‘You have a pain in the spine?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I did it in a discothèque.’
‘Those modern dances are too strenuous for me,’ said Datt.
‘This one was too strenuous for me,’ I said. ‘My partner had brass knuckles.’
Datt knelt down at my feet, took off my shoe and probed at my heel with his powerful fingers. He felt my ankle bone and tut-tutted as though it had been designed all wrong. Suddenly he plunged his fingers hard into my heel. ‘Ahh,’ he said, but the word was drowned by my shout of pain. Kuang opened the door and looked at us.
‘Are you all right?’ Kuang asked.
‘He’s got a muscular contraction,’ said Datt. ‘It’s acupuncture,’ he explained to me. ‘I’ll soon get rid of that pain in your back.’
‘Ouch,’ I said. ‘Don’t do it if it’s going to make me lame for life.’
Kuang retreated back to his room. Datt inspected my foot again and pronounced it ready.
‘It should get rid of your pain,’ he said. ‘Rest for half an hour in the chair.’
‘It is a bit better,’ I admitted.
‘Don’t be surprised,’ said Datt, ‘the Chinese have practised these arts for centuries; it is a simple matter, a muscular pain.’
‘You practise acupuncture?’ I asked.
‘Not really, but I have always been interested,’ said Datt. ‘The body and the mind. The interaction of two opposing forces: body and mind, emotion and reason, the duality of nature. My ambition has always been to discover something new about man himself.’ He settled back into his chair. ‘You are simple. I do not say that as a criticism but rather in admiration. Simplicity is the most sought-after quality in both art and nature, but your simplicity encourages you to see the world around you in black-and-white terms. You do not approve of my inquiry into human thoughts and actions. Your puritan origin, your Anglo-Saxon breeding make it sinful to inquire too deeply into ourselves.’
‘But you don’t inquire into yourself, you inquire into other people.’
He leaned back and smiled. ‘My dear man, the reason I collect information, compile dossiers and films and recordings and probe the personal secrets of a wide range of important men, is twofold. Primarily because important men control the fate of the world and I like to feel that in my small way I influence such men. Secondly, I have devoted my life to the study of mankind. I love people; I have no illusions about them, it’s true, but that makes it much easier to love them. I am ceaselessly amazed and devoted to the strange convoluted workings of their devious minds, their rationalizations and the predictability of their weaknesses and failings. That’s why I became so interested in the sexual aspect of my studies. At one time I thought I understood my friends best when I watched them gambling: their avarice, kindness, and fear were so much in evidence when they gambled. I was a young man at the time. I lived in Hanoi and I saw the same men every day in the same clubs. I liked them enormously. It’s important that you believe that.’ He looked up at me.
I shrugged. ‘I believe it.’
‘I liked them very much and I wished to understand them better. For me, gambling could never hold any fascination: dull, repetitive and trivial. But it did unleash the deepest emotions. I got more from seeing their reactions to the game than from playing. So I began to keep dossiers on all my friends. There was no malign intent; on the contrary, it was expressly in order to understand and like them better that I did it.’
‘And did you like them better?’
‘In some ways. There were disillusions, of course, but a man’s failings are so much more attractive than his successes – any woman will tell you that. Soon it occurred to me that alcohol was providing more information to the dossiers than gambling. Gambling showed me the hostilities and fears, but drink showed me the weaknesses. It was when a man felt sorry for himself that one saw the gaps in the armour. See how a man gets drunk and you will know him – I have told so many young girls that: see your man getting drunk and you will know him. Does he want to pull the blankets over his head or go out into the street and start a riot? Does he want to be caressed or to commit rape? Does he find everything humorous, or threatening? Does he feel the world is secretly mocking him, or does he throw his arms around a stranger’s shoulders and shout that he loves everyone?’
‘Yes. It’s a good indication.’
‘But there were even better ways to reach deep into the subconscious, and now I wanted not only to understand people but also to try planting ideas into their heads. If only I could have a man with the frailty and vulnerability of drunkenness but without the blurriness and loss of memory that drink brought, then I would have a chance of really improving my dossiers. How I envied the women who had access to my friends in their most vulnerable – post-coital triste – condition. Sex, I decided, was the key to man’s drives and post-sex was his most vulnerable state. That’s how my methods evolved.’
I relaxed now that Datt had become totally involved in his story. I suppose he had been sitting out here in this house, inactive and musing about his life and what had led to this moment of supreme power that he was now enjoying so much. He was unstoppable, as so many reserved men are once explanations start burbling out of them.
‘Eight hundred dossiers I have now, and many of them are analyses that a psychiatrist would be proud of.’
‘Are you qualified to practise psychiatry?’ I asked.
‘Is anyone qualified to practise it?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Precisely,’ said Datt. ‘Well, I am a little better able than most men. I know what can be done, because I have done it. Done it eight hundred times. Without a staff it would never have developed at the same rate. Perhaps the quality would have been higher had I done it all myself, but the girls were a vital part of the operation.’
‘The girls actually compiled the dossiers?’
‘Maria might have been able to if she’d worked with me longer. The girl that died – Annie Couzins – was intelligent enough, but she was not temperamentally suited to the work. At one time I would work only with girls with qualifications in law or engineering or accountancy, but to find girls thus qualified and also sexually alluring is difficult. I wanted girls who would understand. With the more stupid girls I had to use recording machines, but the girls who understood produced the real results.’
‘The girls didn’t hide the fact that they understood?’
‘At first. I thought – as you do now – that men would be afraid and suspicious of a woman who was clever, but they aren’t, you see. On the contrary, men like clever women. Why does a husband complain “my wife doesn’t understand me” when he goes running off with another woman? Why, because what he needs isn’t sex, it’s someone to talk to.’
‘Can’t he talk to the people he works with?’
‘He can, but he’s frightened of them. The people he works with are after his job, on the watch for weakness.’
‘Just as your girls are.’
‘Exactly, but he does not understand that.’
‘Eventually he does, surely?’
‘By then he no longer cares – the therapeutic aspect of the relationship is clear to him.’
‘You blackmail him into co-operating?’
Datt shrugged. ‘I might have done had it ever proved necessary, but it never has. By the time a man has been studied by me and the girls for six months he needs us.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You don’t understand,’ said Datt patiently, ‘because