Page 76 - Vol V. #8

Monstrous Men (continued from preceding page)
us they stopped, confused. In the midst of them shambled a wild-eyed man, unshaven and un- kempt, our president.
rupted by his own invincibility, a man who had no friends because he’d had them all murdered.
My musicians abandoned their craft and stood and yelled, “Greetings, our president,” the way the etiquette handbook had instructed. I begrudged it, a little; it was his place, so surely he should have been greeting us?
With no conductor, the music and clapping wa- vered on the verge of chaos, then managed a fleeting perfection. The functionaries were ad- vancing on us. The last thing I saw was the deter- mined face of Hermes as, my arms gripped from behind by one of his colleagues, he pressed his thumbs into my eyes and expertly turned them in their sockets, a second’s work to put my lights out forever.
Our glorious leader looked like a barbarian who had just been roused. But above all, he looked anguished, at the sight of us all, at the greeting,
at the sound of the music, which groaned into life again as soon as the children sat down. The presi- dent beckoned an aide, who beckoned another, and they all had a hurried discussion that ran to a silence culminating in a collective stare across the room to the man I knew as Hermes.
I can’t remember how many republics Parisians have had, and their short-arsed tyrants, Robespi- erres and Napoleons; their oppressors have never been able to enforce their stupid laws. Parisians keep their air of liberty, even if equality and fra- ternity may be sadly lacking. Perhaps it’s all to do with their natural obstinacy. They make it clear that they don’t like me stealing their thunder in concert halls, or teaching their morose children at the Conservatory. But as long as I don’t over- draw at the bank, or slight any of their dignitaries at official receptions, I am now, and forever, one of them.
Just as I registered this, I was distracted by L’s entry, behind the audience. She started grace- fully enough, but then her posture became combative. Her smile vanished when she saw the empty chairs, and realised, I assumed later, that her unveiling had been cancelled. She sent an agitated, open-mouthed look towards us, and shouted, “Play!”
My apartment overlooks the Batignolles Park, said to be beautiful. But, probably, it’s just a park, variegated in spring and autumn, green in sum- mer, white in winter, full of dog-walking dames, starchy nannies, and crow-like concierges.
And, concentrated, smiling, almost, my genii ig- nored their conductor and stuttered into musical momentum. I was too busy watching the cabaret out in the audience.
The palace factota were puzzled, hesitant. None of them watched L as she stepped quickly to the cur- tain guarding her picture, and wrapped the cord around her wrist. The president saw her though and, I thought, was begging her not to pull it.
N described it for me all the same. She had been the child who feigned sickness on the evening
of L’s unveiling to cover her ineptitude on the clarinet: a genuine stroke of genius, ensuring the survival of her sight. At the age of twenty five, having gained an expertise enabling her to play anything, in any style, she had wriggled under that Iron Curtain, and made her way to Paris, and to me. She had become my eyes, and the source of all my comforts.
Declaiming the title over and over, L pulled. The masterpiece was simply a giant-sized rendition, on the palace wall, of the presidential portrait we saw in every public place. There were some dif- ferences: he was wearing a tatty brocaded dress- ing gown much like the one worn by the living, seething president, and he looked much like the man we saw; wizened, mean, dull-eyed and cor-
One night at a recital I was giving, it was whis- pered during the interval that a lady from my
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Monstrous Men