The Adventures of God in His Search for the Black Girl Page 6

  However, protocol and security could not be skimped. Six weeks elapsed. During them, the Emperor of the West read and re-read the pigeon message, trying to understand the ‘arrangement’ it mentioned. The best he could surmise seemed a redoubled incredibility: was it possible that the Empire of the East was also without defence?

  It crossed the Western Emperor’s mind that, were that so, it might conceivably be his distasteful duty, for the sake of humanity at large, to order an invasion of the East.

  However, he happily realised that that decision, right or wrong, was one he need not take: because his own Empire, being without armies or arms, was in no position to march in.

  The Emperor of the West approached the first day of the conference impatient for the second day and the secret appointment.

  He thought of the first day as mere slack time, during which no private puzzles could be answered and all he could expect from his fellow-Emperor was public affability.

  But the Emperor of the East in fact did something unexpected. He died.

  He thudded forward onto the conference table, seemed to be trying to say something to the Emperor opposite, and extended his dying arm across the table towards him.

  The delegates from the Eastern Empire, in consternation, accused the Empire of the West of having poisoned the Emperor.

  One Eastern official, reputedly the toughest member of the so-called Committee of Six, actually leaned threateningly across the conference table and shouted at the Emperor of the West: ‘Assassin!’

  The Emperor of the West remained cool. ‘Surely it would be wiser to wait for the post mortem findings before making accusations. To my admittedly untrained eye, the symptoms looked just like those of my own predecessor, when he had his heart attack.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said the tough official. ‘Even in death, our heroic and martyred comrade was trying to point the finger of suspicion at you.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ the Emperor of the West replied suavely. ‘He was trying to extend to me the hand of conciliation.’

  It was an answer which discernibly calmed both delegations.

  The Eastern delegation announced that they must immediately retire into private session to consider domestic problems, by which everyone understood them to mean they must choose a new Emperor.

  By the next day he was chosen. He was not the tough official (who indeed had vanished overnight from the Eastern delegation) but a mildly spoken man, who opened the session by apologising for the accusations flung in the crisis of grief.

  ‘It turns out’, said the new Emperor of the East, ‘that our late esteemed comrade Emperor died of causes entirely natural – unless, that is, your Western technologists have come up with a poison that is undetectable.’

  There was a moment’s bristling on both sides, but then the new Emperor smiled to shew he was joking.

  ‘Our own technologists’, he added, ‘tell me that is impossible, and since ours are known to be the best technologists in the world I entirely believe them.’

  The Emperor of the West shushed one of his technical advisers who was obviously on the point of interpolating that it was western technologists who were the best, and the Eastern Emperor went on to say, apologetically, that in the new circumstances he felt obliged to adjourn the inter-Emperor conference. ‘I am very much a new boy’, he said, smiling again, ‘and have much to learn about my new job. When I have sufficiently schooled myself, I hope to have the pleasure of resuming, on an informed basis, this conference with my colleague the Emperor of the West.’

  Everybody understood the new Emperor to be saying that he must discover what military resources were at his disposal so that he could know from how much strength he was negotiating.

  Everybody thought it a perfectly natural response on his part.

  Only the Emperor of the West was secretly worried. However, having foreseen what might happen, he said, before the conference dispersed: ‘Fellow-Emperor, I have been personally grieved, as I am sure you have, by the death of your predecessor. I have written you a purely personal and private letter in which I have tried to express my feelings. May I beg you to read it, when you return to your own capital, in privacy. I should be embarrassed if my stumbling sentences were seen by any eyes but yours, which I know will look sympathetically on my deficiencies.’

  And he held out the letter, which was in a sealed envelope.

  Some Eastern security men moved to intercept it and vet it. But their Emperor brushed them aside. ‘There is no such thing as an undetectable poison,’ he said. ‘If the letter poisons me, you will know all about it, and you will have lost nothing but my life and the peace of the world. But I am sure’, he added, with a slow courteous bow to the Western Emperor, ‘that it will bring me not poison but comfort.’ And, taking the letter he put it into his inside breast pocket next to his heart.

  When he opened the letter in privacy, the Emperor of the East found that, to a sheet of his official tiara’d writing paper, the Western Emperor had sticky-taped the by now crumpled message sent him by pigeon. Underneath, the Emperor of the West had written: ‘I had this from your predecessor. If you recognise the writing as his, you will have an earnest of my good faith. When you make a certain disturbing discovery, please take no action until you have called for a resumption of the adjourned conference. At that conference, please keep the appointment your predecessor made with me.’

  Within a fortnight, diplomatists from the East applied for the conference to be resumed.

  On the second morning of the resumed conference, the Emperor of the West rose abruptly from the table, remarked ‘The drinking water in these spa towns where we hold conferences is always upsetting,’ and left the room.

  A second later, the Emperor of the East rose, said ‘I don’t think it’s the water; I think it’s the quantity of wine at these banquets we give each other,’ and also left.

  By the time the Emperor of the East reached the room marked ‘Toilets. Emperors Only’, the right-hand cubicle (there were, of course, only two) was already occupied, with its door shut.

  The Emperor of the East entered the cubicle on the left.

  Beneath the partition between the cubicles, a sheet of blue lavatory paper was extended towards him.

  The Emperor of the East picked it up and read: ‘I have discovered that my Empire is totally disarmed. Have you?’

  On a piece of pink lavatory paper from the box in his cubicle, the Emperor of the East replied: ‘Yes. Let’s keep it up.’

  In accordance with security procedure, both Emperors flushed away the messages they had received.

  So, though this conference too appeared to produce no result, paradise continued in both Empires.

  Indeed, it became double paradise. In the free exchange of ideas, each Empire was able to copy the best things about the other.

  The Emperor of the West grew old and judged that the world was now safe enough for him to contemplate retirement while he might still have something new and truthful to say about the theory of the syllogism.

  He was encouraged by the existence of an up-and-coming young politician who was campaigning for a reconciliation with the East. His slogan was ‘Trust the People – whether of West or East’.

  The Emperor, who believed he had more knowledge than anyone else of exactly how trustworthy the East was, took the young man to his heart. ‘I will retire and support you for the succession’, he said, ‘on condition that as soon as you become Emperor I may see you in strict privacy. I have something to tell you.’

  ‘I don’t like deals between politicians,’ said the young man. ‘It may surprise you, but I’m not a cynic. I truly believe in trusting the people.’

  ‘The belief does you credit,’ said the old Emperor. ‘But as this concerns the security of the Empire, indeed of the world, I must insist.’

  The young politician agreed and, with the now ex-Emperor’s help, was elected.

  The ex-Emperor was about to remind his successor of their appointment, when
he was summoned to the Palace.

  He found the new Emperor pale and furious.

  ‘I’ve already discovered,’ the new Emperor said. ‘I move fast. And a more despicable, catastrophic betrayal of the people I never—’

  ‘But you don’t know the whole of it,’ the ex-Emperor said. ‘There is a secret arrangement—’

  ‘I will have no truck with secret arrangements. I am for honesty, sincerity and open discussion with the people. I shall tell the people at once that they have been left without a shred of protection. I shall tell them it was you who left them so. I’m having you arrested at once.’ The Emperor pushed a button. ‘I’ve summoned the armed guards.’

  Emperor and ex-Emperor waited three minutes in silence.

  ‘You see,’ said the ex-Emperor gently, ‘there are no armed guards.’

  ‘A trifle like that won’t stop me,’ said the new Emperor, and he threw up the window.

  The ex-Emperor tried to warn him of the effect on the air conditioning.

  But the new Emperor pushed past him and yelled through the window: ‘I want three hefty loyal citizens to arrest a traitor!’

  Heavy footsteps rushed up the stairs outside.

  ‘It won’t take as many as three,’ the ex-Emperor was murmuring when five strong louts burst in.

  ‘Take this traitor to prison.’

  ‘Certainly, sir. But could you tell us where the nearest prison is? It’s one of those secrets no unauthorised person knows.’

  ‘I’m not cognisant of details,’ said the Emperor. ‘Ask the secret police or someone.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, there are no prisons,’ said the ex-Emperor, ‘any more than there is any secret police. We have been living as free human beings for some time now, though we didn’t know it.’

  ‘Things have even more indescribably gone to pieces than I’d realised,’ said the Emperor. ‘But I tell you, trifles won’t stop me. Put him’, the Emperor commanded the louts, ‘in a cellar. We still have plenty of those. Indeed, everyone drinks too much these days. The whole concept of discipline is vanishing.’

  In the Palace cellar where he was rapidly thrust, the ex-Emperor was, as a matter of fact, comparatively happy. He thought about syllogisms by day and drank claret by night.

  He was probably the only person in the Empire who did not hear the urgent broadcast in which the new Emperor told the people that they had been left defenceless and called on them for a superhuman effort to remedy the lack.

  The broadcast was of course monitored in the Empire of the East.

  No one in the East was unduly worried. Defence was believed to be adequate to meet any threat – particularly if the Western Emperor’s broadcast had been not a ruse but the truth, in which case there could not be much threat.

  Without urgency, however, the Eastern Empire’s Committee of Six, against the wishes of their Emperor, thought it advisable to check up, as a matter of routine, on the defences available.

  On the second day of the check-up, the Eastern Emperor was deposed and the tough official who had not taken part in public life for some years replaced him.

  In both Empires paradise was demolished.

  It went amazingly quickly.

  The new flats were commandeered for improvised barracks. The new schools and theatres were turned into weapons factories and arsenals.

  Both sides were in such haste, their commanders in such panic and their technicians so out of practice that, on one side or the other (or perhaps on both simultaneously), there was error and a weapon was detonated by mistake.

  The other Empire believed the accident to be an act of aggression, and retaliated. Counter retaliation followed automatically.

  The Western Emperor’s Palace, a prime target, received one minute’s warning from the improvised alert system. The occupants rushed to the cellar, tripping, in their rush, over the ex-Emperor, who was sitting drunk on the steps inside, happily mouthing that he’d at last seen a way to refute John Stuart Mill’s aspersions on the syllogism. However, the cellar was not protection enough. All the occupants perished when the Palace, and with it most of the capital city of the Western Empire, was obliterated.

  Certain retaliatory devices continued to be despatched, on both sides, automatically; and in consequence the human species became extinct.

  It is possible that some of the weapons continued to shoot about in the depopulated world after the species which had designed them had ceased.

  The resulting world-wide fallout soon extinguished the other animal species – the more rapidly because the other animals, during mankind’s brief bout of tolerance towards them, had given up shunning human habitation.

  Only a plastic dolphin, floating at the remote centre of an ocean now emptied of mind and instinct, bobbed on, its gay and silly nods slandering the intelligent animal in whose likeness it was shaped.

  However, the stopper in its inflation valve, constructed to allow for the presence of a tiny machine, was no longer, in the absence of that machine, completely airtight. Little by immeasurably little, as the years passed uncounted, the only unpolluted air in the world leaked away. The dolphin shape collapsed, and the plastic eventually shrivelled.

  The Pasiphaïst Version

  1

  Pausing in his daily task of sweeping the miles of intricate intersecting and redoubling corridor, and leaning for a moment on the handle of his broom, the Minotaur said:

  ‘I’ve been in this Labyrinth now, man and beast, 30 years.’

  2

  When Theseus saw him, he commented:

  ‘I don’t mind having a fight with the human component in him, but I’m not going to harm the element that’s bull.’

  ‘Toh!’ Ariadne scoffed: ‘I thought you were a hero.’

  ‘So I am,’ Theseus replied. ‘That means I’m all human, and no bully.’

  ‘Bad puns will get you nowhere with me,’ Ariadne said. ‘I thought you’d want to avenge your fellow Athenians – all those Athenian youths and maidens whom the monster eats as tribute.’

  ‘Your father’s fascist propaganda would be more credible’, Theseus said, ‘if he weren’t so ignorant. Bulls, like me, are vegetarians.’

  ‘The only reason I smuggled you in here’, Ariadne said sulkily, ‘was that I hoped to witness the bullfight of all time. I did it at great risk to myself. Indeed, I can’t go back to the palace now. My fascist father would tan the hide off me.’

  ‘All right,’ Theseus said. ‘I’ll get you out and take you home to Athens with me. But we’re taking the Minotaur too, in case your fascist father should turn spiteful on him. Give me the end of that thread.’

  So saying, he gently wound one end of the thread into a collar about the Minotaur’s bull neck; and by following the rest of the thread back to where they came in, he made good his own and Ariadne’s escape, while the Minotaur followed them quietly.

  3

  Almost as soon as they had put out from Crete for the voyage back to Athens, the Minotaur became sea-sick.

  Theseus patiently held his bull head. Ariadne said it was disgusting, but Theseus replied that she was in no position to object, as her mother had been a good deal more intimate with a bull than that.

  4

  Meanwhile, in the royal palace in Crete, a junta of colonels armed with pistols arrived one dawn outside the royal bedchamber and arrested Queen Pasiphaë.

  She was arraigned on charges of unnatural sexuality and contempt of the régime. She was found guilty. King Minos abdicated, and his regally fascist rule was replaced by the military fascism of the junta. Cretan culture passed into a phase of apathy, which lasted until Sir Arthur Evans touched it up.

  5

  The Athenian ship was not more than half-way home when its supply of clean sheets was exhausted, the Minotaur having soaked through them all in his fits of shivering and sweating.

  Theseus told the sailors to take down the sails, tear them up and put them on the Minotaur’s bunk. The ship approached Athens under sails i
mprovised from the grubby sheets, which from a distance looked black – and at sight of which Theseus’s father jumped into the sea, leaving Theseus ruler.

  Long, however, before that, Ariadne had declared herself finally out of patience with Theseus’s mollycoddling of the monster. She insisted on leaving the ship at its half-way port of call, on the island of Naxos, where she eventually took to drink.

  6

  As soon as he set hoof on dry land, the Minotaur recovered his health and cheer. Theseus made him at home, in the palace which was now Theseus’s property and, as soon as the Minotaur was sufficiently settled in to be left for a little, Theseus went off and had a fight (a naïve form of flirtation) with Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons.

  Hippolyta let him beat her because she had fallen in love with him, and she accompanied him home to Athens, where they reigned together.

  7

  At Athens it was soon an open secret that the fabled Minotaur was living at the palace with Theseus and Hippolyta.

  Theseus’s reputation as a hero was enhanced by the public belief that he had tamed both the Minotaur and Hippolyta, though in fact the Minotaur had been of a tame disposition all along and, if anything, Hippolyta had tamed Theseus.

  As a result of too much horse-taming and other athletics in her girlhood, Hippolyta was unable to have a baby. The Minotaur became a sort of adopted son to the pair. He dined with them at table every night and would often rise early in the morning and accompany them in their favourite sport of drag-hunting, which they did in a wood near Athens.

  Athenian citizens who were in the know and could get up early enough often went out there in the hope of glimpsing the extraordinary sight of a huge man with the head, feet and tail of a bull running happily if clumsily behind Theseus’s hounds, which were bred out of the Spartan kind, so flew’d so sanded, and their heads were hung with ears that swept away the morning dew.