Brian Aldiss - The Male Response

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. Where 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.’

‘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.