When the Going Was Good

by Evelyn Waugh

  The blacksmith, who knew all that was going on in the town, promised to tell me as soon as the Commissioner’s boat was sighted, but it so happened that he forgot to do so, and I only learned from Mr Steingler, one morning after I had been six days in the Priory, that it had arrived the previous evening and was due to leave in an hour; the Commissioner was at that moment at the wireless station. I hurried off to interview him. Things might have been less difficult if Father Alcuin had been able to accompany me, but it was one of the days when he was down with fever. Alone I was able to make no impression. The Commissioner was an amicable little man, in high good humour at the prospect of a few days’ leave in Manaos, but he flatly refused to have me in his boat. I cannot hold it against him. Everyone in that district is a potential fugitive from justice and he knew nothing of me except my dishevelled appearance and my suspicious anxiety to get away from Boa Vista. I showed my passport and letters of credit, but he was not impressed. I besought him to cable to Georgetown for my credentials, but he pointed out that it might take a week to get an answer. I offered him large wads of greasy notes. But he was not having any. He knew too much about foreigners who appeared alone and unexplained in the middle of Amazonas; the fact of my having money made me the more sinister. He smiled, patted my shoulder, gave me a cigarette, and sharp on time left without me.

  I cannot hold it against him. I do not think that the British Commissioners would have done any more for a stray Brazilian. But it was in a despondent and rather desperate mood that I heard his boat chugging away out of sight down the Rio Branco.

  From then onwards my only concern was to find some other means of getting away from Boa Vista. The trade boat of which David had spoken became increasingly elusive as I tried to pin its proprietor down to any definite statement of its departure. He was the manager of the chief store, a low-spirited young man named Martinez. I went to see him every day to talk about it; he seemed glad of a chat but could hold out only the vaguest hopes for me. The boat had to arrive first. It should be on its way with the new Prior; when it came, there would be time enough to discuss its departure. All sorts of things had to be considered – cargo, mail, other passengers. Day after day went by until all faith I had ever cherished in the trade boat slowly seeped away. Ordinary vexation at the delay began to give place to anxiety, for everyone in the town seemed to spend at least three days a week in fever. It seemed to me a poor gamble to risk becoming semi-invalid for life for the dubious interest of a voyage down the Rio Branco. So I abandoned the idea of Manaos and decided to return to Guiana.

  This journey, so simple from British territory, where one was supported by the good will of the mission and the ranchers, presented endless difficulties from the other side. Mr Martinez said he could arrange it, but days passed and no horses appeared. He found me a guide, however, in the person of a good-natured boy named Marco; he was fifteen or sixteen, in from the country, and had been hanging round the store for some weeks in search of employment; this youth, after a house to house enquiry lasting several days, eventually secured the hire of a horse for himself, belonging, as it turned out, to Mr Martinez and quartered at the ranch on the other side of the river. I still needed another horse – if possible two – and provisions. Mr Martinez had some tins of sweet biscuits and sardines, another shop had two tins of sausage; the nuns made bread and cheese. These would comfortably take us the three days’ ride to Dadanawa. Horses were still an unsolved difficulty when help came from an unexpected quarter.

  Mr Steingler had hitherto listened apathetically to my complaints, merely remarking from time to time, ‘Les peuples ici sont tous bêtes, tous sauvages; il faut toujours de patience,’ until one day the thought came to him that there might be something in it for him. He opened the subject cautiously, saying one evening that even if I secured a horse, it would be impossible to get a saddle; both were equally important. I agreed. He then went on to say that it so happened that he had a very good saddle himself, one that he would not readily part with to anyone, a particularly fine, new saddle of European workmanship, a rare and invaluable possession in a country like this. However, seeing my difficulty, and feeling the kinship that one European feels for another in a savage country, he was willing to part with it to me.

  He took me to his room and dragged it out from under his bed. It was made on the English pattern but clearly of the most slipshod local workmanship; moreover, it was of great age and in deplorable condition, half unsewn, with padding as hard as metal, every leather frayed and half worn through, several buckles missing. I asked him what he wanted for it.

  Between European gentlemen, he said, it was impossible to bargain over money. He would call in a friend to make an assessment. The friend was the carpenter from the next room who was transparently in the racket up to his eyes. He turned over the saddle, praised it (embarrassing himself and Mr Steingler by inadvertently detaching another buckle while he spoke) and said that, all things considered, 20,000 Reis (£5) would be a moderate price. I accepted the assessment and then began, in my turn, to point out that, necessary as a saddle was, and much as I admired this particular one of Mr Steingler’s, it was of very little use to me without a horse. I would buy it at his price, if he would find me a mount to put under it.

  From that moment onwards Mr Steingler worked for me indefatigably. He set out there and then in his boater hat, twirling his ridiculous cane, and by evening was able to report that the Collector had the very horse for me; a beast of some age, he admitted, but immensely strong, big boned, well-conditioned; just what was needed for savannah travelling. We went to see him. He was of much the same quality as the saddle and, curiously enough, commanded exactly the same price. Presumably 20,000 Reis was a unit in their minds, the highest figure to which avarice could aspire. I bought him on the spot. I do not know what rake-off Mr Steingler got on the transaction, or whether he merely wished to keep in with the Collector. I preferred to be thought a mug and get away, rather than to achieve a reputation for astuteness and risk spending an unnecessary hour in Boa Vista.

  That evening Mr Steingler did a further bit of business, by producing the town clerk, a venerable old man with a long white beard, who was willing to hire me a pack horse he owned in the corral on the further bank – 4,000 Reis for the journey to Dadanawa. I paid him and went to bed well contented with the prospect of immediate escape.

  Next morning I bade farewell to Father Alcuin. The plans for my departure had been freely discussed at table for over a week, but had not penetrated the feverish trance in which the poor monk lived. He was greatly surprised, and when I handed him a donation to the house to cover my board and lodging, he woke suddenly to the fact that he had exerted himself very little on my behalf; it was then that he revealed, what before he had kept carefully hidden, that he had a wooden pack saddle which he could put at my disposal. Thus equipped and blessed I felt that I was at last on my way.

  But it was not to be as easy as that; the forces of chaos were still able to harass my retreat and inflict some damaging attacks. The next two days, in fact, were slapstick farce, raised at moments to the heights of fantasy by the long-awaited appearance of the Prior.

  News of his approach and imminent arrival came on the morning of the day that I had fixed for my departure. Instantly the Priory was overrun by nuns. They worked in the way nuns have, which is at the same time sub-human and superhuman; poultry and angels curiously compounded in a fluttering, clucking, purposeful scurry of devoted industry; they beat up the Prior’s mattresses and dusted every crevice of his quarters, they trotted to and fro with wicker rocking-chairs and clean sheets, they lined the corridor to his room with potted shrubs, put palm leaves behind all the pictures, arranged embroidered tablecloths on every available shelf and ledge, decorated the bookcase with artificial flowers, built a triumphal arch over the front door and engrossed programmes for a hastily organized concert. I regretted very much that I should not be there to see his reception.

  My plans were that I should cross the
river in the afternoon with the grey cob I had bought from the Collector; see to the rounding in of the other two horses, sleep by the corral on the further side and start for Dadanawa first thing the next morning.

  Mr Martinez had organized the crossing, for which he had hired me a canoe and another boy, whom I was to meet with Marco at three o’clock. At half past four they arrived; the other boy turned out to be a child of eight or nine. Mr Martinez explained that he was taking the place of his elder brother who had fever that day.

  We carried the saddles and baggage down the bank, found the canoe, which when loaded was dangerously low in the water. The descent at the usual landing place was too steep for a horse, so it was arranged that the small boy and I should paddle to a point up stream where the bank shelved down more gently, where Marco would meet us with the horse. It was half past five when we reached the place and found no sign of Marco. The sun sets at six. For half an hour the small boy and I sat hunched in the canoe – I cramped and fretful, he idly playful with my belongings – then we paddled back in the darkness to the landing place. Sundry whistlings and catcalls ensued until presently Marco loomed up through the shadows riding the grey. We neither spoke a word of the other’s language but by repetitions and gestures, and that telepathy which seems to function between two people who have something of urgency to communicate, we got to understand that the horse had taken some catching, that Marco was quite ready to try swimming him across in the dark, that I thought this lunacy, that the baggage was to be left where it was, that Marco was to sling his hammock by the bank and guard it all night, that I would come at dawn and we would cross over then. I cannot explain how we discussed all this, but in the end the situation was well understood. Then I hurried back to the Priory which I had left a few hours before with so many formal thanks and good wishes.

  In my vexation I had entirely forgotten about the Prior. I now came to the refectory, ten minutes late for dinner, out of breath and wet to the knees, to find him sitting at table. He was, as it happens, in the middle of the story of his own sufferings on the way up. It was a problem of good manners of the kind that are solved so astutely on the women’s pages of the Sunday papers. What should I do? It was clearly impossible to escape unobserved, for the Prior had already fixed me with a look of marked aversion. I could not slip into a chair with a murmured apology for my lateness, because some explanation of my reappearance was due to Father Alcuin, and of my existence to my new host, the Prior. There was nothing for it but to interrupt the Prior’s story with one of my own. He did not take it too kindly. Father Alcuin attempted to help me out, explaining rather lamely that I was an Englishman who had waited here on the way to Manaos.

  Then what was I doing attempting to cross the Rio Branco in the dark? the Prior demanded sternly.

  I said I was on my way to Dadanawa.

  ‘But Dadanawa is nowhere near Manaos.’

  Clearly the whole thing seemed to him highly unsatisfactory and suspicious. However, with the charity of his Order he bade me sit down. The idiot boy removed the soup plates and the Prior resumed his story. In honour of his arrival a fish course had been added to the dinner; nothing could have been less fortunate, for he had lived on fish for the last ten days and on that particular sort of coarse and tasteless fish that was now offered him. He glared at it resentfully over his spectacles and ordered it to be removed. Mr Steingler watched it go with evident distress.

  The Prior was no doubt a very good man, but he did not add to the ease of the refectory. He was thoroughly exhausted by his journey and in no mood to bustle off to the nuns’ concert. He had already formed a low opinion of Mr Steingler and my arrival confirmed him in his general disapproval. He was there on a mission of reorganization and Mr Steingler and myself were obviously the kind of thing that had to be investigated and cleaned up. He finished his narration of delays and discomforts, took a dislike to the pudding, and before Mr Steingler had nearly finished his first helping, rose to recite an immensely long grace. Then, with hostile adieux, stumped away grumbling to the celebrations at the school.

  Next day at dawn I saw him on his way to Mass and he was more amicable. I bade him good-bye with renewed thanks and went down to the river. The small boy and Marco were there; the baggage was intact; after an hour’s perilous and exhausting work we got the canoe and the horse across to the other side; the child paddled back and I settled down to wait until Marco had collected the other horses. The pack horse was easily identified by some vaqueiros who were waiting there. He was a wretched creature, down in the pasterns, but our baggage was very light and it seemed probable that he would get it to Dadanawa. Mr Martinez’s horse could not be found. After two hours Marco returned, smiling and shrugging and shaking his head.

  Back to Boa Vista once more. We had to wait until noon for a canoe. I arrived at the Priory once more, a good quarter of an hour late for luncheon. The Prior’s doubts of my honesty became doubts of my sanity. Once more I made my adieux, repeating the same thanks with increased apologies. Mr Martinez, at last roused to activity, decided to accompany me himself to the other side and find the horse. He issued a number of peremptory orders which were lethargically obeyed. His motor launch was brought up, four or five men were recruited, and a formidable expedition set out. After some hours, the horse was discovered straying some miles distant, lassoed and led in. Then a further disaster occurred. A large sow which had been nosing round the baggage for some time discovered a way into the kit bag and ate the whole of the bread and cheese on which I had been counting as my main sustenance in the next few days.

  Back to Boa Vista; back to the Priory, just as they were finishing dinner. The Prior now regarded me with undisguised despair. I was able, however, to buy another loaf and more cheese from the convent. Next morning, without further contact with my hosts, I slipped out of the Priory and left Boa Vista for the last time.

  Chapter Five

  A War in 1935

  (From Waugh in Abyssinia)

  Addis Ababa

  In the summer of 1935 the Evening Standard published a cartoon representing the Throne of Justice occupied by three apes who squatted in the traditional attitude, each with his hands covering his eyes, ears or mouth; beneath was the legend, ‘See no Abyssinia; hear no Abyssinia; speak no Abyssinia’.

  This may have expressed the atmosphere of Geneva; it was wildly unlike London. There the editorial and managerial chairs of newspaper and publishing offices seemed to be peopled exclusively by a race of anthropoids who saw, heard and spoke no other subject.

  Abyssinia was News. Everyone with any claims to African experience was cashing in. Travel books whose first editions had long since been remaindered were being reissued in startling wrappers. Literary agents were busy peddling the second serial rights of long-forgotten articles. Files were being searched for photographs of any inhospitable-looking people – Patagonian Indians, Borneo head-hunters, Australian aborigines – which could be reproduced to illustrate Abyssinian culture. In the circumstances anyone who had actually spent a few weeks in Abyssinia itself, and had read the dozen or so books which constituted the entire English bibliography of the subject, might claim to be an expert, and in this unfamiliar but not uncongenial disguise I secured employment with the only London newspaper which seemed to be taking a sane view of the situation, as a ‘war correspondent’.

  There followed ten inebriating days of preparation, lived in an attitude of subdued heroism before friends, of knowledgeable discrimination at the tropical outfitters. There was a heat wave at the time. I trod miasmic pavements between cartographers and consulates. In the hall of my club a growing pile of packing cases, branded for Djibouti, began to constitute a serious inconvenience to the other members. There are few pleasures more complete, or to me more rare, than that of shopping extravagantly at someone else’s expense. I thought I had treated myself with reasonable generosity until I saw the luggage of my professional competitors – their rifles and telescopes and ant-proof trunks, medicine chests, ga
s-masks, pack saddles, and vast wardrobes of costume suitable for every conceivable social or climatic emergency. Then I had an inkling of what later became abundantly clear to all, that I did not know the first thing about being a war correspondent.

  After the bustle, ten tranquil days on the familiar route. On 19th August, Djibouti; the familiar stifling boulevards; spindly, raffish Somalis, the low-spirited young man at the Vice-Consulate; the tireless, hopeless street pedlars; the familiar rotund Frenchmen, their great arcs of waistline accentuated with cummerbunds; the seedy café clientèle, swollen at this moment by refugees – Dodecanesan mostly – from up the line and by despondent middle-aged adventurers negotiating for Ethiopian visas; the familiar after-dinner drive to the café in the palm grove; the fuss about train and luggage. A torrid, almost sleepless night. On the 20th, shortly before midday, we crossed the Ethiopian frontier.

  The occupants of the railway carriage were typical of the rising tide of foreigners which was then flowing from all parts of the world to the threatened capital.