The King Across the Mountains
A perilous moment at the puppet-theater. The audience — consisting mainly of the children of the poor, there by themselves, or those of the lower middle-class, accompanied by their country-girl nursemaids; of the meaner class of peasants, up to the city to hawk a wicker-basket-box of dubious eggs; and of super-annuated servants given a penny to spend by Young Master, or of the commonest of common laborers, smelling powerfully of the fish- market or the livery-stable — the audience at the puppet-theater are sitting at the edges of the benches, wondering if Little Handsome Hansli is going to be eaten up by The Ogre. Little Handsome Hansli is wondering, too.
“ Who will save muh from being eaten by The Ogre?” he cries (or, at any rate, a voice from behind the backdrop understood to be his, cries) allowing his dangling legs to buckle and his dangling hands to be twitched aloft in prayer; “who will save muh, will nobodduh save muh, will somebodduh save muh, will anybodduh save muh, and if so, who?” A good question. At this, the much bigger puppet, half-man and half-beast, chops its jaws to show its monstrous fangs and tushes, rubs its belly in the nummy-nummy sign, jumps up and down and makes menacing gestures and utters the famous gurgling-growling sound known world-wide* as “the chortle of The Ogre” —
“WHO will save muh?” A thirteen-year-old baby-minder at this point beginning to whimper, her four-, five-, and six-year-old charges at once burst into loud wails. “Help! WHO?” cries out the Little Handsome Hansli puppet; whereat observe a not-overbright hostler’s helper starting to his feet and being tugged back down by his convives under some dim adumbration that this is really not allowed. And whilst Little Handsome Hansli’s despairing hoot of “Whoooo?” rings through every dirty ear and a few clean ones —
— see suddenly appearing from Stage Right, a puppet truly marvelously adorned, and crying out, “I will save you, Little Handsome Hansli!” Much
* World-wide throughout Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania, that is.
applause. This figure wears a tall, brimless hat of black samite, with a cross, rather like the archaic headgear of a Hyperborean Uniate mountain archpriest, hat protruding up from a large and battered crown; its garments a mixture of inauthentic military and ecclesiastical rag-tags. ‘Twill save you from filling the upper and lower intestines of The Ogre, for I am PURSER- JOHNNY, the Slayer of Frenchmen, Ogres, Monghouls, and Turks! — take that, The Ogre, you!, and this, and this, and —” Much, much applause. Shouts.
Shortly afterward, having quitted the puppet-theater, “We have really nothing quite like that in The Hague,” said Dr. Philosof J.M.R. van der Clooster, Director of the Stateholders’ Collegium in the Dutch capital.
“No. Uniquely a part of our own rich cultural heritage, if that is what one would correctly call it,” said Dr. Engelbert Eszterhazy, of many degrees and titles, and of the City of Bella, capital of the Triple Monarchy of Scythia- Pannonia-Transbalkania (fourth largest Empire in Europe [Russia, then Austria-Hungary, then Germany; the Turks, their European territories reduced largely to Albania, Thrace, and part of Macedonia, were fifth]). Doctor Philosof van der Clooster, on a trip around anyway the Old World, had stopped offbriefly in Bella; and Eszterhazy was showing him sights. “I hope you have not picked up anything in that flea-pit. I warned you. But you would go.”
“I have sprinkled with powder. But tell me, though, Compeer” — Dr. J.M.R. v.d. C. was a fellow-member of the Effectively Noble Order of Saint Bridget of Sweden (Savants’ Section) — “who and what is or was ‘Purser- johnny’? ”
“Prester John,” said his compeer, shortly.
“Ah, ahah!” sang out the Netherlander, in high delight; “Prester John!” — as though the emphasis would save from confusion with any possible Prester Jane, Prester William, or (shall we say) Prester Olga. “I did think it would be most unusual for any mere purser to achieve apotheosis —”
“Most unusual,” agreed Dr. Eszterhazy. Wondered if he should refer to the process for which the British in India had a name, whereby unfamiliar ethnically-exotic words were transformed into ethnically-familiar words — such as assuming that the names of the Prophet’s grandsons, Hassan and Hussein, were actually the home-like Hobson and Jobson. He decided not to. Van der Clooster was very knowledgeable, but he was (often) very heavy. If, for example, one referred to “the songs of Homer,” van der Clooster might ask if one meant Homer, the Hellenic poet, or Homer Rodeheaver, the American hymn-singing evangelist. Eszterhazy observed, as they proceeded, the perhaps picturesque population of the teeming South Ward; but he for once (once?) observed without enthusiasm.
“Tell me, my dear Compeer,” avoiding the erratically-located stall of a seller of “green” sausage, “who do you think Prester John really was?” — van der Clooster.
The mid-afternoon chimes of a clock-tower sounded nearby, informing them, musically, of the not-very-latest-news, viz., that Malbrouk had gone to war. A wind, brief but brisk, stirred about the usual South Ward stirabout of old pie-papers, old fruit-peelings, dust, desiccated horse-dung; and blew away the ragged clouds, revealing patches of blue skies, revealing the mountains.
Some might perhaps perform the same tasks day after day, month after month, year after year, without fatigue: His High Highness the Heir, for example, never tired of hunting, or of taking troops on manoeuvres; for that matter, Betti and Borri Kratt, who rolled meat-pie-crust in a room in an alley off Lower Hunyadi Street, never tired of mixing flour and water and processing dough. Did Dr. Eszterhazy never tire of reading books, of studying and studying, day in and month-year-out?
Sometimes, yes he did.
“Who do you think wrote the famous so-called Letter from Prester John, claiming to be both priest and king, thus causing medieval Christendom to look upon him as its possible savior from the Mongol Hordes; who?”
A flock of brown-and-white milch-goats followed its piping herdsman, ready to provide strictly-fresh milch as when/where called for, passed by; Eszterhazy, stepping delicately, avoided the evidences of its passage. “Who?” echo of Little Handsome Hansli? “One may only guess. My guess is that some medieval monk on Mount Athos wrote it, in a fit of boredom and wishful thinking.”
Van der Clooster disputed the guess until they reached their next stop, the Archepiscopal Museum; and after that they called at Rudl’s Famous Mussels with Fresh Sweet Butter House. And then they went to Dr. v.d. Cloos- ter’s hotel rooms for Holland gin. And then it was time to take the visiting savant to catch his train for Zagreb. Ah, Zagreb! Glamorous, sparkling, brilliant Zagreb! Eh? Well, maybe not.
Steam engineering, his current study, had grown lately just a trifle stale, perhaps from overwork; half, Eszterhazy wished to geologize a bit; half, he would study Sympathetic Ethnology, (i.e., Magic) among the Men of the Mountains. And, whilst he hesitated, the voice of a spirit whispered in his ear, “Why not try both?”
Geologists, amateur and professional, had tapped the rocks and stones of the Hyperthracian Hills, and, discovering no mines of gold and silver or precious stones or coal, had departed. Botanists bearing butterfly nets had sallied through them, failed to find exciting new specimens, and also departed. Each mountain (and each valley) was said to have its own peculiar count or prince — and some of them were said to be very peculiar indeed. This profusion of nobility was held, in Bella and in Avar-Ister, to be perhaps not in the best of taste. “If a man there has a cow, he’s a count,” it was said in those cities. “If he has two, he’s a prince.” The princes, anyway, were proud, even if poor; Bella and Avar-Ister did not like them? Of no importance, they did not like Bella or Avar-Ister. So there. They stayed in their remote reaches and recesses, reportedly pursuing, barefooted, the chamois from crag to crag, exercising the jus primae noctis, and administering the rough and ready justice of the region without much recourse to the larger and more lagging units of government.