‘It's Northcliffe here,’ bellowed The Fat Controller down the entryphone. ‘I've got Dr Hieronymus Gyggle and Ian Wharton from D.F. & L. Associates with me. May we come up?’
‘Oh yes, I suppose so but please, please remember — ’
‘I know, “the least sound is exquisite torture” to you, we know, don't rupture yourself over it.’
The Money Critic pressed the button to admit them to the block and retreated to the sanctity of his armchair.
There was barely room in the aluminium box for the three of them. As it accelerated upwards The Fat Controller expostulated, ‘Pah!’ and sprayed Gyggle and Ian with musty saliva. ‘Pah!’ he reiterated. ‘The man's an utter poove, “The least sound is exquisite torture to me”.’ He parodied the Money Critic's breathy tones. ‘I think the man's a complete fraud.’
‘Yes, yes, maybe — ’ Gyggle was staring at the ceiling as he spoke. ‘But fraud or not he is a successful one and people listen to him.’
‘Oh I know it,’ said The Fat Controller, ‘don't I just.’ The trio relapsed into silence. Alighting from the lift they proceeded to the door of the flat. The Fat Controller was just about to beat it down, his frozen turkey of a hand raised up for the task like a sledge hammer, when it swung open.
The Money Critic was wearing a floor-length djellaba of unparalleled richness, patterned with interlocking geometrical shapes and financial symbols. The robe was iridescent even in the muted light of the flat. As soon as he had opened the door he worked his way back to his high-backed Queen Anne armchair, where he picked up his bone-china cup and took a sip of a rarefied tisane. He didn't invite the trio to sit and indeed they couldn't have even if they had wanted to, for there were no other chairs.
Instead, the whole floor of the room which the front door opened into was covered with irregular piles and heaps of money. Money of all kinds: neat stocks of freshly printed bank notes as slick as stationery; plastic rolls of new coinage broken into elbows; used notes of all denominations and currencies, stacked in loose bundles; necklaces of cowrie shells; criss-crossed stacks of lead and iron plugs; notched bones; the filed teeth of narwhals; totemic spirit boards; myriads of different kinds of share-issue certificates, government bills, gilts, bonds (junk and otherwise) from all the two hundred and fifty-two countries of the world; dry-cleaning tokens; Indian State Railway chitties; Luncheon Vouchers; pemmican; piltjurri; balls of crude opium; pots of cocaine basta; gold (in HM Government ingots, also US issue from Fort Knox and Reichsbundesbank wartime loot still stamped with the Nazis’ bonnet mascot eagle); other ingots of precious metals; diamonds, pearls, emeralds and dustbin bags full of semi-precious stones; and all kinds of plastic — there was a great slick drift, made up solely of service-till cards, which flooded into the kitchenette.
Here and there, there was an item of what might of been furniture, faintly visible beneath the riot of dosh, but overall the impression the Money Critic's room gave was of a relief map of currencies, in which the lumpings and moundings of diverse kinds indicated their relative liquidity and value.
The Money Critic's room was the room of a man who criticised money with a vengeance; for into these expensive spits and promontories of pelf there was written clear evidence of careful lapidary arrangement. There was nothing in the least vulgar about this, rather, the same mind that had conceived of the collection as an opportunity to demonstrate the raw mechanics of money — its great gearing, both into itself and into the subsidiary world of things — had also chosen to regard the things-that-were-money as aesthetic objects in their own right. A lacy bridal veil pinned with high-denomination drachma notes was draped over the lampshade; the sunlight from the window fell through — and was filtered by — a collection of abacuses that were ranged along the sill, each one like a miniature Venetian blind.
‘Well, this is cosy,’ exclaimed The Fat Controller. He shouldered his way to the centre of the room and stood there breathing noisily through his shofar nose.
‘Please,’ said the Money Critic quaveringly, ‘I cannot work if there is any aural pollution —’ He broke off, a discreet chattering of metal on paper was coming from an adjoining room.
Ian looked towards the sound. At the end of the ‘l’ formed by the flat's balcony there was another smaller room, this was choked with softly chattering telex machines, gently grinding fax machines and a bank of VDUs, across the faces of which green and yellow figures played chicken with one another. An enormous tangled knot of printout jerked, waggled and then came towards them; underneath it was a ratty little man wearing an old-fashioned sharkskin suit. He rid himself of the bunch and then emerged from the telecommunications room clutching a fragment of this paper. Making his way to the side of the Money Critic's chair, he made a respectful obeisance before handing the fragment over.
The Money Critic examined the piece of paper for a long time, as if trying to divine its purpose, then he pronounced, ‘Peaty, mulchy, mouldy — almost tetanussy. .’ then fell silent. The little man shuffled back to the networking vestibule and tapped this verdict into the bank of machines.
‘What was that then?’ asked The Fat Controller, who was undeterred by atmospheres of sanctity.
‘Government bond, five-year, Papua New Guinea.’ The Money Critic sounded distracted; all too clearly he regarded it as hack work. His voice trailed away and he fell to regarding a large book of Vermeer colour plates that was propped on a strategically positioned lectern.
Ian stifled a snigger — it was unheard of for anybody to behave like this towards The Fat Controller, yet he seemed to be taking it. He drew a leather briefcase from under his hogshead of an arm and began to pull leaflets and forms out of it. It was, Ian realised, the material produced by D.F. & L. for ‘Yum-Yum’.
‘Well, here it is,’ said The Fat Controller, passing it to the Money Critic. ‘Tell us what you think; and mark my words, don't dissimulate in any way ‘soever. I shall know immediately if you do.’
The Money Critic gave him a withering look but said nothing. He started examining the documentation, occasionally sniffing one of the pages or taking a miserly nibble out of it.
While this was happening The Fat Controller had got out his gunmetal cigar case and opened it. ‘Erm.’ The Money Critic cleared his throat. ‘If you don't mind I'd prefer it if you didn't smoke.’
‘Can't smoke! Can't smoke!’ Despite all the poor man's injunctions The Fat Controller was now trumpeting, ‘What the hell do you expect me to do with myself if I can't smoke, eh? Are you afraid it'll get in your bloody ears?’
To his credit the Money Critic came back at him saying, ‘It's the cigar I object to, you're welcome to smoke a pipe of opium if you like, or a bidi.’
‘A bidi?’ The Fat Controller was nonplussed. The Money Critic gestured to his assistant who hurried off and returned with an ornately carved opium pipe about the size of a baseball bat. This he proceeded to prepare laboriously, taking ages to prime a little ball of grungy opium on a pin. When the mouthpiece was finally pointed at him by the Cratchetty figure, The Fat Controller took a vast neck-swelling pull on it and then exhaled, filling the room with the sweetly moribund smell of the smoke. He chucked the pipe to one side and it clattered amongst some bales of Jaquiri skins.
The Money Critic hadn't been paying any attention to this performance, he just went on reading, smelling and nibbling the ‘Yum-Yum’ literature; every so often he would write a note on a slip of violet paper with a gold propelling pencil.