When the Going Was Good Page 12

  Professor W. had spoken to me of this party some days before, saying with restrained relish, ‘On Saturday I am lunching with the Emperor. There are several things I shall be interested to discuss with him.’ But, as it turned out, he had little opportunity for conversation. There were about eighty guests and many empty places, showing that the messenger had not been able to finish his round in time. At first we stood in the glazed corridor which ran down one side of the main building. Then we were ushered into the throne-room, bowed and curtsied, and ranged ourselves round the walls while byrrh and vermouth and cigars were carried round. There was something slightly ecclesiastical in the atmosphere.

  The Emperor then led the way into the dining-room. We tramped in behind him in no particular order. He seated himself at the centre of the top table; three tables ran at right angles to him, resplendent with gold plate and white-and-gold china. Typewritten name-cards lay on each plate. Ten minutes or so followed of some confusion as we jostled round and round looking for our places; there was no plan of the table, and as most of us were complete strangers we were unable to help each other. The Emperor sat watching us with a placid little smile. We must have looked very amusing. Naturally no one cared to look at the places next to the Emperor, so that when at last we were all seated the two most honoured guests were left to sidle forlornly into the nearest empty places. Eventually they were fetched. Irene sat one one side and the French wife of the Egyptian consul on his other. I sat between an English airman and a Belgian photographer. A long meal followed, of many courses of fair French cooking and good European wines. There was also tedj and the national beverage made from fermented honey. We had sent out for some, one evening at the hotel, and found it an opaque yellowish liquid, mild and rather characterless. The Emperor’s tedj was a very different drink, quite clear, slightly brown, heavy, rich, and dry. After luncheon, at Irene’s request, we were given some of the liqueur distilled from it – a colourless spirit of fine flavour and disconcerting potency.

  Only one odd thing happened at luncheon. Just as we were finishing, a stout young woman rose from a seat near the back and made her way resolutely between the tables until she planted herself within a few yards of the Emperor. I understand that she was a Syrian Jewess employed in some educational capacity in the town. She carried a sheaf of papers which she held close to her pince-nez with one plump hand while she raised the other above her head in a Fascist salute. Conversation faltered and ceased. The Emperor looked at her with kindly enquiry. Then, in a voice of peculiar strength and stridency, she began to recite an ode. It was a very long complimentary ode, composed by herself in Arabic, a language wholly unintelligible to His Majesty. Between verses she made a long pause during which she fluttered her manuscript, then she began again. We had just begun to feel that the performance would really prove interminable, when, just as suddenly as she had begun, she stopped, bobbed, turned about, and, with glistening forehead and slightly labouring breath, strode back to her place to receive the congratulations of her immediate neighbours. The Emperor rose and led the way back to the throne-room. Here we stood round the walls for a quarter of an hour while liqueurs were served. Then we bowed in turn and filed out into the sunshine.

  One moment of that week is particularly vivid in my memory. It was late at night and we had just returned from a party. My room, as I have said, was in an outhouse at a little distance from the hotel; a grey horse, some goats, and the hotel guard, his head wrapped in a blanket, were sleeping in the yard as I went across. Behind my room, separated from the hotel grounds by wooden palings, lay a cluster of native tukals. That evening there was a party in one of them. The door faced my way and I could see a glimmer of lamplight in the interior. They were singing a monotonous song, clapping in time and drumming with their hands on petrol-tins. I suppose there were about ten or fifteen of them there. I stood for some time listening. I was wearing a tall hat, evening clothes and white gloves. Presently the guard woke up and blew a little trumpet; the sound was taken up by other guards at neighbouring houses (it is in this way that they assure their employers of their vigilance); then he wrapped himself once more in his blanket and relapsed into sleep.

  The song continued unvarying in the still night. The absurdity of the whole week became suddenly typified for me in that situation – my preposterous clothes, the sleeping animals, and the wakeful party on the other side of the stockade.

  It was during our third week in Addis Ababa, when the official celebrations were over and the delegations were being packed off to the coast as fast as the Franco-Ethiopian Railway’s supply of sleeping cars would allow, that Professor W. suggested to me that we should make an expedition together to Debra Lebanos.

  This monastery has for four centuries been the centre of Abyssinian spiritual life. It is built round a spring where the waters of Jordan, conveyed subterraneously down the Red Sea, are believed to well up endowed with curative properties; pilgrims go there from all parts of the country, and it is a popular burial-ground for those who can afford it, since all found there at the Last Trump are assured of unimpeded entry into Paradise.

  It was the dry season, so that the road could be attempted by car. Professor Mercer had recently made the journey and had come back with photographs of a hitherto unknown version of Ecclesiastes. Ras Kassa had driven from Fiche only two weeks before and renewed the bridges for the occasion, so that we had little difficulty in finding a driver willing to take us. Permission had first to be obtained from Kassa to use the road. Professor W. obtained this and also a letter of commendation from the Abuna. An escort of soldiers was offered us, but refused. The expedition consisted simply of ourselves, a bullet-headed Armenian chauffeur, and a small native boy, who attached himself to us without invitation. At first we were a little resentful of this, but he firmly refused to understand our attempts at dismissal, and later we were grateful for his presence. The car, which did things I should have thought no car could possibly do, was an American make which is rarely seen in Europe. When we had packed it with our overcoats, rugs, tins of petrol, and provisions, there was just room for ourselves. The hotel supplied beer and sandwiches and olives and oranges, and Irene gave us a hamper of tinned and truffled foods from Fortnum & Mason. We were just starting, rather later than we had hoped, when Professor W. remembered something. ‘Do you mind if we go back to my hotel for a minute? There’s just one thing I’ve forgotten.’ We drove round to the Imperial.

  The thing he had forgotten was a dozen empty Vichy bottles. ‘I thought it would be courteous,’ he explained, ‘to take some holy water back to Ras Kassa and the Abuna. I’m sure they would appreciate it.’

  ‘Yes, but need we take quite so much?’

  ‘Well, there’s the patriarchal legate, I should like to give him some, and Belatingeta Herui, and the Coptic patriarch at Cairo. … I thought it was a nice opportunity to repay some of the kindness I have received.’

  I suggested that this purpose could be more conveniently achieved by giving them tedj, and that from what I had seen of Abyssinians they would much prefer it. Professor W. gave a little nervous laugh and looked anxiously out of the window.

  ‘Well, why not fill my empty beer-bottles?’

  ‘No, no, I don’t think that would be quite suitable. I don’t really like using Vichy bottles. I wish I had had time to scrape off the labels,’ he mused. ‘I don’t quite like the idea of holy water in Vichy bottles. Perhaps the boy could do it tomorrow – before they are filled, of course.’

  A new aspect of the professor’s character was thus revealed. My acquaintance with him until that day was limited to half a dozen more or less casual encounters at the various parties and shows. I had found him full of agreeably ironical criticism of our companions, very punctilious, and very enthusiastic about things which seemed to me unexceptionable. ‘Look,’ he would say with purest Boston intonation, ‘look at the exquisite grace of the basket that woman is carrying. There is the whole character of the people in that plaited straw. Ah, why do
we waste our time looking at crowns and canons? I could study that basket all day.’ And a wistful, far-away look would come into his eyes as he spoke.

  Remarks of that kind went down very well with some people, and I regarded them as being, perhaps, one of the normal manifestations of American scholarship. They were compensated for by such sound maxims as ‘Never carry binoculars; you only have to hand them over to some wretched woman as soon as there is anything worth seeing.’ But this worldly good sense was a mere mask over the essentially mystical nature of the professor’s mind; one touch of church furniture, and he became suddenly transfused with reverence, with an impulsive and demonstrative devotion, that added a great deal to the glamour of our expedition together.

  Those bottles, however, were an infernal nuisance. They clinked about the floor, making all the difference between tolerable ease and acute discomfort. There was nowhere to rest our feet except on their unstable, rolling surface. We drew up our knees and resigned ourselves to cramp and pins and needles.

  Debra Lebanos is practically due north of Addis Ababa. For the first mile or two there was a clearly marked track which led out of the town, right over the summit of Entoto. It was extremely steep and narrow, composed of loose stones and boulders; on the top of the hill was a little church and parsonage, the ground all round them broken by deep ravines and outcrops of stone. ‘Whatever happens,’ we decided, ‘we must make quite certain of coming over here by daylight.’

  From Entoto the way led down to a wide plain, watered by six or seven shallow streams which flowed between deep banks at right angles to our road. Caravans of mules were coming into the town laden with skins. Professor W. saluted them with bows and blessings; the hillmen answered him with blank stares or broad incredulous grins. A few, more sophisticated than their companions, bellowed, ‘Bakshish!’ Professor W. shook his head sadly and remarked that the people were already getting spoiled by foreign intrusion.

  It took two or three hours to cross the plain; we drove, for the most part, parallel to the track, rather than on it, finding the rough ground more comfortable than the prepared surface. We crossed numerous dry watercourses and several streams. At some of these there had been rough attempts at bridge-building, usually a heap of rocks and a few pieces of timber; in rare cases a culvert ran underneath. It was in negotiating these that we first realized the astonishing powers of our car. It would plunge nose first into a precipitous gully, shiver and stagger a little, churn up dust and stones, roar, and skid, bump and sway until we began to climb out, and then it would suddenly start forward and mount very deliberately up the other side as though endowed with some peculiar prehensile quality in its tyres. Occasionally, in conditions of scarcely conceivable asperity, the engine would stop. Professor W. would sigh, and open the door, allowing two or three of his empty bottles to roll out on to the running-board.

  ‘Ah, ça n’a pas d’importance,’ said the driver, prodding the boy, who jumped out, restored the bottles, and then leant his shoulder against the back of the car. This infinitesimal contribution of weight seemed to be all the car needed; up it would go out of the river-bed, and over the crest of the bank, gaining speed as it reached level ground; the child would race after us and clamber in as we bumped along, a triumphant smile on his little black face.

  At about eleven we stopped for luncheon by the side of the last stream. The boy busied himself by filling up the radiator by the use of a small cup. I ate sandwiches and drank beer rendered volatile by the motion of the car. The professor turned out to be a vegetarian; he unwrapped a little segment of cheese from its silver paper and nibbled it delicately and made a very neat job of an orange. The sun was very powerful, and the professor advanced what seemed, and still seems, to me the radically unsound theory that you must wear thick woollen underclothes if you wish to keep cool in the tropics.

  After leaving the plain we drove for three hours or so across grassy downland. There was now no track of any kind, but occasional boundary-stones hinted at the way we should follow. There were herds grazing, usually in charge of small naked children. At first the professor politely raised his hat and bowed to them, but the effect was so disturbing that after he had sent three or four out of sight, wailing in terror, he remarked that it was agreeable to find people who had a proper sense of the menace of motor transport, and relapsed into meditation, pondering, perhaps, the advisability of presenting a little holy water to the Emperor. The route was uneventful, broken only by occasional clusters of tukals, surrounded by high hedges of euphorbia. It was very hot, and after a time, in spite of the jangle of the bottles and the constriction of space, I fell into a light doze.

  I awoke as we stopped on the top of a hill; all around us were empty undulations of grass. ‘Nous sommes perdus?’ asked the professor. ‘Ça n’a pas d’importance,’ replied the driver, lighting a cigarette. The boy was despatched, like the dove from Noah’s ark, to find direction in the void. We waited for half an hour before he returned. Meanwhile three native women appeared from nowhere, peering at us from under straw sunshades. The professor took off his hat and bowed. The women huddled together and giggled. Presently fascination overcame their shyness and they approached closer; one touched the radiator and burned her fingers. They asked for cigarettes and were repelled, with some very forceful language, by the driver.

  At last the child returned and made some explanations. We turned off at right angles and drove on, and the professor and I fell asleep once more.

  When I next woke, the landscape had changed dramatically. About half a mile from us, and obliquely to the line of our path, the ground fell away suddenly into a great canyon, descending abruptly in tiers of sheer cliff, broken by strips and patches of timber. At the bottom a river ran between green banks, to swell the Blue Nile; it was practically dry at this season except for a few shining channels of water which split and reunited on the sandy bed in delicate threads of light. Poised among trees, two-thirds of the way down on a semi-circular shelf of land, we could discern the roofs of Debra Lebanos. A cleft path led down the face of the cliff and it was for this that we were clearly making. It looked hopelessly unsafe, but our Armenian plunged down with fine intrepidity.

  Sometimes we lurched along a narrow track with cliffs rising on one side and a precipice falling away on the other; sometimes we picked our way on broad ledges among great boulders; sometimes we grated between narrow rock walls. At last we reached a defile which even our driver admitted to be impassable. We climbed out along the running-boards and finished the descent on foot. Professor W. was clearly already enchanted by the sanctity of the place.

  ‘Look,’ he said, pointing to some columns of smoke that rose from the cliffs above us, ‘the cells of the solitary anchorites.’

  ‘Are you sure there are solitary anchorites here? I never heard of any.’

  ‘It would be a good place for them,’ he said wistfully.

  The Armenian strode on in front of us, a gallant little figure with his cropped head and rotund, gaitered legs; the boy staggered behind, carrying overcoats, blankets, provisions, and a good half-dozen of the empty bottles. Suddenly the Armenian stopped and, with his finger on his lips, drew our attention to the rocks just below us. Twenty or thirty baboons of both sexes and all ages were huddled in the shade.

  ‘Ah,’ said Professor W., ‘sacred monkeys. How very interesting!’

  ‘Why do you think they are sacred? They seem perfectly wild.’

  ‘It is a common thing to find sacred monkeys in monasteries,’ he explained gently. ‘I have seen them in Ceylon and in many parts of India. … Oh, why did he do that? How very thoughtless!’ For our driver had thrown a stone into their midst and scattered them barking in all directions, to the great delight of the small boy behind us.

  It was hot walking. We passed one or two tukals with women and children staring curiously at us, and eventually emerged on an open green ledge littered with enormous rocks and a variety of unimposing buildings. A mob of ragged boys, mostly infected with
skin diseases, surrounded us and were repelled by the Armenian. (These, we learned later, were the deacons.) We sent the boy forward to find someone more responsible, and soon a fine-looking, bearded monk, carrying a yellow sunshade, came out of the shadow of a tree and advanced to greet us. We gave him our letter of introduction from the Abuna, and after he had scrutinized both sides of the envelope, with some closeness, he agreed, through our Armenian, who from now on acted as interpreter, to fetch the head of the monastery. He was away some time and eventually returned with an old priest, who wore a brown cloak, a very large white turban, steel-rimmed spectacles, and carried in one hand an old black umbrella and in the other a horsehair fly-whisk. Professor W. darted forward and kissed the cross which swung from the old man’s neck. This was received rather well, but I felt too shy to follow his lead and contented myself with shaking hands. The monk then handed his superior our letter, which was tucked away in his pocket unopened. They then explained that they would be ready to receive us shortly, and went off to wake up the other priests and prepare the chapter house.

  We waited about half an hour, sitting in the shade near the church, and gradually forming round us a circle of inquisitive ecclesiastics of all ages. The Armenian went off to see about his car. Professor W. replied to the questions that were put to us, with bows, shakes of the head, and little sympathetic moans. Presently one monk came up and, squatting beside us, began to write on the back of his hand with a white pencil in a regular, finely-formed Amharic script. One of the letters was in the form of a cross. Professor W., anxious to inform them all that we were good Christians, pointed to this mark, then to me and to himself, bowed in the direction of the church, and crossed himself. This time he made a less happy impression. Everyone looked bewildered and rather scared; the scribe spat on his hand and, hastily erasing the text, fell back some paces. There was an air of tension and embarrassment, which was fortunately disturbed by our Armenian with the announcement that the council of the monastery were now ready to receive us.