Lawrence Durrell - Esprit de Corps - Sketches from Diplomatic Life

“In after years the very memory of this recitation used to make the sweat start out on my forehead. You must try it for yourself sometime. Just try repeating ‘oom kroop der poop’ five hundred times in a low voice. After a time it’s like Yoga. Everything goes dark. You feel you are falling back into illimitable space.

“By this time Smith-Cromwell himself had begun to suffer. He leaned across to me once on this particular evening to whisper a message. I could tell from his popping eye and the knot of throbbing veins at his temple that he was under strain. He had at last discovered what culture means. ‘If this goes on much longer,’ he hissed, ‘I shall confess everything.’

“But this did go on; unremittingly for a whole winter. I spare you a description of the cultural offerings brought to us by the remoter tribes. The Argentines! The Liberians! Dear God! When I think of the Chinese all dressed in lampshades, the Australians doing sheep-opera, the Egyptians undulating and ululating all in the same breath.… Old boy, I am at a loss.

“But the real evil demon of the piece was La Valise. Whenever culture flagged she was there, quick to rekindle the flame. Long after the Corps was milked dry, so to speak, and had nothing left in its collective memory except nursery rhymes or perhaps a dirty limerick or two, La Valise was still at it. She fancied herself as a singer. She was never without a wad of music. A mezzo-soprano never gives in, old boy. She dies standing up, with swelling port curved to the stars.… And here came this beastly attaché again. He had turned out to be a pianist, and she took him everywhere to accompany her. While he clawed the piano she clawed the air and remorselessly sang. How she sang! Always a bit flat, I gather, but with a sickening lucid resonance that penetrated the inner ear. Those who had hearing-aids filled them with a kapok mixture for her recitals. When she hit a top note I could hear the studs vibrating in my dinner-shirt. Cowed, we sat and watched her, as she started to climb a row of notes towards the veil of the temple — that shattering top E, F, or G: I never know which. We had the sinking feeling you get on the giant racer just as it nears the top of the slope. To this day I don’t know how we kept our heads.

“Smith-Cromwell was by this time deeply penitent about his earlier encouragement of La Valise and at his wits’ end to see her stopped. Everyone in the Chancery was in a bad state of nerves. The Naval Attaché had taken to bursting into tears at meals if one so much as mentioned a forthcoming cultural engagement. But what was to be done? We clutched at every straw; and De Mandeville, always resourceful, suggesting inviting the Corps to a live reading by himself and chauffeur from the works of the Marquis de Sade. But after deliberation Smith-Cromwell thought this might, though effective, seem Questionable, so we dropped it.

“I had begun to feel like Titus Andronicus, old man, when the miracle happened. Out of a cloudless sky. Nemesis intervened just as he does in Gilbert Murray. Now La Valise had always been somewhat hirsute, indeed quite distinctly moustached in the Neapolitan manner, though none of us for a moment suspected the truth. But one day after Christmas M. De Panier, her husband, came round to the Embassy in full tenu and threw himself into Cromwell-Smith’s arms, bathed in tears as the French always say. ‘My dear Britannic Colleague,’ he said, ‘I have come to take my leave of you. My career is completely ruined. I am leaving diplomacy for good. I have resigned. I shall return to my father-in-law’s carpet-factory near Lyons and start a new life. All is over.’

“Smith-Cromwell was of course delighted to see the back of La Valise; but we all had a soft corner for De Panier. He was a gentleman. Never scamped his frais and always gave us real champagne on Bastille Day. Also his dinners were dinners — not like the Swedes’; but I am straying from my point. In answer to Smith-Cromwell’s tactful enquiries De Panier unbosomed.

“You will never credit it, old man. You will think I am romancing. But it’s as true as I am standing here. There are times in life when the heart spires upward like the lark on the wing; when through the consciousness runs, like an unearthly melody, the thought that God really exists, really cares; more, that he turns aside to lend a helping hand to poor dips in extremis. This was such a moment, old boy.

“La Valise had gone into hospital for some minor complaint which defied diagnosis. And in the course of a minor operation the doctors discovered that she was turning into a man! Nowadays, of course, it is becoming a commonplace of medicine; but at the time of which I speak it sounded like a miracle. A man, upon my soul! We could hardly believe it. The old caterpillar was really one of us. It was too enchanting! We were saved!

“And so it turned out. Within a matter of months her voice — that instrument of stark doom — sank to a bass; she sprouted a beard. Poor old De Panier hastened to leave but was held up until his replacement came. Poor fellow! Our hearts went out to him with this Whiskered Wonder on his hands. But he took it all very gallantly. They left at last, in a closed car, at dead of night. He would be happier in Lyons, I reflected, where nobody minds that sort of thing.

“But if he was gallant about this misfortune so was La Valise elle-même. She went on the halls, old boy, as a bass baritone and made quite a name for herself. Smith-Cromwell says he once heard her sing ‘The London Derriere’ in Paris with full orchestra and that she brought the house down. Some of the lower notes still made the ash-trays vibrate a bit but it was no longer like being trapped in a wind-tunnel. She wore a beard now and a corkscrew moustache and was very self-possessed. One can afford to be in France. He also noticed she was wearing a smartish pair of elastic-sided boots. O, and her trade name now was Tito Torez. She and De Panier were divorced by then, and she had started out on a new career which was less of a reign of terror, if we can trust Smith-Cromwell. Merciful are the ways of Providence!

“As for poor De Panier himself, I gather that he re-entered the service after the scandal had died down. He is at present Consul General in Denver, Colorado. I’m told that there isn’t much culture there, so he ought to be a very happy man.”

“The case of Wormwood,” said Antrobus gravely, “is one which deserves thought.”

He spoke in his usual portentous way, but I could see that he was genuinely troubled.

“It is worth reflecting on,” he went on, “since it illustrates my contention that nobody really knows what anybody else is thinking. Wormwood was Cultural Attaché in Helsinki, and we were all terrified of him. He was a lean, leathery, saturnine sort of chap with a goatee and he’d written a couple of novels of an obscurity so overwhelming as to give us an awful inferiority complex in the Chancery.

“He never spoke.

“He carried this utter speechlessness to such lengths as to be almost beyond the bounds of decency. The whole Corps quailed before him. One slow stare through those pebble-giglamps of his was enough to quell even the vivid and charming Madam Abreyville who was noted for her cleverness in bringing out the shy. She made the mistake of trying to bring Wormwood out. He stared at her hard. She was covered in confusion and trembled from head to foot. After this defeat, we all used to take cover when we saw him coming.