The Days of the King by Filip Florian

that enchanted document (which must have looked like any other document but which would, at last, bestow upon him genuinely sovereign powers), was pacing like a caged wolf, oblivious not only to the landscape and people, but also to his own attire. The top three buttons of the prince's waistcoat were undone, his belt was loose, the buckle drooping by his hip, and he was wearing lilac slippers with curved, pointed toes and silk tassels, while his immaculate black boots awaited him under a coffee table. They remained alone together for a while. The prince was walking from one end of the room tothe other, his head slightly bowed, his paces measured and equal in cadence, nineteen paces forward and nineteen paces back. He always turned on the sole of his right foot. Nineteen paces to the southeast and nineteen paces to the northwest. All of a sudden he stretched out on the narrow couch, for such was now his whim, and lay with his eyes fixed on the ceiling. And upon the arching ceiling was emblazoned a silver crescent moon, framed by meticulously engraved and painted chains, lines, and spirals, as if the red car gliding down the iron rails of the Ottoman Empire might at any moment have transformed itself by the mercy of Allah into a small, mobile mosque. The dentist rummaged among his flacons, powders, and instruments, and selected a curved pair of tweezers, lint, medicinal spirit, and extract of celandine. In a few minutes, he managed to lull the prince's wisdom tooth to sleep, or at least he persuaded it to doze. He was getting ready to withdraw, but Karl Ludwig, who according to some had an aquiline profile (and perhaps he did, but not then, lying on the couch groggy and perspiring, with deep bags under his eyes), begged him not to leave. They examined together one of the lilac slippers, they discussed at length and in German its shapes and details, they presumed many things and strove to imagine even more, until the slipper, with its curved, pointed toe and silk tassel ceased to be a mere slipper and became an embodiment of the world that Karl Eitel Friedrich Zephyrinus Ludwig had entered five months previously, a world in which he often wondered what he was looking for, in which he was sometimes astonished to find himself. Herr Strauss, meditating on the fate of the prince and that land of plentiful goose liver, of more barrels of wine than beer, of charlatans and cereals, of tumult and tobacco, permitted himself to offer the not at all reassuring advice that he should keep his poise, his determination, and his throne. Carol cleared his throat, shook Joseph's hand with unwonted firmness, and asked (he did not command) that the dentist find an appropriate (and blessed) remedy for his tooth prior to his appearance before the sultan. After they parted, Joseph found himself in a quandary; he had left on the other side of the upholstered door a man agitated, exhausted, and fearful. In the rear car, with its second-class insignia and rhythms, the cook was snoring gently, his brow resting on the windowpane and his shoulder still twitching. They had not yet come to any agreement about whether
leuştan
was lovage, but the hours and the days had not yet run out.
    In the time it took the train to reach the coast, the sea had, in succession, been tinted by the nacreous hues of sunset, the ashen tones of the gloaming, the dark visage of night, the reverie of sunrise, and the azure splendor of a new morn. Now at last it revealed its many faces, as various as the seasons, to a ruler who was and was not a ruler and to generals, politicians, ministers, advisers, secretaries, and plenty of others who also were and were not what they believed themselves to be. That morning, many were viewing the sea for the first time, for which reason some of the officers and servants made the sign of the cross and each placed a stone in his mouth (a small one, of course, as big as a cherry pip or a raisin). A few knew the sea well, from voyages and paintings,