It was by no means an illusion, as sceptics have sometimes maintained. Modern scientists know that the chemical properties release certain substances in the endocrine glands, which is why the bottling of the waters now constitutes the main industry of Ronda. The United States buys over eighty per cent of the total annual output. Originally, though, since the industry was in the hands of the Archduke, the waters were bottled privately, and sold only to those visitors who crossed the borders into the country. The wastage must have been enormous, if you consider the source, flowing as it did from the cave nine thousand feet up on the Ronderhof and cascading in falls down the mountain-side. All that energy, which might have been tapped and pumped into the veins of tired Americans, merely tumbled over bare rocks into the air and down to the valleys below, where it nourished the already rich earth and produced the golden Rovlvula flower.
The people of Ronda, of course, drank the waters with their mother’s milk: hence their beauty, and their joie de vivre, and the gaiety which made them incapable of ill-feeling or ambition. That, I have always understood from the historians, was the essence of the Rondese character - contentment, lack of ambition. Why, asked Oldo, Ronda’s famous poet, why kill, when we are lovers? Why weep, when we are glad? And why indeed should the Rondese cross the Ronderhof to countries where there was sickness and plague, poverty and war, or sail down the Rondaquiver to lands where the people were herded together in slums and tenements, each man imbued with the determination to do better than his neighbour?
It did not make sense to the Rondese. They had had their flood. Their ancestors had perished. One day perhaps the Rondaquiver would rise and overwhelm them again, but until that day came let them live and dance and dream. Let them spear the leaping fish in the Rondaquiver, let them jump the waters of the Ronderhof, let them gather the golden Rovlvula flowers and tread the petals and the vines, harvest the grain, tend the cattle and the sheep, cherished and watched over by the prince of eternal youth, the prince who passed and was born again.This is roughly what Oldo said, but Rondese translates with difficulty, for the whole idiom is so different from that of any other European language.
Life in Ronda, therefore, changed little during the centuries after the flood. Archduke succeeded Archduke, and no one ever knew the age of the ruler or of his heir apparent. Rumour would go about that the monarch was ailing or had suffered some accident - there was never anything secret about it; the thing happened and was accepted - and then the proclamation was fastened to the palace gates and it would be learnt that the Archduke had died and that the Archduke lived again. It could be called religion. Theosophists argue that it was religion, that the Archduke symbolized spring. Whatever it was, religion or working tradition, it suited the Rondese. They liked to think of their monarch handing on the secret of eternal youth to his successor, and they liked his blond beauty, and his white uniform, and the shining scabbards of the palace guards.
The monarch did not interfere with their pleasures, or indeed with their lives at all. As long as the land was tilled, and the harvest gathered, and enough food grown to feed the people - after all, their wants were few, with fish and fowl and vegetables and fruit, and the wine and liqueur from the vines - no laws needed to be passed. The marriage law was so self-evident that no one ever dreamt of breaking it. Who would want to marry a woman who was not Rondese? And what woman would consent to hold a child in her arms that might be born with the pudgy limbs and flabby skin of some stranger over the border?
It will be argued that the Rondese intermarried, that a small country the size of Cornwall was populated by people who were all related. This cannot be denied. It was indeed obvious to those who knew Ronda well in old days that, though nothing was said, many brothers paired with many sisters. Physically, the result appeared beneficial, mentally it did no harm. There were very few idiot children born in Ronda. It was this intermarrying, though, which, according to historians, made for lack of ambition amongst the Rondese, their rather lazy contentment and their disinclination for war.
Why fight, as Oldo said, when we want for nothing? Why steal, when my purse is full? Why ravish a stranger, when my sister is my bride? No doubt these sentiments could be described as shocking, and many tourists were shocked, when they came to a country so flowing with sensuous charm, so empty of moral principle; but however carping, however outraged, in the end the tourist was won. He could not stand up to beauty. Argument fell away, and by the time his holiday was over the tourist who had partaken of the spring waters was himself a proselyte, having discovered in Ronda an attitude to living that was both selfless and hedonistic, with mind and body in perfect harmony.
Here lay the tragedy. Western man is so constituted that he cannot abide contentment. It is the unforgivable sin. He must forever strive towards some unseen goal, whether it be material comfort, a greater and purer God, or some weapon that will make him master of the universe. As he becomes more conscious he becomes more restless, more grasping, forever finding fault with the warm dust from which he sprang and to which he must return, forever desirous of improving and so enslaving his fellow-men. It was this poison of discontent that finally infiltrated to Ronda, bred, alas, by contact with the outside world, and nurtured to maturity by the two revolutionary leaders, Markoi and Grandos.
You ask what made them revolutionaries? Other Rondese had crossed the borders and returned again unharmed. What was so special about Markoi and Grandos that made them wish to destroy the Ronda which had remained virtually unchanged for seven centuries?
The explanation is simple. Markoi, like Oedipus, was born lame, with a twisted foot: therefore he had a grudge against his parents. They had brought into the world a maimed being, and he could not forgive them for not having made him beautiful. The child who cannot forgive his parents cannot forgive the country that cradled him, and Markoi grew up with the desire to lame his country, even as he himself was lame. Grandos was born greedy. It has been said that he was not of pure blood, and that his mother, in a moment best forgotten, had coupled with some stranger from beyond the seas, who afterwards boasted of his conquest.Whether true or not, Grandos inherited an acquisitive nature and a quick intelligence. At school - there were never any distinctions in education, all receiving the same tuition except the reigning family - Grandos was always first in his class. He often knew an answer before his teacher. This made him conceited. The boy who knows more than his master knows more than his prince, and so eventually feels himself superior to the society into which he has been born.
The two boys became friends. Together they crossed the border and travelled in Europe. They returned, after six months, with the seed of discontent, unconscious hitherto, ripened and ready to break surface. Grandos went into the fishing industry and, being intelligent, made the discovery that the fish of the Rondaquiver - the staple diet of the Rondese, and so delectable to the connoisseur - could be used in other ways. The backbone, when split, was so curved that it was the exact shape of a woman’s breast supporter, and the oil of the fish, if smoothed into a paste and scented with the Rovlvula flower, made a beauty cream that would nourish the toughest and oldest of complexions.
Grandos started an export business, sending his products all over the western world, and was soon the richest man in Ronda. His own countrywomen, who hitherto had never used a breast supporter or a beauty cream in their lives, found themselves beguiled by the advertisements that he inserted in the newspapers, and began to wonder whether they would not increase their happiness by making use of his products.
Markoi did not go into industry. Despising his parents’ vineyard, he became a journalist, and was soon appointed editor of the Ronda News. This had originally been a news sheet giving the events of the day and the particulars of Rondese agriculture or trade, with an art supplement three times a week. It was the custom to read the news during the midday siesta, whether in the countryside or in the cafés. Markoi changed all this.The news was still given, but with a subtle slant, a mockery at the old-establi
shed customs such as treading the vines (this was a hit at his parents, of course), and spearing the fish (this to help Grandos, because spearing injured the fish’s backbone and so harmed the export business), and gathering the Rovlvula flower (another piece of indirect assistance to Grandos, whose beauty paste demanded the crushed heart of the flower, which meant tearing the golden Rovlvula to pieces). Markoi encouraged the tearing of the flower because he liked to see anything beautiful destroyed, and because it hurt the feelings of the older people of Ronda, whose favourite springtime custom had been the flower gathering and the decorating of home and capital and palace with the fragrant blossoms. This artless enjoyment was something that Markoi could not bear, and he was determined to put an end to it, together with the other customs he disliked. Grandos was his ally not because he himself felt any sort of hatred towards the customs or traditions of Ronda, but because in destroying them he furthered his export trade, and therefore became richer and more powerful than his neighbours.
Little by little the young Rondese were indoctrinated with the new values which they read about every day. The appearance of the newspaper was cunningly timed as well. It was no longer issued at midday, to be browsed over and then forgotten during the siesta, but was sold on the palace square and in the villages at sundown, that moment before dusk when the Rondese sips his Ritzo and is therefore more susceptible, more easily seduced. The effect was marked. The youthful Rondese, who until now had thought of little else but enjoying the two most perfect seasons of the year, the winter snows and the spring verdure, and making love through both, began to question their upbringing.
‘Have we endured,’ asked Markoi, ‘seven centuries of neglect? Has Ronda become a paradise for fools? Anyone who crosses the border knows that the real world lies outside our frontiers, the world of achievement, the world of progress. The Rondese have been nurtured too long on lies. We are unique only in that we are idiots, despised by men and women of intelligence.’
No man likes to be called a fool. A gibe brings shame and doubt. The more advanced of the young people felt themselves insecure. And, whatever their occupation, the worth of what they did became doubtful.
‘He who treads the vine with his bare feet treads himself into the ground,’ said Markoi. ‘Whoever spades the earth digs his own grave.’
He was, you will observe, a bit of a poet, and had a clever knack of twisting the philosophy of Oldo into derogatory phrases.
‘Why,’ he asked, ‘are we, the young and the strong, deliberately kept under by a system of government that withholds from us our own possessions? We could all be leaders. Instead, we are led. The immortality that could make us rule the world is vested in the sham personage of one man who, by a trick, holds a chemical secret.’
When Markoi wrote this on the day of the spring festival, and saw that a copy of the newspaper reached every household in Ronda, there was no longer any doubt amongst the inhabitants that their little world must change.
‘There’s truth in it, you know,’ said one man to his neighbour. ‘We’ve been too easy-going. We’ve just sat down through the centuries and accepted what’s been handed to us.’
‘Look what it says here,’ said a woman to her companion. ‘The spring waters could be shared out and none of us need ever grow old. There’s more than enough for every woman in Ronda.’
No one had the discourtesy to attack the Archduke himself, but there was, nevertheless, an undercurrent of criticism, a growing belief that the people of Ronda had been hoodwinked, kept in subjection, and because of this were in reality the laughing-stock of the world. The spring festival, for the first time in centuries, lacked its essential gaiety.
‘These nonsensical blossoms,’ wrote Markoi, ‘gathered by the toiling masses of Rondese men and women merely to drug the sense of the older generation and appease the vanity of one man, might have been crushed and distilled for our use, for our enrichment. The natural resources of Ronda should be exploited and sold, to benefit ourselves and all mankind.’
There was logic in his argument.The waste, people whispered, of all those golden blossoms, of all that flowing water, of all the untrapped fish surging down the Rondaquiver to the open sea, fish whose backbones might have braced the bosoms and enlaced the hips of the ungirt Rondese women, who must surely, as the newspaper said, be despised and laughed at by the rest of the western world.
That night, for the first time in history, there was silence when the Archduke appeared on the balcony.
‘What right,’ whispered a boy, ‘has he to lord it over us? He’s made of flesh and blood, isn’t he, no better than ourselves? It’s only the elixir that keeps him young.’
‘They say,’ whispered the girl beside him, ‘that he has other secrets too. The palace is full of them. Not only how to prolong youth, but how to prolong love as well.’
So envy was born, fostered by Markoi and Grandos, and the tourists who crossed the border were aware of the new spirit amongst the Rondese, an irritability and shortness of temper ill-suited to their fine physique. Instead of showing off the national ways and customs with unaffected enjoyment, they began, for the first time in history, to apologize for their imperfections. Imported words like ‘enslaved’, ‘backward’, ‘unprogressive’ were used with a shamefaced shrug, and the tourists, with lack of intuition, added fuel to the smouldering fires of discontent by calling the Rondese ‘picturesque’ and ‘quaint’.
‘Give me a year,’ Markoi is supposed to have said, ‘give me a year, and I’ll bring down the ruling house by ridicule alone.’
This suited Grandos. In a year he would have an agreement with every fisherman of the Rondaquiver to supply him with the backbones and oil from the fish caught in their nets, and by the end of the same year all flower-gatherers under seventeen would have contracted to hand over the pulped hearts of the Rovlvula flowers, whose essence Grandos would manufacture into scent and export to the United States.Together he and Markoi, industrialist and journalist combined, would control the destiny of the Rondese people.
‘Remember,’ said Grandos, ‘that united we are unbreakable, divided we fall apart. If you attack me in your paper I sell out to the highest bidders across the border.They walk in, and Ronda merges with the rest of Europe. You lose your power.’
‘And don’t forget,’ said Markoi, ‘that unless you support my policy, and share your fish oil and your beauty paste, I’ll turn every youngster in the republic against you.’
‘Republic?’ asked Grandos, raising his eyebrows.
‘Republic,’ nodded Markoi.
‘The principality has lasted for seven centuries,’ ventured Grandos.
‘I can destroy it in seven days,’ said Markoi.
This conversation is not recorded in the documents relating to the revolution, but it was reported, nevertheless, by word of mouth.
‘And the Archduke?’ mused Grandos. ‘How do we dispose of the immortal one?’
‘In the same way,’ said Markoi, ‘as I dispose of the Rovlvula flower. By tearing him apart.’
‘He may escape us,’ Grandos said, ‘flee the country, and join the other exiles on that ridiculous liner.’
‘Not the Archduke,’ said Markoi. ‘You forget your history. All princes who believe in eternal youth offer themselves as victims.’
‘That’s only myth,’ observed Grandos.
‘True,’ agreed Markoi, ‘but most myths have a sound factual basis.’
‘In that case,’ said Grandos, ‘not one member of the reigning family must remain alive. One member would encourage reaction.’
‘No,’ said Markoi, ‘one member must remain. Not, as you may fear, for purposes of adoration, but as a human scarecrow. The Rondese people must be taught rejection.’
The next day Markoi started his campaign, designed to spread over the year until the spring festival should come again. His purpose was to decry the Archduke, in the columns of the Ronda News, in so subtle a fashion that the people of the country would absorb the poison unco
nsciously.The idol must become the target, the figurehead the cutty stool. The way of attack lay through his sister, the Archduchess. Loveliest of women, without an enemy in the country, she was known as the Flower of Ronda. Markoi’s intention was to bring about her moral and physical degradation. Whether he succeeded or failed, you shall hear in due course, if the subject interests you.
This man was evil, you say? Nonsense, he was an ideologist.
3
The Archduke was several years older than his sister. How many years, no one could say. And anyway, all records were burnt during the Night of the Big Knives. But it might have been as much as thirty years. The archducal birthdates were kept only in the palace archives, and the people had no curiosity. All they knew was that the Archduke of Ronda was in essence immortal, and that his spirit passed to his successor. Each prince was virtually the same through the seven centuries, and the time-factor was unimportant. Perhaps the Archduchess Paula was not the Archduke’s sister. Perhaps she was his great-granddaughter. You have to realize that the relationship was really immaterial, but she was of the blood royal, and had from the beginning been known as his sister.
Tourists from across the border were always baffled by the reigning family of Ronda. How can they exist, they asked, century after century, behind those palace walls and in those grounds - admittedly beautiful, what could be glimpsed of them - and up in the Ronderhof chalet during the skiing season and at high summer, and on Quiver islet when the fish were in spawn? What do they do all day? Are they never bored? And surely the intermarriage is shocking besides being dull? What about protocol? Is it rigid? Are they hemmed about with ceremony? The Rondese, when questioned, used to smile and say, ‘Frankly, we don’t know. We believe them to be happy, as we are ourselves. Indeed, why not?’ Why not? Nations other than the Rondese - in which I include all Europeans and citizens of the United States, all the so-called ‘civilized’ races - simply could not understand happiness. It was impossible for them to realize that a Rondese man or woman, whether he ran a café in the capital, tended a vineyard on the slopes of the Ronderhof, kept a fishing-boat on the Rondaquiver, or lived as a minor princeling or princess behind palace walls, was content with his lot and loved life. That was the fundamental truth. They loved life. ‘It isn’t natural,’ I have heard tourists say, ‘to live as the Rondese do. If they only realized what the rest of the world has to put up with, day in, day out . . .’ - an oddly grudging point of view, if you come to think of it. The Rondese did not realize and did not care. They were happy. If the rest of the world chose to herd in skyscrapers or prefabricated hovels and then blow themselves to pieces, it was their affair. Tandos pisos, which can be translated as so what?
The Breaking Point: Short Stories Page 19
