Grand Days

by Frank Moorhouse

  But as the youths pushed and shoved their way deeper into the club, the noisy chatter and laughter died down. Soon the sounds of conversation had died away, leaving only the music of the orchestra playing on bravely, but ignored, with the dancers slowing to a shuffle, then stopping, and then standing, holding their poses while the music went over and around them, but unable to move.

  Edith recognised the uniformed youths as Action Civique, a Swiss youth group friendly to Italy and the Mussolini government.

  ‘Action Civique,’ Ambrose said to his two friends. ‘Not nice.’

  Mr Huneeus returned from the toilet and looked at the youths with distaste. He seemed to know the Action Civique too. ‘A bad lot,’ he said to Edith.

  Some of the youths were speaking Italian in a bombastic, showy way, as part of their political exhibition.

  The orchestra continued to play but at a faltering volume.

  The Action Civique went around the room, stopping in front of some of the travesti and using their batons to lift the front of their low-waisted skirts and dresses like theatre curtains, running their batons lewdly up the stockinged legs to their groins, but not going as far as violence, interested only in embarrassment and the parading of the power which flowed from their uniforms, their batons, and their political arrogance. Some of the travesti pretended, with bravado, to like the attention of the young men and bravely played up to it. Weirdly, this play-acting in the face of threat seemed, then, almost natural to the atmosphere of the club, almost part of the evening. The frightened behaviour of the travesti with their exposed stockings and knickers unveiled the threatening nature of it all.

  The owner of the club came through the crowd and approached the youths. He offered to provide the youths with tables and with drinks but they roughly pushed him away. As the owner reeled back from the shove and fell against the some of the standing couples, the music from the orchestra trailed off and the club became quiet under the revolving glitter-ball.

  Of all things, Edith feared first for her fur coat but decided then that the youths were not thieves, and reminded herself that despite their Italianate political posing, they were, after all, Swiss, which she found vaguely reassuring. And that they belonged also to some political organisation and, presumably, had some sort of discipline.

  Edith and Mr Huneeus and the others sat down and tried to resume an imitation of conversation but the youths reached their table and stared down at them, especially at Mr Huneeus.

  For some reason, Mr Huneeus stood up, not respectfully, but as an assertion of himself. The leader of the group moved very close to Mr Huneeus and said, in Italian and then in French, ‘Your papers!’

  Mr Huneeus seemed now quite dark and foreign in his heavy-weave double-breasted suit.

  ‘I am here as guest of the Swiss federal government and you have no right.’

  ‘Your papers.’ The leader pushed Mr Huneeus’s stomach with the baton. ‘In here, we are the government.’ One or two others stood behind their leader, their batons resting in the palms of their hands in a practised way.

  ‘I am the Deputy President and the Ambassador-at-large for the Republic of Azerbaijan. I request that you honour that.’

  Edith was impressed by this information from Mr Huneeus, and wondered whether the Action Civique would respect his position.

  ‘You have no place in this country,’ the leader pronounced, and hit Mr Huneeus across the mouth with the baton, hard enough for a hard cracking sound to be heard. Blood came from his broken lips and he tried to stand his ground, staggering, ignoring the bleeding.

  ‘Now look here!’ Ambrose said, rising to his feet and stepping forward. ‘Easy on.’

  His English male voice came through the lipstick and make-up ludicrously and ineffectually. Edith felt embarrassed for him.

  The leader lifted Ambrose’s dress to reveal his lace underwear and then jabbed at his genitals with the baton. Ambrose instinctively recoiled and pushed his dress down, his hands covering his genitals. One of the youths gave a cry of triumph at the unmasking. In a diminished voice, Ambrose said, ‘Please stop!’

  She saw that Ambrose had lost his male authority, his English authority. She felt that even she might have more authority as a woman than he did now as a man dressed as a woman. But she felt that her limited authority could not save Mr Huneeus. Nothing could be done by speaking or appealing to them, and instead she stood up and moved in front of Mr Huneeus, shielding him, and said to the leader, ‘Stop this. Ambassador Huneeus is with me,’ hoping still that the use of his title might help.

  The leader looked her over and then took hold of her dress on both sides of her body and pulled her skirt fully up, revealing her underwear, and put a hand on her crotch.

  She pushed his hand away, and pulled her skirt down, in a firm movement which was something she realised that the travesti had not done. The leader stood perplexed, having touched her enough to know that she was a woman, feeling maybe that to touch her further would be not so much an abuse of power but an impropriety, something of which his mother would not approve. Or perhaps it entered his mind that he might have committed a criminal offence.

  Another of the crowd of young thugs, however, seemed not to be so restrained and came forward saying, ‘Is she a woman?’

  The leader said yes, trying to push her away now, to get around her to Mr Huneeus, but she stayed protectively interfering with his efforts, but weakly, defencelessly.

  The second man pulled Edith away, and said, ‘Let me carry out a search.’

  She struggled with him but another youth moved in to hold her arms. Another two grappled with Mr Huneeus who was trying to come, now, to her rescue, and Ambrose and his two friends were also grappling with youths. As the scuffling began to spread, the second man put his hand up inside her skirt and she felt his hand inside her knickers, felt a finger probing, trying to find her opening.

  Mr Huneeus cried out in rage and lunged free from those holding him. In trying to protect her, he was again struck on the head with baton blows.

  She kicked out a foot and screamed, and felt her kicks connecting with the youth’s legs who simply grunted from the kicks and moved off, resuming an uneasy laughter, smelling his fingers, offering his fingers to his colleagues — ‘Pure woman.’ Now some of them acted as if the smell was repugnant. All this happening under the glitter-ball and in the bizarre decor of the club made it seem even more nightmarish.

  Had they really dared to touch her there? She heard herself cry out again.

  The leader said to the others to leave her alone but she saw that he now had little command.

  The club seemed to erupt, with scuffling breaking out at the other end of the club as well and with others going to their assistance, attention turned from Mr Huneeus and from her.

  She caught Ambrose’s eye, and cried out in English, ‘Let’s run for it!’ She reached down and took off her shoes and Ambrose followed her example and took off his shoes also. Ambrose took her hand, she took the dazed, bleeding Mr Huneeus by the arm and pulled him with her. The other two came good and acted as a sort of running guard as they pushed their way towards the door through which other people were also beginning to flee the enveloping mêlée.

  The scuffling spread through the club with the Action Civique using their batons and clubgoers using chairs and other objects which came to hand. Glass was being smashed. The black musicians had taken their instruments and disappeared from the stage.

  At the bottom of the stairs, before running for the street, Edith thought momentarily of her fur coat but kept on going.

  She, Mr Huneeus, and the three men dressed as women rushed up the stairs, burst into the chilly air of the street, and ran.

  With her arm around Mr Huneeus, he holding on to her and to Ambrose, they ran for it, along rue de Ia Cité and down towards the lake and Ambrose’s apartment.

  They all paused on a corner about a block or so from the club, all holding on to each other, breathless, Ambrose had both his shoes
and wig in his hand, Mr Huneeus, more breathless because of age and weight and maybe his injuries, was coughing. The soles of Edith’s stockings were holed, her feet were hurt.

  They limped up the stairs to Ambrose’s apartment, and once inside, fell into chairs, heavy with exhaustion from their fear and running, safe behind the locked door.

  Ambrose changed out of his dress into a silk house robe and took up his doctor role, attending to Mr Huneeus’s smashed lips and cut head, and to the older of his English friends, who was beginning an asthma attack.

  The younger friend went to the kitchen and prepared cocoa which Edith found an incongruously practical thing for the young man in a women’s evening dress to be doing.

  After regaining her breath, Edith went to the bathroom, and, alone, began to sob from the indignity of the molestation and from the panic of it all. She was burningly aware that her indignity had happened in front of these unknown Englishmen and Mr Huneeus. She kept splashing cold water on to herself. She doubted that she could go back out to the others in the drawing room.

  After a while, Ambrose came looking for her. ‘Edith? Are you all right in there?’

  She thought for a moment that she did not have the will to open the door, but he remained outside, calling to her, and she did open it and he came in looking worried. She held on to him.

  ‘Should we call the police?’ he said, but without conviction. She saw that he was caught in their private predicament as well as in the urge for justice. She saw instantly too, that the police would be too much for her to take at this time or for any of them to take.

  Mr Huneeus was lying down on a couch, covered with a blanket, suffering from shock. He kept saying that a bodyguard usually accompanied him. That he would, tomorrow, instruct his bodyguard to track down these thugs. They would be dealt with. Dealt with.

  She wanted to believe him; she thought it probable that someone like Mr Huneeus would have a bodyguard. She believed it and felt good about it and she wanted him to track down the thugs and beat them.

  While Mr Huneeus rested, the four of them sat around, the English couple in their women’s clothing without wigs, the older one inhaling from a preparation, all retelling, cursing, and sharing observations now in their fully male voices — as survivors from a shipwreck, all solicitous of Edith. They were all made very close from what they had been through. She no longer felt any antipathy towards the two Englishmen. She kept shivering and Ambrose fetched a rug which she draped around her shoulders. The couple asked if they might stay, and Ambrose fixed a bed for them in the guest room and they said good night, kissing Edith and holding her in a strong embrace.

  After dozing for a short time, Mr Huneeus awakened and said a formal good night. Ambrose, who had a telephone, called the taxi depot. As Mr Huneeus prepared to go, he handed her his card. She fumbled in her handbag and found her card which she gave him, without any thought of protocol or the League or any of that. He read it, bowed formally to her and to Ambrose.

  In bed she began to cry. As Ambrose comforted her and they talked there in the dark, she realised that Ambrose had not seen, or had not registered, what had happened to her. He spoke of the brutish behaviour towards Huneeus but did not mention the behaviour of the youth to her.

  ‘And there was what they did to me.’

  ‘Are you hurt too?’ He half sat up in the bed.

  ‘Not bodily.’

  ‘You were very brave.’

  She wondered if she should tell him. ‘I mean the other thing, the thing they did to me.’

  He was silent, as if trying to recall. ‘I don’t follow.’

  For a flashing second, she thought that she might have imagined it all, that it was her mind enacting a primeval terror. ‘They molested me.’

  Ambrose turned on the bedside light and looked at her. She could tell that he was disturbed, was perhaps worried that she was hysterical, that she was caught in frenzied fantasies of womankind. Or that she was using the language loosely.

  ‘You were molested?’ His voice now had the protective concern of a doctor. She began crying. ‘I didn’t see this. Was it at the time you tried to protect Huneeus?’

  As she cried she suffered a peculiar opposition of feeling — relief that he hadn’t seen and that maybe others hadn’t seen, and yet also a yearning for pity.

  ‘How were you molested? I mean, talk to me as a doctor.’

  ‘I’m all right. In a way I’m glad you didn’t see it. Maybe others didn’t see it either. I don’t want to describe it. My head aches, but it’s more from humiliation.’

  He held her. ‘I didn’t see what happened in the confusion. I don’t want to sound disregarding.’

  She liked that he was a doctor, and she relished a sense of protection. ‘It’s all right. Turn off the light. Let’s sleep. I need to sleep.’

  ‘I’ll get you a sleeping draught.’

  ‘No, don’t bother. Thank you.’

  He ignored her, and left the room, returning with a mixture in a glass. He held her head as he would a child, and helped her drink it and she felt comforted by him there in his regimental striped pyjamas, and as a doctor.

  For the first time since coming to Geneva, she wanted to go home to Australia.

  She did not go to the office on the Monday but by Wednesday her spirits had returned, her agitation had settled somewhat, and, though still deeply sombre and occasionally shaking, she went into work.

  In her office, there was a formal note from His Excellency, Mr Huneeus, and flowers from him which had been put in water by one of the women in the bureau, but they were wilting. The note invited her to come to his embassy on the Tuesday of the following week. She wondered tiredly if the invitation implied amorous interest by Mr Huneeus. She felt affection for him from their having shared a horror and survived, but she did not want to encourage any amorous affection. She pushed the matter aside for now.

  Ambrose had gone back to the club and retrieved their coats and hers was on a hanger behind the door of her office.

  She decided to have Ambrose accompany her to the Embassy of Azerbaijan. They discussed whether Mr Huneeus would recognise Ambrose as a man, and decided that, given Mr Huneeus’s condition on the night, he probably would not, and that if he did, he would choose not to refer to the strange circumstances under which they’d met.

  It was a rambling, clean office in Servette, and she surmised that Mr Huneeus and others lived in the upper apartments. On the wall was a framed portrait of the President, a group photograph of his cabinet, a framed copy of the constitution of the Republic of Azerbaijan, and a national coat-of-arms.

  Mr Huneeus sat at a green-covered desk. His lips were still swollen. There were three other men and one woman in the room. A map was spread on the desk. A rubber stamp and inking pad. A document. An ink well. A wooden rocking-blotter.

  He rose and, as a traditional greeting, hugged them both. If he recognised Ambrose, he did not indicate it by any word or gesture.

  Speaking with some distress and further distortion because of his lips, he said that it was to be a formal occasion after which they would retire to a less formal reception.

  He handed a sheet of paper to one of the other men who read from it in French, as if reading a proclamation, using a deep, loud voice: ‘I wish to announce to the world that the Deputy President of Azerbaijan, with the powers vested in him, in gratitude for the efforts of Edith Campbell Berry to save the Ambassador-at-large and Deputy President of Azerbaijan from bodily harm, in recognition of her gallant and courageous efforts to extricate all from a situation of certain danger, the Republic of Azerbaijan hereby declares and irrevocably assigns, the name of Edith to the River Akara in the sovereign republic of Azerbaijan and that henceforth this river will be known as the River Edith.’

  Edith was suffused with emotion and began to shake. From where he’d been standing in the background, Ambrose came up behind her and she felt his arm supporting her, as tears rose to her eyes.

  Mr Huneeus took up the
rubber stamp, inked it, stamped the proclamation, signed it and blotted the signature.

  He rolled up the proclamation, tied it with blue silk ribbon, and handed it to Edith, again formally hugging her and kissing her on both cheeks.

  ‘I am overwhelmed,’ she said, feeling truly overwhelmed, tears now coming to her eyes and flowing. ‘I cannot say how moved I am.’

  One by one, the other men and the woman came to her and hugged her, and kissed her on both cheeks.

  Ambrose said softly, ‘Well earned, Edith,’ and gave her a hug and kiss.

  ‘Come.’ Mr Huneeus gestured to her to look at the map, and he traced with his finger, the river. ‘This is the River Edith. It is a fine, clear river, it flows through forests and snow-covered mountains to the Caspian Sea. It is untouched and unspoiled.’

  Edith had another burst of crying then, briefly, but dried her eyes and pulled herself together like a good diplomat, though remaining on the brink of tears. She realised that it was not her courage alone that was being attended to. She knew from his words that Mr Huneeus was also attending to her hurt.

  He said, taking her arm, ‘Come, now we will feast,’ and he led her to a drawing room where traditional Azerbaijan food was laid out. Champagne was served by a member of staff dressed as a waiter, but who did not move as deftly as a waiter.

  She was toasted. The champagne seemed to her to be from the waters of the river. She felt cleansed by its clean taste, and cleansed by the image in her mind of the clear, fine river flowing through forests and snow-covered mountains, and she felt herself healing, felt the sullying being taken from her by the river and by the sincere and serious honour which these people had bestowed, even if, as she suspected, their authority was doubtful.

  ‘I hope,’ she said, tightly holding her champagne glass, tears again in her eyes and her voice, ‘I hope one day to visit my river, in the free Republic of Azerbaijan. I toast the free Republic of Azerbaijan.’

  They all toasted the free Republic of Azerbaijan.