I staggered back to the University of Truth and Justice late that night. Lunch with the University big shots had been a largely liquid affair, prolonged well into the evening at various Art Nouveau cafes that held nostalgic appeal for Professor Masaryk and his old pal Otto Hell. Drinking one liqueur-laden coffee after another with these hardy old Central Europeans, I belatedly realized the appeal of the old Austro-Hungarian cafe-culture. Cafes are places for respectable intellectuals to get smashed. Most of the conversation between the two old professors had centered around which of their old associates were dead or dying, and while it was cute to observe the dimple of pleasure that appeared on Hell's jowled cheek at every mention of senility and disease among his still-extant contemporaries, I couldn't help feeling left out, which made me put even more Cointreau into my coffee than I would have otherwise. And then Hell insisted on going to the opera. They say it ain't over till the fat woman sings, but my eyelids droop the moment some jumbo diva appears and begins to moan. And it would have seemed rude to snore openly in front of my new boss, so I tried to swallow my yawns instead, causing Professor Masaryk some concern when I choked and my face swelled and turned purple like a bloated bullfrog. Hell watched the spectacle with malicious amusement. After the show the two professors merrily toddled on down the long garish strip of Wenceslas Square's cabarets and night clubs, two old reprobates indulging in a night on the town while I caught a taxi and came straight back to the university. I needed sleep, badly, even though I knew that I would have nightmares about opera singers with Alzheimer's disease.
Adorable Annichka at the reception desk waved a little pink slip at me. "You had a phone call!" she exclaimed gaily. `Call Rasputin immediately,' the message read, followed by a long phone number. A cold shudder ran through me. "Your friend called from Moscow!" Annichka squeaked. "He wanted to talk to you! He said it was very important!"
"Did he say what he wanted?" I asked huskily. Synchronicity always bothers me. It disturbed me profoundly that Rasputin had been calling me while I was insulting him behind his back.
"No, he didn't." Annichka made a delightful little moue. "Why don't you call him and find out?" She offered me her telephone. I recoiled involuntarily. Then, bringing my heart up from my boots with some effort, I bravely took hold of the receiver and with shaking hands punched in the number. It rang a few times and I was just about to put the phone down gratefully when a voice answered.
"Hullo..." A very languorous English drawl. I was filled with a strange foreboding.
"May I speak to Rasputin please? Who the hell is this anyway?"
"Rasputin is away at the moment. This is God speaking. May I help you?" the languid voice murmured. I felt faint.
"Godfrey. Why are you in Moscow? What is Rasputin doing there? Isn't he afraid of getting arrested?"
"Oh, hullo, old chap. Didn't recognize your voice. He may well be arrested at any moment. It might even do us some good. Free publicity for this Canadian documentary, you see."
"No, I'm afraid I don't see. What documentary?"
"I thought Rasputin might have explained to you. But he is a terrible correspondent, isn't he? It's quite simple, actually. Rasputin and I are working with this Canadian chap called Tim or Jeff or Mutt or something or the other, one of those North American names, you know. I always get mixed up." God paused. I waited breathlessly. "Tom? Jerry?" God mused. "No, I really can't remember. Anyway, this Canadian fellow makes documentaries and he wanted to make one about the Russian mafia. I met him at a party in someone's place in South Kensington and put him in touch with Rasputin who of course jumped at the chance to make some money..."
"Wait a second. Rasputin used to boast that he was on the KGB's list of most wanted dissidents. Isn't he scared that..."
"That they might get him? No, things seem to have changed quite a bit. Actually, we even went to KGB headquarters and had a guided tour. A frightful bore, really. All those dungeons. Who really cares which rooms they kept their silly files in?"
"So what is Rasputin doing to this poor Canadian?"
"Oh, he's buying nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers."
"I don't catch your drift."
"Draft is the technical term, I believe."
I had a strong divination of God at that moment, the mental image of a short slight young man reclining indolently on a couch in some apartment in Moscow, heavy-lidded eyes fixed vacantly on a half-empty vodka bottle, stroking his unshaven chin, trying to decide whether the bottle was too far away to reach without excessive movement, the phone receiver crooked between shoulder and neck, far away from his fat lower lip.
"Eighty-five thousand ton draft, the aircraft carrier. It's lying unfinished in some Ukrainian shipyard. Rasputin is trying to outbid the Chinese. Or is it the Indonesians? I can't remember. One of those states that want the Spratly Islands. I don't know why they should, really."
"What do the Spratly Islands have to do with it? Stop prattling, God. Get to the point. Why is Rasputin trying to buy an aircraft carrier?"
"It's for the documentary," God explained, unperturbed by my hysterical outburst. "This chap, Joe, or is it Ike?, has wired Rasputin up. Quite ingenious although a bit uncomfortable, I should imagine. It took ages to strap all the little gadgets onto Rasputin in invisible places. Little tape-recorders and microphones and even a tiny video-camera. Luckily, he found that he could hide all the wiring under the rolls of flab on Rasputin's belly where they wouldn't show even if he was strip-searched. The video camera was a bit more tricky but Steve?, Mike?, ended up embedding it in the sole of Rasputin's shoe. So all Rasputin has to do is to sit with his leg up on his lap and his shoe pointed at the person with whom he is negotiating, if you see what I mean."
"I think I see. So Rasputin isn't actually planning to become a shipping magnate or a pirate. He's just pretending to buy submarines."
"Exactly." God chuckled. "Can't you just see the faces of these Malay or Filipino negotiators when they see the documentary and find out that they've had to pay three times their original offer because Rasputin was upping the ante? I imagine there might be a few red faces in Bangkok over this one. Do Asians blush? I mean, do their faces change color? I ask purely out of scientific curiosity."
"Well, I can sometimes feel my face getting hotter but I don't think it shows. That's why you white people think of us as inscrutable. Actually, we're flustered and confused all the time."
"Interesting. I suppose you're right. I was forgetting about this notorious propensity for embarrassed giggling."
"With whom is Rasputin negotiating?"
"Oh, some corrupt admiral or the other," God said airily. "Probably in cahoots with the KGB. They're all trying to make money these days."
"I'm sure they'll be really amused by the documentary as well. Isn't Rasputin at all worried about this little escapade?"
"Oh, he isn't using his real name, obviously. He goes by the nom de plume of Lev Pistoff."
"And you? What are you doing there while Lev Pistoff negotiates?"
"Oh, I sit here and drink. I'm not bored in the slightest. Negotiating about nuclear powered ships is only the tiniest fraction of what we're doing," God said reassuringly. "We go to mob restaurants, drink vodka with the mob, fuck mob molls, you know, we're building up our personae as mobsters."
"So I gather. What character are you playing?"
"Corrupt British Secret Service. It goes with the accent and then, you know, Russians are so used to corrupt KGB agents that they just naturally assume that the Russian mafia in the West must have the same sort of connections."
"So Lev Pistoff is part of the Russian mafia in the West, is he?"
"Sounds so true to life, doesn't it?" God giggled happily. "We're also doing a bit of smuggling on the side."
"Drugs?"
"No, no, we don't want to get into a fight with the Italians. They're all over the place by the way."
"Drugs or Italians?"
"Both. Last night we went to this restaurant on the Arbat and the way the Italians behaved was really quite outrageous. I mean, it's one thing to politely insert a hundred dollar note into some stripper's G-string and tickle her a bit, and quite another to force the chorus girls, who one must admit were quite acquiescent, to dip themselves in bathtubs full of glue and to just lie there, shivering, poor things, you could see the goosebumps, while these mafiosi threw dollars by the bucket all over the place. Of course, they had been snorting cocaine by the handful all evening, which renders their disgraceful behavior understandable but not excusable."
"God, you seem to be developing morals."
"I know. Isn't it terrible?" God replied complacently. "Still it is a new experience. Luckily, we shall soon be returning to decadent old London, laden with all manner of good things."
"What are you smuggling?"
"Art. Ikons. Rare books. Stuff for the cognoscenti."
I yawned. "Whatever. Would you happen to know why Rasputin wanted to talk to me so urgently?"
"I'm sure I couldn't say, old chap. As you know, he doesn't tell anyone anything. It's safer that way. Is there any particular message I should pass on to him when, or, indeed, if he returns?"
A happy thought struck me. "You could tell him that I had lunch today with his friend Lady Monica Bigglesworth-Fume. She sent her love to Rasputin and asked him to get in touch with her soon. It's been so long, she said."
"I shall certainly pass on your message. Did Killjoy-Yuck have venison for lunch by any chance?" God sounded very sleepy.
Alarm bells went off in my head in a deafening clamor. I looked at my watch and sighed. I knew I had to find out what strange game Godfrey was playing, if I was to get a wink of sleep that night. I hate tossing and turning in bed. Whom the gods would destroy, they first deprive of sleep, and I was firmly determined to get my usual ten hours, even if that meant that I had to keep God talking. I made myself take a deep breath, and then another. If this momentary pause in our telephone conversation informed Godfrey that I was startled by the extent of his knowledge about who was present at my lunch with the big people who ran the University of Truth and Justice in Prague, thousands of kilometres away from Moscow where he was playing dangerous games with our thuggish friend Rasputin, well, then, so much the better. Wilful naivete has its own rewards, especially the confusion it produces among people who enjoy playing games with other people's heads. "You're very well informed, God," I said, allowing just a little shock to seep across the telephone. "Just how would you happen to know that Terence Killjoy-Yuck was also at lunch?"
"Oh, dear boy, welcome to the club."
"You mean you..."
"Didn't you know? Why did you think I got sent down from Oxford?"
"Because you drank all the time and did no work?"
"Doesn't everyone?"
"True," I admitted. "But you were so ostentatious about it..."
"Precisely," God purred.
"Godfrey, you bastard." I was genuinely outraged. "Did Killjoy-Yuck recruit you?"
"Heaven forbid." Godfrey sounded appalled. "He wasn't my tutor. It would have been poaching. Not at all the done thing, my dear fellow."
"But are you working for Killjoy-Yuck?"
"`Working for...'" Godfrey repeated mockingly. "Isn't that rather an obsolete concept, old chap? Sounds so proletarian, somehow, sort of like singing company songs before descending into the mines. Surely we're all free-lance these days. It's more efficient, isn't it?"
"So how did you know about my lunch?" I persisted.
"Oh, Terence and I chat periodically. He knows we're friends. Surely it's only natural that I ask about you?"
A bright idea struck me between the eyes. "Are you keeping tabs on Rasputin?"
God laughed. "You mean telling Terence about Lev Pistoff's activities? But that would be peaching. Another of the things one doesn't do, my dear fellow."
"So what do you do?" I asked, exasperated. "No poaching, no peaching, good grief, it sounds so rural, like you're all boy scouts or something."
"Oh, one just looks around, you know. One keeps one's eyes open. One passes on bits of information that might be interesting. It's all very casual."
"Well, will you tell me why Terence asked me to gather the dirt on X-O-X?"
"X-O-X? Ah, you mean, Socks."
"It's pronounced 'Hdzhooohdzh' in Albanian."
"How very interesting," God replied with languid condescension. "Well, everyone's keeping an eye on Socks, aren't they? I imagine Terence just wants you to find out what Socks is up to with this University. Is it a front for arms smuggling to revolutionary movements? That sort of thing."
"The university doesn't even have any students yet," I protested.
"In that case, it isn't a very good front yet," Godfrey agreed. "But Socks does rather like setting up front organizations. Take, for instance, the Fund for Peace and Love."
"So that is a Xox thing? Flossie was applying to them for money for her research in India."
"Yes, well, they do give away large gobs of money for more or less legitimate research. Covers up the rumour that the Fund for Peace and Love is used to channel money to various guerrilla groups. I know that CIA bribes to moderate Arab groups were laundered though it. And the Kurds. Probably lots else as well. Maybe that's how Socks made his money. Kept a percentage."
"Godfrey, you sound like such an expert," I said, impressed. "Does anyone else know about all this?"
"Among our mutual friends, you mean? I can't remember. I might have told Floss. By the way, they gave her the money for her research so she's off to India next week. Lulu might know too. I often talk in my sleep. Quite embarrassing."
"Isn't it a breach of security?"
"On the contrary, old chap." God sounded amused. "It's the old strategy of double-bluff. Rasputin is particularly good at it. That's how he defused all the suspicion he aroused at Oxford, you know, this excessively loud dissident Russian, everyone thought he must work for the KGB, right, otherwise how could he get away in the early days of perestroika with calling Gorbachev a KGB stooge? Why wasn't he getting the shove with the old poisoned umbrella, people muttered. Rasputin brazened it out well by simply declaring that he might be KGB but how would you ever know? You see, this way he was executing a triple-bluff, finessing the whole thing onto another, higher, dimension of uncertainty. Perhaps, one could keep going on infinitely. You know the paradox about the Cretan who declared that all Cretans are liars. Now, what does Wittgenstein say about it? Maybe I should look at Godel again..."
"Godfrey," I pleaded. I knew from bitter experience that he could spend hours rambling on and on about such things. He did after all have a first class degree in philosophy from Cambridge which, actually, now that I thought about it, made his amazing failure as a postgraduate student at Oxford quite inexplicable. Unless he was telling the truth... They want you to think like this, I said to myself sternly. Stop thinking! Be your normal superficial self. Take things at appearances. It is dangerous to get too deep into the quicksand of analytic thought. Besides, Godfrey's mention of Godel reminded me of a footnote in a book I had recently read... "God. Quick. Answer one question."
"Ask and you shall receive..."
"Who paid for Rasputin's studies at Oxford?"
"The Fund for Peace and Love. In other words, Socks. But you must have known. Wasn't Terence your tutor as well as Rasputin's?"
My head was whirling. X-O-X, Terence Killjoy-Yuck, Rasputin, Godfrey… fragmented faces and leering grins in a lurid kaleidoscope of connections. I knew I couldn't keep this up much longer. "Of course. Yes, of course, I knew that all along. I must hang up now. Good talking to you. Take lots of drugs. Say hi to the Mafia. Good luck with the art smuggling. I hear the airports are dangerous in Moscow now..." I babbled and then hung up. I rested my spinning head in my hands and took another deep breath. I didn't know what to believe from what Godfrey had been telling me. Was I really working for a fake university, for a front organization for arms smugglers and revolutionaries? I knew that I had to get in touch with my friend Lulu. She would know what was going on. In desperation, I looked up, straight into Annichka's pretty little face behind the reception desk.
"You were talking about drugs. Do you take drugs?" Annichka asked wonderingly, her big brown eyes bovine with amazement.
"Uh, sure, sometimes, I used to," I responded uncertainly, not knowing the extent to which Czech children were indoctrinated against pleasurable chemicals.
"I wasn't sure, you look so prim and proper. Such a clean little boy."
I glared at this infant. "And you're shooting up every day, I suppose, huh?"
I haven't yet but I'd love to," Annichka responded. "Everyone I know takes drugs," she confided. "My parents smoke marijuana all the time. They said I could smoke some with them when I'm eighteen. But that's so far away!"
"How old are you, Annichka?" I felt like a child molester, just looking at her. The contrast between the lithe yet lush body of this little Lolita, encased today in a skin-tight bodysuit, and her squeaky babyish voice seemed even more disconcerting now that she was talking about drugs. After my conversation with God I felt aged enough to be her father. Or her grandfather. But maybe the old gentleman took drugs too.
"Sixteen." Annichka smiled frankly.
"Sixteen." I couldn't remember back that far. "I think I was sixteen when I first took drugs. I'll give you some."
"Will you?" Annichka beamed at me. "Do you have some here?"
"Not right now. But I'll get some soon," I promised. "I'll get my friends to send some mescaline from Kalifornia. You'll like it. It makes you see pretty colors."
"Does it?" Annichka breathed. I leaned forward to hear her better. "I love pretty colors. I draw with my crayons all the time."
"Me too," I smiled, looking up from her baby cleavage. "Maybe we can play together sometime."
"I'd like that! When you get the mescaline, okay?"
"It's a date. Now can I make another phone call? It's kind of private."
"Sure! Go into the booth and call anywhere in the world! Talk as long as you want! The University pays for everything! Isn't it lovely?" Annichka clapped her hands delightedly. I blew her a kiss and walked across the wide lobby to the phone booth.
As I dialled Lulu's unlisted number, I looked at my watch and tried to calculate the time difference. It wasn't even two o'clock yet in Oxford so there was only the slimmest of chances that Lulu might actually be home and alone. But it was worth a try. Genuine naivete was positively dangerous in the perilous circumstances in which I now found myself. I needed information in order to maintain my stance of ingenuous innocence. And who better to turn to for lessons in the dainty art of candid guile than that consummate ingenue, Lulu?
Adorable Annichka at the reception desk waved a little pink slip at me. "You had a phone call!" she exclaimed gaily. `Call Rasputin immediately,' the message read, followed by a long phone number. A cold shudder ran through me. "Your friend called from Moscow!" Annichka squeaked. "He wanted to talk to you! He said it was very important!"
"Did he say what he wanted?" I asked huskily. Synchronicity always bothers me. It disturbed me profoundly that Rasputin had been calling me while I was insulting him behind his back.
"No, he didn't." Annichka made a delightful little moue. "Why don't you call him and find out?" She offered me her telephone. I recoiled involuntarily. Then, bringing my heart up from my boots with some effort, I bravely took hold of the receiver and with shaking hands punched in the number. It rang a few times and I was just about to put the phone down gratefully when a voice answered.
"Hullo..." A very languorous English drawl. I was filled with a strange foreboding.
"May I speak to Rasputin please? Who the hell is this anyway?"
"Rasputin is away at the moment. This is God speaking. May I help you?" the languid voice murmured. I felt faint.
"Godfrey. Why are you in Moscow? What is Rasputin doing there? Isn't he afraid of getting arrested?"
"Oh, hullo, old chap. Didn't recognize your voice. He may well be arrested at any moment. It might even do us some good. Free publicity for this Canadian documentary, you see."
"No, I'm afraid I don't see. What documentary?"
"I thought Rasputin might have explained to you. But he is a terrible correspondent, isn't he? It's quite simple, actually. Rasputin and I are working with this Canadian chap called Tim or Jeff or Mutt or something or the other, one of those North American names, you know. I always get mixed up." God paused. I waited breathlessly. "Tom? Jerry?" God mused. "No, I really can't remember. Anyway, this Canadian fellow makes documentaries and he wanted to make one about the Russian mafia. I met him at a party in someone's place in South Kensington and put him in touch with Rasputin who of course jumped at the chance to make some money..."
"Wait a second. Rasputin used to boast that he was on the KGB's list of most wanted dissidents. Isn't he scared that..."
"That they might get him? No, things seem to have changed quite a bit. Actually, we even went to KGB headquarters and had a guided tour. A frightful bore, really. All those dungeons. Who really cares which rooms they kept their silly files in?"
"So what is Rasputin doing to this poor Canadian?"
"Oh, he's buying nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers."
"I don't catch your drift."
"Draft is the technical term, I believe."
I had a strong divination of God at that moment, the mental image of a short slight young man reclining indolently on a couch in some apartment in Moscow, heavy-lidded eyes fixed vacantly on a half-empty vodka bottle, stroking his unshaven chin, trying to decide whether the bottle was too far away to reach without excessive movement, the phone receiver crooked between shoulder and neck, far away from his fat lower lip.
"Eighty-five thousand ton draft, the aircraft carrier. It's lying unfinished in some Ukrainian shipyard. Rasputin is trying to outbid the Chinese. Or is it the Indonesians? I can't remember. One of those states that want the Spratly Islands. I don't know why they should, really."
"What do the Spratly Islands have to do with it? Stop prattling, God. Get to the point. Why is Rasputin trying to buy an aircraft carrier?"
"It's for the documentary," God explained, unperturbed by my hysterical outburst. "This chap, Joe, or is it Ike?, has wired Rasputin up. Quite ingenious although a bit uncomfortable, I should imagine. It took ages to strap all the little gadgets onto Rasputin in invisible places. Little tape-recorders and microphones and even a tiny video-camera. Luckily, he found that he could hide all the wiring under the rolls of flab on Rasputin's belly where they wouldn't show even if he was strip-searched. The video camera was a bit more tricky but Steve?, Mike?, ended up embedding it in the sole of Rasputin's shoe. So all Rasputin has to do is to sit with his leg up on his lap and his shoe pointed at the person with whom he is negotiating, if you see what I mean."
"I think I see. So Rasputin isn't actually planning to become a shipping magnate or a pirate. He's just pretending to buy submarines."
"Exactly." God chuckled. "Can't you just see the faces of these Malay or Filipino negotiators when they see the documentary and find out that they've had to pay three times their original offer because Rasputin was upping the ante? I imagine there might be a few red faces in Bangkok over this one. Do Asians blush? I mean, do their faces change color? I ask purely out of scientific curiosity."
"Well, I can sometimes feel my face getting hotter but I don't think it shows. That's why you white people think of us as inscrutable. Actually, we're flustered and confused all the time."
"Interesting. I suppose you're right. I was forgetting about this notorious propensity for embarrassed giggling."
"With whom is Rasputin negotiating?"
"Oh, some corrupt admiral or the other," God said airily. "Probably in cahoots with the KGB. They're all trying to make money these days."
"I'm sure they'll be really amused by the documentary as well. Isn't Rasputin at all worried about this little escapade?"
"Oh, he isn't using his real name, obviously. He goes by the nom de plume of Lev Pistoff."
"And you? What are you doing there while Lev Pistoff negotiates?"
"Oh, I sit here and drink. I'm not bored in the slightest. Negotiating about nuclear powered ships is only the tiniest fraction of what we're doing," God said reassuringly. "We go to mob restaurants, drink vodka with the mob, fuck mob molls, you know, we're building up our personae as mobsters."
"So I gather. What character are you playing?"
"Corrupt British Secret Service. It goes with the accent and then, you know, Russians are so used to corrupt KGB agents that they just naturally assume that the Russian mafia in the West must have the same sort of connections."
"So Lev Pistoff is part of the Russian mafia in the West, is he?"
"Sounds so true to life, doesn't it?" God giggled happily. "We're also doing a bit of smuggling on the side."
"Drugs?"
"No, no, we don't want to get into a fight with the Italians. They're all over the place by the way."
"Drugs or Italians?"
"Both. Last night we went to this restaurant on the Arbat and the way the Italians behaved was really quite outrageous. I mean, it's one thing to politely insert a hundred dollar note into some stripper's G-string and tickle her a bit, and quite another to force the chorus girls, who one must admit were quite acquiescent, to dip themselves in bathtubs full of glue and to just lie there, shivering, poor things, you could see the goosebumps, while these mafiosi threw dollars by the bucket all over the place. Of course, they had been snorting cocaine by the handful all evening, which renders their disgraceful behavior understandable but not excusable."
"God, you seem to be developing morals."
"I know. Isn't it terrible?" God replied complacently. "Still it is a new experience. Luckily, we shall soon be returning to decadent old London, laden with all manner of good things."
"What are you smuggling?"
"Art. Ikons. Rare books. Stuff for the cognoscenti."
I yawned. "Whatever. Would you happen to know why Rasputin wanted to talk to me so urgently?"
"I'm sure I couldn't say, old chap. As you know, he doesn't tell anyone anything. It's safer that way. Is there any particular message I should pass on to him when, or, indeed, if he returns?"
A happy thought struck me. "You could tell him that I had lunch today with his friend Lady Monica Bigglesworth-Fume. She sent her love to Rasputin and asked him to get in touch with her soon. It's been so long, she said."
"I shall certainly pass on your message. Did Killjoy-Yuck have venison for lunch by any chance?" God sounded very sleepy.
Alarm bells went off in my head in a deafening clamor. I looked at my watch and sighed. I knew I had to find out what strange game Godfrey was playing, if I was to get a wink of sleep that night. I hate tossing and turning in bed. Whom the gods would destroy, they first deprive of sleep, and I was firmly determined to get my usual ten hours, even if that meant that I had to keep God talking. I made myself take a deep breath, and then another. If this momentary pause in our telephone conversation informed Godfrey that I was startled by the extent of his knowledge about who was present at my lunch with the big people who ran the University of Truth and Justice in Prague, thousands of kilometres away from Moscow where he was playing dangerous games with our thuggish friend Rasputin, well, then, so much the better. Wilful naivete has its own rewards, especially the confusion it produces among people who enjoy playing games with other people's heads. "You're very well informed, God," I said, allowing just a little shock to seep across the telephone. "Just how would you happen to know that Terence Killjoy-Yuck was also at lunch?"
"Oh, dear boy, welcome to the club."
"You mean you..."
"Didn't you know? Why did you think I got sent down from Oxford?"
"Because you drank all the time and did no work?"
"Doesn't everyone?"
"True," I admitted. "But you were so ostentatious about it..."
"Precisely," God purred.
"Godfrey, you bastard." I was genuinely outraged. "Did Killjoy-Yuck recruit you?"
"Heaven forbid." Godfrey sounded appalled. "He wasn't my tutor. It would have been poaching. Not at all the done thing, my dear fellow."
"But are you working for Killjoy-Yuck?"
"`Working for...'" Godfrey repeated mockingly. "Isn't that rather an obsolete concept, old chap? Sounds so proletarian, somehow, sort of like singing company songs before descending into the mines. Surely we're all free-lance these days. It's more efficient, isn't it?"
"So how did you know about my lunch?" I persisted.
"Oh, Terence and I chat periodically. He knows we're friends. Surely it's only natural that I ask about you?"
A bright idea struck me between the eyes. "Are you keeping tabs on Rasputin?"
God laughed. "You mean telling Terence about Lev Pistoff's activities? But that would be peaching. Another of the things one doesn't do, my dear fellow."
"So what do you do?" I asked, exasperated. "No poaching, no peaching, good grief, it sounds so rural, like you're all boy scouts or something."
"Oh, one just looks around, you know. One keeps one's eyes open. One passes on bits of information that might be interesting. It's all very casual."
"Well, will you tell me why Terence asked me to gather the dirt on X-O-X?"
"X-O-X? Ah, you mean, Socks."
"It's pronounced 'Hdzhooohdzh' in Albanian."
"How very interesting," God replied with languid condescension. "Well, everyone's keeping an eye on Socks, aren't they? I imagine Terence just wants you to find out what Socks is up to with this University. Is it a front for arms smuggling to revolutionary movements? That sort of thing."
"The university doesn't even have any students yet," I protested.
"In that case, it isn't a very good front yet," Godfrey agreed. "But Socks does rather like setting up front organizations. Take, for instance, the Fund for Peace and Love."
"So that is a Xox thing? Flossie was applying to them for money for her research in India."
"Yes, well, they do give away large gobs of money for more or less legitimate research. Covers up the rumour that the Fund for Peace and Love is used to channel money to various guerrilla groups. I know that CIA bribes to moderate Arab groups were laundered though it. And the Kurds. Probably lots else as well. Maybe that's how Socks made his money. Kept a percentage."
"Godfrey, you sound like such an expert," I said, impressed. "Does anyone else know about all this?"
"Among our mutual friends, you mean? I can't remember. I might have told Floss. By the way, they gave her the money for her research so she's off to India next week. Lulu might know too. I often talk in my sleep. Quite embarrassing."
"Isn't it a breach of security?"
"On the contrary, old chap." God sounded amused. "It's the old strategy of double-bluff. Rasputin is particularly good at it. That's how he defused all the suspicion he aroused at Oxford, you know, this excessively loud dissident Russian, everyone thought he must work for the KGB, right, otherwise how could he get away in the early days of perestroika with calling Gorbachev a KGB stooge? Why wasn't he getting the shove with the old poisoned umbrella, people muttered. Rasputin brazened it out well by simply declaring that he might be KGB but how would you ever know? You see, this way he was executing a triple-bluff, finessing the whole thing onto another, higher, dimension of uncertainty. Perhaps, one could keep going on infinitely. You know the paradox about the Cretan who declared that all Cretans are liars. Now, what does Wittgenstein say about it? Maybe I should look at Godel again..."
"Godfrey," I pleaded. I knew from bitter experience that he could spend hours rambling on and on about such things. He did after all have a first class degree in philosophy from Cambridge which, actually, now that I thought about it, made his amazing failure as a postgraduate student at Oxford quite inexplicable. Unless he was telling the truth... They want you to think like this, I said to myself sternly. Stop thinking! Be your normal superficial self. Take things at appearances. It is dangerous to get too deep into the quicksand of analytic thought. Besides, Godfrey's mention of Godel reminded me of a footnote in a book I had recently read... "God. Quick. Answer one question."
"Ask and you shall receive..."
"Who paid for Rasputin's studies at Oxford?"
"The Fund for Peace and Love. In other words, Socks. But you must have known. Wasn't Terence your tutor as well as Rasputin's?"
My head was whirling. X-O-X, Terence Killjoy-Yuck, Rasputin, Godfrey… fragmented faces and leering grins in a lurid kaleidoscope of connections. I knew I couldn't keep this up much longer. "Of course. Yes, of course, I knew that all along. I must hang up now. Good talking to you. Take lots of drugs. Say hi to the Mafia. Good luck with the art smuggling. I hear the airports are dangerous in Moscow now..." I babbled and then hung up. I rested my spinning head in my hands and took another deep breath. I didn't know what to believe from what Godfrey had been telling me. Was I really working for a fake university, for a front organization for arms smugglers and revolutionaries? I knew that I had to get in touch with my friend Lulu. She would know what was going on. In desperation, I looked up, straight into Annichka's pretty little face behind the reception desk.
"You were talking about drugs. Do you take drugs?" Annichka asked wonderingly, her big brown eyes bovine with amazement.
"Uh, sure, sometimes, I used to," I responded uncertainly, not knowing the extent to which Czech children were indoctrinated against pleasurable chemicals.
"I wasn't sure, you look so prim and proper. Such a clean little boy."
I glared at this infant. "And you're shooting up every day, I suppose, huh?"
I haven't yet but I'd love to," Annichka responded. "Everyone I know takes drugs," she confided. "My parents smoke marijuana all the time. They said I could smoke some with them when I'm eighteen. But that's so far away!"
"How old are you, Annichka?" I felt like a child molester, just looking at her. The contrast between the lithe yet lush body of this little Lolita, encased today in a skin-tight bodysuit, and her squeaky babyish voice seemed even more disconcerting now that she was talking about drugs. After my conversation with God I felt aged enough to be her father. Or her grandfather. But maybe the old gentleman took drugs too.
"Sixteen." Annichka smiled frankly.
"Sixteen." I couldn't remember back that far. "I think I was sixteen when I first took drugs. I'll give you some."
"Will you?" Annichka beamed at me. "Do you have some here?"
"Not right now. But I'll get some soon," I promised. "I'll get my friends to send some mescaline from Kalifornia. You'll like it. It makes you see pretty colors."
"Does it?" Annichka breathed. I leaned forward to hear her better. "I love pretty colors. I draw with my crayons all the time."
"Me too," I smiled, looking up from her baby cleavage. "Maybe we can play together sometime."
"I'd like that! When you get the mescaline, okay?"
"It's a date. Now can I make another phone call? It's kind of private."
"Sure! Go into the booth and call anywhere in the world! Talk as long as you want! The University pays for everything! Isn't it lovely?" Annichka clapped her hands delightedly. I blew her a kiss and walked across the wide lobby to the phone booth.
As I dialled Lulu's unlisted number, I looked at my watch and tried to calculate the time difference. It wasn't even two o'clock yet in Oxford so there was only the slimmest of chances that Lulu might actually be home and alone. But it was worth a try. Genuine naivete was positively dangerous in the perilous circumstances in which I now found myself. I needed information in order to maintain my stance of ingenuous innocence. And who better to turn to for lessons in the dainty art of candid guile than that consummate ingenue, Lulu?
