The Choir Boats

by Rabuzzi, Daniel

  Foremost among the stops on the circuit was the Analytical Bureau. Best of all, at the A.B. they began rehearsals for Buskirk’s “Hero of the Hills” to be staged at the Marine soiree in Plassy-Month. During rehearsals, everyone forgot the roaring winds outside and the threat of war with Orn and all the weird and dangerous adventures that had befallen them.

  They cancelled rehearsal on one Dowse-day to visit the University, primarily to see “The Specimen,” the preserved body of a near-human that had washed ashore in Yount. Reglum and the other A.B.s felt the body should be housed at the Analytical Bureau, as part of the biology and anatomy holdings, but the Sacerdotes, who ran the University, saw the body as an exemplar of divine will and a matter for theological discussion.

  After all that they had seen since leaving Mincing Lane, the sight of a human who was not quite human still came as a shock to the McDoons. Sanford, in particular, did not wish to stay long; he searched but could not find a verse to comfort or guide him. The naked body lay embalmed under glass on a plinth in the middle of an otherwise bare rotunda. He looked like a stork if a stork were anthropomorphized: eight feet tall, with long, gangly legs and arms, an elongated neck, a bony narrow chest, greyish skin with a sort of pinkish wattle around a nose twice as long as it ought to be (even considering the height of the man). The nose had three nostrils.

  Sally stared a long time at the body before asking, “What colour were his eyes?” The eyes were shut.

  A Learned Doctor answered, “We do not know. The sea had taken them before he reached us.”

  Sally turned away and asked no more. Nothing emanated from the body; it lay there mute, with nothing to tell the viewers beyond the raw fact of its existence.

  Somewhere out there is, or was, a world where this — man’s — kind lived and presumably loved, warred, thought, raised their children, Sally thought. I wonder if they dreamed and what they dreamed of. Did they worship a mother or a father, or both, or neither? Were they also trapped in a place they could not escape? If so, what had they done to merit their punishment, and what must they do to escape it? Along what tangled, folded route did this unfortunate travel to arrive dead on a beach in Yount? Was he sent here as a sign of providence or as a warning?

  The Specimen offered no clues.

  The McDoons’ few other visits were more light-hearted. They visited Fraulein Reimer’s sister several times, a cheerful woman named Frau Rehnstock, who had a large family she was eager to show off. Frau Rehnstock’s granddaughter, Amalia Elisabeth, adored the great-aunt she had never seen and shyly nestled next to Sally: Amalia, called Malchen by all, was the girl with the teaselled hair whose eyes had shown as she sang so beautifully at the Lutheran Christmas service. The fraulein and Sally read out loud to Malchen in antiquated German from crumbling books, the family’s treasures from their sundered Hamburg.

  “See Malchen,” said Sally. “Salts of messium are best for curing horsebites, and here are ways to predict the rain.”

  “Who are these people?” cried Malchen, pointing to a plate on the next page.

  “Rose-warriors,” said Sally. “See, they have thorns for teeth. Here are their friends, the oaken-children. Together they battle the salamanders, see over there?”

  “But who are the little men in this picture, the ones with beards, curled up inside duck’s eggs?”

  “Dwarflings,” replied Sally. “Cousins to the mandrake root and the mare’s nest.”

  Malchen lingered longest over the picture of Frau Luna, with the leaping dolphins and the moon, and traced the silvery crenellations in the picture of the enclosed garden.

  Sally accompanied Afsana three times to meet with the Rabbi of Palombeay.

  “You want to know how there came to be a rabbi in Yount?” he said, making tea for his guests. “The whole story would take up volumes but the short version is this: My father was a rabbi in Salonika, part of the Ottoman Empire (ah, I see you know that!), who, because of his great service to the Sultan, was asked to join an embassy to Persia, Herat, and Sind. They returned by sea, but the ship was blown far south by a storm and disappeared into — yes, you guessed it! — the gateway to the Interrugal Lands. My undaunted father washed up here, where — God having a great sense of humour! — he found eighty Jews (including his future wife, my blessed mother) looking for his brand of leadership. By dint of his intelligence and gentle but persuasive diplomatic talents, he became the Exilarch, the head of not only the Jews but the entire expatriate Karket-soomi community in Yount Great-Port. Less intelligent but more fortunate than he, I inherited this position. So, here I am!”

  He spoke with Afsana and Sally of the wisdom Jews, Christians, and Muslims held in trust for one another and the roots they cultivated together, all the more visible for being equally alien in Yount. Afsana and Sally listened as the Rabbi discussed the commentaries of Isaac Abravanel, the revelations of Yosef Karo, the encyclopaedism of Yalaqov ben Mahir Culi.

  “What about the Mother they worship here?” asked Sally. Afsana nodded.

  “Well,” said the Rabbi, nibbling a honied breadstick. “Little enough of her stands in any of the Books we know from the Abrahamic faiths, but perhaps the covenant was written differently in different worlds. I do not know, but in my un-knowing I admit to greater wisdom. Or so I believe. Dates and cinnamon, young misses?”

  Sanford diverted himself by visiting the commercial Collegium and befriending Noreous Minicate in the Central Commissary to learn what he could about Yountish merchant practices. Still, he fretted much about the business of McDoon.

  “Barnabas, what if Brandt is beset with troubles? He is ever so young.” Sanford said, worried.

  “Well,” said Barnabas. “There’s Salmius, I mean de Souza, to help him, and Sedgewick, and Grammer on behalf of the Buddenbrooks. Never you fear! Matchett & Frew, for another, and Gardiner . . . we’ve many friends!”

  Winter passed slowly. Sally dreamed only once. She saw the young African-looking woman, who had been in her dreams on the Gallinule, wearing the cast-off sailor’s jacket with the worn red neckerchief. The young woman stood in a narrow, soot-grimed, red-brick courtyard under a foggy sky. At first Sally saw the woman in profile, her black hair tightly braided but, as if Sally had announced herself, the woman turned and looked straight at her. Sally felt the woman had been expecting her, waiting for an answer from Sally to a question Sally did not know. The woman looked at her out of solemn, patient eyes, but her stance suggested a judgemental attitude, the patience of an interrogator. The two regarded each other, as wisps of fog crept into the courtyard and the meagre sunlight dwindled. Sally felt she should know something, a terribly urgent something, but what it might be, she did not know. The woman looked disappointed, in the way a mother might look when a child fails a simple test or neglects a basic duty. Sally tried to speak but could not. The woman, whom Sally saw was very cold in the mean, damp courtyard, made a tight circling motion with her left hand. Sally woke up.

  She sought out Afsana straight away and found her teaching Tom how to play the Yountian equivalent of chess, a game called glunipi. Sally described the dream to Afsana and Tom, but Afsana had never seen such a young woman in her own dreams.

  “You know,” said Tom, trying to be helpful since he did not dream the way his sister and cousin did, at least not that he remembered. “You describe what could be a courtyard almost anywhere in East London. Could be in Wapping, say, or around St. Giles, or St. George-in-the-East.”

  Sally bit her lip and, in a tone that made Tom leave his questions about glunipi, said, “The girl — just before I woke up, so maybe I did not see it rightly — made the warding motion that the Yountians do, when they speak ‘The Plea’ to the Mother.”

  But neither Afsana nor Tom had any more idea than Sally did about whether the young African woman might really have moved her hand that way and, if she had, what she might have meant by doing so. Sally walked away deep in thought, leaving Tom to lose yet again to Afsana at glunipi.

  Sally
wrote many letters to the cook, and the Mejuffrouw Termuyden and Mrs. Sedgewick, and one to Elizabeth Bennet of Longbourn in Hertfordshire, planning to post them on the next tough ship sailing for Pash in the event that the McDoons did not sail with that ship. Nexius stopped by one day to say that the ice was breaking and that the Pratincole was due to sail in two weeks, which topic the McDoons studiously ignored at dinner for the next three nights.

  Sally finally said, “We cannot keep padding around the porridge; we must take a bite at it before it gets cold!”

  Tom said, “We can hardly leave with the debut performance of Buskirk’s ‘Hero of the Hills’ due to take place the week after the tough ship is set to sail.”

  Barnabas said, “No one has asked us to leave, not even in a polite way that we might have missed. In fact, I think the Queen and the Lord-Chancellor and, beyond any doubt, the Marines expect us to stay at least through the summer.”

  When they could bear it no longer, Tom came right out and asked Sanford what Sanford wished to do.

  “Well, dearest friends,” said Sanford. “I miss our home on Mincing Lane, and our business in the port of London. I miss our garden, and I miss the chance for another hara masala dinner. But I think we are called to help the dry bones in this valley find their own way home. It seems we McDoons cannot go home until Yount does.”

  Everyone cheered. The McDoons would stay in Yount a while longer. To everyone’s surprise, the next day Afsana made a meal to celebrate Sanford’s decision: a hara masala with goat’s meat. Unfortunately, newly slaughtered goat was hard to get at that time of year, especially with the war on, so Afsana was forced to use salted goat’s meat that Noreous had found for her in the Central Commissary. Also, not all of the masala spices were available in Yount, so she had to substitute in some cases. Try as she might, the meal was not very tasty, but Barnabas was fulsome in his praise.

  “Father,” Afsana said (the word was still new to their ears). “My mother and grandparents always said that a family’s love had to be rooted in hard truth or else the tree could not survive. So, tell me truthfully, does my meal really taste so good?”

  Barnabas stroked his palempore vest that he had worn to honour the masala. He reached in his pocket for the key, which, of course, he no longer had. He coughed twice and wished he had something more to drink than pear juice.

  “Well, to speak plainly, which is always the best course to take,” he said. “No, my daughter, the dinner is not so fine as perhaps I have suggested. But my praise is aimed more at the intent than at the result.”

  Afsana smiled in bittersweet triumph, and picked up her fork. Barnabas coughed again, looking for a moment as if he might pop with some great emotion that he struggled to contain.

  “Afsana,” said Barnabas. “So long as you raise the subject of truth in families . . . well, I must say . . . that is . . . oh, Quatsch.”

  Afsana gripped her fork.

  She means to throw it at Uncle Barnabas, thought Tom. If she does, no doubt she’ll plant it expertly in Uncle’s sternum.

  “Here it is,” said Barnabas, looking down at his vest and his hands. “You are right to be angry with me about how I treated Rehana. I told you what I did was low behaviour that does me no credit whatsoever . . . irreparable unless I can in some small way make it up by being a proper father for you. But, but, your saying to me that I played a role in your mother’s death . . . well, I do not think you can lay that at my feet!”

  Afsana trembled. Tom wanted to put his arms around her but did not. He worried about where her fork might end up. Afsana stood up, still holding the fork. She thrust it out like a rapier. Tom half-stood but Afsana waved him aside.

  “She suffered a lifetime because of you,” said Afsana.

  Barnabas stood up and said, “Yes, I know that. I can never forgive myself but I will try to make it up to you. But her death . . . ?”

  Afsana stood with the fork held in front of her. She lowered the fork slowly. Her shoulders shook as she soundlessly began to cry. Tom stood and Afsana did not wave him away. He put one arm around her. She did not bow her head or put it on his shoulder, but she allowed him to keep his arm around her.

  Drawing in several large breaths, Afsana said: “No, I cannot lay her death at your feet. I wished myself to come to Yount. No matter what you had done or not done to her, I longed for Yount. By forcing her to come with me . . . I caused . . . she died . . .”

  Sanford walked around the table to Afsana, gently took the fork out of her hand and stepped back. He stood there as he had in the churchyard on the day his wife was buried, the day only Barnabas and the cook were graveside with a grieving husband. All the credits in the world could not right that debit but Sanford could try to help balance someone else’s ledger.

  His voice choked with his Norfolk accent, Sanford said to Afsana, “Grief is made out of love so grief never dies until you do. But love can make other things too, that last even longer. Join us and make more than grief from your love.”

  Afsana looked in wonder at the austere man before her, a man whose spiky Christianity scared and angered her and whose laconic, meticulous ways baffled her. Suddenly she saw that her own wounds had caused her to overlook the pain of others. More than that, she had not understood that others in pain might share their wisdom, if only she asked for it.

  Sanford said, with one of his frugal smiles, “Besides, it was not the best hara masala I ever et, but nor were it the worst.”

  Sanford stepped aside as Barnabas approached.

  Barnabas reached for his daughter’s hands and said, “I owe you an apology I shall make for the rest of my life. I wronged you before ever you were born. Please join this family so I can make amends. Please.”

  Afsana took her father’s hands, with Tom still holding her. In her mind’s eye Sally saw two books, a pair of som-manri, one her uncle’s, one her cousin’s. She could not see what was written in the books of atonement but she saw that in each there suddenly appeared one blue flower, the sela-manri, the flower of repentance. The flowers were pressed between two pages and the books were shut.

  After that meal, the McDoons looked forward to an improvement in events, an upturn away from their maladventures and disappointments. But that is not what happened.

  The Ambassador from Orn, no more than five feet tall, walked into the royal audience hall on the balls of her feet like the champion fencer she was. A scar ran from one cheek over the bridge of her nose to her other cheek, the mark in Orn of a leader of a noble war-clan. Her black uniform was bare except for one red stripe down each pant leg and one red stripe around each sleeve-cuff. A sword in an unadorned black scabbard swung from her hip. Behind her walked her delegation, five diplomats dressed in identical black uniforms (except that theirs lacked the cuff-stripe), each with a sword swinging to match hers. With lethal grace she advanced down the long carpet towards the dais which held the throne upon which Queen Zinnamoussea sat. The Lord-Chancellor, the Arch-Bishop, and the Queen’s other chief counsellors sat behind her. The audience hall was filled to overflowing with people, more even than had jammed into it for the hearing after the events at the Sign of the Ear. The McDoons sat on one side, with Nexius, Reglum, Dorentius, and Noreous.

  The Ornish delegation paced forward: the creaking of the leather scabbards was audible as they swung in unison. Ten paces from the foot of the dais, the Ambassador from Orn and her delegation stopped. As one they reached up and took off their hats, which to the London McDoons looked like the fore-and-aft hats of officers in the British Navy. As one the six Ornish placed the hats under their arms and stood at attention. Their hats seemed to have more life than their faces. So expressionless were the Ornish that — to Sally’s eyes — they looked like cephalophores, the decapitated saints who were pictured in stained glass holding their heads tucked under their arms.

  It was one week after the McDoons had decided to stay in Yount. The Ambassador from Orn had demanded an audience with the Queen. No ambassador had demanded, as oppos
ed to requested, an audience in almost a century, not since the Incident at the Island of Loism in the Liviates had almost caused the War of Affirmation to resume. Nor had the Ambassador from Yount Major to the Coerceries demanded an audience with the Tyrannulets in all that time. Yount Major and the Coerceries of Orn had skirmished, bickered, and sniped at each other for almost a century, sued each other over alleged or real breaches of the Treaty of Malipad-Em, but done so within what the two sides agreed were normal diplomatic channels. Demanding an audience broke the system and both sides knew it.

  The Ambassador from Orn took two more steps forward, and said to the Queen: “In the name of the Mother and by the Five Trees, I represent the Four-Coerceries of Orn-Acting-in-Concert: Nash, Wheyse, Khoof, and Moozhe. I bear the greetings of the Four Tyrannulets, may their ferocity be commended, and of the Ornish College of Hierophants, may their wisdom be praised, and of the collected noble war-clans, may their loyalty be shown against all enemies.”

  Queen Zinnamoussea, with a look that said she was keen to skip the formalities, welcomed the Ambassador.

  The Ambassador nodded and said, “Unfortunately, exalted Queen, as you no doubt have surmised, I am not come on a happy errand or to exchange pleasantries. Rather, I am instructed to deliver to and lodge with you and your government a formal complaint, and to issue a demand to you and your government stemming from that complaint.”

  Queen Zinnamoussea replied without emotion, “And what, Ambassador, are the specifics of the injuries and harms your government alleges under the Treaty of Malipad-Em, and what are the specifics of the demand?”

  The Ambassador shifted her balance from one foot to another, as a fencer does, and said, “Our first complaint is that you and your government did, without informing us in advance, let alone seeking our consent as the treaty constrains you to do, enter the holy Temple of the Mother at the Sign of the Ear, did employ several so-called Karket-soomi, strangers from outside Yount — procured through means and in a nature expressly forbidden by the Mother — did endeavour to open and did actually for some short time succeed in opening the Door in the Moon, but in so doing roused a demon against all of Yount and, in general, through your heedless and selfish actions did violate the wishes of the Great Mother and prolong the suffering of all Yountians in our place of exile.”