The Temptation of Jack Orkney: Collected Stories Volume Two

‘I expect the person who murdered him felt sorry when he discovered he had murdered a famous writer.’

‘Yes, I expect so.’

‘Was he old when he was murdered?’

‘No, quite young really.’

‘Well, that was bad luck, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, I suppose it was bad luck.’

‘Which do you think is the very best story here? I mean, in your honest opinion, the very very best one.’

I chose the story about killing the goose. She read it slowly, while I sat waiting, wishing to take it from her, wishing to protect this charming little person from Isaac Babel.

When she had finished she said: ‘Well, some of it I don’t understand. He’s got a funny way of looking at things. Why should a man’s legs in boots look like girls?’ She finally pushed the book over at me, and said: ‘I think it’s all morbid.’

‘But you have to understand the kind of life he had. First, he was a Jew in Russia. That was bad enough. Then his experience was all revolution and civil war and …’

But I could see these words bouncing off the clear glass of her fiercely denying gaze; and I said: ‘Look, Catherine, why don’t you try again when you’re older? Perhaps you’ll like him better then?’

She said gratefully: ‘Yes, perhaps that would be best. After all, Philip is two years older than me, isn’t he?’

A week later I got a letter from Catherine.

Thank you very much for being kind enough to take me to visit Philip at his school. It was the most lovely day in my whole life. I am extremely grateful to you for taking me. I have been thinking about the Hoodlum Priest. That was a film which demonstrated to me beyond any shadow of doubt that Capital Punishment is a Wicked Thing, and I shall never forget what I learned that afternoon, and the lessons of it will be with me all my life. I have been meditating about what you said about Isaac Babel, the famed Russian short story writer, and I now see that the conscious simplicity of his style is what makes him, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the great writer that he is, and now in my school compositions I am endeavouring to emulate him so as to learn a conscious simplicity which is the only basis for a really brilliant writing style. Love, Catherine. P.S. Has Philip said anything about my party? I wrote but he hasn’t answered. Please find out if he is coming or if he just forgot to answer my letter. I hope he comes, because sometimes I feel I shall die if he doesn’t. P.P.S. Please don’t tell him I said anything, because I should die if he knew. Love, Catherine.

Outside the Ministry (#u3776eae9-781d-5be9-ac14-65c9509fa16a)

As Big Ben struck ten, a young man arrived outside the portals of the Ministry, and looked sternly up and down the street. He brought his wrist up to eye level and frowned at it, the very picture of a man kept waiting, a man who had expected no less. His arm dropped, elbow flexed stiff, hand at mid-thigh level, palm downwards, fingers splayed. There the hand made a light movement, balanced from the wrist, as if sketching an arpeggio, or saying goodbye to the pavement – or greeting it? An elegant little gesture, full of charm, given out of an abundant sense of style to the watching world. Now he changed his stance, and became a man kept waiting, but maintaining his dignity. He was well dressed in a dark suit which, with a white shirt and a small grey silk bow tie that seemed positively to wish to fly away altogether, because of the energy imparted to it by his person, made a conventional enough pattern of colour – dark grey, light grey, white. But his black glossy skin, setting of his soberness, made him sparkle, a dandy – he might just as well have been wearing a rainbow.

Before he could frown up and down the street again, another young African crossed the road to join him. They greeted each other, laying their palms together, then shaking hands; but there was a conscious restraint in this which the first seemed to relish, out of his innate sense of drama, but made the second uneasy.

‘Good morning, Mr Chikwe.’

‘Mr Mafente! Good morning!’

Mr Mafente was a large smooth young man, well dressed too, but his clothes on him were conventional European clothes, remained suit, striped shirt, tie; and his gestures had none of the in-built, delighting self-parody of the other man’s. He was suave, he was dignified, he was calm; and this in spite of a situation which Mr Chikwe’s attitude (magisterial, accusing) said clearly was fraught with the possibilities of evil.

Yet these two had known each other for many years; had worked side by side, as the political situation shifted, in various phases of the Nationalist movement; had served prison sentences together; had only recently become enemies. They now (Mr Chikwe dropped the accusation from his manner for this purpose) exchanged news from home, gossip, information. Then Mr Chikwe marked the end of the truce by a change of pose, and said, soft and threatening: ‘And where is your great leader? Surely he is very late?’

‘Five minutes only,’ said the other smiling.

‘Surely when at last we have achieved this great honour, an interview with Her Majesty’s Minister, the least we can expect is punctuality from the great man?’

‘I agree, but it is more likely that Her Majesty’s Minister will at the last moment be too occupied to see us, as has happened before.’

The faces of both men blazed with shared anger for a moment: Mr Chikwe even showed a snarl of white teeth.

They recovered themselves together and Mr Mafente said: ‘And where is your leader? Surely what applies to mine applies to yours also?’

‘Perhaps the reasons for their being late are different? Mine is finishing his breakfast just over the road there and yours is – I hear that the night before last your Mr Devuli was observed very drunk in the home of our hospitable Mrs James?’

‘Possibly, I was not there.’

‘I hear that the night before that he passed out in the hotel before some unsympathetic journalists and had to be excused.’

‘It is possible, I was not there.’

Mr Chikwe kept the full force of his frowning stare on Mr Mafente’s bland face as he said softly: ‘Mr Mafente!’

‘Mr Chikwe?’

‘Is it not a shame and a disgrace that your movement, which, though it is not mine, nevertheless represents several thousand people (not millions, I am afraid, as your publicity men claim) – is it not a pity that this movement is led by a man who is never sober?’

Mr Mafente smiled, applauding this short speech which had been delivered with a grace and an attack wasted, surely, on a pavement full of London office workers and some fat pigeons. He then observed, merely: ‘Yet it is Mr Devuli who is recognized by Her Britannic Majesty’s Minister?’

Mr Chikwe frowned.

‘And it is Mr Devuli who is recognized by those honourable British philanthropic movements – the Anti-Imperialist Society, the Movement for Pan-African Freedom, and Freedom for British Colonies?’

Here Mr Chikwe bowed, slightly, acknowledging the truth of what he said, but suggesting at the same time its irrelevance.

‘I hear, for instance,’ went on Mr Mafente, ‘that the Honourable Member of Parliament for Sutton North-West refused to have your leader on his platform on the grounds that he was a dangerous agitator with left-wing persuasions?’

Here both men exchanged a delighted irrepressible smile – that smile due to political absurdity. (It is not too much to say that it is for the sake of this smile that a good many people stay in politics.) Mr Chikwe even lifted a shining face to the grey sky, shut his eyes, and while offering his smile to the wet heavens lifted both shoulders in a shrug of scorn.

Then he lowered his eyes, his body sprang into a shape of accusation and he said: ‘Yet you have to agree with me, Mr Mafente – it is unfortunate that such a man as Mr Devuli should be so widely accepted as a national representative, while the virtues of Mr Kwenzi go unacknowledged.’

‘We all know the virtues of Mr Kwenzi,’ said Mr Mafente, and his accent on the word we, accompanied by a deliberately cool glance into the eyes of his old friend, made Mr Chikwe stand silent a moment, thinking. Then he said softly, testing it: ‘Yes, yes, yes. And – well, Mr Mafente?’

Mr Mafente looked into Mr Chikwe’s face, with intent, while he continued the other conversation: ‘Nevertheless, Mr Chikwe, the situation is as I’ve said.’

Mr Chikwe, responding to the look, not the words, came closer and said: ‘Yet situations do not have to remain unchanged?’ They looked deeply into each other’s face as Mr Mafente inquired, almost mechanically: ‘Is that a threat, perhaps?’

‘It is a political observation … Mr Mafente?’

Mr Chikwe?’

‘This particular situation could be changed very easily.’

‘Is that so?’

‘You know it is so.’

The two men were standing with their faces a few inches from each other, frowning with the concentration necessary for the swift mental balancing of a dozen factors: so absorbed were they, that clerks and typists glanced uneasily at them, and then, not wishing to be made uneasy, looked away again.

But here they felt approaching a third, and Mr Mafente repeated quickly: ‘Is that a threat, perhaps?’ in a loud voice, and both young men turned to greet Devuli, a man ten or more years older than they, large, authoritative, impressive. Yet even at this early hour he had a look of dissipation, for his eyes were red and wandering, and he stood upright only with difficulty.