Читать книгу In Praise of Savagery - Warwick Cairns - Страница 10

The top-hatted doorman stood to one side, allowing the young man in the tweed suit to pass through the double revolving doors of the new hotel into the hush of the marble hall, leaving behind all of the sounds of Park Lane, the motor-cars, the taxis, the electric trams, the midday crowds on the pavements.

At the far side of the hall was a great burr-mahogany desk, bound at the corners with beaten copper bands fastened with brass studs, and topped with polished slate, and behind it sat a tall bald man in a tailcoat and gold-braided waistcoat, dipping his pen-nib into a square cut-crystal inkwell as he wrote on the heavy cream-coloured pages of a green leather-covered ledger.

The young man glanced briefly back towards where he had come, and saw the taxi passing back out into the traffic. The square-faced clock between the doors said twenty to three. He was twenty minutes early; but then, everything was riding on this meeting. He crossed the hall, hearing the sound of his own footsteps on the polished floor.

The man at the desk looked up.

‘Mr Thesiger?’ he said. ‘You are expected. One moment.’

He picked up a small bell and shook it.

Instantly, a second man appeared by his side, as if from nowhere.

‘If you would be so kind as to follow me, sir,’ said the man.

He led the young man through the hotel, past the open doors through which could be seen the vast pillarless ballroom, and to a secluded table in the restaurant beyond, where two places had been laid and where two waiters stood, each with a starched napkin over his forearm.

They brought the young man tea, and a silver tiered stand of cucumber sandwiches and small pastries.

He took some tea, but did not touch the food. He took the fob-watch from his waistcoat pocket, and turned it over in his fingers, and then put it back again. The walls and coffered ceilings were white and gold, as were the fish-scale-patterned Egyptian pillars. The pale carpet was intricately woven in a chinoiserie style.

He consulted his watch again. Still almost twenty minutes left to wait.

He had, by now, made the decision to go.

He would, he had decided, cross the desert to Aussa, and he would enter the Sultan’s kingdom and pass through, and he would follow the river along all the length of its unmarked, unknown course until he came to the end and solved the mystery. On this he was determined.

He had made arrangements and plans, and had obtained the blessing and sponsorship of the Royal Geographical Society, and gained further funds for food and equipment, medicines and wages for his party from Magdalen College and from the Linnean Society.

But at this time the Sultanate of Aussa lay, nominally, within the borders of Abyssinia, and obtaining the permission of the Abyssinian Government was proving considerably more difficult than he had bargained for.

His initial requests had been met with a flat refusal; and although he was not without connections there, although his late father had been British Minister at the court of the former Emperor Menelik, although he himself had received a personal invitation to attend the coronation of Haile Selassie, these things seemed to have got him nowhere.

And then came the message from the Embassy.

The waiter came, to see if fresh tea was required. It was not.

The young man felt his watch-chain again, and half-pulled his watch from its pocket, but then pushed it back, and instead studied the scalloped pattern on the back of his teaspoon.

Time. How we measure it out. How it feels, the passing of it. How what was is transformed utterly into what is, and which even in the moment of perceiving has vanished into what is to come, and so on for ever and always. How the wood that made the table at which he sat had grown, for however many years, in some far-flung forest, and the ragged trailing creepers overhanging, and the piercing call of brightly plumed birds. This same thing.

His father. The presence of him, the fact of him, as solid and real as anything in this life, and now gone, long, long gone: dead and buried these what—thirteen years? One wonders how this can be so.

He became aware of low voices across the room, and of a cluster of men, and one stepped out from among them and gestured to the others to stay, and turned to look over to where Thesiger sat. He was a young man—little more than a boy, in fact—maybe sixteen or seventeen at a guess—and slight, light-boned, narrow-shouldered and black as your hat. He had prominent ears, big, heavy-lidded eyes, and he wore a formal black suit, tightly buttoned-up, with a high white collar, and highly-polished black shoes on his feet; and he carried a battered leather satchel, brass-buckled like a doctor’s bag.

Thesiger shot to his feet, recognising the boy at once.

The boy smiled, revealing white teeth, and crossed to where he stood.

‘Do sit down,’ he said, in perfect, educated English, ‘You don’t mind if I join you?’

‘You are more than welcome, sir,’ said Thesiger.

A waiter appeared and pulled out a chair so that His Highness Asfa Wossen Tafari, Crown Prince of Abyssinia, eldest son of the Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, King of Kings and Elect of God, and direct lineal descendant, it was said, of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, could sit down.

‘Jolly good sandwiches,’ said the boy, taking a bite, ‘Not so sure about the tea, though. A bit cool for my liking.’

He snapped his fingers and fresh tea was brought.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘down to business. The place you desire to go to: they are very bad people there, you know. Absolute savages. And you are determined to go among them?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘They will kill you, of course.’

‘I’m prepared to take my chances.’

‘I am sure that you are. Everything I have heard about you convinces me that this is, indeed, the case. But it is not as simple as that. Not by a long way, because if they kill you, it puts my father in a very difficult position.’

‘How so, sir?’

‘Aussa is part of Abyssinia. This is agreed. It is not in dispute. And in all of Abyssinia my father’s word is law. But the Sultan does not always see things in this way. And there have been … incidents in the past. Very unfortunate ones. We tend to keep our officials away from Aussa, to avoid too many of these … misunderstandings. Now, if you travel there, with my father’s authority and under his protection, and if anything were to happen to you, then he would be obliged to take the matter up with the Sultan, and it would all be rather awkward.’

‘I understand that, sir—which is why I am prepared to go there at my own risk, and without involving your father in any way, other than asking for his permission to proceed.’

‘Hmm …’ he said. ‘Just what we expected you to say. So you are absolutely determined to do this thing?’

‘I am, sir.’

‘And nothing we could say would make you think otherwise?’

‘No. Nothing.’

The young prince looked serious for a while, and then, quite suddenly, he smiled.

‘Well, in that case, my father has, after careful consideration, authorised me to offer you two things.’

He took a sip of his tea, savouring the flavour of it before continuing.

‘The first,’ he said, ‘is his permission.’

Thesiger moved as if to speak, but the prince raised a hand to silence him. ‘And the second,’ he continued, ‘is this.’

He pulled out his satchel from beneath the table and unfastened the buckles. From inside a faint, slightly sour odour arose, as of stale sweat.

Reaching in, the prince pulled out a bundle of yellowed cloth, which looked very much like someone’s used shirt, rolled up and knotted around something weighty; he passed it across the table.

‘You may open it.’

It was, indeed, an old shirt. But when Thesiger untied the knotted sleeves and unwrapped the bundle, he saw inside a heavy, ancient-looking gold chain upon which were strung rows of thick gold rings.

‘For your expenses,’ said the prince.