Rex (25 page)

The lions felt it, the rounded front of his strength. They approached him like gigantic dogs, their flanks rippling tamely, arching their backs before the king, the taut, gleaming skin of their shoulders, hypnotic. The backlit agate of their eyes fixed on him.

Then the horizon returned, a slow swell of sky, there was a sky once more. From which a light drizzle began to fall, it seemed about to rain, but these were only the bubbles from the machine, falling from above, exploding on my cheeks like light, swollen drops of a cosmic, super-sized rain. I didn't forgo the pleasure of catching them in flight, watching them come toward me, iridescing in the night air. But Batyk's thick ignorance, his disorderly love of lies, made him open his mouth and allow these idiotic words to emerge: “We'll have fireworks.” Because the purity of the test had been compromised by the presence of Simeon, a king, I won't say a true king, but of ancient descent, the House of Saxe-Coburg. And the lions, who never attack a king, crouched before him. Not before Vasily.

I was hurt by that, I didn't want to hear it. It was intended to blemish my happiness. Why fireworks? Why a false and inappropriate display of fireworks? I, who had triumphed, who had extracted and condensed
the wisdom of the Book, overcome the dangers, woven the most delicate deception ever conceived by the mind of man, nourished its engines with the sale of the diamonds, conceived of the construction of the Pool, the diamond that would be seen, that would shine as the cornerstone of the empire, I, all this—fireworks?

I cut him off with a gesture, went over to the boy, and said (fully prepared to withdraw and let things take their course): “I no longer wish to speak.” I said to you:
“‘I no longer wish to speak.' You said, ‘Master, if you did not speak, what would there be for us, your disciples, to transmit?' I said, ‘Does Heaven speak? Yet the four seasons follow their course and the hundred creatures continue to be born. Does Heaven speak?'”

But these words by the Writer enclose such wisdom that he himself, with his exemplary frankness, attributes them to Comenius:
When once you have tasted sugarcane, or seen a camel, or heard a nightingale sing, these sensations will be so indelibly engraved on your memory that they cannot be erased
. All three, the
sugarcane
, the
camel
, and the
nightingale
, are words applicable to my case and whose literal interpretation presents no difficulty whatsoever, because it explains and illustrates a certain fatal tendency of mine, the way I had of walking with bent body or gliding along the slippery plane of dance floors, my perverse and inexplicable—indecipherable, even with the Writer's help—mania for dancing.

Just when I thought I had overcome all obstacles—the incredulity of the tourists, the danger that Simeon would leave a party he deemed inappropriate to his royal dignity (he didn't, he stayed right to the end), the terrible unseemliness of Batyk's attire, the danger of the lions, the black cloak of their shoulders, their agate eyes—I was about to ruin everything by succumbing to an astutely planned blow, the most subtle way of undermining my efforts, the blackest of betrayals.

Batyk played his last card. He had doubted, perhaps until that very moment, the success of my undertaking, but when he saw that no one could stop us and witnessed the palpable victory of my plan, the last and final rusty partition that separated the somewhat less murky portion of his soul from the unfathomable reservoir of sewage in his chest gave way and the sewage broke through and flooded everything. And
his eyes began to shoot out a grim gaze on which he came gliding in like a surfer, to put his blackest and most perfidious scheme into action.

The instant my ears caught its placid undulations on the wind, my feet tensed, the ears of my feet, for I have ears on my legs, one on each calf. Listening to and obeying the sound of that music and letting myself be carried in the sole direction of that diabolical sound, defenseless before it, Petya, without the slightest control. Such perfidy! Seen and imagined by me in that same moment, in vividly cinematic flashback: Batyk's curved hand, his hard white nails, how they carefully selected a disk with that music. And before that, seeking it avidly in every record store in Marbella. Making himself understood with great difficulty, waiting patiently for the salesman to grasp so unusual a request, coming from a person with his almond eyes. “Lumba? Lumba, you say?” “Yes, you know, lumba, like … Like lock, etcetera.” Until the
r
took the place of the
l
and understanding dawned on the salesman from on high. All right, then, he must have said to himself: what times these are, a Chinaman (though in fact he was a Buryat) asking me for that …

And my feet were electrified by the charges that shot through them, ready to launch into a Saint Vitus' dance, to begin one of the interminable sessions over which I had no control whatsoever, unable to stop as long as the music played, destroying with my spinning feet and the arabesques of the dance what my hands, with such diligence and effort, had built.

My eyes wanted to speak to his, plead with him, not for myself but for Their Majesties, but they ran up against the metallic gleam of his iris, blackest evil from the deep cavern of his face.

I underestimated the malevolent power of this
Negoro
, the eternal bad guy—that's what I'm getting at. But to his machinations, Petya, I opposed the countermachination of the Book. With infinite subtlety, having, under my tutelage and the Writer's words, completely changed
your interior. A proven truth in you, a gaze that could never be confounded, knower of answers to which no objection could ever be made. Just as you were finishing your journey through the vade mecum of the Book, best foot forward, shod in elegant sandals. Having passed through it under my guidance, moved your brain through its pages, your masteries interwoven in more complex formations than your father's oscillating ferrites, too easily oriented in the wrong direction. Discovering you to be, displaying you now: a radiant boy, a resplendent prince, a scholar of the Book.

What country, what democracy, incipient or adult, knowing what I knew, having meditated and reflected upon the question, with the knowledge or data my eyes had gathered from your bearing as royal boy, would not want you as its prince? Forty-two years of Pax Augusta, a richer and fuller life in the force field of your eyes.

The disk of the
Vinteuil Variations
in your hands, the music by which you'd sought to pacify your father's insomnia, this composition—by the greatest of musicians!—you had learned to love and appreciate as I did. I believed I saw this, I thought this. But immediately, when I saw what disk was actually in your hand, I understood what your advice was, how to overcome the test, and skillfully free myself from the barbed jaws of that betrayal. Your advice was to enter further into the music, these new versions, beautifully commented on: to culminate, in short, in a great dance.

Better a dance than the passive adoration of the Pool, far wiser to set them all dancing, so that they might better apprehend Vasily's cosmic importance, his very beautiful wife, the new Imperial House of Russia.

The way you approached the silvery stereo and pushed the play button, the way you turned toward me with the majesty and propriety of a king's son, requesting:

“Please dance, Master Psellus.”

And this
Mourdant
, the eternal bad guy, paled dramatically beneath his mask, as on the night when he'd heard me recite whole passages of the Book from memory, long chapters, the text incarnate.

Need I explain to you why? The reason for his pallor? Certainly not, of course not—right? You know it and Batyk knew it, too, the instant he saw me move toward the center of the room, waltzing smoothly, arms extended toward your mother. His delicately tubular ears sensed it, understanding what I was preparing to do even before he himself did. Distancing myself here, suddenly, from the Book—not a single dance in the Writer! Understanding how much better an inaugural ball than a simple banquet, a party with exhausting word games, bons mots, the gathering of many pages. On the wings of an inaugural ball, how easily we could glide into Russia. All the pitfalls of legitimacy, the relevance of our project, popular support, neatly sidestepped. Your mother's understanding of the situation: not the slightest injury to her royal dignity, on the contrary. The way she awaited me with arms outstretched, stepped flawlessly into my spin, smoothly twirling backward, dancing as no sovereign of any European house could have.

New dance steps, a goldmine of new steps blossoming from within me with perfect ease, from forearm to arm, arm to finger. Redeemed of my wickedness, my low passion for your mother, firmly grasping the whole matter of the restoration. The Russian people bedazzled by the prodigy of this dance, our triumphal entry into Moscow to sit on
the czars' empty throne guaranteed. Even if, when the music began, the reediness of the voices were perceived, even if it were discovered that the new royal pair weren't as good as the terrific production values made it seem, the miracle of the lighting, the luxury of their clothing … A product! Natural talent is unnecessary. I could, if I liked, place a monarch in every European country, or a single one over all Europe, whatever I'm asked to do. And it wouldn't be an undemocratic operation: as we poll public tastes, study tendencies, publish ratings, the monarchs would end up no less democratically elected than if voted in … And, yes, maybe he was a bit on the chubby side, the one playing the king, but my God! What an ostentation of wealth! What money! How intelligent he is, that man! Me, that is, walking straight toward the audience from the back of the stage to bow, dressed soberly in black. From Cuba—did you know?—brought expressly from Cuba for the occasion. Such expense! And not in vain. A success. Undoubtedly.

Enough to reign for three hundred years.

Or like the victory of Augustus at Actium, or that other coup de theatre in India or Asia Minor by Nicephorus Phocas, who had himself publicly levitated to impress Liutprand, bishop of Cremona, I told you about this already, in 949 (no small thing, this effect of liberating oneself, annulling terrestrial gravity!). All the pomp and circumstance of Westminster, of the Hall of Mirrors (in Versailles), but in the air, pure play of lights. Broadcast live, seen by millions of viewers. And the videos and the “behind the scenes” footage; a whole twelve-hour program on the new Imperial House of Russia. The only authentically exotic royal house, the most long-suffering of them all, an ideal candidate for relaunching, eighty years after its forced defenestration.

Regressing back to Babylon, to a Babylonian apprehension of kingship, however much we may resemble modern men, whatever we fast food eaters may look like. Changing the cut of the suits, widening and narrowing the lapels, still looking like pencil pushers and wives of pencil pushers, some of the women pencil pushers themselves, but with an inner transformation, the fine substance of a sense of hierarchy in their souls. Conscious of the many rungs that separate them, the abyss between the simple construction of their bodies and the more formidable fabric of a king. The futility of all movement understood, all pride set aside: just men, you know? What better thing than this? What better than to dance?

Me with the millions, finally. God knows I hadn't stopped dreaming about that money and God knows, too, how much it surprised me to discover it glittering there in the garden grass when I had told myself: you won't get it. Never. My failure with the butterflies, the fiasco of my education of Linda, which I'll tell you about someday. All that, in its moment, drove me across certain countries, uncontrollably or as if uncontrollably, not only toward the sea, as I told you, but also toward the reflection of the golden stone. And I had closed my eyes in resignation, saying to myself: an illusion, you'll never get it. I had accepted this and lowered myself to giving a few classes, earning a little money (never as much as I'd imagined), until the day I saw the stone in the garden and everything changed, the world turned upside down as I looked at it.

Nelly and Vasily dancing there among the azure sparkle of those final days of the century, in perfect awareness that those years were blue. I'd felt this, too, I had sensed it and adjusted myself to blue. Not gray, as in the Writer's life, or some shade of red, the inexplicable reddish orange of my childhood. The blue of those years that still have not gone by, your mother's metallic skin and hair gleaming among ribbons of blue. OK, fellows, God would say, floating overhead, the best you can do, the wisest: blue. Precisely what I had in mind for those years.

Vasily gravitating in the middle of the room with a slow and majestic air, augustly. Absorbing all the light that rushed toward him, all the objects and the party guests spinning around him. Bathed by the brilliance of the stone. Large as an outcrop of rock or a colossus. His mass augmented, but also, like a neutron star, infinitely dense. The party flowing around him, gliding downward with the smooth tension of a curtain of water as he watched, spellbound, approaching for a closer look, then understanding that the curtain, seeming to flow as it fell, was revolving around him in iridescent bands, slower and slower.

He gave an involuntary start of surprise. I saw it appear on his face, observed it from afar, unable still, in that moment, in the heat of the dance, to understand or explain to myself the expression of wonder that rose to the surface of his eyes. He understood himself, comprehended himself as an object of almost infinite mass beneath which space warped, around which the hours grew still.

(For this, Petya, is where the principal lines of the Book arrive at their confluence: that of gravity and that of time.)

Only now do I understand, only now have I succeeded in explaining to myself his figure standing motionless in the center of the room, his surprise as he watched everything spinning slower and slower: Astoriadis's fork poised in midair, Lifa's apple cheeks, Batyk's bilious eyes, and the tedium in yours, Petya, as you waited for the moment of your escape to the sea, the shock in his wife's face, the three phases or
moments it took me to understand what was happening before my eyes. All of us going, diluting into a single gray movement.