Rex

by Jose Manuel Prieto

  Vasily, gleaming in his Savile Row, illuminating everyone else, the group of tourists toward whom he graciously swiveled his torso. Sweeping them with the light of his infinite goodness as well as that of the diamonds studded across his chest and at the jacket’s cuffs and the waistcoat’s buttonholes. Blue and red gems covering his enormous body like tears of resin on a tree: a patch of night sky revolving majestically, stars glittering in the dark abyss or fathomless universe of his body. Stopping and bowing strangely, extending the hand—the darkness visible—greeting the assembly with full mastery of his voice, for your father had changed, dropped his cover, shucking off his petty carapace; he had donned the constellated suit of the superior man. He knew he must reign, do justice to the people of Russia, the vacationers from Irkutsk, the odious professor Astoriadis, the sublimely beautiful Claudia, revolve glitteringly above them with the serenity and parsimony of a star that brings well-being and mutual comprehension, a sun of justice.

  You in your Pierrot cape, the fulfilled promise of an entirely new fashion in children’s wear. Your dirty jeans cast aside for breeches made of some new material, an intelligent fabric that at a command from its owner enfolds him and rises, snaking up the entire leg, covering his body. The owner, standing before the mirror in amazement, his garment responding, corresponding, conforming to the mind’s most delicate impulses, the most capricious sketches, the strangest arabesques, total personalization (and democratization? And democratization!), Hilfiger and Dolce&Gabbana surpassed and forgotten, a unique nanotextile prototype, the nobility and taste and intelligence of each one clear to all eyes, on display for all to see.

  More brilliant than your mother’s Rabanne, still more magnificent than your father’s solar attire, the imagination of mankind, your subjects, captivated by it. To begin again, I thought, exactly where the previous dynasty ended: with the hand-tinted photos of the grand dukes on sale across Russia in the year ’14 as well as the years ’15 and ’16 and ’17. A publicity campaign using deaf mutes to distribute them in trains, interrupting conversations, the passengers’ insipid chitchat. They studied the postcards devotedly, breaking off their inane and resentful commentaries, their faces illuminated by the vision of Nelly, your resplendent mother, of Vasily, emperor of gemstones, of you, Petya, like a child of the future, the image in platinum and titanium of the Doncel del Mar, the youth from the sea.

  The whole country, the miners who crawl through underground tunnels dragging heavy pneumatic hammers behind them and then come out into the sun, their faces and lungs patched with black, getting blind drunk every payday because they’re terrified of dying young; the nurse who accidentally pricks herself with a needle she’s just used on an emaciated patient; the music teacher who takes out a wallet gone limp from use as she stands in front of a counter calculating that she only has enough for half a loaf of black and half a loaf of white; the master glassworker in Pskov, the gene counter in Perm: all of them would proudly hang the plastic reproductions of the imperial family on their walls and mutter to themselves, without taking their eyes from the tableaux or moving off to attend to other household duties: this one, yes, Our Father! He’ll put things in order, he’ll whip this country into shape.

  5

  And at this point the Commentator wonders, with an insufferable turn of phrase: “What does it seek to say? What message can be derived or liberated from the quoted passage?”

  I answer: in the plainest possible sense, entirely contrary to any recherché or obscure interpretation, the idea of a king is simple, clear, and profoundly elegant, easily understood, perfectly coherent, spherical. And no one, ever, in Marbella (and why only in Marbella? In all Spain! You’re right, in all Spain), no one has ever seen a spectacle like this one. Never. The enthusiasm, the transports of joy awoken by the blue stone, the Pool, the deep throb it transmitted to the entire gathering, the confidence it awoke in me: We’re saved! My plan has worked!

  The same miraculous transformation in the Verdurins, from entirely insufferable bores to the Prince and Princess de Guermantes. And in one-tenth as many pages as the Writer. Is it not prodigious? A miracle? Or does Simeon, present here, understand it as a farce, knowing full well that Vasily will never become czar, will never succeed in launching a dynasty?

  Has Simeon read the Writer, who judges men’s souls with such good sense and benevolence, who does not label this plan a senseless one and recognizes the tragedy of the scientist, the man of talent, the person who believed it was possible to swindle the mafia, an essentially good man who chose the worst possible hiding place, in plain view of so many compatriots, the tourists who were still squeezing into the garden, dressed in all manner of strange garments?

  Only one of them was elegantly garbed, someone from the A list, the first version of the guest list which envisioned the uncrowned kings and international jet set coming to the house to form a princely electoral college. His attire selected with impeccable taste and an air of ineffable refinement, red silk handkerchief peeking out of breast pocket. Distinction and years of training visible in the crease of the trousers, the way they fall over the high gloss of the polished boots. Standing out like a peacock in a flock of sparrows.

  Certainly not one of the tourists that Claudia seemed to have an infinite supply of: people who were—ay!—not fully equipped for a party like this one. Nor the clever imitation of a gentleman, the Italian “spurious gentleman” who, in the Writer, has a rendezvous with Daisy Miller in Rome. A true air of lordliness here, the look of one who on learning of our party, this unique opportunity, had given instructions to his valet, selected his suit with great care, and stopped by the florist’s downstairs, next to the reception desk, to pick up a carnation for his buttonhole.

  6

  But the most striking aspect of the gentleman’s attire, Petya, the part that most leapt out at the eyes and that I couldn’t tear my eyes away from, were the two black lions he was leading on a leash and that were revolving powerfully around him, setting their heavy paws down on the grass, hating, it was easy to see, the yoke of their collars, advancing toward your father. And when your mother saw them and belatedly realized that what she’d taken for two large dogs, two mastiffs—the play of muscles beneath their silken shoulders—she let out a stifled cry and gripped my arm, white-faced.

  I stepped back, the blood rushing from my face as well, and then there ceased to be a sky. How to explain this to you? There ceased to be a sky, the plane of the sky tilted away in silence, not even a faint crackle, as the vaulted roof of a stadium slides shut. No longer a sky: a broad red plateau at my feet and as far as my eyes could see: the red vastness of space in which floated or suddenly emerged, pushed toward the surface, the half circle of a blood-red sun. The rays of its dark light crossing all of visible space, powerfully illuminating it. The whole plane dotted with stars toward which—I had a sudden certainty—I could walk, reaching them on an endless but possible journey, never leaving the plane, across that two-dimensional world.

  The silence of the empty air into which the laborious breathing of Simeon of Bulgaria suddenly erupted, rattling in panting acceleration like a diesel generator starting up during a power failure. And he blinked during the second or two before the lights came back on and grew brighter in brief bursts as they returned to their former brilliance, dazzled by the revelation, for he hadn’t imagined this, he had stopped believing in his mission after so many throneless years in Spain, had never expected to see the lions again.

  But there they were, he saw them with his own eyes, to his great joy, and understood. He thanked the man, the unknown gentleman, for his gesture. Alerted to the presence of a king in Marbella, this gentleman had resolved to put him to the test, bringing the magnificent pair of black lions to the party. The resolute way that Simeon took a step toward the lions and reached out his hand, without the slightest doubt, without fear.

  The lions felt it, the rounded front of his strength. They approached him like gigantic dogs, their flanks rippling tamely, a
rching 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?’”

  7

  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.”

  8

  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, sm
oothly 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.