Chapter III

The central heating in the Embassy ballroom gave out a thick furry warmth which made the air taste twice-used; but the warmth itself was a welcome contrast to the frigid pine-starred landscapes outside the tall windows where the snow fell steadily, not only over Russia, it seemed, but over the whole world. It had been falling now for weeks on end. The numb drowsiness of the Soviet winter had engulfed them all. There seemed so little motion, so little sound in the world outside the walls which enclosed them. The tramp of soldiers’ boots between the shabby sentry-boxes outside the iron gates had died away now in the winter silence. In the gardens the branches of the trees bowed lower and lower under the freight of falling whiteness until one by one they sprang back shedding their parcels of snow, in soundless explosions of glittering crystals; then the whole process began again, the soft white load of the tumbling snowflakes gathering upon them, pressing them down like springs until the weight became unendurable. Today it was Mountolive’s turn to read the lesson. Looking up from the lectern from time to time he saw the looming faces of his staff and fellow secretaries in the shadowy gloom of the ballroom as they followed his voice; faces gleaming white and sunless — he had a sudden image of them all floating belly upwards in a snowy lake, like bodies of trapped frogs gleaming upwards through the mirror of ice. He coughed behind his hand, and the contagion spread into a ripple of coughing which subsided once more into that spiritless silence, with only the susurrus of the pipes echoing through it. Everyone today looked morose and ill. The six Chancery guards looked absurdly pious, their best suits awkwardly worn, their jerks of hair pasted to their brows. All were ex-Marines and clearly showed traces of vodka hangovers. Mountolive sighed inwardly as he allowed his quiet melodious voice to enunciate the splendours — incomprehensible to them all — of the passage in the Gospel of St. John which he had found under the marker. The eagle smelt of camphor — why, he could not imagine. As usual, the Ambassador had stayed in bed; during the last year he had become very lax in his duties and was prepared to depend on Mountolive who was luckily always there to perform them with grace and lucidity. Sir Louis had given up even the pretence of caring about the welfare physical or spiritual of his little flock. Why should he not? In three months he would have retired for good. It was arduous to replace him on these public occasions but it was also useful, thought Mountolive. It gave him a clear field in the exploitation of his own talents for administration. He was virtually running the whole Embassy now, it was in his hands. Nevertheless…. He noticed that Cowdell, the Head of Chancery, was trying to catch his eye. He finished the lesson unfalteringly, replaced the markers, and made his way slowly back to his seat. The chaplain uttered a short catarrhal sentence and with a riffling of pages they found themselves confronting the banal text of ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ in the eleventh edition of the Foreign Service Hymnal. The harmonium in the corner suddenly began to pant like a fat man running for a bus; then it found its voice and gave out a slow nasal rendering of the first two phrases in tones whose harshness across the wintry hush was like the pulling out of entrails. Mountolive repressed a shudder, waiting for the instrument to subside on the dominant as it always did — as if about to burst into all-too-human sobs. Raggedly they raised their voices to attest to … to what? Mountolive found himself wondering. They were a Christian enclave in a hostile land, a country which had become like a great concentration camp owing to a simple failure of the human reason. Cowdell was nudging his elbow and he nudged back to indicate a willingness to receive any urgent communication not strictly upon religious matters. The Head of Chancery sang: ‘Someone’s lucky day today Marching as to war (fortissimo, with piety) Ciphers have an urgent Going on before’ (fortissimo, with piety). Mountolive was annoyed. There was usually little to do on a Sunday, though the Cipher office remained open with a skeleton staff on duty. Why had they not, according to custom, telephoned to the villa and called him in? Perhaps it was something about the new liquidations? He started the next verse plaintively: ‘Someone should have told me How was I to know? Who’s the duty cipherine?’ Cowdell shook his head and frowned as he added the rider: ‘She is still at work-ork-ork.’ They wheeled round the corner, so to speak, and drew collective breath while the music started to march down the aisle again. This respite enabled Cowdell to explain hoarsely: ‘No, it’s an urgent Personal. Some groups corrupt still.’ They smoothed their faces and consciences for the rest of the hymn while Mountolive grappled with his perplexity. As they knelt on the uncomfortable dusty hassocks and buried their faces in their hands, Cowdell continued from between his fingers: ‘You’ve been put up for a “K” and a mission. Let me be the first to congratulate you, etc.’ ‘Christ!’ said Mountolive in a surprised whisper, to himself rather than to his Maker. He added ‘Thank you.’ His knees suddenly felt weak. For once he had to study to achieve his air of imperturbability. Surely he was still too young? The ramblings of the Chaplain, who resembled a swordfish, filled him with more than the usual irritation. He clenched his teeth. Inside his mind he heard himself repeating the words: ‘To get out of Russia!’ with ever-growing wonder. His heart leaped inside him. At last the service ended and they trailed dolorously out of the ballroom and across the polished floors of the Residence, coughing and whispering. He managed to counterfeit a walk of slow piety, though it hardly matched his racing mind. But once in the Chancery, he closed the padded door slowly behind him, feeling it slowly suck up the air into its valve as it sealed, and then, drawing a sharp breath, clattered down the three flights of stairs to the wicket-gate which marked the entry to Archives. Here a duty-clerk dispensed tea to a couple of booted couriers who were banging the snow from their gloves and coats. The canvas bags were spread everywhere on the floor waiting to be loaded with the mail and chained up. Hoarse good-mornings followed him to the cipher-room door where he tapped sharply and waited for Miss Steele to let him in. She was smiling grimly. ‘I know what you want’ she said. ‘It’s in the tray — the Chancery copy. I’ve had it put in your tray and given a copy to the Secretary for H.E.’ She bent her pale head once more to her codes. There it was, the flimsy pink membrane of paper with its neatly typed message. He sat down in a chair and read it over slowly twice. Lit a cigarette. Miss Steele raised her head. ‘May I congratulate you, sir?’ — ‘Thank you’ said Mountolive vaguely. He reached his hands to the electric fire for a moment to warm his fingers as he thought deeply. He was beginning to feel a vastly different person. The sensation bemused him. After a while he walked slowly and thoughtfully upstairs to his own office, still deep in this new and voluptuous dream. The curtains had been drawn back — that meant that his secretary had come in; he stood for a while watching the sentries cross and recross the snowlit entrance to the main gate with its ironwork piled heavily with ice. While he stood there with his dark eyes fixed upon an imagined world lying somewhere behind this huge snowscape, his secretary came in. She was smiling with jubilance. ‘It’s come at last’ she said. Mountolive smiled slowly back. ‘Yes. I wonder if H.E. will stand in my way?’ ‘Of course not’ she said emphatically. ‘Why should he?’ Mountolive sat once more at his familiar desk and rubbed his chin. ‘He himself will be off in three months or so’ said the girl. She looked at him curiously, almost angrily, for she could read no pleasure, no self-congratulation in his sober expression. Even good fortune could not pierce that carefully formulated reserve. ‘Well’ he said slowly, for he was still swaddled by his own amazement, the voluptuous dream of an unmerited success. ‘We shall see.’ He had been possessed now by another new and even more vertiginous thought. He opened his eyes widely as he stared at the window. Surely now, he would at long last be free to act? At last the long discipline of self-effacement, of perpetual delegation, was at an end? This was frightening to contemplate, but also exciting. He felt as if now his true personality would be able to find a field of expression in acts; and still full of this engrossing delusion he stood up and smiled at the girl as he said: ‘At any rate, I must ask H.E.’s blessing before we answer. He is not on deck this morning, so lock up. Tomorrow will do.’ She hovered disappointedly for a moment over him before gathering up his tray and taking out the key to his private safe. ‘Very well’ she said. ‘There’s no hurry’ said Mountolive. He felt that his real life now stretched before him; he was about to be reborn. ‘I don’t see my exequatur coming through for a time yet. And so on.’ But his mind was already racing upon a parallel track, saying: ‘In summer the whole Embassy moves to Alexandria, to summer quarters. If I could time my arrival….’ And then, side by side with this sense of exhilaration, came a twinge of characteristic meanness. Mountolive like most people who have nobody on whom to lavish affection, tended towards meanness in money matters. Unreasonable as it was, he suddenly felt a pang of depression at the thought of the costly dress uniform which his new position would demand. Only last week there had been a catalogue from Skinners showing a greatly increased scale for Foreign Service uniforms. He got up and went into the room next door to see the private secretary. It was empty. An electric fire glowed. A lighted cigarette smoked in the ashtray beside the two bells marked respectively ‘His Ex.’ and ‘Her Ex’. On the pad beside them the Secretary had written in his round feminine hand ‘Not to be woken before eleven.’ This obviously referred to ‘His Ex.’.As for ‘Her Ex.’, she had only managed to last six months in Moscow before retiring to the amenities of Nice where she awaited her husband upon his retirement. Mountolive stubbed out the cigarette. It would be useless to call on his Chief before midday, for the morning in Russia afflicted Sir Louis with a splenetic apathy which often made him unresponsive to ideas; and while he could not, in all conscience, do anything to qualify Mountolive’s good fortune, he might easily show pique at not having been consulted according to custom by the Principal Private Secretary. Anyway. He retired to his now empty office and plunged into the latest copy of The Times, waiting with ill-concealed impatience for the Chancery clock to mark out midday with its jangling whirrs and gasps. Then he went downstairs and slipped into the Residence again through the padded door, walking with his swift limping walk across the polished floors with their soft archipelagos of neutral rug. Everything smelt of disuse and Mansion polish; in the curtains a smell of cigar-smoke. At every window a screen of tossing snowflakes. Merritt the valet was starting up the staircase with a tray containing a cocktail shaker full of Martini and a single glass. He was a pale heavily-built man who cultivated the gravity of a churchwarden while he moved about his tasks in the Residence. He stopped as Mountolive drew level and said hoarsely: ‘He’s just up and dressing for a duty lunch, sir.’ Mountolive nodded and passed him, taking the stairs two at a time. The servant turned back to the buttery to add a second glass to his tray. Sir Louis whistled dispiritedly at his own reflection in the great mirror as he dressed himself. ‘Ah, my boy’ he said vaguely as Mountolive appeared behind him. ‘Just dressing. I know, I know. It’s my unlucky day. Chancery rang me at eleven. So you have done it at last. Congratulations.’ Mountolive sat down at the foot of the bed with relief to find the news taken so lightly. His Chief went on wrestling with a tie and a starched collar as he said: ‘I suppose you’ll want to go off at once, eh? It’s a loss to us.’ ‘It would be convenient’ admitted Mountolive slowly. ‘A pity. I was hoping you’d see me out. But anyway’ he made a flamboyant gesture with a disengaged hand ‘you’ve done it. From tricorne and dirk to bicorne and sword — the final apotheosis.’ He groped for cuff-links and went on thoughtfully. ‘Of course, you could stay a bit; it’ll take time to get agrément. Then you’ll have to go to the Palace and kiss hands and all that sort of thing. Eh?’ ‘I have quite a lot of leave due’ said Mountolive with the faintest trace of firmness underlying his diffident tone. Sir Louis retired to the bathroom and began scrubbing his false teeth under the tap. ‘And the next Honours List?’ he shouted into the small mirror on the wall. ‘You’ll wait for that?’ ‘I suppose.’ Merritt came in with the tray and the old man shouted ‘Put it anywhere. An extra glass?’ ‘Yes sir.’ As the servant retired closing the door softly behind him, Mountolive got up to pour the cocktail. Sir Louis was talking to himself in a grumbling tone. ‘It’s damn hard on the Mission. Well, anyway, David, I bet your first reaction to the news was: now I’m free to act, eh?’ He chuckled like a fowl and returned to his dressing-table in a good humour. His junior paused in the act of pouring out, startled by such unusual insight. ‘How on earth did you know that?’ he said, frowning. Sir Louis gave another self-satisfied cluck. ‘We all do. We all do. The final delusion. Have to go through it like the rest of us, you know. It’s a tricky moment. You find yourself throwing your weight about — committing the sin against the Holy Ghost if you aren’t careful.’ ‘What would that be?’ ‘In diplomacy it means trying to build a policy on a minority view. Everyone’s weak spot. Look how often we are tempted to build something on the Right here. Eh? Won’t do. Minorities are no use unless they’re prepared to fight. That’s the thing.’ He accepted his drink in rosy old fingers, noting with approval the breath of dew upon the cold glasses. They toasted each other and smiled affectionately. In the last two years they had become the greatest of friends. ‘I shall miss you. But then, in another three months I shall be out of this … this place myself.’ He said the words with undisguised fervour. ‘No more nonsense about Objectivity. Eastern can find some nice impartial products of the London School of Economics to do their reporting.’ Recently the Foreign Office had complained that the Mission’s despatches were lacking in balance. This had infuriated Sir Louis. He was fired even by the most fugitive memory of the slight. Putting down his empty glass he went on to himself in the mirror: ‘Balance! If the F.O. sent a mission to Polynesia they would expect their despatches to begin (he put on a cringing whining tone to enunciate it): “While it is true that the inhabitants eat each other, nevertheless the food consumption per head is remarkably high.” ’ He broke off suddenly and sitting down to lace his shoes said: ‘Oh, David my boy, who the devil am I going to be able to talk to when you go? Eh? You’ll be walking about in your ludicrous uniform with an osprey feather in your hat looking like the mating plumage of some rare Indian bird and I — I shall be trotting backwards and forwards to the Kremlin to see those dull beasts.’ The cocktails were rather strong. They embarked upon a second, and Mountolive said: ‘Actually, I came wondering if I could buy your old uniform, unless it’s bespoke. I could get it altered.’ ‘Uniform?’ said Sir Louis. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’ ‘They are so fearfully expensive.’ ‘I know. And they’ve gone up. But you’d have to send mine back to the taxidermist for an overhaul. And they never fit round the neck, you know. All that braid stuff. I’m a frogging or two loose I think. Thank God this isn’t a monarchy — one good thing. Frock coats in order, what? Well I don’t know.’ They sat pondering upon the question for a long moment. Then Sir Louis said: ‘What would you offer me?’ His eye narrowed. Mountolive deliberated for a few moments before saying ‘Thirty pounds’ in an unusually energetic and decisive tone. Sir Louis threw up his hands and simulated incoherence. ‘Only thirty? It cost me….’ ‘I know’ said Mountolive. ‘Thirty pounds’ meditated his Chief, hovering upon the fringes of outrage. ‘I think, dear boy ——’ ‘The sword is a bit bent’ said Mountolive obstinately. ‘Not too badly’ said Sir Louis. ‘The King of Siam pinched it in the door of his private motor-car. Honourable scar.’ He smiled once more and continued dressing, humming to himself. He took an absurd delight in this bargaining. Suddenly he turned round. ‘Make it fifty’ he said. Mountolive shook his head thoughtfully. ‘That is too much, sir.’ ‘Forty-five.’ Mountolive rose and took a turn up and down the room, amused by the old man’s evident delight in this battle of wills. ‘I’ll give you forty’ he said at last and sat down once more with deliberation. Sir Louis brushed his silver hair furiously with his heavy tortoiseshell-backed brushes. ‘Have you any drink in your cellar?’ ‘As a matter of fact, yes, I have.” ‘Well then, you can have it for forty if you throw in a couple of cases of … what have you? Have you a respectable champagne?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Very well. Two — no, three cases of same.’ They both laughed and Mountolive said ‘It’s a hard bargain you drive.’ Sir Louis was delighted by the compliment. They shook hands upon it and the Ambassador was about to turn back to the cocktail tray when his junior said: ‘Forgive me, sir. Your third.’ ‘Well?’ said the old diplomat with a well-simulated start and a puzzled air. ‘What of it?’ He knew perfectly well. Mountolive bit his lip. ‘You expressly asked me to warn you.’ He said it reproachfully. Sir Louis threw himself further back with more simulated surprise. ‘What’s wrong with a final boneshaker before lunch, eh?’ ‘You’ll only hum’ said Mountolive sombrely. ‘Oh, pouf, dear boy!’ said Sir Louis. ‘You will, sir.’ Within the last year, and on the eve of retirement, the Ambassador had begun to drink rather too heavily — though never quite reaching the borders of incoherence. In the same period a new and somewhat surprising tic had developed. Enlivened by one cocktail too many he had formed the habit of uttering a low continuous humming noise at receptions which had earned him a rather questionable notoriety. But he himself had been unaware of this habit, and indeed at first indignantly denied its existence. He found to his surprise that he was in the habit of humming, over and over again, in basso profundo, a passage from the Dead March in Saul. It summed up, appropriately enough, a lifetime of acute boredom spent in the company of friendless officials and empty dignitaries. In a way, it was his response perhaps to a situation which he had subconsciously recognized as intolerable for a number of years; and he was grateful that Mountolive had had the courage to bring the habit to his notice and to help him overcome it. Nevertheless, he always felt bound to protest in spite of himself at his junior’s reminder. ‘Hum?’ he repeated now, indignantly pouting, ‘I never heard such nonsense.’ But he put down the glass and returned to the mirror for a final criticism of his toilet. ‘Well, anyway’ he said, ‘time is up.’ He pressed a bell and Merritt appeared with a gardenia on a plate. Sir Louis was somewhat pedantic about flowers and always insisted on wearing his favourite one in his buttonhole when in tenue de ville. His wife flew up boxes of them from Nice and Merritt kept them in the buttery refrigerator, to be rationed out religiously. ‘Well, David’ he said, and patted Mountolive’s arm with affection. ‘I owe you many a good turn. No humming today, however appropriate.’ They walked slowly down the long curving staircase and into the hall where Mountolive saw his Chief gloved and coated before signalling the official car by house-telephone. ‘When do you want to go?’ The old voice trembled with genuine regret. ‘By the first of next month, sir. That leaves time to wind up and say good-bye.’ ‘You won’t stay and see me out?’ ‘If you order me to, sir.’ ‘You know I wouldn’t do that’ said Sir Louis, shaking his white head, though in the past he had done worse things. ‘Never.’ They shook hands warmly once more while Merritt walked past them to throw back the heavy front door, for his ears had caught the slither and scrape of tyre-chains on the frosty drive outside. A blast of snow and wind burst upon them. The carpets rose off the floor and subsided again. The Ambassador donned his great fur helmet and thrust his hands into the carmuff. Then, bowed double, he stalked out to the wintry greyness. Mountolive sighed and heard the Residence clock clear its dusty throat carefully before striking one. Russia was behind him.

Berlin was also in the grip of snow, but here the sullen goaded helplessness of the Russias was replaced by a malignant euphoria hardly less dispiriting. The air was tonic with gloom and uncertainty. In the grey-green lamplight of the Embassy he listened thoughtfully to the latest evaluations of the new Attila, and a valuable summary of the measured predictions which for months past had blackened the marbled minute-papers of German Department, and the columns of the P.E. printings — political evaluations. Was it really by now so obvious that this nation-wide exercise in political diabolism would end by plunging Europe into bloodshed? The case seemed overwhelming. But there was one hope — that Attila might turn eastwards and leave the cowering west to moulder away in peace. If the two dark angels which hovered over the European subconscious could only fight and destroy each other…. There was some real hope of this. ‘The only hope, sir’ said the young attaché quietly, and not without a certain relish, so pleasing to a part of the mind is the prospect of total destruction, as the only cure for the classical ennui of modern man. ‘The only hope’ he repeated. Extreme views, thought Mountolive, frowning. He had been taught to avoid them. It had become second nature to remain uncommitted in his mind. That night he was dined somewhat extravagantly by the youthful Chargé d’Affaires, as the Ambassador was absent on duty, and after dinner was taken to the fashionable Tanzfest for the cabaret. The network of candle-lit cellars, whose walls were lined with blue damask, was ruled with the glow of a hundred cigarettes, twinkling away like fireflies outside the radius of white lights where a huge hermaphrodite with the face of a narwhal conducted the measures of the ‘Fox Macabre Totentanz’. Bathed in the pearly sweat of the nigger saxophonists the refrain ran on with its hysterical coda: Berlin, dein Tanzer ist der Tod! Berlin, du wuhlst mit Lust im Kot! Halt ein! lass sein! und denk ein bischen nach: Du tanzt dir dock vom Leibe nicht die Schmach. denn du boxt, und du jazzt, und du foxt auf dem Pulverfass! It was an admirable commentary on the deliberations of the afternoon and underneath the frenetic licence and fervour of the singing he seemed to catch the drift of older undertones — passages from Tacitus, perhaps? Or the carousings of death-dedicated warriors heading for Valhalla? Somehow the heavy smell of the abattoir clung to it, despite the tinsel and the streamers. Thoughtfully Mountolive sat among the white whorls of cigar-smoke and watched the crude peristaltic movements of the Black Bottom. The words repeated themselves in his mind over and over again. ‘You won’t dance the shame out of your belly,’ he repeated to himself as he watched the dancers break out and the lights change from green and gold to violet. Then he suddenly sat up and said ‘My Goodness!’ He had caught sight of a familiar face in a far corner of the cellar: that of Nessim. He was seated at a table among a group of elderly men in evening-dress, smoking a lean cheroot and nodding from time to time. They were taking scant notice of the cabaret. A magnum of champagne stood upon the table. It was too far to depend upon signals and Mountolive sent over a card, waiting until he saw Nessim follow the waiter’s pointing finger before he smiled and raised a hand. They both stood up, and Nessim at once came over to his table with his warm shy smile to utter the conventional exclamations of surprise and delight. He was, he said, in Berlin on a two-day business visit. ‘Trying to market tungsten’ he added quietly. He was flying back to Egypt at dawn next morning. Mountolive introduced him to his own host and persuaded him to spend a few moments at their table. ‘It is such a rare pleasure — and now.’ But Nessim had already heard the rumour of his impending appointment. ‘I know it isn’t confirmed yet,’ he said, ‘but it leaked just the same — needless to say via Pursewarden. You can imagine our delight after so long.’ They talked on for a while, Nessim smiling as he answered Mountolive’s questions. Only Leila was at first not mentioned. After a while Nessim’s face took on a curious expression — a sort of chaste cunning, and he said with hesitation: ‘Leila will be so delighted.’ He gave him a swift upward glance from under his long lashes and then looked hastily away. He stubbed out his cheroot and gave Mountolive another equivocal glance. He stood up and glanced anxiously back in the direction of his party at the far table. ‘I must go’ he said. They discussed plans for a possible meeting in England before Mountolive should fly Out to his new appointment. Nessim was vague, unsure of his movements. They would have to wait upon the event. But now Mountolive’s host had returned from the cloak-room, a fact which effectively prevented any further private exchanges. They said good-bye with good grace and Nessim walked slowly back to his table. ‘Is your friend in armaments?’ asked the Chargé d’Affaires as they were leaving. Mountolive shook his head. ‘He’s a banker. Unless tungsten plays a part in armaments — I don’t really know.’ ‘It isn’t important. Just idle curiosity. You see, the people at his table are all from Krupps, and so I wondered. That was all.’