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The Crown Prince has inaugurated a new road by cutting the braided crimson ribbon. The road goes straight from the Royal Palace to the airport, a road that does not serve the City, a road built at great expense and coerced land appropriation. The Peasants, humbly dressed in grey rags and brown tatters, have been gathered together to watch: they've been rehearsed on when to clap, how to cheer. His part of the ceremony finished, the Crown Prince and his retinue return to the Royal Palace in their Daimlers and Bugattis. But the motley crowd of Peasants stay on, joined by the court Jester, flamboyant in red rags and purple tatters, who has come to join the celebration. Lifting her nose high in the air, she delivers herself of a set of rousing sneezes and coughs, runs up to wipe her nose on the edge of the ribbon, and then solemnly braids and ties it up again, carefully forming an elegant bow knot. At this, the Peasants begin to guffaw, to slap each other on the back, and to do elaborate summersaults. After about ten minutes of such hilarity, they sit down on the grass, and spend the rest of the afternoon picking the lice out of one another's scalps and braiding one another's hair.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-4362-9_5

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