Seven Days in New Crete (Penguin Modern Classics) (13 page)

‘No double-bladed axe in his bed now?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Wine, women and tobacco at his call day and night?’

‘Yes.’

‘In his last month, would a king be allowed to go for a long railway journey if he pleased, or learn his A.B.C., or talk during meals or whistle in his bath?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘And by the time he comes to the drop he’s so pickled and gorged and fagged-out that he doesn’t care very much whether he or his other self is to reign for the second half of the year? Is that the idea?’

‘The Goddess is always merciful to fools.’

They told me that there would be music at sundown. I had already gathered that music was never used as a casual entertainment, but was reserved for special religious occasions. So I asked: ‘In celebration of what?’

‘Of the Goddess, Sir, always of the Goddess,’ said Starfish. ‘This will be a performance of the
Santrepod
.’

‘And what, may I ask, is the Santrepod?’

‘A group of three songs proving her triple power.’

‘And why are they to be played this evening?’

‘To introduce Monday, the Magicians’ Day, the day of enchantment. Music is similarly used by the recorders to introduce Wednesday, the day of learning; by the captains to introduce Thursday, the day of authority; by the servants to introduce Saturday, the day of humility; and by the commons to introduce Sunday, the day of royalty. We begin our days at curfew of the previous evening.’

‘What happens to Friday? And Tuesday?’

‘They’re not observed by any particular estate. Friday is the day of love and Tuesday is the day of war. In love, as in war, when a magician may belong to the same band as a commoner, differences of estate may occasionally be transcended.’

‘Do you mean to say that on a Friday one is free to have a love-affair with a woman of a different estate?’

‘Yes. Only we say it the other way about: a woman may choose a lover from a different estate.’

‘And does she ever?’

‘Very seldom, except for the customary union of captains and commons. “Smokes do not mix,” as you know, and if for instance a woman magician falls in love with a recorder, or a recorder with a woman servant, and they form a Friday union, they’re “without benefit of estate” while the union lasts. That’s the subject of many of our stories, but a very awkward position to be in. When Saturday comes the lovers go to consult the Goddess, whom they must obey, whatever her orders. Sometimes she lets them off lightly; sometimes she torments them. Well, as I was saying, there’ll be a Santrepod when the curfew sounds. By the way, See-a-Bird tells me that all isn’t well between you and Sally. The Santrepod should remedy that.’

I stirred uneasily in my chair. ‘There was a slight misunderstanding this morning,’ I said. ‘It was my fault, I expect. I like Sally very much,’ and here I gave her what was intended for a friendly smile, but that was a mistake. Erica’s arrows had penetrated deeper than I cared to admit to myself, and it must have been pretty obvious that my smile was forced. Sally may even have read my thoughts and felt that I was throwing her a bone. ‘You’re very generous,’ she said, and stiffened noticeably.

Starfish bent down with a look of concern, removed one of her shoes and started gently kneading her foot. She sighed with satisfaction. I didn’t inquire whether this was a common sedative practice among magicians, or in New Crete generally, or whether it was a peculiarity of Sally’s that she liked having her feet kneaded. I never saw it done again.

With a grateful glance at Starfish I asked Sapphire whether there was any fundamental difference between the music of the various estates.

‘Of course,’ she said, and explained that the commons went in for part songs, military marches and dance tunes, played by fiddle, pipe and drum, and for other sorts of traditional popular music, none of it recorded in the archives: they played solely by ear and were given no formal musical education. But musical practice varied geographically, certain instruments in popular use being confined by custom to different kingdoms. I gathered that the flute belonged to what is now called France, the mandoline to Italy, the guitar and castanets to Spain, the accordion to Germany.

‘Shades of Bach!’ I exclaimed. ‘The accordion!’

‘The climate of Germany encourages spiritual pride and the accordion is the most homely of instruments.’

‘And who gets the saxophone?’

But she hadn’t heard of the saxophone.

The recorders, she told me, neither danced nor sang and limited themselves to piano recitals (but the New Cretan piano had a shortened keyboard) and the string quartette. Their music was intellectual and passionless in the manner of the eighteenth century; nothing happened in it – Sapphire meant that melody was jealously excluded – but they derived a great deal of satisfaction from an ingenious exploitation of musical theory. They had now taken theory far enough and acquired a sufficient body of music to satisfy their needs; their
Canon
was complete. The captains shared the music of the commons, though specializing in the trumpet. The servants chanted plain-song from a limited repertoire and played no instruments of any sort.

‘What about the magicians?’

‘You’ll be able to judge for yourself in a moment. We don’t dance and we don’t have choirs and orchestras. We concentrate on pure melody and sing either to the harp or the lute; only one voice and one instrument, and never with more than four or five people present. Our musical education is rather austere; it’s based on the songs in our three
Books of Music
and a close study of counterpoint.’

It was getting dark. The curtains were drawn and the candles lighted. Everyone stopped talking when Sapphire opened a chest and took out her lute. She spoke a few words of reverent dedication, paused for half a minute and then began singing to it. The words were New Cretan, but, to my surprise, the melody was Elizabethan: I recognized it at once as ‘Flow not so fast, ye Fountains’ by John Dowland,

… whose heavenly tuch
Upon the Lute, doeth ravish humaine sense

as Barnfield (or some say Shakespeare) wrote of him.

Sally sat completely motionless, but the men had risen and were holding out their hands, palms outstretched, in the attitude of prayer. Knut Jensen’s advice came grotesquely to my mind. ‘And remember, when they start hopping about and wagging their genitals and rubbing mud in their hair and rolling their eyes, you’ll attract far less attention if you join in the fun than if you just sit goggling at them and fiddling with your note-book. Always join in the fun, old boy, always join in the fun! It’s the safest way.’ I rose too, and held out my hands. Indeed, I felt disposed to pray: Sapphire’s voice and her touch on the strings were so perfectly controlled that the full sorrow of the music, the
lachrymae
as Dowland called them, came welling out without distortion or loss. My eyes soon began to smart, and I wept unashamedly, relieved that there was no need to fight the impulse in the heroic English manner.

She sang two more songs – the first by the celebrated Cleopatra, very stately and scornful, but with funny little grace-notes when least expected, called ‘Heather’s Mockery of Holly’ at which everyone was expected to laugh. Everyone did laugh, including myself, because Sapphire again let the song speak for itself. There was no need for any pantomime business to point its dry humour.

The last song, called ‘The Sleepy Lovers’, was written by Alysin, the most celebrated musician of recent times. Now, I don’t pretend to know much about music but, as Barnfield pointed out in that very sonnet, music and poetry are ‘the sister and the brother’, and I find that if I apply poetic standards to music I am seldom far out in my judgements. Cleopatra’s song, though of a different type from Dowland’s, was of the same masterly order; but the ‘Sleepy Lovers’ left me unmoved. It was meant to make us feel drowsy, and Sapphire gave us the clue by smothering a yawn. Everyone but myself reacted as she intended. The three men swayed on their feet and at last sank gracefully to the floor, Sally’s head dropped forward on her chest, and when finally Sapphire broke off in the middle of a bar they were all dutifully asleep.

I continued to stand with palms outstretched: an irreproachable attitude of respect to the Goddess, but a criticism of the music, which was not nearly good enough. Technically it may have been flawless, yet I felt that it was synthetic. Alysin, when he wrote the song, had not felt amorously drowsy as Dowland felt lachrymose, or Cleopatra drily humorous – he had been wide awake and industriously deducing from his memory of popular lullabies what combinations of mode, key, time and so on, have the most soporific effect. Doubtless he had invoked the Goddess in the approved style, but she was not present in the song, as she was in the other two – yes, Dowland, I remembered, had turned his back on Protestantism and returned to the Blessed Virgin for his inspiration – and I refused to be deceived. However, since everyone else, including Sapphire, had dozed off, by autosuggestion, nobody noticed my obstinate wakefulness. I decided that I could now, with propriety, return to my chair and sat there feeling rather at a loss. Instinctively, my hand went into my pocket for a cigarette.

A slight giggle aroused me. I turned round sharply and saw Erica tiptoeing into the room. I waved her back wildly, but she took no notice.

‘Why aren’t you asleep?’ she asked in a stage-whisper. ‘They were playing Alysin, weren’t they?’

I scowled at her. ‘Yes, they were.’

‘You think he’s lousy?’

‘I do. If I yawned at all it was from sheer boredom.’

‘He’s a bit of a come-down after Cleopatra, isn’t he? She knew her stuff all right. Cigarette?’

‘No thanks. The last two got me into plenty of trouble, so I blamed the stubs on you.’

‘I ought to have warned you not to throw them all over the country-side. But why not take some of these and smoke them up the chimney when you’re alone in your bedroom?’

‘I don’t want to risk offending my hosts; they’re nice people.’

‘Have it your own way; offer withdrawn. Do you mind if I smoke myself?’

‘For God’s sake leave me alone, woman! They’ll wake up in a minute and throw five separate fits.’

‘No, they won’t. Not until I’m good and ready to go.’

She sat down in Fig-bread’s chair and lit up. I glared at her, but she did not seem to be impressed, so I tried soft words.

‘Darling,’ I said, ‘it’s only fair to warn you that they’ve decided to deport you.’

‘Yes, I heard about that. But why? Did you give them my dossier?’

‘Only in bare outline, but even so it got them all worked up. They say you came with me when I was evoked, feloniously clinging to my hair. And for some reason or other my report on your green slippers caused quite a sensation.

‘The idiots! Now, I suppose, Sally will come along in the early morning to make a pattern around the Nonsense House and try to winkle me out.’

‘What’s a pattern?’

‘Don’t you know? She’ll strip stark naked and go round the house widdershins, making funny noises. If I were you, I’d watch her at it; she’s got lovely thighs and shoulders and she prowls like a tigress.’

‘No, thank you. I’ll be happy enough sharing a pillow with Sapphire – oh, thanks,’ I added absently, accepting a cigarette and lighting it from hers. ‘But I dare say you won’t be at home tonight?’

‘Why shouldn’t I be? I’ve a sound-proof flat in the top storey of the house and Sally may growl and prowl all night so far as I’m concerned; I don’t mind her trying to get rid of me. She can’t be worse than a posse of Paris
flics
.’

‘Why did you come to this place?’ I asked.

She looked at me inscrutably and sang:

‘There was a time when silly bees could speak
And in that time I was a silly bee
And fed on thyme, until my heart ’gan break.’

‘Another of Dowland’s,’ she explained, ‘but the words are by the Earl of Essex. Do you think, if you stay here long enough feeding on thyme, your heart will break too? Essex went mad dog in the end and the Queen cut off his head.’

‘When did you come? Will you tell me that, at least?’

‘Ages ago. I told you so this morning.’

But I persisted: ‘Your supply of cigarettes seems to have lasted remarkably well.’

‘Do you want the address of my bootlegger?’

‘No, thank you very much.’ And then I realized that I was smoking, after all, and threw a perfectly good
Gauloise
into the fire.

‘Have an Old Gold instead!’ she said, opening her case. ‘I got them specially for you. Have two, have three, have the lot!’ In spite of my protests she emptied her case down the neck of my shirt.

I fished them all out and resolutely burned them. ‘There’s another thing I wanted to ask you, Erica,’ I said. ‘What’s the proper name for this white coat of yours?’

‘How should I know? All I can tell you is that I bought it off the peg in a shop in Princes Street, Edinburgh, years ago when I was living with Andrew – you remember Andrew? Andrew Mann, who used to write apocalyptic verse for
transition
and the
Little Magazine.
Work it out for yourself; I must be off. Good-bye, Teddy. I’ve got a date with a couple of elders down the lane. Now be a good boy, shut your eyes and pretend to be asleep, and I advise you not to mention my visit to a single soul. If you do, they’ll think you’re nuts and lock you up.’

‘Good-bye, damn and blast you!’

She tiptoed out, just as Sapphire stirred in her sleep, stretched, rubbed her eyes and awoke the others.

They all seemed unaware of the interlude and I did not undeceive them nor even hint to Sally that she might catch a chill to no purpose if she made her pattern in the damp meadow. We wished one another a Happy Monday, and Sapphire and I went off to our bedroom.

We lay awake for a long time talking about the events of the day, but not touching on either Erica or the brutch. She allowed me to stroke her hair and shoulder, but went on talking meanwhile and did not betray by any change of tone that she was either satisfied or dissatisfied by my caresses. At last the conversation faded away, she laid my head in the crook of her arm again as before, and I fell asleep instantly.