The sucking continued and the Princess gazed out nervously at the Mze, which was busily regurgitating a new island: an ovoid slab of primordial mud flecked with quartz.
“Receiving semen is my greatest ecstasy,” pronounced the Princess apropos of nothing.
They returned to the house in a nude monotonous march.
At the peak of floodtime there is absolute silence, as every discord has been harmonized. But now with its strange resorbent sound, the river seemed to be looking to acquire a language at the very moment it had lost its power of metaphor. It was as if the Mze had lost its primal force, had tired of making limpid aesthetic statements and become self-conscious, yearning to be expressed. Its gurgle was rather like actors in a play whose lines are so densely poetic you cannot grasp them or the action; just the opposite of Father reading to me, that tumultuous cataract, those enfilades of dirty soldiers marching through the night. If this were a language its waterfall was now played out, its once curved body flat and meager, the pother as its base, vanished. The surface rapids were no longer visible, curving backward in sulfurous currents. There was no osmosis, no flowing—just a series of little scum-covered puddles, half-suffocated with water lilies and spiked rushes, into which ivory scavenger gulls, no longer able to plunge for fish, gingerly stepped, dreary, sad, and invested with an air of desperate deprivation. Poorly equipped, they carried away mysterious and far-from-appetizing fragments of this language, which in no time at all reappeared on the newly exposed rocks as a squirming white cape of excrement.
As an unwanted encore, Waterlily had launched into a conclusion of Astingi frontier songs, snatches from the decasyllabic “Ballads of Heroes” (Kange Krajiŝnice) of which every Astingi girl had a repertoire of hundreds—short song-cycles formulated in the fifteenth century to conquer the boredom of the men’s endless recited epics. I had always thought their artistic value slight, but as she refashioned them in voix mixte, her uvula flickering, ad lib with variations as the player pleases, she emptied the landscape of everything save the text, and Semper Vero consisted of only the solitary singer and her page.
Once in the East
A host marched in helmets
A man was with them on horseback
With two dogs.
I pulled him down from his horse
Where he fell I stood up
I put on his clothes, whistled his dogs
Blew into my cupped hands
As the helmets drifted dead in the stream
The ladies were playing desultory tennis in men’s whites when the Topsy party returned, a brace of Chetvorah chasing down and retrieving any ball which left the court. The straw target was stuffed black with arrows.
The Professor was red-faced but proud, and Father walked behind, pale but also proud. The Princess waved her racquet, and the Professor, showing off, dropped into a half crouch as Topsy heeled.
“Nervorum atque cerebri mala affecto (don’t get creative on me),” Father hissed in camp Latin.
The Chetvorah sat on either side of the net like referees, waiting for a mishit and pointedly ignoring Topsy. The Professor thought they were slyly winking at him.
“And how did my little darling do?” the Princess queried breathlessly, one eye on her pet and another on a ball rolling slowly off the court.
“She takes it all very well,” the Professor beamed. “Not bad at all,” Father informed the party, “considering her rational part is defectuous and impeached.” Then he went to kiss Mother, whose hair was still wet. “How goeth it?” he whispered in her ear.
“Oh, we do not enjoy seeing one another, but would be unhappy if we didn’t,” Ainoha mused. “She’s not in love with her husband, and what’s worse, not in love with anyone else.” She had on that fake brave grin which always affected Felix more than her natural smile.
“If I were religious, I would pray for one thing, dear heart,” she whispered as Father took her in his arms, “and that is, we ought to leave . . . the retail business.”
“My thoughts exactly.” He held her close. “The best pet is a pet idea.”
They walked back to the Professor and Princess, who were also talking earnestly and intimately. Topsy was calm, golden flecks in her hazel eyes.
“The time has come for the ultimate reinforcement,” Felix gastriloquized, and after taking the cord from the Professor’s pocket, he ambled out on the lawn away from the court. “You see, training finally becomes four-dimensional, not by aspiring beyond the material, but by humblingly, gruelingly, and systematically working every fine point into the body until it becomes second nature.”
First he gently pulled on a fold of Topsy’s neck, then released the cord nonchalantly, keeping the flat of his hand on the place the cord had occupied. Turning to his audience, he rasped, “It’s the last mile, of course, which is the hardest to hold.” Topsy blinked coquettishly.
“Care, take care,” Father whispered as he drew away from her with a slow backward tango-tread, tracing out a pause in which his partner could play in and adorn. Then he raised his right arm perpendicularly and gently pressed his left hand against her back.
“Toho,” he whispered, and the dog slowly turned her head, eye on his hand, tail flagging, but mute. “Bend,” he orated softly, “bend,” and Topsy slowly arched her back, raised her head, and lifting a forepaw ever so slightly, she turned and twirled.
“Utter transcendence,” the Princess swooned.
“A million-dollar move,” the Professor ejaculated.
“That will do,” Father whispered to Topsy. Then, balancing on one boot, exhaling as the breath was drawn out of the dog as well as the assembly, gradually spreading his hands as if he were pulling apart dough, all movement was suspended. The air itself seemed to disappear, sucked away, and the earth pulled all heads downwards. Then Felix slowly pivoted on one leg, and scarcely giving the sign of a downbeat, he concluded the muted elegy as all the players resumed breathing.
“All we want in this world, all we want,” Father whispered hoarsely, “is that the damn dog follow our lead, that she walk calmly by our side with her head high.” A tear came to his eye. “But . . . this is all too rare. Not one in a thousand dogs is worth keeping.”
“But to move the patient from hysterical inversion to common misery and to forget the self-dramatizing,” the Professor comforted him, “that is progress!”
Waterlily was reaching a harsh crescendo, a cosmic C-minor, then a roulade of one-and-a-half octaves of stunning rapidity. She hurled out the notes to the sky, neither words nor sounds, but distended spheres, mucoid globules unattached to anything.
From thirteen gods
and fourteen goddesses
I am descended
From my son
I begat myself once again
blinder of hosts.
My name is now Astinge
And by that only I shall be called
As I go to the nations.
She was caterwauling like a bathhouse nymph.
The chatter was animated on the terrace that late afternoon. “Can you imagine how glorious it is,” the Princess giggled, “to see into a dog, and to tease oneself into her exactly at her center, the place out of which she exists as a dog?”
Felix had turned away from this, but was immediately cornered by the Professor.
“My gratitude is boundless, Councilor, but have you no concern at all that the Pzalmanzar method, this taking of the animal into liberality, is something of a trick?”
“Balderdash,” Felix replied in a stage whisper. “We are tricked into being born and tricked into staying alive. Each time we’re saved, it’s with a different trick.”
Öscar Ögur actually served drinks with aplomb, spilling only one tray, which no one mentioned. He had taken over for Catspaw, who could now be seen furiously ferrying Gubik downstream to the Penelope III, in the hope of catching a ride to overtake the Desdemona at Razacanum on her route to Chorgo, there to pick up the Valse de Mocsou. As Catspaw strained at the oars
, Gubik stood in the bow of the copper-prowed caique, arms folded like Napoleon, caped and white-gloved, his swineherd’s Phrygian cap pulled tightly over his skull. As they drew abreast of the Penelope III, a rope net was thrown down from the scuppers and our prodigy scrambled aboard, his white gloves flashing, just as the frigate, with its magical cargo and dispirited crew, disappeared into a fogbank at the mill. Felix and Ainoha toasted him sadly and silently as his pig herd filled the woods with bellows of protest. The Professor noted irritably that he seemed to be carrying one of his custom plaid valises, and I realized that the red sash about his waist was the banner from my sister’s tomb.
After much cranking and cursing, the limousine finally started. The golden ponies in the far pasture galloped from corner to corner as the ignition coughed.
As a celebratory gesture, all the kennels, coops, and stables were flung open, and the menagerie entire was released for a run. Moccus and Epona thundered up and down the drive at forty miles per hour, packs of Chetvorah dove off into the woods for randy deer, arthritic seventeen-year-old cats tottered through portals, doves alighted on the furniture, chickens and ducks strutted fearlessly about, and the tame gray parrot, Arnulph, whom I hadn’t noticed for years, hopped from shoulder to shoulder. Topsy walked like royalty, calm and dignified amongst the miffed, milling Chetvorah.
The Professor thanked Father over and over.
“The Princess is always welcome,” Felix lied, “but keep her well clear of the stables. She gives off a scent of fear.”
But just as he concluded this, he realized the Princess was standing behind him and had already forgiven him.
“Topsy and I will be forever in your debt,” she said modestly.
“Ah, Prinzessin.” Felix bowed deeply and kissed her hand. “Now that you have seen a few miracles, perhaps you will begin to appreciate realism.”
“The next thing you know, we’ll be hunting her!” the Professor beamed.
“This child was not meant for the field, my friends. While she will raise many cocks, I fear you will get few shots.”
Topsy had lain down next to them, head between her forelegs. The Princess’s eyes began to dart again. “Shouldn’t one write all this down?”
“All dog literature is worthless, because it is written either by owners or scientists. Everything you want to know and more you will find in this pamphlet, Prinzessin,” Father bowed again as he handed her his private printing, Breaking Strange Dogs and Vicious Horses, bound in white satin. “I’ve inscribed it for you.” And she read it out, her voice quivering.
Who lives to learn, the properties of hounds,
To breed them first, and then to make them good,
To teach them to know, both voice and horne, by sounds,
To cure them too, from all that hurts their blood:
Let Her but buy this book, so shall she find
As much as may (for hounds) content her mind.
“I am not desirous of making you unsatisfied with anything you possess, Prinzessin,” Felix adumbrated, “but a judicious exertion on your part will add much to Topsy’s usefulness, as well as to your own enjoyment. Much may be done through the affections. Do not be contented with a disorderly cur, when a trifling addition to your pains will produce an extravagant companion.”
“I am most grateful for the proper commands,” the Princess said, a bit choked up.
As the two couples walked to the hissing limousine, Father took her arm. “I must tell you honestly, Prinzessin, such commands mustn’t smack of an order. Language is hardly absolute. Words have meaning only in the stream of life. And the world is, I’m afraid, full of independent subjects.” He opened the car door and Topsy raced by them, flinging herself into the back seat. The Princess pressed a small bag of uncut garnets into Father’s hand. Had she looked down, she could have picked up twenty more from the road.
“My husband often gets carried away with the spirituality of his projects,” Mother now confided, fearing a scene, while helping the Princess negotiate her way into the dark petit point interior of the limousine. “Let me send you on your way with some practical observations. First, the little hussy ought not be tied up, even if she wants it. Straining at her collar will throw out her elbows, and she will grow up bandy-legged. Two, if you must administer a powder, mix it with a little butter and smear it on her nose. She will readily lick it down. This is also the best time to pare her nails. Lastly, never lend your doggie to anyone, not even a brother. It may seem selfish, but an ignorant sportsman will bring you nothing but grief. I hope you will forgive me for saying so.”
The Princess did not reply, but for the first time in her visit did manage to make eye contact.
“And what departing advice have you for me, dearest lady?” the Professor queried, batting his coal-chunk eyes. But before Ainoha could answer, Felix had broken in:
“For you, sir, keep it simple, songful, and slow. And go easy on the melancholy.”
“And next time,” the Professor sang like a child, “we shall do the phui, phui, phui!”
So it was that the goldenischechow, Pouilly-Gepacht, was delivered back to her mistress with the silvered words of her commands written in a daybook, to demonstrate that even with the most spoiled of bitches, bloodsport can ultimately be put in the service of civility—that in all of us the urge to pounce can be turned, if not quite to grand effect, nevertheless to leading gestures and illusions of spectral beauty.
Leaving the estate in chastened profile, the Princess lay her hand on the Professor’s shoulder as he pulled his bowler ever more tightly on his head, while Topsy, punished but forgiven, could be seen in the front seat in more of a demi-plié than a rapt quivering point, but nevertheless scanning the barren fields for signs of life.
She would outlive both the Princess and the Professor, and from that day on, never had a leash upon her.
Master and Mistress walked arm in arm down to the bathing beach in the wolf-light, reflecting upon the bankruptcy of their business venture, smoking their pipes, and regarding their new island, so amphorously regurgitated from the Mze. Only yards from the bank, it already sported a fern.
Felix flung the bag of garnets far out in the stolid waters. Ainoha snapped the pleats out of her skirts, raised them above her sunburnt legs to her golden bee, and beckoned her husband to follow. He removed his boots and trousers, and they waded through the murmuring reed-beds, the face of a virgin saint on the tip of each stalk of underwater grain. And there like Quality and the Muse, Mnemosyne, they had a quiet conversation on an uninhabited island.
“I’ve never seen the Mze so low,” Felix murmured, and for the first time in his life, he saw a streak of fear in his wife’s eyes. Realizing that her sorrowing, even for good reason, was the only thing which could frighten him, Ainoha took her husband’s hand and resolved to change the subject.
“Dearly beloved, I know you have need of your men friends, but it’s their friends who have become the issue. What a pair of cold fish, I should say.”
“Indeed,” Felix concurred, “there is such a thing as too thoughtful a performance—and too singular a person.”
“But perhaps the Professor is on to something with his obsession with . . . bourgeoisiosity? Darling, what sort of century do we face when aristocratic royalty behave like plebs? Perhaps,” she threw back her head and laughed like a horse, “perhaps the time has come for a bit of anti-bourgeois thinking?”
Felix stroked her hair as he stroked his beard. His concentration had been broken for a moment, for while pondering the receding waters, he had noticed a dark shape circling the island, a shadow longer than the largest sturgeon. “Well,” he murmured absently into her loosened hair, “it’s their century, no doubt, but wouldn’t it be grand to throw them off-stride for a moment?!”
They embraced as he placed his right hand on the flat of her back. Then Felix began a gliding stride about her, counterclockwise, though he was following more than leading, and once she had thought several moves ahead, sur
e of her loveliness, Ainoha tempered his figures by placing a bare foot with great care into his pauses, as if the new sand of the island was scorching—and with this counter-proposal, it was he who twirled in the air, a grin in his underwear.
“Oh, Cavalier,” she gushed, “one is always making history, isn’t one.”
“Let us put it all behind us, dear. Live and learn.”
“Oh, darling,” she punched the heavy air. “Learning or forgetting. Who knows what’s worse.”
They raced each other back to Semper Vero for an early dinner and bed, but were surprised to find Count Zich’s sweat-drenched grays standing at the door. He sat slumped behind his silver-buttoned groom, swathed in a cadmium orange blanket embroidered with his huge monogram, his granite hatchet-face pale and unshaven.
“There’s not enough water in this landscape,” he greeted them in a bad humor.
From my lookout, I had watched their pretty dance, and knew my place in the Age to Come—the dumb dancer who must keep silent during the dance, acting the part of the clown and cracking a whip to keep away evil spirits. But I was also the flagbearer, the dumber one who will invariably assume the lead.
In the last of the wolf-light, the foothills and answering ranges beyond gleamed like sheetmetal hammered into angles, and the Mze was ablaze with floating shields and helmets. Deep, diurnal shadows rocketed up the peaks and zigzagged down ravines, convex and concave changed from insubstantial radiance into geometric figures—parallelograms, rhomboids, polygons—as drought brought spring and autumn into one. I felt it ludicrous that this landscape would one day be registered in my name.
But suddenly, as if to trump my own self-mockery, thermal hurricanes were charging down the gorge, a cold front turning the sky green and the grass blue. The air was filled with the disordered wingbeats and jargon of birds, lightning was held captive in the incandescent cloudbanks, and when it finally struck without a single drop of moisture, small fires broke out in the cornfields, and the currents paled in sulfurous ravines. White legions of thistledown blanketed the flickering thickets, and the woods were garlanded with snowy wool. Flash after flash of lightning ripped from the burst clouds, and the air was sullied by the chemical smell of fading leaves as the solar winds tore about our house.
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