Olura (6 page)

He was a remarkable presence in scarlet-and-gold pyjamas and a clashing dressing-gown of imperial purple. I suppose that when at last he could shut his door against the world he pleased himself
by a return to tropical magnificence. When I told him that I had come back with Livetti he was relieved. He said that he never ought to have allowed me to drive away, that we had been far too
impulsive and that he had been worrying over the intolerable risk. He mentioned the awkward inquisitiveness of dogs. I had thought of that, too, but probably not so anxiously as someone accustomed
to the habits of vultures and hyaenas.

On the other hand he was far more shocked than I by Livetti in an open garage. What about the risk of some sneak thief breaking into the boot? He wanted to go down at once and keep watch on the
car. I wouldn’t have it, assuring him of my very real faith in the honesty of the local population. So far as the hotel was concerned, we had slept the night away, innocent and undisturbed.
It seemed a pity to spoil so clean a sheet by sitting in the car without any imaginable excuse and arousing curiosity. Luck had been with us even when he came in from the garage; he had found the
night porter asleep and had tip-toed past him.

There’s nothing like the prospect of standing together in the dock for breaking down the inhibitions of black and white. We could not possibly sleep, so we talked; or rather he did. And it
was the best kind of talk—not the flowery tripe which he handed out at public meetings and the United Nations, but getting down to the real day-to-day working troubles of bringing a nation of
primitive agriculturalists out of the Iron Age into the Twentieth Century. In his own country he had little use for the rights of the individual, but he was forced to pretend for the sake of
opinion abroad that he had. The rights of the individual were prized by just those people who kept alive the evil conscience of the west, and that evil conscience was of enormous value to him. No,
he didn’t think it was unjust.

I delicately brought up the question of Olura and her gang, and found a most forgiveable inconsistency. Though no one knew better than he that well-meaning enthusiasts must not be allowed to
interfere with the government, he worshipped Olura and all that she stood for. He was full of gratitude and overestimated her importance because he loved her dearly. Not passionately. Not quite as
a father. More as a favourite nephew, extraordinary though that may seem. At least I remember feeling something of the sort for a young aunt of mine. She was all-powerful. She was beautiful. And,
though I used to dream of rescuing her from untold dangers, there was not a trace of conscious sexuality.

‘Chivalry, yes,’ he said to me. ‘I don’t know if you grant us that. We have it, but in a rather different form: reverence for the woman who can serve and command.
It’s not unlike the knight’s worship of a queen—if that ever existed outside literature—but religion, superstition, whatever you like to call it, comes in.’

Well, so it did in the twelfth century. The Cathars, the Troubadors. And read any fairy story with the eye of an anthropologist!

Then he was encouraged by our intimacy of common disquiet to reveal a bit more of himself. He wanted to know whether I, as a fairly broad-minded European, really felt superior to the
African.

‘Of course I do,’ I replied frankly, ‘but in fifty years time my children will not.’

No, he explained, he didn’t mean the obvious, present-day differences of culture and education; he meant physical repugnance which he admitted was widespread. But was it deep-rooted or
just the normal human prejudice against anything unfamiliar?

‘Do we in fact, to you a neutral and intellectual, bear an insulting resemblance to apes?’

I said that to judge from what I had read the white man of some discrimination had always been impressed by the physical splendour of some tribes and the animality of others. Speaking for
myself, knowing little of Africans, I could well find repugnant the face of some jazz musician empty of everything but coarseness and false good humour, while feeling humble before that of a
sensitive, brave and kindly fisherman.

‘There is a type of businessman around the Baltic,’ I told him, ‘which bears an insulting resemblance to a pink pig. But what matters to me is the spiritual quality of a human
face. It appals me to think that some people, black or white, might have an immortal soul, and it saddens me that others might not have.’

I could see that I had shocked him. In a sense he was a hypocrite. In all but name he was a dictator. But he was an earnest Christian of missionary simplicity. Peculiar in a black Napoleon, yet
reassuring! I had no doubt that Leopold Mgwana was of vital importance to the future. I felt for the first time that I cared very much for his reputation, quite apart from Olura’s.

At half past eight we called on her. She was in pieces and defenceless after so agitated a night. There was a tired-little-girl quality about her which I found adorable. I gave her a short
account of what had happened and asked her to drive the car—since she would attract less attention than I who had never been seen in it—round to the side of the hotel terrace where one
of us could always keep it under observation from the balconies.

She cried out that it was horrible, that it would be better if we all confessed and that she couldn’t bear it. Her lack of courage disappointed me. It may be that I had treated with too
obvious heartiness the question of the empty petrol tank. The trouble with Olura was that one had to fall over backwards to avoid making her feel guilty, since she was dead certain to be feeling
guilty already, usually without reason.

I said at once that of course I would take the car out of the garage and that it didn’t matter. She gave me a look of extreme dislike, including the silent Mgwana in it, and instantly went
out to drive it round herself.

Mgwana posted himself on his balcony and took the first watch. Meanwhile I tried to get some sleep and probably got some. When I went down for lunch I stopped at the bar and was boldly accosted
by a new guest whose trim buttocks suggested that her skirt was designed deliberately for an interminable succession of bar stools.

Her face was over-repaired, but intelligent. I might even have granted her an immortal soul, which goes to show what nonsense one can talk when there are no facts on which to base opinion. She
had an entertaining line of patter which would have appeared very sophisticated if she had not assumed that because we were both English we were confederates against the world. I found myself
compelled to offer her a drink—since I needed another myself—and she then decided, sliding off the bar stool and revealing for my benefit a jellied leg very well moulded, that we should
take our glasses to a table.

‘Tell me,’ she asked, ‘has anything been happening here?’

‘Nothing more than some filthy weather. I hope it clears up for you.’

‘I don’t think I shall stay more than a night,’ she said.

I replied politely that it was a pity, and where was she going on to?

‘Back to Madrid. I live there. I’m the correspondent of two of our Sunday papers.’

‘Have you come up to see Leopold Mgwana?’

‘I might as well, now that I’m here. I’ll ask him what he thinks of Spanish women or something, though as a matter of fact’—she gave me an elegantly smutty
glance—‘I expect he’s fully occupied.’

I was just about to deal with her as she deserved and leave her to pick up the pieces when I remembered what the experienced Mgwana had said: that ‘they’ would see we couldn’t
keep it out of the news.

‘You mean Miss Manoli?’ I replied. ‘Of course one has to be broad-minded about these things, but …’

‘Do they seem a happy couple?’

‘I don’t know. I never noticed.’

‘Isn’t that like a man!’ she exclaimed gaily.

She asked how long I was staying, and when I said that I should be at the Hostal de las Olas another week she gave me her card and invited me to telephone her if I saw or was told anything out
of the ordinary.

‘But what sort of out of the ordinary?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Anything to do with La Manoli can be News. I had a hot tip that I should drive up here at once if I wanted a scoop. It sounded like a society
scandal.’

‘How do you clever girls get your information?’ I asked. ‘I mean, anybody could telephone and send you off on a wild-goose chase.’

‘They do, but not twice. This was just an anonymous telephone call to tell me that Mgwana was here with some society girl. I checked the information with a source in security police, and
couldn’t make him say yes or no. But I had a hunch, and here I am.’

‘Why the police?’

‘Well, Mgwana is an important person, I supposed that if he was really here, he would have a guard.’

She certainly knew her way around. A secret police source would be most useful. And no doubt her source occasionally got his reward. He could always have a bath afterwards.

The implications of what she had just told me needed sorting out. If anyone at all was keeping an eye on the security of Mgwana he was pretty inefficient. Whatever little book of rules he had
would surely include the checking of bathroom windows. And wouldn’t he make himself known to Mgwana?

I was prepared to bet that the police had not yet taken any action. Mgwana’s visit was unofficial. His inexperienced embassy in London might never have thought of dropping a note on the
Spanish Embassy. As for Olura, who had arranged the holiday, it was not in her character to communicate with an undemocratic government to request the discreet services of its brutal secret agents.
So it was possible that Madrid had known nothing of Mgwana’s arrival until a leisurely report was received from Frontier Control.

Another hypothesis was tenable: that a security guard had arrived soon after Mgwana, and that he had connived at last night’s atrocity. I ruled that out. The secret police might be a
sinister lot when dealing with Basque or Asturian miners, but I knew them to be conscientious and hard-working from the point of view of the State. No agent would allow himself to be suborned by a
pair of dubious foreigners, especially since he would have to explain how a murder took place under his nose.

‘Have you found out if the police have a man up here?’ I asked.

She had not. But she did have, she said, a contact in the hotel, a man called Araña. The name had been given to her by her anonymous informant. I offered to help her to find Araña
and to act as an interpreter in case she did not speak Spanish.

‘I do,’ she claimed.

It was a fair conjecture that Araña would turn out to be the floor waiter who had been packing up that late supper, well posted to listen for sounds of alarm from Olura’s room. I
took my little Sunday pornographer upstairs, and found the man in the pantry on Mgwana’s floor—which was surprising since there was never any room service during lunch. I had not looked
at him closely during the night. Now that I did, I doubted if he was the type to take a bribe for anything plainly dishonourable. There were half a dozen young waiters sliding smoothly about the
terrace with drinks, any one of whom would be a far more likely choice. This fellow was unshaven and looked as if he hadn’t washed or slept, but he was middle-aged, fatherly and reliable.

I turned her loose on him, and never in my life heard worse Spanish. She used a torrent of verbs in the infinitive and assumed a French accent—on the grounds, I suppose, that it ought to
be more intelligible than an English one. But I must admit that this hideous jargon, when accompanied by a too understanding smile and a general air of comely flesh all a-twitter, did get
results.

Even at his age he could not resist the synthetic charm which was squirted at him and did his best to understand her as she drivelled away about the excellence of Spanish hotels and how poorly
paid the staff was. But when she asked him outright if anything of interest to a newspaper had happened to the English señorita during the night, he looked at me for permission to talk.

‘We have no secrets from the lady,’ I said.

‘Nothing happened,’ he told her, ‘nothing at all, except that this gentleman and the black Excellency came downstairs together and called on the lady about two o’clock
with a bottle.’

I grinned at my dainty journalist. She shut the half-open bag which had been a hint that hundred-peseta notes were to be found in it, and looked at me with a set face in which was puzzlement as
well as irritation. She got out of there as fast as dignity and her skirt allowed. She may have thought that I was Mgwana’s shadow and bodyguard.

‘By the way, friend,’ I asked when she had gone, ‘what’s your name?’

‘José Arizmendi.’

I switched at once to Euzkadi.

‘Who told you to hang about in the passage, Arizmendi?’

‘The manager.’

‘And what the devil does
he
want to know?’

‘He told me that it was on orders from Madrid. Somebody has to look after your black man until a trained guard arrives.’

I said that I was very glad to hear it, which I wasn’t. I could have extracted some useful information if the waiter had been employed or bribed by Vigny.

‘And the sooner he comes, the better,’ said Arizmendi. ‘By God, Ardower, I tell you I’m not cut out for the police!’

There are no ‘sirs’ in Euzkadi. We democratically use the surname, whatever the difference of status.

‘One can see that,’ I assured him.

‘Thank you. All the same, there are plenty of good fellows among them up here. I had a second cousin who was a sergeant in Vitoria. But what I was going to say to you is that my job would
be easier if you and the Minister would tell me his intentions. Look! It’s not decent to stand outside a guest’s room, so I stay in the pantry. Last night I was on the floor below, for
I knew this African uncle was in the lady’s bedroom.’

He stated the fact without even an innuendo in his eye, for which I gave him full marks—though I suspect that his unconcern was due to the fact that he took the immorality of politicians
for granted.