The Life to Come by E. M. Forster

Author:E. M. Forster [Forster, E.M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: RosettaBooks
Published: 1972-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

What Does It Matter? A Morality

Before the civil war, Pottibakia was a normal member of the Comity of Nations. She erected tariff walls, broke treaties, persecuted minorities, obstructed at conferences unless she was convinced there was no danger of a satisfactory solution; then she strained every nerve in the cause of peace. She had an unknown warrior, a national salvo, commemorative postage-stamps, a characteristic peasantry, arterial roads; her emblem was a bee on a bonnet, her uniform plum-gray. In all this she was in line with her neighbours, and her capital city could easily be mistaken for Bucharest or Warsaw, and often was. Her president (for she was a republic) was Dr Bonifaz Schpiltz; Count Waghaghren (for she retained her aristocracy) being head of the police, and Mme Sonia Rodoconduco being Dr Schpiltz’s mistress (for he was only human).

Could it be this liaison which heralded the amazing change—a change which has led to the complete isolation of a sovereign state? Presidents so often have mistresses, it is part of the constitution they have inherited from Paris, and Dr Schpiltz was an ideal president, with a long thin brown beard flecked with gray, and a small protuberant stomach. Mme Rodoconduco, as an actress and a bad one, also filled her part. She was extravagant, high-minded and hysterical, and kept Bopp (for thus all the ladies called him) on tenterhooks lest she did anything temperamental. She lived in a lovely villa on the shores of Lake Lago.

Now Count Waghaghren desired the President’s downfall, and what the Count desired always came about, for he was powerful and unscrupulous. He desired it for certain reasons of haute politique which have been obscured by subsequent events—perhaps he was a royalist, perhaps a traitor or patriot, perhaps he was an emissary of that sinister worldwide Blue Elk organization which is said to hold its sessions in the Azores. It is hopeless to inquire. Enough that he decided, as part of his scheme, to sow dissension between husband and wife. Mme Schpiltz’s relatives were financiers, and a scandal was likely to start fluctuations on the exchange.

His plot was easily laid. He forged a letter from Mme Rodoconduco to Mme Schpiltz, inviting her to visit the lovely Villa Lago at a certain hour upon a certain day, he intercepted the reply of Mme Schpiltz accepting the invitation, and he arranged that the President and his mistress should be found in a compromising position at the moment of her call. All worked to perfection. The gendarme outside the villa omitted (under instructions) the national salvo when the President’s wife drove up, the servants (bribed) conducted her as if by mistake to the Aphrodite bedroom, and there she found her husband in a pair of peach-blush pyjamas supported by Mme Rodoconduco in a lilac negligée.

Mme Rodoconduco went into hysterics, hoping they would gain her the upper hand. She shrieked and raved, while Count Waghaghren’s microphone concealed under the lace pillows transmitted every tremor to his private cabinet. The President also played up.

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