Universe 8 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Terry Carr

  A flying count will suddenly fold his bat wings and land on the broad bosom of one of the three maidens and have into her throat with his terrible blood-sucking fangs. And every time it happens, there is a horrible flopping and screeching.

  The voice of Clarinda Calliope is heard loud and clear and real in a slow angry sound.

  “Dammit, Aurelian, that’s real blood they’re taking out of my throat.”

  And came the suave voice of the master dramatist Aurelian Bentley (but the voices shouldn’t be breaking in like this):

  “Right, Clarie. It is on such verisimilitude that I have built my reputation as a master.”

  Clarinda, in her three roles, seemed to lose quite a bit of blood as the drama went on, and she fell down more and more often. And the drama was a howling and bloody success, no matter that the story line was shattered in a thousand pieces—for each piece of it was like a writhing blood snake that gluts and gloats.

  And then, after the drama itself was ended in a spate of final blood, there came those intrusive voices that seemed to be out of some private drama.

  “Aurie, if you are worrying about being killed, how about providing for me before it happens?”

  “I leave you half of my kingdom, ah, estate, Clarie, right off the top of it. My word is good for this. And stop falling down.”

  “I’m weak. It took a lot out of me. Yes, your written word is good on this, Aurie, if it is written and attested to in all the right places. Let’s take care of that little detail right now.”

  “Clarie, my spoken promise is enough, and it is all that I will give. I hereby attest that half of my estate, off the top, belongs to you. Let the eared walls of this room be witnesses to what I say, Clarie. If the walls of this room will swear to it, then surely they will be believed. Now don’t bother me for a few days. I will be busy with something else. And stop falling down. It’s annoying.”

  The female person then said or thought something in a fuzzy thought-voice:

  “Yes, I believe I can make the walls of this room attest for me when the time comes. (I might have to put in another amplifying circuit to be sure.) And I believe that the attesting walls will be believed.”

  The male person then said or thought something in a fuzzy thought-voice:

  “I have Miss Adeline Addams now. Why should I care about this Calliope clown? It’s irritating the way she keeps turning chalk-white and falling down. I never saw anyone make such a fuss over nine quarts of blood. But now I am on a new and more glorious dawn road. Is it not peculiar how a man will fall in love with one woman and out of love with another one at the same time?”

  * * * *

  11. The Ghost at the Opera is the eleventh of the Aurelian Bentley television dramas in the year 1873. The Ghost is based on Verdi’s Il Trovatore, but Bentley’s production is quite original for all that. The role of Leonora is played by Miss Adeline Addams. But the same role is also played by Clarinda Calliope, who was originally selected to play the role by herself. This business of having two different persons playing the same role creates a certain duality, one might almost say a certain duplicity, in the drama.

  The “Ghost” is the doubling: it is the inept and stumbling Clarinda trying again and again to sing parts of the Leonora role and failing in it totally and being jerked off stage by the stage manager’s crook; and it is the beautiful and brimming genius Adeline Addams coming on and performing the same role brilliantly. This provides the “cruel comedy” that is usually lacking in Verdi; for, without cruelty, only a limited success is ever possible in opera. But Clarinda took some very bad falls from the stageman’s crook jerking her off her feet, and besides she was still weak and falling down from all the blood she had lost in her roles in The Vampires of Varuma. She was suffering.

  “Why do you go through with it, Clarinda?” Hubert Saint Nicholas asked her once in an outside-of-the-play-itself voice. “Why do you allow yourself to be tortured and humiliated like that?”

  “Only for the money,” Clarinda was heard to say. “Only for the actor’s fee of four dollars a day. I am clear broke and I am hungry. But if I can stick it out to the end of the opera, I will have four dollars tonight for my wages.”

  “Four dollars, Clarinda? The rest of us get only two dollars a day. Are you playing another role that I don’t know about?”

  “Yes, I am also playing the role of Wilhelmia, the outhouse cleaner.”

  “But I thought that you had millions from that old tyrant, Clarinda.”

  “It’s gone, Hubie, all gone. I had expenses that the world wotted not of. I gave Apollo most of the money when I was in love with him. And I gave the rest of it to him today to do a special favor for me.”

  “You gave the money to him today? But he was buried yesterday.”

  “Time seems to go faster as we get older, doesn’t it?”

  Meanwhile, back on the opera stage, a new Verdi was being hammered out. Leslie Whitemansion was playing Manrico. X. Paul McCoffin was playing Ferrando. Hubert Saint Nicholas was playing Count di Luni. Apollo Mont-de-Marsan was playing the ghost. But was there a ghost in the libretto besides the double ghost of the two females playing the same role? Yes there was; there was a real ghost in the libretto. It was written in there in a queer “other” hand, really a “ghostly” hand, and it wrote that Apollo was playing the role of the ghost.

  So the merry comic opera went along almost to its end. It was just when Manrico was being led to the executioner’s block and the evil Count di Luni was gloating in triumph, when everything was finally being shaped up in that drama that had some pleasure for everybody, that a horrible thing happened in one of the loges or boxes that overhung the stage.

  Aurelian Bentley was knifed there in his box at the opera. Oh God, this was murder! “Your mind is looking for a better solution, I believe, for a neater murder.” Oh, that had been the voice of another sort of ghost. But now, to be slain by the ghost of a man dead only a day or two, and in the presence of several thousands of persons here! (For it was, possibly, none other than Apollo Mont-de-Marsan, who had been “gotten rid of,” who was getting rid of Aurelian Bentley.) And again: “There are good murders and bad murders, you see ... It seems it would be worth it, for art’s sake, for the perfect murder.” Aurelian Bentley was stabbed to death in his box at the opera there, but even he had to admit, with some appreciation, as he went, that it was done with art.

  And immediately, as the opera on stage came to its great conclusion, there welled up cries of “Author, Author, Bentley, Bentley!”

  Then the dying (or more likely dead) man rose for the last time, bowed formally, and tumbled out of his box and onto his face on the stage, stark dead, and with the thirsty (now slaked) dagger twinkling between the blades of his shoulders.

  What other man had ever made such an exit from or on life’s stage! That was Theater! That was Drama!

  * * * *

  12. An Evening in Newport was intended to be the twelfth of the Bentley television dramas. But it was never produced; possibly because of the death of its producer. It exists only as libretto.

  This was a high society “drama of manners,” as Miss Adeline Addams knew it, as Aurelian Bentley with his quick mind and quick mimicry knew it from his brief brushes with it. But does not a drama or comedy of manners depend largely on the quip and the arch aphorism? How could it be done in silent presentation?

  By art, that’s how it might be done: by the perfect art of the silent mimes, and Aurelian Bentley was master of that art. By the gestures, by the facial implications, by great silent acting this might be done. Was there any witticism that Adeline Addams could not express with her talented, high society face? Was there any devastating riposte that she could not give with her autocratic hands? It was never tested, but Aurelian believed that she was pretty good.

  On the lower level, An Evening in Newport was a one-sided duel between Mistress Adeline Addams of Newport, playing the role of Mistress Adela Adams of Newport, and Clarinda Calliope, playing the
role of Rosaleen O’Keene, a low, vicious, ignorant, filthy, bad-mannered, fifth parlor maid newly arrived from Ireland. It was a stacked set in favor of Adeline-Adela.

  On the higher level, the drama was the passionate portrayal of the total love of a beautiful and wealthy and intelligent and charming and aristocratic young lady (Adeline-Adela) for a man of surpassing genius and ineffable charm, a man of poise and power and heroic gifts, a man the like of whom will hardly appear once in a century. The drama was supposed to take on a note of hushed wonder whenever this man was mentioned, or so the libretto said. The libretto does not identify this exceptional man, but our own opinion is that the librettist, Aurelian Bentley, intended this hardly-once-in-a-century man, the object of the torrid and devoted love of Miss Adeline Addams, to be himself, Aurelian Bentley.

  But An Evening in Newport, intended to be the surpassing climax of that first and still unsurpassed television series, was never produced.

  * * * *

  13. Pettifoggers of Philadelphia is the noncanonical, apocryphal, thirteenth apocalypse of The Wonderful World of Aurelian Bentley, that first and greatest television series. There is no libretto to it. There is no formal production, and it does not carry the Bentley “Seal of Production.” But it does repose in one of the old television receivers, the one that was Aurelian’s own control receiver, the one that was in Aurelian’s own luxurious den where he spent so many hectic hours with Clarinda Calliope and later with Adeline Addams. It reposes there, and it may be seen and heard there.

  Though Bentley was already dead when these scenes were ordered and live-presented, yet he walks in them and talks in them. The experience of hearing the thoughts and words of a hovering dead man spoken out loud and of seeing him as if in the flesh is a shattering but dramatic one.

  The setting and sole scene of Pettifoggers of Philadelphia is that same luxurious den of Aurelian Bentley’s, first placed under court seal, but then opened for a meeting which, as one of the parties to it stated, could not validly be held anywhere else. A probate judge was present, and pettifoggers representing several of the parties, and two of the parties themselves. It was a hearing on the disposition of the estate of Aurelian Bentley, or what might be left of that estate, he having died without having made a will. But one of the parties, Clarinda Calliope, insisted that Bentley had made a will, that the will was in this particular room and no other, that the will in fact was this room and the eared and tongued walls of it.

  There seemed to be several meetings in this room superimposed on one another, and they cannot be sorted out. To sort them out would have been to destroy their effect, however, for they achieved syntheses of their several aspects and became the true meeting that never really took place but which contained all the other meetings in one theatrical unity.

  The pettifogger of a second cousin once removed was there to present the claim of that distant person, as next in kin, to the estate of Aurelian Bentley.

  The pettifogger of Adeline Addams of Newport was there to present the claim of Adeline to the estate, claims based on an irrefutable promise. This irrefutable promise was the marriage license for Aurelian Bentley and Adeline Addams. It was not signed or witnessed, of course. The marriage, the pettifogger said, had been scheduled to take place on a certain night after the presentation of an opera, that was contained in a television drama, that was contained in a riddle. But Aurelian Bentley had been killed during that opera, which voided the prospect of marriage, but did not void the promise.

  There were pettifoggers there for the different creditors. And all the pettifoggers were from Philadelphia.

  And there was Clarinda Calliope representing herself (as Portia, she insisted, and not as pettifogger), and she claimed rights by a promise too big and too intricate to be put on paper.

  There was the probate judge of the private hearing who ambled around the luxurious den flipping a silver dollar in the air and humming the McGinty’s Saloon Waltz.

  “Oh, stop flipping that silly silver dollar and get on with the matter of the probate,” Miss Adeline Addams complained to that nitwit judge.

  “The silver dollar is the matter of the probate,” the judge said. “The dollar is important. It is the soul and body of what this is all about.”

  The piles of paper began to accumulate on the tables there. There were the documents and attestations of the distant next of kin, of Adeline Addams, and of the creditors in their severalty. And not one scrap of paper did Clarinda Calliope put forward.

  “Enough, enough,” said the judge after the flood of paper had narrowed down to a trickle. “Stop the paper,” but he didn’t stop flipping that silver dollar or humming the McGinty’s Saloon Waltz. “All a-sea that’s going a-sea. Miss Calliope, it is time you laid a little evidence on the table if you are to be a party of these hearings.”

  “My evidence is too large and too living to lay on the table,” Clarinda said. “But listen, and perhaps look! Due to the magic of the selenium ‘slow response’ principle, and to the walls of this very room being wired parallel to the receiver in this room, we may be able to bring to you a veritable reconstruction of past words and avowals and persons.”

  And pretty soon the voice of the once-in-a-century man began, ghostly at first, and then gradually taking on flesh.

  “Oh, Aurelian!” Adeline Addams squealed. “Where are you?”

  “He is here present, in this room where he spent so many wonderful hours with me,” Clarinda said. “All right, Aurie baby, talk a little bit clearer and start materializing.”

  “All these things I will give you, Clarie,” came the voice of Aurelian Bentley, and Bentley was there in shadow form himself. “No one else would give you so much. No one else would ever care so much . . . trust me, Clarie.”

  Aurelian Bentley was standing there solidly now. It was a three-dimensional projection or re-creation of him, coming into focus from all the eared and eyed and remembering walls of the room that was wired in parallel to the television receiver. Aurelian stood in the midst of them there in his own luxurious den.

  “Clarie, I will do handsomely by you ... a million dollars, my love, and I will give it to you.” Oh, these were startling and convincing words coming from the living ghost there!

  “I swear to you, Clarie ... I will buy any island or group of islands in the Pacific Ocean for you . . . Hawaii, Samoa, Fiji. Name it and it’s yours.”

  What man ever made such tall promises and with such obvious sincerity?

  “Not on paper, not on air, Clarie, but in real life. I will make you the real and living queen.”

  If they will not listen to one risen from the dead, whom will they listen to?

  “Clarie, believe me, believe me, believe me! I will do all things for you. I promise it.” How are you going to top something like that?

  “I leave you ... my kingdom, ah, estate, Clarie. My word is good for that.”

  It was all in the bag, and the drawstring was being tightened on the bag.

  “I hereby attest that ... my estate . . . belongs to you. Let the eared walls of this room be witnesses to what I say, Clarie. If the walls of this room will swear to it, then surely they will be believed.”

  The image of Aurelian Bentley disappeared, and his sound was extinguished with a sharp snipping sound. Adeline Addams was putting a scissors back into her handbag.

  “I’ve meant to find out what that wire there was for several times,” she said. “That sort of shuts it all off when the wire is cut, doesn’t it?”

  “Here, here, you are guilty of destroying my evidence,” Clarinda Calliope said. “You can go to prison for that! You-can burn in fire for that!”

  A sudden flaming hay wagon with a wild woman driving it rushed into the room and seemed about to destroy everyone in the room. Everyone cringed from it except Clarinda and the probate judge. The flaming hay wagon did crash into all the people of the room, but it did them no damage. It was only a scene from one of the earlier plays. You didn’t think that Clarinda had only on
e circuit in that room, did you? But several of the persons were shaken by the threat.

  “Good show,” said the probate judge. “I guess it wins, what there is left to win.”

  “No, no,” Adeline cried. “You can’t give her the estate?”

  “What’s left of it, sure,” said the judge, still flipping the silver dollar.

  “It isn’t, the principle either,” said Clarinda, “it’s the dollar.” She plucked the silver dollar out of the air as the probate judge was still flipping it.

  “This is the entire residue of the estate, isn’t it?” she asked to be sure.

  “Right, Calliope, right,” the judge said. “That’s all that was left of it.”

  He continued to flip an invisible coin into the air, and he whistled the last, sad bars of the McGinty’s Saloon Waltz.

  “Anybody know where a good actress can get a job?” Clarinda asked. “Going rates, two dollars a day per role.” She swept out of the room with head and spirits high. She was a consummate actress.