and a pen the size of a water pipe was the Buler s official biographer. My beloved children, the Buler now called out, turning to the multitude, I want to say, may you all be blessed for your superwonder gift to me. Not least of what made it so endearing, he said, was that it came as a complete surprise: not in his wildest dreams had he thought that Aburfria would show its gratitude by attempting something that had never been done in the history of the world. He had never expected any rewards; doing what he had done had been its own reward, and he would continue to do so out of a fatherly love. He stopped, for suddenly near the center of the multitude issued a bloodcurdling scream. A snake! A snake! came the cry taken up by others. Soon there was pandemonium. People shoved and shouted in every direction to escape a snake unseen by many. It was enough that others had; the cry was now not about one but several snakes. Unable to believe what was happening and with none wanting to be first to show fear, the Cabinet ministers cast surreptitious glances at one another, waiting for someone to make the first move.
Part of the crowd started pushing its way toward the platform, shouting, Snake! Snake! Some police officers and soldiers were about to run away but when they saw the Ruler’s guard ready their guns to shoot into the crowd, they stood their ground. The chaos continued unabated.
To calm things down, the police chief shot his gun into the air, but this only made matters worse and the melee turned into a riot of self-preservation as people took to their heels in every direction; after a few minutes, only the Ruler and his entourage of ministers, soldiers, and policemen were left in the park. The head of the secret police woke up from a stupor and whispered to the Ruler, This might be the beginning of a coup d’etat, and within seconds the Ruler was on his way to the State House.
7
The media never mentioned the pandemonium at the park. The headlines of the following days were all about the special birthday gift and the impending arrival of the Global Bank mission, MARCHING TO HEAVEN IN SPACE, intoned the front page of the
So if it had been left to the media, the story about snakes would have remained only a rumor. Ironically, what subsequently gave life to the rumor was the strangeness emanating from the State House.
8
For a number of days the Ruler did not utter a word about what had happened. Those who claimed to be in the know asserted that he was furious and that much of his fury was directed at Sikiokuu. Sikiokuu’s calls for a personal spaceship and a Rock Rover in Heaven came back to haunt him. So intrigued had the Ruler been by Sikiokuu’s suggestion that even in his anger he asked for a video on the exploration of Mars, but when he saw the size of the spacecrafts, especially the early one,
For some days, the Ruler would not receive Sikiokuu, who became so worried that he took steps to stave off the impending explosion. He began by sending his first wife by night to plead for him. The Ruler ignored her. Sikiokuu then sent the second wife. The Ruler ignored her. Sikiokuu sent his much younger third wife. The Ruler ignored her. Finally, he sent his two daughters. It was only then that the Ruler softened and he started to see Sikiokuu again, but then only to vent his anger on the hapless minister.
It was not simply the size of the star surface cruisers or that one bore the name of a slave woman that made the Ruler angry with Sikiokuu. The disruption of the birthday gathering, the memory of the multitude melting away and leaving him and his retinue alone on the field made him boil inside: What message had this sent to the world? Where had all the M5 gone? The intelligence services were under Sikiokuu; hence the Ruler’s fury at him. Why had these services not heard anything about those snake people? he kept asking Sikiokuu.
To save their skins, the head of M5 and Sikiokuu explained that the snake people were members of an underground party, the Movement for the Voice of the People, and that the intelligence agents had known all along about them but had kept the knowledge to themselves to buy time to sort out the truth from rumors to get at the roots of the entire movement. It was not a good idea, they explained, to give the group unnecessary publicity before the fullness of its perfidy was known. One does not rush to hit a snake before it has fully come out of its hole.
This made the Ruler even angrier. And so you gave it time to come out of its hole? How dare anybody say that I cannot strike a snake before it has fully revealed itself? Who says that I don’t have the power to strike at that which is most hidden from view? Sikiokuu’s attempt to diffuse the Ruler’s wrath by explaining that his statement was only a proverb made matters even worse. Was Sikiokuu suggesting that there were proverbs that superseded the Ruler’s mighty sayings? The Ruler had power over all proverbs, all riddles in Aburlria, and no proverb could bar him from hitting the hidden, even in the most inaccessible of holes.
To remind people of this point the Ruler decided to address the nation.
The performance, carried live on all the airwaves, was visually compelling, and people talk about it to this day. His government knew, he told the nation, that certain malcontents, the self-styled Movement for the Voice of the People, had duped university students into scattering plastic snakes at gatherings. He wanted to remind the nation that, in direct response to their wishes, the government had long ago banned all political parties. In Aburlria there was only one party, and the Ruler was its leader. Let it be known to the entire world, he declaimed, that from this minute the Movement for the Voice of the People ceases to exist aboveground or underground. The Ruler was the sole voice of the people, and they loved it so.
To fight the lies of these terrorists he ordered the formation of a new squad, His Mighty Youth, and he asked all school and college students to join and become the Ruler’s youthwings. Their main responsibility was to tell all the land that his might was the might and the light of the nation. The wingers would teach the catechism: Aburlrians can never have a party except the Ruler’s Party or worship political idols imitating the Ruler. On His Mighty Service would be their motto, and this would be inscribed on all their badges, stationery, clothes, and vehicles. OHMS.
The Ruler paused to allow that to sink in within the minds of his televiewers. And then came what has become the talk of all Aburiria and probably the basis for the rumors of snakes, devil worship, and supernatural powers. Emphasizing the warning he was about to issue, he pointed at the cameras with his club-shaped staff as if at the terrorists of the Movement for the Voice of the People. He, the Ruler, would outsnake all their plastic terrorist snakes with real ones. In biblical times, it was the Mosaic snakes that swallowed the Pharaonic ones. Today in Aburiria, it is the Pharaonic snakes that will swallow all of you who think that you are the new Moses.
And suddenly he raised the club higher in the air as if ready to throw it at any and all self-styled Moseses. The cameramen ducked behind their cameras, and all at once, as if hit by the same object simultaneously, every television screen in the country split into seven pieces. The viewers did not know whether the Ruler had actually thrown the club or simply had the power of mind to disintegrate their screens; disagreements remain to this day. Whatever the truth, the television performance did inspire a new snake dance, which became all the rage so that wherever and whenever two or three young people met, they would move their bodies-heads, torso, and hands-in serpentine motions as they sang:
