Charles Newman - In Partial Disgrace

Once in the East

A host marched in helmets

A man was with them on horseback

With two dogs.

I pulled him down from his horse

Where he fell I stood up

I put on his clothes, whistled his dogs

Blew into my cupped hands

As the helmets drifted dead in the stream

The ladies were playing desultory tennis in men’s whites when the Topsy party returned, a brace of Chetvorah chasing down and retrieving any ball which left the court. The straw target was stuffed black with arrows.

The Professor was red-faced but proud, and Father walked behind, pale but also proud. The Princess waved her racquet, and the Professor, showing off, dropped into a half crouch as Topsy heeled.

“Nervorum atque cerebri mala affecto (don’t get creative on me),” Father hissed in camp Latin.

The Chetvorah sat on either side of the net like referees, waiting for a mishit and pointedly ignoring Topsy. The Professor thought they were slyly winking at him.

“And how did my little darling do?” the Princess queried breathlessly, one eye on her pet and another on a ball rolling slowly off the court.

“She takes it all very well,” the Professor beamed. “Not bad at all,” Father informed the party, “considering her rational part is defectuous and impeached.” Then he went to kiss Mother, whose hair was still wet. “How goeth it?” he whispered in her ear.

“Oh, we do not enjoy seeing one another, but would be unhappy if we didn’t,” Ainoha mused. “She’s not in love with her husband, and what’s worse, not in love with anyone else.” She had on that fake brave grin which always affected Felix more than her natural smile.

“If I were religious, I would pray for one thing, dear heart,” she whispered as Father took her in his arms, “and that is, we ought to leave. . the retail business.”

“My thoughts exactly.” He held her close. “The best pet is a pet idea.”

They walked back to the Professor and Princess, who were also talking earnestly and intimately. Topsy was calm, golden flecks in her hazel eyes.

“The time has come for the ultimate reinforcement,” Felix gastriloquized, and after taking the cord from the Professor’s pocket, he ambled out on the lawn away from the court. “You see, training finally becomes four-dimensional, not by aspiring beyond the material, but by humblingly, gruelingly, and systematically working every fine point into the body until it becomes second nature.”

First he gently pulled on a fold of Topsy’s neck, then released the cord nonchalantly, keeping the flat of his hand on the place the cord had occupied. Turning to his audience, he rasped, “It’s the last mile, of course, which is the hardest to hold.” Topsy blinked coquettishly.

“Care, take care,” Father whispered as he drew away from her with a slow backward tango-tread, tracing out a pause in which his partner could play in and adorn. Then he raised his right arm perpendicularly and gently pressed his left hand against her back.

“Toho,” he whispered, and the dog slowly turned her head, eye on his hand, tail flagging, but mute. “Bend,” he orated softly, “ bend ,” and Topsy slowly arched her back, raised her head, and lifting a forepaw ever so slightly, she turned and twirled.

“Utter transcendence,” the Princess swooned.

“A million-dollar move,” the Professor ejaculated.

“That will do,” Father whispered to Topsy. Then, balancing on one boot, exhaling as the breath was drawn out of the dog as well as the assembly, gradually spreading his hands as if he were pulling apart dough, all movement was suspended. The air itself seemed to disappear, sucked away, and the earth pulled all heads downwards. Then Felix slowly pivoted on one leg, and scarcely giving the sign of a downbeat, he concluded the muted elegy as all the players resumed breathing.

“All we want in this world, all we want,” Father whispered hoarsely, “is that the damn dog follow our lead, that she walk calmly by our side with her head high.” A tear came to his eye. “But. . this is all too rare. Not one in a thousand dogs is worth keeping.”

“But to move the patient from hysterical inversion to common misery and to forget the self-dramatizing,” the Professor comforted him, “ that is progress!”

Waterlily was reaching a harsh crescendo, a cosmic C-minor, then a roulade of one-and-a-half octaves of stunning rapidity. She hurled out the notes to the sky, neither words nor sounds, but distended spheres, mucoid globules unattached to anything.

From thirteen gods

and fourteen goddesses

I am descended

From my son

I begat myself once again

blinder of hosts.

My name is now Astinge

And by that only I shall be called

As I go to the nations.

She was caterwauling like a bathhouse nymph.

The chatter was animated on the terrace that late afternoon. “Can you imagine how glorious it is,” the Princess giggled, “to see into a dog, and to tease oneself into her exactly at her center, the place out of which she exists as a dog?”

Felix had turned away from this, but was immediately cornered by the Professor.

“My gratitude is boundless, Councilor, but have you no concern at all that the Pzalmanzar method, this taking of the animal into liberality, is something of a trick?”

“Balderdash,” Felix replied in a stage whisper. “We are tricked into being born and tricked into staying alive. Each time we’re saved, it’s with a different trick.”

Öscar Ögur actually served drinks with aplomb, spilling only one tray, which no one mentioned. He had taken over for Catspaw, who could now be seen furiously ferrying Gubik downstream to the Penelope III , in the hope of catching a ride to overtake the Desdemona at Razacanum on her route to Chorgo, there to pick up the Valse de Mocsou . As Catspaw strained at the oars, Gubik stood in the bow of the copper-prowed caique, arms folded like Napoleon, caped and white-gloved, his swineherd’s Phrygian cap pulled tightly over his skull. As they drew abreast of the Penelope III, a rope net was thrown down from the scuppers and our prodigy scrambled aboard, his white gloves flashing, just as the frigate, with its magical cargo and dispirited crew, disappeared into a fogbank at the mill. Felix and Ainoha toasted him sadly and silently as his pig herd filled the woods with bellows of protest. The Professor noted irritably that he seemed to be carrying one of his custom plaid valises, and I realized that the red sash about his waist was the banner from my sister’s tomb.

After much cranking and cursing, the limousine finally started. The golden ponies in the far pasture galloped from corner to corner as the ignition coughed.

As a celebratory gesture, all the kennels, coops, and stables were flung open, and the menagerie entire was released for a run. Moccus and Epona thundered up and down the drive at forty miles per hour, packs of Chetvorah dove off into the woods for randy deer, arthritic seventeen-year-old cats tottered through portals, doves alighted on the furniture, chickens and ducks strutted fearlessly about, and the tame gray parrot, Arnulph, whom I hadn’t noticed for years, hopped from shoulder to shoulder. Topsy walked like royalty, calm and dignified amongst the miffed, milling Chetvorah.

The Professor thanked Father over and over.

“The Princess is always welcome,” Felix lied, “but keep her well clear of the stables. She gives off a scent of fear.”

But just as he concluded this, he realized the Princess was standing behind him and had already forgiven him.

“Topsy and I will be forever in your debt,” she said modestly.

“Ah, Prinzessin .” Felix bowed deeply and kissed her hand. “Now that you have seen a few miracles, perhaps you will begin to appreciate realism.”