Salsa Soko Pelchis, the Presidential Mansion
These days, the senate chamber had come to look small and shabby, for he was thinking more and more of the presidency, and of the magnificence of the Salsa Soko Pelchis, the Presidential Mansion. The living reality of the senate was but a poor and trifling thing compared with the grandeur of Heineman's ambitions. [EoH Ch5]
He never lingered long by the window, however, because the cold of the stone floor inevitably forced him to move on. While the climate of Islam Demaxus was generally warm, a peculiarly gripping cold seemed to settle into the stones of the Salsa Soko Pelchis by night. This was, said some, a consequence of the art of the Balancers, the Masons of Chalakanesia's classical period whose surpassing excellence in construction was proved by the fact that this building, one of the greatest of their works, had stood for centuries without needing so much as half a morning's repair work.
Excellent, certainly - but cold. And Heineman did not like to wear slippers against that cold, since he trusted his bare feet better. He had a positive horror of slipping on the smooth stone floors and breaking his head, a horror which was enforced by the fact that he had repeated dreams which suggested that he would die in just that manner (if he was not first eaten by a giant carpet, or buried alive by a screaming avalanche of bright green broccoli). [NoP Ch1]
So Heineman went barefoot and coldfoot down the corridor. And a long way it was, for it was a full hundred paces to the Presidential Toilet. The Salsa Soko Pelchis, the Presidential Mansion, was vast, and ancient, and inconvenient, and had exceedingly primitive plumbing. As Heineman had learnt shortly after assuming the presidency, all previous incumbents had kept a chamber pot in the bedroom, but he refused any such expedient. He had grown up in the House Jubiladilia, which had its own private spring, the waters of which were used (amongst other things) to power flush toilets, and he had a horror of the notion of sharing his bedroom with a bowl of reeking urine and ordure.
So Heineman padded barefoot to the Presidential Toilet, which was set in a room as big as one of those small Chalakanesian shops which are devoted to the sale of nostraluminums. An actual nostraluminum, a devotional candle, was burning in that gloomy chamber. By the light of that candle, Heineman first checked that there was toilet paper, and found that there were two and a half rolls. [NoP Ch1]