Throughout this my mother and I occupied ourselves without the slightest guilt with the used Bösendorfer of infinite nostalgia and a gramophone of His Master’s future voice. But as we whiled away the hours in the music room, in his study Father had became increasingly aware of the slight error which centuries of technical subterfuge has distributed throughout the twelve fifths of the keyboard, in order to make the remotest tonalities undistressing to the ear—and this began to annoy him as much as the fulsome, too wholesome tone color of Priam’s heritage.
One day when Father attended an afternoon concert in the Silbürsmerze park, he saw a composer—dressed more like a mechanic than an artist—get up from his stool and crawl inside the grand piano, where he continued to play. He loved the offense it gave to the office-heroes in the audience, but once inside the instrument, Father knew that they were at no cutting edge but back to the stringed gourd which had so unhinged Marcus. As much as he enjoyed for a few moments the mutilation of the classic, he found that his delight in the discomfort of the audience was gradually evaporated by the tonal dice games, an artform constructed almost entirely of hurt feelings, and he had his first premonition that there might come a day when Klavierland would exist no more.
It was not long afterward that he sniffed out a retired professor at the Monstifita Conservatory, one Dr. Janko, who before arthritis had curled his fingers like so much burned paper, had been at work on a massive keyboard in which all auxiliary vibrations had been preserved—four keyboards of thirty-two keys each, so that each semitone succeeded another, each sharpened sharp, each double-sharpened flat, were preserved in all their purity to their remotest diatonic regions, yet all these faraway places were still staunchly related to the key of C, so that the notes could not be made to disappear until the vibration of each string came naturally to an end.
The Janko keyboard was invincibly difficult to play, but it fully suited Father, who had perfect pitch but no formal training to forget. Of all Grandfather’s accessories, he found only the pocket hand exerciser from Dresden useful, though he still found occasion to use all the pedals, like all fortunate men whose antecedents have their place in every piece they undertake.
He knew then that if he would not play for a public, neither would he play for himself. He would play it for itself, allow the instrument to be the judge of him, frozen in a history that no one could locate. No performer, no composer, he would devise an instrument which only he could play, and so he performed without embarrassment a kind of random, dodecaphonic, dysphoric nonsense which gave him enormous satisfaction, in which no one in the entire countryside, much less our house, could share, nor was meant to.
There would be no evenings, merry or sober, spent round this instrument. No suitor would come to beguile his nieces. No strange hirsute visitor would call on him and ask him to sponsor a recital. No reviewer would get caught up in the finer points of explaining the intention of his composition. And he was grateful above all to realize that he would attract no pupils. He came to see that the Janko keyboard did not lend itself to those ineffable inner states which must elude the poor written word. However, as a weapon against artpiousness it had no equal. It was, indeed, the only way he could relax after training sessions and contact with the general public.
He began to see that this eclectic machine could be turned against the very class it captivated, and had he been interested in making such a thing as an aesthetic, he might return music to its military origins, and march against the sentimentality, stuffiness, and weepyeyed pale virtuosity by which the weak could make overstimulated women weep, a weapon which could be brought to bear against the cult of family values and civil society in general. It was shameful, no doubt, to work such idiots over, yet he couldn’t help indulging himself in this anti-bourgeois music par excellence.
His hands were about to fall.
“And now for some chowmusic, Herr Professor!”
And thus he began, like the mechanic, with a few sweeps of sentimental C-majorness, to gradually disconnect the phrases from their harmonic center, willfully losing its heartbeat in chattering thickets of sound. In this many-layered but non-propulsive music, the notes were no longer played singly, but looked forward and backward at once, sub-harmonic resonances separated by fifty-second pauses, rappelling into the lost world of the future. Then he opened the pipes of the old wohltemperer, solo to swell, transposing the heckelphone onto the quinte tromba, the tuba mirabilis onto the flûte à cheminée, the bois celeste onto the muted viole and corno d’amore, and finally launched into the double counterfugue, A Confutatis Tremendae.
“Enough, dayenu, enough!” cried the Professor, clapping his hands over his ears, but too stunned to move.
Father responded only by dropping the flats of his hands onto the lowest and highest octaves of Janko’s keyboard. The chords enveloped the tone-deaf Professor, on whom it produced goosebumps of a strange, indeterminate hue, and the dogs curled about me at the door—who had merely cocked their ears in semaphores of puerile curiosity at the sound of the Bösendorfer—now suddenly rose as one, totally alert. Sitting on their haunches in deep reverential respect, like a pair of tawny sphinxes, they took the notes into their bodies, those chords flying out to the east, a sound like that of walking on birds, away from the singing voice into the soul of the percussion people, dividing the hemispheres of the brain with Time’s Arrow. This reverberation seemed to go on forever, back to the original timbre, with no separation between wood and metal, past Marcus’s smoking braziers to the campfires across the river, which the barbarians could only extinguish by wounding themselves and dousing the embers with their blood. It was as if he had canceled out all those echoes buzzing in the soft dilettante’s sleep of ages and approached the Heraclitan ideal—registering the overtones of the original historical note. The style of styles did not rise or fall—it was neither calming nor exciting. Only the Chetvorah seemed to recognize it as the sound of primeval men breaking camp without a goal, a well-known accompaniment to a task with unforeseen consequences, a rasp of wood on metal, the real prelude before the etude, the sound of changing your mind. And when it finally seemed unendurable and the air itself was smeared with notes that would never die on their own, Father kicked out the damper as well as the sixth pedal, and as the tone began to subside, the two tiny negroes swung out from each side of the instrument, ringing in a little postlude of triangle, bells, and trapdrum—to remind us that the task of the barbarian is to civilize the men of science.
The afternoon disappeared into a mournful, barely audible triple pianissimo, at once sardonic and ethereal, a solitude which was itself almost art.
The Professor had drawn himself up in a perspiring, quivering glower, his tone hyperboreal.
“I believe, sir, our business is concluded.”
Father seemed taken aback.
“You’re going away, then?”
“Yes, I must see about the horses.”
“Very well, very well. Why must you . . . Do you find it dull here?”
“You will excuse me.”
“Very well, then. I thought you would stay with us a little longer. A few hours . . . It’s rather little, Berganza, rather little.”
“Sir,” the Professor stammered, his jaw jutting and rattling, “you ridicule me, sir, and have insulted the only comfort of my old age. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: people do not love you for what you know!”
Flinging open the study door, he barged past us spies down the stairs, as Father gave a start and clutched at his chest.
The horses were at the door. The Skopje in high felt boots sat listlessly in the box, his soft, fleshy torso and smooth, puffy face bloodless in the twilight, while his white scarf and shirttail blazed purity. In one hand he held the reins within a white cloth, in the other a popular illustrated magazine. His face had the yellow cast of a burning manuscript. Lun and Jofi sat chained on either side of him, white dressings stained with gore about their necks, and muzzled with bows
of white satin ribbon. The dogs stared impassively to the east with reddened, slanted eyes, their faces reminiscent of those hirsute teenage fanatics whose passport photos hung in every postal guild, with eyes which neither see nor mirror, just places to take hold of the skull like a bowling ball. As the wind turned the poplar leaves silver, Father continued his efforts at repair, as he assisted the Professor in mounting the carriage step.
“You have taken on a complicated history, my friend. These dogs, you must understand, are the only hunting dogs native to China. There’s mastiff in them, and Samoyed, no doubt. But they were never used for guarding their honorary patrons. They pointed and retrieved, if you can believe it: a lion stalking a golden quail—now there’s a mandarin bit for you,” he said with a false laugh. “And then as the civil wars ceased they were used for herding. Thousands of years denied their natural function, and only later, when the Tartars took them, did they become natural assassins. So you see there’s some confliction here, which no doubt appeals to you. Their very lack of balance might be turned to an advantage, who can say? No one ever knows how a dog might assist a man.”
Then he reached up to shake his hand, but the Professor refused to acknowledge him.
“One final thing you ought to bear in mind as far as upbringing goes,” Father went on, grasping the coattail of his only male friend in Klavierland, “is the westernizing that these dogs have suffered.” He reached up and ruffled Lun’s fur to show the straightened rear leg. “Shortened thigh bone, yes?” And then he squeezed the roll of fat behind her neck. “This we owe to our British fanciers. If this were a human fetus, Professor, what would be your diagnoze?”
The Professor said nothing.
“Professor,” my father said, his untaken hand almost shaking, “an interpretation, please! Here’s a hint: an ugly synonym for certain Asiatics . . .” There was a long harsh pause, then through the Professor’s silence, the word appeared crisply in my father’s throat:
“Mongoloid.”
Then he nodded and stepped back, waving to the Skopje to be off.
“One last thing, Herr Doktor.” He grinned mischievously, “The chow carries its tail over its back. As long as it’s up the weather’s fine. But if it ever drops, even a centimeter, run like a lunatic.”
Then he offered his hand again. But the Skopje cracked his whip, bellowing out in a high falsetto:
“Stand clear, ye warmints!”
The wheels spun gravel and the kennels issued a baleful, incandescent roar. As the carriage door slammed on Felix’s hand, from within the cab there came only a hiss:
“I walk out of your heart!”
My father ran alongside the carriage for perhaps a mile, only his apologetic white thumb visible in the black doorframe. He felt lonely as that little finger when, at a sharp turning of the road, he was flung into a ditch.
The village clock did not sound but showed such a time as perhaps never comes.
HISTORAE ASTINGAE:
Sport (Aufidius)
No country offers as much variety in hunting as the great pied-à-terre of Cannonia. An hour’s drive in any direction will give the Sportsman an unlimited extent of moor and forest where he can range at will, whilst taking all manner of bodily relaxation in jorrocks, jaunts, and jollities. The visitor who is able to ride cross country, drop birds, take the tiller of a yacht, play rackets with skill, lure a great salmon to an artificial fly, keeping it in play for hours on the trace of a single gut, will have little difficulty in securing an invitation to a shooting party.
It is nevertheless advisable to put yourself under the expert guidance of one of the peasant nimrods of your district. They are capital walkers, generally amusing companions, and by no means despicable shots. Seek a good cragsman, untiring and dependable, clammy of brow with good lungs and heart, and a hand which when called into play, shows no tremor.
The shooting season commences on the fifteenth of July at the intersection of our sixteen migratory routes, which comprise the complete trajectory, song line, and career of every bird alive. First come the willow grouse, hazel grouse, woodcock, grate, single, and jack snipe, golden plover, curlew, corn crake, et alia. The double snipe arrive about the twelfth of August, but a night’s frost will drive them southwards. Then come the incantations of Asia: duck, teal, thrush, titmouse, swallow, sparrow, swan, fieldfair, wildgoose, nightingale, plover, raven, lark, lubber, goldfinch, seagull, and merganser. (Also cranes and white pelican, though these are not considered at the head of the game list.)
The foreign minister of the country, Count Moritz Achilles Zich, founder of the famous antlers collections in Munich, often leaves his estate at eleven at night, shoots his birds high in the mountains, and is back for his daily duties at seven. At Scipsi, in 1895, he shot eleven hundred and twenty pheasants in one day, dispensing twenty-five thousand Purdey cartridges, and near Chorgo he had the good fortune to bag thirty-two duck with a single discharge of his gun. His estate at Malaka includes eagles, vultures, and flamingoes on the jealously preserved game list, though in middle age his most esteemed sport is the killing of skylarks with golf balls.
The ibex was reintroduced to Cannonia by Victor Emmanuel and was carefully preserved there by his son, King Humbert, until his assassination. The golden pheasant was provided to several forests by a former Marquis of Breadalbane, and the mouflon is from an unknown donor in Hungary. The American rainbow trout and turkey were imported in the 1890s, as were the great gray wolf from Iskalisia; oryx and coubain hail from the Grand Duke Serge’s estate in the Caucasus. One can replicate here the equivalent of Turkish sea fishing, a goose shoot at Seville, the ibex stalking of Novgorod, an otter drive in the Pontine Marshes, or the dolphin shooting off Cattegat.
In July, when raspberries come, the bear turns vegetarian; then mulberries and wild apples in the month of September; then acorns in October and November. By the end of September, Black Game have retired to the thickest woods. The willow grouse are so packed in the turnip fields as to defy the wariest dog; the rest have left for warmer climes. It is now that the bateau and boat shooting commences. Punts contain boatmen only. In coot-drives the etiquette is to complete the line and keep it closed, driving from one end of the lake to the other, pressing the game ashore. If the birds should fly overhead and settle on the other side of the line, the punts are put about and the drive repeated from the other side.
In bustard-stalking, the sportsman goes to the other extreme, making no attempt to hide, but on the contrary, showing himself carelessly, as if unaware of the birds’ presence. In a native cart with a thatched roof he drives slowly beside the plowed fields like some farmer inspecting his land, then brings them down with a knout.
Rabbits are met with in most places, even in the dunes, and are not protected. Ferrets are used to thin them out. There are red and white hares in the woods that may be enticed by imitating a doe’s bleat, which may also produce the bonus of an amorous, twenty-six point red buck.
The winter season comprises the following: vulpecibism is not here considered a crime, and many a gallant fox has fallen from a deadly barrel behind a bateau. As the country is mostly unrideable, foxes are nevertheless contingent and are trapped adrag, or hunted with clubs near Phamaphy.
The forest pig should be approached from behind, leaping upon it and gripping it with your knees. While grasping with one hand the thick mane of the creature’s shine, plunge the knife into the body behind the right shoulder blade, between the first and second ribs.
With bear, the Sportsman is generally provided with two guns and a spear as a dernier ressort. When ringing a bear, as it is termed, should the peasant guide again cross the track of a bear he knows is out of the circle when making his ring, rather than returning to his starting point, he will accordingly follow the fresh track. Many Sportsmen will pursue only when the animal has settled himself for the winter. When the peasant has discovered the spot where he has made his den, the Sportsman thus informed goes to the place alone, generally taking with hi
m three or four rough dogs, to rouse the bear from his lair; and thus he has only himself to blame if he returns empty-handed (or does not return).
Wolves are very wary, difficult to drive from their lurking place. (Tether a young pig as bait and pinch its ear to make him squeak.)
On the inaccessible little island of Reil, once featured on coins (unapproachable and fog-bound most of the year), one may stalk a group of ibex which have been carried there by volcanic disruption. Patriarchal rams have dark yellow fleece. The parti-colored hybrids are bigger and more powerful with superb ebony black horns which curve backward, saberlike, almost to the spine, like the bow of Pandarus. No dog can keep up with them.
The coveted lynx, our European tiger, are here considered vermin. In the Marches, miniature antelope sleep like dogs near the railway tracks. As for Belgian wolves and white blackbirds, more people talk of them than see them.
The Mze, as Thucydides tells us, is the “fishiest” river in Europe, “comprised of two-thirds fish and one-third water.” To this unaddicted observer, the fish seem quite unsophisticated, picking at almost any fly in the book at random, though the gaudier ones are preferred. The tributaries are run with trout of microscopic size, as well as salmon (the only piscivorous animals which profit by abundance.) A new American method to catch pike involves a short line, a strong hook, and a big worm. The great sturgeon must be shot in the head, for if wounded, they go off at great speed or sink immediately, only to reappear inflated by decomposition. They are best retrieved by two large men in a rowboat, though recently a Russian prince retrieved thirteen in five days by swimming. Ponds should be avoided as the natives often net the narrow places and dynamite the deeper pools.
Among our most intrepid guests are, of course, those English counts and American physicians who court landrails, the king of quails, returning home with barrels of them preserved by cooks, and generally setting off a great migration of dead birds by steam launch to the poulterer’s. Often they use lighted torches to attract exhausted quails, net larks at night, surprise wild bustards with their wings frozen (driving them in this helpless state straight to market) and gather wild ducks after the frost, starved to death on the golf links. Their weapon of choice is a .303 sporting Lee-Metford or Mannlicher.
In Partial Disgrace Page 39