Tomorrow

by Damian Dibben

  ‘And do you not count your dog a living thing?’

  Vilder looked at me directly and there was murder in his eyes.

  ‘What?’ My master floundered, shifting his weight to shield me behind his legs.

  ‘You heard me. Your dog. It is the same one I met twenty years ago.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Lie. I thought you never lied? Let me see if he has a scar as we do.’

  ‘Stop this.’

  Vilder sidestepped him. ‘Here,’ he purred, beckoning me with little jerks of his fingers. I panted from heat and fear. ‘Come now, let me see. Show me if you have the same mark, your own cursed cicatrix. I bet you have, you sly creature.’

  ‘Run!’ my master shouted at me, motioning for the open door, whilst blocking Vilder’s way, but the fiend snatched up the book and punched the spine of it into my master’s neck. He gave out a rasp, teetered across the room and fell, the bottle of liquid jyhr tumbling from his pocket. Vilder grabbed me by the skin of my neck and pulled me over the boards, thumping my head against furniture, towards the fire. I flailed, squealing, trying to get away, but his strength was unnatural.

  ‘There it is, you devil,’ he said, stretching my leg so he could see the mark at the side of my abdomen. He drew his dagger and held it to my throat.

  ‘Please, please,’ my master begged. ‘Let him go. Hurt me, not him.’

  ‘No. One life for another. That is fair, is it not? More than fair, for I lost a man, and you a mere dog.’

  ‘Please, let him go, I beg of you.’

  ‘One request I made of you. One chance I had, and you denied me.’ Vilder seized me by my front legs and hurled me into the hearth. My head struck the red-hot bricks at the back of it and my master screamed. I gasped, but the air was liquid heat. There was a reek of sulphur as my hair went up in crackles. It seemed the shrieks that echoed up the chimney belonged to someone else, but they were mine. My master came for me, horror on his face, but Vilder fought him back. I tried to crawl free, but the room was turning round, my blood in revolt, and it was hot enough to melt my bones. My master must have broken free, as I saw him seize the poker and strike Vilder in the jaw. There was a crack of bone, the monster collapsed and my master pulled me from the fire.

  ‘My champion, my champion, do not die,’ he wailed, ripping off his jacket and patting embers from me. I coughed and coughed, but couldn’t get air into my lungs. Vilder was on the floor, motionless, blood lapping from a deep cut behind his ear and I thought his head had come apart, opened like a box at the forehead, before I realized it was his hair that had dislodged. He wore a wig. He had always worn a wig.

  I jumped from my master’s arms and ran from the room. The pain of my burns would come later, the blisters beneath my coat and tar in my lungs, but in that moment I was too shocked to feel any of it. My master came after me and I saw him turn the key of the library door, to lock Vilder inside. We ran down the stairs, out of the front door and into fresher air.

  ‘My champion, my poor champion.’ My master knelt down and hugged me.

  Above him, at the first-floor window, I saw that Vilder had clambered to his feet. He unlatched one of the window casements and pushed it open. ‘You run from me, do you?’ With his wig lopsided and one side of his face darkened with blood he looked gruesome, but his voice was precise and carried on the hot night. My master was transfixed and for a moment I thought he might even return to the house, but he pushed me on and we went quickly up the street. As we turned the corner I heard Vilder say, ‘Run then. But I’ll find you—and play god with you yet.’

  The sun was coming up and the deserted canals were turning crisp orange against it. Eventually we reached the street where carriages could be hired. My master alighted on one and snapped instructions at the driver, who looked down at me. I’m sure it was not the case, but I’ve always imagined I was still smoking. Realizing he had no money, my master tugged a ring from his finger—a gold band that he had always worn—pressed it into the driver’s hand, and we were motioned aboard. My master very carefully laid me out on the seat, before checking one last time that no one was behind. He slammed the door and closed the curtains. As we left town, heading south, he kept fussing over me and though I was grateful, the pain had begun to set in and I would have rather have been left alone.

  He took the red velvet wallet from his inside pocket and retrieved the tortoiseshell box and the remains of the powdered jyhr. ‘We have this at least.’ He’d lost the hexagonal bottle, the distilled jyhr, a large batch that would have taken years to create. ‘But we will survive, my champion, you and I. You and I,’ he said over and over, but all I could think of was Vilder in the window, his wig half off and his sotto voce curse as we had turned the corner—‘Run then. But I’ll find you—and play god with you yet.’

  7

  SPORCO AT THE BALL

  Padua, May 1815

  Sporco nudges me. ‘We’re arriving somewhere.’

  It’s almost dusk and the cavalcade, along with Vilder’s carriage, is climbing a hill towards the walls of a city. The red brick and broad Moorish crenellations are obscurely familiar: a long stowed-away memory of my master and I spending the night here in Padua. We pass through a gatehouse, along winding streets, over campiellos—the little squares that litter all Italian towns—until we arrive at an elliptical piazza and the convoy bunches to a halt, Vilder’s carriage stationing ahead of the rest in the forecourt of a coaching stable.

  ‘Do you know what?’ Sporco raises his brow, apparently gripped by some mischief. ‘There is another dog in this outfit. A lady dog. I caught a scent of her in a wagon ahead. She’s special this one. I’ve thought of nothing else.’

  ‘Well, try,’ I reply coolly. ‘We keep ourselves to ourselves.’

  ‘Ha, you wait until you catch her scent. She wants sex that one. Well, I don’t mind if she does. I will help her, I swear I will.’

  ‘You’re not helping any lady dogs. Understand?’

  My eyes are fixed on Vilder. He dismounts, stretches and casts his eye about the piazza. From behind us, a carriage sweeps in through the arch. The window is open and, as it passes, a cloud of vetiver rises from inside. I catch a glimpse of a pink gilt interior, two ladies in evening dresses and a gentleman lounging, his hair as slick and black as the vehicle. He peers out quizzically at the soldiers, and the coach sails on, out the other side of the square, towards music nearby. Another carriage speeds through. And a third and fourth. All elegant. A few of the officers—some of the ones that had ridiculed Vilder in Mestre—gather for a discussion, before going off in the direction of the music. Vilder watches them. A song ends and another begins. He says something to Braune and follows the soldiers.

  ‘Quickly,’ I say, jumping from our hiding place.

  ‘There she is!’

  A Rottweiler shambles down from the back of a gunner’s wagon, in heat, musk and yeast pealing off her. She stops in front of us, crouches and shits.

  ‘Did you ever come across anything so beautiful?’ Sporco drops to the ground in front of her and writhes on his back in a preposterous mating dance.

  ‘No ladies tonight.’

  ‘Can’t I just—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re ravishing,’ Sporco proclaims, puffing up his chest.

  The Rottweiler shows her teeth. ‘I’ll take you apart limb by limb,’ she pronounces in a low growl.

  ‘Just ravishing!’ Sporco declares. She growls again and I shoulder him on.

  Following the music, we come into another square dominated by a single palazzo, all columns and pediments, antiquity reimagined for the modern world, like a stage set, the type of building that my master would have found enthralling, even as his peers would have found it too modern to be tasteful. There is a ball. At the gates, carriages are disgorging their cargoes of sleek humans, who drift up a torchlit avenue to the house. I s
pot Vilder straightening his necktie and dusting down his tunic before entering. Music from inside teases through me, the melody of bows on strings, violins and cellos, the royalty of musical instruments. It’s a balmy evening and flowers in the front garden are in evening bloom, sweet alyssum, gardenia and honeysuckle. Sporco’s tail does a swish-swish and I’m overtaken with an uncommon pang of melancholy, of long-lost glories, of my vanished past, of the decades eaten up by waiting, the search and living alone.

  At first I think I’ll wait outside, but I would rather have Vilder in my sights. And besides, I want to witness a ball again after all these years, and for Sporco to see it too—for the first of one’s life is the most magical. Mine was long ago at Whitehall, on a summer evening such as this. Courtiers came to pavilions on the banks of the Thames in fancy dress, as medieval knights and Indian goddesses, as woodland faeries and the royalty of ancient England. No, indeed, this warm night is for the sharing of good spirits.

  I lead him to the fountain on the near side of the square. ‘We must wash if we wish to enter.’ For my part, I keep myself clean, so I deviously pretend to pass under the spray, so he’ll do the same. I brace myself for an argument, as dogs in general, even if they love water, can’t abide an actual bath, to be denuded of their scents—but Sporco proves an exception. He’s delighted by the procedure. As I paw him clean, washing three years of Venetian grime from his fur, he can’t stop giggling. When he’s shaken himself dry, and passed in and out of a hedge until the smell of wet fur has evaporated, we’re ready. We slip through the gates and pad into the shadows of the garden.

  ‘The pack, huh?’ he says, and I pretend not to hear him.

  The front portico has two principal arches, through which the humans go, and smaller ones on each side, one of which we pass through. The fragrance of flowers in the hall is almost shocking: peonies, lisianthuses and delphiniums in a thousand garlands. Summer capes are dropped in the hands of baby-faced chambermaids, to be carried backstage. There’s a chatter of champagne glasses, and light from countless chandeliers shines off canteens of silver and beeswaxed tabletops. A staircase sweeps up from the middle of the room and where it divides I can see the entrance to the ballroom. Vilder is mounting the stairs, studying the faces of guests coming and going, before disappearing inside. I look round at Sporco, but there’s another dog there, or so it seems. For my friend has transformed; he’s two shades lighter, golden blond, as he was as a puppy. And he’s grown handsome too. With the mask of dirt removed, there’s nobility in the arrangement of his features that I had never guessed was there.

  ‘Chi sono? Cani!’ calls a lady, coming from a side door and spotting us. She is the mistress here, I can tell from her bearing, and she will have us thrown out. A pity. I’d hoped to see just a little of the dance. Sporco goes to meet her, tail dancing in a circle. I mean to nudge him out of the way, but she scoops down and throws her arms round him. ‘Quanto è bello! Like a baby lion.’ She’s a beauty, with a swan’s neck and golden ringlets falling to her slim wide shoulders. Her voice is deep, like a man’s. ‘Come sei bello! This one reminds me of my darling Alfonso,’ she says of Sporco. ‘Look, everyone, these handsome fellows have come to join our dance. You are welcome. I am Claudina. Incantata.’ She curtsies and laughs, looking round to an assortment of courteous smiles. ‘Adesso, I must play the hostess.’ She collars a footman, entrapping him with her smile. ‘Bring these two water, with ice.’

  She leaves us, sailing queen-like up the stairs, a nod here, a smile there, her hand raised to receive a gentleman’s kiss and, with a final trumpet of laughter, she’s gone into the ballroom. My friend watches her, panting in admiration. When the footman returns with a golden bowl and sets it down before us, I could be back at the French court at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where, to the amusement of my master, cream-gloved butlers would bring me my meals on platters of bone china.

  Entering the grand ballroom, we find it thronged with guests, abuzz with chatter, and sparkling like a pharaoh’s treasure. The elite of Hapsburg society, wilful, vain and proud. Satined debutantes, boastful army officers, impatient counts and crookbacked dowagers. Deals are struck and little wars waged to the scent of money—kid leather, starched linen, perfumed silk, sable, amber and spikenard. Vilder sifts through them, searching faces. Now that men’s fashions are all efficient lines and muted colours, browns and greys, his clothes, of a more flamboyant age, set him apart. But that aside, in this milieu of society, he no longer seems hollowed out, but returns in part to his bygone incarnation, his back straighter and head higher, his demeanour pronouncing him a man of means and judgement. He does a loop of the chamber, before settling by the door. He takes out his little flask and doses himself, but this time—close up and in the light—I realize I know the bottle, though I have not seen it in almost two centuries: the hexagon of thick glass in which my master kept his liquid jyhr that he dropped in Amsterdam when Vilder attacked us. What a crafty collector he is, to have taken and held on to it all these years. Now the bottle contains a pale yellow liquid, which—as I surmised in Venice yesterday—must be some variety of easing potion, for Vilder’s shoulders drop and his pupils seem to shiver when he takes a sip of it.

  As he stows it once more in his pocket, an old chap next to him says, ‘I admire your coat.’ The man wears a colourful scarf on top of an otherwise plain countryman outfit. ‘Are you an artist?’

  ‘A what?’ The look on Vilder’s face is pure contempt, but the man doesn’t seem to notice.

  ‘An artist, I thought, in your fairy-tale coat. Us aesthetes must stick together.’ He waves his hands at the crowd. ‘Money, money, money. It’s all they think of.’ A pause. ‘That and its ugly cousin, war.’

  A waiter passes with a tray of champagne glasses and Vilder takes two. The man, thinking one is for him, smiles and holds out his hand, but Vilder keeps them both, draining the first, depositing it and starting on the second. ‘Who is this?’ He motions towards the orchestra on a platform at the far end. ‘The music, whose is it?’

  ‘Is it not utterly sublime? A young composer, an Austrian. Franz Schubert. Just eighteen. They say he is another Mozart.’

  ‘A who?’

  ‘Mozart.’ For a moment, both men look confused. I myself recognize the name, even if Vilder doesn’t. ‘Wouldn’t you agree the comparison is warranted?’

  ‘I’m sure it is.’

  ‘Eighteen, mark you. His whole life ahead of him. To possess such genius. If this is what he can produce as an adolescent, imagine the glories to come. Think of all those as yet unknown worlds he’ll bring to life for us, so that this world will be brighter and better.’

  ‘Or he may just go mad and poison himself with nightshade. That’s what they do, isn’t it, artists?’ To this, the poor chap has no reply. Vilder retreats to a chair in the corner, collecting a full bottle of champagne on his way.

  ‘Let’s go closer,’ I say, ‘and hear the orchestra play.’ We set off round the edges of the room. I’m dark-furred, ordinary, and can come across as solemn—even though once I used to be called the smiling dog—and no one notices me. But Sporco is an innate extrovert, and loves the attention—he gets tickled, ruffled and complimented on his golden coat. When we get to the front, he sits on his haunches, ears stuck up as enraptured as a child in front of a magic display, staring from one musician to another. It gives me pleasure and a peculiar sense of pride to see how awestruck he is, whilst also taking it all in his stride. The musicians are very fine—I could tell they would be from outside—faces plain with concentration, but fingers acrobatic. They notice the golden-haired dog gaping up at them and when he stands on his hind legs and taps the knee of the lead violinist, smiles spread from face to face.

  The music makes me feather light, shaking clouds of happy memories from the remote places of my mind. Music has always been a vital part of my life, most particularly when my master and I were together. ‘Who plays?’ he would always say, he
aring it, perhaps from a city street, or the far wing of a palace, or even when we were stationed with an army, and we’d go and investigate. In Venice, I would seek it out wherever I was able, perhaps thinking that the sublime alchemy of instrument and player would somehow draw him back to me. It was an extra boon if one of the masters or mistresses with whom I shared the years of my vigil brought music into the house, like the banker and his philanthropist wife that I lived with for a while—some years after the bachelor Jerome who’d been murdered for his jewels—in the largest palazzo of Dorsoduro.

  They lived for music and company, forever holding soirées and spectacles, always helping out some impoverished composer or other. One summer day, a particularly diverse and interesting crowd assembled, a pageant of powdered wigs and mantillas, constantly whirring fans, all craning their necks as an adolescent heeled into the room, cleared his throat, bowed at my hosts and took his place at the front of the orchestra. I wondered who the youngster could be, with his messy profusion of fine flaxen hair and pitted teenage face, he looked as unremarkable as a kitchen skivvy dressed up for the day. How judgemental I was, and in the presence of so great a man. But when Herr Mozart put his violin to his chin and started to play and the chamber orchestra took flight I thought I would melt across the floor.

  There’s a rattle of metal against glass, and the orchestra pauses, the master of ceremonies makes an announcement and the guests divide, some shrinking back to the walls as the remainder pair up in the centre. There’s a rustle of parchment as the musicians set out new sheets. The lead violinist counts in the others, the ladies curtsy, the gentlemen bow, and the waltz begins. With their first sweep, skirts unleash a wave of jasmine and orange flower. The onlookers applaud, eyes devouring the spectacle. The couples spin, polished shoes on the glassy floor, white breeches and gloves, winging tailcoats, silk ribbons catching the light. Within seconds the room is in motion, circles within circles. Sporco gapes at it and I remember that balls are fascinating not just for the joy of them, but for the zeal, ambition and jealousy that surfaces too. The dance is a battle, and not just between the dancers, but between the many parts of each human.