Hob Broun - Cardinal Numbers - Stories

Evening descended quickly, with click beetles at their posts, fumes of new dust on the air. The flock politely breathed together, formed rhomboids, pentagons. Zoltan, the Shepherd, did not know patience as a word or an idea, but he was replete at the end of the winter fast simply from watching worms move through a hunk of cheese. He fed his reed pipes into the fire piece by piece.

The ragged shape stumbling over bogs in a conflation of bell-chiming was Cassius, the Leper. Moonlight very much became him. He preened with despair, groping for edible mist. How could he live on integrity alone? But no one else had cared to design his banishment. Clear chiming amid the drift. He called out indictments to challenge the Emperor: Flaccid in the pose of strength, you have outlived your time. Resourceless! Unbegotten! Spayed!

Mating cavies filled the afternoon with spray and newts tumbled out of the trees. It was the second day of spring; from guano-spattered ramparts the disconsolate Emperor looked abroad. Where once there had been garden, roses to gather and tangerines to squeeze, there now was featureless meadow. Where there had been meadow on which to ride out hawking, there was a tangle of thornbush and stranglers. No more Animating Divinity in and of the earth, no more heroism, no will to overcome.

Possibly, things had not been disremembered, but only, as Rodolfo said, elided. And so the Emperor slept on a board while his Confessor made a bed of lavender and furs, brooded over a jug of moss water while the Little Father, sipping clove liqueur, played motets at the harmonium. And so Ilse was still unrepentant, raking her sleepless flesh with nuggets of bee varnish. But the route was lost. She could no more dream her frescoes of venery.

The Woodsman made history. Deranged, disarranged, he had never been more himself. He issued edicts, decrees. From the fountainhead of Sven! And the people shrugged, mumbled, obeyed. He minted coins with his profile on both sides. He stayed executions, bestowed lands and titles on deserving hermits. His shackles dissolved in rust. He went blind.

Spark struck tinder and caught. Cassius was no less entitled to spring appetite. The lampreys he had speared from the common sewer now were ready to be dangled in smoke. He hurled florid epithets at all the dead chefs of the land. Misanthropes! Fakirs! Let them poke in middens for their supper. And chase ghosts through long meat kitchens. The Leper hunkered down. Split skin, fat and smoke. Such aromas as approached fell back from the crater that had once been his nose.

The Emperor’s last Queen had betrayed him, disgraced him with a pardon-seller, and was beheaded. Now his Concubine sat beside him in the chapel and they stared at the malachite-inlaid casket rumored to house the Queenly remains. Hadn’t she been gutted, then packed with opals? (Or was it potatoes?) And what of the alley trade in bone amulets? Ilse whispered that he had every right to break the seal, and go ahead, don’t wait. He took up her cool fingers and with them pressed shut his eyes.

Henceforward, all sins are venial. Was that the way Rodolfo said it?

Gathering blooms for a votive bouquet, Lenore saw the Shepherd as he came over the road with a lamb in his arms. And what a fine countenance, she told herself, such purity. Zoltan had for so long been asleep inside the smell of lanolin that he could not begin to understand the warm nuances through which passed the Virgin’s gaze. All he could think of to do was to open the lamb’s throat with his poniard, letting its blood into the chalkdust of the road as a kind of offering.

In the same dark library vault where the Confessor combed through enchiridions of prophecy, where, amid moth powder and glue fragrance, Ilse refined her science with codices of nerve expansion, mucosal viscosity, Francois Rogelio IV, the last of his line, bowed over family chronicles and wept at the loneliness of power. Under his hands the parchment was stiffly rucked, its illuminations flaking. The old proverbs made a deadly weight. At opposite ends of a fracture, a fissure, and nothing to hand across.

Some petty villain mixed feathers into the hay and now the Little Father’s best stallion had foundered. This vexed him quite as much as His Majesty’s whimpers, not to say Ilse’s pious melancholia. Yes, he could see they were under compulsion — like ants guarding larval packages under a rock — but this was not a useful recognition. And what was he supposed to say, take out and smash all the mirrors? Hazards, both of them, in any palace. Not that Rodolfo necessarily liked eating alone, but nobody else knew how to relish food. They saw the most succulent curries as masking ground glass, the perfect blushing fruit as a vehicle for parasites. So it was his part to play from the great carved mahogany chair, to stretch forth his arm, there there, kiss the ring, my child, partake of serenity. And among all these demands on his patience, someone had found a motive and murdered his favorite horse. Revenge was too small a thing to stay for long in the Confessor’s mind. Hoofbeats, hoofbeats. He might go down into the village for a game of dominoes. Perdition. He had only to stretch forth his arm.

The flock was long gone over the hill. Silver bubbles broke behind the weir. Woodbine and dog rose neatly shared a single trellis. The Virgin made a steamed pudding of blood and offal of which, until she coaxed his hand around a spoon, Zoltan took no more than he could admire with his eyes. She watched the motion of his burly stalwart arms. This was a different kind of grace. Not like her salad greens planted as radiant spokes from the wellhead, or like afternoon sun on the flank of a pail. Better. Not so definite. Zoltan explained that he’d been sent out with the animals just as soon as he could walk. Seasons might follow seasons without his seeing anyone, and so, not even wanting to, he had taught himself to sing. Lenore described without a blush what she did each night to fall asleep. They wanted to tell each other everything, or at least as much as could be remembered.

Ilse had come far to reach the cave mouth, far enough that her naked legs were all cut up with nettles and sedge grass. The Leper vibrated. She asked for his invitation in such a sweet, warming voice. He said, do come in and sit right down there, all with the clapper of his bell. The Concubine did not seem the least bit nervous or shy. Cassius thought, well, I could be more than a creature, but he was still wary of a trick. She picked stones out of the packed clay floor and rhymed them. He presented her a birdwing fan. Side by side, their legs were a single description. I envy you, she said. Aging is merciless in my profession. The Leper was a young man. He was not surprised when she took down her beautiful hair and with it washed him up and down.

Effigies dangled from the highest turret. Cactus blocked the pantry entrance and garbage crammed the bake ovens full. Whelping went on under slogans written in candle smoke on the walls of the ransacked library, and the old desert men traded puppies. There was an intricate system of demerits. Turtle eggs appeared at every dungeon level. The nights got longer. Loyalties went untested. Life was cheap.

With grunts and bewilderment, the people massed to say contrition.

Rodolfo said go in peace.

OLIVIA FROM HER BEDROOM window watched the honeyed light of October sunset move slowly up the street of brownstones to cast long shadows and soften contours. It turned leafless trees to mahogany, flared richly on the windows opposite, alluding to darkwood interiors, a warm sepia comfort of roast meat and carved furniture. Olivia brushed out her long, light-brown hair. Night fell and the city filled itself with rhetoric.

FROM the parlor of the house on West Seneca Street in Buffalo she had looked out at junipers in silhouette like hearse plumes. There you always knew you were at the edge of wilderness. Factory soot came down with the snow. The immigrant shanties were just waiting for a match. Her father saw, practically, that he would never grow beyond the ceramic insulator business. He gave Olivia two years at Rose Hill College for Women, and then sent her to Aunt Catherine in New York.