Napoleon Symphony

by Anthony Burgess

  The rain struck some three minutes before the completion of the journey. It was exceptionally heavy and it sent many of the torches hissing out and the bearers scampering for shelter, showing their tails. Reinaus, Lousev, Nodruog, Ednamram. Rabbits, N was thinking, watching them. But no, those rabbits had run towards him and his gun in expectant joy, sweet innocents. Nosirbtnom, Eduoirb, Moir and Trebma and Eriossi. Helped out of the coach while the trumpets blared welcome, he insisted on standing bareheaded in the downpour. Snoyn, Erési, Cairuam. Lightning split the black sky, chiding the presumption of the fireworks. N saw himself standing there, upright in the presence of the lightning. A good picture for Gros perhaps. The thunder followed, chiding the presumption of the kettledrums. Some stood outside the theater still, cheering wetly, bearing blackened straw smoking up in weak defiance of the rain, and N thought that he did not know the names of any of these.

  “Sire, with respect. You will be soaked.”

  “A big enemy, rain,” he said, drinking it. “Mud. The bogging down of the artillery. Men cursing, slipping in it.” And then he allowed himself to be persuaded to proceed within. Lights and obeisances. From group to group to group to group to group and all the way it was candles shining aloft with Long Live The Emperor and It Is The Anniversary Of His Crowning and God Bless You Sire, smooth courtiers in tears of love and joy as he walked, with best sperm candles blazing all about, from obeisance to obeisance to obeisance. He waved his hand in thanks, tears in his own eyes, God Bless You My Children, and was escorted to his glittering box. Thank You Thank You he cried from it weeping at the standing tiers who were doing him honor and then, quietly, to the inclined ear of his aide:

  “Wake me up in good time. I have to lead the fucking applause.”

  After an overture in the classical style, the curtain rose upon a representation of Mount Olympus, with gauzy clouds floating convincingly, the wires which flew them scarcely visible. The gods in general synod stood about, statuesque, decrepit, angry, dressed in silver-powdered wigs and togas. Jupiter spoke first in wavering accents, the old and bent head of a doomed and discredited régime. In stately alexandrines he remarked irritably that these Titans were growing too bold, especially that son of Iapetus and Clymene, or was it Themis? Begotten on a remote island somewhere. Mnemosyne, one-time Jovian paramour, who had given birth all at once to the Muses nine, was herself growing crotchety and unreliable. He couldn’t remember things as well as he used to. Forgotten even the name of the damned Titan who was especially demonstrating impious boldness. Mars, in battered armor and limping as with gout, said the name was Prometheus, Prometheus was the name, that was what it was, Prometheus. (Here the audience applauded. Smelling the possibility of dangerous satire somewhere, N stayed awake but did not applaud.) Ah yes, Prometheus. This Prometheus had taken it upon himself to make living creatures out of chunks of clay (more applause, more smell of danger) and was now teaching them the art of war—his own art, the Martian art, just imagine. War? said Jupiter. Fighting? Who was he teaching them to fight against? No doubt, said Mars, that the Promethean aim was to lead an army up the slopes of Olympus itself and do to death the deathless gods, so that he, a mere Titan, with his handmade soldiers, could take over the rule of the universe. Saturn, god of old age, shuffled downstage to ask how. Fire, how else? Mars rumbled. They have fire, fire. But that is the limit of impiety, shocked Jupiter said. Fire is divine, fire is sky-born, the gods’ weapon. Where did they get the fire from? They made it, Mercury said. Or rather Prometheus discovered a way of making it, finding that the seed of fire inheres not merely in heaven but in the soul of crass heaven-shunning matter. Jupiter now delivered a set piece in praise of fire, the fire of the sun, all-consuming, the milder fire of the stars, the fire that strikes when divine thunderbolts are hurled. Fire is to strike lesser breeds, such as Titans, with; it is not, heaven forbid, even ever to be dreamt of as being used against the high thrones of the gods. Old the gods may be, but they still have divine power; they are by no manner of means to be minimally or maximally mocked. What then shall be done to Prome Prome—ah, Mnemosyne, why did you leave me? (Audience laughter. “Look,” N said urgently, “what is this? A comedy? There are no chairs on the stage.”)

  Wipe out the entire race of Titans and, while your thunderbolt-hurling hand is in, the entire race of Titanic clockwork toys, men or whatever they are called. Thus spoke Uranus. But ah, Jupiter said, why wipe out what the torment of gives the gods pleasure? For it is not enough to carouse, it is not enough to sit long over the cenal or prandial ambrosia, it is not, for that matter, enough to swoop down on hapless nymphs in zoomorphic disguises. Power, gentlemen, power consists mainly in the power to hurt. (La puissance, messieurs—why, it was the very Aulic Council.) And so we will take away the fire-making faculty from these upstarts. But, to seem clement, nay to seem generous, we will send down a heavenly bride for this Titan—Prometheus is the name, Neptune said, scratching at his wig with a prong of his trident. We will send down Pandora. Bring in Pandora now. Mercury, in brave disdain of creaking joints, flew off lumpishly. Stay, Jupiter stayed him. She must not forget her box. (“See,” N said, “if it is the Empress they are out to mock—”) Mercury nodded and, with an exit-applause-provoking gesture which in fact provoked no applause, was off.

  Neptune, to fill in the time of waiting for Mercury’s return with Pandora, delivered a speech which N did not greatly like.

  NEPTUNE

  Let us admit, that age may come to birth

  When a new rational race may win the earth,

  May scale the mountains, drain the rivers dry,

  Erect tall towers defiant of the sky,

  May bid the deserts blossom like a flower,

  May chart the year and calibrate the hour,

  The mighty billowing ocean stays exempt

  From any would-be conqueror’s attempt.

  In nether caverns though I seem to sleep

  Yet in an instant will I rouse and leap

  And crash upon each bark that reckless rides,

  Splitting its mainmast, stoving in its sides,

  When, in my wisdom, it appears to me

  I hear a claim to mastery of the sea.

  Beware, ye island races yet unborn,

  Divinity is in the power you scorn.

  Rage you may reap whene’er you plow my plain:

  The sea is mine, and mine it will remain.

  (N chewed that over, not too sure who it was getting at. It was in bad taste somehow. And it was not true. History, like the gods, was not altogether mocked, try as one might. It did not fit in well with Trafalgar. Oh my God oh my God Trafalgar. Only civilians sneered at the enemy. N felt he would now like to nap a little, but he was apprehensive about what might be coming next.)

  What came next was the entry of Pandora, accompanied by smirking Mercury. She was played by a pretty but, as N knew from backstage and backstairs visits, pert and buttock-shrugging girl from Chateauroux, a diaphanous gown pasted to her, bosom well on show, a reminiscence of the discredited Directory. Jupiter explained how she had been knocked together by Hephaestus, kneeded and molded, to be exact, out of clay, hence of a substance of those insolent creations of Prometheus, whom she was now (no magic involved; who could easily resist her? Were not the deathless gods now leering in senile concupiscence?) to wed. He, Jupiter himself, had given her a box as a kind of dowry. The bridegroom, curious as to its contents, would not be able to resist opening it, and then and then—Creaking stage machinery now made this box, or rather one of its sides or walls, trundle some way downstage from the skyey cyclorama, and the wall fell open to allow its living freight to be disgorged. This consisted of masked actors representing a rich selection of the causes of earthly woe—poverty, disease, superstition, famine, earthquake, tyranny and so on. They spoke each a long speech that made N nod. The gods in general, to whom N gave a bleary kind of attention, seemed to consider that Prometheus and his creation were being perhaps excessively punished for possessing fire (which th
ey no longer possessed anyway, the gods having doused it for them) and cleverness—illiquidable by the gods, who could easily turn living beings into constellations, continents, or herbaria but not easily, the gods being ignorant of the nature of folly, into fools. Wait, said Jupiter, see how merciful we are. He clapped his hands and, to quiet music, a beautiful female figure sidled out, simpering in a kind of nun’s costume, from the innermost shadows of the box. Hope, said Jupiter, her name is Hope. Tableau. The curtains closed to as much applause as the playwright and players could reasonably hope for.

  Prometheus, acted by Beaumard, began the next part solo. Nothing Napoleonic about him, N decided, watching thin gesturing arms and the rise and fall of a prominent larynx. Prometheus told the audience that he had not liked the look of this allegedly conciliatory gift from heaven and given her to his brother Epimetheus to marry. Epimetheus, intrigued by the dotal box, had loosed on the earth a large horde of Ills and a very little Hope. Still, he, Prometheus, was determined to emphasize the hopefulness of human life and so had sneaked up to Olympus and stolen fire. He showed the audience a sort of monstrance with the igneal semen cached in it like a eucharistic wafer. The journey hither had been terrible, what with all the Ills milling about, and the journey hence would be even more perilous, but he, Prometheus, had a responsibility to his creatures. (Applause.) Horns now sounded: the gods were giving chase. The horns wound louder, and from both left and right. Prometheus, hugging his monstrance like a priest during the Terror, sought to leave but found all ways cut off. And then the gods, some from left, others from right, Jupiter himself from up center, where he stood, pointing the finger, on a craggy peak, came on, terrible in controlled wrath. Prometheus, he. By what filthy trick of titanicity had he managed to mount Olympus and carry off sacred fire? Denunciatory speeches from the gods in turn, defiant ripostes from Prometheus. (N nodded, pleased mildly, guessing what would happen now, then home to a cold chicken and a warm bed. Prometheus would hurl fire at them, fire that, belonging to a new and vital race of beings, would wither the gods in a blinding flash of applied gunpowder, with strontium nitrate added.)

  The monstrance was wrested from the Titan’s hands, Mars supervised his pinioning and binding by a sort of godly bodyguard. Jupiter cried:

  This frosty height is hight the Caucasus.

  Here let this insolent and impious

  Caitiff be punished for his simony.

  Here let him howl forever to the sky,

  Eagles shall peck his liver for their food,

  Nightly consume what daily is renewed.

  I see their bulky shadows whirling now.

  Eagles, I charge ye, do it. And I vow,

  A vow divine, that equal punishment

  Awaits each one who nurses the intent

  Heretical of daring to aspire

  To thieve our thunder and to filch our fire.

  So the gods solemnly moved off, leaving Prometheus bound and moaning. He cried to the eagles, invisible above him, that he had thought they were his friends—mortal, aspirant, daring—but he saw now from their cruel eyes and beaks that they were friends no more, instead the ruthless consumers of his substance. Who will free me? he cried. Who help? The curtain came down to applause somewhat uncertain. N said to his Empress:

  “I don’t like it.”

  A flunky brought sorbets in, as well as champagne on ice and, for the Empress, a platter of canapés. She said: “The verse is very bad meseems, ah bad, yes.”

  “I don’t mean the verse. I mean the story. I don’t like it, Duroc,” he said to Duroc. “I mean, I’m Prometheus, aren’t I? Have you seen the text? What happens now?”

  “He follows the myth,” Duroc said. “Hercules comes to rescue Prometheus and then together they announce that the reign of the old gods is at an end.”

  “Who are they meant to be then?”

  “It doesn’t have to be allegorical really. But Prometheus is probably the spirit of man and Hercules is, with respect, yourself.”

  “Me Hercules? But Hercules is a god. I’m not a god. I’m a Titan,” he said simply. “It would have been enough to have Prometheus sending them all off packing on his own. With perhaps the help of some of his clay creatures. I don’t like it. It’s a bad omen. That Caucasus bit too. It won’t do, I tell you.”

  “Shall I arrange for the performance to be announced as over because of the indisposition of somebody or other in it? Ouvrard or Pécriaux or somebody?”

  “No no no no, with Prometheus having his liver pecked like that? Go backstage and tell them to get Prometheus to break his own chains—titanic strength, you see—and take the spell off the eagles. I don’t like this playing around with eagles. They’re mine, after all. And then he finds that the gods have inadvertently left that fire behind somewhere, so he fights them with it and burns them all up. And then the Imperial Hymn at the end.” “Improvise, you mean? They won’t like that.”

  “God damn it, man, I’ve improvised victories, haven’t I? You could go so far as to say that I’ve improvised a whole civilization. Surely they can improvise a last act. Liver.” He rubbed his own, watching sourly his Empress bite at a kind of Torte. “Tell them it’s the Emperor’s command.”

  When the curtain rose again Prometheus was disclosed still chained to the crags, but this time there was a vista of sea behind him. The audience jeered. Prometheus was baldish and had grown a morbid paunch. He kept going ow ow ow. “Liver,” he explained to the audience. “Foie gras. Rotten. Decayed. Not even the eagles will touch it. Too much gross feeding. The Viennese cuisine, you know. Goulash. Bauernschmaus. Guglhupf mit Schlag. Topfenpalatschinken. Butterteigpastetchen mit Geflügelragout. Tafelspitz.” His Austrian accent was not good. “Eagles, eagles,” he called. “Do not desert me. You are the only company I have. They may as well desert me,” he told the audience. “Everybody else has.” The audience jeered. “The Dukes of Castiglione, Istria, Parma, Vicenza, Feltre, Frioul, Otranto, Gaeta, Abrantès—” Jeers and howls drowned the catalogue. “And me voici on a rocky island.” He moved his arms and the chains fell off. “No need for these really. Can’t get away. Too long a swim. Though I’d be buoyed up well enough, all this blubber. Bony become Fleshy, eh?” One of the lengths of chain was a string of sausages. “Wienerwurst. Sehr gut, ja ja. And now a little song, petit chanson.” The orchestra struck up a melody that, meant to be Corsican, was really Neapolitan. The Great Littlehampton beamed, swinging his sausages. He sang:

  When my military career began

  I gained a reputation as a good hard man.

  At Lodi and Rivoli I trounced the Austry Ann

  And I showed myself a very good Republy can.

  I made a peace at Campo Formio

  And taught the whole of Italy the way to go.

  But the British lion took a great big bite

  And said I could be Emperor

  (Vive L’Empéreur)

  Of an empire rather smaller than the Isle of Wight.

  That was in London. In Vienna the gods in general synod stood about, statuesque sometimes but often ready to relax. Goulash. Bauernschmaus. Guglhupf mit Schlag. Topfenpalatschinken. Butterteigpastetchen mit Geflugelragout. Tafelspitz. Delicious, Cardinal Consalvi said, the Vatican delegate. He ate but, of course, did not dance. Well, Castlereagh said, our Titan had made a pretty pickle of Europe but now he was safely away on a remote island where he could do no harm. Wellington muttered to him about this damned fellow Talleyrand, not to be trusted, a Frenchman anyway, always on the winning side, knows which side his bread’s buttered. Keep him out of the main sessions anyway. Britain, Austria, Russia, Prussia. Their task to make decisions. This Austrian wine’s deceptive, Castlereagh. Silk-smooth but woke with a damned bad liver after it. Can never remember the name of that confounded Russian over there. Capodistrias, eh? Keep wanting to call him, ha, Aspidistras.

  My reputation and my power increased

  So I thought as how I’d tackle that ferocious beast.

  But the Navy said no s
o I thought at least

  Yd venture into Egypt for to prick him in the East.

  But my wife proved faithless, the Directory too,

  So I swam back to Paris to see what I could do.

  I was made First Consul by my fellow frogs

  And was on my way to Emperor

  (Vive L’Empéreur)

  Of an empire not much bigger than the Isle of Dogs.

  The Prussian Friedrich von Gentz, Secretary-General, was quietly glad to see that Prussia was to get back Posen and Danzig, a good portion of Saxony, bits of Pomerania that had been ruled by the Swedes, and a very fair part of Westphalia. Let me speak, Talleyrand said, for the spirit of German unity. The proposal that there be thirty-nine German states in a confederation without a center must inevitably mean an eventual domination by Prussia. Not his affair, let him keep out of it. Leave all that till later, Hardenberg (Prussia) suggested. Settle the small apportionments first. United Kingdom of the Netherlands—Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg. That can do no harm. How about Cracow, somebody (Nesselrode?) said. Make Cracow a free city, Talleyrand proposed. Where is this damned Cracow, Wellington wanted to know. Wish that Frenchie would keep his impertinent nose out of it. Need him for the votes, Castlereagh said. Useful man when it comes to the votes. Put it to the meeting, said Stein, that we do now adjourn. Grand ball this evening. Cream of Viennese society. Need time to rest, dress, get ready. We are here to work, gentlemen, Metternich said, not to dance. The claims of Austria have so far received scant committee time.