Дэймон Найт - Orbit 12

The music was nearer now, coming and going about the mountainside as intricately as its own measure. And its effect on me was measureless.

“Whoever the rogue is who plays, he has Time where he wants it,” I said, rising to my feet. “I’ve eaten enough. Lise, though it be the devil himself at his music, I must dance with you!”

She came into my arms, that beautiful willowy girl, and we danced, so that I felt for the first time the warmth of her vulnerable front against my body, and knew the delicate perfume of her in my nostrils. Her movements against me were so light, so taunting and in tune, that a special spring primed my step, powered by more than music. With a cry, Lambant and Chloe also jumped up and moved into each other’s embrace.

So we were stepping lightly before the musician came into sight. When he rounded the rock, we scarcely heeded him, so rapt were we in our art, so much a part of our company he had become. I only saw that he was old and small and stocky, playing very gaily on his hurdy-gurdy, and that a man-lizard accompanied him.

As long as the music went, so went we. It seemed we could not stop, or had no need of stopping. It was more than dance we made; it was courtship, as the music told us, as our own closeness, our own movements, our own looks told us. When we fell apart gasping, and the music died, we were together more intimately than before.

We took up the bottles of wine and passed some to the gallant old musician and his friend. The hurdy-gurdy player was small and densely built, so that he seemed in his fustian clothes as thick as the city wall. His complexion was swarthy and we saw how old he was, his eyes sunken and his mouth receding, though there were black locks yet on the fringes of his white head. My friend and I recognised him at once. We had seen his likeness that very day.

“Do you not live by the flea market, O tuneful one?” asked Lambant.

“It’s undeniable, sir.” His thin, used voice had none of the brilliance of his music. “I have a poor shack there, if it’s all the same to you.”

“We saw you portrayed on one of Master Bledlore’s glasses.”

The old musician nodded. He came forward, holding out his instrument. It was painted all over yellow and bore a picture on its casing. We looked and saw there two children, chasing each other with arms outstretched. They were laughing. We knew the workmanship at once—and the children.

“This must be Bledlore’s art! These children—they are the same ones on the azure vase in his studio?”

“As you so rightly say, sirs! The very same, bless their lovely hearts. Since Giovanni used me as his model to paint, he painted these other models here as his fee. They are my little grandchildren—or at least I should say they were, and the apple of my eye, until the thrice-cursed chills of last winter carried them both off. They would dance all day to my music if you let them, pretty little things. But the magicians at the North Gate put a spell on them and now they are no more than compost, alas!” He began to weep. “I have nothing left of them but their little picture here,” and he cuddled his hurdy-gurdy to his cadaverous cheek.

“How fortunate you are to have that consolation,” said Chloe pertly. “Now give us another tune, for we can’t dance so nimbly to your tears as to your music.”

“I must make for Heist, to earn myself a few kopettos,” he said. “For it will soon be winter, however hard you young people dance.” He shuffled on, and the lizard-man followed, upright on his two sturdy legs and giving us the smile of tight-lipped kindness which belongs to his kind. As for Lambant and me, we fell to kissing and petting our pretty dears when the others were scarcely out of sight.

“Poor old man, his music pleased us but not himself,” said Lise’s beautiful lips, close to mine.

I laughed. “The object of art is not always consolation!” I pulled her dark hair about my face.

“I don’t really know what the object of art is—but then, I still don’t know what the object of life is, either. Fancy, Prian, those little children dead, and yet their images living on after them, engraved on something as fragile as glass!” She sighed. “The shadow so eclipsing the substance . . .”

“Well, art should be enduring, shouldn’t it?”

“Yes, but you might say the same about life.”

“You girls are so morbid! You talk so, when what you are enduring is only my hand groping up your silken underclothes . . . Ah, you delightful creature!”

“Oh, dearest Prian, when you do that ... No art can ever . . .”

“Ah, sweet bird, now if only . . . yes . . .”

But there is little merit in reporting on a conversation as incoherent as ours became for, of all the arts, none translates into words less readily than that we then pursued. Suffice it merely to say that I—in the words of my most favourite poet—”‘twixt solemn and joke, enjoyed the lady.”

So much for us. As for the meteorological phenomena, the beautiful anticyclonic weather brought down a sunset of ancient armorial gold, so that the world glowed like an old polished shield before night sank in upon it, and scarcely a wind stirred meanwhile. The six-hour spell on our flying carpet was allowed to run out, until it lay there limp and useless, incapable of further transports—and, at last, the same condition held for lucky Lambant and me, relaxed in the arms of our still loving ladies.

We slept there in a huddle, the lamps of the distant fair our nightlights, with kisses for prayers.

A cold predawn stirring woke us. One by one, we sat up and laughed at our negligence. The girls attended to their hair. In one corner of the sky the cloud cover had opened like a reluctant jaw, showing light in its gullet, but the light was as chill as the breeze that moved about our temples. We rose and made our way down the mountainside, following the path among the goosefoot, the amaranthus, and the gaudy spikes of broom. No movement or illumination showed from the city; up near the grey walls of Heist, however, where the mountain dialect was still spoken, dull-gleaming lanterns showed that peasants were already astir, going to a well or making for their slanting fields. Birds were beginning to call, without breaking the mountain hush.

We came down to the riverside and headed for a wooden bridge. An old wooden wizard still stood guarding it, leaning and well weathered as an ancient goat—but I saw that flowers had been laid fresh in his wormy hand, even this early in the day, and the symbolism was cheering. Taking Lise about the waist, I said, “However early you wake, someone is awake before you. However light you sleep, someone sleeps lighter. Whatever your mission, someone goes forth on an earlier one.”

Lambant took it up, and then the dear girls, improvising, starting to chant and sing their words as we crossed over the creaking slats of the bridge.

“However light your sleep, the day is lighter. However bright your smile, the sun is brighter.”

“However overdue the dawn, no dues delay it . . . And what it owes the morn, in dew ‘twill pay it.” My clever little puss!

“However frail the blossoms that you bring, year after year, they still go blossoming.”

“The water runs below our feet, ever-changing, ever-sweet, the birdlings burble and the brittle beetles beat!”

“However long night breezes last, day overthrows them, though day’s overcast.”

“And what a world of never-never lies in that little word, However. . . “

We skirted the closed booths of the fair, which looked tawdry in the dregs of night, and moved toward the portal of the city. A first watery ray of sun, piercing over the chilly meadows, lit the huddle of buildings beyond the wall. Its beam was thrown back by a window. Looking up, I perceived it was Master Bledlore’s casement, tight closed. He would be sleeping still, obsessed and stuffy, his lungs scarcely moving for fear of stirring dust in his studio.