Charles Newman - In Partial Disgrace

“The next thing you know, we’ll be hunting her!” the Professor beamed.

“This child was not meant for the field, my friends. While she will raise many cocks, I fear you will get few shots.”

Topsy had lain down next to them, head between her forelegs. The Princess’s eyes began to dart again. “Shouldn’t one write all this down?”

“All dog literature is worthless, because it is written either by owners or scientists. Everything you want to know and more you will find in this pamphlet, Prinzessin,” Father bowed again as he handed her his private printing, Breaking Strange Dogs and Vicious Horses , bound in white satin. “I’ve inscribed it for you.” And she read it out, her voice quivering.

Who lives to learn, the properties of hounds,

To breed them first, and then to make them good,

To teach them to know, both voice and horne, by sounds,

To cure them too, from all that hurts their blood:

Let Her but buy this book, so shall she find

As much as may (for hounds) content her mind.

“I am not desirous of making you unsatisfied with anything you possess, Prinzessin,” Felix adumbrated, “but a judicious exertion on your part will add much to Topsy’s usefulness, as well as to your own enjoyment. Much may be done through the affections. Do not be contented with a disorderly cur, when a trifling addition to your pains will produce an extravagant companion.”

“I am most grateful for the proper commands,” the Princess said, a bit choked up.

As the two couples walked to the hissing limousine, Father took her arm. “I must tell you honestly, Prinzessin, such commands mustn’t smack of an order. Language is hardly absolute. Words have meaning only in the stream of life. And the world is, I’m afraid, full of independent subjects.” He opened the car door and Topsy raced by them, flinging herself into the back seat. The Princess pressed a small bag of uncut garnets into Father’s hand. Had she looked down, she could have picked up twenty more from the road.

“My husband often gets carried away with the spirituality of his projects,” Mother now confided, fearing a scene, while helping the Princess negotiate her way into the dark petit point interior of the limousine. “Let me send you on your way with some practical observations. First, the little hussy ought not be tied up, even if she wants it. Straining at her collar will throw out her elbows, and she will grow up bandy-legged. Two, if you must administer a powder, mix it with a little butter and smear it on her nose. She will readily lick it down. This is also the best time to pare her nails. Lastly, never lend your doggie to anyone, not even a brother. It may seem selfish, but an ignorant sportsman will bring you nothing but grief. I hope you will forgive me for saying so.”

The Princess did not reply, but for the first time in her visit did manage to make eye contact.

“And what departing advice have you for me, dearest lady?” the Professor queried, batting his coal-chunk eyes. But before Ainoha could answer, Felix had broken in:

“For you, sir, keep it simple, songful, and slow. And go easy on the melancholy.”

“And next time,” the Professor sang like a child, “we shall do the phui, phui, phui !”

So it was that the goldenischechow , Pouilly-Gepacht, was delivered back to her mistress with the silvered words of her commands written in a daybook, to demonstrate that even with the most spoiled of bitches, bloodsport can ultimately be put in the service of civility — that in all of us the urge to pounce can be turned, if not quite to grand effect, nevertheless to leading gestures and illusions of spectral beauty.

Leaving the estate in chastened profile, the Princess lay her hand on the Professor’s shoulder as he pulled his bowler ever more tightly on his head, while Topsy, punished but forgiven, could be seen in the front seat in more of a demi-plié than a rapt quivering point, but nevertheless scanning the barren fields for signs of life.

She would outlive both the Princess and the Professor, and from that day on, never had a leash upon her.

Master and Mistress walked arm in arm down to the bathing beach in the wolf-light, reflecting upon the bankruptcy of their business venture, smoking their pipes, and regarding their new island, so amphorously regurgitated from the Mze. Only yards from the bank, it already sported a fern.

Felix flung the bag of garnets far out in the stolid waters. Ainoha snapped the pleats out of her skirts, raised them above her sunburnt legs to her golden bee, and beckoned her husband to follow. He removed his boots and trousers, and they waded through the murmuring reed-beds, the face of a virgin saint on the tip of each stalk of underwater grain. And there like Quality and the Muse, Mnemosyne, they had a quiet conversation on an uninhabited island.

“I’ve never seen the Mze so low,” Felix murmured, and for the first time in his life, he saw a streak of fear in his wife’s eyes. Realizing that her sorrowing, even for good reason, was the only thing which could frighten him, Ainoha took her husband’s hand and resolved to change the subject.

“Dearly beloved, I know you have need of your men friends, but it’s their friends who have become the issue. What a pair of cold fish, I should say.”

“Indeed,” Felix concurred, “there is such a thing as too thoughtful a performance — and too singular a person.”

“But perhaps the Professor is on to something with his obsession with. . bourgeoisiosity ? Darling, what sort of century do we face when aristocratic royalty behave like plebs? Perhaps,” she threw back her head and laughed like a horse, “perhaps the time has come for a bit of anti -bourgeois thinking?”

Felix stroked her hair as he stroked his beard. His concentration had been broken for a moment, for while pondering the receding waters, he had noticed a dark shape circling the island, a shadow longer than the largest sturgeon. “Well,” he murmured absently into her loosened hair, “it’s their century, no doubt, but wouldn’t it be grand to throw them off-stride for a moment?!”

They embraced as he placed his right hand on the flat of her back. Then Felix began a gliding stride about her, counterclockwise, though he was following more than leading, and once she had thought several moves ahead, sure of her loveliness, Ainoha tempered his figures by placing a bare foot with great care into his pauses, as if the new sand of the island was scorching — and with this counter-proposal, it was he who twirled in the air, a grin in his underwear.

“Oh, Cavalier,” she gushed, “one is always making history, isn’t one.”

“Let us put it all behind us, dear. Live and learn.”

“Oh, darling,” she punched the heavy air. “Learning or forgetting. Who knows what’s worse.”

They raced each other back to Semper Vero for an early dinner and bed, but were surprised to find Count Zich’s sweat-drenched grays standing at the door. He sat slumped behind his silver-buttoned groom, swathed in a cadmium orange blanket embroidered with his huge monogram, his granite hatchet-face pale and unshaven.

“There’s not enough water in this landscape,” he greeted them in a bad humor.

From my lookout, I had watched their pretty dance, and knew my place in the Age to Come — the dumb dancer who must keep silent during the dance, acting the part of the clown and cracking a whip to keep away evil spirits. But I was also the flagbearer, the dumber one who will invariably assume the lead.

In the last of the wolf-light, the foothills and answering ranges beyond gleamed like sheetmetal hammered into angles, and the Mze was ablaze with floating shields and helmets. Deep, diurnal shadows rocketed up the peaks and zigzagged down ravines, convex and concave changed from insubstantial radiance into geometric figures — parallelograms, rhomboids, polygons — as drought brought spring and autumn into one. I felt it ludicrous that this landscape would one day be registered in my name.