The Male Response. Brian Aldiss
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but their feeling is to be respected,’ said the President, catching the note of condemnation in Soames’ voice. ‘Enlightenment is like a tearing down of old familiar rooms when we are left to squat in a desert of disbelief. What has education to offer but the truth of man’s smallness and beastliness? What is knowledge but the gift of danger? – Did not one of your poets say that?’
‘Pope said that a little learning was a dangerous thing.’
‘Well? All learning is little, a block and tackle job of dismantling the gods.’
‘Yours sounds a very disillusioned philosophy, President,’ Soames remarked.
‘Yes, it goes badly with this excellent rye whisky, eh? By tomorrow I shall probably have thought of a totally different set of things to say, thank God.’
‘What the hell are you two jabbering about, Soames?’ Timpleton asked.
‘Be quiet,’ Soames said.
‘What I was going to say was to warn you,’ the President told Soames. ‘You more than your friend, for he is the hard worker and you are the talker on this job. Therefore my people will instinctively hold you responsible for any changes the machine introduces; they know – forgive me, but I am also in your category – that the talker is the curse of the world. The old mysteries are still here. Umbalathorp looks ahead, yes, but the jungle and the river are close, and the spirits of the jungle and the river are still strong. They look backwards, far backwards. Your machine will offend them. My witch doctor, Dumayami, will be offended. That is why you and the machine have been established in the palace. Not only is this a beautiful palace, but it is protected by guns and soldiers.’
All this was said lightly enough, but Soames was aware as he listened that the President was watching him searchingly, as if to see how he reacted to a hint of danger. While he was casting about for the answer which would create the best impression, Timpleton broke into the conversation in dog French.
‘Où est la chambre pour nous dormir, monsieur Président?’ he asked angrily. ‘Vous et Soames ici sont parlent très beaucoup. Dernier soir, nous a dormi dans une – une, er, mud’ut très terrible, beaucoup de fleas, puces, très grands puces. Où est une belle chambre? Et avez-vous des femmes pour nous?’
President Landor rose, one eyebrow cocked at his visitors. He appeared more amused than put out.
‘Désirez-vous une femme de plaisir noir?’ he asked Timpleton.
‘Oui,’ Timpleton said emphatically, ‘si vous n’avez pas les blanches. Toutes les femmes sont seulement femmes, après tout.’
‘It is a thought which has echoed down history, though frequently better expressed,’ the President said, as if to himself. ‘If you will leave me now, gentlemen, I will attempt to see that your wants are attended to.’
‘With patient look, thou watchest …’
All men think alike; no two act alike.
In Umbalathorp there were, quite unknown to Soames, several people who considered themselves interested parties where he was concerned and who, from the moment of his arrival, vibrated with a passion of curiosity about him. In the thoughts of each, he appeared as a pawn merely, an object they could profitably, for one reason or another, incorporate into their own designs. But the ways in which they set about arranging a meeting with him were diverse; the meeting became, to one, an ambush, to another an attack, to another a lure, to another only a wary circling.
Timpleton also was under surveillance, but to a lesser degree. It was recognised from the start, in the uncanny fashion one does recognise such things, that Soames, of the two, was – in the expressive American phrase – loaded. Soames, though he would have shrunk from the idea, conformed to the slightly dated and therefore doubly appealing world-image of The Englishman Abroad to a remarkable degree. His indecisiveness, by which an inward panic frustrated all outward action, chimed curiously in all its external aspects with the British tradition for keeping one’s head while all around are losing theirs; and the delicacy with which, on first riding through Umbalathorp, he had averted his eyes from its grosser squalors had easily been misinterpreted as the chill aloofness of a white barra sahib.
Eyes, hostile, friendly and calculatingly neutral, had read these marks upon Soames on his arrival and during his ride through the market, and had laid their plans accordingly. The first of these plans to develop from the theoretical to the practical phase was that of Queen Louise.
The Queen descended upon him while he was still surveying his room. Timpleton had been shown by a servant to another, similar room down the corridor. Apart from the tropical generosity of window space, this might have been the cell of a top-brass priest on Mount Athos; it was of whitewashed stone, furnished only with bed, chair and chest of drawers. The bed was covered with a bright rug. The big brass bowl on top of the chest contained a handful of dead leaves.
The Queen knocked and swept into Soames’ room, accompanied by a small, tittering maid, almost before he had time to cry ‘Come in’. She was a large, ugly woman, with nostrils as mobile as gills and skin the colour of strong tea; when she announced herself, one heard the loud but inaudible fanfare of trumpets.
‘You may kiss my hand, Mr Soames,’ she said, in clear English, ‘but otherwise no formalities. Kindly address me as “Queen Louise”, as do my other subjects. Come, I shall be good enough to show you round the palace.’
Soames protested that his clothes looked too disreputable, that when the expedition to the plane returned he could make himself more presentable for such an honour.
‘If I show you round as you are, that only makes the honour more great,’ Queen Louise said. ‘Please step along – I am, alas, not with much patience.’
It was difficult to decide what to say to this lady, Soames thought, as he followed into the corridor, jostling to get past the little maid to the Queen’s side, for her manner was impersonal enough to make one wonder if she was being formal or friendly. In the end, he tried for common ground by saying, ‘It is a pleasure to meet the mother of Deal Jimpo, whom I have grown to like very much.’
‘Of course,’ the Queen said. ‘I shall not deny you any pleasure you ask. You shall see her copiously soon.’
This plunged Soames into eddies of confusion. He felt like a male Alice walking beside a composite of the Queen of Hearts and Humpty Dumpty. Either Queen Louise was referring to herself in the third person, in the manner of Caesar’s ‘Caesar is turned to hear’, and offering to strip for him, or they had somehow come a cropper over the language barrier.
‘You are Jimpo’s mother?’ he enquired hesitantly.
‘Not I,’ said the Queen. ‘I am the mother of lovely, intellectual Princess Cherry, whom you shall soon meet. Jimpo is the son of the President’s wife.’
‘But you are the President’s wife.’
‘I am the King’s wife.’
‘But President and King are one!’
‘They are held by one person, but they are two separate offices, each of which is entitled to one wife.’
‘Oh.’
‘I make bed with the King; that is fealty. I must not make bed with President; that would be adultery.’
‘You must find these rather fine distinctions difficult to draw at times,’ Soames murmured.
‘It needs mighty discipline,’ said the Queen with relish.
She swept him into an empty banqueting hall, clapped her hands and ordered him to sit down on a couch. She deposited herself beside him. When the gamelan-like harmonies of the springs had died, she began to interrogate him, first about