The Complete Stories (45 page)

  "I am modern. You are a poet?"

  "Hardly that. A few translations."

  "I am an original poet. I translate my poems myself into English prose. They have been published in the United States. Do you read the New Destiny?"

  "I am afraid not."

  "It is the magazine which publishes my translations. Last year they sent me ten dollars."

  "No one has ever paid me for my translations."

  "You should send them to the New Destiny. It is not possible, I think," continued the Poet, "to render the poetry of one language into the poetry of another. Sometimes I translate English prose into Neutralian poetry. I have done a very beautiful rendering of some selected passages of your great Priestley. I hoped it would be used in the High Schools but it is not. There is jealousy and intrigue everywhere—even at the Ministry of Education."

  At this moment a splendid figure at the centre of the table rose to make the first speech. "Now to work," said his neighbour, produced a notebook and pencil and began busily writing in shorthand. "In the new Neutralia we all work."

  The speech was long and provoked much applause. In the course of it a note came to Scott-King by the hand of a waiter: "I shall call on you to reply to his Excellency. Fe."

  Scott-King wrote in answer: "Terribly sorry. Not tonight. Indisposed. Ask Whitemaid," stealthily left his place and, still hiccuping, passed behind the table to the dining-room door.

  Outside the foyer was almost deserted; the great glass dome which throughout the years of war had blazed aloft nightly, a candle in a naughty world, rose darkly. Two night porters shared a cigar behind one of the pillars; a huge empty carpet, strewn with empty chairs, lay before Scott-King in the subdued light to which a parsimonious management had reduced the earlier blaze. It was not much past midnight but in the New Neutralia memories persisted of the revolutionary curfew, of police roundups, of firing squads in the public gardens; New Neutralians liked to get home early and bolt their doors.

  As Scott-King stepped into this silent space, his hiccups mysteriously ceased. He went through the swing doors and breathed the air of the piazza where under the arc-lamps workmen were washing away with hoses the dust and refuse of the day; the last of the trams, which all day long rattled round the fountains, had long since returned to its shed. He breathed deeply, testing, as it were, the limits of his miraculous recovery, and knew it to be complete. Then he turned back, took his key and, barely conscious, ascended.

  During the first tumultuous afternoon and evening in Bellacita there had been little opportunity for more than the barest acquaintance between Scott-King and his fellow guests of the Bellorius Association. Indeed he had scarcely distinguished them from their hosts. They had bowed and shaken hands, they had exchanged nods among the University archives, they had apologized one to the other as they jostled and jogged elbows at the vin d'honneur; Scott-King had no share in whatever intimacies flourished after the banquet. He remembered an affable American and a Swiss of extreme hauteur and an Oriental whom on general principles he assumed to be Chinese. Now on the morning following he came cheerfully to join them in the Ritz foyer in accordance with the printed programme. They were to leave at 10.30 for Simona. His bags were packed; the sun, not yet oppressive, shone brilliantly through the glass dome. He was in the best of tempers.

  He had awoken in this rare mood after a night of untroubled sleep. He had breakfasted on a tray of fruit, sitting on his verandah above the square, showering copious blessings on the palms and fountains and trams and patriotic statuary. He approached the group in the foyer with the intention of making himself peculiarly agreeable.

  Of the festive Neutralians of the day before only Dr. Fe and the Poet remained. The rest were at work elsewhere constructing the New Neutralia.

  "Professor Scott-King, how are you this morning?"

  There was more than politeness in Dr. Fe's greeting; there was definite solicitude.

  "Extremely well, thank you. Oh, of course, I had forgotten about last night's speech. I was very sorry to fail you; the truth was ..."

  "Professor Scott-King, say no more. Your friend Whitemaid I fear is not so well."

  "No?"

  "No. He has sent word that he cannot join us." Dr. Fe raised exquisitely expressive eyebrows.

  The Poet drew Scott-King momentarily aside. "Do not be alarmed," he said. "Reassure your friend. Not a hint of last night's occurrences shall appear. I speak with the authority of the Ministry."

  "You know I'm completely in the dark."

  "So are the public. So they shall remain. You sometimes laugh at us in your democratic way for our little crowds, but they have their uses, you see."

  "But I don't know what has happened."

  "So far as the press of Neutralia is concerned, nothing happened."

  The Poet had shaved that morning and shaved ruthlessly. The face he thrust near Scott-King's was tufted with cotton-wool. Now he withdrew it and edged away. Scott-King joined the group of delegates.

  "Well," said Miss Bombaum, "I seem to have missed a whole packet of fun last night."

  "I seem to have missed it too."

  "And how's the head this morning?" asked the American scholar.

  "Seems like you had fun," said Miss Bombaum.

  "I went to bed early," said Scott-King coldly. "I was thoroughly over-tired."

  "Well, I've heard it called plenty of things in my time. I reckon that covers it too."

  Scott-King was an adult, an intellectual, a classical scholar, almost a poet; provident Nature who shields the slow tortoise and points the quills of the porcupine, has given to such tender spirits their appropriate armour. A shutter, an iron curtain, fell between Scott-King and these two jokers. He turned to the rest of the company and realized too late that jocularity was the least he had to fear. The Swiss had not been cordial the day before; this morning he was theatrical in his coldness; the Asiatic seemed to have spun himself a cocoon of silken aloofness. The assembled scholars did not positively cut Scott-King; in their several national fashions they signified that they were not unaware of Scott-King's presence amongst them. Further than this they did not go. They too had their shutters, their iron curtains. Scott-King was in disgrace. Something unmentionable had happened in which he was vicariously but inextricably implicated; a gross, black, inexpungible blot had fallen on Scott-King overnight.

  He did not wish to know more. He was an adult, an intellectual; he was all that has already been predicated of him. He was no chauvinist. Throughout six embattled years he had remained resolutely impartial. But now his hackles rose; quite literally he felt the roots of his sparse hairs prick and tingle. Like the immortal private of the Buffs he stood in Elgin's place; not untaught certainly, nor rude, nor abysmally low-born, but poor and, at the moment, reckless, bewildered and alone, a heart with English instinct fraught he yet could call his own.

  "I may have to keep the party waiting a few minutes," he said. "I must go and call on my colleague Mr. Whitemaid."

  He found him in bed looking strange rather than ill; almost exalted. He was still rather drunk. The windows stood wide open on to the balcony and on the balcony, modestly robed in bath towels, sat Miss Sveningen eating beefsteak.

  "They tell me downstairs that you are not coming with us to Simona?"

  "No. I'm not quite up to it this morning. I have things to attend to here. It is not easy for me to explain." He nodded towards the giant carnivore on the balcony.

  "You spent an agreeable evening?"

  "A total blank, Scott-King. I remember being with you at some kind of civic reception. I remember a fracas with the police, but that was much later. Hours must have intervened."

  "The police?"

  "Yes. At some kind of dancing place. Irma here was splendid—like something in a film. They went down like nine-pins. But for her I suppose I should be in a cell at this moment instead of happily consuming Bromo-Seltzer in your company."

  "You made a speech."

  "So I gather. You missed it? Then we shall never know what I said. Irma in her blunt way described it as long and impassioned but incomprehensible."

  "Was it about Bellorius?"

  "I rather suppose not. Love was uppermost in my mind, I think. To tell you the truth I have lost my interest in Bellorius. It was never strong. It wilted and died this morning when I learned that Irma was not of us. She has come for the Physical Training Congress."

  "I shall miss you."

  "Stay with us for the gymnastics."

  For a second Scott-King hesitated. The future at Simona was obscure and rather threatening.

  "There are to be five hundred female athletes. Contortionists perhaps from the Indies."

  "No," said Scott-King at length firmly. "I must keep faith with Bellorius."

  And he returned to the delegates who now sat impatiently in a charabanc at the doors of the Ritz.

  III

  The town of Simona stands within sight of the Mediterranean Sea on the foothills of the great massif which fills half the map of Neutralia. Groves of walnut and cork-oak, little orchards of almond and lemon, cover the surrounding country and grow to the foot of the walls which jut out among them in a series of sharp bastions, ingeniously contrived in the seventeenth century and never, in a long history of strife, put to the test of assault; for they enclose little of military significance. The medieval university, the baroque cathedral, twenty churches in whose delicate limestone belfries the storks build and multiply, a rococo square, two or three tiny shabby palaces, a market and a street of shops are all that can be found there and all that the heart of man can properly desire. The railway runs well clear of the town and betrays its presence only by rare puffs of white smoke among the treetops.

  At the hour of the angelus Scott-King sat with Dr. Bogdan Antonic at a café table on the ramparts.

  "I suppose Bellorius must have looked out on almost precisely the same prospect as we see today."

  "Yes, the buildings at least do not change. There is still the illusion of peace while, as in Bellorius's time, the hills behind us are a nest of brigands."

  "He alludes to them, I remember, in the eighth canto, but surely today? ..."

  "It is still the same. Now they call them by different names—partisans, resistance groups, unreconcilables, what you will. The effect is the same. You need police escort to travel many of the roads."

  They fell silent. In the course of the circuitous journey to Simona, sympathy had sprung up between Scott-King and the International Secretary.

  Bells deliciously chimed in the sunlit towers of twenty shadowy churches.

  At length Scott-King said: "You know I suspect that you and I are the only members of our party who have read Bellorius."

  "My own knowledge of him is slight. But Mr. Fu has written of him very feelingly, I believe, in demotic Cantonese. Tell me, Professor, do you think the celebration is a success?"

  "I'm not really a professor, you know."

  "No, but for the occasion all are professors. You are more professor than some who are here. I was obliged to cast my net rather wide to have all countries represented. Mr. Jungman, for example, is simply a gynaecologist from The Hague, and Miss Bombaum is I do not know what. The Argentine and the Peruvian are mere students who happened to be in the country at this time. I tell you these things because I trust you and because I think you suspect them already. You have not perceived an element of deception?"

  "Well, yes."

  "It is the wish of the Ministry. You see, I am their cultural adviser. They required a celebration this summer. I searched the records for an anniversary. I was in despair until by chance I hit on the name of Bellorius. They had not heard of him, of course, but then they would have been equally in the dark if he had been Dante or Goethe. I told them," said Dr. Antonic with a sad, sly, highly civilized little smile, "that he was one of the greatest figures of European letters."

  "So he should be."

  "You really think so? You do not find the whole thing a masquerade? You think it is a success? I hope so, for you see my position at the Ministry is far from secure. There is jealousy everywhere. Imagine it, that anyone should be jealous of me. But in the New Neutralia all are so eager to work. They would snap up my little post greedily. Dr. Arturo Fe would like it."

  "Surely not? He seems fully employed already."

  "That man collects government posts as in the old days churchmen collected benefices. He has a dozen already and he covets mine. That is why it is such a triumph to have brought him here. If the celebration is not a success, he will be implicated. Already, today, the Ministry have shown displeasure that the statue of Bellorius is not ready to be unveiled tomorrow. It is not our fault. It is the Office of Rest and Culture. It is the plot of an enemy named Engineer Garcia, who seeks to ruin Dr. Fe and to succeed him in some of his posts. But Dr. Fe will explain; he will improvise. He is of the country."

  Dr. Fe improvised next day.

  The party of savants were quartered in the main hotel of Simona, which that morning had the aspect of a wartime railway station owing to the arrival some time after midnight of fifty or sixty international philatelists for whom no accommodation had been arranged. They had slept in the lounge and hall; were, some of them, still sleeping when the Bellorius delegation assembled.

  This was the day set down in the programme for the unveiling of the Bellorius statue. Hoarding and scaffolding in the town square marked the site of the proposed monument, but it was already well known among the delegates that the statue had not arrived. They had lived by rumour during the past three days for nothing in their exhilarating experiences had quite corresponded with the printed plan. "They say the bus has gone back to Bellacita for new tyres."—"Have you heard we are to dine with the Lord Mayor?"—"I heard Dr. Fe say we should not leave till three o'clock." "I believe we ought all to be at the Chapter House" ... and so on. This was the atmosphere of the tour, and in it the social barriers which had threatened to divide them at Bellacita had quickly broken down. Whitemaid was forgotten, Scott-King found himself once more befriended, made part of a fellowship of bewilderment. They were two days on the road sleeping at places far from their original route; they were wined and feasted at unexpected hours, disconcertingly greeted by brass bands and deputations, disconcertingly left stranded in deserted squares; once they crossed paths and for several frantic hours exchanged luggage with a party of religious pilgrims; once they had two dinners within an hour of each other; once they had none. But here they were in the end where they should be, at Simona. The only absentee was Bellorius.