The Male Response

by Brian Aldiss

  ‘That I do not doubt. But I hardly think I shall stay, all the same.’

  ‘Dumayami, the witch doctor, who is a clever man at reading the future, tells otherwise.’

  Lunch was served in the banqueting hall. The small handful of people present huddled round two tables at one end of the room, under the only electric fan which was working. M’Grassi Landor with his two wives, Queen Louise and Mrs President, a buxom Goyese called Tunna, sat at one table with such of their respective offspring as were of manageable age (a category including Princess Cherry and her younger brother Shappy), eating in almost complete silence. At the other table sat Soames with an assortment of black men who were court officials or government ministers. Since none of them possessed much English, silence fell there, too, when they had tried out the little they had. Timpleton was not present, thereby missing an excellent Indian curry.

  After the meal, the Indian chef came out of the kitchen to present himself to Soames. He was a slender man whose goat’s eyes did not smile when the rest of his face did.

  ‘My name is Turdilal Ghosti, sir. I am the head cook to this palace since three years, sir. Was the dinner exactly to your liking, I am hoping?’

  ‘Excellent,’ Soames said. ‘I am very fond of Indian food. The chicken pilau was first rate.’

  ‘Is the best, sir. How long you are staying here?’

  ‘Oh, about a fortnight. I hope I’ll see you again,’ Soames said, shuffling his feet, preparing to leave.

  ‘I am living in this bloody town, sir, since seven years. Is too long time for me. Here I am all alone with my old mother and my wife and my six little children and my brother and his family and my uncle and some of his relations and their relations.’

  ‘I noticed there were a lot of Indians in Umbalathorp,’ Soames said. He was cornered in an alcove, and the little chef was adroitly keeping him there. Soames could see that the inside of his mouth was bright with betel.

  ‘Plenty Indians are living here, sir,’ Turdilal agreed, ‘and all are being so bloody unhappy, sir. This climate only good for black men. No other man is liking, sir. In the Japanese war I was cooking three years in Firpo’s restaurant on Chowringhee Street at Calcutta; there I am learning all my culinary skill, sir. Perhaps one night you will come to honour my house with your presence? Then I am cooking for you a splendid meal, sir, and displaying to you my children.’

  ‘It’s really awfully kind,’ Soames said, ‘but I fear I’m going to be very busy during my brief stay.’

  ‘I have very nice house, sir, half up Stranger’s Hill. You will be having good entertainment.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure.’

  ‘When I am in Calcutta I am having a white friend, sir.’

  Growing more embarrassed, Soames attempted a feeble joke and said, ‘I’d like to come. It’s just that I think Queen Louise has my spare time pretty well arranged.’

  ‘The Queen is a bloody old hag, sir, if you excuse the word,’ Turdilal said, with no trace of anger in his voice. ‘I think later you are regretting you don’t come my house like I am asking, sir.’

  He turned on his heel and snaked down the corridor. Soames sighed, abandoned his alcove, stuck his hands in his pockets and wandered down a flight of stone steps into the sunshine. Here, he was at the back of the palace; it was private and a rough attempt had been made at a garden. The trees were beautiful; big green lizards scuttled up them like rats as he approached.

  Soames was enjoying himself. People are taking an interest in me, he thought self-indulgently; they may be no less self-seeking than my fellow-countrymen, but they go about the business with more originality, more verve. They are more amusing. The real reason for his enjoyment, however, was a deeper, sillier, better, less analysable reason; he was living in a strange land.

  It was a different thing altogether from holidaying in a strange land. Here, although only temporarily, he belonged, was in touch. It was something, for all his excursions abroad and the brief business trips to Brussels and Paris, he had never managed before.

  At the bottom of the garden flowed the river Uiui, only five feet below the brow of a tiny cliff. Soames stared down into the flood, its surface green and turbulent as it hurried along. A small fishing boat, manned by four negroes bent sweating over the oars, laboured against the current. A hill rose sheer out of the opposite bank, its jungle studded with jagged outcrops of rock. ‘Africa,’ whispered Soames to himself, ‘darkest Africa’; and he exulted.

  There seemed to be no reason why his stay here should not be entirely pleasant, despite the vaguely disturbing warnings of M’Grassi Landor about the witch doctor. Already, reports of the situation had been transmitted home from the wireless room in the palace. What had threatened to be a difficult monetary situation had also been cleared up by M’Grassi Landor and a gentleman grandly styled Minister of Finances who turned out to be manager of the Umbalathorp Bank. Both Soames and Timpleton had been loaded down with doimores, the local coin; twenty mores equalled one doimore, and one doimore was worth ten shillings at the current rate of exchange.

  Feeling both at peace with the world and excited by it, Soames turned left and made his way upstream by a path along the bank of the river. It wound enticingly, hedged with flowers and sheltered from the piercing sun. Soon he had left the palace grounds behind; the growth on either side became thicker, the path more devious. He passed an almost naked hunter, who stood gravely aside for him without a word or gesture. The dappled shadows ahead, the silence, led Soames on as if under an enchantment; he walked dreamily, mind a blank.

  When he reached a square-framed reed hut, Soames halted, telling himself there was no point in going further. Suddenly he was tired. The hut was empty, its interior cool and inviting. Inside was nothing but a bundle of rags in one corner and an old orange box in another; gratefully, Soames went in and sat on the box.

  He mopped his brow, letting his chin droop on to his chest as he rested. Warm drowsiness overcame him.

  A sudden sense of being watched jerked his head up. A man stood in the doorway, staring at him with unfriendly eyes; he must have come up with almost supernatural quietness.

  ‘You frightened me for a moment,’ Soames said, aware that his start had been observed.

  ‘I am Dumayami, chief witch doctor of Umbalathorp. I want speak with you,’ the stranger said soberly.

  It invariably happens that in those parts of the world which, disregarding the opinions of their inhabitants, we call remote, the products of the white man are more welcome than his presence. They precede him, they succeed him. In the heart of Sumatra (as dangerous now to a pale-haired one as it was two hundred years ago), you may come upon old men drinking from little round tins which once contained fifty of Messrs John Player’s cigarettes; the petrol can of the Occident is the foundation stone of the Orient; Coke bottles clog the very source of the untamed Amazon. Knowing this, Soames felt little surprise to find Dumayami clad in an undoubted Church of England surplice with, pinned to it, a badge saying ‘I like Ike’, just possibly a souvenir of the recent Gunther safari.

  Apart from this, the witch doctor was an impressive figure, a giant feather nodding over his scaphocephalic skull, his face notched with tribal marks and wormed with wrinkles. An air of confidence and a whiff of rotten eggs surrounded him. Soames’ alarmed thoughts took on a defensive tinge; alas, he was armed with nothing fiercer than a nail file.

  ‘I am resting,’ he said. ‘What is it you wish to say?’

  ‘I think you already know that,’ Dumayami told him. ‘The many spirits of Umbalathorp all speak out against your coming. They declare only ill will come from your visit.’

  ‘What am I supposed to have done? Do the spirits tell you that?’

  ‘Spirits tell Dumayami all things,’ the witch doctor said, squatting for comfort on the threshold of the hut. The pupils of his eyes held a malevolent, tigerish glint. ‘Spirits say you come with machine to make much trouble here.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Soames. ‘Th
e Apostle will trespass on your pitch in some respects, eh?’

  ‘In Umbalathorp is room for only one law. Now you bring Christian devil box, cast wrong spells, make much trouble.’

  ‘My dear man, the Apostle Mk II does no more than juggle with given data,’ Soames said; this old man was clearly a bit of a loon. ‘You’d better come up and look at it when it’s installed and set your mind at rest.’

  Dumayami performed his own equivalent of crossing himself at the very suggestion.

  ‘First Apostle Mark come,’ he said gloomily, ‘then other apostles, Luke, John, maybe Paul. You must not have success here.’

  ‘Oh, how are you going to stop us? Burn cockerel feathers or something? Progress, Dumayami, has reached Goya at last.’

  ‘Already spirits pull down your flying machine,’ Dumayami said darkly. ‘Next blow up Christian devil box machine.’

  It was, Soames mentally conceded, a crafty point; some people might even have been impressed by it.

  ‘And me? What’s going to happen to me, Dumayami?’ he enquired.

  The witch doctor rose lazily, shaking his head as if to say that it was better for Soames not to know that. Groping under his surplice, he produced what looked like a sharp bone. With two backward paces he was out of the hut. He bent down and used the bone to inscribe a sign in the dusty earth of the threshold.

  ‘If you do not step over this sign, you do not leave Africa,’ he said. Raising one hand, he stepped from view and was gone as noiselessly as he came.

  ‘Damned silly,’ Soames muttered aloud. ‘Of course I can step over it.’

  He went over the doorway to examine the mark Dumayami had made. Before he got there, two little yellow and red birds had fallen squabbling and copulating on to the path outside. Their bright wings, fluttering in lust and anger, erased the witch doctor’s sign. Soames stood there blankly, not heeding them as they plunged away.

  At last, taking a long step over the threshold, he emerged from the hut and hurried back to the palace. Of Dumayami there was neither sight nor sound.

  Chapter Five

  ‘And now with treble soft …’

  Later that afternoon, the expedition to the wrecked plane returned. Wending its way through the corn patches and streets of Umbalathorp came a caterpillar of slow men bearing, across poles slung over their shoulders, the crates which bore the component parts of the Apostle Mk II, the generators, the cables. Leading this procession was the palace lorry, a dilapidated Dodge 3-tonner which looked as if it had just made the journey from Cape Town on foot. It was loaded up and weighed down with the heavier crates.

  Grunting with disgust, it slewed round in front of the palace in a paddy of dust. Gradually it became motionless. From the passenger’s seat in the cab climbed Jimpo, easing his broken leg down. The twelve guards presented arms to him, their umbrellas trembling above them.

  Now disorder broke out. The bearers jostled and vied with each other to dump their burdens as near to the Dodge as possible. Scores of pot-bellied children cheered them on. When Soames appeared on the scene, attracted by the noise, he found the lorry had nearly disappeared behind a wall of crates.

  Timpleton was there, standing back from the mêlée, regarding it with a seraphic grin. Following his gaze, Soames saw he was looking at the boxes themselves, and his own heart quickened as he read the words stencilled boldly on their sides:

  UNILATERAL LONDON ENGLAND.

  It was a pleasant reminder of home.

  Going over to Timpleton, Soames said, ‘It’s good to see them here. None of them looks damaged.’

  Timpleton smiled. ‘Warms the cockles of your heart, don’t it? That’s what they need here, a spot of civilisation.’

  Soames was about to enquire why the engineer should believe that something which had brought no happiness to Europe should work more beneficially here when he checked his tongue. No good would come of antagonising Timpleton. Already they had had a short, explosive altercation after the interview with King Landor, when Soames had protested against Timpleton’s using the King as a common tout. At least Timpleton showed no sign of umbrage now, for which Soames was glad.

  ‘Where were you at tiffin time?’ he asked conversationally.

  Timpleton’s manner immediately became withdrawn.

  ‘Oh, knocking about,’ he said noncommittally. ‘What have you been doing, Soames?’

  ‘I, too, have been “knocking about”,’ Soames said, a little primly. Then he relented, and after a minute, told Timpleton of his encounter with the witch doctor.

  Jimpo had now begun to restore order among the bearers, calling for Timpleton and Soames to help him. Skins of cool water having been carried out from the palace, the men refreshed themselves and then again shouldered their loads. The Dodge reappeared. The battleship grey boxes with their yellow, white and black stencilling were borne up the steps and into the building. Here, a large room facing out to the river Uiui had been set aside for the Apostle. Standing on the first packing case to arrive in this room, Timpleton began shouting instructions to the porters, cheerfully disregarding the fact that none of them spoke English.

  ‘That’s it now! That one over there, Johnny, that one over there. Easy with it, you silly sod – treat it like it was crockery. Now bring that one here. You! Bring it here. Here, you clot! That’s better. Well, get your great foot out the way. Where are you going? Where are all them others? Come on, chop-chop, you black bastards, my grannie could move quicker. No, that’s Number Twenty Crate, that goes right down that end. Further. Further still. No, not there. There! Good lad.’

  The porters seemed to understand. They loved being sworn at. Grinning broadly, they parrotted Timpleton’s words, calling to one another, ‘No. Not dere,’ ‘You black basads.’ Eagerly they fought for the diminishing pile of crates outside, in order to relish the joy of being cursed again inside. So forty-six grey boxes came to be strung out in line down the length of the room, in numerical order according to the stencilled numbers on their sides.

  Timpleton rubbed his hands. He picked up a crowbar he had been using as a conductor’s baton during the cursing operations.

  ‘OK, Jimpo,’ he said. ‘Let’s open a test case and see if anything’s broken.’

  Working delicately with the crowbar, he prised the lid off Crate Ten. Inside, packed tightly, partitioned with thick rubber, cushioned with foam rubber, each gripped in place by a spring clip, stood rows of transistors and valves as delicate as Fabergé jewels. The electronics engineer grunted, eased one of the partitions out and removed a valve from its clip.

  It was pear-shaped, sixteen slender prongs protruding from its base. The lower half of it was silvered. Timpleton held it up to the light with a connoisseur’s eye. Inside it was a lattice of wires and grids, a tiny structure as dainty as a fairy palace in a bottle, while through its interstices could be glimpsed the river Uiui, flowing darkly on.

  ‘That’s OK,’ he said finally. ‘And if a 10 CAAL 10 pentode has stood the journey, the rest of the equipment will be OK. I’ll get started putting it together as soon as possible tomorrow morning, Jimpo.’

  ‘Excellent, Ted,’ Jimpo said. ‘I will get down two of our radio engineers to assist you in any way.’

  ‘Yes, they can help over things like bolting the main framework together,’ Timpleton assented.

  ‘I shall take this very good news to my father,’ Jimpo said. ‘Your personal luggage, by the way, is in the cab of the lorry. A bearer will fetch it to your rooms. Tomorrow the lorry will go back to the wreck and will transport the bodies of the dead men – so much as remains of them – here for burial.’

  The last meal of the day was taken at sundown, and consisted chiefly of a porridgy meat mince which Soames did not enjoy. Turdilal Ghosti, the chef, was evidently off duty. None of the royal and presidential families was present except for Princess Cherry, who sat alone at the royal table, and Jimpo, who came down to the commoners’ table to discuss computers and the wonderful science of electricity with
Timpleton and his two radio engineers, Gumboi and L’Panto.

  Eventually, Soames got up and left on his own.

  The palace, which during the day preserved the quiet of a village church, was now as noisy as a village fair. From being nearly empty it had become nearly full. Thronging groups of black men and women made the corridors as unruly as hospital corridors at visiting time. Vendors descended on Soames, volubly offering him peanuts, cotton vests, sweets, drugged parrots and nicely shaped bits of old sardine tins.

  Someone touched his arm and gently spoke his name.

  ‘Come away from this maddening crowd with me, Mr Noyes. Outside it is pleasant weather before the rain breaks. We will find silence outside.’

  An old Chinese with a dark skin and sleepy eyes stood there smiling, introduced himself as Ping Ah and repeated his invitation to the great outdoors. ‘Who am I,’ thought Soames, ‘that all nations should love me?’ He suddenly felt sour and suspicious, for the recent meal lay heavy on his stomach.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I am tired. I don’t want to walk tonight.’

  ‘Then it would be very nice thing if you will come to my room here in the palace. Take a cup of tea with me, Mr Noyes. Discuss old times.’

  ‘What old times?’ (Even as he spoke, he was being manoeuvred down the passage, gently, celestially.)

  ‘As a young man, my wife and I live in England five years,’ the Chinese said. ‘We make money there and enjoy. Liverpool very interesting city. You come from there perhaps, Mr Noyes?’

  ‘No. I’ve been there, though.’

  ‘Is very interesting city, no?’

  ‘Very interesting.’

  ‘In Liverpool are many Chinese men. This is my room now please.’ Ping Ah seized Soames by the sleeve, opened the door wide enough to stick his head in, stuck his head in, and shouted sharply in Cantonese, whereupon there came an almighty scuffling inside, followed by silence.

  ‘Just I call to see if my missus at home,’ explained Ping Ah blandly. ‘Please do me a favour of stepping inside.’