Christine Brooke-Rose - The Brooke-Rose Omnibus

— You mean, after all that …?

— I’ve told you, diagnosis only prognosticates aetiology.

— I don’t understand.

— You’re not meant to.

The sigh is almost imperceptible, the boredom perhaps imagined on the bland and glowing asphalt face.

— There we are. Goodbye. Next please.

— Excuse me but, will you want to see me again?

— What? Oh, no. You’re a bit behind the times aren’t you? Psychoscopy’s an extracted absolute of analysis. We don’t need transference any more. We’re not only able to telescope a dependence that used to take years to build up, we telescope the let-down as well. You’ll see, the wrench will be fairly painless. More so, at any rate, than with Mr. Swaminathan, eh? You’ll have to renew your drugs, though, we haven’t quite solved that one yet, but there’s an automatic dispensary outside, you just feed in your prescription each time. Goodbye.

Somewhere in the archives there will be evidence that this has occurred, if it is kept, and only for the minds behind the microscopes. And besides, the installing and rigging up of the microscopes, and of the subjects under the microscope, interferes with the absolute result of being tinted. Other episodes, however, cannot be proved in this way.

MRS. JOAN DKIMBA eats the Beef Strogonoff and rice with appetite and relish.

— Lilly it’s delicious. I’m so glad to see you’re not starving here. What a pity you’re on a diet, that gruel looks most unappetising. I must tell Denton, he’s very interested in the geography of famine. He has a great big map in his office, you know, and sticks coloured pins into it. You can see everything at a glance. It’s particularly bad in the North, especially in and around the capital, where of course the overcrowding is awful. Everyone flocks to the capital hoping for work, it’s amazing how stupid people are, they’re told to keep away but everyone thinks they’re an exception. I spend hours and days slum visiting and trying to persuade them. It’s true there are more jobs in the capital, naturally, but nothing like enough, and the more everyone thinks so the less there are. Then those terrible shanty-towns grow on the outskirts like cancers, huts built of petrol-cans and old tyres and bits of tarpaulin, the bidonvilles, you’ve seen them I expect, and crime of course is rampant. For every ten people we manage to move out to rural areas two hundred move in. You don’t know how comfortable you are here, with your own separate bungalow, two whole rooms and a kitchen. Oh yes of course you do, having come here from the capital. I wish we could rehabilitate more people, but it really is impossible to keep up with it. Denton tours the whole country, the whole continent even, and the other continents too, trying to get co-operation from distributing organisations, did I tell you he’s been made Chief Spokesman, he was chosen among sixty-seven, you know, to represent his country, but the trouble is everyone’s out for themselves, and so suspicious! Of course there’s corruption, no one denies it, but you’d think they’d be able to tell, I mean they ought to have perfected means of detection by now, and international policing of distribution. In the end one has to tackle everything oneself. And I must say we’ve done wonders in this country, out of sheer will-power and determination. The energy of the people, it’s amazing. I mean just look at this reclaimed area, it simply didn’t exist before. Does your husband work on the land or is he retired? I think the Pension-Pill Scheme is marvellous, don’t you, I mean, no one ever thought of that before, to keep the old people not only fit but happy. Denton had quite a hand in that, you know. It’s the same with the dole-pills. Well I mean that side of things is important, isn’t it. The difficulty is in persuading people to come and get what they’re entitled to. They seem to prefer wallowing in their misery, it’s quite extraordinary.

— Oh, he’s unemployed? I see. It really is an insoluble problem, isn’t it? And I assure you that it isn’t prejudice, Denton’s gone into it very carefully, the figures show that prejudice is definitely not part of the overall picture, though of course it may occur in individual cases here and there. You see, you can’t get away from the fact that the Colourless are more unreliable, oh, not that they mean to be of course — except in individual cases, throw-backs, so to speak, who can’t adapt to new environments— but simply because they’re weaker, they go sick more often, and they’re more susceptible to the — well, of course I don’t know why I’m talking in the third person like this, I’m as Colourless as you are, but somehow I’ve been caught up, as it were, in a manner of speaking, but I’m with you all the way, naturally. But I thought you told me he had a job up at Denise Mgulu’s? Temporary, oh I see. It is difficult isn’t it? I should have thought that with the BAUDA there’d be plenty of extra work. Oh, it stands for Ball in Aid of Under Developed Areas. Lilly, you should know that, it’s an annual event. Oh, I see, well maybe she’s right, it does make it sound a bit grim, I suppose. But I always think it’s best to face facts. You know Denise strikes me as awfully out of touch sometimes. All this lady of the manor business. Of course I approve of her food-growing experiments, I think she and Severin have done wonders round here, but you know Severin is always up at that farm of theirs, he’s hardly ever seen in the House of Reps and for heaven’s sake one must be seen. I mean one is elected for something I suppose and what is it if it isn’t representation? And they wouldn’t’ve been able even to start the farm if it hadn’t been for the Government reclaiming schemes. Denton had a big hand in that you know. Still, I always support Severin when Denton runs him down, and I positively persuaded him that this year we must come down and support their ball. So here we are, and of course I just had to look you up. I do think you have a charming kitchen. And this meal was delicious, Lilly, but then you always were a marvellous cook, even at school you always came out top in domestic science, didn’t you. D’you remember when Miss er, what was her name, Miss Mgoa, that’s it, she asked me, how will you find and feed a husband, Joan, if you don’t learn how to cook, and I said I shall have servants, it’s strange, isn’t it, how I knew even then, and she said coldly, I doubt that very much. She did, you know, I remember it as if it were today. Oh yes, I’ve had my share of prejudice, and of course it was much worse in those days as you know, the first reaction being a complex of relief and revenge, and then the fear of the malady, but I believe all these things like health and luck and success are a matter of attitude, they’re a state of mind. They’re not things outside us that come to us. We project them. Now you never did project that, Lilly, and I imagine your husband projects even less. I mean fancy getting a foothold of employment in that big house, just at the time of the big ball as she calls it, and then losing it.

— Oh, I see. I didn’t know. What did they say? It isn’t …? No. Not that they’d tell you of course, until it was too obvious. Psychoscopy? But that’s marvellous. What did I tell you, I knew he didn’t project, one only has to look at him. How clever of Denise. And how very kind. He’s tremendously lucky, you know, very few Colourless get it. Oh, in theory of course, but in practice they’re given up as hopeless, and there is a tremendous demand and a shortage of qualified psychoscopists, not to mention the machines and operators. It’s highly skilled and takes years to train them. It breaks one’s heart when the unemployment is so acute, but there it is, it’s always the same old story. There are jobs for the specialists or rather for some specialists like astro-computors and isofertilisers and demographers and geoprognologists regardless of race or creed, but not for the unskilled or even the semi-skilled and the unskilled literally cannot even be trained for such jobs, their standard of brain-function is too low, well, it’s a chemical fact, and the semi-skilled and specialists in other things are too set in their ways to adapt. Adaptation, that’s the thing, you see. But what with one thing and another, and the priority on cosmoindustry, bathyagriculture, psychostellar communications and all that, and of course, medicine, I mean all other medical ways and means of dealing with the malady, psychoscopy’s somehow become a luxury. So you see he’s very lucky. I hope it will have done some good. I’m sorry to talk about you in the third person like that, my dear, it’s very rude I know, but then, you don’t say much, and besides, it’s a sort of habit Lilly and I got into, a sort of game we used to play at school, talking about people as if they weren’t there. Very unnerving. That was the idea, of course, to show we weren’t put out by the others’ treatment. Oh, they were very nice to us, but there was a sort of undercurrent, if you know what I mean, and it was much worse then than now, which was understandable really. I mean, what with history and the displacement and all that, and of course the malady, I mean things have improved considerably, thanks largely to their extraordinary energy and efficiency and generosity. Because they really are superbly generous, you know, very warm-hearted people, that’s one thing one can say, they are warm-hearted, in fact I’ll tell you one thing, now that I feel so much one of them, you remember how at school they used to call us cold fish, cold-blooded, cold-hearted? Well they still do, you know, that’s entirely between you and me, and you of course, but there’s a tradition, going way back, no doubt into tribal history, that this is the fundamental difference between the Melanian races and the Colourless. Even I feel it sometimes, this basic attitude I mean. That’s why I have psychoscopy every month. It’s absolutely invaluable to me. I mean, I have to meet so many people all the time, I’d be lost without it.