Napoleon Symphony: A Novel in Four Movements (38 page)

“Sire, with respect. You will be soaked.”

“A big enemy, rain,” he said, drinking it. “Mud. The bogging down of the artillery. Men cursing, slipping in it.” And then he allowed himself to be persuaded to proceed within. Lights and obeisances. From group to group to group to group to group and all the way it was candles shining aloft with Long Live The Emperor and It Is The Anniversary Of His Crowning and God Bless You Sire, smooth courtiers in tears of love and joy as he walked, with best sperm candles blazing all about, from obeisance to obeisance to obeisance. He waved his hand in thanks, tears in his own eyes, God Bless You My Children, and was escorted to his glittering box. Thank You Thank You he cried from it weeping at the standing tiers who were doing him honor and then, quietly, to the inclined ear of his aide:

“Wake me up in good time. I have to lead the fucking applause.”

A
fter an overture in the classical style, the curtain rose upon a representation of Mount Olympus, with gauzy clouds floating convincingly, the wires which flew them scarcely visible. The gods in general synod stood about, statuesque, decrepit, angry, dressed in silver-powdered wigs and togas. Jupiter spoke first in wavering accents, the old and bent head of a doomed and discredited régime. In stately alexandrines he remarked irritably that these Titans were growing too bold, especially that son of Iapetus and Clymene, or was it Themis? Begotten on a remote island somewhere. Mnemosyne, one-time Jovian paramour, who had given birth all at once to the Muses nine, was herself growing crotchety and unreliable. He couldn’t remember things as well as he used to. Forgotten even the name of the damned Titan who was especially demonstrating impious boldness. Mars, in battered armor and limping as with gout, said the name was Prometheus, Prometheus was the name, that was what it was, Prometheus. (Here the audience applauded. Smelling the possibility of dangerous satire somewhere, N stayed awake but did not applaud.) Ah yes, Prometheus. This Prometheus had taken it upon himself to make living creatures out of chunks of clay (more applause, more smell of danger) and was now teaching them the art of war—his own art, the Martian art, just imagine. War? said Jupiter. Fighting? Who was he teaching them to fight against? No doubt, said Mars, that the Promethean aim was to lead an army up the slopes of Olympus itself and do to death the deathless gods, so that he, a mere Titan, with his handmade soldiers, could take over the rule of the universe. Saturn, god of old age, shuffled downstage to ask how. Fire, how else? Mars rumbled. They have fire, fire. But that is the limit of impiety, shocked Jupiter said. Fire is divine, fire is sky-born, the gods’ weapon. Where did they get the fire from? They made it, Mercury said. Or rather Prometheus discovered a way of making it, finding that the seed of fire inheres not merely in heaven but in the soul of crass heaven-shunning matter. Jupiter now delivered a set piece in praise of fire, the fire of the sun, all-consuming, the milder fire of the stars, the fire that strikes when divine thunderbolts are hurled. Fire is to strike lesser breeds, such as Titans, with; it is not, heaven forbid, even ever to be dreamt of as being used against the high thrones of the gods. Old the gods may be, but they still have divine power; they are by no manner of means to be minimally or maximally mocked. What then shall be done to Prome Prome—ah, Mnemosyne, why did you leave me? (Audience laughter. “Look,” N said urgently, “what is this? A comedy? There are no chairs on the stage.”)

Wipe out the entire race of Titans and, while your thunderbolt-hurling hand is in, the entire race of Titanic clockwork toys, men or whatever they are called. Thus spoke Uranus. But ah, Jupiter said, why wipe out what the torment of gives the gods pleasure? For it is not enough to carouse, it is not enough to sit long over the cenal or prandial ambrosia, it is not, for that matter, enough to swoop down on hapless nymphs in zoomorphic disguises. Power, gentlemen, power consists mainly in the power to hurt.
(La puissance, messieurs
—why, it was the very Aulic Council.) And so we will take away the fire-making faculty from these upstarts. But, to seem clement, nay to seem generous, we will send down a heavenly bride for this Titan—Prometheus is the name, Neptune said, scratching at his wig with a prong of his trident. We will send down Pandora. Bring in Pandora now. Mercury, in brave disdain of creaking joints, flew off lumpishly. Stay, Jupiter stayed him. She must not forget her box. (“See,” N said, “if it is the Empress they are out to mock—”) Mercury nodded and, with an exit-applause-provoking gesture which in fact provoked no applause, was off.

Neptune, to fill in the time of waiting for Mercury’s return with Pandora, delivered a speech which N did not greatly like.

NEPTUNE

Let us admit, that age may come to birth

When a new rational race may win the earth,

May scale the mountains, drain the rivers dry,

Erect tall towers defiant of the sky,

May bid the deserts blossom like a flower,

May chart the year and calibrate the hour,

The mighty billowing ocean stays exempt

From any would-be conqueror’s attempt.

In nether caverns though I seem to sleep

Yet in an instant will I rouse and leap

And crash upon each bark that reckless rides,

Splitting its mainmast, stoving in its sides,

When, in my wisdom, it appears to me

I hear a claim to mastery of the sea.

Beware, ye island races yet unborn,

Divinity is in the power you scorn.

Rage you may reap whene’er you plow my plain:

The sea is mine, and mine it will remain.

(N chewed that over, not too sure who it was getting at. It was in bad taste somehow. And it was not true. History, like the gods, was not altogether mocked, try as one might. It did not fit in well with Trafalgar. Oh my God oh my God Trafalgar. Only civilians sneered at the enemy. N felt he would now like to nap a little, but he was apprehensive about what might be coming next.)

What came next was the entry of Pandora, accompanied by smirking Mercury. She was played by a pretty but, as N knew from backstage and backstairs visits, pert and buttock-shrugging girl from Chateauroux, a diaphanous gown pasted to her, bosom well on show, a reminiscence of the discredited Directory. Jupiter explained how she had been knocked together by Hephaestus, kneeded and molded, to be exact, out of clay, hence of a substance of those insolent creations of Prometheus, whom she was now (no magic involved; who could easily resist her? Were not the deathless gods now leering in senile concupiscence?) to wed. He, Jupiter himself, had given her a box as a kind of dowry. The bridegroom, curious as to its contents, would not be able to resist opening it, and then and then—Creaking stage machinery now made this box, or rather one of its sides or walls, trundle some way downstage from the skyey cyclorama, and the wall fell open to allow its living freight to be disgorged. This consisted of masked actors representing a rich selection of the causes of earthly woe—poverty, disease, superstition, famine, earthquake, tyranny and so on. They spoke each a long speech that made N nod. The gods in general, to whom N gave a bleary kind of attention, seemed to consider that Prometheus and his creation were being perhaps excessively punished for possessing fire (which they no longer possessed anyway, the gods having doused it for them) and cleverness—illiquidable by the gods, who could easily turn living beings into constellations, continents, or herbaria but not easily, the gods being ignorant of the nature of folly, into fools. Wait, said Jupiter, see how merciful we are. He clapped his hands and, to quiet music, a beautiful female figure sidled out, simpering in a kind of nun’s costume, from the innermost shadows of the box. Hope, said Jupiter, her name is Hope. Tableau. The curtains closed to as much applause as the playwright and players could reasonably hope for.

Prometheus, acted by Beaumard, began the next part solo. Nothing Napoleonic about him, N decided, watching thin gesturing arms and the rise and fall of a prominent larynx. Prometheus told the audience that he had not liked the look of this allegedly conciliatory gift from heaven and given her to his brother Epimetheus to marry. Epimetheus, intrigued by the dotal box, had loosed on the earth a large horde of Ills and a very little Hope. Still, he, Prometheus, was determined to emphasize the hopefulness of human life and so had sneaked up to Olympus and stolen fire. He showed the audience a sort of monstrance with the igneal semen cached in it like a eucharistic wafer. The journey hither had been terrible, what with all the Ills milling about, and the journey hence would be even more perilous, but he, Prometheus, had a responsibility to his creatures. (Applause.) Horns now sounded: the gods were giving chase. The horns wound louder, and from both left and right. Prometheus, hugging his monstrance like a priest during the Terror, sought to leave but found all ways cut off. And then the gods, some from left, others from right, Jupiter himself from up center, where he stood, pointing the finger, on a craggy peak, came on, terrible in controlled wrath. Prometheus, he. By what filthy trick of titanicity had he managed to mount Olympus and carry off sacred fire? Denunciatory speeches from the gods in turn, defiant ripostes from Prometheus. (N nodded, pleased mildly, guessing what would happen now, then home to a cold chicken and a warm bed. Prometheus would hurl fire at them, fire that, belonging to a new and vital race of beings, would wither the gods in a blinding flash of applied gunpowder, with strontium nitrate added.)

The monstrance was wrested from the Titan’s hands, Mars supervised his pinioning and binding by a sort of godly bodyguard. Jupiter cried:

This frosty height is hight the Caucasus.

Here let this insolent and impious

Caitiff be punished for his simony.

Here let him howl forever to the sky,

Eagles shall peck his liver for their food,

Nightly consume what daily is renewed.

I see their bulky shadows whirling now.

Eagles, I charge ye, do it. And I vow,

A vow divine, that equal punishment

Awaits each one who nurses the intent

Heretical of daring to aspire

To thieve our thunder and to filch our fire.

So the gods solemnly moved off, leaving Prometheus bound and moaning. He cried to the eagles, invisible above him, that he had thought they were his friends—mortal, aspirant, daring—but he saw now from their cruel eyes and beaks that they were friends no more, instead the ruthless consumers of his substance. Who will free me? he cried. Who help? The curtain came down to applause somewhat uncertain. N said to his Empress: