The opposition to the pageant was firm and widespread.
The Conservative Party rallied under the leadership of the Earl of Ngumo. This nobleman, himself one of a family of forty-eight (most of whom he had been obliged to assassinate on his succession to the title), was the father of over sixty sons and uncounted daughters. This progeny was a favourite boast of his; in fact, he maintained a concert party of seven minstrels for no other purpose than to sing at table about this topic when he entertained friends. Now in ripe age, with his triumphs behind him, he found himself like some scarred war veteran surrounded by pacifists, his prestige assailed and his proudest achievements held up to vile detraction. The new proposals struck at the very roots of sport and decency and he expressed the general feeling of the landed gentry when he threatened amid loud grunts of approval to dismember any man on his estates whom he found using the new-fangled and impious appliances.
The smart set, composed (under the leadership of Lord Boaz) of cosmopolitan blacks, courtiers, younger sons and a few of the decayed Arab intelligentsia, though not actively antagonistic, were tepid in their support; they discussed the question languidly in Fifi’s salon and, for the most part, adopted a sophisticated attitude maintaining that of course they had always known about these things, but Why invite trouble by all this publicity; at best it would only make contraception middle-class. In any case this circle was always suspect to the popular mind and their allegiance was unlikely to influence public opinion in the Emperor’s favour.
The Churches came out strong on the subject. No one could reasonably accuse the Nestorian Patriarch of fanatical moral inflexibility — indeed there had been incidents in his Beatitude’s career when all but grave scandal had been caused to the faithful — but whatever his personal indulgence, his theology had always been unimpeachable. Whenever a firm lead was wanted on a question of opinion, the Patriarch had been willing to forsake his pleasures and pronounce freely and intransigently for the tradition he had inherited. There had been the ugly affair of the Metropolitan of Matodi who had proclaimed himself fourth member of the Trinity; there was the parish priest who was unsound about the Dual Will; there was the ridiculous heresy that sprang up in the province of Mhomala that the prophet Esaias had wings and lived in a tree; there was the painful case of the human sacrifices at the Bishop of Popo’s consecration — on all these and other uncertain topics the Patriarch had given proof of a sturdy orthodoxy.’
Now, on the question of Birth Control, his Beatitude left the faithful in no doubt as to where their duty lay. As head of the Established Church he called a conference which was attended by the Chief Rabbi, the Mormon Elder and the chief representatives of all the creeds of the Empire; only the Anglican Bishop excused himself, remarking in a courteous letter of refusal, that his work lay exclusively among the British community who, since they were already fully informed and equipped in the matter, could scarcely be injured in any way by the Emperor’s new policy; he wished his Beatitude every success in the gallant stand he was making for the decencies of family life, solicited his prayers and remarked that he was himself too deeply embroiled with the progressive party, who were threatening the demolition of his Cathedral, to confuse the issue with any other cause, however laudable it might be in itself.
As a result of the conference, the Patriarch composed an encyclical in rich, oratorical style and dispatched copies of it by runners to all parts of the island. Had the influence of the Established Church on the popular mind been more weighty, the gala should have been doomed, but, as has already been mentioned, the Christianizing of the country was still so far incomplete that the greater part of the Empire retained with a minimum of disguise their older and grosser beliefs, and it was, in fact, from the least expected quarter, the tribesmen and villagers, that the real support of Seth’s policy suddenly appeared.
This development was due directly and solely to the power of advertisement. In the dark days when the prejudice of his people compassed him on every side and even Basil spoke unsympathetically of the wisdom of postponing the gala, the Emperor found among the books that were mailed to him monthly from Europe a collection of highly inspiring Soviet posters. At first the difficulties of imitation appeared to be insuperable. The Courier office had no machinery for reproducing pictures. Seth was contemplating the wild expedient of employing slave labour to copy his design when Mr Youkoumian discovered that some years ago an enterprising philanthropist had by bequest introduced lithography into the curriculum of the American Baptist school. The apparatus survived the failure of the attempt. Mr Youkoumian purchased it from the pastor and resold it at a fine profit to the Department of Fine Arts in the Ministry of Modernization. An artist was next found in the Armenian colony who, on Mr Youkoumian’s introduction, was willing to elaborate Seth’s sketches. Finally there resulted a large, highly coloured poster well calculated to convey to the illiterate the benefits of birth control. It was in many ways the highest triumph of the new Ministry and Mr Youkoumian was the hero. Copies were placarded all over Debra Dowa; they were sent down the line to every station latrine, capital and coast; they were sent into the interior to vice-regal lodges and headmen’s huts, hung up at prisons, barracks, gallows and juju trees, and wherever the poster was hung there assembled a cluster of inquisitive, entranced Azanians.
It portrayed two contrasted scenes. On one side a native hut of hideous squalor, overrun with children of every age, suffering from every physical incapacity — crippled, deformed, blind, spotted and insane; the father prematurely aged with paternity squatted by an empty cook-pot; through the door could be seen his wife, withered and bowed with child-bearing, desperately hoeing at their inadequate crop. On the other side a bright parlour furnished with chairs and table; the mother, young and beautiful, sat at her ease eating a huge slice of raw meat; her husband smoked a long Arab hubble-bubble (still a caste mark of leisure throughout the land), while a single healthy child sat between them reading a newspaper. Inset between the two pictures was a detailed drawing of some up-to-date contraceptive apparatus and the words in Sakuyu: WHICH HOME DO YOU CHOOSE?
Interest in the pictures was unbounded; all over the island woolly heads were nodding, black hands pointing, tongues clicking against filed teeth in unsyntactical dialects. Nowhere was there any doubt about the meaning of the beautiful new pictures.
See: on right hand: there is rich man: smoke pipe like big chief: but his wife she no good; sit eating meat: and rich man no good: he only one son.
See: on left hand: poor man: not much to eat: but his wife she very good, work hard in field: man he good too: eleven children: one very mad, very holy. And in the middle: Emperor’s juju. Make you like that good man with eleven children.
And as a result, despite admonitions from squire and vicar, the peasantry began pouring into town for the gala, eagerly awaiting initiation to the fine new magic of virility and fecundity.
Once more, wrote Basil Seal, in a leading article in the Courier, the people of the Empire have overridden the opposition of a prejudiced and interested minority, and with no uncertain voice ha ye followed the Emperor’s lead in the cause of Progress and the New Age.
So brisk was the demand for the Emperor’s juju that some time before the day of the carnival Mr Youkoumian was frantically cabling to Cairo for fresh supplies.
Meanwhile the Nestorian Patriarch became a very frequent guest at the French Legation.
‘We have the army, we have the Church,’ said M. Ballon. ‘All we need now is a new candidate for the throne.’
‘If you ask me,’ said Basil, one morning soon after the distribution of the poster, ‘loyalty to the throne is one of the hardest parts of our job.’
‘Oh, gosh, Mr Seal, don’t you ever say a thing like that. I seen gentlemen poisoned dead for less. What’s ‘e done now?’
‘Only this.’ He handed Mr Youkoumian a chit which had just arrived from the Palace: For your information and necessary action, I have decided to abolish the following:
/> Death penalty.
Marriage.
The Sakuyu language and all native dialects.
Infant mortality.
Totemism.
Inhuman butchery.
Mortgages..
Emigration.
Please see to this. Also organize system of reservoirs for city’s water supply and draft syllabus for competitive examination for public services. Suggest compulsory Esperanto. Seth.
“E’s been reading books again, Mr Seal, that’s what it is;
You won’t get no peace from ‘im not till you fix ‘im with a woman. Why can’t ‘e drink or something?’
In fact, the Ministry’s triumph in the matter of Birth Control was having highly embarrassing consequences. If before, Basil and Mr Youkoumian had cause to lament their master’s tenacity and singleness of purpose, they were now harassed from the opposite extreme of temperament. It was as though Seth’s imagination like a volcanic lake had in the moment of success become suddenly swollen by the irruption of unsuspected subterranean streams until it darkened and seethed and overflowed its margins in a thousand turbulent cascades. The earnest and rather puzzled young man became suddenly capricious and volatile; ideas bubbled up within him, bearing to the surface a confused sediment of phrase and theory, scraps of learning half understood and fantastically translated.
‘It’s going to be awkward for us if the Emperor goes off his rocker.’
‘Oh my, Mr Seal, you do say the most damned dangerous things.’
That afternoon Basil called at the Palace to discuss the new proposals, only to. find that since his luncheon the Emperor’s interests had veered suddenly towards archaeology.
‘Yes, yes, the abolitions. I sent you a list this morning, I think. It is a mere matter of routine. I leave the details to the Ministry. Only you must be quick, please … it is not that which I want to discuss with you now. It is our Museum.’
‘Museum?’
‘Yes, of course we must have a Museum. I have made a few notes to guide you. The only serious difficulty is accommodation. You see, it must be inaugurated before the arrival of the Cruelty ‘ to Animals Commission at the beginning of next month. There is hardly time to build a house for it. The best thing will be to confiscate one of the town palaces. Ngumo’s or Boaz’s would do after some slight adjustments. But that is a matter for the Ministry to decide. On the ground floor will be the natural history section. You will collect examples of all the flora and fauna of the Empire — lions, butterflies, birds’ eggs, specimens of woods, everything. That should easily fill the ground floor. I have been reading,’ he added earnestly, ‘about ventilation. That is very important. The air in the cases must be continually renewed — a cubic metre an hour is about the right draught — otherwise the specimens suffer. You will make a careful note of that. Then on the first floor will be the anthropological and historical section — examples of native craft, Portuguese and Arab work, a small library. Then in the Central Hall, the relics of the Royal House. I have some of the medals of Amurath upstairs under one of the beds in a box — photographs of myself, some of my uniforms, the cap and gown I wore at Oxford, the model of the Eiffel Tower which I brought back from Paris. I will lend some pages of manuscript in my own hand to be exhibited. It will be most interesting.’
For some days Mr Youkoumian busied himself with the collection of specimens. Word went round that there was a market for objects of interest at the Ministry of Modernization and the work of the office was completely paralysed by the hawkers of all races who assembled in and around it, peddling brass pots ‘ and necklaces of carved nut, snakes in baskets and monkeys in cages, cloth of beaten bark and Japanese cotton, sacramental vessels pouched by Nestorian deacons, iron-wood clubs, homely household deities, tanned human scalps, cauls and navel strings and wonder-working fragments of meteorite, amulets to ward off the evil eye from camels, M. Ballon’s masonic apron purloined by the Legation butler, and a vast, monolithic phallus borne by three oxen from a shrine in the interior. Mr Youkoumian bargained briskly and bought almost everything he was offered, reselling them later to the Ministry of Fine Arts of which Basil had created him the director. But when, at a subsequent interview, Basil mentioned their progress to the Emperor he merely nodded a listless approval, and even while he unscrewed the cap of his fountain pen to sign the order evicting the Earl of Ngumo from his town house, began to speak of the wonders of astronomy.
‘Do you realize the magnitude of the fixed stars? They are immense. I have read a book which says that the mind boggles at their distances. I did not know that word, boggles. I am immediately founding an Institute for Astronomical Research. I must have Professors. Cable for them to Europe. Get me tiptop professors, the best procurable.’
But next day he was absorbed in ectogenesis. ‘I have read here,’ he said, ‘tapping a volume of speculative biology, ‘that there is to be no more birth. The ovum is fertilized in the laboratory and then the foetus is matured in bottles. It is a splendid idea. Get me some of those bottles … and no boggling.’
Even while discussing the topic that immediately interested him, he would often break off in the middle of a sentence, with an irrelevant question. ‘How much are auto-gyros?’ or ‘Tell me exactly, please, what is Surrealism?’ or ‘Are you convinced of Dreyfus’ innocence?’ and then, without pausing for the reply, would resume his adumbrations of the New Age.
The days passed rapturously for Mr Youkoumian who had found, in the stocking of the Museum, work for which early training and all his natural instincts richly equipped him; he negotiated endlessly between the Earl of Ngumo and Viscount Boaz, armed with orders for the dispossession of the lowest bidder; he bought and resold, haggled, flattered and depreciated, and ate and slept in a clutter of dubious antiques. But on Basil the strain of modernity began to leave its traces. Brief rides with Prudence through the tinder-dry countryside, assignations furtively kept and interrupted at a moment’s notice by some peremptory, crazy summons to the Palace, alone broke the unquiet routine of his day.
‘I believe that odious Emperor is slowly poisoning you. It’s a thing he does do,’ said Prudence. ‘And I never saw anyone look so ill.’
‘You know it sounds absurd, but I miss Connolly. It’s rather a business living all the time between Seth and Youkoumian.’
‘Of course, you wouldn’t remember that there’s me too, would you?’ said Prudence. ‘Not just to cheer me up, you wouldn’t.’
‘You’re a grand girl, Prudence. What Seth calls tiptop. But I’m so tired I could die.’
And a short distance away the Legation syce moodily flicked with his whip at a train of ants while the ponies shifted restlessly among the stones and shelving earth of a dry watercourse.
Two mornings later the Ministry of Modernization received its sharpest blow. Work was going on as usual. Mr Youkoumian was interviewing a coast Arab who claimed to possess some ‘very old, very genuine’ Portuguese manuscripts; Basil, pipe in his mouth, was considering how best to deal with the Emperor’s latest memorandum, Kindly insist straw hats and gloves compulsory peerage, when he received an unexpected and disturbing call from Mr Jagger, the contractor in charge of the demolition of the Anglican Cathedral; a stocky, good-hearted little Britisher who after a succession of quite honourable bankruptcies in Cape ‘ Town, Mombasa, Dar-es-Salaam and Aden had found his way to Debra Dowa where he had remained ever since, occupied with minor operations in the harbour and along the railway line. He threaded’ his way through the antiquities which had lately begun to encroach on Basil’s office, removed a seedy—looking caged vulture from the chair and sat down; his manner was uncertain and defiant.
‘It’s not playing the game, Mr Seal,’ he said. ‘I tell you that fair and square and I don’t mind who knows it, not if it’s the Emperor himself.’
‘Mr Jagger,’ said Basil impressively, ‘you should have been long enough in this country to know that that is a very rash thing to say. Men have been poisoned for less. What is your trouble?’ br />
‘This here’s my trouble,’ said Mr Jagger, producing a piece of paper from a pocket full of pencils and foot rules and laying it on the table next to the mosaic portrait of the late Empress recently acquired by the Director of Fine Arts. ‘What is it, eh, that’s what I want to know?’
‘What indeed?’ said Basil. He picked it up and examined it closely.
In size, shape and texture it resembled an English five-pound note and was printed on both sides with intricate engraved devices of green and red. There was an Azanian eagle, a map of the Empire, a soldier in the uniform of the Imperial Guard, an aeroplane and a classical figure bearing a cornucopia, but the most prominent place was taken by a large medallion portrait of Seth in top hat and European tail coat. The words Five Pounds lay in flourished script across the middle; above them THE IMPERIAL BANK OF AZANIA and below them a facsimile of Seth’s signature.
The normal currency of the capital and the railway was in Indian rupees, although East African shillings, French and Belgian colonial francs and Maria Theresa thalers circulated with equal freedom; in the interior the mediums of exchange were rock-salt and cartridges.
‘This is a new one on me,‘ said Basil. ‘I wonder if the Treasury know anything about it. Mr Youkoumian, come in here a minute, will you?’
The Director of Fine Arts and First Lord of the Treasury trotted through the partition door in his black cotton socks; he carried a model dhow he had just acquired.
‘No, Mr Seal,’ he pronounced, ‘I ain’t never seen a thing like that before. Where did the gentleman get it?’
‘The Emperor’s just given me a whole packet of them for the week’s wages bill. What is the Imperial Bank of Azania, anyway? I never see such a thing all the time I been in the country. There’s something here that’s not on the square. You must understand, Mr Seal, that it’s not anyone’s job breaking up that Cathedral. Solid granite shipped all the way from Aberdeen. Why, Lord love you, the pulpit alone weighs seven and a half ton. I had two boys hurt only this morning through the font swinging loose as they were hoisting it into a lorry. Smashed up double one of them was. The Emperor ain’t got no right to try putting that phoney stuff across me.’