The Male Response. Brian Aldiss
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wash your crutch what else won’t they do?!’
‘The same thought occurred to me, Ted,’ Soames admitted solemnly and was surprised when Timpleton burst into laughter.
The bathing ceremony had occurred at dusk last night, shortly after the weary travellers had arrived. By then, Jimpo had already left them to be carried to his father, informing them they would be well looked after. That they certainly had been, and the three girls apiece who scrubbed Timpleton and Soames, despite their coy protests, in ceremonial concrete baths, had not lacked ardour. Soames had to admit that the only offensive note in this covertly erotic ceremony had been the emptying of an entire carton of detergent into their water.
While they were still being dried by their handmaids with wads of cotton waste, an English-speaking native appeared. He escorted them, when they were ready, to a brick building where an excellent meal was served. Then he took them through the strange-smelling darkness to this beehive-shaped hut in which they had served as nourishment all night.
‘All Umbalathorp men make to you much apologise for this dead-end-kid mansion,’ he told Soames and Timpleton. ‘Better you to sleep here one night while room for you in President palace not sweep. Tomorrow room in palace be much sweep for you. Be nice for you. Be clean like England hospital tomorrow. Only tonight not sweep.’
‘I suppose it never occurred to the blighter that this place wasn’t sweep either,’ Soames grumbled, when the man had gone, after producing – or so it had seemed – a lighted candle for them from his pocket.
‘This must be where they usually keep the palace tigers,’ Timpleton said, sniffing suspiciously.
‘Subtle effluence of cat,’ agreed Soames.
‘Subtle? Have you got cotton wool up your nose?’
Now Soames emerged into the open air, nervously rubbing his hands together. He wore, with an uneasy air, the European clothes the handmaids had given him the night before, in exchange for his own sweat-stained garments. The clothes did not fit properly, hence his nervousness; to a casual observer he might have been taken for a repentant amateur clothes thief, or an ex-jailbird without the strength of his previous convictions.
Directly Timpleton joined him, similarly disguised, their guide of the night before appeared and escorted them to breakfast.
‘After this foregoing meal you are have a shave in the barber’s and next then go to palace,’ he told them.
When they left the barber’s shop, a large hut with a number of smelly charms for sale on the walls, a rickshaw was waiting to take them to the palace. This ride gave them their first good chance of seeing Umbalathorp. The capital, although small, was dispersed over uneven ground broken by several streams and bounded on the one side by a hill they later knew as Stranger’s Hill and on the other by the Uiui River, whose opposite bank rose in places to become almost unscaleable cliff. In the town itself, streets and roads, with few exceptions, were sketchily marked, huts, bungalows and larger buildings facing this way or that according to the whim of their owners. Patches of cultivation or strips of jungle stood even in the heart of the town, giving Umbalathorp a desultory air. The total effect was as if Bideford had suddenly been elected capital of England, whereupon everyone’s garden had grown eaves high, and the town council, to celebrate, had planted thousands of giant straw beehives in the streets as far as Northam and Buckland Brewer.
Many people were about, mostly negro, the variety of their features suggesting that several races mingled here; a number of Indians could be seen, carrying umbrellas and looking important. Once Soames thought he saw a European, but the man vanished into a shop. A few American cars were in evidence, outnumbered by pariah dogs by ten to one.
The rickshaw made its way slowly through the market place, its owner adding his voice to the babble of the crowd; they swerved down a wide road and came unexpectedly on the Presidential palace, from which a crimson, scarlet and black flag flew. Guards at the gate waved to the vehicle as it passed them and turned up the drive.
The palace looked like one of those great grey barracks the British used to build with such tedious frequency in Central India, but its gauntness was relieved by a riot of creeper which attempted to swarm up every balustrade and into every window – something never permissible in Central India, for fear the local women took advantage of this unorthodox staircase to accost the troops. From the tessellations which crowned the building floated a great brown banner bearing a word that, in these unexpected surroundings, took on a resonant ambiguity: DUNLOP. On the wide steps below, flecked by the droppings of a thousand brightly coloured birds which flitted ceaselessly in and out of the creeper, ten black soldiers in white uniforms stood with rifles at the slope, open umbrellas attached to the rifles in place of bayonets, lest they should become flecked like the steps on which they stood.
This impressive scene was marred only by a discarded bath full of Coca-Cola bottles and rainwater lying by the drive, from which a dog drank in insolent disregard of the nearby soldiery.
When Soames and Timpleton dismounted from their chariot, their guide paid off the owner and led them quickly up the steps. They proceeded through an archway and down a corridor to a small room, the door of which the guide opened for them.
‘Please wait here; someone else come see you soon, gentlemen.’
‘This is like a dentist’s waiting room only more so,’ Timpleton remarked, as the guide left.
On the benches round the room two men were already sitting, as far apart from each other as possible; Soames and Timpleton selected an intermediate position and eyed the magazines piled on a central table. The only English language offerings were two copies of Drum and a Radio Times for week ending 5th March 1955.
Soames had no sooner settled down to scratch a cluster of tiny, red-hot tents erected close to his navel by an exploring insect party the previous night, when one of the two waiting men shuffled over and addressed him.
‘Is it my pleasure and fortune to be soliciting the two flying British who are transporting the magical scientific box hitherwards?’ he enquired, in an English so elaborately broken that the two flying British were left rather in the air. ‘Possibility that it can be no others makes a double delight.’
Always anxious not to make an inadequate response, Soames rose, bowed awkwardly, and said, ‘How do you do? This is my colleague Mr Edward Timpleton: my name is Soames Noyes.’
The stranger received these names with relish, repeating them to himself with his fingers on his lips, as if to get the feel as well as the sound of them.
‘So!’ he said. ‘No meeting for me can be more too delightful,’ and he announced himself with a flourish as José Blencimonti Soares. This done, he shook hands warmly and protractedly with both Soames and Timpleton, producing a bandana after the operation, on which he thoroughly mopped his podgy hands.
He was a dumpy man in his fifties, dressed in a tropical suit, from the starched lapels of which burst a large flower like a geranium, its brightness in striking contrast to the grey jowls which brushed it during excessive outbursts of expressiveness.
‘I am for long resident in Umbalathorp, sirs,’ he said, ‘and delighted to show you its attractions, if of convenience. I have the pleasure and fortune to be leader of local Portuguese community. We see few Europeans here: last one was an American called Mr John Gunther, and brand-new faces like yours always welcome, also pleasantness of visit very much agreeable. My residence, my wife, my food and my beautiful daughter Maria are open to you eternally.’
Ignoring the sly kick this last remark prompted Timpleton to give him, Soames offered his thanks and enquired innocently if there were any Englishmen in the town. At this Soares’ pudgy face clouded like a peke’s with toothache, and he said, ‘Only one outcast family, señor, the Pickets, at whom you should be advised to steer clearly.’
Timpleton waved him nearer with two beckoning fingers.
‘Here, Mr Soares, give us the lowdown on this dump. Never mind the English – what we want to know is, how about the women?’
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