The great Mister Jeremiah Marlowe, said Georg approaching. Georg wears a trilby out of doors, though he is not balding as I am. The coming political man, he said, drawing us under the awning of a bar. I said Vikram had taken it well, being voted out, and Plaster-cast-tottie, detaching herself a little, but not entirely, said how sorry she was for Vikram because he was such a comic and 'simpatic' person, and you could see he cared, she said, but hadn’t wanted to show it, Georg shrugged his shoulders. Griffiths is a maverick, he said. Then he began to ask if I genuinely felt I was up to making the presentation of our case, because if not, there was a written speech which he and she and Dimitra had prepared for whoever had to make the presentation, detailing the exact nature of our grievance and in particular the legal justification for our claim both to permanent contracts of employment and to salaries equivalent to that of an associate professor, albeit at the most junior level, i.e. two-and-a-half million lire a month after tax. The whole thing was a question, Georg said — and this was absolutely crucial — of comparison within the relevant framework. And while he began to explain then, very seriously, that the point was that all comparisons had to be made within the reality that was Italy, rather than allowing myself to be drawn, should there be any open discussion, perhaps with the press, into comparison with legal systems outside Italy, which tended to be less favourable to employees in general and University employees in particular (since European law stated that we should have equal rights
within the system of the country we lived in, rather than generally across the Community) — while he explained all this carefully and usefully, I found myself recalling, as Plottie gave my hand a squeeze, for the coach had arrived now and people were trooping towards it, I found myself remembering how she had once made a comparison which was supposed to be favourable to myself. In response to my continued anguish at her betrayal, she remarked that he, and she meant Georg (though she has never to this day admitted it was Georg), had not been alla sua altezza a letto, not at her level in bed, as I on the contrary was. She laughed, she was naked, we had made love. She said — no, she sighed — He wasn’t really at my level in bed, you know. The way you are. This was perhaps a week or two after the phone-call when she talked about the ammonia spray She sighed again: In the end, we only made love two or three times, she said. And the fascinating thing here was how she imagined this comparison would cheer me up, offering as it did, as she doubtless saw it, a convincing reason for her decision to come back to me, particularly after I had done the honest thing now and left my wife, she said. Whereas what struck me was the subtext that, had Georg proved to be at her level in bed, then perhaps she would have stayed with him. Love does not, or should not fall within the realm of comparison, I thought, walking through blown rain across the central square in Strasbourg towards our big modern coach with the pally Plottie to one side and sensible Georg to the other, the latter properly concerned about the source of income that allows him to support the chronically sick mother of his child. Love should lie outside the world of analogical procedure, of comparisons within the relevant framework and discrete units of measure, I thought, climbing on to the coach in a press of girls giggling and singing and with the distinct feeling that Plottie was seeking to appropriate me and was being remarkably straightforward about it. Though of course, I thought, climbing the steps, looked at from another point of view, one is always seeking comfort in comparison. One is always saying to oneself, At least you’re not so badly off as so and so, at least you haven’t had such an empty life as so and so, or suffered so much as so and so, this person you read about and that person you knew. Or one even catches oneself comparing the bodies of casual lovers with her body and saying, This arse is better and younger and fresher than hers, this skin is smoother and softer and sweeter than hers. One believes, I tell myself here in the hotel room gazing at those clasping Picasso lovers, who would perhaps have looked well against the anodyne facade of a floodlit cathedral, one believes one desires uniqueness, yet one seeks comfort in comparison. One constantly, obsessively, compares one’s own story with everybody else’s, until, not finding quite the like, one realizes that one’s banality lies precisely in uniqueness.