did was also a bit of a mystery. They still made religious movies, though for so many different religions and denominations that no one had any idea what they themselves really stood for. To make things even more obscure they marketed whatever they did produce through so many subsidiaries in so many countries that it was impossible to know.
‘But what about the whales and the baby octopuses?’ the Bursar asked one man he knew who had connections with Nature Programmes at the BBC.
‘Whales and what?’
‘Baby octopuses,’ said the Bursar, who had never got over Karl Kudzuvine’s explanation of the extraordinary security measures at Transworld Centre. ‘They made a series that had some pretty dramatic effect on the Spanish fishing industry. They received death threats and things.’
‘Christ. I never heard about it, but if you say so. Try World Wildlife. They’d know. I don’t.’
But the Bursar hadn’t bothered. From his point of view the only thing to matter was that Transworld Television Productions obviously had funds to spare. A company that could make religious movies for the Vatican, for several extreme Protestant Churches in the Bible Belt in America, for Hindus, for Buddhists and various sects all over the world as well as documentaries on rainforests, whales and baby octopuses, had to be incredibly rich. The Bursar began to think he had found a private gold-mine. All the same he remained puzzled and his bewilderment increased when he went down to London the following Wednesday.
This time he did not meet Mr Hartang. ‘He’s busy with Rio right now and then Bangkok want him so he’s non-available,’ Kudzuvine told him when he’d been through the metal-detector and the Porterhouse accounts ledgers had been screened in the X-ray machine. ‘You got me and Skundler. Skundler does the assessmentation.’
‘Assessmentation?’ said the Bursar.
‘Like money. Okay?’
They went up in the elevator to Floor 9 and then down to 6. ‘Got to be careful. Drill,’ said Kudzuvine by way of explanation.
‘Are you still having trouble about the baby octopuses?’ asked the Bursar. For a moment Kudzuvine looked a little uncertain.
‘Baby octopuses? Oh, sure, those baby octopuses. Are we ever. Those fucking wop fishermen in Italy. They’ve given us more trouble than you can imagine. Man, death threats.’
‘Italians? Italian fishermen too?’ asked the Bursar.
‘Who else?’ said Kudzuvine, but the Bursar hadn’t time to answer. They had reached Floor 6. Kudzuvine carried the ledgers into Skundler’s office and introduced the Bursar as Professor Bursar.
‘Ross Skundler,’ said the man, who looked exactly like Edgar Hartang the week before, but without the hairpiece. The desk was glass-topped too but far smaller than Hartang’s, and while the chairs were the same green colour the leather was clearly artificial. There was no sofa. But if the Bursar was taking in the details of Ross Skundler’s office with its computers and telephones, the Assessmentation Officer was finding it difficult to take in the Porterhouse ledgers. They were extremely large and quarterbound in dark red leather. ‘Jesus,’ he muttered and looked from them to Kudzuvine. ‘What’s with those? Where’d you find them? Ararat?’
‘Arafat?’ said Kudzuvine. ‘What’s the PLO got to do with it? Says on them Porterhouse. You only read figures or something?’
‘Ark,’ said Skundler, who evidently didn’t like Kudzuvine’s manner any more than he liked the look of the ledgers. ‘The Ark on Mount fucking Ararat. Animals two by two, okay? You can’t count or something? Makes like four.’
The Bursar was about to
intervene with some light remark about baby octopuses and Noah, but remembered in time that octopuses – or was it octopi? – could swim. He was feeling decidedly uneasy in the company of these two men who clearly hated one another.
‘I can count,’ said Kudzuvine, ‘but Professor Bursar don’t have no print-out. Isn’t that right, Prof?’
The Bursar nodded. ‘I’m afraid we aren’t into computers,’ he said, trying to match their way of talking.
‘You can say that again,’ said Skundler, still looking very warily at the huge ledgers. ‘These have got to be fiscal archaeology. Like dealing with the Fuggers.’
But even the Bursar was beginning to get annoyed. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said coldly.
Mr Skundler looked up at him very suspiciously. ‘What for?’ he asked.
This time it was Kudzuvine’s turn to intervene and pacify things. ‘Just because the Prof isn’t computer-literate don’t mean you got to call him that. Old guy can’t help it.’
‘Call him what, for fucksake?’
‘You know. You’ve just used it again.’
‘Used it again? You mean …’ The light dawned. ‘I didn’t call him a fucker. What’s he done I got to call him that? Fugger, dummy, F-U-G-G-E-R-S. Kraut bankers way back in the Dark Ages. Like … like the Crusades or something. Used quills. Jesus, what a way to run a business. Got to catch a fucking goose every time you make an entry. You use a –’ But something about the look on the Bursar’s face stopped the question. ‘Okay, let’s go,’ he said instead and opened the first ledger. ‘Just hope you’re into double entry.’
The Bursar hit back. ‘As a matter of fact we are,’ he said. ‘And what’s more we don’t use quills.’
Mr Skundler pushed his blue glasses up onto his forehead and ran his eyes down the pages for several minutes, while the Bursar sat and glared at him, and Kudzuvine peered over his shoulder at the figures. It was clear they were having difficulty believing what they were seeing. Finally Skundler looked up.