FROM THE JOURNAL OF CITIZEN SCHMECK – 24th Day of Vulpioz, Year Twenty of the Republic

In the Republic, in the time of general public peril, the Chairman’s word is not to be denied.
To act otherwise is to perish—and then, over what remains of us, command will be taken by one whom the people never elected, and to whom the people shall never hold account.

Even Citizen Henscher himself declared that, after several hours of hammering out serious plans, the two of us had earned not merely a full plate of soup and boiled beef in the Assembly’s refectory (consumed, as is proper, in Henscherian silence—for Hencher, when he eats, is always mute, and when he eats meat, he silently contemplates the creature whose flesh he partakes of), but also twenty-five Republican minutes of “discussion under the freest possible agenda” at the same table, accompanied by two cups of tea. So it had to be.

No one joined us at our table: the other members of our parliamentary club were elsewhere, and to all others, it was evidently more comfortable to observe us from a distance.

Thus, around the table of the neutral representative Michner-Radger, my colleague not only by office but also by race, there gathered a rather numerous company—doubtless hoping to learn, through his lupine hearing, all that he might overhear from our conversation.

Hencher would have said: So be it! In a Republic, all must be public.
For my part, I would say that secrecy is sometimes the golden liberty even of the most upright citizen.

“Let us ask one another, O good citizens, the following question,” began Henscher, setting down his utensils—and I could not be certain whether he thus addressed me because he knew there were listeners present, or whether this elevated form of speech was simply habitual with him, even when third parties who might overhear were, beyond all reasonable doubt, absent.

“What shall become of our personal lives—yours, Citizen Schmeck, and mine, Citizen Henscher—if the infamous afsen should return to power, and place once more upon his head the perforated metal crown?”

“Ha, my fellow citizen, who indeed could know?” I replied. “After all, can the natural goodness of our minds rival the evil ingenuity of royalist executioners in devising torments with which to adorn our final hours and moments? Yet it shall not come to that—for the ultimate victory shall be ours alone.”

I am certain that to my listener—or listeners—my answer conveyed perfect composure, faith in the power of justice, and disdain for the enemy. So it ought to be, in the interest of public morale.
Yet in truth, a chill did pass through me when Henscher uttered his question, as it does each time I think upon the possibility of defeat. I believe, in any case, that I would do all within me not to fall alive into enemy hands—though I must confess my dread that the instinct of self-preservation might, in the fatal moment, forbid me to enroll myself among the fallen heroes of the Homeland.

The antidote to such dreadful thought has always been one and the same: not, I confess, the certainty of the triumph of good over evil, nor of the invincible power of the people—for these are, in the end, two noble fictions—but rather the prospect of a merciless reckoning with those who would prepare for us a fearful end, especially with those of them who are already within our grasp.

Thus I cried out: “It is far easier to answer what shall become of the personal lives of clarence and rupert afsen—and what shall become, for those two, shall be no good thing!”

“Hurrah!” thundered Hencher, striking his fist upon the table.
The blow resounded so mightily that the head of Michner-Radger—who, unlike myself, could not have anticipated this presidential outburst—jerked under the assault of sound upon his ears.

“But again,” continued Henscher, “there are those among us who propose postponement of the annihilation of the aforesaid pair. What, then, is the motivation of such persons, especially considering the question we have just put before ourselves?”

There may be many motives—tactical calculation in negotiation with the enemy, the usefulness of hostages, or even that most banal bourgeois pity.
Yet certainly among some there is also that very motive of which Hencher was surely thinking.

Still, lest in the eyes of the neutrals the werewolf always seem the sniffer-out of treason, I allowed Henscher the pleasure of answering his own question after only a few seconds’ pause:

“The motive of the suspicious and the base who would spare the afsens is none other than this: that if by misfortune the tyrant returns to power, they may say to him and to his lackeys, Behold, Your Majesty, Henscher and Schmeck sought to destroy your sons, but we saved them. And then Henscher and Schmeck, like once poor Gelbs, shall be pelted with fruit upon the scaffold—those two excellent friends of mankind—while the traitors themselves may, a day or two later, upon the Pillar of Shame, receive from the oppressors of virtue the false laurels of pretended merit.”

At this, the tables of neutrals—among whom were those who had publicly urged clemency for the afsens—could not remain silent.
Indeed, Hencher had spoken loudly enough that all could hear him, even without lupine ears. Two of them even approached us, clapping our shoulders, attempting to embrace us, and solemnly promising that they would never betray us.

When they had withdrawn (unsteadily and with embarrassment), Hencher continued:

“Scoundrels… not only here, but everywhere—in the city, in the village, in the forest, in the field! The worse the condition of the Republic, the more scoundrels there shall be—ready to betray the future of the Homeland for a beetroot, for half a carrot, for the wretched remnant of a life they will live as slaves without honour or integrity!”

Hencher was shouting now, waving his fist:

“If the general condition of the Republic worsens even a little, there will be more of those willing to hand their tribunes to the executioners, than those who refuse with righteous indignation…”

I knew that Hencher spoke the truth: we fight for the people, and their good is our highest goal; yet we must never underestimate the corruptibility, cowardice, and weakness of the small man—small not by obscurity, for such men are found even among the most renowned—but small by the poverty of virtue within him.

“Except under one condition,” Hencher went on,
“and that is that the Republican Code be applied yet more energetically, yet more consistently—that its letter cleanse the public spirit of all vicious and unworthy tendencies that corrupt both society and man.

Show me a man in the street,”—and here he raised his forefinger in oratorical majesty—“and I, as a legislator, can make of him either an angel of virtue or the most despicable villain, depending upon the laws I give him, and the example I set before him.”

“Hurrah!” resounded from all sides of the Assembly refectory—sincerely or not, who could tell? But the impression of Hencher’s triumph was soon spoiled by the loud and insolent laughter of the leading Hrebsites, who had entered the hall to take their own repast.

“Behold the destroyers!” Hencher greeted them, as always, in his habitual manner.

“Behold the destroyers!” replied Ostven, mockingly and self-satisfied, then turned to the neutrals:

“We were distributing coffee to the children—to make them grow tails, so we may have more werewolves among us!”

Ostven, of course, believes not in this absurd superstition, but he delights in mocking the respectable citizens who, it is said, still frighten their children with tales of this consequence of drinking a beverage which, like so many other things, grows scarcer by the day.

“And tell us,” Ostven added, “will Hencher distribute to the functionaries of his club the blood of the two afsens, to make them aristocrats?”

This was, of course, a jab at Hencher’s new proposal for a Republican Aristocracy.