A Fish Dinner in Memison - Zimiamvian Trilogy 02

by E R Eddison

  "'and do You attune my song,' said Fiorinda slowly, as if savouring the words upon her tongue: 'and do You attune my song.—I was but remembering,' she said as in answer to the King's swift look.

  But Anthea, scanning, as shepherds will some red April sunrise, the shadow-play of that lady's lip and eyelash, said, for Campaspe's private ear. 'Honey-dew: a certain spittle of the stars. We shall see dog-tricks to-night.'

  'Have I your higness' drift?' said the Duke: 'that when Truth's unhusked to the kernel, every imaginable thing is real as any other? and every one of them imperishable and eternal?'

  .'Ay,' said the King: 'things past, things present, and things to come. And alike things not to come. And things imaginable and unimaginable alike.'

  'So that a God, walking where He will, (as you, madam,' to his lady mother, In your garden, making a bunch of flowers), may gather, or note, this or this: make Him so His own particular world at choice.'

  The King nodded.

  'And soon as made, fling it away, if not to His mind, as you your nosegay. Yet this difference: rose-bud or canker-bud, His flowers are immortal. Worlds He may create and destroy again: but not the stuff of worlds.'

  'Nay, there,' said the King, 'you go beyond me. No matter. Proceed.'

  ‘I go beyond your highness? But did not you say 'tis eternal, this stuff worlds are made of?'

  'True: but who are you, to hobble the omnipotency of the most Highest? Will you deny the capacity to Almighty God with one breath to uncreate all Being, and, next breath, bring all back again pat as before?'

  'To uncreate?' said the Lord Beroald: 'and Himself along with it?'

  'And Himself along with it. Why not, if 'tis His whim?'

  'Omnipotency is able, then, on your highness's showing, to be, by very virtue of its omnipotency, also impotence? Quod est absurdum.'

  'Be it absurd: yet what more is it than to say He is able to create chaos? Chaos is a thing absurd. The condition of its existence is unreasonable. Yet it can exist.'

  Beroald smiled his cold smile. 'Your serene highness will bear with me. In this empyreal light I am grown so owly-eyed as see but reason set to unthrone reason, and all confounded to confusion.'

  'You must consider of it less narrowly: sub specie aeternitatis. Supposition is, every conceivable bunch of crciumstances, that is to say, every conceivable world, exists: but unworlded, unbunched: to our more mean capacities an unpassable bog or flux of seas, cities, rivers, lakes, wolds and deserts and mountain ranges, all with their plants, forests, mosses, water-weeds, what you will; and all manner of peoples, beasts, birds, fishes, creeping things, climes, dreams, loves, loathings, abominations, ecstasies, dissolutions, hopes, fears, forgetfulnesses, infinite in variety, infinite in number, fantasies beyond nightmare or madness. All this in potentia. All are there, even-just as are all the particulars in a landscape: He, like as the landscape-painter, selects and orders. The one paints a picture, the Other creates a world.'

  ‘A task to decay the patience of a God!' ' ‘No, Beroald: easy, soon done, if you be Almighty and All-knowing.'

  'As the poet hath it,' said the Duke, and his eyes narrowed as a man's that stares up-wind searching yet more remote horizons:

  'To an unfettered soules quick nimble hast

  Are falling stars, and hearts thoughts, but slow pac'd'

  ‘What of Time, then?' said the Duchess.

  'That is easy,' said Barganax: 'a separate Time for each separate world—call't earth, heaven, what you will—that He creates.'

  The Duchess mused. ‘While Himself, will you think? so dealing, moveth not in these lower, cribbed, success-sions which we call Time, but in a more diviner Time which we call Eternity. It must be so,' she said, sitting back, gazing, herself too, as into unseen distances. 'And these worlds must exist, full and actual, as the God chooses them, remaining or going back, as He neglects or destroys them, to that more dim estate which we call possibility— These flowers, as in their causes, sleepe.'

  'All which possible worlds,' said the King, 'infinitely many, infinitely diverse, are one as another, being they are every one available alike to His choice.'

  'Except that a God,' said the Duchess, ‘will choose the Best.'

  'Of an infinite number perfect, each bearing its singular and unique perfection, what is best?'

  'And an infinite number imperfect?'

  'How otherwise? And infinitely various and innumerable heavens. And infinitely various and innumerable hells.'

  ‘But a God,' Amalie said, ‘will never choose one of the hells to dwell in.'

  'He is God, remember,' said the Duke, 'and can rid it away again when as the fancy takes Him.'

  The Vicar gave a brutal laugh. ‘I cannot speak as a God. But I'll stake my soul there's no man born will choose to be in the shoes of one judged to die some ill death, as (saving your presence) be flayed alive; and there's he, stripped to's buff, strapped convenient on a plank, and the hangman with's knife, split, nick, splay, roll back the skin from's belly as you'd roll up a blanket.'

  Zenianthe bit her knuckles. ‘No, no.'

  The King spoke, and his words came as a darkness. 'As His rule is infinite, His knowing is unconfined.'

  To look on at it: enough knowing so, I’d a thought,' said the Parry. 'Or do it. Not be done by.'

  'Even that,' said the King, as it were thick darkness turned to speech. The eagless looked forth in Fiorinda's eyes.

  'Go,' said the Vicar: 'I hold it plain blasphemy.' Fiorinda, with unreadable gaze beholding him, drew her tongue along her lips with a strange and covert smile.

  'Come, we have fallen into unhappy talk,' said the King. 'But I'll not disthrone and dissceptre God of His omniscience: not abridge His choice: no, not were it to become of Himself a little stinking muck of dirt that is swept out of unclean corners. For a moment. To know.'

  But the Duchess Amalie shivered. 'Not that—that filthiness the man spoke on. God is good: will not behold evil.'

  'Ah, madam,' the King said, Tiere, where this lower Time determines all our instants, and where is no turning back: here indeed is good and evil. But sub specie aeternitatis, all that IS is good. For how shall God, having supreme and uncontrollable authority to come and go in those infinite successions of eternity, be subject unto time, change, or death? His toys they are, not conditions of His being.'

  There was a pause. Then said the Duke, thoughtfully dividing with his silver fork the flesh from the bones of a red mullet, 'Needs must then (so reasoneth at least my unexpert youth) that death and annihilation be real: the circle squared: square root of minus one, a real number. Needs must all particular beings, nay, spirits (if there be) unmade, without beginning or ending in time, be brought to not-being; and with these, the One unical, the only-being Being, be obliterate, put out of memory, vox inanis, Nothing.'

  The Vicar, upon a swig of wine, here bedravelled both beard and cheek with his too swift up-tipping of the cup. The Lord Jeronimy, as grown suddenly a very old man, stared, slackmouthed, hollow-eyed, into vacancy, fingering tremulously the while the jewel of the kingly order of the hippogriff that hung about his neck. Zenian - the, herself too at gaze, yet bore not, as the Admiral, aught of human terror in her eye: only the loveliness of her youth seemed to settle deeper, as if rooted in the right and unjarring harmonies of some great oak-tree's being, when the rust of its leaves is melted in the incandescence of a still November sunset which feeds on summer and shines towards spring. Anthea whispered Campaspe: their nymphish glances darted from the Duchess's face to the face of her lady of honour: so, and back: so, again.

  After a little, the Duchess began to say, resting her eyes the while on that Lady Fiorinda: 'But there is, I think, a dweller in the innermost which yet IS, even when that immeasurable death shall have disrobed it of all being. There is that which made death, and can unmake. And that dweller, I think, is love. Nay, I question if there truly BE, in the end, aught but love and lovers; and God is the Love that unites them.'

  There fell a s
tillness. Out of which stillness, the Duke was ware of the King his Father saying, 'Well? But what world, then, for us, my Amalie?'

  'Answer me first,' said she, ‘why will God this world and not that? out of this infinity of choice?'

  The King answered, 'For Her 'tis wrought'

  'So Her choice it is?'

  'Must we not think so?'

  ‘But how is She to choose?'

  ‘How can She choose amiss? seeing that every choice of Hers is, of Her very nature, a kind of beauty.'

  'But if He may so lightly and so unthriftily make and unmake, can He not make and unmake Her?'

  'We must think so,' said the King. 'But only at cost of making and unmaking of Himself.'

  'My lord Chancellor smiles.'

  ‘But to observe,' said the Chancellor, ‘How his serene highness, spite of that conclusion he hath driven upon so many reasonable principles, is enforced at last to say No to the Most Highest.'

  'It is Himself hast said it, not I. There is this No in His very nature, I should say,' said the King. "The most single and alonely One, abiding still one in itself, though it be possible, is not a thing to be dreamed of by a God: it is poverty, parsimony, an imagination not tolerable save to unbloody and insectile creatures as far _ removed below men's natures as men's below Gods'.'

  'As the philosopher hath it,' said Barganax: 'lnfinitus Amor potestate infinitd Pulchritudinem infinitam in infinitd perjectione creatur et conservatur: infinite Love, of His infinite power, createth and conserveth infinite Beauty in Her infinite perfection. You see, I have sat at the feet of Doctor Vandermast.'

  Fiorinda's uncomparable lips chilled again to the contours of the sphinx's, as she said, with accents where the bee's sting stabbed through the honey to the shuddering sense, 'But whether it be more than windy words, which of us can know?'

  'Which of us indeed, dear Lady of Sakes?' said the King.

  'And what need we care?'

  Anthea, upon a touch, feather-light, tremulous as a willow-wren's fluttered wing, of Campaspe's hand against her arm, looked round at her: with eyes feral and tawny, into eyes black and bead-like as a little water-rat's: exchanging with these a most strange, discharmed, unweariable look. And that was a look most unaccordant with the wont of human eyes: beasts' eyes, rather, wherein played bo-peep and hid themselves sudden profundities, proceeding, a learned man might have guessed, from near copulation with deity.

  Amalie spoke: 'It was in my mouth to answer, dear my Lord, (but I've changed my mind): "Ah, what world if not this? But this made sure of, secured. Roses, but no thorns. Change, but no growing old. Transfiguration, but no death".'

  'A world without stoat or weasel?' cried Anthea, laughing a little wild-cat laugh, very outlandish and. strange.

  'I note in such a world,' said the Admiral, 'some breath of an overweeningness apt to tempt in a manner the jealousy of the Gods'.

  'I hold it flat impiety, such talk,' said the Vicar, scarlet with furious feasting, and emptied his brimming cup of muscadine.

  'Nay, you ought not so ungroundably,' said the Chancellor, 'my good lord Admiral, to imagine Gods distrained with such meaner passions as do most disbeautify mankind. Yet I see in such a world an unleefulness, and a want of logic'

  ‘A pool without a ripple?' said Campaspe. 'A sky with never at any time a hawk in it? Day, but no night?'

  Again Anthea flashed lynx-like teeth. 'Because She is turned virtuous, shall there be no more blood to suck?'

  The Duke tightened his lips.

  'I could teach stoat and weasel to be gentle,' the Duchess said, very low; slowly with her fan tracing little pictures on the table. 'But I changed my mind.'

  The King waited. 'What then, madonna mia?' he said, and opened his hand, palm upwards, on the table. The Duchess's came: daintily under its shimmer of rings touched with its middle finger the centre of his open palm: escaped before it could be caught

  'For I bethought me a little,' said she, 'of your highness' words awhile since, that there's a blessedness in not knowing—yes, were we God and Goddess in very deed;, and a zest, and a savour. So that this world will I choose, dear my Lord, and choose it not caponed but entire. Who e'er could abide a capon unless to eat? and, for a world, 'tis not eat but live withal. And be in love withal. And time hath an art, and change too, like as the lantern of the moon, to make lovely and lovable. Beyond that, I think it best not to know.'

  While she so spoke, Barganax's gaze, chancing upwards, was caught by the sapphired gleam of Vega shining down through vine-leaves overhead: some purer unfadable eye, joining with the common and unevitable mortality of these candleflames to survey the things which these surveyed and, albeit more distantly and with less flattering beams, caress them, pronounce them good. In that star's light he followed his mother's words: the honeyed accents, the owl-winged thought, the rainbow-shot web of memories, the unheard inwardness of laughter under all, as a night's dewing of grace and sweetness. Then his eye, coming down again, met with that Dark Lady's. There shone a fire there starrier than that natural star's, greener than the glow-worm's lamp, speaking, too, in articulate shudders down the spine. As to say: Yes, My friend. These words are My words: Mine to You, even just as they are Hers to Him.

  'Time. And Change. But the last change,' said the King: 'your own word, madonna: "last mischief, Death".'

  For a minute, the Duchess held her peace. Then she said: 'I will remember you, dear my Lord, of the tragical story of the Volsungs and the Niblungs, after the battle in King Atli's hall, and they had fallen on Hogni and cut the heart out of him; but he laughed while he abode that torment. And they showed it to Gunnar, his brother, and he said, "The mighty heart of Hogni, little like the faint heart of Hjalli, for little as it trembleth now, less it trembled whenas in his breast it lay." And Death we know not: but without that unknown, to look it in the eye, even as did Hogni, and even as did Gunnar after, when he was cast into the worm-close: without that, I wonder, could there be greatness of heart and courage in the world? No: we will have this world, and Death itself. For we will choose no world that shall not be noble.'

  XVI

  The Fish Dinner:Caviar

  'So YOU AND I,' said the King, Still have this world? Well, I am answered. But the game's ended ere well begun; for this world's ready made to our hand.'

  'If we must try tricks elsewhere, let her choose,' said Amalie, looking at Fiorinda. 'She is too silent. Let her speak and decide.'

  ‘Better not,' he said. 'She is in a contrary mood tonight. A world of her choosing, as now she is, should be a strange unlucky world indeed.'

  'Nay, but I am curious,' said the Duchess. 'Nay, I will choose her world for to-night, whatever it be. Come, you promised me.'

  'Well?' said the King.

  In Fiorinda's eyes sat the smile, unrelentless, Olympian, fancy-free, of Her that leads at Her train the ancient golden world. "The choice is easy,' she said. ‘I choose That which is.' There was a discordancy betwixt her words, so plain and so simple, and the manner of their speaking, as from an imperial lust that, being unreined, should hardly be resisted anywhere.

  The King held his peace. The Duchess looked round at him, sitting so close at her left hand that sleeve brushed sleeve, yet to look on as some watch-tower removed, black and tremendous among hills: as Our Father Zeus, watching out of Ida. 'That which is?' he said at last. 'Out of your ladyship's mouth we look for meanings in such simplicities, as for colours in those shining exhalations that appear in tempests. Come, is't but this world again you mean?'

  'I speak,' answered she, 'in honest plainness. I would wish your serene highness to receive it so.'

  Campaspe and Anthea laughed with one another in secret way behind their fans.

  'That which is, then: in honest plainness what can that be,' said the King, 'but the ultimate Two alone? They, and the blessed Gods and Goddesses Who keep the wide heaven, of a lower reality, may be, than His and Hers, yet themselves more real than such summer-worms as men? Is this your choice, then, and
the golden mansions of the Father? If: then picture it to me. Let me perceive it'

  That lady smoothed her cheek, cat-like, against her ruff. To look in her eyes now was to see strange matter, as of something dancing a dance untowardly about a pit's brink. 'No. No,' said she. 'Like as her grace, I also will change my mind too: look lower.

  'Well,' she said after a minute, ‘I have thought of a world. Will your highness create it indeed for me, as I shall specificate?' The dying fall of her voice, so languefied in its melodious faint discords, held in the very sloth of it some menace, as of one in her affections unbitted, intemperable by her estate, raging by her power.

  The King beheld her so an instant in silence; then said, ‘I'll do my endeavour.'

  Fiorinda lifted her head, as a she-panther that takes the wind. 'Good,' she said; and her eyes, leaving the King's, rested now constantly on Duke Barganax's who gazed upon her as a man carved in stone. 'And ere we begin upon our world for to-night's disport,' she said, ‘I, as so peerlessly to be doted upon, will lay you down your terms of service, as master-builder of my worlds. Seeing I am She, I will be content with no outward shows. The wine of our loving-cup shall be the chosen butt of the chosen vintage. The very cobblers of my shoes shall be the wittiest and honestest and goodliest to look on in the world, and the best at their trade. One world shall not be enough for me. Nor one in a life-time. No, nor one a day. Aeons of unremembered ages, shall go to the making of the crumb I brush from my dress upon rising from board. Generations of mankind, innumerable as the generations of the may-fly through a hundred years, shall live and die to no purpose but to merry my senses for five minutes, if I affect for pastime before my looking-glass to untwine my tressed hair. The slow mutations of the immemorial rocks of the ancient earth shall be but for the making ready of a soft cushion of turf for me upon some hillside, in case the fancy should one day take me there to recline myself after my walking in the mountains. Upon millions of trees millions of millions of leaves shall sprout, open, turn colour, and begin to fall, only but to give me a sweet prospect from my window some sunshiny November morning. Because of me, not Troy nor not this world only, but even the whole wide universe and giant mass of things to come at large, shall be cast away, abolished, and forgot.'