The Shadow of Great Britain

Chapter 1522: Chapter 256: ”Hemorrhoids”—Eld Carter’s Tsarist Russian Literary Debut_2

Joking aside, I know I’m bound to lose in the bet with Charles.

Arthur, frankly, during this long voyage, your letters are among the few things that bring me amusement.

It’s a pity I could not witness your ’resurrection’ spectacle in person. Though, thinking back, when I heard you actually crawled out of a coffin, I thought Alexander and Charles were pulling a nasty prank on me. Looking back, it was indeed quite hilarious.

Your adventures in France, Hanover, and Russia are rich enough to make anyone jealous! Arthur, don’t hide it from me, Alexander has already spilled the beans about you being hailed as — London’s Liszt.

Considering our years of friendship, just fess up, you bastard, how many noblewomen and young ladies have you intertwined with in Paris, Gottingen, and St. Petersburg?

Exactly!

Don’t get it twisted!

I’m literally asking how many you’ve slept with!

Damn it, had I known the Foreign Office held such benefits, I shouldn’t have listened to my uncle’s slander and come to the sea for this stupid high-ranking job!

Britain’s seas!

Ha ha! Look! Such a damn fine-sounding phrase!

Look at this vast Pacific Ocean, where you can’t even spot a hair, and Charles couldn’t catch a single female tortoise in the Galapagos Islands after nabbing three!

In this situation, even if I declared myself Emperor of the Pacific, what difference would it make?

I’d rather be a ladies’ dog; at least their corgis get rewarded with expensive leashes!

Oh, Arthur, don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not venting at you with these words.

It’s just that, as I write this letter, it’s been over a month since I’ve seen land, so you can imagine my mental state.

Of course, I know you’d certainly criticize me for not writing when I’m in a good mood when the ship docks.

But you know me well; when the ship is docked, I have plenty of urgent matters to attend to, leaving no spare hands to write to you.

Your description of Russia in the last letter particularly intrigued me. Before your introduction, I always thought it an uncultivated wilderness, but it turns out Russian literature’s charm far exceeds my basic expectations.

With nothing better to do, I also wrote a few exercises on the ship mimicking the tone of Russian novels, and the following piece, ”The Ailment,” is my proudest work. Maybe you should publish it in Russian newspapers (provided their censorship isn’t too stringent).

”The Ailment”

Ivan Kalbovich always remembered how that amber-colored dusk was rent by his backside.

At the time, he was crawling toward the Winter Palace stairs with the humble posture typical to a twelfth-rank civil servant—his elbows pressed tight to his ribs, his neck arched in the curve of a ruble symbol, moisture leaving a track on the glazed tiles from his nose tip. Thirty-two steps were his three-month trained pilgrimage ritual, yet on the twenty-eighth step, a herring scent soaked in vodka slipped into his sneeze.

”Achoo!”

That thunderous sneeze led his tailbone into a historic encounter with Peter the Great statue’s copper base.

With the crisp sound of silk pants tearing, something scorching suddenly pulsated fiercely between his buttocks, like a monster hatching from the archives pouch by a junior clerk.

”God!” The Imperial Guard Colonel’s Sword of Honor clattered to the ground: ”This medal... could it be...”

Trembling, Ivan reached out to feel, and his fingertip sensed the embossing of a double-headed eagle.

Beneath the blood-soaked ripped pants, in the center of a swell turned eggplant purple, a pattern identical to the Royal Crest emerged.

The gilded eagle’s beak was clutching a tuft of his leg hair, swaying in draft like the St. Andrew’s Flag.

”The divine spirit descends!” A certain Countess screamed and fainted, her whalebone skirt knocking over the Easter egg tower three meters away.

The Foreign Secretary’s monocle shattered into eight pieces, yet he still crawled to catch the dripping pus with a silk handkerchief: ”His Majesty’s fortune is boundless, even wounds bloom into imperial flowers!”

Imperial Physician Kurchatov’s sable cape whisked off three attendants’ wigs in its dash. He raised a gilded magnifier towards that blurred flesh, his gray pupils behind the lens bursting with a gold digger’s frenzy: ”Come see, gentlemen! This is conclusive evidence of Academician Pavlov’s ’Holy Anatomy’! The Empire’s map manifests through human fluids!”

Twelve clerks lay on the floor recording each pulsation of the abscess, parchment soaking up erratic script with various heinous report titles — ”Report on the Correlation between Anal Sacred Stigmas and Sovereign Magnetic Field Research”, ”Prospects for Applying Buttocks Heraldry in Administrative Grade Evaluation”...

When the Tsar’s bronze carriage crushed the thin ice of Winter Palace Square, Ivan was being displayed, upside down, from the gilded chandelier. Eight crystal chandeliers illuminated his buttocks transparently, his ailment sketching bizarre territorial maps under the lights.

A Duke suddenly knelt and wept: ”Novgorod! I see the outline of Novgorod!”

”Nonsense!” The Minister of Seal kicked away obstructive ribbons: ”That’s clearly the Crimea defense plan! Look at the abscess’s position, exactly like Sevastopol Fortress!”

The next day St. Petersburg News’s headline read:

All-Russia Bureaucratic Medical Review Committee formed. By vote of three hundred academicians, Kalbovich’s anal ailment officially classified as a Ninth Holy Stigma, to receive saintly relic-level preservative treatment.