Mefisto (20 page)

– I’m just here for a chat, she murmured. Just a chat.

She went and stood at the printer, and for a moment both of them watched in silence the sheets of figures coming up.

– How fast it goes! she said, leaning to look more closely. And so much of it! You know, we’ve been so impressed with the quantity of the material you produce here.

Professor Kosok grunted again, and again walked away from her. She continued to watch the print-out, shaking her head in a little show of admiring wonderment. The professor sat down at the console, breathing hard, and started to stab at the keys with two stiff index fingers, like an amateur pianist in a temper. Leitch and I stood on either side of him. Miss Hackett came and hovered at his shoulder. It was like a little recital, we might have been gathered around the parlour piano.

– Of course, Miss Hackett said with a silvery laugh, we have noticed a certain lack of … well, of results, shall we say?

She waited, but he went on hitting the keys as if he had not heard. She took a deep breath, and grasping my arm she moved me firmly aside, and executed a swift little twirl that brought her to a half-sitting position against the console, facing him, with her arms folded and her ankles neatly crossed. She flashed her nursery smile again, and inclined her head and peered into his face, twinkling at him.

– The minister, you know, she said in a playfully menacing tone, the minister likes results.

He lifted his hands at last violently from the keyboard, and turned around in his chair and looked up at Leitch with a harsh laugh.

– Results! he said. She wants results!

He turned again and glared at her.

– What are you talking about? he said. What do you mean, what results are these, that this minister expects?

She pounced, leaning forward with sudden force and bringing her hands together in a soundless clap.

– But that’s the point! she cried gaily. That’s what we want you to tell us! You see?

Leitch, for some reason, laughed.

She rose from her perch on the console, tucking her briefcase more firmly under her arm, and stepped past me. She was careful not to touch me this time, no doubt recalling, more vividly than she would have wished, the feel of that stick-like thing inside my sleeve. She walked off a little way, head bowed in thought, then turned and retraced her steps slowly.

– We are all aware, she said, what an honour it is that you are working here, a person of your … your … And of course, in such a case the cost is not a large consideration.

– Cost, what cost? the professor cried. This is nighttime.

Leitch coughed.

– Downtime, he said softly.

The professor turned in his chair again and glared at him. Miss Hackett waved away these interruptions, frowning, making a great show of following her train of thought.

– But we have our masters, you see, she said, even the minister is accountable.

She stopped in front of him, smiling down at him pensively, letting her gaze wander over his irate brow and pop eye, his clenched jaw with its ginger bristles, his bow-tie, his boots. Then in a flash she had drawn up a chair and plumped down on it, pressing her briefcase firmly on her knees, with an air of setting all constraints aside and getting down finally to the real business.

– My dear sir, she said. Listen. When you came to us first you spoke of conducting certain studies. I have the documentation here.

She gave the briefcase a friendly smack, as if it were the head of a trusty hound.

– It’s vague, she said. The documents are vague. We were vague, at the time. You, forgive me, were vaguest of all.

The professor stood up abruptly and stamped away from her, rubbing a hand over his scalp, his short legs working angrily.

– Studies, yes! he said. I am conducting studies! You think I lied?

Miss Hackett shook her head, still blandly smiling.

– No no no, she said soothingly, with pursed lips. What an idea! Of course there is no question of … fraud. Only, this machine, you see, it costs such a lot of money to run, even in …

She looked to Leitch, who breathed, fawning.

– Downtime, he said.

She thanked him with an almost coquettish little bob of her head, her brazen waves tossing.

– Cost! the professor said. Pah!

Miss Hackett with a deft glance consulted her watch, then drew a breath and tried again. She spoke in a soft voice, slowly, giving a pert, interrogative flick to the ends of her sentences.

– We’re only asking, she said, the minister is only asking, for some sort of statement of your precise aims in this programme? Everything you show us seems so … well, so hazy, so … uncertain?

At this the professor made a violent whooshing noise, like a breathless swimmer breaking the surface, and turned on her in a fury.

– There is no certainty! he cried. That is the result! Why don’t you understand that, you you you …! Ach, I am surrounded by fools and children. Where do you think you are living, eh? This is the world, look around you, look at it! You want certainty, order, all that? Then invent it!

He flung himself down on his chair, fuming, twisting his head from side to side and yanking at his bow-tie, his legs furiously twitching. There was a silence. Miss Hackett gave a delicate cough and touched a hand to her hair. She glanced at Leitch, at me, even, with a brittle, brave little smile, to show us how patient she was, how dauntless, then she considered the professor again, chidingly, as if he were a big, recalcitrant baba.

– I’m sure I didn’t mean to make you angry, she said. I only came to have a friendly chat. The minister wanted to send someone else, but I said no, no need for that, yet. Let me go, I said, he’ll talk to me. After all, I am a statistician, in a manner of speaking.

The professor waved a weary dismissive hand.

– Oh, statistics …! he murmured, shaking his head.

– But I see, Miss Hackett went on, I see I was mistaken. In fact, I’ve wasted my time, haven’t I. And now it’s late, and I must leave you.

She stood up, smoothing her skirt, and tucked her briefcase under her arm. Leitch wallowed forward, for a second it seemed he might pick her up and carry her, in apology and reverence, to the door. Suddenly the professor gave another of his brief harsh laughs, and rose and pushed his face up into hers, pointing a finger at me.

– There! he said. Him! He is the one you need, he thinks that numbers are exact, and rigorous, tell your minister about him!

They turned, all three, and gazed at me for a moment in silence. Miss Hackett frowned. The professor shook his head again.

– And look at him, he said. Just look.

They might have been standing on the edge of a hole, peering in. Then Miss Hackett roused herself, and summoned up a last, steely smile.

– Well, she said to the professor, goodnight, no doubt you will be hearing from us, in due course.

Halfway to the door she halted, Leitch shambling at her heels almost collided with her. She looked about the room, wrinkling her nose, as if she were noticing the place for the first time. The printer nattered, the air hummed.

– What a dungeon this is, she said. How you can stand it …!

When she was gone Leitch looked at the professor with a vengeful eye.

– You’ve done it now, he said. Oh, you’ve done it now, all right.

Things were never to be the same again between Leitch and me after that night. It was as if we had been caught up together in some desperate, accidental drama, and the shared danger had forced on us an intimacy as awkward as it was inescapable. He became talkative. He complained about the professor, called him an old fucker, told me of other enormities he had committed before that night. He sat hunched over the console, fat and venomous, muttering. Somehow Miss Hackett’s visit had lanced the boil of his bitterness, now the poison all came pouring out. He had not been treated right, he had never been treated right. They were all against him, people, all against him, just because – but there he broke off, and cast at me a narrow, distrustful look. His eyes were haunted, sunk in their pools of violet shadow, turbid, and somehow sticky, like two brown water-snails. He talked about Miss Hackett too, softly, in a sort of reverie of disgust. He made up jokes in which she suffered the most intricate indecencies. His knowledge of female anatomy was impressive, Felix called him a spoiled gynaecologist. He would put a warm hand on my wrist, chuckling, and lean his head at my ear and whisper another good one. I could never manage more than a wan smile in response, but it did not matter, he hardly noticed, he only wanted to hear himself saying the words. When Felix was there, though, he kept silent. Felix watched him, delighted with him, his slippers and his cravat, his bloated belly, that wary, aquatic eye.

– I say, Basil, he would say, what’s a gay blade like you doing in this queer hole, eh?

And he would wink at me, with an artful smile, and put up his feet on the console and light a butt from his box.

We waited for what would follow Miss Hackett. Leitch expected the worst, though he never said exactly what he thought the worst would be. One night the telephone rang, until then I had not even noticed it was there. Professor Kosok answered it, and stood and listened to its tiny, irate voice for a long time, pulling at his lower lip and scowling. He said little, and at last slammed down the receiver. When it rang again he left it off the hook. Then the volume of transmissions began to slacken, it was hardly noticeable at first. Sometimes the printer would stop abruptly, in the middle of a line of figures, and sit in silence for minutes on end, with an uncanny air of smugness and knowing. Leitch insisted he could find no fault, that they must have stopped sending at the other end, and the professor would shout at him, until at last the printer started up again, as if nothing had happened. The day-people were staying later and later, once when I arrived they were just leaving, I spotted a hand closing the door, and heard them laughing on the stairs. The seats of the chairs were still warm.

Felix dropped in at all hours, arriving sometimes in the early morning, when we were finishing. He always looked as if he had been up all night, doing things. He and I would go out together into the dawn, and walk along by the grey river, in the mist. I remember those mornings with peculiar clarity, the silence over the city, the gulls wheeling, the pale spring sunlight struggling through the grime, that particular shade of lavender in the dense air above the rooftops. He talked about the professor, asked in an offhand way about the work we were doing. I think he thought I was keeping things from him, he would give me a long look, quizzically smiling, his head thrown back and one rufous eyebrow arched. I told him about Miss Hackett, and he laughed.

– So they’re on to him, eh? he said. Better take care, Philemon, that you don’t get washed away along with him.

IT WAS ON ONE OF
those mornings with Felix that – no, he wasn’t there, it was just a morning, in April. The professor was away too, I don’t know where, it doesn’t matter. The flat was silent. There was the remains of a meal on the table in the front room, and a brimming ashtray. I stood at the window, not wanting to leave, not wanting to stay either. Pain had started up its thrumming tune, as it did at this weary hour every morning, I imagined something inside me, all knees and terrible elbows, plucking at my nerves. The street was deserted. In one of the houses opposite I could faintly hear a telephone ringing, it went on and on. The silence congregated at my back, it was like some large mute beast, nudging at me gently, with a kind of mournful insistence. I did not like to be alone like that, in a room not my own, I felt as if I were a stranger, I mean a stranger to myself, as if there were two of us, I and that other, that interloper standing up inside me, sharing in secret this pillar of frail flesh and pain. But then, I was not alone.

She was in the dingy bathroom on the landing, I found her when I tried to open the door and something was stopping it. She lay in a huddle with her knees drawn up to her chest and one bare arm flung out. She was wearing her plastic raincoat over her slip. One of her bare feet was wedged against the door, I had to hold my breath and squeeze sideways through the opening. When I knelt beside her she stirred and gave a fluttering, vaguely protesting sigh, like a sleeping child unwilling to be wakened from a dream. Her hands were icy, she must have been lying here for hours. There was a blue bruise turning yellow in the hollow of her elbow.

– Adele, I said. Adele.

It sounded foolish.

I gathered her up in my arms. She had wet herself. She was unexpectedly heavy, a chill, clammy limpness that I could hardly hold. Her raincoat squeaked and crackled when I lifted her. I got my foot around the door to open it, but lost my balance and swayed off to one side, like a caracoling horseman, and for a moment I was trapped there, with one foot in the air and my shoulder pressed to the wall. A tap was dripping in the handbasin. The window behind the lavatory was open, down in the garden a blackbird piped a repeated, liquid note, that too was like water dripping. When I turned my head a magnified eye, my own, loomed at me in a shaving mirror. I looked at things around me, that tap, an old razor, a mug with a toothbrush standing in it, their textures blurred and thickened in the ivory light of morning, and I felt for a second I was being shown something, it flashed out at me slyly and then was gone, like a coin disappearing in a conjuror’s palm.