To the Fair!
18:10
Busy day. I trust the orders are reaching you? I can safely say that our merchandise is universally admired. It scarcely needs to be sold. Among the new lines particular interest in salad servers, kitchen thermometers, salt and pepper shakers, kebab skewers, bathroom scales, scatter cushions. Focus on kitchenware as you see. Should be reflected in the orders.
Van den Ende has a new line of Papa leisurewear on a guerrilla-warfare theme. Shoddily made as ever. Not our core business but tempting to make it so, if only to show up the ‘competition’. All-weather poncho looks interesting. Have packed sample.
Hardly a spare moment at the stand. Pressure relieved mid-morning by a formal procession of Papas through the exhibition hall on their way to a plenary session of the Convention. A comical profusion, I must say, every shape and size. We exhibitors gathered to applaud.
Gratified to find our merchandise in situ at the Convention Centre: hand driers and soap dispensers in the restrooms. Have noted proposal for small design adjustment to homburg handle. Also doorstop in the exhibitors’ canteen. Plaster Papa with arms akimbo. Thus far and no further! Delightful and functional.
Got an intern to watch the stand in the mid-p.m. lull, with strict instructions about pilferers, and slipped up to the second floor to attend a session of the Convention. Interest piqued by ‘When Impersonators Intermarry: Type and Taboo’ but missed start so caught instead ‘The Ethics of Impersonation: A New Approach’. Wordy elaboration on basic dos and don’ts. Very lifelike Papa at the lectern. ‘It takes more than a hat and doublet.’ He had neither.
Sensed animosity between ‘professionals’ and ‘amateurs’ in the questions from the floor, especially on the subject of surgery. Some jibing about stand-up versus stand-in which I could not follow. Wish you were here to puzzle it through with me. You know the second of the languages so much better than I do. Sure you might have enjoyed: ‘Where are the Mamas? Challenging Patriarchy.’
Meanwhile thanks for the clarification on ‘Bhuti’. How silly of me! Now that I know it means ‘brother’ I shall wear it more comfortably.
23:00
Did I mention that I was going to the theatre? Old-fashioned place but newly constructed, accessed by skywalk. The development has retail, sport, hotel, office and residential components and there’s no need to go wandering off into the jungle to take up the leisure offerings.
The story of Papa’s life. Few surprises: goatherd, guerrilla, prisoner of state, Father of the Nation. Convincing leading man — but no more convincing in make-up and costume than many an audience member. Papas in every row from the royal gallery to the stalls. His famous victory speech sounded in a hundred voices. They knew it by heart!
Suddenly exhausted. Heard talk over lunch of a sedative in the complimentary nightcap.
Please confirm orders.
DAY 3
23:45
Thank you for your exemplary briefing on the monarchy received this morning. An elected king. Interesting idea. I hoped to quiz Bhuti Khuzwayo about it before my audience at the Palace, but our Convenor was nowhere to be seen. This despite the crush in the exhibition hall. Everybody and his brother allowed in today. A pickpocket’s paradise. Hardly came up for air, as you will have gathered from the orders, which please confirm.
Forgive me if I skip the day’s business and go straight to the Palace. It’s a long story, but you must hear it in full.
A limousine came to fetch me at sunset. My hopes of seeing more of the destination dashed by shaded windows. I cannot say where we went, but it was not close by. Drove for more than an hour. Piped music the whole way, military marches and lugubrious hymns, and cocktails on tap, although I did not indulge. Had one only and could barely hold my head up afterwards.
At last, the driver stopped and let me out. I was bearing the nutcracker that you gift-wrapped for just such an occasion, but the driver took it from me. We were in an underground parking garage. He ushered me to an elevator and pressed a button that sent me upwards.
The room I emerged into had the atmosphere of a health spa. Remember that place in Guangdong? Towers of folded towels, potted plants with enormous leaves, pebbles, steam. A young woman in a nursemaid’s pinafore and a beaded cap showed me to a cubicle with a shower. When I had freshened up, she said, I should put on the national dress laid out in the cabinet.
I did as I was told.
From what I’d seen of local habits, I expected cotton pants and dashiki, sandals, perhaps a skullcap — or a homburg! — but this is what I found: a linen leisure suit, very finely made, a silk shirt with side pleats, and leather loafers (tan, fringed) that might have been cobbled to fit me — you know the trouble I have with my mismatched feet! There was no mirror to judge the full effect but it felt splendid. My own clothes, which seemed shabby by comparison, I placed in the basket as requested. The nursemaid assured me that they would be returned to the Ambassador — which indeed they were, freshly laundered, along with the nutcracker in its wrapping.
At the nursemaid’s invitation, I passed into an antechamber where the servitor who was to accompany me to the audience stood waiting. He took my elbow and steered me towards a wheelchair in the middle of the room. I assured him that I was quite fit for a man of my age, but he insisted that I sit in the chair. Kneeling before me, he lifted my unequal feet onto the footplates and bound my ankles with leather straps. It was done so deftly, I scarcely had time to object, not that I was inclined to do so. When in Rome…
Giving my shoulder a reassuring squeeze, my servitor pushed me along a passage to a larger reception area. A dozen men, each clothed like me in a pale linen suit and seated in a wheelchair attended by a servitor, were waiting there. Apparently I was the last guest to arrive, for as soon as we entered a bell rang, a door opened and we proceeded in convoy into the banqueting hall.
The banqueting hall was a circular enclosure with low stone walls and a conical grass roof that reached almost to the ground (there are similar things in the files). In the middle of the hall was an immense radiation pit with iron racks on which slabs of protein were broiling. The servitors positioned the wheelchairs at intervals around the pit and stood ready behind us. I was curious, of course, to make the acquaintance of my dinner companions, but their distant mien no less than the gaps between our chairs did not encourage conversation.
The royal chamberlain, or perhaps he was simply the maître d’, welcomed us one and all in the fourth or fifth of the languages. I could not follow much of it, but I gathered from the sprinkling of ‘Excellencies’ and ‘Worships’ that I was among ambassadors and judges and other important people. At the end, he bowed deeply towards a shadowy sector of the circle, which I had thought unoccupied, and thus made me aware that the King was already present, reclining on a divan. Just then a golden light sifted down, illuminating the dome of his head and the folds of his silk pyjamas. He looked like a gilded idol in a temple.
It was silent in the hall. Though I craned my neck for a closer view, my companions averted their eyes. The pit smoked and the protein sizzled.