Read Online Water Theatre by Lindsay Clarke - Free Book Online

is your father a communist?” he asked.
    Adam raised his brows at him. “Why do you ask?”
    â€œSome of the books I noticed downstairs. And didn’t Emmanuel say something about having been to Russia?”
    â€œHe’s been to many places. Washington is as interested in him as Moscow.”
    â€œThat doesn’t answer my question.”
    â€œNow you sound like that grubby little demagogue Joe McCarthy:
Answer the question, answer the question. Is Hal, or has he ever been, a member of the Communist Party
? Would it bother you very much if he were? I mean, if you don’t care about politics, what’s it matter either way?”
    â€œIt’s just that I’d like to know what I’m dealing with here.”
    â€œIn case Hal might try to brainwash you? What kind of people do you think Hal and Emmanuel are? If you want to know about their politics, you should ask them. But ask seriously. They’re serious men. The issues they care about are serious. Probably the most serious issues in the world right now”
    Until this moment the wider context of Hal’s endeavours had seemed too far removed from this house perched on the Pennine edge for serious consideration, and too distant from Martin’s own preoccupations to excite more than puzzled interest. But now, even as the snow shut them in, he sensed horizons sweeping open round him.
    â€œI can see that,” he said. “It’s why I want to know more.”
    â€œAll right, then forget your prejudices, forget the propagandist labels. Hal’s thinking owes a lot to Marx, but he’s not in the Party, not any more. He’s his own man, a thinker in his own right, a political theorist. Emmanuel has the chance to put his theories into practice. It really is about changing things… and not just in Equatoria. In fact, independence for Equatoria is only the start. They’re working on a development plan that will transform the country in ten years and set an example for the whole continent. Africa has vast resources – which is why it’s been carved up and plundered by the imperial powers to no one’s advantage but their own. Imagine what it could be like as a continental union – a federation of independent countries, each running its own affairs, resisting exploitation by international capital on the one hand and the crude oppression of state control on the other. In fact, absolutely refusing to take sides in the paranoid madness of the Cold War. Its influence would be unstoppable. It would be like accelerating history.”
    Here was a dream on a scale unfamiliar to Martin’s thinking. Caught up in Adam’s enthusiasm for Hal’s plans, he was told how the long collaboration with Emmanuel had given Hal arare chance to realize a philosopher’s dream that was at least as old as Aristotle: to shape world events through the proper education of a man of action. To most people Equatoria might be no more than a minor page out of a stamp album, a sweltering stretch of rainforest and savannah, populated by half-naked savages. But it had an ancient tribal culture of its own – in the sixteenth century the Portuguese had been sufficiently impressed by its wealth to send ambassadors to the court of the Olun of Bamutu, the region’s most powerful king. And the country was rich in minerals – diamonds, copper, zinc, and possibly uranium. If properly administered on behalf of the people by the new radical intelligentsia, the country could quickly be transformed. A hydroelectric dam in the Kra River Gorge would power new industries. The profits would finance a national programme of education for all. Ancient tribal rivalries would be dissolved by a growing sense of a national commonwealth. As a place to make a stand for the future, Equatoria had much to commend it.
    With growing wonder Martin realized that the telephone in Hal’s study really did reach, operator by operator, and