The Great Pursuit

'You've got one. That's Crime and Punishment, Dummkopf. For a publisher you know but nothing.'

'I know how to sell books. I don't have to read the goddam things,' said Hutchmeyer. 'Books is for people who don't get satisfaction in doing things. Like vicarious.'

'They teach you things,' said Baby.

'Like what? Having apoplectic fits?' said Hutchmeyer who had finally got his bearings on The Idiot.

'Epipleptic. A sign of genius. Like Mohammed had them.'

'So now I've got an encyclopedia for a wife,' said Hutchmeyer, 'and with Arabs. What are you going to do? Turn this house into a literary Mecca or something?' And leaving Baby with the germ of this idea he had flown hurriedly to Tokyo and the physical pleasures of a woman who couldn't speak English let alone read it. He came back to find Baby had been into Dostoyevsky and out the other side. She was devouring books with as little discrimination as her bears were now devouring blueberry patches. She hit Ayn Rand with as much fervour as Tolstoy, swept amazingly through Dos Passos, lathered in Lawrence, saunaed in Strindberg and then birched herself with Celine. The list was endless and Hutchmeyer found himself married to a biblionut. To make matters worse Baby got into authors. Hutchmeyer loathed authors. They talked about their books and Hutchmeyer under threat from Baby found himself forced to be relatively polite and apparently interested. Even Baby found them disappointing but since the presence of even one novelist in the house sent Hutchmeyer's blood pressure soaring she was generous in her invitations and continued to live in hopes of finding one who lived in the flesh up to his words on paper. And with Peter Piper and Pause O Men for the Virgin she felt sure that here at last was a man and his book without discrepancy. She lay on the waterbed and savoured her expectations. It was such a romantic novel. In a significant sort of way. And different.

Hutchmeyer came through from the bathroom wearing a quite unnecessary truss.

'That thing suits you,' said Baby studying the contraption dispassionately. 'You should wear it more often. It gives you dignity.'

Hutchmeyer glared at her.

'No, I mean it,' Baby continued. 'Like it gives you a supportive role.'

'With you to support I need it,' said Hutchmeyer.

'Well, if you've got a hernia you should have it operated on.'

'Seeing what they've done with you I don't need no operations,' Hutchmeyer said. He glanced at Pause and went through to his room.

'You still like that book?' he called out presently.

'First good book you've published in years,' said Baby. 'It's beautiful. An idyll.'

'A what?'

'An idyll. You want me to tell you what an idyll is?'

'No,' said Hutchmeyer, 'I can guess.' He climbed into bed and thought about it. An idyll? Well if she said an idyll, an idyll was what it would be to a million other women. Baby was infallible. Still, an idyll?

Chapter 9

There was nothing idyllic about the scene that greeted Piper when the ship berthed in New York. Even the fabulous view of the skyline and the Statue of Liberty, which Sonia had promised would send him, didn't. A heavy mist hung over the river and the great buildings only emerged from it as they moved slowly past the Battery and inched into the berth. By that time Piper's attention had been drawn from the view of Manhattan to a large number of people with visibly different backgrounds and opinions who were gathered on the roadway outside the Customs shed.

'Boy, Hutch has really done you proud,' said Sonia as they went down the gangway. There were shouts from the street and a glimpse of banners some of which said ambiguously, 'Welcome To Gay City', and others even more ominously, 'Go Home, Peipmann'.

'Who on earth is Peipmann?' Piper asked.

'Don't ask me,' said Sonia.

'Peipmann?' said the Customs Officer not bothering to open their bags. 'I wouldn't know. There's a million hags and fags out there waiting for him. Some are for lynching him and others for worse. Have a nice trip.'

Sonia hustled Piper away with their luggage through a barrier to where MacMordie was waiting with a crowd of reporters. 'Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr Piper,' he said. 'Now if you'll just step this way.'

Piper stepped this way and was immediately surrounded by cameramen and reporters who shouted incomprehensible questions.

'Just say "No comment",' shouted MacMordie as Piper tried to explain that he had never been to Russia. 'That way nobody gets the wrong idea.'

'It's a bit late for that, isn't it?' said Sonia. 'Who the hell told these goons he was in the KGB?'

MacMordie grinned with complicity and the swarm with Piper at its centre moved out into the entrance hall. A squad of cops fought their way through the newsmen and escorted Piper into an elevator. Sonia and MacMordie went down the stairs.

'What in the name of hell gives?' asked Sonia.

'Mr Hutchmeyer's orders,' said MacMordie. 'A riot he asks for, a riot he gets.'

'But you didn't have to say that about him being a hit man for Idi Amin,' said Sonia bitterly. 'Jesus wept!'

At street level it was clear that MacMordie had said a great many other things about Piper, all of them conflicting. A contingent of Survivors of Siberia surged round the entrance chanting, 'Solzhenitsyn Yes. Piperovsky No.' Behind them a band of Arabs for Palestine, acting on the assumption that Piper was an Israeli Minister travelling incognito on an arms-buying mission, battled with Zionists whom MacMordie had alerted to the arrival of Piparfat of the Black September Movement. Farther back a small group of older Jews carried banners denouncing Peipmann but were heavily outnumbered by squads of Irishmen whose information was that O'Piper was a leading member of the IRA.

'Cops are all Irish,' MacMordie explained to Sonia. 'Best to have them on our side.'

'And which goddam side is that?' said Sonia but at that moment the elevator doors opened and an ashen-faced Piper was hustled into public view by his police escort. As the crowd outside surged forward the reporters continued their indefatigable quest for the truth.

'Mr Piper, would you mind just telling us who and what the hell you are?' one of them shouted above the din. But Piper was speechless. His eyes started out of his head and his face was grey.

'Is it true that you personally shot...?'

'Can we take it that your government isn't negotiating the purchase of Minutemen rockets?'

'How many people are still in mental...'

'I know one who soon will be if you don't do something fast,' said Sonia thrusting MacMordie forward. MacMordie launched himself into the fray.

'Mr Piper has nothing to say,' he yelled gratuitously before being hurled to one side by a cop who had just been hit by a bottle of Seven-Up thrown by an Anti-Apartheid protester for whom Van Piper was a White South African racist. Sonia Futtle shoved past him.

'Mr Piper is a famous British novelist,' she bawled but the time had passed for such unequivocal statements. More missiles rained against the wall of the building, banners disintegrated and were used as weapons, and Piper was dragged back into the hall.

'I haven't shot anyone,' he squawked. 'I've never been to Poland.' But no one heard him. There was a crackle of walkie-talkies and an urgent plea for police reinforcements. Outside the Survivors of Siberia had succumbed to the Gay Liberationists who were fighting for their own. A number of middle-aged dragsters broke through the police cordon and swooped on Piper.

'No, I'm nothing of the kind,' he yelled as they tried to rescue him from the cops. 'I'm simply a normal...' Sonia grabbed a pole which had once held a sign saying 'Golden Oldies Love You', and fended off the falsies of one of Piper's captors.