Slowly, the illusion of fire sank away, and she was standing, supported by servants, gazing at something too still, too full of peace to be her father. Now his strange words came back to her: "Beg him to remove the curse."
The day after the King was buried, she went to the box-painter.
9.
She could not believe, at first, the change that had come over him. He seemed much older, much sadder, so gentle that the Princess-or, rather, the Queen, since she now ruled the kingdom-could almost have believed she had dreamed their last meeting, when he"d charged those mad prices for the worthless pictures she and her friends had bought, carelessly scrawled landscapes of cows crossing streams, sickly, drab asphodels and forget-me-nots, day-lilies and primroses, or those maudlin little animals, cats, dogs, teddy-bears-not so much box-paintings as angry parodies, at best, of the box-painter"s art. He was busy at the same kinds of subjects now, but with such a difference that they seemed not the work of the same hand. His paintings of gardens were so accurate in each detail, even to the occasional weed or insect, so alive with the spirit of whoever it was that had planted them-some old woman, she imagined, or some old man in suspenders, once a farmer or a lawyer, who"d settled down in his final days to make the life he was leaving more comfortable for someone he knew, or perhaps did not know, for the world in general, with all its sorrows-so accurate in their depiction of both the beauty and the sadness of the world as it is, that one believed, if one closed one"s eyes, that one could smell the autumn leaves.
Nor was the studio he worked in the same at all. What had seemed a kind of crypt never visited except by the artist"s ghost, a bleak place of weariness, misery, and failure, had now become a hive of activity. There were customers who greedily sorted through the boxes, pretending to find fault with them to get an easier price, children and old people, a lean, smiling banker with a terrible worried look flickering around his eyes-he was looking for a box for his wife, he said, and had no idea what might appeal to her ("Bring her in!" said the box-painter with gestures. "Bring her in!")-an angry old woman, a laborer, a midget. ... Vlemk the box-painter had taken on three young apprentices, two dull, lanky ones and one who was fat and near-sighted-"A master!" Vlemk told the Queen with gestures, "a genius!" She looked at the young man with distaste: plump, pink-cheeked, working with his tongue between his teeth, bending down to watch, almost cross-eyed, as his mallet ticked brads into the eight-sided box he was at work on. When he saw that she was watching he smiled and gave her a wink that seemed vaguely obscene. Quickly, she looked away. How Vlemk had done it all in less than a month was a mystery to her, for the Queen had no idea that she herself was at the heart of the change. Her friends who"d bought boxes had made Vlemk the social dernier cri, and they had done so just at the moment when, as chance would have it, he was in a mood to revise his life. That too was of course her influence, though she could not know it. She could know only that he was a changed man, an artist again, though not at all the artist she had come to seek out-and in fact not an artist she approved of. There had been in him, before, something scornful and majestic, the dignity and barely contained rage of a fallen Lucifer, a haughty detachment, unbending pride, even in his abject poverty, that transformed his afflictions, even his muteness, to bends of n.o.bility. Now overnight he had become just another peasant artisan-indeed, a man at ease with peasant artisans: over by the window, timidly peering down with tiny pig"s eyes through his thick, thick spectacles, stood a famous stained-gla.s.s-window maker called Lefs-her father had often been his patron-and on a stool, half asleep, sat Borm the bell-maker, a thick-nosed, doltish-looking fellow with hair in his ears.
She stood erect, her face half hidden in the cave of her hood, her gloved hand closed on the doork.n.o.b. She was half inclined to flee, sick at heart. It was at that moment, looking around her at the tedious goodness that rolled like granulating honey through the box-painter"s shop (such was her word for it; she was no longer comfortable calling it a studio), that the Queen understood that the terrible paintings of her were true. She might not like it, she might-knees trembling-feel shocked toward despair by the frightening fact, but she knew that those paintings she had seen were serious, as none of this was, that the mind that had seared through her flesh to the bones, the mind that with the icy indifference of a G.o.d had layer after layer torn the sham away, the childish eagerness, the ridiculous pretenses-the mind that had stripped her and used her and dismissed her-was the mind, sublime and coldblooded, of an artist. Tears sprang to her eyes as she considered the ruin he had become: a man worth, at his best, all the gold in the kingdom, a thousand kingdoms, now reduced, without even knowing it, to this. She remembered with incredulity how once she had refused to let a coin be tossed to him, imagining in her madness that it might lead him to "further debauchery!" Unconsciously she raised her hand to her eyes. The movement was enough to draw the attention of Vlemk the box-painter.
Quickly he came toward her, moving his lips in some remark of dismay, as if he"d forgotten that he"d lost the gift of speech.
"I must go," she said, and opened the door. A warm breath presaging rain came in.
Grotesquely, as solicitous as her moustached Prince, he caught the edge of the door, half closed it, and held it. He gestured and rolled his eyes. Heaven knew what he was saying. His gaze was fixed on her black band of mourning.
"I must go," she said again, this time more sternly.
A calm came over him. A coldness, rather; faintly reminiscent of his greater days. With the look of a man killing an insect while holding a conversation-a brief wince, then no change in his expression-he closed the door. She stared, a little frightened, trying to read his eyes. He simply stood there, queerly smiling, the hum of sweetness filling the room behind him, customers chattering, his apprentices hurrying, now painting, now talking, no one noticing the two of them, herself and Vlemk, as removed as two stars. She jerked at the doork.n.o.b. She might as well have jerked at a k.n.o.b on a wall of stone. She focused on the doork.n.o.b, studying the wild leap of feeling inside her. She was angry enough to scream at him, but at the center of her rage lay the mad question: am I in love with this pot-bellied old man?
"I"ll come back when you"re less busy," she said.
"You"ve come to see the pictures," he said. Though she knew it was impossible, he seemed to say it with his voice.
"Yes, I have," she said.
Vlemk the box-painter nodded, polite, then took his hand from the door and turned away. He stopped to speak in gestures to one of his apprentices-the young man looked over at the Queen, then quickly back at Vlemk-then, half smiling, nodding to his customers, stepping carefully past his table of boxes, the box-painter went to a covered stack in the corner of the room, lifted off the cover, took a folded sack from the floor beside them, and indifferently dropped the boxes, one by one, into the sack. When he returned to her, the box-painter took her hand as he would a child"s, hardly looking at her, opened the door, led her from the room, and softly pulled the door closed behind them. Then, letting go of her hand, he started down the stairway. The Queen followed.
Strange as it may seem, the Queen had never before seen the inside of a tavern. She walked with the false a.s.surance of a blind man pretending he needs no help, pressing forward, stiff and erect, waiting as if impatiently for Vlemk to choose a table, though in fact she had no idea whether or not it was accepted practice for a man and a woman to be seated together in a tavern. She was a.s.saulted by such sensations, such newness and mystery, that she could hardly think, could only see and see, drinking in vision with the wide eyes of a child-indeed, she thought instantly of the way she had seen things at four or five, every surface alive, unnaturally sharp-edged: she remembered when she"d gone to the Fair with her father, servants all around them, looking out with sharp, fearful eyes for anarchists, her father still strong and tall, almost fat, crying "Ho, ho, ho" and shaking hands with his people when he could reach past the circle of guards.
The room was still, the people all pretending not to look at her. She stood, chin lifted, feeling a strange thrill of evil in her veins. What would people say? she wondered, knowing what they"d say, and an image from one of Vlemk"s paintings rose before her, what she secretly called "The Queen as Fallen Woman."
Then the barmaid stood before them, more innocent than the Queen had been even in childhood, or so the Queen imagined, the barmaid companionably nodding and smiling, guiding them to a long table close to the front door, a table with candles on it, alongside it six stolid chairs. Vlemk led the Queen to a chair by the wall, went back around the table to the chair directly opposite, and laid the sack on the table while the barmaid silently moved the other four chairs away. Vlemk made a signal, presumably his order, and the barmaid left. Then, without expression, Vlemk opened the sack and took out the boxes, one by one, and slid them across to her. When he"d removed the last box, he folded the sack and put it on his lap like a napkin. He splashed open his hands and smiled disparagingly, eyes remote. The Queen looked down at them.
It was incredible to her that they"d so shocked her the first time she"d seen them. There they were, her possibilities, each more terrible than the last; but they did not seem to her terrible now. It was like reading history books: this king died in battle, this king of syphilis, this one by a fall from his horse. What she felt, more than anything else, was a sense of new freedom, release. It was true, she thought, as if responding to something the talking picture on the box had said to her; this decorous life she"d pursued all her days was trivial, ludicrous. How strange and wonderful to be able to gaze down from the mountaintop, like a soul at last free of its body, and see life as it was. This king died in battle, this one of syphilis....
One of the pictures showed her face tipped so high it seemed her neck would snap. "The Queen Full of Pride," she secretly named it. She laughed. Vlemk the box-painter glanced at her, judgmental, and she laughed again, more openly than she"d meant to. A man with yellow-white flaxen hair and sleepy eyes stopped abruptly in the middle of the room to look at her, then after a moment drew up a chair and sat down beside her. At just that moment the barmaid returned with the drinks Vlemk had ordered, two small, crude gla.s.ses that contained something thick and vaguely black. The barmaid looked daggers at the man who had come to sit with the Queen, then looked questioningly at Vlemk, who lowered his eyes and shrugged. With a frightened expression, the barmaid glanced at the Queen. "It"s no harm," said the Queen, and mimicked Vlemk"s shrug. One casual hand raised to hide her ugly birthmark, the barmaid looked again at Vlemk, who pretended not to notice; then, at last, she reluctantly turned away to go about her business.
"h.e.l.lo," said the man with flaxen hair, and grinned one-sidedly. His teeth were discolored and tilted, like headstones in an old, old graveyard.
She nodded and glanced at his patched, ragged elbow, too close to her own.
"I," said the man, "am a poet." He tipped his head back, slightly to one side, letting his remark sink in.
"That"s nice," she said, and glanced at Vlemk. He was looking at the boxes. She too looked down at them.
"Poets are much disparaged in this moron age," said the poet.
She said nothing, but gave him a noncommittal nod and reached for a candle to give the boxes more light. The poet leaned closer, looking too. She lowered her eyebrows and tensed her forehead, straining to ignore him.
It seemed that any one of the paintings might speak if it wished to, even the ones done most carelessly, as if in disgust. What had he been thinking as he painted them? she wondered again. And how was it that he could sit there so calmly now, two fingers around the stem of his gla.s.s, hardly looking at her, beginning to show signs of impatience. She drew away from the poet a little, shooting him a look, and then glanced again at Vlemk. Here in the tavern, with the candlelight making his graying hair glow like newly cut iron, he no longer seemed just one more artisan. In comparison to the poet, he might have been made of solid marble. "I have come to beg you to remove the curse," she thought of saying, and quickly looked down, driving out the image of her father by saying to herself with intense concentration, "It makes no sense."
The poet said, "Your eyes are like curdled cream. Does that offend you?"
She looked at him as she"d have looked at some curious insect.
Instantly, the poet rolled his eyes up and waggled his hand.
He looked exactly like her father, and the breath went out of her. She threw a wild glance at Vlemk for help, but Vlemk had his eyes closed, infinitely patient, burying both the poet and herself in the rot of time. Suddenly she found herself shaking like a machine, and Vlemk opened his eyes. He looked at the poet, so calmly that the whole world changed for her. Yes, she must learn to be like Vlemk the box-painter. Learn to dismiss with absolute indifference the antics of mere mortals! She must live for the imperishable! She"d been wrong about him, she saw now. He had not mellowed, gone soft. In the end he had dismissed even rage and scorn, even the young artist"s hunger for Truth. He had moved beyond silence to a terrible kind of comedy, painting nonsense with unholy skill-landscapes, animals, all that dying humanity foolishly clings to.
That instant Vlemk leaned forward, one finger raised as if in warning, and with a stern expression shook his head. Was he reading her mind? she wondered. He must be, of course. He knew her as no one had ever known her before, every spasm and twitch.
The boxes gleamed in the candlelight, a coolly disinterested catalogue of horrors-wretched grimaces, rolled eyes; ten obscene masks of corruption. And it came to her suddenly that the point was not that one of them was fated to come true: all of them were true. And it was not that he loved her or hated her. She was a specimen, simply, like the rat the biologist happens to come down on with his glove. He could have done it as well with the poet-she could do it herself, if she had his craft! This is the world, he had said. So much for the world! And he"d gone back to painting pretty gardens, where weeds pushed up, merry as crocuses, and insects chewed and were chewed, like gargoyles on a church. This is the world, my children, my moustached princes, coyly smiling ladies. Again Vlemk"s eyes were closed, burying all that lived. I never heard him mention you, the picture that could talk had said. Even when he was painting her hour after hour, he"d given her no more thought than the biologist gives to the frog he is cutting to pieces, still alive. That was Art. That was the mountaintop. The boxes blurred together in an image of her father"s dying face.
She leaned forward, clutching the table, struggling to clear her sight. Her wits reeled, though she hadn"t yet tasted the vaguely black drink. She found herself staring now at one of the boxes in particular-perhaps she"d been staring for some time. "The Queen Envious," she thought it might be called. It showed her face almost comically narrowed and peaked, her eyes enormous, the tips of her teeth showing.
Vlemk opened his eyes. "Your health," he said soundlessly, murderously ironic-or so it seemed to the Queen-and raised his gla.s.s.
Soon there were two more of them, friends of Vlemk, or so they claimed, and Vlemk accepted it in silence, eyelids sinking again. One maintained he was an ex-violinist. The other maintained nothing at all, staring at her throat a moment, occasionally glancing at the door as if expecting more of these "friends." The Queen could hardly breathe. All her life she had scorned and avoided vulgarity, ugliness: but here, sunk deep in both, she was revising her opinions. She had wanted gardens without insects. She wanted that no longer. She wanted now only to see. But her mind was fuzzy. She strained for concentration. There was no feeling in the tips of her fingers.
The poet said things so foolish one had to think about them.
"Suppose," he said, floating his head toward her, half-moons of yellow below his irises, "suppose G.o.d were a spider!"
She waited. He seemed to have nothing more to say. But when she turned to the ex-violinist for help, the poet broke in quickly, seizing the floor again, violently trembling, "Out of his own entrails the spider spins!" He gave a jerk, trying to raise his arm to shake his fist at her, but his elbow struck hard against the edge of the table, making him yelp and bringing tears to his eyes. The ex-violinist shook his head and said, "Listen-" Furiously, wildly, the poet struck out with his narrow left arm, hitting the ex-violinist in the chest. "But also the spider stings!" the poet yelled. The voice, thin and high, reminded her of the voice of the picture that could talk, and abruptly she remembered that the picture was herself. She looked at Vlemk. He was asleep.
The poet, for no reason, was crying. Softly, the ex-violinist said, "He"s so full of hate, this man. Who can blame him?"
She looked for help at the man who sat staring at her throat. Something in his look made her blood curdle, and, smiling nervously, lowering her lashes, she asked, "And what do you do?" Nothing in his expression changed, but he looked into her eyes, giving her a terrible sensation of endless falling. After a moment he indicated by a shift of his eyes that she should look under the table. She felt herself blushing scarlet; then, biting her lip, she obeyed. In the darkness below, almost touching her shoes, lay the blade of an axe. Instinctively, before she knew she would do it, she touched her throat. The man smiled, then his eyes once again went out of focus. She put both hands over her heart to calm the pounding, like a fire behind her collarbone.
Vlemk the box-painter opened his eyes a little, raised his eyebrows, and looked at his friends. He looked at the Queen, as if to ask what had happened, then down at his lap. He lifted the sack and began to put the boxes in, one by one. She watched them being taken from her with the anguish of a child losing its treasures. Each horror he moved to the sack was like flesh torn from her, but she kept herself from speaking. When he"d put them all inside and had pulled the purse-string that closed the neck, he pushed back his chair and stood up, nodding to her and gesturing. She too pushed back her chair-breathing shallowly, her legs slightly shaking-and stood up. The poet protested. The man who had the axe raised his head as if in distress, looking at her throat. She tried to look away from him but found herself helpless until the box-painter came around the table and offered her his arm. She seized it and clung tightly. Though she looked back, trailing him to the door, still clinging, no one asked for money. She tried to think about it, but her mind was still full of the image of the axe.
Soon they were on the street, where her driver was waiting, the black-and-gold carriage gleaming weirdly in the light of the lamps and the distant moon. The driver held the door of the carriage for her, melting into darkness in the way her father had always liked, and Vlemk the box-painter squeezed her arm, more powerfully than he knew-she would have bruises in the morning-then released her and began to back away. Before she knew she would do it, she reached out, sudden as a snake striking, and seized the bag of boxes. He did not seem surprised but only looked at her, expressionless, as if thinking of another way of painting her.
"Let me take it," she said. She could not look at him. "Sell them to me!"
He said nothing, showed nothing, but after a long moment shook his head sadly, a little sternly, and opened his thick, strong fingers so that the bag was hers.
She stepped into the carriage, the door closed behind her, and almost at once she heard the tocking of the horses" hooves and felt the swaying of the carriage.
10.
It was the beginning of a terrible period for the Queen. Whatever the truth might be, it seemed to her unquestionable that she had glimpsed a world more important than her own, gloomy and malevolent but intrepidly alive. In her sleep she would dream of the dark, smoky tavern and see again the tip of the axe peeking out from the skirt of the silent man"s coat. Putting on a necklace or walking in a field, she would suddenly find herself not looking at the emeralds or watching the airy pirouette of starlings but gazing, mystified and perhaps a little frightened, at the calm, sleeping face of Vlemk the box-painter, the sum of the earth all around him-the poet who could not write, the violinist who could not play, the grim man who carried an axe and stared at throats.
Strange to say, the boxes, when she laid them out one after another on her table, had no great interest for her now. She looked at them, studied them, but the magic had evaporated. They were pictures, simply-not even very good ones, she occasionally suspected-and though she knew, intellectually, that they were the story of her life or image of her character, she found that something had gone wrong with her; she had no feeling for them. She looked at them each time with renewed disappointment. They might as well have been sick cartoons. They were not just that, she knew, and she struggled to feel their significance. Sometimes, indeed, she could feel a frail echo of the original thrill of alarm-sense herself decaying, know the horror of death. But when she thought, she knew that the feeling did not come from the pictures, it came from the tavern, the silent man"s axe. The pictures were boring. It was because of that, because she had lost all feeling, that sometimes she sat with the terrible pictures spread out before her and silently wept.
"Are you all right?" the picture that could talk would say.
She would sniff, jerk back her head, and nod.
"You certainly are becoming a bore," the picture that could talk would say. "What ever happened to your fury?"
" "Fury," " the Queen would mock, sniffing. There it usually ended. But one night when unaccountably the air smelled of winter, the picture felt cross enough to press the matter. "That"s what I mean," the picture said. "Why are you so quick to pounce on things?"
"The quilt," said the Queen coolly, rising from her bed. "Why? That"s no fair!" cried the picture. "What did I say?" But the Queen had no mercy and put the quilt over the picture"s face.
It was not quite sufficient; she could hear the picture wailing, like the hum of a mosquito; but she ignored it.
Tiresome as the paintings on the boxes were, or deeply depressing, not for what they showed but for the proof they gave her that she was only half alive, a miserable creature displacing air in the world for no good reason-the thought of the tavern filled her with something like the same alarm she had felt when she first stepped through the door. Perhaps that was the answer, it struck her all at once. Immediately she thought of the man with the axe and felt a tingle of fear. Suppose he should indeed kill her! In her mind"s eye she saw it vividly, the sudden moving shadow where she had thought there was only a doorway, his rush toward her, coattails flying, the axe uplifted, the man running just a little sideways, coming without a sound. The vision was so clear that it made her cry out, sudden tears filling her eyes. She clenched her fists, then clutched her head, trying to think clearly. Was that perhaps the curse that had fallen on her-a fear of life because she too much feared death? Surely that was wrong! Surely there was nothing in the world that she feared, pain, sickness, madness ... Abruptly, reaching her decision almost without knowing it, she rose and s.n.a.t.c.hed up her cloak, crossed to her door, thinking of calling for her carriage driver, then paused, lips pursed, and, deciding on another course, threw her cloak across a chair. She quietly opened the door, stepped through, and just as quietly closed it; she looked to left and right, then hurried to the chamber of her maid. When she opened the door without knocking, letting light rush in, the maid sat bolt upright in bed and gave a peeping cry.
"It"s all right!" said the Queen. The maid"s eyes widened again, and her small gray mouth fell open.
"I need to borrow some clothes," said the Queen. And so that night the Queen walked down into the city, alone and in disguise.
Not even the stupidest of the regulars were fooled, but they pretended to be. The Queen stood stiff and erect at the elbow of the ex-violinist. "Do you mind if I sit down?" she asked.
The ex-violinist looked at his friends in befuddlement, then back at the Queen, then severely nodded, reaching out with a jerk of his arm for the chair, to pull it back for her.
It was the strangest, most joyful and terrifying night of her life-as much of it as she could remember. It seemed to her that all she had suspected was true: her ordered life was madness, only this wild, unbridled acceptance of whatever the universe might throw, in its glorious indifference, was true and right. Somehow in her innocent dreams of debauchery she had imagined that she would sing like a gypsy and dance, throw her fists like a man, indulge in unspeakable language. That, when she thought of it now, made her toss back her head and shake uncontrollably with laughter. No no, it was nothing like that for the Queen. It was something far more wonderful and vile. It was the smell of the armpits of the ex-violinist as he closed her in his arms, almost falling from his chair beside hers in the tavern, raging against music. It was the coldness of the flesh of the sleeping poet when she kissed him on the cheek-she would have sworn he was dead-and the heat in the fingers of the axe-murderer as he slowly lowered his hand onto hers, pinning it to the coa.r.s.e tavern table, his eyes staring through her.
"Very well," she thought, sometime long after midnight-full of cunning, her eyelids so heavy she had to peek out through the slits, "very well, very well ..." She strained futilely to remember what she"d meant to say. The three men"s eyes were all glazed and still, like the eyes of dead animals she"d seen beside the road. "Very well," she said again, with conviction, and raised one finger to shake it at the axe-murderer. She made her face bold and dissolute. "I suppose you"re aware that my father died?" The murderer looked at her as before. Yes, she thought, yes! and felt a thrill of aliveness. What was it to artists-a life, a death? She smiled and jerked herself left to look around at the room, pawing abstractedly for her gla.s.s and straining hard to clear the blur. Smoke, darkness, people, a tall figure, blurred at the edges, standing by the door. She smiled, head lowered, and swung her face back toward the axe-murderer. "Well" she said, her voice gone deep. "I imagine you wonder why I"m here!" She laughed, hearing the girlishness, the sweetness. "Ha ha! Ha ha!" She steadied herself, focusing on the murderer"s face, and it occurred to her that it was time to speak truthfully. She took a drink from her gla.s.s, not looking down from his eyes. "I suppose you"re aware that my father died?" she said. "Well!" she said, coming to her senses-she was making a scene; it was absurd. "Very well!" she said, and smiled. The murderer was leaning down, doing something with the axe, under the table. The tall man at the door came toward them and slowly walked past, his arms folded over his chest. He was a policeman. When he was gone, the murderer wiped his forehead. The policeman sat down in the corner of the room. He got out his pipe and stoked it. After a moment, pursing her lips, the Queen said, "I suppose we all die, don"t we." She found she was crying.
11.
For Vlemk the box-painter, it was not easy to believe his eyes when he found her the next morning, gray as a ghost, one shoe missing, her body in the gutter surrounded by old papers, oyster sh.e.l.ls, and frost like bits of gla.s.s and white hair. He knew from the instant he first saw her exactly what had happened and all that was wrong with her, for strange to say, she looked, right down to the last detail, like a certain one of the cruel, bitter pictures he"d made of her. He gawked, his knees bent, his arms reaching out; then, clamping down his hat with one hand, ran around her, absurdly looked down for a relatively clean place to plant his knees, shook himself in anger at such foolishness, then dropped down to listen-almost dizzy with dread-for her heartbeat. Was it possible that she"d frozen to death? He heard her heart at once, sound as any drum, and joyfully patted her on the cheek, weeping with relief, then rubbed his hands. "Yes, yes," he exclaimed inside his mind, looking up and down the street, "be quick about it!" Tears ran down his cheeks, cold as ice in the wind. He planted his knees more firmly and thought about where to put his hands to pick her up.
It was only when he was halfway up the hill on his way to the palace, huffing and blowing, the Queen a deadweight in his arms, that the box-painter"s joy at finding her still alive gave way to worry. What was to become of her? He"d told himself at first that it was grief at the death of her father that had brought on this fling of self-destruction; for indeed, the whole kingdom had reeled and staggered at the death of the old man. But now Vlemk was beginning to remember certain things that disturbed him. He remembered how, when he"d ridden in the carriage with her, her gloved hand, laid on his, had trembled. It had filled him with alarm which he"d have given more thought to, had he not been, at the time, too drunk to think of anything but himself. He remembered, and saw again now, looking down at her-her head falling limply, slightly turned to one side as he carried her in his arms-how hollow her cheeks had looked of late, and how under her eyes she had dark circles. He thought of the glint he had seen repeatedly in her eyes when she was angry, a glint that seemed a little like madness. "Bless me," he said in his mind, and his distress became greater than before. "How beautiful she is!" he thought, and did not notice the strangeness of it, for what he was noticing was quite the opposite, that she had changed for the worse.
Vlemk"s arms and legs were trembling and aching-"None of us are as young as we used to be," he thought-and he saw that he must rest before finishing the trek up the hill. Now that the sun was out, the day had become quite warm. A maple tree stood beside the road just ahead of him, and he decided to push that far and set down his burden for a little underneath it in the shade. Shortly before he reached the tree, red-gold and glorious, he saw to his surprise that there was a monk sitting under it. He felt a touch of dismay, for he had hoped he could get her to the palace without anyone"s seeing her; but his weariness was not to be denied. If he carried her much farther he would fall; it was no time for niceties. He entered the spa.r.s.e shade of the maple with the Queen, bowing politely to the monk as he came in, and lowered her to the gra.s.s and fallen leaves on the tree"s far side, where the monk might not notice who she was. Vlemk dusted a few bits of dirt from her forehead, straightened her arms and legs-as if arranging her for her funeral, he thought woefully, for in fact she looked astonishingly like the cruel painting he called "The Princess Almost Dead of Despair." Then, wiping away all trace of his tears, Vlemk went around to the side of the tree where the monk was, to keep him occupied.
The monk was an old man as bony and wasted as a person who"s lived for years on just air and tea. He sat with the skirts of his ca.s.sock hiked up to let the breeze in at his legs-it was a day for picking persimmons or going for one last cool swim in some farmer"s pond-and he had his hood thrown back, revealing his large ears and head, as hairless as a darning egg. A stalk of timothy hung down limply from the brown stumps that more or less served him as teeth, and inside his collar, to cut down the scratching, he had burdock leaves.
"Ah! The box-painter!" said the monk, looking up at Vlemk. Vlemk studied him more closely. "We met one dark night in a graveyard where I make my home, insofar as I have one," the monk explained.
Vlemk nodded and smiled, remembering now, though only dimly. He also remembered that when he"d last seen the monk the curse of the picture had not yet been put on him. By gestures and winces, he revealed his new condition.
The monk smiled and nodded, utterly unperturbed. "That"s the world, my friend," he said. "Sin"-he looked up into the tree as if the notion pleased him-"sin is all around us. The whole of creation is one vast sin." He smiled.
Vlemk scowled to show that he was not in agreement, or that at any rate he did not consider his curse to be a punishment for his sins but, on the contrary, a stroke of blind chance.
"Matter itself is sin," said the monk. "This is a hard lesson, my child." He reached toward Vlemk to pat his foot with one skeletal hand. Not instinctively, but to show how he felt, Vlemk drew his foot back. The monk closed his eyes and smiled as benignly as before. "I know, I know. You don"t believe me. No one does. Nevertheless it"s the case, I believe. I"m an old, old man, as you can see by these teeth-close to the grave, beyond all desire to make up stories. I can give you my a.s.surance as a Christian ascetic, I was never so happy in all my days as I"ve been since the night I accepted the proposition that all matter, all earthly physicality, is filth and corruption."
Vlemk sighed irritably, reached down for a stick on the gra.s.s beside him, and considered whether he was strong enough to continue on his way up to the palace. His legs were still weak, the strength in his fingers so diminished that he could barely break the stick with two hands. "Very well, I"ll sit here a moment longer," he thought. Much as he disliked the monk"s opinions, Vlemk joked to himself a little bitterly, the monk did no more harm in the world than, say, an axe-murderer, and Vlemk had tolerated that, though perhaps not with pleasure.
"Ah yes, ah yes," the monk said, nodding. "I understand the pull! That lovely lady there-" He gestured toward the Queen lying still as a corpse on the far side of the tree. Carefully, or so it seemed to Vlemk, the monk avoided looking at her. "Physicality has its beauties, but they"re devil-lures and delusions. Take my word for it. Everything pa.s.ses. That"s the one great truth, this side of heaven." He glanced at Vlemk, oddly shy. "Symbols, that"s their value," he said. "Signs of what might be. This timothy stalk"-he pointed at the stalk he chewed on even as he lectured-"all the juice has been gone out of it for months now. That"s why I chew on it."
As he spoke, a bee, for some reason not flying but buzzing in the gra.s.s, struggling along through it, found purchase on his ankle and, still buzzing, beating its small wings with the fury of a d.a.m.ned soul in fire, climbed up on top of his foot and settled, gradually calming itself, between the monk"s first and second toes. Vlemk leaned forward slowly, not to alarm the bee, and pointed, imagining that the monk had not noticed it was there.
"Let him rest," said the monk. "He has his troubles too." He shook his head sadly. "A tiny soul trapped in the horror of materiality-sick unto death, it may well be; certainly it will be, sooner or later. For him, all the pain in the world is right there in that small body." He pointed at the bee.
"You"re not afraid he"ll sting you?" asked Vlemk with gestures.
Ever so slightly, the monk shrugged. "Let him sting me. Not that he will, I think. But suppose he does? Who am I to complain? Up there where we can"t see them, blinded by daylight"-he pointed up into the tree, or through it-"stars are exploding. Have you ever seen an elephant die?" He rolled his eyes up, then closed them, shaking his head.
Rested, the bee began beating its wings again, and apparently whatever had been wrong before was no longer wrong, for it lifted from its place between the monk"s two toes, flying backward, then forward, or so it seemed to Vlemk, and zoomed toward the trunk of the tree. It moved on past the trunk in the direction of the Queen, and suddenly Vlemk"s heart floundered. It flew straight to the Queen"s lower lip and settled there. Vlemk was up at once, leaping like a flea, and dropped down on his knees beside the Queen and flailed his right hand above her face to drive the bee off. Horrified, too shocked to flail his hand again, he saw the bee lower its stinger into the pink of her lip-slowly, deliberately, it seemed to Vlemk-then fly away. The Queen"s eyes popped open and she gave a little cry. She raised her hand to her mouth.
"Oh no!" Vlemk exclaimed without a sound. "He"ll die now," the monk said. "You"ve killed him; or he"s killed himself." He still had his eyes closed. "That"s what comes of falling in love with the things of this world. Let them be-let them batter and claw themselves to death, as they will. In the end they"ll be better off for it, believe me. Freed souls, pure spirit! The same as they were before matter undid them, with all its serpentine twists and accidents." The monk waved his hand, still with eyes closed. "I know, I know," he said wearily. "You don"t believe me."
The Queen rolled her eyes to left and right in panic, poking at her lip with two fingers, trying to make out what had happened and where she was.
"It"s all right," said Vlemk with gestures. "A bee stung you."
She stared at him, closed her eyes again, then opened them and touched her mouth with the tip of just one finger.
The monk stretched out on his back, as if dismissing them.
Gingerly, as if her body were as bruised as her dress was torn, the Queen sat up and looked up the hill toward the palace. "What am I doing here?" she asked. Then her eyes widened and she raised her hand to keep him from answering.
Rising, giving a little bow, Vlemk invited her to continue with him if she was ready. She seemed to consider it carefully, then at last nodded.
Until they reached the palace gate, the Queen walking with both hands on Vlemk"s arm, putting her feet down one after another with the care of an invalid, occasionally reaching up with a troubled gesture, pushing her hair back or briefly covering her eyes, neither Vlemk nor the Queen said a word. At the gate she hesitated, looking in toward the great, arched door like a stranger, then glanced at Vlemk and, after an instant, bowed her head. With her right foot she abstractedly drew something in the yellow-white pebbles of the road, a small, perfect square like the beginning of one of his boxes. "Will you come in with me?" she asked.
Vlemk sighed, imagining what the servants would say behind their hands, what they would suppose about his bringing her home in this bedraggled condition, long after breakfast time, her lower lip bright red and swollen. She was looking at him earnestly, on the verge of withdrawing her question, and, to save her that further embarra.s.sment, however trifling, Vlemk the box-painter nodded and gave a little shrug.
Now they had another problem. It seemed that the Queen had no key to the gate-if she"d started out with one, she"d lost it somewhere-and so they took two stones from the side of the road and banged on the iron, at first politely, then with all their force. Suddenly the door of the palace opened and the Queen"s greyhounds came bounding out, followed by a stooped old man. Barking noisily, leaping like deer, the dogs charged the gate as if trained to eat intruders alive. There were five of them, lean as eels, their eyes rolling wildly and their teeth like razors, hurling spittle to left and right. "Smakkr! Lokkr! Zmlr!" cried the Queen, but even at the sound of her voice they seemed not to know her, bounding up again and again and biting empty air. She put her hand between the bars of the gate, then s.n.a.t.c.hed it back. "Down, Klauz!" she shouted, furious. "Eerzr! Down, boy!" The old man was still some distance back, moving without hurry, leaning hard on his cane, throwing a shout to the dogs from time to time, but only from a feeble civility. Now, however, the most cunning of the dogs, or perhaps the most suspicious, was showing signs of confusion. He hung back, head slung sideways, still barking as tumultuously as the others but no longer bounding up. The Queen, too, had noticed it. "Zmlr!" she cried, as loud as she could shout, her face red with anger, and now another dog, perking up his ears, showed uncertainty. Suddenly the two dogs were snarling at the others, interfering with their leaps, and in an instant all five dogs had changed their ways completely, whimpering and whistling in their throats like puppies, pressing their narrow noses between the bars, crying for a pat from the Queen. The old man, seeing it, began to hurry.
"Fool!" shouted the Queen when he was near enough to hear, "is this how you manage our watchdogs?
"Oh, Mistress, Mistress," cried the gatekeeper, tears running down his face, and wrung his hands.