The Looking-Glass Conference

by Godfrey Blunden

Genres: General Fiction; Satire

Synopsis

A brilliantly funny satire on modern diplomacy. The Far Eastern republic of Inevitable Khaos is at war with the repulic of Incredible Khaos and an international conference is gathering in a neutral European capital to discuss the problem. First on the scene come the security authorities wrangling about accommodation for their delegations. Two Russian painters may be spies, refugees seeking political asylum or the advance guard of the Russian delegation. And a young Khaotian patriot decides to live in a tree outside the conference building until peace comes to his country. Next arrive the delegates themselves: they discuss procedure, protocol and the official language. But the main pre-occupation of each is to utter the precise cliche that will fire the world's imagination and immortalize his attendance at the conference. The Looking-Glass Conference is a brilliant political satire. It is uproariously funny, but Mr Blunden's host of characters are endearingly human and their varied national characteristics are unmistakably true to life.

Release date: May 24, 2012

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 245

Sample

The surprising thing about the canton of Colmo, twenty-sixth and southernmost of the alpine republics, is the magnificence of its trees. One hardly expects to find in such intimacy with Europe’s loftiest peaks so much solid verdure, or in the waters of the Grand Lac so much green shadowing the glacial turquoise. In one of his letters the younger Pliny, whose bust decorates a modest square in the old city of Colmo, observes that southern breezes, breasting the Etruscan plain, breathe their last in this high valley. To be sure, there is a warmth, a quickening of the sap in Colmo that suggests the distant Mediterranean; but of wind, except in the months of March and October, there is nary a puff: below blue sky and silent snow-capped mountains broad leaves of oak and vine have the motionless immutability of begging hands. The effect is one of timeless tranquillity.

A phenomenon of such rarity has its own celebrity. Thus, Roman generals came to Colius Lacus to bathe Gaul’s bruises and to talk over the pacification of Germania. Here, successively, Lombard, Savoyard, and Visconti found a serenity conducive to the contemplation of one another’s destruction. Napoleon loved the place and signed several of his more crushing treaties in Colmo. And here in the republican century princes and potentates sought that peace of mind without which it is not possible properly to plot the overthrow of popular government. Their advent, and that of their parasoled mistresses, brought a line of grand hotels to the lake front, caused a gilded casino to be built on the site of the Roman baths. Here Dostoevski gambled his last ruble while Europe’s gainers, encouraged by the enduring neutrality of the Republic, built villas among the trees and banking houses in the city. In the dawn of the new century, on the old stone quay beside the opalescent lake, the chimes of the twelfth-century church like anvil notes on the clear quiet air, Lenin walked his quick, short walk, hands clasped behind his back, brooding the undoing of Plekhanov. And, in fact, it was in Colmo, hardly more than a dozen years later, that Chicherin, exchanging Latin quips with Monsignor Pacelli, an interested observer, signed away what remained of the World Revolution.

Indeed, so many and so disastrous were the treaties signed in Colmo in the following years that the Colmans, inspired by the vision of a world of nations endlessly exchanging seals, were persuaded to tear down the old casino and erect in its place, solely for the accommodation of treaty makers, the magnificent Maison des Peuples. Alas, they reckoned without new, powerful, non-European influences. By insisting that the hope of the future lay in open covenants openly arrived at, the newcomers put so deep a curse on pact making that for a whole generation, while shreds of desiccated paper rained all over Euope, the Maison des Peuples lay in lonely desuetude, cobwebs in its colonnades, green growth crowding its walls, as nearly forgotten as the castle of Sleeping Beauty.

An awakening, however, was at hand.

The communiqué of the Three Greatest Powers had been posted only a few hours when a large limousine bearing Mr. Sing’s party turned the corner of the celebrated Route de Colmo at that point on the mountainside where the whole valley lies in view.

“Stop,” said Mr. Sing.

The chauffeur eased the limousine into an embrasure built beside the road for the convenience of Colmo’s many tourists. Three Chinese stepped out of the car.

Mr. Sing was a short, stocky man in a gray felt hat with a snap brim. He wore a dark blue double-breasted business suit, a trifle broader across the shoulders than his frame called for but tailored after a certain fashion, a soft white shirt with a button down collar, a dark tie. On the right cheek of his blunt brown face there was a scar like a small sickle. Taking a cigarette pack from his jacket pocket, he shook out a cigarette, which he proffered to his companion and, upon his companion refusing it, put it into the corner of his own mouth, thrusting the pack away and lighting the cigarette with a single thumb movement of his windproof lighter. It was the gesture of a man who seemed well poised on the wheel of Western life.

About Mr. Tsang, his companion, however, there was something quite desperately strange. A tall, thin, straight-backed man buttoned into a gray uniform without insignia, he stood head and shoulders above Mr. Sing. At some recent date horse clippers had been run over his bumpy scalp, leaving only a tuft of lacquered satin above his forehead. His face, flat, smooth, and wrinkleless, resembled a rubber mask with Mr. Tsang’s eyes peeping through narrow, cutout eyeholes. He was probably a young man.

The third member of the party was a woman. Mme Sung was a flat-chested, matronly person dressed in a Western traveling costume and a small hat rather exquisitely done in a Chinese style which, though it may have been made by a Parisian milliner, looked, because it was worn by a Chinese woman, provincial. The only other fuss about her neat person was a blue silk scarf threaded through the grip of her handbag.

Conquistadors on Darien looked down on a view less fair. At the far end of the long narrow arm of the lake lay the city of Colmo. It was a city in two parts, the old town built on a knoll, its burnt-sienna walls like steps rising to a slender campanile, and the new town of solemn financial institutions, shops, restaurants, and sleepy hotels spreading out around the lake. Between them lay an embroidery of parks and gardens, a glass-roofed railway station, and, in the valley beyond, the long, oblique cross of an airport.

“Many trees,” said Mr. Tsang.

“Flowers too,” said Mr. Sing.

“The flowers are very convenient,” said Mme Sung.

There were villas above the lakeside that looked as though they might break into a little tune if their roofs were gently lifted. Mr. Tsang’s peephole eyes, roving the valley, came to rest on a white building with a columned portico lying grandly among the trees.

“That one,” said Mr. Tsang.

“That one,” said Mr. Sing, “is the Maison des Peuples.”

Even as Mr. Sing spoke there was a burst of colored bunting from a row of flagstaffs in front of the building. News of the communiqué had just reached Colmo, and the Colmans, sensible of the honor bestowed upon their city, had run up the flags of the seven nations.

Mr. Tsang, shifting his gaze to the other end of the valley, sighted a stone edifice on a shoulder of a mountain.

“That,” he said.

“Why?” inquired Mr. Sing, drawing on his cigarette.

“It’s big.”

“You mean it’s defensible?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Tsang.

“It was,” said Mr. Sing, “about three hundred years ago. It’s a ruin.” He explained tolerantly, “Europe’s full of ruins.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Tsang, “just like our country.”

Mme Sung gave a sharp, excited cry.

“Look,” she exclaimed, “there, that one!”

Almost immediately below them, separated from neighbors by a walled park not less than a hundred acres in extent, in a frame of clipped chestnut trees, was a cream-colored house with a bronze-green roof. In front of the house a series of terraces dipped down toward the lake; behind the house was a tiny formal garden like the design on the back of a playing card. Sun glinted on the glass walls of a small conservatory. Bronze nymphs riding marble lions guarded the entrance stairway.

Mr. Sing beckoned to the chauffeur.

“What house is that?” he asked.

The chauffeur, a Colman, took one look and began reciting with credible facility: “You see below the Château de Varienne de Magligo, considered one of the enduring gems of the Lombard renaissance. The fountain is by Canova or Rodari. Built in 1721 for the Prince Varienne de Magligo as a gift to his mistress the Countess de Caumont natural daughter of the Cardinal of Paris …”

“Who owns it?” said Mr. Sing.

“The present owner is Mr. Konstantine Poppocoppolus, the shipping magnate …”

“A Greek?”

“A naturalized citizen of the Confederation who lived there until recently. The château is open to inspection on …”

Mr. Sing’s attention had shifted, as had that of Mr. Tsang. Their ears had picked up the sound of an airplane. A minute later they saw it, a khaki-colored plane floating down between the mountains. They watched it steadily, saw the landing wheels drop and the air brakes slide out. Now it was below them, and on the brown wings they saw large red stars.

The three Chinese turned back to the limousine.

“To the château, Comrade,” said Mr Sing.

It was the first time that a plane with red stars on its wings had ever touched down at Colmo airport. The news of its approach, heralded from the plane itself in heavily accented English, had brought a host of officials hastening to the airport. They stood now outside the glass-fronted airport building, an escarpment of black coats on the edge of the concrete apron. The plane itself was disappointing, a mere DC-3, tiny beside the sleek white stratocruisers and big-bellied turboprops parked nearby.

The plane was already in front of the airport building when the pilot, instead of turning in toward the welcoming group, as the airport signaler beckoned him to do, suddenly ruddered his plane in the opposite direction and ran off the concrete onto the grass sward on the far side of the apron. Here he swung the plane smartly around to face the airport tower and cut his engines. It was a gesture of aloofness—unfamiliar but understood by Colmo’s officials; the bridging of this distance demanded a special effort of the neutral heart.

The door of the fuselage opened. There was a wait of several minutes and then a head appeared at the door of the plane. Suddenly it was withdrawn and a second later what seemed to be a huge bear clambered out.

In dogskin greatcoat and conical sheepskin hat he looked immense, a man close to seven feet in height with a great barrel-like chest and arms like pump handles. A vast black beard curling down from his chin and ears did not conceal the big mouth and apple-red cheeks. His nose was short, retroussé, so that his brow was a bridge across his face.

Leaning back into the plane, he drew out a battered leather portmanteau and a thin wooden case like those carried by painters.

A second man climbed out, but with difficulty. While not many inches under medium height, he was elflike beside his giant companion, an effect enhanced by his obvious age, for he was stooped, and his hair, beneath the threadbare sealskin cap, was white. He carried a small cardboard suitcase and a cloth bundle.

Although it was a sunny spring morning in Colmo, both men were dressed for the deepest winter. The fact that it was not winter seemed to astonish them. They stood together, baggage in hand, on the far edge of the airport apron, staring at their surroundings.

“Vladim, my dear, this is not what I expected,” said the big man.

“A fine airport, Fedya. And so clean!”

“It is as I have always said: one simply does not know what goes on outside Moscow.”

“Look at those mountains, Fedya.”

“True, they do not resemble the Urals.”

“The Caucasus, perhaps.”

“But this is not Tbilisi, nor even Ossetia, for I was once at those places.”

“Fedya, we have traveled far. Can these be mountains we have never heard of? Can this be Vorkuta or Kolyma?”

“Siberia? I always said the nationalities would surprise us.”

“We are not in the nationalities, Fedya.”

Seeing their confusion, Colmo’s official welcomers strode forward. They came across the concrete, a silent, solemn phalanx, and for a few seconds it seemed as if their visitors might turn and fly. But the big man squared his immense shoulders, stood huge and hairy like Batuyk’s guards before Stalingrad.

Suddenly the attack was all around him. The blackcoats, crying their strange battle cries and thrusting hands at them like bayonets, were in an overwhelming superiority. A youngish, balding man who seemed to be their platoon leader took hold of Fedya’s huge fist and began pumping it up and down.

Suddenly the light dawned on Fedya. The great red-lipped mouth spread open into a smile, the granite brow rose above the eyes of childish sparkling blue.

In a voice that almost decimated the ranks of the blackcoats he cried: “Zdravstvuite!”

Dropping his portmanteau, he put his huge arms around his chief assailant and hugged him mightily, laughing and laughing in his great roaring voice.

“Vladim,” he cried, “we are not in the nationalities.”

“But, Fedya, where are we?” “Vladim, we are outside!”

By midafternoon Mr. Sing’s party had covered a good deal of ground in and around Colmo. Mme Sung had pronounced herself charmed with the Château Varienne, furious with the Maison des Peuples, and superior to the luncheon served at the exclusive lakeside restaurant. Rolling down the Quai des Alpes, the big limousine came slowly to a halt at the Hotel Excelsior, largest and most celebrated, though not the most convenient, of Colmo’s period hotels.

At the reception desk Mr. Sing asked for their reservations.

The clerk, Franz-Joseph, in a cutaway coat and starched collar, took in Mr. Sing’s snap brim, Mme Sung’s hat, and Mr. Tsang, who, with a soft, cloth-visored cap covering his clipped pate, looked more than ever like an outer planetary spaceman.

“I like this hotel,” said Mr. Sing, observing the clerk observing them.

Franz-Joseph, presenting a regal, if round-shouldered, back, pretended to glance through the day’s telegrams. “A thousand apologies,” he called over his shoulder, “the Royal suite is occupée.” But something in Mr. Sing’s demeanor made him, like many others before him, hesitate and, hesitating, compromise. “We have, however, the Grand Ducal suite …”

“I’ll take the Grand Ducal suite,” said Mr. Sing. “Also the Grand Duchess’ suite.”

Turning to face Mr. Sing, the elderly clerk’s eyes bulged, his sideburns quivered with horror. Hotel register in hand, without apology or subterfuge, the Chinese was making a leisurely study of the names of the hotel’s guests.

“Your passport,” demanded Franz-Joseph.

The expression on Mr. Sing’s face was one of utter incomprehension. It was as if the clerk had asked him for a piece of his head. In the ensuing months the staff of the Hotel Excelsior was to become quite familiar with, and despairing of, this expression as a response to simple requests made in the interest of Colmo’s hitherto happily conventionalized bureaucracy.

The Grand Ducal suite, a thing of white and gold brocade, gilt mirrors, and Kidderminster carpets, pleased Mr. Sing. In the drawing room he picked up the gold-plated telephone, glanced at the bell box to see if it concealed a microphone, then ordered a carton of Chesterfields and a box of Corona Coronas, a bottle of Scotch, some ice, and a bucket of champagne. As an afterthought, he added, “Need a hot water urn and a tea service in the Duchess’ suite.”

The chauffeur staggered in under a load of bright new pigskin. Mr. Sing beckoned to him.

“Call up the Foreign Office,” he said. “Tell the Minister I want to see him. Right now. And call that real estate agent and ask him to bring over the lease for signing.”

Mr. Sing lit a cigarette and began a casual inspection of the rooms. In the Ducal bathroom, as he had half expected, he found Mr. Tsang posed like a cormorant over a flashing array of faucets. With courteous tolerance Mr. Sing demonstrated the Grand Ducal plumbing. Suddenly, without a warning word, Mr. Tsang stepped into the Grand Ducal tub and in a series of quick movements like those of a gun-layer, a spinning of wheels and knobs, he had water spouting from every available source —needle sprays, hand showers, bidet fountains, and taps. From a position by the doorway, through clouds of spray and steam, Mr. Sing saw the gray spaceman’s uniform turn into a sodden mess, hang limply on the long thin frame. But through it all he saw Mr. Tsang’s rubber face buckled into a deep smile, the eyes rolling happily in their slots. Mr. Sing quietly closed the bathroom door.

Passing into the Grand Duchess’ suite through the Grand Duke’s private door, he found Mme Sung, her hat removed, sitting among her dressing cases in a gilded chair.

“Comrade Albert is telephoning,” said Mr. Sing.

“Do you feel he is quite reliable?” asked Mme Sung.

“No,” said Mr. Sing, “but useful.”

“And Tsang,” said Mme Sung, “do you think he is reliable?”

“Reliable, but not useful,” said Mr. Sing.

For a minute or two Mr. Sing and Mme Sung regarded each other, their faces composed in the celebrated impassivity of their race.

“Ah,” said Mme Sung, “our good peasants. I am worried for them. How will they react to the temptations of this corrupt bourgeois world?”

“You mean cigars and whisky?” asked Mr. Sing.

“Yes … and vice!”

“It is simple,” said Mr. Sing. “They must amuse themselves in other ways.”

“Such indulgences as they crave must be strictly regulated.”

“The habits and customs of the bourgeois world must be explained to them,” said Mr. Sing.

“We must have a curfew,” said Mme Sung, “and after the curfew, hour orientation talks.”

“If vigilance fails,” said Mr. Sing, “cleansing.”

“And now I must change,” said Mme Sung, rising with conscious grace from her gilded chair.

Mr. Sing continued his inspection of the Grand Ducal apartments. He tapped wooden panels, glanced behind picture frames, rustled drapes, examined light standards, opened drawers. Presently the telephone rang and Albert, answering it, announced the imminent arrival of a representative of the Colmo Foreign Office.

Mme Sung came softly into the drawing room attired in an ankle-length black satin gown fastened at the throat with tiny blue buttons. A blue chiffon handkerchief trailed from her hand, but otherwise no ornament detracted from the sallow severity of her oval face or the black lacquer of her hair.

At the door a youngish man with thin yellowish hair thrust a Homburg hat and dove-colored gloves into Albert’s hand, bowed in the direction of the Chinese, and advanced smiling, chin outthrust, the personification of Colman good will and impartiality.

“Monsieur et Madame …”

“Speak English,” said Mr. Sing.

“Permit me … Henri de la Fondue, assistant to the Minister.”

M. de la Fondue glanced sharply into the faces of the visitors. No view, no horizon could have been more distant. The atmosphere was like a wind from the Gobi Desert.

“Why do you insult us?” asked Mme Sung gravely.

“Madame!”

“Why do you not fly the flag of our country at the Maison des Peuples?” asked Mme Sung.

M. de la Fondue’s finely articulated jaw dropped.

“Why do you give encouragement to our enemies?” asked Mme Sung.

“But certainly, Madame, the flag is there …”

“The flag flying at the Maison des Peuples is that of the late bourgeois nationalist reactionary government overthrown by the class of workers and peasants,” said Mme Sung.

“Mon Dieu!” cried M. de la Fondue. “A mistake! Madame, I assure you, it is how history overtakes us. The wrong flag! Somebody will pay for this …”

“We are considering laying a formal complaint before the Conference,” said Mr. Sing.

“It will be corrected immediately,” said M. de la Fondue. “If you will allow me the use of your telephone …”

Before M. de la Fondue could get to the gold-plated instrument it rang and Albert announced the arrival of the real estate agent.

“I will go about the flag,” said M. de la Fondue. “I will go at once. Such gross discourtesy. An official apology …”

“Don’t go,” said Mme Sung. Her smile was warm, disarming. “This real estate agent is just a little business we have to make in a hurry.” She laid a friendly hand on M. de la Fondue’s arm. “Don’t go. We have so much to talk about. You understand, this is my first visit to Colmo.”

Gratitude wrinkling his diplomatic brow, M. de la Fondue grasped the straw of truce.

The real estate agent, a ponderous Colman with horn-rimmed spectacles, was in a state of agitation. Bowing stiffly in the general direction of the room’s occupants, he came toward Mr. Sing, talking rapidly in French.

“He says Poppoc. . .