Beauty (21 page)

"I shall persevere, " I told him severely. "Too soon or not, she will need me."]

18

Aboard the
Stugos Queen,
I put on my cloak and went into Nacifia to see all those things Mrs. Gallimar had recommended I see. If we left upon the morrow, there might be no other opportunity to investigate the city.

I went first to the Cathedral of Helpful Amphibians, which was beautiful, outside and in. Though the materials were not ones Gaudi could have used, the place reminded me somewhat of pictures I had seen in the twentieth of a Gaudi cathedral. I sat down near one of the pillars, crystal carved into the likeness of a jet of water, leaping toward the sky. The whole cathedral was a fountain in stone. It was lit from high green windows with a dim, liquescent light, and in the side chapels statues of the helpful creatures sprawled or lay or climbed, each after its own nature.

I took off my cloak for coolness sake when I sat down. It was not long thereafter that I was surprised by a voice behind me saying, "Is there anything I can do for you, daughter, or are you merely sightseeing?"

"Ah ... Father," I murmured, turning about so I could see him. "Sightseeing. Yes."

"You're the lady rescued from the sandbank," he smiled at me as he came to sit beside me. "What do you think of our cathedral."

"It's very beautiful," I said honestly.

He nodded in agreement, beaming at the pillars.

"At home," I said, struggling for truth without complication. "At home we would think it strange to dedicate a cathedral to ... ah ... amphibians."

He seemed slightly startled. "What would you dedicate a cathedral to?"

"A martyr, perhaps," I suggested. "An angel?"

"Were they made by the Creator?" he asked.

I nodded that they were.

"Well, so are these," he said with some asperity, gesturing around him. "Are some parts of creation more worthy than others in your homeland?"

I told him yes, that in my homeland (thinking of the twentieth and twenty-first) only humans were worthy of anything at all. All else was disposable.

He shook his head over me, speechless, his old face suddenly lined with horror. He made a gesture in my direction, which I recognized as being one of aversion, one of fear.

"I didn't say I believed that," I cried.

He made the gesture again, and tottered away into a side chapel where I could see him kneeling at the altar of St. Frog, murmuring in a heartbroken tone. I slipped on my cloak once more, saddened by his rejection.

My next stop was at the clownery, where I wandered invisibly down long hallways, watching the inhabitants at their work or play or whatever it was they were doing. One inmate was packing cockroaches, one hundred to the bag. I do not think the insects were dead, though they were very quiet. Another inmate was constructing a large bust of the Viceroy, so the label said, out of what appeared and smelled to be dung. A third inmate, with the aid of a tall ladder, was writing her autobiography on the walls of the place. She had covered four stories of one stairwell and had extended her tale out into the reception area, where two walls were already covered with obscenities. I followed her story back in time until I reached a door to the roof, where a group of attendants were having morning coffee. Even read in reverse, it had been a novel of violence, abuse, incest, and horror.

I stood on the roof listening to the attendants, who were mostly interested in discussing the fine points of their latest soccer series. When I went down the stairs again, the walls were clean. Another inmate with bucket and brush was washing them, as he sang a lovelorn lament. The inmate with the bags of insects had given them to someone else, who was letting them go. The sculptor was asleep in the shade of his gigantic construction, while six or seven others carried the substance of it away in wheelbarrows. Each madness had been unmaddened.

I made my way next to the macabre heights of Mont Osso Negro where the citadel stood. I had a mind to look upon the Viceroy of this place. I found him striding through arched corridors in search of his daughter Constanzia, whom, as his bellows of rage and accusation testified, he suspected of dalliance with the young men of the garrison. Before his iron-booted feet, legions of scrub women scattered to one side or the other, squawking like chickens, except for one aged crone who scuttered along beside the Viceroy on all fours, attempting to slosh soapy water in his path while muttering, "Beast. Hideous beast. Inhuman dog. Ingrate," calumniations of which the Viceroy took no notice. His long, white face was set in an expression of obdurate annoyance, one, I was to learn, of his two customary expressions, the other being a vacuous stare of terminal ennui.

When his invective became boringly repetitious, I left off following him and went in search of Constanzia herself, a quest which the boots made simple. She was hidden in one comer of the long, vaulted library loft, reading a leather-bound volume with the word "Forbidden" stamped on its cover in age-faded ink. The book was mildewed and fly-specked; the pages were yellowed by time. Still, the gold leaf of the title gleamed bravely in the slim rays which leaked through the owl holes cut in the gables of the loft:
The Diaries of Ambrosius Pomposus, Founder of the State of Chinanga.

Constanzia's reading was interrupted frequently by the need to look up words with which she was unfamiliar. I went to and fro with her as she searched for references in various volumes written in a multitude of tongues, a process which ate up the hours. She had managed to get only to page one hundred forty-two of
The Diaries,
and she muttered to herself that it had taken the better part of three rainy seasons to read that far. A sense of fiery purpose emanated from her, like heat from the sun.

When I grew weary of reading, I explored the castle, finding the Viceroy soaking in his tub, a steaming towel wound around his head, leaving only his nose to quest for air, like a tapir's snout, while an intermittent procession of water carriers dipped out portions of the cooling water and poured in equivalent ewers of hot from the boilers in the kitchens below. Obviously, the plumbing no longer functioned, and certain smells wafting from lower regions indicated the drains, too, might be endangered.

Captain Jemez sat on a chair by the window, reading the
Nacifia Noticias,
remarking occasionally upon its contents, while the Viceroy muttered comments from under the towel. After a time, the Viceroy seemed to fall asleep, and Captain Jemez went to the window.

I peered over his shoulder. In the marketplace the fruit stalls were bright with mangos and pollarels, bananas and cuscumbres and chinangarees. On the hills behind the town the goatherds played their pipes, the sound coming faintly over the bleating of their flocks, borne by the soft warm winds down from Baskarone.

"Ah, Baskarone. Sun-kissed Baskarone of the thousand delights," the captain murmured, beginning to sing in a strong tenor voice, "I found my love in lovely Baskarone."

He crossed to the other side of the room to look out across the river, far among the drowned trees where the land sloped up to the range of jungle hills. After the rains, the river would fall, I had been told, into its narrower channel, leaving behind ten thousand little lakes and pools to reflect the blossoms and give a homeland to the frogs.

The captain had similar thoughts. "Bless all frogs and other helpful amphibians," he intoned in plainsong, switching to his baritone register.

"Captain," said a firm voice behind us.

"Madam," he bowed, flushing. I slipped to one side, not to be trampled by the visitor. Flatulina had come into the bathroom and stood considering her husband's recumbent figure as the steam rose gently about him.

"How long has he been in there?" she asked, arms akimbo, massive shoulders raised in inquiry, huge head cocked, its generous features dwarfed by the mane of black hair which boiled from her skull in an uncontrollable torrent.

"Most of the morning, madam."

"Get him out. Hell be all wrinkled." Flatulina's full lips twisted in distaste.

"Madam ... "

"Get him out. There's an ambassador come. Ambassador Israfel from Baskarone. Tell him I said." And she was gone, leaving the captain to consider how he might best disturb the Viceroy without running the risk of that gentleman's wrath. I followed the woman, much desiring to see Ambassador Israfel from Baskarone.

And he was there. Though I was wrapped tightly in my cloak, he looked up and smiled at me as I came into the room. He was only slightly more marvelous than I supposed any other man might be, anywhere. Looking at him, I felt that I had been changed forever. The thing that burned at the center of me came alight, a fine white flame.

And he went on smiling at me, seeing me though the cloak was tight around me, seeing and approving that flame before he turned away and greeted the Viceroy. I leaned against a pillar in utter confusion. As soon as I could move, I returned to the
Stugos Queen.

I lay upon my bed, wondering what I had seen, what I had felt. I had loved, still love Giles. That is a human affection, a love that desires, at least partly, some physical consumation: a touch, a glance, something that speaks from one body to another, one heart to another. Even if we were very old, Giles and I, we would want that. We would want to lean together in the gloaming, our cheeks next to one another, our hands clasped, letting our selves say to one another that we loved. I think that would be true. Remembering him now, I think that would be true.

This thing I feel in the presence of the ambassador is something else. This is what I sometimes felt in Westfaire, at certain times when the light fell beneath hovering clouds onto the windows and the grass, lighting them with a mysterious and marvelous effulgence, colors so pure that they made one's eyes ache, or at certain times when the rain dropped in gauzy curtains of mist to half-hide, half-disclose the fine, soaring lines of the castle. It is a longing so deep, an appreciation so rare ...

In the twentieth I felt it a few times. I went to an opera and heard a woman's voice, like a stream of falling water, the orchestra behind her in a cataract of sound, and I felt it then. I felt it a little when I set my eyes on the jungles of Chinanga for the first time, a kind of perfection that sings inside.

They are both love. If Father Raymond were here, perhaps he would say this other thing is the love of God. But I was not thinking of God when I felt it at Westfaire, and when the woman sang, and when I saw Israfel. I don't think I was.

Night came to Nacifia. The riverbank bloomed bright with torches. The day had been long and hot and full of sights and sounds and tastes. I had no wish to engage in conversation or be introduced to anyone else. After supper, I put on my cloak and moved like a shadow along the quay, looking here, listening there. Captain Karon and his crew scattered themselves among the waterfront tavernas; the people of the town scattered themselves likewise. Constanzia approached the captain with a curtsy and a request from her mama. The captain was known to have certain special luxuries aboard. Would he be inclined to display them?

Display his wares tonight? the captain asked in nicely feigned disbelief. Who would look at his poor goods after sundown?

Certain people, she said, had indicated that they might be persuaded.

The captain demurred. Surely not.

There was so little amusement in Nacifia, she persisted, with a flounce, a sidelong look, and maidenly laugh.

Until, at last, the captain gathered up a dozen torches and set them around the
Stugos Queen
while ordering three of his men to open the hatches of the small, forward hold and bring out what was there.

Cages of silver peacocks and lengths of shining silk. Incense and carved sandalwood boxes. A half-lifesize mechanical ballerina who danced upon her toes, click, click, click, like a cricket, coming to the edge of her stage and raising her tiny hands in mechanical fright before turning to begin her dance again. Pots of perfumed ointment and hand-blown bottles of cologne. Monkeys with gold collars and iguanas in jeweled chains. Lace from the convent at St. Mole and confections from the monastery of St. Cloud. How so many things could come out of the little hold was a wonder to everyone, no less to me. Each thing brought out smelled, too, that old, mysterious smell which I had never identified: the chapel smell, the smell of Westfaire.

Coins changed hands. The Viceroy's wife went home with lengths of sparkling fabric. Other wives contented themselves with the piece goods Flatulina had overlooked. Daughters sniffed at the crooks of their arms where drops of ointment deliquesced in silken folds. The robust Malisunde carried off an ape in a cage, as a substitute for a husband who was never home said someone, not meaning to be heard. Only the shadows and I heard, and only we laughed.

In the half-darkness, at the edge of the torchlight, a young lieutenant stood with Constanzia, murmuring, "His Excellency, your father, has been somewhat distraught of late."

"Do you think so?" Constanzia asked. "I had thought he was rather less irritable than usual. This business in Novabella has quite set him up. He hasn't tried to kick Grandma for at least a week. Even when she got soap under his feet and knocked him down in the long gallery last Friday. And he is sending Mrs. Gallimar as plenipotentiary. With a provisional permit!"

The lieutenant agreed that the issuance of even a provisional permit betokened the possibility of novelty, even, perhaps, of change. He was gazing at her as at a wonder, but she did not seem to notice.

Constanzia nodded thoughtfully. "I believe the people of Novabella have promised him a virgin with a difference. He has all the ingredients but that one. Think what it will mean if she truly is what they say she is!" She smiled on the young man, at which he blushed red as a rose. But then, just as he put out his hand to touch hers, she excused herself and went trotting off up the street toward the citadel. He turned away in confusion. Poor boy.