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CHAPTER 2

In Which Treason Is Narrowly Avoided

The office of the minister for the exterior was an efficient one, run by the extremely busy Mario Lucaccia, whose intense industriousness manifested itself in an empty desk with just a notepad and a careful alignment of recently sharpened pencils, ordered by size and poised for action. The interruption to his morning was regrettable as he was on the verge of implementing a groundbreaking directive, the nature of which had eluded him for some years. He tutted audibly. With barely a pause and a brusque wave of the hand, the young minister swiftly passed Remi on, through an internal door that was partly shrouded by a heavy brocade curtain. It led to the larger and more cluttered office of Signor Rolando Posti, the minister for the interior.

‘What have we here, Remi-Post?’ the world-weary minister enquired, peering up at the visitor from beneath his once-impressive eyebrows.

‘I am here, with your kind permission, to deliver a letter from the United Kingdom of England, sir.’ Remi shuffled a little but took comfort from the presence of two palace guards and one minister for the exterior.

‘A letter you say. And how can you be so sure?’ The minister reached for the aerogramme and studied it carefully.

‘Oh, I know a letter when I see one, sir. It is my job to know these things.’ On safe ground now, Remi shuffled a little less.

‘It is, is it? And at what point, Remi-Post, does your job end and my job commence? For is it not within the remit of my job to recognize the difference between a letter and a formal application from a foreign entity?’ The minister for the interior let the possibility hang in the air.

‘A formal what, sir?’ Remi knew immediately that this was outside the realm of his training and fell silent, his mouth agape.

The minister continued, ‘And as such, if it is determined to be the latter rather than the former, it requires an altogether different procedure. And here is a conundrum that immediately becomes apparent, Remi-Post, a quandary that a postman such as your good self needn’t ordinarily concern himself with, but I shall enlighten you because it is the wish of our president that wisdom is shared for the collective understanding of our entire nation and for the evolutionary betterment of future generations.’ He paused. ‘If it is just a letter, we needn’t worry our president with it. He is a busy man with an election to prepare for, and it is our job, as ministers, to act as filters and remove all that is trifling or troublesome from his immediate concern. If I were to go now to his chambers and interrupt his work with just-a-letter I cannot begin to second guess the consequences, but they would be grave.’ Signor Posti sighed heavily for dramatic effect. ‘If, however, it transpires that this is indeed a formal application from a foreign entity, and I were to hesitate before presenting it to our president, or to presume I had the resource or acumen to deal with it independently, then he would be quite correct to consider my action, or my non-action, as an act of gross treason.’

He glowered at the men in the room. The palace guards were almost imperceptibly retreating, a backwards half-step at a time, in a silent bid to put distance between themselves and these treasonous associations. Signor Lucaccia, meanwhile, who had been listening intently to the exchange, was now eyeing the older minister. The younger minister’s scrutiny sported a glint of nervousness and he was chewing his lip anxiously, but he knew, too, that there was much he could learn from studying the older man’s handling of the situation. All the power was in the interior, everybody knew that, and progressing from his own inferior ministerial duties would be easier if he took his lead from this sagacious elder statesman.

Signor Posti drew himself up in his chair and looked coolly at his audience. Now was a time for decisiveness and clear thinking. A letter would be quicker to deal with, but there was no precedent for receiving one at Parliament Hall and the stamps upon this communication certainly appeared to bear the mark of the United Kingdom’s most senior stateswoman. The minister was a cautious man, and his caution was one of the virtues that had earned him high office. It would be safer – both for the sake of his career and for the sanctity of his country – to assume this was not just-a-letter but an official communiqué. In this instance, hasty action would mitigate any potential risk to the president. With the first part of the decision already made, it was now simply a case of determining the correct protocol.

Swivelling his chair, Signor Posti turned slowly and deliberately to the shelves behind him and heaved one of the tomes back to his desk. He wetted his finger and flicked through the pages, conscious of four pairs of eyes upon him as he scanned the headings and sub-sections, many of which he had authored over the years. After several tense moments he found the right page and, smiling knowingly to himself, began the laborious task of form filling. This required the dispatching of the hovering minister for the exterior for two fresh sheets of carbon paper to allow the execution of the paperwork in triplicate. Glad once more to have volunteered interest, the less-experienced man hurried off importantly.

Remi jigged from foot to foot, anxious to learn his fate and, if protocol decreed it, to take hold once more of the important document. A lifetime of training had prepared him for this very scenario and, while the minister before him had an evolved understanding of the machinations of Parliament, he alone understood that the royal blue of the par avion sticker, fixed jauntily to the left-hand corner, insisted upon the most urgent of handling at all times. But, as anxious as he was, his strict sense of hierarchy ensured that he must do nothing to interrupt the process of government. As patiently as possible, he observed the complex ritual, quietly respectful of the enormous amount of bureaucracy his not just-a-letter had already generated.

At last, the postman’s conscientious approach was rewarded. After a brief discussion between the two ministers, who huddled forehead to forehead in a corner while they decided on the best course of action, Remi was invited to hand-deliver the not just-a-letter to its final destination, proceeding further into the echelons of Parliament Hall, using another, narrower, flight of stairs. Shaking with excitement and accompanied now by two guardsmen, one short, eager minister for the exterior and one tall, craggy, breathless minister for the interior, he hesitated, then politely rapped on the carved wooden door of his president’s private chambers. Upon hearing the call from within, he was barely able to still the knocking of his knees.

CHAPTER 3

In Which a Formal Communication From a Foreign Entity Is Delivered

Until twenty-two minutes past ten, when Remi’s bicycle had bounced its way, riderless, to a halt in front of the railings, President Sergio Scorpioni had been contemplating life and the complex paradigms it dealt him. Each new dawn seemed to reveal to him another bewildering puzzle to solve, and nightfall brought disappointment and impotence in place of the sense of completion and resolution he craved. Today his own dissatisfaction was the source of his troubles. ‘To what do all men aspire?’ he asked himself. ‘Great wealth? Good looks? A beautiful wife with generous hips?’ Pausing for effect, even though the conversation was playing out in the confines of his own mind, he answered, ‘No, the ultimate status symbol comes in the shape of a position of power.’ And there he was, appointed to the highest office in the land, with all its associated amenities and privileges. At his disposal he had catering staff and cleaning staff, he had a dozen vice-presidents, who were the clearest thinkers and his dearest friends in the land, yet he remained unfulfilled.

He shook his head and chewed his lip as he surveyed the material manifestation of his power. As a centrepiece, his sumptuous private chambers boasted an intricately carved mahogany four-poster bed, with a firm but forgiving mattress on which to rest at night, several goose-down pillows on which to lay his head, cool cotton sheets and warm angora blankets, surrounded by the finest bombazine hangings.

Throughout his chambers the floor was covered with layer upon layer of hand-woven carpets, each overlapping the next and telling its own elaborate tales. Their rich and complex threads wove the stories of many lifetimes, winding together the narratives of peasant childhoods with high holidays, of marriages made in Heaven and useful lives reflected upon from the comfort of an old age well accounted-for. Carpets owned by his mother, stitched by his grandmother, trodden on by his father and forefathers before him.

His desk, carved, like his bed, of the very finest hardwood, was solid, vast, and shone with decades of polish. With inset inkwells and a large blotter that was regularly refilled with a clean sheet, that desk had been the seat of power for his father, and his father’s father. And look! It was all his! As he paced from bed, to desk, to window and back again, in a circle that showed, after four and a half years of office, a faint trace of a path in the carpets, he tried to count his blessings on his fingers. ‘One, I have my health. Two, I have the tools for change. Three, I don’t have to make my own bed in the morning …’

It was no good, his face crumpled and his fingers balled into fists as the full weight of the responsibility that was attendant upon his comfortable life came crashing back upon his shoulders. As he continued to pace, his lips formed silent pledges but the acid that rose from his stomach, giving him almost constant pain in his lower chest, came from a dark, dismal place that countered those promises and told him that he would never, ever, be as successful as his father.

He stopped at the window, resting his forehead against the damp glass and allowing a little pool of condensation to gather there. Below him, Piazza Rosa was gloomy. Puddles from the previous night’s rain had gathered between the cobbles, and wastepaper clung miserably to the rims of gutters, refusing to be swept away out of sight but lingering to add to the forlorn landscape. Plastic webbed chairs were tilted forward against moulded white tables, and metal shutters were drawn at the majority of shop windows, giving the country’s finest meeting point an air of neglect and dejection. Sergio looked at his watch, which showed twenty-five past ten, and then up at the landmark clock opposite him. It remained stubbornly, accusingly, at ten to seven and the painted clay figurines, crafted to represent the finest attributes of Vallerosa, who should have been lining up to announce the next fifteen-minute interval, had long been stilled. Today was the beginning of spring, a time of festivity, traditionally used to commence courtship and slaughter the last of the winter pigs, but no one was celebrating. Even Franco, the town’s alcoholic, would have been a welcome sight, but not even he was prepared to liven up the square with his clumsy lurching and unintelligible mutterings. Sergio scanned the piazza, his eyes sweeping across the left edge, with its arched walkway, along the grand façade of the town hall and clock tower and back down the right edge, but all was damply silent.

Inside, the electrics hummed, the ancient heating system clicked and sighed, and the building itself creaked under the oppressive atmosphere of a period of celebration when the public had chosen – unanimously – not to celebrate.

The winter months were dismal, as for any city that thrived on its long, hot summers, whose very livelihood depended on clear blue skies by day and clement nights. Each year, work in the tea plantations remained at a standstill until the sun heaved itself over the mountaintop to awaken the first shoots in April, when labour could once again resume. A sluggishness of pace that was forgivable in the unrelenting summer sun took on a less condonable tenor, tinged with apathy and inertia, when the days shortened and the thermometer seldom rose above twelve degrees.

The red façade of the city’s main square that, under the kind light of the summer months, shone with every tone from a pale, dusty rose to a deep, bottomless burgundy, looked tired in the winter, shrinking in fear from each day’s onslaught. The flaking plaster and crumbling stone glared accusingly at the president, reminding him of the enormous cost involved in maintaining the piazza in its present state, let alone restoring it to its pre-1900s glory.

He returned to his desk and took up his pen. After allowing it to drink thirstily from the ink, he resumed writing. His current train of thought was complex and the recent round of pacing had done little to unlock his dilemma. He reread the last passage he had written.

Choice exists to liberate your electorate. But, what a responsible leader must ask is, does his constituent really hanker after choice? No, of course they don’t. What the constituent demands – nay, deserves – is flawless leadership. And providing that flawlessness is evident throughout government, elected or otherwise, if perfection has already been attained, then how can further choice ever equate to liberation? That choice, that freedom, which the democratic world so craves, is redundant if the only choice the state can proffer is that between perfection and mediocrity. What, then, are you offering your people? Your people are the backbone of the society, yes; they are the bedrock of the country, the foundation on which any great nation is built. They are the flour, the eggs and milk, but without the wooden spoon, they cannot be the pancake. They are the proletariat, not the elected, and as such they cannot possibly begin to interpret the discourse of politicians. Nor are they equipped to decipher the devious ruses that politicians will utilize, the depths to which they’ll sink, in pursuit of a vote. And why are they unable to enter the twisted mind of a power-crazed despot, hell-bent on seizing control of a country? Because the state has governed in such a way that its people only understand fairness, citizenship, fellowship, a society working together for the benefit of society. This country’s people have not been educated in the art of insidiousness. You give your people a vote without giving them the warped mind needed to make an educated decision and they are in danger of choosing to exercise their vote for change just because they can. You, through the so called tools of liberation, have given them the very rope with which they will unwittingly hoist themselves from the petard.

Sergio flexed his writing hand and leaned back in his chair, which groaned beneath him. He rested his eyes and immediately, uninvited, the image of his father sprang before his closed lids. He rubbed them with the back of his hands and opened them again, preferring the look of his writing to the ever-wagging finger of Sergio Senior. He sighed deeply, wiped away the small beads of sweat gathering on his upper lip, and continued.

Give an honest man the choice between good and evil and he might inadvertently choose evil, because he has no experience from which to recognize the traits of the perfidious.

As Sergio came decisively to this conclusion, a resounding thud in his heart seemed to echo his thinking. He took up his pen to begin writing once more when, startled, he realized the noise came not from inside his head but from somebody knocking repeatedly at the door. Glancing around the room to assure himself that there were no visible traces of his inner turmoil, Sergio barked permission to enter.

Expecting a butler with a tray of tea, as was customary at this time, he was surprised to find he was giving audience to a posse of visitors. Their sheer numbers as they filed through the door gave him a moment’s anxiety that, as foretold in any one of his recent nightmares, a coup might be unfolding before his eyes. But quickly he recognized them all as friends, the young postman, whom he himself had promoted, his trusted minister for the interior, the younger, ambitious minister for the exterior, for whom he had high hopes, and two palace guards, who were hanging about in the background, onlookers, it appeared, rather than active protectors of the realm.

After an awkward silence, Remi stepped forward and, unsure whether he was presenting a letter, a not just-a-letter, or an official communication from a foreign entity, simply held out the blue envelope to his president. He was not quite far enough forward for Sergio to reach it without standing up, and even when the president had pushed himself up from his chair and leaned across his desk, there was still an unmet gap of some inches. It seemed that the stalemate might never be broken. Sergio stretched further but Remi, clearly terrified by the proximity of the president, dared not look at him and affixed his eyes instead to the intricate pattern in the carpet.

Sergio relented, and came around his desk to pluck the letter from the postman’s hands. At this moment, perhaps unsure that he wanted his adventure to end, Remi clung to a corner and Sergio had to use surprising force to tug the envelope away. Flustered, he retreated to the safe haven behind his desk and took a long-handled letter-opener from beside the blotter.

One of the ministers, either interior or exterior, made a murmur as if to excuse the party but Sergio silenced the onlookers with a wave of his hand. He removed the elegant letter-opener slowly from its leather sheath, inserted the tip into the top seal and, with unhurried decorum, used the blade to separate the three gummed sides. The letter tumbled out to its full length and the president read its contents from top to bottom, taking in the London address, the velvety quality of the flimsy yet luxurious paper, the superb penmanship, with its loops and curves, unlike any he had seen before, and the evenly applied ink of the signature. Some of it was almost impossible to decipher but he peered at the English words, identifying several as his eyes flicked from one line to the next. ‘Please … visit … research … success … Duke of Edinburgh … 5 June … for one month.’

A slow smile spread across Sergio’s face, softening his features and letting the careworn frown disappear. His only regret, which passed through his mind at lightning speed, was that his father (who had made it quite clear that his son would probably amount to nothing) was no longer alive to witness this triumph. For a triumph it most certainly was, and that it had fallen during Sergio’s tenure allowed the president to take this success as a personal one.

His country had finally been recognized beyond its borders and, as clear as the blue ink with which the signature had sealed its intent, a visit from British royalty, of those distant but hallowed islands in the North Sea, was imminent and had been humbly begged by, presumably, the personal secretary of the Duke of Edinburgh, to whom the letter referred on a number of occasions.

He put the letter down. Placing a hand firmly on either side of it, he leaned forward and looked thoughtfully at each man before him. ‘Gentlemen,’ he announced grandly. ‘It seems we are to expect a royal visit later this year. Sound the fanfare. I shall be making an address to the people on this matter of national importance at …’ he glanced at his watch, then calculated the time he would need to write a short speech and change into his formal attire ‘… noon. I shall speak to them from the balcony. That will be all. Carry on.’

The five men hastily backed out of the room, leaving the president to the solitude of his chambers. As soon as he was sure he was alone, he punched the air and danced a little jig on the spot.

Meanwhile, the minister for the exterior headed directly to the press office, the minister for the interior went to the army’s control centre while the postman made for Il Gallo Giallo to ensure that word quickly spread. Within the hour, those at home, or in either of the city’s two bars, downed tools, drinks, laundry or children and headed out into Piazza Rosa to hear the president’s news.