The U.N. Adviser liked to drive his own small car (D666) to and from work, leaving the flagged and chauffeur-driven official monster to his wife, one of whose few pleasures, poor woman, was to queen it. He splashed through his dismal realm (how sordid the shop-houses, the box-like offices of the trading companies, the stucco police station) towards the river-road and the hill, the swishing wiper swabbing in vain, himself hot and headachy in the airless rain-beseiged car, home to luncheon. There would be guests; nearly every day there were guests – American travel-book writers, Gauguin-style painters, missionaries, district officers making reports, wild-life-protection cranks, birth control propagandists, members of the town community pricked off from a roster. The U.N. Adviser would have preferred bread and cheese and bottled beer in his office, but he had a strong sense of duty and was adept at the false welcoming smile and the hearty handshake. He tried out the false smile now like a pocket torch as he passed the Sailing Club and climbed to the widespaced suburb whose crown was the Residency. On his right was the rising river, opening out to the estuary, and beyond the river the river village, stilts of the houses on the river-fringe already thigh-deep in water. There was really nothing to smile at, even falsely. Yet what was there in life? You looked forward to leave and Piccadilly Circus and the shows whose tunes your daughter played on the Residency gramophone, and at home you were called "mate" by jostling workmen and your wife was insulted by teddy-boys, and you wanted to be back out here again, sweating and longing for Regent Street and the shows whose tunes your daughter played on the Residency gramophone. The U.N. Adviser, as the car climbed, uttered a strange word: "Reality". This term was to be his last; his application for a further term, a postponement of retirement and Piccadilly Circus always only a two hours' drive away, had been inexplicably refused. He was going to face reality at last, and he had nothing to face it with. Nothing, except his pension and the small house on the South Coast, his wife and his unmarriageable daughter. He was going to become a stock type of the stage, a cut above the blistered Anglo-Indian colonel who already belonged to the past, but fit only for the justices' bench and the rose-garden and the band-performance on the pier. And he would become really deaf, not just hard of hearing, and the band on the pier would mean little, and he would have to ask police witnesses to speak up. He would have to live inside his own head, a head furnished with monotonous jungle and river, and listen to voices half-remembered speaking languages despised by the humanists of the West.
The Residency had a vast hilly garden full of hibiscus, orchids, canna lilies, flame of the forest, and other gaudy but scentless blooms of Africa. It had a swimming pool, a private jetty at the foot of a stone stairway, two small guesthouses. In the porch of this house (built for the Colonial Resident in 1911, vaster but much shabbier than the dwellings of his subordinates) the official car was parked, and clustered about were the cars of some of the luncheon guests. The U.N. Adviser was obliged to park some yards from the house, and, getting out, he plunged into the vertical river of the rain, which soaked his head and his shirt and his bow-tie and his trousers, while he trod deep water in a rut of the drive. He cursed a word: "Reality." Entering, he saw himself in the cheval-glass in the hall: tall, with all his hair, not yet paunched, a school prefect grown up. To his right was the open sitting-room, closed in today from the rain with striped blinds, and in it people were drinking weak cocktails (this was a working day). His wife presided, speaking loudly as befitted a U.N. Adviser's lady. Her vowels were patrician enough, but odd lapses of grammar (the U.N. Adviser heard distinctly "Between you and I") betrayed her lower middle-class origins. He had met her in Harrod's, when she was a salesgirl of gramophone records, he still a cadet in the Shurga Civil Service. And now she said, "Ah, here is Mr. Tomlin," though she was not speaking to servants, was not an American, was not a Jane Austen wife. Mr. Tomlin hesitated, wondering whether to change his clothes, but his wife called brightly. "Come on in, dear. Ahmad is getting you a pink gin."
The U.N. Adviser looked at his guests with a sinking heart. They had risen, holding their shallow cocktail glasses with care, fingering their ties, trying to smile. One of the guests was black, bearded, long-haired, true to the party vow not to shave till the day of independence. But he was no mere party member; he was the party – Patu, author of The Coming Day of Power (not yet published; manuscript in the hands of the State police) and of a sheaf of inflammatory pamphlets printed in Nairobi. He grinned viciously as the U.N. Adviser gave him his hand, spilling, in the force of the shake, some of his tomato juice on the carpet (he was a Moslem), where it lay like blood. The U.N. Adviser's head, which all the morning had toyed with the prospect of aching, now tossed a coin and settled stoically to a megrim. For here, next to Patu, was Nando Tasca ("Just think, Jim," said Mrs. Tomlin, "he actually knows the manager of that little albergo in Piombino where we stayed.") and Nando Tasca, over a flabby hand, said, "A please a to meet a you." There were two other guests: a District Adviser with incipient D.T.s, called Rowlandson; a Czech painter from Asmara who was going to hold an exhibition in Dunia Town. Everybody sat down again, and Nando Tasca said, "This a very nice a ouse. I not be in your a ouse before. When you tell me I not a do a right you a tell a me in your office. I think you not a like a me. But now a I know you a like a me because you ave a me ere in your a ouse. We a friends a now. That a very good." Rowlandson's cocktail glass clattered against his teeth; he looked furtively behind him and at the curtains, as though fearful that enemies might lurk beyond. But from behind the curtains came only Penelope, the daughter of the U.N. Adviser. Eighteen, weedy from an African upbringing, she danced in in a mauve cotton dress that was fussy with frills; her yellow hair, clawed at by the damp heat, was growing piebald; the mauve of her garment did nothing for her complexion; her nose was long, her spectacles had tortoise-shell rims. But Nando Tasca was gallant. "You a daughter," he said, "a very a beautiful. Like a mother." The mother simpered, rocking her bulk on the rattan chair. She showed dimples, saying, "Oh, Mr. Tasca." Penelope sat down next to her father, ruffled his hair and said, "Dear Daddy," and leaned forward, hands on her shins, face shining, with a young girl's eagerness to hear more compliments.
"I ave a daughter," said Nando Tasca. "Back a in a Italy. She a good a girl. Elp a mother in a ouse. Not like a son. E a no good. E a bad a boy a to is a father."
“And when is your er,” said the U.N. Adviser. "That is to say, when are you showing your er? Mr. er?"
The Czech painter rose, said "Smetana" fiercely, sat down again. "I shall hold my exhibition in the Rest House on Tuesday and. Wednesday," he said. He had fiery hair and bad teeth. His suit had been made by an Aden tailor. His hands on his knees were tense, knuckle-bones gleaming in the rainy light. "I hope you will buy. It is the duty of those in authority to encourage art." He looked at the one wall (the other three sides of the big room were veranda) and said, "These pictures you have do not set a good artistic example. That, for example." He nodded fiercely at a washed-out English landscape, boarding-house greens. "Inept in composition, insipid in colour. That is not good artistic taste. It does no credit to you and the ruling class." He fiercely flicked his head as if to spit at the picture.
"My daughter," said the U.N. Adviser. "That is to say, my daughter painted it."
"Oh, Daddy," said Penelope, "you shouldn't have. I mean, I was only just learning when I did that." She blushed and squirmed. Her mother smiled uncertainly.
"It not a right," said Nando Tasca to Mr. Smetana, "to say a thing like a that in other people's ouse. It a rude."
"An artistic judgment is an artistic judgment," said Mr. Smetana. "That vase over there is also in bad taste. I would say the same if you had that vase in your house, and, if I should turn so moronic as to have such a vase in my house and you developed, which is perhaps not likely, sufficiently sound artistic judgment to be able to assess the artistic qualities of that vase correctly, I should not be offended if you said it was in bad taste, as I have just said."
Nando Tasca understood little of this. He said, "I not a have a you in a my ouse. In a the war we ave a foreign men in Italy. I not ave a one in my ouse. They not a ave good a manners. I not a ave a you in a my ouse so you not a say what you a say just a now."
"I think," said Mrs. Tomlin, "that lunch is ready. And Mr. Tomlin has to go back to the office at two. Ah," she smiled as a white-coated servant hovered at the dining room door, "is lunch ready yet, Ahmad?"
"Five more minute. Electric cut off." The servant showed neither regret nor satisfaction.
"Please," said Rowlandson. He held up his shaking glass pleadingly. He was youngish, colourless, lank-moustached. He had had a bad time in his district where, according to his report, cannibalism and head-hunting had recently been revived. "Please, could I have another? In a bigger glass, so I can have more water?"
"Ahmad's gone," said Mrs. Tomlin. "It hardly seems worth while to call him. After all, lunch is nearly ready."
"I'll help myself," said Rowlandson. Unshakily he made for the bar and the glint of bottles.
"Rowlandson," said the U.N. Adviser, "I don't think it advisable, if you want my advice. You'd be better off with some food in your stomach."
"I've wanted this opportunity," said Patu with sudden urgency. "You never seem available when I come to your office." The U.N. Adviser watched uneasily while Rowlandson, whimpering with relief, slopped gin into a beerglass. His first job that afternoon, he thought grimly, would be to chastise his secretary, one of whose duties it was to issue luncheon invitations.
"I could a do with a one glass a beer," said Nando Tasca. "This weather make a very a thirsty. You tell me where a ice-box and I a get."
"I'm afraid I don't know where it is," said Mrs. Tomlin queenlily. "I leave all that to the servants."
"If you a my a wife," said Nando Tasca roguishly, his piggy blue eyes wrinkling up, "you a not ave a no servants. We a live in a little ouse and you a cook a for me. Every morning you go to a market and all a the men they a whistle to a see you. They say a Nando Tasca very a lucky man a ave a wife so a beautiful. But not a possible," he sighed. "You already ave a usband. Very good a man. Very beautiful a daughter. Nando Tasca ave a no luck."
"It's this question," said Patu, his beard wagging fast, "of an entry permit for Bastians. Why won't you let him in? He's been to our party conferences before. It's only right that our own movement here should keep in touch with what's happening in other places. Bastians is a very good man, a very fine speaker, he has a fine revolutionary record. I can tell you, my own party is going to take this very hard. This is undemocratic, repressive, tyrannical."
"You really ought," said the U.N. Adviser, with almost no voice, "to come and see me officially." Rowlandson was drinking on his own at the bar, a gin bottle in his left hand. "Although it won't do any good, you know."
"I've tried five, six times," said Patu. "They won't let me in. Is that justice? Is that democratic?"
"He's politically undesirable," said the U.N. Adviser.
"He nearly caused a riot in Colombo. We're not having him. I'm not really prepared to discuss the matter further."
"He's only coming for one day," said Patu. "Is this Western justice?"
"You not a worry," said Nando Tasca. "It a no trouble. Ice-box must a be in a kitchen. Kitchen must a be through a there." He pointed to the dining-room. "Nando Tasca can a not ave a beautiful a wife. Nando Tasca ave instead a one bottle a cold a beer." He marched off sturdily. He paused at the dining-room door to wave his hand at Mrs. Tomlin. Then he did a little dance-step and, with a stage tenor's wide gestures, sang one or two bars of "Celeste Aida". Then, with a bow, he was gone. The servant came through to announce lunch, but a far voice said, "You wait a one a minute. Not a urry. One bottle cold a beer." The servant looked at Mrs. Tomlin, mouth open, undecided.
"Two more minutes," said Mrs. Tomlin. "This Italian charm," she said to her daughter. Smetana was gloomily wandering the room, picking up objets d'art and sneering at them.
"I have to get back, you know," said the U.N. Adviser, looking at his watch. "Shouldn't we eat now?"
The Czech turned, frowned, said, "Eat, yes, eat. You invited me here to eat. Even artists must eat, though the world thinks not." In the U.N. Adviser's head, megrim-racked, great express trains began to approach in thunder.
"Oh," he said, "you must eat, must you? Put that thing down," he added. Mrs. Tomlin, Miss Tomlin turned startled eyes on their man. The Czech looked with a world of scorn at the sentimental painted china Harlequin he held. "This," he said. "Art, eh?" He put it down on the small polished table, clanging it against a cloisonne vase, Harlequin's chessboard backside facing the audience. A fresh rain-gust agitated the striped veranda blinds. The U.N. Adviser said, "Reality. What do any of you know about reality?" He stood up, shaking as Rowlandson had done. It was to Rowlandson he went. "Give me that bottle," he said. "If I'm not to eat I might as well drink."
"Jim," said Mrs. Tomlin. "What have you been doing this morning?" She spoke sharply. His daughter breathed, "Daddy." The U.N. Adviser could not hear. Nando Tasca returned with a bottle, singing from Rodolfo's aria, "Per sogni e per chimere e per castelli in aria, l'anima ho milionaria." The U.N. Adviser could hear. He turned, saying harshly, "Reality. What are we all doing? What do you all want?"
"I want to eat," said Mr. Smetana. "And I want this man to stop singing. He cannot sing. He has not one ounce of beauty in his body. He has no voice. He has no appreciation of anything artistic. The Italians are a superficial race."
Rodolfo Tasca sang to Mimi Tornlin, "V'entrar con voi pur ora, ed i miei sogni . . ."
"I feel," said Patu, "that it is perhaps the Government that knows nothing of reality. The movement towards the realisation of self-government for this State cannot be halted. 'The gradualness of inevitability', as your Lord Passmore put it, showing that an aristocrat could, if he wished, be democratic. You cannot hold us back. We march steadily on to the end."
"What is this about reality?" asked Mr. Smetana, pricking up his ears at the rustle of an abstraction. "Wirklichkeit? Realitdt? Is an Englishman asking about reality?"
Nando Tasca happily caught up the word in the twindling broth of his song. "Realtd" he sang to Mrs. Tomlin, and again, in a cadenza, "Realtd:"
"What I say is this," said the U.N. Adviser in a prefectly voice. He used the base of the gin bottle as a gavel. "What I say is that this is no way to behave. This is my house. My wife and my daughter and I are being very patient, very tolerant. And I've been patient and tolerant all morning. And I come home for a bit of rest and a quiet drink and a meal, and all I get is his. It is not good manners," he said primly.
Nando Tasca agreed heartily. "That a what I a say," he said, "to this a man. E a very rude. But all a German very a rude." ("Czech," said Mr. Smetana, as in chess.)
"After all," said the U.N. Adviser, "I am the U.N. Adviser." The stress on the 'am' sent the tail of the statement too far into the air, making it a querulous question, almost a prayer for confirmation.
Nando Tasca confirmed with a nod of shaking chins that the U.N. Adviser was the U.N. Adviser. "You," he said, "a the U.N. Adviser."
Rowlandson, hearing authority invoke itself, sat down with a full glass. The U.N. Adviser said, "All I say is that this is no way to go on. Why can't everybody learn to behave properly? I mean, it's easy enough, isn't it? We just try to behave decently to the other fellow and have a bit of a joke now and again with his wife, nothing more than that. And just a couple of drinks now and again, and the odd game of tennis when the sun's on its way down, and perhaps a trip to the Sailing Club to have a bit of a yarn with some of the chaps. And a game of bridge. Decent behaviour, a decent life, everything in moderation. That's right, isn't it? That's what we Anglo-Saxons have tried to teach the world, isn't that right? Isn't it?" he repeated, with little hope.
Mr. Smetana said, "Your people are not really equipped for answering questions about the nature of reality. They have never had any need to probe into the nature of what lies behind phenomenon, the Ding an sich. Metaphysics to them was always a game. Now they have nothing to hide behind, now they have to face the great emptiness without tea-cups and cricket and trade expansion and ruling subject races. It is the Untereang,"
"Mummy," said young Penelope, "shall I hurry them up? I'm sure lunch must be ready."
"There remains beauty," said the Czech. "That is real enough. To capture the transient on canvas and make it eternal. That is what we must try to do." Penelope, running towards the kitchen, was met by Ahmad announcing lunch. "I think," said Mr. Smetana, "I have succeeded in capturing something and making it worthy of contemplation." Then, rising, he said, "Thank God we can now eat."
"Shall we go in?" smiled Mrs. Tomlin, the hostess once more in her depth. Now a pattern could be imposed, conversation could be led into the right channels from the head and tail of the table.
"I bring a my a beer with a me," said Nando Tasca. He gallantly offered Mrs. Tomlin his marble-worker's left arm, the beer-glass in his right hand. Mrs. Tomlin's right hand gently rode on the tide of decayed muscle. Patu (black flesh, black mop and whiskers) took in washed-out white and yellow Penelope. Rowlandson went in somnambulistically, Smetana fiercely and hungrily, the U.N. Adviser wanly, jerkily, worries pushing his shoulder-blades.
The girl and the woman steered into place the artist, the hedonist, the dipsomaniac, the politician, the U.N. Adviser. Water sang chillily into their glasses, water still raged hotly outside. Soup was already on the table. It was intended to be bouillon frappe, but the power-cut (now, as the fan above the table proclaimed, restored) had sent it on a journey back to hot broth. At the first tepid mile-stone it had halted. It was spooned in now without much conviction, though Nando Tasca smacked his lips politely and kissed his fingers. Patu said:
"You will forgive me if I do not eat. I am a very orthodox Moslem. One cannot be sure whether the food one eats outside a Moslem house is halal."
"Oh," said Mrs. Tomlin, unkissing her spoon, "really, I can assure you – "
"If he doesn't want to eat, don't force him," said the U.N. Adviser somewhat sourly. The headache still sat there, now watching him take his soup.
"How," asked the Czech, "can you reconcile your advanced political views with a blind acceptance of primitive food taboos?" He had already finished his soup and a slice of bread. He leaned across the table hungrily at Patu.
"I am a Moslem, that is all," said Patu. "I see nothing illogical about wishing to practise my religion in a democratic state that shall grant freedom of worship to all its citizens. I claim that freedom for everybody. Including myself."
"Then how," said the U.N. Adviser nastily, "do you reconcile being a good Moslem with having a non-Moslem state ?"
"I don't quite see that," said Patu. "Would you mind – ?"
"You talk it over with H.H.," said the U.N. Adviser.
"He says it's all one and indivisible. If you want a democratic state you can't have a Caliph. If you don't have a Caliph you can't have Islam. You can take it or leave it." He almost snarled over his last tepid spoonful. His wife and daughter looked at him anxiously: they had never seen him like this before in company. What was the matter? Was it the rain? Was it something that had happened that morning? Was it because this was their last term? Nando Tasca said:
"It like a not eat a meat a Friday. What difference it a make? God a not care eat a meat or not eat a meat. God not care whether it a Friday or not a Friday. God not know it a Friday. If a man a good a man it a all a right." The soup-bowls (blue, Chinese, crawling with dragons) were removed, and a dish of Chinese spaghetti endragoned with prawns was brought. Cold damp plates were placed before the guests. "This look a very nice," said Nando Tasca bravely.
"I think," said the U.N. Adviser, "I'll join Mr. Patu in not eatin anything. I've got rather a bad headache."
"Oh,"you poor dear," said Mrs. Tomlin. "Oh, poor Daddy, said Penelope. "Have a couple of aspirins and lie down," said Mrs. Tomlin. "Don't go back to work," said Penelope. "Take an afternoon off, Daddy. I'll ring up."
"You might as well," said Patu with fresh viciousness.
"The work of repression can go on equally efficiently in your absence."
Suddenly Rowlandson lifted his head and bayed at the ceiling-fan. The waiting servant opened his mouth in fear and dashed to the kitchen. "Now then, Rowlandson," said the U.N. Adviser sharply. "Pull yourself together."
"Oh, Mr. Rowlandson," said Mrs. Tomlin. "Oh, please, Mr. Rowlandson."
"Shut up," said Rowlandson, "Shut up up up." His accent was revealed as basically North Country. "What do you know about it? Eh? The U.N.A.'s right. We try to do our bloody best." ("Oh," blushed Penelope.) "We won the war, didn't we? Try to give 'em peace and show 'em how to behave? Isn't that right? No good German but a dead un;” he said. "Hitler was a bloody painter. A bad un, Ike you,” he said to Smetana. ("Czech," chessed Smetana.)
“Race of bloody organ-grinders," he said to Nando Tasca.
"Black bastards," he said to Patu. "You'll have your own bloody way, but what do we get out of it? Sitting there snug on your arses, having a crack at the poor bloody British. Income tax fifteen bob in the pound. Fags five bob for twenty. Purchase tax on every bloody thing. Can't afford whisky. So that all you smug bastards can sit comfortable on your arses and have a smack at the British."
"That's enough, Rowlandson," said the U.N. Adviser.
"You've said enough. More than enough."
"Es ist genug," said Mr. Smetana, the four syllables rising in whole tones firmly, the opening of the Bach chorale. He ate his lunch imperturbably.
"Everybody having a go at the British," said Rowlandson. "Look at the Middle East."
"That is enough," said the U.N. Adviser, percussing an accompaniment with his fork-handle. "I shall send you away from the table," he threatened. "I know you've had a bad time, but that's what you were sent here for. The British are supposed to have a bad time. That is their destiny."
"Please, dear," said Mrs. Tomlin, "don't you start. Please."
"All right," said the U.N. Adviser. "Bring on the next course. Let's get this lunch over."
"I understand what a e say," said Nando Tasca. "E say thing a not a so good about a Italian people. I not on a side a Mussolini. I against a Mussolini. I against a German people. And," he added, leaning forward with sharp blue eyes, "if a Italian people not a good why you a bring a Italian people a ere put a marble in a Mosque? If a British a people a good why they not a do it? I not ask a come a ere. I better in a Tripoli. I ave a girl a there. There nobody insult a me. I not a finish a work in a Mosque," he said. "I ave a strike. Mosque a not ready when they want a it a be ready."
"Do what the hell you like," said the U.N. Adviser. The rain teemed down, his head was near cracking. He got up. "I'm going to bed," he announced. "I'm ill. I'm sick. Send a message through to the office," he said to Penelope, "Good afternoon, everybody."
"You cannot evade your responsibilities so easily," said Patu.
"I don't feel at all well," said Rowlandson. "I think I'll go back to the Rest House. I'll have a rest there. I don't want anything more to eat. I'm sorry for what I said. I don't know what came over me. It's not like me at all."
The U.N. Adviser, head and shoulders bowed, went out. His wife still tried to fly the flag that was now much mud-spattered. She rang the little silver bell. A servant called Haroun, braver than his colleague, changed the plates for dishes of melted ice cream. Nobody fancied it. Smetana had expected at least a steak. Nando Tasca breathed heavily, but soon, when Penelope returned from the telephone, he returned to his Latin gallantry. "It a very nice a lunch," he said. "Now I return a ospitality. You two a ladies," he said, "must a come to my a ouse. I arrange. We ave a pasta. And a bottle a Chianti. Ere very expensive, but I a buy. My son a cook for us. E sometimes cook a good. Sometimes e a good a boy. When e told be a good a boy e sometimes good a boy to is father." He kissed the hands of the glum ladies who, ice cream left to liquefy, had risen to escort their guests out. Smetana bowed stiffly and hungrily. Rowlandson tottered to his feet. Patu grinned maliciously: the luncheon party had been a great success. They went out to their cars – Smetana's hired, Rowlandson's junior government officer's Morris, Patu's opulently new, ready for The Coming Day of Power. Nando Tasca had no car, he had come in a taxi. "You take me ome," he said to Patu. "You not a drunk and you not a Czech. He say a Czech, really he a German. I go with you."
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