'You mean - what do you mean exactly?'
'I mean it isn't real. It's make-believe. The whole damn thing is make-believe.'
'In one sense, yes.'
'All dressed up playing parts, putting on a show. I'm getting nearer, aren't I, to the meaning of things?'
'In a way, yes, and in a way, no -'
'There's one thing I'd like to ask you because it puzzles me. Big Charlotte ordered you to bring me to see her - why? What did she know about me? What use did she think she could make of me?'
'I don't quite know - possibly a kind of Eminence Grise - working behind a fa?ade. That would suit you rather well.'
'But she knows nothing whatever about me!'
'Oh, that!' Suddenly Renata went into peals of laughter. 'It's so ridiculous, really - the same old nonsense all over again.'
'I don't understand you, Renata.'
'No - because it's so simple. Mr Robinson would understand.'
'Would you kindly explain what you are talking about?'
'It's the same old business - "It's not what you are. It's who you know". Your Great-Aunt Matilda and Big Charlotte were at school together -'
'You actually mean -'
'Girls together.'
He stared at her. Then he threw his head back and roared with laughter.
Chapter 12
COURT JESTER
They left the Schloss at midday, saying goodbye to their hostess. Then they had driven down the winding road, leaving the Schloss high above them and they had come at last, after many hours of driving, to a stronghold in the Dolomites, an amphitheatre in the mountains where meetings, concerts and reunions of the various youth groups were held.
Renata had brought him there, his guide, and from his seat on the bare rock he had watched what went on and had listened. He understood a little more what she had been talking about earlier that day. This great mass gathering, animated as all mass gatherings can be whether they are called by an evangelistic religious leader in Madison Square Garden, New York, or in the shadow of a Welsh church or in a football crowd or in the super demonstrations that marched to attack embassies and police and universities and all the rest of it.
She had brought him there to show him the meaning of that one phrase: "The Young Siegfried."
Franz Joseph, if that was really his name, had adressed the crowd. His voice, rising, falling, with its curious exciting quality, its emotional appeal, had held sway over that groaning, almost moaning crowd of young women and young men. Every word that he had uttered had seemed pregnant with meaning, had held incredible appeal. The crowd had responded like an orchestra. His voice had been the baton of the conductor. And yet, what had the boy said? What had been the young Siegfried's message? There were no words that he could remember when it came to an end, but he knew that he had been moved, promised things, roused to enthusiasm. And now it was over. The crowd had surged round the rocky platform, calling, crying out. Some of the girls had been screaming with enthusiasm. Some of them had fainted. What a world it was nowadays, he thought. Everything used the whole time to arouse emotion. Discipline? Restraint? None of those things counted for anything anymore. Nothing mattered but to feel.
What sort of world, thought Stafford Nye, could that make?
His guide had touched him on the arm and they had disentangled themselves from the crowd. The had found their car and the driver had taken them by roads with which he was evidently well acquainted, to a town and an inn on a mountainsaide where rooms had been reserved for them. They walked out of the inn presently and up the side of a mountain by a well-trodden path until they came to a seat. They sat there for some moments in silence.
It was then that Stafford Nye had said again, 'Pasteboard.'
For some five minutes or so they sat looking down the valley, then Renata said, 'Well?'
'What are you aking me?'
'What do you think so far of what I have shown you?'
'I'm not convinced,' said Stafford Nye.
She gave a sigh, a deep, unexpected sigh. 'That's what I hoped you would say.'
'It's none of it true, is it? It's a gigantic show. A show put on by a producer - a complete group of producers, perhaps. That monstrous woman pays the producer, hires the producer. We've not seen the producer. What we've seen today is the star performer.'
'What do you think of him?'
'He's not real either,' said Stafford Nye. 'He's just an actor. A first-class actor, superbly produced.'
A sound surprised him. It was Renata laughing. She got up from her seat. She looked suddenly excited, happy, and at the, same time faintly ironical.
'I knew it,' she said. 'I knew you'd see. I knew you'd have your feet on the ground. You've always known, haven't you, about everything you've met in life? You've known humbug, you've known everything and everyone for what they really are.
'No need to go to Stratford and see Shakespearian plays to know what part you are cast for - The Kings and the great men have to have a Jester - The King's Jester who tells the King the truth, and talks common sense, and makes fun of all the things that are taking in other people.'
'So that's what I am, is it? A Court Jester?'
'Can't you feel it yourself? That's what we want - That's what we need. "Pasteboard," you said. "Cardboard". A vast, well-produced, splendid show'. And how right you are. But people are taken in. They think something's wonderful, or they think something's devilish, or they think it's something terribly important. Of course it isn't - only - only one's got to find out just how to show people - that the whole thing, all of it, is just silly. Just damn silly. That's what you and I are going to do.'
'Is it your idea that in the end we debunk all this?'
'It seems wildly unlikely, I agree. But you know once people are shown that something isn't real, that it's just one enormous leg-pull, well -'
'Are you proposing to preach a gospel of common sense?'
'Of course not,' said Renata. 'Nobody'd listen to that, would they?'
'Not just at present.'
'No. We'll have to give them evidence - facts - truth -'
'Have we got such things?'
'Yes. What I brought back with me via Frankfurt - what you helped to bring safely into England -'
'I don't understand -'
'Not yet - You will know later. For now we've got a part to play. We're ready and willing, fairly panting to be indoctrinated. We worship youth. We're followers and believers in the young Siegfried.'
'You can put that over, no doubt. I'm not so sure of myself. I've never been very successful as a worshipper of anything. The King's Jester isn't. He's the great deboucher. Nobody's going to appreciate that very much just now are they?'
'Of course they're not. No. You don't let that side of yourself show. Except, of course, when talking about your masters and betters, politicians and diplomats. Foreign Office, the Establishment, all the other things. Then you can be embittered, malicious, witty, slightly cruel.'
'I still don't see my r?le in the world crusade.'
'That's a very ancient one, the one that everybody understands and appreciates. Something in it for you. That's your line. You haven't been appreciated in the past, but the young Siegfried and all he stands for will hold out the hope of reward to you. Because you give him all the inside dope he wants about your own country, he will promise you places of power in that country in the good times to come.'
'You insinuate that this is a world movement. Is that true?'
'Of course it is. Rather like one of those hurricanes, you know, that have names. Flora or Little Annie. They come up out of the south or the north or the east or the west, but they come up from nowhere and destroy everything. That's what everyone wants. In Europe and Asia and America. Perhaps Africa, though there won't be so much enthusiasm there. They're fairly new to power and graft and things. Oh yes, it's a world movement all right. Run by youth and all the intense vitality of youth. They haven't got knowledge and they haven't got experience, but they've got vision and vitality, and they're backed by money. Rivers and rivers of money pouring in. There's been too much materialism, so we've asked for something else, and we've got it. But as its based on hate, it can't get anywhere. It can't move off the ground. Don't you remember in 1919 everyone going about with a rapt face saying Communism was the answer to everything. That Marxist doctrine would produce a new heaven brought down to a new earth. So many noble ideas flying about. But then, you see, whom have you got to work the ideas with? After all, only the same human beings you've always had. You can create a third world now, or so everyone thinks, but the third world will have the same people in it as the first world or the second world or whatever names you like to call things. And when you have the same human beings running things, they'll run them the same way. You've only got to look at history.'
'Does anybody care to look at history nowadays?'
'No. They'd much rather look forward to an unforeseeable future. Science was once going to be the answer to everything. Freudian beliefs and unrepressed sex would be the next answer to human misery. There'd be no more people with mental troubles. If anyone had said that mental homes would be even fuller as the result of shutting out repressions nobody would have believed him.'
Stafford Nye interrupted her.
'I want to know something,' said Sir Stafford Nye.
'What is it?'
'Where are we going next?'
'South America. Possibly Pakistan or India on the way. And we must certainly go to the USA. There's a lot going on there that's very interesting indeed. Especially in California -'
'Universities?' Sir Stafford sighed. 'One gets very tired of universities. They repeat themselves so much.'
They sat silent for some minutes. The light was failing, but a mountain peak showed softly red.
Stafford Nye said in a nostalgic tone:
'If we had some more music now - this moment - do you know what I'd order?'
'More Wagner? Or have you torn yourself free from Wagner?'
'No - you're quite right - more Wagner. I'd have Hans Sachs sitting under his elder tree, saying of the world:
'"Mad, mad, all mad" -'
'Yes - that expresses it. It's lovely music, too. But we're not mad. We're sane.'
'Eminently sane,' said Stafford Nye. 'That is going to be the problem. There's one more thing I want to know.'
'What?'
'Maybe you won't tell me - But I've got to know - is there going to be any fun to be got out of this mad business that we're attempting?'
'Of course there is. Why not?'
'Mad, mad, all mad - but we'll enjoy it all very much. Will our lives be long, Mary Ann?'
'Probably not,' said Renata.
'That's the spirit. I'm with you, my comrade, and my guide. Shall we get a better world as a result of our efforts?'
'I shouldn't think so, but it might be a kinder one. It's full of beliefs without kindness at present.'
'Good enough,' said Stafford Nye. 'Onward!'
Book III - AT HOME AND ABROAD
Chapter 13
CONFERENCE IN PARIS
In a room in Paris five men were sitting. It was a room that had seen historic meetings before. Quite a number of them. This meeting was in many ways a meeting of a different kind yet it promised to be no less historic.
Monsieur Grosjean was presiding. He was a worried man doing his best to slide over things with facility and a charm of manner that had often helped him in the past. He did not feel it was helping him so much today. Signeur Vitelli had arrived from Italy by air an hour before. His gestures were feverish, his manner unbalanced.
'It is beyond anything,' he was saying, 'it is beyond anything one could have imagined.'
'These students,' said Monsieur Grosjean, 'do we not all suffer?'
'This is more than students. It is beyond students. What can one compare this to? A swarm of bees. A disaster of nature intensified. Intensified beyond anything one could have imagined. They march. They have machine-guns. Somewhere they have acquired planes. They propose to take over the whole of North Italy. But it is madness, that! They are children - nothing more. And yet they have bombs, explosives. In the city of Milan alone they outnumber the police. What can we do, I ask you? The military? The army too - it is in revolt. They say they are with les jeunes. They say there is no hope for the world except in anarchy. They talk of something they call the Third World, but this cannot just happen.'
Monsieur Grosjean sighed. 'It is very popular among the young,' he said, 'the anarchy. A belief in anarchy. We know that from the days of Algeria, from all the troubles from which our country and our colonial empire has suffered. And what can we do? The military? In the end they back the students.'
'The students, ah, the students,' said Monsieur Poissonier. He was a member of the French government to whom the word 'student' was anathema. If he had been asked he would have admitted to a preference for Asian 'flu or even outbreak of bubonic plague. Either was preferable in his mind to the activities of students. A world with no students in it! That was what Monsieur Poissonier sometimes dreamt about. They were good dreams, those. They did not occur often enough.
'As for magistrates,' said Monsieur Grosjean, 'what has happened to our judicial authorities? The police - yes, they are loyal still, but the judiciary, they will not impose sentences, not on young men who are brought before them - young men who have destroyed property, government property, private property - every kind of property. And why not, one would like to know? I have been making inquiries lately. The Prefecture have suggested certain things to me. An increase is needed, they say, in the standard of living among judiciary authorities, especially in the provincial areas.'
