The Breaking Point (25 page)

‘Have we endured,’ asked Markoi, ‘seven centuries of neglect? Has Ronda become a paradise for fools? Anyone who crosses the border knows that the real world lies outside our frontiers, the world of achievement, the world of progress. The Rondese have been nurtured too long on lies. We are unique only in that we are idiots, despised by men and women of intelligence.’

No man likes to be called a fool. A gibe brings shame and doubt. The more advanced of the young people felt themselves insecure. And, whatever their occupation, the worth of what they did became doubtful.

‘He who treads the vine with his bare feet treads himself into the ground,’ said Markoi. ‘Whoever spades the earth digs his own grave.’

He was, you will observe, a bit of a poet, and had a clever knack of twisting the philosophy of Oldo into derogatory phrases.

‘Why,’ he asked, ‘are we, the young and the strong, deliberately kept under by a system of government that withholds from us our own possessions? We could all be leaders. Instead, we are led. The immortality that could make us rule the world is vested in the sham personage of one man who, by a trick, holds a chemical secret.’

When Markoi wrote this on the day of the spring festival, and saw that a copy of the newspaper reached every household in Ronda, there was no longer any doubt amongst the inhabitants that their little world must change.

‘There’s truth in it, you know,’ said one man to his neighbour. ‘We’ve been too easy-going. We’ve just sat down through the centuries and accepted what’s been handed to us.’

‘Look what it says here,’ said a woman to her companion. ‘The spring waters could be shared out and none of us need ever grow old. There’s more than enough for every woman in Ronda.’

No one had the discourtesy to attack the Archduke himself, but there was, nevertheless, an undercurrent of criticism, a growing belief that the people of Ronda had been hoodwinked, kept in subjection, and because of this were in reality the laughing-stock of the world. The spring festival, for the first time in centuries, lacked its essential gaiety.

‘These nonsensical blossoms,’ wrote Markoi, ‘gathered by the toiling masses of Rondese men and women merely to drug the sense of the older generation and appease the vanity of one man, might have been crushed and distilled for
our
use, for
our
enrichment. The natural resources of Ronda should be exploited and sold, to benefit ourselves and all mankind.’

There was logic in his argument.The waste, people whispered, of all those golden blossoms, of all that flowing water, of all the untrapped fish surging down the Rondaquiver to the open sea, fish whose backbones might have braced the bosoms and enlaced the hips of the ungirt Rondese women, who must surely, as the newspaper said, be despised and laughed at by the rest of the western world.

That night, for the first time in history, there was silence when the Archduke appeared on the balcony.

‘What right,’ whispered a boy, ‘has he to lord it over us? He’s made of flesh and blood, isn’t he, no better than ourselves? It’s only the elixir that keeps him young.’

‘They say,’ whispered the girl beside him, ‘that he has other secrets too. The palace is full of them. Not only how to prolong youth, but how to prolong love as well.’

So envy was born, fostered by Markoi and Grandos, and the tourists who crossed the border were aware of the new spirit amongst the Rondese, an irritability and shortness of temper ill-suited to their fine physique. Instead of showing off the national ways and customs with unaffected enjoyment, they began, for the first time in history, to apologize for their imperfections. Imported words like ‘enslaved’, ‘backward’, ‘unprogressive’ were used with a shamefaced shrug, and the tourists, with lack of intuition, added fuel to the smouldering fires of discontent by calling the Rondese ‘picturesque’ and ‘quaint’.

‘Give me a year,’ Markoi is supposed to have said, ‘give me a year, and I’ll bring down the ruling house by ridicule alone.’

This suited Grandos. In a year he would have an agreement with every fisherman of the Rondaquiver to supply him with the backbones and oil from the fish caught in their nets, and by the end of the same year all flower-gatherers under seventeen would have contracted to hand over the pulped hearts of the Rovlvula flowers, whose essence Grandos would manufacture into scent and export to the United States.Together he and Markoi, industrialist and journalist combined, would control the destiny of the Rondese people.

‘Remember,’ said Grandos, ‘that united we are unbreakable, divided we fall apart. If you attack me in your paper I sell out to the highest bidders across the border.They walk in, and Ronda merges with the rest of Europe. You lose your power.’

‘And don’t forget,’ said Markoi, ‘that unless you support my policy, and share your fish oil and your beauty paste, I’ll turn every youngster in the republic against you.’

‘Republic?’ asked Grandos, raising his eyebrows.

‘Republic,’ nodded Markoi.

‘The principality has lasted for seven centuries,’ ventured Grandos.

‘I can destroy it in seven days,’ said Markoi.

This conversation is not recorded in the documents relating to the revolution, but it was reported, nevertheless, by word of mouth.

‘And the Archduke?’ mused Grandos. ‘How do we dispose of the immortal one?’

‘In the same way,’ said Markoi, ‘as I dispose of the Rovlvula flower. By tearing him apart.’

‘He may escape us,’ Grandos said, ‘flee the country, and join the other exiles on that ridiculous liner.’

‘Not the Archduke,’ said Markoi. ‘You forget your history. All princes who believe in eternal youth offer themselves as victims.’

‘That’s only myth,’ observed Grandos.

‘True,’ agreed Markoi, ‘but most myths have a sound factual basis.’

‘In that case,’ said Grandos, ‘not one member of the reigning family must remain alive. One member would encourage reaction.’

‘No,’ said Markoi, ‘one member must remain. Not, as you may fear, for purposes of adoration, but as a human scarecrow. The Rondese people must be taught rejection.’

The next day Markoi started his campaign, designed to spread over the year until the spring festival should come again. His purpose was to decry the Archduke, in the columns of the
Ronda News
, in so subtle a fashion that the people of the country would absorb the poison unconsciously.The idol must become the target, the figurehead the cutty stool. The way of attack lay through his sister, the Archduchess. Loveliest of women, without an enemy in the country, she was known as the Flower of Ronda. Markoi’s intention was to bring about her moral and physical degradation. Whether he succeeded or failed, you shall hear in due course, if the subject interests you.

This man was evil, you say? Nonsense, he was an ideologist.

The Archduke was several years older than his sister. How many years, no one could say. And anyway, all records were burnt during the Night of the Big Knives. But it might have been as much as thirty years. The archducal birthdates were kept only in the palace archives, and the people had no curiosity. All they knew was that the Archduke of Ronda was in essence immortal, and that his spirit passed to his successor. Each prince was virtually the same through the seven centuries, and the time-factor was unimportant. Perhaps the Archduchess Paula was not the Archduke’s sister. Perhaps she was his great-granddaughter. You have to realize that the relationship was really immaterial, but she was of the blood royal, and had from the beginning been known as his sister.

Tourists from across the border were always baffled by the reigning family of Ronda. How can they exist, they asked, century after century, behind those palace walls and in those grounds - admittedly beautiful, what could be glimpsed of them - and up in the Ronderhof chalet during the skiing season and at high summer, and on Quiver islet when the fish were in spawn? What do they do all day? Are they never bored? And surely the intermarriage is shocking besides being dull? What about protocol? Is it rigid? Are they hemmed about with ceremony? The Rondese, when questioned, used to smile and say, ‘Frankly, we don’t know. We believe them to be happy, as we are ourselves. Indeed, why not?’ Why not? Nations other than the Rondese - in which I include all Europeans and citizens of the United States, all the so-called ‘civilized’ races - simply could not understand happiness. It was impossible for them to realize that a Rondese man or woman, whether he ran a café in the capital, tended a vineyard on the slopes of the Ronderhof, kept a fishing-boat on the Rondaquiver, or lived as a minor princeling or princess behind palace walls, was content with his lot and loved life. That was the fundamental truth. They loved life. ‘It isn’t natural,’ I have heard tourists say, ‘to live as the Rondese do. If they only realized what the rest of the world has to put up with, day in, day out . . .’ - an oddly grudging point of view, if you come to think of it. The Rondese did not realize and did not care. They were happy. If the rest of the world chose to herd in skyscrapers or prefabricated hovels and then blow themselves to pieces, it was their affair.
Tandos pisos
, which can be translated as so what?

To return to the royal family, of course they intermarried, just as the Rondese people did, cousin with cousin and closer than that; but they had brought emotional life to such delicacy of interpretation that the coarser methods of so-called love-making were rarely used, and then only to ensure the birth of a prince. There was no sort of congestion behind the palace walls, because there was no necessity to breed. As to boredom, that curious supposition of the tourist, it is impossible to be bored if you are happy.

The royal family of Ronda were all poets, painters, musicians, skiers, riders, divers, gardeners - whatever pleasure attracted them they sought and so enjoyed.There was no competition, and therefore no jealousy. As for protocol, I have heard that it did not exist.The Archduke made his evening appearance on the balcony, and that was all. He was, naturally, in charge of the elixir, and not only of his own formula, but of the spring-waters. The cave whence the waters came was royal property, and managed entirely by the Archduke and his team of experts, bred in the mountains and trained by their fathers before them. The seizure of the cave was, of course, the ultimate aim of Grandos.

The royal family was in no way narrow or boorish. The palace library - and what a crime it was to burn the books, most of them irreplaceable - had been added to by every prince through the centuries. The standard of education among the young princes and princesses would have frightened even a French professor.

The Archduchess Paula was exceptionally gifted even for a Rondese princess. She spoke five languages, played the piano, and sang remarkably well; and a famous English collector who acquired one of the bronze heads that escaped destruction on the Night of the Big Knives gave it as his opinion that whoever sculptured the head was a genius. It was believed to be the work of the Archduchess. She skied, of course, as all the Rondese did, and swam and rode, but from her birth there was something about this princess of the royal blood which fired the imagination of the people, and made her beloved. For one thing, her mother was said to have died at her birth, and her father soon afterwards. Secondly, the Archduke, her brother - if he was her brother - was unmarried, and so made a particular pet of the small girl whose birth coincided with his accession to the ducal throne. There were no very young children being brought up within the palace at that time, previous generations having grown up and married, and Paula - offspring of the former Archduke and one of his nieces - was the first baby to be born at the palace for nearly fifteen years.

The people gradually became aware of her existence. A nurse, carrying an infant, looked out of one of the high windows of the palace. A boy picking Rovlvula blossoms saw a perambulator in the royal gardens. Then story followed story, and a golden-haired child was seen skiing on the Ronderhof slopes, diving in the Rondaquiver, and, more intimate and delightful still, holding the hand of the Archduke before he made his nightly appearance on the palace balcony. It became known that this was indeed the last baby to be born in Ronda palace, the sister of the present Archduke, the little Archduchess Paula.

As the years passed and she grew to womanhood, the legends and the stories multiplied. Always good-natured, always amusing, the tales would be handed from one Rondese to another - how the Archduchess Paula had jumped the Ronderhof cascades at their highest and most dangerous point, the Ronda leap, attempted hitherto only by the finest athletes; how the Archduchess Paula had rounded up the sheep from the slopes above the capital and let them loose into the vineyards; how the Archduchess Paula had netted the upper reaches of the Rondaquiver so that the fish could not escape, and a multiple catch splayed over the meadows, to the astonishment of every farmer when he visited his crops the next morning; how the Archduchess had placed wreaths of Rovlvula blossoms on the heads of the sacred statues in the palace portrait gallery; how she had crept into the Archduke’s bedroom and hidden his white uniform, and would not tell him where she had concealed it until he had given her a sip of the elixir.

There may not have been one word of truth in any of these tales, but they delighted the Rondese. A medal of her likeness hung in every home.‘That,’ said the proud Rondese to the tourist inquiries, ‘that is our Archduchess.’ It was never ‘the’ Archduchess, but always ‘our’.

She became patron - corresponding to the Christian godmother - of almost every child born in Ronda. Special purifying water from the springs and a message of goodwill would be sent to her patron-children on their birthday, and at their marriage, crystals of potent dew. This custom was considered repugnant by Anglo-Saxon tourists, but southern Europeans were amused.

Since the Archduke and his sister were so close in sympathy, it was taken as a matter of course by the Rondese people that they would one day marry. This was considered so shocking by the tourists of the western world that there was a movement among the European and American churches to ban further visits to Ronda, but nothing came of it. And anyway, if revolution had not taken place, it is certain that the Archduchess would have married her first cousin Anton, ski-champion of Ronda, and a poet. One servant who managed to survive the Night of the Big Knives said they had been in love for years.