Ubu roi

Pa Ubu is a captain of dragoons, a trusted officer of King Wenceslas of Poland, decorated with the Order of the Red Eagle, and former King of Aragon—which should amply suffice him, and indeed does, until Ma Ubu, his wife, begins whispering in his ear that he could have the crown of Poland succeed that of Aragon upon his pate. Eating chitterlings most frequently, riding in a carriage through the streets, procuring an umbrella and a great overcoat that would fall to his heels—such is the agenda. Pa Ubu hesitates, balks, protests that he would rather be as beggarly as a lean and brave rat than as rich as a wicked, fat cat; but the temptation of the capeline and the umbrella is too strong: bugger of a shitr, shitr of a bugger, should he ever run into him in the corner of a wood, King Wenceslas is in for a very bad quarter of an hour.

Captain Bordure, mortal enemy of Wenceslas, is recruited at the price of promises—a Duchy of Lithuania—around a splendid table where Ma Ubu serves Polish soup, rastron ribs, dog pâté, turkey rumps, and cauliflowers à la shitr, and where Pa Ubu hurls an unspeakable broom onto the feast, poisoning several guests. The plan is simple: at the parade ground, Pa Ubu will step on the king's toes, bellow SHITR at him, and at this signal the conspirators will hurl themselves upon him. All swear to kill the king good and proper.

Queen Rosemonde has seen in a dream Pa Ubu striking Wenceslas with his mace and casting him into the Vistula, while an eagle places the crown upon his head. The king listens to nothing, refuses to arm himself, and goes to the parade with his sons Boleslas and Ladislas, leaving Boggerlas, the youngest, at the palace with the queen. At the parade ground, Pa Ubu crushes the king's toe, howls SHITR, and his men strike Wenceslas dead. Boleslas catches a bullet, Ladislas is sliced in two like a sausage by Bordure. Boggerlas defends his mother sword in hand, cleaves a soldier's skull, unstitches Pa Ubu's strumpot with a terrible blow, and flees down the secret staircase. In a mountain cave, the queen dies of cold and grief, and the ghosts of royal ancestors appear to the fourteen-year-old boy to hand him a great sword and the charge of vengeance.

Pa Ubu, now crowned, reluctantly distributes gold and meats to the people—meats yes, gold no, slaughter three old horses, it is quite good enough for such slobs—then organizes a race whose winner, Michel Fédérovitch, carries off a chest of three hundred thousand rose nobles. But no sooner has the orgy ended than the King of Phynances sets to work. He calls for the noble-box, the noble-hook, the noble-knife, and parades the aristocrats one by one: Count of Vitepsk, three million rixdollars, condemned, down the trapdoor; Grand Duke of Posen, down the trapdoor; Duke of Courland, down the trapdoor; Prince of Podolia, ruined, down the trapdoor for his insolence. The magistrates who refuse the reforms: down the trapdoor. The financiers who protest against the taxes on property, commerce, marriages, and deaths: down the trapdoor. No more justice, no more finance: Pa Ubu himself will go from village to village gathering the taxes.

Escorted by his Penny-Snatchers and his phynance-cart, he descends upon the peasants. Old Stanislas Leczinski protests that they have already paid one hundred and fifty-two rixdollars. Pa Ubu has changed the government and had it published in the newspaper that everyone must pay all taxes twice, and three times for those yet to be designated: with this system, he will soon make his fortune, then he will kill everyone and leave. The house is destroyed in the struggle, Stanislas flees across the plain, and Ubu remains to rake in the phynance.

Bordure, thrown into the casemates of Thorn for demanding his duchy, escapes, rides for five days and five nights across the steppes to Moscow, and convinces Tsar Alexis to invade Poland to restore Boggerlas. When Ma Ubu reads the threatening letter to the Council of Phynances, Pa Ubu weeps, sobs, invokes Saint Anthony and all the saints, promises phynance and votive candles. War is decided upon despite him—he refuses to disburse a single penny—and he sets off mounted on an enormous horse, laden with his shitr-saber, his phynance-hook, his physics-stick, and his little piece of wood, resembling an armored pumpkin. Ma Ubu is granted the regency and, no sooner has the fat puppet departed, thinks only of killing Boggerlas and seizing the treasure.

In the crypt of the Warsaw cathedral, Ma Ubu unseals the stone thirteen slabs past the tomb of Ladislas the Great and stuffs the gold of the ancient kings into her sack, but a voice issuing from the tomb of John Sigismund drives her away howling. Outside, Boggerlas leads the revolt, the Palotin Giron is killed, the mob hurls stones, and Ma Ubu flees, pursued by all the Poles.

In Ukraine, Pa Ubu proceeds on foot because his horse can no longer carry him, dragging it by the bridle. The Russians appear on the plain. Pa Ubu barricades himself in a windmill, orders eight bullets put in every rifle because eight bullets can kill eight Russians and that is eight fewer he will have on his back, then descends into battle when it rains lead and iron. He is wounded, riddled, perforated, administered, buried—but he tears a Russian apart, recognizes Bordure in disguise and pockets him, leaps over a ditch into which the Tsar falls, and delivers a triumphant speech that no one listens to. The Russian dragoons rescue the Tsar, it is a rout, and Pa Ubu flees while Lascy is not looking.

Taking refuge in a Lithuanian cave where it is freezing cold, abandoned by Pile and Cotice who slip away into the night, Pa Ubu confronts a bear. That is to say, he scrambles up a rock to recite the Pater Noster while the Palotins fight it out with knives and explosive brass knuckles. The bear falls dead, and Pa Ubu climbs down to claim the victory: it is to the magnanimous virtue of the Master of Phynances, who has strained, exhausted, and shouted himself hoarse churning out paternosters, that the survivors owe their salvation. He falls asleep muttering a confused nightmare mingling Bordure, Boggerlas, the bear, the Tsar, the Rbu who rummaged in the tomb, the Salopins who cut off the earrs—debrain, murther, wrench out the phynance and drink until death, such is the life of the Salopins, such is the happiness of the Master of Phynances.

Ma Ubu arrives in the cave after a four-day run through the snow, dead of fatigue and cold, and discovers her fat buffoon asleep. She deepens her voice, passes herself off as the Archangel Gabriel, declares that Pa Ubu's wife is adorable and delightful, at least the equal of the Venus of Capua—who did you say has lice?—that she does not drink, that she does not embezzle a single penny. Pa Ubu answers every praise with an insult: a horror, a harpy, a hussy. Day breaks, the deception is exposed, and Pa Ubu seizes Ma Ubu to inflict upon her the twisting of the nose, the tearing out of the hair, the penetration of the little piece of wood into the earrs, the extraction of the brain through the heels, the laceration of the posterior, the partial or even total suppression of the spinal marrow, the opening of the swim bladder, and the grand decapitation renewed from Saint John the Baptist, all drawn from the most Holy Scriptures, set in order, corrected, and perfected by the here-present Master of Phynances.

Boggerlas bursts into the cave with his soldiers. Insults fly—Polack, drunkard, bastard, hussar, Tartar, coward, hypocrite, snitch, Savoyard, Communard—the Palotins return just in time, Pa Ubu knocks out the last two guards using the bear as a weapon, and the Ubus flee across snow-covered Livonia. Boggerlas has gone to get himself crowned; Pa Ubu does not envy him his crown. On the deck of a ship sailing close-hauled upon the Baltic, he speeds along at a million knots an hour—knots which have the distinct advantage that, once tied, they do not come undone—orders the main-cock to be lowered and to take a stroll in the plum trees, causing a deluge by trying to command the maneuver. Ma Ubu sighs with delight at the thought of seeing sweet France and the castle of Mondragon again. The ship rounds the point of Elsinore, bounds over the dark swells of the North Sea, skirts along Germania, whose inhabitants are all German cousins, and Pa Ubu, contemplating having himself appointed Master of Phynances in Paris, concludes that, however beautiful that country may be, it is not worth Poland—for if there were no Poland, there would be no Poles.