At the new foreign ministry on the Quai D’Orsay, it was precisely 7 o’clock on the morning of Friday, the 29th of February 1856. Rain had fallen heavily until dawn, but by now it had eased to a drizzle. This being a leap-day, the cleaners of the French Civil Service were not on duty - they were required to work only 365 days a year. Yet a small, grey, inconspicuous man, dressed not unlike a cleaner, arrived at the gilded doors of the Salon des Ambassadeurs. Dripping slightly, he tested a handle. It was not locked. He turned it, and peered inside. He saw a round green table, a dozen chairs, and an easel bearing a large map of the Black Sea and its environs. Closing the door quietly behind him, he stole into the room. For a few seconds he stood before the map, studying it.
This map had been drawn up specifically for the plenipotentiaries at the conference. The solid lines had been painstakingly drawn with Indian ink, but the areas between the lines had been tinted with coloured pencil, so that they could be rubbed out if necessary. The Ottoman Empire was shown in brown, the Austro-Hungarian in green, and the Russian Empire in purple. British and French-occupied areas were cross-hatched in red and blue, respectively. Areas not relevant to the Crimean War remained white.
The inconspicuous man took a coloured pencil from his pocket. After hastily glancing behind him to reassure himself that nobody else was there (though he would have heard the door open), he changed three areas of the map from white to purple: Armenia, Circassia, and the Isle of Batrony.
If anybody had challenged him, his instructions were to say that, since childhood, he had been hopelessly addicted to colouring-books, and could not bear to see an enclosed white space on a piece of paper. In fact, he was a junior secretary at the Russian Embassy, acting under the direct instructions of Prince Orlov. Entirely unobserved, he left the Salon at 7:03 and returned to his leaky flat in the XVIIième arrondissement.
At 9:30 the plenipotentiaries met. Their agenda for the fifth day of the congress was to consider the north and east of the Black Sea, and determine what changes (if any) would be made to the borders of Russia. They studied the map, kindly provided by the French: a record of fact, rather than of territorial ambitions.
During a boring speech from the Turkish envoy, Lord Clarendon took up his lorgnette and studied the map. "I note, from the tinting, that Russia now appears to encompass Circassia, the Isle of Batrony, and that purple thingamajig at the bottom," Clarendon remarked. "I was not aware of that."
"It has long been the case," Prince Orlov replied smoothly. "For many years those areas have been Russian protectorates."
"I had not known that," said Vincente Benedetti, the Secretary-General. (Despite his Italian name, he was French.) "But the map was prepared by our Foreign Ministry, who know their business. However, that is a minor point. Our most pressing matter today is to resolve the Bessarabian question."
A hour or two later, the discussion adjourned, and each plenipotentiary briefly returned to his rooms. Orlov could hardly contain his jubilation.
"They swallowed it!" he crowed. "Un fait accompli!"
"Not so loud!" Baron Brunnov cautioned. "The English in the next room will hear you. Besides, my prince, it is not yet accompli. We have already have troops in Armenia, and others are poised to occupy Circassia, but Batrony is not under our control at all."
"We must conquer it before our navy is taken from us, then!" Orlov snarled. "All that has prevented us in the past is their infernal wind, but now that we possess paddle-steamers and are not yet banned from naval activity in the Black Sea - and the Batronians in all probability have not yet established defences - this could be our only opportunity to vanquish them. Telegraph Vorontsov immediately, and tell him to waste no time with the invasion. And no other power must know that this is happening - particularly the British and French in Sebastopol."
It had been agreed that, to expedite communications, the Russians were permitted to use the electric telegraph wire that the British had built to Sebastopol, after winning the recent war. Telegraphic communications in Russia itself were almost non-existent, and it would have taken the Russians a week to send a message to the Crimea without British assistance.
That night, in Sebastopol, Lord Lucan received a copy of a telegram sent to Prince Vorontsov. "This one is very short," the code-master remarked, handing him the copy: 38096 15874 69898. Since the British had captured the Russian codebook, the Russians had started using a new one, which the British were now beginning to crack. They had already worked out that 69898 meant Prince Orlov.
"Interesting!" said Lucan. "Two words, then Orlov’s code. Now, do you realize, Lieutenant Gordon, that today is Vorontsov’s birthday. Yes, he was born on a leap-day. I think we may safely conclude that 38096 means ‘happy’ and 15874 ‘birthday.’ Or vice versa. Depending on the order of nouns and verbs in Russian. Get me?"
Charles Gordon dutifully noted his commander’s perspicacity.
On receiving the encrypted telegram, Vorontsov looked up his new codebook. CAPTURE BATRONY ORLOV was the message. Vorontsov was delighted. In the past, the Tsar had strictly vetoed any such suggestions. "That island is more trouble than it’s worth," Nicholas had confided to Vorontsov. "As long as no other power controls it, it doesn’t matter that we don’t. Besides, it’s unleavable."
But now Nicholas was dead, and Alexander was Tsar. And though the naval bases at Sebastopol, Kherson, Nikolayev, Theodosia, and Kherch had all been destroyed, Odessa still harboured the odd warship. The ignorant British had bombarded Odessa on the Russian Good Friday in 1854, and the protests of the Russians at such irreligious antics had reached the ears of the French, who had extensive commercial interests in Odessa. A demand was delivered to the Royal Navy: leave Odessa alone. (Besides, its harbour was too shallow for large ships.)
Thus in mid-March of 1856, four small but powerful ironclad paddle-steamers left Odessa, to conquer the Isle of Batrony. For the first time, Russia had ships with the capability of reaching Batrony without being destroyed. Due to fierce winds, Batronian waters had previously been uncharted (hence the island’s not appearing on most maps), but the perspicontruvious Vorontsov had found among the papers inside the Lord Privy Seal a map of the Isle of Batrony. The map was much written-on in English - in Edward Lear’s hand, though Vorontsov did not know that: he assumed that the scribbles had been made by the dead British spy.
Not knowing where the capital of Batrony was, Vorontsov noted the town with the most doodled-on name: Coromandel. As this was situated in a strategic position on the north side of the Bay of Gurtle, Vorontsov deduced that it must be the capital, and therefore must have a good harbour. Yet again, he prided himself on his powers of deduction.
The flagship of this small fleet was the SS Minsk, commanded by Vorontsov himself. The other ships, each displacing 1,600 Russian tonnes, were the SS Pinsk, the SS Omsk, and the SS Tomsk. The plan was to surround Batrony on all four quarters. (The Russians were not aware that Batrony has five). The Omsk would capture the harbour of Limbo, while the Tomsk would seize the harbour of Kitoozh. The Pinsk would take the eastern entrance of the Bay of Gurtle, while the victorious Minsk, entering the Bay of Gurtle from the north, would capture Coromandel. After a modest bombardment, the uncouth and craven Batronians would surrender. Vorontsov would step ashore in pomp, splendour, and full regalia to claim the island on behalf of the Tsar. The Batronians would be so impressed by Vorontsov’s quangle-wangle hat (bearing 209 of his medals) that they would do anything he asked.
The fleet was further aided by the fact that the equinox was approaching. They would time their arrival for precisely sunrise on the 21st of March, the famed "instant of calm."
Synchronizing their chronometers, the four captains surrounded the island, each anchoring ten leagues offshore. Buffeted by the howling gales, their crews endured the night. At precisely one minute past midnight (Moscow time) on the 21st, anchors were weighed, and the four ships sailed in to attack their targets. Impelled onshore by those terrible winds, the captains found that they had to reverse the paddle-wheels, ordering Full Steam Astern, so as not to be swept against the rocky coasts.
At 5 a.m. dawn was beginning to break, and each ship was within one league of Limbo: the limit of its territorial waters.
At precisely 6 a.m., as the sun would have appeared on the horizon (had the weather not been so foul), the winds sighed to a stop, and each ship (now less than one mile offshore) found itself rapidly reversing. Full Steam Ahead was now ordered, and the bombardment began.
Kitoozh did not resist. Not a single shot was fired in its defence. Expecting a trap, the landing party had all muskets cocked as they marched ashore. It was 7 a.m. and there was still not a breath of wind in the harbour. The nervous Russians searched the deserted city. Not a soul was to be seen, though ovens were still smouldering, fresh crumbs of bread lay unmoused on tabletops, and the usual sprinkling of dead dogs littered the streets.
At a junction of narrow lanes, two search parties attacked each other, believing the other to be the enemy. Ten sailors were wounded, and six killed.
In fact, the previous day the Kitoozhenos had completed their biannual migration to the upper city. Captain Popoff, commander of the SS Tomsk, did not notice a faint line on his quarter of the map, pointing to the other Kitoozh. But his sailors noticed the uphill road, and signs of recent travel. An armed detachment set out to see what they could find, while others stayed to guard the Tomsk. If the posse had walked for a single day, they would have arrived at Upper Kitoozh - and would have found that it had slipped into its great abyss, to the surprise of the returning population.
But the posse did not arrive. It is conjectured that Triboldy bandits (late, as usual), who had come to waylay the returning Kitoozhenos, intercepted Captain Popoff and the Russian sailors, and, tired of a monotonous diet of liquorice, perhaps ate them. (The previous statement was inserted purely for sensational purposes: the only evidence for it is that in the brief uprising of 1918 that preceded the wholesale extermination of the Triboldies, an old Russian musket was found in a Triboldy lair near Eggless.)
On board the Tomsk, the crew awaited further orders. The weather was too foul for them to leave, and there was no food in the port. Six months later, their emaciated skeletons were discovered, their mouths blackened by the coal they had been nibbling.
There is no record of the fate of the SS Omsk, which was to have captured the harbour of Limbo. The ship, with all its hands, vanished without a trace. Perhaps in the fifth quarter - who knows?
The SSes Minsk and Pinsk entered the Bay of Gurtle, one on either side of the Myrtetic Mountain island. In the equinoctial calm, several foolish fishing boats had ventured into the straits.
"If that is their Navy, we have nothing to fear," remarked the Pinsk’s commander, after a single volley from the ship’s guns had scuppered the pea-green Gurtle Turtle.
Following the northern shore, the SS Minsk reached the town of Coromandel by midday. Prince Vorontsov, with field-glasses, was scanning the far side of the Bay, looking for the SS Pinsk. But, while sinking the fishing boat, the ironclad Pinsk had sailed too close to the Myrtetic Mountain, to which it was now stuck fast, at an angle so extreme that all its crew had slid overboard. With their shiny iron buttons and buckles, these sailors were now magnetized face-down to the mountain. Eventually their cries attracted hungry beasticles, boggalongs, and birdlings, all of whom feasted on the sailors’ buttons and bones.
Vorontsov knew nothing of this. The Minsk was less than one verst offshore from Coromandel, which Vorontsov was now studying through a telescope. He had been expecting a large city, but found a small one. It had only a handful of buildings of any size: a church, a hotel, a town hall, and several large villas overlooking the bay. On the balcony of one of these, an elegant lady in white appeared. To Vorontsov, she seemed to be gazing at the Russian ship, with the Tsar’s Imperial Standard flying resplendent from its mast. On the quayside, a ragged crowd had gathered. They were gesticulating wildly, performing wilful somersaults, bouncing cheap prawns in the air, and indulging in sundry other circuitous pursuits.
The lady in white retreated into her villa, then came out again with something long, black, and thin. "Surely not!" thought Vorontsov - but seconds later a bullet whistled past his ear, ricocheted off the iron-plated wall behind him, and landed on his left boot, charring the immaculate maroon leather.
Vorontsov (having been brought up in London, where his father had been Ambassador) was too much of a gentleman to fire directly at a lady. Instead, nervously fingering the lucky ear that he always kept in his pocket, he decided to order a bombardment, to show them who was who, what was what, and which was which. Such a concentration of adverbs, he reasoned (for Vorontsov was no grammarian) would attract the Batronian armed forces, which would then be speedily dispatched. To annoy the lady in white, Vorontsov ordered the mighty Paixhans gun to be aimed at the neighbouring villa. At such short range, it was hardly possible to miss.
The massive gun targeted the central upper window of the other villa, and Vorontsov personally gave the order to fire. As the great shell departed, and the sound of gunfire echoed from the low cliffs, the Russians realized that something was amiss. Unaccountably, the massive shell curved downwards and to the left, where it struck the pink cliff below the lady’s villa, but above a line of buildings along the shore.
If only the Russians had consulted the ship’s compass since entering the bay, they’d have been surprised to find its needle pointing to the Myrtetic Mountain. Vorontsov actually did feel a strange sensation at his waist, where his belt-buckle was pulling strongly towards his fly-buttons, but attributed this to the charms of the lady in white. Even at a range of more than one verst, he sensed that she was extremely attractive. (He did not at the time remember the painting he had kept, from the Lord Privy Seal.)
When the 8-inch shell had embedded itself in the cliff (failing to explode), it caused no great damage. However, the cliff itself was quilxicated of a species of rock which, when disvosperated, becomes materia sternumentum. Thus a great drift of dust instantly effluminated, provoking an ezophilizatic reaction. In the biannual calm, the dust-cloud did not disperse, but moved slowly north-east from the cliff, endusticating the entire town of Coromandel.
In her villa, the seaward windows of which had been shattered by the blast of the Paixhans gun, Lady Jones was overtaken by a gross fit of disvosperate sneezing. Her eyes watered, and her throat ached. "Ah choo!" she called to her maid, whose name she still had not learned to pronounce. "Please bring me a handkahchoof!" The maid, herself sneezing wildly, did so.
"Dastardly Russians!" exclaimed Jingly Jones between sneezes. "Most unsporting of them, I say, to fire a sneeze-gun at us. If that had hit my new dress..." She was wearing a brand-new spider-silk gown, completed after two years’ laborious work by 40 nests of spiders.
"Don’t worry, madam," said Oeauiaia, whose sister had helped co-ordinate the spiders. "That dress may be thinner than paper, but it is stronger than iron."
Meeting no resistance, Vorontsov and a score of sailors boarded a longboat, and set out for the wharf. With their customary brilliance, they had noticed that the waters were too shallow for the Minsk to dock: less than two sazhens.
As they approached the shore, Vorontsov’s guard had their muskets at the ready. But on the wharf, everybody was too busy sneezing to fire back - not that their home-made "shit-shooter" breech-loaders would have had any effect on the might of Russia.
"Why is that cloud so low?" Vorontsov asked his lieutenant. In answer, the man merely sneezed. Seconds later, all the men were sneezing, their guns forgotten. As they tied up at the wharf and came ashore, they were met by sneezing Batronians.
Lady Jones had fled down to the quay, in a vain attempt to escape the sneezing-powder. Near the wharf, a group of itinerant pumpkin-jugglers was performing a sneeze-dance for a group of Russian sailors, who were climbing out of a boat.
At her heels, the mayor wept as he sneezed. Like all the other Batronians, he was quite unable to speak. Jingly, being of stern British stuff, was of course barely affected by the disvosperation.
"I say!" she called, addressing a man in a ridiculous gaudy uniform, who looked as if he were in charge. "Excuse me, my good man! Ah-choo!"
"She speaks oh-choo," muttered Vorontsov. Thus he introduced himself in English, but (as befitted a Russian aristocrat) sneezed politely in French. "Permit me to oh-choo myself, madam. I am Prince Mikhail oh-choo, Governor of the oh-choo. Could you please tell me where I might find the oh-choo of this oh-choo?"
"Ah-choo!" replied the puzzled Lady Jones. "I am ah-choo..."
"Pravilna! You yourself are oh-choo?" answered Vorontsov, astounded. "May I compliment you on your... apchkiy! And is your husband oh-choo?"
"My husband is ah-choo," said Lady Jones. "Therefore I am ah-choo." Tears dripped down her face.
Though 20,000 of his serfs had died during the construction of his Alupka Palace near Yalta, Prince Vorontsov considered himself a deeply compassionate man. He could not bring himself to question this elegant lady (by far the best-dressed person in this splendid city of Coromandel) on the death of her husband. He deduced that she must now be Queen of Batrony in her own right, just as Victoria was Queen of England. He had not expected to find an Englishwoman in such an out-of-the-way spot - but royal families often intermarried. (Even the Tsar had a tiny fraction of English blood.) And no Russian would ever question the truth that followed a sneeze.
Before Lady Jones’ eyes, a rocking-horse fly was having a ptarmic fit, stunned at the array of spider-power facing it. She waved her hands at the fly, which, in its distress, ignored her. So she fumbled down the front of her new spider-silk gown (gallant Vorontsov averted his eyes), pulled out a white handkerchief, and waved it in the air to drive the fly away.
"Êtes-vous oh-choo?" said Vorontsov, tears streaming down his face. He wiped them away, hastily: tears were inappropriate for a victorious Russian commander, accepting the white flag of the native Queen.
"But the war!" said Jingly. "Is it still ah-choo?"
"Une détente!" Vorontsov gasped. "C’est oh-choo!"
"So you are not my ah-choo enemy?"
"Ne plus, ma oh-choo."
"Then please ah-choo me to ah-choo."
"Avec oh-choo, madame."
Without knowing it, Lady Jones had surrendered Batrony to the Tsar. And without knowing it, Count Vorontsov had promised to deliver her to the British headquarters at Sebastopol.
By evening, the sternumentary efflumination had dispersed, and Jingly had invited the Count to dinner at her villa. When he arrived at her door, she had an apology to make.
"I do regret having shot at you," she admitted. "Since you speak English so well. But at the time, I believed my action appropriate, thinking our countries were still at war."
"And I thank you, madam, for aiming ever so slightly to my left," the Count replied. Gallantly, he raised her delicious hand to his lips, and gently kissed it. He dimly remembered a painting he had taken for his collection when that earless monk had ruined his greenhouse: a woman cavorting on a beach, wearing nothing but a well-placed fish. Could this be her?
"They tell me I have surrendered this country to the Tsar," Jingly said sweetly, watching the silly man pretend not to be in agony. (Not caring to have her hand kissed by an enemy, she had sprinkled it with Batrony’s hottest chilli powder.)
"If indeed I did so," she continued, "it was to enable a modern steamship service to commence. I intend to take the first available steamship to the Crimea, to find out what my rascally husband is up to."
"Anything you say, milady," mumbled Vorontsov. He could no longer speak clearly: his lips were on fire.
The Murgatroyd visited Father Boulak the next day, to discuss funeral arrangements for the seven Coromandelusians who had lost their souls while sneezing themselves inside-out. Also, nine Russian sailors had sneezed their heads off. Already the bay was being dredged in search of the missing parts.
"Have you heard the news?" the Murgatroyd asked.
"Indeed," said Boulak gravely. "A Russian ship in the bay, with no sails - therefore powered by the Devil. I am lighting twenty-five candles, to drive the devil away."
"Not that news. Worse. Lady Jingerly has surrendered our isle to the Russians." (Though the Batronian language is littered with glottal atrocities, the NGGL throat-clearing manoeuvre is not one of them.)
"Nonsense. Batrony is not hers to give away. "
Boulak carefully lit another candle.
"Nevertheless, I am no longer Murgatroyd. The Russians have occupied the Town Hall."
"Fight them, you weakling! Give them a taste of shit-shot!"
"Boulak, you do not understand. The Russians have this terrible weapon, before which all are powerless."
"Really?" said Boulak, bored, lighting his last two candles. "And what is that?"
"The...the...the...ah-choo! The most fearful weapon ever invented by man. Ah-choo! The sneeze-bomb!"
Father Boulak, all of whose candles had just been blown out, was forced to agree. "The fault lies not so much with the beautiful Jingerly," he ventured.
"With that silly Onions man," suggested the Murgatroyd.
"No: with that scoundrel Lear. Because of him, Jingerly is here. In the annals of our country, let Lear’s name be blackened!"
And that is why, to this day, the name of Edward Lear is always written in black, throughout the entire Batronian Democratic Republic.
The following week, Lady Jones left Limbo - never to return, she hoped - along with Vorontsov, on the SS Minsk. Vorontsov protected himself from her by spending the voyage inside his iron coffin: the same box in which, for fear of snipers, he had retreated from Dargo during the Lesghian war.
No sooner had the Minsk berthed at Admiralty Harbour in Sebastopol than she made her way to the British High Command, at Fort Redan. There she had an audience with the commanding officer, General Sir William Codrington.
"Your husband left the Crimea last month," she was told. "His regiment was sent to Canada."
"Canada! But why?"
The general chuckled. "Whitehall has belatedly realized that our empire and the Russians share a border - where Alaska joins the Yukon. For two years that border has gone unguarded, and hordes of snivorous Russkies may have slipped across. Lord Palmerston has vowed to guard that border, from now on. Four regiments have already left, and two more sail next week."
"Did not my husband try to contact me?" Lady Jones sobbed.
"Who knows?" replied Codrington (renowned for his tact).
"And why did he not visit me at Scutari on his way through?"
"Pressing business, perhaps." Codrington fiddled with his pipe.
"Tell me, Codrington," said Lady Jones boldly. "Did you ever hear my husband mention any person in connection with Dorking?"
"Only his batman, that nanny-boy, young Montague Dorking. Never approved of all those goings-on. In and out of each other’s bunks like rabbits, they were, those two. (You know all this, of course.) Bloody sickening, as far as I’m concerned - but every chap to his own taste."
"Ohhhh," said Lady Jones, in her iciest voice. "And has this Dorking person gone to Canada too?"
"Naturally," said Codrington. "Personal batman, you know. Where one goes, the other must follow. Army rules, y’know."
"Ohhhhhhhh," said Lady Jones. "And did my husband ever happen to mention a portrait of myself, which I sent him?"
"There was one," said Codrington, in his most detached voice - the well-practised official tone he always used when personally informing next-of-kin. "I believe it could have been yourself. Well painted. Not too many clothes on, what?"
"What," Lady Jones confirmed.
"Bit of a blighter in some ways," Codrington remarked, stuffing his pipe with tobacco and not looking up. "Showed it around to the men, you know. ‘My wife, ha-ha’ - that kind of thing. They made what they considered appropriate suggestions. Then the blighter goes and says ‘Too much skin, that’s the trouble with women.’ Prefers less skin, he says. Not so messy with a man, y’know."
"Thank you, Sir William," said Jingly. She stormed out of the compound, and hailed the first passing droshky on the Vorontsov Road. "To Admiralty Harbour, if you please, my man," she ordered the coachman - who had already learned never to be surprised at the actions of the British.
A week later, she was back in Coromandel - where she had never been happier, she told the surprised inhabitants. "If my husband wants me, he can come and collect me," she announced. "I have asked General Sir William to forward my address to the War Office. And, if Mr Lear should choose to return...perhaps events may take a different turn." (She smiled to herself, remembering his farewell sketches and rhymes. The inhabitants scowled.)
Though Lady Jones had been the instrument of Russian occupation, when she returned in the SS Minsk with the first contingent of Russian police, the prawn-jugglers of Coromandel welcomed her with open arms. They fell to the feet of their Akondessa cum British Consul, sobbing with uncontrollable joy. The following day, the ex-Murgatroyd presented her with a dozen milk-white hens. He no longer had a use for them.
Neither Edward Lear nor General Jones ever returned to the Isle of Batrony. Nor did Akondessa Jingerly ever leave it - except for equinoctial visits to agricultural exhibitions at Odessa. After the postal services between Russia and England resumed, every few years she would pen a brief note to her husband, care of the War Office, but she never received a reply.
The grateful Alexander II awarded her 4000 desiatini (a lot) of fertile land near the town of –--–, as well as a thousand nonexistent serfs. (After the Great Conflagration on Mount Oggodoggo in August 1854, in which the Patrakond and his court were thoroughly conflagrated, there was a profound surplus of nonexistent serfs.)
Her estates became famous for their shrimps, watercresses, and milk-white hens - but above all for their early-blowing pumpkins. If some of these were looked at in appropriate directions, with appropriate lighting, they slightly resembled the face of Edward Lear.
She speedily became fluent in both Russian and Batronian, and was re-elected several times to the zemstvo.
In deference to Comrade Jones, no ill-feeling toward Edward Lear was ever expressed in her circles. But after the revisionists came to power, he became universally despised. To Batronians he became the symbol of imperialism incarnate, the villain who had delivered their once-free country into the hands of the Tsar. At annual Pumpkin Festivals around the Isle, feathered effigies of "Ellelear" were built, so that the peasants could fling mud and dung at their oppressor.
In 1919, while the communists were taking over, lauding the collective at Limbo as a model for the world, the Akondessa passed away in her sleep. Though of course she never admitted her age, she was suspected to be in her nineties.
The grateful Coromandelusians, in a frenzy of Communistic monument-making, erected a quayside statue to her: Comrade Jingerly, sitting on a heap of stones, surrounded by three of her milk-white hens, gazing pensively across the Bay of Gurtle, towards the silent-roaring ocean.
After midnight, on those rare nights with two full moons, it is reported (by children who have sneaked out of bed) that the statue scoops her hands into the bay, pulls out three wild prawns, and juggles them over the moons.
In 1967, the Bay of Limbo was finally liberated. Noble Russian engineers - heroes of Soviet labour! - managed to blast and bore their way through the hollow hills south-west of Limbo. On the glorious 14th of October, the last curtain of rock was dynamited away, revealing a modern highway that stretched all the way to Kitoozh. The inhabitants of Limbo, never known for their wild emotional outbursts, glanced at the first tractor on the splendid new road, nodded imperceptibly, and trudged on their weary way.
The road did not seem to attract much traffic, but within a few years, Limbo was deserted. Its inhabitants dribbled and drabbled away. Since the return of capitalism, there has been a succession of plans to convert Limbo into a five-star tourist resort, but the millionaire developers are always going bankrupt, and the road has been buried by massive landslides. Once again, Limbo is isolated from the world, but aerial photographs reveal slow decay.
And where did all the Limbots disappear to, and why? Perhaps they disapproved of the Statue of God being converted to the Statue of Kruschchev with the addition of a exterior concrete shell. And judging by a sudden population spurt, many of them probably ended up at Lower Kitoozh. (Upper Kitoozh was no more. Its famous chocolate mine was found to be a massive source of radioactivity, linked to the physical mutations so common among the inhabitants. Accordingly, the upper city was fenced off, and the mine became a military secret.)
At Lower Kitoozh, to cater for the great influx, much of the harbour was reclaimed, and everybody now lives in crammed apartment blocks, built in the Brutalist style, of ricecrete from the remains of Mount Oggodoggo. If the Limbots are there, they are indistinguishable from the original Kitoozhenos, watching TV all day while they wait for the wind to stop.
Other Limbots are dotted around the Isle of Batrony. One, for example, became the Abogome of Zinzipuss, when religious freedom was restored following the end of communist régime. His long, boring sermons attract huge crowds. His unorthodox pulpit is shaped like a huge mushroom - or umbrella. He stands on top of this, fulminating at his congregation, who exchange surreptitious bets on when he will slip off.
The Abogome’s sermons are always in English, and almost the same every Sunday. Therefore most members of his devoted audience are young students. They believe that a good knowledge of English will be their passport to leave this poverty-stricken Isle and find work overseas. Abogome Onions, however, is not deterred by their lack of devotion. He knows full well how hard it is to leave.