changing-places-david-lodge Read online

  5°

  5»

  ' If there's anything I can do for you, Phil, just call me.

  sudden spasm ofhomesickness; then he wonders whether the lAy number's in the book.'

  plane will crash, and what it would be like to die and

  'Yes, well, I haveWseen to America before, you know. But whether there is a God, and where did he put his luggage thank you for the offer.'

  tickets. Morris Zapp debates whether to stay in London for Boon wave* his hand deprecatingly. 'Any time, day or a few days or go straight to Rummidge and know the worst night. I have an answering service.'

  at once. He thinks of his twins playing secretively in a corner And to Philip's astonishment, Charles Boon gets up and of the yard and breaking off their game reluctantly to say walks, unchallenged, past a hovering stewardess, through goodbye to him and how D6siree had refused to make love the curtains that conceal the First Glass cabin.

  the night before he left, it would have been the first time in months, and remembers the first girl he ever had, Rose

  'I guess we must be over England, now,' says Mary Finkelpearl the fish-monger's daughter on the next block, Makepeace, staring out of the window.

  and how puzzled he'd been when his second girl also reeked

  ' Is it raining ?' Zapp asks.

  faintly offish, and wonders how many people at the airport

  'No, it's very clear. You can see all the little fields, like a will know what this charter has come to England for.

  patchwork quilt.'

  The planes yaw and tilt. A wall of suburbs suddenly rears

  'It can't be England if it's not raining. We must be off up behind Mary Makepeace's head, and falls away again.

  course.'

  Cloud swirls round Philip Swallow's plane and the windows

  'There's a great dark smudge over there. That must be a are slashed with rain. Then houses, hills, trees, hangars, big city.'

  trucks, skim by in recognizable scale, like old friends seen

  ' It's probably Rummidge. A great dark smudge sounds again after a long separation.

  like Rummidge.'

  Bump!

  And now, in the two Boeings, falls simultaneously the special silence that precedes an airliner's landing. The Bump!

  engines are all but cut off, and the conversation of the passengers is hushed as if in sympathy. The planes begin to At exactly the same moment, but six thousand miles lose height - clumsily, it seems, in a series of lurching, apart, the two planes touch down.

  shuddering drops, as though bumping down an enormous staircase. The passengers swallow to relieve the pressure on their eardrums, close their eyes, finger their passports and vomit-bags. Time passes very slowly. Each person is alone, temporarily, with his own thoughts. But it is hard to think connectedly, swaying and lurching here between heaven and earth. Philip thinks of Hilary smiling bravely and the children waving forlornly on Rummidge station as his train drew away, of an essay that he has forgotten to return to a student, of the probable cost of a taxi from the airport to Plotinus. The future seems frighteningly blank and he has a 5a

  2. Settling

  Philip Swallow rented an apartment in the top half of a two-storey house high up on Pythagoras Drive, one of many classically named but romantically-contoured residential roads that corkscrewed their way up and around the verdant hills of Plotinus, Euph. The rent was low, by Euphoric standards, because the house stood on what was called a Slide Area. It had, in fact, already slid twelve feet towards the Bay of Esseph from its original position - a circumstance that had caused the owner hurriedly to vacate it, leasing the accommodation to tenants too indigent, or too careless of life, to complain. Philip fell into neither of these categories, but then he had not learned the full history of 1037 Pythagoras Drive until after signing the six months' lease. That history had been related to him on the first evening of his occupancy by Melanie Byrd, the prettiest and most wholesome-looking of the three girls who shared the ground-floor apartment, as she kindly explained to him the controls of the communal washing machine in the basement. At first he had felt exploited, but after a while he grew reconciled to the situation. If the apartment was not, after all, surprisingly cheap, it was still cheap; and as Melanie Byrd reminded him, there was no truly safe place to live in Euphoria, whose unique and picturesque landscape was the product of a huge geological fault running through the entire State. It had caused a major earthquake in the nineteenth century, and a repetition of this disaster before the end of the twentieth was confidently predicted by seismo-logists and local millennial sects: a rare and impressive instance of agreement between science and superstition.

  When he drew back the curtains in his living-room each 55

  morning, the view filled the picture window like a visual living-room window and seen at this distance, the view still tour de force at the beginning of a Cinerama film. In the looked very good indeed.

  foreground, and to his right and left, the houses and gardens of the more affluent Euphoric faculty clung picturesquely to Morris Zapp was less enchanted with his view - a vista the sides of the Plotinus hills. Beneath him, where the foot-of dank back gardens, rotting sheds and dripping laundry, hills flattened out to meet the Bay shore, was the campus, huge, ill-looking trees, grimy roofs, factory chimneys and with its white buildings and bosky paths, its campanile and church spires - but he had discarded this criterion at a very plaza, its lecture rooms, stadia and laboratories, bordered by early stage of looking for furnished accommodation in the rectilinear streets of downtown Plotinus. The Bay filled Rummidge. You were lucky, he had quickly discovered, if the middle distance, stretching out of sight on both sides, you could find a place that could be kept at a temperature and one's eye naturally travelled in a great sightseeing arc: appropriate to human organisms, equipped with the more skimming along the busy Shoreline Freeway, swerving out rudimentary amenities of civilized life and decorated in a across the Bay via the long Esseph Bridge (ten miles from combination of colours and patterns that didn't make you toll to toll) to the city's dramatic skyline, dark downtown want to vomit'on sight. He considered living in a hotel, but skyscrapers posed against white residential hills, from which the hoteb in the vicinity of the campus were, if anything, it leapt across the graceful curves of the Silver Span sus-even worse than the private houses. Eventually he had taken pension bridge, gateway to the Pacific, to alight on the an apartment on the top floor of a huge old house owned by green slopes of Miranda County, celebrated for its redwood an Irish doctor and his extensive family. Dr O'Shea had forests and spectacular sea coast.

  converted the attic with his own hands for the use of an This vast panorama was agitated, even early in the aged mother, and it was to the recent death of this relative, morning, by every known form of transportation - ships, the doctor impressed upon him, that Morris owed the good yachts, cars, trucks, trains, planes, helicopters and hover-fortune of finding such enviable accommodation vacant.

  craft - all in simultaneous motion, reminding Philip of the Morris didn't see this as a selling point himself, but O'Shea brightly illustrated cover of a Boy's Wonder Book of Modern seemed to think that the apartment's sentimental associa-Transport he had received on his tenth birthday. It was tions were worth at least an extra five dollars a week to an indeed, he thought, a perfect marriage of Nature and American torn from the bosom of his own family. He Civilization, this view, where one might take in at a glance pointed out the armchair in which his mother had suffered the consummation of man's technological skill and the her fatal seizure and, while bouncing on the mattress to finest splendours of the natural world. The harmony he demonstrate its resilience, contrived at the same time to perceived in the scene was, he knew, illusory. Just out of reflect with a mournful sigh that it was scarcely a month sight to his left a pall of smoke hung over the great military since his beloved parent had passed to her reward from this and industrial port of Ashland, and to his right the oil very bed.

  refin
eries of St Gabriel fumed into the limpid air. The Bay, Morris took the flat because it was centrally heated — the which winked so prettily in the morning sun, was, according first he had seen thus blessed. But the heating system turned to Charles Boon and other sources, poisoned by industrial out to be one of electric radiators perversely and unalterably waste and untreated effluent, and was being steadily con-programmed to come on at full -blast when you were asleep tracted by unscrupulous dumping and filling.

  and to turn themselves off as soon as you got up, from which For all that, Philip thought, almost guiltily, framed by his time they leaked a diminishing current of lukewarm air into 56

  57

  the frigid atmosphere until you were ready to go to bed handed jig all year long, to the merry confusion of the again. This system, Dr O'Shea explained, was extremely vegetable world. Philip felt his pulse beating to its exhilara-economical because it ran on half-price electricity, but it ting rhythm.

  still seemed to Morris an expensive way to work up a sweat He had no difficulty in finding his way to Dealer Hall, a in bed. Fortunately the apartment was well provided with large,, square building in the neoclassical style. He was pre-gas burners of antique design, and by keeping them on at vented from entering it, however, by a ring of campus full volume all day he was able to maintain a tolerable policemen. Quite a lot of students and staff were milling temperature in his rooms, though O'Shea evidently found it about, and a long-haired youth with a KEEP KROOP button excessive, entering Morris's apartment with his arm held up in the lapel of his suede jacket informed Philip that the to shield his face, like a man breaking into a burning house.

  building was being checked out for a bomb allegedly Simply keeping warm was Morris Zapp's main preoccu-planted during the night. The search, he understood, pation in his first few days at Rummidge. On his first might take several hours; but as he was turning away it morning, in the tomb-like hotel room he had checked into ended quite suddenly with a muffled explosion high up in after driving straight from London airport, he had woken to the building and a tinkle of shattered glass.

  find steam coming out of his mouth. It had never happened to him indoors before and his first thought was that he was As Morris Zapp learned much later, he made a bad im-on fire. When he had moved his baggage into the O'Shea pression on his first appearance in the Rummidge English house, he filled the micro-refrigerator with TV dinners, Department. The Secretary, young Alice Slade, returning locked his door, turned up all the fires and spent a couple of from her coffee break with her friend Miss Mackintosh of days thawing out. Only then did he feel ready to investigate Egyptology, observed him doubled up in front of the De-the Rummidge campus and introduce himself to the partmental noticeboard, coughing and wheezing and English Department.

  blowing cigar ash all over the floor. Miss Slade had wondered whether it was a mature student having a fit and Philip Swallow was more impatient to inspect his place asked Miss Mackintosh to run and fetch the porter, but Miss of work. On his very first morning he strolled out after a Mackintosh ventured the opinion that he was only laughing, delicious breakfast of orange juice, bacon, hot cakes and which was indeed the case. The noticeboard distantly re-maple syrup (maple syrup! how delightful it was to recover minded Morris of the early work of Robert Rauschenberg: such forgotten sensations) to look for Dealer Hall, the a thumb-tacked montage of variegated scraps of paper -

  location of the English Department. It was raining, as it had letterheaded notepaper, memo sheets, compliment slips, been the previous day. This had been a disappointment to pages torn clumsily from college notebooks, inverted en-Philip initially - in his memory Euphoria was bathed in velopes, reversed invoices, even fragments of wrapping perpetual sunlight, and he had forgotten - perhaps he had paper with tails of scotch tape still adhering to them - all never known - that it had a rainy season in the winter bearing cryptic messages from faculty to students about months. It was, however, a fine, soft rain, and the air was courses, rendezvous, assignments and books, scribbled in a warm and balmy. The grass was green, the trees and shrubs variety of scarcely decipherable hands with pencil, ink and were in full leaf and, in some cases, flower and fruit. There coloured ball-point. The end of the Gutenberg era was was no real winter in Euphoria - autumn joined hands with evidently not an issue here: they were still living in a manu-spring and summer, and together they danced a three-script culture. Morris felt he understood more deeply, now, 58

  59

  what McLuhan was getting at: it had tactile appeal, this Recollecting all this reminded Morris that he had not noticeboard - you wanted to reach out and touch its rough, been able to prise any information about his own teaching irregular surface. As a system for conveying information it programme from Rummidge before leaving Euphoria.

  was the funniest thing he'd seen in years.

  The girl finally got the door open and he went in. He was Morris was still chuckling to himself as the mini-skirted pleasantly surprised: it was a large, comfortable room, well-secretary, looking, he thought, rather nervously over her furnished with desk, table, chairs and bookshelves of shoulder from time to time, led him down the corridor to his matching polished wood, an armchair and a rather hand-office. Walking along the corridors of Dealer Hall was like some rug. Above all, it was warm. Morris Zapp was to ex-passing through some Modern Language Association Hall perience the same sense of surprise and paradox many of Fame, but he recognized none of the nameplates here times in his first weeks at Rummidge. Public affluence and except the one on the door Miss Slade finally stopped at: private squalor, was how he formulated it. The domestic MR p. H. SWALLOW. That rang a distant bell - but, he standard of living of the Rummidge faculty was far below recalled, as the girl fumbled with the key (she seemed very that of the Euphoric faculty, but even the most junior jumpy, this chick) it wasn't in print that he had encountered teacher here had a large office to himself, and the Staff the name, merely in the correspondence about his trip.

  House was built like a Hilton, putting Euphoric State's Swallow was the guy he was exchanging with. He recalled Faculty Club quite in the shade. Even the building in which Luke Hogan, present Chairman of Euphoric's English De-Morris's office was situated had its own spacious and compartment, holding a letter from Swallow in his enormous fortable lounge, restricted to faculty, where you could get fist (a handwritten letter, again, it came back to him) and fresh coffee and tea served in real china cups and saucers by complaining in his Montana cowboy's drawl, 'Goddammit, two motherly women, whereas Dealer Hall boasted only a Morris, what are we gonna do with this guy Swallow? He small room littered with paper cups and cigarette ends claims he ain't got a field.' Morris had recommended where you fixed yourself instant coffee that tasted like hot putting Philip down to teach English 99, a routine intro-disinfectant. 'Public affluence' was perhaps too flattering to duction to the literary genres and critical method for Rummidge, and it couldn't be the socialism he'd heard so English majors, and English 305, a course in novel-writing.

  much about, either. It was more like a narrow band of As Euphoric State's resident novelist, Garth Robinson, was privilege running through the general drabness and priva-in fact very rarely resident, orbiting the University in an tion of life. If the British university teacher had nothing else, almost unbroken cycle of grants, fellowships, leaves of he had a room he could call his own, a decent place to sit absence and alcoholic cures, the teaching of English 305

  and read his newspaper and the use of a John that was off-usually fell to some unwilling and unqualified member of the limits to students. That seemed to be the underlying regular teaching staff. As Morris said,' If he makes a fuck-up principle. Such coherent thoughts were not yet forming of English 305, nobody's going to notice. And any clown in Morris Zapp's mind, however, as he first cast his eyes with a PhD should be able to teach English 99.'

  round Philip Swallow's room. He was still in a state of

  ' He doesn't have a PhD,' Hogan said.

  culture shoc
k, and it gave him a giddy feeling when he

  * What?*

  looked out of the window and saw the familiar campanile of Euphoric State flushed an angry red and shrunk to half its

  'They have a different system in England, Morris. The normal size, like a detumescent penis.

  PhD isn't so important.'

  ' It's a bit stuffy in here, I'm afraid,' said the secretary,

  ' You mean the jobs are hereditary ? *

  60

  61

  making a move to open a window. Morris, already basking Dear Professor Zapp,

  in the radiator's warmth, lurched with clumsy haste to I gather you'll be using my room while you're here. I'm afraid prevent her, and she shrank back, quivering, as if he had I've lost the key to the filing cabinet, so if you have anything really been about to put his hand up her skirt - which, given its confidential I should keep it under the carpet, at least I always do.

  dimensions, wouldn't have been difficult, it could easily Do feel free to use my books, though I'd be grateful if you wouldn't happen accidentally just shaking hands with her. He tried to lend them to students, as they will write in them.

  soothe her by making conversation.

  I gather from Busby that you'll probably be taking over my tutorial groups. The second-year groups are rather hard going,

  * Don't seem to be many people on campus today.'

  especially the Joint Honours, but the first-year group is quite She looked at him as if he had just arrived from outer lively, and I think you'll find the two final-year groups very space.' It's the vacation,' she said.

  interesting. There are a few points you might like to bear in mind.

  ' Uhuh. Is Professor Masters around ?'

  Brenda Archer suffers badly from pre-menstrual tension so don't

  'No, he's in Hungary. Won't be back till the beginning of be surprised if she bursts into tears every now and again. The other term.'