Sauve Qui Peut

We Dips (said Antrobus, employing the sobriquet of the diplomatic lower echelons) are brought up to be resourceful, to play almost any part in life, to be equal to any emergency almost--how else could one face all those foreigners? But the only thing for which we are not prepared, old man, is blood.

Blood?

Blood!

Mind you, I am thinking of exceptional cases, out-of-the-way incidents; but they are not as rare as one might imagine. Old Gulliver, for example, was invited to an execution in Saigon to which he felt it was his duty to go. It affected him permanently, it damaged his concentration. His head is quite over on one side, he twitches, his ears move about. Unlucky man! I cannot claim an experience as radical as his, but I can speak of one which was almost as bad. Imagine, one fine day we are delivered a perfectly straightforward invitation card on which we read (with ever-widening eyes) the following text, or something like it:

His Excellency Hacsmit Bey and Madame Hacsmit Hacsmit Bey joyfully invite you to the Joyful Circumcision of their son Hacsmit Hacsmit Abdul Hacsmit Bey. Morning dress and decorations. Refreshments will be served.

You can imagine the long slow wail that went up in chancery when first this intelligence was brought home to us. Circumcision! Joyfully! Refreshments! "By God, here is a strange lozenge-shaped affair!" cried De Mandeville, and he was right.

Of course, the embassy in question was a young one, the country it represented still in the grip of mere folklore. But still I mean ... The obvious thing was to plead (concluded on page 196)Sauve Qui Peut(continued from page 139) indisposition, and this we did as one man. But before we could post off our polite, almost joyful refusals to these amiable Kurds, Polk-Mowbray called a general meeting in chancery. He was pensive, he was pale and grave, quite the Hamlet. "I suppose you have all received this," he said, holding up a pasteboard square on which the dullest eye could descry the sickle and minarets of the Kurdish arms with the sort of crossed cruets underneath.

"Yes," we chorused.

"I suppose you have all refused," went on our chief, "and in a way I am glad. I don't want my mission to develop a taste for blood--these things grow on one. But it does raise rather a problem, for the Kurds are a young, buoyant, up-and-coming little country with a rapidly declining economy and they are fearfully touchy. It is inconceivable that Her Majesty's Government should not be represented at this affair by one of us. Besides, who knows, it might be informal, touching, colorful, even instructive ... what the devil? But someone should be there; we just can't ignore two-legged Kurds in the modern world. The next thing is, they will vote against us in the UN. You take my point?

"Well, I have sat up all night worrying about the affair and (having no taste for blood myself) have arrived at a perfectly democratic solution which I know you will approve and I hope you will respect." From behind his back came his left hand holding a packet of straws. "Whoever draws the shortest straw will represent us!" he cried shrilly. We all paled to the gums, but what could we do? It was a command. Closing our eyes, lips moving in prayer, we drew. Well and ... yes, of course I did. I drew the shortest straw.

I let out--I could not help it--a rueful exclamation, almost a shout. "But surely, sir," I cried. But Polk-Mowbray, his face full of compassion, smote me on the shoulder. "Antrobus," he said, "I could not have wished for anyone more reliable, more circumspect, more jolly unflinching. Anyone less likely to faint. I am glad--yes, glad with all my heart--that fate should have chosen you. Courage, mon vieux!"

This was all very well. I wasn't a bit cockered up by all this praise. My lip trembled, voice faltered. "Is there no other way?" I cried out in my anguish, gazing from face to stony face. There wasn't, it would seem. Polk-Mowbray shook his head with a kind of sweet sadness, like a mother superior demobbing a novice. "It is kismet, Antrobus," he said, and I felt a sort of coffin lid close on me. I squared my shoulders and let my chin fall with a thump onto my chest. I was a beaten man. I thought of my old widowed mother in St. Abdomen in the Wold--what would she say if she knew? I thought of many things. "Well," I said at last, "so be it." I must say, everyone brightened up, looked awfully relieved. Moreover, for the next few days I received every mark of consideration from my colleagues. They spoke to me in hushed voices, hushed commiserating voices, as if I were an invalid. They tiptoed about for fear of disturbing my reveries. I thought of a hundred ways out of the affair, but none of them seemed practicable. I went so far as to sit in a draft, hoping I would catch pneumonia; I hinted broadly that I would surrender my two stalls for the Bolshoi to anyone kind enough to replace me ... in vain.

At last the day dawned; there was nothing for it but to climb into sponge-bag (the old morning coat and the black and whites) and hoist gongs (tack on the decorations). At last I was ready. The whole chancery was lined up to shake my hand and see me off. Polk-Mowbray had put the Rolls at my disposal, pennant and all. "I've told the driver to take a first-aid kit with him," he said hoarsely. "One never knows in these matters." You would have thought that I was to be the sacrificial lamb from the way he went on. De Mandeville pressed his smelling salts into my hand and said, "Do give little Abdul all our sympathy!" As for Dovebasket, he pressed his Leica upon me, saying, "Try and get a close-up. The Sunday Times color supplement is crying out for something new, and they pay like fiends; I'll split with you--it's one chance in a million to scoop Tony!" The little blackhead! But I was too broken to speak. I handed the tiling back without a word and stepping into the car I cried faintly, "To the Kurdish Embassy, Tobias!"

The Kurds had everything arranged most tastefully, I must say; lots of jolly decent-looking refreshments laid out under a huge marquee on the back lawn. Here we Dips congregated. I noticed that most missions had sent acting vice-consuls smelling for the most part of brandy and looking pale and strained. Now the Kurds may be a young nation, but they look as crafty as some of the older. The mission was dressed in spanking tenue, but in one corner, presiding over a side table covered in grisly-looking Stone Age instruments, stood a small group of sinister men clad in horse blankets of various colors. They had shaven skulls and purple gums and they conversed in a series of dry clicks like Bushmen. Faces which suggested nothing so much as opencast coal mining. This, I took it, was the medical wing of the Kurdish Embassy--the executioners. But where was the little beardless youth in whose honor all this joyful frolic had been arranged? I went so far as to ask. "Ah!" cried the ambassador. "He will be here in a minute. He is on his way from the airport." I was a bit puzzled by this, but ... Kurds have their own way of doing things. "And think of it," went on the head of mission, clasping his hands, "Abdul knows nothing of all this! It is a surprise for him, a little surprise. He will be very joyful when he sees ..." He waved at the group of executioners. Well, I thought to myself, let joy be unconfined, and tried to draw strength from some rather good rahat-loukoum--Turkish delight--which I found in a corner. After all, one could close one's eyes, or turn the head; one needn't actually look, I told myself.

Luckily my fears were groundless. Imagine our collective surprise when Abdul bounded into the tent to embrace his mother and father; instead of some puling adolescent we beheld a tough-looking youth of some 20 summers with a handsome mustache and a frank, open countenance. This was to be the victim! I must say, his frank, open countenance clouded as he took in the import of the business. He showed every sort of unwillingness to enter into the full joyfulness of the occasion. Wouldn't you? Moreover, he was just down from Oxford where he had not only taken a good degree, but had got his boxing blue. His mother and father looked troubled and began to urge, to plead, in Kurdish. But he respectfully declined, giving every mark of disapprobation.

He shook his head violently, and his eye flashed. At last his father lost patience and motioned to the thugs in the corner. But the young man had learned something at Oxford. With a right and left he sent two sprawling; the others climbed on his back. A terrible fracas broke out. Cartwheeling round like a top with the Kurds on his back, Abdul mowed half the corps down and upset the trestle tables; then, reversing, he knocked the tent pole out and the whole thing collapsed on us in a billowing cloud of colored stuff. Shouts, yells ... I lost my topper, but managed to crawl out from under. I tottered to the gate, yelling for Tobias. All I got out of the affair was a box of Turkish delight, which I shared round the chancery. It met with approval and I was the hero of the hour. Compliments? They fairly forked them up to me! Polk-Mowbray was in two minds about the sort of figure I had cut, but after giving it thought, he summed the matter up jolly sagely. "In diplomacy," he said, "it is so often a case of sauve qui peut."