Septimania

by Jonathan Levi

  But as she began to walk down the terrace towards them, she saw two other men approaching Louiza. They were running—at least the one with the crew cut, the one she had seen at the Farmers’ Market taking Louiza away from her, was running. The other man, old and hobbled, followed with difficulty up from the Blue House, sporting a cane and the graying remnants of a red beard. She saw Malory notice the men and turn back from the pond, searching for something on the low table, something he was desperate to find. Ottavia gathered her breath within her to shout a warning to Malory, to Louiza, to all of them.

  Then the shot rang out.

  It seemed to Malory—like Dante’s Tuscan peasant on the side of a hill at the time of day when the sun turns his face and the woman he loves lifts her chin across the pond to call him home for supper—that all the fireflies of the world had come to illuminate TiborTina, to show in a single, pitiless flash the solitude of Ottavia and Cristina, the paralysis of Malory at one edge of the pond, of Louiza at the other. In the light of that big bang, Malory saw the sorrow, the seven-sided confusion of Tibor blown into as many memories, although he had no way of recognizing the faces of all the women—not just the Indian Antigone with her crying baby but all the women: women of memory, women with memories—who paused as they heard the blast on their own private hillsides far away. All paused, at TiborTina and beyond, and smelled the air, touched their hearts, glanced around, as if a universe had just disappeared and their lives weighed a fraction less than they had a moment before.

  Up on the porch of the house, above the terrace abandoned by La Principessa and her court, all the countless bits of what had been Tibor’s childhood and adolescence and hopeful struggle and boundless energy, all the memories of the actresses of Tenth Avenue and the ballerinas of St. Petersburg and the demimondaines of Paris and nights sleeping rough in Rome and cracking a vertebra or two leaning over the parapet of the organ loft of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, all these bits went flying through the nighttime air towards the half-roof above the terrace, towards the top branches of the three protective birches, towards the quivering underbellies of the leaves, and lit up the night with a light as sharp and ambitious as the flames of hell; all strove with a last muscled flicker of energy to become a part of the great Tevere of stars that twisted across the heavens.

  The bit of Tibor that flew the highest, attached for a moment as brief as that timeless instant at the beginning of the beginning to a still-intact apple pip, was his first memory of a rising sun in the depths of a Bucharest winter; of hair dark, years away from the merest hint of gray; and the two eyes, gray, even silver, interrupting his rehearsal, looking for a bathroom, drawn to his—eyes pure and clean and full of a saving innocence in a time before knowledge, before the wisdom of Minerva overran them both. That final spark of Tibor’s compounded, complex, unimaginable love for Cristina released its forgotten energy and lit up the sky above the Red Barn and Cristina’s gray head.

  And then, since these countably finite memories—each attached to a portion of swiftly cooling brain—had been forcibly exiled from any connection to heart and lung, all that remained was the echo of the pistol that Mr. Jeddah had left in the plastic bag on the bar of the Seven Veils, the bag Ottavia had so thoughtfully retrieved for Tibor. Then came a silence and then the prayers of the crickets and the mantras of the bullfrogs, as the fireflies—whose memories are the merest fraction of their brief lives—lit what was left of the world, until, giving way as it must to the law of gravity, the light circled back upon itself, licked its paws, crept into a box, let fall the lid and seal, and settled cold, extinguished, irreversible.

  If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.

  —ISAAC NEWTON

  3/0

  11 September 1692

  ear Mr. Newton,

  I regret to inform you that, on the night of 10 September, after consuming a light supper with a bottle of claret, Her Royal Excellency, the Queen of Septimania, retired to the Sanctum Sanctorum for the last time. Enclosed, please find a letter in her hand addressed to you. I rest

  your most humble & most

  obedient Servant,

  Settimio

  3/1

  LEEPLESS, BUT NOT DREAMLESS.

  Sleepless in the Good Knight’s Inn in South Hackensack.

  The digital alarm blinked out the minutes of the early hours with a spastic colon. Malory reckoned he had been awake for every one of those indigestible blinks. But sometime in the darkness a vision came to him—perhaps in the way the Arabian Tales revealed themselves to restless storytellers over a thousand and one insomniac nights. Water—an ocean, or maybe just the pond at TiborTina, water lapping the grassy shingle like a lukewarm summer’s bath—pole pines, shadows, evening fog muting all sense of space. Sitting at the edge, shoes off, trousers rolled below the knees, toes deep in loamy mud, a bamboo pole and shop-bought string for a fishing rod.

  “So …” Malory knew Tibor was behind him, could smell the tobacco and the vodka merging with the fog. “Do you promise to tie my legs?”

  Malory tried to answer, tried to ask, but in his half-sleep couldn’t move his lips.

  “Tie my legs,” Tibor continued, “tight at the ankles. Tie my wrists behind me. Tight. Toss me into the pond and count to thirty. If my hands come up first, waving, fish me out and dry me off. If my feet come up, bound and lifeless …”

  Malory knew the story, knew how it would end. He knew the Tale of Judar, the tale that Haroun al Rashid had told Aldana in the stable below the shochet’s house in Narbonne. He knew the story of the three brothers from some distant Arab land—Morocco was it? Tunisia?—the three brothers who approached a young fisherman named Judar on the shore of Lake Karoon. They had made the same request as Tibor—bind my wrists behind me, bind them tight. Toss me into the water and count to thirty. Two of the brothers drowned. The third rose to the surface hands first and led Judar to unimaginable treasure.

  Malory didn’t want to tie up Tibor, couldn’t imagine unimaginable treasure—certainly didn’t need it. But in his sleep, he felt bound—yes, he remembered thinking that word—to bind his poor, sick, drunken, sweat-soaked friend. He reached into his Kit Bag and pulled out a meter’s length of laundry cord. He began to wind the cord around Tibor’s arms, but Tibor’s elbows kept slipping the knots.

  “Sorry,” Malory said. He reached again into the Kit Bag and pulled out a coil of grapevine, the leaves and grapes still hanging ripe and heavy. But tying knots in the mess only made the job more difficult. Malory reached into the Kit Bag a third time and found a cello string, the low C-string, a length of steel-wrapped gut thicker than the grapevine but less complex. With the C-string, Malory was finally able to tie Tibor’s arms behind his back and bind his ankles in a rough imitation of a Transylvanian martyr.

  “Now what?” Malory asked in his half-sleep.

  “The rules,” Tibor said, with a long sigh. “Just follow the rules, Malory.” And although Malory had no idea which rules, or who else was following the same rules, Malory lifted Tibor over his head with a strength that he hadn’t manifested since he’d carried Louiza from Santa Maria sopra Minerva to the Ospedale Fatebenefratelli twenty-three years before.

  “Now!” Tibor commanded.

  With the heave of a Hercules, Malory launched Tibor towards the Sun. And as Tibor descended towards Earth, as the rules mandated, and the full force of his turkey-trussed, balding frame hit the water, the explosion—unlike anything Malory had heard, even from the sixty-four-foot contra-trombone stops of the cathedral of Narbonne—shattered whatever sleep had brought on the dream.

  The clock flashed 05:34, September 11. Malory found the light.

  WHEN MALORY HEARD THE GUNSHOT AT TIBORTINA THE NIGHT BEFORE, he first thought that he had been hit and then feared it was Louiza. But as he was running to her and she to him, he realized that the sound must have come from elsewhere and been directed at somebody else. He was happy—he remembered that sentiment—happy that it was not th
em, that he was close and closer and Louiza was also running.

  And then he was stopped.

  “Principe!” The Driver grabbed Malory around the waist in a manner both respectful and determined. “I apologize, but we must go.”

  “Let me go, please,” Malory said.

  “I cannot,” the Driver said. “My instructions are to protect you.”

  “I,” Malory began, as the Driver pulled him towards the car, “I command you …”

  But clearly Settimio’s commentary of twenty-three years before, that Malory was the one who made the choices, was the Chooser-in-Chief, did not apply to this situation. There were other rules that Malory couldn’t understand, rules that overruled Malory’s rule. And as the Driver firmly, but respectfully, shoved Malory into the passenger’s seat and locked the door, Malory saw the man with the brush cut follow Louiza up the hill to the pond. He saw the brush cut lead Louiza away.

  What did he know?

  He had heard a gunshot.

  And after?

  He had seen Louiza, alive thankfully, but in the grip of the brush cut.

  He had seen Ottavia—yes, he was certain of it—running up the hill from the herb garden to the White House.

  He hadn’t seen Cristina. He hadn’t seen Tibor.

  Except in his dream in the Good Knight’s Inn. He had tied up Tibor in his dream. He had lifted him over his head and tossed him into the pond. And then an explosion.

  And now he was awake at 5:34, sitting on the edge of the bed, bound in the vague motel smell of cigar and mold on an unwashed scrim of plastic and foam. His suitcase was open—had been opened by the Driver the night before. They had arrived—or, more precisely, the Driver had ceased his tour of the smaller roads of New York and New Jersey—well after midnight, many hours after the flight from TiborTina. A fresh pair of corduroys and a cotton dress shirt hung from the closet door. Malory’s toiletries—bypassing the Good Knight’s Inn bar soap and packet shampoo—had been neatly laid out on a towel covering the broken bathroom shelf. It was 5:34, and Malory was sitting at the edge of the bed. When the Driver knocked on Malory’s door, the digital alarm clock showed 7:30 and Malory still hadn’t moved.

  “My lord,” the Driver said softly from outside. Malory stood and padded across the carpet to the door. The morning air was cool, the sun already risen, the car already humming. If the Driver was surprised at seeing Malory undressed, he had the grace not to show it. He merely guided Malory through the bathroom into his clothes and out into the car in under seven minutes. The ride to the airport was even shorter. And as the Driver had doubtless been in communication with Settimio, the private jet that had brought Malory from Rome to the United States the morning before was refueled, repiloted, and waiting for them. The Driver carried out whatever formalities were necessary to assure the U.S. government that Malory was a safe bet on a private plane. A flight attendant, a young Italian woman who identified herself as Maria Grazia, brought Malory a cup of tea with a choice of two scones—the Driver took only water—as the plane taxied towards takeoff. And at 9:15, Malory pulled his seatbelt tighter as the engines revved, or did whatever they were supposed to do, in preparation of takeoff.

  Malory didn’t want to go.

  What he wanted was to return to TiborTina. What he wanted was to find Louiza, to find Ottavia, to find out what he could about the explosion, about Tibor and Cristina. He had no cell phone himself, of course, and was barely aware to what extent Settimio or the Driver or anyone else might be able to find out what had happened at TiborTina the night before. The Driver and Settimio knew he was concerned. They were concerned. Everyone was concerned.

  So when the engines on the plane suddenly revved down, or whatever they were not supposed to do, and Maria Grazia answered a call from the pilots over the intercom and then said to Malory in lightly accented English that she was very sorry but the flight would be delayed, that the pilot was turning the plane back to the terminal and would he like another cup of tea, Malory began to plot how he might drive, as quickly as possible, to TiborTina and find out what had happened.

  It was easier than he’d thought. While he was pondering a strategy, the Driver and Maria Grazia chatted in a rapid, half-whispered Italian that was full of concern, but which Malory imagined had to do with liaisons either past or future and didn’t concern him. So when they returned to the terminal—although shortly thereafter things would be forever changed in airports public and private after this moment—it was only a matter of a quick trip to the bathroom and a mistaken turn to the left, and Malory was in a New Jersey taxicab heading north to River Road.

  The cabdriver was a heavyset Kodiak bear of a man, who made no attempt to help Malory into the taxi. A full pelt of hair pressed his head onto his chin and his chin onto a chest wrapped in a multi-pocketed vest full of pens and pads and things covered in feathers and fur that Malory couldn’t begin to identify from the back seat. The cabdriver was playing a CD on his audio system—La Chanson de Roland by Louis Couperin—which meant that he and Malory could travel the roads up the Hudson unencumbered by knowledge of events only a few miles to the south.

  “Like music?”

  “Sorry?” Malory thought he had heard.

  “I asked if you like music,” the cabdriver said again, with a punctuated crescendo on every syllable.

  “Mmm,” Malory answered, since an explanation would be too long.

  Malory not only knew the piece, he knew the recording—E. Power Biggs on the organ of Saint Sulpice in Paris. Baroque Biggs was one of the few treasures left behind by his mother, a gift for his ninth birthday. The Couperin was not a difficult piece—he had persuaded the organist in Narbonne to teach it to him that next summer. His favorite part was towards the end when Roland calls for help. He blows his horn of elephant tusk so hard—the young Malory had to stand up on the pedals and reach high with both his arms to produce the effect on the organ—that his brain explodes and he dies on the spot. But another memory struck Malory with greater force as the taxi headed up the river. When Haroun first met Aldana in the stables below the house of the Jewish shochet Yehoshua, he had spoken of the death of Roland, Charlemagne’s cousin and best friend. Roland had stayed at the rear of the retreat of the Franks from Spain. He had died in the Battle of Roncesvalles deep in the Pyrenees, cut off from the rest of the troops by the betrayal of one of his kinsmen. Was Malory himself guilty of such treachery? He had left his own friend behind, if not the night before, then twenty-three years of nights before. And if a large part of Malory knew that Tibor was already dead, an equally large part was determined to return to TiborTina and at least put the body to rest.

  And find Louiza.

  And Ottavia.

  If not the Pip.

  “I began to dig organ back in the Navy,” the cabdriver said.

  “Mmm,” Malory said again, not convinced he understood but certain he would find out.

  “Moms put me in Language School. Keep me from going to Vietnam. Spruce Cape. Alaska. Not much to do up there except throw rocks at seagulls and study Russian. One of the SEALs training for cold weather combat had a Nakamichi reel-to-reel and about a hundred hours of tape—Karl Richter, Olivier Messiaen, that showboat Virgil Fox and the blind Kraut Helmut Walcha. But my favorite was Edward George Power Biggs. Man, I couldn’t get enough of E. Power.”

  Malory thought about telling the Driver that he had met Biggs once, had taken him on a tour of the Father Smith organ in Trinity, with its forty-two ranks refurbished by Metzler Söhne. One ear was listening to the Chanson de Roland and the other for clues as they drove onto the toll bridge across the Hudson.

  “Listened to so much E. Power,” the cabdriver said, as he threw some change into the basket, “that I failed my language exams. They stuck me in a booth with a set of headphones and played a tape—a simulation of a couple or three Russian MiGs in attack mode. The back and forth of the voices, the hiss of the switches going on and off. Lots of Russian. And above everything, the sound of air
, like a giant bellows. Something about the voices reminded me of E. Power’s recording of the Bach Toccata and Fugue in D minor, you know, the second section where everything goes haywire. And then suddenly—silence. ‘Hey’ I told the examiner, ‘your tape broke.’ ‘Nope’ the guy told me. ‘My tape didn’t break. Your fighter just got shot down.’” The cabdriver turned the wheel to the left by the round barn. Malory looked out through a window, greasy with New Jersey. Half a dozen people were gathered around a TV plugged into one of the lights in the parking lot. “So I came back here and started driving.”

  They stopped at the fieldstone fence at the top of the dirt road that led down the hill to Ottavia’s yellow cabin by the creek. Malory handed the cabdriver his wallet, furnished by Settimio with enough American money and discreet identification to last him several days. It was almost noon, less than twenty-four hours after Malory first strolled with Ottavia down the road and up the tractor path to the Blue House. Malory was returning to TiborTina. For Louiza? Did he really expect she would be there? For Tibor? Did he really believe he was still alive? For Ottavia? She had spoken to Malory of Haroun and his own return to Rome for the coronation of Charlemagne. Haroun came back for Aldana, Ottavia told him, for the daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor, for love. The driver took what he needed and handed the wallet back to Malory. The Couperin had trickled down into a runnel of sixteenth notes, a soothing anesthetic for his arrival. The driver backed into the dirt road, turned the way he came, and drove off over the last of the organ.

  It wasn’t until Malory crested the hill to the pond that he saw any signs of life. There were no cars parked by the Blue House, none by the Red Barn. The pond at noon was still and gray and nearly invisible. Whatever traces Louiza had left in the loam around the edges were merely the residue of his imagination. Malory turned. He hadn’t climbed up the terrace the evening before, hadn’t been invited yet up to the White House. Tibor had left him by the pond while he went to cook dinner, Ottavia had run off to pick herbs, and then there had been Louiza and the explosion and all that followed.