The High Place

by Geoffrey Household

  ‘Yet I never knew a man with more respect for the human body,’ she laughed. ‘You ought to like that.’

  ‘Amberson has an instinctive ideology,’ said Osterling. ‘He smells in Urgin the Marxist deviationist. And, of course, he’s perfectly right! All scientists have a strong tendency to Marxism, for they know perfectly well that in the present stage of human development every discovery they make is a potential menace. Therefore they cling to a childish belief in planning. Daddy Planning will be able to mend it. But don’t let it bother you, Amberson. Good God, give ’em the toys and money they want, and they’re as easy as soldiers for the intelligent man to manage!’

  Urgin opened the door a little sulkily, with an open book in his hand to emphasize the fact that he was enjoying his privacy. He brightened up when he distinguished Elisa among his three nocturnal visitors, and received us with a warmth that was entirely sincere, though you heard him, as it were, fumbling for the switch which turned it on.

  ‘You know I never disturb you except on duty,’ she said, ‘or unless I’m invited.’

  ‘Invited?’ he protested. ‘I don’t have to invite you. You’re always welcome.’

  ‘Then sometimes you ought to tell me so.’

  That was the only time I ever heard Elisa deliberately exploit her sex. Flirtation was a manner that I could have sworn did not enter into her values or even her calculations. And yet how right she was! She ensured the peaceful devotion of whatever simple and honest soul Urgin kept for use outside his laboratory.

  He was, I believe, a Lithuanian, but he had taken his degree at London University and spoke perfect English. He had no longer a country or a family, and assumed a pose of bitter internationalism. I doubt if he considered, when alone in his flat, that small countries were as futile as he pretended.

  ‘Did it ever occur to you, up here,’ she asked with affectionate mockery, ‘how we import your cigars?’

  ‘I’m an observer of nature, Elisa,’ he retorted, ‘and it’s hardly likely I shouldn’t have noticed that the boxes have no custom stamps.’

  ‘Well, there’s your smuggler!’

  Urgin looked at me with a cheerfulness he had never shown before. He was a stocky little man, with a round bald head and round eyes. They had always seemed to me round with indigna­tion before, but now they were round with interest.

  ‘Then I owe him an apology,’ he said. ‘The last time we met I accused him of having a completely untrained mind. I see I was using the wrong standards of comparison. To be a man of action and open to ideas—how admirable!’

  ‘But surely not rare?’ I asked, smugly accepting the descrip­tion of myself as man of action, which I know only too well that I am not.

  ‘Urgin will leave the bio-out of his chemist.’ Osterling remarked with a cruelty that I did not for the moment appreci­ate. ‘That’s why he tends to socialism.’

  ‘I don’t tend to socialism,’ Urgin replied indignantly. ‘I am a socialist. If I wasn’t, what would I be doing in your damned colony? Though, if you ask me, you’re all anarchists.’

  He switched on the laboratory lights, and ushered us through the door with a sharp little bow as if from an expert to a govern­ment inspector. The place was aromatic as a tobacconist’s shop until the nose picked up the faint and alien scents of inorganic matter.

  Cabinets, apparatus and a huge refrigerator overcrowded the room, which, though a good forty feet long, was evidently too narrow for Urgin’s enthusiasm. It preserved, however, the desolate purposefulness of a laboratory except in one corner which Urgin seemed to have prepared for some coarse hospi­tality of his own. There a grotesque imitation of a small public bar had been constructed, with bottles, packets of chocolate and cigarettes, and even shabby paper streamers on the shelves; and on the counter a jug of water, spilt pools of various liquids, bitters and plates of sausage. The lighting was cleverly arranged, and it was only at a second glance that I saw the whole stage set was enclosed in Perspex.

  ‘An experiment in absorption,’ said Urgin, ‘under natural con­ditions.’

  ‘Good God!’ Osterling exclaimed, showing a certain distaste for the deliberate filthiness of the display.

  Elisa was amused. Her robust and resolute mind was blind to the vulgar or to the macabre—or indeed to any detail, how­ever repugnant, so long as it was purified by an intent she could appreciate.

  ‘Which is the villain of the piece?’ she asked.

  ‘The calendar,’ Urgin answered, pointing to a fly-spotted and indecent champagne advertisement which hung behind the bar. ‘It is impregnated with a solution of garlic, and other things.’

  He turned to me.

  ‘My life’s work, Mr. Amberson, has been an endeavour to formulate general laws from the pointer readings of taste and smell, accepting the two senses as more exact instruments than any my laboratory can contain. You will object at once that the pointer readings are there, but unmeasurable. It is, however, possible to produce a parallel scale, and partly by chemical analysis, partly by electronics, to detect and record the passage of those molecules which our senses insist is actually taking place. I would not claim infallibility for the sense—it is not difficult to deceive them when the laws that govern their reactions are known—but I do claim for them a greater accuracy than most of my colleagues would be prepared to admit.’

  I said that I thought his chief difficulty must be to establish an average standard of taste and smell.

  ‘A very intelligent objection,’ he complimented me, ‘which at once reveals my research to be empirical, as indeed it is. But I have expressed myself badly. My own taste must of course be the primary detector. If I find a better, and his superiority is definable, then the calibration, as it were, of my parallel scale can be vastly improved.

  ‘For example, if I had the privilege of entertaining a profes­sional wine-taster for a month, I should, I think, be able to express in mathematical formulæ those very subtle differences which only his palate can detect. I start, I must repeat, from the assumption that the palate is right, and that the distinctions do exist and are measurable.’

  Under the casement windows which ran the length of the laboratory were low white cabinets, their drawers marked with names of tobaccos and estates. Laid out for some experiment were labelled jars of ash, and glass trays containing hashish, a light cigarette tobacco ready-cut, smoke-cured Latakia and a variety of cigarette papers. Nearby was an apparatus resembling a small still, or a very large orchestral tuba, mounted on a rubber-tyred trolley; at a lower level were racks supporting an electric pump, gas cylinders, glass retorts and some inflatable rubber bags, all connected together by a labyrinth of rubber and nickel-plated tubing.

  Urgin, with a smile that expressed his gratitude for my un­suspected illegalities, took a Coriolano cigar and fitted it into the glass projection that resembled the tuba’s mouthpiece. When he switched on the motor and lit the cigar, the smoke was drawn in through the mouthpiece and expelled through an orifice to the side of it.

  ‘This,’ he said, bringing into action one of the rubber bags which filled and pulsated, ‘represents the suction of the mouth. And here are the lungs—doing their best, as you see, under difficulties.’

  An auxiliary pump began to work irregularly, inhaling and exhaling air. Urgin then permitted the lungs to inhale smoke, and the rhythm of smoking slowed as the auxiliary took over the main suction.

  ‘The pump control is ingenious,’ he said, ‘and essential if one is to study the residues retained in the lungs. Otherwise this is a quite ordinary commercial apparatus adjusted by myself for the analysis of ash—smoke, that is—before and after it enters the body. I can also vary the quantity and quality of the ash by reproducing any method or rhythm of smoking.’

  He removed the cigar, and fitted over the mouthpiece a mask, like a caricature of some revolting Teutonic capitalist.

  ‘That is funny, is it not?’ he declared with satisfaction, replac­ing the cigar. ‘But, alas, he has no palate, as i
ndeed his appear­ance might lead us to believe.

  ‘Now, Mr. Amberson, I suggested to you that it was not difficult to deceive the senses when the laws that govern their reaction are known. I admit that as yet the exquisite measuring instrument of the wine-taster would defeat me. But, without boasting, I could deceive the good palate of the ordinary con­noisseur. My research has little practical value, though occasionally Osterling is kind enough to ask his moneyed friends to test——’

  ‘We’ll have a test,’ Osterling interrupted, sharply silencing the flow that looked likely to go on and on. ‘Have you any of the experimental brandy left?’

  Urgin and he went to the other end of the laboratory and after hunting around in a cupboard returned with one of those odd-shaped and unlabelled bottles which somehow promise that the contents are superb.

  We returned to the flat and made ourselves comfortable. When Urgin, with some difficulty, drew the cork, I was relieved to see that it had not been tampered with, and that the other three sipped their brandy without hesitation.

  ‘A cigarette?’ asked Osterling, offering me his case.

  I thanked him, and lit it.

  I remember yawning a couple of times, and then waking up as Osterling addressed some question to me. I apologized for dozing, and said it must have been the effect of the brandy after a day in the open air.

  ‘But I suggested a practical test,’ Osterling reminded me.

  I suddenly realized that there was a pillow under my head which had not been there before, and that Urgin had left the room. I might have been angry if Elisa had not been smiling at me with that confident air of proprietorship which in her took the place of tenderness.

  ‘Your cigarette?’ I asked.

  ‘I only wished to prove to you the perfection of Urgin’s work,’ Osterling said, ‘for you may have to trust to it. You have had half an hour’s healthy sleep. Do you agree that any normal man would ascribe it, as you did, to brandy and open air?’

  I answered shortly that of course I did.

  ‘As for the rest,’ he went on, ‘I wish you were a chemist. But as you’re not, you’ll have to take my word for it that neither in the ash nor the butt of that cigarette would any trace of any drug be found.’

  What he gave me I do not know. I could taste nothing wrong with the cigarette, and there were no after effects at all. The absence of Urgin made me wonder whether the drug had been intended to make me talk. I decided it had not—for some at least of any confessions likely to emerge from my sub-conscious would have concerned Elisa, and she would hardly permit any babbling before a witness.

  ‘While you were asleep, Eric,’ she said, ‘we were discussing Oliver Poss. I still don’t think I was wrong to use him, but we’re uneasy. Will you see him again and find out how much he really knows?’

  I replied that of course I would, but that I suspected Poss might be more than a match for me.

  ‘If you are sure you don’t mind,’ Osterling said with decep­tive diffidence, ‘we rather wanted you to try one of Urgin’s con­juring tricks on him.’

  My face must have shown that I found the suggestion dis­tasteful, for Elisa gave me a half-smile which was dear and familiar; it was the expression with which, a score of times, she had received some scruple or opinion of mine that was founded on deep but illogical prejudice.

  ‘He drinks of course?’ Osterling asked.

  ‘Like a fish—if it’s good.’

  ‘Then let him repay your hospitality, and as well as he likes. His drinks, you understand, ordered by him—because if he has any suspicion at all it will fall on the drinks. But he won’t have any. He’ll merely assume, afterwards, that he reached a stage of maudlin drunkenness, and he’ll put it down, Amberson, to bad mixing or to your undoubted human sympathy.’

  ‘It will be a cigarette?’ I asked.

  ‘For such an evening as I envisage? Good God, let it be a Coriolano at least! By the way, you must tell him to leave his new cigar alone.’

  I turned to Elisa, and asked her what else she wanted me to do.

  ‘To listen, dear Eric—at which you are so good. But for the silences, these are the questions: does he know any connection between the supposed syndicate and political action? Does he know Czoldy? Has he any suspicion that we are not mere traders?’

  ‘I can answer some of that now,’ I said. ‘He knows there’s little money in cigars, and thinks you may be using them as a currency, like cigarettes in Germany—and, of course, that you’re working up connections for bigger deals in something else.’

  She said that Poss was quite right, and that I must test to the bottom how much he had guessed. I warned her that Poss would be an awkward customer if he were to suspect I had drugged him.

  ‘Amberson your mind is inclined to melodrama,’ Osterling laughed. ‘Let me explain. Your own body, like mine, has de­veloped a tolerance for large doses of alcohol. Now, you must have noticed that the tolerance is less, if with the alcohol you consume strong tobacco. In that case you lay down your cigar, admit to yourself that you have had enough to drink, and—if I am not wrong—immediately have another drink to clear your head.

  ‘That, from the subjective point of view of the smoker, is exactly the result which Urgin’s Coriolano will produce. Poss will be convinced that he is disgustingly drunk. In the morning he will be properly ashamed that after a lifetime of experience he couldn’t control himself. But why on earth should he suspect that Urgin has synthesized a volatile thiopentone from barbituric acid, and succeeded—with an impish delight that I have en­couraged—in adding it to a cigar?

  ‘So much for what Urgin calls the deception of the higher centres. The effect of the drug will be approximately that of ordinary commercial Pentathol, of which you’ve probably heard. I’m sorry for you—but Poss is going to pour out all his recent resentments and inhibitions.

  ‘He’s a connoisseur of cigars,’ I objected. ‘What about taste?’

  ‘Amberson, were you so sleepy that you missed the point of Urgin’s lecture? Taste is all that interests him. To him it would be a far greater triumph if he could use, say, onion peel instead of barbiturics. Poss will blow out a mouthful of smoke, and say the Coriolano is a beauty. And if he’s really a connoisseur, I’ll bet he asks you how you keep your cigars in this climate. In fact, that gives you your excuse for not smoking his. Tell him that by no means everybody would agree that his new cigar is better, and offer him a Coriolano in perfect condition to prove it.’

  Elisa walked back with me to the guest bungalow, and said good-night. At Kasr-el-Sittat we were never lovers. That was not, I think, due to her pride, but rather to the intense and con­tinual preoccupation of her thoughts.

  In the morning she was restless and strained, and I could guess she had not slept. Her flair for making use of such eccen­tric creatures as Poss and myself—and subtly limiting the knowledge they possessed—must have worried her less intuitive colleagues and led to exhausting argument. She presented me with a box of ten Coriolanos, apparently unopened, and warned me not to smoke the two outside cigars myself.

  I told her that my greatest chance of success was to tackle Oliver Poss in Istanbul, where he could reasonably be expected to entertain me and to do it well. We didn’t want him in Syria again. To this she agreed, and said that if I would wireless the date of my return through Gisorius, she would come down to El Mina to get the news.

  ‘And when I’m at home, is there no quicker way of reaching you than a letter?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘Drive up and see me. Does it seem so very far?’

  She put her hands on my shoulders, and for a moment her mouth was ungoverned by the strange severity of her pose.

  ‘And soon, my dear, soon,’ she murmured. ‘You will be with all of us at Kasr-el-Sittat.’

  Perhaps, when tired, she permitted herself the longing that we should not be parted; but in the soon for which she cried, the soon which that very night may have been decided, there surely can have been l
ittle room for the image of a lover. I pray and believe that she was not a woman to set her heart on writ­ing a sonnet into the apocalypse.

  2

  I exchanged telegrams with Oliver Poss, and arrived in Istan­bul three days before he was due. I had a little business of my own to transact with shipping agents, and I wanted a breath of freedom in a city that I loved.

  I had not been out of Syria and the Lebanon for a year. Istanbul lifted my spirits to that conscious joy of living, that exhilarating percipience, which always welcomes me on arrival in a metropolis after any long spell, however contented, of pro­vincial life. Why Istanbul should keep its air of the capital of the Middle East when it is not even the capital of a country, I do not know. Why does the City of London still give the im­pression of being the financial centre of the world? A city, I suppose, can no more get rid of its past than a man of his educa­tion. Once the eyes of its traders have been opened to the divers­ity of civilization, open they remain; and the thoughts of the humblest porter, when he thinks at all, have some share in the collective wisdom of his ancestors.

  In Tripoli I read little of current affairs. Neither my own politicians nor any others seemed to have sincerity or human understanding, or even that tradition of statesmanship which prevents a man without either from doing any harm. So to avoid melancholy I cultivated ignorance. In Istanbul, however, such a pose was impossible. There was too lively a discussion going on in what I had chosen to think a dead and disillusioned world; and it was Lois Tassen, the American journalist at our table on my first visit to Kasr-el-Sittat, who had started it.

  Her opinions evidently commanded respect or, at any rate, notoriety; for when I bought an armful of recent American newspapers and magazines I watched the editors and columnists all hunting along the line that she had laid. I found her original article. It was a sinewy and magnificent attack on state tyranny in Western Europe, with special reference to Great Britain. Every difference between ourselves and America, and every like­ness of our state to Russia were cleverly documented and emphasized.