Oliver VII by Antal Szerb

public finances had sunk to the state of an intractable mess. At the Princess’s wish Pritanez had been replaced by the chief accountant of a large bank who, a week later, committed suicide in a fit of bookkeeping insanity. He was followed by a wine-merchant who fled the country without embezzling a single cent; then a business tycoon, who promptly arranged for his own denunciation , and a university professor, who simply disappeared, said to have been lost in the labyrinth of the Exchequer and never seen again. After that no one had the courage to take on this ill-fated post, and Princess Clodia now handled the state finances herself, in ever-mounting despair.
    But the moment she saw Sandoval her furrowed brow became smooth again.
    “Sandoval,” she cried. “Just the person I was looking for!”
    Sandoval instantly assumed that she wanted to appoint him Minister of Finance, and protested in horror:
    “Your Highness, I have embezzled every cent ever trusted to me. Don’t put me in the way of temptation! There must be a few taller left in Alturia, though God knows where … ”
    “Now just listen, please! This is something else altogether. I want to send you abroad on an important and deadly secret mission. I can’t use a detective. That would immediately give it an official character and there would be all sorts of complications . I need a private individual, and what’s more, one who would easily understand the deranged mental state of the missing person in question—and find out where he is and what he is doing. In other words, I want to know the whereabouts and present doings of my daft cousin Oliver.”
    “King Oliver! But surely everyone knows that. First he was in Paris, then in London … ”
    “True, so far … ”
    “But then he joined an English expedition to Central Africa, hunting big game. He’s been there ever since. We’ve heard nothing more, these past few weeks.”
    “Yes. That’s what everybody thinks, and I have no objection to their thinking that. He slipped quietly out of the country , and when he returns no one will be the least bit interested in him. And it would be a very good thing if it were true. But I am quite convinced Oliver never went to Africa.”
    “Why do you think that, Your Highness?”
    “First of all, because I know Oliver of old, and I know that all his life he has loathed hunting. In our childhood I was the one who climbed up trees after birds and used his pellet gun, while he cried over the poor little creatures I shot. Later on, when he was almost of an age when hunting was required of him by his rank, he always pretended to be sick when there was an official shoot. And when he took the throne he abolished hunting altogether. I really can’t imagine why he would go after big game now … ”
    “This really is a surprise.”
    “On the other hand, he’s so shifty and so unreliable—as his behaviour showed during the revolution—he’s so devious that if he tells us he’s gone on safari, and is giving interviews on the subject to the English press, then we can be pretty sure he’s got something quite different in mind.”
    “Your Highness’ supposition is strengthened by the fact that he seems to pop up in such widely different places. There are reports of him spending the summer in the Austrian Alps, and studying folk costume in Albania, and not long ago an American journalist spotted him in Kansas City, in his shirtsleeves : the King told him he was buying up petrol stations and living off the proceeds.”
    “Of course it’s all fairy tales. I believed these reports myself, for a while, but since yesterday I’ve known for certain where he is. I had a letter from Countess Tzigalior. She says she’s seen him in Venice. He was very much changed; he’d shaved off his moustache and side-whiskers, to look like an actor. Obviously, so that he wouldn’t be recognised. But Countess Tzigalior knew him at once. And from all I know of my daft cousin Oliver, Venice