Homunculus by Aleksandar Prokopiev

Author:Aleksandar Prokopiev
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Istros Books
Published: 2015-04-30T04:00:00+00:00

This fairy tale should not be told to democrats

The Story of the Letter Q

There once was a king who was unhappy in his marriage and disil­lu­sioned with love in general. Such was his exasperation at all the quibbles of his queen, whose name was Quince, that one day he blew a fuse and decreed that the letter Q be abolished – even the ‘kw’ sound itself – and that it be replaced with ‘tw’. Throughout the kingdom, it was now forbidden to say or write ‘question’: it had to be ‘twestion’. ‘Query’ was to become ‘twery’. Instead of ‘quintessence’ people could only say and write ‘twintessence’, and ‘quail’ was to be ‘twail’. Such was the depth of the king’s disillusionment that the decree even ordered that names containing the letter Q be changed forthwith: ‘Quentin’ was to be ‘Twentin’, and ‘Quinta’ – ‘Twinta’. Breaches of the new rules were reported without qualms (sorry, twalms). Soon they mounted, and the fines were nothing to be sneezed at (which had the side effect of augmenting the budget). And so the citizens who were used to being obedient bit their tongues and submitted to the king’s decree. Everyone, in fact, except the children.

It must be said that children often don’t understand adults, and vice versa. As such, although the decree only applied in a handful of cases (as not many words contain Q), it struck the children as being a bad idea. Or a ‘crackpot notion’, as their parents used to whisper. The children who followed their parents’ conversations were of the same mind, though not because of ‘quintessence’ (a term they didn’t yet understand) or ‘inquisitiveness’ (an innate characteristic of children, albeit hard to pronounce), but above all because of the names!

Children are often given nicknames by other family members or their playmates, to help identify them. Sometimes these are derived from their name: Quirina becomes Rina, and Quasimodo – Modie. Sometimes nickname are based on an imagined similarity with animals, for example Mousey, Piggy or Bugs Bunny, and other times on a prominent feature of physiognomy – Big-Nose, Jug-Ears, Googly-Eyes. The decree about replacing Q with tw made things awkward for Quentin, Quinta, Quincy and Quartz, who had already suffered due to being given a fancy name by their parents, so being turned into Twentin, Twinta, Twincy and Twartz overnight made each of them feel their hard-won identity was being tampered with. Plus it was unfair, because Peter, Robert, Igor, Irina, Sandra, Andrea and the other children didn’t have to change their names at all.

And so a small group of disenfranchised children had no choice (because their parents, like I said, were pusillanimous) but to turn for help to the White Hermit, who lived beyond the edge of the city, in a cabin in the woods.

By common opinion of the adults, the White Hermit was a ‘rene­gade’. Various stories were in circulation concerning his past and why he left to live in solitude. Some claimed he was a member of

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