Olafsen greeted them with the keenest pleasure. “So you have not gone with the others, Boot? And you are now friends with Kätchen? Good, good. Sir Hitchcock, to present my distinguished colleague Boot of the London Beast.”
Sir Jocelyn was always cordial to fellow journalists, however obscure. “Drink up,” he said. “And have another. Sending much?”
“Nothing,” said William, “nothing seems to happen.”
“Why aren’t you with the bunch? You’re missing a grand trip. Mind you I don’t know they’ll get much of a story at Laku. Shouldn’t be surprised if they found the place empty already. But it’s a grand trip. Scenery, you know, and wild life. What are you drinking, Eriksen?”
“Olafsen. Thank you, some grenadine. That absinthe is very dangerous. It was so I killed my grandfather.”
“You killed your grandfather, Erik?”
“Yes, did you not know? I thought it was well known. I was very young at the time and had taken a lot of sixty per cent. It was with a chopper.”
“May we know, sir,” asked Sir Jocelyn skeptically, “how old you were when this thing happened?”
“Just seventeen. It was my birthday; that is why I had so much drink. So I came to live in Jacksonburg and now I drink this.” He raised, without relish, his glass of crimson syrup.
“Poor man,” said Kätchen.
“Which is poor man? Me or the grandfather?”
“I meant you.”
“Yes I am poor man. When I was very young I used often to be drunk. Now it is very seldom. Once or two times in the year. But always I do something I am very sorry for. I think perhaps I shall get drunk tonight,” he suggested, brightening.
“No, Erik, not tonight.”
“No? Very well not tonight. But it will be soon. It is very long since I was drunk.”
The confession shed a momentary gloom. All four sat in silence. Sir Jocelyn stirred himself and ordered some more absinthe.
“There were parrots, too,” he said with an effort. “All along the road to Laku. I never saw such parrots—green and red and blue and—every color you can think of, talking like mad. And gorillas.”
“Sir Hitchcock,” said the Swede. “I have lived in this country ever since I killed my grandfather and I never saw or heard of a gorilla.”
“I saw six,” said Sir Jocelyn stoutly, “sitting in a row.”
The Swede rose abruptly from his stool. “I do not understand,” he said. “So I think I shall go.” He paid for his grenadine and left them at the bar.
“Odd chap that,” said Sir Jocelyn. “Moody. Men get like that when they live in the tropics. I daresay it was all a delusion about his grandfather.”
There was food of a kind procurable at Popotakis’s Ping Pong Parlor. “Will you dine with me here,” asked Sir Jocelyn, “as it’s my last evening?”
“Your last evening?”
“Yes, I’ve been called away. Public interest in Ishmaelia is beginning to wane.”
“But nothing has happened yet.”
“Exactly. There was only one story for a special—my interview with the fascist leader. Of course it’s different with the Americans—fellows like Jakes. They have a different sense of news from us—personal stuff, you know. The job of an English special is to spot the story he wants, get it—then clear out and leave the rest to the agencies. The war will be ordinary routine reporting. Fleet Street have spent a lot on this already. They’ll have to find something to justify it and then they’ll draw in their horns. You take it from me. As soon as they get anything that smells like front page, they’ll start calling back their men. Personally I’m glad to have got my work over quick. I never did like the place.”
They dined at Popotakis’s and went to the station to see Hitchcock off. He had secured the single sleeping car which was reserved for official visitors and left in great good humor. “Goodbye, Boot, remember me to them at the Beast. I wonder how they are feeling now about having missed that Laku story?”
The train left and William found himself the only special correspondent in Jacksonburg.
*
He and Kätchen drove back. Kätchen said: “Frau Dressler was very angry again this afternoon.”
“Beast.”
“William you do like me?”
“I love you. I’ve told you so all day.”
“No you must not say that. My husband would not allow it. I mean, as a friend.”
“No, not as a friend.”
“Oh dear you make me so sad.”
“You’re crying.”
“No.”
“You are.”
“Yes. I am so sad you are not my friend. Now I cannot ask you what I wanted.”
“What?”
“No I cannot ask you. You do not love me as a friend. I was so lonely and when you came I thought everything was going to be happy. But now it is spoiled. It is so easy for you to think here is a foreign girl and her husband is away. No one will mind what happens to her… No, you are not to touch me. I hate you.”
William sat back silently in his corner.
“William.”
“Yes.”
“He is not going to the Pension Dressler. It is to the Swede again.”
“I don’t care.”
“But I am so tired.”
“So am I.”
“Tell him to go to the Pension Dressler.”
“I told him. It’s no good.”
“Very well. If you wish to be a beast…”
The Swede was still up, mending with patient, clumsy hands the torn backs of his hymn books. He put down the paste and scissors and came out to direct the taxi driver.
“It was not true what Sir Hitchcock said. There are no gorillas in this country. He cannot have seen six. Why does he say that?” His broad forehead was lined and his eyes wide with distress and bewilderment. “Why did he say that, Boot?”
“Perhaps he was joking.”
“Joking? I never thought of that. Of course, it was a joke. Ha, ha, ha. I am so glad. Now I understand. A joke.” He returned to his lighted study, laughing with relief and amusement. As he settled himself to work once more, he hummed a tune. One by one the tattered books were set in order, restored and fortified, and the Swede chuckled over Sir Jocelyn’s joke.
William and Kätchen drove home in complete silence. The night watchman flung open the gates and raised his spear in salute. While William was wrangling with the taxi driver, Kätchen slipped away to her own room. William undressed and lay among his heaps of luggage. His anger softened and turned to shame, then to a light melancholy; soon he fell asleep.
*
There was one large table in the Pension dining-room. Kätchen was sitting at its head, alone; she had pushed the plate away and put her coffee in its place between her bare elbows; she crouched over it, holding the cup in both hands; the saucer was full and drops of coffee formed on the bottom of the cup and splashed like tears. She did not answer when William wished her good morning. He went to the door and called across to the kitchen for his breakfast. It was five minutes in coming but still she did not speak or leave the table. Frau Dressler bustled through, on the way to her room, and returned laden with folded sheets. She spoke to Kätchen gruffly in German. Kätchen nodded. The cup dripped on the tablecloth. She put her hand down to hide the spot but Frau Dressler saw it and spoke again. Kätchen began to cry; she did not raise her head and the tears fell, some in the cup, some in the saucer, some on the tablecloth.
William said, “Kätchen… Kätchen darling, what’s the matter?”
“I have no handkerchief.”
He gave her his. “What did Frau Dressler say?”
“She was angry because I have made the tablecloth dirty. She said why did I not help with the washing.” She dabbed her face and the tablecloth with William’s handkerchief.
“I am afraid I was very disagreeable last night.”
“Yes, why were you like that? It had been so nice until then. Perhaps it was the Pernod. Wh
y were you like that, William?”
“Because I love you.”
“I have told you you are not to say that… My husband has been away for six weeks. When he left he said he would return in a month or at the most six weeks. It is six weeks this morning. I am very worried what may have become of him… I have been with him for two years now.”
“Kätchen there’s something I must ask you. Don’t be angry. It’s very important to me. Is he really your husband?”
“But of course he is. It is just that he has gone away for his work.”
“I mean, were you married to him properly in church?”
“No, not in church.”
“At a government office then?”
“No. You see it was not possible because of his other wife in Germany.”
“He has another wife then?”
“Yes, in Germany, but he hates her. I am his real wife.”
“Does Frau Dressler know about the other wife?”
“Yes, that is why she treats me so impolitely. The German Consul told her after my husband had gone away. There was a question of my papers. They would not register me at the German Consulate.”
“But you are German?”
“My husband is German so I am German, but there is a difficulty with my papers. My father is Russian and I was born in Buda-Pest.”
“Is your mother German?”
“Polish.”
“Where is your father now?”
“I think he went to South America to look for my mother after she went away. But why do you ask me so many questions when I am unhappy? You are worse than Frau Dressler. It is not your tablecloth. You do not have to pay if it is dirty.”
She left William alone at the breakfast table.
*
Twelve miles out of town Corker and Pigge were also at breakfast.
“I never slept once,” said Corker. “Not a wink, the whole night. Did you hear the lions?”
“Hyenas,” said Pigge.
“Hyenas laugh. These were lions or wolves. Almost in the tent.” They sat beside their lorry drinking soda-water and eating sardines from a tin. The cook and the cook’s boy, the driver and the driver’s boy, Corker’s boy and Pigge’s boy, were all heavily asleep in the lorry under a pile of blankets and tarpaulin.
“Six black bloody servants and no breakfast,” said Corker bitterly.
“They were up all night making whoopee round the fire. Did you hear them?”
“Of course I heard them. Singing and clapping. I believe they’d got hold of our whisky. I shouted to them to shut up and they said, @Must have fire. Many bad
[email protected]’
“Yes, hyenas.”
“Lions.”
“We’ve got to get the lorry out of the mud, somehow. I suppose the rest of the bunch are half way to Laku by now.”
“I didn’t think it of them,” said Corker, bitterly. “Going past us like that without a bloody word. Shumble I can understand, but Whelper and the Excelsior Movie-News bunch… With that great lorry of theirs they could have towed us out in five minutes. What have they got to be competitive about?… and those two photographers I gave up half my room to at the hotel—just taking a couple of shots of us and then driving off. Two white men, alone, in a savage country… it makes one despair of human nature…”
*
The preceding day had been one of bitter experience.
Within quarter of a mile of the city the metaled strip had come to an end and the road became a mud-track. For four hours the lorry had crawled along at walking pace, lurching, sticking and skidding; they had forged through a swollen stream which washed the undercarriage; they had been thrown from side to side of the cab; the binding of the stores had broken and Pigge’s typewriter had fallen into the mud behind them to be retrieved, hopelessly injured, by the grinning cook’s boy. It had been an abominable journey.
Presently the track had lost all semblance of unity and split into a dozen diverging and converging camel paths, winding at the caprice of the beasts who had made them, among thorn and rock and anthills in a colorless, muddy plain. Here, without warning, the back wheels had sunk to their axles and here the lorry had stayed while the caravan it had led disappeared from view. Tents had been pitched and the fire lighted. The cook, opening some tins at random, had made them a stew of apricots and curry powder and turtle soup and tunny fish, which in the final analysis had tasted predominantly of benzene.
In bitter cold they had sat at the tent door, while Pigge tried vainly to repair his typewriter and Corker, struck with nostalgia, composed a letter to his wife; at eight they had retired to their sleeping bags and lain through the long night while their servants caroused outside.
Corker surveyed the barren landscape and the gathering storm clouds, the mud-bound lorry, the heap of crapulous black servants, the pasty and hopeless face of Pigge, the glass of soda-water and the jagged tin of fish. “It makes one despair of human nature,” he said again.
*
It was some days since William had seen Bannister so he drove out that morning to the Consulate. There was the usual cluster of disconsolate Indians round the door. Bannister sent them away, locked the office and took William across the garden to his house for a drink.
“Looking for news?” he asked. “Well the Minister’s got a tea-party on Thursday. D’you want to come?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll get them to bung you a card. It’s the worst day of the year for us. Everyone in the place comes who’s got a clean collar. It’s the public holiday in honor of the end of the rainy season and it always pours.”
“D’you think you could ask a German girl at my boarding-house. She’s rather lonely.”
“Well, frankly Lady G. isn’t very keen on lonely German girls. But I’ll see. Is that why you didn’t go off on that wild goose chase to Laku? You’re wise. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if there weren’t some rather sensational happenings here in a day or two.”
“The war?”
“No, there’s nothing in that. But things are looking queer in the town. I can’t tell you more, but if you want a hint look out for that Russian I told you about and watch your friend Doctor Benito. What’s the girl’s name?”
“Well I’m not sure about her surname. There’s some difficulty about her papers.”
“Doesn’t sound at all Lady G.”s cup of tea. Is she pretty?”
“Lovely.”
“Then I think you can count her off the Legation list. Paleologue’s been trying to interest me in a lovely German girl for weeks. I expect it’s her. Bring her along to dinner here one evening.”
*
Kätchen was delighted with the invitation. “But we must buy a dress,” she said. “There is an Armenian lady who has a very pretty one—bright green. She has never worn it because she bought it by mail and she has grown too fat. She asked fifty American dollars. I think if she were paid at once it would be cheaper.” She had become cheerful again. “Wait,” she said. “I have something to show you.”
She ran to her room and returned with a sodden square of bandana silk. “Look, I have been doing some washing after all. It is your handkerchief. I do not need it now. I have stopped crying for today. We will go and play ping-pong and then see the Armenian lady’s green dress.”
After luncheon Bannister telephoned. “We’ve had a cable about you from London.”
“Good God, why?”
“The Beast have been worrying the F.O. Apparently they think you’ve been murdered. Why don’t you send them some news.”
“I don’t know any.”
“Well for heavens sake invent some. The Minister will go crazy if he has any more bother with the newspapers. We get about six telegrams a day from the coast. Apparently there’s a bunch of journalists there trying to get up and the Ishmaelite frontier authorities won’t let them through. Two of them are British unfortunately. And now the Liberals are asking questions in the House of Commons and are worrying his life out as it is about some infern
al nonsense of a concentration of fascist troops at Laku.”
William returned to his room and sat for a long time before his typewriter. It was over a week now since he had communicated with his employers, and his failure weighed heavily on him. He surveyed the events of the day, of all the last days. What would Corker have done?
Finally, with one finger, he typed a message. PLEASE DONT WORRY QUITE SAFE AND WELL IN FACT RATHER ENJOYING THINGS WEATHER IMPROVING WILL CABLE AGAIN IF THERE IS ANY NEWS YOURS BOOT.
*
It was late afternoon in London; at Copper House secretaries were carrying cups of tea to the more leisured departments; in Mr. Salter’s office there was tension and consternation.
“Weather improving,” said Mr. Salter. “Weather improving. He’s been in Jacksonburg ten days and all he can tell us is that the weather is improving.”
“I’ve got to write a first leader on the Ishmaelite question,” said the first leader-writer. “Lord Copper says so. I’ve got to wring the withers of the Government. What do I know about it? What have I got to go on? What are special correspondents for? Why don’t you cable this Boot and wake him up?”
“How many times have we cabled Boot?” asked the Foreign Editor.
“Daily for the first three days, Mr. Salter,” said his secretary. “Then twice a day. Three times yesterday.”
“You see.”
“And in the last message we mentioned Lord Copper’s name,” added the secretary.
“I never felt Boot was really suited to the job,” said Mr. Salter mildly. “I was very much surprised when he was chosen. But he’s all we’ve got. It would take three weeks to get another man out there and by that time anything may have happened.”
“Yes, the weather may have got still better,” said the first leader-writer, bitterly. He gazed out of the window; it opened on a tiled, resonant well; he gazed at a dozen drain pipes; he gazed straight into the office opposite, where the Art Editor was having tea; he gazed up to the little patch of sky and down to the concrete depths where a mechanic was washing his neck at a cold tap; he gazed with eyes of despair.