“Not just to wear a crown—but to bring happiness to the people of his country. But how can you bring them happiness? What I did was to make various reforms.”
Oho, that’s interesting, thought Matt.
“But reforms are the hardest thing of all, yes, the hardest.”
And then the king began playing his violin so sadly that it seemed to be weeping.
Matt stayed up late into the night, thinking and thinking. He tossed and turned, the sad violin music still in his ears.
I’ll ask him for advice. He must be a good person. I am the Reformer King and I don’t know what reforms are. But he says they are very hard.
Then Matt thought some more: But maybe he’s lying. Maybe the three kings have a plan, and the third one will try to give me some document to sign.
Matt had been surprised that none of the kings discussed the loan or anything else with him. After all, kings get together to talk about politics and other important things. But not them. He thought they didn’t want to talk to him because he was little. Then why was the third king treating him like a grownup?
Matt liked the sad king, but he didn’t trust him. Because kings soon learn not to trust.
Matt wanted to fall asleep quickly and began to hum a sad song to himself, when suddenly he heard footsteps in the next room.
Maybe they’re going to kill me, flashed through Matt’s mind. He had heard about kings lured into ambush and murdered treacherously. All his thoughts and the sad king’s mournful song had made Matt edgy.
Matt quickly pressed the button on the electric lamp. Then he slid his hand under his pillow, where he kept his revolver.
“Not sleeping, Matt?”
It was the king.
“I can’t fall asleep.”
“So dark thoughts are even driving sleep from the eyes of little kings?” said the king with a smile, sitting down by the bed.
He said no more but only looked at Matt. Matt remembered that his own father had often looked at him like that and that he hadn’t liked it when his father looked at him like that. But now it felt nice.
“Yes, yes, Matt, you were very surprised when I told you that I didn’t want a war with you but that I went to war anyway. Because you still think kings can do what they want to.”
“That’s not so. I know we have to follow etiquette and obey many laws.”
“Oh, so you do know. Yes, we make bad laws ourselves, and then we have to obey them.”
“But can’t we make good laws?”
“We can, and we have to. You are young, Matt. You must study and learn to make good, wise laws.”
The king took Matt’s hand and placed it on his as if comparing his own large hand to Matt’s little one; then he stroked it very tenderly, bent forward, and kissed it.
Matt felt terribly embarrassed, but the king began to speak quickly and softly: “Listen, Matt. My grandfather gave his people freedom, but it didn’t turn out well. He was assassinated. And people ended up even more unhappy than before. My father built a great monument to freedom. You’ll see it tomorrow. It’s beautiful, but what does that matter when there are still wars, still poor people, still unhappy people? I ordered that great parliament building built. And nothing changed. Everything’s still the same.”
The king seemed suddenly to remember something. “You know, Matt, we always did the wrong thing by making reforms for adults. Try doing it with the children, maybe you’ll succeed . . . Sleep now, dear child. You came to enjoy yourself, and I’ve been keeping you up late. Good night.”
The next day Matt tried to continue this conversation, but the king was no longer in the mood. However, he did give Matt a very clear explanation of what parliament was. Parliament was a huge and beautiful building whose interior looked a bit like a theater and a bit like a church. The members of parliament sat on a sort of stage at a table, just as they did in Matt’s palace during conferences. Except that here there were an awful lot of chairs with all sorts of people sitting in them. Speakers would get up, go to a sort of pulpit, and speak as if they were delivering a sermon. There was a special section where the ministers sat. To one side, at a large table, sat the people who wrote for the newspapers. The public was up above.
When Matt and the king entered, someone was addressing the ministers very angrily. “We won’t allow it,” he shouted, brandishing his fists. “If you don’t do what we want, you won’t be our ministers any more. We need intelligent ministers.”
Another man said that the ministers were very intelligent and they didn’t need any others.
Then they started quarreling and everyone began to shout. Someone shouted: “Down with the government.” Someone else shouted: “Shame on you.” And while Matt was leaving the chambers, someone yelled: “Down with the king.”
“Why are they quarreling like that?”
“Things are going badly for them.”
“But what will happen if they really kick the ministers out?”
“They’ll elect new ones.”
“What about the one who shouted ‘Down with the king’?”
“He always shouts that.”
“Is he crazy?”
“No. He just doesn’t want a king.”
“But can they kick the king out?”
“Of course they can.”
“What would happen then?”
“They’d elect someone else and call him something else.”
It was almost as interesting as the two monkeys he’d been given by the African chief, Vey-Bin.
MEANWHILE, IN MATT’S capital, the newspapers were constantly writing about the welcome the foreign kings had given Matt, how much they liked and respected him, and what lovely presents he was receiving. Hoping to put these new friendships to good use, the ministers wanted to borrow a great deal of money, and to do so quickly. They were worried that Matt would return to the capital and spoil everything at the last moment. It was a good thing that the foreign kings had not been offended by Matt’s postscript to the document, though never before in all the world had any king, even the greatest Reformer King, ever written on an official document: “Don’t be piggy.”
So the ministers had arranged for Matt to spend an extra month abroad, saying that he was tired and needed a rest.
Matt was very happy and asked if they could go to the seashore. And so Matt, the captain, Stash, Helenka, and the doctor traveled to the seashore together. This time Matt wore civilian clothes and stayed in an ordinary hotel, not a palace. And now he was called prince, not king. All this was done so that Matt could stay by the sea—incognito. Because there is a rule that kings can go abroad only when they are invited, and if they want to be by themselves, they must pretend not to be kings.
Matt didn’t care, he even liked it, because he could play with all the children and be like everyone else.
It was wonderful. They went swimming in the sea, collected seashells, built castles, ramparts, and fortresses out of sand. They went boating, horseback riding; they went berry picking in a nearby forest, and found mushrooms, too.
The time went even faster because Matt had started his lessons again, and as I’ve already said many times, he was glad to study and loved his teacher and so three hours of classes did not spoil his fun in the least.
Matt was very fond of Stash and Helenka. They were very well brought-up children and never quarreled with him, or only very rarely, and then just for a very short while.
Once Matt quarreled with Helenka about a mushroom, an enormous mushroom. Matt said that he had seen it first, and Helenka said that she had. Matt would have given in to her, because one mushroom didn’t mean very much, especially to a king. But why was she bragging and lying?
“As soon as I saw the mushroom, I shouted, ‘Oooo, look,’ and pointed my finger at it,” said Matt. “And all you did was run over to it.”
“I picked it.”
“Because you were closer, but I saw it first.”
Helenka grew angry, threw down the mushroom,
and stomped on it with her foot. “I don’t need that old mushroom.”
But she immediately saw that she had been bad. She felt very ashamed of herself and burst into tears.
Girls are strange, thought Matt. She stomped on it herself, and now she’s the one crying about it.
Another time, Stash had built a very fine fortress with a tall tower. It’s hard to make a tall tower from sand because you need very damp sand for that and have to dig deep. Stash was tired from digging. He put a stick in the middle of the tower to give it support and was waiting to see what the waves would do to his fortress. Then Matt suddenly got an idea and shouted: “I’m going to conquer your fort.”
He jumped on the tower at a run and knocked it over. Stash was angry, but he had to admit that it was hard for a king to restrain himself when he saw a fortress, and so he only pouted a little. Then they made up.
Sometimes the captain told them stories about the times when he had fought against savage tribes in the African deserts. And sometimes the doctor would tell them how a disease is like an enemy who attacks a person, that there are little red and white specks like soldiers in the blood which attack the infection and they either win and the person is healthy again or they lose and he dies. There are glands in a person very much like forts. Inside those glands are many corridors, trenches, and places to wait in ambush, and when the infection is drawn into the gland, it gets lost, and then those little soldiers in the blood attack and kill the infection.
They made friends with fishermen who taught them how to tell from the sky if a storm was coming, and whether it would be a big storm or not.
It was interesting to listen to people and nice to play, but sometimes Matt ran off deep in the forest or broke away from the group as if he were going to look for seashells; then he would sit down and think for a long time about what he should do when he returned home.
Maybe things should be as they were in the country of the sad king who played the violin. Maybe it’s even better when all the people rule, and not just the king and the ministers. Why not? A king might be too young and his ministers might not be too wise, or even just plain dishonest. But what could you do then? He had put all his ministers in jail, but then he’d been all alone and not known what to do. But this way he could go to parliament and say: “Choose new, better ministers.”
Matt devoted a lot of time to thinking, but he wanted to get advice from someone. So one day he went out alone with the doctor and asked him: “Are all children healthy like me?”
“No, Matt.” (The doctor didn’t call him king because Matt was at the seashore incognito.) “No, Matt, there are very many children who are weak and sick. Many children live in unhealthy, damp, dark houses, they don’t go out to the country, they don’t eat enough and often go hungry, and so they become ill.”
Matt had already seen some dark, airless houses, and he had also known hunger. Matt remembered how he had often preferred to sleep outside on the cold ground rather than in a poor peasant’s hut. Matt remembered the pale children with crooked legs who would come to their camp and ask the soldiers for a little soup, and he remembered how greedily they had eaten. He thought it was only like that during a war, but now he learned that children often suffered from cold and hunger even when there was no war.
“But can’t something be done,” asked Matt, “so everyone could have nice little houses with gardens and nourishing food?”
“That’s very difficult. People have been thinking about that a long time, but so far nobody has come up with a good idea.”
“Do you think I could?”
“You could, of course you could. A king can do a lot. For example, the king who plays the violin built many, many hospitals and homes for children, and in his kingdom most children go to the country in the summertime. He made it a law that every city has to build camps in the country where children in poor health can spend the whole summer.”
“Do we have any summer camps like that?”
“No, we don’t, because we haven’t made a law like that yet.”
“Well, then, I’ll make one,” said Matt, stamping his foot. “Doctor, I need your help, because naturally the ministers will say it’s too difficult again, that they don’t have this and that, and I don’t know if they’re telling the truth or just giving me a song and dance.”
“No, Matt, they’re right. It isn’t easy.”
“All right, I know. I wanted chocolate given out in one day and they promised to do it in three weeks. And then it took them two months. But they did do it.”
“Sure, but it’s easy to give away chocolate.”
“But if it was easy for the king with the violin to make that law, why should it be hard for me?”
“It was hard for him, too.”
“All right. Hard or not, I’ll do it anyway.”
Just then, the sun, huge, red, and beautiful, began to set behind the sea. Matt was thinking how to make it possible for all the children in his country to see the sun and the sea, go boating and swimming, and pick mushrooms.
“All right,” said Matt on the way back from their walk, “but if that king is so good, why did somebody yell ‘Down with the king’?”
“Some people are never satisfied. There is no king or minister in the world who could win everyone’s praise.”
Matt remembered how the soldiers at the front had made fun of kings and said all kinds of things about them. If Matt had not been to war, he would have thought that everyone really loved him so much they just had to throw their hats up in the air for joy every time they saw him.
After that conversation, Matt studied even harder, and began to ask when they’d be going home.
I have to begin my reforms, he thought. I am the king and I must do just as good a job as the other kings who send all their children out to the country for the summer.
MATT RETURNED TO the capital just when all the arrangements had been made to borrow the money from the foreign kings. Matt only needed to sign the papers and say when and how he would repay the loan.
As soon as King Matt signed the papers, the Chancellor of the Exchequer left with sacks and boxes to contain all the foreign silver and gold.
Matt waited impatiently for the money, because he wished to introduce three reforms:
To build camps in all the forests, in the mountains, and at the seashore so that poor children could spend the entire summer in nature.
To supply all schools with seesaws and merry-go-rounds of the type that play music.
To construct a zoo in the capital, with cages for wild animals—lions, bears, elephants, monkeys, snakes, and birds.
But Matt was soon to meet with disappointment. When the money arrived, it turned out that the ministers couldn’t spare any for Matt’s reforms, because they had only calculated how much was required for their own needs.
A certain amount had to go for new bridges, a certain amount for the railways, a certain amount to build new schools, and a certain amount to pay war debts.
“Had Your Royal Highness told us earlier, we would have borrowed more,” said the ministers, while thinking to themselves: It’s a good thing Matt wasn’t at the meetings. The foreign kings wouldn’t have wanted to lend us money for Matt’s reforms.
“Well, all right. You’ve tricked me, but I know what to do now.” He wrote a letter to the king who played the violin: “I want to introduce the same reforms in my country that Your Royal Highness did in yours. I need a lot of money. My ministers borrowed for themselves, and now I want to borrow for myself.”
Matt waited a long time and had begun to think he would never receive an answer, but then one day during a lesson he was informed that a royal envoy had arrived for an audience. Matt knew what this meant and went to the throne room at once.
The envoy requested that everyone leave, because his business was secret and could only be communicated to the king. When everyone had left, the envoy told Matt that they could lend him money, but only if he created a constitution that woul
d allow the country to be ruled by the people.
“Because if we lend money to Matt, we could lose it, but if we lend it to the people, that’s a completely different story. The only problem is,” said the envoy, “the ministers will never agree.”
“They have to agree,” said Matt. “What else can they do? They agreed to my becoming a reformer king, and so that’s that.”
But the ministers agreed with unexpected ease. They were terribly afraid that Matt would put them in jail again.
Now, when something has to be done, thought the ministers, we’ll say that this is what the whole nation wants and there’s nothing we can do about it. We have to do what the people tell us to. And Matt can’t put the whole country in jail.
Meetings began. The wisest people came to the capital from all the cities and all the villages. And they discussed everything for days and nights on end. It was very difficult to make sure that the whole nation had said what it wanted.
The newspapers wrote so much about the parliament that they didn’t even have any room for pictures. But Matt was a good reader now and didn’t need pictures any more.
Separate meetings were held by the bankers to calculate how much money would be needed to build the camps for the children in the country, the merry-go-rounds, and the seesaws.
Traders came from every corner of the world to find out which animals, birds, and snakes would be needed for the zoo. Their meetings were the most interesting, and Matt always attended them.
“I can sell you four beautiful lions,” said one trader.
“I have the wildest tigers,” said a second.
“I have pretty parrots,” said a third.
“Snakes are the most interesting,” said a fourth. “I have the most dangerous snakes and crocodiles. My crocodiles are big and live a long time.”
“I have a trained elephant. He used to perform in a circus when he was young. He rode a bicycle, danced, and walked a tightrope. Now he’s a little old, so I can sell him cheaply. He’ll be great fun for the children, because he can take them for rides. Children love elephant rides.”
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