Somewhere East of Life. Brian Aldiss

      ‘I’m fine. I’ll explain when I see you. Wiederschön.’

      He put the phone down. He should have asked her who she was; but these things would be easier face to face. It was so wimpish to have to admit you had had your memory stolen; no one liked admitting loss of memory. Whoever she was, she must be a girlfriend. She might be able to fill in some of his past. They could eat in the Schäfer’s Chinese restaurant, and maybe they would make love. It sounded like a good way to pass an evening in the Federal Republic.

      Wandering about the apartment, he found himself unable to think. In the top drawer of his dresser was the photograph of a pretty woman in a large straw hat, smiling, as people felt compelled to do when they saw a camera about. Was it a photograph of the girl he had just phoned? But this one was standing in front of what looked like a Spanish building. He was baffled. He thought, ‘It’ll be better after Saturday afternoon. That’s the future. In the future all men are equal – nobody has memories of the future …’

      He began to look out a book to take on the journey. Gibbon, of course. Montaigne. From his travel shelf he pulled down Freshfield’s Travels in the Central Caucasus.

      As darkness was falling, Burnell’s phone rang.

      ‘Burnell?’ A neutral voice.

      ‘Yes. Who’s that?’

      ‘Tartary. Listen to this message. Georgia, in the Caucasus. A missing ikon, known as “The Madonna of Futurity”. Could be it’s at Ghvtismshobeli. Number One wants it back here. Do your best …’

      ‘Who’s that? Who’s Number One?’

      ‘Just get that ikon.’

      The phone went dead. On several previous trips Burnell had carried out seemingly unimportant missions for Codename Tartary he believed: in this way he earned money to support his habit. He could not identify the voice; its owner probably spoke through a masker. Possibly it was a German voice speaking an American English. Many mysterious things went on in FAM.

      For a while he worked on his personal computer, summoning up data he had forgotten.

      Number One might refer to ‘Gus’ Stalinbrass himself, the crazed American general in charge of the EU peace corps who had somehow turned his troops into an invading force, apparently with the intention of carving out an empire of his own … Strange things happened these days.

      Another theory was that WACH was part-funded by Stalinbrass monies. He had listed possible evidence of this. The Director of WACH might be involved – mainly in the theft of art works from the emergent nations with which WACH was principally concerned. Someone in WACH was using Burnell. He stared into the illusory depths of his screen.

      Burnell believed evolutionary pressures determined that people exploited each other. Consequently, he tolerated being exploited unless he felt himself squeezed. In retrospect, even the trick Broadwell-Smith had played on him was amusing.

      He looked again into his electronic diary for further details on Tartary which might have been lost with the extracted memories. There was nothing. Not even a phone number. They got in touch with him, not vice versa.

      How deeply he was involved he did not know. However, if someone wanted an ikon which he might come across in Georgia, he was complaisant enough to oblige.

      Flicking through the electronic index, he saw the name Remenyi. It was another unknown. He turned up the entry.

      Peter Remenyi was thirty-two years old, a celebrated Hungarian ski-jumper. It appeared he was a close friend, and that he and Burnell had been in the Alps the previous summer, travelling on horseback. A home address in Budapest was given. Vexed to think he had been in Budapest and not called his friend, Burnell immediately phoned Remenyi’s number.

      For a while, he listened to the phone ringing in Hungary. Nobody answered.

      He switched off the processor, sitting back, trying to sort through the struggle of non-memory in his head. Whatever had happened in the recent past was a puzzle. The sections of the brain involved with memory retention contained many amacrine cells or microneurones. Yet non-localized storage of data also occurred; in consequence, ghost images rose up. Faceless men and women came and went. And was there not someone he knew, possibly this Peter Remenyi, lying somewhere in a coma?

      The nightmare thought occurred to him that he might himself be Remenyi. But that was absurd. His colleagues in WACH had identified him as Roy Burnell.

      As he was throwing some clothes into a pack, his doorbell buzzed. It was seven-thirty on the dot. Burnell went and opened the door.

      A young woman entered his domain, self-possessed on her high heels. A man of unprepossessing aspect had accompanied her. He remained in the corridor, giving Burnell a hard look, not speaking. The woman was in her late twenties, well built, not quite plump. Her dyed blonde hair was cut short, bristly at the back of the head up to the occipital bone. Her eyes, fringed by long false lashes, were curiously masked by the application of shining scarlet make-up which curved to a point on the temples. Her lips were painted black. She wore a tight green plastic skin dress, buttoning up the front, which emphasized her generous bosom. The dress ceased just below the swell of her mons veneris.

      He understood immediately.

      ‘You’ll have to tell me your name.’

      She was looking about the apartment, very business-like. ‘That’s silly. You sounded strange on the phone. Not yourself.’

      ‘Maybe. I’ve been robbed. It’s the EMV craze. Someone has stolen my memory. The immediate past is a blank. I hoped perhaps you might help me.’

      ‘I don’t offer that kind of therapy. Sorry. You’re got ninety minutes of my time. You can still have erections? I guarantee I will leave you relaxed and happy. As always.’

      ‘It’s clear we’ve met before. Because of the theft – I just don’t remember you.’

      ‘Let me remind you.’ She was wearing nothing under the dress. It fell open like a chest of drawers spilling out its goodies.

      ‘Does this look familiar?’

      Her pubic hair had been shaved off.

      She insisted on checking his anti-AIDS status. The indicator on his watch showed green. She showed her indicator, also reading Safe. It was OK. They went briskly through into the bedroom. She led the way. Burnell followed, admiring the jaunty buttocks, smooth as machine parts.

      He had always liked the Germans, not least because his father hated them. The neatness of German towns, where modernity sat comfortably with antiquity, had been achieved nowhere else in Europe. In the same way, a Teutonic drive towards success – success in all things – was moderated by an everyday courtesy. Earnestness was similarly moderated by a sense of humour. He found the Germans honest; or at least they retained a respect for honesty. They were good on respect. Wholeheartedness attracted him, perhaps because he had never possessed the quality: it formed an element in the life here which excited him, an intense secret eroticism buried under the surface of daily existence which foreigners rarely saw: an eroticism which differed from the flashiness of Italian, the polish of French, the bounciness of Scandinavian, and the salaciousness of English eroticism, in that particular culinary quality, Teutonic wholeheartedness. He understood well that national wholeheartedness had led Germany into disastrous follies in the past, just as it had led to leadership in Europe in the present; still he found that wholeheartedness admirable: not only in economic life, but in bed. He paid her before undressing.

      German women brought to lovemaking the same kind of homely expertise they once brought to breadmaking, the sleeves of their blouses metaphorically rolled up, their hair piled out of the way, the smells of a warm hearth in the air, flour spreading up to their armpits, the dough kneaded into required shape under those dimpled practised hands.

      After ninety minutes and three orgasms, Burnell was relaxed and happy.

      As the woman was leaving, he said, perhaps trying to restore his reputation in her