The Man who Missed the War (33 page)

‘Exactly; and for that reason I want to impress on you how important it is to give yourselves a real scrubbing and wash your heads as well when you have your baths in a few minutes’ time. Afterwards I’ll give you some robes to put on for dinner, so that all your clothes can be sterilised by baking in the oven as soon as possible.’

It seemed so sensible a precaution that they agreed at once. Next moment, as they entered the open space round which the cluster of buildings stood, Gloria exclaimed:

‘Now aren’t these little houses cute! They come straight out of Hans Andersen, an’ I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see a witch in a steeple hat open the door of one any minute!’

Each of the houses had a low front door with two steps leading down to it, a small square window at either side and one above which peeped out of the overhanging thatch. The windows had no glass in them but appeared to made be from many small panes of thin horn, through which the lights in several of them glinted dully.

‘The only witch in these parts is yourself, dear guest,’ declared the Prince gallantly, as he stooped down to throw open the door of one of the little houses for Gloria. Following her in, he added:

‘Normally, each of the cottages has two rooms on its ground floor and two above, but, as you will see, I eliminated both the partitions and the upper floors, so each piece of the Palace now makes one quite good room. This is my sitting-room. Next door on the right is my bedroom, beyond it lies the bathroom, and
other rooms serve as a dining-room, kitchens, store-rooms and so on.’

The room they entered had a large open fireplace at one end, on which a bright wood fire was burning. Its furniture was of the simplest, consisting of two long low wooden chests, the fronts of which were carved with crude symmetrical designs, and a great pile of woollen pelts which formed a divan in the centre of the floor.

As the only light was the flickering of the fire, neither Gloria nor Philip at first noticed the two small figures who were sitting on low stools in one corner of the room. But, as they jumped up and came running forward, the girl exclaimed:

‘You didn’t tell us you had children here!’

The Prince’s mouth twisted cynically as he turned to look at her, but he made no reply and just stood there, fingering his beard. Meanwhile, the two small figures had thrown themselves at his feet and were banging their foreheads repeatedly on the earthen floor, in token of abject submission.

Philip had never seen such a thing happen before, yet the scene seemed vaguely familiar to him. Then he remembered that he had read somewhere that, up to quite recent times, all people who were not of noble birth had to grovel in this manner when admitted to the presence of the Czars of Russia. He recalled, too, with a grim satisfaction that an English merchant of Elizabeth’s day, on being told what was expected of him on his presentation at the Court of St. Petersburg, had stoutly refused to make such a fool of himself, and told the scandalised Chamberlain that, as he did not crawl about on his knees in front of his own Sovereign, he certainly would not do so before any foreigner.

For a moment the Prince let the two little figures grovel, then he tapped each of them gently on the back of the head with the sole of his boot and they scrambled to their feet.

When Gloria saw them face to face it was only with the greatest difficulty that she controlled her expression to avoid hurting their feelings. Although they were only just over three foot six in height, and were dressed in woollen rompers, they were not children at all; they were little old men with straggly beards and brown wisened faces like dried-up walnuts.

‘Ugly little devils, aren’t they?’ laughed the King. ‘These two are my personal servants, and I’ve christened them Gog and Magog. They happen to be twins, but in looks they are no exception. In fact, all these queer subjects of mine look so much alike that it’s difficult to tell one from another. The fact that they all dress the same way adds to the confusion. They all wear those suits of brown llama’s wool and during cold spells a jerkin of dressed llama’s hide on top of it.’ As Solgorukin had been speaking he had pulled off his furs and dropped them casually on the floor, then he spoke to Gog and Magog for a moment in a strange language, and, snatching up the furs, the two little men scuttled away.

The Prince made a gesture towards the divan of fleecy llama skins, and Philip and Gloria, tired after their long day’s march, sank gratefully upon it. Within a few moments Gog and Magog reapppeared, the one carrying a tray with some pottery cups and a jug on it, the other a dish covered with small, round, flat cakes.

‘Sorry that we don’t run to Dry Martinis here,’ their host apologised. ‘I’ve tried a dozen times to make alcohol by fermenting various things, but the job absolutely defeats me. Still, you won’t find that drink bad. It is made from a kind of blaeberry and is very refreshing. The cakes are rather fun if you like sweet things. They’re a bit sticky but that’s because they’re full of honey. No sugar cane or beet grows in the valley, but the people keep bees, and honey is our universal substitute for sugar.’

Soon after they had eaten Gog came in and spoke to his master in the tongue they used together. Standing up, the Prince said to Gloria: ‘He’s come to report that your bath is ready. You’d better have it at once and Philip and I will have ours immediately after. That way you won’t delay dinner too much. You see, when I had the Palace built I never expected to receive any guests here, so you’ll both have to share my private bathroom until I can get another made. Come along, I’ll show you the way.’

He led Gloria outside and along to the next house but one, where she found that the bath consisted of a large sink-like trough cut out of solid stone, but it was full of steaming water,
and wooden buckets holding additional supplies of hot and cold were ranged along one side of it. Not having had a proper wash since she left the raft a fortnight before, Gloria was looking forward to her dip with as much eagerness as a hungry man does to a square meal; and the Prince kept her only long enough from it to remark that she might find the towels a bit strange at first, as they were made of wool, cotton and linen being unknown in the valley.

When he rejoined his other guest Solgorukin was at once plied with questions about this strange, rather woebegone, little country. ‘It’s just like a Fairy Tale,’ said Philip. ‘Those two little men of yours remind me of elves or hobgoblins. Are they really normal human beings or is there something queer about them, just as there is about the climate here?’

‘Oh, they’re normal enough,’ the Prince replied, with a shrug. ‘You just kick one and hear him squeal. After all, they are no smaller than the pigmies that live in the forests of Central Africa, and there is nothing abnormal about them except for their size.’

‘Did you have much difficulty in getting them to accept your authority?’

‘I did at first, but I caught a couple and demonstrated on them what I would do to the rest if they didn’t toe the line; but I’d rather not talk about it now as I don’t want to have to repeat the whole story again for Gloria’s benefit. I’ll tell you as much as I can about them during dinner.’

In spite of this promise, when, greatly refreshed from their baths, they sat down to dinner in the next house an hour later, the Prince had disappointingly little to say about his people. He had no idea how long they had been settled in the valley or where they had come from, and it was quite clear that he regarded them as little better than intelligent animals which a beneficent Providence had provided to fulfil for him the rôle that thousands of Russian serfs had played in ministering to the needs of his forefathers. He said of his arrival there nine months before:

‘I was already fed up with whaling. The smell of those big fish when they are dead is positively revolting; so I asked the captain to put me ashore for a bit with as much food as I could carry. This range of mountains seemed to be the only feature of
interest hereabouts and within the limits of a twelve-day trip. I reached the range in four days, so I thought I could well risk another couple in climbing the nearest pass, and on the sixth day I came to the valley. The people were hostile to begin with, but they have no idea of organising themselves for any purpose, so their opposition was sporadic and quite easily overcome. One could no longer go to Europe because of this stupid war, and New York society was beginning to pall on me a little, so I decided to settle here.’

‘Will you be telling me how you learnt the language?’ Gloria asked. ‘That you can speak it in so short a time seems a great cleverness to me.’

‘Like all undeveloped peoples, their language is simple, because it is required to convey only the simplest ideas. I found it difficult to make myself understood for the first few weeks, but I had little else to think about and constant practice, so after a bit it became quite easy.’

‘I take it that you’re an autocratic monarch,’ Philip grinned, ‘and there’s no Parliament or anything of that kind.’

‘No. There is no capital here, no towns, not even a village. On the other hand, there are no rates and no taxes.’

‘That means no police, no drains and no education.’

Solgorukin shrugged. ‘So far as I know, they have no fixed code of laws, so a law court would be superfluous. I suppose they must have personal disputes at times, but I’ve very rarely seen any of them quarrelling. As there are no towns, drainage can be dealt with in the manner common to peasants all over the world; and, as for education, well, perhaps they are happier without it.’

‘Do they have any art, at all?’ asked Gloria.

‘They carve crude designs such as you may have noticed on the chests and pottery, but they haven’t got up to the point of making furniture with drawers, or chairs. The stools we’re sitting on are the type they use, and in order to make this table, I got them to cut a length of the largest tree I could find in half and fit legs into the rounded part. They have not discovered dyes or paints yet. That’s why everything is left its natural colour, including the woodwork of the houses and the woollen clothes they wear.’

‘Do they practise any kind of religion?’ Philip inquired.

‘No. They have no gods or temples, and they don’t worship anything, unless you can call it moon worship to come out each month and dance at the full of the moon.’

Gloria looked up quickly. ‘What sort of dances?’

‘It’s a kind of ring-a-ring-of-roses in which groups of six or eight of them join hands and jump round in circles. At least, that’s the only dance I’ve ever seen them do. I discovered this practice of theirs by chance one night, and, on the two or three occasions I’ve endeavoured to watch them, directly they’ve realised I’m looking on they’ve broken up and gone home. As I didn’t want to spoil their fun I gave up my attempts to find out more about their monthly gatherings.’

‘Anyhow, they cook jolly well,’ remarked Philip. ‘The meat is simply delicious.’

‘I’m afraid a large part of its charm for you is due to the fact that it is many months since you last ate fresh meat,’ smiled the Prince. ‘It’s llama, of course, and I’ve no doubt that in time you’ll get as sick of it as you would of mutton if nothing but mutton were available.’

‘But the vegetables and the gravy and the little oatcakes,’ Gloria protested; ‘Phillip’s right, Prince—they’re all just marvellous.’

‘Well, yes. Actually their cooking is much better than might be expected, and particularly their treatment of vegetables. They grow the most excellent salads, and they make many kinds of cheeses, but unfortunately we have very few fruits and no domestic birds—so no eggs. However, while the season lasts I occasionally make an expedition to the seashore and come back with as many gulls’ and penguins’ eggs as I can carry.’

When they had finished dinner they moved back to the sitting-room, but all of them were tired after their long day. As the conversation languished Solgorukin stood up and said:

‘As I never expected to entertain there are no proper guestrooms. For the time being I suggest that you should make yourself comfortable on the divan here, Gloria, and I’ll have some more skins put down for Philip in the dining-room.’

Philip and Gloria looked at each other. For many months past they had shared the same sleeping accommodation, and
somehow it had never occurred to either of them that they would now be separated.

The Prince caught the uncertainty in their glance and, stroking his curly black beard, said smoothly: ‘Of course, in view of your quite exceptional circumstances during the past two years, it would not be the least surprising if you had come to regard each other as husband and wife but I had formed the impression that that was not so. If I am wrong you must forgive me, and we will make more suitable arrangements.’

Oh no!’ exclaimed Philip and Gloria together. One added: ‘Thanks awfully!’ and the other: ‘I’ll be fine right here!’ and both of them wished their cynically smiling host a rather awkward good night, Philip following him out into the darkness.

Next morning, after breakfast, the Prince took them for a walk further down the slope into the valley. It was much too big for them to explore the whole of it in one day, but their host told them that during the tour on which he proposed to take them they would see things typical of all that was in the whole country; and they would discover little that was fresh even if they covered the country acre by acre for a couple of years.

There were, as he had told them the night before, no villages, and the population seemed very evenly dispersed with one cottage to every six or eight small fields. Here and there the people were now working in the fields, but they had only the most rudimentary agricultural tools, such as rough spades and hoes with which they laboriously furrowed the earth instead of ploughing it.

Only the little gnome-like men were to be seen working. The women were all busy in their kitchens or in the dairies which leant crookedly against the side of each small house. Now and again, Solgorukin turned off the dirt track which served as a road, to take his guests into one of the houses. Wherever he appeared, men, women and children immediately threw themselves on the ground and banged their foreheads on the earth until he called to them to stop.