by Brian Aldiss
‘Well,’ Soames hedged, ‘it is, but you make it sound awful.’
‘It is awful! What is more, it does not endure just for the term when, the fires of sexual attraction being strong between them, the husband and wife see no wrong in each other; no, it endures till death! – which is no freedom! Has there ever been woman born whose nature is so intolerably miscellaneous that she can fulfil all these expectations? If there is such, you may be sure she has had sense enough to avoid the exasperations of marriage.’
‘You are being wildly unfair,’ Soames said. ‘You are letting your imagination run away with you!’
‘That is any man’s privilege,’ M’Grassi replied, ‘but I assure you I was not indulging myself then. All I am saying is that in Western marriage a thousand barriers are placed between the hope of and the achievement of true intimacy. Here, perhaps because we are sceptical of true intimacy between the opposed sexes, except briefly when the blood dictates, we tax our wives with far less. We give them the status of marriage and ask in return only the more modest comforts. For all the intangibles, the butterflies, you are hunting, we turn to mistresses or concubines; they are welcome to trifle with our hearts, while our wives have the more vital job of looking after our stomachs.’
He accepted a steaming bowl of rice and spiced livers from a serving woman and added, ‘There, in essence, you have the credo of the balanced man: a wife for this side of his nature, a mistress for that. The practical for public, the poetical for private.’
‘That’s all sound enough as far as it goes,’ Soames said, ‘but it excludes the whole idea of love. I cannot go into this thing cool-bloodedly; I must also have love. Can’t you understand that?’
‘I can entirely. I also know you mean, not just love, but romantic love, complete with dizzy feelings and the big gesture. This is fine, my dear Soames, and honourable – if also a little ludicrous in a man over twenty-one; what is less fine is that you are obviously expecting such a passion to spring up within the next twenty-four hours. Surely if such feelings are to be deep, they must also be slow growing?’
‘Not necessarily,’ Soames replied defensively. ‘I’m not sure you can’t clap eyes on a girl and be certain that she is the one you have always been seeking.’
‘Just as you chose your male friends, by instinct rather than any reasoned system, in which case the time factor is really irrelevant?’
‘Yes, I think so,’ Soames said. ‘Intellect is not a very good guide in personal relationships, is it?’
‘It may be a fair guide as far as men are concerned; obviously it is more pleasurable to be surrounded by those who think like us than by those with whom we can only disagree. But the best guides to friendship are those mysterious affinities we can sense only instinctively; whoever does not have this power cannot learn it, and is lost, at least by my reckoning. Friends chosen by this method are the true friends, however surprising they may appear to outsiders – who will note our differences rather than the deeper similarities. I sense that we have that sort of friendship, Soames.’
‘Thank you; I am flattered. I believe it is so. But may not our differences, which you must admit are many, finally outweigh our similarities?’
‘They may, but I think they may not,’ M’Grassi said, beckoning for some more sauce. ‘If somebody feels like you, the chances are he will also think like you – which is why I said the intellect is a fair guide: if you pick on someone who thinks as you do, he may feel as you do. But the feeling is the cause, the thinking the effect, not vice versa. All thought is rationalisation.’
Recollecting his present situation, Soames said, ‘This is interesting, but it hardly helps me choose a Chosen Virgin.’
‘It is indeed interesting,’ M’Grassi replied, obviously reluctant to change the subject. ‘It is the vital subject, for the richness of our lives consists almost entirely in the amount of reciprocity existing between us, our friends and our women. We must talk of this much more in the days ahead … But at the moment, you want a practical application of the theory. Well, what I have said about friends goes equally for lovers – except that though women feel as we do, their thought processes are always alien, because they rationalise differently. My advice is, to try to detect this affinity of which we have been speaking, and see that it’s housed in a passable body.’
‘That’s more or less what I’ve been trying to do, I think,’ Soames said confusedly. ‘But in practice it doesn’t seem so easy.’
‘Well, you must work it out on your own terms, but they seem so muddled I do seriously fear for your performance tomorrow. Please let me press some more of these excellent spiced livers upon you: they are supposed to have aphrodisiacal powers.’
Chapter Seventeen
‘Steady thy laden head!’
‘There are more attitudes towards love than there are positions for it,’ Soames said to himself, as he finished his meal and steeled himself for the afternoon’s session of interviews. ‘Each man seems to have a different idea about this vital matter when one gets down to examining it. What a thousand pities that the subject still cannot be honestly and openly discussed at home: then we might get some general agreement on it. Well, I can only go by my own heart. Perhaps that’s what M’Grassi means.’
His decision, the name of his Choice, had to be communicated to the Mayor of Umbalathorp by ten o’clock that night. He settled down in his room to interview the next applicants.
One of the first to appear was Alastair Picket. Over his long, tolerant face, extending even to his crinkled linen suit, was a look of shamed embarrassment.
‘Shan’t keep you long, old man,’ he said, giving Soames the briefest, dampest handshake. ‘Just dropped in in passing, but I can see you’re busy. I wanted to tell you, as the only other Englishman in this god-forsaken hole, how much I feel for you in your dreadful predicament. Of course, we are delighted – absolutely delighted – to hear about your falling into the Presidency. I may say, too, that this delight isn’t entirely unselfish either, because after all, who should benefit out of it if not your own countrymen, eh?’
‘Who indeed?’ echoed Soames blandly, glancing at his watch.
‘But what we feel is so typically Goyese – believe me, Soames, I know them to the core, right to the core! – is the way they’re forcing you to go through this Defloration business as if you were a blessed black. It’s absolutely degrading. Disgusting!’
‘Why degrading?’ Soames asked who, having felt that way himself, now suddenly felt otherwise. ‘If I accept the honour of being elected President, I must accept everything else that goes with it. I must be whole-hearted or nothing. This ceremony, with small variation, has been carried out on the accession of new rulers for hundreds of years; it’s their way of guaranteeing they don’t get themselves an impotentate; it’s certainly not something which has been invented on the spot just to upset me.’
‘But you’re a white man, old man,’ Picket said, explaining the cardinal fact with the exaggerated patience one uses to imbeciles. ‘It’s terrible to think you should have to do this in front of a crowd of these people.’
‘Do you know, Picket, I’d much rather do it here tomorrow than in Wembley Stadium. In Wembley, it would merely be an obscene stunt; here, it means something to these people.’
‘It means degradation for you,’ Picket said sharply. He reached at his throat, as if a ghostly dog collar still lingered there, and then, recollecting why he had come, said much more gently, ‘It means degradation, I fear, but in the circumstances it is up to us British to pop our heads together to see if we can’t in some way mitigate the disgrace. At least we can foil what I cannot help seeing as a blatant attempt at miscegenation on M’Grassi’s part. It is a frame-up there is only one way of avoiding. You must perform this ceremony at dawn with my daughter, Grace, Noyes.’
Soames got up and began to walk about behind the desk.
‘Grace agrees, does she?’ he asked.
The ex-clergyman shook his head and lo
wered his eyes. This, obviously, was not the reaction he had been counting on.
‘As a matter of fact, to be quite frank,’ he said, ‘I dared not put it to her in case she refused. I thought if I could get you to agree, you could put it to her. You must admit my suggestion is the only one worth listening to. Don’t you?’
‘No, I don’t,’ Soames said. ‘Your arguments strike me as peculiarly objectionable. You don’t like the idea of my going on to that field, yet you’re quite willing to send your daughter there – provided I will do the dirty work of talking her into it.’
Picket rose, gathering dignity.
‘Very well, Noyes, I’ll go,’ he said; ‘if you can’t accept a suggestion in the spirit it was offered, I’m sorry for you, that’s all I can say. And considering what went on between you and Grace the other evening, I think you’re behaving very badly towards her.’
‘You are mistaken, Mr Picket. I had not forgotten Grace. From the sentimental point of view, I feel in some ways very attracted to Grace. From a practical point of view, to have an English wife in such exotic surroundings might be more than wise. But to have you as a father-in-law, in any surroundings, is, I think, something I would much prefer to avoid. Good afternoon.’
He felt better after that, and rattled through several applicants without a qualm. Among these applicants were a penitent Soares and his daughter Maria. Soares made the expected speech about the financial advantages which would accrue to both of them out of a union with Maria. Soames, already feeling the strength of his new position, shooed him out and turned to speak with Maria alone.
She flung herself at once into his arms.
‘Please, please, forgive,’ she said, looking up with tears in her great brown eyes. ‘I think perhaps you look in my heart to see what is said there. Help me to escape from my cruel father!’
‘He seems to treat you kindly enough,’ Soames remarked.
‘Ah, you do not know! How can you know! I am treated only to cruelty. I will even submit to this horrible ceremony tomorrow to become free with him. I will always be loving to you – and I can also dance very nicely – if you take me from him. You are a strong man and my father cannot come to the palace if you say “no”, isn’t it?’
‘It is,’ Soames agreed, and put her name on his list of possibles. He also, hesitantly, added Grace’s name; Picket, too, could be kept away without any objections from his daughter. Later, he added the name of a faun-eyed Galla girl, Roedi, who smiled at him across the desk, holding herself with an appealing mixture of eagerness and shyness. One of M’Grassi’s affinities might be there, and anyhow the breasts were good.
Dumayami’s daughter, Tulatu, so extolled by Turdilal the previous evening, also appeared. Either the Indian had grossly exaggerated on every point or else Tulatu had changed a good deal during the night: she looked a raddled fifty, with a face like a goat’s udder and warts on her dirty hands. Turdilal had had the sense not to appear with her, and Soames dismissed her without wasting a minute.
By teatime, Soames had added only one other name to his list: Miss Betty Noktrauma, a dusky little thing of entangled ancestry who had been a film star in South Africa. She vamped Soames unremittingly, and twitched round the room looking at everything as she talked.
‘Here, I tell you what, Mr President,’ she said, in a low, quick voice. ‘I am a what you call a real fortune-huntress, you know. Boy, man, we could really wake up this town, hey? Do all sorts of things, have fun – I tell you, you and me. But I’m not one of your hard-hearted hussies, you know, not this girl. Soft as they came, is me! Soft all through, yes sir! And you know what I also like a spot of? Ah, boy, man, I show you …’
She leant across Soames and kissed him on the lips, gradually letting herself subside on to him, without slackening the pressure, working her plump hands under his jacket, round to his shoulder blades. This was novel treatment for Soames, and he emerged from it slightly groggy.
‘Yes, yes, I think you’ve got there something I like a very much,’ Betty Noktrauma sighed. ‘I would like to stay and teach you to release just a bit more easily, Mr President. I make you give out plenty! If I don’t know much stuff about men, I know the slow starters make a hot finish. That’s you, Mr President! Take the tip from Betty, tomorrow morning at dawn, you will be standing there with your pants down hollering out for the kind of girl who can bring you round to life quick, hey? Believe me, I do that for you, no fooling, is a pleasure. What you say?’
‘Ooooh,’ Soames murmured, breaking out of a fresh embrace. ‘There’s a good deal in what you say, Miss Noktrauma. A very good deal indeed. My decision will be announced tonight at ten o’clock.’
After tea, Mrs Picket was shown in. She moved through the door as if on the point of collapse, sitting down on a chair with closed eyes and ashen face.
‘Can I get you anything?’ Soames asked. ‘May I ring for a glass of water – or a whisky?’
She did not answer. After a minute, in which she sat absolutely still, she opened her eyes and said, ‘You must go back to England, Mr Noyes. At once. This evening.’
Soames was astounded.
‘Go home, Mrs Picket?’ he exclaimed. ‘I can’t go home. Haven’t you heard? Tomorrow morning at dawn I am due to go through –’
‘I know all that,’ Mrs Picket interposed, speaking without emphasis as if every move of her jaw hurt her, ‘that is why I made the effort to come here. You must go home. You think of this place as a principality of Africa; I know it better; I know it as a principality of the devil. Quite literally … a principality of the devil.’
‘Really,’ Soames said, ‘what do you expect me to say to that?’
‘Say nothing, only go home. If you had lived here as long as I, you would know what I mean. Can you imagine, Mr Noyes, what my life has been like here? I came here as a devout, Christian woman, full of the desire to serve God and my husband. Almost at once, my husband had his faith stolen from him. I am convinced the devil entered him as soon as he arrived here. He spoke blasphemy …’
She paused, closing her eyes again. Dust seemed to lie like powder on her plump cheeks. In a moment she continued to speak, though without opening her eyes.
‘Then my husband was seized by unnatural inclinations, Mr Noyes; he began to seduce black boys. Later, my daughter was visited by the same terrible lusts. What could that have been but the work of the devil? And by a thousand other signs about me of nakedness and promiscuity, I have learnt that this is the country of the Powers of Darkness. Now they are about to gather you in too. Go, I say, before it is too late, before you are doomed for ever.’
She opened her eyes, regarding Soames with the sort of expression one generally reserves for Monday mornings at the office. Soames just sat there; it was not till some days later that he realised he should have said to her, ‘Madam, you have obviously reached a certain dangerous stage of life; the menopause has allied itself with the unhappy conditions of your marriage to give you delusions.’ The shock might have been good for her.
‘What I am saying is not making its proper mark on you,’ Mrs Picket continued, in the same flat fashion, closing her eyes again. ‘This is one of the things the devil has done to me. I have never fallen to his temptations as the other members of my family have done; but the battle has drained my strength over the years. Sometimes I feel I have grown all but invisible to the world. You must disregard this, Mr Noyes; you must heed what I say and go away. I know that my husband came to you earlier. You must disregard his words. He is corruption. He is now the devil’s chief agent in Umbalathorp.’
‘You aren’t well, Mrs Picket,’ Soames said, getting up and going to her. ‘Let me use my influence to get you a bed in the hospital; I will pay for it. You need a long rest away from everyone.’
‘You are speaking for the devil,’ she said. ‘I must stay in that cursed house on the hill; it is my bounden duty. The devil has now moved in in person, and I have to stay and confront him as best I can.’
‘Real
ly, you are imagining things, Mrs Picket. Your health is low, you are mentally overstrained.’
‘Naturally you would say that, Mr Noyes, if you are as lost as I now fear you are. You have seen this creature of the night, Pawli, who has now taken over our house, have you not? That is the disguise of the devil! It is he in person – and the terrible thing is that I should have to live with him and pretend I have not recognised him.’
She stood up, weakly fending his hand from her arm. The lids of her closed eyes were dark yellow in the white face.
‘You’re terribly mistaken,’ Soames said. ‘I beg you to take that bed just for a week, and see if you don’t see things differently afterwards.’
‘Go!’ she said, ‘go quickly, or you are damned for all eternity. Leave for England before dark falls.’
As she left the room, she was, as she had claimed, all but invisible. Her outlines seemed fuzzy. Soames lit a cigarette and let it burn. He did not countenance one word she said: yet he felt uneasy. The modern equivalents of the devil are every bit as efficient as the Old Master.
None of the other girls who paraded before him pleased him. His mind was no longer on his work. At seven o’clock, when daylight died, he rang a bell and had the rest of the applicants dismissed.
As he came slowly out of the room, the Princess Cherry met him in the corridor.
‘Your face says you still do not decide,’ she said, staring hard at him. ‘I am too proud girl to come as candidate for choosing, but remember me, won’t you? I have more desires than reading poetry. I think we could make a good pleasure together.’
‘Of course,’ he said gently, ‘I won’t forget, Princess. You’ve always been terribly kind to me. I – often feel very lost here, but I’m always glad to see you. This is a rather awkward sort of thing to say to you, but – well, I hope you’ll be forgiving if I don’t pick you for tomorrow.’