The Teleportation Accident

by Ned Beauman

  ‘You want to fuck me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You want to fuck me,’ Loeser repeated. ‘You don’t want to admit it to yourself, but I can prove it. You’re still running your own experiments on the Teleportation Device, aren’t you? Nocturnal experiments that Bailey doesn’t know about? Well, I know what you’ve been putting in the chamber. Your little romantic tributes. Stockings and brassieres and lipsticks and handkerchiefs and so on.’ Adele choked on smoke and Loeser knew he was right. ‘You told me you can’t control where the objects go, because you can’t control your heart, and the teleportation device runs on love. But it doesn’t run on love. It runs on desire. And, unconsciously, you want to fuck me, so you’ve been sending everything straight here. You might think you’re in love with Bailey — chaste and unrequited — but that’s classic Freudian displacement. My parents were psychiatrists, remember? I know about this stuff. “Love is the foolish overestimation of the minimal difference between one sexual object and another.” You told me that once. There’s more than a minimal difference between Bailey and me, but we’re the same in some ways. Each of us is an isolated genius who wants to build a teleportation device. You’ve just got confused between us. He’s your metonym for me. At first I wasn’t even sure I believed that Bailey’s Teleportation Device worked. But now I know I was right to follow you all the way to America!’

  ‘That is irredeemable nonsense,’ said Adele.

  ‘Then how do you explain all these intimacies of yours I still have in my house? How else could I possibly know what you put in the chamber?’

  ‘You’ve just made a good guess. Perhaps you’ve been taking some sort of evening class in feminine psychology.’

  She was more correct than she knew, thought Loeser, but Dames! And how to Lay them had not been any help in this particular case. From a long way off he thought he heard laughter, but out on Palmetto Drive nothing stirred. Ziesel had once told him about the heat death of the universe, in trillions of years’ time, when all thermodynamic free energy would have dissipated and so there would never again be motion or life: quite often west Pasadena felt like that. Millikan, apparently, had argued that cosmic rays were the ‘birth cries’ of new atoms being created all the time by God to delay this heat death, but Loeser found it hard to believe that God was forever slapping the face of the universe like a policeman trying to stop a drunk from falling asleep. ‘Let’s have dinner after the performance tonight,’ he said.

  ‘And I suppose if I don’t sleep with you, you’ll tell the Professor I’ve been defiling his Teleportation Device. You’re as bad as Drabsfarben.’

  Loeser frowned. ‘What do you mean? What has any of this got to do with Jascha?’

  ‘You understand perfectly well what I mean. I should have guessed you’d copy his methods before too long.’

  ‘Drabsfarben is trying to seduce you?’

  ‘Don’t play ignorant. You know all about Drabsfarben and the Professor. What about those parties in the Palisades?’

  ‘I just take Bailey to the Muttons’ house sometimes because Dolores Mutton told me to,’ said Loeser. ‘On my parents’ graves, if there’s some intrigue afoot there, I’m not part of it. Come on, give me the rest. Is this why you’ve been so bad tempered in all the rehearsals this year?’

  ‘You really don’t already know?’

  ‘Adele, I smoked cigarettes for five years before I learned to inhale properly. I am not always’ — he reached for the American phrase — ‘ “quick in the uptake”.’

  ‘Drabsfarben’s blackmailing the Professor,’ said Adele.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He claims to know some secret about the Professor’s past. He says if he tells everyone, the Professor will be ruined. But he’s bluffing. The Professor’s never lied about his past. Why would he? Honestly, Egon, I can’t bear the thought that I tried to get Drabsfarben to go to bed with me once. Berlin seems like somebody else’s life now.’

  To Loeser it didn’t feel as if any time had passed at all. ‘Adele, as it happens, I’m getting blackmailed by Drabsfarben myself. That’s what I meant about Dolores Mutton. He’s obviously a very prolific extortionist; a Balzac of the form. Can I please emphasise that I’m not about to use the same tactics to get you into bed?’

  ‘Let’s see what happens later when you’re drunk.’

  ‘Why doesn’t Bailey just go to the police about Drabsfarben?’

  ‘I keep telling him to. But he refuses to involve them.’

  ‘And what does Drabsfarben want from Bailey?’

  ‘I don’t know. The Professor won’t tell me.’

  ‘You don’t have any idea?’

  Adele hesitated. ‘He did once mention something about Russia.’

  ‘Russia?’

  ‘Look, Egon, you specifically forbade me from going into the lab today because you said I had to be relaxed for the first night. This conversation has not been very relaxing. I’ll see you backstage. I hope you forget about all this by then.’ She hung up, and Loeser felt the last five years of his life begin to disrobe at last.

  ‘Couldn’t this have waited?’ said Dolores Mutton a few hours later as she sat down opposite Loeser on a red velvet banquette in the bar of the Chateau Marmont. He’d telephoned to demand a meeting in private, and since her husband was at home she’d reluctantly agreed to drive out as far as Hollywood. ‘Stent and I are coming to your play later. And what’s that smell?’

  ‘Death,’ said Loeser. He took a sip of his beer. ‘Is Drabsfarben a spy?’

  Like a flock of blackbirds just before it knew which way to fly, the decision not yet made but already scribbled in its wings, Dolores Mutton’s face, in the three or four seconds that followed, seemed to disclose the whole polyphasic transit of her deliberations; but Loeser knew that it was only when you were in love with a woman, or at least had once been in love with her, that you could look up and follow the transit, read the wings, join the flight. And although Loeser would have mortgaged his bone marrow to see Dolores Mutton naked just once, he wasn’t in love with her, so he didn’t anticipate that she was about to call over a waiter, ask for a double vodka, wait patiently for it to arrive, and drink most of it down before replying: ‘Whenever I used to practise what I’d say when someone finally came out and asked me that, I used to assume it would be Stent. Or someone from the FBI. Or someone who mattered. I never guessed it would be somebody like you. I didn’t rehearse for this. And I’m trying to remind myself now why I’m supposed to say what I’m supposed to say. But this morning I feel closely comparable to somebody who doesn’t give a damn.’ She grimaced as if she’d only just noticed the taste of the alcohol. ‘You know, it’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time when I really believed in it all. Years ago, back in New York, when they first got their hooks into me. I read Capital to the end — I don’t even think Bill Foster read Capital to the end! And I was happy to help, although I was never their favourite because I wasn’t one of those girls who’d put on lipstick and screw some diplomat for the good of the Party. Then I met Stent and we got married and we moved out here. I forgot all about it. Until one day in thirty-four Drabsfarben came to see me and said he’d been told I was a loyal friend of the Communist International.’

  Loeser had always thought that was a song. He nodded.

  ‘At first, he just wanted Stent to put his name on some petitions. Then there were the letters to the newspapers. Then we had to go on that trip to Moscow and Stent had to write those articles. And meanwhile the novels all had to be anti-capitalist, anti-bourgeois, anti-government. I didn’t really mind any of that. It still felt like doing good, sometimes. But then Drabsfarben wanted us to help out more directly. He had people coming to California. Gugelhupf was the first. Do you think I ever wanted to live in that ridiculous glass box? Maybe in Berlin it’s a political gesture to build a house like that. Here, it’s no different from building a Gothic chateau or a Tiki hut or whatever the hell else. Except the house builders here don’t know
what to do with the sort of blueprint you get from Gugelhupf, so not a damn thing fits together and there are nails sticking out of everything. And half the time it’s too hot to think! But Drabsfarben said we had to have Gugelhupf build us a house because it was the easiest way to get him set up in California. They needed him here. I still don’t know why. And how did that asshole thank us? He rehashed an old design. Then Drabsfarben made me set up the Cultural Solidarity Committee as a cover. We started having the parties. I hate those parties. I always hated parties. I never threw a party in my life before Drabsfarben told me to. Do you know what I like doing at night? I like cooking dinner with my husband and then making love on the beach. But Drabsfarben makes me fill our house with strangers twice a week so he can catch them in his lobster trap. Every year, it gets worse. Every year, Drabsfarben wants more.’

  Loeser remembered that conversation he’d misunderstood five years ago at the Muttons’ party. One is always wrong, he thought now, always, always wrong about every single thing; if some young cousin was ever stupid enough to ask him for advice about life, that was all he would be able to tell them. The truth ran back and forth over your head at night but you never saw so much as the colour of its fur. ‘And what does your husband think about all this?’ he said.

  ‘Stent? He’s never had any idea! He just likes how I take an interest in his work. He likes how I always have suggestions and corrections. He says I’m the best editor a writer ever had.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t care what happens to me any more. I don’t care if I get locked up for spying. I don’t even care if Drabsfarben shoots me and dumps my body in the ocean. But Stent can’t know. I love that man more than anything in the world. I love that man so much it makes me grind my teeth at night. If he found out I’d been fooling him for our entire marriage … That’s why I can’t stop. If I stop doing what Drabsfarben says, he’ll make sure Stent finds out about everything I already did. You know, I met Sinclair Lewis’s wife once. She was in the same hole as me. But in the end she went to the FBI. I guess I’m not that brave.’

  ‘What does Jascha want with Bailey?’

  ‘When the NKVD found out Bailey was working on teleportation, they told Drabsfarben they wanted Bailey to defect. That was supposed to be his top priority from then on. But Drabsfarben only really knew artists and writers and musicians and architects. Back then, he didn’t have a connection to CalTech. He didn’t even have a connection to a connection. Then we saw you going to dinner at Gorge’s house. Gorge bought himself a lot of juice at CalTech with that million dollars for the theatre. Drabsfarben thought you might be useful one day.’

  Ever since he noticed Dolores Mutton, the barman across the room had been polishing the same side of the same glass in ever smaller and more rapid circles. ‘So that was why you called me afterwards and took back all your threats and offered me that job,’ said Loeser.

  ‘Yes. And in the long run, it worked out nicely. Drabsfarben’s plans almost always do. We put on a little pressure and you brought Bailey right to us. The NKVD were thrilled. But after about another year, Drabsfarben decided Bailey wasn’t going to defect voluntarily. So he tried blackmail.’

  ‘Adele told me that. What’s this secret about Bailey’s past?’

  ‘Maybe he’s a bootlegger from North Dakota? I don’t know. Drabsfarben hasn’t told me. But that’s not all Drabsfarben knows. He has something else on Bailey. Something much bigger. Something so big he says it’s too dangerous even to bring into play right now. In any case, blackmail hasn’t worked either. And Drabsfarben’s getting worried. The NKVD have taken the Comintern apart, and they see Drabsfarben as a Comintern man all the way through. That means he has to watch his back. He goes out in public now less and less. Did you hear what happened to Willi Münzenberg?’

  ‘Who is that?’

  ‘Didn’t you know him in Berlin? He came up in the Comintern at the same time as Drabsfarben. They worked together for years. They used to leave parcels for each other at some second-hand bookstore.’

  ‘Luni’s!’

  ‘I don’t know. But a couple of months ago Münzenberg was found hanging from a tree outside an internment camp near Lyons. Drabsfarben thinks the same thing could happen to him. He thinks the only way he can save himself now is to get Bailey to Moscow. I just hope he fails.’

  ‘So do I! Bailey’s supposed to be running my Teleportation Accident tonight.’ Loeser finished his beer. ‘Are you still going to pay me the thirty dollars every month?’ he said.

  ‘No. If the Cultural Solidarity Committee carries on, I want it to do some honest good for honest exiles.’

  ‘Oh. All right, well, one last question: have you really seen Jascha kill someone?’ For the first time Loeser wondered if Drabsfarben might have had something to do with the deaths at CalTech.

  ‘Maybe I was just saying that to scare you. Either way, though, if you breathe a word about any of this to anyone, you’ll have a hell of a lot more to worry about than those forged cheques.’

  ‘You needn’t worry, Mrs Mutton. I won’t tell anyone. Whom would I tell?’

  The answer, of course, was Blimk. He told Blimk. After Dolores Mutton left him alone in the bar of the Chateau Marmont, Loeser paid the bill, walked down to the shop where he still spent most of his afternoons, and repeated every sensational detail.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more persuasive demonstration of why you shouldn’t get involved in politics,’ Loeser concluded.

  ‘I feel sorry for the lady,’ said Blimk, who had not made any comment on Loeser’s odour, perhaps because, by the standards of the shop’s regular customers, it was not memorably unpleasant.

  ‘I shouldn’t still be scared of her, but I am.’

  ‘So you want a number for my buddy in Washington?’

  ‘Your Lovecraft man at the Department of State? Why?’

  ‘Probably easier than calling the FBI out of the blue.’

  ‘Why would I want to call the FBI?’

  ‘Tell ’em what’s going on in the Palisades.’

  ‘I’m not telling anyone about this except you. If getting Bailey to Moscow is really Drabsfarben’s last chance to save himself, then there’s nothing more he can make me do for him now. I don’t have to worry about it any more. I can just sit back and watch what happens.’

  ‘But he’s a commie spy. Probably wants to bring the whole country down.’

  ‘I thought you weren’t political.’

  ‘I ain’t, but a fella’s got some responsibilities to the place he lives.’

  ‘Not me,’ said Loeser. ‘I am what is sometimes termed a rootless cosmopolitan. I had no responsibilities to Berlin and I certainly have no responsibilities to Los Angeles. Anyway, so what if Drabsfarben does bring the country down? What would anyone mourn? Jell-O salads with mayonnaise?’

  ‘You been here five years and you’re still pretending you hate this place? Five years and you’re still worried about what your buddies from back home would say if they heard you admit you kinda liked it?’

  Blimk had never spoken so sharply to him before. ‘Look, I read an article in The Nation last year by some English writer,’ Loeser declared, ‘where he said, “If I had to choose between betraying my country” — well, not that this is my country — but anyway, “If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend” — well, not that Drabsfarben is my friend — still, “If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should …” — well, I can’t remember exactly how it ended, but the point was … until you’ve seen Dolores Mutton in a red dress you can’t comprehend the position I’m in.’

  ‘You think it won’t make any difference to you if the commies get this teleportation fella? You ain’t read about all these deals Hitler and Stalin keep making?’

  ‘I try not to pay attention to any of that.’

  Blimk put down his cup of coffee. ‘Get out of my store.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I might not love
my country like I ought to, but I like it okay, and I think it’s been nicer to you than you deserve.’

  ‘Would you still like your country so much if it took your store away?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Have any more of those men from the Traffic Commission come by recently?’

  ‘So what if they have?’

  Loeser was about to tell Blimk all about the elevated streetcar terminal, but he knew the information was too important to give up in haste. ‘I just mean your opinion might change one day.’

  ‘I said get out of my store. Out.’

  Loeser decided he just did not have the inner faculties to resolve a quarrel with his best friend on the same day as the première of The Christmas Teleportation Accident; but he couldn’t go straight to the Gorge Auditorium, because he’d always taken a sort of Berkeleian idealist approach to first nights, believing that problems didn’t really start to multiply until the director was there to deal with them; and he didn’t want to go home because of the skunk bomb. So instead he sat in a drugstore on the edge of Elysian Park long enough to arrive at CalTech with only about an hour to spare, no more than was sufficient to give Bailey’s new theatrical effect the proper test run it had been awaiting for so long. Passing the Obediah Laboratories on his way to the Gorge Auditorium, however, Loeser was dismayed to see Bailey himself going inside. He pursued the physicist upstairs to room 11, too impatient to knock.

  ‘Professor Bailey? I’m sorry to interrupt, but we really both ought to be at the theatre by now.’

  ‘Just a minute, Mr Loeser.’ Bailey was already bent over the controls of the ultramarine accomplishment or whatever it was called. Loeser sighed and looked around the room. On a desk nearby was Bailey’s toy steam engine, and beneath it Loeser noticed a slim white book with a familiar yellow illustration of a row of shacks: The Shadow Over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft.

  ‘I had no idea you were a Lovecraft aficionado, Professor!’ said Loeser.