Rex (24 page)

How long have I pondered these words, how often turned them over in my head:
God has disposed, and I believe this to be so, that not all are to be rich, for God knows very well why he did not allow the goat's tail to grow too long
.

For at first, in my adolescence, when I was reading the Book merely as a work of fiction and had no awareness or only some vague intuition of the mine of wisdom it is in reality, I tended toward an allegorical reading that was contrary to its literal meaning. In the sense that a longer tail on a goat wouldn't be the sign of a few powerful chosen ones, but only a caprice of nature from which to draw no moral or human implications. But now, with the years, I've come to suspect that the Writer's intention was more literal, very different from that which might be attributed to a writer addicted to the vice of obscurity
such as Theophrastus Bombastus (aka Paracelsus). For yes: a few powerful chosen ones. And myself among those few, and your father and your mother among the few, and the Writer, let me tell you, not among the few, higher than the few, from which it can be deduced that I couldn't apply to her, to your mother, the same criteria by which we judge an ordinary member of the public, that she, like Your Excellency (this to Simeon), operates outside of the normal boundaries and, in effect, is excluded from my wrath. For she may have had her reasons for having acted thus, and I, in my insignificance, was not the man to judge her.

“My words, Majesty, are not calculated to gain your sympathy. I say that this is so because I feel it to be so. To understand things once more as they were understood prior to 1793 (when Louis was guillotined) or even to 1649 (when Charles was beheaded). Or as if the interval between 1917 and today did not exist. The horror of the two wars erased, a time in which, from the porthole of my ship, I see no blue sky and purple clouds or planets below, only death, -isms, genocidal camps. Is that life? Yes, but not in human form. A pseudoformation, a gulf in time, a shoot or bud that must be eliminated. I've repeated this to myself over the course of countless nights, for if there are so few flowers and only one sun, then why pretend to be all of us flowers, all of us suns? And the ether in which they breathe and exhale their fragrance? And the branches, Simeon, that hold up the sun, which shines and revolves amid their green formations?

“Without lingering for a second, Usia, over the fallacious argument that such an idea is outmoded, that this is an anachronistic form of government, from which it could be deduced that more modern or advanced forms, methods for governing that are intrinsically better, or more progressive and advanced forms of government … That a community (European) is better than an empire (Asiatic), a president
better than a king, that Francis Bacon's
Innocence X
(a commentary) is better than Velázquez's
Inocencio X
(the text commented upon). Placed at different points along a scale or hierarchy, and not as I see them: equidistant, equivalent, combinable. All the arguments in favor of a regime of direct or indirect representation also easily applicable to a king. Against Lucius Tarquinus Superbus, the last king of Rome, and in favor of Lucius Tarquinus Superbus …”

Batyk took full advantage of the time it took Lifa to reach us with the drinks. He seemed to materialize in discrete moments or pulsations of time: at the door of the drawing room, one; in the center of the drawing room (on the tiger-striped rug), two; next to the Pool, three; then next to us, to Simeon and myself. Unctuous as an usher, fawning as a vizier.

“You talk like a book!” he interjected, bowing low before Simeon. “You don't know how right His Excellency is” (this to me) “for there is already the basis for a terrible argument against republics in the single fatal fact that any monarchy can in twenty-four hours be transformed into a republic, while, on the other hand, no republic can, in twenty-four hours, improvise itself back into a monarchy. To return to nature, to fall into barbarity, to go back to the primitive state, is always very easy, because one need only let oneself go: nature is always there, in the background, lying in wait for us. What isn't always there is civilization: that is, work, conquest, discipline, time, and patience.”

I could not believe my ears! I was about to say something to refute his ridiculous argument, but just then the Emperor, your father, made his entrance. One by one the swimming pool's lights came on. Inside, a light awoke the Pool.

I warbled sonorously, my chest rippling like a bird's: Vasily I, Emperor and Autocrat of All Russia, Moscow, Kiev, Vladimir Novgorod, Czar of Kazan, Czar of Astrakhan, Czar of Poland (
we'd see about that
), Czar of Siberia, Czar of the Tauric Chersonese, Czar of Georgia (
and that
), Grand Duke of Finland (
and that, too
), etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Nelly glittering at the top of the stairs like a real queen, a thousand times more luminous and radiant than Maha, daughter of the king of Thailand. The majesty and grace with which she swept through the crowd, the aplomb with which she allowed some men and many women to kiss her hand. How I approached her, my chest still palpitating, shaken by the vision of her torso transformed into a bird. The grace with which she turned toward me, came down to me, lowered herself to me as slowly as a goddess, the polychrome statue that comes to life in a fairy tale, miraculously bending at the waist, its painted wooden dress rippling as it leans down to you, kisses you. She said to me, she whispered into my ear: “I thank you for all of it, all your effort, Psellus: you will be rewarded.” Laughing in amusement at my childish whim, for I was about to fall to my knees and kiss her hand, and she detected that impulse and placed her hand on my forehead. How she floated then across the drawing room and went to take up a place against the blue-green background of the Pool. Nelly settled into her pose and fell still, hands clasped in front of her. She, too, glittering like a star.

Vasily, gleaming in his Savile Row, illuminating everyone else, the group of tourists toward whom he graciously swiveled his torso.
Sweeping them with the light of his infinite goodness as well as that of the diamonds studded across his chest and at the jacket's cuffs and the waistcoat's buttonholes. Blue and red gems covering his enormous body like tears of resin on a tree: a patch of night sky revolving majestically, stars glittering in the dark abyss or fathomless universe of his body. Stopping and bowing strangely, extending the hand—the darkness visible—greeting the assembly with full mastery of his voice, for your father had changed, dropped his cover, shucking off his petty carapace; he had donned the constellated suit of the superior man. He knew he must reign, do justice to the people of Russia, the vacationers from Irkutsk, the odious professor Astoriadis, the sublimely beautiful Claudia, revolve glitteringly above them with the serenity and parsimony of a star that brings well-being and mutual comprehension, a sun of justice.

You in your Pierrot cape, the fulfilled promise of an entirely new fashion in children's wear. Your dirty jeans cast aside for breeches made of some new material, an intelligent fabric that at a command from its owner enfolds him and rises, snaking up the entire leg, covering his body. The owner, standing before the mirror in amazement, his garment responding, corresponding, conforming to the mind's most delicate impulses, the most capricious sketches, the strangest arabesques, total personalization (and democratization? And democratization!), Hilfiger and Dolce&Gabbana surpassed and forgotten, a unique nanotextile prototype, the nobility and taste and intelligence of each one clear to all eyes, on display for all to see.

More brilliant than your mother's Rabanne, still more magnificent than your father's solar attire, the imagination of mankind, your subjects, captivated by it. To begin again, I thought, exactly where the previous dynasty ended: with the hand-tinted photos of the grand dukes on sale across Russia in the year '14 as well as the years '15 and '16
and '17. A publicity campaign using deaf mutes to distribute them in trains, interrupting conversations, the passengers' insipid chitchat. They studied the postcards devotedly, breaking off their inane and resentful commentaries, their faces illuminated by the vision of Nelly, your resplendent mother, of Vasily, emperor of gemstones, of you, Petya, like a child of the future, the image in platinum and titanium of the Doncel del Mar, the youth from the sea.

The whole country, the miners who crawl through underground tunnels dragging heavy pneumatic hammers behind them and then come out into the sun, their faces and lungs patched with black, getting blind drunk every payday because they're terrified of dying young; the nurse who accidentally pricks herself with a needle she's just used on an emaciated patient; the music teacher who takes out a wallet gone limp from use as she stands in front of a counter calculating that she only has enough for half a loaf of black and half a loaf of white; the master glassworker in Pskov, the gene counter in Perm: all of them would proudly hang the plastic reproductions of the imperial family on their walls and mutter to themselves, without taking their eyes from the tableaux or moving off to attend to other household duties: this one, yes,
Our Father
! He'll put things in order, he'll whip this country into shape.

And at this point the Commentator wonders, with an insufferable turn of phrase: “What does it seek to say? What message can be derived or liberated from the quoted passage?”

I answer: in the plainest possible sense, entirely contrary to any recherché or obscure interpretation, the idea of a king is simple, clear, and profoundly elegant, easily understood, perfectly coherent, spherical. And no one, ever, in Marbella (and why only in Marbella? In all Spain! You're right, in all Spain), no one has ever seen a spectacle like this one. Never. The enthusiasm, the transports of joy awoken by the blue stone, the Pool, the deep throb it transmitted to the entire gathering, the confidence it awoke in me: We're saved! My plan has worked!

The same miraculous transformation in the Verdurins, from entirely insufferable bores to the Prince and Princess de Guermantes. And in one-tenth as many pages as the Writer. Is it not prodigious? A miracle? Or does Simeon, present here, understand it as a farce, knowing full well that Vasily will never become czar, will never succeed in launching a dynasty?

Has Simeon read the Writer, who judges men's souls with such good sense and benevolence, who does not label this plan a senseless one and recognizes the tragedy of the scientist, the man of talent, the person who believed it was possible to swindle the mafia, an essentially good man who chose the worst possible hiding place, in plain view of so many compatriots, the tourists who were still squeezing into the garden, dressed in all manner of strange garments?

Only one of them was elegantly garbed, someone from the A list, the first version of the guest list which envisioned the uncrowned kings and international jet set coming to the house to form a princely electoral college. His attire selected with impeccable taste and an air of ineffable refinement, red silk handkerchief peeking out of breast pocket. Distinction and years of training visible in the crease of the trousers, the way they fall over the high gloss of the polished boots. Standing out like a peacock in a flock of sparrows.

Certainly not one of the tourists that Claudia seemed to have an infinite supply of: people who were—ay!—not fully equipped for a party like this one. Nor the clever imitation of a gentleman, the Italian “spurious gentleman” who, in the Writer, has a rendezvous with Daisy Miller in Rome. A true air of lordliness here, the look of one who on learning of our party, this unique opportunity, had given instructions to his valet, selected his suit with great care, and stopped by the florist's downstairs, next to the reception desk, to pick up a carnation for his buttonhole.

But the most striking aspect of the gentleman's attire, Petya, the part that most leapt out at the eyes and that I couldn't tear my eyes away from, were the two black lions he was leading on a leash and that were revolving powerfully around him, setting their heavy paws down on the grass, hating, it was easy to see, the yoke of their collars, advancing toward your father. And when your mother saw them and belatedly realized that what she'd taken for two large dogs, two mastiffs—the play of muscles beneath their silken shoulders—she let out a stifled cry and gripped my arm, white-faced.

I stepped back, the blood rushing from my face as well, and then there ceased to be a sky. How to explain this to you? There ceased to be a sky, the plane of the sky tilted away in silence, not even a faint crackle, as the vaulted roof of a stadium slides shut. No longer a sky: a broad red plateau at my feet and as far as my eyes could see: the red vastness of space in which floated or suddenly emerged, pushed toward the surface, the half circle of a blood-red sun. The rays of its dark light crossing all of visible space, powerfully illuminating it. The whole plane dotted with stars toward which—I had a sudden certainty—I could walk, reaching them on an endless but possible journey, never leaving the plane, across that two-dimensional world.

The silence of the empty air into which the laborious breathing of Simeon of Bulgaria suddenly erupted, rattling in panting acceleration like a diesel generator starting up during a power failure. And he blinked during the second or two before the lights came back on and grew
brighter in brief bursts as they returned to their former brilliance, dazzled by the revelation, for he hadn't imagined this, he had stopped believing in his mission after so many throneless years in Spain, had never expected to see the lions again.

But there they were, he saw them with his own eyes, to his great joy, and understood. He thanked the man, the unknown gentleman, for his gesture. Alerted to the presence of a king in Marbella, this gentleman had resolved to put him to the test, bringing the magnificent pair of black lions to the party. The resolute way that Simeon took a step toward the lions and reached out his hand, without the slightest doubt, without fear.