City of Spades - By Colin MacInnes Page 0,51

and you, Moscow, have been seen in peculiar assemblies, so I hear, with people of evil reputation.’

‘If you’re speaking of last Saturday a somebody may have told you or, Miss Cornwallis, it was at a prominent lawyer’s house, and bankers and military officers and also a chief man of police were present there.’

‘Now, please don’t argue with me, Norbert.’

‘If a party’s suitable for the police chief, what can be so wrong with it as that?’

‘It’s not parties I’m talking about, Norbert – it’s how you spend your leisure time when you’re not dancing. You should be visiting the picture museums and cultural centres of which this city’s provided very freely.’

‘All right, Miss Cornwallis, we’ll visit picture museums and study pictures.’

‘Please don’t argue with me, Norbert. It’s not necessary.’

My trance-like fascination was interrupted when a pair of arms clasped me gently, but firmly, round the waist. I turned and saw a short, lissom figure standing on tiptoe, gazing up as if adoringly, and, beside him, a tall, slender companion, holding two tapering, elongated drums.

‘There are the Haitian boys, the drummers,’ Larry said. ‘That’s Hercule La Bataille who’s trying to seduce you, and Hippolyte Dieudonné is this one here.’

I greeted them, disengaging myself with difficulty from the encircling arms.

‘These boys,’ said Larry, ‘will be doing their bit of voodoo at the party tonight.’

‘I turns you into hen, and eat you,’ said Hercule with an abominable smile.

Hippolyte was expressionless, but gave six sharp taps on one of his drums.

‘You turn this Limey into a hen, and I slit your throat,’ said Larry, suddenly producing an enormous knife from inside his clothing, and brandishing it (though sheathed) before the faces of the Caribbeans.

‘Larry, do be careful,’ I cried out. ‘Why on earth do you carry that dreadful weapon?’

‘I’m never without my knife,’ said Larry. ‘Not in any circumstance whatsoever.’

6

Theodora lured away from culture

The price Miss Theodora made me pay for that twenty pounds she gave me at the radio corporation building was quite heavy: it was to take me that selfsame evening to a theatre, and show me a play by a French man about nothing I could get my brain to climb around. At a coffee, in the interval (for this theatre had no liquor in its sad bar), I said, ‘Miss Theodora, I know this kind of entertainment is suitable for my improvement, but don’t you think we could now step out into the air?’

‘I did hope you’d like it, Johnny.’

‘Quite over my comprehension, Theodora. Please – can’t we go?’

I could see she was sad that I didn’t rise up to her educational expectancies; but to hell with that, and by some violent smiles I managed to get her up into the street away from that bad place. For compensation of her feelings, I took her by the hand and pressed and rubbed it nicely as we walked along the paving-stones. Then what should I hear, rising up from underneath my feet, but the sound of real authentic African song and drumming. A door said, ‘The Beni Bronze’, and I pulled Miss Theodora down the steps before she quite knew what.

Just think of my pleasure when I found it was a genuine, five-drum combination, and hardly had I parked Miss Theodora on a seat beside the bar when I stepped across the floor through all the dancers and asked the band leader (who was bald on his head as any ostrich egg) if I could sit in at the bongos for a moment, at which I am quite a product. He gave his permission with a weary smile, and I asked the young bongo player, as I wedged his sweet instrument between my thighs, what this leader’s name was. ‘Cuthbertson,’ this boy said. ‘Generally called Cranium.’

I think to their surprise my performance gave some pleasure, and as soon as we’d ended I asked this Mr Cranium to come over to the bar. Theodora, I could see, was not very glad at the use I was making of the wad of notes she’d given me, and tried some attempt to pay herself, which I soon avoided. (I do hate those women fishing in their handbags. No woman will ever pay a drink for me – unless I hold her money for her beforehand.)

‘And how is our African style appreciated in this country?’ I enquired of Mr Cuthbertson.

‘Just little,’ he replied with sorrow. ‘Only our people like it, and some few white; but West Indians and Americans – well, they like something less artistic