Гектор Манро - The Complete Short Stories of Saki

A feature of the Parliament Chamber itself was its enormous size. The space allotted to Members was small and very sparsely occupied, but the public galleries stretched away tier on tier as far as the eye could reach, and were packed to their utmost capacity.

‘There seems to be a very great public interest in the debate,’ exclaimed Bidderdale.

‘Members are excused from attending the debates if they so desire,’ the Fiend proceeded to explain; ‘it is one of their most highly valued privileges. On the other hand, constituents are compelled to listen throughout to all the speeches. After all, you must remember, we are in Hell.’

Bidderdale repressed a shudder and turned his attention to the debate.

‘Nothing,’ the Fiend-Orator was observing, ‘is more deplorable among the cultured races of the present day than the tendency to identify fiendhood, in the most sweeping fashion, with all manner of disreputable excesses, excesses which can only be alleged against us on the merest legendary evidence. Vices which are exclusively or predominatingly human are unblushingly described as inhuman, and, what is even more contemptible and ungenerous, as fiendish. If one investigates such statements as “inhuman treatment of pit ponies” or “fiendish cruelties in the Congo”, so frequently to be heard in our brother Parliaments on earth, one finds accumulative and indisputable evidence that it is the human treatment of pit ponies and Congo natives that is really in question, and that no authenticated case of fiendish agency in these atrocities can be substantiated. It is, perhaps, a minor matter for complaint,’ continued the orator, ‘that the human race frequently pays us the doubtful compliment of describing as “devilish funny” jokes which are neither funny nor devilish.’

The orator paused, and an oppressive silence reigned over the vast chamber.

‘What is happening?’ whispered Bidderdale.

‘Five minutes Hush,’ explained his guide; ‘it is a sign that the speaker was listened to in silent approval, which is the highest mark of appreciation that can be bestowed in Pandemonium. Let’s come into the smoking-room.’

‘Will the motion be carried?’ asked Bidderdale, wondering inwardly how Sir Edward Grey would treat the protest if it reached the British Parliament, an entente with the Infernal Regions opened up a fascinating vista, in which the Foreign Secretary’s imagination might hopelessly lose itself.

‘Carried? Of course not,’ said the Fiend; ‘in the Infernal Parliament all motions are necessarily lost.’

‘In earthly Parliaments nowadays nearly everything is found,’ said Bidderdale, ‘including salaries and travelling expenses.’

He felt that at any rate he was probably the first member of his family to make a joke in Hell.

‘By the way,’ he added, ‘talking of earthly Parliaments, have you got the Party system down here?’

‘In Hell? Impossible. You see we have no system of rewards. We have specialised so thoroughly on punishments that the other branch has been entirely neglected. And besides, Government by delusion, as you practise it in your Parliament, would be unworkable here. I should be the last person to say anything against temptation, naturally, but we have a proverb down here “in baiting a mouse-trap with cheese, always leave room for the mouse”. Such a party-cry, for instance, as your “ninepence for fourpence” would be absolutely inoperative; it not only leaves no room for the mouse, it leaves no room for the imagination. You have a saying in your country, I believe, “there’s no fool like a damned fool”; all the fools down here are, necessarily, damned, but◦– you wouldn’t get them to nibble at ninepence for fourpence.’

‘Couldn’t they be scolded and lectured into believing it, as a sort of moral and intellectual duty?’ asked Bidderdale.

‘We haven’t all your facilities,’ said the Fiend; ‘we’ve nothing down here that exactly corresponds to the Master of Elibank.’

At this moment Bidderdale’s attention was caught by an item on a loose sheet of agenda paper: ‘Vote on account of special Hells.’

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I’ve often heard the expression “there is a special Hell reserved for such-and-such a type of person”. Do tell me about them.’

‘I’ll show you one in course of preparation,’ said the Fiend, leading him down the corridor. ‘This one is designed to accommodate one of the leading playwrights of your nation. You may observe scores of imps engaged in pasting notices of modern British plays into a huge press-cutting book, each under the name of the author, alphabetically arranged. The book will contain nearly half a million notices, I suppose, and it will form the sole literature supplied to this specially doomed individual.’

Bidderdale was not altogether impressed.

‘Some dramatic authors wouldn’t so very much mind spending eternity poring over a book of contemporary press-cuttings,’ he observed.

The Fiend, laughing unpleasantly, lowered his voice.

‘The letter “S” is missing.’

For the first time Bidderdale realised that he was in Hell.

In the political history of nations it is no uncommon experience to find States and peoples which but a short time since were in bitter conflict and animosity with each other, settled down comfortably on terms of mutual goodwill and even alliance. The natural history of the social developments of species affords a similar instance in the coming-together of two once warring elements, now represented by civilised man and the domestic cat. The fiercely waged struggle which went on between humans and felines in those far-off days when sabre-toothed tiger and cave lion contended with primeval man, has long ago been decided in favour of the most fitly equipped combatant◦– the Thing with a Thumb◦– and the descendants of the dispossessed family are relegated today, for the most part, to the waste lands of jungle and veld, where an existence of self-effacement is the only alternative to extermination. But the felis catus , or whatever species was the ancestor of the modern domestic cat (a vexed question at present), by a masterstroke of adaptation avoided the ruin of its race, and ‘captured’ a place in the very keystone of the conqueror’s organisation. For not as a bond-servant or dependent has this proudest of mammals entered the human fraternity; not as a slave like the beasts of burden, or a humble camp-follower like the dog. The cat is domestic only as far as suits its own ends; it will not be kennelled or harnessed nor suffer any dictation as to its goings out or comings in. Long contact with the human race has developed in it the art of diplomacy, and no Roman Cardinal of mediaeval days knew better how to ingratiate himself with his surroundings than a cat with a saucer of cream on its mental horizon. But the social smoothness, the purring innocence, the softness of the velvet paw may be laid aside at a moment’s notice, and the sinuous feline may disappear, in deliberate aloofness, to a world of roofs and chimney-stacks, where the human element is distanced and disregarded. Or the innate savage spirit that helped its survival in the bygone days of tooth and claw may be summoned forth from beneath the sleek exterior, and the torture-instinct (common alone to human and feline) may find free play in the death-throes of some luckless bird or rodent. It is, indeed, no small triumph to have combined the untrammelled liberty of primeval savagery with the luxury which only a highly developed civilisation can command; to be lapped in the soft stuffs that commerce has gathered from the far ends of the world, to bask in the warmth that labour and industry have dragged from the bowels of the earth; to banquet on the dainties that wealth has bespoken for its table, and withal to be a free son of nature, a mighty hunter, a spiller of life-blood. This is the victory of the cat. But besides the credit of success the cat has other qualities which compel recognition. The animal which the Egyptians worshipped as divine, which the Romans venerated as a symbol of liberty, which Europeans in the ignorant Middle Ages anathematised as an agent of demonology, has displayed to all ages two closely blended characteristics◦– courage and self-respect. No matter how unfavourable the circumstances, both qualities are always to the fore. Confront a child, a puppy, and a kitten with a sudden danger; the child will turn instinctively for assistance, the puppy will grovel in abject submission to the impending visitation, the kitten will brace its tiny body for a frantic resistance. And disassociate the luxury-loving cat from the atmosphere of social comfort in which it usually contrives to move, and observe it critically under the adverse conditions of civilisation◦– that civilisation which can impel a man to the degradation of clothing himself in tawdry ribald garments and capering mountebank dances in the streets for the earning of the few coins that keep him on the respectable, or non-criminal, side of society. The cat of the slums and alleys, starved, outcast, harried, still keeps amid the prowlings of its adversity the bold, free, panther-tread with which it paced of yore the temple courts of Thebes, still displays the self-reliant watchfulness which man has never taught it to lay aside. And when its shifts and clever managings have not sufficed to stave off inexorable fate, when its enemies have proved too strong or too many for its defensive powers, it dies fighting to the last, quivering with the choking rage of mastered resistance, and voicing in its death-yell that agony of bitter remonstrance which human animals, too, have flung at the powers that may be; the last protest against a destiny that might have made them happy◦– and has not.