Stephen Fry - The Liar

The Liar

The Liar

STEPHEN FRY

Copyright © 1991 Stephen Fry

Published by

Soho Press, Inc.

853 Broadway

New York, NY 10003

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fry, Stephen, 1957-

The liar / Stephen Fry.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-56947-012-1

I. Title.

PR6056.R88L5 1993

823' .914—dc2 0 92-4040-7

CIP

The author and publishers are grateful to the

following for permission to use copyright material:

Shakespeare and Tragedy. © John Bayley

quoted by kind permission of Routledge Ltd

"Maria" (Richard Rogers / Oscar Hammerstein II)

© 1959, Williamson Music International, USA

Reproduced by permission of EMI Music Publishing Ltd, London wc2h oea

'Puppy Love' composed by Paul Anka

and reproduced by kind permission of M.A.M. Music Publishing Ltd

'I Don't Know How to Love Him' by Tim Rice

reproduced by kind permission of MCA Music Ltd

Manufactured in the

United States

20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12

To

(insert full name here)

Contents

One

I

II

III

Two

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

Three

I

II

III

IV

Four

I

II

III

IV

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

I

II

Nine

I

II

III

Ten

Eleven

I

II

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Acknowledgements

Not one word of the following is true

A Fame T-shirt stopped outside the house where Mozart was bom. He looked up at the building and his eyes shone. He stood quite still, gazing upwards and glowing with adoration as a party of Bleached Denims and Fluorescent Bermuda Shorts pushed past him and went in. Then he shook his head, dug into his hip pocket and moved forwards. A thin high voice behind him caused him to stop mid-stride.

''Have you ever contemplated, Adrian, the phenomenon of springs?''

'Coils, you mean?'

'Not coils, Adrian, no. Coils not. Think springs of water. Think wells and spas and sources. Well-springs in the widest and loveliest sense. Jerusalem, for instance, is a spring of religiosity. One small town in the desert, but the source of the world's three most powerful faiths. It is the capital of Judaism, the scene of Christ's crucifixion and the place from which Mohammed ascended into heaven. Religion seems to bubble from its sands.'

The Fame T-shirt smiled to himself and walked into the building.

A Tweed Jacket and a Blue Button-down Shirt of Oxford Cotton stopped in front of the steps. Now it was their turn to stare reverently upwards as the tide of human traffic streamed past them along the Getreidegasse.

'Take Salzburg. By no means the chief city of Austria, but a Jerusalem to any music lover. Haydn, Schubert and . . . oh dear me yes, here we are . . . and Mozart.'

'There's a theory that special lines criss-cross the earth and that where they coincide strange things happen,' said the Oxford Cotton Button-down Shirt. 'Ley-lines, I think they call them. '

'You'll think I'm grinding my axe,' said the Jacket, 'but I should say that it is the German language that is responsible.'

'Shall we go up?'

'By all means. ' The pair moved into the interior shadows of the house.

You see,' continued the Tweed, 'all the qualities of ironic abstraction that the language could not articulate found expression in their music. '

'I had never thought of Haydn as ironic. '

'It is of course quite possible that my theory is hopelessly wrong. Pay the nice Frdulein, Adrian. '

In a second-storey chamber where little Wolfgang had romped, whose walls he had covered with precocious arithmetic and whose rafters he had made tremble with infant minuets, the Fame T-shirt examined the display cases.

The ivory and tortoise-shell combs that once had smoothed the ruffled ringlets of the young genius appeared not to interest the T-shirt at all, nor the letters and laundry-lists, nor the child-size violins and violas. His attention was entirely taken up by the models of stage designs which were set into the wall in glass boxes all round the room.

One box in particular seemed to fascinate him. He stared at it with intensity and suspicion as if half expecting the little papier mâché figures inside to burst through the glass and punch him on the nose. He appeared to be oblivious of the group of Bleached Denims and Acid-coloured Shorts that pressed around him, laughing and joking in a language he didn't understand.

The model that so particularly engrossed him was of a banqueting hall in which stood a dining table heaped high with food. Two little men had been placed by the table, one crouched in terror, the other standing with hand on hip, in an attitude of cavalier contempt. Both figures looked upstage at the model of a white statue which pointed down at them with the accusing finger of an Italian traffic policeman or wartime recruiting poster.

The Tweed Jacket and the Blue Button-down had just entered the room.

'You start at that end, Adrian, and well meet in the middle. '

The Jacket watched the Oxford Cotton move to the other end of the room and then approached the cabinet, whose glass was still being misted by the intense scrutiny of the Fame T-shirt.

'Don Giovanni,' said the Tweed coming up behind him, 'a cenar teco m'invitasti, e son venuto. Don Giovanni, you invited me to dinner, and here I am.'

The T-shirt still stared into the glass. "Non si pasce di cibo mortale, Chi si pasce di cibo celeste,' he whispered. 'He who dines on heavenly food has no need of mortal sustenance.'

'I believe you have something for me,' said the Tweed.

'Goldener Hirsch, name of Emburey. Small package.'

'Emburey? Middlesex and England? I had no idea you were interested in cricket.'

'I get it out from a newspaper. It looked a very English name.'

'And so it is. Goodbye.'

The Tweed moved on and joined the Blue Shirt, who had fallen into conversation with a Frenchwoman.

'I was telling this lady,' said the Shirt, 'that I thought the design for The Magic Flute over there was by David Hockney.'

'Certainly so,' said the Tweed. 'Hockney seems to me to paint in two styles. Wild and natural or cold and clinical. I seem to remember remarking that there are two kinds of Hockney. Field Hockney and Ice Hockney.'

'Please?'

'It's a joke,' explained the Blue Shirt.

'Ah.'

The Tweed was examining an exhibit.

'This figure here must be the Queen of the Night, surely.'

'She is a character altogether of the most extraordinary, I believe,' said the Frenchwoman. 'Her music - my God, how but that it is divine. I am myself singer and to play the Queen is the dearest dream of my bosom.'

'It's certainly one hell of a part,' said the Oxford Cotton. 'Pretty difficult I'd have thought. What's that incredibly high note she has to reach? It's a top C, isn't it?'

The Frenchwoman's answer to this question startled not just the Blue Button-down Shirt and his companion, but the whole room. For she stared at the Blue Shirt, her eyes round with fright, opened her mouth wide and let go a piercing soprano note of a purity and passion that she was never to repeat in the whole of her subsequent, and distinguished, operatic career.