A couple of delegates wanted to voice objections, but the majority had already raised their hands, and Felek said: “Parliament has passed the resolution.”
WORDS CANNOT DESCRIBE what went on in Matt’s country when people learned of the decision passed by the children’s parliament.
“This is anarchy!” said some people angrily. “Who are they giving orders to? We have our own parliament, and we don’t have to submit to them. Their parliament decides what the children are to do, and they have no right to interfere in our affairs.”
“All right, say we do go to school, then who’ll work?” others asked.
“Let the children get a taste of work. They’ll see it’s not as easy as they think.”
“Who knows?” said those with calmer heads. “It might even be a good idea. When the children realize how much knowledge work requires, they’ll have more respect for us.”
The people who were out of work were the happiest of all.
“Matt is a wise king. We were about to start a revolution, but he came up with a good idea. Our bones ache from digging coal, and now we’ll be sitting on comfortable benches while learning interesting things. But how much will we be paid?”
A law was passed that people would be paid the same for schoolwork as for regular work, because work was work. And another law was passed saying the children would go to work and the grownups would go to school.
There was tremendous confusion, because most of the boys only wanted to be firemen or drive a truck and the girls wanted to work in toy stores and pastry shops. There were the usual stupid ideas: one boy wanted to be a hangman, one boy wanted to be an Indian, and one boy wanted to be a lunatic.
“But we all can’t be firemen and work in toy stores!”
“I don’t care about that. I just want to do what I want.”
There were many family quarrels when the children handed their parents their textbooks and workbooks.
“You got your books all dirty and now the teachers will yell at us for being messy,” said one mother.
“You lost your pencil and now I don’t have anything to write with and the teacher will be mad,” said one father.
“You were late with breakfast, so write me a note saying that’s why I’m tardy,” said one grandmother.
But the teachers were very happy. Now they’d get a little rest, because grownups were calmer than children.
“They’ll set a good example for the children,” said the teachers.
Of course there were some people who had a good laugh at the whole thing, and some who thought it interesting and different.
But everyone said it wouldn’t last long.
The city looked strange with the grownups walking to school carrying books and the children going to the offices, factories, and stores. Some grownups were grumpy or ashamed, but others didn’t mind at all.
“So we’re children again. That’s not so bad either.”
Some of them even ran into old classmates they’d once sat next to in school. They talked about their old teachers, the games they used to play, and the mischief they’d made.
“You remember our old Latin teacher?” said one man, who was now an industrial engineer.
“Do you remember that fight we had once, what was it over?”
“Sure I do. I bought a jackknife and you said it was made out of iron, not steel.”
“And we were sent to the cloakroom.”
A doctor and a lawyer got so carried away with stories about the old days that they completely forgot they were no longer boys and started chasing each other and knocking people off the sidewalks; a passing teacher told them that was no way to behave in public.
But some grownups were very angry. A fat woman who owned a restaurant was on her way to school in an absolute fury, when a mechanic recognized her.
“Look, there goes that big fat cow. She’s always cheating us at her restaurant. She waters your vodka and charges you the price of a whole herring for one slice. You know what, let’s trip her. If we’re going to be children again, we might as well do it right.”
He put his foot in front of her. The fat woman almost fell on her face. Her books went flying.
“You bad boys!” she yelled.
“It was an accident.”
“You just wait, I’ll tell the teacher you weren’t letting people walk down the street in peace.”
The children, however, were very calm and dignified and by nine o’clock were at work in the offices and stores.
All the grownups were in school. The older people sat in the back to be nearer the stove. They figured on catching a few winks during class.
And so the grownups did their reading, writing, and arithmetic. Everything went pretty well. The teachers tested them to see how much they had forgotten. The teachers only got angry at the grownups a few times for not paying attention. It was hard for them to pay attention, because they were all thinking about what was happening at home and in the factories and stores.
The girls were working as hard as they could to make their first dinner a delicious one. But not all of them knew how to cook.
“You know what, let’s serve jam instead of soup.”
And so they went to the store to buy some jam.
“Oh, it’s too expensive. Let’s buy the jam somewhere else.”
Some children bargained to show they were smart shoppers, and some salesmen wanted to brag that they had the best prices in town, and so business went well.
“Ten more oranges, please.”
“And a pound of raisins.”
“And some Swiss cheese. But make sure it’s fresh, or I’ll bring it back.”
“I have nothing but the best cheese, and my oranges have nice thin skin.”
“Fine, how much will that be?”
The salesmen would try to add it all up, then give up and ask: “How much money do you have?”
“Twenty.”
“That’s not enough for all this stuff.”
“I’ll bring the rest later.”
“Well, all right.”
“But please give me my change.”
“How can you be so stupid! First, you don’t give me enough money, and then you want change.”
It has to be admitted that the children weren’t always polite to one another in the stores and offices, and often said things like “You’re dumb!” “You’re lying!” “Get out of here!” “No means no.” “Watch it!” “What do you want now?” “Scram!” and so on.
They also said things like “You just wait until Mama comes home from school.”
Or “I’m telling my dad everything as soon as school’s over.”
The street kids caused the most trouble—they’d run into a store, stuff their pockets, and refuse to pay.
There was a sort of police force. Boys stood on the street corners, but they still weren’t sure what they were supposed to do.
“What kind of policeman are you, anyway! Some bad kids ran into my store, grabbed a handful of dried plums, and then ran out without paying,” said one salesgirl.
“Which way did they run?”
“How should I know?”
“Well, if you don’t know, how can I help you?”
“You’re the policeman, you should be watching.”
“Sure. You have one store and you can’t keep an eye on it, and I have fifty stores to keep an eye on.”
“You’re a jerk.”
“If you’re going to call me names, don’t call me the next time you’re in trouble.”
The policeman left the store, stumbling on his sword.
“Listen to her. She wants me to catch the thief, but she doesn’t even know which way he went. This is a lousy job. All you do is stand around like a dope. And that stingy salesgirl didn’t even offer me an apple. I don’t want to be a policeman any more, and that’s final. Let people do whatever they want. I can go back to school if they don’t like the way I’m doing my job.”
When the grownups ca
me home from school, the children opened the door for them and asked: “Did you hand in your composition, Mommy?”
“Did you do your homework, Daddy?”
“Who’d you sit next to, Gramma?”
“What row are you in?”
After work, some children stopped by the school to walk their mother or father home.
“Well, what did you do at the office?” the father would ask.
“Nothing much. I sat at my desk, then I watched a funeral go by out the window. I tried to smoke a cigarette, but it tasted terrible. They put some papers on my desk and I signed them all. Then three men came to see me. They must have been speaking French or English, and I told them I couldn’t understand what they were talking about. Then it was teatime, but there was no tea, so I ate some sugar. I called up some of my classmates to find out what they were doing, but the telephones are all messed up. I talked to one friend who was working at the post office. He said there were a lot of letters with foreign stamps there.”
Dinner had turned out well in some homes but had been burned to a crisp in others. And some children hadn’t even been able to light the stove, which meant that now their mothers had to make dinner in a hurry.
“I have to rush,” said one mother, “because I have a lot of homework for tomorrow. Our teacher said grownups have to do more homework than children. But that’s not fair. The teachers in the other schools aren’t giving such big assignments.”
“And did anyone have to stand in the corner?”
The mother was a little embarrassed. “Yes.”
“For what?”
“There were two women in the back row who knew each other from before. They had shared a summer house or something. They chatted during the whole lesson. The teacher told them to stop twice, but they kept right on chatting. And finally the teacher made them stand in the corner.”
“Did they cry?”
“One laughed, but the other one had tears in her eyes.”
“Did the boys pick on you?”
“A little.”
“That’s just how it was for us,” said the children gleefully.
MATT WAS SITTING in his study reading the newspaper, which gave an accurate report on the first day. The article admitted that things were far from running smoothly, that the telephones were working very badly and the letters weren’t being sorted properly at the post office. A train had been derailed, but nobody knew how many people had been hurt because the telegraph system wasn’t working. Patience was needed; the children didn’t know how things worked yet. Every reform needs time. There’s never been a reform that didn’t jolt the economy.
Another article said that a subcommittee was working out the details of the law concerning the schools in such a way that teachers, children, and parents would all be satisfied.
Suddenly Klu Klu came running in. She clapped her hands and jumped for joy. “Guess what just happened.”
“Well, what?” asked Matt.
“One thousand African children just arrived.”
Matt had forgotten that he had wired King Bum Drum to send one hundred children. But a parrot or some other bird must have tapped the wire with its beak, which made the telegraph tap out an extra zero. And so it turned out that Matt had invited a thousand children, not a hundred.
Matt was upset by the news, but Klu Klu was happy as could be. “That’s even better. The sooner more children start studying, the sooner we can build a new Africa.”
Klu Klu set right to work. She had all the children line up in the royal gardens. She chose ten she knew to be reliable and put each of them in charge of one hundred children. And they in turn chose a leader for each group of ten. Every leader of ten was given a room in the summer palace, while the ten main leaders lived in Matt’s winter palace. Klu Klu told them what the rules were in Europe. They passed on this information to the other leaders, who then explained things to their groups of ten.
The same method would be used for their schooling.
“Where are they going to sleep?”
“For now, they can sleep on the floor. After all, they’re still uncivilized, so what do they care?”
“But what are they going to eat?” asked Matt. “The cooks are all in school.”
“They can eat raw meat for now. After all, they’re still uncivilized, so what do they care?”
Klu Klu hated to waste time and gave the first class right after lunch. She explained everything so clearly that in four hours the leaders had already learned quite a bit and could start teaching their own groups.
Everything seemed to be going well, until a messenger on horseback galloped up to the palace to report that, by accident, the children had opened the wolf cage at the zoo and let all the wolves out. The people in the city were too terrified to leave their houses.
“Even my horse was afraid, and I had to whip him hard,” said the messenger.
“But how did the wolves get out?”
“It wasn’t the children’s fault,” said the messenger. “The zookeepers left for school without telling the kids who took their places about the switches that open the cages. And so they threw a switch by accident.”
“How many wolves got out?”
“Twelve. One of them is very bad. Catching him won’t be easy.”
“And where are the wolves now?”
“Nobody knows, they ran off in all directions. People say that they’ve seen them running down the streets. But you can’t believe them, because they’re so frightened they think every dog’s a wolf. There are even rumors that all the animals have escaped from their cages. One woman swore that she was chased by a tiger, a hippopotamus, and two cobras.”
As soon as Klu Klu found out, she asked what wolves were like, because there were none in Africa and she’d never seen one. She asked Matt a million questions.
“Do they roar? Do they slink around before they attack, or do they jump right at you? Do they use their teeth or their claws? Will they attack you even if they’re not hungry? Are they brave or cowardly? Do they have good hearing, smell, sight?”
Matt was ashamed that he knew so little about wolves, but he told her what he could.
“I think,” said Klu Klu, “that they’re hiding in the park near the zoo. I’ll go there with my group leaders and fix this situation in two minutes. Too bad the lions and tigers didn’t escape. That would have made for better hunting.”
Matt, Klu Klu, and the ten group leaders set off for the zoo. People stood at their windows and watched. There wasn’t a single person on the street. The stores were closed up tight. The city looked deserted.
Matt was ashamed that his people were so cowardly. When they reached the zoo, the group leaders began playing their drums and flutes as loud as they could. But they could not spot any wolves in the bushes or trees.
“Halt!” cried Klu Klu. “Ready with your bows. Something’s moving over there.”
Klu Klu dashed forward, grabbed hold of a branch, and pulled herself up into the tree, a great big wolf snapping at her heels. Standing on its hind legs, the wolf scratched the trunk with its front claws. It howled, and all the other wolves answered it with howls.
“It’s the leader,” cried Klu Klu. “They won’t be any problem without him. Go around the bushes and drive them out.”
They did what Klu Klu said. Frightened by all the noise, the wolves began to run away. The group leaders shot their smallest arrows at them and banged their drums loudly. They came at the wolves from the right and the left. And five minutes later, all eleven wolves were back in their cage.
They locked the cage right away. Now the twelfth wolf saw that he was all alone and bounded away.
Klu Klu hopped down from the tree. “Hurry,” she cried. “Don’t let him escape from the park.”
But it was too late. The crazed wolf had fled into the city. And now the people really did see a wolf running through the streets, chased by Klu Klu and ten black children. Matt was bringing up the rear. He couldn’t keep up with
those African children. Sweaty and tired, he could barely stand on his feet. Just then, a kind old woman invited him into her apartment and gave him some milk and rolls.
“King Matt,” she said, “you are a good king. I’m eighty years old and I’ve seen all sorts of kings. Some were better than others. But there’s never been one like you. You didn’t forget about us old people. You’re sending us to school and you’re kind enough to pay us to study. I have a son who lives far away, in another country. He writes to me twice a year. I save his letters, but I can’t read them. But I don’t want strangers to read them to me, because there might be something secret in them and maybe they’d trick me and not tell me what the letters really said. But now I’ll be able to find out for myself. The teacher said that if I really try I’ll be able to write to him myself in two months. That will make my son so happy.”
Matt finished his milk, kissed the old woman’s hand, thanked her, and left.
Meanwhile, the wolf had jumped through an open manhole into a sewer. Klu Klu was about to crawl in after it.
“Stop! I won’t allow it,” cried Matt. “It’s dark down there. You’ll either suffocate or that wolf will tear you to pieces.”
But Klu Klu wouldn’t be stopped. She put a hunting knife between her teeth and climbed down into the sewer. Now even the African children were afraid, because there was nothing more dangerous than fighting a wild animal in the dark.
Trying to decide what to do, Matt suddenly remembered that he had a flashlight with him. And then, without even stopping to think, he lowered himself into the sewer. Where could they be in such a narrow pipe? But this wasn’t the main pipe. Up ahead, he could see a river of water, mud, and filth. The stench was so bad it made Matt gag.
“Klu Klu,” called Matt, his voice echoing back from every direction, for the sewers ran under the entire city. Matt didn’t know whether Klu Klu had answered or not. He kept turning his flashlight off to keep the batteries from going dead. Just then, up to his knees in water, Matt heard a terrible racket in one of the tunnels.
He turned on his flashlight and saw Klu Klu and the wolf. Klu Klu was stabbing the wolf in the throat with her knife, but then the wolf grabbed her hand in its teeth. Klu Klu quickly switched the knife from that hand to the other and began stabbing the wolf again. The wolf let go of her hand, lowered its head, and was about to sink its teeth into her stomach. If it tore open her stomach, that would be the end of Klu Klu. His revolver in one hand, Matt rushed at the wolf, shining his flashlight right into the wolf’s eyes. Blinded by the light, the wolf bared its teeth and snarled. Matt shot the wolf right through the eye.
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