Malafrena

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  In the cab both regretted the invitation which had seemed so natural on the coach. They said no more about destiny and civilisation; each looked out his window. The cab stopped before a handsome house on a wide, quiet street. As Paludeskar took him up the steps Itale heard a great bell striking the hour across the dark roofs and streets, a deep, quiet voice in the restless air of the city night.

  He was handed over to a servant, taken up imposing stairs and down a long passage to a room with a curtained bed, marble fireplace, Turkish carpet, red-draped windows, and a very large painting of a racehorse with a fat round body and tiny head and feet. As the one servant departed a second one arrived, carrying his valise. “Thank you,” Itale said, relieved to see the familiar object, an anchor in a sea of strangeness. His effort to get the valise away from the man was foiled with skill, courtesy, and ease; after that defeat there was no hope of making the man go away. He was French and middle-aged; as he unpacked Itale’s valise he intimated that his name was Robert, that he was M le baron’s man, that Itale must change into his other coat, that a clean shirt was also desirable, that a gentleman did not put on his own shirt, that Robert was perfectly aware that Itale was young, poor, provincial, and possessed no articles of toilet besides a hairbrush, but did not hold it against him—some of this in words, some by other means. “If monsieur permit,” he said, circling behind Itale at the looking glass, and in five hypnotic motions transformed Itale’s cravat into a model of austere symmetry. “It is the best knot, but not every man wear it so, it requires the long face,” he said, admiring his handiwork so honestly that Itale warmed to him at last and let him help him into his coat without a struggle.

  Then he had to go downstairs alone.

  The long, bright drawing-room was a confusion of people, light-coated men, light-gowned women. He did not see Paludeskar anywhere. A tall, fair woman glanced at him frowning. He dared not move farther forward, he dared not go back. There he stood, like a rock. Near him a group broke out laughing at the end of a story, and he smiled too, until he found he was smiling. Another tall, fair woman in violet was approaching him, or was it the same one? She was coming straight at him. He looked away. He began to edge backwards towards the hall.

  “Mr Sorde?”

  He bowed.

  “I am Luisa Paludeskar.”

  He bowed.

  She looked at him coolly; made up her mind; and took him to present him to her mother.

  The young baroness was robust and handsome like her brother; the old baroness, sitting near a gold-encrusted Erard piano with two other ladies, looked pinched, sick, and sour. She said how do you do to Itale and had no more to say to him. Baroness Luisa took him on to a side room, where to his relief he found Paludeskar devouring cold chicken and champagne, and was invited to do the same. While he ate he managed to shake off the paralysis of total self-consciousness and make some observation of other people. He found that nobody was wearing trousers at all like his, and that conversation with these people was very difficult, as they all spoke quickly and bounced on from one subject to the next like rabbits. “Will you be long in Krasnoy, Mr Sorde?” asked a man to whom he had just been introduced and whose name he had instantly mislaid, and before he had decided how to answer the other bounced on, “Absolutely dead just now, few remaining fragments of civilisation are gathered in this room. And the opera’s not opening until November.”

  “I hope to see the opera,” said Itale, and was able to take a deep breath, having produced a comprehensible if not dazzling sentence.

  “You’re musical?” asked the other man—was his name Hacheskar? Harreskar?—“It’s not precisely Paris, as you can imagine, and old Montini lost his high A last season, but it does very well.”

  “Paolina,” Itale brought out, the name of a local diva whom he had heard praised at Solariy. “Aha,” said Helleskar—that was it, Helleskar, but baron? count? prince?—“have you heard Paolina? is it she that brings you here?”

  Itale stared at him. What was he to say—“No, I am here to subvert the government”? He said, flatly, “No.”

  Helleskar smiled. He was pale, like Paludeskar, but his figure was slight and his face fine-drawn. “I’m sorry, I’m always boring people with music,” he said, and though Itale appreciated that goodnatured courtesy he was unable to respond to it.

  “Luisa,” said Helleskar, a little later in the other room, “who is your brother’s new friend?”

  “I have no idea, George.”

  “Literary,” Helleskar proposed.

  Luisa Paludeskar shrugged.

  “Epic poems…Or, no; I know. He is planning to found a clandestine journal, full of long quotations from Schiller.”

  “No idea at all.”

  “He was simply found on the coach, like someone else’s hat? He might be a spy for Gentz, he might steal the silver. I had no idea Enrike was so rash. But then, no spy could possibly tie his cravat that well; at least not a spy for Austria. It must be Schiller after all.”

  “Introduce him to Amadey, then.”

  “Is he here? How is he?”

  “Wretched, of course. I don’t know why he doesn’t leave that woman. There’s your friend, take him over to Amadey. Mr Sorde!”

  Itale, startled, looked round. His eyes met Luisa Paluderskar’s, and for an instant she too looked startled, taken off guard; then her face closed and looked bored, even rancorous.

  “Count Helleskar has been speculating that your propensities are literary,” she said, drawling, and Helleskar broke in: “I leave speculation to bankers, baronina, I never go further than entertaining fancies. I have a bad habit of deciding what people ought to do without consulting them; I had rather decided you ought to publish.”

  “Defend yourself, Mr Sorde.”

  “Is it an accusation?” Itale asked naively.

  Helleskar laughed. “We’ll have to consult Estenskar. Is literature a crime, a fault, or merely a misfortune? The—”

  “Estenskar? Amadey Estenskar?”

  “You stand self-accused, Mr Sorde,” Helleskar said. “He’s here tonight; may I introduce you?”

  “He has no—that is, there’s no—I don’t—”

  “Come along,” the count said, and Itale meekly came, obeying Helleskar’s flawless self-assurance. But halfway across the room his protest became audible again. “Count,” he said earnestly, “I can’t intrude on Mr. Estenskar—”

  “You set him higher than the rest of us,” Helleskar said, with his ironic smile. “Quite right. Come on.” He led on. “He’ll be in here no doubt, the mausoleum, library I mean. Refurbished catacomb. There he is.” And bringing Itale to a wiry, red-haired, white-faced man who stood reading in a corner of the bookcases, he introduced them. “A fellow exile, Amadey,” he said.

  Estenskar had gained his fame with the publication of The Torrents of Karesha, when he was nineteen. His Odes and a novel had confirmed his reputation; at the age of twenty-four he was the best-known writer in his country, passionately reviled and praised, a stormbringer, one of those after whose passing things are not the same. “Very glad,” he said in a dry voice. There was a pause. “You’re from my part of the country?”

  “From the Montayna.”

  “I see.”

  “What are you reading, Amadey? Herder. Weh ’st mir! Literature is a vast slough of German poets.”

  Estenskar shrugged. Itale observed the shrug with awe, and burned to go reread Herder as soon as possible; but as Helleskar continued to make conversation and Estenskar to cut it short, the talk did not grow more interesting. Of course there was no reason why a genius should converse with a flippant worldling like Count Helleskar. The genius’ manners were disagreeable, but that was because he was so far above his company. All these people did was gossip; Itale had listened now to a dozen conversations of gossip—as a matter of fact Estenskar was now embarked on some gossip, and apparently enjoying it. “A year in Paris couldn’t civilise that ass,” he was ending his tale, with an artificial, unp
leasant tenor laugh, “nothing could.” And Helleskar laughed and said, “Civilisation is wasted on humanity,” and Itale struggled desperately to swallow a yawn. He looked up from the struggle to find Estenskar’s cold gaze on him.

  “Did you know about Adanskar’s new literary magazine, Amadey? To which only noblemen may contribute?”

  Estenskar laughed his high, loud ha-ha-ha. “What next?”

  “The name—that’s the beauty of it. He discussed it with me at length. Pegasus, Aurora, all nine muses, couldn’t use them; Greek, low connotations. Tried French: Revue du Haut monde. Aha, I say, that’ll put that new Revue des deux mondes in its place. No, no, can’t have that, low connotations again. Then the divine afflatus swept into him before my very eyes, and he said, ‘I shall call it The Journal of Nobility and Genius!’”

  “My God, what a fool the man is.”

  “He’ll do it, too, you know. You must contribute.”

  “I’d do it in order to lose him his Censor’s permit.”

  “It’s not that bad, surely,” Helleskar said, with a very slight change of tone. Estenskar shrugged and was silent. “You still haven’t got the printing permit for the new book?” Helleskar said, and again Estenskar shrugged; he stuck Herder back on the bookshelf, looked at his fingernails, turned away, then swung back and burst out shrilly, “I’ve been trying to get it for six weeks now. They want changes. One of the poems cannot be published at all. Why? Why not? It’s about listening to music, what in the name of God is political about that, because it’s music does it have to be the Marseillaise? Oh, no, Mr. Estenskar, you don’t understand—I don’t understand my own work, but they do—it’s not the subject of the poem that is undesirable, but the meter. The meter! The meter! By the bowels of Christ what is radical about iambic tetrameter? Do you know? Can you imagine what he said? It’s a national meter—common in songs, popular—dangerous—and then my ode, the bad one, you know, ‘To the Youth of My Country,’ you know—it was, by God, it’s in iambic tetrameter, and I can’t go around reminding people of it. So this poem can’t be published, the book can’t have the Censor’s permit so long as it’s there. And my friend at the Bureau, my good friend Censor Goyne, who can’t spell ‘recommend,’ Goyne takes the trouble to recommend improvements. All I have to do is add an extra foot to each line, just a word or two, he showed me how to do it, really very simple, he said. They burned what I’ve written, now they rewrite what I write!”

  The eyes in the white face were round, yellowish, gluing. Itale thought of the half-grown hawks he had tamed, their rage and resistance that only exhaustion could control; and even in defeat they would cry out in their shrill terrible voices, defeated, not tamed.

  “You have endured six years of this,” Helleskar said. “How do you have the courage to go through it all again!”

  “I don’t. When I get this book in press, I’m done. Going home. I can’t fight to try to get it distributed. It won’t be. I will stay just long enough to be sure the text isn’t changed, to keep Goyne’s improvements out of it. I don’t know why I bother even with that. What difference it make?”

  “A great deal, Mr Estenskar,” Itale said, stammering. “Because the book will be printed by the clandestine press—I’ve never seen your books but in the clandestine editions—”

  “Victory without profit,” the poet said drily.

  “No man, not even a genius, can win this kind of battle unsupported. If there were a group, a real group, with a publication, a journal, ready to come up against the Bureau of Censorship every day, for every word, a steady united pressure—And if the Estates are convened, censorship will be an issue—”

  “I see it’s true you’ve only been here two hours,” Estenskar said, turning back to the bookcase. He scanned it as if seeking a title while he spoke. “A group?…Literary men are afraid of jail, as a rule…As for getting help from the politicians, I suppose you’re joking.”

  Itale was paralysed; Helleskar said, as easily as ever, “Why so, Amadey? If the Estates meet, there will be some new men in town.”

  “You’re in an optimistic fit tonight?”

  “I am an optimistic man. I merely keep it to myself so that I won’t get laughed at. As ‘To the Youth of My Country’ got laughed at, for example.”

  “And rightly. It’s the stupidest thing I ever wrote. I suppose Mr Sorde disagrees.”

  Perhaps it was invitation, but Itale took it as reproof, understanding only that his enthusiasm had been gall to Estenskar. “How can I argue with you?” he said almost inaudibly.

  Helleskar frowned. “You wrote it; let us read it, Amadey. Allow us our little privileges. They don’t encroach on yours. I believe we need a change of muse. Luisa’s in a vile mood tonight, she always plays well in a vile mood, shall we go demand some Mozart?”

  Though enmeshed in self-castigation, Itale was vaguely aware that Helleskar had come to his defense, and in an equally vague persuasion of obligation followed the two back into the salon, though what he wanted was to get away from Estenskar before he antagonised his hero any further. Luisa Paludeskar agreed to play; he stood with the group around the piano. It was past midnight. He was worn out. The radiant music passed him by as so much noise. Helleskar and Baron Paludeskar talked beside him; he did not listen, and he would not open his mouth again, not if he were damned for it. Why am I here, he thought, what am I doing here? Why did I leave home?

  When she had played what was asked of her, Luisa Paludeskar sat on at the piano listening to the others talk. Every now and then she glanced up at the tall, stiff, speechless young man. There he stood with his chin stuck into his collar; the epitome of boorish, provincial, male complacency. She would have liked to kick him.

  “Who is that fellow, baronina?”

  “Enrike found it on the coach. I don’t plan to keep it around long.”

  Estenskar smiled disagreeably. “He hardly seemed to partake of the ton,” he said. He was on the attack again. Luisa, who loved battles, rose to the challenge, and performed a rapid outflanking manoeuvre: she smiled straight at him, and said, “You’re not really going off east, are you, Amadey?”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  “What is there to decide? Is there anything in the Polana besides the east wind and sheep? Will the sheep listen to you? I know we’re sheep, to you, but we are attentive sheep—adoring sheep—your own woolly flock—”

  “Sheep’s clothing.”

  “That’s you, the wolf. The Polana wolf. Don’t run away, Amadey; not now.”

  “I’m not running away. I’m going home.”

  “‘Home!’” She played a light derisive arpeggio. “We have a ‘home’ too, you know, up in the Sovena. I know all about rain and wind and mud and sheep and the neighbors’ visits. They tell you hunting stories. How they shot the wolf. How they bagged three poets in the marsh last winter…”

  “I’ll come back for your wedding.”

  “Oh indeed! My wedding with whom?”

  “George, of course.”

  “How silly you are. I can’t marry an old shoe.”

  “If the shoe fits…”

  “Always twist the knife a little before you remove it. No, I think I shall marry a total stranger, someone found on a coach.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there would be a few weeks before he knew how to hurt me very much—before he learned where the nerves are. Unless he was a poet, of course. But you mustn’t leave Krasnoy, Amadey. What shall I do without you? Without my daily anti-opium?”

  “I wish I had fallen in love with you, Luisa.”

  “Yes, but you didn’t.”

  She looked up into the man’s unhappy face, and smiled again.

  When he got to bed at two-thirty, Itale could not sleep. The Mozart sonata to which he had not listened rang note for note in his head, the red-curtained bed swayed like a coach at the trot, his ears were full of voices and his eyes of faces; he lay and twitched and turned. The deep, soft bell told the quarters and the hou
rs, three o’clock, over the dark roofs, the dark streets, the endless houses where two hundred thousand people slept and he among them awake, a prisoner.

  II

  Robert the man-servant waked him, late in the morning; he could not elude assistance in getting dressed. He found his way through the huge, cold house to the breakfast room. The baron was already there, and the sister soon arrived. The two young men were stiff and shy with each other. Itale remarked that it was hot, Enrike that it was damned foggy, and they got no further. Luisa, dressed very plainly in brown, seemed to have set aside her arrogant manner with her evening dress. She was pleasant and gracious, without affectations, and within a few minutes Itale found himself almost at ease talking with her. But she was beautiful, more beautiful than he had realised last night, more beautiful than any woman he had ever spoken to; and he realised as they talked that she was younger than he, twenty at most, which by adding youth to her opulence of beauty, wealth, and wit cowed him, making him feel a hopeless clod. And the brother glowered across the table. It was a relief when the meal was done at last.

  Frenin had been living in the city for a month, and had sent Itale his address. Itale asked Enrike where the street was. “What? Never heard of it,” the baron growled. “Going off, are you? Can’t stay? No? Well. Glad, very glad.”

  When Itale had escaped, the baron followed his sister up to the music room. “You hear that, Lulu? He’s going to some damned street in the river, Somebody’s Tears Street, now what the devil, coming all the way from the damned mountains. I thought he was a gentleman, yesterday.”

  “He is, don’t be stupid, Harry.”

  “But nobody lives in a place like that?”

  “Students—”

  “Students! Exactly!”

  She knew what was upsetting her brother. Through boredom and a dim sense of shame at his uselessness, Enrike was trying to secure a minor diplomatic post. He had decided that his new acquaintance was politically suspect, therefore not to be cultivated; but he was ashamed of his own motives, and preferred to act the snob. All this was clear to Luisa. Her boredom was far more drastic than her brother’s, her ambitions clearer, and she set herself up as a conscious enemy of hypocrisy in all its forms.