Читать книгу The Male Response - Brian Aldiss - Страница 9

‘… And full-grown lambs loud bleat …’

Without putting too philosophical a shine on the matter, we may say that cities are places where men gather. It follows therefore that, as no man is perfect, no city he builds is without fault. Hong Kong has its overcrowding, Peking its interminable walls, London its traffic, New York its pavements, Bombay its hideous buildings, Paris its foreigners, Buenos Aires its residents. Umbalathorp has its biting things. It was a peevish Soames Noyes who climbed from his rush bed next morning and cursed all the nocturnally feeding species who had banquetted upon him.

‘We’d have done better to stay in the plane,’ Timpleton said, running a thumb-sized bug to earth in his arm pit.

‘Jimpo said we’d be moved to the palace today. It should be slightly less inhabited there.’

‘Soames … Do you reckon those black women’ll come and bath us again like they did last night? That was a queer stunt, if you like.’

Soames emitted a giggle. He had yet to orient his feelings with regard to that ceremony.

‘They did you all over,’ Timpleton said musing. ‘Christ, I ask you, Soames, if they’ll 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?’

The Portuguese laughed. Soames recognised that laugh; it had frequently been described in the literature of his boyhood as ‘a greasy chuckle’.

‘So you are what you call an old dirty man,’ he said, nodding approvingly. ‘In all the world is women to be had, and in Goya many good variety, what colour or size to fit the individual whimsy. Only one thing to be warned is of dreaded akkabaksi pox.’

‘What the deuce is akkabaksi pox?’ inquired Soames, alarmed and interested.

Soares rolled yellow eyeballs and puffed out yellow-grey cheeks expressively.

‘Akkabaksi pox is very nasty local disease, misters, I telling you, cause much misery in the bazaar.’

‘What is it?’

‘Is caught from dirty woman, pfafft, just like that. After two days catching it, the victim finds hugest black scabs of matter at point of contact. Then he will pack up three days ration for food and water and will march off into the jungle.’

‘What for?’ Timpleton asked. He had turned an unsuitable shade of grey round the jowls.

‘Is finished, sir,’ Soares replied simply. ‘Has no cure. Not Western medicine or witch doctor Dumayami can cure dreaded akkabaksi pox. In three four days, all the bones turn to jelly, the stomach will explode. Pfafft! Is finish!’

‘Good God!’ the two Englishmen exclaimed in chorus.

Switching his mood and expression from supreme dejection to extreme elation, Soares leant over and smacked them on the knee.

‘But is no need for worry for you. Trust to me who can be your friend. Always I sell you good clean girl. Come to old Soares for priceless virgin flesh. Guaranteed no disease. Fresh as a sea smell.’

Changing this subject abruptly, he asked, ‘Now you have an auditorium with President Landor, yes?’

‘I suppose so,’ Soames said. ‘The arrangements seem a bit vague. We only got here last night, you know.’

‘Any difficulties, come at a run to me, I insist,’ Soares said, smiling winningly. ‘Because I do much trade in Goya. I have pleasure and honour to hold ear of President.’ He tapped his heart impressively as if he kept this presidential appendage in his breast-pocket.

‘We’re going to live in the palace,’ said Timpleton. ‘Is it OK here? Give us the lowdown.’

‘Hunky dory,’ Soares told him unexpectedly. ‘All plumbing throughout by courtesy of José Soares and his company. All business here, my business.’

A palace guard entered and spoke briefly in Goyese to Soares.

‘Now is time for my auditorium,’ Soares said. ‘Gentlemen, we are bounders to meet again.’ Bowing, smiling, nodding, wagging one finger above his head, he left with the guard.

Half an hour later, the same guard appeared and beckoned to the two Englishmen. As they left, Soames glanced back at the other occupant of the waiting room. He was an ancient, white-haired negro with a battered cardboard box on his knee. Not once had he stirred since Soames had been there. Perhaps, like the 1955 Radio Times, he went with the room.

Soames hurried to catch up with Timpleton, who was slicking back his hair with a pocket comb preparatory to his audience with President Landor.

President Landor was worrying his hair with a pocket comb preparatory to his audience with the Englishmen when they arrived and bowed to him. He was a tall and splendid man just beginning to run to fat. His face creased into a broad smile when Soames and Timpleton entered, and he came across the room with outstretched hand, leaving the comb hidden in his crinkly hair.

‘The geniuses from Unilateral Company, the splendid survivors of the air crash, the rescuers of my son Deal Jimpo,’ he said easily, speaking in French. ‘I regret that I have no English. Queen Louise, whom you will certainly meet, speaks it fluently, but not I, alas; a deplorable omission. I trust you both have command of French?’

Soames had, Timpleton had not.

‘We shall get on splendidly,’ the President said to Soames. ‘You must tell your friend what I am saying. Sit down here and try with me some of this Canadian rye whisky which the all-too-capable Señor Soares has just left as a token of his esteem.’

They settled themselves in wicker chairs while an attendant filled their glasses and the President spread himself comfortably and looked them over. He wore Indian chaplis, white starched shorts and a white shirt over which latter was an unbuttoned brocade waistcoat, the magnificence of which robbed it of any incongruity it might otherwise have had.

‘You do not mind to sit with me?’ he asked.

‘No. I’m sorry – should we – of course, we should have remained standing,’ Soames said.

‘No, no. That was not my point. I wondered if you subscribed to this popular thing, the colour bar.’

‘The colour bar – is not reasonable,’ Soames said.

‘Possibly so. That does not prevent many millions of people being swayed by it.’

‘Unfortunately people in the mass are swayed most easily by the unreasonable,’ Soames replied, colouring slightly.

‘You should have been a politician.’

‘In England now, to be a politician one must also be photogenic, in order to appear on TV. My nose is too irregular for affairs of state, Mr President.’

‘Just call me “President” – or “King” if you like it better, for I am both President of Goya and crowned King of my territories.’

‘How unusual,’ Soames said, smiling, for the President was also smiling. ‘A surprising mixture of the American and British constitutions.’

‘We try to retain here the best features of both great democracies,’ the President said.

‘What are you two on about?’ Timpleton asked. He had finished his drink far ahead of the others. ‘What’s he doing about our rooms?’

‘I’m just getting to that, Ted,’ Soames said and then, tactfully, to President Landor, ‘My friend is enquiring after the health of your son, Deal Jimpo.’

‘His leg will mend. The witch doctor, Dumayami, has seen it and proclaimed the omens right. Jimpo is out now with the palace lorry and a host of porters supervising the transportation here of the all-important cargo of your plane.’

‘My clean clothes,’ exclaimed Soames gratefully.

‘The computing machinery,’ added the President gently.

He then pressed them for particulars. Timpleton agreed that when all the parts of the Apostle Mk II were brought to the palace he should be able to assemble them in three days, provided the parts had not been damaged in the crash. (Under the original contract, with the Birmingham man and Brewer to help, this process was only to have taken a day.) Two further days would then be needed to install the generator, which had also been flown in, and to carry out extensive tests, etc.

‘Then I commence work,’ Soames said. ‘I will train the local man you have selected to operate the Apostle. There may be some difficulty in interpreting the results the machine gives, just at first. I shall be at hand to explain. These machines operate normally on the binary system, producing answers which only skilled mathematicians can comprehend. On your model, Unilateral have greatly modified input and output circuits, with the result that problems can now be typed out on an ordinary typewriter keyboard, whence they feed automatically into the machine on a roll of paper like pianola music; similarly, the machine’s answers will be ejected, typed in English, from a slot on another piece of paper.’

‘In English?’ repeated the President.

‘Yes, I hope that is what you wished? Your son, Deal Jimpo, was firm on the point in his contract.’

‘Quite correct. Too many sons of guns, including myself, speak French here. But English, correctly spoken, is managed by but a very few. Therefore a mystery is created, and my people respect a mystery. Or rather – they fear enlightenment.’

‘It is the same with the masses in England,’ Soames said with unconscious priggishness.

‘Ah, 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.’