Stanley Elkin - Criers & Kibitzers, Kibitzers & Criers

The next morning he came again to the palace gates. In a short while he heard the clatter of the horses pulling the royal carriage. In a moment trumpets blew and the gates were pushed open smartly by the palace guard. The carriage lumbered through and he saw the royal hand go up. In the white glove it seemed flaccid, contemptuous of the crowd it had given the signal to stop for. He heard the wheels skid noisily as the coachman applied the brakes. The king smiled and whispered to the duke beside him, the white glove shielding the side of the king’s mouth. Of course, he thought. He’s mocking us.

He stared steadily at the duke, who was smiling, obviously enjoying himself. He was certain now he had not imagined the resemblance between them. It’s real, he thought, I do look like him.

The man he had spoken to the day before came up beside him. “It’s amazing,” he whispered. “He could almost be your father.”

“I know, I know, ” he said hoarsely.

An old woman curtsied at the side of the carriage, her ancient body shaking in the awkward position. She spoke rapidly and he could not hear what she said. At last he heard the king thank her and watched as, still bent in the stiff curtsy, she backed away from the carriage. When she stood, turning to face the crowd, he saw that her face and neck were flushed. Several in the crowd had gathered around her and were demanding in excited voices that she tell them what had been said.

Just then he saw a very tall, white-haired man begin to move forward slowly, approaching the carriage. Before he realized what he was doing he found himself pushing through the crowd urgently, roughly. Walking quickly, he was soon abreast and then ahead of the tall man, who, startled by his brusqueness and misinterpreting what had happened, thinking somehow he had made a mistake and had disgraced himself before his king, stepped back to lose himself in the crowd.

In the meantime he continued to advance, head downward, to the side of the carriage. He stopped when he saw before him, at the level of his chest, the high top of a yellow wheel. He was conscious of the odor of dung and felt a random, irrelevant anger. He stood by the side of the carriage, his eyes inadvertently falling on the small pile of manure flattened precisely at its center where the rim of the wheel pressed on it. He had no idea what he would say, nor why he had so precipitately come forward. His mind burned. He stood there for at least a minute, his head bowed, trying desperately to think of something to say. Finally he heard the king’s voice above him. “Yes?” it said. He could think of nothing. He had no sensation, except for the consciousness of the medallion which hung from his bowed neck like a heavy weight. He could feel the sharp point of the shield shape prick uncomfortably against his flesh. He thought of the terrified eagle, impudent usurper, on its surface, and as he pressed his chin still tighter against his chest it seemed that surely the point of the shield would pierce the skin, as if the talons of the eagle itself might dig themselves into his bunched flesh. Again he heard the voice above him. “Yes? What is it you want?” it asked impatiently. He looked up quickly, jerking his neck, and saw the king’s face looking down into his own. The quickness of the movement had startled the king, but he did not look away. Neither did he avert his own gaze, but stared directly into the king’s face, the frightened eyes. His own eyes strained desperately, as though he were forcing them to see a great distance. He seemed to search for something in the king’s face; he did not himself know what. It was as though he were trying to recognize something there, the horn-helmeted strength perhaps, or the ferocity he had predicated as a premise for kings. At last the king, his outrage mitigated by embarrassment at this stranger’s stare, looked away; his eyes darted nervously to the guards, who came forward quickly. He shot his white glove toward the driver and the carriage lurched away.

A guard came up to him. “Here now, what’s all this?” he said.

He looked at the guard absently for a moment and then began to walk away.

“Wait a minute,” the guard yelled, rushing after him. “Hold on, now. I asked you a question. What’s all this about?”

“He’s all right, Guardsman,” the man said who had spoken to him before. He touched his temple familiarly, obscenely, and winked at the guard. The guard stopped, looked at the man, grinned and made no effort to go after him as he walked off.

During the long day, and then in the evening on the docks, his excitement did not wane. It was self-assertive, something true about himself, like the color of his hair. He went over each detail of his encounter, and though he could not forget that he had behaved stupidly, had stood, hulking and dumb, a great gaping baby, the odor of dung corrosive in the wings of his nose, he did not forget either that it had been the king who had finally averted his eyes. Thinking about the king, he saw him in a new light — pale, delicate, watery, committed not to the obligations of kingship, but merely to its ceremonies, dressed not in the skins of animals he felt he would himself have worn, but in a neat blue uniform, vaguely naval — a king of peace and quiet in a country that kept the armistice, whose borders were historical and as fixed and final as a canceled stamp. He imagined lawn parties and the king — excusing himself, too tired to dance — in the static blue uniform, a banker’s image of a king, the uniform merely a cloth against which one hung red and yellow ribbons, symbols of imaginary campaigns. For himself he eschewed even armor. Kings should ride forth naked into battle, panoplied only by their anger. They should still be what they had been once: leaders, recruiters for the kingdom who, sitting their horse in an open field, could tease a hero from each coward, could shout, “ The day is ours .”

But this king had seen him that morning as a kind of enemy, had looked at him through those conceited eyes as he must have looked at all his subjects — as slightly mad. Yet there was a difference. He had elicited fear, had come forward to thrust an assassin’s eyes into his face until, in confusion and terror, the king had been forced to look away. His presence had disturbed the bored placidity of even those hands, white-gloved agents of the royal will, had stiffened them in unfamiliar urgency and made them a real king’s hands, if only for a moment, and if only a frightened king’s. But it would not do, he thought angrily, to be remembered as a madman, and it would not do — he recalled the gesture of the man he had spoken to at the palace gates — to be dismissed as harmless. He was not harmless. If his claims were at all valid (and as yet he had made no claims) their validity was a threat. Made to wait so many years, thrust aside with only the medallion as a warrant for an insight into his condition, restoration would harm them all.

What he must do now, he thought, was to contact the duke. He did not know his name, nor even his formal title, but that was no real problem. There would be pictures in the newspapers and in the magazines. He even imagined one: a photograph of a man reclining in a lawn chair, the face in profile, the beard heaped in an awkward mound upon the neck.

Nevertheless it took him two weeks to find out the duke’s name, and another week to get his address from the registry. On approaching a clerk in the registry office, he had been so secretive, not realizing that his was a normal request, that the clerk had hesitated, and then, sensing that he was dealing with a man merely unfamiliar with the procedures, had deliberately made him believe that his request had been quite out of the way, hinting to him that certain risks were involved, that he was only a clerk, that he was taking upon himself a terrible responsibility. It had ended by the clerk’s extorting from him a small sum of money that it had not been necessary for him to pay at all.