“AND HOW DOES Your Royal Majesty feel?” asked the same general who had pinned a medal on Matt last winter for helping blow up the ammunition dump. The general was saluting.
“I am Tomek, an ordinary soldier, General, sir,” cried Matt, tearing off his covers.
“I see,” said the general, bursting into laughter. “We’ll check that right now. Call Felek in here.”
In came Felek, wearing an aviator’s uniform.
“Tell me, Felek, who is that?”
“That is His Royal Highness, King Matt the First.”
Matt could not deny it any more. Now there was no need to hide anything. On the contrary, the situation demanded that all the troops and the whole country hear the message loud and clear—King Matt was alive and had been fighting at the front.
“Is Your Royal Highness now able to take part in consultations?”
“I am,” answered Matt.
And so the general told Matt that a doll had been made to take his place, that every day the doll had been driven about the capital city in a car, that the Prime Minister had even placed the doll on the throne during audiences, and that the doll nodded its head and saluted when a string was pulled.
The newspapers said that the king was carried to his open car because he had given his word that his foot would not touch the ground again until all their territory was free of every last enemy soldier.
The trick had worked for a long time; people believed it, even though they thought it was strange that King Matt always sat in the same position on his throne and in his open car, never smiling, never saying anything, only nodding his head from time to time and saluting.
At first, a few people here and there were suspicious, but as time went by, quite a few people learned about the disappearance of King Matt. Informed by their spies, the enemy had some idea but pretended not to know anything, because what difference did it make—it was winter, and in winter all you could do was sit in your trenches.
Only when they found out that Matt’s troops intended to break through their front line did they begin to snoop around seriously. And then they found out the whole secret.
And so, on the day before the attack, they hired a bad boy, who threw a stone with all his might at the doll of King Matt.
The doll broke. The porcelain went flying to pieces; only one arm was left, saluting the air because the head was gone. Some people fell into despair; some grew angry that they had been tricked, and threatened to start a revolution; but others just laughed.
On the day after the first attack, when King Matt had been taken prisoner and the general attack was supposed to begin, airplanes suddenly appeared over Matt’s army, but instead of dropping bombs, they dropped little printed leaflets. These were proclamations.
“Soldiers!” said the leaflets. “Your generals and ministers are deceiving you. King Matt is no more. Since the beginning of the war, all you’ve been seeing was a porcelain doll, which today was broken by a stone thrown by a bad boy. Stop fighting and go home.”
It had been very hard to convince the soldiers to wait a little while longer, that it all might be a lie. But now they had lost all desire to attack.
Then Felek had confessed everything.
The generals were happy. They telephoned the captain and ordered him to send Matt to headquarters immediately. But they were horrified when they found out that Matt had been taken prisoner during the first attack.
What to do?
They couldn’t tell the rebellious soldiers that Matt had been taken prisoner; they’d been tricked once and wouldn’t believe it. At a special meeting, they decided to attack the enemy with airplanes and snatch Matt back during the panic and confusion.
The airplanes were divided into four squads. One was to attack the prisoner-of-war camp, one Matt’s prison, one the new ammunition dump, and one the officers’ headquarters.
And that is precisely what they did. They bombed the building where all the officers were, and so there was nobody left to give orders. They also bombed what they thought was the ammunition dump, but they had no luck this time. The third squadron attacked the prisoner-of-war camp in search of Matt, but they didn’t find him. It was the fourth squadron which snatched Matt away. He was unconscious when they found him, and it hadn’t been easy to bring Matt back around.
“You acquitted yourselves valiantly, gentlemen,” he said. “But how many airplanes did we lose?”
“We sent out thirty-four, and fifteen returned.”
“How long did the attack last?” asked Matt.
“From takeoff to landing, forty minutes.”
“All right, then,” said Matt, “tomorrow we begin the general attack.”
The officers clapped their hands in joy.
What a surprise! Wonderful! The soldiers all along the front would hear that very night that King Matt was alive and with them and that he would lead them in the attack. That would make them very happy and they would fight like lions.
Immediately the telephone and telegraph lines between the army and the capital began to buzz.
That night, all the newspapers put out special supplements.
King Matt wrote two proclamations, one to the soldiers, one to the people. Nobody was thinking about a revolution any more; only a few young people and some children stood outside the Prime Minister’s palace booing and hissing.
The council of ministers assembled at once and issued their own proclamation, saying that everything had been done on purpose to trick the enemy.
The soldiers were so excited that they couldn’t wait for morning to come, and kept asking what time it was.
Then the attack began.
Three kings were making war on Matt. Matt’s forces smashed the first army head-on and took their king prisoner, and they beat the second king so badly he couldn’t fight again for three months because he had lost almost all his cannons and more than half his troops. So there was the one king left who had stayed in reserve.
When the battle was over, Matt met with his ministers again to make further plans. Both the commander in chief and the Prime Minister, who had arrived on an express train from the capital city, attended the meeting.
“Should we pursue the enemy or not?”
“Pursue him!” cried the commander. “If we did so well against two armies, we’ll do even better against the one that’s left.”
“I say no,” said the Prime Minister. “We already had one good lesson when we pursued the enemy farther than we should have.”
“That was a different story,” said the commander in chief.
Everyone was waiting to hear what Matt would say.
Matt desperately wanted to pursue the defeated enemy who had wanted to hang him. Besides, it was usually the cavalry who did the pursuing, and Matt hadn’t been on a horse even once during the whole war. He had heard a lot about kings conquering on horseback, but all he had done was crawl on his belly and sit hunched over in a trench, and so he wanted to ride a horse even if only for a little while.
But Matt remembered what he’d seen at the beginning of the war—they had advanced too far and almost been defeated. Matt also remembered that people had said that the commander in chief was a boob. And last, Matt remembered that he had promised the departing ambassadors that he would try to conquer them quickly and make lenient peace terms.
For a long time Matt did not say a single word, everyone waiting in silence.
“Where is our royal prisoner of war?” he asked all of a sudden.
“Not far from here.”
“Please bring him here.”
The enemy king was brought in in chains.
“Off with his chains!” cried Matt.
His order was carried out at once. A guard stood by the prisoner to keep him from escaping.
“Defeated king,” said Matt, “I know what being a prisoner means. I give you your freedom. You have been beaten, and so I ask you to remove the rest of your soldiers from my country.”
The defeated
king was then taken by car to the front line, and from there went on foot back to his own men.
THE NEXT DAY, a paper arrived signed by all three enemy kings.
“King Matt,” they wrote, “you are brave, wise, and noble. Why should we fight? We want to be friends with you. We’re returning to our own countries. Do you agree?”
King Matt agreed.
Peace was concluded.
All the soldiers were happy, and so were their wives, mothers, and children. Only those who had been robbing and stealing during the war may have been dissatisfied, but there weren’t too many of them.
And so Matt was greeted with joy when his royal train returned to the capital.
He ordered the train to halt at one station while he went to see the switchman’s good wife.
“I’ve come to have a cup of coffee with you,” said Matt with a smile.
The switchman’s wife was so overjoyed she didn’t know what to do. “I’m so happy, so happy,” she kept saying, the tears trickling from her eyes.
There was a car waiting for him in the capital, but Matt demanded a white horse.
The master of ceremonies was so happy that he jumped for joy. “Oh, that Matt is so smart. Of course a king should come riding back from war on a horse and not in some jalopy.”
And Matt rode his horse slowly through all the streets, and there were people, mostly children, waving from every window.
The children threw the most flowers and shouted the loudest: “Hurray, long live King Matt! Vivat, vivat, vivat!”
Matt held himself up straight, but he was very tired. The attack, being taken prisoner, the meeting, the other battles, the trip, and now this terrific shouting had all so tired Matt that sometimes he heard a roaring in his ears and thought he was seeing stars.
And then some idiot threw his cap up in the air and it landed right on the head of Matt’s horse. A thoroughbred from the royal stables and very sensitive, the horse bolted and Matt fell off.
Matt was immediately carried to a horse-drawn carriage, and brought to the palace at a full gallop. Matt hadn’t hurt himself or passed out, he was just sound asleep. He slept and slept and slept, all through the night and the next morning and on till noon.
“Gimme some food, damn it!” Matt bellowed. His terrified footmen turned white as ghosts.
One minute later, there were a hundred dishes with food and dainty tidbits on his bed, beside his bed, and even under his bed.
“Take these foreign fricassees away this minute,” roared Matt. “I want kielbasa, cabbage, and beer.”
But, good Lord, there wasn’t a single piece of kielbasa in the entire royal pantry. Fortunately, the corporal of the palace guard lent them some.
“Oh, you mama’s boys, you sissies, you pantywaists, you dimwits, you jerks, you nincompoops,” shouted Matt, using all the new words he had learned as a soldier. “Now you’re going to get it from me!”
While stuffing himself with kielbasa, Matt thought: Now they will know I’m a real king, one they have to obey.
Matt had a premonition that now, after winning the war, he would have to fight even harder with his own ministers.
While Matt was at the front, word had reached his ear that the Minister of Finance was all in a fury.
“A fine victory,” said the Minister of Finance. “Why didn’t Matt demand that our enemies pay us reparations? In the past, the loser always had to pay. Yes, he’s very noble; so let him run the economy himself now that the treasury’s empty. Let him pay the manufacturers for the cannons, the shoemakers for the boots, the merchants for the oats, peas, and kasha. They all waited while the war was on, but now the war’s over and it’s time to pay up. And we don’t have a penny!”
The Minister of Foreign Affairs was furious, too.
Never in all history had peace been concluded without the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
“What am I, just a decoration?” said the Minister of Foreign Affairs. “The other officials are laughing at me.”
The doll manufacturer kept pestering the Minister of Commerce. “Pay me,” he said, “for the porcelain doll.”
The Prime Minister’s conscience was bothering him, and the prefect of police was worried that he had not done a very good job of covering up Matt’s disappearance.
Matt knew a little, and he guessed the rest. He decided to put them all in their places.
The ministers had ruled long enough. Either they obey him or out they go. Then he wouldn’t need the Prime Minister’s permission to take a day off.
Matt licked his lips after the kielbasa, spat on the carpet, and ordered a bucket of cold water to be poured over him.
“That’s how a soldier takes a shower,” he said with satisfaction.
He put his crown on his head and went into the conference room. The Minister of War was the only one there.
“But where are the others?”
“They didn’t know that Your Royal Highness wanted to confer with them.”
“Perhaps they thought I would come back from the war and settle down to my lessons with my foreign tutor, while they do whatever they damn please . . . Well, they are sadly mistaken! Mr. Minister, I am calling a conference for two o’clock. When we assemble in the meeting room, a platoon of soldiers is to form up in the corridor without making a sound. The platoon leader is to stand by the door and listen—when I clap my hands, he is to come into the room with his soldiers. I’ll tell you the truth: if the ministers want to do everything the old way, the way it was before the war—I’ll have them arrested, it’ll hit them like a hundred thousand bombs. But that’s a secret.”
“Yes, Your Royal Highness,” said the minister, bowing.
Matt took off his crown and went out to the palace gardens. He hadn’t been there for a long time.
“Oh, right,” he exclaimed. “I completely forgot about Felek.”
He whistled and heard the cuckoo sound answer him.
“Come here, Felek. Don’t be scared. Now I’m a real king, and I don’t need to explain anything to anyone.”
“All right, but what will my father say?”
“Tell your father that you are the king’s favorite and I forbid him to even lay a finger on you.”
“If only Your Royal Highness would put that in writing.”
“I’d be glad to. Come to my office.”
Felek didn’t have to be asked twice.
“Mr. Secretary of the Court, I would like you to write a paper stating that Felek has been named my favorite.”
“But, Your Royal Majesty, there has never been such a position at court.”
“Maybe there hasn’t, but there is now, for that is my royal desire.”
“Perhaps Your Royal Highness would prefer to postpone writing the paper until the meeting of the ministers. That would not be much of a delay, and it would make it all a bit more official.”
Matt was ready to yield, but Felek tugged softly at his sleeve.
“I demand that the paper be written immediately, damn it!” roared Matt.
The secretary scratched his head and then wrote two papers. One said:
I, King Matt, absolutely demand that a paper be written without delay and then be given me for signature. When that paper has been sealed, Felek will be the official Royal Court Favorite. It my will and royal command are not fulfilled at once, those guilty of the delay will be given the most severe and ruthless punishment. This I make known to the Secretary of the Court and confirm with my own signature, written in my own hand.
The secretary explained that only after Matt signed the first paper would he have the right to issue the second one.
King Matt signed the first paper and then the secretary gave him the stamped paper naming Felek the favorite.
Matt and Felek went to the royal playroom and played with toys and read books. They talked about their adventures during the war, and then they ate lunch together. After lunch, they went out to the gardens. Felek called over some other boys their age from the courtyard,
and they all had great fun playing until it was time for the conference of ministers.
“I have to go,” said Matt sadly.
“If I were king, I’d never have to do anything.”
“You don’t understand, Felek, even us kings can’t always do what we want.”
Felek shrugged his shoulders, which meant that he had a different opinion, and then started reluctantly for home; even though he had a paper signed by the king himself, he would still have to meet his father’s stern gaze and the familiar question: “Where’ve you been, you mongrel? Come on, out with it.”
Felek knew what usually came after that question, but this time it was going to be different.
THE MINISTERS WERE moaning and groaning.
The Minister of Finance said that there was no money. The Minister of Commerce said that the merchants had lost a lot of money because of the war and could not pay their taxes. The Minister of the Railroads said that many of the trains that had been sent to the front had been badly damaged and would have to be repaired at great expense. The Minister of Education said that the children had run wild during the war because their fathers weren’t at home and their mothers couldn’t control them. And so the teachers were demanding an increase in pay and the replacement of all broken windows. The fields had not been planted because of the war. The stores were nearly empty. And on and on it went for a whole hour.
The Prime Minister drank a glass of water, which he always did when he was going to speak for a long time. Matt hated to see the Prime Minister drink a glass of water.
“Gentlemen, this is a strange meeting. Anyone who heard us talking like this would think we had been beaten and lost the war. But we are the victors, after all. Until now, the loser always had to pay a lot of money to the winner. And that was fair. Because the winning country was the one that didn’t stint on cannons, powder, and food for its soldiers. We spent the most money and we won the war. Our heroic King Matt could judge for himself that our troops had everything they could need. But why should we pay more money now? They attacked us, they started it, we have forgiven them, which shows our generosity and our goodness. But why shouldn’t they pay us what we spent on the war? We don’t want anything of theirs, but give us what we’ve got coming. Heroic King Matt was carried away by nobility and made peace with the enemy, a deed as wise as it was beautiful, but that free peace has created unprecedented financial difficulties. We can deal with this because we have experience, because we have read many wise books, because we are cautious and skillful, and if King Matt honors us with the same confidence we enjoyed before the war, if our council is willing to accept—”
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