‘The natural fall of snow,’ said the botanist, ‘is to the east, but, because the fall would interfere with the pleasures of the privileged, it is learnt that orders have been given to the mountain guards to divert to the west all avalanches that threaten the skiing grounds. That these avalanches may be detrimental to the flower industry on the western slopes apparently does not matter, nor that the contamination from radioactive snow may affect the Rondese market-gardeners.’
This article brought a quick response from one of the leading flower-gatherers in the country to say that he had always understood the snow to be the cause of the very rare texture of the Rovlvula buds, and the avalanches had been appreciated by his forefathers for that very reason. Had they all been mistaken?
‘We are afraid,’ said the Ronda News, ‘that our correspondent has been misinformed, and his forebears brought up in a false tradition. Recent tests prove that snow is harmful to the bud, and a number of the workers in the Grandos factory employed in pulping the Rovlvula into paste for export have had the palms of their hands affected by some itching substance that is feared to contain particles of radioactive dust.’
The newspaper gave an alarming photograph of the skin of a man’s hand covered with eczema. This eczema had appeared after the man had crushed a bud gathered from the slopes of the Ronderhof. The man had lost the use of his hand and was said to be seriously ill.
Grandos announced forthwith that he was fitting every workman in his employment with gloves so that they should run no risk of contamination if the Rovlvula flower were in fact radioactive.
‘The people of Ronda can be proud,’ said the newspaper, ‘that at least one citizen of this country has the welfare of the common man at heart. We take the opportunity of saluting Grandos.’
And what of the Archduchess all this time? Had she been forgotten? One of the chalet attendants who escaped on the Night of the Big Knives and took refuge in eastern Europe told those who gave him shelter that he had had the good fortune to wait upon the Archduchess and her cousin Anton during their brief courtship.
‘No two people have ever been so happy,’ he is supposed to have said, ‘no two people more artlessly in love. They used to ski on the high slopes and swim in the summit pools, and in the evenings I and my fellow-attendant, later murdered, would serve them the young fish from the high reaches of the Rondaquiver, braised in Rovlvula leaves, and the fermented juice of the white grapes grown on the Ronderhof. The Archduke had placed at their disposal his own suite of rooms, which had windows and balconies facing east and west. They could watch the sunrise and the dawn, but in point of fact the Archduchess told me herself that they watched neither.’
This story found its way into the American press after the revolution and was supposed to be a tissue of lies. Many old people believed it.
In early March the Archduchess and her cousin Anton returned from the mountain chalet and took up their quarters in the palace in preparation for their wedding. And this, of course, was where she made her mistake. They should both of them have stayed in the mountain chalet. But the Archduchess, so full of happiness herself, wished to share her good fortune with the Rondese people. She did not realize that in such a short time their attitude could change. Later, rumour had it that the Archduke warned her, and that she did not listen. ‘I have always loved the people, and the people have loved me.’ Certainly she is known to have said this; and on an impulse, because she was happy and in love, she took her cousin Anton by the hand and appeared at an upper window of the palace, waving and smiling, on the night of her return. The people and the tourists were gathered there, as usual, and suddenly they raised their heads and saw the Archduchess Paula, who they had been told was in disgrace or even imprisoned, with Anton by her side. Quickly she withdrew, beckoned into the shadows by the Archduke himself, perhaps, and everyone began to talk and to ask questions.
‘Then she is not a prisoner?’ said some. ‘She’s there, and she was smiling, and that chap beside her is Anton, the ski champion and poet. What does it mean? Are they in love, then, after all?’
The moment might have been disastrous for Markoi, who happened to be sitting himself in the square that very evening with some of his friends. He sipped his Riivi tea - he never touched Ritzo or any alcohol, and Riivi was a herb concoction good for the bile - but he was intelligent enough to smile and to say little.
‘It’s all part of a plan,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow there will be an announcement from the palace. Wait and see.’
In the morning the placard on the palace gates said briefly that a marriage had been arranged and would take place shortly between the Archduchess Paula, beloved sister of the Archduke, and her cousin Anton. And Markoi brought out a midday edition of the Ronda News.
‘What this newspaper has foretold has happened,’ said gigantic letters on the front page. ‘The Rondese Flower, against her own wishes, has submitted to a marriage of convenience with a blood relative.Weeks of solitary confinement have finally broken the spirit of this beautiful and courageous young woman. Her expressed desire to marry a commoner and give herself to the Rondese people has been ruthlessly, brutally, set aside.Who can tell what methods were used, within the palace, to force the Archduchess Paula to obedience? These methods have been used perhaps for years, for centuries, to subdue their young relatives, by fanatics clinging to power.Anton, the prospective bridegroom, and favourite of the Archduke since boyhood,no doubt came to a private arrangement with the monarch months ago to share his bride, and therefore ensure the succession. The Rondese people have lost their Archduchess.The Archduchess has been stolen from the people.’
That night the first riots broke out in the capital. Buildings were set on fire, café windows broken, older people, begging for calm and order, beaten up. There was no attack upon the palace. The Imperial guard remained at their posts, but the Imperial band did not play the national anthem, and for the first time the Archduke did not appear on the balcony.
In the morning the crowd, gathered sullenly before the palace gates, read the notice fixed there by the guard. It was in the Archduchess’s own handwriting, and said, ‘I want the people of Ronda to know that I am in love with my cousin Anton, that we have had our pre-nuptial honeymoon, which was exceedingly happy, and that this marriage, soon to be solemnized, is of my own choosing.’
The crowd stared at the notice. They did not know what to believe. But agitators, placed here and there by Markoi and Grandos, soon set the murmurs going. ‘They made her write it. They stood over her and threatened her. Pre-nuptial honeymoon my foot. An unwilling prisoner of the ski champion Anton. That mountain chalet ought to be burnt to the ground.’
There was no issue of the Ronda News at midday. The evening edition made no reference to the notice written by the Archduchess. A brief paragraph, tucked away in small type, said, ‘The Archduchess Paula has signified her acceptance of the hand of Anton, close friend to the Archduke. The marriage will take place immediately, if it has not already done so. The Rondese people will draw their own conclusions.’
The centre page was given up almost entirely to an account of fresh outbreaks of eczema on the palms of Grandos’s petal-pulpers. Eczema was also breaking out, according to the Ronda News, among the workers in the fish-bone industry. The management was seriously concerned, and had ordered an immediate close-down of both industries while the matter was being investigated. There was a photograph of Grandos patting the head of a flower-pulper’s child, and giving him a pair of minute gloves.
Tourists began to leave the country the following day, and the island hotels in the Rondaquiver emptied.
‘We don’t want to catch this eczema,’ complained many of the tourists. ‘We’ve been told it may spread. And one of the fisherman had it from an authority that the fish caught in the river is polluted. Something to do with the snow from the mountains.’
‘Too bad about your little Archduchess,’ said the more romantic-minded of the visitors, ‘forced into marriage with a man she
hates. Is it true she’s terribly in love with a café proprietor? In the States she’d be allowed to marry him.’
Friends of Markoi and Grandos mixed with the crowds at the airport and frontier posts.
‘Just as well you’re leaving Ronda,’ they hinted. ‘We understand there may be trouble. The Archduke is in an ugly mood. If the people show they dislike this forced marriage, there’s no knowing what he may do.’
‘But what can he do?’ objected the more complacent of the tourists.‘He hasn’t any armed forces to speak of, only that Imperial guard dressed up for show.’
The agitators looked grave. ‘You forget,’ they said, ‘he owns the spring-waters. If he cared to release them he could flood the entire country. Ronda could be under water tomorrow.’
The various European airlines had to make changes in their normal running schedules and send extra aircraft to Ronda, so great was the demand to get away. A United States liner anchored off the mouth of the Rondaquiver to take on board all American citizens who could not bribe their way on to the aeroplanes.The Rondese people themselves remained calm, but they were bewildered and anxious, and the rumours of flood soon spread from one end of the small principality to the other.
‘Would he do it?’ asked one Rondese of another. ‘Would the Archduke ever unleash the waters?’
The people of the plains gazed up at the Ronderhof, remote and still, so many thousands of feet above their heads, and the people of the hills came out of their chalets and listened to the falls as they cascaded down from the great caves.
‘If it should happen . . . where could we go? Who would be safe?’
Ronda, the paradise for fools, knew fear for the first time.
4
What you have to realize is that no one faction brought about the revolution. The leaders behind the scenes were undoubtedly Markoi and Grandos, but the people themselves were split into groups according to their way of life and their interests.
The young romantics - and these were mostly in the capital itself - believed that the Archduchess Paula, the Flower of Ronda, had been forced into a hated marriage because of tradition, and that she had in reality given her heart to one of them. No one knew the secret lover, mark you, but he was said to be the son of a prominent citizen, and none of the young men in the capital was going to give away the fact that he was not the chosen one. It became the fashion to look mysterious and melancholy in turn, to sport a Rovlvula flower in the buttonhole, to sit in the palace square of an evening sipping Ritzo and staring moodily at the palace windows.
The more practical - and these were generally in industry - were disturbed by the original drowning of the foreman at the fish-bone plant, and by the eczema discovered on the palms of their fellow-workers. It was perfectly true, as a matter of fact, that the eczema did break out amongst the fish-bone workers and flower-pulpers, and the reason for this was very simple. The fish-bones were sharp, and contained a substance which could irritate a sensitive skin; while the heart of the Rovlvula flower, if crushed, emitted a poisonous juice. Grandos had chosen to industrialize just the two natural resources that of their very nature were unsuited for manufacturing purposes. Had the Rondese realized this, they would have shrugged Tandos pisos and left the industries. Grandos suspected the truth, if he did not know it for a certainty. But industrialists have a knack of ignoring potential trouble if the trouble is likely to affect their finances.
The progressive Rondese were angry because they had read in the Ronda News that the new industries would be likely to fail through the selfishness of the Archduke, who wished to control them himself; and the independent-minded Rondese understood, from the same newspaper, that their liberties were threatened. As for the more simple-minded, the very thought of floods, of havoc to crops and vines, of disaster to livestock and indeed to human life, was enough to make them rally to any faction which might offer them some promise of security.
The dread of the spring-waters flooding, and the fear that these spring-waters could be unleashed by the Archduke in anger, was the one great factor that turned the older Rondese people into revolutionaries. The knowledge that the spring-waters contained properties which could give them eternal youth, and that these waters were held by a single prince for his own use, was the first reason for making rebels of the young. The Archduchess was a figurehead, a symbol. She was beauty kept in subjection by the beast. She was the cry, the rallying-point. It was not really difficult to see how the different threads converged into a single aim . . . the overthrow and destruction of the Archduke.
The spring festival drew near. Every man knew in his heart that something would happen. The winter snows on the Ronderhof must break, as they always did in early March, but this year would something else break with them? Would the Archduke, who gave no sign from within the palace that anything was changed, suddenly take the Rondese people unawares, and release the catastrophe?
There were meetings and gatherings throughout the whole of Ronda. Up on the hills, in the plains, by the banks of the Rondaquiver, on the slopes of the Ronderhof, in the capital city of Ronda itself, bands of men and women murmured, whispered. The old people, fearful, anguished, locked themselves behind doors. ‘If it has to be done,’ they said amongst themselves, ‘let it be done quickly. Let us close our eyes and shut our ears.’
The day of the spring festival was a national holiday, and as a rule it was warm and fine.The country people were able to gather the early Rovlvula flowers, which they would bring to the capital to decorate the city and the palace, and in the afternoon the Ronda Games were held in the stadium a few miles from the capital.
It is a curious thing how the elements often combine with earthly unrest to produce crisis. The last few days before the festival were unusually cold, and on the evening before the festival itself snow began to fall, and in the morning was still falling. The Rondese awoke to find their whole world white. There was no sun, but only the great wet blanket of sky, and giant flakes the size of a man’s hand which drifted upon the upturned faces of the people. It was almost as if the snow had some evil purpose, and had been sent to Ronda as a cloak to hide ill intent.
‘In all the years,’ said the old people, ‘we cannot remember weather like this for the spring festival.’
Was it possible, they asked themselves, that what the young folks hinted was true, and that the Archduke could control the weather just as he controlled the spring-waters? Did this unnatural fall of snow herald their doom?
No gathering of flowers . . . no games . . . no dancing on the slopes or in the palace square. Then the first shepherd, high on the Ronderhof in search of his lost sheep, came stumbling through the drifts to the nearest village. ‘It’s come,’ he said, ‘the avalanche! I heard it as I stood blinded by snow in the high forest. There’s no time to lose.’
Now there had been avalanches before on the Ronderhof, time without number, winter after winter through the centuries, but this one was different. This avalanche had all the weight of propaganda behind it.The villagers fled through the driving snow to the safety of the capital, and as they fled the rumours fled with them, and met them, and encircled them, encircled all the Rondese who were standing despondent watching the wet sky, watching the failure of the national holiday. ‘The Archduke has let loose the waters, the Archduke has made the mountain move!’ The primitive fear of the villagers infected the people of the city. ‘The Archduke has escaped. He’s caused the snow to fall and blind all of us, so that he and the royal family can flee across the frontier.Then, when they are safe, the floods will destroy Ronda.’
The most fearful of all were the workmen from the Grandos factories.‘Don’t touch the snow, it’s contaminated, poisoned, don’t touch the snow . . .’ They came running from the villages, running from the plains, men and women, boys and girls, running to the capital of Ronda. ‘Help us, save us, the snow is poisoned!’
In Markoi’s headquarters, the offices of the Ronda News, Markoi was handing out to his followers the big knives
used in the Rondese vineyards to prune the vines. He had handled these knives as a boy, and he knew their cutting powers. For weeks now he had been collecting them from every vineyard in the country.
‘There will be no issue of the Ronda News today,’ he said. ‘Go out into the streets.’
Then, with great self-denial, he shut himself up in his small room at the back of the building and took no part in the proceedings that followed. He had no food that day. He disconnected the telephone. He sat watching the falling snow. Markoi was a purist.
Grandos also kept himself aloof. But he opened his doors to the refugees who fled from the hills. He fed them with broth and wine, and he gave them warm clothing - it was extraordinary, refugees said afterwards, how he seemed to be prepared for calamity - and he was unfailingly thoughtful, full of assurances of help, ready with medicines and bandages, going from one to the other panic-stricken individual. ‘Keep calm. You have been fearfully treated, terribly misled. But I promise you everything will soon be under control.’ He did not mention the palace or the Archduke. He put one single telephone-call through to Markoi before Markoi disconnected the telephone, and the message was this: ‘Let the people be told that a pipeline, connecting the palace with the spring on the Ronderhof, has been filled with radioactive water, and that at a signal from the Archduke this pipe-water is to be turned on to the Rondese in the palace square. The first jet will scald and blind and maim.’ Then he hung up and distributed more food and clothing to the weeping refugees.
The Breaking Point: Short Stories Page 21