KING’S DAY

Remembering Mark Twain, I might say that I have been both Prince and the Pauper, both personalities separated by more than one year. In fact, my Pauper was rather a poverty- stricken rebel, what they call extremists these days. I was out on Independence Square in Kyiv, collecting funds to dismantle that huge monstrous statue of the titanium woman with a sword that glowers over the Dnipro, called Mother the Protectress (or just Ugly Mother. —Ed.) and a true sore on the city’s backside. I was in the subway stations, collecting the tax-reduction tax, serving to satisfy a cultural and economic need, so to speak. And I dressed accordingly when acting as king and as an outcast. But first things first.

Over a year ago, after having my system patched up and eyesight improved somewhat, attending Norbekov’s courses of treatment, on the penultimate day (the course lasted ten days), I and others in the groups were assigned a special kind of homework. Each was to dress in a provocative way, so as to check just how free each at us was.

They gave us an example, a Moscow millionaire who dressed like a hobo and was quietly digging in a heap of garbage when he was picked up by a militia patrol. They were about to take him away when his mobile phone, an expensive model at that, buzzed in a pocket. In the end, he apologized and identified himself. The lawmen were not too happy, but let him go after checking his identity.

Honestly, I wasn’t too happy to get the assignment. The thing is that we were daily reminded of man being either king or slave, or both, albeit in varying proportion. True enough. It was thus Anton Chekhov squeezed the slave out of himself, drop by drop, so as to leave more room for the king.

I remembered that I had played the Prince. I had been tired of playing Ivanushka the Simpleton, a hero of Russian fairy tales, lucky daredevils, cowboys, and Indians, so playing Ivanushka was refreshing.

I had made a crown of cardboard and foil, a mantle of an old dress from mother, and, dressed like that, walked out into the yard. Nothing much happened, except an old lady following me for a while, mumbling something and making signs of the cross, but I ran away. I was four, but I still remember everything vividly.

Returning to my story, we were assigned to dress in an extravagant manner, so, considering my youthful experience, it was no problem. It was time to play the king once again.

However, it is one thing being constantly told that you should don a virtual crown and an altogether different thing actually putting on that crown, even if a cardboard one.

I spent two hours in the morning making a crown from cardboard and foil, remembering my very young experience. Then I asked mother to lend me some cloth, preferably bright- colored, most preferably royal purple. My mother was not happy about my social experimenting and gave me a dirty rug. She must have secretly hoped that I would accept it, and others would think it was my old beach towel. I angrily rejected it, saying it could not pass muster as royal apparel. In the end we found a length of decent fabric royal purple, albeit polka dotted. It’s all right, I told myself, suppose it’s a royal Moderne style.

Lest the public have any beach- towel illusions, I affixed a Czech fancy brooch at my neck. Now this would surely be taken for what it was, royal insignia.

I had attuned myself to my role and was about to walk out of the apartment when mom returned from the grocery store and went into hysterics. She would never let me out, crying that I was in mortal peril, they would beat whatever could be beaten out of me, and such. Who would touch me, I asked her sarcastically. Someone surely would, she replied tearfully.

I denied any such possibility, but my mood was not as bright as only minutes before.

Mother let go of me and suddenly noted that the crown looked gorgeous. See what I mean, I said and felt charged with fresh enthusiasm. It had been two hours of artwork, I informed her proudly.

The first to see me out of the house was a local drunk reclining on a bench. “Got a smoke”, he asked, raising his head and when his bleary eyes focused on me he inquired sympathetically if the crown wasn’t too tight. I said no, it was custom-made. Good for you, the tippler agreed.

I walked down the street, sensing that my unusual attire was creating some kind of high voltage field around me. I decided to follow my usual route without deviating a centimeter. I had my homework, and I would do it well.

I bought my usual newspaper at the kiosk and there I found myself under a spell of royal generosity. I bought a stack of copies of The Day and proceeded to hand them out to passers-by, I also gave a copy to the woman in the kiosk. Then we had a nice chat, among other things about Paris, which I had visited recently.

On my way to the fixed-route taxi stop no one seemed to pay any special attention to me, except the children and teenaged girls.

Inside the fixed-route taxi no one visibly responded to my looks, not even the driver. It was not as though they had noticed and were now pretending not to find anything unusual about my clothes. It was something else. They simply did not notice my carnival costume. How self-centered of them!

It was only in the second fixed- route taxi that a young lady seemed to pay some attention. She was two seats ahead and kept turning to look at me, I was even worried about her neck. The two workmen sitting right in front of me were bleary-eyed and looked right through me.

Apart from the kids, militiamen were also interested, but they were trained to notice things out of the ordinary. office when I found myself in front of an OMON militia riot squad detail. There were ten hefty guys. I was walking by the curb and they were moving in the opposite direction on the sidewalk. As if by silent accord their heads turned to me and I turned to them. When our eyes met we burst out laughing without slowing our pace.

At the office the security guard asked me in a worried voice, “What’s happened?”

“Nothing, I’m fine, in fact better than ever,” I told him.

The next person I met was the most sober-mind one on staff, our commercial manager. We shook hands and for quite some time he was unable to identify the phenomenon facing him. I tried to make the atmosphere somewhat easier and said, “It’s just the King’s Day today.”

“Oh, so that is,” he sounded relieved, although I could see that he didn’t understand. I also thought that I’d just found a very accurate formula and wondered how many kings there were in the offices and streets. After that I fooled around a little to make my colleagues and the management feel better.

I especially enjoyed the reaction of the Deputy Editor-in-Chief. She was at her desk, writing something, when I stepped in. She looked up and went on writing, murmuring to herself something like load of rubbish.

“What do you mean rubbish,” I objected. “Take a good look, it’s me.”

Later, I spent quite some time weighing the pros and cons of making the Editor-in-Chief happy by presenting myself in that festive attire. In fact, I was not sure even after her secretary nearly dropped out of her chair laughing. But then the door to the sanctum sanctorum opened and there was nowhere to retreat.

I looked at the Editor-in-Chief and was speechless. The way she was dressed — regal was the first word that came to my mind. Her stylish stunning dress was kept in a style best described as medieval, and the impression was heightened by a chain necklace instantly reminiscent of knights, ladies, tournaments, flashing swords, and flying spears.

I was stunned (and so was the Editor-in-Chief), and all I managed was to ask, “Why aren’t you wearing a crown?”

She did not know what to say at first, then she turned to her deputy and pointed at me, “I knew that he was taking a course of ophthalmologic treatment, but I didn’t know he was that bad...”

On my way to the Metro station, no one paid attention, except a little lop-eared boy whose eyes open wide. He turned to look at me and exclaimed, “Duncan McLeod!”

In the underpass from Independence Square to Khreshchatyk, two youths followed me for a while, talking in stage whispers, apparently determined to stage a spot forensic medical experiment.

“Come on, ask him the time,” one urged the other.

“You want to ask, go ahead,” hissed the other. And the first one turned out to have intestinal fortitude. Quickly he walked ahead of me, then turned and asked politely, “Excuse me, what time is it?”

“Quarter to six, boy,” I politely replied. But the youth just stood there, gaping, rooted to the ground. Then he turned to his friend. The experiment was effectively over.

I walked all the way from the Arsenalna Metro station to Sichnevoho Povstannia [January Uprising] Street. It was only there that I became aware of the crown’s weight on my head. The place seemed swarming with gawks and they were all staring at there is some kind of short circuit, and you turn into a lightning rod. In my case I felt like getting to the place of treatment as fast as I could.

Yet I had promised myself that I would not change anything in my route, so I had to step into the supermarket to buy a bottle of mineral water.

A plump salesgirl was talking to another one across the counter. She turned to look at me and suddenly asked, “How do you like my new dress?” It was light and vinous and I honestly said it was great.

“How do you like my crown?” I asked her in turn.

“It’s cute,” she replied, ending the exchange of compliments.

I told the other salesgirl I wanted a bottle of mineral water at room temperature.

“Yes, I understand,” she said.

Several minutes later I received an ice-cold bottle that immediately started sweating. I also realized that had not been able to explain room temperature to her at the moment.

I walked into the big room where the course of treatment was to be performed and was greeted with applause. I was the only king, it appeared, but otherwise it was a real masked ball. What amazing creative potential is secreted in the masses! It was then I had rid myself of the writer’s snobbishness, once and for all.

Among others, I noticed a girl with a scuba mask and a snorkel. Her costume was complemented by an elegant bowtie. She told me a young man gawked at her for five minutes nonstop in the subway, and she told him, “I’m scuba-diving, you know.” He did and placed a good distance between the two of them.

A young man named Mykola had chosen a standard workingman’s attire. Nothing out of the ordinary, it seemed. Except that he lacked one sleeve and half a trouser leg. Simple but effective.

“I thought a long time what to do about my clothes,” he told us from the podium, “and then I solved the problem with two strokes of an ax.” The audience laughed, and Mykola made the appropriate pause. “Then I walked out of the house and the old lady on house watch raced after me, yelling, “Mykola, for Heaven’s sake, what has happened?” I told her everything was OK. I was tense at first, but then I relaxed. I walked and thought that I’d cut all my problems had gone up that cut sleeve and then out that trouser leg.”

I thought he was a born poet.

Others laughed and said people handing out leaflets with enticing business proposals by the exits of the Arsenalna Metro station had almost gone insane watching grotesque figures emerge one after the next: a woman wearing a marine uniform and a chestful of medals, with a wreath and ribbons on her head, a man sporting a Panama hat, like Jules Verne’s Prof. Jacques Paganel, with a butterfly net (he was actually a biologist), or even an elderly woman wearing children’s clothes.

In the end those dispensing leaflets would melancholically wave such characters on, saying you go over there, you’ll find others like you.

I took off my extraordinary headgear only before going to bed. I thought that playing the king was anything but simple. Nevertheless, one had to cleanse one’s feelings, now and then, of the rust of experience and age, since I found out that only children could adequately respond to miracles.

A year later when the third level was passed in Kyiv for the first time in four years, we were assigned to play someone we strongly disliked, actually hated.

But that is another tale