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Evelyn Waugh
BLACK MISCHIEF
First published in 1932
ONE
WE, Setk, Emperor of Azania, Chief of the Chiefs of Sakuyu, Lord of Wanda and Tyrant of the Seas, Bachelor of the Arts of Oxford University, being in this the twenty-fourth year of our life, summoned by the wisdom of Al-mighty God and the unanimous voice of our people to the throne of our ancestors, do hereby proclaim…” Seth paused in his dictation and gazed out across the harbour where in the fresh breeze of early morning the last dhow was setting sail for the open sea. “Rats,” he said; “stinking curs. They art all running away.”
The Indian secretary sat attentive, his fountain pen poised over the pad of writing paper, his eyes blinking gravely behind rimless pince-nez.
“Is there still no news from the hills?”
“None of unquestionable veracity, your majesty.”
“I gave orders that the wireless was to be mended.
Where is Marx? I told him to see to it.”
“He evacuated the town late yesterday evening.”
“He evacuated the town?”
“In your majesty’s motor boat. There was a large company of them—the station master, the chief of police, the Armenian Archbishop, the Editor of the Azanian Courier, the American vice-consul. All the most distinguished gentlemen in Matodi.”
“I wonder you weren’t with them yourself, Ali.”
“There was not room. I supposed that with so many distinguished gentlemen there was danger of submersion.”
“Your loyalty shall be rewarded. Where had I got to?”
“The last eight words in reproof of the fugitives were an interpolation?”
“Yes, yes, of course.”
“I will make the erasion. Your majesty’s last words were ‘do hereby proclaim.’ “
“Do hereby proclaim amnesty and free pardon to all those of our subjects recently seduced from their loyalty, who shall during the eight days subsequent to this date return to their lawful allegiance. Fur-thermore…”
They were in the upper story of the old fort at Matodi. Here, three hundred years before, a Portuguese garrison had withstood eight months’ siege from the Omani Arabs; at this window they had watched for the sails of the relieving fleet, which came ten days too late.
Over the main door traces of an effaced escutcheon were still discernible, an idolatrous work repugnant to the prejudice of the conquerors.
For two centuries the Arabs remained masters of the coast. Behind them in the hills the native Sakuyu, black, naked, anthropophagous, had lived their own tribal life among their herds—emaciated, puny cattle with rickety shanks and elaborately branded hide. Further away still lay the territory of the Wanda—Galla immigrants from the mainland who, long before the coming of the Arabs, had settled in the North of the island and cultivated it in irregular communal holdings. The Arabs held aloof from the affairs of both these people; war-drums could often be heard inland and sometimes the whole hillside would be aflame with burning villages. On the coast a prosperous town arose; great houses of Arab merchants with intricate latticed windows and brass studded doors, courtyards planted with dense mango trees, streets heavy with the reek of cloves and pineapple, so narrow that two mules could not pass without altercation between their drivers; a bazaar where the money changers, squatting over their scalef, weighed out the coinage of a world-wide trade, Austrian thalers, rough-stamped Mahratta gold, Spanish and Portuguese guineas. From Matodi the dhows sailed to the mainland, to Tanga, Dares-Salaam, Malindi and Kis-mayu, to meet the caravans coming down from the great lakes with ivory and slaves. Splendidly dressed Arab gentlemen paraded the water-front hand in hand and gossiped in the coffee houses. In early spring when the monsoon was blowing from the Northeast, fleets came down from the Persian Gulf bringing to market a people of fairer skin who spoke a pure Arabic barely intelligible to the islanders, for with the passage of years their language had be-come full of alien words—Bantu from the mainland, Sakuyu and Galla from the interior—and the slave markets had infused a richer and darker strain into their Semitic blood; instincts of swamp and forest mingled with the austere tradition of the desert.
In one of these Muscat trading fleets came Seth’s grandfather, Amurath, a man wholly unlike his companions, a slave’s son, sturdy, bow-legged, three-quarters negro. He had received education of a kind from Nestorian monks near Basra. At Matodi he sold his dhow and entered the Sultan’s service.
It was a critical time in local history. The white men were returning. From Bombay they had fastened on Aden. They were in Zanzibar and the Sudan. They were pushing up round the Cape and down through the Canal. Their warships were cruising the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean intercepting slavers; the caravans from Tabora were finding difficulty in getting through to the coast. Trade in Matodi was almost at a standstill and a new listless-ness became apparent in the leisured life of the mer chants; they spent their days in the town moodily chewing khat. They could no longer afford to keep up their villas round the bay. Gardens ran wild and roofs fell into disrepair. The grass huts of the Sakuyu began to appear on the more remote estates. Groups of Wanda and Sakuyu came into town and swaggered insolently about the bazaars; an Arab party returning from one of the country villas was ambushed and murdered within a mile of the walls. There were rumours of a general massacre, planned in the hills. The European powers watched their opportunity to proclaim a Protectorate.
In this uncertain decade there suddenly appeared the figure of Amurath; first as commander-in-chief of the Sultan’s forces, then as general of an independent army; finally as Emperor Amurath the Great. He armed the Wanda and at their head in-flicted defeat after defeat on the Sakuyu, driving off their cattle, devastating their villages and hunting them down in the remote valleys of the island. Then he turned his conquering army against his old allies on the coast. In three years he proclaimed the island a single territory and himself its ruler. He changed its name. Until now it had been scored on the maps as Sakuyu Island; Amurath renamed it the Empire of Azania. He
