HOW NORMAN FAILED TO PASS A QUALIFYING EXAMINATION FOR THE POST OF KING
OF ALSANDER, AND WAS WHIPPED: TOGETHER WITH A DIGRESSION ON THE
EXCELLENCE OF WHIPPING
Les cris ne sont pas des chants.
_Paul Fort_
Norman was about to laugh at this unusual question when he seemed to
catch the eyes of the Board of Examiners at once (for he could think of
them under no other designation). All the eyes seemed to be looking at
him with such peering intentness that he began to believe that they were
all unintentional and not intentional lunatics, and therefore dangerous.
So he simply bowed. If it is a joke, thought Norman, that will be in
keeping; if it is not, it will be expected of me. And he thought himself
clever.
"Very good," said the little man, abruptly. "I think, Doctor," he
continued, turning to a prominent Hebrew on his left, "that the
preliminary examination should be conducted by you in person."
"I will begin at once. Take off your clothes," said the Doctor,
addressing the last remark to Norman in a tone of command.
"But really...." began Norman, in expostulation.
"Absolutely necessary, I assure you," continued the Doctor. "For the
proper exercise of monarchical functions nothing, not even courtesy, not
even common sense, is more important than a sound physical condition. To
judge of that condition it is imperative that you should take off your
clothes. I may add," he continued, not unkindly, "that considering your
general appearance I do not think that you will have much difficulty in
satisfying the examiners on that score."
Norman was so puzzled by the evident gravity of the heavy-bearded
doctor's speech and demeanour that he began to believe that a certain
mad seriousness underlay the whole proceedings. It seemed to him
unlikely that a dozen lunatics possessed of a common mania should find
such a facility of meeting together in solemn assembly, even in
Alsander. The poet, whom he still believed to be the prime instigator of
this curious comedy, though eccentric, was no madman. So, having rapidly
summed up in his mind the pros and cons of the case, Norman cautiously
took off his coat.
However nothing less than complete nudity would satisfy the Doctor, and
Norman, with growing reluctance, shed garment upon garment till, in the
words of the Eastern poet, "the shining almond came out of his dusky
shell," and "the petals of the rose lay strewn? upon the ground."
However, at a word from the shopman, who seemed in authority, Norman was
permitted to retain as much clothing as would satisfy the by-laws of a
very free bathing resort. The Doctor then rose, came round the table,
and, seizing hold of the unfortunate, tapped him, pinched him, prodded
him, poked him, felt his muscles, sounded his chest, examined his
tongue, blew in his ears, slapped his stomach and tried his pulse. All
this to the intense aggravation of his victim.
But when the Doctor finally commanded him to rim round the room as he
was and climb along the rope that dangled from the ceiling, the boy
succumbed to over-mastering indignation.
"I am not going to stand any more damned nonsense from you or anybody
else," cried Norman. "This joke has gone quite far enough, and though it
may amuse you vastly to make a fool of me I'll knock down the next one
of you who tries it on."
The effect of his words was as instantaneous as he could have wished;
there could be no mistaking the anger that flashed in the eyes of these
curious examiners. Even Norman, in the heat of his excitement, noticed
that, though he failed to notice that the youthful President's face (for
the young shopkeeper seemed to be President, to judge from his central
chair) remained unmoved save for a slight ocular twinkle. It was the
President, however, who addressed him: "I am afraid," he said, "that we
shall have to ask you to dress and leave us at once."
"I won't leave the room until you apologize to me, and if you don't
apologize I'll punch your head." And Norman, all but naked as he was,
began to bend up and down a very decent right arm and seemed well
capable of executing his threat.
"You should be more patient, sir," observed the President, waving
towards Norman his gold-embroidered sleeve with a conciliating smile. "I
assure you that it is to your advantage to obey us, and very much to
your disadvantage to be rude. I admit that our demands, coming from
total strangers, seem both impertinent and extravagant, but I assure you
that they are necessary, and I should like to impress you with the
earnestness of this apparently inane procedure. The Doctor only desires
to see your muscles in motion. I assure you, your body is not a thing of
which you need be ashamed. Should you disobey, you will be in serious
danger."
"I don't believe you. You dare not touch me. I am an Englishman,"
retorted Norman, refusing to be conciliated.
"I am afraid," replied the President, ringing a little electric bell
which was under his hand, "that we shall have to give you immediate
proof of the earnestness of our intentions and our power to cause you a
disadvantage."
At once four guards entered the room, whom Norman from their uniform and
faces recognized to be the very palace guards who had let him and the
supposed beggar pass into the palace the day of their memorable visit.
Unfortunately for Norman, they wore no longer the air of benevolent
sleepiness which had characterized them on that former occasion; they
were obviously wide awake and attentive to command.
"Do you still refuse to perform the exercises demanded of you?" inquired
the President.
"Yes," said Norman, stubbornly.
"Haul him up," said the President quietly, but with anger in his eyes.
Norman found his wrists seized before he could make the slightest
resistance, and he was swung up on to the back of the tallest of the
guards.
"Do you refuse also to apologize?" said the Doctor.
"Yes."
"Let him go away quietly," said the President.
"Why should we hurt him? We cannot expect him to understand us."
"I insist on an apology. I will not leave the room without it," said
Norman. "As for you, you soppy little fool...."
His bewilderment rapidly gave place to alarm. He wished he had not been
quite so rude to the President, who, after all, had been polite. Still,
he hoped he might be simply undergoing some form of Test by
Verification, like the legendary Masonic hot poker. At least, I suppose
it is legendary. But when from the tail of his eye he beheld from his
undignified perch a horsewhip in the hands of one of the guards, he
tried to remember the sufferings of his days in the village school at
Blaindon, which, after all, were not of such remote antiquity.
He wondered, like the schoolboy, how many? If, that is, he really was to
suffer after all.
His apprehensions were confirmed and relieved by the President, who
exclaimed in a wickedly gentle voice, "I'm very sorry, but I suppose you
must give him a dozen." The maniac examiners were quite capable, he had
felt convinced, of beating him to death, and a dozen? Why, a dozen was
about the extent of the good old pedagogic punishments, which he had
endured stolidly in his time, and many of them.
A new question surged through his mind. What was the brawny guard about
to aim at? Was the supreme indignity to be conferred upon him before all
these pompous personages to emphasize his unfitness for dignity? Norman
hoped so, for to tell the truth, he didn't care a damn about the
dignity, but he thought it would hurt less and was more used to it.
Meantime he had never felt so cold, and the rough cloth of the guard who
was holding his wrists so tightly grated unpleasantly against his naked
chest.
His dignity was not damaged. His shoulders were. He discovered his old
pedagogue to have been the mildest and most inefficient flagellator in
the world. Let us leave him to his punishment and philosophize a little.
Philosophy and the whip? Is there not always some subtle connexion? Has
not a whipping always meant for us something more than a whipping? Is it
not a symbol? Think of this, youthful reader, if you are still in the
happy days of subjection and possibility, and may it comfort you in the
hour of trial. The Spartans formed their character, the Romans ruled the
world, with whippings. With little whips the Kings of Egypt made the
Jews work with their hands--honest manual toil, to which that race no
longer much inclines; he built his pyramid and flogged a great nation
into life. But the East, the golden East in the golden days--that was
the world for whippings. In other climes and other times, whipping has
been a symbol of degradation; in murderous Russia it has been, they say
it is, something too foul for the philosopher to look at. But when there
were Caliphs in Bagdad, then whipping was the joyous symbol of
democracy. Are you rich and powerful, the Caliph's friend? Tread
delicately on those rich carpets: the day comes when to put foot to the
finest Bokhara may be a torment to make you howl. Are you a poor pedlar
selling glasses from a tray? Repine not at your barefoot treading of the
cobbled lanes: it is all practice for the soles; you shall fare better
than your proud neighbour on the day of affliction. Quick! Bow your
head: put your hands in the sleeves of your tattered abba. The great
Vizier is coming, the Window of Heaven, the Tulip of the Garden of
Government, the Sun's Moon, the Vizier. And behind him, O Allah! the
blazing luminary of the universe itself! Where shall you hide from those
dazzling rays? The Caliph comes. Some insolent retainer has kicked over
all your glasses. Your little fortune has gone. No longer will you cry:
"O sunset, O sunrise, O ocean drops my glasses,
O emeralds, O rubies, O sapphires, O my glasses!"
Your wife will curse you, your children will starve; your dreams of a
little ease are shattered with the shining crystals; your fortune lies
with them prostrate in the dirt. You crouch in the doorway. But ho! what
is that? The Vizier's horse has shied, he is kicking, he has kicked the
Sun of the Universe off his saddle. All that splendour is smirching the
bashful mud! Forgetting yourself, you rush to help him; your dirty,
horny fingers pick up Perfection, careless of sacrilege. You wait and
tremble, for Perfection is himself again. The Vizier is pale. The
Monarch gives a sign to the blackest of his black negroes. Down comes
the Tulip of the Garden of Government. The Vizierial beard is in the
dirt; the Sun's Moon's feet are all in air and looped into a pole: the
blows fall, the Tulip howls--and you? The Caliph has embraced you and
made you Vizier on the spot. Such is a whipping in the East.
So much, then, for whipping from the point of view of historical
geography. It has other aspects--too vast for mention here. The
individual aspect, or the whippings inflicted on the famous, on Psyche
by Venus, on Aristotle by Phyllis, on St Paul by the Romans, on-Henry
Plantagenet by the monks, on Milton by his College, on Voltaire by a
lackey, on Shelley by a schoolmaster. We read of the latter that he
writhed on the floor not because he was hurt but out of shame. Ethereal
Shelley!
Or take the literary aspect. Take the heroes of famous books--what
whacks and thwacks they encounter, especially in all books that are an
epitome of world life. From _Apuleius_ to _Don Quixote_, from _Gil Blas_
to _Tom Jones,_ from _Candide_ to _Richard Feverel_, there is no great
book without its whipping.
And there are those who say children should not be whipped! They are
right, dear youthful reader, they are entirely right. It is we who
should be whipped, we adults, we pompous people, we who are so ready to
torture the young and who have quite forgotten the bitterness of the
torture we inflict. It is we who should be whipped, we who dread the
dentist, we whose waistcoats bulge and blossom into gold watch chains.
And criminals? O we flog them still, but only the poor, violent, rough
fellow who does a bit of straightforward business. It is that fat
financier whose juicy back I want to see streaked with red like a rasher
of bacon; it is that ape-like vestryman whose yells would be music to my
ears; it is, above all, the proprietor of pills that I would strap down
to his alliterative and appropriate post, the pillory.
None of the above reflections occurred to Norman. His literary knowledge
did not help him. He seemed to have spent whole years being whipped. He
felt as if his lungs would burst. But the executioner laid on steadily
and evenly, till the victim's back looked like a sheet of music paper.
Then he was abruptly let down and writhed for half a minute with rapidly
decreasing pain. And about this let the philosopher say one word more.
Whipping is not strictly torture. It does not deform. It leaves no ill
effects. And therefore many a parent who would shudder to use rack or
thumb-screw to our children, think nothing of whipping them. But it need
not hurt much less.
Norman, in absolute silence, put on his clothes. The examiners meanwhile
filed out of the hall; the young shopman-president alone remained. For a
mad moment Norman thought he saw tears in the President's eyes and pity
in his face; but his own vision was dim, and certainly it seemed
improbable that the brute who had ordered the whipping should be
affected thereby to tears. When Norman was dressed the President said,
"Follow me, I will let you out." Norman obeyed silently. They went alone
together into the little shop. The boy had already begun to plot
revenge, and now thought he saw his opportunity. Calculating the moment
and the distance, he suddenly sprang like a tiger on the President. His
effort was attended by no success. He found himself lying on the floor
as swiftly as a skater who has tripped on a stone.
"Do you think I was not prepared?" said the President, smiling, as
Norman picked himself up. And somehow, for all that his back was still
aching, the charm and beauty of the young man, his soft voice and his
insinuating smile, changed Norman's wrath into a sort of shame.
"So that's all I'm to get for coming with you," said Norman, like a
rueful schoolboy. "You've forgotten even the present suitable for a
lady."
"You're a wonderful person," muttered the President. "It's a pity we had
to reject you." And opening a drawer he drew out a very beautiful
jewelled clasp.
Norman muttered, "How much?" and felt in his pocket. He knew the
receipts of Price's Bon Marché would not have paid for it in fifty
years--if the stones were real.
"You have earned it this time," said the President, "and please not to
take me for a shopkeeper again," and, opening the door into the street,
he waited for Norman to go out. The boy hesitated.
"Tell me, to whom does all this belong?" he asked, voicing questions
that troubled his mind. "And where is the Old Poet? And why did he
choose me as a subject for his unpleasant jokes?"
"Good evening," said the President, pointedly. "I have nothing further
to say to you but this, that if you say one word, one little word, to a
soul of what has happened to-night--there are worse things awaiting for
you than whipping." And with these ominous words he closed the door and
shut Norman out into the street.
"This comes," said Norman, bitterly, "of following the advice of
poets!"