Crisis in Zanat

Chapter 1

Without Capital, a Girl gets Nowhere

In the muddle of limestone hills, which is Zanat's problem for the town-planner, two summits stand out above the others. Each is a brown, baldish scowl of rock, crowned raggedly with masonry, and with a few black flames of cypress springing up here and there on its slopes. One is Fort Basil, the other Fort Mikkel. Fort Basil has a neat white tower from which the war-flag of Illyria blows until the evening bugles bring it fluttering down. On mornings of national rejoicing, its battery of Schweik guns tersely declare themselves to the silver mists, summoning the citizens to be merry, display bunting, and don their best clothes. Fort Mikkel's tower is flagless and its ramparts silent. But they are not cannon-less. Forlorn and crumbling as they are, they bear, under cerements of tarpaulin, a gun larger than all the artillery of the rival eminence across the city. A cannon, that, from the head-waggings and awesomely vague remarks of the elder inhabitants, who claim that they have heard it fired in old Prince Mikkel's day, has passed into the legends of Zanat.

M. Bastien, director of the famous Belgian armaments firm, in Zanat on business, had heard the cannon of Fort Basil, newly installed by the hopeful Herr Schweik of Bohemia. "Highness," he had said to Prince Mikkel, "the guns are very nice, but not nearly loud enough. Bastien can do better than that. If I may be allowed to make your highness a little present. . . ."

Big Mikko was one who never refused a present. In a month or so, a monstrous piece of artillery was pulled up the slope of Fort Mikkel. An imposing concrete platform was prepared and, in the presence of the Illyrian general staff in gala uniform, the gun was rapturously demonstrated. As its clumsy thunder trundled over the city roofs, a few hundred windows in Zanat were shattered, the staff visibly paled, the plumes on their kepis bent to the blast, but Prince Mikkel was delighted. That afternoon, M. Bastien was given an order to equip the Illyrian army with field artillery.

But it is one thing, and a fine thing, to have a gun; to fire it is different. The cost in steel, explosive charge and broken window-glass of each stupendous detonation was so daunting that even Mikkel was frugal with the toy. It could not be fired save on an order signed by the sovereign's own hand. And in fact Mikkel gave the order only on the visit to Zanat of some neighbouring ruler whom it was politic to impress with the might and modernity of Illyrian arms. Since Mikkel's death the gun had never spoken. But its reputation lived on. And the business it had once brought to the Zanat glaziers multiplied in telling with the years. Zanat said, "Who has not heard Mikkel's gun has heard nothing." When Fort Basil's battery thudded in honour of a royal birthday, people would remark, with a touch of condescension, "There go the kettledrums," implying that there was a big drum, a mightier tympanum.

There was even a legend, looked on by some scholars as the perversion of a solar myth, that some day in Illyria's hour of need, Fort Mikkel's cannon would sound, and to some purpose. One variation of the legend asserted that Big Mikko would rise from his sleeping place in the royal crypt and, magnificently bearded, himself pull the firing lever. But in fact, the duty of firing the piece would in the ordinary course of things lie with Artillery-Sergeant Gornik, a soured and disappointed man and, since the departure of his daughter Zoe, sole occupant of the desolate and ruinous Fort Mikkel. Once a week the veteran would uncover the Bastien gun, to tend its lean and murderous beauty, oiling here and polishing there, testing the sighting mechanism, the ranging apparatus, the trigger and the recoil system. Once a week, he would inspect the ammunition, piled in gleaming rows as on the day of its delivery from Belgium. But the order to fire never came. And when Sergeant Gornik heard Fort Basil's guns perform their neatly spaced salutation, he would frown and talk about peashooters; or on the other hand, utter an ironic "Boom, boom", and pretend to be deafened.

He was not greatly interested in his daughter. Apart from teaching the child, as a father should, the principles of gunnery and the management of every part of the cannon, he neither looked after her in the present nor prepared her for the future. When, on her sixteenth birthday, she left Fort Mikkel to become a chambermaid at Mrs. Latiniki's select hotel in Zanat, all he said was, "One day, my child, you shall hear from us." And Artillery-Sergeant Gornik put a red and bony forefinger to his nose. Zoe knew what he meant. But although she said dutifully, "Yes, Father," she had no real hope. She left the gaunt old fort with the firm belief that she would never see it or her father again. And this saddened her. Sergeant Gornik seemed to his daughter a pathetic and thwarted man. But still more was she saddened by the thought that she too had a very poor chance in the life that lay ahead of her. She belonged to an unlucky family, that was quite apparent; a family whose cannon was never fired.

Zoe took up her duties at Mrs. Latiniki's, expecting little good from life, yet warily resolved to ward off the worst. Caution was not a superfluous virtue at Mrs. Latiniki's establishment, especially since Zoe, unknown to her father and but dimly suspected by herself, was of such as might come down to earth, not from ancient and gloomy ramparts, but from radiant heights, treading airily, flower-bedecked, to rejoice the children of men.

This circumstance was in due course observed by various citizens of Zanat who began to take an interest in Zoe's future. Watching her pass along the street, men would say kindly, "That girl has never had a chance." Their wives, however, would remark with some grimness, "That girl doesn't need a chance." But the first person to act on the knowledge which one glance at Zoe abundantly vouchsafed to mankind was a Spanish visitor to the hotel, who asked Zoe one day if she had thought of making herself a career as an actress. He had by chance surprised a private dream which Zoe had long since put away as not for her. But the Spaniard said, "Nonsense! A girl with a figure like yours has a great future on the stage." Only it would be necessary for her to go to South America, to the great cultural city of Buenos Aires, where girls with theatrical gifts grew fabulously rich, thanks to the generous and artistic public. It turned out that he was going there himself very soon and nothing would please him more than to be her escort. So profound was his faith in Zoe's future that he went so far as to buy her a new dress, which the girl showed to her friend Georgi, the policeman. Georgi listened with care . . .