Nowhere (8 page)

“But now, Your Royal Highness, you need answer to nobody,” said I.

“How wrong you are! Commoners never understand these matters,” said the prince with a profound sigh. “I am in reality a helpless prisoner of tradition!” In a lugubrious manner he sucked two more little avian delicacies off their dead legs, but then quickly cheered up when more dishes arrived.

No doubt it would be as exhausting to read more of this meal as it was to sit there throughout it sans appetite. I couldn’t have kept up with Sebastian at the most esurient moment of my hollow-bellied adolescence. I had no taste for the succession of dishes that arrived on the trolley, which never stayed long at rest: the game course (hare); the roast; the vegetables, which came in separate servings and included things like cardoons, salsify, baby artichokes no larger than plums; a profusion of salads; savories of cheese, mushrooms, bacon; and puddings and pastries and fresh fruits, each second or third course divided from the next by a palate-refreshing sherbet; and finally a great platterful of so-called
friandises:
bonbons, petit fours, candied chestnuts, and the like.

The prince said no more, seeming indeed to forget me as well as all else, in the transports of what could only be called his orgy, though again, as with the initial ice cream, he dropped or dripped nothing from his implements and, so far as I could discern, had not even a sheen of grease on his lips, which were thin for such a plump face. He did, when in the so to speak thick of things, breathe rapidly and stertorously, and his eyes when not rolling were closed.

How long this spectacle went on I cannot say, for though eating no more I continued to swallow champagne, my supply of which was ever replenished by my personal footman, but with little consequent peace of mind or, inexplicably, any reaction to the alcohol.

But I was taken by surprise when Sebastian ate a final chocolate cream, lowered his chin and produced a shattering belch, then, raising himself slightly, whitening knuckles on the ends of the chair-arms, flatulated even more loudly.

I tried to stick my nose into the champagne glass, but unfortunately it was of the narrow gauge called a flute. However, it might be of some interest here to note that the prince’s farts were, in my limited experience of them, not noisome: explain that if you can without embracing the assumption that his bowels were as regal as his blood.

As the echoes of this report were still reverberating amongst the high vaultings overhead, Sebastian looked at me and said, “For some time now I have been bored with the affairs of state, from which a monarch cannot relieve himself short of abdicating. But I have no one to whom to turn over the crown. I am myself an only child. I have not yet married. By modern tradition the sovereign weds only a Sebastiani commoner. Until the late Renaissance we took wives or husbands from the other ruling families of Europe, but usually this meant that the consort was from a much larger and more powerful country than our little state, and too often it happened that the wedding was but a prelude to an attempt by the larger country to annex our land. We repelled all such, but at an awful price in Sebastiani lives. Sebastian the Eleventh was our Henry the Eighth, beheading as he did four queens in succession and all for the same crime: conspiring to betray their adopted country to the advantage of whichever German or Bohemian or Rumanian kingdom they came from.”

The prince signaled to Rupert, and the old retainer brought him another glass of mineral water. He drank it down in one prolonged swallow, and then changed his position in the chair and farted again, this time producing a peculiar vibration that made the crystal glassware tremble.

“I know I should marry some healthy peasant,” he resumed, “and impregnate her several times in succession, for my parents were irresponsible in producing only me—which is why I must take such precautions to ensure my safety: I am the last of the line. If I make no heir, this splendid little land will fall to the rabble.”

Now, I am democratic to the marrow, and if I rail against the vile herd, or in any event that version of it all too oppressively evident in New York City, my objections have naught to do with matters of social class, my own being none too exalted. Yet, I confess that sitting at the prince’s table, and more important, drinking his champagne, I was inclined to take his problem as having much the same value as he himself put upon it.

“Good heavens. Then you must by all means and with all haste find a bride, sir, for I have had my own personal experience with your enemies.” I began to tell him about the Liberation Front bombing, but royalty has (or anyway this example of it had) small patience with the narratives of commoners, and Sebastian spoke as if I had been sitting in silence.

“Luckily,” I was saying, “I took seriously the voice on the phone, and ran from my building, for—”

“The difficulty,” said Sebastian, “is that I cannot endure the prolonged company of women. Unfortunately, tradition demands that the prince go through an elaborate series of wedding ceremonies, and then make at least some pretense of sharing his life with the princess, insofar as official functions are concerned.”

“Aha,” said I, in lieu of a better response. Obviously the prince was immune to charges of so-called sexism, which in New York were so easily brought by the kind of viragoes I dated, when my crime was so minor as to express a preference for a plain bagel as opposed to one of which honey, dates & nuts were constituents.

“I’m afraid that artificial insemination is not possible, owing to the many restrictions precedent places on the royal semen,” said the prince. “The sovereign’s spunk is considered virtually sacred. The sheets are burned if I have a nocturnal emission in bed, for example.”

I drank a half-fluteful of champagne.

Sebastian was frowning into the middle distance. “I expect there’s nothing for it but to get cracking, repugnant as my life will be thereafter, until there are sufficient children to make extinction of the dynasty unlikely, and then the princess might be dispensed with.”

I choked on a draught of champagne. “She will be put to death?”

After a jolly laugh, Sebastian said, “No, that sort of thing has not been done in ever so long a time. It would now even be out of date to send her to a convent. No, she’ll have a pretty villa in the country and an adequate staff: perhaps not sumptuous accommodations, but neither will they be mean. My own mother enjoyed such lodgings for many years.”

I was so relieved to hear that he would not, when done with her, execute the poor woman who married him that I could respond almost blithely to the plight of his maternal parent.

“How nice.”

“Rare indeed,” said the prince, “is the great man who has not found a boy’s flesh much sweeter than that of any female. Socrates, Caesar, Frederick the Great: there are few exceptions, and those who pretended otherwise were surely hypocrites.”

To make some expression of what in the Aesopian jargon of those groups who seek to promote the acceptance of their own special tastes was called “freedom of choice” would be truistic to the point of lèse majesté under the current conditions: the prince hardly required my permission to pollute the choirboys of the country he ruled absolutely, not to mention that he was not misguided in finding many celebrated sodomites on the rosters of prominent men. But it was ludicrous to suppose that the likes of Napoleon, Mark Twain, and General MacArthur, to take a disparate lot, had been fraudulently heterosexual. But remember that my purpose was not an inquiry into eroticism.

I drew on my store of trivia: “And England’s Edward the Second and Ludwig the Mad of Bavaria.” The prince frowned quizzically. I explained, “Two more for your list: I was responding to your theory with respect to great men.”

Sebastian shrugged. “I am
always
right. Perhaps it’s a pity. Sometimes I walk upon the palace wall and look down and see my subjects in the town below. I think how happy they are to be wrong in most of their opinions and judgments. How comfortable a lot, whereas I must carry the burden of perfect wisdom to my deathbed.” He rubbed his hands together: I had not previously noticed how chubby they were; so fat were his fingers as to look as though inflated. He wore no rings.

He smiled at me and said, “But you do not yourself have a taste for boys.”

“Yes, that is true, Your Royal Highness. I cannot explain it, but I seem to prefer women. It takes all kinds, I expect.” I made a happy-go-lucky flinch. “Would you mind telling me how you knew?”

“
You are not a great man,
” cried the prince, preparing to chuckle. “And while the pederast has a keen sense of humor—he must have, given the joke he is perpetrating on nature!—he is usually the entertained and not the entertainer.” He gave vent to his risibilities, with the sound of boiling water.

“Aha.” Until one has been put in his place by a royal personage, one has not experienced the ultimate in that exercise: the difference in rank is so commanding that to be reminded of it is not offensive. The bootblack envies his busier colleague at the next stand, not the captain of industry in whose lobby he works. But the analogy is inadequate, for it is not impossible that a shoeshine boy can become a chairman of the board, whereas blood can never become blue by gift or effort. Thus far I had seen in Prince Sebastian not the ghost of an admirable or even decent trait, yet he was the reigning prince: not so long ago in the history of humanity, such a figure was believed to have been the personal selection of God and to be able, with a touch of his hand, to cure scrofula.

On the other hand, I was getting lots of free champagne and I felt an obligation to be companionable. “Uh, given this unhappy chore—that of marrying a person of the opposite sex—what would be your criteria for a prospective wife?” I smiled politely. “Should I come across a suitable candidate somewhere, perhaps back home.” I had several ex-girlfriends I would have liked to sic on him.

“Americans? Oh good heavens, no!” he cried. “I cannot endure them. They speak in conundrums when they’re young; when they’re old, in homilies.”

In my unsuccessful effort to understand that statement I concluded that I probably did, after all, feel the champagne more than I had realized. “Yes, well, perhaps you might tell me what kind of woman you would find least repulsive: blond, brunette, tall or short, full-bodied or slender, and so on?”

He had widened his eyes early in my list. “Obviously you are not aware that blonds are held in contempt in my country.” He leaned back and snapped his fingers. The signal brought Rupert to the table. It occurred to me that this meal had gone on for hours, a long time for an old man to be on his feet. Sebastian merely breathed heavily in his direction, and Rupert drew a silken handkerchief from his sleeve, held it to the prince’s nose, and Sebastian blew a blast that would have been as shattering as his flatulations had it not been so muted. When this episode was brought to a close, the ancient retainer wadded the cloth carefully and carried it out of the dining room.

The prince leaned confidentially towards me. “I wanted to get rid of him for a moment. He must go to burn the handkerchief that carries the royal snot.... The fact is, Rupert is not as young as he once was. He really makes a cockup of the job. I need a younger and more vigorous man. I could never trust any of my contemporary subjects.” He slapped the top of the table. “Wren, would you like to be my principal body-servant?”

I pretended to ponder gravely on the matter, while my pulse raced in horror.

“Naturally,” Sebastian went on, “I wouldn’t expect you to perform all the duties done these many years by Rupert. You would not be required to attend me at stool, wiping my bum and so on, except in emergencies, midnight alarms, that sort of thing.”

“Sir, you are too good.”

He shrugged genially. “I am aware that times have changed, and that these warm, personal attentions that so characterized one’s association with underlings in the past are now considered too quaint for words! One thinks something precious has been lost, but perhaps I’m hopelessly romantic. In any event, a lackey can always be found for the tasks for which you feel yourself too good.”

“Sir, I—”

“No need to make up your mind on the instant,” said the prince. “I can imagine how staggered you must be at the magnificence of the proposal. Here you are, an obscure tourist, a historical nobody, and without warning you are offered the opportunity to be as near a royal personage as anyone could be, short of a sexual partner, a role you can never play, owing to your advanced age.”

I endeavored to rise above my disappointment at the limitations of the offer. “Indeed, sir, sire, I am overwhelmed. But might I ask about your earlier reference to blonds? They are despised in Saint Sebastian?” Experience has taught me that the most effective way to distract an unwelcome importunity of any kind is to ask a question.

The device worked with Sebastian. “Indeed they are,” said he. “They are the butt of the typical Sebastiani joke. They must stay in their own areas at places of public entertainment, and are barred altogether from cafes and restaurants except those exclusive to themselves. They may pursue any profession, but usually they voluntarily confine themselves to the callings considered inferior by others, for example, the practice of law.”

“Attorneys are blonds?”

Sebastian nodded. “You must understand that litigation is discouraged here, and that criminals are not allowed to have counsel. Thus a Sebastiani lawyer has virtually no work. His principal function is to provide a figure to be derided by those who have useful occupations.”

“The first Sebastiani national I met was a blond young woman, as it happened. She is an airline stewardess.”

“There you are,” said the prince, waving his fat hand. “Politics is against the law here, of course, as is its brother profession, journalism, else they might make excellent pursuits for the Blonds, who by the way some years ago successfully petitioned me to command that their designation be spelled with a capital
B.
This was during the time of their Blond Pride campaigns.”