The Adventures of God in His Search for the Black Girl (6 page)

In a corner of the Empire of the West, three poets, who had been on the verge of starving in a cramped garret and who had been using up their failing strength in debating which of them was the least gifted poet (for they all agreed that, once he had been justly picked out, it would be only just for the other two to eat him), were rescued at the latest possible moment by state pensions for life, granted them personally (and, he insisted, privately) by the Emperor.

In brief, the plan worked.

Everyone in both Empires was soon receiving a sound but interesting education and then going on to a secure and pleasant job which exacted from him only short hours of work.

Everyone continued, however, to believe that most of his fellow citizens were slaving away, in factories too secret for their whereabouts to be divulged, at the distasteful but necessary chore of making weapons.

Each Empire was quickly growing into a paradise – but a paradise much less boring than its mythical prototype. For,
besides
being offered entertainment of a high standard to divert them in their new quantities of leisure, both populations turned their serious attention to the unendable quest for excellence in art. And there was constant public discussion of adventurous and subversive ideas.

Ideas which a few years before would have been called dangerous were now thought exciting. People no longer wanted to stop others saying things they disagreed with. They
positively
wanted the ideas they disliked to be expressed, because otherwise it was impossible to put the arguments against them.

Now that people were enjoying their own lives, they felt very little impulse to prevent other people from enjoying theirs.

No more did they want to prevent animals of other species from continuing and enjoying
their
lives. Humans stopped
torturing
and killing other animals for purposes of sport, science or food production. They explored the luxuries of vegetarian food (which, since it was cheaper than carnivorous food, further increased the affluence of both Empires), and two new and sophisticated vegetarian cuisines were developed, one Eastern and spicy, the other Western and saucy.

On each side there were moves to extend the new tolerance to the other Empire. Each Empire was inclined to believe that its own way of life was now so obviously paradisal that citizens of the other Empire would need only to see it to be won over.

Having lost their dread of subversion (their secret
conviction
, that is, that the other side was more attractive than one’s own), both sides permitted their own citizens to travel freely and welcomed visitors in return.

The tourists were much freer than before to roam while they were abroad. Although they knew there existed large military areas which it was forbidden to enter, they never seemed to chance on one, no matter how widely they wandered.

In their new freedom, the tourists became much less purblind about what they allowed themselves to admit to themselves they saw. Both sets of tourists were, in fact, astonished to realise, from observation, that the other Empire was also a paradise.

On each side, the consensus worked spontaneously round to the conclusion that, regrettable though it was in principle and expensive in practice, armed vigilance must still be kept up, since the rival Empire obviously had dangerously huge material resources.

Suddenly, the Emperor of the West died.

(His doctors diagnosed, unfortunately after the event, that his heart had been weakened by his taking up long-distance swimming and when he was past the age for it.)

The new Emperor of the West, like most people in both Empires, was a believer in reluctant armed might. As soon as he was installed and had access to top secrets, he considered it his duty to satisfy himself about the state of the armed forces, the stock of weapons and the security precautions of his Empire.

He found it difficult to penetrate the codes and the
reciprocally
watertight systems of the many security organisations. Having, however, been trained in Formal Logic, he set about deciphering the secret files systematically and coolly. Yet for all his coolness he could scarcely believe the conclusion to which all his investigations seemed to point.

Flustered despite himself, the new Emperor realised that he must instantly summon the whole political and military
hierarchy
and disclose what he thought he had discovered. If anyone could shew that the Emperor had misunderstood the files, so much the better: he would merely have made a fool of himself.

He planned to disclose the truth in total secrecy, of course. He realised that any leak would entail enormous risk: should word reach the East of the West’s complete lack of defence, immediate invasion might result.

Although he had made up his mind what he must do, the new Emperor found the state of affairs he was about to
disclose
so incredible that, before summoning the assembly, he retired to his private study and passed an hour of agonised solitude trying to get used to the reality of what he had to tell.

He was on the point of pressing the intercom button and sending out his summons, when he noticed his window being besieged by a singularly persistent pigeon.

A birdlover in any case, impressed by this bird’s purposeful behaviour, and feeling the need for a moment’s respite from his huge and urgent responsibility, the Emperor raised the window, despite the disruption that invariably made in the air
conditioning
, and found that a note, purporting to be from the Emperor of the East, was attached to the pigeon’s left leg.

‘If you’ve discovered what I think you must by now have discovered,’ the message read, ‘do nothing rash. I had an arrangement with your predecessor. I’ll explain when I can see you alone. Accept my forthcoming invitation to an official conference, and leave the table for the lavatory at 11.39 G.M.T. on the second morning. Message ends.’

The Emperor pushed the intercom button but only to ask for the air conditioning to be rectified and to request a handful of corn from the kitchen so that he might thank the pigeon.

The next day, diplomats from the East began negotiations for an Emperor-level conference.

That seemed to offer the Emperor of the West some assurance that the message was not a hoax.

All the same, he was worried by the danger of doing nothing about his Empire’s vulnerability. He might be committing the grossest dereliction of duty in history. He told his own
diplomatists
to hurry the conference arrangements.

However, protocol and security could not be skimped. Six weeks elapsed. During them, the Emperor of the West read and re-read the pigeon message, trying to understand the ‘
arrangement
’ it mentioned. The best he could surmise seemed a
redoubled
incredibility: was it possible that the Empire of the East was also without defence?

It crossed the Western Emperor’s mind that, were that so, it might conceivably be his distasteful duty, for the sake of humanity at large, to order an invasion of the East.

However, he happily realised that that decision, right or wrong, was one he need not take: because his own Empire, being without armies or arms, was in no position to march in.

The Emperor of the West approached the first day of the conference impatient for the second day and the secret
appointment
.

He thought of the first day as mere slack time, during which no private puzzles could be answered and all he could expect from his fellow-Emperor was public affability.

But the Emperor of the East in fact did something
unexpected
. He died.

He thudded forward onto the conference table, seemed to be trying to say something to the Emperor opposite, and extended his dying arm across the table towards him.

The delegates from the Eastern Empire, in consternation, accused the Empire of the West of having poisoned the
Emperor
.

One Eastern official, reputedly the toughest member of the so-called Committee of Six, actually leaned threateningly across the conference table and shouted at the Emperor of the West:
‘Assassin!’

The Emperor of the West remained cool. ‘Surely it would be wiser to wait for the post mortem findings before making accusations. To my admittedly untrained eye, the symptoms looked just like those of my own predecessor, when he had
his
heart attack.’

‘Nonsense,’ said the tough official. ‘Even in death, our heroic and martyred comrade was trying to point the finger of suspicion at you.’

‘On the contrary,’ the Emperor of the West replied suavely. ‘He was trying to extend to me the hand of conciliation.’

It was an answer which discernibly calmed both delegations.

The Eastern delegation announced that they must
immediately
retire into private session to consider domestic
problems
, by which everyone understood them to mean they must choose a new Emperor.

By the next day he was chosen. He was not the tough official (who indeed had vanished overnight from the Eastern
delegation
) but a mildly spoken man, who opened the session by apologising for the accusations flung in the crisis of grief.

‘It turns out’, said the new Emperor of the East, ‘that our late esteemed comrade Emperor died of causes entirely natural – unless, that is, your Western technologists have come up with a poison that is undetectable.’

There was a moment’s bristling on both sides, but then the new Emperor smiled to shew he was joking.

‘Our own technologists’, he added, ‘tell me that is impossible, and since ours are known to be the best technologists in the world I entirely believe them.’

The Emperor of the West shushed one of his technical advisers who was obviously on the point of interpolating that it was western technologists who were the best, and the Eastern Emperor went on to say, apologetically, that in the new
circumstances
he felt obliged to adjourn the inter-Emperor conference. ‘I am very much a new boy’, he said, smiling again, ‘and have much to learn about my new job. When I have sufficiently schooled myself, I hope to have the pleasure of resuming, on an informed basis, this conference with my colleague the Emperor of the West.’

Everybody understood the new Emperor to be saying that he
must discover what military resources were at his disposal so that he could know from how much strength he was negotiating.

Everybody thought it a perfectly natural response on his part.

Only the Emperor of the West was secretly worried.
However
, having foreseen what might happen, he said, before the conference dispersed: ‘Fellow-Emperor, I have been personally grieved, as I am sure you have, by the death of your predecessor. I have written you a purely personal and private letter in which I have tried to express my feelings. May I beg you to read it, when you return to your own capital, in privacy. I should be embarrassed if my stumbling sentences were seen by any eyes but yours, which I know will look sympathetically on my
deficiencies
.’

And he held out the letter, which was in a sealed envelope.

Some Eastern security men moved to intercept it and vet it. But their Emperor brushed them aside. ‘There is no such thing as an undetectable poison,’ he said. ‘If the letter poisons me, you will know all about it, and you will have lost nothing but my life and the peace of the world. But I am sure’, he added, with a slow courteous bow to the Western Emperor, ‘that it will bring me not poison but comfort.’ And, taking the letter he put it into his inside breast pocket next to his heart.

When he opened the letter in privacy, the Emperor of the East found that, to a sheet of his official tiara’d writing paper, the Western Emperor had sticky-taped the by now crumpled message sent him by pigeon. Underneath, the Emperor of the West had written: ‘I had this from your predecessor. If you recognise the writing as his, you will have an earnest of my good faith. When you make a certain disturbing discovery, please take no action until you have called for a resumption of the adjourned conference. At that conference, please keep the appointment your predecessor made with me.’

Within a fortnight, diplomatists from the East applied for the conference to be resumed.

On the second morning of the resumed conference, the
Emperor
of the West rose abruptly from the table, remarked ‘The drinking water in these spa towns where we hold conferences is always upsetting,’ and left the room.

A second later, the Emperor of the East rose, said ‘I don’t think it’s the water; I think it’s the quantity of wine at these
banquets we give each other,’ and also left.

By the time the Emperor of the East reached the room marked ‘Toilets. Emperors Only’, the right-hand cubicle (there were, of course, only two) was already occupied, with its door shut.

The Emperor of the East entered the cubicle on the left.

Beneath the partition between the cubicles, a sheet of blue lavatory paper was extended towards him.

The Emperor of the East picked it up and read: ‘I have
discovered
that my Empire is totally disarmed. Have you?’

On a piece of pink lavatory paper from the box in his cubicle, the Emperor of the East replied: ‘Yes. Let’s keep it up.’

In accordance with security procedure, both Emperors flushed away the messages they had received.

So, though this conference too appeared to produce no result, paradise continued in both Empires.

Indeed, it became double paradise. In the free exchange of ideas, each Empire was able to copy the best things about the other.

The Emperor of the West grew old and judged that the world was now safe enough for him to contemplate retirement while he might still have something new and truthful to say about the theory of the syllogism.

He was encouraged by the existence of an up-and-coming young politician who was campaigning for a reconciliation with the East. His slogan was ‘Trust the People – whether of West or East’.