Sometimes revolutions begin with a bang, a furious outburst of peasantry urged on by hunger; other times they occur furtively, unnoticed by the living but discovered centuries later by historians. And sometimes there are no revolutions but only possibles, revolutions stillborn, aborted revolutions, revolutions exposed to die on infertile cliffs. This might be a story of this third sort of revolution; but if there had been a revolution I wouldn’t have written about it. I will tell you a story not of revolution and not of a failed revolution but of a failure.
The failure occurred in the kingdom of Rossina. The kingdom of Rossina was grand and it was orderly. Everyone in the larger cities had impeccable taste; the royal family set a standard of dress carefully followed by the populace. Folk strode along the carefully manicured avenues with martial precision, as if the end of the workday signaled a changing of the guard. And of course everyone held themselves to the highest and most up-to-date standards of hygiene.
The Kingdom had not always been this way. Scarcely fifteen years had passed since the Smedlevs had come into power and worked to transform the country, from one populated by foul-smelling barbarians to a nation on the frontiers of the newest sciences. His Highness Smedlev Bakton was particularly interested in the relationship, postulated by the most unorthodox and cutting-edge new wave of doctors, between regular washings and happiness. Bakton had once been a medical student himself; however, the demands of a political career which involved committee meetings late into the night necessitated his early withdrawal.
Not that he would have made a particularly good doctor.
“You’re too kind,” Arevny Mordekof, head instructor of the Institute for More Advanced Studies in Human Biology and Textual Criticism, once said to him, “You have too much concern for the person and too little for the symptom, the disease. You mustn’t confuse the two!”
“But, Herr Mordekof, am I not treating people? Is not the curing of disease merely a mediary goal, our final being to help the person?”
The professor clucked his tongue. “Yes, but we are students of medicine, not religion. Whatever you do; medicine, or politics, or bread making, you must focus your energies on that one thing and do well at it. Medicine is not always sweet and if you put too much store in the comfort of others, and in being kind, then never will you do any good.”
“Must I force them then, or let them be happy?”
“You must force them. You must force a better condition on them, if they refuse.”
Bakton continued to fail at medicine. But he did not forget that he must force them.
–
After his accession he renounced religion and shaved his beard. He threw aside the mores of the old court in favour of new science which was then flourishing in the northern countries. In spite of his inability to read, he leaned as much as he could–men of wisdom flocked to his court as he handed out large prizes to those who could solve the problems and riddles he posed to the world.
And no longer would there be shanties but oak-lined palisades; no longer would there be brick layers but sculptors; no longer would there be haggard old men ever seen in the cities. Everyone would be neat and trim and Rossina would profit mightily from an improved reputation among other kingdoms, since the diplomats would now behave themselves, and they would above all be clean. His regime was not without its dark underbelly however. There were cities and then there were not-cities. And the unkempt were cast out of the cities.
“This baby has a clefted chin,” they would say. “It can’t be seen, send it to work!” And the child would be boarded on train twelve or eighteen, which went only East, on which no one rode back to the cities, not even the engineers. And train twelve would snake itself under cliffs near dried out oceans, and tunnel itself through Mount Argishtiouna, and wind through the soft undulating plains of Nagrev until it might have arrived at a dusty makeshift station by a little brook where ugly children were collecting stones.
One such station was miles from any habitation or farmlands, but the children would go there nevertheless, everyday, to escape the scorching heat of the wide fields and the lash of drunken fathers. At the sun’s reddening they’d drag their feet homeward towards Shim, to meet their weeping mothers in doorways bearing lemongrass tea, trading it for stories of who climbed the tallest tree today or who came off the train.
But invariably they’d pass by Boodaloo’s house, right on the edge of the makeshift hamlet they’d set up here–whose house pressed eagerly against the old rickety fence Hermer had built back before the Smedlevs were even anybody at all.
And on this particular evening the first boy didn’t throw his rock. Instead he raised his hand, signaling to the others and cocked his head. He had heard a noise from the house, a woman’s voice, sounding agitated as if protesting or pushing away.
“Shh, they’ll hear,” said a second boy but not after the first had already begun to climb the richety fence. Together (for the others stayed behind or went on home, dropping their stones to the ground)–together they made their way around to the side of the house, the side facing away from the village, whence a little amber light shone. From their vantage point amid weeds they peeked gingerly between eyebrows and windowsill at the most hideous and alien of sights they’d yet seen in their tender lives.
Boodaloo was there, amidst a panoply of shiny implements and porcelain basins, wearing an apron they’d never seen. His eyes were ablaze with a keen light which reflected itself off a pendant worn by the obese woman seated in the centre of the room, whose jaws were agape and who was just then speaking.
“Son, I can’t let you do this to me–can’t you find a replacement?” Boodaloo only grinned, his lips tight as he rifled through the things on the table.
“You’re acting like a Smedlev, you know. I can’t understand why on earth you insist on this. God what did I do? I did not raise you to act like this, and the–the downright gall to even ask me, I just can’t believe it.”
“Mother,” Boodaloo turned, “I simply must practice. Father has left us, and the alpacas too.” He paused. “I think I may be good at something. Don’t you want that?”
The woman nodded. She looked terrified and slowly opened her mouth. Boodaloo plucked a bowl and a few thin oblong tools and stepped forward.
The two boys left after viewing the spectacle. They piled their rocks by Boodaloo’s front gate and each promised themselves, never to hurl stones at the house again.
