This hilltop holiday of sweet air, Franciscan talk with birds and bats, ample cold food and drink, father's insect rage far far below, enforced leisure, gratifying attention from large crowds, was doing Paolo good. His beard flourished and his flesh filled out. There were certain disadvantages, lack of washing and laundry facilities chief among them, but on the whole this was a fine, if somewhat artificial, life. Paolo had as little pudeur as the birds about voiding in public, but, being a good boy brought up in a civilised village, he tried to regard the day as a great "ENGAGED" sign; at seven in the evening the sun flushed the sky's basin, leaving to Paolo the blue vacant gabinetto of the night. No rain came, and Paolo remained dirty, but every other day he changed from his own clothes into his father's suit. His enemies could not get at him, for he could clearly see who was there down below, ready for the arduous ascension. The men with beards and mops of hair were always welcome: to them he always unlatched the door, taking with gratitude their gifts of curry and beer and cigarettes; but his former colleagues he no longer trusted. Did they not neglect him during his illness, were they not now working for his father? The beards alone were allowed up to encourage him, shake him by the hand, tell him to continue the fight against tyrannical oppression. Paolo, being as innocent of politics as of Protestant morality, assumed in his simple way that it was just a matter of beard calling to beard; he did not know that he had already become a symbol — the prisoner in the tower yelling for justice. Even in Ceylon he was known: Mr. Bastians referred to him in a speech, and the newspapers had brief references to a young Italian fanatic, self-appointed leader of ragged malcontents, emulating Simon Stylites to shame the white men into granting immediate autonomy to Dunia.
Paolo called down to his father several times a day (the main electrical switch had still not been located) words of abuse but also, and more frequently as time went on, a demand for a one-way ticket to Italy. Once or twice his father called back through the microphone that hung above the mimbar, and the town would be loud with snarling Tuscan stichomythia. The father ordered and the son demanded and neither would yield; the town felt as the Trojan heroes must have felt — oppressed by a celestial family quarrel which was no less petty for being divine and ubiquitous.
But the unemployed and the party members cheered when Paolo cried "Italy! Italy!" and they themselves took up the cry and made a freedom slogan out of it. And it was "Italy!" that they cried when at last the police came.
It was a noon of cruel heat and brightness. Mr. Bishopspawn bit his under-lip again and again as he looked at the crowd's proffered throats, as he looked at his squad and the Indian inspector. Nobody was armed. Mr. Mudd, acting U.N. Adviser, had just gone up-river to rebuke the tribe that had lost its head; he had, before leaving by launch, given curt orders that Paolo must be dragged down from his tower bodily — no bloody nonsense about persuasion or threats. The door must be broken in and the prisoner forced back to liberty. However, Mr. Bishopspawn saw that some of his Moslem constables were not too happy about using violence in a holy place, even violence to a door. The fact that the Mosque had not yet been consecrated was neither here nor there; they were faced with a job which, when they first joined the force, they had never expected they would ever be forced to do. Mr. Bishopspawn noted uneasily many beards in the crowd; he saw many small boys who ecstatically grinned "Italy" at him; he felt — as he had felt many times before in his colonial police career — unpopular. He did not want too much trouble.
Mr. Bishopspawn, shy of decision, proffered his own throat to the sun's blade as he looked up at his quarry. Some of the crowd, ready to believe anything of the British, thought that he proposed to climb the minaret the hard way, and there was a murmur of excitement and even sympathy. As he gazed up, drinking the height, his hands on his hips, Paolo's voice suddenly smote him and the whole town with a few bars-in bops and bups-of "Sweet Sue". Mr. Bishopspawn reddened, looked awkward, as the crowd laughed gently, then decided that he had to act. He went over to the Indian inspector and talked to him, occasionally pointing like a general in a news-reel, as though the enemy had many flanks and was to be attacked not vertically but horizontally. It was then, when Mr. Bishopspawn's back was turned, that a nervous constable made a gesture of mock threat at a child — a small boy who had grinned, said "Italy" and put out his tongue. Some of the crowd said, "Aaaah" in gentle reproof, and one of the beards said, "Bully". Some of the constables moved back. and it seemed to Bishopspawn that the crowd was moving forward. He waved an imperious hand at them, other hand still on his hip, and said, "Come on, now," while motioning them to go back. Then he turned, ready to give orders for the ascent of the minaret, but the Indian inspector, with uncommon common sense, said to Bishopspawn: "I think this is not the best time. Too many people ready to cause trouble. It is better to come back when it is dark and everybody is in bed."
Bishopspawn saw the force of this but said, "They'll think we're scared. We'll lose face."
"Oh, no," said the inspector, who, an Oriental, knew all about face. "We not lose face at all. We lose face only if we try and fail. Nobody is making us go back now. We are going back of our own free will."
"Yes, yes," said Bishopspawn, biting his lower lip. "Yes." 'Subtle,' he thought; 'subtle, these damned Orientals.' "All right," he said, "lead 'em back." The inspector went slowly back to the station with the constables, and Bishopspawn, with a great effort, smiled bleakly at the crowd. The crowd showed teeth in the sun, some cheered feebly. And then, walking back himself, Bishopspawn thought: 'The key. Somebody must have the key.' But that small sun of hope went in; this was Dunia: there would be no key.
Nando Tasca watched with displeasure from one of the stained-glass windows. He had hoped to see his son dragged down snivelling, though he did not want too much violence done to the suit. Anger had been making Nando Tasca work hard these days, working hard had given him an intenser appetite for his beer: he had to guard against softening towards Paolo. He set his jaw nel modo Churchilliano, turned towards his workmen, and counted again the number of slabs of marble already laid. They came to a tidy bonus. The work evidently would not be finished on time, but Nando Tasca knew a thousand pretty tricks that would afford temporary satisfaction to all concerned — architect and Caliph included. Curtains could be hung, carpets laid — oh, there were lots of things that could be done. And all the time more blame to be laid on Paolo. "E not a work a ard. I tell im e not a work a ard. I it im. E run away aide. E very bad boy. It all a is a fault." A repentant and dirty Paolo could then be made to finish the work after the official opening of the Mosque and before he took up his new and lethal post. A very bad boy. All the world now knew it; it was advertised as openly as the oneness of Allah.
Nando Tasca gave harsh instructions to his workmen and then left the Mosque for his lunch-hour or beer-hour. He crossed the courtyard by the iridescent fountain, squinting up at the minaret as he went. A tiny figure above shook a fist at a tiny figure below. Nando Tasca returned the salute and walked on towards the Dunia Hotel. He was pleased to notice that he was losing flesh round the middle: he could now squeeze his hand between waistband and belly. His arms felt tired, however; the marble-cutting machine was shaking the fat, to its surprise, back to muscle. But he had a marble-dusty thirst, one not to be sold for a thousand bucks. It was decidedly an ill wind.
Nando Tasca was given letters at the reception desk. He did not sleep here, he did not work here, but the Dunia Hotel had, for many months, been his home and his office. He read the letters over his first and second beers. There were only two of them, one from Tripoli, one from his wife in Italy. The letter from Tripoli enclosed a cheque — Paolo's passage-money back to Italy, representing— as the banana firm would pay Paolo's fare to Krochucha — an acceptable free gift for Paolo's father. The other letter Nando Tasca read closely, twice, sipping his third beer thoughtfully as he read certain passages yet again.
"Mio caro, I am so sorry that you will not be coming home after your present work is finished. It is such a long time since I last saw you that I am forgetting what you look like and you never send me a photograph. I suppose with all that work and the heat and the foreign food which you will not be able to eat you will be getting quite thin. You must watch your health as you will have to work for many more years yet if I am to stop working which I will have to soon as the sewing machine is past repair and I will not be able to afford another. Lucrezia is a very big girl now but she seems to have forgotten that her father exists. That is because you do not write very often and you very rarely send any money. It is such a pity that they do not pay you more if you work so hard. Lucrezia has had three jobs in six months and has lost all of them. I fear she is not a clever girl and cannot add money up very well and so is not very much help in a shop. I am sorry to hear that Paolo is a bad boy still and lies in bed while you have to work. I think he will work harder and be a better boy when he has a wife and family to look after. And now I will tell you that there is somebody here who will marry Paolo if he wants her to and of course he must want her to. I do not think it is good if Paolo stays in foreign parts and perhaps will marry a foreign woman and we will have black grand-children. If you send Paolo home he can marry this girl. She is Novello's eldest daughter and she is older than Paolo about seven years but if he loves her and she loves him age is not important. She is not beautiful in her face but I think perhaps her soul is beautiful. She is quite big and strong and I think that is what Paolo needs to keep him in order. Her upper teeth are false but her lower teeth are all her own. Now you know that Novello has now more than two shops he has five with one in Piombino and one in Volterra with managers and he is opening business in Siena. His farm too is bigger. He will settle money he says as he is sick of his daughter's voice and does not want her living at home. So I think this is best for Paolo. If he comes home by ship she says she will meet him in Leghorn if you can say what day he will come. I think this is best for Paolo and for us as you do not seem to earn much money.
Molto affetto, Gina."
That, thought Nando Tasca, would be the worst punishment of all. Marriage. Why hadn't he thought of that before? If Novello's eldest daughter were anything like Novello's wife-say, Novello's monumental ugliness and Signora Novello's slate-pencil gramophone voice, together with the thorough and utter bitchiness of the grandmother, why, Paolo would be well served. And he could send money to his mother, plenty, while his poor father languished in Africa. What were lions, leeches and cannibals to a daughter of Novello's? What was tropical sweat, what was prickly heat, what was malaria? Paolo must be brought to heel; he had had too much of his own way, he had got the better of his father-and always by mean tricks and unfilial treachery-much too often. Let Novello's daughter meet Paolo at Leghorn; that would be enough, the rest would follow, he wouldn't be able to get away.
Nando Tasca had another beer, sweating happily under the fan. He thought of his girl in Tripoli. It would not be long now. Africa was too good for sons like Paolo.
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