The Curious Enlightenment of Professor Caritat by Steven Lukes

Author:Steven Lukes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 2014-05-27T04:00:00+00:00

19

Malvolians and Stalactites

Next morning, Nicholas awoke to the sound of children getting ready to be taken off to their various schools. After they had gone, he went downstairs and found Jonny slumped over a cup of black coffee.

‘I greatly enjoyed your opera,’ he said.

‘Thank you,’ Jonny muttered.

‘What I cannot judge,’ he went on, ‘is how much of it is fantasy.’

‘That,’ said Jonny, ‘you will be better able to judge by the end of today.’

Goddington returned from delivering the children to school and joined them for coffee.

‘We will visit the Malvolians first,’ he said. ‘A meeting has been fixed for eleven this morning. Of course they don’t know that you’re going to make an appeal on behalf of Jonny. They simply take it for granted that a famous visitor would visit them first; otherwise they would take offence. And they know about your mission.’

‘And will probably tell you that their way of life is what is best about this best possible world,’ remarked Jonny, wrily.

The minister shot him a disapproving glance. ‘In the afternoon,’ he added, ‘we’ll visit the Stalactites. But remember, you must be extremely discreet and on no account reveal that you have met Jonny.’

Goddington and Nicholas set off for the House of Ethnicity to meet the Malvolians. The two Parliament Buildings stood, side by side opposite the former Royal Palace, on a grand public square at the very top of the Hill of Bees. They had been rebuilt after the Settlement, and were characterless, rectangular structures (presumably to avoid offence). Outside each House stood a Guard of Honour of soldiers dressed in a wide variety of colourful costumes. Inside, the House of Ethnicity was decorated with the flags, crests and portraits of all the official ethnic communities. Each community was given an equal section of the imposing entrance hall for display.

They walked along a corridor with doors on each side bearing the names of the different ethnic groups in alphabetical order. Passing ‘BEES’ and ‘EMMETS’ and many others, they came, eventually, to M and stopped outside the door marked ‘MALVOLIANS’. Goddington knocked.

A nervous page in an ill-fitting uniform opened the door to a committee room. Seated at a long table were five men of varying ages, all wearing cross-gartered yellow stockings and grey tunics. The eldest sat at the centre facing the door. He had a white pointed beard, a shiny bald head and a fierce, intense expression that did not soften on the arrival of the visitors. The others wore the same disinterested glare. Neither friendly nor unfriendly, their hostile facial expressions were directed at the outside world in general, of which Nicholas and Goddington were simply two representatives.

The old man with the beard introduced himself as the Chairman of the Malvolian Parliamentary group. The others were his colleagues. Everyone shook hands. Goddington and Nicholas sat facing them.

The Chairman spoke slowly and deliberately. Nicholas noticed that he tended to use the first-person plural indiscriminately. Sometimes by ‘we’ and ‘our’ he seemed to mean himself and his colleagues,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.