Part 3 (1/2)

The young man said, leaning even nearer: ”But you, my friend, as a music lover, must understand that the disappointment I've thus far delimited is nothing by comparison with the disappointment I have yet to describe. The moment my father first saw me in the crib, with these fingers that reach out like tentacles, he cried out, 'A pianist! The Dear Lord has sent us a pianist!' I could reach a full octave at the age of seven. And I was rhythmically talented, and had perfect pitch. I amuse acquaintances by telling them the frequencies of pistol shots, car crashes, screams for help. The point is this: what are a poet's lying words to the rich and the secret intimations of a piano chord, a great pipe organ, an orchestra, a voice? I've searched the globe for some firm reality that could give me even the shadow of a hint that our musical intuitions are not madness. I've stood before the greatest works of sculpture, and I've thought, 'Yes, it's beautiful. Is that all there is?' I've looked up from Zermatt at the Matterhorn and thought, 'very like the postcards.' I watched a friend die. It was just as I'd expected.”

The young man smiled as if consciously laboring to make his smile ferocious. ”That is why I compose as I do, my dear music lover.”

Professor Klingman said, ”You, then, are the composer of-” He said it almost casually, as if merely checking an earlier conclusion.

”I am,” the young man said fiercely, and waited.

Perhaps as much as a minute pa.s.sed. At last Professor Klingman took off his gla.s.ses to wipe them again. He did this slowly and carefully, his fingers trembling. He hooked the gla.s.ses back over his ears, folded his handkerchief, then changed his mind, unfolded it, and blew his nose. He noticed that he still had his hat on, and removed it, carefully setting it down on the table. ”I'm flattered that you should tell me all this,” he said softly, tentatively.

The young man waited. He seemed to be growing more angry by the minute.

Professor Klingman sat nodding slowly and thoughtfully, nervously smiling. Finally he said, as if he had no idea what else to say, ”My wife was a pianist.”

He began then, slowly and patiently, to explain what she had meant to him, though of course his feeling was impossible to put into words.

TRUMPETER.

Queen Louisa's dog, Trumpeter, was n.o.body's fool, which is one of the reasons he kept mostly out of sight, taking care of himself, harmlessly chasing a rabbit now and then, soaking up the sun in the cemetery-where no one ever went-one eye half open, on the watch for trespa.s.sers, sometimes wandering through the alleys of the village, peeking in through windows when the sun had set, observing how shopkeepers counted up their money unaware of the servants who peered from every curtain and hungrily eyed those stacked silver coins, and then again sometimes pausing by old shanties where cutpurses met, filling the night with their blasphemous obscenities, and where there were smells, everywhere, of bile and perspiration and unwholesome drink, still other times trotting to the foul black wharf, where old merchant s.h.i.+ps b.u.mped against the waterlogged planks and young sailors snored and whistled in the arms of drunken maidens and sometimes a pirate slipped silent as a reptile from fog-wisp to fog-wisp, wetly smiling, carrying his parrot and rum. Sharp ears lifted, burning eyes narrowed into needle-thin slits, Trumpeter would listen to whatever unrighteousness came drifting his way, and then he would lift his leg, leave his warning, and move on.

Trumpeter knew, as no one else did, all that was afoot in the kingdom of mad Queen Louisa. Not that he took undue pride in this. It was his nature, as a dog, to keep track of things, to be a jealous guardian, eternally alert. Even when, unbeknownst to them all, he lay in a corner of Queen Louisa's room, or slept with his head on his paws behind the stove, or bared his fangs to keep the cat on his toes-for the cat was an old one and weary of mice-Trumpeter's mind was on one subject: the welfare of the kingdom. This was, so to speak, what he was paid for. Not that Trumpeter could really be called paid. But Trumpeter was no haggler, never one to stand on ceremony. It is true, he would admit, that the people of the castle almost never spoke to him and, once they'd grown used to him, hardly looked up when he went gliding like an angel of death through the room; but sometimes when he rubbed against Queen Louisa's shoulder she would give him a brief, absentminded pat, and on rare occasions, for no discernible reason, she'd say, ”Sit, Trumpeter,” or, ”Down-for the love of G.o.d, boy!” or, ”Outside!” As for the others, they paid to Trumpeter no attention whatsoever, merely obeyed him as they obeyed the King or Queen, without thought or hesitation. When he stood by the door, they opened it. When he stood by the cupboard, they filled his dish. When he barked, they went over furtively and peeked out the window.

He was n.o.body's fool, but he had, it is true, his limitations, and the chief of them was this: ponder as he might-and ponder he did, hour on hour and year on year, his black head lowered into the carpet's scents, his eyes rolled up-he could never penetrate the reason (for presumably there was some reason) for the curious behavior of Queen Louisa and her court. It was said, and Trumpeter in his way understood, that at times Queen Louisa, to rest her mind, would transform herself suddenly into a large greenish toad. This habit was notorious, reported far and wide; everyone who knew her had seen the thing happen quite frequently. Everyone, that is, except Trumpeter. It was not, in his opinion, a case of the Emperor's Clothes. Trumpeter was no innocent: man's ways are not dog's, he knew. He had seen the whole court sit erect for hours, dead silent except for an occasional whisper, an occasional cough, listening to people on a bright raised platform howl. He, when he tentatively joined them, had been kicked and sent outside. On that same raised platform he'd seen a man in black creep up cunningly on another, a dagger in his hand, and when he, Trumpeter, had hurtled to the rescue, he'd been beaten and seized by five knights and had been chained behind the b.u.t.tery.

The oddities of man were inexhaustible, and this change that came over the Queen-a change Trumpeter could not see except by the reaction of the others-was merely one of them. He had learned to accept, simply to watch and consider, stretched out half hidden behind the curtains or under the table, offering no comment. One moment the court would be walking toward the chapel all in solemn array, bearing high white candles, Queen Louisa at their head in her long sky-blue gown, her red hair gleaming, her expression sweet and sad-they all had sad expressions as they moved toward the chapel, and their bodies were rigid, as if ritually so, slightly trembling with each step-and the next they'd all be leaping, or darting their tongues out-even King Gregor, with a pained expression, his black beard bristling-and the princesses and princes would suddenly begin croaking, ludicrously grinning, and their eyes would bug out. Trumpeter would let out a sigh and s.h.i.+ft his position slightly, and when Queen Louisa came down like an avalanche inches from his nose, he would thump his tail once, courteous, showing her he'd noticed. ”Goo-boo!” she'd say. This was not, strictly speaking, his name, or the right time of day, but he accepted it.

Whatever the reason for this strange behavior on the part of the Queen and, after her, the court, it was a peaceful kingdom, no one could deny it. King Gregor and King John, who for years had been at war, were now, because of the general confusion, the best of friends, squatting on some garden path arm in arm, or, in another mood, debating at the tops of their voices, jabbing their fingers at the writing in a book. ”Saintly, my a.s.s!” King John once yelled. (Trumpeter had no trouble understanding words. It was merely sentences that befuddled him.) ”Saintly, my a.s.s! Do you wash your peasants' feet on Maundy Thursday?” King Gregor's eyes widened. ”G.o.d forbid!” he said.

If all this was strange, there were other things still stranger. No one seemed to remember anymore, except for Trumpeter, that the Princess had gone away. Not the Princess called Muriel, whom the Queen had discovered and declared to be her own dear long-lost child, and not the numerous princesses and princes she'd found later and joyfully recognized and brought to the castle, Djubkin and Dobremish, Pretty Polly, and the rest. For all these, Trumpeter had no hostile feelings; and he understood-dimly, yet clearly enough-that in making them her children, as perhaps they were indeed, since the life of a dog is but a heartbeat, so to speak, in the long span of man, the Queen had brought happiness to a kingdom that had suffered, before that, grave troubles-peasants against royalty, ”madness against madness,” as the minstrel said: an obscure saying; but Trumpeter, in his heart, understood it.

He remembered, nonetheless, that another princess had lived here once in the days before Queen Louisa was mad-she had vanished one morning like dew into the blind blue air. Her hair was yellow. He would lie beside the fireplace, an old slipper in his mouth-he was not always, in those days, wide awake-and he would feel a certain pressure bearing down on his shoulder, and when he opened his eyes and turned his head, there the Princess would be, her hair falling over him, her cheek on the flatness between his shoulder and back, using him as a pillow, and he would moan and she would mimic him, harmlessly mocking.

This was no flickering memory but steady as the floor.

Whether or not he understood the details, he understood the importance of a kingdom at peace. Vrokror, that terrible grudge-bearing fiend, had no supporters now. The words with which Queen Louisa had undone him-”All error,” she'd said, ”begins with soreheads”-were now common slogan in King Gregor's realm. It was part of a verse for skipping rope to. Trumpeter, travelling far and wide, had seen the extent to which Vrokror had been undone. Vrokror was a monk again, as he'd been in the first place, but a monk in absolute and terrible isolation: he saw nothing sentient-certainly not G.o.d-but lived all alone on the top of a mountain, eating tundra plants.

All was well, all was well. Travelling through alleys, Trumpeter saw that the servants were afraid of their masters and would do them no harm, hunger as they might for those coins stacked like pillars in the palace. Watching the cutpurses, studying every smile, he saw that they were miserable, whatever their pretenses. There are never, of course, enough purses to go around. And Trumpeter saw that the merchants all cheated fellow merchants, and the pirates all stole from them, and no one was distressed; they were used to it. Trumpeter began to feel a strange discomfiture.

”Bad dog,” she'd say, this real Princess whom only Trumpeter remembered, and she'd shake her finger ferociously, and he would duck his head. But it was a pleasure, he would admit, that attention she gave him; and he partly understood-sometimes fully understood-that she did it for the absolute absurdity of the thing. Here was he, four, five, six times her weight, with jaws that could cut through the thighbones of a steer; and here was she, who with a word could lay him flatlings.

Sometimes lately, in the middle of the night, Queen Louisa would sit bolt upright in her bed. She would be atremble all over. He lay perfectly still, ready to spring to the defense, but there was nothing to defend her from. ”We must have,” she said one drizzly, miserable dawn, ”a royal ball. I must marry off my princes and princesses.”

There followed a period of intense preparations; dressmakers came, and cooks and carpenters and pirates disguised as wine merchants, eyeing the silverware. The palace was transformed. King Gregor paced furiously back and forth, stroking his black beard, s.n.a.t.c.hing at the arm of his friend King John. ”We've forgotten something,” he cried out, ”but what?” Trumpeter rushed with renewed intensity from the cemetery to the alleys of the village to the foul black wharf. All was well, all was well. On every lamppost and wall he left his warning.

She'd grown pale as marble and quick to be exhausted. Nevertheless, all was well, it was obvious. King John and King Gregor met daily for war, and their armies came home bleeding-or King Gregor's came home bleeding and King John's army went-and there was dancing till midnight and poetry speaking and courtly love-and the Princess would shake her head and smile: ”They're all mad, you know, Trumpeter. Stark raving mad.” He would hold out his paw, and she would take it and solemnly make acquaintance.

”She seems pale,” Queen Louisa said, pulling at her lip.

”She needs to eat more beefsteak,” said King Gregor, and never moved his eyes from the map. ”Ha!” he said suddenly. ”He'll creep up on us from here”-he jabbed down his finger on some lines on the map-”and little will he guess ...”

Since the palace was filled to overflowing with princes and princesses, none of them the pale one whom Trumpeter remembered, King Gregor and Queen Louisa held their royal ball. The orchestra played merrily, waltz after waltz, and by midnight all the merchants and the merchants' servants had found themselves some princess, and each and every prince had found some daughter of a merchant who was exactly to his liking, and the peace and serenity of the kingdom were more wonderful than ever.

When the ball was long over and everyone in bed, Queen Louisa sat bolt upright and said, ”Trumpeter! What's that?”

It was nothing, he knew. If there were anything there, he'd have heard it or smelled it or felt it in his bones. But he dutifully rose, head turned to yawn, and mournfully went over to the window to look out. It was nothing: emptiness. Poor Trumpeter had no imagination.

”Something must be done,” said Queen Louisa, ”about the pirates and parrots, not to mention the cutpurses.” She leaped from the bed, her white legs bowed, presumably presuming she'd been changed into a toad, and stared past Trumpeter's shoulder deep into the night. Absentmindedly, she stroked his head, and he moaned. ”That's it,” said Queen Louisa, as if it seemed to her he'd spoken. ”We must show them we love them and think of them as equals. What can we do?” She began to pace, bowleggedly hurrying back and forth, wringing her fingers and biting her lip. Trumpeter sat, ears c.o.c.ked, head tilted.

A queer expression stretched Queen Louisa's face. ”Do we really need the royal treasury?” she said.

Though the sentence was difficult, Trumpeter understood, and, hardly knowing what else to do, he covered his eyes with his right paw. Queen Louisa, however, was too excited to notice. ”That's it!” she cried. ”We'll invite the cutpurses, pirates and parrots to guard the royal treasure. They'll steal it and never be miserable again!”

A dog has no power. His only hope was that in the morning the Queen would have forgotten her plan.

Morning came, and she had not. ”Gregor,” she said, ”I have a brilliant idea.”

Trumpeter slunk off. He rushed to the cemetery, where no one ever went, and kept careful watch for an hour or so. But no one trespa.s.sed, not a rabbit stirred, so he hurried on, though it wasn't yet dark, to peek through windows here and there in the village, but no one was in sight-the merchants and their servants were all away celebrating with their new royal wives-then he rushed, quick as lightning, to the foul black wharf. But it was empty as a rum bottle lying in the sand, and then, with a heavy heart, Trumpeter returned to the palace.

”Dear G.o.d!” the King was yelling, though he was in on the plan, ”the royal treasury has been depleted!”

Trumpeter lay down.

All was well; all was well.

She, this Princess whom only he remembered, had grown increasingly pale, increasingly quick to weary. He'd insisted on lying at the side of her high bright platformed bed, waiting, on the theory that sooner or later, inevitably, given the span of human time, the sun would rise and she'd abruptly sit bolt upright, and they would walk out again into the fields to pursue silly rabbits. Then, for reasons not discernible to him, five knights had come and had cajoled and coaxed him and had finally seized him with their iron gloves and had dragged him by a chain to the place behind the b.u.t.tery. When they released him days later, the Princess was gone.

”We've done it! We've done it!” Queen Louisa cried wildly, startling him awake. As far as Trumpeter's eye could see there were people dancing.

”Ah, peace!” cried King Gregor.

”Ah, justice!” cried King John.

There stood Vrokror the Terrible, looking shy as a maiden, holding Muriel's hand; and Djubkin, Dobremish, Pretty Polly, and the rest were throwing rose petals over them, their faces bright with tears. Queen Louisa was laughing with a beautiful lilt, for the king of the pirates was offering her a treasure chest crammed to the gunnels with silver and gold, kissing her fingertips and squinting his eyes like a man who intended to steal it all back again; and King John and King Gregor were agreeing, all smiles, that both of them were certainly, in their own small ways, saints; and the parrots were crying, all, ”Cracker! Pretty cracker!”

The palace was full of light-beyond the windows, thick darkness. Nothing was wrong; nothing could go wrong. It was a balanced kingdom, the only kingdom in the world where art reigned supreme.

Trumpeter crept from beneath the dark curtain of the tablecloth and glided to the door. He stood waiting. It was opened. He hurried away from the dancing and light, away from the joyful celebration of things that he knew to be quite proper, and when he reached the depths of the forest, he began to howl.

THE LIBRARY.

HORROR.

I had been troubled for days-odd sounds, objects out of place, all the pitiful and mundane symptoms of a disordered mind, symptoms I know all too well, coming as I do from a family of lunatics, as everyone knows-when a few odd phrases in a book on aesthetics threw everything into sharp new perspective. I had been reading along in my usual fas.h.i.+on, simultaneously urgent and desultory, one hand pressed to my chest, a faint uneasiness in the back of my mind, a sort of floating anxiety like a shape moving furtively from window to window-never mind the reason (I had missed an opportunity to drop in on my father at the asylum outside the village, or, rather, I had thought of several reasons I could not possibly go, and then, not having gone, I had suddenly seen everything in a new light and had realized that my reasons were all trivial and absurd, I should certainly have gone; nor was that all, but never mind)-when suddenly I came upon these curious observations on ”living form” in art.