Arkady Strugatsky - Hard to Be a God

The spiders had met. Don Reba was sitting in a tense posture, his elbows resting on the desk and his fingers interlaced. A heavy throwing knife with a wooden handle was lying on top of a pile of papers to his right. The minister was wearing a pleasant although somewhat dazed smile. Honorable Waga was sitting on a sofa with his back to Rumata. He looked like an eccentric aged nobleman who hadn’t left his country palace for the past thirty years. “The chonted will shlake,” he said, “and they’ll unbiggedly shump the margays with a hollow blackery. That’s twenty long heapers already. It’d be marky to knork the motleners. But the heapers are bedegging redderly. This is how we’ll heaten the rasten. That’s our struntle.”

Don Reba stroked his clean-shaven chin. “That’s tooky jelly.”

Waga shrugged. “This is our struntle. Denooting with us isn’t rastenly for your gnawpers. It’s revided?”

“It’s revided,” said the Minister of the Defense of the Crown decisively.

“And drink the circle,” Waga said, getting up.

Rumata, who was listening to this gibberish dumbfounded, discovered a bushy mustache and a pointy gray beard on Waga’s face. A true courtier from the time of the last regency.

“It was nice to talk to you,” said Waga.

Don Reba also got up. “The conversation with you gave me great pleasure,” he said. “I have never before seen a man as courageous as yourself, honorable…”

“Me too,” said Waga in a bored voice. “I’m also amazed and proud of the courage of the First Minister of our kingdom.”

He turned his back on Don Reba and shuffled toward the door, leaning on his staff. Don Reba, continuing to look at him pensively, absentmindedly placed his fingers on the handle of the knife. Someone behind Rumata’s back immediately took an extremely deep breath, and the long brown barrel of a blowpipe squeezed past his ear toward the gap between the curtains. Don Reba remained standing for a second, as if listening, then he sat back down, opened a drawer, extracted a pile of paper, and became absorbed in his reading. The man behind Rumata’s back spat on the floor; the blowpipe was removed. Everything was clear. The spiders had agreed. Rumata got up and, stepping on somebody’s feet, started making his way back out from the lilac quarters.

The king dined in a huge hall with two tiers of windows. The ninety-foot table was set for a hundred people: the king himself, Don Reba, the royals (two dozen full-blooded individuals, gluttons and drunks), the Minister of the Court and the Minister of Ceremonies, a group of highborn aristocrats invited by tradition (this included Rumata), a dozen visiting barons with their ox-like baronets, and at the very end of the table various aristocratic small fry, who had somehow finagled an invitation to the royal dinner. When these last were being handed their invitations and chair numbers, they were warned, “Sit still, the king doesn’t like it when people fidget. Keep your hands on the table; the king doesn’t like it when people hide their hands under the table. Don’t look around; the king doesn’t like it when people look around.” At every such dinner, vast quantities of fine food were devoured, whole lakes of ancient wines were drunk, and masses of dishes made from the famous Estorian china were damaged or broken. In one of his reports to the king, the Minister of Finance bragged that just one of His Majesty’s dinners costs as much as maintaining the Soanian Academy of Science for half a year.

While he waited for the Minister of Ceremonies to proclaim “To the table!” three times, accompanied by trumpets, Rumata stood in a group of courtiers and listened for the tenth time to Don Tameo’s story about the royal dinner that he, Don Tameo, had the honor to attend six months ago.

“… I find my seat, we stand up, the king comes in, sits down, we also sit down. The dinner goes on as usual. And suddenly, imagine this, my dear dons, I feel something wet underneath me. Yes, wet! I don’t dare turn around, squirm, or feel it with my hand. However, I find an opportunity to stick a hand underneath me—and what happens? It really is wet! I smell my hand—it doesn’t smell like anything in particular. What a fable! Meanwhile, everyone is getting up, and as you can imagine, noble dons, I am somehow afraid to get up. I see the king—the king himself!—walking toward me, but I keep sitting, as if I were a bumpkin baron without any manners. His Majesty comes up to me, smiles indulgently at me, and puts his hand on my shoulder. ‘My dear Don Tameo,’ he says, ‘everyone has gotten up and is about to go to watch the ballet, but you’re still sitting down. What’s wrong, did you eat too much?’ ‘Your Majesty,’ I say, ‘chop my head off, but something is wet underneath me.’ His Majesty was so gracious as to laugh and order me to stand up. I get up—and what happens? Laughter all around! Noble dons, I had been sitting on rum cake for the whole dinner! His Majesty was so gracious as to laugh a lot. ‘Reba, Reba,’ he said, finally, ‘these are all your jokes! Would you be so kind as to clean the noble don up, you soiled his seat!’ Don Reba, laughing uproariously, takes out a dagger and starts scraping the cake off my pants. Can you imagine my condition, noble dons? I won’t deny it, I was shaking in fear at the thought that Don Reba, humiliated in front of everyone, would take revenge on me. Fortunately, nothing happened. I assure you, noble dons, this was the happiest experience of my life! How the king laughed! How His Majesty was pleased!”

The courtiers roared with laughter. In fact, such jokes were customary at the royal table. The invitees would be seated in pâtés, in chairs with sawed-off legs, on goose eggs. They’d been seated on poisoned needles too. The king liked to be amused. Rumata suddenly thought: I wonder what I would have done in this idiot’s place? I’m afraid that the king would have had to look for another Minister of Defense, and the Institute would have had to send another man to Arkanar. In any case, I need to be on my guard. Like our eagle Don Reba.

The trumpets sounded, the Minister of Ceremonies bellowed melodiously, the king limped in, and everyone began to take their seats. The guardsmen on duty were standing motionless in the corners of the hall, leaning on their two-handed swords. Rumata got taciturn neighbors. On his right, the seat was filled with the quivering bulk of the sullen glutton Don Pifa, the husband of the well-known beauty, and on his left, Gur the Storyteller was staring at an empty plate. The guests paused, looking at the king. The king stuffed a grayish napkin in his collar, scanned the dishes, and grabbed a chicken leg. As soon as he sank his teeth into it, a hundred knives fell onto plates with a clatter, and a hundred hands reached for dishes. The hall became full of chomping and sucking sounds; wine started gurgling. The mustaches of the motionless guardsmen with the two-handed swords began to twitch avidly. Once upon a time, Rumata had gotten nauseated at these dinners. Now he was used to them.

Carving a shoulder of mutton with his dagger, he glanced right and immediately turned away: Don Pifa was hanging over an entire roasted wild boar, working like an excavator. He left no bones. Rumata held his breath and drained his glass of Irukanian wine in one gulp. Then he glanced left. Gur the Storyteller was listlessly picking at a small plate of salad with a spoon.

“Are you writing anything new, Father Gur?” Rumata asked in a low voice.

Gur started. “Writing? Me? I don’t know… A lot.”

“Poetry?”

“Yes… poetry.”

“Your poetry is abominable, Father Gur.” Gur looked at him strangely. “Yes, yes, you’re no poet.”