Arkady Strugatsky - Hard to Be a God

The elder bushes at the end of the block suddenly rustled, and Don Tameo crawled into the alley. Seeing Rumata, he cried out in joy, jumped up, and, tottering wildly, moved in his direction, reaching his mud-smeared hands toward him. “My noble don!” he cried. “I’m so glad! I see you’re also going to the office?”

“Of course, my noble don,” Rumata answered, skillfully avoiding the embrace.

“May I join you, noble don?”

“I’d be honored, noble don.”

They bowed to each other. It was clear that Don Tameo had started yesterday and hadn’t yet been able to stop. He extracted a finely made glass flask from a pair of extremely wide yellow pants. “Would you like some, noble don?” he offered courteously.

“Thank you,” Rumata said.

“It’s rum!” declared Don Tameo. “Real rum from the metropole. I paid a gold piece for it.”

They went down to the dump and, holding their noses, began to walk between piles of garbage, corpses of dogs, and reeking puddles swarming with white worms. The continuous hum of myriad emerald flies was in the air.

“How strange,” Don Tameo said, closing the flask, “I’ve never been here before.”

Rumata didn’t say anything.

“Don Reba has always amazed me,” said Don Tameo. “I was convinced that he would eventually overthrow our worthless monarch, pave new roads, and open shining prospects for us.” With that, his foot slipped into a yellow-green puddle, splattering him heavily, and he grabbed Rumata in order not to fall down. “Yes!” he continued when they reached solid ground. “We, the young aristocracy, will always stand behind Don Reba! The desired relaxation has finally come. Judge for yourself, Don Rumata. I’ve been walking the alleys and kitchen gardens for an hour but I haven’t met a single gray. We’ve swept the gray scum off the face of the earth, and how sweet and easy it is to breathe in the reborn Arkanar. Instead of the coarse shopkeepers, those insolent boors, and the peasants, the streets are full of the servants of God. I’ve seen it myself: some noblemen are now openly strolling in front of their houses. They no longer need to fear that some imbecile in a dung-covered apron will splatter them with his filthy cart. And we now no longer have to fight our way through yesterday’s butchers and haberdashers. Blessed by the great Holy Order, for which I have always had the utmost respect and, I will not conceal, heartfelt affection, we will arrive at a state of unprecedented prosperity—in which not a single peasant will dare raise his eyes at a nobleman without a permit signed by the district inspector of the Order. I’m bringing a memorandum about this right now.”

“What a horrible stench,” Rumata said with feeling.

“Yes, it’s awful,” Don Tameo agreed, closing the flask. “But how easy it is to breathe in the reborn Arkanar! And the price of wine has fallen by half.”

By the end of their walk, Don Tameo had drained the flask to the very bottom and hurled it away, and had become extraordinarily excited. He fell twice, the second time refusing to clean himself off, declaring that he was sinful and unclean by nature and wished to present himself in that state. He kept reciting his memorandum at the top of his lungs: “How forcefully put!” he exclaimed. “Take this passage, for example, noble dons: ‘Lest the reeking peasants…’ Hmm? What a thought!” When they got to the courtyard behind the office, he collapsed onto the first monk he saw and, bursting into tears, started begging for absolution. The half-suffocated monk fought back fiercely, tried to whistle for help, but Don Tameo clutched his cassock and they both tumbled into a garbage heap. Rumata left them behind, and for a long time, as he was going away, kept hearing the plaintive intermittent whistling and exclamations: “‘Lest the reeking peasants’! Bleeessings! With all my heart! I felt affection, affection, you get it, peasant face?”

A detachment of monks on foot, armed with fearsome-looking knotted clubs, was standing in the square by the entrance, in the shadow of the Merry Tower. The corpses had been removed. The morning wind was swirling yellow columns of dust around the square. Crows were screaming and quarreling beneath the wide conical roof of the tower—there, as always, the bodies of the hanged swung upside down from the exposed beams. The tower had been built about two hundred years ago by an ancestor of the late king for military purposes. It had been built on top of a solid three-story foundation, which was once used to store reserves of food in case of a siege. The tower was later turned into a prison. But then an earthquake had collapsed all the interior walls, and the prison had to be moved to the basement. In her time, some Arkanarian queen had complained to her king that the wails of the tortured resounding through the neighborhood interfered with her amusements. Her august husband ordered a military band to play in the tower from morning to night. That was how the tower had gotten its current name. It had long been an empty stone shell—the investigation chambers had long been relocated to the newly excavated, very lowest floors of the foundation—and it had been a long time since a band had played there, but the residents still called it Merry.

The square near the Merry Tower was usually deserted. But today the place was bustling with activity. People were being led, pulled, and dragged along the ground toward the tower—storm troopers in torn gray uniforms, lice-ridden vagabonds in rags, half-dressed city residents covered in goose bumps from fear, hysterically screaming girls, and whole gangs of sullenly staring tramps from the night army. And at the same time, corpses were being removed from the tower, hauled out with hooks through some hidden passageways, stacked onto carts, and driven out of the city. The tail of an extremely long line of noblemen and wealthy citizens, which extended out of the open doors of the ministry office, watched this appalling commotion in fear and confusion.

They allowed everyone into the office, even bringing some people in under escort. Rumata pushed his way in. It was as stuffy here as at the dump. An official with a yellow-gray face and a big goose feather stuck behind his protruding ear was sitting at a wide table surrounded by lists. The next applicant, the noble Don Keu, gave his name, arrogantly fluffing his mustache.

“Take off your hat,” the official said in a colorless voice, without looking up from his papers.

“The privilege of the family of Keu is to wear a hat in the presence of the king himself,” Don Keu proclaimed proudly.

“No one has any privileges before the Order,” the official said in the same colorless voice.

Don Keu huffed, turning livid, but took the hat off.

The official ran a long yellow nail along the list. “Don Keu… Don Keu…” he muttered, “Don Keu… Royal Street, Building Twelve?”

“Yes,” Don Keu said in an irritated bass voice.

“Number four hundred eighty-five, Brother Tibak.”

The heavyset Brother Tibak, who was sitting at the adjacent table, crimson from the stuffy air, searched through the papers, wiped the sweat off his bald head, stood up, and read out monotonously, “Number four hundred eighty-five, Don Keu. Royal, Twelve, for the defamation of the name of His Grace the Bishop of Arkanar Don Reba, which took place at the palace ball the year before last, shall receive three dozen lashes on his bared buttocks, and shall kiss His Grace’s boot.”

Brother Tibak sat down.

“Down that corridor,” said the official in a colorless voice, “the lashes on the right, the boot on the left. Next.”

To Rumata’s complete astonishment, Don Keu did not protest. He had apparently already seen a lot in line. He just grunted, adjusted his mustache with dignity, and departed for the corridor. The next in line, the giant Don Pifa, quivering with fat, had already taken off his hat.