Free A Perfect Vacuum by Stanislaw Lem Page A

contrary, to “disguise himself as an Englishman or a Dutchman,” which simply means to try for a normal, up-to-date appearance. The word “up-to-date,” however, may not be uttered—it belongs among those expressions that would dangerously weaken the fiction of the kingdom. Even dollars are called, always, “thalers.”
    Provided with a considerable amount of ready money, Wieland goes to Rio, where the commercial agent of the “court” operates; after acquiring good false identity papers, Taudlitz’s emissary sails for Europe. The book passes in silence over the peregrinations of his search. We know only that they are crowned with success after eleven months, and the novel, in its actual form, characteristically opens with the second conversation between Wieland and the young Gülsenhirn, who is working as a waiter in a large Hamburg hotel. Bertrand (he will be allowed to keep the name: it has, in the opinion of his uncle Taudlitz, a good ring) is first told only of his millionaire uncle who is prepared to adopt him as a son, and for Bertrand this is reason enough to leave his job and go off with Wieland. The journey of this curious pair serves as an introduction to the novel and performs its function brilliantly, because we have here a moving forward in space which at the same time is, as it were, a retreating back into historical time: the travelers change from a transcontinental jet to a train, later to an automobile, from the automobile to a horse-drawn wagon, and finally cover the last 145 miles on horseback.
    As Bertrand’s clothes wear out piece by piece, his spare things “vanish,” and in their place appear archaic garments, providently supplied and laid out for such occasions by Wieland; meanwhile, the latter is turning into the Due de Rohan. This metamorphosis is by no means Machiavellian; it takes place, from stopping point to stopping point, with strange simplicity. One gathers (later on, this is confirmed) that Wieland has gone through such costume changes (only not quite in these installments) numerous times as the factotum envoy of Taudlitz. And so, while Wieland, who embarked for Europe as Mr. Heinz Karl Muller, becomes the armed and mounted Due de Rohan, an analogous transformation—at least externally—is undergone by Bertrand.
    Bertrand is flabbergasted, stupefied. He is going to his uncle, the owner—so he has been informed—of a vast estate; he has forsaken the life of a waiter to become heir to millions, and now they lead him into the circle of some costume comedy or farce he cannot comprehend. The instructions Wieland-Miil-ler-de Rohan gives him on the way only serve to increase the muddle in his head. Sometimes it seems to him that his companion is merely pulling his leg; sometimes, that he is leading him to his doom, or on the other hand that he, Bertrand, is being let in on some unimaginable skulduggery, whose entirety cannot be revealed all at once. There will be moments in which he will feel he has gone mad. The instructions, of course, never call a thing by its name; this instinctive wisdom is the common property of the court.
    â€œYou must,” de Rohan tells him, “observe the formalities your uncle requires” (“your uncle,” then “His Lordship,” finally “His Highness”!); “his name is ‘Louis,’ not ‘Siegfried’—it is not permitted
ever
to say the latter. He has put it aside—such is his will!” declares Muller, becoming
le due.
“His estate” is altered to “his latifundium,” then to “his realm”; thus Bertrand, little by little, during the long days spent in the saddle, riding through the jungle, and then, in the final hours, inside a gilded sedan chair borne by eight naked, muscular mestizos, and observing from its window a retinue of mounted knights in casques—thus Bertrand is convinced of the truth of the words of