I tried to be grown up. I asked what we could do for Peregrine, though I still did not understand the problem. Israel made an odd sound in his throat, turned away. There was a pause. He continued in a tense whisper, “You won’t understand this. There’s a lot I’ve skipped over. And you need a few years yet watching this comedy we’re in, where if you step out-of-bounds just once, you can’t get back in. Like poor Peregrine. He’s ineligible, forever. But I want you to hear it from me first. Oh, God, Grim, we haven’t got what Peregrine needs. Maybe no one does.”
Israel slumped against the wall. I was frightened. Something was deeply wrong. I believe I did then sense that he was trying to protect me from despair; however, I did not realize it was the hopelessness of complete and unpardonable exile. I also did not realize he was concealing the full details of Peregrine and Charity’s history. The lesson might be, never protect those you love from the truth. I had learned much. I had always known that Father had an unhappy life; I had learned enough from Israel to begin to see that Father had, and had made himself have, a crippled life.
The dumbwaiter was cleared. We were spotted loafing. We scooted back to the triteness of hauling sweetmeats. The rush of guests swept us into a pace that did not abate for hours. I could only smile at Israel as we passed each other with trays. When I did get a chance to think again, it was because Rinse ordered me to the wine cellar to deliver a special key. I weaved through the Great Hall toward the back stairway, and thus enjoyed my first close look at the ball.
The crowd dazzled me, the men in their tapered black coats and brilliant white linen and the women in all colors and cuts of gown. They danced stately waltzes around me. They seemed well loved, well pleased. There was a particular group—taller, healthier, more arrogant—that I guessed were Americans. This was my first exposure to what Israel called the ruling class of my paternal people, so I set a long course to pass by them. The women were diverse, some fair like most of Sweden, others dark and more alluring to me. It is true that one young woman did fascinate me to the point that I stopped to study her as the crowd separated between us. She was sleek, large-boned, tall, olive-skinned, and had thick black hair down to her waist, which she had filled with combs. She had a pouty doll’s face, black almond-shaped eyes, with a large mouth and a long smooth neck, like a swan’s. I thought her beauty itself. It is an image that I have treasured all my life, and though it does not replace my last picture of Cleopatra, it remains supreme.
The dancers closed about me, and I was forced on. The wild smell of the gathered disoriented me. I stumbled against a side table. I knocked off several glasses, a flower arrangement, and a pile of papers. In the mess was a blue booklet like the one I had seen Peregrine grasp. It was entitled “Meet the Laureates.” I made my escape with it. It had finally come to me, slow-witted youth, that Israel had identified Charity Bentham as a guest of honor at the ball.
She was a Nobel Prize winner. I found the entry, which I did not have time to read until after I delivered the key to the King’s retainer in the wine cellar and been told to get quickly back to my post. I was intimidated, rushed through the service corridors, missing many turns. I thought myself clumsy. I was actually overexcited by my discovery. It was luck that brought me to the lift bank—good luck or bad, I am not sure—and as I waited for the lift, I read.
Charity Bentham was born and raised in Chicago, in the American Middle West. Her father, Increase, was a Presbyterian minister; her mother, Dorothea, was a professional choir singer. Her three younger sisters, Constance, Chastity, Hope, were married and were either attorneys or business executives. Her baby brother, Trinity, was deceased. Charity Bentham graduated from Yale University’s law school and had a doctorate in economic science from the University of Chicago, where she was at the time a member of the faculty. Her list of publications was very long. Her books included Brave New Benthamites, which won an honor I cannot recall, and The Pleasure and Pain Principle in World Markets. Her most famous work was The Greatest Good, which seemed to have won every major award and to have been translated into every major language.
Charity Bentham was a celebrity, the hostess of a television series called The Twenty-First Century; and there was a paragraph about the United States government committees that she had either served upon or chaired. The committee I recall most ironically was The President’s Special Commission on Resettlement Crises.
And Charity Bentham’s relationship with the American government was not simple. She was married to an architect and builder named Cesare Furore, the brother of a former senator from the Middle West who had been nominated as his party’s candidate for the presidency of the American Republic. Cesare Furore was described as the developer of futuristic urban communities around the world; the most famous was in Mexico—called Cleopatrium.
There was mention of Charity Bentham being descended, through her German-American mother, from the Royal Family of Great Britain. Of course, there was also prominent mention of her being descended, through her father, from the family of Jeremy Bentham, the eighteenth-century English philosopher.
Also, Charity Bentham was the mother of one daughter, Cleopatra, and the foster mother of several Spanish-American sons.
Charity Bentham was said to be either the first or second woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize exclusively, and was by far the youngest woman, at forty-four, to be so honored. The Nobel Prize selection committee citation read:
“In awarding Professor Bentham the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, the committee cites her tireless work assisting the developed nations in dealing humanely with less fortunate nations, and her profound and far-reaching contribution to international harmony.”
If my memory is correct, this quotation is irony to an appalling extreme. Charity Bentham, as I was to learn, was the philosopher in the late twentieth century who most concerned herself with the despair of the vanquished, the outlanded, and the exiled. And yet she did so as a privileged member of the community that cast out the unwanted. I shall not explain further here. There is a story to tell that makes my opinion come alive in infamy and reversal. But I feel I must emphasize that nothing about what that woman did and said to achieve her Nobel Prize is unimportant to my life, and to my confession. Fate made her mind my enemy. Luck made her passion and her children my allies, and my victims, and my betrayers.
The lift arrived to interrupt my study of Charity Bentham’s letter thanking the Nobel Prize selection committee for her award. She seemed, in her letter, very smart and very happy. This was the woman Israel called “hot.” I pictured a goddess, granite-hard and all-knowing, like Frigg, Odin’s wife and first among the Norse goddesses, but this distortion was because I understood little of her biography. I did congratulate myself for what I presumed was an adult understanding of Peregrine’s anguish. Here was Father’s first and, from what I believed to be true, only love, who had risen to incomparable heights in America while he had remained a bottom-dweller. In my sentimental way, I supposed I could feel how Peregrine must feel—hurt, ashamed, afraid, robbed. It did not occur to me that such emotions in an immature man like Peregrine, who believed himself persecuted by ghosts, could lead to far worse than self-pity.
As the lift delivered me to what I thought was the first story of the castle, I considered how bizarre it was that Charity Bentham was said to be descended from royalty. I wondered if Peregrine had knowm this pretentiousness when he courted her. I imagined it would have disgusted him, descendant of German and Irish swineherds. I did not think that such strangeness might have compelled him to possess her, nor did I think that his possession might have proceeded to marriage. I never asked myself what it was that Israel had “skipped over” in his version of their romance. I did wonder if her royal blood was true, since Israel had told me that the worse snob in America could at best lay claim to ancestors that had been either too incorrigible or too wretched to have remained in Europe. The America that Israel described to me was a huge, fertile, noisy, greedy land of ou
tcasts from the collapse of European. Asian, and African decency, rushing like lunaucs to construct a new and greater amalgamation of indecency. That was where Charity Bentham flourished. That was where Peregrine could never go again. I asked myself, what would such a woman make of my father, after all her victories and all his defeats.
Stupidly, I got off the lift on the first floor, in the servants’ corridor beneath the grand staircase. I panicked that I might lose my wages for truancy. I charged out of the small grillwork door and into the milling celebrants. I blushed at the stares of the women in the Earl of Gotland’s party. I could not rush the staircase. I tried stealth, ducking my head, edging along the wall, it not occurring to me that no six-feet seven-inch gold-maned ice hockey prodigy in ill-fitted livery does anything unnoticed. The stares became more intense. I shrank closer to the wall.
It was luck again, and perhaps bad luck, that one of the few people in the hall who did not notice my awkward chagrin was Peregrine. He was slumped at the end of the bar top in the cloakroom, his hands folded piously before him, his head bent in the most tender pose, his attention fixed upon the willowy, gray-haired, glimmeringly gowned lady of charm and authority before him. They chatted and smiled. Peregrine Ide, pauper, fugitive, servant’s servant, flirted with his long-lost Charity: and Charity Bentham, heiress, stateswoman, and honored guest of the Kingdom, flirted with her long-lost Peregrine.
Israel was not pleased when I told him what I had seen. We did not have time to debate. Rinse rushed over and threatened dismissal. I saw Mrs. Bad-Dober scowling in the distance. We took a cue from the simpletons and feigned obliviousness. We huffed and puffed until midnight, when our gang got a half-hour tea break, because the King’s speech was due to interrupt everything. I wanted to get as close to the dais as possible, hoping Charity Bentham might be there. Israel grabbed me and pulled me along with the other workers to the rear service stairs, where, on the chilly landing, everyone relaxed with tobacco and quiet.
“Surprise, mon guerrier!” cried Guy, charging up with a birthday cake held high. Behind him came Molly Rogers and Thord Horshead, followed by Thord’s lover, Orri Fljotson, and Orri’s younger brother, Gizur, called Sail-Maker, both of them with armfuls of drink and utensils. Last up the stairs was the immense shadow of Earle Littlejohn, his arms crossed oddly. They sang to me a suggestive limerick to the tune of “Happy Birthday,” in English, Swedish, and French. I was embarrassed, because many of the simpletons joined in the shouting. Israel pounded me on the back; Molly and Guy, pulling me down to their height, kissed me wetly; and Orri—a ravenous man at five feet tall—demanded we cut the cake. I asked, “How did you get in here?”
“Trifling matter, birthday boy,” said Thord. Thord’s English was peculiar, learned mostly from eighteenth-century English novels. He was tall, wraithlike, bright and gentle, might have been pretty were his features and person less elongated. His great talent was patronage. As art dealer, he was owed favors by most of the well-placed members of the homosexual community in Stockholm. As “extraordinary tradesman,” his term for smuggler, he simply owned every other third-level official in the government. He could get what he wanted when he wanted it. There were limits, but not for social functions. His taste was for the shadows, however, so though he wielded a carte blanche in the then casually carnal and corrupt Kingdom of Sweden, he exercised his power eccentrically. The only man I knew who did not approve of Thord’s manner was Guy, but Israel assured me that this was just one of Guy’s personality quirks, nothing mean-spirited.
Once we were arranged on the landing like a picnic party, Molly had me blow out the candles. Orri and Gizur took charge of distributing hats, cake, and wine. I leaned against the balcony next to Molly, Israel’s great love, whose affections Israel had finally secured exclusively for himself, though they had yet to marry. Molly was a bosomy red-haired woman, irrepressible and never anything but even-tempered, though she wrote dark verses; she held me bent forward to keep kissing me on the head, mussing my mane, which was then my vanity. It occurred to me to tell her that seventeen years old made me a man. I did not, accepting her pinching in silence, eating the cake with my fingers.
“What wish?” said Israel.
“I’m not telling,” I said.
“A lass to sport with for many a season?” said Thord.
“La femme! L’amour! La vie!” cried Guy.
“Certainly not,” I said.
“Aren’t we the serious one?” said Molly.
“How about two of them?” said Earle, stepping from the side to pull two squirming animals from his coat, handing them over. I squatted up to hold them, two eight-week-old husky puppies, both bitches, part Chinook and part wolf, with large floppy ears, ferocious tails, and soft tongues that attacked the sugar on my hands.
“The blonde is Goldberg,” said Earle, “and the white is Iceberg. Their momma is a sled dog. Their daddy is missing.”
“When did you name them that?” said Israel. “Whoever heard of a husky called Goldberg? Iceberg I rather like.”
“I like them both very much, thank you all,” I said, struggling with them. They had smelled the cake; Molly caught Iceberg as she dove for it. Goldberg yelped as I grabbed her hindquarters. We gorged ourselves, and Earle fed the pups so much cake that they overdosed on sugar and passed out in my lap.
By then, Israel had talked with Guy and Thord about Peregrine and Charity. Their faces were fixed with worry. If I had been bolder, I might have joined them, asked them what we could do to make Peregrine feel loved. But I did not press them, choosing to act. I jumped up with Goldberg and Iceberg tucked in my waistcoat and announced, “I’m going to show them to Father.”
“Not now,” said Israel. He might have elaborated on his intuition had not Rinse then appeared on the landing.
“Who are these people?” he shouted. “Guard!” he called, gesturing as if we were all assassins. The simpletons, whom we had won with the cake, tried to shout Rinse down. This made him crazier.
Deft Guy, whose craft it was to think in motion, advised a general retreat. Thord ignored Guy and tried to deal, taking some large bills from Orri (as a serious art connoisseur and cautious pirate, Thord never carried cash on his person) in order to bribe Rinse, which might have worked had several castle security men not then arrived to assert themselves officiously.
In the confusion, all the hired help, dressed in black, slipped unchallenged by the security men. Israel jerked his head at me, meaning I should follow along. I raced ahead, intending to get to Peregrine in the cloakroom. What I would do then, I did not think. My conduct was rash and clumsy. It was also decisive, for Earle had taught me to follow instinct first, never to stand still and risk being overrun. Ice hockey is not wisdom, of course; at seventeen it was half of all I knew (the rest being Beowulf and Norse lore). With my puppies against my breast and a stomach full of cake and worry, I pushed back into the Great Hall, heading as directly as I could for the staircase. I got full across the room before a woman’s strong voice from the dais distracted me.
“This wonderful night would not have been possible without the unquestioning love and selfless help of my family.” Charity Bentham was at the microphone. She was ringed by radiantly proud men and women, obviously her family, and by two in such ornamentation they had to be the King and the Queen of Sweden. On the dais behind them were other opulent dignitaries. All seemed exceedingly happy (that is, Good). At that moment, as I squeezed as close to the corner of the dais as possible, looking over the thousands of wealthy, well-informed, and well-pleased citizens of the most well-fixed nations of the world, I realized how intimidating property, class, blood, and knowledge can seem to those whose lives have been without such, or who have been excluded from such by accident or cruelty. I was a very young, very underinformed twentieth-century man, and I did not begin to understand how truly powerful those in that hall were. Yet even in my ignorance I was overwhelmed. Their smell, their hum, their bright eyes and vitality seemed to push me back against t
he wall, into the stone, out of the castle. I felt what it is to be a full-grown man and yet be insignificant—ineligible, as Israel had said. Perhaps I felt invisible, although not in the scientific sense. I mean invisible as Israel explained it to me, as how American Negroes, or European Jews, or any number of discarded, destitute, forgotten people have felt insignificant, ineligible, invisible in history. I felt as if I did not matter, did not exist, was not ever to be cared about, loved, respected, missed, mourned. It is a frightening thought, whenever you have it, whatever it is, and the more so if the first time is at the edge of a cavern filled with such visibility. I think what protected me from being crushed by the realization of my meaninglessness was my youth. At seventeen, robust and curious, one is, or should be, full of hope. That I was a penurious bastard, without mother, country, education, legal status, prospects of any reasonable sort, did not challenge me. There was something that did, and it also confounded me. It was their—I mean the assembly’s—apparent kindness, benevolence, sweetness. Those people were among the men and women who can be said to be the masters of the earth, and of mankind. They were power and authority. Yet they stood relaxed, amiable, polite, cheery. Their smiles were lovely, and most certainly charitable. They held the power of goods and knowledge, and they dispensed from their holdings. Yes, they were a charitable lot. I did not understand what that truly meant then. Their benevolent might fooled me. I was a young fool, and still might be a fool, yet now I understand charity.
I add that even with all the above gray thinking, I never lost sight of the profound difference between those men of rank and my family. They were in the King’s castle as guests. Israel, Peregrine, and I were there as help. We had rights, and chances; in comparison to those of the inheritors, we were kitchen knaves.
The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica Page 4