Kalpa Imperial (5 page)

And what happened next, you ask? Oh, good people, everything had been arranged, as you can imagine. Or can’t imagine, since if you could imagine anything you wouldn’t have come here to listen to stories and whine like silly old women if the storyteller leaves out one single detail. So, next, another nobleman received the whip from the hands of the prince, who then approached his mother. The empress stooped, because her son was still a little boy, and held out the polished locket that hung from her neck on the chain of black iron links. She opened it. The boy spat into it, onto a face and name cut in the white stone and half scratched out with a sharp tool, the face and name of the dead man, the emperor, his father.

No, I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you the name of the ninth emperor of the Hehvrontes dynasty, because I don’t know it. Nobody does. It’s a name that is not remembered. His guilt and treason, so they said, had been so horrible that his name was never to be pronounced again. Moreover, that name was erased from the annals, the laws, the decrees, from history books, official registries, monuments, coins, escutcheons, maps, poems. Poems, because the emperor had written songs and poems ever since he was a boy. Unfortunately he’d been a good poet, good enough that the people got hold of his verses and sang them, back in those happy days when he reigned in peace. And to tell you the truth, many of his poems survived despite everything, and it’s said that Livna’lams heard them sung in distant provinces when he himself was emperor. But memory is weak, and that’s a blessing, so say the wise. And I know, because I know a lot of things, that it was a wise man who said or wrote that time’s mirror loses all it reflects. Memory is weak, and people had forgotten where those songs came from. What mattered was that the name be forgotten. And it was.

So the empress left the despicable locket open on her breast, turned her back on the broken statue, and started back to the palace with her son. Then came the procession. Everybody, the most important persons first, the others following, finally the servants, passed the statue, and all did their utmost to express hatred and contempt. Some spat on it, some kicked it, some struck it with sticks or chains or their belts, some smeared it with mud or muck, and some, hoping that their exploit would reach the ears of the empress, went so far as to bring a little bag full of yesterday’s turds and empty them out on the marble.

On their return to the galleries of the palace, the prince and the empress saluted each other and parted. She would spend the rest of the morning in meetings with her ministers; in the afternoon she was occupied with affairs of justice and official proceedings. The little boy met with his teachers and studied history, geography, mathematics, music, strategy, politics, dance, falconry, and all the things an emperor has to know so that later on he can do everything that makes him feel that doing it makes him the emperor.

I said he was a sorrowful prince, young Livna’lams; he was a bright one too, alert, intelligent. There’s another of the advantages of sorrow: it doesn’t dull the intellect as depression and rancor do. His teachers had soon discovered that the boy learned in ten minutes what might take most boys an hour, not to mention totally moronic princes incapable of learning anything. And as he was seven, an important age, and as the noblemen were always present during his studies to supervise the process, they had arrived at a tacit agreement to depart, secretly, from the Protocol: the teachers taught what they had to teach, Livna’lams learned what he had to learn, and then everybody could go do what they pleased—the schoolmasters could burrow into their books, or write boring treatises on themes they believed to be original and important, or get drunk, or play dice, or plot crimes against their colleagues, and the prince could seek a little solitude.

Sometimes he found it in the music rooms, sometimes in the stables or the libraries. But he always found it in the far corners of the palace gardens. Only if he was extremely lucky could he touch an instrument, talk to the horses and the mares with young foals, or read a book, without a music teacher appearing, or a riding master, or a librarian, bowing and scraping and asking to be of service or just standing around waiting for orders. But almost never, or in truth never, was there anyone under the garden walls, among the dense thickets, the hidden benches, the bricked-up doors, the dry fountains, the pergolas. I don’t know what the prince did there. I think he just let time pass. I think he saw and heard things that had not been included in the Protocol. I think that, sorrowfully as ever, he tried to love something—beetles with hard, iridescent wingcases, sprouting weeds, the dirt, stones fallen from the walls.

Now listen carefully, because one day something happened. The day was grey and muggy, and what happened was this: the prince heard voices. I don’t mean he went mad or was divinely inspired. He heard somebody talking, and it alarmed him.

Weren’t the librarians and the riding masters enough? Was he going to have to start hiding even from the gardeners? He looked around, thinking that was it: some idiot had discovered these forgotten corners of the garden and decided to acquire merit by getting the paths sanded, the trees pruned, the benches restored, and worst of all, the thickets cut down.

“I think you’re as crazy as I am,” said a mild, slow voice.

A burst of laughter, and a second voice said, “Friend, I can’t say you’re wrong.” This voice was deeper, richer, stronger.

Those aren’t gardeners, Livna’lams said to himself. Gardeners don’t talk like that, or laugh like that. And he was right. Do any of you have the honor of being acquainted with a gardener? They are admirable people, believe me, but they don’t go around making comments on their own or other people’s mental condition. They stay close to the ground, and know many names in different languages, and nothing in this world impresses them much, since they see life in the right way, as it should be seen, from below looking up, and in concentric circles. But what do you know about all that and how could it interest you? All you want to know is what happened in the palace garden that day when the prince heard voices.

All right, all right, I’ll tell you what happened, just as truly as if I’d been there myself. Those aren’t gardeners, the little boy said to himself, and so nobody’s going to come and clear out the thickets; and that pleased him. And since he was pleased, he got up from the steps he’d been sitting on and walked, trying not to make noise, towards the place where the men were talking. Now, he wasn’t used to walking silently in an overgrown garden; he might manage to be noiseless in the palace corridors, but not here. He trod on a dry stick, a pebble rolled under his foot, he brushed up against a bush, and then, there in front of him, was a huge man, the tallest, broadest man he’d ever seen, very dark, with coal-black beard and hair and eyes. The man took hold of the prince’s arm with a gigantic, powerful hand. The prince squeaked out, “How dare you, you insolent fellow!”

The giant laughed. It was the deep, tremendous laugh Livna’lams had heard a minute earlier. But he didn’t let go. “Ah ha ha ha!” he went, and then, “Come see what we’ve got here!”

He wasn’t talking to the prince but to the owner of the other voice, who was standing behind the big man. This one was shorter and slighter, lanky, also very tanned, cleanshaven, with tangled black hair, bright black eyes that looked amused, a wide mouth and a long, delicate neck.

“I think it might be best to let him go,” he said in a lazy, quiet voice.

“Why?” said the giant. “Why should I? No telling how long he’s been listening. Better not let him go. Better give him a good beating to teach him not to spy, so he forgets that he even came around here this morning.”

“No beatings,” said the other man. “Unless you want us shorter by a head.”

The big fellow considered this possibility, and you can bet your puny little life savings that he didn’t like it; he opened his fist and let the boy go. The prince brushed off his silken sleeve and looked at the two men. He wasn’t afraid. They say princes are never afraid but don’t believe it, it’s a lie. They’re afraid not only when they ought to be but sometimes when there’s nothing to fear, and there have even been some who have lived in fear and died of fear. But Livna’lams wasn’t afraid. He looked at them and saw they wore coarse clothing like fieldworkers or bricklayers, ordinary sandals, a worn pouch hanging from the belt. He also saw that they weren’t afraid of him, which didn’t surprise him—what was there to fear?—and that they didn’t seem disposed to bow or do homage or await his orders in silence. That did surprise him.

“Who are you?” he asked them.

“Oh, you’d like to know that, wouldn’t you now!” said the great big fellow.

This totally non-Protocolish reply, this rude and blustering reply, didn’t offend the prince at all. He liked it.

“Yes, I’d like to know,” he said, crossing his arms.

“But I’m not going to tell you, snotnose.”

“Hey, hey, Renka,” said the other man.

“And I’d like to know what you’re doing here, too,” said the young prince.

“We’d just finished our work, Prince,” said the shorter man, “and we were taking a break.”

“How did you know who I am?” said the prince, at the same time as the big fellow said, “This tadpole is a prince?”

The man answered Renka first: “Yes, which is why I told you that if you gave him a lick they’d have our heads,” and then, to Livna’lams: “By your clothes.”

“What does a bricklayer know about what a prince wears?” the boy asked.

“Listen, tadpole,” said Renka. “Listen up, because I don’t care if you’re a prince. We aren’t bricklayers. We’re adventurers, and therefore philosophers, and therefore although we aren’t going to beat you up, being fond of having our heads attached at the neck, neither are we going to play monkey tricks and bob up and down in reverence to Your Majesty.”

At this the boy did something really wonderful, really magnificent. He uncrossed his arms, threw his head back, and laughed with all his heart.

“We aren’t clowns, either,” said Renka, deeply insulted.

But the other man, who was called Loo’Loö, which isn’t a name or if it’s a name it’s a very unusual one, threw his head back too, and holding his sides he laughed right along with the prince. Big Renka looked at them, very serious, and scratched his head, and when Livna’lams and Loo’Loö quit laughing and wiped their eyes, he said, “If you want my opinion, you’re both crazy. I’m not surprised. Philosophers and princes have a definite tendency to go crazy. Though I never heard of a tadpole with sense enough to go crazy.”

The boy laughed again and then all three sat down on the ground and talked.

They talked about a lot of things that day, but when the sun was high in the sky the prince stood up and said he had to go, they’d be expecting him in the palace for lunch.

“Too bad,” said Renka. “We’ve got cheese,” and he gave a loving pat to the pouch that hung from his wide belt, “and we’re going to buy wine and fruit.”

The prince took this as an invitation. “But I can’t,” he said.

“How come?” said Renka.

Young Livna’lams turned away and set off. After a couple of steps, he stopped and looked back at the two men. Loo’Loö was still sitting on the ground, chewing a grass-blade. “I don’t know,” he said. “Tomorrow, when your work’s done, will you come here again?”

“I say no,” said Renka. “I say we’ve sweated enough in this damned part of this hellish city, but he insists on staying, and since I’m kind and generous and have a heart as tender as a dove in love and can’t watch a friend suffer, I let him have his way.” He sighed.

“Until tomorrow, then,” said the prince.

The two waved goodbye.

“What’ll you get to eat, tadpole?” Renka shouted after him.

“Fish!” the prince called back, running towards the palace.

He had never run before. You realize that he was seven years old and this was the first time he’d ever run? But within sight of the palace he slowed down, and walking as the princes of the Hehvrontes walked, he entered the dining room where the nobles, the knights, the servants were waiting for him, the whole jigsaw puzzle all ready to be put together. The prince sat down, looked at his empty plate, and said, “I want fish.”

It was like an earthquake. The Protocol in no way prevented an hereditary prince from ordering whatever he wanted for lunch, but nobody had ever heard this hereditary prince open his mouth to express any wish, and certainly not a wish for some particular food, since he’d never had any appetite. It cannot be determined whether a cook actually had a nervous breakdown and two footmen fainted, but the story is, and it seems to be true, that when informed, the empress raised an eyebrow—some say it was the left eyebrow, others say the right—and lost the thread of what she’d been saying to one of her ladies of honor. The young prince ate two servings of fish.

Next day—no. I’m not going to tell you everything that happened next day, since it was just the same as the day before. Except for one of those things the Hehvrontes couldn’t prescribe in the Imperial Protocol: it was sunny. How do I know that? Ah, my little man, that’s my privilege, you know. And I have a further privilege, which is that you don’t know what I know nor how I know it. So it was sunny, and the lanky fellow was lying in the grass, half hidden by some shrubbery, and big Renka was standing watching the overgrown path that led from the palace. It led to the palace, too, but Renka was watching for somebody coming.

“Think he’ll come?” he asked.

Loo’Loö was watching a lazy lizard, maybe, or the weeds over his head. “I’d like to say he will,” he said.