But the Minister of War had no other reply to this than furiously to stuff snuff up his nostrils as though each one were the touch-hole of an artillery-piece.
Dr. Engelbert Eszterhazy was certainly of the aristocracy, but so distant from its main branches that no one had expected anything more of him than that, so to speak, he ride a horse and shoot a firearm; he had not even been expected to tell the truth, although he did. He had performed his military service with honor and his palace duty with the same. IL might henceforth do as he pleased, and although it had not been foreseen that he would be pleased to undertake a seemingly endless series of studies, nevertheless that is what he had been doing. “He’ll get brain fever at this rate,” it was said, but he did not get it; neither did he retire to some distant castle to fill its neighborhood with rumor and with terror as did Count Valad Drakulya; neither did he go to Paris and ride a white mare through the Bois and now and then dismount in order to milk her into a silver tassy from which he then sipped, as did Count Albert de Toulouse-Lautrec. He did not fight duels. He did not join hunting-battues in which thousands of game-birds or -animals were driven before the guns of the shooters . .. but these eccentric non-performances were eventually accepted. Often he had gone abroad, and though he had learned not only to accept the smiles which visited mention of his nation’s name but to admit how much the smiles were justified . . . foreign ambassadors invited, for example, to an Imperial Review in honor of the grand opening of a sanitary sewer in Bella: one which turned out to be the first sanitary sewer in the Empire ... nevertheless it was to his own nation that he always returned.
Incomparably less large and vast than the Russian Empire, incomparably less powerful than the German Empire, incomparably less sophisticated than the Austro-Hungarian Empire — still, Scythia-Pannonia- Transbalkania, its mere name a subject for risibility elsewhere, was his Empire, his native land. It may not have functioned very well? so much the more he was pleased that it functioned at all. Its Secret Police was a joke? so much the more he too would enjoy the joke; no one laughed at the Secret Polices in the other empires. Its many languages rivalled Babel or Pentecost? let them: at least here no schoolboy was flogged for praying in whatsoever minor mother tongue. One empire had already, fairly recently, gone from the political map of Europe; and although the name of Bonaparte still rang like a tocsin here and there, it was uncertain the Prince Imperial would himself ever ring it successfully.
Day by day others asked, how fared their country’s wheat compared with Russian wheat, its butter with Danish butter, its timber with Carpathian timber, its tar with Baltic tar, its cloth with English cloth? Day by day the same spokes of the universal wheel flashed by: love, sorrow, terror, death, success, failure, hunger, joy, growth, decay, weakness, strength: the wheel turned and turned and turned: nothing stayed the same, no one bathed twice in the same flowing water for the water had flowed on and flowed away. There is no star at the pole of the universe, young Dr. Eszterhazy recollected the ancient astronomer; and if there was and had long been but blankness in the comparable area in his own country, then might there not be space and place for him? What he hoped for, others did not even think of; what others did not think, might he not think of?
And, after thinking, do?
As for fuel, if it were burnable, in Bella they burned it. Charcoal, firewood, peat from the bogs of Vloxland (though in Bella only the Vloxfolk burned it, perhaps because only they had the patience to wait for it to boil a pot), coke from the Great Central Gas Plant (It was not very great and there was, as a result, not very much coke; but every British firm and office preferred it. Others were suspicious: coke was new.), anthracite and bituminous coal . . . Everyone was agreed that anthracite burned better, cleaner, hotter — once it was burning — but there was the trouble of getting it to burn — and if it were necessary to dump it on a fire already burning with some other fuel, why, the feeling was general, why not simply go on using the other fuel. . . instead? There were and had long been not very far from Bella two mines producing a bituminous coal so soft as to be rather friable. One was still in the hands of the descendants of the mine-serfs, who operated as a sort of de facto cooperative; the soft coal hewed out easily enough and the pit was not deep enough to be dangerous, nor was there any new-fangled nonsense about a tipple, grading and sorting the lumps according to size: you either took it as the coalmen brought it, slid and scooped off the coal-carts into ox-hide sacks and thence into the coal-shed in the back by the alley-door ... or you did without and used something besides soft coal . . . or . . . nowadays . . . perhaps you brought it from Brunk.
Originally the Brunk mine-and-delivery service had operated the same way as the other one did, but bit by bit Brunk Brothers had bought their fellow-miners out. There had been three Brunk Brothers; now there was one. For a quarter century, Brunk Brothers had concentrated on supplying the railroad. And Brunk Brothers still did. But Bruno Brunk had always had in mind that he would someday capture the market for the stoves and fireplaces of Bella, and long he studied it. What was the weakness of the other coaling company in regard to this market? — so he asked. The answer was not hard to find: the local soft coal was so soft that it tended to crumble, and it kept on crumbling; housewife and servant were always busy with broom and shovel sweeping up the little bits and pieces and the coal dust, and dumping it all on the fire. It made things, well, dirty. This did not bother the men who brought in the coal from the Old Pit, for things were dirty anyway if you worked in or near coal. “Feathers is cleaner,” was their common comment to complaints. Sometimes, referring to their product’s undeniable cheapness, they would say, “Burn gold.”
The first hint that something else might be an answer came when Bruno Brunk bought a bankrupt wood-yard where the canal came into the Little Ister. Sumps were dug. Vats and sluices were made. Folks hardly knew what was a-going on. So, suddenly, hoardings all around
town blossomed with posters advertising Brunk’s Clean-Washed Coal. Wagons delivered it — not carts: wagons. It came in slabs of several sizes and each slab had, you see, here was the genius of it, had been washed. And each slab was wrapped in paper, cheap paper to be sure, but wrapped. And each slab (lumps were also sold but they were in paper bags), and each neatly-wrapped slab was tied with twine, cheap twine to be sure, but tied. One simply put a small bag of lump-coal on the grate and a slab of wrapped-coal а-top: then one lit the bag (having first, as instructed, nipped a small hole for air). By the time the bag-paper was burned away, the lumps were burning; by the time the slab-paper had burned away, the slab was burning. There was, to be sure, still soot; Brunk had not thought of everything. But still it was cleaner, oh yes it was cleaner, oh God it was cleaner!
. . . well, it did cost a bit more. . . .
The suppliers of the Old Pit coal watched their better-class business vanish, and they watched in dumb surprise. Then they scowled, ground their teeth, kicked their ponies, cursed, got drunk, beat their wives. Their wives, none of whom had ever heard that a voice ever soft and low was an excellent thing in women, beat them back. Presently and with police permission a petitional parade was seen marching through Bella, and it was composed of men whom much boiling and soaping and scrubbing had turned from their usual coal-black to a singular and singularly nasty reddish-grey: these were The Humble and Hardworking Loyal Laborers in the Pit of Coal, as their quasi-partnership was called. In effect, the petition petitioned that Government should Do Something; and what did Government Do? Government’s reply boiled down to two words in a language not generally spoken by the local coal-workers, to wit, Laissez-faire.