The Bobba-bobba: (Groans, putting both withered fists in the small of her back.) Something for the lower intestine?
The Herbalist: I have just the thing.
After that, up comes the bobba- bobba’ s great-granddaughter.
The Herbalist: What way may I serve the High-born and Beautiful Lady? Parle-voo Italino, Maddom?
The Girclass="underline" (Blushing) (In a whisper.) Something for the lower intestine?
The Herbalist: I have just the thing for you.
And then, by and by, up comes the girl's father.
Peasant: Say, ain't you new here? What become of Old Yockum, used to keep this pitch, hanh? (Hawks a phlegm and spits.)
The Herbalist: Yockum was gored by a boar in Hyperborea.
The Peasant: May the Resurrected Jesus Christ and All the Saints have mercy on his soul, goring was too good for him, the son of a bitch. Got something for the lower intestine?
Ah, the pawky peasantry of
Poposhki-Georgiou!
Meanwhile, and just to show that the Machine—symbolized by (a) the narrow-gage railroad from (and, for that matter, to) the District Capital, (b) the one-boiler engine in the local mill, which grinds grits and goat- fodder, and (c)—but there is no (c)— Just to show that here the Machine has not destroyed the Spirit of the Countryside, traditional music is being supplied by an old man on a one-drone bagpipe, a crippled boy who clashes cymbals which are not mates, and a drunken fat woman with a tambourine. The peasants show their keen appreciation for this old tradition by dancing traditional jigs, breaking wind what time the music pauses, and, when the crippled boy holds out his hand, giving him their bad coins or else spitting in his dirty paw.
And whenever this last piece of prime wit is performed, oh see the peasants—that is, see the other peasants—clutch at their embroidered vests with both hands, wet their knee-breeches, fall into spasms, and roll into dung heaps.
Also Traditional, although missing from the local scene for many years: a mountebank in a cherry-colored coat, blue trousers which fasten under his shoes, and an enormous and r.^cient grey top-hat—The old folks, when they catch sight of him, poke each other and say, “Ahaha, a Russian Jester! Now we’ll hear something good!” and they quicken their pace and crowd up close—the mountebank juggles three pomegranates, which he subsequently auctions off, keeps up a prolonged patter full of coarse jokes .... somehow the fruit turns into bundles of booklets, almanacs, which he procedes to hawk for a few groushek each. . . . "All the Days of the Saints, in Gothic, Glagolitic, and Latin, with the right Signs of the Moon and the time to plant turnips, plus many excerpts from the Sacred Psalms,”—and here he says something, with a pious look and a learned air, something which the peasants assume to be Old Sclavonic, or High Church Gothic; next he summons up a small boy and pulls a pigeon's egg out of his ear; anon there are suddenly two balls which he juggles, anon suddenly there is only one.
The “Russian Jester”: Funny, I had two when I started. (Slaps at himself).
And the peasants clutch their embroidered vests and—
Afterwards, the mountebank, off in a corner by himself, the unsold almanacs in his huge hat, a red kerchief spread out in his lap, is counting his pile of coppers. Most of the crowd is watching an unscheduled bit of entertainment, to wit a dog fight. This is at least as much fun as anything else, and has the added advantage that no one will try to take up a collection afterward.
“Greetings, purest one,” someone says to the juggler. The juggler looks up slowly, one hand upon the coppers, says not a word.
The newcomer is a yellow-faced man, a man with a hairless face, deeply grooved; he wears the costume of a tchilditz, an itinerate sow-spayer.
“Greetings, purest one,” he repeats.
The mountebank smiles the faintest of smiles. “Say,” he says, “you look a sight purer than I am.”
The tchilditz nods. “I am a white dove,” he says, “received the removal of freshly cares when I was a boy. Wasn’t any law against it, then. —But you, no, you are a purest one. You know the Old Tongue. I heard you say it, back then, when you’s talking about their false Psalms, yes I did.
Didn’t I.” The two give swift glances around, their hands meet, are covered by the red kerchief. Does the kerchief move in the wind? Do their fingers move beneath the kerchief?— fingers touching fingers in some ritual play? It is all over in a moment.
“There are more of us around now than there used to be, aren’t there?” the “Russian Jester” says.
The white dove nods head, strokes his long chin. “Yes, more. More. Not many. Never many. Nowhere many. Not since olden times. But all this is going to change. Soon. Changes be starting. You know?”
The jester shrugs, waggles his hands, cups an ear. ‘’I hear. I just . . . hear. But I don’t really know.”
The tchilditz (his name, he says, is Jaaneck) comes closer and brings his mouth close to the mountebank’s ear. Then he seems to think better of it. “Look here, what I be going to show you . . . thee ... So look here. Look down here. Look—” And with his long stave he begins to draw something. Something like a map. “—and I’ll see thee, then, tonight,” he concludes. And starts away.
“Come brother, only two groushek, only two for this here almanac,” the mountebank calls after him, holding one up, as if still trying to make a sale. There are faint smiles on both faces.
It is a feature of the Triune Monarchy that indeed, it is of its essence, his Most Serene and Apostolic Majesty, Ignats Louis, is simultaneously King of Pannonia, Emperor of Scythia, and Basha of Transbalkania. However. As Engelbert Eszterhazy himself so often said, “Things are not simple.” Nor are they. Transbalkania is itself a Confoedorats, consisting in Vlox-Minore, Vlox-Majore, Popushki, and Hyperborea. H.M.S.A.M. Ignats Louis, as every school-child knows, is thus High Duke of the Two Vlox, Prince of Popushki, and Grand Hetman of Hyperborea: Pop. (1901) 132, 756. Principal exports: Sheepskins, hoars’- bristles, dried artichokes, eisenglass, and musk.Capitaclass="underline" (formerly Apolloopolis).
Apollograd is thus the smallest National Capital of the Triune Monarchy. Dr. Einhardt, the statistician, has calculated, in one of his rare droll moments, that it takes anything new an average of 17.5 years to move the 700-odd miles between Bella, the Imperial Capital, and Apollograd. (“That is,” he adds, with the familiar twinkle in his kindly, myopic eyes, “when it moves at all!”) Even now, one may see a group of boar-herds crossing themselves in awe at sight of “the samovar on wheels, as they call the Apollograd steam-tram; as it happens, the last steam-tram in Bella was discontinued over seventeen years ago. Provincial nobility still find it necessary to warn their servants on no account to blow out the gas-lights in the Grand Hotel Apollo and Ignats Louis. Even in the Saxon and the Armenian Quarters the majority of homes are illuminated by kerosene lamps, while most of the Tartars use rush-lights. The rubble-strewn streets of this last sector, formerly a by-word, are now, under the benevolently stern and progressive administration of the Governor of the City, Count Blopz, entirely a thing of the past.
The gas-mains have as yet to reach most of the streets in the older parts of town. Street lamps burning colza oil were tried by Count Blopz, on an experimental basis, early in his term of office; but it was found that the Tartars used to drain the oil and use
it for cooking purposes. Visitors may, on payment of a small fee, obtain the service of a municipally-licensed porter with a lamp.