Philip Kerr - A Philosophical Investigation

‘Sure.’

‘Ask Doctor Chen if he thinks that Wittgenstein might be a male nurse or some other kind of hospital auxiliary staff?’

Chung put the question and Chen replied that he thought he probably was.

‘Just like the real Wittgenstein,’ said Jake. ‘He worked in a hospital for a while, during the Second World War. It was one of the reasons that enabled him to avoid being imprisoned as an enemy alien.’

Chung shook his head. ‘That’s the trouble with you British,’ he said. ‘It was the same with the boat people back in Hong Kong. You always locking people up who couldn’t possibly do you any bloody harm.’

Jake brought Chen out of the trance.

‘Find anything useful in there?’ he said pleasantly.

Jake explained her hunch about Wittgenstein working at a hospital.

‘Pleased to hear it,’ he said, and then stood up and stretched.

‘Well,’ said Jake, looking at her watch. ‘I think we’ve taken up enough of your time, Doctor Chen. I’m grateful.’ It was probably too late to find anyone still working at the Ministry of Health.

‘No problem,’ he said again. ‘Next time see if you can’t help me to stop smoking.’

Jake and Chung returned to the office they used when they were at the Institute, where Jake called the Ministry. She found herself connected with a picture of an impossibly fit and healthy looking girl in a leotard, and an incongruously brusque male voice on an answering-machine which informed her that the Ministry was closed until nine o’clock the following morning.

‘Well I guess that’s it until tomorrow,’ said Jake. ‘Thanks a lot for your help, Yat. I really think that was useful.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ he said. ‘Translation makes a nice change from computers.’

They walked back to the Yard.

‘Your train goes from Paddington, doesn’t it?’ said Jake. ‘Can I offer you a lift?’

‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘But only on one condition. That you let me take you to the best Chinese restaurant in Soho first. It’s owned by a cousin of mine.’

Jake grinned. ‘All right. It’s a deal. But won’t your wife be waiting for you?’

Chung smiled back. ‘Her mother’s staying with us at the moment. She thinks her daughter should not have married a man from Hong Kong.’

‘It’s because she’s narrow-minded,’ Jake offered.

‘No.’ Chung laughed. ‘It’s because she’s never eaten at my cousin’s restaurant.’

My brain hurts. Really, it does.

But is it any wonder? Is it any wonder when there are over 30,000 different kinds of protein swilling around in there? Is it any wonder it hurts when you consider that one gram of brain tissue uses up more energy in keeping you conscious than a gram of muscle uses to lift a barbell? When you consider that your brain consumes about a quarter of all the calories you use in a day?

But before you calorie-conscious people start getting excited and reaching for your philosophy textbooks, let me quickly add that bending your brain to understanding something like Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s The Phenomenology of Perception uses no more calories than having a dump, or picking your nose. Unfortunately for fatties, the fact is most of the calories get used in just keeping the old head-set humming, otherwise G. E. Moore might unwittingly have been responsible for the world’s first Cambridge diet.

Even so it seems to me that my own Gulliver must have been putting in a lot of overtime lately. Sustained thought on the subject of Murder during the last few months must have been using that little bit more energy. Thus the skull-fracturing headache.

The problem is that brain cells are determinedly social. They will insist on speaking to their neighbours — up to 100,000 of them at any one time. And with all the mental sensation that is the inevitable corollary of mass-murder, the electrical firing that’s been going on inside the central coconut must look like the sky above El Alamein.

If only the brain wasn’t such an efficient little bastard — just 2 per cent of body weight, as a matter of fact. In my case that’s about 1.7 kilograms. It will insist on making hundreds of back-up copies of thoughts — even the thoughts one had hoped one had forgotten — storing them in all sorts of different neuronal nooks and cranial crannies. It is like a prudent man going abroad who, having considered the possibility of being robbed, separates his cash and spreads it throughout his luggage and person. This is why when one part of the brain is physically destroyed, for example that part dealing with the recognition of colour, there’s another part of the brain which can manage it just as well.

Try as I might to prevent it, my more murderous brain cells just love talking to the others, poisoning them with their logical pictures of the facts in an attempt to win them round to their cause.

This brings me no small discomfort. Insomnia being the worst torment. Sometimes I lie awake the greater part of the night, watching them at work. It’s easy enough to spot when something’s happening. All thought becomes an image, and the soul becomes a body. Thought actually manifests itself in little hot spots that are the colour of blood. Recently there’s been a lot more of this colour than normal and the other night, the inside of my dome resembled one of those volcanic lava flows that sometimes spew out of Mount Etna and engulf a couple of local villages.

The chief area of neuronal discussion seems to be that I should move on from killing my brothers and start on the human race in general. A sort of business expansion scheme. This seems to me to be a lamentable trend and one which worries me considerably. I had hoped that I could keep things in check a bit, but of course lacking a VMN, ultimately this may not be possible. It may be that in time I shall be forced to close down the company altogether.

They drove to Soho and ended up parking as far away as St James’s Square. Chung apologised for the distance to his cousin’s restaurant.

‘I don’t mind walking a bit,’ said Jake. ‘Frankly, I could use the exercise.’

‘Me too,’ he agreed. ‘Although I do manage to work out a bit at home. I’ve got a heavy punch bag hanging from the ceiling in the garage. I give that a good kicking in the morning. Lately I’ve been imagining that it’s my mother-in-law.’

‘They walked up the short hill that led onto Jermyn Street and turned east towards Regent Street and Piccadilly Circus.

Opposite Simpson’s, Jake paused in front of red brick office building and nodded at the smoked glass door.

‘A girl was murdered in there,’ she said. ‘Just a month or two ago. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?’ She glanced up and down the street. ‘It all seems so peaceful, so civilised, so very...’ Her eyes alighted on the black wall of St James’s Church.

‘What is it?’ asked Chung.

Jake shook her head vaguely. ‘Nothing,’ she said, but started to retrace her steps in the direction of the church’s curiously theatre-like door. ‘At least, I don’t think it’s anything.’

In front of the church, which seemed hardly like a church at all with its bulletin board of visiting speakers, Jake considered the matter syllogistically, as two separate premises. She could not see how the conclusion she had in mind might logically follow these. But even as she told herself that such an invalid conversion would of course lead to an invalid judgment, she remained convinced of the possibility that the thing might be tested empirically. The question was: how?

Seeing her momentarily absorbed like this, Chung remained silent, even when he was obliged to follow her as she walked through the church, out into the stone-flagged courtyard on the other side, and across Piccadilly. She led him up Sackville Street and stopped outside the Mystery Bookshop which, even at that time of the evening, was busy with browsing customers. He noticed that she was smiling a little now and when finally she spoke again, there was a quiet look of triumph in her face.