West’s house. West, Mrs West and Miles Crawshaw, an anthropologist, sit drinking coffee after dinner.

West   Well, of course, the first I heard of it was through Mrs Hardcastle.

Crawshaw   Who’s she?

West   Haven’t I ever told you about Mrs Hardcastle?

Crawshaw   I don’t think so.

Mrs West   (drily) Are you sure?

Crawshaw   Yes.

West   Mrs Hardcastle first wrote to the Embassy, what, two or three years ago. From Bognor Regis. She said she was a widow with a little surplus cash to invest in something adventurous, and that an ad in the personal column of The Times offering land for sale in Brazil had caught her beady eye. So, never one to do things by halves, as she rightly remarked, she had purchased a hunk of the Mato Grosso, slightly larger, according to her computations, than West Sussex. The company to whom she had handed over her nest-egg had come through with many a bland assurance about the excellence of the roads leading to her land, which was divided equally, it seemed, between arable pasture, potential oilfields and fabulous diamond and gold-mines. Was there running water, she demanded sternly, was there … sanitation? Good heavens, yes, the company replied, in precisely such items as these lay the miraculous value of the transaction. So would I be so kind as to investigate for her? Need I say more? What they had sold Mrs Hardcastle and no doubt many another hapless buffoon the length and breadth of the British Isles, the U.S.A. and the Bundesrepublik, was the most arid, inhospitable, impenetrable piece of land you could ever hope to come across. I wrote to her. All is not milk and honey, Mrs Hardcastle, I said, and if you want to visit the land of Hardcastlia, you should start the parachute lessons right away. Well, then all hell broke loose. And because the company was so elusive, it broke all over me. The air was royal blue with the plaints of Mrs Hardcastle. Well, when I began to get one or two other similar inquiries, I thought I’d better try to look into it a bit. What I discovered was that the land which was being sold to these hardy investors really only had one feature of any great interest – it was land which in more enlightened times had been ceded in perpetuity to various Indian tribes. Now the companies that were selling the land were of course quite well aware of this – and being men of the most scrupulous integrity and in many cases landlords themselves, they knew there could be nothing more serious than to infringe the sacred laws of property. Happily, before long someone came up with an extremely simple and efficient method of protecting the Indians from land-grabbers: extermination. And so that’s what was happening. They were bombing them, machine-gunning them, poisoning them, infecting them with diseases, no expense spared. None of this of course was of any interest to Mrs Hardcastle, so I thought I wouldn’t burden her with the details. I simply explained to her that though the terms of the original ad were to say the least somewhat fulsome, the company were doing what it could to improve the site. (Pause.) We still maintain a lively correspondence. She’s not quite so incensed any more. She’s done ever so much better in Nigeria.

Crawshaw   Did you do anything about it?

West   What?

Crawshaw   When you found out what was going on.

West   Well, there wasn’t very much I could do. I mentioned it to a few people, you know? But I couldn’t actually do anything unless what was happening was against the interests of British subjects. Which of course this wasn’t. Quite the contrary. Quite the contrary. (Pause.) Rather more possible for someone in your line, I would have thought.

Crawshaw   You must be joking. Anthropologists aren’t supposed to make comments on political matters, you know, in fact they’re not supposed to make comments about anything very much. They’re supposed to forget that the people they’re working with are human and treat them as if they were an ancient monument, or a graph, or a geological formation. That’s what we call science. If I’m writing a thesis about marriage practices among the Bororo, for instance, and I get fed up with writing about exogamous moieties and say as a matter of fact it doesn’t make much odds who they marry because the rate things are going they’ll all be dead in ten years’ time anyway, I’d be told that’s not anthropology, it’s journalism.

West   I see.

Crawshaw   So what’ll happen is, I’ll finish my thesis, which will be so boring and full of technical jargon they’ll roll over with delight, and I’ll get my fellowship and start inching my way up the hierarchy, and finally, in about thirty years’ time, I might be able to heave my weary bum on to some decaying Chair of Anthropology. And in the meantime some enterprising fellow with a much more practical bent than me, and a far more modest objective will have paid a visit to the tribe I build my reputation on, and without paying the slightest attention to kinship structures, he’ll simply give then a couple of bags of sugar mixed with arsenic, or a few gallons of cachaça, or a dose of measles. And I’ll be saying to my students, they had a social structure every bit as complex as ours, when they were alive, their way of life was perfectly adapted to their environment, when they were alive, they were happier than we are, when they were alive.

Mrs West   Oh, come on, Miles, surely it’s not that bad.

Crawshaw   Well, it is. I sort of hate anthropologists.

West   I thought things were getting better now.

Crawshaw   What gave you that idea?

West   Well, ever since those revelations in when was it, ’68 was it? When all those Indian Protection Service men were put on trial.

Crawshaw   Ah, yes.

General   Senhor, as the Minister has seen fit to release to the press some of the details concerning the corruption of the Indian Protection Service, we have decided to appoint you the head of a full judicial inquiry into the matter.

Attorney General   Yes, General.

General   I want you to get right to the bottom of this, Senhor, I want the world press to see how seriously we in Brazil take our responsibilities in these matters.

Attorney General   Yes, General.

Crawshaw   Some months later.

General   Well, Senhor, how is the inquiry proceeding?

Attorney General   We have had the most extraordinary results, General. We have accumulated such a vast mass of evidence, we are becoming quite desperate. For lack of space to store it, I mean. (He laughs obsequiously.)

General   And what are your general conclusions, Senhor?

Attorney General   My general conclusions, General, are that, as you so wisely remarked, the Indian Protection Service is a sink of iniquity. Very few of them will be cleared. Apart from the cases of murder, rape and enslavement, we estimate that over the last ten years more than 62 million dollars’ worth of property has been stolen from the Indians. We have 42 charges against the head of the service alone, the Major. Including the embezzlement of 300,000 dollars.

General   Excellent, well done, Senhor.

Attorney General   Thank you, General, but that’s not all. You see, what we’ve discovered is that the Indian Protection Service really plays a very insignificant part in the whole picture. They’re only small fry. The people who are really responsible are far more powerful, land-speculators and landowners, a large number of Brazilian companies and even some foreign corporations …

General   I see.

Attorney General   And furthermore …

General   Thank you, Senhor, that will be all. Except for one thing. I happen to know there’s an empty wing at the Ministry of Agriculture, so if you’re having storage problems, please have all your documents sent there, will you?

Attorney General   Yes, General.

Crawshaw   Later still.

General   Well, Senhor, you will be pleased to hear that we have decided to dissolve and abolish the Indian Protection Service, and replace it with a new body, the Fundação Nacional do Indio, FUNAI. This will be an entirely reconstituted and efficient organization, under the direct jurisdiction of the army. As you know, recruitment for these arduous and, it must be admitted, not particularly well-paid posts has never been easy, but on this occasion we have been able to solve the problem by transferring a large number of men from the Indian Protection Service.

Attorney General   But, General …

General   They have all determined to turn over a new leaf, Senhor.

Attorney General   Even the Major?

General   The Colonel, Senhor, as he now is, has been transferred to the Air Ministry. The new head of FUNAI is an excellent man, a personal friend of mine. A general.

Attorney General   But, General, what about all the evidence we have collected?

General   Ah, yes Senhor, I forgot to tell you. By some curious quirk of fate, there was a disastrous fire last night at the Ministry of Agriculture. The west wing was, alas, completely destroyed.

Attorney General   But, General, what am I going to say to the Minister?

General   Senhor, for some reason best known to himself, the Minister has seen fit to hand in his resignation. Now, if you’d be good enough to excuse me, I’m expecting a call from the American Embassy. Good morning.

West   (smiling) I’m sure it didn’t quite happen like that.

Crawshaw   (his smile disappearing) More or less. What’s the difference how it happened?

West   No, I … suppose you’re right. (Pause.) Would you like a brandy or something?

Crawshaw   (nodding) Thanks.

West   What about you, dear?

Mrs West   No, thanks.

It keeps me awake.

Crawshaw   (turning away from her to speak to West) No, the thing is, a lot of good, young, idealistic people are going into FUNAI, but they can’t do anything. They’ve got no resources, they don’t get paid for months on end, their wives leave them, they catch malaria, everything is controlled by the army. All they can do is try to follow the government line, which is don’t exterminate, integrate.

West   Well, at least that sounds like some kind of an improvement.

Crawshaw   No, no, it’s the same thing, only slower.

Mrs West   Surely they’ve got to be integrated sooner or later, they can’t just go on living in the Stone Age.

Crawshaw   That’s it, you see, integration is such a friendly word, no one ever remembers that if people do get integrated, they get integrated into the bottom layer, which in Brazil means they get integrated into the urban proletariat, who are overcrowded, under-employed and desperate, or into the peasantry, who in large areas of the country are simply starving. Integrate them, give them the benefits of civilization, the government says. What they don’t say is that the first two benefits of civilization the Indians are going to be given are disease and alcohol. All they mean when they say the Indians have got to be integrated is that the Indians have got to give up their land and a totally self-sufficient and harmonious way of life to become the slaves of slaves.

West   Well, that may be what happens, Miles, but I’m sure it’s not the government’s intention.

Crawshaw   What about BR–80, then?

Mrs West   What’s that?

West   The road.

Crawshaw   The Transamazon Highway. Look, almost the only place in Brazil where the Indians are protected, looked after and allowed to lead their own lives is the Xingu Indian Park. The road was planned to pass north of the park. Now they’ve decided, at great inconvenience and expense, to move it, so it goes bang through the middle. Why do you think they’ve done that?

West   Didn’t they offer a new grant of land to make up for it?

Crawshaw   None of that land to the south can support life. They just want to get rid of the Park. It’s no secret, they keep saying they want to get rid of it in their speeches. Listen, just the other day, the head of FUNAI, the Minister of Indian Affairs, said: ‘We must remove these ethnic cysts from the face of Brazil.’ That’s what I call putting your cards on the table.

West   Well, I don’t know nearly as much about it as you do. As I say, I just got to hear about it in a roundabout way via Mrs Hardcastle. What I’m really interested in is their legends.

Crawshaw   Legends?

West   Yes, I publish, I mean I have had published, a few what we used to call slim volumes of verse, um, poetry, you know. Nothing very grand, just a small independent publisher …

Mrs West   (drily) Thrust Press.

West   Yes, and I want to do a collection, I mean I got very interested, and they seemed to me very beautiful, some of them, of Indian legends. You know, so I’ve been trying to collect them.

Crawshaw   I see.

West   (laughing nervously) You seem a bit dubious.

Crawshaw   Well, I suppose I am, really. I don’t really approve of the idea of presenting the Indian myths on their own like a lot of pretty children’s stories, without trying to show that they’re just an aspect of an extremely complex and sophisticated society. It’s the kind of thing that reinforces people’s prejudice.

West   Well, I’ve approached them … I mean, to me they’re just like er, Greek legends, or … something like that.

Crawshaw   I’m sorry, it’s very rude of me to judge them, without even having read them, I just …

West   Well, I’ll er …

Crawshaw   Excuse me a minute.

Mrs West   He’s not a bit like James, is he?

West   No, well, I shouldn’t think our children would be anything like us. If we had any.

Mrs West   What’s that supposed to mean?

West   Nothing. (He crosses to the sideboard, pours himself another brandy.)

Mrs West   He wasn’t very nice about your poetry, was he?

West   You’re not very nice about my poetry.

Mrs West   I’ve never said anything about your poetry.

West   Exactly.

Mrs West   You know something, we’re going to have to get rid of Maria.

West   Why?

Mrs West   The dinner was disgusting. I’ve told her how to make rice pudding, I’ve explained it to her time and again; tonight it was so cold and full of lumps it was more like school porridge.

West   I can’t sack her for not being able to make rice pudding.

Mrs West   Why not, that’s what she’s paid for, isn’t it, you pay her enough.

West   I pay her next to nothing.

Mrs West   Well, it’s a lot to them.

Crawshaw   When I was in the lavatory just now, I thought of something that happened the other evening. I was at a dinner-party and there was a woman there who told a story she could hardly get out for laughing. Apparently she has an Indian servant, very unsophisticated, practically a savage, I think she said, but very good-natured and very willing. Anyhow, one day she’d asked him to put a new roll of lavatory paper in one of her bathrooms. An hour or so later, she wanted him for something else, but at first she couldn’t find him. Eventually she discovered him in the bathroom. He was winding the new roll of lavatory paper very slowly and very carefully on to the core of the used roll. He just couldn’t work out how else to do it, she said, and by this time she was laughing so hard I thought her teeth were going to drop out. He looked so funny, she said, hooting and spluttering, you can’t imagine, bent over concentrating with his tongue sticking out. (He shakes his head.) Extraordinary story, I thought. Everyone else seemed to think it was hilarious.

Mrs West   Well, you must admit it is quite funny, isn’t it?