Friday, December 08, 2006

The Animal Kingdom, Part Five

Katerina dreamed of Wilf that night, and awoke sometime before dawn, certain that he was dead. But he wasn’t. Wilf was asleep himself, chasing rabbits in his own dream, chained to the basement wall of a house at the outskirts of the village. He had been captured a week ago by a villager named Hugo Prummler.
Prummler had often seen the dog running beside the Princess, the whole town had come to know the glittering spectacle of the frail young woman on the massive horse with the swift dog at their side. When he came upon the animal asleep in the shade of his bushes he took it as the answer to his prayers. The dog was valuable. The princess would be distraught at his absence, and after enough time, a week or two, perhaps as much as a month, when a reward had been posted, he would return the mutt to the grateful royal family.
And never work another day in his life.
For Wilf the days in Prummler’s cellar, broken by brief walks at dusk and before sunrise, were an unbearable torment. He had tried barking to gain attention, but the massive villager had beaten him until he stopped. He was afraid for his life; he could sense that this human was more brutal even than the bears he had glimpsed in the deep woods. They would kill him if they caught him, he knew that – but only for food. This man took a gloating pleasure in Wilf’s captivity that had nothing to do with any ultimate outcome. Even the beating was beside the point – the muffling effect of the earthen walls made barking completely inaudible to anyone not standing directly above the basement entrance. It was an unfortunate accident that Prummler had heard him at all. But he had kicked and punched the hapless dog anyway. To dominate another creature was Prummler’s true pleasure; it was an end in itself, and Wilf couldn’t understand it. There was no comparable emotion in the animal kingdom.
Still, all of that was almost beside the point. The worst part of the whole situation was that Wilf’s mission might fail.
He hadn’t just run away as an ordinary dog might do, lured by a strange scent or the temptation of a pack. There were gangs of wild dogs, abandoned by their owners, but they scared Wilf. He wanted nothing to do with them. Besides, as Princess Katerina’s favorite he had too much pride to roam the streets, eating garbage and chasing vermin for sport.
No, he had run away for a reason.
He had understood when Anders and the Princess talked about the Gryphillaria leaf – how no one but the dead herbalist could tell the difference between it and the poison plant, pormelusia. No one human, that is; he knew he could tell the musty, astringent smell of those leaves from ten feet away. It was possible that the pormelusia smelled exactly the same, but he doubted it. Perhaps it would to a human …or a horse.
But dogs knew better.
He didn’t want to argue or give anyone false hope so he just left, running for the woods, hoping he could return with the gryphillaria before more bad things happened and the Princess went away with the thick man who smelled like cold bacon fat. The King wanted her to mate with this creature. He couldn’t see the truth, but humans rarely did. Katerina sensed the man’s anger and cruelty. She needed to defy her father, and she could do it if she had the medicine she needed. But he was the only one who could find it for her.
No one else could help.
He had been too eager, though. He had run too far and fallen asleep in the wrong place and now he was trapped and the Princess might be married already. He wasn’t even sure how many days he had been here. His sense of time was no match for his sense of smell. The only thing he was sure of was that he had to escape.
He studied Prummler’s routine as best as he could. There was no chance of escaping from off the sturdy rope leash during the short walks in the walled garden, and the cellar itself had no windows or stairs to the main part of the house. The access to the outside was through a hatch beside the north wall. There was a latch that locked the bay doors and it made a distinctive double click as it closed. After some uncountable number of days, it became to clear to Wilf what he had to do. There were only two moments of opportunity each day – those few seconds when the hatch doors were open, and Wilf was off the leash but not yet chained to the wall. Prummler kept a firm grip on Wilf’s collar, but he had only one hand free. Long ago, he had seen one of the horses pull the bridle out of a stable boy’s hand with a twist of his neck. The image had stayed in his mind. A shadowy choreography began to move through Wilf’s mind, over and over as he lay curled at the furthest extent of the chain. He saw his actions and Prummler’s ever more clearly. And he began to think it could work. There was a lot he had to do, very little time to do it …and only once chance. If he failed Prummler would not allow himself to be so careless again.
For two dusks and two dawns he hesitated, waiting and watching, trying to be sure. Then, on the third day, he made his move. It was an uneventful ten-minute walk and Prummler had been drinking. Wilf knew the smell. And he knew it didn’t make humans faster or more quick-witted.
As Prummler was preparing to secure his collar to the chain, Wilf twisted his head as he had seen the horse do. It bent Prummler’s wrist in the wrong direction and he let go with a shout of pain.
This was it.
He bounded up the stairs and pushed the doors closed with a bang. He shot the bolt with a paw, pushing until he heard the double click, and then ran at the garden wall. He leapt, but it was too high and he almost tumbled over on his back when he landed. He jogged around the house. The front gate was lower. It meant jumping out into the dirt road that ran in front of the building. He might be seen. He might be trampled by horses. But the risk of Prummler’s wife or children seeing him was worse. He took a breath, ran hard at the fence and caught the top rail with his front paws. He pushed hard, snagged it again with his back paws and then he was flying through the air. He landed running in the empty road, and in another moment he was through an alley across the street, into she shadows and gone.
Half an hour later he was hitting his stride, panting as he ran – the loping, steady sprint that had kept him even with horses and left other dogs in the dust since he was barely more than a pup.
He might have reached the forest by midnight, if not for the rabbit trap.
Wilf didn’t know he was caught a trap; all he knew was that his right front paw exploded into a ragged red pain and he was brought up short, falling forward so that his head crashed into the ground and his back legs flipped him over. He tried to get up and the pain sheared through his leg again. He heard a hideous high-pitched screeching whimper and realized in a moment of utter terror that it was coming from him. He couldn’t stop the howl of agony and it kept pulsing out of him like blood from a torn artery, until oblivion flooded over him like black water and he lay unconscious, shaking and shivering on the packed dirt of the empty clearing.

Tomas Gunderson had wanted a dog all his life. He was only twelve years old, but it seemed like a long time to him. His parents had often explained why it was impossible, and by the time he was ten he could see that their explanations made sense. They weren’t farmers, they had no sheep to herd, no sleds to pull, to fowl to retrieve from the water. They had nothing worth stealing and thus no need for a watchdog. A pet was an extravagance they couldn’t afford. “Just another mouth to feed,” was the way his father put it. Tomas was uncomfortably aware of how much he was eating these days; he could see his parents wince slightly every time he asked for a second helping. He didn’t want to make his parents feel worse than they already did, so he let the subject drop. He hadn’t mentioned it since the previous winter when the neighborhood mid-wife, who often took in stray animals and knew how to care for them, had offered his family a handsome retriever whose sores she had healed with herbal poultices. His coat was glossy now, he was well-behaved, energetic and happy. She called him her ‘miracle dog’.
But Tomas’ parents had no interest in old lady Braden’s ‘miracle’. Tomas’ father made some remark about the cur’s appetite being restored also, and that was that. So Tomas had given up on the idea of a dog, and it was the last thing on his mind this cool, damp August morning, as he played Knights and dragons with his friends in the fields beyond his house.
He was tacking in a wide circle around the makeshift dragon castle they had built the week before out of deadfall and twigs when he heard the whimpering. He knew instantly what had happened – some large animal had been caught by one of the ugly rabbit traps that the Schmidt family set out. They harvested dozens of the little animals a week and made the most of them. Royalty purchased the coats and mufflers Mrs. Schmidt stitched together, and of course the meat had gotten them through many a long winter. But Tomas had come upon the mangled creatures before and it was so horrible to him that he actually refused a rabbit fur cap he had been given on his last birthday. His family was one of the poorest in the village; the gift was wildly extravagant. His father was furious – the hat was too small for anyone else to wear and could not be returned. But Tom held his ground. He wanted no part of the rabbit slaughter.
The animal caught in Schmidt’s trap today was a black and white speckled hunting dog, lying on its side with its right leg cocked at a strange angle to reduce the pressure of the trap’s teeth. The dog was barely conscious. He had lost a lot of blood.
“Hey, boy,” Tomas said. “Hey boy, you okay?”
The dog lifted its head a little and despite the pain it must be feeling, managed somehow to wag his tail. It slapped the ground a couple of times.
“Good boy,” said Tomas. “You wouldn’t bite me now, would you?”
He walked slowly toward the dog, getting down on his knees as he got closer and shuffling forward that way. He extended his hand for the dog to smell as Mrs. Braden had shown him how to do. The dog licked his hand with great effort, and though Tom never took his eyes from the dog’s face, he could hear his tail beating the ground more strongly, now.
“All right,” he said, “We’re going to get you out of that trap right now. It’s going to take a few seconds and I have to go real slow, okay? I don’t want these teeth closing again.”
He worked his fingers under the latch of trap, and caught the curve of metal, his fingers laced between the jagged sections. He eased the metal bolt out of the hasp and felt the pressure of the spring on his hand. He was going to cut himself if he wasn’t careful. He pulled it back slowly, feeling sick to his stomach at the strength of the snare, and the force with which it must have come down on this poor creature’s paw.
Finally he had it open. With his other hand he eased the dog’s paw onto the ground. Then with both hands he bore down on the jaw of the trap. He was on the verge of resetting it. Shutting his eyes, he let go. The trap clanged shut again. The noise jolted him and obviously scared the dog. But no more rabbits would be caught here – at least for the next few days.
He bent to pick up the dog. “I think you’re going to be okay,” he said softly as he gathered the little hound in his arms. “I know a lady who knows how to take care of hurt animals. She’s fixed up ones that looked a lot worse than you. And she’s really nice. Come on, don’t be scared, it’s a just a little way.”
Wilf wasn’t scared. He knew the boy and the lady would help him. He licked the boy’s face happily -- if he healed quickly enough, if he was brave and swift enough, he might still save the princess.
He still had a chance.
And that was enough for him.

Notes on Plot

While writing my new novel Abutters (sequel to Owners)I've been wondering about the whole process of plot construction, keeping a journal, trying to make a record of my thinking on the subject. Plot doesn't get talked about much. It tends to be dismissed by the literary set ... most of whom have probably noticed somewhere along the line that devising plots feels a little too much like work. Better to dismiss the whole business as hack writing and get on with the prose poems about city light in winter and losing your virginity in the tenement basement, or whatever.

Someone once remarked that one of my dad's scripts was 'contrived'. He said, "Yeah. I sat down and contrived it."

But how exactly? That's what interests me.
Hence these notes ...


This is a classic plot strategy: when you hit a hole, a spot where the people are behaving in ways that sabotage your intentions … go with it. Follow their actions. See where they lead. It’s your unconscious telling you something. And there is often good story material in following the natural impulses of your characters.

The fatal nemesis of any plot is coincidence. Any gesture of intention – no matter how far fetched – is preferable to coincidence. Your job is to make the preposterous intentional gesture believable, using physical detail and emotional history, quirks of character and every other tool you possess. Because however hard it may be, making a coincidence function as part of the narrative engine is impossible. For instance … does Beaumont just wait around for the girl to arrive on island? That would be lame. Does her arrival give him the idea? Then what was he doing here in the first place? Her showing up just in time to give Beaumont’s victim the perfect motivation for a crime feels dubious and lazy. The only way out is to make Beaumont RESPONSIBLE for her coming to the island. How? Well …What if he had gone to her first? Tracked her down methodically as he circled Krakauer … hacked into the e-mail – suddenly he becomes this creepy red-neck computer geek; and he could have been that all the way back to desert storm … fixing things, including cars and computers … a sort of idiot ( or Snopes-)- savant.
So what if he found out about the land sale, found out that they needed one more partner? … Then he would be just one incidence of identity theft from being that needed last partner and luring the girl to the island. Which would make the whole land fraud thing a potential bust anyway, since one key part of it was fake. It would also allow Henry a way into Beaumont … since he could start with the identity theft, and track Baumont backward from there. This also allows for some interesting research and discussion of identity theft itself. Maybe that has been his specialty … that and writing computer viruses. And improving linux in small ways.

It seems baroque and bizarre … but it beats the girl just showing up. All you really have to do is go back and shore it up, and armor it with enough fact and detail and atmosphere so that the reader buys it.

Characters & plot:
Let characters expand to explain their behavior as dictated by the events of the story. The character is literally formed by the plot and his evolving role in the events of the book. He becomes who he has to be – a creature of narrative fate. It’s a type of destiny you can actually believe in: not God’s plan … just the writer’s contrivance.

Plot – trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle when you don’t have the box. You don’t know what the picture is supposed to look like and you’re cutting the pieces yourself.

The necessity of non-plot related stuff: Lisl Hennig in Deigton. The details that breathe life into the plot. Stray comments, weather, ruminations, observations, minor characters.

Tip of the Iceberg theory –
Knowing the right detail to deliver sideways, with an attitude, convinces more than reams of exposition, and allows you to venture, briefly at least, into areas where you know nothing and have no direct experience. You are not putting a particular tool, or location or skill-set into the book … all you are putting there are words. Choose the right ones, give them the correct casual, opinionated delivery (familiarity breeds contempt … describe the most gorgeous city in the world in terms of the ever worsening dirt and traffic and you will be more convincing that the most detailed guidebook) … and it will be plausible.

Three more notes:
The first is the analogy of the airplane flight and the O’Hare layover. You have three hours between flights, and you spend them in a hard plastic seat next to a snoring fat guy and harried single mom with three kids, trying to read a book and settling for someone else’s discarded Time magazine. It’s tempting to think that you’re stuck there going no place, listening other people’s flights being called. But in fact, you’re still traveling. The whole trip winds up taking ten hours instead of seven, but that’s all it is – a ten-hour cross-country trip. The waiting between flights is as essential to your eventual arrival as the time in the air. It’s the same way while you’re piecing together the structure of a book, arranging and re-arranging all the elements, letting characters expand to fill the new roles that the story requires, catching logic holes and filling them, following odd digressions that lead to transformational ideas, which in turn require basic revisions in the original concept. It’s time consuming but it’s fun … maybe too much fun. Still, it’s essential. It’s the time on the ground that prepares you for that take off and the smooth flight, cruising through the intricacies of the narrative at 30,000 feet. You’re not producing any pages – except pages and pages of notes, probably. So it feels fallow and it’s anything but.

This relates to the second analogy. Devising the plot, however detailed and cunning, is only part of the process. It’s like building a house. It’s not enough to have a weather-proof shell, and all your plumbing and electrical finished – even the wall board and the plastering don’t do it. The place is solid and level, it passed all its inspections, but it’s generic: an item of architecture. You have to paint it and furnish it and cook meals in the kitchen and eat them in the bed. You have to throw parties and clean up after them, come home after a trip and smell the stale air, and fill the shelves with books … you have to live in the place, long story short. You have to let the reality of it enclose you, you have to make that reality animate from the inside out. It’s the same with a plot. Hammer it together – fine, that’s the hard part. But then you have to live with it, let it become real for you … however far fetched or even preposterous it might be. When the house becomes a home, when the plot becomes the truth of your characters’ lives … then you have a new address … or a book.

The third note has to do with accepting and even embracing the haphazard way plots come into existence. Things that seem part of a carefully calculated master plan in fact develop almost at random. The whole first scene (below) in the Muse takes place because I realized the story could not start on the day Debbie arrived on Nantucket. The chronology was screwed up. If Kennis was to get a call about a bombing, Zeke would have had to have been at work for a while, setting his plan up, laying the groundwork. That’s not a one day deal. So … I still needed Debbie’s arrival to kick things off (because after all, it does); and I needed a time lapse. Can you show a quick scene and then jump ahead two weeks? Yes … if you can pull it off. That’s the maddening beauty of the novel form. The only rule is … make it work. If it works, you can do it. The only limits are your own.
Still… how exactly? First of all, stay in Henry’s POV … “The next time he noticed her” leads you into another scene and then a door opens up. You can use that scene to establish things in action you were just going to talk about before. And then a scene you should have figured out from the start lurches into being because of bandaid for a botched piece of chronology. And this isn’t some bizarre anomaly … it’s standard operating procedure. It seems like luck … it’s certainly not the straight line from point a to point b that you’d like … but perhaps these scenes are in fact already organized; the trick is finding your way to them, and linear thinking rarely works.

Why a plotted externally driven book is of an intrinsically lesser quality than a character driven story: the withholding of information closes you out of various characters’ minds. In fact wherever you are closed out of a character’s thought processes in a plot driven novel, a red flag should go up. A good reason why many detective novels are written in the first person … you can’t get into anyone’s head, by definition. A book where you are artificially removed from certain characters … because to hear their thoughts would wreck the plot … its based on a kind of narrative dishonesty. But the lie is embraced by the reader for his own pleasure. It reminds me of my Dad’s analogy between writers and prostitutes. They do their work first for their own pleasure … then for the amusement of their friends – and then for money. It seems that a john embraces the false intimacy of mercenary sex in the same way that the reader accepts the false presentation of situation in a detective yarn. For diversion, for fun, to while away an idle hour. This is hardly Kafka’s view of real literature – “A book must be an axe for the frozen sea inside us.”
But you don’t always want that.

Sometimes you just want to ice-skate.

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

The Animal Kingdom, Part Four

That was the incident that made the King decide to speed up the wedding plans. Torvald would never have full control of Katerina until they were married. That was obvious now.
The next day he called her into his chambers after breakfast (She attended the meal as always; but as usual, now, she ate nothing).
“I have something to show you,” he said.
“Can it be quick, father? I’m tired.”
“It’s ten O’clock in the morning! How can you be tired?”
“I didn’t sleep last night.”
“When you are married you’ll sleep well.”
She looked down.
The King pulled a teak wood case with leather straps from a high shelf. The key was on a chain around his neck. He pulled it over his head and unlocked the small chest. Then, with a flourish, he opened the lid. Katerina gasped. It was full of gem stones, gold bracelets and rings, hammered silver set with rubies. Some of the finer pieces she recognized. They had belonged to her mother. She lifted out one pair of emerald earrings, two tiny gems, each set simply in a slender ring of gold. These had been her mother’s favorites, austere and beautiful, just as she was. Katerina put them on, glancing at her father nervously. But he smiled at her.
“They’re yours,” he said. “They are your dowry.”
She reached into the pile of dense cool jagged metal and smooth stones. There were no portraits of Katerina’s mother in the house; the furnishings she loved had all been recovered or removed to the royal storehouses. The King had burnt her clothes, even the wedding dress that she had always wanted Katerina to wear at her own nuptials. The Queen’s favorite china was gone, also; some said that the King had smashed it all in a seizure of grief soon after her death. One of the servants had actually seen him that night, lumpy and pathetic, sitting on the flagstones under the full moon, sobbing in a sea of shards.
It was all cleaned up by the next morning. Of course it didn’t help him forget. The new plates and cups just reminded him of his futile tantrum and the loss that had ignited his temper.
Katerina picked up a filigreed bracelet. This was all that was left of her mother – a few baubles locked away in a leather-strapped chest.
“Torvald’s family is very pleased.” her father continued. She looked up at him.
“Then the transaction is complete.”
The King shook his head. “So hard. So cold.”
“You barter my body and my mother’s private treasures for land and soldiers. But I’m hard and cold.”
“The marriage will be good for you also, Katerina.”
“But I don’t understand. There is such immense wealth in that box. Why not just buy the land? Why not just hire the soldiers? Why do you need me at all?”
He shook his head. “You have much to learn. Treasure does not secure loyalty. Money doesn’t bring dynasties together. Only the ties of family can do that.”
She stared at him. “I will never be a part of Torvald’s family. Despite whatever words I am forced to mouth.”
“But your son will.”
“And if I have a daughter?”
“Then you will give her a brother.”
She was almost enjoying herself now. It was easy to be defiant when you didn’t care. “Some women give birth only to girls.”
“You will not be one of them.”
She laughed. “So. The King has spoken.”
“I don’t like your tone.”
“Well, I don’t think God likes yours very much, either. Telling him what the sex the babies have to be. He banished his favorite angel to Hell for the sin of pride. I can’t imagine what he’d do to a mere King.”
“I was not presuming upon the dominion of the Lord. I was merely expressing my faith in him.”
“I will never bear Torvald’s children, Father.”
“You will.”
“Then he will have to take me by force. And I can fight, you know that. You taught me. He might lose his manhood before he can impose it on me.”
“This is idle talk. It wearies me. The wedding is set for two weeks from today. The exact nature of your wedding night is between the two of you. Arrange a fitting with the dressmakers. I want you looking your best for the occasion.”
“Father – “
“Don’t mistake your position. You have privilege and luxury. You bathe in warm water and eat plentiful food. You have rank and nobility. You have power. What you do not have and will never have is freedom. We are both prisoners here, Katerina. We are chained by our duties and obligations, as much as any of the peasants who toil in the fields. I had to learn that fact at an early age. Perhaps you will finally learn it on your wedding day.”
“But, father – “
“Go. You have many arrangements to organize. Your mother isn’t here to take care of the details, so you will have to manage by yourself. Five hundred people will be in attendance and there will be no embarrassments this time. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, father.”
“Yes, father, yes you understand me, I know that cunning trick! Will you obey me? That’s the real question.”
“I will do my duty, father.”
He stared at her for a long moment, not quite ready to trust her unexpected surrender. She was looking down at the floor. When she glanced up he saw there was no trace of humor or revolt in her eyes.
She was beaten; he had broken her to his will.
The only lingering question was -- why did that long-awaited victory give him so little satisfaction?
Katerina went to the stables that night, partly to check the bowl of food she always left for Wilf, but mostly to see Lochinvar. Her father had understood her perfectly, had actually watched as the last struts of her will collapsed under the pressure of his quiet rage. She was just rubble, now. There was no point to fighting the marriage, as there was no point to marrying the loutish Torvald. Nothing mattered and everything was the same. But the thought of summoning the will and the strength to perform the obligations her acquiescence demanded made her weep with fatigue. It was like having to knot the noose and build the scaffold for your own hanging.
She told all this to Lochinvar as he stood in his stall, gently pushing at her head with his own. She knew what he wanted but it was impossible.
“I don’t even remember being happy,” she said. “It’s just something I’ve heard about, like falling in love or having children. You hear them gush about it and you just feel excluded, like you’re not even completely human – no offence.”
“None taken, Princess. I don’t want to be human. None of the animals do. It seems like … too much trouble. Too much thinking and not enough running. No, I’m one hundred percent horse and I like it that way.”
“It’s true. You’re all horse, Lochinvar. You’re a good boy.” She stroked his neck. “Sometimes I wish I could just … stop all this, stop being me, stop being human. Be like Wilf, be happy. Be part of the animal kingdom.”
“That’s a strange term. Kingdom. We have no King.”
“What about the lion?”
“I’ve never seen a lion. What is it?”
Katerina shrugged. “Well … I’ve never really seen one, either. But they’re supposed to be – big cats. Very fierce hunters. All the other animals are afraid of them.”
“And that makes them King? It makes sense – that’s how things work in the human kingdom. Power is all that matters.”
“Not to me.”
He rubbed against her head again. “I know that Princess. I think you were born into the wrong world. You and Anders, both. He would be a good dog. He is a dog, in some ways. Wilf feels it. He is happy and loyal and full of energy. Wilf said to me once, ‘I would be proud to have him as a dog. He’s like … an honorary dog.’”
“What about me?”
“You? You’re are a horse, Princess. Strong and cunning and brave.”
“I don’t feel any of those things.”
“You’ve lost yourself in your grief. I can feel your sorrow, I can taste it in the air around you. It has cut you off from the rest of your people. But it allows you to talk to us.”
“Is that what’s happening?”
“I think so.”
“So, if I’m ever happy again … ?”
“We won’t be able to speak this way. But we won’t need to.”
“I’ll miss you.”
“You’ll still have me. I’ll always be your horse. That’s how things work in the Animal Kingdom. No feeling ever goes away. Nothing real is ever forgotten. Just the same way I know all the paths and rabbit holes all over the forest and the village. The way I can always find my way back to the clearing. Humans get lost so easily. They forget the important things, or perhaps they never learned them in the first place.”
“What things?”
“Well … “ He swished his tail as if scattering flies, and lifted his head a little then ducked it down. From now on, she would always know he was thinking when he did this. At last he blew out a shuddery breath. “The sum of your life is the people in it, the people you love, the people who love you. Nothing else matters. What you do doesn’t matter. What matters is … who you do it with. Humans are too busy building things and making things and tearing them down again to remember that. But I think you know what I mean.”
“Sometimes. Not often enough. I forget, too.”
“This time will help you to remember.”
“I hope so.”
Lochinvar said nothing more and they stood in silence for a long time. That was how Anders found them when he arrived in the stables. He touched her shoulder lightly and she turned, startled.
“Hello, Princess,” he said softly. He tilted his head toward Lochinvar. “Do you want to take him out for a ride?”
“No, thank you, I’m too tired, I just wanted … I wanted to be with him for a while.”
Anders smiled. “I know. He’s good company.”
The light caught the emerald earrings she had forgotten to remove in her father’s chambers. “I saw your mother once before she died,” he said. “She was giving out small Easter gifts to all the servants. She was wearing those earrings.”
The Princess reached up and touched them absently.
“She wore them on her wedding day,” she said.
“Is it true, Princess? That the marriage is on again? The servants are talking about nothing else.”
She sighed. “Sometimes I think the whole point of my existence is to give everyone around me something to talk about. Aren’t any of them getting married?”
“Several of them are talking about it. But none of them is a Princess. Besides, if you marry Prince Torvald you will go away and the thought of that makes them sad.”
Of course it was true. It was so obvious it had never even been discussed. Still, the reality of it struck her now for the first time. The phrase was exact: it was like a blow to that vulnerable spot just above her stomach, doubling her over and knocking the breath out of her lungs. All Anders saw was the expression on her face but for him it was as if she had been hit, also. He reached for her shoulders.
“Princess?”
“I’m a fool.”
“No.”
“I can’t do this.”
“Then don’t. All you need to do is say no.”
“Just one word. But I would have to say it to my father.”
“You’re strong enough for that.”
“Not anymore.”
He squeezed her shoulders and squinted at her in the shadows of the barn. “I know you can do this. I’ll help you.”
She shrugged away from his touch. “How?”
Just one word. So -- she could still deliver a single syllable like a slap, if not to her father, at least to him. Anders had no response. By loving you, he might have said. But his love had no practical application. What could he do for her? Kill Torvald? Marry her himself? But these were impossible daydreams. It would insult both of them to speak such things aloud.
“Saddle me up and ride me,” Lochinvar said. “We’ll ride far from here, we’ll run and run and run.”
She turned to him. “And where will we go?”
Lochinvar dug a hoof into the straw. He had no solution to that one. Running was enough for him.
“Princess -- ?”
Anders thought she had been talking to him. She had no strength to explain her new communion with the animals. He would probably just think she was insane anyway. It was all too much trouble.
“I have to go,” she said. “This is just making things worse.”
She walked out of the barn into the amber late afternoon sunlight and Anders watched her go. There was no point in following her. There was nothing to be done. She would be married, and she would be gone. Regardless of how either of them felt about it. He would never see her again, except when he caught sight of her at ceremonial occasions. He would just be another face in the crowd, observing the royal procession.
The barn door swung closed, and he was left standing among the restless animals, alone and silent in the dark.

My Favorite Ghost

My Dad has been on my mind lately, a pervasive spirit, looking over my shoulder when I drink an India ale or eat a Hagen Daz bar, nodding when I cut a redundant sentence out of a paragraph, shaking his head as I fall for a corny Rocky trailer. He hated lower class kitchen sink dramas; he’d walk out of a play if he saw a refrigerator on stage. I was thinking today about the officious accountant who handled Dad’s estate, telling me that I was treating my inheritance irresponsibly, by actually spending some of it. At the time, I had felt like telling him that the feckless child he was chastising was in fact putting two kids through college and had been running his own business for more than a decade. But after a good early morning writing session, I realized there was something far more important to say: that these words on paper, and the furtive, almost criminal satisfaction I took in making up lies about non-existent people -- those were my real inheritance, my true patrimony, and he would never understand it and it would never run out. It would have sounded petty, saying it to the guy.

Realizing it on the beach this morning, all I felt was grateful.

I was glancing through Paranoid, the other day. When Dad cut it, he added transitions and pieces of dialogue. For instance: the President’s wife, son and possible daughter-in-law watch him striding towards the Naval helicopter in a blue suit, with his red tie snapping in the wind, and the girl says to the First Lady: “Don’t Presidents ever wear overcoats?” I had forgotten that one. The jolt of seeing it again isn't exactly communion with the dead; maybe it's just a nod, or a glass lifted for a toast: “Here’s to you, Pop, for sticking around after the formal eviction, doing a quick rewrite and still throwing those great parties in the back of my head.” Sound morbid? It isn’t.

Ghosts make good company. The horror writers never mention that.

Anyway, here’s the eulogy I memorized to deliver “extemporaneously” at his memorial service. It went over well – I killed. He would have approved. The piece is short -- just a hint of who he was: like the menu posted outside a four star restaurant or a photograph of the Grand Canyon.

But it’s better than nothing.

I’ll be brief because that’s how Dad liked it. He had a rule at dinner. Everyone wanted to tell the story of the book or comic book they had just read, or the movie or TV show they had just seen. That was fine, as long as they could do it in three sentences. It was great – all you’d hear for minutes at a time was the sound of grinding teeth as various kids tried to boil down a Star Trek episode, or Lawrence of Arabia … or Moby Dick into three sentences. You could almost hear them: “OK – there’s this whale … no. There’s this guy who was chasing the whale … no, wait …”

It was okay. You were better off listening at that table, anyway.

You could learn a lot at dinner; sometimes meals turned into informal writing seminars. My Dad loved verbs, and he hated adjectives. Once he challenged me to describe something we were eating, some little meat pastry. I said it was flaky and savory and delicious. Three adjectives: no good. He used two nouns and a verb: “calories, lashed together with garlic.” He taught me Logan’s Law: [The theatre director Josh Logan was a great mentor for him and one of his best friends for more than thirty years] “A hit movie or play is a series of scenes culminating in a final scene through which the hero learns something about himself, always emotionally and always for the better. “ And it’s true – from Breakfast at Tiffany’s to Rocky to The Lord of the Rings. Dad said a great thing about cutting once that always stuck with me. “You turn the story upside down and shake it. All the loose stuff falls out.”

He was always proud that he put a phrase into the language with the title of The Seven Year Itch. But he put a lot more phrases than that into my language. To this day I can’t look at a fattening dessert without hearing him saying “..and the best part is … it tears the weight off you.” I can’t sit looking at a blank page without his credo coming to mind: “Will write, if cornered.” I looked at the airline meal on the flight out here, and heard him say “Toy food.” And as for the word ‘totter’, they should just retire it from the language now that he’s gone, the way they retired Wayne Gretzky’s number when he quit playing hockey.

Dad could be a tough audience. I’ll never forget watching a young comedian trying his act on him one Sunday at lunch. Dad just sat there saying, “Good. That’s funny.” But he never even cracked a smile. Finally the comic got exasperated and said “Don’t you ever just laugh?” Dad shrugged. “No,” he said. “But don’t feel bad. My eyes are twinkling merrily.”

I wrote a suspense novel and asked him to cut it. He took more than a third of it out. He said, “You were writing a thriller. I took out everything that wasn’t thrilling.” Then he shrugged and said, “I could cut a minute thirty from the book of Genesis if I really had to.” The edit was a huge job and a lot of work, taken from his own busy schedule. But the gesture was typically generous. My friends and I often heard him ask, “How much money would change your life?” If you thought about it and told him, he’d give it to you. It didn’t always take much. One night when my friend Stephen Salinger was broke and waiting on tables at Ma Maison, my Dad tipped him a hundred dollars. It did the trick; Stephen never forgot that night. Dad once ordered a bottle of Mouton Rothschild ’59 in the Oak Room at the Plaza, just to show me what great wine tasted like. When he knew I needed it desperately, he swept me off to London for my senior year of High School … and thirty two years later, it’s still the best year of my life. I learned much more from him than I did in school – antiquing on the Portobello road, or at the Turner show at the Tate. He had to drag me out to see the Noel Coward tribute at the British Film Institute. Hey, I was seventeen. It was a great night as well as Coward’s last public appearance ever.

It’s strange, standing in this house without Dad and Joanie here. Not even this house exactly… there have been so many over the years. This is just the most recent one. All of them, from 1018 Benedict Canyon to 301 N. Carolwood, from 56 Chester Square to Malibu to Lloydcrest Drive, all had the same spirit. And most of them had the same bar. I got drunk for the first time in my life at that bar. And I don’t think I’m the only one. Anyway … for most my life these houses have been like the world capital of wit and sophistication. I used to judge people by how well they’d fit in at those Sunday lunches. Not many people measured up to that standard. If any of these houses are haunted, there are going to be some great parties going on, with some very classy ghosts.

Dad was a wonderful host, but he was cripplingly shy.
He was full of contradictions, mostly between the cynical things he said and the big-hearted way he lived. He used to say there was no one as tedious as a reformed drunk. But he was one himself for the better part of two decades with no loss of charm or style. An English magazine once asked him to comment on the phrase “All the world loves a lover.” He said, “Funny you should ask. Right now my son is love, my daughter is in love, my cook is in love, my secretary is in love, even the man who picks up my trash is in love. They stand under my window all night long, baying about it. So in response to your question, I would have to say that all the world does not love a lover. In fact all the world is bored to tears by a lover.”

This from a man who was married – with a one short break – to the same woman for more than fifty years. He had nothing against love. He just couldn’t take it seriously.

If there is a heaven, and I know he didn’t believe in that stuff, I can picture him at Ma Maison (The number is still unlisted), St. Peter bringing a bottle of white wine to the table instantly. Dad is ordering lunch – that was his specialty just like Patrick O’Neal’s character in Secret Life. There are some old friends around the table. Maybe he’s even pausing between courses, looking down on this gathering today, listening to my little speech. Not laughing, of course. But maybe his eyes are twinkling merrily.

Right now, I’d be happy to settle for that.

Monday, November 27, 2006

Thanksgiving, 2006

Here are some of the things I took a moment to be thankful for on Thursday -- in no particular order: my son's sense of humor, my daughter's sense of mission, my mother’s high energy and clear-eyed outrage, my father’s sardonic ghost (telling me to cut this short, and keep it funny). I'm thankful for my few good friends, the only people who actaully read this blog.

I'm thankful to struggle through a good paragraph, find the right finish somehow and then watch Annie’s face while she reads it; or praising her work with such surgical precision that she has to believe me. What else? The furry warmth and food obsessed intensity of my bird-chasing pug, my car’s excellent heater and its radio that picks up WFAN and NPR with equal clarity; This American Life, Bob Edwards’ voice, Terry Gross’ laugh, Eddie Bauer sweaters, Jack Bauer sweating while he saves the world (“I need you to leave this building, NOW”), land-line telephones, disposable fountain pens, meat thermometers, four-foot ground swell waves on windless afternoons, Lagavullan scotch, Anna Karenina, Chinatown, La Boheme ,Calvin & Hobbes, Woody Allen when he was funny (“Nice watch, isn’t it? My grandfather, on his deathbed … sold me this watch”), Pinot Noir wine, Sideways (for fixating me on Pinot Noir wine), Winslow Homer watercolors, David Hockney swimming pools, Jim Dine hearts, Rembrandt self-portraits; checks in the mail, just-picked macoun apples , Sentences like “She gave him a look you could pour over a waffle” and “Winston was gelatinous with fatigue”, not to mention pomegranates, unsulfured dried apricots, the internet, disposable paper products and the mid-term elections.

But the most important things to be thankful for are the things that haven’t happened, that we don’t even know about. When something bad happens, a car accident or a mugging, we always think … “If I had just left the house ten minutes earlier … if I hadn’t gone back to answer the phone …” but we don’t consider the other side: all the times we did leave early, or decided to let the machine pick up; all the accidents and calamities that missed us by inches or seconds. Life is a minefield and you can step on one at any time. It’s easy to forget that just avoiding those explosions is something to celebrate. The ghosts of all the dire fates, all the calamitous unfulfilled possibilities, crowd around us like clothes on a line.

So today I’m most grateful for all the narrowly averted tragedies, the near misses I’ll never know: and all the things that didn’t happen, which I’ll never have to regret.

Saturday, November 25, 2006

The Animal Kingdom, Part Three

Over the next few days the power of the leaves faded gradually, and Katerina learned that she needed to swallow their juice roughly once every seventy-two hours. Within a fortnight, she had taken her last dose and the world started to darken and to bulk above her again. Each movement out of the corner of her eye was frightening; every shadow had some evil intent. The walls were closing in.
With the despair chewing away the edges of her mind, her life at home was turning into torture. The brief lightening of her mood had only served to harden her father’s resolve that she marry Torvald. Much was at stake in that union – the combining of the two families’ land and resources and vassals; a military treaty; a powerful new alliance. Her “feelings” – whatever they might be – mattered about as much as her knowledge of Latin vocabulary. Her father made this clear to her in a series of conversations that ended with him shouting himself hoarse and her leaving the room in tears.
The only solace in those days were her long rides on Lochinvar. Her father made no effort to stop her anymore. Short of actually confining her to her room there was no way to keep her away from the stables and he realized that she would always find a new horse to ride, unless he got rid of them all. He actually contemplated that course of action during one of his rages. There were times when he would have gladly torched the stable, slaughtered the animals, smashed and annihilated everything in Katerina’s world that turned her from his will, reduced his kingdom to dust and ashes just to see her on her knees.
But sanity prevailed. It was easier to give her this one freedom. Besides, the long rides seemed to calm her down and they certainly kept her occupied.
The one place she would never ride any more was the forest. The massive trees and their shadows frightened her.
“There is nothing to fear,” Lochinvar told her. He missed galloping in the woods.
“We’ll get lost. We’ll never get out again,” she replied.
“I never get lost,” Lochinvar said proudly. “I always know the way back. I remember every root that ever tripped me and where the good grass for grazing grows. Horses are smarter than people think. Much smarter than dogs.”
But the princess still refused.
One day, it a perfect mild blue day in the middle of July, Lochinvar decided to take matters onto his own hoofs. He raced into the woods with the Princess screaming at him to stop. He could feel her shaking on him, the light touch of her weight on his back trembling as she did in the winter sometimes, when they had run too far and too long through the fresh snow. He knew he should turn back but he wanted to help the princess and he didn’t know any other way to do it.
There was a clearing deep in the forest that would be lush with wild blackberries by now. Deer cropped the grass and a clear drinking stream gurgled over smooth rocks at the edge of the glade. It was one of Katerina’s favorite places, but her fear of the woods had exiled her from it this summer. Lochinvar knew she would be glad to see that enclosed little meadow again, to pick berries and sit by the stream with her feet dangling in the cool water. It was just a matter of getting through the dark tangle of trees, negotiating the twisting paths through the underbrush, that was all. Lochinvar had no gift for abstract thought, but the plan resonated with him, it connected somehow with the larger landscape of her personal difficulties as his own hoof beats matched his heartbeat.
He didn’t quite know why this adventure would help her.
But he knew that it would.
At first, when they entered the forest the Princess shut her eyes. But she looked up finally, and watched the trees flickering past in the dim light. She felt perfectly safe on Lochinvar, surrounded by the thunder of his hooves. For the moment, she actually enjoyed the helplessness, the sweet release of her will.
Lochinvar would take care of her. The forest was no threat while she was on his back.
After a few minutes, they burst into the clearing. Katerina had actually forgotten about it in her gloom. And all she had been able to think about during the wild ride was staying on Lochinvar’s back. After the shadows below the canopy of leaves the clearing was an explosion of light. It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust but soon she saw that it was more beautiful than ever. Between the grass, the dense leaves shifting softly in the breeze and the rustling rose hip bushes, it seemed like every shade of green in the world had joined together there in the soft July sunlight, a million tiny shields rallied to protect her in the bright heraldry of high summer.
The little stream was swollen from the recent rains, running fast and smooth and solid over the polished rocks, speaking in a rushing murmur that rhymed with the wind.
Katerina pulled off her shoes and walked across the carpet of grass to the bank of the little brook. She sat down and dangled her feet in the icy water just as she used to do, and the magic of the place began to affect her. Really, it was impossible to maintain a bad mood here. Every detail of the natural world conspired against you. She smiled to herself, giving in to the sudden ease in her heart and she had given in to Lochinvar’s power a few minutes before.
The horse had walked up behind her and was drinking from the little pool, a cup hollowed out of the rock, just downstream from her. He looked up and whinnied.
“What is it, boy?,” she asked. She stood up and stroked his neck. He just whinnied again. He wouldn’t –- or couldn’t –- speak to her now. She didn’t know what was wrong but she wanted to let him know it didn’t matter. Could he understand her words at this moment? Well, that didn’t really matter, either. They had always been able to communicate the essentials.
“It’s all right,” she cooed to him. He rubbed his head against hers. ”It’s all right.”

When they left the glade, a few minutes later, Katerina could feel her buoyant mood fading. It was nearly dusk and the shadows were growing in the forest. The old sense of menace was stealing back also. These woods were ancient, inhabited by primordial mysteries, forces coiled in the green depths since before there were people in the world. Who knew what quiet evil things shifted and slithered between the trees, once night had fallen? The place seemed to have a malignant intelligence of its own: she was being watched, studied with lip smacking anticipation by something old and foul and patient; it was in the smell of the rotting leaves and the sumac, the clittering rasp of the branches.
They had been riding for more than hour when Lochinvar turned left where he should have turned right and she realized they were lost.
She didn’t know what to do; all the clarity of mind she had felt in the clearing was gone. She just let Lochinvar crash through the underbrush with no guidance, her eyes closed, her fingers tangled in the coarse comfort of his mane.
When he finally stopped to look around him and sniff the air, she realized that she had been crying. She held her breath and listened: the wind, pushing through the high branches, Lochinvar’s breathing, the pattering of small steps nearby and, farther away, the sound of something bigger crashing through the woods. A wild boar, perhaps, or even a bear. She had heard stories of bears attacking the villagers – they ventured out of the forest sometimes in the spring, if they were hungry enough.
Katerina was scared. She was hungry. The warmth and light of the castle seemed to be part of a different world, as if oceans and mountain ranges lay between them, not just a few miles of forest and fields.
“It’s all right, Princess,” Lochinvar said softly.
She could understand him again! She wanted to speak but her voice was caught in her throat.
“I know the way now,” he said softly. “I remember it. I know this place. Just hold on tight and I’ll get us home.”
And he did. Moving at a gentle canter, he took her out of the timberland and across the plowed fields. His hoofs made a solemn drum beat against the paved streets of the town and soon they were through the gates of the castle and Lochinvar was walking into the musty, sweet-smelling darkness of the stable.

Katerina went to bed after waving away a flurry of concerned servants and reassuring her father that she had come to no harm. But she couldn’t sleep. She lay in her bed shaking, the despair crawling over her like insects. She was exiled from the clearing, now; she knew she wouldn’t be able to brave the dark woods again. She would throw herself off Lochinvar rather than face that ordeal.
Her only hope was that the herbalist Anders had mentioned would reach the castle soon. He was supposed to be on his way. If he was familiar with the gryphillaria, he must also know its urgency. Perhaps he was hurrying toward her at his very moment, pockets stuffed with the green speckled leaves.
She got her wish two days later, but it was -- as the man himself might have reminded her –- another one of God’s little pranks. He had nothing on his person, not even a few coins or a crucifix. And he was grievously injured. Highwaymen had attacked him as they had tried to attack Anders. But the herbalist had been on foot and unarmed –- easy pickings. Though they had left him for dead, he had managed somehow to make his way to the castle. He identified himself and asked for Anders. The two men spoke briefly; Anders made him up a pallet in the stable. Anders did what he could, but the man was beyond help and by the morning he was gone.
Anders knew he would have to tell the princess. He was hoping to delay the moment, he had no idea how to say what needed to be said, but she came to the stable early in the morning to see Lochinvar, with Wilf frolicking around her heels. And the words came easily as it turned out -- urgency composed them for him, as they had organized his hands and feet when a friend had led him onto the slope of a nearby quarry the previous spring. Anders had realized at a certain point that they would have to climb the vertical rock face; they had gone too far -- the slope was too high and steep to descend. But after a moment of panic, his hands and feet had taken over. They had reached the top of the cliff quickly. It was only afterward that the shaking began. It was the same now, with the words.
“I have bad news, princess,” he said quietly as she began currying Lochinvar. She wasn’t surprised; in her current state of mind she expected bad news. She almost relished it. The world would feel whole and complete if every optimistic thought could be torn out by the roots. They were like weeds, growing between the flagstones of the castle courtyard. A world of stone –- there was something strangely comforting in that image. So she actually had a small smile on her face when she turned to face Anders. Unlike her father and her fiancée, he understood that smile all too well. It daunted him and he almost left her.
But the words had to be spoken.
“The herbalist came here last night. He was badly hurt and … And he died a few hours ago. There was nothing he could explain to me about the gryphillaria. There’s no trick to identifying it, at least none that he could pass on to me. So … “
“So we’ll never be able to find it.”
Wilf whimpered and pawed at her leg. Lochinvar butted her head gently with his own. She knew that gesture and he knew her response; it was a catechism between them:
“Be happy.”
“I can’t.”
Nothing was spoken. She just stroked his withers and leaned back against him.
“I’m sorry, Princess,” Anders said finally. But his voice sounded puny, as if he was calling out to her from a distant hillside.
She thought things couldn’t get any worse, but as often happens when one is arrogant enough to think such thoughts, they did indeed get worse, almost immediately.
The next morning, Wilf was gone. At first Katerina thought he had just been chasing rabbits, or perhaps had followed one of the other horses in the stable when they were being exercised on the trails north of the town. But the horses all came back and Wilf didn’t. Katerina was sure he would turn up for his dinner – he had never missed a meal since she had adopted him. But that evening he was nowhere to be found.
Katerina spent hours walking the courtyard of the castle and then down into the town and the fields beyond, calling for him. By the time the full moon had risen, all the denizens of the castle and everyone in the village had heard her calling out to the dog, in an ever sadder and smaller voice. Most people recognized her, and many of them knew Wilf but there was nothing they could do to help. No one had seen the dog.
It was late at night when she finally returned to her chambers. She didn’t sleep until dawn and couldn’t be roused for her lessons. Prince Torvald, who was often at the castle consulting on matters relating to the upcoming nuptials with the King, listened with great interest as these difficulties were described to Katerina’s father by two distraught chamber maids and a Latin instructor.
Torvald had actually heard the Princess the night before, crying out to the dog, though he had felt no particular urge to join her. Dogs – domestic beasts in general – meant little to Torvald. They were meant only to be broken, harnessed and beaten until they were of no further use. After that, you ate their flesh, used their pelts for warmth and extracted their fat for heating oil. You wasted no part of them but it was foolish to waste your affections on them. They were insensate animal machinery, nothing more.
“Someone should talk to that girl,” he said when they were alone again.
“Excellent idea!,” the King roared. “This is your opportunity! Talk some sense to her! Be a man – take charge and show her what you’re made of. I’d talk to her myself but she needs a husband right now, not a father.”
“I’m not her husband, sire.”
“And you never will be if you don’t take some action! Now go. Be the thing you strive to become! Or you’ll never be anything but what you are.”
“And what is wrong with that?” Torvald was beginning to feel insulted. He was a proud young man.
The King patted his shoulder gently.
“We could all use some improvement,” he said.
Torvald found Katerina in her rooms a few minutes later. A distraught maid let him in, and stayed near the door to eavesdrop. She didn’t think any good could come of this meeting and she didn’t want to miss a single word. Gossip was currency in her world. She could barter a detailed recounting of this conversation for anything from new buttons for her dress to fresh lamb shanks for her dinner.
The Princess was staring out the window and she didn’t turn to greet him.
“Katerina,” he said. “This has to stop.”
She didn’t respond. Out in the fields beyond the town farmers were gathering the hay from the fields.
“People are talking about you. I hear the servants whispering. They say you’ve gone mad. They say you care more for some useless mongrel dog than you do for your husband to be.”
“They are correct,” she said quietly.
“Well the dog is surely dead by now, eaten by wolves.”
She turned. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears.
“Don’t say that!”
“It’s true. The filthy mutt will never lie on your bed again – if the rumors are true that you allow such outrages.”
The Princess stared at him, tilting her head up a little to look him in the eye. She spoke slowly and clearly as she would speak to Rollo, the retarded boy who cleaned out the cisterns. “I would rather have that mutt beside me in bed than you – dirty paws and all. He has a bigger heart and a sweeter disposition. And he is far more pleasant to look at.”
“Was, Katerina. Was. I don’t expect you’d much enjoy looking at whatever the wolves have left of him now.”
That was when she slapped him. The twist of her hips and the whole weight of her body were behind the blow and the flat smack of flesh on flesh resounded like a plate, shattering against flagstones. The maid on the other side of the door flinched back in shock and surprise. She fled in the nick of time -- Katerina was backing the startled Torvald out of the room with an upraised arm. He stumbled away from her like a frightened child.
“And for your information,” she said as she drove him across the floor. “I have never struck any animal and I never will. I have too much respect for the nobility of their souls.”
When he was gone she slammed the door behind him and let the leaping sobs crash through her, like deer through a hedge. She never even made it to the bed, she just collapsed to the densely patterned carpet and let the spasms trample her.

The Praise Cycle

Modern criticism and political journalism have created a toxic new manifestation of Jung’s collective unconscious. Masses of critics and pundits, without any apparent connection (there is no evidence of a yearly town meeting where they decide this stuff), arrive at a universal consensus. It might concern a political party (The Democrats are ineffectual wimps) or an artist (Bob Dylan is a genius!). But it never has much to do with reality, except by coincidence. It’s satisfying when someone whose work you detest finally comes full circle and their best work in years is universally vilified. But more often it’s infuriating. You can almost smell it before it happens. I had a sense that no matter what kind of book Tom Wolfe wrote next, he was going to get slammed. And I Am Charlotte Simmons got exactly the irrational pasting I thought it would. Maybe by the time he publishes his next book the cycle will have turned 180 degrees and they’ll all praise it … even if it sucks.

One of the worst things that happens (at least in print) to an artist on the dark side of the rotation is the back-handed dismissal: a sort of marginal slap that requires no evidence or justification, since it’s stuck somewhere in the corner of a dependent clause in a sentence that’s discussing someone else. “Mr.A’s brilliantly evocative descriptions of the Amazonian jungle – so unlike Mr. B’s sterile urban street scenes -- seem to anchor the characters’ passions in the dense dripping heat of another world.” You read that and you say, “Wait a second! How did Mr. B get in there? Which street scenes are you talking about? Give me an example! Sterile in what way? Define your terms!” But he doesn’t have to, because he’s already back to the jungle and on to the next point. Start look for this kind of parenthetical side swiping and you’ll see it everywhere.

I always know a writer is on the dark side of the rotation when the review starts off on a chilling note of praise … usually for some previous work published in a sunnier phase of the cycle. In general, any review that starts off positive is bound to take a drastic turn downward into horrific, insulting contempt by paragraph three. Look at the reviews of Thirteen Moons for instance. They all start by lavishing praise on Frazier’s previous book, Cold Mountain (an equally turgid and pretentious pile of print) before circling in for the kill. I can guarantee – if Frazier times the cycle correctly – his next book’s reviews will start with something like “After the portentious and lackluster tedium of Thirteen Moons, I was expecting very little from a new book by Charles Frazier: another over-stuffed, brocade-upholstered -- and yet strikingly uncomfortable -- couch from a furniture maker aping the designs of an earlier age, while capturing none of their grace or beauty.”

Charles: if you read a first sentence like that, pop the champagne corks.
You’re in.

I went to a Bob Dylan/Paul Simon concert a few years ago. Simon, who was then in the darkest quadrant of the Praise Cycle, blew everyone away: the band was hot, the songs were fresh and re-imagined, the whole audience was up and dancing. Dylan by contrast, could barely sing. He couldn’t stay on key when he tried a duet with Simon. There were no recognizable melodies and few comprehensible lyrics. The occasional muttered word (“Tambourine”, “Johanna”) were the only hints to indicate which song he was growling and snarling at that moment. His band was good; he can still play harmonica. But everything else was embarrassingly, catastrophically bad.

Time magazine reviewed the concert in its next issue. This is quotation is typical: “Now Paul Simon knows what it must have felt like to be Art Garfunkel.”

I had to read that one twice. What the hell were they talking about? What concert did they go to? It makes you wonder … is there anything Dylan could have done that would have been bad enough for them to notice? If he had projectile vomited for an encore would they say, “He was singing from the gut”? Probably.
It makes you long for some future review which will begin “After a string of late career masterpieces, it seemed that Bob Dylan could do no wrong…”
When that axe falls, its going to fall hard.
And I for one will be cheering.

The problem is, these cycles don’t just operate in the realm of the arts. They’ve taken over politics, also. The press decides that Gore was a pompous blow-hard or that Kerry was an effete rich boy; they decide that Bush was a down-home brush-clearing ‘war time president’ … and just follow those absurd irrational narratives over the cliff. So often since 2000, I’ve wondered, what would Bush have to do to turn these people against him? Brag about being owned by big business? Nah. Turn his energy policy over to the energy companies? Whatever. Sanction torture? Nope. Lie us into war? Forget about it. Illegal wiretaps? Feh. How about, the worst attack on home soil in American history happening on his watch? Hey, that was all Clinton’s fault. It must be true: I saw it on TV.

Opinions on Bush are slowly cycling around now. The mid-term elections helped. But it’s too little and too late. He can still do a lot of damage. If he manages to sneak in another Supreme Court appointment, or cripple Social Security, or get another few thousand soldiers killed in Iraq, the press who gave him a free ride for six years are going to have to take their share of the blame. But somehow I doubt they will. Like a bully who can never apologize except by being unusually nice for a few days after an ugly incident, they'll probably just wind up over-praising a Democrat. It's already happening, actually.

These are good days to be Barack Obama.

Thursday, November 09, 2006

The Animal Kingdom, Part Two

Katerina heard at breakfast the next morning that Anders had left for Vilny.

“Now perhaps there will be some regularity in this household,” said the King.

And indeed Katerina picked up the routines of her life again, studying mathematics and languages and history with her tutors, reading the Bible, playing hostess to her father’s guests. But her manner was more and more remote, her smile increasingly frozen in place. She made foreign dignitaries nervous. She frightened children, and children had always adored her in the past.

For herself, these social situations seemed louder, more threatening and most of all, faster paced than ever before. Things seemed to go by her in a whirl of sound and color. She often had no idea where she was in a conversation or what was expected of her from moment to moment.

Lochinvar’s departure was a blow she couldn’t seem to recover from. She was helplessly angry with her father but had given up trying to talk to him. She spent a lot of time in her chambers crying and took long walks with Wilf. But his conversation was limited. He was a dog, after all. She had always thought that a talking animal would sound like a human being, only cuter. But Wilf’s concerns remained stubbornly canine.

“Running feels good,” he would offer. Or, “Throw stick for me.”

He missed Lochinvar, too. But it didn’t affect him in the same way. He was sort of impervious to things.

“I hope Lochinvar is happy, I hope he likes his new people,” Katerina would say.

Wilf would focus for a moment. “Me, too,” he’d say. Then, “Bird to chase!” or “There’s some dead stuff to roll in.” and he’d sprint away.

She envied the way his mind was rooted in whatever was going on at any exact moment. It was hard for him to think about the past and to say he had no worries about the future missed the point. He didn’t even understand what the future was, unless it could be summarized by some general concept like, “more of the same”. He liked that idea. More of the same was fine with him.

She couldn’t bear to go near the stables and so she didn’t find out for several days that Anders had returned. It was eight o’clock on Sunday evening when he came to her chamber door. Normally, the servants who worked outside the castle proper were not allowed even into the anterooms of the royal residence, much less the Princess’ suite. But Anders had friends among the palace staff and he was allowed to come and go as he pleased, a privilege he had maintained by not abusing it. In fact, he rarely asked a favor from anyone.

But this night was special.

He knocked on Katerina’s door just as the church bells were tolling the hour. It was only a few days until the summer solstice and the light was still strong outside. Though many in the castle were asleep behind heavy curtains by now, Anders knew Katerina would be awake. She loved the long summer days just as she loathed the cold dark afternoons of the German winter; she had told him so. And she rarely slept more than a few hours a night anymore. She had confessed that, too.

He knocked softly on her chamber door. When she opened it, he stepped back, stunned for a moment by the sheer force of her effortless physical beauty. She had just come from the bath and her personal maid, Lisa, had been brushing her long blond hair, It was usually pulled back into a severe bun or braid – Anders had never seen it loose, framing her face like a waterfall of golden light. And she was wearing some sort of nightgown with a pattern of tiny violets. It was ankle length and demure, but still so intimate that he had to look away.

He was blushing. And it made her smile. Lisa would have been pleased to see that smile – it was the first one that had crossed Katerina’s face for days.

She touched his shoulder.“Anders?,” she said. “What are you doing here? When did you get back?”

He looked up, then away again. He knew his stare was a kind of trespass, for both them. She would see too much if he let her look into his eyes.

“I have something to show you,” he told her. “Come with me to the stables, Princess. Please. It’s important.”

“Now?”

He nodded, memorizing the hallway flagstones, terrified by his own impertinence.

But she said, “Just give me a moment to get dressed.”

The door closed and when it opened again she was wearing her rough riding clothes. To Anders she always looked far more beautiful this way than when arrayed in her finery. Elaborate gowns and evening dresses made her look like anyone else, like all the other noble girls who crowded into the castle for the annual balls and celebrations with their intricately piled coiffures and their painted faces. They were invisible behind those masks; they almost clanked in their feminine armor. And from what Anders had heard about their undergarments, the wired brassieres and the metal chastity belts, the image was not so far-fetched as it might seem.

He loved to see Katerina with her face smudged with dirt and lashed with twigs and leaves after one of her wild rides – that was the best make-up of all. He knew she hadn’t been riding since his departure. But that that was about to change.
They walked to the stables in silence. After a few steps, Wilf joined them, but she scarcely seemed to notice the dog’s presence. Anders could feel her sadness, like a terrible heat. She was a girl with a fever, so warm to the touch; and inside, she was shivering with the cold. Anders knew better than to bother the princess with chitchat, or to try and “cheer her up”. Only the boldest of actions could have any effect on such distress.

So he had acted, in the only way that he was able to, in the only arena where he was free.

He opened the stable door for her and Wilf and followed them into the shadows. An unmistakable voice called out, “Princess? Is that you?”

Katerina grabbed Anders’ arm so hard he cried out in surprise.

“Anders!”

He nodded.

“But how -- ?”

“Go to him. I’ll explain later.”

Katerina ran. She stumbled once, with Wilf tangled in her feet, and cracked her shin on a feed bin. When she found the stall she fumbled with the latch. For a long moment she thought she wouldn’t be able to open it, that her hands had failed her as her mother’s hands had failed, flailing with palsy.

The big horse came to the door just as she managed to release the hasp and slide back the bolt.“I missed you,” he said, rubbing his head against hers “Why didn’t you come?”

She slipped into the stall and hugged his neck.

“I … I didn’t know – I thought – “

“I meant to tell you he was here,” said Wilf. “But I just forgot. I’d see you and get all excited and all the food smells in the castle and … It’s hard for me to remember things sometimes.” He lowered his head, and she rubbed him behind his ears.

“It’s all right, Wilf. You’re a good dog.”

Anders was beside her then. He said, “It’s still light outside. Lead him into the yard. I want you to see something. Then I’ll explain.”

He spoke as an equal and it seemed perfectly natural to all of them. Here among the horses, he was her equal.

In the evening light, Katerina could see that the white flash on Lochinvar’s forehead was gone. If you looked closely you could see that colors didn’t quite match up; his brow was mottled.

“The work I did on Samson was much better. His white flash looks perfect.”

Katerina laughed “Samson? You gave them Samson? He’s the slowest horse in the stable!”

“And the most ill-tempered. We’re well rid of him.”

Lochinvar put his muzzle to her ear. “He was dumb, too, princess. And a bully.”

“But he stood seventeen and a half hands,” said Anders. “Just like Lochinvar here. And that was all that mattered.”

Katerina reached out to touch his arm. “But what if someone finds out?,” she asked. “Won’t you get in trouble?”

“Those people don’t know horses. But even if they did somehow figure it out, what would they do? Accuse the King of cheating them? That’s the quickest route I can think of to the hangman’s noose.”

“The second quickest,” she said softly. “If you’d been caught doing this, you’d have found that out for yourself.”

Anders looked down.

A horse – it sounded like the mare Brianna – whinnied from the back of the stable. Territorial dogs barked back and forth. The wind had picked up a little out of the east. It wheezed along the eaves of the old building.

Katerina stared at Anders for a long moment in the densely peopled silence of the yard.

“Thank you,” she said, finally. And she touched his arm again. They were standing out in the open now, on the flagstones in front of the stables –- if anyone witnessed such a gesture … But fear was the least of what he felt.

He mastered himself. “There is something else,” he told her. “At the inn where I was staying I fell into conversation with an old herbalist. It turns out he had known my father briefly when they were young. We talked through the night for several nights running and eventually I wound up mentioning your … condition. I didn’t disclose your name and I spoke only in the most general terms. But he had a small quantity of a medicinal leaf, from the gryphillaria plant, which he gave me for you. He will be travelling over the next few months and he has promised to visit me here. If the gryphillaria helps you, he can find more. He says it grows copiously here.”

“If it works -- couldn’t we find more ourselves?”

“Unfortunately … no, princess. It is virtually identical to plant called pormelusia, which is deadly. Its juices kill very slowly, but once started the process cannot be reversed. There’s no cure and the pain is unendurable. It’s used as a particularly cruel method of execution in certain … Eastern countries. Or so the herbalist told me. Anyway – it takes a lifetime of study for the eye to distinguish any difference between the two plants. And one wouldn’t want to make a mistake.”

“No.”

“He gave me some gryphillaria for you to try, though. If it eases your sadness at all, there would be cause for hope.”

He pulled a folded tissue out of his pocket. When he opened it there were four small leaves, green and spotted with a darker green, inside. Wilf padded over to smell them. His nose wrinkled and his head flinched away from Anders’ palm. Katerina had never seen that reaction before. Wilf had a lively interest in the world of odor. No smell had ever troubled him like that. She glanced nervously at Anders.

“Do I eat them?,” she asked him.

“You chew them and swallow the juice. It will be bitter, the herbalist told me. He said he found that ‘charming.’ It’s one of God’s little ironies, that medicine so often tastes so terrible, as if it might actually hurt you. Whereas the things that taste best really do hurt us. Or so he says. He thinks God is a perverse sort of fellow, a prankster if you will, and the best way to secure a place in heaven is to let him know you get his jokes.”

“That sort of a God would make me nervous,” Katerina said. “I think I prefer the stern but fair old man with the white beard.”

“Maybe. But I think if you’re trying to hold a whole universe together every day, and answering all these crazy prayers and sorting out all that divine retribution, a sense of humor would come in handy. You’d lose your mind otherwise. Just deciding on the weather every day, and doling out the luck and the diseases, who gets rain and who gets rich and who gets the plague. It’s a big job.”

The princess smiled. He liked the smile so much he decided to go on. He knew it was a kind of sacrilege, but even God would be pleased to see this young woman happy for a moment.

“Sometimes I think he’s in over his head. He’s overwhelmed. How else do you explain ingrown toe-nails and tooth decay and body odor? I’m not saying it’s his fault we smell so bad when we sweat. It just slipped past him, that’s all. He’s overworked. He had more important things to deal with on that day. Commandments to write. Angels to banish. I don’t know. It wasn’t a race – maybe he should have taken an extra day or two.”

She laughed and held out her hand with a mock imperious flourish. He went down on one knee.

“Here, my Lady,” he said, and handed her gryphillaria leaves.

She tasted them gingerly. He was right. The acrid flavor constricted her tongue and dried out her mouth. Her features bunched together comically as she tried to swallow; Anders fought back an unseemly smile. His face was serene and serious when he nodded encouragement into her questioning glance. She stared back at him for a long moment. Then she tore off half of one leaf and bit down hard.
“This better work,” she croaked.

At first the herb seemed to have no effect except to make her dizzy. She held onto Anders to steady herself. She closed her eyes and focussed all her attention inside, hoping to feel the shift. But it was like listening for some impossibly faint sound, every ounce of her clenched into a self-defeating effort. Will became confusion -- the distant cry of greeting was only her own breath; the longed for rain just a rustle of wind in the trees.

She needed distraction. “Talk to me,” she said. “Tell me about your trip.”

“All right,” Anders replied. He thought a moment. Then he brightened. “We were set upon by highwaymen,” he said. “But Lochinvar outran them! And he forced Samson to keep up. Sam wasn’t happy. He tried to kick me when I put him in his stall that night. And there was a carnival. With jugglers. And beggars everywhere. Vilny is a very busy place, Princess. It was market day when I arrived and everything was for sale in the streets. Every kind of food, fruits and vegetables, sides of meat, smoked fowl, wines and liquors, clothing and toys, pots and pans, even … “

“Even what?”

“Even women, princess. Beautiful women, offering their bodies to anyone with a few ducats.”

“It sounds quite overwhelming.”

“It was, princess.”

“Did you buy anything, Anders?”

There was a tiny squint of pleasure in her eyes; the innuendo of a smile. She was teasing him. It took him a moment to realize what was happening. She had never done such a thing before.

Perhaps he was mistaken; he answered her seriously. “No, princess,” he said. “I had only enough money for food and lodging.”

“Probably just as well.”

There was that little squint again. She really was teasing him.

That was the beginning. He could hear it in the tone of her voice. For the Princess it was different. The change for her was physical. It was as if she had lost weight. Her body felt lighter; at the same time the world seemed to settle back into its old dimensions. Everything had loomed so large to her for so long, hills and buildings and trees and people; and she had seemed to be shrinking – withering into a shrill, frightened speck. Now things looked normal again. The barn wasn’t some evil citadel. It didn’t dwarf her, it didn’t drown her in its deep shadow. It was just the barn, low and thatch-roofed and tilting slightly to the southwest, with its crumbling mortar and its sweet reek of hay.

She pulled Anders back inside where they couldn’t be seen and embraced him. He was in the middle of a sentence, something about how someone at the castle in Vilny had spilled a bottle of wine and ruined a damask tablecloth. But the hug squeezed the words out of him. He couldn’t speak and he had no idea what he’d been saying. Katerina was holding him tight.

“It’s working,” she said.

He whispered into her neck: “I’m glad.”

They embraced for a few seconds longer. Then she pulled away. Lochinvar was in the first stall now. He whinnied at her and she stroked his neck. “You’re a good boy,” she said. He whinnied again. It had been a long time since she had heard that sound. But for some reason he wasn’t speaking to her this evening.

“Is he all right?,” Anders asked. “He sounds strange.”

“He’s fine.” She turned away from the horse. “I have to go back. People will start to wonder what I’m doing out here.”

He nodded and pressed the leaves into her hand. “Take these with you. But use them sparingly. We won’t be able to get any more until I see the old man again. He told me he was traveling this way, but he’s on foot so it could take a month or more. And I have no idea how long the effects last.”

“Perhaps I’m cured already,” she said.

“That would be wonderful,” Anders said.

But they both knew it wasn’t true.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

The Animal Kingdom, Part One

Just for fun, I'm going to serialize a story on the blog ... kind of an adult fairy tale with a talking dog (who doesn't have much to say, except about getting scratched behind the ears and rolling in dead stuff). I'll put up a section every week until it's done.



Princess Katerina’s life was as perfectly arranged as her father’s gardens. In the formal plantings cut by gravel walks, each season had an array of flowers that came into bloom in stately waves of color as the seasons changed. It was a visual symphony that the King orchestrated himself, every day all year round, on his hands and knees in the dirt, meticulously pruning and weeding the shrubs and flowers. He had gardeners of course, but he didn’t let them into his private garden. He said it was because he didn’t trust them, but the truth was he didn’t want to share the fun. There wasn’t much fun in his life since his wife had died; he tended to hoard the little that was left.

He had groomed and tended his daughter in much the same way. She was educated in all the arts and sciences; she had been taught to ride and to hunt, to cook and to sew, to play chess and work the abacus. At twenty, she was a gracious hostess, an excellent cook and a deadly warrior with a bow or a sword. An impeccable marriage had been arranged with a Prince from an adjoining barony. His name was Torvald. He was handsome and charming and solicitous. The marriage was set for the first day of June.

Katerina had every reason to be happy. But she wasn’t.

In fact she had been growing more and more miserable over the last months. She had lost interest in her studies, she scarcely ate any more, and the only time she went outside was just before dawn, when she would visit the stables to curry her favorite horse, Lochinvar. Some days she would take long rides on the big roan stallion with the flash of white on his forehead, disappearing for hours at a time into the woods beyond the town at the foot of the castle. The only other creature whose company she could bear was a hunting dog named Wilf. He was a mutt who had come to the door of the servant’s quarters the previous year. Katerina’s personal maid had taken him in. She and Katerina had fed him and nursed him and saved his life.

Now the dog ran beside Lochinvar tirelessly on those long morning excursions. Dogs and horses generally didn’t get along, but these two had become fast friends instantly.

The only person who didn’t question Katerina’s darkening state of mind was Anders, the stable master. He didn’t ask how she was feeling or suggest remedies for her sorrow. He didn’t badger her to smile as her father did. He didn’t taunt her for her unwillingness to go out in society as Torvald did. He didn’t object to her preference for torn pantaloons and men’s blouses over the brocade dresses and gowns that were made especially for her by the royal seamstresses. He simply bridled her horse and called Wilf from the recesses of the barn. He would hand her Lochinvar’s reins with a shy smile and help her up into the saddle though they both knew she didn’t require the assistance. He spoke so little, many people thought he was mute. They found his open-eyed stare unnerving (some suspected he was simple; others claimed he was a warlock), but Katerina liked it. No one else except her father was willing to look directly into her eyes. Not even Torvald.

Anders had helped her once. She suffered from tightness of breath. There were some terrible hours when she felt as if she could hardly breathe at all, as if she were drowning in the sunshine. The court doctors prescribed various potions, leeches had been applied to her bosom, but none of it helped. When the attacks came she could only sit up in bed and haul the air into her lungs with all her might, as she would pull on a rope attached to a boulder, dragging it across a muddy field. It was exhausting.

One day, her lungs closed while she was riding Lochinvar. The big horse sensed there was trouble and galloped as fast as he could back to the castle. Katerina barely had to touch his flanks with her heel. She released the reins, hugged his neck and leaned forward, resting her head on him, letting the world rumble through her as she fought for breath.

She didn’t know how bad it was until she saw Anders’ face at the stable. He was wide-eyed with shock and fear. He made her sit down, held out a hand as if to say “Wait here” and vanished. When he returned five minutes later, he had some yellow berries in his hand.

“Crush these between your fingers and inhale the vapor,” he said.
She looked at them dubiously.

“Please,” he said. “They will help you,” He held out the berries again. Katerina was impressed. This was the most Anders had ever said to her. She took the berries and squeezed them between her thumb and forefinger. Blood-red juice spurted out with a sickly smell of rotting fruit and mildew. She grimaced. Anders shook his head. Lochinvar and Wilf had joined her now, the big horse gently nudging her head with his, the brown and white dog lying down with his spotted muzzle in her lap. She felt loved and safe, surrounded by friends. Best of all her lungs opened up and she could breathe again.

She stood up. She hugged Anders. Anders flinched: this was an unthinkable breach of protocol. He could be executed like a common criminal if anyone saw them. But Katerina didn’t care. They were alone in the stable. No one ever came down here, except on hunt days.

“It worked,” she said into his ear. “I can breathe again. Thank you so much.”

“I was glad to be of service, Princess,” he said.

She kissed his cheek. “How did you do it?” she asked him. “How did you know about those berries?”

“My father taught me. He was a great healer. He knew hundreds of herbs and salves. He spent his life studying them.”

“What happened to him?”

“He saved the life of the King of France. And he was guillotined for witchcraft.”

She pulled away a little. “I’m so sorry.”

“I had to run away. They wanted to kill me, too. I took his notes and formulas and I’ve kept them. But they have to stay secret. People can’t accept such things. People are afraid.”

He gave her the berries whenever she needed them after that and her difficulties with breathing ended and the court doctors called it a miracle.
“In other words,” Anders said ruefully, “They can’t take the credit but there’s no one to blame.”
And that was all he said.

As time went on and the date of the Princess’ nuptials approached, she sank deeper and deeper into the sadness that no one could explain. Little noises alarmed her, the prospect of a simple family dinner filled her with dread and loathing.
She wanted to tell her father to cancel the wedding; she wanted to tell Torvald that their engagement was broken. But she couldn’t. Instead she kept more and more to herself riding Lochinvar and tending to the horses in the stable. Anders was glad for the help and he never questioned the eccentricity of the Princess’ behavior – after all, everyone knew that her father poked around in the dirt working his garden, with thorn cuts on his wrists and blossoms in his hair. They were an odd family, and that was that. One didn’t question the idiosyncrasies of the nobility, just as you tried your best to conceal your own. The world was not so tolerant of ordinary people, as Anders’ father had discovered.

As it turned out, he was able to help the Princess again, a few weeks later. It was the middle of June and the household was like an occupied country. The servants scuttled from room to room quietly; no one wanted to be noticed. The King would pillory a maid who smiled at him, have a master at hounds whipped for not smiling, banish a chef for no reason at all. He was at war with his daughter and anyone might be a casualty at any time.

Katerina had simply not appeared at her own wedding, humiliating the groom and her father in front of hundreds of guests and townspeople. Worse than that, she refused to either apologize or explain. To Torvald she just said, “I cannot see you any more.” When her father confronted her in a rage she said nothing until he had talked himself out, then asked quietly, “May I go now?”

He let her go, but followed her to the stables and watched her gallop off on Lochinvar. That decided him: her obsession with that horse was the root of the problem. The King didn’t brood over problems, he solved them. And the obvious solution to this problem was to get rid of the horse. He had gotten rid of several unacceptable human suitors in the last few years, sending them off to distant wars being fought over various indeterminate slights by his allies to the North and East.
This equine interloper would be even easier to deal with. His stable was the envy of his vassals and any of them would be honored by the gift. It was only a question of which one of them to choose.

The King made the announcement the next night at dinner. “I’m giving the horse Lochinvar away to the Baron of Vilny,” he said. “His stable has been depleted by injury and Lochinvar is an irksome animal anyway. Very moody and difficult. Apparently he kicked one of the stable boys last month.”

“He’s not difficult if you know how to treat him,” Katerina replied. “You just have to spend time with him.”

It was the wrong thing to say.

“Well, it seems to me that you’ve been spending far too much time with that horse, young lady. It’s not healthy. You’ve been neglecting your responsibilities and the people around you. Everyone is upset. I’m worried about you. And Torvald is heartbroken.”

A torrent of answers cascaded through her mind – that Torvald’s heart was like his nose: broken many times, with little effect except to made him more attractive to certain kinds of women, one of whom he was seeing already. That Lochinvar had ten times Torvald’s character, and was much better company as well. That if anyone was worried or upset, this was the first she had heard about it. In fact, everyone had been avoiding her as if she had some contagious disease. Some physical ailment would have been an improvement. The fact that the illness was in her mind appalled and disgusted everyone. She could see it in their faces. She could hear it in the exaggerated courtesy with which they treated her, as if one wrong word might send her over the edge.

She wanted to say everything -- shout it in her father’s face. But she couldn’t. She didn’t have the strength, it wouldn’t do any good and besides, she knew the moment she started to speak she’d start crying.

Instead, she excused herself from the table.

“I know where you’re going,” her father called after her. “Say your goodbyes while you can! The horse is leaving for Vilny at first light tomorrow.”

Katerina ran to the stables. She had never been so unhappy. It was as if she had been trapped in a dark room for weeks, comforting herself that at least there was space around her; but now she had reached out her arms and touched the walls. She was in a tiny, airless room – a cell, a closet. And still no one would hear her when she screamed, no one would come to let her out.

It was a clear night, warm and calm with a bright crust of stars above her. She ran all the way to the stables and when she got there she was alone. Anders had dismissed the stable boys and gone to bed early. Well, of course, that made sense. He had a big day tomorrow. No doubt a trip to Vilny was an exciting prospect, what with the crowds, and the shops and the beautiful women. It would have to be a country boy’s dream come true.

She hated Anders at that moment. She hated her father and his cronies. She hated her mother for dying. She hated the tiptoeing servants and tutors who whispered around her as if she were insane. She hated everyone and everything.

Except Lochinvar; and Wilf.

The shaggy, sweet-tempered dog had fallen into step beside her. Normally she brought biscuits from the kitchen for him, but she had forgotten tonight.

“No Biscuits?”

She stopped running and looked around. She was out of breath and the courtyard was silent under the stars.

“Who said that?,” she called. Her own voice alarmed her. It sounded like someone else’s. No one answered. She looked around. No scuttling furtive figures, no heads disappearing around corners. She looked down at Wilf. His head was cocked inquiringly. His tail was tapping steadily on the stone work of the enclosure.

Their eyes met.

“No biscuits?,” he said again.

Katerina put her hand to her mouth and stepped back. The dog had spoken to her.
Everyone was right – she was insane. She had finally unhooked the last cables of her rational mind and floated away.

But she found herself talking to the dog, anyway. There didn’t seem to be any reason not to.

“I forgot them,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I love you. Pet me.”

She scratched behind Wilf’s ear and they walked together to the stables.

In the sweet, hay-smelling shadows, Lochinvar spoke to her also. “I missed you,” he said.

She hugged his neck. “I missed you, too.”

If this was madness, madness might not be such a bad thing after all.

It was long after dark when they returned from their ride. Katerina was currying the big horse with Wilf at her feet. It was a favorite ritual for both of them (She knew for certain now what she had always presumed), but she was distracted tonight. She knew she would be losing him in the morning. She finished finally, and kissed the white flash between his eyes. She didn’t have the heart to say goodbye.

Lochinvar pushed at her head with his own. It something he did often.

“What does it mean when you do that?,” she asked him.

He looked down. “It means … be happy.”

“I can’t tonight,” she said.

She hugged him once more and left the stable.