Boys and Girls Come Out to Play by Nigel Dennis Read Free Book Online

State Messenger and contained a highly impressive card, topped by gilt fasces, requesting him to appear for his interview at three o’clock, entering by such-and-such a door in such-and-such a wing of a particular building. Immediately, he fell into a shocking state of weakness; his legs quivered, his heart flew into hysterical drumming, he turned as white as paper. In his room he drank two stiff slugs of cognac, looked ecstatically at the ceiling and praised God, fell on the bed, got up again at once, walked round and round the room, kept burning his fingers with cigarettes, stared at the view of the city from his window and felt it was his sole property, spoke aloud snatches of his imagined discourse withMussolini, feebly tried to note down the questions he would ask.
    At this point a frightful panic came over him: he had no idea what questions to ask. It appalled him to picture himself sitting in a chair opposite so important a man and having absolutely nothing to say: for the moment, he completely forgot that Mussolini was the creature he most detested in the world, and when he recalled this fact he felt more horrified than ever, because the only questions that could be put to such a creature were of so insulting a kind that Divver’s sense of politeness was shocked by them. He turned the pages of his notebook, but could not find in them a single point that had anything to do with the approaching situation. He tried to recall interesting points in articles that had appeared in Mrs. Morgan’s For ward : it was as though the articles had never been wrtten. By the time he had washed and shaved for the second time, the truth was before his eyes: he knew that the only thing he knew was that he vigorously disapproved of Mussolini. If he said so, and Mussolini asked why—what would he answer? And what in God’s name would he do if Mussolini began to question him ? It would not be too bad if Mussolini asked him to define the nature of man, but what if he preferred to stick, say, to trade statistics, or Italian history, or asked for Divver’s detailed arguments on some political point?
    Divver found a cab, which drove him to his destination in half a second; he produced his card and was instantly shown into a small empty room without a chair: it was like a cell, and he spent a half-hour in it, praying to God, wishing he had never been born, and groaning to himself until he wanted to burst into tears. He took one glimpse at his twenty-six years of life and they looked as bare and senseless as his notebooks—which he had forgotten to bring. He also had no handkerchief, and he was afraid to smoke. Then an official led him down an immense corridor, decorated with indecent murals, and lefthim at a doorway with an old gentleman in a splendid uniform, who examined Divver’s card and bowed politely. Then he suddenly unbent and whispered kindly to Divver in excellent English: “You have nothing to be afraid of. Il Duce will not devour you.” He then ushered Divver into a large waiting room, full of people.
    But the old gentleman’s remark had struck Divver to the heart. Instead of confidence, he felt shame at having so conducted himself that his cowardice and ignorance had been visible to a stranger, and an undemocratic stranger at that: he began to tremble with resentment. He felt more ridiculous and furious when he saw that his grandiose picture of a tête-à-tête was nonsense: a door had opened at the other end of the room and the fifty odd people, most of them looking shoddy as scarecrows, were filing through it. Divver was almost the last man through: he found himself in the rear of four ranks of reporters, who whispered in any language but English. A thick red cord held the ranks into the back part of the room, which looked like a long office and had a large desk at the opposite end, where a secretary in a morning-coat was doodling on a pad with a gold fountain pen, to make sure the ink was running. There was no sign of