When Angels Travel
By Richard F. Challis
When Angels Travel
By Richard F. Challis
Copyright Richard F. Challis 1968
Published at Smashwords
When Angels Travel
By Richard F. Challis
Copyright Richard F. Challis 1968
ISBN: 978-0-9871585-0-5
The publisher has the permission and approval of the copyright owners of this work to publish it.
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be resold or given away to other people. If you enjoyed this book, please recommend it to other people so they can purchase their own copy, or purchase another copy for them as a gift.
Thank you for respecting the author’s hard work in writing this book.
Also published by Steve Challis
Time and Chance by Richard F. Challis
The Old Firm by Richard F. Challis
A Bad Boy by Steve Challis
Ali the Peacemaker by Steve Challis
ExtraSolar Menace by Steve Challis
Published by Robert Challis
Twilight of the Bald by Robert Challis (Free)
Twilight of the Bald and Other Stories by Robert Challis
Terra Nullius by Robert Challis
O Juliet, Juliet by Robert Challis
Whodunnit Mrs. Christie by Robert Challis
Contents
When Angels Travel
Foreword
This should have been called: "An Innocent Abroad". Mark Twain had no right to use the title since he was a journalist when he made his famous tour. I, on the other hand, was almost forty before I set out on my travels; until then I had not been outside Great Britain, and my longest sea trip was on the ferry across the Humber from Hull to Lincolnshire.
When I set out, Europe was enduring one of its bad summers, but for a time, good weather travelled with me, and a German acquaintance quoted: "Wenn Engel verreisen, scheint die Sonne" - "When Angels travel, the sun shines". This sounded so much more attractive than the alternative explanation: "The Devil looks after his own", that I felt I should use it - but really, this is the account of the travels of an innocent abroad.
When Angels Travel
Chapter 1 Moscow
"The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they really are."
(Samuel Johnson)
"Without going out of the door
One can know the whole world;
Without peeping out of the window
One can see the Tao of heaven.
The further one travels
The less one knows."
(From the Tao-Te King)
"You will not like it!" warned the Dutchman gloomily, as the K.L.M. plane started its descent on Moscow. Apart from a half hour in the Transit Lounge of Amsterdam Airport, this was to be my first landing on foreign soil. I thought that he was probably right; my ideas were vague but I expected something drab, utilitarian and depressing.
A somewhat severe Russian with whom I had negotiated a visa in London, had rather confirmed me in this view. Trying to build a strong case, I stressed that Machino-import in Moscow wanted me there for discussions and in fact had cabled naming the previous Monday as a convenient date.
"Then why were you not there?" asked the Russian, bleakly.
As we emerged from the plane a dour, uniformed Russian took my passport, gazed silently at the photograph in it and inspected me for what seemed a long time. I wanted to explain a number of things: that my good looks are of the elusive sort which no photographer has yet captured; that this was a particularly sloppy bit of photography; that although on the evidence of the picture I had recently had an outbreak of leprosy on my chin, this was merely an illusion caused by the maladroit use of photo-floods; that anyway, I have a beautiful nature. In silence, he allowed me to set foot on his country and soon I was jostling with two plane-loads of people, all trying to get through passport-control, customs and currency-exchange, where banking operations were being conducted with the aid of an abacus, - a frame of beads similar to one on which, many years ago, I had learned simple addition and subtraction. Here, though, the operators used them expertly to check involved calculations.
Soon, with three other visitors, I was speeding into Moscow in an Intourist car. True, the blocks of apartment-houses were lacking in appeal, but anyone who has seen Huddersfield on a wet November day is not afterwards disposed to be too critical. Darkness had fallen by the time I reached the heart of Moscow.
By the following night, I had a wealth of impressions to absorb. All senses had been assailed by things rich and strange. Two odours seemed prevalent: firstly the slightly sickly scent of Russian tobacco which reminded me of some Finnish cigarettes I had once been foolish enough to tackle and which explained why so many Russians wanted British or American cigarettes; secondly, some difference - presumably in refining - gave exhaust fumes from Soviet cars a distinctive, all-pervading smell.
The sense of taste had been pleasantly surprised by its first acquaintance with vodka, sturgeon and caviar. I have often felt that it is a mistake to rush for the treats of this life. The setting is all-important. Thus, I tested my first caviar in the Hotel National, Moscow, overlooking the yellow-ochre walls and golden domes of the Kremlin. I was sharing a table with a Belgian who was a frequent visitor to Moscow. Learning that this was to be my first caviar, he rejected the initial serving and demonstrated how to check the colour and resilience to be sure it was good quality and fresh. I have had caviar since, in a number of places, but none the equal of that on my first night in Moscow.
Later during this tour, I was offered Kangaroo-tail soup but refused it, so that my first bowl was taken some thirty-thousand feet above the fantastic red desert heart of Australia, just as the pilot pointed out Alice Springs below us. Without these associations, how could I hope to keep fresh the memory of that bowl of Kangaroo-tail soup? Particularly as it tasted just like Ox-tail! But caviar - that is a different matter! The food in the main Moscow hotels is good and well-cooked, providing you will eat the Russian dishes. An American tourist who was complaining because she could not have cold turkey, no doubt went home with a different impression.
With less than ten days' notice of this visit to Moscow my Russian language studies were not advanced. I could count up to four, say "Please", "Thank you", "Yes", "No", “Pleased to meet you", or recite the first quarter of their telephone alphabet - ("Ah, Anna, Beh Boris, Veh Vasili, fieh Grigori") - but no more. Although the hotels have a Service-Bureau where the main European languages are spoken, English is not yet widely known. The obliging Belgian had taught me enough Russian so that I could order breakfast in my room - tea, toast, butter and a boiled egg. The egg arrived almost raw and on the second morning I added a second egg and specified "four minutes". Russian minutes are apparently about half the length of British ones and it was not until I had increased the time to six minutes that I had a properly boiled egg.
Intourist had put me in the Hotel Pekin which is solid, clean and Victorian. Apart from breakfast, I ate mainly at the Hotel National, partly because of difficulty with the Pekin's menus, which were in Russian only, but also because the National was more convenient. I enjoyed the walk from the one to the other along the wide and handsome Gorky Street, which accommodates up to twelve lines of traffic. I had been told, by friends who had never been there, that there is very little traffic in Moscow. After I had been almost run down several times by this non-existent traffic I decided that I had been misled. I spent a few foolish minutes trying to cross the vast expanse of Manejnaya Square, with traffic shooting at me unpredictably and policemen blowing whistles and waving furiously - before discovering that the entrance down to the Metro also gave access to a subway under the square.
I had been warned that all traffic travels on the right and a little preliminary practice along part of the East Lancs road, coming out of Liverpool, had already convinced me that it is shockingly dangerous - I was nearly killed! Fortunately I did little driving throughout this tour, but as a pedestrian I invariably glanced the wrong way before stepping into the road.
A telephone call from my hotel room had established that my initial interview with Machino-import would be the following morning and so my first day in Moscow was given over to sightseeing.
Every schoolboy knows that Moscow's climate is extreme and that in late August it will be hot. This knowledge did not prevent a feeling of surprise when I found it hot and sunny, with temperatures in the eighties. Subconsciously, I suppose I was still expecting snowdrifts, troikas and wolves. Surprise, too, was my immediate reaction on seeing a road-mending gang of women, handling road-rollers, picks and shovels - but a moment's reflection convinced me that this was as it should be. Man was made for finer things than shovelling rubble. As I walked respectfully past these Amazons, a young Muscovite fell in step with me.
"You wish to buy genuine, antique, holy Russian ikons?" he asked. "You come with me to my apartment, I show you valuable ikons!"
Probably he had made them himself the previous day; in any event, it did not seem a good idea to visit his apartment. "I'm afraid I cannot," I began.
"You afraid? Why you afraid?" he asked, looking apprehensively over his shoulder.
"No, I mean I am sorry I cannot."
Shortly afterwards, another young Russian wanted to buy my shirt, a nylon waterproof if I had one, or to introduce me to his sister. He did not look the sort of young man who would have a sister and I had no intention of going into business in Moscow, but it was refreshing to find, unsubdued, human nature in all its splendid, shifty, sinfulness. The U.S.S.R. does not yet appear to be releasing nylon for clothing. Although the average Muscovite is clean and decently dressed, the styling and material of their clothes instantly proclaim the visiting Westerner and lead to illegal offers from "spivs". Long, long overdue is an epic poem justifying the ways of the 'spiv", the "con-man", the "grafter", the "fiddler", the “wide-boy". At considerable personal risk they devote to their shifty callings an amount of ingenuity, daring and inventiveness which applied to one of the legally established forms of trickery would give them riches and honours. But the true "spiv" cannot cross the line into normal business thievery. The thrill of the game, the calculated risk, the pitting of his abilities against the weight of society - these are what he lives for.
In the golden August sunshine, the centre of Moscow looked spacious, serene and even graceful. The magnificent squares seem as large as one of the smaller English counties. A child was feeding pigeons near the splendidly barbaric and many-coloured St. Basil's Cathedral. The yellow-ochre tinted walls and the golden domes of the Kremlin under the bright sun added to the general effect of colour and charm.
I had a job of selling to do. The buyer was to be Machino-import, the State Board which buys certain categories of foreign equipment for factories anywhere in the U.S.S.R. The Deputy-Chairman with whom I was involved was virtually the sole buyer of my type of equipment for a nation of over 200 million people. If I could not do business with him, there was no other customer in the whole of the U.S.S.R.
The Deputy-Chairman had two technical assistants with him. He spoke good English, which was fortunate since, apart from my ordering a breakfast from him, we could have achieved nothing in Russian. As the tour progressed, I felt increasingly guilty over the language problem. Regularly, prominent businessmen or trade-journals nag at us and insist that if we wish to sell abroad, we must pay our customers the compliment of learning their language. The point sounds good but it is difficult to apply. Within a week, later on, I would have needed to be fluent in Malay, Thai and Burmese. English is the first or second language of the world and is handled with precision and elegance by people from many countries. The Pakistani in Karachi, who said to me: "Now we go to meet Mr ---. He is an Englishman like yourself and a great scoundrel; you will get on well with him" - clearly was in no need of further English lessons. As a polite compromise I tried to learn a few words of greeting, thanks and farewell in each language.
With the Deputy-Chairman of Machino-import and his assistants, I spent several hours clarifying technical points. We broke off at one point to stand in silence for a few moments while a funeral procession passed, with solemn music, along the street below us. It was, explained the Deputy-Chairman, the funeral of his former chief. We adjourned until the next-but-one day. There had been no mention of price and the real battle was still to come.
And then - it was all over and I was enjoying an Aeroflot breakfast (which started with caviar) on my way back to Amsterdam, and buying gift pots of caviar, miniature bottles of vodka, bracelets and other souvenirs from the attractive hostesses. Meetings with Machino-import, over a period of eight days, had produced some hard bargaining down to the limit of my concessions. Phyrrus is remembered for the Battle of Asculum, ("Another victory like that and we're done for.") I had no wish to be remembered by my Company for a Phyrric Sale. I had heard stories of businessmen in Moscow who had bluffed an order from the Russians by packing and booking a flight as though determined to leave. This did not happen to me - perhaps there was something not quite right about the way I packed.
If I did not have an order in my suitcase, at least I had all thirty-two of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas on fourteen long-play records, performed by Soviet pianists. I had learned that, like many cultural or educational materials, records were cheap - about ten shillings each and so I made my way into a record-shop on Gorky Street. No English was spoken and my phrase-book did not help much, but when I saw on a box the figures 32 and the Russian word for Beethoven, 1 needed to look no further.
I also had memories and programmes of two performances of the Stanislavsky Ballet (of which Tchaikovsky was once a Director) - which included Russian words which by that time I was capable of discovering that these were Don Juan and Scheherazade.
".... and two dolls and some caviar and some L.P's and some miniature vodka", I continued, while the Customs officer at London Airport gave me a swift, practised glance to see whether I was stupid or merely pretending to be. You cannot fool them - a quick scrawl on my baggage and I was through.
Chapter 2 Paris
"I wish he would not go to Paris," said Miss
Matilda anxiously. "I don't believe frogs will
agree with him; he used to have to be very
careful what he ate, which was curious in so
strong-looking a young man."
(Cranford - Mrs. Gaskell)
I returned to London only to collect a Burmese visa which had just been confirmed and in three days I was on my way to Paris - for my first visit. Within ten minutes of my arrival I had managed to get myself kidnapped. The loudspeaker at Le Bourget Airport was asking "Monsieur Shalleece" to go to the transit desk. As I approached expectantly, a man came to me with outstretched hand and announced: "Fenwick!" (The name, surprisingly enough, of the large French factory I was visiting.) I said: "Heureux de faire votre connaissance" -I had been practicing this all the way from London and was rather pleased with the way I got it off. Within minutes we were driving briskly along the road into Paris. He told me that his name was Dreyfus and I repressed a stupid impulse to ask him how he had enjoyed Devil's Island. Even allowing for the fact that his English was not much better than my French, we quickly seemed to be at cross-purposes. When it became obvious that there was a mistake somewhere, he stopped and we re-introduced ourselves. He had not said "Fenwick.' but "Fenwick?" - because he was there to meet a Mr. Fenwick from England, whereas I was expecting to be met by someone from the French Company of that name.
Laughing heartily, my kidnapper turned and drove back to the airport where we parted with expressions of mutual esteem.
For almost forty years, Paris had been a city known to me only through my reading, and ghosts peopled the streets so familiar by name. Boswell dismissed Paris in a few words: “approached Paris; Invalides appeared as St. Paul's does, coming to London. Was not affected much." Next day, January 13th, 1766, he added: "No change of ideas from being in Paris
A friend drove me around and obligingly translated place-names into English, so that Sacré Coeur became "Holy Heart", and I had, mentally, to translate back into French before I knew what I was looking at. The same friend said: When you do not know a French word, pronounce the English as though it were French, and nine times out of ten you will either be correct or be understood." Later, it occurred to me that this advice might create misunderstandings, as I wanted to know when the news came on T.V. and was searching my memory for the French for "news". I might have found myself asking at what hour the nudes appeared, (les nues). Probably it would not have mattered; our drive took us through Montmartre where every other place was a strip-joint.
Approaching the Louvre the next day, I was gratified to be offered indecent photographs. No doubt the man was employed by the Bureau of Tourism to ensure that visitors are not disappointed in their expectations, just as the drunks I was to see rolling around the New York Bowery at noon, were undoubtedly there to provide local colour.
Paris is a fine and beautiful city. The chestnut trees along the Champs Elysees were spilling "conkers" profusely. I pocketed two which had burst from their cases at my feet, fly stained and varnished, and eventually used them in Australia to demonstrate the game of "conkers".
"A dinner without cheese is like a day without sunshine", quoted my French host as he selected four varieties from the fifteen or so on the cheeseboard. France is justly noted for its cheeses and in general is a death-trap for the gastronome.
Two meals, at Le Grand Veneur and at a restaurant with the fascinating name of Les Anysestiers du Roy will linger in my memory along with the recollection of a tripe and cow—heel pie I shared with an alleged friend in Lancashire - but for different reasons.
Prices, not merely of meals, are high, and a shopping expedition produced only the melancholy reflection that apparently I could afford nothing. An attempt to buy lingerie ended when the critical measurements, which I had carefully memorised, proved useless because they were in inches. My efforts at instant conversion into centimetres produced results which could not possibly be the measurements of any human female, however unfortunate, and the shop-assistant, like so many more, spoke no English and apparently understood no French. I hesitated a moment outside a window advertising individual eyelashes. Probably I could manage the price of one, but whom did I know, short of an eyelash?
My last whole day was a Saturday and as the weather was kind, I was able to carry out a project of seeing Paris, on foot. The route from my hotel in the Avenue D'Iena was planned to give me a few hours at the Louvre and at the Galerie du Jeu de Paume where most of the Louvre's Impressionist paintings are hung. I saw the originals of paintings familiar to me as reproductions and felt that I had not been misled except when the original was massive in size, like the fragment of Monet's "D'ejeuncr Sur L'Herbe", which turned out to be about fourteen feet high - a fairly substantial fragment!
The magnificent cathedral of Notre Dame, seen first by moonlight and floodlight, displayed its Gothic splendour to great advantage, but even in the sunshine it retained its impact. Surely, high up, the face and figure of Quasimodo could be seen - and, in the shadows, the Archdeacon for ever slips from his desperate handhold on the gargoyle, two hundred feet up. And the beautiful Esmeralda? "All at once the man at the gibbet kicked away the ladder with his heel, and Quasimodo, who for some moments had not breathed, saw swinging from the end of the rope, about two yards from the ground, the unfortunate girl, with the man crouched upon her shoulders. The rope twisted around several times and Quasimodo saw the girl writhe with horrible contortions."
Those of us too squeamish to re-read Hugo's novel can take heart. Quasimodo's eyes must have deceived him, or someone else was hanged in error, for nestling in the shadow of Notre Dame Cathedral I found "Esmeralda's Cafe". Strangely enough, some months previously, when passing through Haworth, the Brontes’ birthplace, I had seen "Heathcliff’s Cafe". It is a comforting thought that after their trials and tribulations, famous characters should be able to settle down to serving tea and cakes to the tourists. At first I felt that Heathcliff's grim and forbidding temperament would not be conducive to success, but in Yorkshire, as J.B. Priestley has said, civility is still regarded with suspicion as something hypocritical and unmanly, so no doubt Heathcliff has prospered.
I did not go into Esmeralda's Cafe'. She might have turned into a strident hag, serving cold coffee in dirty cups, and I could not have borne that. No, on reflection Hugo was right - it was better to hang her.
Chapter Germany
As a young man, I had for a couple of terms, studied German at evening classes. My father-in-law retired and in Search of occupation decided to come too. The teacher was Mr. Reinach, a refugee from Hitler's Third Reich. He was a purist in the use of language and although only recently resident in England, his English was immaculate. Only once did he slip, when he said: "a lustful boy", meaning "a lusty boy", and from some polite smirks on a few faces he realised that he had made a mistake and asked for synonyms. These were promptly provided by the class and ranged from "lecherous" –my own offering -to "randy" from a demure-looking young lady who should not have known what we were talking about.
That same evening he was carefully explaining to my father-in-law who had failed to grasp it earlier, the intricacies of case and number in respect of nouns and pronouns. Knowing my father-in-law, I could tell that he was not listening, but had dropped into the private world of the elderly. After Mr. Reinach’s masterly summary, taking probably twenty minutes, my father-in-law said: "I'm afraid I shall never ‘get' all that – but if you can teach me a sort of pidgin-German, that will do me.
The look on Mr. Reinach's face lives in my memory and has afforded me many a quiet chuckle over the years. But the same years had largely robbed me of the slender results of two terms. As we circled Dusseldorf for over an hour, waiting for ground-fog to lift, I mentally raked among the ashes and came up with a few unpromising items. While not quite in the position Negley Farson, who started his Arabic studies with: "The eunuch is in the garden of the Caliph" - my stock of German seemed just as remote from everyday life. I could still tell the story of Little Red-Riding-Hood, recite a German version of there's a hole in my bucket", announce that "the East wind is bitter cold today", refuse a cigarette or ask for a copy of the Radio-Times. And then a mental fog closed in, but below, the mist had cleared and we landed in sunshine.
The Export manager of the German firm I was visiting had brought his eighteen-year-old daughter with him to meet me, setting a standard which subsequent hosts around the world failed to live up to, for she was as fresh and beautiful as the morning itself. In Australia, later, I shared the back seat of my host's car with his large dog, which under a pretence of playfulness, was trying to sink his fangs into my jugular artery while I, simulating friendship, tried to throttle him. The Australian said that the dog and I were "real cobbers" but the dog knew better.
My hotel at Velbert displayed a letter from Bismarck, acknowledging with thanks a comfortable stay there. This was for me, a new light on one of the characters from my history books; I had never associated the "Iron Chancellor" with this sort of small civility. Certainly it was a very clean and comfortable hotel and if I almost received drei Martini instead of dry, this was entirely my own fault. As Velbeit is near Essen, I had expected a grimy, industrial setting and was pleasantly surprised by green and rolling hills. But this is not part of the tourist's Germany; here are no castles, gorges or Rhine-maidens. The Rhine is wide and purposeful as it flows across a plain, with Dusseldorf on its right bank.
Business kept me too busy for sight-seeing, but one evening I saw a most respectable strip-tease act, selected by my host because he wanted to include his wife and daughter in the outing. Certainly there was nothing to shock them; the stripper at the end of her act would still have been considered ever-dressed on many beaches. Feeling, perhaps, that this had been dull fare, my host mimed a strip-tease of his own – provocatively taking off imaginary stockings and throwing them coyly at us; unclipping an imaginary brassiere and turning his back to us as he whipped it off, then holding it exultantly aloft by a non-existent strap as he turned to face, us. It was the best night-club entertainment I on the tour. His plump and jolly wife almost shook the room with her laughter; his daughter gave the indulgent smile with which the young view the antics of their parents.
During my final afternoon and evening, I visited Wuppertal which has a monorail suspension railway dating back to 1898, giving a bird’s-eye view of the countryside and congestion-free travel to and from the town. On the way to Dusseldorf I saw the name Neanderthal on a signpost and asked if this was the site of the relics of Neanderthal Man, since, apart from assuming it was in central Europe, it had never occurred to me to wonder where Neanderthal was. My colleague not only confirmed this but obligingly turned off the main road so that we could go through the museum; he had been intending to go there himself but had lived in the vicinity a bare quarter of a century, so he had not had time. There had been much rain and the lane from the road to the museum, through a wood, was dank and marshy. The 70,000-year-old bones were there, looking more like something the dog had not bothered to bury than the remains of a remote ancestor. There were cave paintings from France and Spain together with other relevant material, all well displayed in a smart museum.
In Dusseldorf we walked along the broad Kaiser Allee, photographed each other against the background of the Rhine and, finished the evening with beer, schnaps and a meal at an inn.
My colleague was taking his schnaps medicinally, for a cold, he told me, though this did not involve any discernible difference in the method of drinking it. Everyone I had spoken to in Germany had a thick cold - no doubt the wretched weather was responsible. The sunshine which had arrived with me had been extinguished and rain was falling from leaden skies. We sat silently with glasses in front of us, looking out into the gloom
I felt perfectly at home.
Chapter4 Switzerland
From Dusseldorf I flew to Zurich. At this stage all airlines were new to me and I eagerly read their magazines, full of chatty features such as "Meet your Captain", in which the writer had tried (too hard) to make the aircrews sound safe, solid, experienced, happily-married, well-adjusted and reliable. A parody would read something like this:
One of our most, senior Captains is the ever-popular, Australian born 'Baldy' Walters - a familiar figure to regular travellers on our jet-lines. 'Baldy’ is laughingly reticent regarding his age but gives a clue by revealing that he flew for the R.F.C. in 1915 and for the R.A.A.F. afterwards, where he was known as ‘Wheels up’ Walters through a habit of landing before lowering the undercarriage. After a crash had put him out of the Air Force, he came to England to get in on civil aviation. Asked about the difference between planes then and now, 'Baldy' gave us his flying philosophy in a few words: 'There's no real difference', he claims. 'The jets are faster and you've got to show the cow who’s in charge!'
Bauldy confesses to a liking for his ‘grog’ and has some amusing stories of 'beat-ups' in airport bars all over the world When he lived in Australia, his main sport was kangaroo shooting before he took to glasses. 'Now’, he says in his blunt way, 'I'd have to club the 'roo and it would have to big bastard before I saw it!'
Captain Walters has eight children, all in the custody of their mothers, he hopes to be going on the jet conversion course soon, but because of the great popularity of our ‘Golden Wonder' Jet Service, he is already flying them on a temporary basis."
And always there is a piece about a hostess; so sweet, so winsome, so wholesome, so safe.
Babs Meredith - 'Butterfingers' to her friends (Once, I dropped a baby'!!') - is an attractive, vivacious brunette. She says, she has Spanish blood in her family tree, and thinks this accounts for her flashing dark eyes and hot temper. She is sure she will enjoy the life once she has got her 'air-legs'. 'So embarrassing,' she says, "Why, the other day, I was sick all over a first-class passenger.'"
Fortunately I was in Switzerland only a couple of days. Even in this short period I had acquired a reputation as a sort of mixture of Norman Wisdom and Jacques Tati. It started walked into, and very nearly through, a glass door in my company’s offices in Zug. The crash of my face against the glass attracted the attention of all the typists in the general office. My glasses slipped askew down my nose, giving me a drunken, rakish appearance. Though half stunned, I managed to continue into the office and sit down at my desk a truly British performance.
Perhaps this had jarred my wits. At any rate, within an hour I had walked into the ladies toilet, which was luckily vacant at that moment under the impression that it was the door leading to the Vice-President's suite. Laughter from the outside and the fact that I was obviously not in the Vice-President's suite, made me aware of my error and I shot the bolt on the door and sat down for a few seconds to summon up the necessary courage to emerge. This I did, walking unhurriedly to my desk and even smiling vaguely at one of the girls who made a noise like an empty soda siphon and buried face in her hands.
Later that afternoon I had unaccountably managed to smear ballpoint ink over my face and did not discover it until washing prior to leaving for the day. I had mistakenly assumed that the hilarity and difficulty in keeping straight faces, which afflicted the girls when they saw me, related to my earlier exploits.
Zug is a charming little town in the smallest of the Cantons. Many corporations maintain financial offices there, giving it a prosperity and international flavour independent of the tourist trade. My hotel room overlooked the ancient square and three nearby chiming clocks mark the passing of the quarter hours, day and night - but particularly at night, according to my impression. There was also a disagreement between them regarding the exact moment of the quarters, so that the sleepless visitor is assured of plenty of cheerful noise through out the night.
As I was packing for departure, a fellow guest, an American, interrupted me for a moment with one of the problems created for us by modern technology. The plug on his electric shaver was a moulded-on type, new to me. The flex had frayed and broken away, just where it entered the plug and he was confronted with a service problem but no means of shaving. If the old-fashioned type of plug, made in halves held together by screws, had been fitted he could have carried out the repair in two minutes. He borrowed my battery-electric shaver and over breakfast later, we agreed that progress takes such strange forms that often, but for the advertising, we would not know it for progress at all.
Chapter 5 Karachi
"I ask myself: what to do about my carrier? It is a haddock!" During the three days we had been together, I had frequently admired the vivid English of this Pakistani salesman, but slight differences in stress, intonation and vowel sounds made close concentration necessary if I wanted to follow him all the time. As he had embarked on the story of his life, I had allowed my attention to wander and was now caught with this haddock.
After listening carefully and interposing a discreet question or two, I established that what he had actually said was: "I ask myself; what to do about my career? It is a headache!" We were outside Karachi on a rough, dirt track, jolting and bouncing around in a jeep. When I cautiously hinted that this was not the best of roads, the Pakistani explained that we were in the bed of a river, which most of the time is bone-dry and is then graded into some semblance of a road for use by quarry vehicles which were busily carting away sand and gravel. It seemed unlikely that water ever flowed here. Burning sands, blue sky and the sun beating powerfully down, gave me the illusion of being in a vast desert, rather than within a dozen miles of the centre of Karachi.
The annual rainfall is about five inches, though many locals refuse to believe that there is so much, and Karachi lives on water from the Indus. It is a fascinating city, growing rapidly and changing rapidly. At this point in its transition, several centuries exist side by side, but in a few years the old will have disappeared and Karachi will be a duller city. In wide, modern streets, flanked by now multi-storey buildings, camels wend their way among hooting taxis and cars. In old Karachi, tiny ponies, harnessed side by side, with trappings jingling to their dainty trotting, pull little carts with big loads. Beggars and traders crowd the market area; multitudes of swarthy faces beneath a fiery sun.
There are several good hotels, but the Karachi Intercontinental is generally considered the best, as well as the most expensive. In air-conditioned luxury its guests eat, drink and sleep well. It is redeemed from being just another American hotel on foreign soil by its staff, in native costumes, and by the first-class local food available. There is a swimming pool where guests can bask in the perpetual sunshine.
On one of my evenings there, a reception was being given for the visiting head of a neighbouring State, and security guards, brandishing revolvers and automatic weapons, prowled the lobby. I have an aversion to gunmen, whatever their excuse. Probably an innocent action such as reaching for a fountain-pen, would have been misconstrued by some trigger-happy thug, and I decided to dine at the hotel opposite. The "floor-show" consisted of a belly-dancer whose speciality it was to dance non-stop for forty-five minutes to the deafening accompaniment of about sixty watts of over-amplification. Her act was disappointing, but I was assured by a fellow diner that ten years previously she had been "terrific". Though I had a book in my pocket, politeness in a foreign city prevented me from reading. This was probably as well, because as a grand finale, the dancer leapt on to the tables bordering the room and pranced along them, and I would undoubtedly have had my fingers trodden on. The applause was almost as prolonged as the act. The dancer moved around, stopping to face anyone who seemed apathetic, and indicating by a glare and an imperious toss of the head that, she was entitled to better applause than that. I clapped; my hands were quite sore.
"Pan" for chewing can be bought ready-made at roadside stalls, but the well-to-do, many of whom chew in private, prepare their own. An evening meal with a Pakistani family ended with the preparation of pan by the wife - an elaborate ritual involving the smearing of the betel leaves with lime, camphor, areca-nut parings and other nameless substances, and the wrapping of this into a chewable wad. It was somewhat reminiscent of the elderly English lady's fussing with rows of caddies in the blending and preparation of her pot of tea.
I accepted a pan and found it larger than expected; it certainly inhibited conversation for a time. One of the ingredients colours the lips, tongue, saliva and eventually the teeth too, a bright red, which accounts for the sight of Pakistanis in the street apparently spitting out great gouts of blood, as well as for the red and fearsome smiles of many chewers. If the pan contains tobacco it is necessary to spit, hence the occasional spittoon in office or home, but ours were tobacco-free. While coping with the unfamiliar package in my mouth, I swallowed a nut which felt like a razor-sharp five-jack and cut a series of grooves down my gullet.
The lady of the house had just returned from a pilgrimage to Mecca. This, of course, is something every Muslim hopes to achieve, but because of the shortage of foreign exchange a limited number may go and these are selected each year by lottery from all applicants. As she described the pilgrimage it sounded regrettably over-commercialised and reminded me of the comment that "Christmas would be all right if they didn't insist on dragging religion into it".
The taxi-driver had not set his meter, but I did not notice this until we had reached the Embassy of the U.S.A.
I pointed it out and the driver gave me a red-toothed smile. "I not set meter for friend! You are my friend - you pay me three rupees, four rupees, five, maybe!"
"I pay you two rupees," I said, "and that's too much." It was; a second journey to the Embassy next day cost less than a rupee.
The Embassy has an efficient and comprehensive commercial section, staffed by Americans and Pakistanis. One of the Americans dashed around for me very energetically and helpfully. He was a likeable man of the type often referred to as a "human dynamo". Perhaps he also rather conveyed the impression that he believed this to be the way an American should behave and that until something burst, he was determined to keep up the pace, He finally whisked me upstairs for a drink of 7-up and expatiated on the advantages of this canteen as we waited for our cold drinks.
"Make use of it any time at all," he said generously. "You can have coffee or a sandwich, prepared by our own staff and know that you're not going to pick up any bug here."
While he was speaking, I watched one of the Pakistani canteen staff, tearing meat from a chicken carcase with his fingernails, and making sandwiches with the results.
"Or if you want ice in your drink," continued my friend, "why, you can be sure it was made with water that isn't going to give you an upset stomach."
Pat to his cue, the attendant picked up ice with his fingers and dropped it in our drinks.
I walked from the Embassy to the "Chicken Inn" at the Metropole, a few hundred yards away, for lunch. Just as I had crossed the road a crack like a revolver shot made me jump. Two more followed before I realised that a boy with large, soulful eyes was demonstrating a whip.
"You buy!" he said, cracking it dangerously close to my ear. "Best camel-leather - only twelve rupees.'
I do not have the slightest need for a whip, but it was beautifully made, cheap at the pound he was asking and I felt safer with it in my hands than in his. After bargaining down to ten rupees, I bought it and also a newspaper from one of the interested crowd which had gathered. Then, camel-whip and newspaper in hand, I entered the hotel for lunch.
All visitors to Karachi are expected to have a ride on a camel and so I complied with the custom despite some inner reservations. I was not impressed; the centre of gravity seems too high, it under-steers and the brakes fade badly. For no known reason, my beast broke into a trot and hauling back on the reins produced little effect because of its long, flexible neck. Similarly, pulling on the offside rein in an attempt to turn right, brought the camel's head round until we were looking each other in the eye, but still he continued his forward motion. I could well understand why Lawrence of Arabia is said to have preferred being photographed with camels, to riding them.
Some time after leaving Karachi I received a letter from Pakistani friend:
"As promised, I was at the airport to see you off, but unfortunately I did not reach the counter until 7.17. You can imagine my disappointment and I confess that it had a very sickening effect on me. It so happened that my scooter was out of order and much to my surprise there was no taxi available nearby. I had to catch a bus immediately and after travelling half a mile I hurriedly got down and was able to hire a cab which, in spite of good endeavour, could not reach airport before 7.17. I had a feeling that I might still be in time as you had told me that you may be called in at 7.30. I am at fault, but had all the desire to be with you."
Chapter 6 Lahore
My one evening in the ancient city of Lahore was spent in the cinema, watching "The Last Time I Saw Paris". I had seen this film many years ago and recalled that a critic at the disliked both the film, and the choice of romantic hero, had commented unkindly on the glycerine tears trickling over Van Johnson’s honest, wholesome, freckled but unromantic countenance. Now I was to see them again, though from politeness, not choice.
The young Pakistani who took me, averaged three visits weekly to the cinema and his uncritical enthusiasm for "the pictures" reminded me of my own youthful addiction. He assured me that the cinema was air-conditioned, but apparently attached his own meaning to the phrase for we sweltered, high up in the balcony, while a few ceiling-fans revolved in a tired fashion, as though exhausted by the heat. But my friend made amends the following day, Sunday, when he took me on a sight-seeing tour.
In a temperature of a hundred, we slogged up a minaret of Lahore's great mosque, claimed to be the largest in the world and to be capable of accommodating a hundred thousand worshippers at prayer at the same time, with room for each to prostrate himself. Two hundred feet below us, water-buffaloes were being hosed down. They would prefer to spend the heat of the day submerged, except for nostrils and eyes in a river or mud hole, but as working beasts had to accept this substitute. From the Mosque we moved on to the Fort of Akbar, pausing at the foot to refresh ourselves with warm lemonade before scaling its heights. We contemplated the graceful symmetry of the Shalimar Gardens, still maintained as in the days of the Mogul Emperors.
Despite Lahore's antiquity, it is a thriving city, the next in size to Karachi and the capital of the province of West Pakistan. It is a city of considerable charm, and it is a pity that apparently, it will for ever be linked in my memory with the mournfully banal air: "The Last time I saw Paris."
Chapter 7 Dacca
Hotel S----- is the best hotel in Dacca, capital of East Pakistan. As I waited to register, an American, with raised voice was telling the Manager what he thought of the hotel and its of survival once the new Inter-Continental Hotel was completed. The Manager, a young, good-looking Pakistani, emerged from the encounter with credit and dignity.
"Why," I wondered later, "do tourists get so worked up over trifles? This is an old-style hotel; the dining-room is gay with white-and-red uniformed waiters, swarthy, bearded and turbaned; the Headwaiter has an engaging smile and a patriarchal beard some three square feet in area; the doorman is a midget with large, soulful eyes; a four-piece string and percussion ensemble plays music of the 1890's, giving the illusion of a recession in Time as well as a shift in Space; barefoot porters trot around with suitcases, briefcases, or hatboxes perched on their heads; everything so strange and fascinating! Why criticise it for not being a different sort of hotel?"
Towards midnight, when I was trying to fall asleep, it occurred to me that this business of "old style" could be overdone. In practical terms it meant that the hotel had been built to allow maximum circulation of air, for coolness. This, inevitably, gives maximum amplification of noise, and Goodman or Warfedale would instantly have recognised and approved of the design principles. If someone on the ground floor coughed, it could be heard throughout all floors. A large proportion of the population of Dacca apparently lives in the corridors of the hotel, and I judged that in different parts of the corridor were being held a political meeting, a religious campaign, preliminary heats of the Asian Games and - immediately outside my door - the "Noisiest Men in Dacca" contest.
By one in the morning, the tumult and the shouting had died. I adjusted my head on the pillow and started, mentally, to recite the last section of "Lycidas”, from "Weep no more, woeful shepherds". For an examination I had committed this to memory two decades ago and I have since found it far superior to counting sheep, as a soporific. Then the dogs began to bark. There were six or seven of them, sometimes working independently, sometimes in concert. They were galloping around the grounds and into a new, unfinished wing of the hotel, adjacent to my room.
In the morning, I tackled the Manager.
"Why, yes'. I too heard dogs!" he said, clearly happy to be able to confirm a guest's story. When I had enlarged on my feelings he promised that he would "complain" - to the dogs no doubt. The two following nights were just as bad, but at least, I reflected, summoning as much philosophy as I could muster, there is nothing new in all this. As long ago as July 1st, 1667, Samuel Pepys was noting in his diary: "Up betimes, about 4. o’clock, by a damned noise between a sow gelder, and a cow and a dog, nobody after we were up being able to tell us what it was".
East Pakistan, separated from the West "Wing- by over a thousand miles of India, is about the same size as England, and with its population of 60 millions is one of the most heavily populated countries in the world. Much of the year it is hot and humid. It is a green and watery place, plagued by cyclones and attendant floods. The mighty "Father Brahmaputra" and his tributaries provide a network of waterways of great commercial value. The main language is Bengali as distinct from Urdu in West Pakistan, but in both "Wings" English is spoken widely and we11.
In Dacca I met a local journalist, who interrogated me on some of the more abstruse points of Shakespearean drama and wanted to know whether I considered that Shakespeare thought of himself as a "man of his time or a man writing for and belonging to future times".
In England I would probably have been tempted to answer: "That's a very interesting question. Now, would you rind telling me what the hell it means!" - but courtesy here required that I struggle through to some sort of answer. At school he had read Shakespeare first in a simplified English Version, then in the original and had played Desdemona to his friend's Othello in a school production. During my stay, the two of them insisted on taking me to an entertainment by foreign artists - a rage event. There was some initial confusion about whether we would be seeing a ballet dancer or a belly dancer, but this was cleared up when we learned that we were to see a Soviet Cultural Group.