trivial, domestic executions as now and then became necessary within the royal household. The place was now deserted except for the small cluster of puzzled blacks who were usually congregated round the headquar-ters of the One Year Plan and a single dog who gnawed her hindquarters in the patch of shadow cast by two corpses, which rotated slowly face to face, half circle East, a half circle West, ten foot high in the limpid morning sunlight.
The Ministry of Modernisation occupied what had formerly been the old Empress’ oratory; a circular building of concrete and corrugated iron, its outer wall enriched with posters from all parts of Europe and the United States advertising machinery, fashion and foreign travel. The display was rarely without attendance and to-day the customary loafers were reinforced by five or six gentlemen in the blue cotton cloaks which the official class of Debra-Dowa assumed in times of bereavement.
These were mourners for the two criminals-peculators and perjurers both—who had come to give a dutiful tug at their relatives’ heels in case life might not yet be extinct, and had stayed to gape, entranced by the manifestations of Progress and the New Age.
On the door was a board painted in Arabic, Sakuyu and French with the inscription:— MINISTRY OF MODERNISATION HIGH COMMISSIONER & COMPTROLLER GENERAL: MR. BASIL SEAL.
FINANCIAL SECRETARY: MR. KRIKOR YOUKOUMIAN.
A vague smell of incense and candle-grease still possessed the interior; in all other ways it had been completely transformed. Two partitions divided it into unequal portions. The largest was Basil’s of-fice, which contained nothing except some chairs, a table littered with maps and memoranda and a telephone. Next door Mr. Youkoumian had induced a more homely note; his work was economically con-fined to two or three penny exercise books filled with figures and indecipherable jottings, but his personality extended itself and pervaded the room, finding concrete expression in the seedy red plush sofa that he had scavenged from one of the state apartments, the scraps of clothing hitched negligently about the furniture, the Parisian photographs pinned to the walls, the vestiges of food on enamelled tin plates, the scent spray, cigarette ends, spittoon, and the lit-tle spirit-stove over which perpetually simmered a brass pan of coffee. It was his idiosyncrasy to prefer working in stockinged feet, so that when he was at his post a pair of patent leather, elastic-sided boots proclaimed his presence from the window ledge.
In the vestibule sat a row of native runners with whose services the modernising party were as yet unable to dispense.
At nine in the morning both Basil and Mr. Youkoumian were at their desks. Instituted a month previously by royal proclamation, the Ministry of Modernisation was already a going concern. Just how far it was going, indeed, was appreciated by very few outside its circular, placarded walls. Its function as defined in Seth’s decree was “to promote the adoption of modern organisation and habits of life throughout the Azanian Empire” which, liberally interpreted, comprised the right of interfer-ence in most of the public and private affairs of the nation. As Basil glanced through the correspondence that awaited him and the rough agenda for the day he felt ready to admit that any one but himself and Mr. Youkoumian would have bitten off more than he could chew. Reports from eight provincial vice-roys on a questionnaire concerning the economic resources and population of their territory— documents full of ponderous expressions of politeness and the minimum of trustworthy information; detailed recommendations from the railway authorities at Matodi; applications for concessions from European prospectors; inquiries from tourist bu-reaux about the possibilities of big game hunting, surf bathing and mountaineering; applications for public appointments; protests from missions and legations; estimates for building; details of court etiquette and precedence—everything seemed to find its way to Basil’s table. The other ministers of the crown had not yet begun to feel uneasy about their own positions. They regarded Basil’s arrival as a di-rect intervention of heaven on their behalf. Here was an Englishman who was willing to leave them their titles and emoluments and take all the work off their hands. Each was issued with the rubber stamp, REFER TO BUREAU OF MODERNISATION, and in a very few days the Minister of the Interior, the Lord Chamberlain, the Justiciar, the City Governor and even Seth himself, acquired the habit of relegating all decisions to Basil, with one firm stab of indelible ink. Two officials alone, the Nestorian patriarch and the Commander-in-Chief of the army, failed to avail themselves of the convenient new institution, but continued to muddle through the routine of their departments in the same capricious, dilatory, but independent manner as before the establishment of the new regime.
Basil had been up very late the night before working with the Emperor on a codification of the criminal law, but the volume of business before him left him undismayed.
“Youkoumian.”
” ‘Ullo. Mr. Seal?”
The financial secretary padded in from the next room.
“Connolly won’t have boots.’
“Won’t ave boots? But, Mr. Seal, he got to ave boots. I bought them from Cape Town. They come next ship. I bought them, you understand, as a personal enterprise, out of my own pocket. What in ell can I do with a thousand pair boots if Connolly won’t take them?”
“You ought to have waited.”
“Waited? and then when the order is out and every one knows Guards to ave boots, what’ll appen then? Some pig wanting to make money will go to the Emperor and say I get you boots damned cheaper than Youkoumian. Where am I then? They might as well go barefoot all same as they do now like the dirty niggers they are. No, Mr. Seal, that is not business. I fix it so that one morning the Army Order says Guards must have boots. Every one say but where are boots? No one got enough boots in I59 this stinking hole. Some one say I get you boots in three weeks, month, five weeks, so long. I come up and say
Basil handed him the letter. It was emphatic and almost ungenerously terse, coming as it did in an-swer to a carefully drafted recommendation beginning: The Minister of Modernisation presents his compliments to the Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Army and in pursuance of the powers granted him by royal decree begs to advise…
It consisted of a single scrap of lined paper torn from a note-book across which Connolly had scrawled in pencil: The Minister of Damn All can go to blazes. My men couldn’t move a yard in boots. Try and sell Seth top hats next time. Ukaka C. in C.
“Well,” said Mr. Youkoumian doubtfully, “I could get top ats.”
“That is one of Connolly’s jokes, I’m afraid.’
“Jokes is it? And ere am I with a thousand pair black boots on my ands. Ha. Ha. Like ell it’s a joke. There isn’t a thousand people in the whole country that wears boots. Besides these aren’t the kind of boots people buys for themselves. Government stuff. Damn rotten. See what I mean?”
“Don’t you worry,” Basil said. “We’ll find a use for them. We might have them served out to the clergy.” He took
