“It’s almost as if they’re dancing,” the Princess said.
Across the river, below a rocky ledge wetted with streams, Ainoha could also make out an Astingi squadron emerging from a dark wood of unlimbed beeches. They were in ceremonial warrior garb, carrying lances of cornel tipped with iron, and burnished quivers stuffed with blue lead darts. Their glossy golden mounts wore purple saddlecloths and golden snoods with golden bits clamped between their teeth, and both horse and rider wore pliant twisted strands of gold upon their upper chests. But as this vanguard cleared the wood and descended upon a large bald, the Field of Mars, striplings practicing horsemanship appeared on either flank, like birds driven inland from the sea. They rode barechested, their pantaloons held up by suspenders of their mothers’ hair, skulls smartly slicked beneath wolfskin caps, one foot roughly booted, the other bare. The commanders cracked their whips as they weaved left and right, and behind each, two files of six boys rode in open columns. The columns cantered left and right, wheeled, and with their lances lowered, charged one another, alternating parades and counter-marches, retreats and skirmishes. The Field of Mars was white with bones, and on its distant reaches one might still come across the skeleton of a horse, its ribs plunged with the skeleton of its rider, surrounded by an iron hedge of spears. Fertilized with blood and ashes, the earth sprouted giant nasturtiums and violets which would make the best dog giddy, even faint. Horses got the bends, cattle bloated and toppled over. Bees locked their feet in clouds over gargantuan lilies; even the butterflies were punch-drunk. But now this field was sere.
This was no patrol but a mimicry of combat, and its seriousness was sealed when Mother saw the Shaman himself, never before present during maneuvers, observing from the edge of the wood astride a huge stallion with white pasterns and a snowy blaze across his forehead. He alone was dressed simply, no military decorations nor an ounce of gold, his white beard flashing down his raspberry tunic into his lap, and armed only with a cello. The Astingi were on the move to enlist new gods.
Topsy was salivating and the Professor was perspiring. Father’s hands were moving slowly, doing a bit of detached minor surgery upon the air.
“I believe she is beginning to understand,” the Professor said.
“One can understand a great deal and change very little,” Father said absently. “You can’t change ability, but you can change attitude.”
“But she is behaving, no?”
“For the time being, perhaps. You must learn to listen to those who won’t answer.”
“And then, dear friend?”
“And then you must make sure that your silence is perfectly understood. And then to make your cold silence, warm.”
“Either you are a genius or the worst charlatan, Councilor.”
“Ah, no,” Felix said quietly, tugging upon an invisible leash as if he were fly-fishing, “hardly a genius. I just know how things are, you see. I don’t know why.”
“These are certainly all new theories to me,” the Professor said brightly, “if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“Selves don’t need theories. I mean, dear friend, where do you think we are? Athens?” Father snapped out scathingly. “What is needed is a new tone, a new tempo. Something beyond irony and hyperbole.” He glowered out over the darkening river. “Something dead-on.”
“Yes, something scientific,” the Professor rubbed his hands. “Eine unsägliche diagnose (an unspeakable diagnosis).”
“Not quite,” Father sighed. “A proper science would be critical and humorous, as slippery and sardonic as art. If there’s an idea involved, it’s just this: if the nutcase is to be taken off your hands, she must know there will be no next physician!”
He had drawn abreast of his students. “Now, remove the cord, but not the collar.” And they walked on, Topsy in perfect step, her eyes never leaving their knees.
“Tell me Herr Doktor, what is the longest distance in the world?”
The Professor shrugged, preparing himself for the joke.
“To move a man from his intellect to his brain.”
“Surely this is not so difficult as you make it out.”
“You still are much too interested in unveiling hypocrisy. The point is to pass on a certain tolerance so that authority becomes affordable. A stern but benevolent ally can create courage!”
Topsy had stopped, raised a rear leg, squatted tremulously, and micturated.
“Ah, what a wonderful specimen,” the Professor guffawed.
“Sarcasm is fine, if you use it no more often than a polka in a symphony. Now, by yourselves then.”
The two moved diagonally in something of a clumsy gambol.
“Much better, comrade. We have made some progress today.”
The Professor was flushed, stammering. “And what is down the road, Councilor—the next lesson?”
“It will be a long journey, Professor, and it is still possible that in the future, spoiled and incurious, she will become everything we hate. The next steps, in order, one on each visit, will be the Col Pugno (With the Fist), the Ruhevoll (Serenity), the Mordent Coraggio (Caustic Courage), the Trotta Sentimento (Heartfelt Trot), and finally, with luck, the Adagio Religioso.”
“This last,” the Professor snorted dismissively, “is either schmonzes (nonsense) or schrecklich (frightening).”
“Life is not a ‘Society for Obvious or Underlying Jewish Themes,’ my dearest friend. But my oath to you is that you will experience it by honorable means, if possible. If not, not.”
At this point Topsy wrapped her front legs firmly about Father’s knee and began to deliriously hump away upon his be-putteed leg. Father glanced down knowingly, and for the first time I can recall in a training session, fairly shouted, “Phui!”
She slipped to the ground in the idol-like attitude of the sphinx, paws extended, head elevated, thighs pressed close to her body, her bestial eyes narrowing to mere slits.
“Now there’s a command for you!” the Professor beamed. “Forget the damn music—that’s the one I want to master.”
Father had looked away. “Ah, friend, it takes a great many phuis to make a religion or a work or art.”
The Professor and Topsy had turned toward the river. The wind had picked up, swirling the grass into viridian pockets. Gray Siberian crows, blown in from the steppe, settled about them unconcerned. A crane walked up and passed them by, looking at them over its shoulder like an old gentleman going to the mailbox.
“Relax. Never an angry gesture. Not so constricted . . . Nicht eilen (do not hurry), not so close to the body . . . Bedächtig (deliberately) not too quickly, give her time, feierlich langsam doch nicht schleppen . . . Come out of your bag. If you are tense to begin with, you’ll have nothing left. Stay within yourself. That’s better . . . Now, narrante!”
The chapel promontory was suddenly cupped with gusts of wind. Squirrels raced hysterically about its mullions as skylarks fell twittering aimlessly in descent, ceasing their song only a few inches from the ground. Inside, Waterlily was warming up, but she was no longer singing to herself, as she often did. This was a performance.
Ma-la-mi-doe-doe
Ma-la-fi-ta-do
Waterlily, to her credit, was apparently trying to wrench the Art Song from its culmination of bad history and bad poetry, those recitals solemnly progressing through four centuries and five languages, a trial for all concerned. She was also experimenting with a form of voix mixte, at once guttural and falsetto, combining both head and chest registers, so that each vowel had two rates of vibration. It gave quite a special and eerie effect, suitable for the songs which feature children dying in your arms, but seemed a bit overwrought when glowing sunsets, woeful monks, singing larks, overgrown churchyards, or maidens fishing from a bridge were invoked, and all in all it was best that only I could hear her. Sufficiently resonated, she began that afternoon’s recital with a strange Cannonian water rhapsody, as if she were standing alone in the bend of the all-time resonant piano which was Semper V
ero.
Over the tops of the westerly wood
Friendly beckons the reddish gleam,
Beneath the branches of the easterly wood
The sweet-flag murmurs in the reddish gleam
Until upon loftier, radiant wings
Myself shall flee this changing time.
Eagles were now floating downriver from the upcountry, routing the owls from turrets of the chapel, then walking back and forth on the roof, preening their skulls, their wings folded behind their backs. These heraldic birds—austere, aloof, ill-tempered gentlemen—had little intelligence and no plasticity, their flat heads all inexorable lever, all beak, all pupil. The Astingi abominated the eagle above all things, not only because they carried away their lambs, billykids, and even small foals, but because every empire had adopted them as their symbol of authority. They were the antithesis of the Astingi warrior aesthetic—a beast of prey, aristocracy turned pointless and cruel—which is why every Astingi entourage was brought up in the rear by an eagle trudging on a chain, fed on grub worms and corn gruel, and why Astingi flutes are made from the largest bone of the wing.
The two men breasted the ridge and gazed across the river at the two women sitting, almost classical figures in the light mist. The Penelope III was concealed from them by the angle of the cliff.
“Look,” the Professor said, “their breasts are shaking.”
“Laughing at us, no doubt,” Father replied. “Women are more attuned to reality. That’s why they get hysterical.”
The Professor scowled. Topsy was gazing up at him, blinking nervously like her mistress. “Such beseeching!” he groaned.
“You must put up with this and more,” Father intoned. “We may be witnessing the poorest performance ever given by a dog. Everything depends upon the master’s glance.”
“But she’s so narcissistic.”
“No one can stand unconditional love for long, good friend. Bounce it back to her. Accept her damage. The suffering cannot end prematurely. Your only command to her is this: use your strength. Molto sentimento d’affeto. One must be tender even with the women one has lost.”
The Professor turned back from the river. The cord had tightened inadvertently.
“Pull on her that way, and the only thing you’d be able to predict is where she won’t be.”
“You contradict my every move!”
“Don’t you see, my friend? It’s like playing an instrument. Get the midrange right, and everything else will follow. Più tosto presto spiccato. We walk as between two rivers.”
“Very well, Topsy.” The Professor swallowed his gruffness. “Let us ply the bloody golden mean,” and she waddled through the grass approvingly.
“And stop seeing events as if they were always in a drama,” Felix barked.
The frigate was now directly beneath them, its oars tearing at the water like an uncoordinated centipede. Sailors scurried in the rigging and swore amongst the stacked scenery. But on the main hatch, strewn with pebbles and potted palms, a hodgepodge of a play was being rehearsed to no one’s apparent notice. The Astingi vowels floated up:
“Si spus-am ochiului meu trist: Imbrâtiseazâ!”
And then the translation, in perfect Oxbridge cadences:
“And then who knows whether it is better to be or not to be? But everyone knows that what does not exist feels no pain, while pains in life are many, pleasures few, to be?”
“Good Lord,” the Professor expostulated. “Even the dogs in Cannonia bark in a foreign tongue.” And from the kennel, only broken-winded yelps.
The Princess had lost herself in thought. Mother genuinely tried to deflect her from this course.
“What are they doing up there?” the Princess queried nervously.
The men were facing each other, apparently doing a kind of calisthenics, though upon closer inspection, it was rather a kind of grave conducting of a silent orchestra.
“My husband has devoted himself to the learning of grace, which he has no instinct for. First, conducting lessons from Gundel, the great closet maestro of Monstifita, then flamenco lessons, Greco-Roman wrestling, and ballet at forty-five. Can you imagine?”
But the Princess did not look up or react to this. She insisted, rather, in dwelling upon the history of each of her scars, from her Roman nose (a piano top had collapsed) to her petite cicatrized feet (the bones were growing in the wrong direction, she had been told.) She had also apparently been convinced by a certain Dr. Halban of Monstifita to move that peculiar female member of wondrous nerves, her sucre d’orange as she put it, closer to the urethral passage, a two-step procedure which would allow her to mount more easily ocean’s orgiastic wave.
Ainoha stared at Princess Zanäia for some time, watching as she traced her scars with her forefinger, adumbrating their causes and consequences. Then she threw herself into the river. Staying under for an anxiously long interval, she emerged some fifty yards away with a collar of water lilies, and shouted back to shore, “Surely there are worse things than monogamy!” Then she paddled aimlessly about, trying a number of different strokes, none of which relaxed her, until finally she realized she had no choice but to return to the tiny beach. But no sooner had she dried off than her royal confidant asked her if she could be of assistance in gaining entrance to the Silbürsmerze morgue, so that the Princess might make certain measurements of any female corpses there, as it was common knowledge that the Astingi women’s apparat was the least complicated in the world, and also rumored to run horizontally.
Mother replied that this was certainly a myth, though no doubt a useful one. But she was neither used to exercising self-control nor to asking someone to stop speaking in her presence. And she was also surprised to realize that indignity was as difficult to come by in this situation as compassion.
“Oh, I know you ardent women detest frigid women,” the Princess wailed.
Mother replied somewhat helplessly, “But I know no one at the morgue.”
The Princess was downcast. All her scars seemed to raise slightly. Tilting her head to one side, lips pursed, her nervous glance finally solidified, it was clear she was contemplating a measurement upon the most prominent live specimen of Astingi-related womanhood.
“You are quite the iconoclast,” Mother offered icily.
“Actually, no,” the Princess moaned, “just a misfit,” and burst into tears.
Ainoha had soiled her chemise.
Searching for the perfect non sequitur, Ainoha was mercifully interrupted by Catspaw, who had sensed his Mistress’s distress. He tottered down the steep path in a Russian blouse and white spats, precariously balancing a silver tray with several fruit spritzers and what appeared to be a skull from Father’s collections. He was extemporizing even before he stopped before the Princess.
“Here lies the water; good; here stands the man; good: if the man go to this water and drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he goes—mark you that; but if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself: argal, he that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life.”
“Bravi.” The Princess clapped her translucent hands.
“Goodness gracious,” the Naiad groaned. “Later, dear Catspaw, argal, not now.”
Pain crossed his face as he turned on his heel and began to trudge back up the path. At one point, he turned to recite the breathless messenger’s speech from Macbeth, but Ainoha, drawing her hand across her throat, cut him off.
Topsy was flagging and kept looking longingly across the river.
“In order to compensate for the mind’s imperfections,” Father was saying, “all the other senses must be put into compensatory concert. Now that we have run out of session, we must be quiet.”
They stood stock-still for some minutes.
“Do you feel it?” Father queried.
“Yes, indeed, a kind of energy . . .”
“A displaceable energy, in itself neutral, but able to join forces with another impulse. An immanent movement?”
“Blast, now I’ve lost it!” The Professor snapped his fingers and groaned.
“No matter. The patient takes what she needs. You don’t know what it is, but she takes what she needs and leaves the rest. Semplice ma mysterioso.”
The Professor gesticulated sardonically to the heavens. “I don’t suppose I’ll ever be permitted to play my own cadenzas in this concert?”
“Sir, speak sequentially, without ungainly pauses. Where you choose to breathe is where her character is defined.”
The Professor sullenly took up the cord and dog, and with quick strides headed for the rope bridge, gradually lengthening the distance between the two men. Father followed, correcting the Professor’s various postures and gaits, a repertoire which, to his credit, was expanding:
“Much too correct, nicht blutwallungen, brutalmente . . . Now, there we go, that’s better . . . There . . . Allegro maestoso . . . No, no—fast but not all that fast. There, easy, but not too easy. Adagio, adagio, adagio, adagio, adagio, adagio!”
The Professor’s Trabuko had fallen from his mouth, leaving a trail of embers and ash down his sweat-stained shirtfront. His gaze was locked on a grove of trees on the far side of the river, and Felix himself was taken aback when he saw the winding file of naked girls, their hair undone, jars on their shoulders, bells on their anklets, garlanded with coins, gold chains, and shards of glass. The Peraperduga had been set in motion, one hundred paranymphs dancing in the wilderness in search of purling streams as yet unknown, praying for rain in three languages on the back road to Silbürsmerze, and shivering for joy. A dry muddy-colored rainbow arched over their wild hymns like a faded provincial opera set.
“What can it mean?” the Professor whispered hoarsely, and Felix intoned sadly:
“For us, it is only the definitive sign of drought. Or worse.”
The sun had been cut off quite suddenly by the bluff, as the ladies were startled by a horrific sucking sound.
“Strangely enough,” Mother observed evenly, “the river is often ugliest at dusk.”
In Partial Disgrace Page 33