Дэймон Найт - Orbit 12

“Pardon, pardon, I am naturally a man of passion and I forget myself. I trust you implicitly or I would not be taking you into my confidence. It’s no joke to be cuckolded—even worse to have to admit it. Why, I’m as virile as ever I was—No, no, Prian, before this wretched shadow play ends, listen!—I have my thugs and my spies to my command, never fear, but I want you to tell me if you have seen La Singla acting in any way untoward. In any way! I want you to watch her closely, since you are her friend and she trusts you, as I do.”

“I won’t add to your number of spies.”

“No, no, damn you, nothing dishonourable—just tell me what you see that’s suspicious, and keep watching, eh? And I’m thinking we should build up the part of Phalante the Bankrupt. Such a funny part, especially when you play it You’ve seen nothing untoward with her?”

It was not for me to mention La Singla’s visit to the plump astrologer, which was innocent for all I knew.

“I find it hard to believe such a virtuous woman would deign to deceive her husband, especially such a husband as you!”

He dug me in the ribs with an elbow notorious for its lethal bone structure.

“She doesn’t get much peace from a hot-blooded fellow like me, let me tell you here and now, but every woman is a rake at heart. Men are souls of virtue compared.”

Peace had not fallen on the river. The broken bridge remained unrepaired. Sunset was coming on. Sweet aromatic herbs were lit to one side, to affect the audience with their pleasant odours. A fleet of plesiosaurs cruised placidly up the stream, and the tips of the mountains turned pink as the valley disappeared in shadow. It was suddenly affecting, and it was over.

“Rubbish, rubbish!” Lemperer cried, jumping on his chair. “Not a witty line in the whole thing! Karagog had better improve on that dismal performance or I shall not be able to sit it through!”

But most people were amused. Now they cried for cold drinks to slake their thirsts, so hot was it in the tent Portinari came to sit next to me and we drank sherbet together.

“Well, it was a bagatelle, but very pleasing—and it had novelty!”

“When I was a boy, an old man on the Stary Most used to give The Broken Bridge in a barrel, with a candle for light. It is probably many centuries old.”

“Like The Visionaries ... All the same, this had artistry.”

“Artistry enough. ‘Hokum maybe, but striking theatre,’“ I quoted. “It reminded me of reality without making any ineffectual attempts to imitate it slavishly.”

“Besides, reality is so unpleasant . . . Think how we sit here in—well, moderate comfort, watching a succession of pictures, while behind the screen poor sweating half-naked wretches feed flares hot enough to roast themselves with.”

“Isn’t that the nature of all art—that the artist should suffer agonies to yield his audience one single twitch of delight!”

“Ah, then you have agreed to play Phalante once more! What else was old Lemperer talking about?”

Fortunately, I was spared telling any lies by a resounding series of chords on the harpsichord and the lighting up of the screen, onto which diverse dazzling figures burst, full of life and colour. Out jumped Karagog, with his long arms and his funny red hat such as they wear still in Byzantium, and the fun began. Although the story was little enough, plots are always less important than what they are stuffed with, and here the stuffing was of the richest.

Karagog tried to become a schoolmaster, but failed so miserably that the scholars chased him from the school; tried to join the circus, but fell from the high wire into a soup tureen; joined the army, but became terrified at the sound of cannon. Images pelted across the screen. The puppet master had contrived a zoetrope effect, so that, in the circus scenes, acrobats and jugglers skipped, leaped, and danced across the screen, some of them tossing clubs and balls as they went. And the parade of the soldiers, all in their great plumed hats, was magnificent, for they swung their arms as they went and the music played lillibullero.

The battle scene commenced. The screen darkened. Shots and screams were heard, and vivid cries of “Fire!” A lurid flickering light crossed the battlefield, where soldiers stood ready. Smoke was in the auditorium now—I heard Lemperer coughing and cursing. All at once the screen itself burst into flames, and the puppet operators were revealed behind, running madly from the flames. The whole tent was ablaze!

“You see—realism carried too far!” Portinari said, gasping with laughter as we ran out. A pile of broadsheets stood by the exit and I grabbed one as we went by. Outside, all was pandemonium. The puppets were being flung unceremoniously into a cart, while the assistants threw buckets of water at the blaze and the manager screamed. The flames were spreading to some bowers with trellises where wisteria grew.

“This will improve our attendance figures, I imagine,” Lemperer said, rubbing his hands. “What a blaze! It was madness to have flares inside a tent, as they did! Let’s just hope they don’t get it under control too quickly!”

Ashes of burnt tent were falling like autumn leaves. One settled on La Singla’s shoulder, she screamed, and Lemperer beat at it with blows which would have extinguished Vesuvius, so that his poor wife fell away from him shrieking in pain. Turning to me, gesturing ferociously, he said, “What an end to worry if she too went up in flames, eh?”

Portinari and I, and some of the others in the cast of The Visionaries , went to cool down in the nearest wine shop. In its darkest recess stood a keg of Bavarian beer, and of this the pair of us ordered two tankards. With mutual pledges, we lifted it foaming and amber and living to our lips.

“What an old bastard Lemperer is!” said Portinari, wiping his mouth and sighing.

“I wonder we work for him”

“Yet he has his humorous points. I recall when I first applied to him, I asked if he had any hints for a young actor and he said, ‘Yes, one above all: keep the sunny side of forty.’“

“Good advice—which I for one mean to follow.” I pulled out from my shirt the broadsheet I had picked up in the pleasure gardens and showed him the rhyme in black letters set at its foot:

We roared with laughter over it. “It was this inflammatory stuff, and not the flares which set the tent alight,” I said.

“I could do as well before you drain your tankard,” said Portinari.

“You have little faith in my capacity for Bavarian beer!”

I raised my tankard to my lips and commenced to drink, while my portly friend screwed his face into a ghastly enough grimace to make his Muse cower in submission. As I set the tankard down, he raised a hand, uttering a cry of triumph.

“Yes, ‘For puppets have no Hearts to give the Fair.’“

“No, no, wait—’Since Humans, unlike Puppets, Drink and Piss,’ It has to be an A,B,A,B, rhyme scheme!”

“I concede victory, my fabulous fat friend, and will prove to you that free beer is not so scarce as you may think . . .”

Eventually I made my way home for a siesta, going slowly by way of the coolest and most shadowed alleys. Much was on my mind besides the beer, for the shadow play had given me a splendid notion for our own comedy.