Between My Father and the King (17 page)

The princess did not even notice him.

A black-and-white fantail began to loop the loop and gossip. He thought, ‘All princesses like gossip. And surely she will admire my fine tail.'

The princess did not even notice him.

The old mother cat enticed her three fat kittens to a place beneath the window. She thought, ‘The princess will see my three children rolling and darting and scratching and pouncing. She will admire their glistening fur and their fat little bodies. She will say to me, “Old mother cat, how proud you must be!”'

The princess did not even notice the kittens frolicking. Nothing would comfort her.

The prince himself, too unhappy to say goodbye, or offer to explain, set out secretly and alone to find the Friday Night World, and the king who reigned there. It seemed a long journey. He felt tired and sat down on the side of the road to rest. And do you know what happened? He saw a cloud of bees about him. They were the dead bees come to life. They flew to him and fed him with honey, so that he regained his strength, and was able to continue his journey to the Friday Night World. And the bees hummed in his ear ‘M-m-m-m-m-agic, m-m-m-m-m-agic. You did not really burn-n-n-n-n-n us. M-m-m-m-m-agic.'

In spite of the honey, however, the prince began to feel weary, and sat down on the side of the road to rest once more. And what do you think happened? He found the viola lying beside him, playing such sweet music that his weariness vanished, and he was able to continue his journey, with the bees flying about him and feeding him, and the viola murmuring her news of magic in his ear, telling him that the bees were stronger now than any swarm in the world, and that her music was now more magical than harp or lute or violin-cello. She sang to him,

The burned bees,

The broken viola;

Honey for the mouth,

Honey for the ear.

Suddenly the world grew dark as if the night had come. The prince knew he had arrived at the Friday Night World. He could see dimly before him a great door built of dark glass. Before it, wearing a neatly striped suit, a collar and tie, stood the doorkeeper, for all the world like the manager of a shop. Naturally he would have refused to admit the prince and the viola and the swarm of
bees, had not the viola played music so sweet that the doorkeeper fell into a deep trance, while the bees hovered near to sting him, ever so lightly, in case he should waken. As it was, he slept for eleven and a half Friday Nights.

What a strange sight the prince saw as he entered the Friday Night World. It seemed to be one large shop lit with grey light. He had walked into the vanished shop! He had walked into the palace of the king himself; he saw the people who had sunk down from the world on that fateful night. They stood in a trance. One held in his hand a cake of soap, not yet wrapped. Another had a bag of peppermint cushions; others again had handkerchiefs, electric light bulbs, clothes, skeins of wool, writing paper, dahlia seeds! One man who had been a shopwalker was walking up and down, up and down. His shoes were almost worn out. He had grown thin for want of food. His hair had turned grey. He, and others like him, were in a trance. Sometimes a wind from a dark underground cavern swept through the shop, bringing with it, like pink snowflakes, billions of shop tickets. There was no sign of the King of Friday Night.

While the prince stood wondering what to do next, he noticed a triangular-shaped clock hanging on the wall. It showed only four hours: five o'clock till eight o'clock. It seemed there was no morning or midday or afternoon in this world. Time passed from five o'clock to eight o'clock, or half-past eight; then returned to five o'clock, and every day was Friday.

Suddenly the clock struck the eighth hour. There came a roar like the jingling of a million cash registers, and the shuffle of a billion feet, and the King of Friday Night appeared. He had felt very proud of capturing a shop from the upper world. The floorboards were grateful to him. They no longer said ‘Squawk' or ‘Squirk' or ‘Squeak'. He came every night to inspect the shop and try to decide if it were time he put an end to the trance. Ah! He was a magnificent king. His eleven and a half eyes glittered like electric
light bulbs. Although he was dressed in brown paper with string tied about his waist, there was something about his eyes that made him magnificent and frightening.

The prince himself, who had crossed seas, and swum rivers, and climbed mountains, and who hated Friday Night and the city, could not help feeling a little afraid; until he remembered how much he loved the rivers and the seas and the mountains, and how much he disliked the city with shoppers on Friday Night hurrying and scurrying by with their arms full of cakes of soap and peppermint cushions and handkerchiefs and electric light bulbs and clothes and skeins of wool and writing paper and dahlia seeds.

He stepped forward boldly towards the king. He heard the faithful little night-bee murmuring in his ear. Why, he had forgotten the bees and the viola! The viola played enchanting music, the bees wove a web of honey about the king, who fell into a deep sleep. I do not know if he has awakened yet.

Once the king had fallen asleep the spell was broken and the people and the shop rose again to the upper world. What a commotion there was when the people walking through the streets saw the long-lost shop and its customers appearing!

And it was not even Friday Night! Yet there was the shop open, and the people buying things and the floorboards beginning to say ‘Squawk' and ‘Squirk' and ‘Squeak'. Word was sent to the mayor, who hurried, dressed in mayoral robes with a long gold chain about his neck, to welcome the shop.

‘You should not be open. It is not Friday Night,' said a policeman who happened to pass by and notice the crowd.

But nobody seemed to mind. And so the shoppers shopped and went home as if it were an ordinary day, and the prince with his bees and enchanted viola returned by train to his palace in the north of the land. When he told the princess what had happened, she smiled because she understood. She combed her hair and
wound it about her head in plaits. She saw a little earwig crawling on the windowsill and admired his firm brown coat. She listened to the gossip of a cheeky fantail, and could not help laughing. She saw the old mother cat and her kittens playing underneath the window, and she leaned out and said, ‘Old mother cat, how proud you must be!'

When the Government heard, as governments hear, of the prince's part in rescuing the shop from the Friday Night World, the Prime Minister offered him as much gold as would cover every square inch of the land.

He refused. He took a small handful of gold, and the princess, and the viola and the bees and the little night-bee. He left Friday Nights and the city for ever, and climbed to the top of a snow-white mountain to a snow-white palace. The magic bees gave the prince and princess honey to last the rest of their lives; the viola played enchanting music for ever. And the little night-bee flew in and out of the room saying, ‘What a fine palace! M-m-m-m-m-agic, m-m-m-m-m-agic. What a fine palace!'

If only, he thought, I were God looking from my door upon completeness.

Before I die.

He was not old, only fifty-five. His hair was thin and faded, like desert grass, flattened by secret pressures from the sky. His head was land; within it he felled forests of beech, rimu, kauri, burned the scrub, hacked manuka for fences, measured and set the boundaries for paddocks.

‘Poor Edgar,' the neighbours said. ‘The past has sprinkled salt on his tail, has trapped him in important flight.'

Only it was not that way at all. He was not a bird. Was he a cat, then? Had he swallowed the past, licking it from his life as a cat licks its fur until it winds into a ball inside, compact, soft, a nest-ball that causes pain?

Oh whatever was the matter with Edgar? Cat, bird, human being: it was yesterday that was the matter, and it was no use
saying to him, Don't groom your memory day after day on the hearth until you swallow it and it hurts you, stops your life!

Every morning he sunbathed, lying naked on a rug beside the east wall of the house, only a few feet away from the tomatoes (the stout Russian variety), the clump of garlic, the potatoes numerously leaved like bibles with the small bloodless fruit beneath, the swollen veined cabbages, airy parsley.

He sunbathed for an hour, taking stock of the sun and the secret growth of his vegetables.

Then he would go inside, dress, and using a pencil upon green paper because green was said to be kind to the eyes, he would sit at his homemade table to write his work of literature. He leaned over the table, his shoulders hunched, his face tensed, as if he were in a lavatory. The words came dropping from him tight, and round, and hard.

The compressed words came dropping slowly from him like childhood bullets. All morning he worked, writing, crossing out, writing again, and afterwards typing the fragment he had made, adding it to the pile of green sheets, counting them carefully, reckoning how many more he must squeeze from his head before he completed the work of literature.

Sometimes when he was reluctant to begin working he would sit on the stool near his kitchen window and look out, at the postman passing, throwing the letters in the old biscuit tin which Edgar had put inside the hedge, as letterbox; at the paperboy cycling by, aiming the paper through the gap in the hedge that served as a gate, onto the narrow path. Or he would watch people hurrying to work, to catch the bus and the ferry to the city. He would see his nextdoor neighbour whose face, on Mondays, had a satisfied expression — had he not mowed the lawn in the weekend with the new electric mower, cut down a troublesome tree in his garden with his new electric saw, built a kitchen table for his wife from the Do-It-Yourself kit, and then had time to spend the whole
of Sunday afternoon with his wife and three children at one of the East Coast bays? His father, who lived in a little self-contained hut on the property, had not accompanied them: he was growing old; he was better at home in the sun with a handkerchief over his face.

Edgar looked from his window and saw the past. He had known the area when he was a child. He could not accept the cutting back of the bush nor the rows of white-toothed villas biting into the beach where once he had played under the pohutukawa trees and where, in the Depression days, he had roamed the sand in search of food — cabbages, onions — cast overboard from the trading vessels.

So he lived alone in his house. He grew his hedge high. He pursued his work of literature.

It must be that I am growing old, he said to himself.

It was breakfast time. He had sunbathed, and was drinking a cup of tea while he read the
Critique of Pure Reason
, propping the book against a half-filled jar of preserved peaches.

It's strange about the forest in my head, he thought. I remember it. Down in the King Country on holiday. I went into the farm kitchen and they said to me, What is that terrible look on your face? They demanded to know, as if my seeing the bushfire had collected a fortune which showed in my face and which caused them fear, and envy that it was not their prize also.

Come on, what is that terrible look on your face?

Own up, they were saying, own up, where is the goldmine?

I cried. I never knew what the look was. Have I a look on my face now? If so, it is not fear at seeing my flesh perish, my leaves slowly writhe in the grip of fire and progress.

He who desires completeness is against progress. There is no completeness while Time continues to provide a future.

I have an engineering look on my face now, a scientific look. In the south after the earthquake they rebuilt the city and reclaimed
the land which the shock cast up from the sea. I am reclaiming a certain completeness before I die. Does the sun twist the necks of sunflowers, like a screw-top vision to preserve the molten fruit?

When I was a boy I kept silkworms, from their birth to their death.

Therefore one day Edgar put on his best pants, tied with string at the waist, his grey pullover, his Roman sandals, and his old stained gabardine, and travelling in the bay bus down to the harbour, he bought his ticket for the ferry, and sitting outside in the sun he crossed the harbour to the abominable city where he bought twelve silkworms in a small cardboard box from the pet shop in the street next to the main street.

In the main street were the fashionable stores; then came, like the other side of the moon, the coin, the dream, the places which sold secondhand clothing — men's crumpled collapsed suits, women's shapeless floral dresses to which time and the salt-filled light of the harbour sun had given a mimic sheen of newness, a wild brightness — as if a lifetime were crushed between the two streets, like wheat between stones. The pet shop was next to a secondhand dealer's and a vacant shop with the door boarded up and the windows broken in a star shape revealing that core of darkness which centres itself in holes, gaps of light, the beginning of tunnels, and open doorways at night.