by Mark Helprin
In the background of the Raphael, in one small corner, was a patch of silvery blue that took a divine ray of sun shining pale under a distant rim of gold. The painting was of a battle. “That’s the biggest Raphael in all the world,” Freddy said.
“And the best.”
Freddy’s eyes swept over the ladders on tracks of dulled brass; the marble busts and friezes as smooth and flawless as cream; the racks of weapons, some ancient and others stacked during the war, for the king’s stand had Hitler reached England with more than bombs; the leather-inlaid tables and desks; the saddles and boots; the maps on easels; the seraphim of Grinling Gibbons; the Turner in the corner; the magnificent replica of Repulse; Newton’s apple itself, withered into mystery; and so on. It was as wonderful a place as Freddy had ever seen.
He joined his father, who sat on a huge hearth of honed slate, staring into the fire he had just lit and watching it take. “The main drawback here,” Paul said, “is the lack of heat. In winter it can get extremely cold. That’s why the sofas and desks are bunched up somewhat ungracefully at this end of the room. When it’s really cold, I nap on the slate, which after three or four hours of a fire has warmed nicely. Get us a drink.”
Freddy went to a campaign table upon which half a dozen different single malts stood amid rows of crystal glasses. He chose the Laphroaig be-cause the room with its grandeur was yet like a little house on a Scottish isle. He asked why so many glasses, and the answer was that they looked beautiful when the light played on them—better than diamonds, which reflect too promiscuously and too sharply. The crystal kept as much as it gave, and, in keeping its splendour, took on the quality of warmth.
Paul, it seemed, thought upon the light and followed it for what it did. Freddy had simply not known. Nor did he know at this moment that his father had taken him to this place not only for a practical reason of which Freddy was entirely unaware—which was that he would soon be called to the throne—but to anchor him once again in the world of royalty, lest in the democratic world he become unbalanced in his affections. As darkness fell, they stared into coals that glowed as red as Mars.
FACING THE FIRE, they were, like Englishmen for a thousand years before them, too hot in front and too cold in back. “This is better than central heating,” Paul said, “because it’s less comfortable.”
“I quite agree,” Freddy replied. “Central heating has taken the edge off civilisation.”
“The question is whether one would want civilisation, as it is now constituted, to have an edge.”
“Good point.”
They talked in the firelight until they saw and heard things in the darkness that normally they did not perceive. They heard ocean-like murmurs of oblivion, of the abandoned past, of things and people carelessly forgotten, and it kept them still. Within the dimensionless world where they had gone, amidst the sounds of Roman hammers on Roman anvils, of Scottish oats waving in a summer wind of the fifteenth century, of hawsers squealing against the gunwales of the fleet that waited to meet the Spanish Armada, of the click of Arkwright’s million gears, of steam whistles, and of the ghostly radar beams bouncing from approaching bombers of the Luftwaffe . . . amidst all this and the void in which it was set, they remembered still that the queen and Fredericka would be waiting for them to go to dinner in half an hour, and that Paul was supposed to tell Freddy something.
“What are you going to tell me?” Freddy asked as Vercingetorix (the man) crossed the space in front of his eyes, with battle-axe and horned helmet, his clothing of skins floating upon his body as weightless as Ophelia’s water-borne dress.
“You had to know sometime,” said Paul.
“Know what?” asked Freddy.
Thinking he was being asked a rhetorical question, Paul asked, “What?”
Thinking he was being asked to repeat himself, Freddy said, “Know what?”
“What?”
“What do I have to know sometime?”
“You have to know—it’s only fair—what happened to you as a child.”
“I do know, in general.”
“Yes, but you don’t know of something quite unusual, that may have made you what you are.”
“I’m not adopted, am I?” Freddy asked.
“Of course not. You’ve got my ears and your mother’s nose.”
“You dropped me on my head.”
“Yes, we dropped you on your head. We dropped all our children on their heads, but that isn’t what did it.”
“Did what?”
“Made you a little . . . off, Freddy.”
“A little off ?”
“Most people don’t bathe sixteen times a day.”
“I rather think it’s a virtue,” Freddy said, meaning to bathe sixteen times a day, which he did when he could.
“Most people, when interviewed by the BBC, do not howl like a hyena and laugh until they cannot breathe.”
“It’s just that they’re so correct. That’s what did it the first time, and ever since then I’ve tried desperately not to laugh and simply cannot control it. I used to be able to last ten or fifteen minutes. Now, when they say, ‘Good evening,’ I’m done. The more they look at me in wonder, the more I must laugh. I adopted the trick of howling like a hyena to choke off the laughter, but it works only intermittently. It’s really your fault, for not being able to suppress the BBC full hour’s special of me laughing. What kind of television is that?”
“Freddy, it’s not my fault. And it’s not yours, either.”
Freddy was now alarmed.
“When you were eighteen months of age, your mother and I took you to Africa. . . .”
Freddy’s gaze fixed upon the grizzled duke.
“Your mother had not become queen, and thought that decades might pass before her father’s death. We lived then almost like real human beings. The press was not so invasive. We could actually go places without paralysing the life in them. We could actually meet and talk to people and watch as they warmed to us and forgot who we were. We loved this, and, naïvely, we thought it would go on forever. You always think things will go on forever, and they never do.
“In Africa, we stayed so long in a hunting lodge on the plains beneath Kilimanjaro that the locals forgot we were there and England forgot we were gone. We wore nothing but bush clothing, and your mother, who was young and beautiful, was sunburned and rosy-coloured all the time. That was before we knew that the sun isn’t good for you. It seemed awfully good for us, I’ll tell you that. We had so much life, Freddy, and you were the perfect child. Sometimes we would sit, just the three of us—Sydney was with the queen—and listen to the darkness and feel the heat. Life has never been better, not for me anyway. I knew even at the time; I appreciated it, and I still do.
“One day, having gone out in a jeep to look at one of the great herds of wildebeest, we left you in your carrier on the ground as we observed. We were so excited that we climbed up into the back of the jeep to get a better look. Certainly we checked every now and then, as one does, but then a group of elephants charged through the wildebeest and, I suppose, more time passed than we realised. When next we looked, you were gone.”
“I was gone?”
“You can imagine our distress. Without breath, I scanned all around, and to my horror I discovered that, a hundred feet or so distant, you were being carried away by a huge baboon.”
“Not!” Freddy exclaimed. “I was raised by baboons!”
“No, Freddy, it was worse than that.”
“Worse? What worse? How could it be worse?”
“I picked up my scoped Enfield. Your mother was hysterical and my heart was beating wildly, but I knew that in hand-to-hand combat I was no match for the baboon, and that anyway you could easily have been ripped apart in the struggle. I had to drop the baboon. I had no choice. It was the most difficult shot imaginable, for the baboon carried you in an embrace that gave me no room to miss.”
“You shot me?”
“No, Freddy, worse.”
“I don’t know if you should tell me. Perhaps you really shouldn’t tell me.”
“I think I should.”
“Go ahead.”
“I took that shot, and managed it. The baboon fell in its tracks. You rolled away unharmed. Philippa and I jumped down from the jeep and ran toward you. But, before we could get there—and, unfortunately, I was in such a rush that I had left the Enfield in the jeep—before we could get to you. . . .”
“What!”
“You were seized by a Broom-Tailed Ignatz.”
“I was seized by a what?”
“A Broom-Tailed Ignatz.”
“What is a Broom-Tailed Ignatz? Is this true?”
“If you don’t believe me, look in the encyclopaedia: third shelf, behind the bust of Harold the Invincible.”
Freddy rose, dashed into the darkness, and rushed back with a volume in hand.
“That’s the nineteen seventy-eight edition. Go to the nineteen eleven.”
Soon Freddy was back, riffling in the firelight through the pages of the magnificent 1911 Britannica: “Brooks; Brooks’s; Broom; Broome, William; Broome-Rape; Brosch?”
“Look under Ignatz,” his father told him.
Then he was back again, with volume 14: “Iglau; Iglesias; Ignatiev; Ignatius; Ignatz, Broom-Tailed.” He paused, looked up hopelessly, and read: “ ‘Savage animal found in the mountainous regions bordering the Rift Valley, the Serengeti Plain, and the Masai Steppe in East-Central Africa. First mentioned by Pliny as Insanus vector, the Broom-Tailed Ignatz is a buff-coloured, chicken-like, semi-canine mammal that, nonetheless, lays eggs and swims like an amphibian. A tubular jaw supporting fine rows of sharklike teeth and joined by the huge tendons of the neck to tiger-sized back muscles enables the Ignatz to seize and rip prey, although it is not an agile fighter. Its prime source of food is the baby ostrich, and it sometimes raids the domesticated livestock of native kraals. Alone among mammals, the Ignatz is equipped with a venom sac and a single hollow fang. Entering the flesh, the gross mandibular fang, because of its large diameter, enables the quick injection of venom. In the Ignatz’s customary sources of food, the venom paralyses. In rare cases, when humans have been bitten, the venom induces a’ ”—Freddy paused, looked at the darkness swirling above him, closed his eyes, and said—“ ‘lifelong insanity.’ ” He reeled.
“It’s worse than that, much worse, I’m afraid.”
“What, I was raised by the Ignatz?”
“No. We snatched you away. You were alive. My goodness how you cried.”
“You would have, too, had you been bitten by a Broom-Tailed Ignatz.”
“No I wouldn’t have.”
“How do you . . . oh no.”
“Yes. He bit me as I snatched you from him.”
“Did he bite Mummy, too?”
“He bit her canteen, and then disappeared into the bush.”
“But that’s it, isn’t it? It’s no worse than that?”
“Worse.”
“Not.”
“Worse.”
“How could it be?”
“In the camp where we were staying was a doctor—a Pole or a Romanian or something like that: sometimes I don’t know the difference. Naturally, when we came roaring in, blowing the horn, everyone ran out, including Dr Lupo—Dr Milhasz Lupo. An English doctor was hours away, so we had to give ourselves over to his care.”
“What did he do?”
“He seemed well qualified.”
“What did he do?”
“He transfused our blood.”
“Mine and yours?”
“No. We were both bitten.”
“Mummy’s?”
“No, she was the heir to the throne. You wouldn’t want to have filled her up with Ignatz-treated blood, would you?”
“Whose blood, then?”
“Motta Motta’s.”
“Who?”
“Motta Motta, the local witch doctor—a quarter of a tonne.”
“You mean, we don’t have royal blood? We have witch-doctor blood?”
“Yes, but that wouldn’t be a problem. He was a kind of royalty, and they’re as strong as lions, those Masai. Noble people.”
“But there was a problem.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“What problem?” asked Freddy, drained of reaction.
“Dr Lupo had no way of knowing this, but it seems that Motta Motta had been bitten by Broome-Tailed Ignatzes half a dozen times. That’s why he was such a good witch doctor. After the operation, he calmed down considerably. Our blood had been only a hundred proof, but we ended up with his, at six hundred. Of course, there’s no way of knowing how the Ignatz venom will affect you. Since then, I myself have been almost totally sane. But, you. . . .”
Freddy finished the last of his Scotch. He laughed a slightly deranged laugh, and asked, “Is this true?”
“I’m afraid, my dear boy, that it is.”
“What am I supposed to think?”
“Think nothing of it.”
IMMEDIATELY UPON coming in to dinner, Freddy had noticed that his mother seemed wan and distracted. And when she greeted him, her eyes filled with tears. This he took for her usual disappointment. Knowing that the blood that had run in his veins since his infancy had predisposed him to the controversial incidents in his life that had led others to doubt his stability, he understood her distress. Thus defeated by his very blood, or lack of it, he was uncharacteristically silent. Although he did not know why, so was Fredericka. So was the queen, and so was Paul, who breathed like a fish.
No one touched the hors d’oeuvres. The queen said, “All my life I’ve loved this salmon that the gamekeepers smoke—all my life. How many times and in how many settings I have eaten it I do not know, but I think that for the moment just the memory of it will be enough. It’s very strange, and I don’t understand it, but I now find more satisfaction in abstaining than I do in partaking.”
As they took their seats, Freddy looked at the menu. “Shish-kebab?” he asked. “Goat curry?” He read the card. “Rawalpindi fruit ice?”
“To celebrate your return,” the queen said.
Freddy knew that his mother detested what his father referred to as “wog chow,” and he was therefore baffled. “Shish-kebab?” he asked again.
“Yes,” the queen said, in a slightly tremulous voice. “Did you enjoy it?”
“I haven’t eaten it yet.”
“When you were away.”
“I don’t think we ever did, did we, Fredericka?”
Staring down, Fredericka moved her head back and forth. Her brassy tresses looked like something in a shampoo commercial.
“I suppose their cuisine is quite international now,” the queen said.
“It is,” said Freddy.
“But when we were there,” Philippa continued, “we had it time after time—lamb, goat, mountain burunya.”
“You did?” Freddy asked.
“Oh, yes. And cucumbers in sheep’s milk yoghurt. Curries even for breakfast. Not my idea of eating.”
“Well,” said Freddy, “now they have these things called Egg McMuffins, and another oddity, Cheez Doodles. Although I actually like their Cheez Doodles, frankly, I don’t see how they, as a people, have accomplished all they have accomplished on such a diet.”
“What have they accomplished?” Paul asked. “They’re just a bunch of fly-chewing wogs.”
“You may say that, but this year they’ve won twice as many Nobel Prizes as the nearest competitor.”
“They have?” the queen asked. “No one told me.”
“They invented the electric light, and the transistor.”
“Freddy, that’s what they may say, but everyone knows the electric light was invented by Geoffrey Deakin.”
“I know you believe that, but, really. They are to this day the only people, among all the peoples of mankind, who have walked on the Moon.”
“In their imaginations.”
Freddy was astonished. “
No, Maman, you know that it’s true. Don’t tell me that in my absence you’ve joined the looney left.”
“Don’t be silly, Freddy,” Paul said. “Since they’ve been on their own they haven’t had a pot to piss in. I say to hell with them. They were a drain in the first place. If they want to run around all the time in bedsheets, knifing and stabbing Europeans, that’s their problem.”
“But Pah-Pah,” said Freddy, quite offended, “they came to our rescue in the two world wars.”
“Little New Zealand did a hell of a lot more,” Paul stated crisply.
“New Zealand?” Freddy asked, stressing each syllable. “That’s ridiculous. Without their industrial base, we’d all be Germans now—well, real Germans.”
“Oh Freddy, Freddy,” the queen said, staring at her plate, pained and disappointed. “They helped us, dear, but it was only a drop in the bucket. That dreadful man who led them—of course, they were all Indians then—had conversations with Hitler.”
“Franklin Roosevelt?”
“No,” the queen said, rather sternly, “Hitler.”
“What do you mean, ‘They were all Indians then’? In the Second World War?”
“Ninety percent,” Paul said, authoritatively.
“No no no,” Freddy said, laughing. “Indians made up only one or two percent.”
“And who made up the rest, Freddy?” his father demanded.
“The largest group was of English descent . . .” he began. Paul shook his head in horror, but Freddy continued, “and then, after that, Italians, I believe.”
“Italians?” the queen asked. “Italians?”
“Yes, they and masses of Eastern Europeans came in a tremendous wave of immigration”—Freddy could hardly believe that he had to tell them this, and imagined that perhaps they had been drinking—“at the turn of the century. You know.”
“No, we don’t know.”
“Yes. That’s why they have so much frozen pizza and everyone knows a few words of Yiddish.”
“Freddy,” Paul said, “you seem not to be able to tell the difference between the United States and Pah-kiss-tahn.”