The Lyre of Orpheus

by Robertson Davies

  “So you know about that?” said Gunilla.

  “What don’t I know? You have heard about the spread? Father Simon here made me lay out the cards right at the beginning of that adventure, and there you were, though I didn’t know you then. Do you know who any of the others in the spread are now, Father? All you could think of then was that my daughter Maria must be Empress. She, an Empress! I laugh!”

  Mamusia laughed, and quite a lot of turkey and champagne flew about.

  “Perhaps she is not the Empress, but she may be the Female Pope. She must be one of the women in the cards.”

  “I think she is the third in the oracle cards; that was Judgement, you remember? She is La Justice, who tries and weighs everything. But don’t ask me how. That will be seen when the time comes.”

  “I see you have been thinking about the forecast,” said Darcourt. “Have you identified any of the other figures?”

  “They are not people, you know,” said Mamusia. “They are—smoro. Yerko, what is smoro in English?”

  “Things,” said Yerko, through a full mouth. “I don’t know. Big things.”

  “Might we say Platonic ideas?” said Darcourt.

  “If you like. You are the wise man, Priest Simon.”

  “Is he the Hermit? I said so then but now I wonder,” said Mamusia. “There is too much of the devil in our good Father for him to be the Hermit.”

  “You have left me behind,” said Dr. Gunilla. “Is this a prediction about our opera? What did it say? Was it a good outlook for us?”

  “Good enough,” said Mamusia. “Not bad: not good. Hard to say. I was not at my best that night.”

  The Doctor frowned. “Are we heading toward a mediocrity?” she said. “Failure I can endure; success I like but not too much. Mediocrity turns my stomach.”

  “I know you are not a person who lives in the middle of the road,” said Mamusia. “I do not need the cards to tell me that. Your clothes, your manners, the way you drink—all of it. Let me guess. You are funny about sex, too, eh?”

  “Funny, maybe. Hilarious, not. I am myself.” She turned to Darcourt. “That Raven woman has been calling me again. I had to be strong with her. ‘You know Baudelaire?’ I said. She said: ‘You insult me. I am a professor of comparative literature. Of course I know Baudelaire.’ ‘Well then, chew on this,’ I said: ‘Baudelaire says that the unique and supreme pleasure of love lies in the certainty of doing evil; both men and women know from birth that in evil every pleasure can be found. Didn’t you know that from birth? Or did you have a bad birth? A seven-months child, perhaps?’ She put down her phone with a loud bang.”

  “Do you do evil in love?” said Mamusia.

  “Good and evil are not my thing. I leave that to the professionals, like Simon here. I do what I do. I do not ask the world to judge it, or make it legal or give it a special place in the world or any of that. Listen, Madame; when I was quite a young girl I met the great Jean Cocteau and he said to me: ‘Whatever the public blames you for, cultivate it, because it is yourself.’ And that is what I have done. I am Gunilla Dahl-Soot, and that is all I can manage. It is enough.”

  “Only very great people can say that,” said Yerko. “It is what I always say myself.”

  “Don’t appeal to me as a moralist,” said Darcourt. “I gave up moralizing years ago. It never worked twice in the same way.” The champagne was getting to him, and also the cigar smoke. Good cigars are not accessible to shop-lifters, even those of Mamusia’s talent. The cigars Yerko circulated were more than merely odious: they caught at the throat, like a bonfire of noxious weeds. Darcourt got rid of his as soon as he decently could, but the others were puffing happily.

  “Madame,” he said, for his biography was much on his mind. “You had some intuitions when you laid out the cards. ‘You have awakened the Little Man,’ you said, ‘and you must be ready for what follows.’ l think I know now who the Little Man is.”

  “And you are going to tell us?” said Mamusia.

  “Not now. If I am right, the whole world will know in plenty of time.”

  “Good! Good, Father Simon. You bring me a mystery and that is a wonderful thing. People come to me for mysteries, but I need a few for myself. I am glad you remember the Little Man.”

  “Mysteries,” said the Doctor, who had grown owlish and philosophical. “They are the blood of life. It is all one huge mystery. The champagne is all gone, I see. Where is the cognac? Simon, we brought cognac, didn’t we? No, no, we don’t need new glasses, Yerko. These tumblers will do very well.” The Doctor poured hearty slops of cognac into all the glasses. “Here’s to the mystery of life, eh? You’ll drink with me?”

  “To mystery,” said Mamusia. “Everybody wants everything explained, and that is nonsense. The people that come to me with their mysteries! Mostly about love. You remember that stupid song—

  Ah, sweet mystery of life

  At last I’ve found you!

  They think the mystery must be love, and they think love is snuggling up to something warm, and that’s the end of everything. Bullshit! I say it again. Bullshit! Mystery is everywhere, and if it is explained, where’s your mystery then? Better not to know the answer.”

  “The Kingdom of the Father is spread upon the earth and men do not see it,” said Darcourt. “That’s what mystery is.”

  “Mystery is the sugar in the cup,” said the Doctor. She picked up the container of white crystals the delicatessen had included in the picnic basket and poured a large dollop into her cognac.

  “I don’t think I’d do that, Gunilla,” said Darcourt.

  “Nobody wants you to do it, Simon. I am doing it, and that’s enough. That is the curse of life—when people want everybody to do the same wise, stupid thing. Listen: Do you want to know what life is? I’ll tell you. Life is a drama.”

  “Shakespeare was ahead of you, Gunilla,” said Darcourt. “ ‘All the world’s a stage,’ ” he declaimed.

  “Shakespeare had the mind of a grocer,” said Gunilla. “A poet, yes, but the soul of a grocer. He wanted to please people.”

  “That was his trade,” said Darcourt. “And it’s yours, too. Don’t you want this opera to please people?”

  “Yes, I do. But that is not philosophy. Hoffmann was no philosopher. Now be quiet, everybody, and listen, because this is very important. Life is a drama. I know. I am a student of the divine Goethe, not that grocer Shakespeare. Life is a drama. But it is a drama we have never understood and most of us are very poor actors. That is why our lives seem to lack meaning and we look for meaning in toys—money, love, fame. Our lives seem to lack meaning but”—the Doctor raised a finger to emphasize her great revelation—“they don’t, you know.” She seemed to be having some difficulty in sitting upright, and her natural pallor had become ashen.

  “You’re off the track, Nilla,” said Darcourt. “I think we all have a personal myth. Maybe not much of a myth, but anyhow a myth that has its shape and its pattern somewhere outside our daily world.”

  “This is all too deep for me,” said Yerko. “I am glad I am a Gypsy and do not have to have a philosophy and an explanation for everything. Madame, are you not well?”

  Too plainly the Doctor was not well. Yerko, an old hand at this kind of illness, lifted her to her feet and gently, but quickly, took her to the door—the door to the outside parking lot. There were terrible sounds of whooping, retching, gagging, and pitiful cries in a language which must have been Swedish. When at last he brought a greatly diminished Gunilla back to the feast, he thought it best to prop her, in a seated position, against the wall. At once she sank sideways to the floor.

  “That sugar was really salt,” said Darcourt. “I knew it, but she wouldn’t listen. Her part in the great drama now seems to call for a long silence.”

  “When she comes back to life I shall give her a shot of my personal plum brandy,” said Yerko. “Will you have one now, Priest Simon?”

  “Thanks, Yerko, I don’t think I will. I shall have to get the g
reat philosopher back to her home and her pupil.”

  “Is that the girl who is doing the opera?” said Mamusia.

  “The same. Present appearances to the contrary, I think the Doctor is doing her a lot of good.”

  “Now she is out of the way, what about this baby?” said Mamusia.

  “Well, what about it? It’s a fact.”

  “Yes, but a queer fact. It’s not her husband’s.”

  “If I may ask, how do you know that?”

  “He can’t make babies. I could see it as soon as he came home from the hospital. There is a look. This actor who haunts their house made the baby.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Wally Crottel says so.”

  “Mamusia, Wally Crottel is an enemy to Maria, and to Arthur, and you mustn’t trust him or listen to him. He wants to destroy them.”

  “Oh, you don’t need to warn me against Wally. I have read his palm. A little good-for-nothing, but one can find out things from such people. Don’t worry about Wally. I saw an accident in his palm. Yerko is maybe taking care of the accident.”

  “My God, Yerko! You’re not going to rub him out?”

  “Priest Simon, that would be criminal! But if he is to have an accident, it had better be the right one. Leave it to me.”

  “This baby,” said Mamusia. “Maria wants a baby more than anything. Deep down she is a real Gypsy girl and she wants a baby at the breast. Now she has a baby and she would be happy if Arthur would be happy too.”

  “It’s rather a lot to expect, wouldn’t you say?”

  “In these queer days people hire women to have babies when the wife can’t do it. Why not hire a father? Doesn’t this fellow Powell work for them?”

  “I don’t suppose they thought he would work for them in quite this way.”

  “That Powell is not an ordinary man. I think he is the Lover in the spread. You know how that card looks. A young man between two people and the one on the right is a woman, but who is that on the left? Some people say it is another woman, but is it? They say it is a woman because it has no beard, but what is a man without a beard? Not a man in every way, but still important enough to rule the beautiful woman. That figure wears a crown. A king, of course. Every spread is personal. Maybe in this spread that figure is King Arthur, and he looks as if he is pushing the young man toward the beautiful woman. And the beautiful woman is pointing to the lover as if she is saying, ‘Is it this one?’ And over their heads is the god of love and he is shooting an arrow right into the heart of the beautiful woman.”

  “You make it sound very plausible.”

  “Oh, the cards can be very wise. Also very tricky. So you know who the Little Man is? And you won’t tell?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Well, be careful. Maybe the Fool is tied up with the Little Man I had that hunch about. Father Simon, have you ever looked hard at that card of the Fool?”

  “I think I remember it pretty clearly.”

  “What is the dog doing?”

  “I don’t remember the dog.”

  “Yerko, get the cards. And maybe just a thimbleful of your plum brandy.”

  While Yerko was busy, Darcourt looked at the prostrate Doctor. Her colour was better, and so far as a woman of her distinguished demeanour could do so, she was snoring.

  “Look now. There he is. The Fool. You see he is going on a journey and he looks very happy. He is always going someplace, is the Fool. And he has a good fool’s dress, but see, the pants are torn at the back. Part of his arse is showing. And that is very true, because when the Fool comes into our life, we always show our arses a little bit. And what does the little dog do with the bare arse? He is maybe nipping at it. What is the dog, anyway? He is a thing of nature, isn’t he? Not learning, or thinking, but nature in a simple form, and the little dog is nipping at the Fool’s arse to make him go in a path that the mind would not think of. A better path. A natural path that Fate chooses. Maybe a path the mind would not approve of, because the mind can be a fool too—but not the great, the very fine Fool that takes the special journey. The little dog is nipping, but maybe he is also sniffing. Because you cannot nip without you also sniff. You know how dogs sniff everybody? The crotch? The arse? They have to be trained not to do it, but they forget because they have the great gift of scent, which wise, thinking Man has almost murdered. The nose speaks when the eyes are blind. Man, when he thinks he is civilized, pretends he does not smell, and if he is afraid he stinks he puts on some stuff to kill his stink. But the little dog knows that the arse and the smell are part of the real life and part of the Fool’s journey, and the natural things cannot be got rid of if you want to live with the real world and not in the half-world of stupid, contented people. The Fool is going just as fast as he can to something he thinks good. What do people say when somebody goes as hard as he can for something?”

  “They say he goes for it bald-headed.”

  “People I know say he goes for it bare-arsed,” said Yerko.

  “You see, Father Simon? Somebody in all this destiny that is told in that spread of cards is going bare-arsed for something very important. Is it you?”

  “You have amazed me, Mamusia, and in my amazement I shall speak the truth. Yes, I think it is me.”

  “Good. I thought you were the Hermit, but now I am sure you are the Fool. You are going far, and instinct is nipping at your arse, and you will have to understand that instinct knows you better than you know yourself. Instinct knows the smell of your arse—your backside that you can never see.—Listen, how much does my son-in-law pay you for what you do?”

  “Pay me! Mamusia, I get some expenses now and again to put back in my own pocket what I have taken out of it to serve the Cornish Foundation, damn it, but not one red cent of pay have I ever had. I am always out of pocket. And I am getting sick of it. They think because I am a friend I love working my tail off for them, just to be one of the gang. And the trouble is they are right!”

  “Father Simon, don’t shout! You are a very lucky man and now I know you are the Fool. The great Fool who dominates the whole spread! Don’t you take a penny! Not one penny! That is the Fool’s way, because his fortune is not made like other men’s. They pay everybody. This Powell, the baby-maker. This Doctor here, who is very good at her job, but is just La Force, you know, and sometimes puts her foot very wrong. And that girl, that child who is being given so much money for this opera job, and it may not be for her good. But you are free! You wear no golden chain! You are the Fool—Oh, I must kiss you!”

  Which she did. And then Yerko insisted on kissing him too. A prickly, smelly embrace, but Darcourt recognized now that reality and truth can sometimes be very smelly.

  Thus the party broke up, and Darcourt took Gunilla home in a taxi, and delivered her, still limp and silent, into the hands of Schnak.

  “Oh, Nilla, you poor darling! What have they been doing to you?” she said as she supported her wilted teacher.

  “I have been a fool, Hulda,” said the Doctor, as the door closed.

  Yes, but not the Fool! Exhilarated as he had not been in many years, Darcourt paid off the taxi and walked home, delighting in the chill air and his new character.

  Searching for words to express this exultation, this state of unusual well-being, an Old Ontario phrase swam upward from the depths of his consciousness.

  He felt as if he could cut a dead dog in two.

  (9)

  ETAH IN LIMBO

  My heart goes out to Darcourt. The life of a librettist is the life of a dog. Worse than the playwright, who may have to satisfy monsters of egotism with new scenes, new jokes, chances to do what they have done successfully before; but the playwright can, to some degree, choose the form of his scenes and his speeches. The librettist must obey the tyrant composer, whose literary taste may be that of a peasant, and who thinks of nothing but his music.

  Rightly so, of course. Opera is music, and all else must bow to that. But what sacrifices are demanded of the literary ma
n!

  Psychology, for instance. The watered-silk elegances of feeling and the double-dealing of even the most honest mind; the gushes of hot emotion that rush up from the depths and destroy the reason. Can music encompass all that? Yes, it can in a way, but never with the exactitude of true poetry. Music is too strongly the voice of emotion and it is not a good impersonator. Can it make a character have a voice that is wholly his own? It can try, but as a usual thing the voice is always that of the composer. If the composer is a very great man, like the divine Mozart or, God help us all, the heaven-storming Beethoven, we love the voice and would not change it for even the masterly characterizations of Shakespeare.

  You see, my trouble is that I am torn between Hoffmann the poet and fabulist, and Hoffmann the composer. I could argue with equal conviction on either side. I want the poet to be supreme, and the musician to be his accompanist. But I also want the musician to pour out his inspiration, and the poet must carpenter something with the right vowel sounds that obediently partner the music without pushing itself into prominence. What great line of poetry can anybody quote from an opera libretto? Even Shakespeare is reduced to a hack, after the libretto hack has hacked his lines to suit Maestro Qualcuno’s demands. And then every simpleton says that Maestro Qualcuno has shown Shakespeare how it should be done.

  If the musician is really sensitive to poetry, magic is the result, as in the songs of Schubert. But, alas, Schubert wrote truly terrible operas, and Weber had the fatal knack of choosing the worst possible people to write his libretti. Like that fellow Planché, who ruined Oberon. Oh, how lucky I am to have escaped the well-meaning drollery of Planché!

  Now I have Darcourt, and what a task that poor wretch has been given! To prepare a libretto that will fit existing music, or rather the music that Schnak and the brilliant Doctor can make by enlarging on my notes.