Malafrena

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  “Pretty ducklings,” said Sangiusto: “I see them take their walk in the afternoons, so neat, with bright eyes seeing everything like telescopes. I like the girls of convent schools, they always know so much. Excuse me, you feel religious?”

  It made Itale laugh. “No,” he said.

  “I should like to see your mountains where you came from; as you spoke of them yesterday I thought this sounds like my country.”

  “I wish I could take you there, Sangiusto.”

  “Oh, well, the time will come. If you wait the time comes, I find. To learn how to wait, that’s the job for the exile, isn’t it? I will remember your invitation, Sorde, thank you. Come on, the mass begins.” They went into the church, into the grieving, the waiting, the fulfilment of Easter night. “Christ is risen” the choir sang, the music like sunrise in the heart of night. “Christ is risen in glory!” and the joy washed over Itale’s heart like rain on a stone of the roads, like sunlight over stone.

  IV

  Country women starting home the Great Market of Krasnoy, where they had arrived at dawn to sell stuff from their suburban gardens and dairies, leeks, apples, eggs, cream cheese, were halted on this morning of early September as they straggled back towards Cathedral Square with their empty baskets to meet up with the farm wagons going home. Foreign militia and a squad of the palace guard in their crimson uniforms were blocking one street, clearing another, shouting orders; cockades nodded between horses’ nervously working ears, gilt buttons flashed in the misty sunshine, already growing warm. Those people who had got nearly to the square before they were stopped in a crowd could see a whole battalion of guardsmen drawn up in rows before the doors of the cathedral. “Don’t they all stand there like red tenpins,” said a broad goodwife of Grasse to her neighbor. “Let ’em stand all they like, I’m sick of standing,” said the tall and skinny neighbor, shifting her basket on her arm. “I’d just as soon not be standing next to your goat cheeses, mother,” put in her neighbor on the other side, a man in a cobbler’s apron, with a smiling mouth pursued and lopsided from holding ready all the shoenails of all the years. “Stick to your last, cobbler,” the skinny woman said smartly. “Is it a parade?” shrilled the gaptoothed daughter of the woman from Grasse. “Oh dear little Jesus, remember the Holy Sacrament parade in Grasse, ma, and all the grand gold things? What’s a Sembly, ma?”—“How would I know?” said ma. “Do ye know what all the crowding and the soldiers are about, cobbler?”—“City folk idling,” the skinny wife snarled. “It’s a great day, mother,” said the cobbler, his mouth doing its best to stretch back to normal, “didn’t you know? We’ve all turned out to see the Assembly go by.”—“Who’d have turned out,” said an irritated clerk squeezed up against the cobbler by the growing throng behind, “if the damned guards hadn’t started pushing people around? I’d be in the office now if they’d just let me alone with their damned horses.”

  It was ten o’clock; the people at Cathedral Square heard the bell of St Stephen’s under the Hill, the bell of St Roch’s in Old Quarter, but not the great bell of the cathedral. It was silent until, at nearly quarter past the hour, the whole carillon gave a mighty, hair-raising, triumphant clash and then settled into pealing tremendously treble down to bass, treble down to bass. “What the devil’s all that about?” the nervous clerk said, while the farm women crossed themselves. “It means the benediction of the Assembly’s over,” said the knowledgeable cobbler, “now watch, old woman, you’ll see ’em coming out and heading up Tiypontiy Street to the park.”—“What’s the Benediction of the Sembly, ma?” the gaptoothed daughter squealed. “Oh look! Look! Oh dear little body of Jesus, look at ’em all”

  The Assembly of the Three Estates of the Kingdom came forth from the Cathedral of St Theodora in the order prescribed by the Revision of 1509: the Archbishop and his college of canons, and the deputies of the Clergy of the Ten Provinces, in order of rank, in robes befitting the season of the ecclesiastical year; following these, the deputies of the Nobility of the Ten Provinces, in armor or suitable attire, in order of rank, each attended by a squire bearing visibly the arms of the house; lastly the deputies of the Commons, in black gowns and hats of cloth or fur, though not of ermine or of sable; the whole to be attended and duly honored in their progress to the Palace by the Royal Guard, and to be met and greeted there by the King, the Rector of the Royal University of the City of Krasnoy, the Mayor of the City of Krasnoy, and the Masters of the eight Great Guilds. They went by, in their robes and top hats. Far off in the park a trumpet sounded sweetly. A few cheers went up for known faces among the Commoners, the city’s own deputies and Oragon, the deputy from Rakava. As soon as the cordons were raised the people scattered, a few following the procession across the park, the farm women across the square to meet their wagons, the clerks to their offices, the cobblers to their lasts.

  Inside the Sinalya Palace, in the large, cold Assembly Room, like a marble barn, the convocation proceeded in good order. The deputies sat, the officers of the guard stood armed at each door. Grand Duchess Mariya pronounced, in Latin, the sovereign’s address of welcome.

  Up in the gallery, a kind of pigeon-cote to the marble barn, twenty men stood gasping for air and jammed elbow to rib, trying to see out the four two-foot loopholes that gave on the Assembly Room below. The gallery had been built to accommodate a few court secretaries, not a score of eager reporters. “And I asked to get into this hellhole!” moaned Brelavay. “Pressed goose!” He was there with a pass, stamped by six officials of the Bureau of Censorship, the Militia, the Palace, etc., and issued to the scandal-sheet of Court confidences and city gossip that employed him. Frenin had got a similar pass for his Catholic monthly, which carried parish news and inspirational readings for priests. Itale had the pass for Novesma Verba. The rest were reporters for the government’s organ, the Courier-Mercury, or lookers-on with connections in the ducal court who had wangled themselves passes out of curiosity or self-importance. Givan Karantay stood next to Itale and watched, fascinated, the chopping motions of the grand duchess’s long chin as she read her Latin address. Karantay’s novel The Young Man Liyve, published in the spring, had made an unprecedented hit; he had become something of a national figure. The government in Vienna did not like national figures, but knew when not to meddle with them. Karantay had got a pass, signed by Prime Minister Cornelius, simply by asking for it.

  The grand duchess droned to a close. “It must be four-thirty,” Brelavay groaned. The rector of the university, dark-jowled and tremendous in his gold-faced doctor’s gown, strode to the rostrum. “O miserere, Domine!” Brelavay moaned to him. The rector laid a roll of papers down on the rostrum, placed his hand upon it, and began to deliver his speech extempore. One thin, clerkish reporter for the Courier-Mercury was making notes; Itale tried to do the same, referring for help to Brelavay, who had been a Latin First Prize in Solariy. Brelavay moaned and recited Virgil. “Mugitusque boum!” he said. “Why are you scribbling, Itale? it’s only mugitus boum. Moo! Moo!” he bellowed inaudibly at the rector. The clerkish reporter, scribbling, hissed malevolently for silence in the gallery. After the rector’s orotund half hour the mayor of Krasnoy rose and made a short, Ciceronian address of which he evidently understood not a word, reading it in bursts of syllables like random gun-fire. Then in place of the Masters of the Great Guilds, which had been disbanded as had all workingmen’s associations, came the prime minister of the grand duchy, Johann Cornelius, who spoke pleasantly and fluently in good Germanic Latin for twenty minutes. The Courier’s prize scholar took it down in shorthand. Itale desperately made notes. “Forget it,” Brelavay whispered, “that’s not shorthand, he’s trying to scare us, it’s just hen-tracks.”—“What if somebody says something important?” Itale protested. “Nobody will,” said Frenin.

  The speeches of welcome were over; the Assembly was adjourned for lunch.

  At the Cafe Illyrica everybody was gathered awaiting the four reporters, vociferous with questions about what had gone on in the
Assembly’s first session. “Mooing,” Brelavay said. All the others shouted, argued, questioned, answered; the four who had been in the Sinalya were rather silent. They had known the Assembly would speak in Latin, they had known it would begin with formalities…but the day had been a very long time coming, and was half over already, and it had amounted to nothing: nothing at all. A pageant, a fraud. Itale got back in a corner of the turbulent restaurant with Karantay. The novelist’s goodhumored equanimity was a refuge to him from the indiscriminate and beery enthusiasm of the Illyrica crowd. Karantay combined passion and patience to an unusual degree; he was an ardent and reliable Constitutionalist and Republicanist, ready to risk his already brilliant career for the cause, but unwilling ever to close his intelligence to unwelcome fact. There was a toughness in him that was increasingly welcome to Itale; and it was an endearing quality, that toughness or pragmatism, because Karantay’s novel was wildly, dramatically, whole-heartedly romantic, implausible, and magnanimous; and yet, like its author, in no way was it dishonest. In the complexity of the likeness and unlikeness of the author and his work Itale saw some adumbration of the complex relations of the real and the ideal; and he also saw a good deal that made m like Karantay better the better he knew him. They drank their beer now, and did not say very much, while the old Illyrican shouted as ever about his mistress Liberty.

  Back in their chill airless gallery they watched the deputies resume their seats. A member of each Estate was to speak, thanking the Crown for convening the Assembly. The grand duchess’ seat was now empty; sovereignty had made its gesture. Johann Cornelius, slender and greyhaired, with a benevolent smile, took his place to the right of the empty chair, and the ornate Latin speeches were addressed to him since the grand duchess was absent—“And since Metternich is also absent,” said Frenin. “We thank the puppet minister of a puppet duchess vassal to a puppet emperor controlled by a German chancellor for his kindness in letting us speak a dead language together for six hours a day according to the ancient custom of our people. My God! why are we standing here watching a puppet show?”

  The senior prelate of Orsinia, the archbishop of Aisnar, opened the order of the day at last. Itale had seen him last in Aisnar cathedral on Easter night, a stiff golden figure in a glory of lights and singing. In Church Latin in a thin voice he opened the meeting and placed before the deputies the suggestion that they vote unanimous thanks to the grand duchess for the convocation.

  A speaker rose from the seats at the left. The archbishop conferred with assistants and finally said cautiously, in Latin, “We recognise the deputy.”

  “My Lord Bishop, my lords and gentlemen, my fellow deputies,” the speaker said sonorously not in Latin but in their own tongue, “I propose this emendation of the motion before us: the Assembly of the Nation will vote thanks to the sovereign, the vote to be taken and the resolution stated in the vernacular language of the nation.” There was silence, then an outbreak of voices. “My Lord Bishop! Please call for order, I still have the floor. My name is Oragon, deputy to the Third Estate, elected by the Provincial Assembly of the Polana Province. I speak not for my province only, but for my country, to you who have met here in the name of that country: I speak of our rights and of our sacred duties—” The powerful, assured voice rose, letting the words fill the cold empty spaces of the Assembly Room: my country, my people, our rights, our responsibilities. Any word long unspoken, forbidden, gathers in it all the strength of silence. That strength, the strength of years, filled Oragon’s speech, and he knew it, and spoke on unhesitating, knowing also that his might be the first and last such speech made in that room. Up in the gallery they were all trying to get his words down verbatim. As fast as he spoke, Itale wrote, for he knew the speech already, he had learned it years ago in the quiet dark library of the house at Malafrena, the speech that has used so many words in so many languages over the years, but can all be said in four: live free, or die. Oragon spoke for forty minutes, and when he finished his voice was hoarse, the audience was dazed, and Itale dropped the pencil he could not hold any more. Karantay retrieved it and the notebook, for the Assembly was in a noteworthy state. Speakers arose on every side; the poor archbishop’s eyes rolled. Cornelius had sat quietly through Oragon’s speech. Like Itale he had heard it before, and unlike Itale he believed its day was done. But as the debate went on in the vernacular, half out of control and increasingly tumultuous, the prime minister began to look grim. Enthusiasm and disorder were his enemies. During an incoherently martial and patriotic speech by a baron from the Sovena, Cornelius rose and consulted softly with the archbishop. Oragon stood up again. His big, coarse voice, used to addressing all kinds of meetings indoors and out, cut through the baron’s speech: “My Lord Bishop, I request that we return to the Order of the Assembly of the Kingdom. Herr Cornelius, not being a deputy to any Estate, is a guest in this Assembly, without right to speak unless permission be granted by a majority of the deputies present.”

  Cornelius walked back to his seat through a cowed yet sardonic silence. “I waive my opportunity to request permission to speak,” he said without raising his voice, heard only by the Clergy in the front rows. “Let discussion proceed, please.” But the martial baron was now tongue-tied. Somebody called out, “Take the vote on Mr Oragon’s proposal”—“My Lords and gentlemen,” the archbishop said, “further debate and the vote must be adjourned; it is past five o’clock. With the—” A Krasnoy deputy was on his feet. “Excuse me! Excuse me! I think we vote on whether to adjourn session!” The archbishop rubbed his forehead, setting his archiepiscopal hat askew, and said, “I must implore your patience, I have not yet become entirely familiar with my duties as president of the Assembly. I now propose that the members of the Assembly vote on closing this day’s session.” A clerk popped up next to him like a jack-in-the-box. “Sic et non,” he shouted. “Sic?”—“Hold on!” somebody shouted from among the Nobility. “Finish the business on hand! I want to be recognised!” After a long stretch of amputated orations and confusion a vote on adjournment was taken, and had to be counted. One hundred and forty voted to remain in session, one hundred and thirty-one voted to adjourn, forty-seven abstained. The archbishop ruled that the session be suspended two hours for dinner, and this was accepted. “That does it,” said Brelavay. “They’ll go stuff, come back sleepy, and vote to carry on further debates in Sanskrit.” But when the proposal was finally put to the vote, at eleven that night, there were less than a dozen voices in favor of Latin. A second proposal introduced by Oragon as connected to the first, which by changing certain rules of procedure in the provincial diets would give the Third Estate a majority in the Assembly, was shelved by the archbishop, who had evidently been crammed along with his dinner on how to spot subversive tactics and control them by using parliamentary procedures. On the note of obscure victory the session was adjourned.

  Itale and Karantay left the others at the Illyrica and went to the Old Quarter, to the Helleskar house. They were greeted with champagne and cheers by George Helleskar, Luisa, Enrike, Estenskar, and others of “the liberal circle.” “Well, did ye declare war on Austria?” demanded the old count, George Helleskar’s father.

  The old count, a colonel of the defunct national army, had held his last command at Leipzig, under the Grand Army of the French Empire. Itale had first met two years before, when he had yielded to George Helleskar’s repeated invitation and come to this house for supper. The place was very much grander and austerer than the Paludeskars’ and the occasion had been a fairly formal one. Itale, at his most defiant, had played the didactic republican; George Helleskar had been too busy as host to rescue from the morass of offended silence in which he had gradually and ineluctably foundered. As he sat in self-imposed exile in the farthest corner of the vast drawing-room, the old count had come over to him, walking slowly and heavily, and sat down. “I knew your grandfather,” he said. “Itale Sorde of Malafrena.”

  Itale had stared at him, too involved at first with detesting himself and
everyone else there to understand.

  “George has spoken of you, but I didn’t place the name till I saw you,” the old man went on. “You look like him.”

  “Where—Where did you know him, sir?”

  “Paris. I was a young fellow, he was near forty. We came home about the same time, he back to the estate, I to take my commission. We wrote for some years. I suppose he’s been dead these many years.”

  “He died in 1810.”

  “I never knew a man like him.” The old man spoke gravely, his eyes fixed on Itale.

  “What was he doing in Paris, sir?”

  “Living there as you’re living here. There were a lot of us foreigners in Paris in the seventies. There always are. Polish exiles—best swordsmen I ever saw—Germans, us, and the French to keep us all talking. And we talked…A deal of blood and water has run under the bridges since young fellows used to sit about in coffee-shops discussing the Social Contract in the shadow of the Bastille—eh, Mr Sorde? Everything has changed—everything.”

  “But we still have the Social Contract,” said Itale, without defiance.

  “Eh? Oh aye, we do, and much good it’s done us. That was another age, Mr Sorde, a golden age. Milk and honey, before the milk went sour! I wasn’t in Paris in ’93 to see the butchers, but I was in Vienna in ’15 and saw the vultures…It was your grandfather that showed me that golden age, and told me about the new world that was coming, and a grand world it was, before it came! But what became of him? Back to his vineyards, and dies there like any farmer on his land. And I to take my four hundred to be cut to pieces for Napoleon at Leipzig, and come home to sit here and watch the vultures gobble…”