Brian Aldiss - The Squire Quartet

He looked up, grinning.

‘So says Oggi in Ermalpa. It means the end of England.’

‘Yes, and France. Not a political collapse but a geophysical one.’

They walked briskly up a side street, where men in aprons were sweeping shop fronts, brushing water into the gutter. The first side street they had tried was entirely blocked by parked Fiats, beached like whales on either pavement as well as down the centre of the roadway. The street they were traversing held a mixture of offices, apartments, shops, and a restaurant or two. Outside one of the restaurants, men in shirt-sleeves were unloading containers of fish from a cart. They paused to allow the two visitors to pass.

The top of the street formed an intersection with the broad Via Milano. The Via Milano divided its opposing traffic flows with narrow islands of green on which palm trees grew. Traffic was thick at this hour.

A short distance along on the other side of the road, the Grand Hotel Marittimo faced them. It had a heavy facade of lichenous stone, with a high portico imitating a grander structure. It was set back only slightly from the uproar of the road. Despite its name, it offered its guests no glimpse of the sea from its old-fashioned bedroom windows. Last century, perhaps, it had stood where it could command a splendid view of the sailing ships in the harbour. Since then, upstart lanes of banks, offices and shops had come between it and the water.

Above the entrance, a nylon banner hung. On it were the words:

FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF INTERGRAPHIC CRITICISM

Of the four doors of thick plate glass set inside its porch, only one opened. The two men bowed to each other and went through it.

The heat, light, and noise of the outside were replaced by a melancholy coolness.

The foyer of the Grand Hotel was extremely capacious. Its floors and balustrades gave an impression of marble, its reception desks of fumed oak. To either side, this effect tailed off into cloakrooms or petty chambers in which a man might wait for a mistress, or smoke a cigar, or pretend to write a letter. In one petty chamber stood a glass case offering Capodimonte pottery and other objects to the tourists’ gaze. A similar case (both with curly bronze feet, betraying their age) displayed a number of silk ties.

Such subsidiary matters did not detract from the chief glory of the foyer, a centrally placed white marble of Paolo and Francesca in the Second Circle of Hell, by Canova. Squire had identified it as soon as he entered the hotel the previous evening, recalling involuntarily the volume of Dante’s Inferno with Doré illustrations, which his father had bought, and the line where Dante comments on the fate of these lovers:

Alas! by what sweet thoughts, what fond desire,

Must they at length to that ill pass have reached!

When he had first read the passage, he had been too innocent to understand what the lovers had done to deserve such punishment. This morning at the hotel breakfast table, between pineapple juice and bacon and eggs, he had written a postcard to his daughters, referring to the statue jokingly as ‘two undressed people retreating from something rather nasty’. Whilst writing, he had averted his mind from the actual situation of Ann and Jane, who were in the care of his sister Deirdre in Blakeney.

The postcard had come from a temporary stall set up on the threshold of the conference hall. The stall had extended itself this morning, and was staffed by smiling students, two girls, presumably from the faculty of Ermalpa University involved with the conference. Prominent on the bookstall among other titles were the English edition of Frankenstein Among the Arts, published by Webb Broadwell, and the new Italian translation of the same, Frankenstein a ‘la Bella Scuola’ in its glowing orange jacket. Also on display was the American paperback edition of Squire’s earlier book, a collection of essays entitled Against Barbarism. It was published when television had still to make him famous, and had not achieved an Italian translation.

Standing by the bookstall was a white board announcing that the television series had been captured on videotape and would be shown in its entirety over the four evenings of the conference, Wednesday to Saturday inclusive, at twenty-three hundred hours. In the small conference hall. No admission charge.

Delegates were crowding round the stall, which did brisk business. A number of other delegates stood about the main foyer, in groups or singly. The sight of them was enough to remind d’Exiteuil and Squire, if they needed reminding, that they were fragments of a greater whole, and they moved away from each other without a word of parting.

The polyglot d’Exiteuil appeared to know everyone here. He could have been observed at breakfast, making a courteous round of the tables, welcoming his guests. Squire, who spoke no Italian, knew few people. He moved politely among the delegates, smiling and nodding.

‘Ah, Signor Squire. Good morning.’

Squire looked at the slender man who confronted him. He was fairly typical of what Squire regarded as the medium-young generation of Italians: born after the Second World War ended, but torn by the divisiveness of the peace. He had dark liquid eyes, which darted nervously about as if the foyer was full of enemies. He had a trim beard, kept his hair oiled and combed, wore a cappuccino-coloured suit, and was remarkably tidy. His manners were polite; he had a certain style; and there were many men rather like him.

This man Squire could identify. His nervous eagerness was familiar.

‘Carlo Morabito,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Animal Behaviour. You remember me? How nice to see you here, Signor Squire. I never dreamed you would be in Sicily. You have taken a walk already?’

As they shook hands, Squire said, ‘I was up early. I am a yoga freak.’ Seeing the other’s blank look, he said, ‘I practise yoga.’

‘Oh, you practise yoga, eh? I now work at the University of Ermalpa. Before, I was at Milan, when we last met at your Norwich Symposium, three years away.’

At that, Squire’s memory grudgingly yielded a few details. With help from the University of East Anglia, he had organized a symposium on Animals in the Popular Imagination, which had turned into a lot of fun for the local children, if nothing else. Morabito, already making his name in his field, had been invited to contribute, and had been almost as big a success as Desmond Morris.

‘That was a good occasion.’

‘You know, Signor Squire, best time for me was when we finished the symposium and you kindly drove me to your lovely house. We had tea on the lawn and your wife served it, helped by another lady. It was a perfect English place and I don’t forget it.’

‘I remember you achieved a perfect understanding with our Dalmatian, Nellie.’

‘And with your pretty daughters.’

‘Ann and Jane. Yes, they are lovely.’

The Italian sighed, cleared his throat, shuffled his feet. ‘One day I get married also. I also would like two lovely daughters. Your wife told me when I was at your house that every year you have a pop festival in your gardens, like Woodstock and Knebworth. Is it so?’

‘They were only small festivals. Nothing grand, but great fun. We had The Who one year and they were fantastic. We’ve stopped doing it now, I’m afraid. It got too complicated and too expensive … How do you like the university here?’

‘I take you round for inspection, if you like, one evening.’ Morabito looked anxious, fixing Squire with his luminous eyes. ‘About the delegates to this conference, I have some doubts. Do you know many of them personally?’

‘Only a few. You must know many more.’

Morabito made an expressive gesture and moved closer to Squire. ‘I tell you, maybe I shouldn’t tell this, but I think many are second-rate, and you will be disappointed. Another thing – they have here the Russians.’