Esprit de Corps: Sketches from Diplomatic Life

6. White Man’s Milk

“The Grape,” said Antrobus with a magisterial air as he stared into the yellow heart of his Tio Pepe, “the Grape is a Rum Thing. I should say it was the Diplomat’s Cross — just as I should say that in diplomacy a steady hand is an indispensable prerequisite to doing a job well.… Eh? The tragedies I’ve seen, old boy; you’d never credit them.”

“Ponting?”

“Well, yes — but I wasn’t even thinking of the element of Human Weakness. But just think of the varieties of alcoholic experience which are presented to one in the Foreign Service. To take one single example — National Days.”

“My God, yes.”

“To drink vodka with Russians, champagne with the French, slivovitz with Serba, saki with Japs, whisky and Coca Cola with the Yanks … the list seems endless. I’ve seen many an Iron Constitution founder under the strain. Some get pooped by one drink more than another. There was a Vice-Consul called Pelmet in Riga.…”

“Horace Pelmet?”

“Yes.”

“But he didn’t drink much, did he?”

“No. But there was one drink which he couldn’t take at all. Schnapps. Unluckily he was posted to Riga and then Oslo. At first he was all right. He used to get slightly dappled, that was all. Then he started to get progressively pooped. Finally he became downright marinated. Always crashing his car or trying to climb the sentries outside the Embassy. We managed to hush things up as best we could and he might have held out until he got a transfer to a wine-growing post. But what finished him was a ghastly habit of ending every sentence with a shout whenever he was three or four schnapps down wind. You’d be at a perfectly serious reception exchanging Views with Colleagues when all of a sudden he’d start. You’d hear him say — he started quite low in the scale—“As far as I, Pelmet, am concerned”—and then suddenly ending in a bellow: “British policy IS A BLOODY CONUNDRUM.” I heard him do this fourteen times in one evening. The German Minister protested. Of course, poor Pelmet had to go. They held him en disponsibilité for a year or so but no Chief of Mission would touch him. He died of a broken heart I believe. Took to wood-alcohol on a big scale. Poor fellow! Poor fellow!”

He sighed, drained his glass and raised a long finger in the direction of the bar for reinforcements. Merlin the steward replenished the glasses silently and withdrew.

“But the unluckiest chap of all”, continued Antrobus after a short pause, “was undoubtedly Kawaguchi, the Jap Minister in Prague. His downfall was Quite Unforeseen. Poor chap.”

“Tell me about him.”

“His was a mission of some delicacy. He started off frightfully well. Indeed, they were an enchanting couple, the Kawaguchis. They spoke nothing but Jap, of course, which sounds like someone sand-papering a cheese-wire. With the rest of the Corps they were silent. Both were tiny and pretty as squirrels. Their features looked as if they had been painted on to papier mâché with a fine brush. At functions they sat together, side by side, holding on to their own wrists and saying nothing. But they were full of the small conventional diplomatic politeness — always sending round presents of sweets or paper fans with ‘Made in Hong Kong’ printed on them. Once I saw her laugh — she made a funny clicking sound. As for him, I don’t honestly know how he conducted his business with the Czechs. There was some sort of trade pact being discussed at the time. Perhaps he used telepathy. Or perhaps he’d discovered some sort of Central European tic-tac. His whole mission consisted of two typist-clerks and a butler, none of whom spoke Czech. Anyway the important thing is this: the Kawaguchis never drank anything but saki which they imported in little white stone bottles. As you know it’s a sort of brew from millet or something.…”

“Salty and mildly emetic.”

“Yes: well, when they had to go out to a banquet or rout he always sent his butler over in the afternoon with a few small bottles of the stuff which were always placed before him at table. It was a familiar sight to see the two of them sitting there with their saki bottles before them. And so it was on this fatal evening which I am about to describe to you. It was New Year’s Eve, I think: yes, and the French had elected to give a party. They always did things better than anyone else. The Kawaguchis were there, sitting in a corner, looking about them with their usual air of dazed benevolence. It was late and the party was in full swing. The usual petty scandals had enjoyed their usual public manifestation — the wife of the Finnish Consul had gone home in a huff because her husband had disappeared into the garden with the wife of the French First Secretary. A Russian diplomat was being sick in the Gentlemen’s cloakroom. A nameless military attaché was behaving foully … we won’t go into that. The general nostalgia had afflicted the band and a whole set of Old Viennese Waltzes was being played non-stop. As you know, it is a jolly difficult dance and can verge on the lethal. I always take cover when I hear ‘The Blue Danube’ coming up, old man.”

“So do I.”

“Well, imagine my astonishment when I saw the Kawaguchis rise from their chairs. They had never been known to dance, and at first I thought they were leaving. But something curious in their attitude drew my attention. They were gazing at the dancers like leopards. They both looked dazed and concentrated — as if they had been attending an ether party. Then he suddenly seized her round the waist and they began to dance, to the astonishment and delight of everyone. And they danced perfectly — a real Viennese waltz, old man, impeccable. I felt like cheering.

“They went round the floor once and then twice: everything under control. Then, old man, a ghastly premonition of the worst came over me, I can’t tell why. Was it an optical illusion or were they dancing a bar or two faster than the music? I waited in an agony of impatience for them to come round again. It was only too true. They were one bar, two bars out of time. But their spin was absolute perfection still. By now, of course, the band began to feel the squeeze and increased the time. Indeed, the whole thing speeded up. But as fast as they overtook the Kawaguchis the faster did the two little Japs revolve. Perhaps in some weird Outer Mongolian way they thought it was all a race. I don’t know. But I, who know the dangers and pitfalls of the Old Viennese Waltz, felt my throat contract with sympathy for them. There was no way one could help. A terrible blackness of soul came over me — for all his Czech colleagues were there on the floor dancing with their wives. It could only be a matter of time now.… The speed had increased to something like the Farnborough Air Show. Lots of people had dropped out but the floor was still quite full. The Kawaguchis were still travelling a dozen light-years ahead of the band, and the band with popping eyes was pumping and throbbing at its instruments in an attempt to catch them up. But by now they were no longer a dancing couple. They were a Lethal Weapon.”

Antrobus paused and lit a cigarette with a shaking hand. Then he went on sadly. “The first to go was the Czech Minister of Finance, with whom Kawaguchi had been doing so frightfully well in negotiation. There was a sudden sharp crack and the next moment he was sitting on a violinist’s knee holding his ankle while his wife stood ineffectually beating the air for a moment before subsiding on top of him. The Kawaguchis noticed nothing. They were in a trance. On they went. A series of collisions, trifling in themselves, now began to take place. The Chief Economic Adviser to the Treasury, Comrade Cicic, was dancing with a wife whose massive proportions and enormous buffer constituted a dance floor hazard at the best of times. In a waltz it was hair-raising to image what might happen.

“I calculated that if the Kawaguchis struck her they would certainly be halted dead. Not a bit of it. This frail little couple had achieved such a terrific momentum that when they struck Mrs. Cicic there was a dull crash only: a powder-compact in her evening bag exploded causing a cloud of apparent smoke to rise. When it cleared Mrs. and Mr. Cicic were reeling into the corner while the Kawaguchis were speeding triumphantly on their way. They had entered into the spirit of the waltz so deeply now that they were dancing with their eyes closed. There was something Inscrutably Oriental about the whole thing. I don’t remember ever being so excited in my life. I began to tick off the casualties on my fingers. By now there were quite a number of walking-wounded and one or two near-stretcher cases; everywhere one could hear the astonished whispers of the Corps: ‘C’est Kawaguchi qui l’a fait.…’ ‘Das ist Kawaguchi.…’ But on they went, scattering destruction, and perhaps they would be going on still had not someone deflected them.

“I still don’t quite remember how. All I remember is that all of a sudden they were off the floor and moving through the tables and chairs with the remorselessness of a snow-plough. At the end of the ballroom there were some tall french windows which were open. They opened on to a long terrace at the end of which there was an ornamental lake in the most tasteless post-Versailles tradition. Nevertheless. The Kawaguchis vanished through the french windows like a meteor, and such was the dramatic effect they had created that everyone rushed out after them just to see what would happen, including the band which was somehow still playing. It was just as if someone at a children’s party had shouted: ‘Come and look at the fireworks.’ We all poured out on the terrace shouting and gesticulating. The Spanish Ambassador was shouting: ‘For God’s sake stop them. STOP THEM. Dio Mio!’ But there wasn’t any stopping them.

“The tragic but unbelievably beautiful momentum of their waltz had carried them into the shallow lake. Normally it would be snowbound but Prague had had a thaw this year. They sat, utterly exhausted but somehow triumphant in a foot of water and stench, smiling up at their colleagues of the Corps. The cold night air and the water which enveloped them seemed to be having a calming effect, but they made no effort to get out of the pond. They just stared and smiled quaintly. It was only then that I realized they were both drunk, old man. Absolutely pooped. People had come with lights now, and Czech doctors and alienists had appeared from everywhere. There were even some members of the Czech Red Cross with blankets and stretchers.

“We waded into the swamp to recover our colleague and his wife and after a bit of argument emptied them both into stretchers. I shall never forget her smile of sheer beatitude. Kawaguchi’s face expressed only a Great Peace. As they bore him off I heard him say, more to himself than anyone: ‘Oriental man different from White Man.’ I have always remembered and treasured that remark, old boy. Something like the same thing was said by the French chargé’s wife: ‘How your Keepling say: “Ist is Ist and Vest is Vest”?’ But I was sorry for the Kawaguchis. Magnificent as the whole thing was, here we were, with three minutes to go before midnight, simply covered in mud and confusion. Some of the women had tried to draw attention to themselves by rushing into the swamp after them. The Italian Ambassador had a sort of Plimsoll line in the middle of his dress trousers. The ballroom looked like an advance dressing-station on the Somme. It is impossible to pretend that the evening wasn’t ruined. And above all, the dreadful smell. Apparently all the drains flowed into this romantic little lake. It was all very well so long as it wasn’t disturbed. The French were definitely confused, and I for one was sorry for them. No Mission could carry off a thing like this lightly.”

Antrobus blew out his cheeks and lay back in his armchair, keeping a watchful eye on me to see that I had fully appreciated all the points in the drama. Then he went on in his usual churchwarden’s style: “The Kawaguchis left for Tokyo by air the next afternoon. His mission was a failure and he knew it. I must say that there were only two Colleagues at the airport to see him off — myself and the perfectly foul military attaché about whom I will never be persuaded to speak. He was deeply moved that we had troubled to find out the time of his departure from the Protocol. I wrung his hand. I knew he wasn’t to blame for the whole thing. I knew it was purely Inadvertent.”

“How do you mean?”

“The butler gave the whole thing away some weeks later. Apparently the normal case of saki had not come in that month. They were out of drink. There was nothing a responsible butler of any nationality could do. He took some of the saki bottles and filled them with … guess what?”

“Bad Scotch whisky.”

“Dead right! ‘White Man’s Milk’ he called it.”

“Awfully bad luck.”

“Of course. But we face these hazards in the Foreign Service, don’t we?”

“Of course we do.”

“And we outlive them. Kawaguchi is in Washington.”

“Bravo! I’m so glad.”

“Care for another whiff of Grape-Shot before we lunch?”