The Male Response

by Brian Aldiss

  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.’

  Chapter Four

  ‘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 England, then about himself. To excuse this interest, she claimed she had British blood in her veins, but did not amplify the point.

  ‘The climate of Umbalathorp is good,’ she said, changing the subject abruptly. ‘You find it so?’

  ‘I have no complaints so far,’ Soames said, permitting a slight sulkiness to enter his voice.

  ‘It is good,’ the Queen said. ‘Even the wretched Mr Picket thrives here, although he is an Englishman of another sort. I have read in a Geographical Magazine that the English race comes from the tropics, and Princess Cherry is also very educated, reading great many books. She will make somebody, some privileged personage, a good wife one day. No doubt you are eager to meet her?’

  ‘Perhaps when my own clothes …’

  ‘She is engaged with her studies in the library now,’ said the Queen, ‘but it is possible to interrupt. Come, I know you will like her.’

  Soames and the little black maid scurried after her, down a dark passage and into a room full of rickety shelves, on some of which reposed books and magazines. On a long cane chair lay Princess Cherry, heiress to her mother’s estate and physiognomy. She wore a heavy, heavily flowered dress; a blue plastic bow slide was clipped into her tight curls. One pair of earrings adhered to her ears, another was clipped to the superb dihedral of her nostril flanges. In her hand, negligently, was a copy of Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks; it was right way up.

  ‘This is the Englishman, Mr Soames, Princess dear,’ said the Queen. ‘Get up and put your shoes on at once.’

  The Princess complied and said, guiltily, ‘How do you do? Possibly you like to sit down in my chair and read something?’

  ‘Perhaps I might borrow something to have in bed tonight,’ Soames said. A slow flush crept over his face, in case they should think he had been attempting an innuendo, but both faces were – features apart – blank.

  ‘So you are a literary man?’ enquired Queen Louise, looking at her daughter to prompt her to take over the conversation. ‘The English are a great literary nation as well as conquering parts of Africa.’

  ‘I read quite a bit,’ Soames agreed.

  ‘The English are a very great literary nation,’ the Princess admitted uneasily.

  ‘What do you read – besides Buddenbrooks?’ Soames enquired. He would have enjoyed the conversation better had the Queen not been drawn up like an RSM behind him; she was breathing deeply, like a man receiving a VC at Buckingham palace.

  ‘I read Buddenbrooks for a long time,’ said the Princess sadly. ‘The servants forget to bring me tea when I sit here in this room – library. Also I read John Keats’ “Ode to Autumn”, which I like. It is a poem. Have you heard of it?’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course,’ Soames said. They had swotted up the Ode for School Cert, fifteen years ago. ‘For summer has overfilled their clammy cells.’

  The Princess clapped her hands and smiled with delight. ‘He knows it!’ she said to her mother. Genuine pleasure filled her, she sat down naturally on the cane chair like an English schoolgirl, and Soames’ feelings changed to liking for her.

  ‘This is a sad poem,’ she said, ‘but for me mainly puzzling – for you see we do not have autumn in Goya.’

  ‘Otherwise the climate is excellent,’ said the Queen.

  ‘Autumn must be so strange,’ the Princess said. ‘I wish John Keats had written a novel also. Will you perhaps explain the poem to me, line by line, if you are not always busy at your machine, for my English is so foul?’

  ‘I should love to read the poem with you,’ Soames said, ‘but I assure you your English is very good indeed. Whe
re did you learn it?’

  The young girl’s manner altered. The smile faded from her face, she turned her head away; she seemed to recall unhappy, far-off things.

  ‘From Mr Picket,’ she said.

  ‘Come, we must leave the girl at her work,’ said the Queen briskly, uttering a sharp word of command in Goyese to the maid. Before Soames was bustled out, the Princess rose and curtsied; a memory rose in his mind of a performing bear he had seen as an infant. It, too, could curtsy and look sad.

  Outside the door, the Queen, drawing herself up to her full height and girth, surveyed Soames thoroughly. Under the glare of her eyes and nostrils, he felt like a man confronted by a bandit aiming a double-barrelled gun.

  ‘She is sweet, the Princess, eh?’ the Queen challenged.

  Soames nodded once, saying curtly, ‘I should like to talk to her alone sometime.’

  For answer, he received a salacious wink. The password had evidently been given; the shotgun was lowered; Greek had met Greek. Queen Louise seized his wrist as they set off down the corridor again.

  ‘You are staying here not less than two weeks, Mr Soames.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘That time must be enough for you to grow to love this country. We shall show you up all over it. Perhaps you will not like to leave it then. If it would be so, a very good job can be secured in the President’s government; perhaps the post of Prime Minister could be found for you. I could arrange everything of consequence.’

  ‘I don’t doubt that, Queen Louise,’ said Soames. ‘But I must get back to England.’

  ‘You are not married?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You are single?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A bachelor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Goya has many attractions for a young man, a single literary bachelor.’