In Praise of Savagery. Warwick Cairns

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СКАЧАТЬ he came to the end and solved the mystery. On this he was determined.

      He had made arrangements and plans, and had obtained the blessing and sponsorship of the Royal Geographical Society, and gained further funds for food and equipment, medicines and wages for his party from Magdalen College and from the Linnean Society.

      But at this time the Sultanate of Aussa lay, nominally, within the borders of Abyssinia, and obtaining the permission of the Abyssinian Government was proving considerably more difficult than he had bargained for.

      His initial requests had been met with a flat refusal; and although he was not without connections there, although his late father had been British Minister at the court of the former Emperor Menelik, although he himself had received a personal invitation to attend the coronation of Haile Selassie, these things seemed to have got him nowhere.

      And then came the message from the Embassy.

      The waiter came, to see if fresh tea was required. It was not.

      The young man felt his watch-chain again, and half-pulled his watch from its pocket, but then pushed it back, and instead studied the scalloped pattern on the back of his teaspoon.

      Time. How we measure it out. How it feels, the passing of it. How what was is transformed utterly into what is, and which even in the moment of perceiving has vanished into what is to come, and so on for ever and always. How the wood that made the table at which he sat had grown, for however many years, in some far-flung forest, and the ragged trailing creepers overhanging, and the piercing call of brightly plumed birds. This same thing.

      His father. The presence of him, the fact of him, as solid and real as anything in this life, and now gone, long, long gone: dead and buried these what—thirteen years? One wonders how this can be so.

      He became aware of low voices across the room, and of a cluster of men, and one stepped out from among them and gestured to the others to stay, and turned to look over to where Thesiger sat. He was a young man—little more than a boy, in fact—maybe sixteen or seventeen at a guess—and slight, light-boned, narrow-shouldered and black as your hat. He had prominent ears, big, heavy-lidded eyes, and he wore a formal black suit, tightly buttoned-up, with a high white collar, and highly-polished black shoes on his feet; and he carried a battered leather satchel, brass-buckled like a doctor’s bag.

      Thesiger shot to his feet, recognising the boy at once.

      The boy smiled, revealing white teeth, and crossed to where he stood.

      ‘Do sit down,’ he said, in perfect, educated English, ‘You don’t mind if I join you?’

      ‘You are more than welcome, sir,’ said Thesiger.

      A waiter appeared and pulled out a chair so that His Highness Asfa Wossen Tafari, Crown Prince of Abyssinia, eldest son of the Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, King of Kings and Elect of God, and direct lineal descendant, it was said, of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, could sit down.

      ‘Jolly good sandwiches,’ said the boy, taking a bite, ‘Not so sure about the tea, though. A bit cool for my liking.’

      He snapped his fingers and fresh tea was brought.

      ‘Now,’ he said, ‘down to business. The place you desire to go to: they are very bad people there, you know. Absolute savages. And you are determined to go among them?’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      ‘They will kill you, of course.’

      ‘I’m prepared to take my chances.’

      ‘I am sure that you are. Everything I have heard about you convinces me that this is, indeed, the case. But it is not as simple as that. Not by a long way, because if they kill you, it puts my father in a very difficult position.’

      ‘How so, sir?’

      ‘Aussa is part of Abyssinia. This is agreed. It is not in dispute. And in all of Abyssinia my father’s word is law. But the Sultan does not always see things in this way. And there have been … incidents in the past. Very unfortunate ones. We tend to keep our officials away from Aussa, to avoid too many of these … misunderstandings. Now, if you travel there, with my father’s authority and under his protection, and if anything were to happen to you, then he would be obliged to take the matter up with the Sultan, and it would all be rather awkward.’

      ‘I understand that, sir—which is why I am prepared to go there at my own risk, and without involving your father in any way, other than asking for his permission to proceed.’

      ‘Hmm …’ he said. ‘Just what we expected you to say. So you are absolutely determined to do this thing?’

      ‘I am, sir.’

      ‘And nothing we could say would make you think otherwise?’

      ‘No. Nothing.’

      The young prince looked serious for a while, and then, quite suddenly, he smiled.

      ‘Well, in that case, my father has, after careful consideration, authorised me to offer you two things.’

      He took a sip of his tea, savouring the flavour of it before continuing.

      ‘The first,’ he said, ‘is his permission.’

      Thesiger moved as if to speak, but the prince raised a hand to silence him. ‘And the second,’ he continued, ‘is this.’

      He pulled out his satchel from beneath the table and unfastened the buckles. From inside a faint, slightly sour odour arose, as of stale sweat.

      Reaching in, the prince pulled out a bundle of yellowed cloth, which looked very much like someone’s used shirt, rolled up and knotted around something weighty; he passed it across the table.

      ‘You may open it.’

      It was, indeed, an old shirt. But when Thesiger untied the knotted sleeves and unwrapped the bundle, he saw inside a heavy, ancient-looking gold chain upon which were strung rows of thick gold rings.

      ‘For your expenses,’ said the prince.

Don’t Tell Others

      Sometimes there can be whole days, weeks, months and years that pass you by and it seems just like the blink of an eye.

      Then there are other times where the actions of an instant seem to last for ever.

      People who have been in car crashes or other near-fatal disasters often talk about time ‘slowing down’. It is said that they are able to recall all sorts of peripheral detail with astonishing accuracy, as if they had the time, in the half-second of their almost-death, to roam the scene with the camera of their mind’s eye, and to record for posterity not just the look of drunken horror on the other driver’s face but the missing second button on his shirt-front; the colour and style of the lead on the dog being walked by the man in the flat cap on the pavement; the words and the patterns on the half-torn circus poster on the wall behind him.

      Scientists call this time dilation, and it signifies the feeling СКАЧАТЬ