ambassador. Is that all you have to say? asked Gemstone. He stood up and, with the French ambassador in tow, walked out without waiting for an answer.
For some reason the silence of the French ambassador began to bother him. During the cold war, France used to front for the West in military interference in African affairs and often assured him that she would help him with troops should there be an uprising against him. Did she have a candidate in mind now that the American and British minion was missing? Who?
He recalled Gemstone hastening to say that M. Sartre had no connection with philosophy. Where had the Ruler recently heard something about France, philosophy, and the Aburlrian State, he asked himself, and, remembering the occasion, summoned Governor Fajirika.
“Tell me, which philosopher did you mention to me in this very room some time ago?”
“Philosopher? Me?” asked Tajirika, a little taken aback because he had thought that he was being summoned to be questioned about the dramatic escape of the Limping Witch and the Wizard of the Crow, or about the crowds occupying the grounds around Parliament and the law courts.
“A Frenchman?” said the Ruler to jog his memory.
“Oh, it is not me, I swear,” said Tajirika as if defending himself against an accusation. “It was Sikiokuu who was trying to tell me about him. But I told him clearly that I did not want to have anything to do with the crazy fanatic of doubts.”
“That’s what I am trying to find out. Who is he? What is his name?”
“Oh, Des Cartes or Descartes.”
“And you are sure, very sure, that his name is not Sartre? Jean Pierre Sartre?”
“I am very sure. The name is definitely Descartes. Perhaps there is a Thomas in it-I don’t know. Apparently the French people love the deity and talk about him a lot. Sikiokuu told me that he had first heard about the deity and its religion of doubt at a special dinner party in his honor at the house of the French ambassador.”
“In his honor? Why honor him?”
“Because long before he became a minister he had already shown his faith in French technology by choosing Paris rather than London for the elongation of his ears.”
For a while the Ruler was silent, as if contemplating a dawning thought.
“Does he go there alone, secretly perhaps?”
“I don’t know.”
“Thank you, Titus,” he said, almost affectionately. “You can now go back to your work.”
Soon the Ruler started getting reports that some army officers had received invitations for cocktails and dinners at Western embassies. Coming on the heels of his encounter with the diplomats, he decided that enough was enough; he must find a way to remind these Westerners that in Aburlria he was still the man, regardless of the loans for Marching to Heaven, and there was nothing these arrogant bastards could do about his slaughter of his own people.
He issued an ultimatum followed by an order for the armored division to clear the People’s Assembly.
The sight of armored cars on television, their long guns poised to murder, relentlessly moving down the streets of Eldares made him feel manlier. The media swarming around the columns excited him. Let them see blood, the Ruler whispered to himself, pointing at the television screen. Let them see that I am still in charge.
Suddenly his finger became limp and his hand fell to his side. For the first time since his ascension, he was terrified. For instead of tanks running over the dissidents, there, on the television screen, were army boys and young civilians greeting one another with high fives for the entire world to see, to his embarrassment. Here was the sunset of his reign. But who had choreographed it?
The Ruler was anything but naive and foolish when it came to matters of his own survival. He recalled the visit of Ambassador Gem-stone and their heated exchange.
He went over Gemstone’s words very carefully, and what now stood out in his mind was the ambassador’s call on him to give the insurgents something to hold on to, and he decided to do just that. Given his condition, he would relay a few words to them through the Minister of Information.
Big Ben Mambo, who had always fancied himself a military man, saw an excellent chance to enact his fantasies. Instead of speaking from the platform, Big Ben elected to stand atop one of the armored vehicles, prefacing his official message with a statement that he was speaking on behalf of the commander in chief of the armed forces of the Aburlrian State.
There would be a commission of inquiry into the facts and circumstances surrounding the disappearance of Machokali, our beloved Minister for Foreign Affairs, he now pronounced, hinting that the Ruler was even thinking of asking for help from Scotland Yard, London, and the FBI of Washington to show that he and his government had nothing to hide concerning the late minister. As soon as he said the word
People could not believe their ears: how could the Ruler suspend a minister who for many years had been his right-hand man? They whistled in disbelief when they heard that the police had raided the offices of the Minister of State and collected all his files for further investigation, and that Minister Sikiokuu himself had been arrested and was now being held to account for the disappearance of Machokali. Mambo alluded to the long-standing rivalry between Machokali and Sikiokuu, going all the way back to the days when Machokali chose London for the surgical enlargement of his eyes and Sikiokuu, Paris for the surgical enlargement of his ears. Speaking off the cuff, Mambo said that these two were fighting proxy wars for the British and the French. It was a well-known fact that these two nations, England and France, had always fought for the dominance of Europe, dating all the way back to the days of Napoleon and Nelson. That was why he, Mambo, had refused to follow in their misguided footsteps and gone to Germany for an adjustment of his tongue, which he was now putting to good use as the voice of the commander in chief. Mambo now returned to his prepared text, insinuating that Sikiokuu was involved in a dangerous cabal spreading doubts about the government. But why? Actions spoke louder than words.
Among the items seized from the minister’s offices was a suit that was more or less a replica of those worn only by the Ruler, complete with lion-skin patches, reserved by law for only the Ruler. Sikiokuu had even copied the seat on which the Ruler sat when chairing cabinet sessions. Big Ben Mambo, however, urged the people not to draw any conclusions before the commission of inquiry had completed its work.
But this did not mean that people would have to keep their mouths shut, and anybody who had any information about the disappearance of the beloved son of the soil or about Sikiokuu’s religious sect would be given a chance to present oral or written evidence to the government commission.
And now, speaking in the name of the commander in chief of the Aburlrian Armed Forces, he was ordering all the armored cars off the streets. He was also asking the crowd to disperse peacefully now that the government had responded to their main concerns.
But even as the armored cars retreated to side streets, people did not scatter; they intensified their singing and prayers, now and then shouting: We want our voice back.
2
The two main pillars on which his rule depended, the armed forces and the West, had loosened considerably. The Ruler had to find a way of shoring them up, and he would do so by showing both that his hold on power was not entirely dependent on them. And what better way of showing this than dispersing the defiant crowd without the aid of a reluctant military? But what other than the military and the police could he use to effect it?
The Ruler knew that he could no longer rely on any of his cabinet ministers. He had received reports that some ministers, like military officers, perhaps taking their lead from the disgraced Sikiokuu, had recently been seen cozying up to Western embassies. Gemstone’s remarks that he knew fairly well what was going on in the cabinet made him suspect that some of his ministers were paid informants. To frustrate these informants, he had decided not to hold cabinet meetings. Now that Machokali and Sikiokuu were no longer around, the Ruler realized how much he had depended on them in times of crisis. Not that he missed them, for he had replaced them with Tajirika and
