The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh - Evelyn Waugh [164]
Here there was a hitch. Two sentries, shabbily uniformed but armed for action, war-worn, it seemed, but tigers for duty, barred their passage. Dr. Fe tried a high hand, he tried charm, he offered them cigarettes; suddenly a new side of his character was revealed; he fell into demoniac rage, he shook his fists, he bared his chryselephantine teeth, he narrowed his eyes to Mongol slits of hate; what he said was unintelligible to Scott-King but it was plainly designed to wound. The men stood firm.
Then, as suddenly as it had arisen, the squall passed. He turned to his guests. “Excuse one moment,” he said. “These stupid fellows do not understand their orders. It will be arranged by the officer.” He despatched an underling.
“We box the rude mens?” suggested Miss Sveningen, moving cat-like towards the soldiers.
“No. Forgive them I beg you. They think it their duty.”
“Such little men should be polite,” said the giantess.
The officer came; the doors flew open; the soldiers did something with their tommy-guns which passed as a salute. Scott-King raised his hat as the little party swept out into the blaze of sunshine to the waiting cars.
“This superb young creature,” said Scott-King, “would you say she was a slightly incongruous figure?”
“I find her eminently, transcendently congruous,” said Whitemaid. “I exult in her.”
Dr. Fe gallantly took the ladies under his own charge. Scott-King and Whitemaid rode with an underling. They bowled along through the suburbs of Bellacita; tram-lines, half-finished villas, a rush of hot wind, a dazzle of white concrete. At first, when they were fresh from the upper air, the heat had been agreeable; now his skin began to prick and tickle and Scott-King realized that he was unsuitably dressed.
“Exactly ten hours and a half since I had anything to eat,” said Whitemaid.
The underling leaned towards them from the front seat and pointed out places of interest. “Here,” he said, “the anarchists shot General Cardenas. Here syndico-radicals shot the auxiliary bishop. Here the Agrarian League buried alive ten Teaching Brothers. Here the bimetallists committed unspeakable atrocities on the wife of Senator Mendoza.”
“Forgive me for interrupting you,” said Whitemaid, “but could you tell us where we are going?”
“To the Ministry. They are all happy to meet you.”
“And we are happy to meet them. But just at the moment my friend and I are rather hungry.”
“Yes,” said the underling with compassion. “We have heard of it in our papers. Your rations in England, your strikes. Here things are very expensive but there is plenty for all who pay, so our people do not strike but work hard to become rich. It is better so, no?”
“Perhaps. We must have a talk about it some time. But at the moment it is not so much the general economic question as a personal immediate need —”
“We arrive,” said the underling. “Here is the Ministry.”
Like much modern Neutralian building the Ministry was unfinished, but it was conceived in severe one-party style. A portico of unembellished columns, a vast, blank doorway, a bas-relief symbolizing Revolution and Youth and Technical Progress and the National Genius. Inside, a staircase. On the staircase was a less predictable feature; ranged on either side like playing-cards, like a startling hand composed entirely of Kings and Knaves, stood ascending ranks of trumpeters aged from sixty to sixteen, dressed in the tabards of medieval heralds; more than this they wore blond bobbed wigs; more than this their cheeks were palpably rouged. As Scott-King and Whitemaid set foot on the lowest step these figures of fantasy raised their trumpets to their lips and sounded a flourish, while one who might from his extreme age have been father to them all, rattled in a feeble way on a little kettledrum. “Frankly,” said Whitemaid, “I am not in good heart for this kind of thing.”
They mounted between the blaring ranks, were greeted on the piano nobile by a man in plain evening