The Red Queen

by Margaret Drabble

  Bob has been to Seoul several times, and he is far more interested in conference gossip and catching up on stories of academic life in the United Kingdom and the United States than in Babs’s naive impressions of a foreign culture. He can do without the travelogue news, for South-East Asia is not nearly as foreign to him as it is to her. He is no stranger to the many varieties of bibimpap. After this conference, he is on his way to another conference in Japan, but he does not want to talk about that either. He wants to tell her about the implications for the nature–nurture debate of the latest findings on a fancy new way of rewiring the brains of laboratory rats, and he wants to share with her the view that Dr Radda’s paper on the hereditability of certain forms of resistance to bowel cancer had been substantially lifted from a paper delivered some weeks ago at Stanford and subsequently pasted all over the Internet. It had all been about high salt and low fat, and it had racist implications anyway, says Bob.

  Babs picks up a crispy, brown chicken wing and starts to tear at it with unladylike ferocity.

  ‘What doesn’t?’ she comments, as she swallows the tender white fibres of fowl and gobbles a few fries.

  ‘God,’ she says, still chewing vigorously, and in excuse for her poor manners, ‘those noodles were the end. Cold and slimy and hot at the same time. I like hot food, but cold-hot food is horrid. Could anyone really like them? Mind you, it was a very cheap, touristy kind of eatery. It wasn’t very authentic.’

  ‘Do your students plagiarize?’ asks Bob, as he attacks his bowl of high-salt, high-fat fries with similar gusto.

  ‘I haven’t had any students for a year. But yes, when I have, they do. And so do I. I plagiarize, and I appropriate. So do we all. Don’t we? Nothing comes from nowhere, does it? And with the Internet, you can’t always tell, can you? I just copy out these chunks of argument, and then I can’t remember who thought of it first. What does it matter who thought of it first, as long as it gets you somewhere interesting?’

  ‘That’s a very dangerous attitude, Dr Halliwell.’

  ‘Dangerous for me, perhaps, but I don’t suppose it hurts anyone else very much.’

  Both fall silent, as they gnaw at the small bird bones. Both are thinking of Peter Halliwell’s father, a famous anthropologist who had been accused of falsifying the controversial results of years of remote fieldwork in Africa. The principal accusation had not been substantiated, but he had committed other smaller but more easily verifiable professional offences, and his career and reputation had suffered disastrously. Each knows that the other is thinking of this. It does not need a fancy theory of telepathy or neural interaction to explain it, and Babs is not at all surprised when Bob’s next remark is ‘And how’s your ex, Babs?’

  Peter is not Babs’s ex, for she is still legally married to him, and still wears her wedding ring, but she is used to this terminology and does not challenge it. She considers it a fair question, for Bob Bryant had known Peter Halliwell in the old days, before Peter lost his mobility and most of his mind. Bob had met Peter long before he met Babs. Bob had met Peter before Babs had met Peter. Bob and Peter had been tennis partners when they had both been postgraduates at Cambridge. This seems unlikely now, for Bob Bryant looks too unfit to play tennis, and Peter Halliwell can hardly walk and rarely leaves his room in the Retreat. But twenty years earlier, they had been contenders, and had together won the Ashley College Cup.

  ‘Oh, God,’ says Babs, in initial response.

  ‘Don’t say if you don’t want,’ says Bob, who is kind, though curious.

  ‘I don’t mind saying,’ says Babs.

  And she says. Bob Bryant listens, courteously. It is a sad story. Babs has had a tough time, a raw deal. That’s what all her friends say, and it is true. But Peter Halliwell has had a tougher time, and a worse deal.

  ‘What about medication?’ asks Bob, when she has finished her update on Peter’s condition.

  She shrugs.

  ‘When it might have done him some good, he wouldn’t take anything. Maybe he was right not to want to, I don’t know. Now it’s too late, they fill him up with God knows what.’

  ‘Is it really too late?’

  ‘Far too late,’ says Babs. ‘You should see him. You wouldn’t ask.’

  ‘Dying by Lot, eh?’ says Bob, and waves at the waiter in hope of another pint of beer.

  ‘I suppose voluntary and involuntary euthanasia will have been adopted worldwide in a hundred years,’ says Babs, in indirect response to this. ‘But we’ll call them something different. I mean, it’s inevitable, isn’t it? Do you know what it costs, to keep Peter at the Retreat? It doesn’t matter to me – financially, it’s covered – but it is a lot of money, to keep somebody in such misery. Somebody who would much rather have been dead. No, I won’t, thanks, but I wouldn’t mind a shot of something. Is there any particular kind of Korean hard liquor I should try?’

  She smiles ingratiatingly at the waiter, wondering if she will ever get rid of this overpowering sense of her own physical superfluity. She had hoped that in Bob’s large-bellied, bare-armed company, she might begin to feel a little more refined, but she still feels too big. Alice in Wonderland must have felt like this, when she went down the rabbit hole. Is there a shrinking potion on sale anywhere, she wonders?

  The neat, slim, willowy, androgynous waiter recommends that she try some soju. OK, she says, she is game for that.

  ‘You can get this aphrodisiac,’ says Bob, ‘with a dead snake floating in it.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ says Babs.

  ‘Kim Jong Il, the Dear Leader of North Korea,’ says Bob, ‘is famed to be one of the world’s greatest consumers of Hennessy VSOP Cognac.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ says Babs, sniffing cautiously at her glass of soju.

  ‘Are you going on the trip to the Expo?’ asks Bob, as he watches her take her first small sip of the tapioca-based firewater.

  ‘Of course,’ says Babs. ‘I never miss an outing. I love an outing.’

  Babs Halliwell had predicted that Jan van Jost would not join the coach tour. She was wrong. She has made various false assumptions about Professor Jan van Jost, and this was one of them.

  Professor Jan van Jost does join the coach tour. At ten o’clock the following morning, he ceases to sulk in his suite, emerges from his superior isolation, and joins the party. There he is, in the foyer, waiting to become a tourist, waiting to be handed his Tour Welcome Package and his Guide to the Expo and yet another map of Seoul. He is looking pale and affable: the halo of fame still surrounds him, but it glows a little less brightly, and his skin has a taut and tired transparency, a delicate pallor beneath the tan. It occurs to Babs, who is mollified by his very attendance, that he may be somewhat exhausted. He is in his late sixties, and he has been touring China. China is enough to tire a younger man.

  She is further mollified when he follows her on to the coach, and elects to sit beside her. It is true that in her role as the only woman delegate who has signed up for the outing she has been directed to a good window seat at the front, with a good view: no doubt he takes his place next to her in his role of alpha male. Nevertheless, whatever the reasons, here he is, nodding pleasantly at her, and dutifully opening his map upon his knee. ‘Good morning,’ he says, agreeably. ‘And how are you this morning? Have you been enjoying Seoul? Is it your first visit here?’

  She is disarmed by the condescension of this fairly elementary politeness, and, as they sit there waiting for something to happen, she tells him a little of her impressions of the city. He listens, with deference. ‘You have seen far more than I,’ he offers, when she mentions the queen’s palace and the stone tomb that houses the king’s placenta. ‘Do you have a special interest in Korea?’

  She demurs. She does not embark on the story of the Crown Princess and Dr Oo because it is too long and too complicated: no, she says, she is here simply because she was invited. Does he know the country? And had he enjoyed his visit to China?

  The coach is still stationary, in front o
f the hotel. What are they waiting for now? Babs can see her putto, Mong Joon, on the hotel steps, keeping his eyes on her until she is safely on her official way to her official destination.

  Jan van Jost says that China had been difficult and that, no, he does not know the Korean peninsula, and that is why he is here.

  ‘I used to think,’ he says, with an apologetic smile, ‘that I would visit every country in the world before I died. Now I know that is not true. But at least I can add South Korea to the list. To tell you truly, I would like to visit North Korea also, but I gather this is not yet possible. I saw the President in the Blue House yesterday, and he tells me in five years I can surely go to North Korea. But that is too far away.’

  She wonders why he wants to go to North Korea. He is a man of the left, but not that far left, surely. She is impressed that he has met the President in the Blue House, which she correctly assumes must be the South Korean version of the White House. This is fame. She is sitting next to fame.

  ‘In the hotel foyer,’ she says, as he seems to begin to withdraw from her into an inward and melancholy mode of reflection, ‘there are leaflets about trips to the Demilitarized Zone. I was a bit surprised. You can visit the Infiltration Tunnel and the Anti-Communism Hall.’

  ‘Really?’ He seems to perk up at this bizarre information. ‘How extraordinary!’

  She is flattered by his interest and digs around in her shoulder bag. Yes, here is the leaflet. Visit the DMZ, the most heavily fortified border on the planet! See the tanks and propaganda! See the Freedom Bridge and the flora and fauna that thrive in this vast deserted region in the absence of all humankind! Peace and tension coexist upon the border! A nature reserve created by conflict! Through a telescope you can watch the North Koreans go about their daily life!

  Jan van Jost is fascinated by this brochure – he is a sociologist, is he not? – and he is pleased when she says he can keep it. There are plenty more, she assures him, on the concierge’s desk. She is pleased when he tucks it away carefully in his Armani breast pocket. And the sociologist in him is clearly also taken by the fantastic apparel of the couple of tour guides who now board the bus. These young women are improbably dressed in shiny gold-and-turquoise uniforms, and their oddly cut and strangely draped trouser-skirts are far, far too short. Their brown legs are long and look painfully naked, and they wear peculiar and playful little hats upon their heads. Babs Halliwell is embarrassed for them, and she can see that they are embarrassed for themselves.

  Jan van Jost is the soul of courtesy. He speaks gently to these overexposed young women, as they wait by his elbow at the front of the coach for the driver to start the engine. What is this colourful costume? he wishes to know. It is historical costume of Koryo period, says one of the girls. No, no, mutters the other, it is Unified Silla period. Koryo, says the first. Silla, says the second. Koryo, says the first. Not very authentic costume anyway, says the second girl, in conciliation. They both smile, nervously. They are college girls, not courtesans, although they appear to be dressed as courtesans. They seem overawed by van Jost, yet at the same time on the verge of insubordinate laughter. Do they know who he is? Have they read his books? Or does his unmediated aura shine undimmed across all boundaries and all frontiers? He does his best to put them at their ease. They look very charming, whatever their costume is meant to represent, he tells them, gallantly. They blush.

  The coach careers round Seoul, and over a bridge towards the Expo. Those seated further back cannot see much because of the darkly tinted windows, but Babs and Jan get a good view of traffic jams, skyscrapers, sculptures, bronze statues, street traders, medieval gates and medieval walls. The girls give a lively commentary through a megaphone on aspects of Seoul ancient and modern, on Korea’s success in the World Cup, on the Koreans’ passionate love for their football team’s coach, the Dutch hero Guus Hiddink who had led their team to such an unexpected victory. We love all Dutch people now, they needlessly assure van Jost, who accepts the compliment gracefully.

  Babs Halliwell is not quite sure why they are on the way to visit the Expo, and she is not much clearer when they arrive there and clamber out of their coach. The exhibition, or exposition, appears to be a cross between a theme park and a trade fair. The international and multicultural gaggle of sociologists, evolutionary biologists, evolutionary psychologists, social psychologists, behavioural economists and clinical experts straggles bewildered round its stands and its marquees. They are shown the most modern electronic technology juxtaposed with faithful reconstructions of old tea-shops. They are introduced to displays of traditional weaving and knot making and bamboo pyrography. They watch a craftsman engaged in dancheong ornamental painting, using vivid shades of blue, crimson, yellow, white and black. They follow obediently as Miss Silla and Miss Koryo usher them smartly round a big tent displaying upon illustrated panels the long history of Confucianism. The conflicting answers of these two ladies to the questions of their flock spread further confusion. Babs, a compulsive tourist, is fascinated by everything, including the amicable disputes of the guides. She wonders if they know anything about the Crown Princess, and is wondering whether to raise her from the dead when she finds that she is being herded into a darkened auditorium. Anxious not to get lost, she sticks close to her group, and finds herself sitting, once again, next to van Jost.

  Side by side, in the darkness, they obediently watch the screen, as it fills with images of temples and parks and palaces and lakes and mountains. It is a three-D, virtual-reality travelogue of exceptional virtuosity. Professor van Jost and Dr Halliwell, side by side in their dark green velvety upholstered armchairs, travel together weightlessly through time and space: they ascend pine-forested peaks, plunge through precipitous waterfalls, abseil up torrents of frozen granite, and swim underwater amongst the roots and beneath the leaves of lotus and lily. They march along ramparts and spirit roads, and creep into underground chambers. Bodiless, they pass through paper screens into inner courtyards and secret lacquered rooms. Armies of bowmen take harmless aim for them, temple bells ring for them, red-bridled high-stepping horses prance for them, painted constellations glimmer in a dark blue vault for them. It is kitsch and yet it is enchanting. Towards the end of the display, in a spectacular grand finale, a host of large multicoloured butterflies flies out from the screen towards them. One of them settles on the shoulder of Dr Babs Halliwell, and Jan van Jost, astonished, reaches out his hand to touch it. His hand passes through it, for it is not there, it is a hologram hallucination, and his hand comes to rest on the real fleshly viscose-clad shoulder of Babs Halliwell. The butterfly departs, but his hand rests there for a moment on the thin fabric and the firm flesh, and she looks at him, and he looks at her, and there, in the darkened cinema, their eyes meet, and they both smile shyly, like lovers in the dark, joint captives of illusion. His eyes seem to hers to be full of film-star tears.

  The lights go up, to an appreciative murmuring from the audience and a little naively enthusiastic applause. It had been a wonderful show! Miss Silla and Miss Koryo, now walking hand in hand, smile proudly as they lead their docile scholars back towards their waiting coach. Professor Jan van Jost and Dr Barbara Halliwell walk side by side, not hand in hand, but something has passed between them, and they take their seats for the homeward journey side by side as though they were lovers, as though they were man and wife.

  As the coach crosses the broad Han River, from south to north, from new Seoul to old Seoul, Babs Halliwell says to Jan van Jost, ‘I came to this conference because I wanted to hear you speak. I wanted to see you, in the flesh.’

  This was not true, and it is not true, but it has a truth somewhere in it.

  Jan van Jost smiles ruefully, and looks down modestly. Then he looks at her again, eye to eye.

  ‘You come too late,’ he says, ‘for I have nothing to say.’

  She takes this in.

  ‘Then I come to hear you say nothing,’ she says. ‘Nothing will be enough.’

  He is about
to speak once more, when Miss Koryo leans over, and taps him anxiously on the shoulder with her megaphone. She and Miss Silla have been whispering feverishly together, and now Miss Koryo says, ‘Please, Professor van Jost, we have decided the costume is not Silla or Koryo. It has features from Unified Silla, but it is a fantasy costume. But we want to say, women in the Silla kingdom had very high social status.’

  ‘The Silla kingdom was 57 BC to AD 935,’ says Miss Silla helpfully, discreetly consulting a clipboard on her knee. ‘Koryo period not so good for women, and the Yi dynasty, worse still. But Silla, this was a good time for women in this land.’

  ‘And now is another good time for you,’ says van Jost, generously and genially.

  ‘Please, Professor,’ says Miss Koryo, emboldened, ‘please sign my programme!’

  ‘And mine, please, if not too much trouble!’ says Miss Silla.

  Graciously, he signs. Heavily, he sighs. He is the Prince of Mournful Thoughts, the Prince of the Leaden Casket. Babs Halliwell is proud to sit by his side. She does not ask for his signature, although she almost wishes that she could bring herself to do so. For he is very, very famous.

  She wonders if he will come to listen to her paper on ‘Dying by Lot’ at four-thirty that afternoon. She does not think he will. And he does not. Or if he does, she cannot see him. She looks for him, as she takes her place on the platform and adjusts the microphone and pours herself a glass of water, but she does not think that he is there. She can see various supportive and admonitory presences: both Peter Halliwell’s extennis partner, Bob Bryant, and her putto minder are conspicuous in the second row, as well as other delegates with whom she has conversed during the conference. She peers beyond them, into the middle distance. The lighting in the main body of the hall is dim: he may be there, perhaps, hidden away at the back? She does not know if she wants him to be there, or not. She has fallen under the spell of Jan van Jost. She has fallen pointlessly and passingly in love with him. She wishes to charm him, as he has charmed her. But then, she wishes to charm any audience. She wishes every member of her audience to fall in love with her. She is vain, and she enjoys displaying herself to the admiration of strangers.