Three men in a fruit and vegetable wagon asked each other what was going on? They could fathom out no answer. Said one, “Well, whatever, we can’t get through here and we must be at the Palace Children’s Infirmary on time; turn at the right —” “Just as impassable! The devil!” “Keep on and turn at the next left —” “No use! What —?” “Whip up and head for Garlicstringer’s Gulley!” They lashed the horse. They pressed on. And on. But ever they seemed pressed farther and farther from the way they would go, and anxiously they scanned the faces of the church-tower clocks, and, with growing concern, compared their watches.
Three charcoal-burners had come down from the White Mountain to sing for money in the streets according to old-time custom, clad in shaggy goatskins: one with a timbrel, and one with a drum, and one with a rattle and a bell; the intention being to collect enough money to have a good old drunk at the end of Lent before heading back up-hill with what might be left — said, suddenly, one to the other, of a sudden looking up: “Say, brother, ain’t that a eagle?”
“A course that be a eagle, brother! That ain’t no magpie!”
“Makes a man feel at home . . . almost...”
“Say, we ain’t corned hear to watch birds, there’s a bunch a people up ahead, let’s give’m four or five verses of By the Limpid Forest Pool See the Chaste Gertruda Bathing Bare-ass
By and by the Police traced the bottle to the neck.
No one of course dared order Emma Katterina to arise, but attempts were made to order her Ladies and her Chaplain: “Up with you,
Madame. Up, Father, up! Get up, Lady — now!” Lips and fingers continued moving, eyes swung to the Royal Mistress. Her reply was brief. “The Mamma wouldn’t let,” said she.
The Countess Critz could not restrain a word of triumph to the baffled Police official; “Away, Antichrist!” she cried.
Hers was a very piercing voice.
The word spread to and through the superstitious and ever-turbulent South Ward that “Big Katinka was a-keeping Antichrist at bay,” whereat the locksmen in the Grand, the Royal, and the Little Canals downed levers as one, thus blocking canal traffic; with repercussions all the way to ’s Gravenhage and Rostov-on-Don; and the stokers in the R.- and I.- Central Steam Plant raked out the fires under their boilers and sounded the Great Alarm Whistle to blow off all the steam. Then they pissed on the embers to put them all quite out. And then they trooped along to join the throng.
“This bloody Gulley is bloody unpaved!” one of the men in the wagon cried. “Slow down, slow down, slow —”
“We haven’t the time,” said another, panting, “the clock in the Work is set and no one can break the seal without setting it off — oh God! Oh God!”
Still loyal to his faith in something which could not be proven, namely the nonexistence of Deity, another said, sweaty face gleaming, “There is no God.”
“Well, I bloody well believe that! Look, look! The next through street is packed and blocked! Oh God!”
“Oh God!”
Farther away. The sacristan of the Uniate Hyperboreans’ Procathedral, who had in recent years grown as cracked as his peal of bells, on hearing of the attempted approach of Antichrist, ran wildly up into his belfry and pealed them all. The Uniate Hyperboreans’ Procathedral lay in the East Ward, whither the confusion had yet in its full form to spread, and where in consequence the trams were still running. The tram- switchmen in the East Ward, however, by the rankest kind of nepotism, were Uniate Hyperboreans every-man-jack of them; no sooner had the tinny tintinnabulation of “their” bells rung out than, taking it for a sign, or at least a signal, they leapt from their hutches and threw their switches. Thirty-three trams were more than sufficient to block Gumbarr Street as it crossed the Avenue Anna Margerita; whereat, puzzled beyond patience as to what was going on, the Royal and Imperial Telegrapher on duty in the Gumbarr St. office tapped along an open wire the query — perhaps unfortunately couched in the form of a proverbial question — The Turks have entered Vienna? It was certainly unfortunate that, having given up spirituous beverage for Lent, his fingers suddenly trembled so that he could not at once add, Interrogation Point... for at once all the Receiving Telegraphers still on the wire ran to the doors of their offices and shouted at the tops of their lungs, “Turks have entered Vienna!“
The duty of Great Bell Ringer at the Old Tower of the Old Cathedral had traditionally been filled by the largest galley-slave on the Ister, it being assumed that only such labors could develop backs and arms to toll Great Gudzinkas, as the immense Bell (cast in Moscow during the reign of Anna and brought hither at vast expense) was called. Named after Algirdas Gudzinkas, the great Lithuanian metallurgist, engineer, and friend of Dr. Swedenborg, it had last been officially rung in celebration of a report that Bonaparte had been killed by an elephant whilst crossing the Alps (this report turned out to have been false). It had last been actually rung when Mazzimilian the Mad had — briefly — regained his sanity: an act so totally impermissible that Authority had ever since steadfastly denied that it had been rung at all.
It was long since there were galley-slaves. The current Great Bell Ringer was a convicted murderer on ticket-of-leave, one Gronka Grimka, called (and for very good reason) the Slovatchko Giant. He was sitting, as usual, scowling in his kennel and smoking the vile black tobacco known as Death-to-the-Vlox, when the Archbishop’s cook ran hysterically across the yard, waving her apron and ululating as she ran.
“Why are you sitting there, by-blow of a hobgoblin?” she howled. “Haven’t you heard? The Turks have entered Bella! Ring the Big Bell!“
Ordinarily Gronka Grimka would not have cared if the Turks had entered Heaven or Hell, let alone Bella, which he despised; but it was fixed tradition that “whosoever got to ring Great Gudzinkas would receive the Most Gracious Pardon, 17 1/2 pieces of gold, a barrel of the best good goose-grease, and a double-pension, too.” He rose to his feet rather like the rising of the Nile, and, first crossing himself and then spitting on his immense and horny palms, muttered his national imprecation of “Bugger the Bulgars,” and climbed up into the belfry without delay. The immense engine there moved slowly, but by no means silently. The sound of the turning of the huge iron wheels over which the cable-thick bell-ropes passed, presently rumbled through the air, causing all the servants still on their feet within a square mile to fall on their knees, under the impression that they were hearing “Satan’s chariots.” And soon the dull, clamorous boom-boom . . . boom-boom ... of Great Gudzinkas himself sounded throughout almost the whole city.
There was an ancient piece of ordnance, a veteran, in fact, of the French crossing of the Ister, situated on the Old High Rampart; it was of course by now purely ornamental, but Ignats Maurits had ordered it be kept charged. The order had never, somehow, been rescinded: informal motto of the R. & I. Artillery: “Follow an order even if it falls off a cliff.” Nevertheless, a certain common sense was employed in regard to the Old French Gun, to wit, “Under no circumstance is the Old French Gun to be fired except at the order of the direct superior officer, or the King- Emperor Himself if there present, or at the sounding of the Great Big Bell.” And at the sounding of the Great Big Bell, Cannonry-Corporal Moomkotch performed a neat about-face, bringing his knee up to his belt-level, and down again, stamp, produced a large wooden sulfur- match from his pocket, struck it on his boot-sole, and calmly touched it to the touch-hole of the Old French Gun. It went off with an immense boom! The ball whizzed high, dropped low, struck very near a certain large old mulberry tree, skimmed along the street like a giant bowling- ball, and buried itself in the wall of a mouldering old palace — to the pleasure of a wandering Swiss street photographer who, having set up his equipment, had just then taken a test shot.