The Call-Girls by Arthur Koestler Page B

the verdict:
    â€˜
Engländer
…! ’
    Nikolai walked a little faster. Claire giggled: ‘That dame looked exactly like a chest of drawers mounted on stovepipes with the top-drawer pulled out… Were they like that when you were taken on vacation as a little boy?’
    â€˜Little boys love big bosoms,’ said Nikolai.
    â€˜So all American men are little boys,’ said Claire. ‘I am just being silly. I know this transformation is a shock to you.’
    â€˜I did love the mountains,’ said Nikolai. ‘And the mountainpeasants. They called themselves not farmers but peasants –
Bauern.
They were proud of it. Official communications were addressed to “Herrn Bauer Moser” or “Herrn Bauer Hübner”. Bauer is still one of the commonest names in their telephone directory – but hardly anybody in ours is called John Peasant, or Jean Paysan.’
    â€˜But perhaps as a little boy your view of the
Bauern
was somewhat dewy-eyed.’
    â€˜Perhaps. One has no right to blame them. It was a hard life. Until they made the greatest discovery in their history: tourists are easier to milk than cows. You don’t have to get up at four in the morning.’
    They sat down on a public bench provided by the municipality of Schneedorf, a few steps off the lane. It had a magnificent view and an advertisement for a new deodorant painted on the back-rest. A few steps from them there was a souvenir stall displaying native woodcarvings of stags, mountain-goats and golden eagles copied from Disney comics.
    â€˜I am not being sentimental,’ said Niko. ‘You think the tourist explosion is just a minor nuisance. But the tourist industry occupies first place in the economy of this country, and of others as remote as the Fiji islands; and in some the annual turnover of tourists far outnumbers the native population. They flood the mountains, the beaches, the islands. They turn the natives into parasites, erode their ways of life, contaminate their arts and crafts, their music…’ Niko was getting steamed up. He hit the ground with his walking stick.
    â€˜â€¦ You think it’s a minor nuisance, but it is a global phenomenon, spreading global corruption. It is levelling down all cultures to the lowest common denominator, to a stereotyped norm, a synthetic pseudo-culture, expanding like a plastic bubble. Colonialism is dead; now we have coca-colonization, all over the world. Each nation does it to the other.’
    Claire knew that when he got into that mood there was no arguing with Niko. Nevertheless she tried:
    â€˜Isn’t there another side to it? People like that chest-of-drawers lady have never before had a chance to travel abroad. Why grudge them their fun?’
    â€˜Fun? Do you remember those bus-loads of blue-haired matrons on package tours in Hawaii? Two hundred of them in each package. The organizers treated them like a bunch of battery-reared hens expected to lay a golden egg per day. And they felt just like that, hating it all, the natives who robbed them, the food that gave them diarrhoea, the lingo which they couldn’t speak. Instead of bringing nations closer to mutual understanding, travel spreads mutual contempt.’
    Niko evidently had a bee in his bonnet about it. Claire could not quite understand why, although she knew that the philanthropist in him was always ready to turn into a misanthropist by the throw of a switch. Yet he always took such childish pleasure in travelling in foreign countries. Even the exotic uniforms of the customs officials delighted him.
    â€˜Have you noticed,’ he said, ‘that nothing sounds so contemptuous as a tourist calling another tourist a tourist?’
    â€˜But we both love being tourists,’ protested Claire.
    â€˜Ah!’ said Niko. ‘Because we love looking out of the window of the train. But they travel like registered parcels.’
    Suddenly it dawned on Claire that there