Kingsley Amis - Dear Illusion - Selected Stories

‘Delighted you can join us,’ the host said when Simpson’s presence had been explained. ‘A privilege to have an Outworlder at one of our little gatherings. Now for our Part Two. Has Piotr explained to you about the ancient film that taught us so much? Well, its second and third sections were so badly damaged as to be almost useless to us. So what’s to follow is no more than an imaginative reconstruction, I fear, but I think it can be said that we’ve interpreted the tradition with taste and reverence. Let’s begin, shall we?’

He signed to an attendant standing at the table; the man began filling the teacups with a mixture of two liquids. One came out of something like a wine-bottle and was red, the other came out of something like a medicine bottle and was almost transparent, with a faint purplish tinge. Courteously passing Simpson the first of the cups, the host said: ‘Please do us the honour of initiating the proceedings.’

Simpson drank. He felt as if someone had exploded a tear-gas shell in his throat and then sprayed his gullet with curry-powder. As his own coughings and weepings subsided he was surprised to find his companions similarly afflicted in turn as they drank.

‘Interesting, isn’t it?’ the host asked, wheezing and staggering. ‘A fine shock to the palate. One might perhaps say that it goes beyond the merely gustatory and olfactory to the purely tactile. Hardly a sensuous experience at all — ascetic, almost abstract. An invention of genius, don’t you think?’

‘What — what’s the…?’

‘Red Biddy, my dear fellow,’ Piotr Davies put in proudly. There was reverence in his voice when he added: ‘Red wine and methylated spirits. Of course, we can’t hope to reproduce the legendary Empire Burgundy characters that used to go into it, but our own humble Boojly isn’t a bad substitute. Its role is purely ancillary, after all.’

‘We like to use a straw after the first shock.’ The host passed one to Simpson. ‘I hope you approve of the teacups. A nice traditional touch, I think. And now, do make yourself comfortable. I must see to the plonk in person — one can’t afford to take risks.’

Simpson sat down near Davies on a packing-case. He realized after a few moments that it was actually carved out of a single block of wood. Then he noticed that the dampness of the walls was maintained by tiny water-jets at intervals near the ceiling. Probably the sacks on the floor had been specially woven and then artificially aged. Pretending to suck at his straw, he said nervously to Davies: ‘What exactly do you mean by plonk? In my time, people usually…’ He broke off, fearful of having betrayed himself, but the man of the future had noticed nothing.

‘Ah, you’re in for a great experience, my dear friend, something unknown outside this room for countless decades. To our ancestors in the later twentieth century it may have been the stuff of daily life, but to us it’s a pearl beyond price, a precious fragment salvaged from the wreck of history. Watch carefully — every bit of this is authentic.’

With smarting eyes, Simpson saw his host pull the crumb from a loaf and stuff it into the mouth of an enamel jug. Then, taking a candle from a nearby bottle, he put the flame to a disc-shaped cake of brownish substance that the attendant was holding between tongs. A flame arose; liquid dropped on to the bread and began to soak through into the jug; the assembled guests clapped and cheered. Another brownish cake was treated in the same way, then another. ‘Shoe-polish,’ Simpson said in a cracked voice.

‘Exactly. We’re on the dark tans this evening, with just a touch of ox-blood to give body. Makes a very big, round, pugnacious drink. By the way, that’s processed bread he’s using. Wholemeal’s too permeable, we’ve found.’

Beaming, the host came over to Simpson with a half-filled cup, a breakfast cup this time. ‘Down in one, my dear chap,’ he said.

They were all watching; there was nothing for it. Simpson shut his eyes and drank. This time a hundred blunt dental drills seemed to be working at once on his nose and throat and mouth. Fluid sprang from all the mucous membranes in those areas. It was like having one’s face pushed into a bath of acid. Simpson’s shoulders sagged and his eyes filmed over.

‘I’d say the light tans have got more bite,’ a voice said near him. ‘Especially on the gums.’

‘Less of a follow-through, on the other hand.’ There was the sound of swallowing and then a muffled scream. ‘Were you here for the plain-tan tasting last month? Wonderful fire and vehemence. I was blind for the next four days.’

‘I still say you can’t beat a straight brown for all-round excoriation. Amazing results on the uvula and tonsils.’

‘What’s wrong with black?’ This was a younger voice.

An embarrassed silence, tempered by a fit of coughing and a heartfelt moan from different parts of the circle, was ended by someone saying urbanely: ‘Each to his taste, of course, and there is impact there, but I think experience shows that that sooty, oil-smoke quality is rather meretricious. Most of us find ourselves moving tanwards as we grow older.’

‘Ah, good, he’s… yes, he’s using a tin of transparent in the next jug. Watch for the effect on the septum.’

Simpson lurched to his feet. ‘I must be going,’ he muttered. ‘Important engagement.’

‘What, you’re not staying for the coal-gas in milk? Turns the brain to absolute jelly, you know.’

‘Sorry… friend waiting for me.’

‘Goodbye, then. Give our love to Mercury. Perhaps you’ll be able to start a circle of the Friends of Plonk on your home planet. That would be a magnificent thought.’

‘Magnificent,’ the Director echoed bitterly. ‘Just think of it. The idea of an atomic war’s too much to take in, but those poor devils… Baker, we must prepare some information for Simpson to take on his next long-range trip, something that’ll show them how to make a decent vodka or gin even if the vines have all gone.’

I was hardly listening. ‘Aren’t there some queer things about that world, sir? Shoe-polish in just the same variants that we know? Wholemeal bread when the crops are supposed to have —’

I was interrupted by a shout from the far end of the lab, where Rabaiotti had gone to check the TIAMARIA. He turned and came racing towards us, babbling at the top of his voice.

‘Phase distortion, sir! Anomalous tracking on the output side! Completely new effect!’

‘And the TIOPEPE’s meshed with it, isn’t it?’ Schneider said.

‘Of course!’ I yelled. ‘Simpson was on a different time-path, sir! An alternative probability, a parallel world. No wonder the ground-level estimate was off. This is amazing!’

‘No nuclear war in our time-path — no certainty, anyway,’ the Director sang, waving his arms.

‘No destruction of the vines.’

‘No Friends of Plonk.’

‘All the same,’ Simpson murmured to me as we strolled towards the Conference Room, ‘in some ways they’re better off than we are. At least the stuff they use is genuine. Nobody’s going to doctor bloody shoe-polish to make it taste smoother or to preserve it or so that you’ll mistake it for a more expensive brand. And it can only improve, what they drink.’

‘Whereas we…’

‘Yes. That draught beer you go on about isn’t draught at all: it comes out of a giant steel bottle these days, because it’s easier that way. And do you think the Germans are the greatest chemists in the world for nothing? Ask Schneider about the 1972 Moselles. And what do you imagine all those scientists are doing in Bordeaux?’

‘There’s Italy and Spain and Greece. They’ll—’

‘Not Italy any more. Ask Rabaiotti, or rather don’t. Spain and Greece’ll last longest, probably, but by 1980 you’ll have to go to Albania if you want real wine. Provided the Chinese won’t have started helping them to get the place modernized.’