What?”
Doctor Eszterhazy sighed. “Ah, Your Reverence has a certain way of putting things.”
His Reverence said, “Ho Ho/” and, putting his hand between his guest s shoulder-blades, gave him a a friendly shove which might have staggered someone less sure on his feet. “Yes,” said the bishop, “Christ-ian Diab-o-
lism, . . . And would you believe, no: the flesh-pots of Egypt (that is to say: Bella) you know, but of this particular canker-sore you know nothing and would not believe. But we know and we believe! Yes! These scoundrels are stirring after their insufficiently-long slumber and sleep. Yes, these rogues are actually whispering about coming out into the open! Well, let them try! Tolerant we may be, but even Tolerance has its limits, and, after all, we are not the descendants of mice or of sheep, let me tell you a tale or two of that godly man, Duke Vladimir the Impaler, rrrrrrr/”
But by this time they had washed their hands and it was time for the bishop to say grace.
The Bureau of the Royal and Imperial Posts and Mails (Division of Semaphores and Telegraphs) had closed for the night, but opened as a courtesy to the Faculties of Law, Letters, and Medicine; plus a small gratuity. .
“You have no objection to the use of American standard commercial code?” asked Eszterhazy.
“Doctor,” the Royal and Imperial Telegrapher said, as he sat down at the instrument, “for another such amount, you may, if you please, send the entire corpus of the Legends of The Saints—in Glagolitic.”
But Eszterhazy said he thought that the rather briefer message which he had prepared would do. At that moment the incoming set burst into a clatter.
“'Most Important,'” the clerk translated, and, brightening, suggested that it was the results of the football tournament holden that afternoon in Bella: but no.
“ ‘Bulgaria has invaded Turkey,' " Esterhazy interpreted.
” ‘Most important!'” the telegrapher shrugged sarcastically, and, clearing his throat, began to tap the outgoing message.
That night the congregation of the illicit conventicle in Tartar Town was larger by several dozen. “Beloved brethren,” the deacon began, “the glad tidings have begun to spread. It is our duty to help spread them, indeed. It is also, as always, our duty to accept martyrdom, and I am sure that oppression is as inevitable as—this time—it is bound to be transitory. For is not our local saying true, that ‘We are in debt to the landlords’ handerchiefs for the very sweat of our brows’ as true as ever? Which of us indeed owns the fields he tills, the shops wherein he toils? Scarcely a one. If the monks, bishops, and archimandrites do not own the fabric of our livelihood, then some nobleman does. It is in their evil interests to defy Holy Saint Satan and to wage war upon his saints, but”
His voice stopped upon the interval for breath and in the shaveling of a second his voice, like that of everyone present, rose and fell upon a deep sound ofO, which prolonged itself.
To his left, and in what had been until that second the darkness and dimness of the corner of the room- top, there appeared a head and face. In appearance it reminded one of the portrait in the Royal Imperial Art Museum in Bella, entitled The Boyar Bogdanovich, After A Long Resistance to the Vlox, Being Led Away to Impalement On His Castle Walls—the same air of ruined grandeur and defiant nobility—but it was more than twice the size of any merely human head or face; and tears of blood coursed from the glowing yellow eyes and fell silently into the darkness. The congregation fell with one accord upon their knees; and the lips opened and began to speak.
“Children of Light, falsely called ‘of Darkness” the head spoke, in tones sonorous and echoing, ‘ way which you intend is not the way. not .... not .... the .... the .... way .... way ....
The deacon broke the numinous silence. “O Blessed Saint Satan.” he asked, imploringly, “what is the way?”
The lips writhed as though in anguish, the golden and glowing eyes rolled; at length the voice said, “I shall send you a messenger and the token shall be the verse of the former scriptures about the land spread forth as though on wings….”
And as the last words still throbbed in the ears, the vision and the visage began to fade, and again the congregational voice rose and fell and prolonged itself upon a deep sound of O.
T'he cheat Central Platform of the railroad terminal in Avar-Ister, capital of Pannonia, is seldom uncrowded. Here arrive and here depart the great expresses to and from Bella, almost their last stop this side of Constantinople, many of the fashionable travellers getting down to stretch their legs during the half-hour pause, to walk up and down, and buy the famous roses and the famous sweetmeats of the Co-Capital (as it is called, often, in Avar-Ister, and, seldom, in Bella). Here one changes for all the branch-lines which connect the second city of the Triune Monarchy with all places east and south (including Apollograd). Here one sees Yanosh, the once famous Gypsy dancer—that is, still famous, but no longer a dancer; not since losing two of his toes as the result of a bite inflicted during a lovers’ quarrel by a jealous mistress—and his by now almost equally-famous dancing she-bear, Yanoshka. There is a saying to the effect that “Whoever sits upon the middle bench of the great Central Platform of the railroad terminal in Avar-Ister, if he sits long enough, will see pass in front of him everyone whom he knows;” at least, there is a saying to that effect in Avar- Ister . . . sometimes called “the Paris of the Balkans.”
Sometimes.
At the moment (the moment being midnight) it was difficult to see just who was sitting on the middle bench, for a crowd of travellers was milling around watching Yanosh beat his Gypsy tambourine, shouting hoarsely, as Yanoshka, head up, shuffled up and down upon the soles of her huge feet.
A thin gentleman in a high, starched collar with rounded ends looked around uncertainly. At that moment « someone rose from the middle bench and approached him.
“Mr. Abernathy?”
The thin gentleman removed a finger from its place between his collar and his neck, adjusted his eyeglasses, and said. “Sir, I am Silas Abernathy, sole Representative in Scythia-Pannonia-Transblakania of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Southwestern Nebraska Railroad; might you be Doctor Eszterhazy? You are! Well, say, I want to thank you for your wire, and —say, are you a doctor of medicine, a doctor of philosophy, or a doctor of jurisprudence?”
“Yes,” said Eszterhazy.
Mr. Abernathy blinked, gave an uncertain chuckle, then plunged ahead. “Say, I don’t know how you learned that those ten townships alongside our right-of-way have finally come out of litigation, but you are one hundred percent right that the a,p, and sn line desires to settle them with You-roe-pene settlers of an industrious nature. The soil is deep, sir, the soil is fer-tyle, it can grow corn (maize, as you call it), it can grow pertaters, it can grow winter wheat, and the a,p, and SN line is not only willing to sell it to the right parties for nothing down and three dollars a acre over twenty-five years, but we are also willing and eager to pay all of their moving and travelling expenses for their persons and baggage. Say, they can be their own landlords in no time flat, with a good crop er two, and they can also enjoy freedom of the press if they are of a literary pursuit in their spar time, as well as freedom of speech, needless to add mention of freedom of rulligion—”