The chance to buy Kafka’s soup was just too good an opportunity to miss. The fact that it had been discovered after so many years was a small wonder in itself, but the department, no doubt mindful of the envy which would sweep across our rival institutions knowing that they could have such a valuable commodity for themselves, decided at once to stump up the cash. Professor Zazzo Thim was dispatched to Prague.
He arrived during a thunderstorm. The lightning played around the concrete tower blocks which stride so confidently down the hills around the suburbs of the city. Thim found lodgings at a former communist hotel and, from his window, watched as the lightning flashed and forked across the premature evening sky. Already, he could feel that something was amiss. He didn’t know exactly what it was, but it was as if the thunderstorm was heralding something deep down, some bad news. He did not sleep well at all.
When he woke, a bright sun filled his room, and a little of his enthusiasm began to come back. The room was decorated with old, flowerry curtains and wood panelling, and the windowsill was taken up by a gigantic radio which was bigger than the average television.
When he went to the bathroom for a wash, he pulled the plug and watched, incredulously, as the water came out of the bottom of the basin on to the floor, and then down a drain in the middle of the room. Thim felt that he was in another world
He reflected once again on the reasons why the department wanted to buy the soup. A new professor in the science wing wanted to scrutinise the soup so that he might find traces, embedded in the remains, of Kafka’s undoubted genius, that such intellectual DNA’ might be reconstituted and used to further the aims of mankind. Indeed, a list of volunteers had come forward already, that they might be implanted with Kafka’s ‘intellectual DNA’, that it might help them with their writing or their general view of the world. Secretly, Thim shuddered to think of a hall full of Kafkas, moping about the state of the human condition, but he had a job to do and he was always professional in his outlook.
He went down to breakfast and met an American tourist by the name of Arlene. They shared a table and they got to talking about their different jobs, and it turned out that Arlene worked for a company which published romantic fiction, and that she was there to try and open up a new market for her employers. Arlene was a jovial lady with false eyelashes and an infectious belly laugh. She also had an annoying habit of slapping the professor on the back when she emphasised a point.
“What do you think about that, eh, Zazzy?”, she roared, slapping him mid-shoulder. “Haw haw haw!”
The Professor couldn’t remember what kind of point she had been making, but there was something about Arlene which comforted him, and he wondered if it was possible to spend more time with her.
“The thing is”, he said, somewhat croakily, “I’m here to make a purchase for my university. If it wasn’t for the fact that I have such worthy and important work to do, I might be inclined to spend more time with you”.
“Purchase?”, she asked, “What kind of purchase?”
Thim took a deep sigh.
“There has long been a school of thought that intellectual vigour might be transmitted by close proximity to objects utilised by those of a particular literary bent. I have come to Prague”, Zazzo announced, “In order to buy Kafka’s soup”.
“Huh”, she said, snorting back a laugh. “Can’t be arsed with all that!”
“I can assure you”, he continued, “That the soup shall be a most valuable commodity. If it wasn’t for this, I’m sure we would have a remarkable future together”.
“Well, Zazzy”, said Arlene, as she got up from the breakfast table, “Some things just aren’t meant to be”.
The Professor went about his duties and was taken into town by taxi so that he might view the fabled soup. He looked at it, where it was on display in the museum protected from the general public by a glass screen, and he thought how remarkable it was that such a relic should survive for so long. But the more time he spent in the company of the hallowed soup, the more he started to think about Arlene, and remember the fun that they had had just by sharing breakfast. When he left the museum he managed to secure a place in the front row at the following day’s auction, but the moment he left the room, he had forgotten that the soup had even existed
Arlene was holding court in the hotel bar that evening. A drab, sullen waitress with her hair tied back served Zazzo unsmilingly, though Zazzo would hardly have noticed if she had. immediately, he went and sat on the periphery of Arlene’s group, close enough to hear the phlegm rattling at the back of her throat.
“So I said to them”, She continued, “If that’s a side of beef, my dear, then I think I’ll stick to the moose!” And then came that familiar laugh. “Haw haw haw!”
The surrounding men laughed appreciatively and Zazzo joined them, though he was upset to see Arlene demonstrating as much joviality to these complete strangers as she had done with him that very morning. The men were all of a certain age – younger than Zazzo, smarty-dressed, tanned, knowingly handsome. Zazzo felt out of place and he looked down at his old jacket and moth-eaten pullover.
Of a sudden Arlene hooted: ‘Oh my! If it aint my old good friend, Zazzy!” She stood up, waddled across the bar, and flung her arms around him.
“Hel-lo!”’, Zazzo croaked
“My my!”, she said, letting go of him at last. “Did you buy the soup?”
“Not yet” he replied.
She half-turned him to the rest of the group. “This is my old friend Zazzy”, she said. “He buys food and makes writers who are grumpy, or something like that. You should talk to him, he’s a laugh and a half!”
Arlene’s assembled throng began to disperse, mumbling under their breath. She took hold of Zazzo’s hand and took him over to the corner.
“Now”, she said, “Let’s have ourselves a bit of quality time, eh?”
“Yes”, said Zazzo, “That sounds rather pleasant”.
‘Let’s shoot the breeze. Let’s have ourselves a little chinwag’.
Zazzo nodded eagerly. Neither of them said anything for a very long while. A light rain began to fall on the bar window, distorting the image of a nearby tower block so that it seemed almost ethereal, like a Christmas tree.
“Well”, Zazzo said, “The, um, the modern propensity for… literary experimentation…seems to have subsided of late, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Oh, yes, yes”, Arlene replied. “Totally”.
There was another, agonisingly long period of quiet.
“Though I can only see this”, said Zazzo, “As a bad thing”.
“Totally”, Arlene said. “Totally”.
Arlene drummed her chubby fingers on the table, while Zazzo, sadly, looked at his own reflection in the glass window. The rain was coming down heavy now, and he wondered what it was he might be able to talk about.
“In the course of your job”, Arlene said, “Do you get to read much romantic fiction?”
“No”, he replied.
And now a very long section of quiet lasted almost until bed-time.
That night, he could think of no-one else but Arlene. He saw her as a commentary on his life so far, the fact that he might be able to dream of a cosy union but never actually commit to the niceties and the jovial harmony which necessarily came with such a partnership. Late night trams rattled his hotel room, and he wondered if he would get another chance with Arlene, another opportunity to demonstrate just how much of a man he could be. Before long he realised that sleep would be quite impossible, so he went for a walk.
Outside the hotel, the surrounding tower blocks loomed down on him like concrete robots.
He walked around the grounds, over grass lawns and the car park, as a full moon revealed itself above and shone down a lunar glow. He sat for a while on the bank overlooking the main road, and he watched the cars as they made their way into the city. Of a sudden, he realised what he might do.
He went to the hotel reception shop, where a display of Arlene’s romantic fiction had been installed the previous day, and he bought a copy of ‘Stud Lover’, a cheap novel set on a dude ranch somewhere in western America. The hero was a rugged man named Brad, the object of his desires was a southern belle named Nancy. Zazzo sat on a leather armchair in the lounge and read the whole book in one sitting, reading frantically as Nancy fell for the wrong man, then saw Brad leading his horses to the stream, then fell for Brad, then watched aghast as Brad and her old boyfriend, Tim, had a duel, then spent a night of passion with the saintly Brad and listened as he eulogised the beauty of the open plains, the thrusting mountains, the moving power of the desert. At once Zazzo recognised that Arlene associated masculinity with landscape, and that he would try to do the same the very next day.
He slept late and missed breakfast. At lunch she came in and sat down at his table, giving him a sweet smile, but saying nothing. He knew she was thinking of their conversation on the previous day, so he cleared his throat.
“My dear Arlene”, he said, “What beautiful eyes you have”.
She looked up at him, slightly mistrustful. “I’ll have the fish chowder”, she said to the sullen waitress.
“When I see you”, he said, “I begin to think of… of the landscape of my native Thames Valley”,
She frowned, and leant back in her chair.
“The … the wooded vales, the wide plains, the industrial estates around the western fringes of the airport”.
“Hmm?” she asked.
“The miles and miles of rolling countryside, the sun setting over the council houses, illuminating against the red sky each individual chimney pot – and oh, the incessant rumble of traffic on the M25″
“Uhrrr…”, she said.
“The thrusting, penetrating hills of the Chilterns, the long, straight, inexorable line of the Waterloo to Basingstoke line …”.
There was a period of quiet, and then Arlene threw back her head. “Haw haw haw! Oh Zazzy, stop, stop! This really is too much! Where did you get such corny language?”
“From… from your book”, he whispered.
“Honey”, she said, “I could never respect anybody who actually read that crap”. And at this, she stood up, patted him twice on the back, and left the table.
Naturally, Zazzo was devastated, not least when her lunch turned up and he had to pay for it. He watched Arlene leave the restaurant and he felt a piece of him die, quietly, a part of his need in life disintegrate. And then he knew what the thunderstorm had been about: it had been the death of his companionship, the final fling of his heart before it settled, once and for all, into a life of quiet subservience.
And then he remembered the auction, but it was too late. The soup would have been bought, and he had failed, there was nothing he could do. He would have to go back to his institution empty handed, a failure once again, a laughing stock.
Unless . . .
He reached out towards Arlene’s fish chowder.
Two weeks later the university unveiled the culmination of their scientific model. One of the Professors made a moving speech about progress and about recreating the ethos and the mind-set of a literary genius. He then thanked the volunteers, and, laughingly, wondered if they ought to thank him for their new personalities, that they would progress far and write such beauteous prose now that they were embedded with Kafka’s intellectual DNA. Indeed, he continued, perhaps this might be the start of a new intellectual rigour at the university, that the solemnity and weight which Kafka took to his life might be applied now to every aspect of thought and circumstance at the facility.
At this the curtain was pulled and the stage was filled with ladies dressed in floral dresses who, en masse, on seeing Professor Zazzo Thim, shouted: “Zazzy! Coo-eeee! Zazzy! Haw haw haw!”
The experiment was not deemed a success.
Robert Garnham 