And after Terence had taken his vitamin like a good boy and calmed down, we all trooped out of Xox's suite down to the elegant auditorium of the University of Truth and Justice. The mahogany walls and parquet floors glittered with fresh polish, the baize on the conference table shone under the bright lights like a meadow in spring, the microphones amplified without dissonance, and the eager young faces in the audience looked scrubbed and spruce. The string quartet fell silent as Xox and Hell walked onto the stage.
A hand grabbed my jacket. I turned sharply around. God smiled lazily at me, amidst a bristling forest of microphones and video-cameras. "What are you doing here?" I hissed.
Godfrey smirked at the notebook ostentatiously perched on his lap. "Covering this event for The Sociologist, my dear fellow," he purred. "Jenkins was most insistent. Wouldn't miss it for all the world."
"Godfrey, are you up to mischief again?"
"As always, old chap. How else to overcome boredom?"
I spotted Jesus and Barbie in the third row of the auditorium. Barbie was dressed in black and her eyelids were swollen and puffy. "We'll have to have a long chat about boredom sometime, God. I've got to run."
"Of course. Enjoy yourself… for now. This bash promises to be most interesting."
I went up to Barbie and hugged her. "Jesus just told me Luke was dead," she said in a barely audible voice. "I can't believe it…"
"I know, honey," I said sadly. Barbie's tears coursed down my neck. At length she let go and reached into my pocket for a handkerchief. "Keep it," I said, after she had blown her nose noisily. Barbie smiled at me through her tears: it was an old joke between us ever since my twelfth birthday when she had given me a dozen beautifully embroidered handkerchiefs laced with sneezing powder. I delved into my other pocket and found a tube of vitamins. "Take one now, sweetie. You'll feel better..."
Doors slammed and necks craned as the other Big People were ceremoniously announced. First came a dumpy lady with golden bouffant hair fluffed out over a bloated purple face stuck in a severe scowl. Her protuberant blue eyes and protruding front teeth made her resemble a pugnacious old rabbit. "Her Grace, Lady Snatcher!" And immediately after: "His Excellency, Monsieur Jacques!" The President of Europe, a nondescript politician with silvery hair and stern spectacles strutted down to the stage and waved his arms in the air, clumsily, like an ageing rock star. An excited murmur ran through the audience as the two principal antagonists took their seats on stage.
"Herr Gunther Otto Troll!" I liked the icy attack glare in Troll's frosty blue eyes when he saw the last guest arrive, the disgraced chairman of Banque Eurolux, Jean Rameau, a pudgy person of indeterminate age and gender, sweating profusely as he wiped his pasty jowls. In the row in front, Marya Madlenova spit disdainfully in Rameau's direction. Madlenova was holding hands with Professor Flysenko, our sociologist-in-residence and world-famous expert on prostitution. Madlenova and Flysenko glowered at me: I smiled back and mentally wished them luck. I felt exhilarated. The speakers were clearing their throats and a few were already drinking their doctored water. An expectant hush descended over the audience. The Big Bash was about to begin.
Rameau's keynote address began with platitudes and degenerated into clichés: a jumble of banker-talk and Eurocratese. "Convergence of economic cycles… Synchronisation of fiscal laws and tax regimes… Public policy capacity building… Deeper versus wider… The best is yet to come…." After ten minutes of pompous pronouncements on the challenges facing Central Europe, my eyes glazed over. I was impatiently waiting for Fyodor and his friends to take up the rather over-ripe tomatoes I had thoughtfully arranged in hampers by their seats, when Rameau's drone came to a startled halt.
"Excuse my ignorance, Rameau," Troll interrupted curtly. "How long has Banque Eurolux been around?"
"Almost two years."
"Your institution was supposed to provide capital to small businesses in the post-communist countries. How many loans have you made in these two years?"
Rameau flushed. "None. But…"
"What was your bank's budget last year?"
"Four billion euros."
"And how much of it was spent in Central Europe?"
"None. I must protest…"
"How much money did you spend on decorating your offices last year?"
"I cannot recall…"
"Answer the bloody question!" Hell growled.
"About two and a half billion," Rameau conceded sulkily.
"And how much was spent on staff salaries and bonuses?"
"Just under two billion."
"How much did you make?"
"This is unbearable," Rameau protested. "I did not come here to be insulted in this fashion…"
"That's true," Hell replied. "You came here because it was a chance to rehabilitate your sleazy reputation. Here's your chance. Answer the question!"
"My remuneration last year was approximately half a billion," Rameau replied, glaring at Troll. "And it was approved by the Banque's board of directors. Including His Excellency, Monsieur Jacques…"
"So your budget was four billion and your costs were four and a half billion. Leaving a deficit of half a billion," Troll said silkily. "The same amount as your personal take. Quite a banker, Monsieur Rameau. Or should I say bank-robber?"
"Just as we have said all these years," Lady Snatcher snarled stridently. "Pigs wallowing in the trough. Salami and all that European nastiness! Waste of good tax-payer money! This would never have happened while we were around…"
"Actually, Madame, the Banque Eurolux was established at the last European meeting you attended as Prime Minister," Monsieur Jacques interpolated. "I remember it well. You assaulted me violently with your handbag."
"We don't remember you." Lady Snatcher glared at Monsieur Jacques. "You a Frog or a Kraut?"
"Neither, Madame," Monsieur Jacques replied with dignity. "I am Belgian."
"In that case you don't count. Another European nobody. At all those meetings we were forced to attend there was never anyone who could stand up to us. European men have no balls."
"It is true that rates of testicular cancer have risen sharply in Europe while sperm counts keep falling," Monsieur Jacques conceded. "However…"
"All this garbage you Euro-fags eat," Lady Snatcher continued, unmoved. "Garlic and salami. What's wrong with good old sausage? Solid British fare is what you need. Bangers and mash. Steak and kidney pie. Bubble and squeak. Toad in the hole. Pre-packaged microwave dinners. Doesn't appeal to all you snail-eaters though. Always nibbling on brie and sucking up to your farmers."
"The rural lifestyle is an integral part of the European dream!" Monsieur Jacques protested. "Our farmers need all the subsidies they can get. The European landscape would not be the same without them!"
"Who needs landscape?" Lady Snatcher replied robustly. "Come to think of it, who needs farmers? Put the lazy layabouts to work. Let them build roads. Sixteen lane concrete highways stretching over hill and dale, packed from bumper to bumper with motorists safely sheltered in the privacy and security of their automobiles."
"But public transport is vital for our society. Standing shoulder to shoulder in a crowded metro builds strong feelings of community!"
"This illusion of community is all a gigantic left-wing conspiracy," Lady Snatcher declared darkly. "We defeated communism single-handed. President Reagan helped a bit. Now you Europeans are trying to revive this monstrous notion that we have something in common with one another. But we will never give in!!"
"Social harmonisation is key to solving the problems of unrestricted capitalism. The crisis of homelessness…"
"The homeless are a good measure of a vibrant economy. Look at New York City!"
But what about single mothers? Starving children…"
"Women should know how to keep hold of their husbands. By the balls, if necessary. And children should work. Builds discipline. Look at the Third World! In Victorian times, Britain was like that." Lady Snatcher sighed with regret. "Ordinary people knew where they belonged. In the factory and in the slum. And if they didn't work they went to the poor house or to jail. Debtors were hanged and we sent thieves to Australia. It worked so well! But then we grew soft and brought in all these communist laws abolishing child labour and capital punishment. Look at the result! Whiny little namby-pambies bleating for more art lessons!"
"Artists are an indispensable element of the social fabric." Monsieur Jacques was scrabbling about for words. " The glory of European culture… Leonardo da Vinci!"
"Leonardo was a military technician. Proves our point exactly. Get rid of cultural subsidies and put more money in the military! All these artists hanging around like pests ever since we stopped killing off one another. Bring back the age of patronage. Instead of messing about with all this abstract nonsense, let them paint us!"
"Have you no feeling for social justice?" Monsieur Jacques, asked, appalled.
"That's what those weak little men said when they deposed us." Lady Snatcher laughed harshly. "But they did not succeed. We will never surrender! We have been re-grouping, gathering about us the best and brightest, the most ruthless entrepreneurial spirits of our time. Now we are informed that there is a new Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna, and a new Pope. At last Europe emerges again in its true colours. A Katholic conspiracy to suppress individualism and substitute dogma and corruption instead of the joys of consumerism and the free market. We welcome this development. Your hornet's nest of namby-pamby social democrats will be squeezed from either side by the true believers. And when the bureaucratic nobodies fall away, there will be at last the final battle, the ultimate showdown between gallant Britain and the Evil Empire. Like a second Churchill, we will be acclaimed again as England's ruler; like another great Queen, we will send forth our brave pirates to demolish the Katholic Armada. In that last Crusade, the free market shall prevail once and for all, and the Margarine Age shall begin!"
"You are deranged, Madame." Monsieur Jacques was shaking like a leaf. "This is my worst nightmare. Please, Monsieur Xox, put an end to this mad cow's ravings!"
"Roast beef builds character, little man!" Lady Snatcher bellowed back. "You're probably a vegetarian. Snivelling like a Hindu!"
"Fight! Fight! Fight!" the students chanted, inciting the two opponents. Tomatoes and rotten eggs whizzed through the air, smearing the glittering stage. Lady Snatcher rolled up the sleeves of her blood-red jacket, revealing powerful blacksmith arms. Monsieur Jacques loosened his tie with shaking hands and gulped down a glass of water. Lady Snatcher sneered and threw down a beer. The atmosphere in the room was electric.
Just then Xox stood up and held up his hand. "What a thoroughly enjoyable debate." He smiled at the audience. "I have always held that we are what we eat. Lady Snatcher is living proof. Put down those tomatoes for a moment. Shall I tell you a story?"
"Story! Story!" the audience chanted. The lights in the auditorium dimmed, and a single spotlight shone on Xox's gleaming head. He stood there in the silence, an enigmatic portly figure, one hand playing in the pocket of his grey suit, and began.
A hand grabbed my jacket. I turned sharply around. God smiled lazily at me, amidst a bristling forest of microphones and video-cameras. "What are you doing here?" I hissed.
Godfrey smirked at the notebook ostentatiously perched on his lap. "Covering this event for The Sociologist, my dear fellow," he purred. "Jenkins was most insistent. Wouldn't miss it for all the world."
"Godfrey, are you up to mischief again?"
"As always, old chap. How else to overcome boredom?"
I spotted Jesus and Barbie in the third row of the auditorium. Barbie was dressed in black and her eyelids were swollen and puffy. "We'll have to have a long chat about boredom sometime, God. I've got to run."
"Of course. Enjoy yourself… for now. This bash promises to be most interesting."
I went up to Barbie and hugged her. "Jesus just told me Luke was dead," she said in a barely audible voice. "I can't believe it…"
"I know, honey," I said sadly. Barbie's tears coursed down my neck. At length she let go and reached into my pocket for a handkerchief. "Keep it," I said, after she had blown her nose noisily. Barbie smiled at me through her tears: it was an old joke between us ever since my twelfth birthday when she had given me a dozen beautifully embroidered handkerchiefs laced with sneezing powder. I delved into my other pocket and found a tube of vitamins. "Take one now, sweetie. You'll feel better..."
Doors slammed and necks craned as the other Big People were ceremoniously announced. First came a dumpy lady with golden bouffant hair fluffed out over a bloated purple face stuck in a severe scowl. Her protuberant blue eyes and protruding front teeth made her resemble a pugnacious old rabbit. "Her Grace, Lady Snatcher!" And immediately after: "His Excellency, Monsieur Jacques!" The President of Europe, a nondescript politician with silvery hair and stern spectacles strutted down to the stage and waved his arms in the air, clumsily, like an ageing rock star. An excited murmur ran through the audience as the two principal antagonists took their seats on stage.
"Herr Gunther Otto Troll!" I liked the icy attack glare in Troll's frosty blue eyes when he saw the last guest arrive, the disgraced chairman of Banque Eurolux, Jean Rameau, a pudgy person of indeterminate age and gender, sweating profusely as he wiped his pasty jowls. In the row in front, Marya Madlenova spit disdainfully in Rameau's direction. Madlenova was holding hands with Professor Flysenko, our sociologist-in-residence and world-famous expert on prostitution. Madlenova and Flysenko glowered at me: I smiled back and mentally wished them luck. I felt exhilarated. The speakers were clearing their throats and a few were already drinking their doctored water. An expectant hush descended over the audience. The Big Bash was about to begin.
Rameau's keynote address began with platitudes and degenerated into clichés: a jumble of banker-talk and Eurocratese. "Convergence of economic cycles… Synchronisation of fiscal laws and tax regimes… Public policy capacity building… Deeper versus wider… The best is yet to come…." After ten minutes of pompous pronouncements on the challenges facing Central Europe, my eyes glazed over. I was impatiently waiting for Fyodor and his friends to take up the rather over-ripe tomatoes I had thoughtfully arranged in hampers by their seats, when Rameau's drone came to a startled halt.
"Excuse my ignorance, Rameau," Troll interrupted curtly. "How long has Banque Eurolux been around?"
"Almost two years."
"Your institution was supposed to provide capital to small businesses in the post-communist countries. How many loans have you made in these two years?"
Rameau flushed. "None. But…"
"What was your bank's budget last year?"
"Four billion euros."
"And how much of it was spent in Central Europe?"
"None. I must protest…"
"How much money did you spend on decorating your offices last year?"
"I cannot recall…"
"Answer the bloody question!" Hell growled.
"About two and a half billion," Rameau conceded sulkily.
"And how much was spent on staff salaries and bonuses?"
"Just under two billion."
"How much did you make?"
"This is unbearable," Rameau protested. "I did not come here to be insulted in this fashion…"
"That's true," Hell replied. "You came here because it was a chance to rehabilitate your sleazy reputation. Here's your chance. Answer the question!"
"My remuneration last year was approximately half a billion," Rameau replied, glaring at Troll. "And it was approved by the Banque's board of directors. Including His Excellency, Monsieur Jacques…"
"So your budget was four billion and your costs were four and a half billion. Leaving a deficit of half a billion," Troll said silkily. "The same amount as your personal take. Quite a banker, Monsieur Rameau. Or should I say bank-robber?"
"Just as we have said all these years," Lady Snatcher snarled stridently. "Pigs wallowing in the trough. Salami and all that European nastiness! Waste of good tax-payer money! This would never have happened while we were around…"
"Actually, Madame, the Banque Eurolux was established at the last European meeting you attended as Prime Minister," Monsieur Jacques interpolated. "I remember it well. You assaulted me violently with your handbag."
"We don't remember you." Lady Snatcher glared at Monsieur Jacques. "You a Frog or a Kraut?"
"Neither, Madame," Monsieur Jacques replied with dignity. "I am Belgian."
"In that case you don't count. Another European nobody. At all those meetings we were forced to attend there was never anyone who could stand up to us. European men have no balls."
"It is true that rates of testicular cancer have risen sharply in Europe while sperm counts keep falling," Monsieur Jacques conceded. "However…"
"All this garbage you Euro-fags eat," Lady Snatcher continued, unmoved. "Garlic and salami. What's wrong with good old sausage? Solid British fare is what you need. Bangers and mash. Steak and kidney pie. Bubble and squeak. Toad in the hole. Pre-packaged microwave dinners. Doesn't appeal to all you snail-eaters though. Always nibbling on brie and sucking up to your farmers."
"The rural lifestyle is an integral part of the European dream!" Monsieur Jacques protested. "Our farmers need all the subsidies they can get. The European landscape would not be the same without them!"
"Who needs landscape?" Lady Snatcher replied robustly. "Come to think of it, who needs farmers? Put the lazy layabouts to work. Let them build roads. Sixteen lane concrete highways stretching over hill and dale, packed from bumper to bumper with motorists safely sheltered in the privacy and security of their automobiles."
"But public transport is vital for our society. Standing shoulder to shoulder in a crowded metro builds strong feelings of community!"
"This illusion of community is all a gigantic left-wing conspiracy," Lady Snatcher declared darkly. "We defeated communism single-handed. President Reagan helped a bit. Now you Europeans are trying to revive this monstrous notion that we have something in common with one another. But we will never give in!!"
"Social harmonisation is key to solving the problems of unrestricted capitalism. The crisis of homelessness…"
"The homeless are a good measure of a vibrant economy. Look at New York City!"
But what about single mothers? Starving children…"
"Women should know how to keep hold of their husbands. By the balls, if necessary. And children should work. Builds discipline. Look at the Third World! In Victorian times, Britain was like that." Lady Snatcher sighed with regret. "Ordinary people knew where they belonged. In the factory and in the slum. And if they didn't work they went to the poor house or to jail. Debtors were hanged and we sent thieves to Australia. It worked so well! But then we grew soft and brought in all these communist laws abolishing child labour and capital punishment. Look at the result! Whiny little namby-pambies bleating for more art lessons!"
"Artists are an indispensable element of the social fabric." Monsieur Jacques was scrabbling about for words. " The glory of European culture… Leonardo da Vinci!"
"Leonardo was a military technician. Proves our point exactly. Get rid of cultural subsidies and put more money in the military! All these artists hanging around like pests ever since we stopped killing off one another. Bring back the age of patronage. Instead of messing about with all this abstract nonsense, let them paint us!"
"Have you no feeling for social justice?" Monsieur Jacques, asked, appalled.
"That's what those weak little men said when they deposed us." Lady Snatcher laughed harshly. "But they did not succeed. We will never surrender! We have been re-grouping, gathering about us the best and brightest, the most ruthless entrepreneurial spirits of our time. Now we are informed that there is a new Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna, and a new Pope. At last Europe emerges again in its true colours. A Katholic conspiracy to suppress individualism and substitute dogma and corruption instead of the joys of consumerism and the free market. We welcome this development. Your hornet's nest of namby-pamby social democrats will be squeezed from either side by the true believers. And when the bureaucratic nobodies fall away, there will be at last the final battle, the ultimate showdown between gallant Britain and the Evil Empire. Like a second Churchill, we will be acclaimed again as England's ruler; like another great Queen, we will send forth our brave pirates to demolish the Katholic Armada. In that last Crusade, the free market shall prevail once and for all, and the Margarine Age shall begin!"
"You are deranged, Madame." Monsieur Jacques was shaking like a leaf. "This is my worst nightmare. Please, Monsieur Xox, put an end to this mad cow's ravings!"
"Roast beef builds character, little man!" Lady Snatcher bellowed back. "You're probably a vegetarian. Snivelling like a Hindu!"
"Fight! Fight! Fight!" the students chanted, inciting the two opponents. Tomatoes and rotten eggs whizzed through the air, smearing the glittering stage. Lady Snatcher rolled up the sleeves of her blood-red jacket, revealing powerful blacksmith arms. Monsieur Jacques loosened his tie with shaking hands and gulped down a glass of water. Lady Snatcher sneered and threw down a beer. The atmosphere in the room was electric.
Just then Xox stood up and held up his hand. "What a thoroughly enjoyable debate." He smiled at the audience. "I have always held that we are what we eat. Lady Snatcher is living proof. Put down those tomatoes for a moment. Shall I tell you a story?"
"Story! Story!" the audience chanted. The lights in the auditorium dimmed, and a single spotlight shone on Xox's gleaming head. He stood there in the silence, an enigmatic portly figure, one hand playing in the pocket of his grey suit, and began.
