Avram Davidson
THE KING'S SHADOW HAS NO LIMITS
The Late Renascence historian known as Pannonicus had written that ‘The names of nations are often changed; the names of rivers, never.” Had he contented himself with observing that the names of nations changed more often than those of rivers, his comment would have been more correct. The names of the Triune Monarchy of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania had been officially adopted only in the fifth year of the Reign of the present Monarch; the name of the Ister is found on the earliest maps; The so-called Addendum to Procopius quotes a Fragment of Tacitus, now lost, to the effect that "The river of the Galans flows into the Ister,” and so forth. Gaul, Gael, Galan, Galicia, Gallego, Galatia, all mark the marches of that once-widespread people, whose languages are now spoken only in the highlands and islands of the misty Atlantic. The lesser of the two streams on whose banks came into being the great City of Bella still bears, officially, the name of the Gallants . . . but to every nonscholar in the Capital of the Triune Monarchy it is and only is the Little Ister.
For a long time the lower part of this stream, particularly where it
flowed through the South Ward, had been a little better than an open sewer; now, however, it was announced, “The Council and Corporation of the City of Bella”—a phrase which lacked, somehow, quite the majesty of, say, Senatus 'populusque Romanus—was going to embark upon a twofold program of flood control and beautification in regard to the lesser river: and this project was to be dedicated as a birthday present to His Royal and Imperial Majesty, Ignats Louis. With a certain degree of caution, it had not been made clear which birthday it was going to commemorate. The King-Emperor, in no great period of time, would be eighty-two.
Some alteration to adjoining property was, of course, inevitable; and one-property owner, a parvenu brewer, had been gauche enough to protest The law books had been opened wide enough to acquaint him with the law of eminent domain, and then slapped shut in his face, so to speak; whilst the slap was still echoing, the Court of First Jurisdiction had seen fit to add, perhaps as obiter dicta, the old saying, “The Kings shadow has no limits. . .
Doctor Eszterhazy, one fairly fine day, thought that he would go and have a look at the work in progress. He did not take any of his carriages, and neither did he take the steam runabout—the last time he had taken his steam runabout into the South Ward, an aggressive drunkard had staggered up and insisted on being supplied with twopennyworth of roasted chestnuts. Eszterhazy took the tram.
The rains that spring had been less than usual, and this portended trouble for the farmers’ crops, and, eventually, for the poor, to whom even a rise of . . . say, two pennies ... in the price of a commodity meant tragedy. But even this much drought made work on the Little Ister easier: a series of dams had, first reduced the flow to a trickle, and then—the last one—cut it off entirely. Where the old stream had in freshet inundated slums and junkyards, an enormous excavation was now preparing the way for a tree-lined pool. Exactly how much the poor would appreciate this park was not yet certain, but certainly they must have appreciated the great increase in employment which the project afforded. It would have been most ungrateful if they had not, for this did more than merely supply them with wages, it helped “dissipate unrest,” as the Gazette newspaper reminded its readers . . . few of whom were likely to be seeking employment on the project, however.
Eszterhazy, more or less by osmosis, progressed through the crowd over the Swedish Bridge (it had once been crossed by Charles XII, fleeing the Turks, among whom he had found brief refuge after fleeing the Russians), and eventually found a place on the railing. He seemed to be looking down upon an anthill which had roughly broken open.
“Unrest” there certainly was in more than usual quantity. The Royal Pannonian Government had again refused Slovatchko-language rights to the Slovatchko minority in the schools of Avar-Ister, capital of Pan- nonia, whilst vigorously insisting upon an extension of Avar-language rights for the Avar-speaking minority in the schools of Bella: the Serbians, as usual, had been far from slow in pointing out that such a situation would never arise in a (projected) Kingdom of the Serbians, Slovatchkoes, and Dalmatians. The Romanou had revived their old practice of driving swine to market through the Turkish and Tartar sections of the towns; the regular routes would have been shorter, but it would not have been as much fun. The Concordat with the Vatican was shortly due for its quinquennial confirmation, and the Byzantine Delegates in the Diet were again announcing that, if it were confirmed, they would vote against the Budget. The grain merchants, in anticipation of a shortage, had already begun to hoard supplies. And the Hyperboreans were again refusing to pay their head-tax.
Long lines of men reached from the bottom of the excavation to its top, and were passing up leathern buckets of dirt from hand to hand. Steam shovels would have been quicker, but there were only twelve or so of these smoking monsters in all of Bella, whereas the number of the underemployed was beyond count. Some of the workers, had they belonged to a class higher in the social scale, would have been still in school. Others must certainly have had wives and children to support. A surprising number were quite on in years, and one of these for some reason kept repeatedly attracting Eszterhazy’s attention; an old, old man, white-haired and -bearded, clad in tatters, who moved slowly to receive his bucket of dirt, strained to maintain it, slowly turned to pass it on. Again and again the eyes of the watcher returned to this single figure, though he could not have said why.
It took less time to withdraw from the railings of the bridge than it had to get to them. Eszterhazy crossed over to the south side, wandered a while through the mazy little streets where the fishwives were forever slapping herring on the chopping-blocks and hoarsely shouting, “A penny off! A penny off!” and came back again within sight of the work. Slowly, slowly, the sides of the great pit were being peeled back at an angle, the dirt tossed down into a huge heap. The heap itself was in constant flux, shovels moving it continually to several points, whence by buckets it slowly moved to the top and into the wagons which carried it off, he did not know where. The men in the bucket brigade swayed to and fro, from side to side. The leathern containers moved up, up, up. When they had been emptied, they were tossed down into the pit again.
Eszterhazy’s eyes were seeking something . . . someone. . . . He had not realized whom until he found him once again. He was nearer, this time, and in a moment or two, he realized what it was about the ragged old man which had been attracting his gaze.
For some reason, the old toiler reminded him of the old Emperor. And this brought him a recollection of some words of Augustine about astrology: of two men known to him, whose births, having occurred upon an estate “where even the births of puppies were recorded/’ were known to have been under the same sign at the same hour and minute —yet one grew up to inherit the estate, and the other toiled on “without the yoke of bondage being lifted for a moment. . .” The reflection disturbed him. Had the old man been near, he would have given him alms; as it was . . .
He boarded the tram which had taken him to South Ward, but—on impulse—got off quite a ways before his home stop. He had seen a crowd where crowds were not usually to be seen, and he walked across the street and into the square where it was. He saw an old, neglected- looking church and the high iron palings and tottering tombstones of a neglected churchyard. People were swarming in and out. An old woman, her bosom covered with a tattered sack, hurried past him, one hand clutched tightly upwards as though to contain and protect; behind her another old woman, and an old man, and a youngish woman, and a child—all in sackcloth and all with expressions of great wonder and all with a clutched fist.