"And then," said George Lim, "you test terminals A and B. If terminals A and B are causing no trouble, then there is only one thing left to do." He read swiftly through the mildewed booklet, mouthing the long harsh German words silently.
"What a that?"
"You clean the whole thing with a stiff brush. That, it says here, should be done every fortnight. Has it been done every fortnight?"
Nando Tasca did not know. But, "No," he said without any hesitation. "My son," he explained, "a very very bad a boy." Paolo's behaviour, during the brief week of Lydgate's second honeymoon and Nando Tasca's re-marriage to toil, had been worse than ever. He had lain on his bed, groaning, refusing to work, asking for a doctor, demanding — unreasonably, thought his father, as he was no longer earning his keep — food and drink. "A very very very bad a boy." Then, fiercely, without gratitude, he turned on George Lim, leaning his bare worker's arms heavily on the reception desk of the Dunia Hotel. "Why a you not a tell a me before you speak a German?" he asked. "Not a possible cut a marble and time a very short and you not a tell a me you speak a German." Because you could not, decided Nando Tasca, enmarble the whole place with painted cement. Here and there it was all right, but not everywhere. And the workmen, all except the cleft-palate moron who was condemned to a vow of silence, wanted to know why they were locked out. They had spent their convalescence playing cards in the courtyard of the Mosque, sitting at the cool base of the fountain, which had now itself begun, though in divine intransitivity, to play. And there the Caliph had found them. The Caliph, trying to enter the Mosque, had met a locked door and, behind it, the voice of Nando Tasca saying, "Nobody not a see this a stage of a the work. This a very secret." The Caliph, having heard about the mysteries of freemasonry, had not insisted on his right of entry. But the workers wanted to get back to work. Or, rather, they wanted overtime. And they wanted to see what was going on. They were intrigued by the incomprehensible pantomime of their cleft-palate colleague — a kind of arthritic ballet with a pendulum arm and music of nasal grunts. They were made apprehensive by the unwonted generosity of paid leave that their patron donated. These were days of prodigies. The sun-whipped earth was settling to another long drought: the brown frogs were going to wage war against the green frogs: heads were rolling in up-river villages: neon lights were coming on all over the town. Had they been Christians they would have crossed themselves; had they been Moslems they would have prayed five punctual times a day; being animists, they tied knots in things, touched wood, bowed before stones, bit their nails, avoided walking under ladders.
"Why a you a know a German, anyway?" scolded Nando Tasca. "It a not a right a Chinese know a German."
Lydgate came in, asking for a room. He had no luggage, not even a toothbrush (he had so few teeth left to clean, anyway). He had not fancied leaving Lydia's house with a suitcase in the midst of a party. Some of the guests might have got a bit crook. Now he would lie on a bed, his drip dry shirt drip-drying for the morning, and think about leaving the State, how, when, where for, selling his car, getting an exit permit from the Astana, sailings, flights, what friends in Gibraltar, in Macao, in Tokyo?
"Number One-o-one, Mr. Lydgate," said George Lim, giving him a key. Lydgate, clutching the key tightly, for it was a long time since he had had a key, went upstairs. Lydia wouldn't split, but Mudd — He had been a bit of a fool, he had said too much, he had not taken horse-racing seriously enough. He must think, he must —
"Well, Signor Tasca," said George Lim, "I had to learn most of the European languages, you see, because it was intended that I should be a missionary. A Taoist missionary, taking the true message to the heathen. But I was seduced from my purpose by European literature which, in order to increase my various vocabularies, I was made to read. Dante," he began to say eagerly. "The Vita Nuoua, for instance —"
"It a not a right a Chinese read a Dante," rebuked Nando Tasca. He himself had not read Dante.
"And so, you see, I entered the hotel business." He had on his desk an Arabic grammar. Soon, with the coming of the distinguished visitors for the opening of the Mosque, the Paraclete would have to hover all day.
Nando Tasca nodded to George Lim truculently and went into the restaurant to drink beer. He had given up protecting his son. His son could be written off. Nando Tasca had already made arrangements with a member of the Italian colony in Shurga to make arrangements with a Eurasian friend on a small banana plantation in Krachucha to make arrangements for PaoIo to be appointed under-assistant-manager at a minimal salary. Sixty-six per cent would, by a special arrangement, be deducted from Paolo's salary at source and remitted to Nando Tasca in Tripoli to be remitted, if Nando Tasca could afford it, to Paolo's mother in Italy. That would keep her quiet. But Nando Tasca was disturbed that the jungle war in Krachucha was (Moscow now having other, larger, interests) fast coming to an end. Still, the banana plantations were still, thanks to the Probooba tribes, losing managers at the rate of one every three months. Paolo's chances were good enough. Paolo's mother would be pleased to be the weeping mother of a posthumous hero, and Nando Tasca himself could boast of having freely given his son's life in some cause or other, noble but undefined.
The prospective posthumous hero lay, meanwhile, at home, hungry. He had now a Christ-like beard which brought tears to his eyes whenever he looked into his father's shaving-mirror. He could walk a little now, his bruised temple was healing, he could, perhaps, at a pinch, go back to work again. But he was so hungry. His father had brought him back, grudgingly, an occasional greasy parcel of cold Chinese spaghetti and even the odd duck-head or bone, always, in an ecstasy of self-laudation, with the words, "I a good a father. You a not a work but I a still give a you a food." Paolo had tried to supplement these irregular rations through odd raids on the neighbouring houses. With grief he saw that Lydgate had gone: no more butter or tins of Porkyboy. He had crawled painfully to the house of the two drunken Sudus, but they never had any food. An Indian clerk had given him saffron-tinted rice. Forbes, sometimes standing by the door, backed by motherless children, had snarled strange words at him but not offered further to molest him. But Paolo did not feel he could ask Forbes for a heel of cheese or of mildewed bread. Christ in the wilderness, thirsting and hungering, Paolo sometimes felt that his apotheosis was near — his frame light as the frame of an early biplane, a sensation as of balloon-gas filling his hollows.
Why, he wondered, had he been forsaken? In horizontal crucifixion he lay on the dirty bed-sheet, beard getting longer. Why had those workmen, his disciples, not brought him food, not come to comfort him with dulcet words and threats of new strikes? He had much to learn about Africa, about the good intentions thwarted by indolence, about out-of-sight-out-of-mind. And so he lay, wondering, the naked bulb of light caught in big gathering tears. And then he remembered early images — himself as the Italian Tiger, the Laughing Parricide, the Fearless Thief. A kind of bar-parlour stuffed with old signed photographs surrounded him, though dancing and unsteady like his Lloyd-Triestino cabin in the Indian Ocean. A skull xylophone began to tingle in the distance — a whole-tone scale straight out of Debussy. “Mangiare," cried Paolo, "mangiare, io devo mangiare." He remembered an evening when, his shoe full of buck-notes, he had gorged himself nearly ill on Chinese pasta and tiny beasts of the estuary. He had stolen, but the theft had harmed nobody. His father's watch was back again on his father's wrist. He must steal again, but what now could he steal?
He looked around the room and, his delirious brain seeing round corners, into the lavatory. The light-bulb, his father's razor, a piece of pumice, a disintegrating sponge, the bed-sheets. They, he felt sure, would fetch very little. Then he saw, in a mound in the corner, his father's dirty shirts and socks and undervests. His father had grumbled that Paolo was not yet able to resume laundry-work. And, of course, somewhere or other downstairs was the electric iron. And, on the landing, was the single wardrobe that his father had appropriated to his own use, locking it, keeping the key in his pocket. Inside, Paolo knew, was a suit, a suit his father wore when summoned to the house of the Caliph's Private Secretary to report on the work in the Mosque. Paolo got painfully up, naked except for the cerement about his waist, and walked, with many religious cries, to the landing. He switched on its light, and flying ants dashed in to dance around it. There stood the wardrobe, locked but fragile. Weak as he was, he found it easy to open. His father had a long bottle-opener, much prized, stolen from a Tripoli bar. This hung on a nail beside his father's bed. Paolo crawled back for it, pushed it into the crevice between wardrobe-door and jamb, levered and saw the maimed door fly open. There, cleaned and pressed professionally, hung the suit. Trembling, Paolo unhooked the hanger from the rail. He took also a pair of his father's slacks and a nylon shirt. He dressed himself in these, and Christ changed to D. H. Lawrence. Then, sitting on his bed, he felt in the inside pocket of his father's jacket (there might be a cheque from Tripoli, the odd ten-buck bill) and pulled out envelopes. He opened them eagerly. One letter was in English and was signed-Paolo recognised the name-by the Tripoli whore. Another letter was in Italian, and this Paolo read with attention. "Caro arnica," it began, but much of the Italian had been corrupted by long contact with alien races. It was the Italian of a member of the Shurga Italian colony, garnished with references to Lighthouse Beer, Pox Road, Murder Street, some of its asseverations intensified with words like "bloody". But content began to interest Paolo far more than style. He read, with horror, that he was not, after all, to be sent back to Italy after the opening of the Mosque; instead, he was to be sent to some jungle or other to live with snakes and lions and leeches. He was to force horrible black coolies to climb trees and bring down bananas. It was a trick; he saw that clearly. It was a device to have him eaten alive by ferocious beasts, never again to see the safe world of pasta and Fiats and Aqua Sacra, gelati and Sophia Loren. Tears came again. He knew his father was jealous of his intelligence and his virility, but he had not thought he hated him as much as that. Then he felt panic, wondering what to do now. He would leave, he would never return to this bedroom, he would sell his father's suit and buy a ticket to Italy, he would eat, he would get drunk, he would commit suicide. "Mamma mia,' he cried, clutching the empty suit to his chest. "Che faro, che faro?"
Out on the street, hardly able to walk, he looked wildly about him. A yellow-topped taxi came and, in it, a Chinese youth with sun-glasses who said, "You." Paolo, despite his agitation, his delirium, realised that he had no money and that it would be wasteful to pay a taxi-fare with a suit. “Aspetta," he said. He went back into the house and came out with an electric iron. The youth handled it with interest and said, "Ah."
As they journeyed to the town the youth commented on the festive illuminations that were going up everywhere. "There 355. There 25 blue, 31 yellow. There I not count yet. Tomorrow I count." Alone in the town centre, Paolo looked about, fearful, dizziness coming over him. Everywhere there seemed to be members of Forbes's road-gang, unemployed now, for their road was finished, sneering like polecats, making truculent gestures. He hurried shakily, clasping the suit, down Sir Ernest Sidebotham Road, seeking the shop where his workmates were wont to gather. At a table they sat, leaning against a solid wall of radio music, and the subtle Indian greeted him — "Friend! You have returned to us from the tomb!" — and the rat-tailed Sudu showed gold teeth, and there, to Paolo's numb shock, was his father, sitting at the same table, his back to the street, saying, 'It a too a late a now you go on a bloody strike. Two a week a more, Mosque a open. You work a Sunday you a get a double time. Tomorrow I mend a marble-cutting machine a." And turning bulkily, he saw his suit hanging in mid-air, open mouths of loiterers looking on, and then the suit retreating, legs with baggy trousers beneath it, walking from the knees. "Ladrone!" called Nando Tasca. "Stop, you a bloody thief!" But on-lookers would not get out of his way, and there was Eileen Forbes saying, "You like, darling? You want quickie, five bucks?"
"Not a now," said Nando Tasca. "Out a way quick, blodoy fool." But Paolo, the suit on his back, had dived, panting, into an alley full of cardboard cartons, cabbage leaves, hens. Sanctuary, sanctuary! He longed, as for his mother, towards some great Gothic cathedral where he would be safe, God on the altar saving him from his earthly father. Weak, he tried to hurry, losing himself, pausing for breath once by a wall. And from that wall, in moonlight, he saw the glory of the Mosque, his home, the one place where he had never seen his father. Moonlight blanched the central dome, the cupolas on their towers, the minaret which poked at the moon. In relief he made towards it, through the filthy back-street gutters, courting cats, the odd stunted scavenger startled by his prayers to the Virgin:
“—-Sede della Sapienza, implora larghezza ed efficacia di mezzi alla stampa cattolica— "
Over the courtyard, where the fountain played under the moon. The magnificent portico, with its twisted barley-sugar pillars, the oak doors with their stained glass. But locked, locked; the massy ward had been installed, ready for the vast ceremonial key. Paolo looked around wildly, the fountain singing to him. Then he saw the door of the spiral stairs that led up, up to the muezzin's golden cage. There, up against the moon, among the birds, he would be safe. He took many deep breaths and then, his father's suit on his back, began to climb.
At every turn he had to pause, sit, wipe away sweat with his nylon sleeve. Gasping, after half an hour of aching leg muscles, he saw, through the golden cage round the last bend of the stairs, the moon and the African stars. He dragged himself up, into the conning tower of an alien faith, and felt safe at last. God would protect him; it was, after all, the same God, for there was only one God. He stood, gasping, his hands on the fitted lectern with its microphone, and looked down over the dangerous land. There was the river with lights. There were the fairy clusters on the streets, there the Dunia Hotel, there the Chin Chin Cinema, there the Kool Kaffi. Somewhere below, an angry and agitated worm, was his father. Paolo, light-headed, filling his chest with cold air, laughed. He laughed and laughed and then he cried. He switched the microphone on, and his sobs began to pump themselves, sobs of a giant, from loudspeakers all round the town. God was crying. Then he sang, for a bar or two, "Stardust" in Italian, changing "stardust" to "marble-dust". Then he switched the microphone off, making a pillow of his father's suit, lay down for an empty-stomached sleep. Then, fearful again, remembering some text about "They did it while I slept", he closed the door that shut the muezzin in with his godly wails, pleased that it had a Yale lock. Then, locked in with divinity and the moon and the stars, he lay down once more. God would look after him. He was, despite everything, a good boy.
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