The Call-Girls Read Free Page B

Schneedorf had not appreciably altered for the last three or four hundred years, yet suddenly, without warning, they were confronted with this huge, sadistic-looking, glass-and-concrete thing which some Scandinavian architect must have dreamt up in a state of acute depression.
    â€˜How do you like?’ the driver asked as the bus came to a standstill.
    There was silence in the bus. Then Dr Wyndham’s thin voice sounded from one of the back seats with a donnish titter:
    â€˜It rather reminds one of a steel filing cabinet with plate-glass in front, doesn’t it?’
    The remark caused some mild hilarity which dispelled the after-effects of the spiky virgins and created an atmosphere of camaraderie among the call-girls, while they trooped upthe steps to the concrete terrace in front of the austere building.
    â€˜Here comes our very own Nikolai Borisovitch Solovief,’ Harriet shouted as a big bear of a man in a rumpled dark suit emerged from the building and came to meet them with unhurried steps. ‘Our Nikolai,’ she added, ‘in full melancholy bloom.’
    â€˜He looks ill,’ Wyndham thought sadly, holding out his pudgy hand. ‘You do look flourishing,’ he said with enthusiasm.
    Solovief thrust his shaggy head forward and looked at Wyndham as if he were examining a specimen under the microscope. ‘He is telling lies as always,’ he said in a deep, cracked voice.
    â€˜It is nearly two years since Stockholm, isn’t it?’ said Wyndham.
    â€˜You have not changed.’
    â€˜I can’t afford it any longer,’ Wyndham tittered coyly.
2
    The Kongresshaus was the brainchild of an adventurous operator whose life and works remain shrouded in mystery. He was the son of a postman in a lonely Alpine valley destined to take over his father’s job, instead of which he ran away to South America and became a millionaire. One rumour asserted that he did it by smuggling arms, another that he ran a chain of brothels where the girls wore dirndls and had to yodel at the critical moment. However, after his first coronary episode, he underwent a spiritual conversion and made his money over to the Foundation for Promoting Love among Nations. The message was to radiate all over the world from the Kongresshaus, built in the Founder’s beloved native mountains; but he died before the building was completed. After his death, the Trustees discovered that the Foundation’s investments yielded just enough interest topay their salaries, and that there was nothing left to promote the message. They accordingly decided that the building could be put to best use by renting it to congresses and symposia, and leaving the promoting of the message to them. Actually, the building was originally called
La Maison des Nations’,
but when somebody discovered that this had been the historic name of the most reputed and lamented brothel in the rue de Chabanais in Paris, a change was made. Although the Fräuleins during the skiing season were more lucrative, the villagers took a certain pride in being hosts to several galaxies of celebrities every year. But they had no standards of comparison, and thus did not realize that this particular bus-load was of exceptional quality, including three Nobel laureates and several likely candidates.
    Some of the participants had arrived on that Sunday afternoon by the bus; others drove up in hired cars. There were to be only twelve of them, an unusually small number for an interdisciplinary symposium, but Solovief had insisted that this was the optimal figure which still allowed for constructive discussion – much to the distress of the International Academy of Science and Ethics, which acted as sponsor.
    The Academy, financed by another repentant tycoon, was run by public relations experts who believed that the prestige of a symposium, and of the handsome volume in which its proceedings would subsequently be published, was proportionate to