Malcolm Bradbury - Doctor Criminale

‘I don’t have my contacts,’ said Ildiko, with what seemed to me a strange lack of enthusiasm. ‘I didn’t know you wore any,’ I said, ‘It is, I’m sure of it.’ ‘So?’ asked Ildiko. ‘So come on, let’s go,’ I said. ‘Why do we go?’ asked Ildiko, spooning in ice-cream. ‘To catch up with them,’ I said. ‘And then?’ asked Ildiko. ‘We’ll work it out,’ I said, pulling her up by the hand, ‘Quick, before we lose them.’ I dropped some Swiss francs onto the table. ‘Amazing, he pays,’ said Ildiko, following me across the square, between the Porsches and the Audis. We passed another grand hotel, the Château d’Ouchy, also a place where diplomats gathered and treaties were signed. ‘This also is very nice,’ said Ildiko, looking inside. ‘Quick, or they’ll disappear,’ I said. ‘I do not think this is such a very good idea,’ said Ildiko, ‘What do you say to him when you see him?’ ‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘Let’s just catch them first.’

The party ambled on somewhere ahead of us, going through the park. They were an obvious congress group, headed for an evening out. ‘Where do you think they go?’ asked Ildiko. I pointed ahead: the white lake steamer we had seen earlier at the pier was in steam, black smoke pouring out of its funnel. ‘Oh, they make a trip on the lake, how nice,’ said Ildiko, ‘They will not let us on, of course.’ By now the forward battalions from the congress were already passing through the turnstiles and onto the pier, then mounting the gangplank of the white lakeboat. Among them I could now clearly see the impressive, grey-haired, stocky bulk of Bazlo Criminale, clad in one of his shining suits and wearing, of course, his yachting-cap. I could also see more clearly the girl in a bright orange dress who was holding his arm and steering him up the plank. ‘I was right,’ I said, ‘He is with Miss Belli.’ ‘How wonderful,’ said Ildiko.

Ildiko was right too. At the entrance to the pier, a sign said ‘Privé,’ and a sailor taking rickets guarded the gate. ‘It’s a charter,’ I said, ‘It must be a special trip just for the congress. We’ll have to wait until tomorrow.’ But Ildiko’s mood seemed to change; evidently she was now taken up by the thrill of the chase. ‘You know you are hopeless?’ she said, ‘If you want to get on, you must think a little Hungarian. Wait, and give me your wallet.’ ‘My wallet?’ I asked. ‘If you want to catch him, it will cost you something,’ she said, ‘Do you want it or not?’ I handed her my wallet, and Ildiko ran off, disappearing into the mêlée at the pier entrance. For a few terrible seconds it occurred to me that I had been very foolish: maybe that would be the last I would see of both of them, and that the small supply of funds Lavinia had sent me would soon be making its merry way round the stores of Lausanne. This was, it seemed, an unworthy thought. A few moments later Ildiko re-emerged, running towards me, and carrying a large conference briefcase.

‘How did you get that?’ I asked. ‘Very easy,’ she said, ‘It cost a hundred Swiss francs from one of the delegates. I hope you don’t mind I spend some of your very precious money?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘But what did you do?’ ‘Of course, I asked if anyone there was Russian,’said Ildiko, ‘I found one and he sold his briefcase to me. Those people will sell you anything.’ ‘Ildiko, sometimes you are absolutely wonderful,’ I said. Ildiko had opened the wallet and was looking inside. ‘And sometimes you are a true pig,’ said Ildiko, taking out a conference lapel badge and pinning it onto me, ‘But now you are a quite different pig, a pig called Dr Pyotr Ignatieff. Take this, before they move away the plank. Then walk through there with me on your arm as if you really belonged to a photo congress, yes?’ We went through the turnstile and up the gangplank of the waiting ship. Moments later, the ship’s whistle sounded shrilly, the sea­gulls, or lakegulls, fluttered and fled, the great metal armatures of the ship’s well-oiled engines began to lever and turn, the paddle-wheels churned the grey water into a thick white foam. Soon our ship was backpaddling out into the misty lake; we stood on the deck and watched Lausanne and the port of Ouchy standing off on the shore. In the middle of the shoreline stood the great illuminated façade of the Beau Rivage Palace; somewhere out of sight round the corner was the hidden low frontage of the Hotel Zwingli, which I now conceded deserved its want of stars in the local guide. Bells clanged, the saloons were bright with a crowd of happy people. Thanks to Ildiko, we were now, for the moment, members of the Lausanne International Congress on Erotics in Postmodern Photography, and I was Dr Pyotr Ignatieff of Leningrad: quite a change of life.

By this stage I was beginning to learn a good deal about congresses and conferences, as anyone would whose task was to follow in the footsteps of Doctor Bazlo Criminale. I had certain half-formed thoughts on the subject which might in fact have made quite a good paper, if they ever decided to hold a conference on the topic of conferences (and I’ve no doubt that sooner or later they will). In one sense all congresses are like each other: they all have lapel badges and briefcases, banquets, trips, announcements, lectures in the congress hall, intimate liaisons in the bar. In another sense every congress, like every love affair (and the two are often closely connected), is different. There is a new mix of people, a new surge of emotion, a new state of the state of the art, a new set of ideas and chic philosophies, a changed order of things. There are congresses of politics and congresses of art, congresses of intellect and congresses of pleasure, congresses of reason and congresses of emotion.

In this simple scale of things, the Lausanne International Con­gress on Erotics in Postmodern Photography, which, standing in the entrance of the ship’s saloon, we began to inspect, was pretty clearly a congress of art, pleasure, and emotion. At Barolo, now seemingly so far away, we had been a group of paper-giving introverts. The photographers of Lausanne, who numbered about eighty strong and had come from every­where, were clearly a group of ego-fondling extroverts. Writ­ers are sometimes inclined to let their work do the talking; photographers have to let their talking do much of the work. Helped by waiters who served them Dole, and Pendant, and various of the local Vaudois vintages, they had quickly turned the ship into a noisy babble. They stood close to each other, pawing and fussing and fluttering and flapping. They chatted and embraced and laughed and shouted; they kissed and gasped and flirted and posed.

Yes, they were a flamboyant crowd. One woman was barebreasted. One man wore a Napoleonic uniform. Many had crossdressed: several of the men had on what looked like chiffon bedroom wear, and several of the women were clad in ties, tweeds or dress shirts and dinner-jackets. They had a band on board, so they began to dance. There was a bar on board, so they began to drink. There was finger-food on board, so they began to snack. There were celebrities on board, so they started celebrating. There were evidently illegal substances on board, so they began to dream. There were lips and breasts and buttocks on board, so they began to neck and fondle and nuzzle and suck. They were beautiful people, and they knew they were, so they started to do beautiful and outrageous and infinitely photographable things. They also photographed themselves doing them, making their circle of unreality complete.

But amid all this glitzy excitement there was one small pool of calm, sanity and metaphysical reason. It surrounded, of course, Bazlo Criminale. We wandered round the ship – the chilly top deck, the back of the lower deck, the front saloon, the rear saloon – and at first we couldn’t find him. Then there he was, sitting stockily at a table in a corner of the rear saloon. His great erotic adventure – and, looking at Miss Belli, who sat beside him, it surely must have been a great erotic adventure seemed to have changed him a little. His humour seemed much brighter, and the air of domesticity had gone. He wore a bright Ralph Lauren sports shirt under his fine suit, and his hairstyle was no longer bouffanted in the style of Romanian dictators but had been slicked firmly down in the style of a Thirties seducer. Belli, beside him in her bright orange dress, chattered, laughed, flirted, and constantly touched him on the arm. And in a crowd of flamboyant celebrities, he seemed somehow to be the true celebrity, as perhaps the constant flash of cameras insisted. I saw now how Criminale and People magazine could somehow go together.