After Zenda

by John Spurling

  So what appeared to be a preponderance of Germans from the heart of the establishment negotiating with two Slav outsiders under a disinterested English referee was in fact a pressure group aimed at loosening the President’s grasp on power in favour of the referee. Whether President Slovbodjak himself realised he was the victim of a velvet coup no one could be sure. Heinz Albert was too smooth an operator to suggest at any point that he wasn’t, as he sat, confronting the two outsiders and shoulder-to-shoulder with his President. But the combination of undeclared interests all on one side with the military weakness of the Germans, plus Slobodjak’s own sense of guilt at having betrayed the Slavs, would probably have been enough on its own to convince him he might as well let go. As it was, faced with Yelena, he became as soft and nearly as gooey as an overripe pear. Pity the philosopher who meets - or thinks he meets - an angel! He doesn’t transform into a theologian, which is only another sort of arguer, but into a convert, a mindless worshipper of mystery and divine beneficence.

  President Slobodjak fell in love with Yelena just as instantly as I had and Michael had and no doubt Fisher too (and Colonel Starvrilev and his Cossacks, for that matter, not to speak of half the population of Karapata) and was happy, like the rest of us, to think of it as something more spiritual than physical. Perhaps it was. Or perhaps it’s simply physical abstinence that turns sex into love. I never succeeded in getting between Yelena’s legs, but I ‘loved’ her far more intensely than I did Gerda or Clare or even darling Susha (to name only those sexual partners I’ve included in this story).

  Anyway, by the time the Count’s delectable cold lunch was served half way through the afternoon, the President would have ceded his palace there and then, if only Yelena had been the great-grandaughter of Queen Flavia. When the table of salads, with asparagus, caviar, smoked salmon, spiced chicken-legs, thin rolls of underdone beef, salami and cheeses was brought in by the ‘Royal Elphberg’ staff, Slobodjak himself filled Yelena’s plate, carried it to her and sat beside her on the sofa. Had his eyes left hers for a moment he would surely have twigged the collusion of everyone else in the room, since we all - even Michael - exchanged little winks or smiles at this significant development.

  During lunch the discussion turned from whether an agreement could be reached to how it could be implemented: what concessions could be offered by the Germans and accepted by the Slavs, how this might affect the constitution and the forthcoming election, how the True Faith could live at peace with the Catholic and Orthodox churches, and how security for the agreement could be guaranteed once the guerrillas dispersed to their farms and the Cossacks pulled back beyond Vlod. But would the Cossacks then pull back to Ukraine? Would Ukraine forgive them for causing trouble with a neighbouring country or would it punish them? I had to continue pretending that I had no knowledge of or contact with the Cossacks, so Yelena grasped this nettle immediately:

  ‘The Cossacks must stay in Ruritania,’ she said.

  Consternation all round.

  ‘For two reasons,’ she said. ‘First, because they’ve burnt their bridges with Ukraine. Secondly, because we Slavs of the True Faith owe our safety to them. We want them to stay and we make it an absolute condition of any agreement that they do. In any case, it would be useless to tell them to go. You might as well order them to go and shoot themselves as return to Kiev to be disciplined. They already have Kapitsa and they could seize Zenda tomorrow and maybe Strelsau the day after.’

  So that potentially disastrous debt of mine was covered in advance and Yelena went on to propose that the Cossacks should be given land for their own semi-independent community in the foot-hills between Bilavice and Kapitsa, where they would remain as permanent guarantors of the good faith of Germans towards Slavs.

  ‘Do you mean roughly the area where we dumped your hair from the train-window?’ I asked, smiling at the President to remind him that he already knew this intimate secret.

  ‘About there,’ she said.

  I could see that her latest devotee already liked the idea a lot.

  ‘Goldenhair Valley!’ I said, ‘Land of the Ruritanian Cossacks!’

  ‘This is how myths are made,’ said Slobodjak, not disapprovingly.

  ‘Are you suggesting they would be permanently armed?’ asked Heinz Albert.

  ‘All Cossack hosts are organised on military lines,’ said Yelena. ‘They will have to be attached to the State independently of the Ruritanian Army, directly answerable to the Head of State.’

  There was a pause, while they all considered the implications both for the State and the Head of State, whoever that might be.

  ‘Two separate armies?’ said General Practsin.

  ‘For two separate ethnic groups in one country,’ said Yelena. ‘Or you could say one body with two legs, two arms and one head.’

  Outside it had stopped raining at last and through the windows a few visitors to the country club could be seen strolling through the trees. There were only a few because most were afraid of being caught between the guerrillas and the Army and broke off their spring holidays prematurely. Only the boldest and dumbest stayed and were able to boast afterwards of being present unawares at the historic Mayakovsky Dacha Treaty. There may be a moral in that.

  Nibbling fastidiously at a slab of gruyere, Heinz Albert, with something of the creaky deftness of a famous but ageing matador, now initiated the last phase of what had become a kind of bullfight.

  ‘All these arrangements are very well so long as you remain President, Stepan. You can be trusted to stand up for the Slav minority and indeed our present constitution reserves more power to the Presidency than in many other republics for that very reason, as a counter-weight to the advantage held by the German majority in elections. But when - if- you should retire, we must remember that the next President will also be elected by a majority and that that person might not be so well trusted by the minority. Then all the arrangements we may make today, including this interesting proposal for a Cossack homeland, could unravel and bring about another civil war with less reasonable leaders on either side.’

  The President misunderstood him - or perhaps, since politicians use a coded language of their own, understood him perfectly.

  ‘You mean, Heinz, that the Slavs no longer trust me as they did and it will be hard to win their approval for these arrangements in the forthcoming election?’

  The Prime Minister began to bite into a large red apple and put his head on one side as if he agreed but didn’t commit himself to saying so.

  ‘Should I perhaps step down and should Mrs Lopotska stand for the Presidency? Dare I say she might be equally attractive to both Slavs and Germans?’

  He was joking, probably - at least everybody except Practsin smiled. Michael made his sneer and Yelena, who had risen from the sofa and was going out of the room to find the loo, bowed slightly in humorous acknowledgment.

  ‘But I’m not a Ruritanian national,’ she said. ‘You should change your constitution more radically, Mr Slobodjak. You’re lucky enough to have available a man everybody can love, a worthy descendant of your national heroine Queen Flavia. I think Ruritania should be a kingdom again.’

  She went out, leaving us all embarrassed. This was exactly what we’d all, except the President, come here to bring about; but not so overtly. Our unspoken plan was that the ground would be opened and fertilised at this meeting and that its success through my agency would make the crop spring up more gradually in the minds of the press and public. Slobodjak was not a fool. He may never have realised that he was the victim of a preconceived plot, but as he looked round at us now he understood that Yelena had spoken for everybody. His eyes came back to his particular friend, Heinz Albert, and he spoke Latin:

  ‘Et tu, Brute?’

  ‘A wild idea,’ said the Prime Minister, without dropping his eyes, continuing to munch delicately round the core of his apple, ‘but if what we’re really talking about is unifying the country, it’s nearly as attractive as your own wild idea for
Mrs Lopotska.’

  Slobodjak went on looking at him as he thought about it.

  ‘Could you get a majority in parliament on this platform?’ he asked.

  ‘Very likely. Especially if we achieve a good agreement at this meeting and make known who was its designer.’

  That put the whole conspiracy in a nutshell, but if Slobodjak guessed he pretended not to.

  ‘It bears thinking about,’ he said.

  Soon afterwards the Count’s staff came in with a birthday cake and lit its thirty blue candles.

  ‘A celebration?’ said the President.

  ‘A tribute to our young friend,’ said the Count, waving at me, ‘on reaching the age of discretion.’

  The President examined the cake. It was iced all in white with a crimson script: ‘Karl Marx Rassendyll’. Slobodjak turned to me incredulously:

  ‘Is that really your name?’

  ‘I said my father was a believer.’

  ‘Just as well you’re not,’ he said.

  I saw Yelena come into the room and stop in surprise at the cake.

  ‘Not at least in that prophet,’ I said.

  I cut the first slice. Nobody mentioned a wish or sang ‘Happy Birthday’. Everybody knew what the wish was and we none of us felt like pretending to be children. I put the slice on a plate and gave it to Yelena, who nibbled a crumb for form’s sake.

  ‘Red writing, white icing, blue candles,’ she said. ‘How tactful of the Count to remind us of your neutral nationality and how sly to put the Elphberg rose there too!’

  She sounded and looked now like the victim of a vampire. She’d probably been doctoring herself in the loo. It struck me she must have put in her sudden sword-thrust about the kingdom because she was running out of puff and couldn’t wait any longer for the others to bring the bull to his last stand. The bull himself, carrying his own slice of birthday cake, came and joined us.

  ‘I can understand why you fought for those people,’ he said, perhaps meaning both of us. ‘You are very young and it’s sometimes easier to be right when you’re young than when you’re old.’

  The meeting broke up soon afterwards. The public would be told on the news that night that a truce had been arranged and they could sleep quietly. The details would be worked out in the next few days. Asked what exactly the public should be told, the President said:

  ‘Where the meeting took place, those who took part in it and that the conclusion was peace and brotherhood.’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t mention my name,’ said Yelena. ‘You can say a representative of the Cossacks.’

  ‘And shouldn’t we say to whom the credit for the truce is due?’ asked the Count.

  ‘The credit is due to all of us,’ said the President, ‘but principally to this lady and to the great-grandson of our last monarch. The lady cannot be mentioned, but perhaps the gentleman can. Not his middle name, however! That would confuse people.’

  I was able to speak privately, though very briefly, to Yelena as I helped her out to her car.

  ‘If it happens, will you come to Strelsau as soon as possible?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘And will you revoke your sentence of never to be yours ?’

  She stumbled - or perhaps deliberately pressed against me.

  ‘I would, dear Karel, with all my heart, but one sometimes speaks the truth without meaning it.’

  She kissed me on the mouth and got slowly into the car.

  ‘Please thank Colonel Stavrilev and tell him what you’ve done for him,’ I said.

  ‘As he has done for us,’ she said and lay back against the seat.

  I couldn’t disguise my red eyes and wet face from Michael as I shook his hand through the car window and Orlin drove away. Nor could I disguise them from the President who was waiting by his own car to shake my hand.

  ‘She’s very ill?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  Tm sorry,’ he said. ‘But she did the trick, didn’t she? In my view, Karl - may I call you that? - she could very easily be the Virgin Mary. At any rate the Virgin Mary herself could have done no more than she did. And if gods come to earth at all, I’m sure they never do stay long.’

  The President stayed in office until after the election, having promised he would readily step down and endorse a new constitution if the Royal Party of National Reconciliation (PRRN), led by Count von Wunklisch and Heinz Albert, gained a majority. My reputation rose like a gas balloon with the news of my role in averting civil war and postcards of the flat-capped guerrilla in the mountain-stream making his victory sign and of the Count and Rudolf Rassendyll’s descendant smiling at one another in the grim dungeon of Zenda Castle began to sell even better than ‘Karl and Karapatan Girl’. The PRRN swept to power and I became King of Ruritania.

  I was crowned that autumn by the Archbishop of Strelsau with Flavia’s own simple gold circlet, which was an excellent fit - thanks to Vladek’s goldsmith - and generally thought to be a better symbol of modern monarchy than the sort of gem-encrusted wedding-cake normally used on these occasions. Since the Ruritanian crown jewels had long since disappeared, it was cheaper too. The ceremony was long and included rites performed by the Orthodox patriarch as well as rambling statements of good will from several members of the True Faith, during which a very new, still hairless sprog began squalling furiously and had to be taken out by its doting parents, Susha and Mikos.

  There were many other old friends in the cathedral that day. From Bilavice came Gerda (now its mayor) and ex-sergeant Brobek with other ex-members of the Bilavice home guard; from Chostok or thereabouts came Corporal Radichev and Tishkon Yavelets’ whole family, with other ex-guerrillas; from Previce Castle, Magda and her mother; from Kapitsa, the junior officers of the Second Regiment (many now promoted). Michael and Vakisch (both now generals in the Royal Ruritanian Army, from which most of the old high command had been purged) were there, as were Andrzej (now personal bodyguard and fitness adviser to His Majesty) and Anton Grabenau (one of the deputies elected for the PRRN). General Stavrilev and a mounted troop of the Royal Ruritanian Cossacks formed the guard of honour before and behind my open British-racing-green Bentley (not a charge to the State, it was acquired second-hand in Switzerland by the Count at his own expense), as we processed through the packed and cheering crowds, which flung innumerable British-labour-party-red roses, but fortunately no bombs or bad eggs (I was too much loved) on our way to and from the Cathedral.

  Among the most important guests in the front rows of the congregation, with minor foreign royalties, ambassadors and third-rank international politicians, were, of course, my prime minister, Count von Wunklisch, my foreign minister, Heinz Albert, ex-President Slobodjak and his wife, and General Practsin, now in overall command of the airforce as well as the security services, since there could be little security for a ruler in such a small country as Ruritania without tight control of the airforce. Also up front were Vladek Tarlenheim (newly appointed Director of Ruritanian Heritage, including all museums and historic buildings, which I hoped would leave him no time to paint); my distant (le mot juste) cousin, Lord Burlesdon, an elderly horsebreeding type who disapproved of my not wearing a robe and knee-breeches for the ceremony and flew home immediately afterwards; General Danzing (re-appointed Ruritanian Ambassador in London); an elderly couple no one knew from a barge on the River Volzer; and two British tourists from Hackney, delighted to find the exchange rate of the Ruritanian kruna still more advantageous than the year before, though it hardly mattered - except for buying souvenirs - since they were staying at the Palace and would accompany the King, all expenses paid, on his first ceremonial tour of the country. Freddy and Jennifer, I must say, took my new job extremely well. Freddy gave me invaluable advice on how to handle civil servants, while Jennifer immediately started to redesign the interior of the Palace for me and promised to order new furnishings and fittings from Heal’s, unless, she said, I preferred cheaper things which would wear out sooner. I got the im
pression they were both quite confident that I wouldn’t be in this position much longer than in previous ones, but as Jennifer said:

  ‘The good thing about this job is that, even if you drop it, it doesn’t go out of the family.’

  Clare Studebaker was not, sadly, in the congregation. We quarrelled over the confiscated video-tapes and cassettes, which never were returned to her and which Michael - not, I think, meaning any harm - told her he only took on my instructions and had now destroyed, also on my instructions. She was posted elsewhere - some trouble-spot in Africa, I think - after General Danzing complained to the BBC about a hostile report she broadcast almost on the eve of my coronation.

  Nor was Yelena there. She stayed in the hospital at Vlod until after the election and I visited her whenever I could spare the time, but she was dead before my coronation - at the end of which I kissed the toe of Our Lady of Wloczovar with such passion that one of the papers suggested I must be ‘a truly religious man’. Yelena is buried with her husband the water-engineer at Chostok. In her honour the statue of Our Lady of Chostok was restored to the church (which remained otherwise bare and, regrettably to Dr Moritz, retained by the True Faith) and is becoming a shrine to her memory among all the people of Karapata of whatever denomination, as well as the third most popular tourist venue in the country, after Zenda and Strelsau itself. Outside the church, in spite of the disapproval of the True Faith, there is always a lively trade in relics, especially small cellophane sachets of golden hair, said to have been picked up along the railway line to Kapitsa, but I’m sure most of that went to line birds’ nests or fill some peasant’s pillow and the only true hair is the bunch still possessed by Michael.