The Squire Quartet. Brian Aldiss

smiled, and the bangles rattled as she stretched out a hand. ‘Nor will I ask you if you are finding enjoyment in your world-wide success, since you must surely have become tired of such a question. Do you mind if I smoke?’

      She was more striking than pretty, with a sharpness about her features which suggested wary intelligence. The sharpness, a quickness in her movements, a fleck of green in her irises, suggested wolf to Squire. He admired wolves; wolves were good to each other.

      Her hair moved about her cheeks as she reached into the clumsy leather bag and brought out her cigarettes. He noticed immediately, with surprise, that they were Yugoslav, ‘Drina’ brand. He knew the name.

      Whilst he was leaning forward to give her a light, the friendly waiter arrived. He cast an envious and distinctly unfriendly look at Squire. Squire stood his gold lighter on the table as he ordered drinks. After the waiter had left, dismissed by a brilliant smile from Ajdini, she picked up the lighter and inspected it as it lay in her narrow palm before pressing it into Squire’s hand.

      ‘What I respond to personally in your work is your humanity. It gives your criticism what the rest of us lack, a creative depth. No, I’m not praising now, merely stating. To prove it, let me be a little critical, if you will permit, and say that I find the humanity the more impressive since you do come, do you not, from a deeply privileged background?’

      He regarded her through her protective cloud of smoke, admiring her breasts and thinking of the benefits her beauty must bring her, unasked.

      ‘Almost anyone, in North America or Western Europe, must admit to a privileged background.’ Seeing her expression, he added, ‘And that is not intended as an evasion of your question. We must use that privileged background to carry not only our materialism but our liberalism and awareness to the rest of the world. We must hope that ultimately those values will prevail.’

      ‘Liberalism doesn’t carry much priority, even in universities.’

      ‘No, or in an ant heap. But we have to resist the idea of the world as ant heap.’ He could catch the distinctive smell of Balkan tobacco.

      ‘Well, I know what you mean, but only people from backgrounds of privilege can afford the luxury of fine sentiments. Your series, when all’s done, was admirable as display …’

      He laughed. ‘Display? Give me credit for keeping my politics out of it.’

      She looked down at the table, sharply up at him, down again. ‘I found it loaded with politics.’

      Music was playing, perhaps in the room overhead. The atmosphere of the room was oppressive; having the general listening stonily to all that was said did not increase comfort.

      ‘I don’t see any worth in a world in which individuality has been lost or relinquished,’ he said. ‘On an evolutionary scale, mankind strove for many generations to become a conscious individual being, instead of a unit in a tribe or a herd or an ant heap. In our generation – or generations, I should say, since there is a considerable difference in our ages – we have seen a menacing move in the opposite direction, and individualism crushed by the power of the state.’ In fact, there probably was not more than eight years between them.

      ‘In a world threatened by fascism, where parliamentary democracy has failed, the state must protect the individual, and the individual submits for his own good.’

      ‘Perhaps you mistake the implications of what I say. I would deny that parliamentary democracy, for all its faults, has failed; being a consensus, it offers its citizens a freer life than the despotisms of either Left or Right. Nor is the world threatened by fascism; individual countries, perhaps. But fascism is always a ramshackle thing which cannot perpetuate itself, whereas the great communist bureaucracies prove to have longer life.

      ‘However, the point I was trying to make goes beyond politics, to forces moving through our evolutionary lives, if I may use that phrase. Evolution still shapes us. Compare Islam and Christianity with the conceptually primitive Aztec religion, where mass-salvation could be achieved by mass-sacrifice. Souls were interchangeable. The Old Testament is a drama of man becoming aware that souls are no longer interchangeable.’

      She smiled. ‘You speak of the soul, whatever that may be. Yet you are not a religious man?’

      ‘We are all religious. In our day, the Left has all the dialectic, the Right none. Yet lying to hand is the supreme argument that souls are not interchangeable. It is perhaps too universal a truth for the Right to use, too true a truth to fall to the service of any party. Nevertheless it is the vital factor through which the present world struggles towards the future, whether capitalist or communist, Caucasian, Negroid, or Mongoloid. It’s our one hope, because undeniable.’

      They paused as the waiter brought in their drinks, a cinzano for Ajdini, a vodka for Squire, on a silver tray also bearing two bowls of nuts and olives. The waiter slid the bill to Squire as if performing a conjuring trick.

      ‘I find yours an elitist argument,’ Ajdini said. ‘Naturally, evolution has no party. People are too busy trying just to live, to survive, to worry over evolution. Who can worry over evolution? Surely you don’t?’

      ‘Well, “elitist” is just a worn-out Marxist term of abuse, isn’t it? Designed to banish thought. I’m trying to establish some sort of historical perspective.’

      ‘Historical perspective is itself a luxury. People with empty bellies care nothing for yesterday or tomorrow.’

      He sighed and raised his glass to her, without sipping, lowering it again to say, ‘We are not people with empty bellies, you and I, so we must cultivate those perspectives. Don’t try to bludgeon me with fake compassion for the starving. You call my background “deeply privileged”; I see it as carrying deep responsibilities – responsibilities for civilized enjoyment as well as duties. Yes, I have good fortune. That is because I have spent most of my life maintaining those values I live for.’ He made a dismissive gesture. ‘I do not expect you to accept those values as worth maintaining; perhaps you would rather destroy them, since they are those shared by many in my social stratum – among them, during his lifetime, Aldous Huxley.’

      He had made his point. Now he drank.

      Looking down at her hand resting on the table, she said, ‘You evidently did not care for my paper this afternoon.’

      Making a slight effort, he said, ‘We’re off duty now.’

      She put fingers to her delicate lips and said, ‘I see you do not want to argue. I wonder why that is?’

      ‘I see you want to argue.’

      As they both chewed olives, she said, ‘However beastly you may find my politics, I am not a dedicated Women’s Libber. Not exactly.’

      He said nothing to that, having learnt that either approval or disapproval of such statements provoked argument.

      After a short silence, she said, ‘Before I was into stylistics, I worked in neurosurgery in Los Angeles. That was when I was fresh out of college, apart from a trip to Mexico, where I saw for myself the poverty and injustice suffered there under American imperialism.’

      She went on, and he continued to look at her, but her words no longer penetrated to his senses. He thought about her being a neurosurgeon, and saw her character differently, regarded her not just as a woman parroting ideology, but as someone vulnerable and dedicated. About her remarkable face, the sharp planes cutting back from her nose, there was something of the scalpel; but he detected a sensitivity previously hidden from him, perhaps a sensitivity to things to which he remained blind. Her priggish phrase about Mexicans suffering under American imperialism represented some genuine experience of pain and distancing which she could interpret only in terms of political theory.

      She was saying, ‘Perhaps you know the name of Montrose Wilder. He was very distinguished in his field. It was a privilege to work with him. A good surgeon. Also a good man.

      ‘When I began as a trainee under him, he had a patient aged about forty, who had been involved in