Jim Crace - Arcadia

‘They only need to see us,’ Con had said. ‘And hear us too.’

So they stood firm and wet; and they began to chant and clap and jeer and offer leaflets whenever anybody passed them by to enter Victor’s fort.

Just before eleven the architectural press began to arrive for Victor’s conference, but there were other writers too, from papers and from magazines that would not normally concern themselves with building schemes. Rook’s phone calls, Victor’s press release and invitation, the early radio reports of trouble in the marketplace and streets, had stirred the news editors and the diarists to send their representatives. The Burgher himself had come (again my face is hoist above the parapet), and I was keen to follow up the anecdote of Victor’s coddled fish with something else to make the rich seem ludicrous. I noted what the placards said — Save our Market from the Millionaire — and when I took their leaflet, saw what comedy the Burgher could construct from Signor Busi’s pregnant domes. Already — and without, as yet, much cause beyond an appetite for mischief — the traders had a champion. The Burgher loathed those men who gained their power and wealth from trade.

‘Who are these people?’

Signor Busi was glad of an excuse to leave the breakfast table and look out on the mall. An hour of non-business conversation with Victor had obliged him to sit silently, engaged in food, or else — his choice, in fact — to hold a monologue. As Victor showed no sign that he was either bored or entertained, the monologue was free to range untrammelled and, perhaps, unheard, amongst the pleasantries of Busi’s intercontinental life. He talked at length about New York, its obesity. Did Victor know New York? No? So Busi spoke about Milan, the town he loved and loathed the most. It was more Celtic than typically Italian, he believed. Did Victor realize that London was closer to Milan than Sicily? Victor had not realized, but seemed prepared to accept Busi’s word.

Now the architect was stuck. The more he said, the less he had to say. So he was happy to stand and help the old man to the parapet and relay — his eyes were sharp — what he could see; the banners, the picket line, the drama in the mall. No, Victor did not know what all the distant noise was for. He sublet twenty-three floors of Big Vic to fourteen different companies, so there were fifteen possible reasons for demonstrations at the door.

When Anna came to lead her boss and Signor Busi down to the press conference, she said that there would be delays. They had expected just five writers at the most and perhaps an agency photographer, but there were thirty journalists in all, including a film crew and two people from the radio. The meeting room was far too small. They’d have to find a larger venue.

‘Then use my office suite,’ Victor said. ‘You might have guessed there’d be wide interest.’

Anna thought it prudent not to detail the width of interest that had gathered in the mall. She replied to Signor Busi’s urbane bow with a ceremonial smile and left to fetch the press.

Both men were pleased to launch Arcadia to such an eager group. The cameras were put to work as soon as the two men came down by Victor’s private lift. Anna distributed plans and paperwork. Each file contained an architectural brief, a plan, a sketch, an article from the International Gazette about the Busi Partnership. Big Vic’s Publicity Manager introduced the two men to the press. Signor Claudio Busi, he explained, would say a word or two, and then there would be questions and photo-opportunities and wine.

Signor Busi embarked upon his second monologue that morning, but on this occasion he had come prepared. The speech that he had already made to Victor would do for these people, too, except that now there was no need ‘to glorify the vision of the man who pays’.

‘My work is familiar to you, I think,’ he said, implying that the new Arcadia was all his work. ‘I have been called …’ (here he laughed, to demonstrate his lack of vanity) ‘… a guru of design, a philosopher amongst journeymen. I introduced the notion, as you know, of “building as event”. That is to say, that when we use a building we should experience narrative and drama in the way that on a mountain walk we experience the textures and elements of landscape.’

As yet the pens and pencils of the press had made no mark. What were they building in the marketplace? A planetarium? A Disneyland? An operatic set? A wildlife park? Mont Blanc?

‘We have nostalgia and we have experiments,’ he continued. ‘We also have modernity. I think it will be clear to you — if I can now invite you to open up your files and look at the impression of Arcadia — that we have opted for modernity, that is to say, for this city of today we replace the chaos of a medieval market with the harmony and dignity of a modern one.’

He held his larger illustration of Arcadia up against his chest. ‘What does this recall to you?’ he asked, and gave no time for anyone to make a guess. ‘Here is a landscape at the city centre,’ he said, and then — encouraged by the smiles that greeted every word — Signor Busi added ‘an amusing confidentiality’: ‘Something to make us laugh. My colleagues in Milan have called Arcadia the Melting Glass Meringues. You see their joke, I think?’ I held the Burgher’s pen. It went to work. Busi had given me a comic heading for that evening’s diary. He had surrendered his confectionery Arcadia to my cartoonist and to my irony.

‘Meringues? Are these cakes known to you?’ asked Busi, unnerved that no one seemed amused.

Victor hid behind his desk, his eyebrows making Ms and Ws. Perhaps he wondered whether this Italian was entirely sound, or else was blinking back his mirth.

When questions came, there were the usual queries about budgets and timescales which Signor Busi and the publicity manager handled with unnecessary detail. Then the tougher questions came, ‘What consultations have there been with the street traders currently at work in the Soap Market?’ and ‘What provisions have been made to protect the interests of the marketeers?’ The PR man made reassuring noises. It was his opinion that the building scheme was in the interests both of the city and the traders. ‘Why, then, are there a crowd of soapies demonstrating in the mall?’

The Burgher rose upon my legs. I held the market traders’ leaflet up and read the question that it posed and then the answers that it gave: ‘Arcadia? Who pays? You, the shopper. Me, the trader. Us, the citizens. Them that value history and tradition.’

‘There are placards at this very minute at the door which call on us to help protect the market from the millionaire,’ I said. ‘I see the millionaire himself is silent. I wonder whether we can ask him to reply to what the traders say?’

Victor did not stand. He did not want to speak, but had no choice. Old men can take their time, and not seem slow. He looked down at his hands. It seemed he would not speak at all, but then he raised his head and looked, not at the people in the room, but at the rain which swept into the windowpanes.

‘The market’s getting taller. That’s all,’ he said. ‘When I was small the traders put their produce out on mats. You had to bend to make your choice. Then we brought in raised stalls with awnings on which bags and tresses could be hung. You had to stretch to take your pick. So now we have Arcadia with steps and lifts and balconies. The market’s like a plant. It grows and flourishes, or else it withers. There will be no problems with the marketeers. Arcadia will make them rich.’

‘The traders at the door do not share your optimism,’ someone said.

‘They will,’ said Victor. ‘I’ll speak to them myself.’