The Night Language

by David Rocklin

  Those chairs were once filled by our younger selves.

  He glanced at the princess, at the fine lines on her face and shades of gray in her hair, at the beauty still visible beneath the soft folds of skin around her mouth. And two of those chairs were filled by those who are gone…

  They passed the State Room. He could still see the linen streamers, the mess he’d made of the photographer’s Abyssinian backdrop, the camera, and the carte de visite it gave birth to.

  “May I just take a moment?” he said after they’d come to a new hall.

  “I thought you might want to,” Princess Louise said. “It’s open. Not too long now.”

  He touched the wood of the apartment door. Voices came from other corridors and on landings. Doors opened in other parts of the castle to let people come and go with no idea. A long, mechanical sigh rose from somewhere outside, the whirr of a machine that didn’t exist when the apartment had been theirs. Another machine song joined it, a new motor car erupting into gas-wheezing life far down the Walk.

  He wished there were no people and no noises that didn’t belong to the old world. No new tapestries and paintings and renovated, rebuilt, refitted skin on the walls to make the castle something it wasn’t. A citizen of the times. Damn it, that’s not what it is, or should ever be. If you want to build from stone, you have to know stone. Be stone. If you want to be timeless, forever a monument, then be the history you stand on. Don’t move. The world does enough of that for all of us. You, you stay here. Don’t change, don’t age, don’t die and be remade.

  The new world shouldn’t be allowed in this place, he thought. Least of all this room. All of it should be sealed off, like me.

  Nudging the door until it swung silently open, Alamayou stepped inside as the past accumulated in him.

  “However you remember it,” Rabbi Ariel said, “let it be that. No one can take it from you, no matter what you see.”

  The apartment was exactly the same.

  He went in fully as the breath caught in his throat. The bed, the covers, all the same. The curtains on the windows were the same pale shade; he remembered that in the castle he’d seen back in his time, this apartment was the only room not to be covered with the queen’s mourning shades.

  The covers still hung low. They’d make a good hiding place for things, as they had for the medical bag Philip had secreted there.

  He went to the window, and though the view had changed—new trees, new flowers, the landscape rolling slightly differently to accommodate changes to the contours of the castle itself—it was still the world he saw every night while he painted.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “It’s the only room like this,” Princess Louise said, “besides the Blue Room. She did it for you, Alamayou. Her other dead prince. We’d better go if we want to speak to her. Her strength fails her so quickly now.”

  They moved away from the open doorway into the sunlit hall. He lingered a moment longer, closing his eyes and listening to the voices in the room as the rest of the castle fell away. Our world, he thought.

  I’ve had a good life, Philip. I want you to know that. It’s hard every day not to know you. I’ve learned to live with a sort of joy, of having a hole in me bigger than can ever be filled. Who can say they had something, even for a second, that carried so much of them away when it left? Few of us. In my lifetime, only one other. Her.

  One night, we closed our eyes right in this spot, and we let our language be silence. Do you remember? Who could have known that she would have heard us and understood that what we made in here had to remain here, untouched?

  Standing at our window each day was common. It was not poetry or painting, just the stuff of life. And yet we made something, Philip, that a queen wants to keep preserved for all time.

  §

  At the door to the portrait room, Alamayou knocked softly.

  “Come,” a soft, trembling voice said.

  Opening the door, he stepped inside and felt as if he’d stepped into the moment he and Philip first saw her. The room was almost as dark as it had been that night, with a dim fire in the hearth that cast a throbbing glow across the walls and windows.

  “Your Majesty.” He bowed deeply. “Thank you for seeing me. I’m so grateful.”

  She sat near the warmth of the hearth, and when she raised her hand to acknowledge him, it caught a bit of the fire and made her skin appear lit from within.

  He came closer, stunned at what he saw on the wall above the mantle. Her family portrait and his painting of the two princes, where she’d hung them long ago.

  “They’re never far from me,” she said. The quaking in her voice made a smear of her words, but he understood her. She was bent, frail, breathing with difficulty. A shawl lay loosely over her shoulders. Even the simple weight of that cloth seemed to push her farther down.

  “May I ask about your health, Your Majesty? I wish you a speedy recovery.”

  “There won’t be any recovery. We accept the fact of it.”

  The light in her eyes was as fierce as he remembered. He saw the glow of the fire in them, and the room, and even a suggestion of himself, dark and looming. He thought he saw the grace she spoke of in them, too. The awareness of how close her death was to her.

  Was I as accepting as she is? he wondered. Was I as composed on that day she and I found each other amid all the fighting over sending me back?

  “I don’t know where to start,” he said, his body shaking unstoppably.

  “Sit with me.”

  He took the chair next to her. At the far end of the room, Princess Louise and Rabbi Ariel sat on a bench near the wall.

  I remember Philip sitting there that night. Watching us here by the same fire.

  “We have heard the account from our daughter,” the queen said. “You wish to give us peace in these, our last days.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty. I do want that for you, very much.”

  “Enough to place yourself in the danger you now find yourself in? For me?”

  “Yes.”

  “All so I can die knowing that I didn’t fail you. I didn’t send you to be killed by telling you to go before Parliament and lay out your life before them. All of it.”

  “Philip was the only one who ever believed in me enough to say, ‘tell it all.’ I’d do it all over again, I swear to you. If only because it meant you didn’t see me as something to be ashamed of.”

  “And so you come to me now, to tell me the same thing. That my hubris and arrogance, placing you in that position, hasn’t made of me something to be ashamed of.”

  “It never did. It never will.”

  A flicker came across her face. The stirring of an old memory and, with it, the pain it had left with her. Just as quickly, it was gone.

  “I’ve heard almost all that I need to,” she told him. “But one thing remains. If you are who you say you are, you’re the only one who can answer. Where is Philip Layard?”

  Alamayou reached into his coat pocket and took out the only possession he’d ever cared about, the only thing to come with him from London to Paris and back again.

  The yellowed letter fell open along its creases.

  I’ve almost said it all, Philip. Not perfectly, but I’ve said our lives in full. I’ve grown all these words over the years and now all I have to do is cut myself open one last time, find my secret heart, and show it to the queen of England.

  It’s time to set the last words loose and see them live in the world. Your words.

  “He’s here,” Alamayou said, holding Philip’s letter.

  Chapter Twenty

  9 January 1869

  “I think I understand,” Philip said as he reached inside the medical satchel. “I truly do. You can’t go back.”

  Alamayou turned to him, to comfort him. He saw only a flash of white in Philip’s hand. It c
ame at him too fast and pressed against his face, filling his lungs with a sickly sweet odor. He struggled but Philip had him, and he was so strong. He always was.

  The paintings and the lands outside the apartment window all descended. The sounds of Windsor doubled, chimed like bells, then grew thick and fat like the chloral-soaked linen clogging his nose and mouth.

  “I’m sorry,” he heard Philip say from far off, as his vision slipped into the clouds.

  §

  I can barely hold the pen as I write this, so I must be quick. And yet I have to say it all. This letter has to make everything clear. It’s the last time I’ll ever be able to talk to you.

  You never felt the linen in my hand, Alamayou. I held it to your nose and mouth. The chloral seeped into your skin and into my own. The fumes overcame you. I felt myself grow light and dizzy, but I knew to hold my breath. You didn’t.

  My right hand’s gone dead from it, as I need it to be. In a moment I’ll stick it into the fire I’ve built up in the hearth. When I go to the ship tonight, they’ll see a bad right hand, and they’ll take me for who I must be. You.

  Your eyes flutter. You’re fighting to see me, but it’s no use. You’re leaving me. Your arms flap weakly at your sides. The grip of the chloral has you and nothing can make it let go. Nothing but time.

  When you wake, you’ll have this letter and all it holds. The last language we can share.

  Alamayou, listen. There are things I want to say to you.

  There’s this—you’ll wake later tonight. When you do you must leave. No one will give a thought to me. I’m nothing. At least, I was before you.

  Tell no one where you’re going. Just get as far away as you can from London. Don’t let anyone see you.

  And this:

  Remember me.

  Until Abyssinia, I lived as if no one was listening and no one could ever possibly care, and so my life was meaningless. A hapless road through a world far larger than someone like me deserved.

  I know now, I’ve lived for you, Alamayou. I’ve lived for this moment. It’s the map by which I found you over time. And I have found you. At last.

  It’s right, then, that here with you, this road ends.

  You weren’t what I dreamt of, on those occasions when I dreamt of someone who would finally see me and not run, but remain, know, and care for me. You’re more than I dreamt of. Now, you’re all I’ll dream of, across the sea.

  As you would say, it’s enough. This.

  I don’t understand it, but I can’t live knowing that you do not. What I can do is die knowing that you did not.

  By these words, I leave you, Alamayou. In bed, in our apartment at Windsor, in the predawn hours of this the ninth day of January 1869. What awaits me I can’t say. But at your side I learned.

  Love is language. It comes to us before we can speak it. It demands our fluency. Learning it undoes us, or brings us home.

  May these words bring you home. I know I found home, with you.

  Philip Layard.

  §

  3 January 1901

  Philip’s last words were out there now, for the first time since the night he’d left the letter for Alamayou to find when he returned to consciousness. The words were a part of the world.

  The queen’s face was inscrutable. She stared past him to the door, as if expecting to see someone there.

  Tears fell down his cheeks. Finish it, he thought.

  “When I woke, it was nearly morning but still dark. Philip had been gone for hours by then. I read his letter and ran away. I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t know anything but this: get to the water. Stop him and together, run. Whatever might come, let it all come. We can run.

  “Charles, your old coachman, found me on the Walk. I told him what Philip had done.

  “He hesitated only a moment, then told me to take what I couldn’t live without. Some clothes, Philip’s letter. Everything else, even the painting of Philip and I—I left behind. We fled under the last hour of nightfall.

  “We sped through the city as the light grew. Charles gave me money. He told me I shouldn’t ever come back. ‘Ye make a life somewhere else. Alamayou can’t be seen again. If he is, the family’ll not survive the scandal. No one’ll care for Philip’s whereabouts and ye know well that’s true.’

  “I knew. The world would never hear of him.

  “We reached the Channel. Charles couldn’t stay, but I hesitated in the carriage. In there, my life at Windsor could still be found. In the corner was the spot where I saw Philip’s London, his Lambeth, the flat and the tenement where a long-ago boy once came to the window and waved at him. Outside was the Channel and a future I couldn’t name.

  “I asked him why Philip had done it. I suppose I needed to hear it out loud, somewhere else, not just inside me. ‘Why?’ Charles said. I’ll never forget the way he asked me that, as if I was an idiot for not knowing. This old white man, who ought to hate me on sight for saying what I said. ‘I seen it in war,’ he told me. ‘I learned what men do when they come t’know one another, go through ’ell and only th’ other t’speak it to. Only th’ other t’ trust it with. Then comes a man with a blade or a gun, an’ the one stands in front of th’ other, and they die and we th’ living ask why.’

  “He shook his head at me. He pitied me, maybe, or more likely he welcomed me into a small brotherhood. I wonder what he thought he knew. He said, ‘Th’ answer’s th’ most natural reason there can be for such as Philip sacrificed. An’ that reason has found ye, among all. He loves ye. And no matter what anyone might think, I’ll not know a love like what ye know.’

  “He left me there.

  “I got out, into the deafening chaos that was London at the Channel crossing. I queued and was told to go to a farther point where other lessers gathered to wait for the ferry without upsetting decent passengers. I waited there with the sounds of many nations ringing in the air. All of us, so far from home.

  “After thirty minutes I paid my pence and boarded the ferry. Taking a seat away from the others, I turned to the water. Shrouds of rain hung over a distant point on the water that we’d eventually sail under. There at the rail, I thought of Philip and where he might be. How far, how close. Somewhere beneath the clouds, there was a ship crossing the sea with him aboard. Bad right hand, black of skin. Everyone would see him aboard that ship and they’d take him for me. They’d have their instructions. Bring him to Annesley, and then come round again. Come home without him.

  “What a sight I must have made. A Negro with nothing but the clothes on his back, a shoddy bag, and a letter gripped as if it would save him, weeping as the daylight broke open over the water.

  “We crossed. I didn’t even know where it was I was headed to until the ferry arrived at the other side. As I got off, I was met by a gendarme who asked me something I didn’t understand.

  “‘Une citoyenne?’ but my vacant gaze must have told him.

  “‘Are you a citizen of France?’

  “‘No.’

  “‘England?’

  “‘Yes.’

  “‘Your name.’

  “I held his letter in my hand. I looked at the water, then the sky. The same sky would be above him, the water below. For a little while longer, we still shared the world.

  “‘My name is Philip Layard,’ I said.

  “I came to Paris and kept to myself. My heart learned. In daylight it remained quiet, so as not to draw attention. But I saw Philip in every window, in every dusk. At night, I read his words in the letter. I thought of every conversation we ever had, through Seely and just us, together. With our hands and with our words. I memorized his life and made it mine.

  “On a winter day in eighteen seventy-one, I happened upon a Parisian newspaper at a café on Rue Barre where I occasionally stole half-eaten pastries and cold coffee if I didn’t have enough money to see m
e through. I took the paper because of the name I spotted in the rightmost margin, near the bottom. ‘Alamayou.’

  “I wandered the city and eventually reached the Marais, holding the Journal out to every passing stranger and begging them to tell me what it said. Finally, I met an old man who spoke enough English that we could understand each other a little. He told me his name was Ariel. ‘Lion,’ he said.

  “I liked him right off, and each day since.

  “He fed me, spoke briefly of a service he needed to lead in the temple below, and then read the article to me. It talked about my history through the day before Parliament. It said that I boarded a ship in the dead of night, like a common coward. My identity was confirmed by the color of my skin and the state of my hand.

  “It said that the ship arrived in Abyssinia in approximately three months’ time. Upon their arrival, the crew was met at Annesley by thousands of Abyssinians belonging to every tribe. A tribal leader, a dejazmach, read the accusations against the son of Tewedros on behalf of the people. He asked questions, but the prince only said one thing, over and over. Manoriya bet. Manoriya bet.

  “They beat him to death there at the harbor and threw his lifeless body into the sea.

  “I imagine they asked Philip the obvious question. Why did you come back? He knew a little Amharic, from me. He could have said, ‘I didn’t do anything,’ or ‘I’m not a monster.’ What he did say, they took as a reference to Abyssinia. They didn’t care and they couldn’t have known what he meant. ‘Why did you come back?’

  “Manoriya bet. Home.

  “Over time, I learned enough French to strike up conversation. Where it didn’t seem out of place, I brought that name up into the open. ‘Alamayou.’ In a few years I received only questioning expressions. Alamayou had disappeared.