by Rick Moody
There was a lad, born in the first third of our century, precocious stripling, much given to reverie and to silence. In his bedchamber, he labored over problems mathematical and geometrical, never venturing forth, even should he chance to see a fair maiden dancing on the village green beyond his mullioned windows. He paid no mind to her jolly braids, nor to her furious dancing, nor to the particular brother of this particular girl, a woeful prince (for any comely lad of means was potential regent during the bloodshed and disorder of our interregnum), whose acute melancholy was said to have been owing to his terror of ascending to the throne. No, our future king secreted himself in his chamber, covered with animal skins, studying magics and potions through which he might better the station of workers of fields and shopkeepers and salespersons of viands and pickled vegetables. The lads formula, for the upstanding meritorious valor of aforementioned salespersons, was said to have been called the Formula of Surplus Value, completed by him in quill on goat’s parchment, under a candle that, according to spell of witchery, never burned down.
One day, our yet-to-be monarch and chief agonist, buoyed by the influence of a thick Turkic potion known as espresso kaffee, and because of faintest impropriety of speech that by and by inhibited the correct recitation of spells, turned the comely nervous prince —Maxwell Hennesy Charming, brother of the flapper maiden already mentioned —into a performing monkey, or hanuman. As I say, it was inadvertent. The young artist of physick was making as to formulate a concoction of creamy distillate for his beverage. Nevertheless, wherefore Prince Maxwell, with fashionable opiated eyes and bulbous cheekbones, had dressed in long flowing garbs that might as well, in a dreamer’s tossings, have been the robes of women, now, as hanuman, he became the dandy. Breeches of a dusty rose and a blue waistcoat with diamonds and rubies all upon it and stones as these days are called by the name rhinestones, such that he shimmered when he crawled on all fours or hung from a bough by his serpentine tail. Wherefore Prince Maxwell had been known to help a blind woman of our village, Miss Hogg, ahead of the carriages thundering by at street trivia, only to be named infernal scamp on deliverance of her to the farther side, as hanuman the prince was a rake and a Lothario, and would as soon inflict his manly endowments on a maiden as he would devour a banana in payment for his games of chance. I tell you, Inever liked that particular prince, when he was under the curse, and would occasionally seize his tail and dip it into inks or poisons.
The family of Charming, a lordly assemblage of counselors and barristers, made suit against our young hero for having turned Prince Maxwell into a tree monkey, and this case was duly heard, on a day marked by grand hailstones. Well it is remembered in my village, how we had to flee the collapsing of thatched roofs, the merciless raining down of godly disapproval, but the courthouse, never have you seen such astonishing manufacture, with steps made out of the same pink marble used for imperial towers of clerks, and a roof that held fast beneath all assault. The carriages in which the barristers arrived to disgorge the principals of this story pulled fast to the curbstone and lords hastened indoors. Two or three footsoldiers were yet crushed by the hailstones so that their brains ran out into the street, each ofthem a mother’s son, alas. Yet I was lucky among townspeople to sit in witness of that trial, in a box marked for commoners. A rabid bitch kept us in our place by gnawing ceaselessly if any of us should so much as take modest breath.
The courtier Ebenezer Sloane served as the plaintiff’s counsel, and his miserly and shifty eyes were such that all present agreed he’d have bartered away his mother’s petticoats if circumstance permitted. So wide was he that his frilly collar scarcely closed about his neck and but a tiny residuary chin protruded from his mounds of bulk. When cogitating earnestly —which was not often —folds of skin on Ebenezer’s forehead would move and bulge, as if flowing of the humors to the skull so required.
The king, of course, not yet so crowned, was merely a young knight given to solitary and religious pursuits, and among witnesses and barristers he had none of that splendor we lately associate with his personage. Charges against him were read out by a lady in the employ of the judge —though some say it is more than employ and that saucier pursuits in her instance might be more accurate. I’m speaking of Lady Calderon, Duchess of Fidget, who next declaimed, Hear ye, hear ye, unworthy taxpayers of back alleys and fundaments of this very stinking mound of livestock droppings, we are gathered in this space to discuss the fate of this young magician, he of the oily pockmarks and unwashed parts, here to contemn in strongest terms what has confounded the very order of our local nature, an irrefutable slight against the family of Charmings, consisting of Maxwell Charming now deceased or metamorphosed into a primate from Asia Minor, his sister, thelovely Andalucia Charming, a father, Lancer Charming, Esq., his wife, Lady Charming, all drug into these premises to seek restitution for the fact of their nobility and station infringed upon by this young man of origins foul and mean.
The duchess, that sow—with mane of black curls, eyes jaundiced from gourmandish quaffing of mead eight days per week; a bosom that would barely be contained in her evening gown; pearls like a profane rosary circumnavigating her patchy neck, her lips horribly pursed. It was evident from the first syllables of her declamation that any celestial muse of justice would not necessarily adjudicate in this tragical matter. And yet at the woeful charges an uproarious tumult issued from the cronies of the Charmings. Jailkeep-ers rustled their irons at the corner of the space. Dogs grimaced and spilled their putrid salivas about us. It was a pretty show. And sure the king turned even bluer than his constitutional imperial shade, for his very term seemed about to come due, and if not capital execution then such tortures as being branded with fiery iron, eyes excavated with wooden spoons, leg eaten off by ravenous boar. Yet the king was prepared to meet his woeful fate without complaint: he was humble before persecutors.
Just then the queen —Heart beat softly! I have given away a portion of the end! May my listeners forgive me!—or rather the young Andalucia Charming assumed the throne of witnesses before our magistrate so deaf and blind that it is said he lingered for days though the courthouse be emptied, and she was sworn in, under enchantment, because the likes of which she spoke had never been uttered in a courtroom before or since, Your honors, worshipful townsfolk, I have nothing but love for that contemned man, my heartthrobs at the apperception of his fine manly features, I would unsheath myself of these fetters of rank and privilege and live with him as a lover, adrift upon breezes of sentiment, I would have no more divisions between folk, I recognize none, there shall be only love! Consternation upon the courthouse. In later times it was said that this enchantment was not the kings own, yet whichever the origin, its most devastating magic was upon the very head of our king, who loved Andalucia at once and from that moment forward, as a rich illumination hovered about her. Her braids, her gladsome lips, her downcast eyes. Who would not love the queen? Who would not kneel to declare for her?
The king thereupon rose to mount his defense, unaided by barristers.
I am a lowly inventor of magics and alchemical poultices, he began, neither kith nor kin of any here on this terra firma, and my poor parents moldering six feet down, and I am called here for no reason but that I have increased the local population of apes by one, a feat which does not deprive the world of a living thing, nor does it infringe, as milady says, on the divine aspect of nature, since whichever way I chance to pivot is nature, and the same with you, for what is man but natures most frolicsome plaything, and I would not undo my enchantment, but would rather accept my fate, yet that this young woman should perish in a foul grief at the loss of her brother, a prince, and so, out of respect for her loveliness, I vow to remove this curse upon hanuman and restore this savage to Prince Charming, meanwhile to ensure the preservation of some qualities of his former apish state, namely a robust and amusing demeanor, so that he might talk freely with the fairer sex, and with passersby upon the street. If my fate is commuteduntil nightfall tonight I wil
l total the figures and assemble the tinctures needed for this magic.
The king, having no clear idea of how he had made the prince a monkey in the first instance —when, in like mishaps, he had changed a charwoman into hedgehog, and then, on attempting to return her to a former shape, had made her instead into a large snaking desk lamp—was agitated about the prospects for his next formula, but knew that his passionate affinities were enough to liberate him from the courthouse, as indeed a lady of the court, in sunshiny curls and clutching a velvet accessory in which were housed her several gold pieces, rose up from the audience, in recognition of his fancy oratories, and cried out, That man shall be king!(For it had been said that the most just and enterprising of our many princes would ascend to rule.) This being a piece of prophecy that she was in no way equipped to repeat, as I have heard that this selfsame heavily rouged and plucked woman of the court was later pauperized by making wagers upon sport between poultry. Next, the town gossip, Mudge, afflicted with a peculiar ocular condition known among chirurgeons as wall-eye, as with a smart additional set of bicuspids, this Mudge strode, all inflated as when the peacock in thick of venery attempts to impress his mate, into the street to cry to all who would listen, New regent, romancer or necromancer? New regent chooses a Charming bride and dazzles all! Those of us gathered likewise spilled out into a dripping besmirchment of hailstones and forthwith made riot in merry dancing.
The king, as sunset fast approached, was not, of course, able to find any oath that would restore the hanuman — which beast he had caged in his bedchamber so that while laboring he was subjected to a torrent of abuse in an excessively ornamented verbiage, Hey, fair and pungent youth, I would not be the damned prince again! I’m happy just the way I am! I’d rather be mummer before thy endless processional of monarchical brats than be again that cur! Moreover, the animal made the king so excitable by tactics of percussive nattering and drumming upon the bars of his gaol that his lordship kept mixing the parts of lizards and the vomitus of small birds incorrectly, with the effect that his housekeeping, his Oriental rugs and French chaises, magically yielded to a sequence of stuffed antelopes. With this in mind, the king, short of time, saw no other recourse but to make appointment with the most feared and reviled citizen of our village, the pustulating warlock known hereabouts as Levi the Dispatcher.
The Dispatcher, as any here will assent, could not be found by searching, because such gray and black places as he sequestered himself were one day apparent down neglected thoroughfares and next entirely vanished. Only prayers of desperation, in combination with the production of ducats and other gold curios, would produce the dreadful troll of a man. Thus, the king, not yet coronally adorned, walked the streets in rags muttering in low tones, Oh, good Christian gentleman Levi, I will give you a tenth portion of my treasury, should I ever ascend to the magnificence of rulership, if only you will dig me out of this infernal quackery into which I have plunged myself At which, finally, like lightning upon meadow, the foul warlock stepped out of a most ostentatious carriage called a sport utility vehicle, and confronted the incipient monarch, while picking encrustments out of his large nose, Wait, let me be an answerer of riddles. Somewhere a neurasthenic lad is converted into a chimp and the humbler who brought to pass this enchantment comes hither to have him restored. The further action of this drama? That shall cost you a pretty sum, my lordship, as you well know.
The king’s pockets were unfortunately spacious, indeed quite ventilated, and therefore he agreed to a special arrangement called margin(I have only passing acquaintance with the transaction), and this arrangement concluded the warlock rose, red curls like a kerosened halo, up above the streets to declaim the following lines of verse, no doubt composed by himself in a joyful interval, Prince, oh prince, once so charming, your fine sports become alarming, yet since your future needs be farming, your apelike features we are harming, during which moment, according to manifold witnesses, a jocose Prince Charming did suddenly appear upon the avenues of our fair city, smiling broadly and bestowing blessings on women of mean reputation, while here in our tale a ghoulish laugh issued forth from the warlock and he performed a number of somersaults and fell to earth before the king, saying, It is done, and now I require of you a token of your esteem. At which point the king ran him through with a dull blade. Manly act of a manly king.
And the king knelt down and prayed to the gods for whom we are justly pawns and made himself grateful. Promptly, upon returning to the court, he ascended to the throne, promptly he was trothed to the queen —until that felicitous day known as Andalucia Charming —and promptly, too, they produced a lovely daughter, the hunting princess named Diana, who wore frocks of blue and bows of red and who married a court musician. For some years all was right in the kingdom.
Wait just a moment, blessed auditor, bestow on me your forgivenesses, for I seem to have misplaced a portion of the tale, such a large helping, in fact, as to be said to constitute a second plate. Fervent apologies. I urge you to return to the enchantment in the courthouse, of which I have earlier spake, having to do with the queen’s sudden and fervid declaration for the king, though he be the man who changed her own brother into a performing monkey, etc. and so forth. This forgotten section of the story, which I append, concentrates on the author of this particular enchantment, namely, the giant of Sandy Spit, known among neighbors and plaintiffs as Maurice.
He wore foul jerkins instead of proper clothes, to begin judiciously enough, blouses that had been sweated through with undignified perspirings for many fortnights or even months; he was fat, he was of such girth that when he ate too much his own house burst open along the joists; his breath smelled of goat’s milk that has been left out in the hot sun to accumulate gobs of cheesy rankness, he rarely even wetted himself down nor wore a gay cologne. And further to his miserable condition Maurice was alone raising up three progeny, a girl in her middle years, flaxen like himself, name of Kurt, a secondborn girl and boy both with dark mien, like the giant’s deceased wife, many years departed. Their names were Elsa and Stibb.
Nearly every inquisitive scamp who hears such tales requires to have satisfied the exact largeness of the giant, and so here I essay solution to the enigma, to common good of both young and old, Just how big was the giant? Since I only saw his children, I give surmise founded upon reports from travelers to distant precincts, who say of him, taller than church spires, taller than the biggest oaks, taller than the cliffs at Mahon, tall enough to reach up to the green cheese in the night sky and steal himself a fermenting hunk, massive enough to light his pipe from the morning sun, giant enough to trample the oceans for footbaths.
As the giant was their father, headmaster of hearth, bringer home of manifold pork products including pork loins and pork lips and sausages, his three children had no choice but to love him, yet for some ages they had noticed that he was very dismally sad, given to fits of grave sobbing and beating of breast, which would then cause floods in the streambeds of our land, this melancholia dating to the demise of his goodly wife, of course; these many years, he had stayed singularly awake into the caliginous night muttering Love is an appellation known to all, and so why must I be so solitary unto the hereafter just my wee children but no woman such as might love me and care for me despite my accursed appearance? Why am I destined to march unaccompanied along my path, all men fleeing my footfall? Upon encountering him, sleepless and cross, in the morning, the children confabulated many wiles and stratagems to distract the giant from woe, including the imposition of elixirs such as St. Johns Wort into his tea, which Maurice liked of such strength that it had been known to corrode iron kettles. None of these stratagems succeeded, alas, and the giant of Sandy Spit would therefore, in the midst of his fever, maraud upon the land, abducting children, devouring livestock, visiting horrors upon gentlefolk. In such a fell mood, the giant one day espied before him in the road, like a poisonous ant that needs to be crushed before habitations of the day can continue, a small fleeing figure, namely the on
ce and future Andalucia Charming, now queen of our demesne, who had been bathing in a small, clear loch, a reservoir of agreeable drinking waters much traveled by lithesome harvesters of corn and other truck, and having spent an afternoon feeding berries to one of these lads, the queen Andalucia, clad only in a womanly undergarment —as mischievous youths had absconded with her further draperies —she now fled home, hoping to arrive at the castle before her most admirable mother, thereupon to make appropriate tributes to the staff such that they might neglect to mention to her pro-genetrix this dishonored state.
Thunder upon the land. The giant caught glimpse of the small, curvaceous, and perfect queen, and soon fetched her up in his fulsome palms, and here the giant held her to his eyes, being much afflicted in the matter of nearsightedness, at which he immediately became a convert to the argument of Andalucia’s beauty. She was like a smoky crystal with its Hindering lights, she was like unto the handsome portraits that hung in houses wherein his parents had once begged for alms, she was lily of field, bird of air, she might make wolves eat only herbs and sing madrigals. Upon my honor, Maurice cried, and of course the sounds were audible across the land, as if a rogue city-state launched infernal bullets and arrows toward our cities, Ibelieve a goddess has crossed into my wilderness and that I must devote myself toher service henceforth and always. The queen attempted to reply, of course, but Maurice squeezed her so tightly in his fist she fainted dead away making no audible reply