The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [155]
A thin woman in a grey dress, with a regular little cough, asked whether the supplies of rubber had arrived. Was it true that the Americans meant to demonstrate these things at the congress?
Goldman said she hoped so.
Charles felt himself vaguely excited. Not in quite the right way. Later, as he walked back to the hotel, he looked intently at all the women they passed, the little groups of smiling and beckoning girls in pretty skirts and prominent corsages, the elegantly strolling demi-monde. He had never seen a naked woman, except those sculpted in marble or bronze. He had an idea of apertures and protuberances he needed to know about. It might be a good thing to buy this knowledge—he would be contributing to a solid meal—but precisely because it was incumbent on him to see the strolling, signalling, smiling creatures as people in need, it became hard, perhaps impossible, to bargain with one. It was all a lie. Moreover, as Goldman had insisted, there was the question of disease. Panizza’s condemned play, The Council of Love, Joachim told him, had presented God and Mary and Jesus in heaven as a degenerate enfeebled family who gave the Devil licence to introduce syphilis to the world to punish the Borgia popes for their orgiastic excesses. Joachim would never have talked like this in England. Karl wondered for the first time what Joachim did about sex. He could not think of a way to ask him.
He dined with the Cains, Tom, Fludd and Philip. Everyone talked of what they had seen at the fair. Charles did not mention Emma Goldman, and did not discuss streetwalkers. Cain said he supposed it was encouraging that people at war with each other—the Germans and the Chinese, for instance—could coexist in this imaginary city. Benedict Fludd, who seemed alternately excitable and grumpy, said perhaps Cain had not seen the papers? An anarchist had stepped out of a crowd with a revolver and shot point-blank at the King of Italy. They missed him three years ago with a knife, said Fludd. This time they got him. He’s dead. What do they hope to achieve?
“Chaos,” said Prosper Cain. “They are mad.” Karl kept his polite public-school face at this moment also. He was in a moral knot that he was beginning to recognise. Belonging to something, believing in an idea, meant perhaps conceding assent to things that were, outside the belief, ludicrous or horrid. He had tried being Christian, and had tried to force himself to believe in the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection. He found the anarchists compelling and arousing. But he could not—he could not—accept that a symbolic killing of this or that muddle-headed or insulated old monarch would really advance freedom or justice. And then he tried to see it from the anarchists’ point of view. He formulated an idea: they are more sane, and madder, than other people. They have a better idea of human nature, which is perhaps only an idea. But they are serious and real, and this hotel is not, and this soufflé is all airy nothing, and the women in evening gowns at the next table are bought and sold.
It was, however, a delicious soufflé, elegantly put together with Seville orange and Grand Marnier. It lingered on the tongue like a blessing.
Philip had spent much of his time alone. Fludd would refuse to get out of bed, or would sit in the hotel gloomily drinking coffee and cognac. He told Philip to get out and educate himself. Philip walked for miles, looking at the lights, translating things seen into ideas for pots, failing miserably. It was all too much for him. His own art seemed small and provincial and far away, and he felt he was a lout and an ignoramus.
He found the ceramics stands on the Esplanade des Invalides. He was attracted to the special exhibition of the Gien Faïencerie by its principal exhibit, an awesome ceramic clock, towering more than three metres, and standing on a carved pedestal. He thought it was a silly shape, and was in awe of the extraordinary technical skill that must have gone into its construction. It was shaped like a very tall vase, decorated with gold underglaze