Black Mischief (19 page)

Interest
in the pictures was unbounded; all over the island woolly heads were nodding,
black hands pointing, tongues clicking against filed teeth in unsyntactical
dialects. Nowhere was there any doubt about the meaning of the beautiful new
pictures.

See: on
right hand: there is rich man: smoke pipe like big chief: but his wife she no
good; sit eating meat: and rich man no good: he only one son.

See: on
left hand: poor man: not much to eat: but his wife she very good, work hard in
field: man he good too: eleven children: one very mad, very holy. And in the
middle: Emperor’s juju. Make you like that good man with eleven children.

And as
a result, despite admonitions from squire and vicar, the peasantry began
pouring into town for the gala, eagerly awaiting initiation to the fine new
magic of virility and fecundity.

Once
more,
wrote Basil Seal, in a leading article in the
Courier, the people of the Empire have overridden the opposition of a
prejudiced and interested minority, and with no uncertain voice ha ye followed
the Emperor’s lead in the cause of Progress and the New Age.

So
brisk was the demand for the Emperor’s juju that some time before the day of
the carnival Mr Youkoumian was frantically cabling to Cairo for fresh supplies.

Meanwhile
the Nestorian Patriarch became a very frequent guest at the French Legation.

‘We
have the army, we have the Church,’ said M. Ballon. ‘All we need now is a new
candidate for the throne.’

‘If you ask me,’ said
Basil, one morning soon after the distribution of the poster, ‘loyalty to the
throne is one of the hardest parts of our job.’

‘Oh,
gosh, Mr Seal, don’t you ever say a thing like that. I seen gentlemen poisoned
dead for less. What’s ‘e done now?’

‘Only
this.’ He handed Mr Youkoumian a chit which had just arrived from the Palace:
For
your information and necessary action, I have decided to abolish the following:

Death
penalty.

Marriage.

The
Sakuyu language and all native dialects.

Infant
mortality.

Totemism.

Inhuman
butchery.

Mortgages..

Emigration.

Please
see to this. Also organize system of reservoirs for city’s water supply and
draft syllabus for competitive examination for public services. Suggest
compulsory Esperanto. Seth.

“E’s
been reading books again, Mr Seal, that’s what it is;

You
won’t get no peace from ‘im not till you fix ‘im with a woman. Why can’t ‘e
drink or something?’

In
fact, the Ministry’s triumph in the matter of Birth Control was having highly
embarrassing consequences. If before, Basil and Mr Youkoumian had cause to
lament their master’s tenacity and singleness of purpose, they were now
harassed from the opposite extreme of temperament. It was as though Seth’s
imagination like a volcanic lake had in the moment of success become suddenly
swollen by the irruption of unsuspected subterranean streams until it darkened
and seethed and overflowed its margins in a thousand turbulent cascades. The
earnest and rather puzzled young man became suddenly capricious and volatile; ideas
bubbled up within him, bearing to the surface a confused sediment of phrase and
theory, scraps of learning half understood and fantastically translated.

‘It’s
going to be awkward for us if the Emperor goes off his rocker.’

‘Oh my,
Mr Seal, you do say the most damned dangerous things.’

That
afternoon Basil called at the Palace to discuss the new proposals, only to. find
that since his luncheon the Emperor’s interests had veered suddenly towards
archaeology.

‘Yes,
yes, the abolitions. I sent you a list this morning, I think. It is a mere
matter of routine. I leave the details to the Ministry. Only you must be quick,
please … it is not that which I want to discuss with you now. It is our
Museum.’

‘Museum?’

‘Yes,
of course we must have a Museum. I have made a few notes to guide you. The only
serious difficulty is accommodation. You see, it must be inaugurated before
the arrival of the Cruelty ‘ to Animals Commission at the beginning of next
month. There is hardly time to build a house for it. The best thing will be to
confiscate one of the town palaces. Ngumo’s or Boaz’s would do after some
slight adjustments. But that is a matter for the Ministry to decide. On the
ground floor will be the natural history section. You will collect examples of
all the flora and fauna of the Empire — lions, butterflies, birds’ eggs,
specimens of woods, everything. That should easily fill the ground floor. I
have been reading,’ he added earnestly, ‘about ventilation. That is very
important. The air in the cases must be continually renewed — a cubic metre an
hour is about the right draught — otherwise the specimens suffer. You will make
a careful note of that. Then on the first floor will be the anthropological
and historical section — examples of native craft, Portuguese and Arab work, a
small library. Then in the Central Hall, the relics of the Royal House. I have
some of the medals of Amurath upstairs under one of the beds in a box — photographs
of myself, some of my uniforms, the cap and gown I wore at Oxford, the model of
the Eiffel Tower which I brought back from Paris. I will lend some pages of
manuscript in my own hand to be exhibited. It will be most interesting.’

For
some days Mr Youkoumian busied himself with the collection of specimens. Word
went round that there was a market for objects of interest at the Ministry of
Modernization and the work of the office was completely paralysed by the
hawkers of all races who assembled in and around it, peddling brass pots ‘ and
necklaces of carved nut, snakes in baskets and monkeys in cages, cloth of
beaten bark and Japanese cotton, sacramental vessels pouched by Nestorian
deacons, iron-wood clubs, homely household deities, tanned human scalps, cauls
and navel strings and wonder-working fragments of meteorite, amulets to ward
off the evil eye from camels, M. Ballon’s masonic apron purloined by the
Legation butler, and a vast, monolithic phallus borne by three oxen from a
shrine in the interior. Mr Youkoumian bargained briskly and bought almost
everything he was offered, reselling them later to the Ministry of Fine Arts of
which Basil had created him the director. But when, at a subsequent interview,
Basil mentioned their progress to the Emperor he merely nodded a listless
approval, and even while he unscrewed the cap of his fountain pen to sign the
order evicting the Earl of Ngumo from his town house, began to speak of the
wonders of astronomy.

‘Do you
realize the magnitude of the fixed stars? They are immense. I have read a book
which says that the mind boggles at their distances. I did not know that word,
boggles. I am immediately founding an Institute for Astronomical Research. I
must have Professors. Cable for them to Europe. Get me tiptop professors, the best
procurable.’

But
next day he was absorbed in ectogenesis. ‘I have read here,’ he said, ‘tapping
a volume of speculative biology, ‘that there is to be no more birth. The ovum
is fertilized in the laboratory and then the foetus is matured in bottles. It is
a splendid idea. Get me some of those bottles … and no boggling.’

Even
while discussing the topic that immediately interested him, he would often
break off in the middle of a sentence, with an irrelevant question. ‘How much
are auto-gyros?’ or ‘Tell me exactly, please, what is Surrealism?’ or ‘Are you
convinced of Dreyfus’ innocence?’ and then, without pausing for the reply,
would resume his adumbrations of the New Age.

The
days passed rapturously for Mr Youkoumian who had found, in the stocking of the
Museum, work for which early training and all his natural instincts richly
equipped him; he negotiated endlessly between the Earl of Ngumo and Viscount
Boaz, armed with orders for the dispossession of the lowest bidder; he bought
and resold, haggled, flattered and depreciated, and ate and slept in a clutter
of dubious antiques. But on Basil the strain of modernity began to leave its
traces. Brief rides with Prudence through the tinder-dry countryside,
assignations furtively kept and interrupted at a moment’s notice by some
peremptory, crazy summons to the Palace, alone broke the unquiet routine of his
day.

‘I
believe that odious Emperor is slowly poisoning you. It’s a thing he does do,’
said Prudence. ‘And I never saw anyone look so ill.’

‘You
know it sounds absurd, but I miss Connolly. It’s rather a business living all
the time between Seth and Youkoumian.’

‘Of
course, you wouldn’t remember that there’s me too, would you?’ said Prudence.
‘Not just to cheer me up, you wouldn’t.’

‘You’re
a grand girl, Prudence. What Seth calls tiptop. But I’m so tired I could die.’

And a
short distance away the Legation syce moodily flicked with his whip at a train
of ants while the ponies shifted restlessly among the stones and shelving earth
of a dry watercourse.

Two mornings later the
Ministry of Modernization received its sharpest blow. Work was going on as
usual. Mr Youkoumian was interviewing a coast Arab who claimed to possess some
‘very old, very genuine’ Portuguese manuscripts; Basil, pipe in his mouth, was
considering how best to deal with the Emperor’s latest memorandum,
Kindly
insist straw hats and gloves compulsory peerage,
when he received an
unexpected and disturbing call from Mr Jagger, the contractor in charge of the
demolition of the Anglican Cathedral; a stocky, good-hearted little Britisher
who after a succession of quite honourable bankruptcies in Cape ‘ Town, Mombasa,
Dar-es-Salaam and Aden had found his way to Debra Dowa where he had remained
ever since, occupied with minor operations in the harbour and along the railway
line. He threaded’ his way through the antiquities which had lately begun to
encroach on Basil’s office, removed a seedy—looking caged vulture from the
chair and sat down; his manner was uncertain and defiant.

‘It’s
not playing the game, Mr Seal,’ he said. ‘I tell you that fair and square and I
don’t mind who knows it, not if it’s the Emperor himself.’

‘Mr Jagger,’
said Basil impressively, ‘you should have been long enough in this country to
know that that is a very rash thing to say. Men have been poisoned for less.
What is your trouble?’

‘This
here’s my trouble,’ said Mr Jagger, producing a piece of paper from a pocket
full of pencils and foot rules and laying it on the table next to the mosaic
portrait of the late Empress recently acquired by the Director of Fine Arts.
‘What is it, eh, that’s what I want to know?’

‘What
indeed?’ said Basil. He picked it up and examined it closely.

In
size, shape and texture it resembled an English five-pound note and was printed
on both sides with intricate engraved devices of green and red. There was an
Azanian eagle, a map of the Empire, a soldier in the uniform of the Imperial
Guard, an aeroplane and a classical figure bearing a cornucopia, but the most
prominent place was taken by a large medallion portrait of Seth in top hat and
European tail coat. The words
Five Pounds
lay in flourished script
across the middle; above them THE IMPERIAL BANK OF AZANIA and below them a
facsimile of Seth’s signature.

The
normal currency of the capital and the railway was in Indian rupees, although
East African shillings, French and Belgian colonial francs and Maria Theresa thalers
circulated with equal freedom; in the interior the mediums of exchange were
rock-salt and cartridges.

‘This
is a new one on me,‘ said Basil. ‘I wonder if the Treasury know anything about
it. Mr Youkoumian, come in here a minute, will you?’

The
Director of Fine Arts and First Lord of the Treasury trotted through the
partition door in his black cotton socks; he carried a model dhow he had just
acquired.

‘No, Mr
Seal,’ he pronounced, ‘I ain’t never seen a thing like that before. Where did
the gentleman get it?’

‘The
Emperor’s just given me a whole packet of them for the week’s wages bill. What
is the Imperial Bank of Azania, anyway? I never see such a thing all the time I
been in the country. There’s something here that’s not on the square. You must
understand, Mr Seal, that it’s not anyone’s job breaking up that Cathedral.
Solid granite shipped all the way from Aberdeen. Why, Lord love you, the pulpit
alone weighs seven and a half ton. I had two boys hurt only this morning
through the font swinging loose as they were hoisting it into a lorry. Smashed
up double one of them was. The Emperor ain’t got no right to try putting that
phoney stuff across me.’

‘You
may be quite confident,’ said Basil with dignity, ‘that in all your dealings
with His Majesty you will encounter nothing but the highest generosity and
integrity. However, I will institute inquiries on your behalf.’

‘No
offence meant, I’m sure,’ said Mr Jagger.

Basil
watched him across the yard and then snatched up his topee from a fossilized
tree-fern. ‘What’s that black lunatic been up to this time?’ he asked, starting
off towards the Palace.