Erasmus was yelping, demanding his walk. Henry had phone calls to make, lines to work on, a costume that needed to be found in a vintage clothing store. He put the story down.
He returned to the story a few days later during an afternoon lull at The Chocolate Road, paying attention to the story as a whole rather than just the parts highlighted by his reader. There was a curious imbalance in the story, with one key element left hanging and unresolved. The dual character of Julian, compassionate yet murderous, made sense in the story's human realm. In his mercenary days, for example, his deeds are violent but they take place within a moral framework. So, "in turn he came to the aid of the Dauphin of France and the King of England, the Knights Templar of Jerusalem, the Surena of the Parthian army, the Negus of Abyssinia and the Emperor of Calicut," and it is implicit that these varied sovereigns deserve his assistance, and thus the need to kill so many enemies. The righteous nature of this spilled blood is made explicit on the same page: "He liberated nations. He rescued queens held captive in towers. It was none other than he who slew the Viper of Milan and the Dragon of Oberbirbach." It is clear that those who oppressed nations and put queens in towers were of the same loathsome ethical stature as the Viper of Milan. The human violence, then, is directed by a moral compass, navigating Julian on a path of lesser evil in which, if there needs to be killing, it is better that those killed be culpable "Scandinavians covered in fish scales… Negroes armed with round shields of hippopotamus hide… Troglodytes… Cannibals," rather than noble dauphins, kings, and Knights Templar of Jerusalem. And this, the use of the compass of morality in times of violence, made sense. Indeed, it is precisely at such times that it must be used.
After Julian kills his parents, slaying them as they sleep in his own bed, mistaking them for his wife and a lover, not knowing that his wife has invited them to rest there, he is keenly aware of the enormity of what he has done. Remorse overwhelms him. His moral compass is spinning.
It is set straight by the end of the story. Julian takes in a horribly disfigured leper who is cold and famished, giving him not only food and shelter, but his own bed, lying naked on top of him-"mouth to mouth, breast to breast"-to give him all the warmth he Christianly can. The leper proves to be Jesus Christ. When the Lord rises in the sky, taking with him the redeemed Julian, what is being represented is the triumph of Julian's blood-spattered moral compass pointing true north. Two modes of seeing the world, one narrative, one religious, are juxtaposed by Flaubert and given their most popular and synonymous conclusions: a happy ending and a sinner saved. All that made sense, fitting the conventions of a traditional hagiography.
But the murder of the animals made no sense. It found no resolution, no reckoning, within the framework of the story, and religiously it fell into an embarrassing void. Julian's pleasure in the pain and extermination of animals-described at greater length and in far more detail than the killing of humans-is only tangentially involved in his damnation and salvation. It is for killing his parents that he wanders the earth forlornly and it is for opening his heart to a divine leper that he is saved. His stupendous hunting carnage only provides the great stag that curses him. Otherwise, the slaughter, a wished-for extinction of animals, is a senseless orgy about which Julian's saviour has not a single word to say. The two of them ascend into eternity, leaving behind quantities of animal blood to dry in silence. This ending seals a reconciliation between Julian and God, but it leaves burning and unredeemed an outrage against animals. This outrage made Flaubert's story memorable, but also, Henry felt, baffling and unsatisfying.
He flipped through the pages one last time. He noticed again how his reader had highlighted in bright yellow every instance of animal massacre, from a single mouse to all the creatures of Eden. That was equally baffling.
The envelope contained more than just the story. Another paper clip held together a second sheaf of pages. It seemed to be an extract from a play, title unknown, author unknown. Henry's guess was that it was the work of his highlighting reader. Lethargy overcame him. He returned Flaubert and the play to their envelope and put it at the bottom of his stack of mail. There was fresh cocoa stock that needed sorting at the back of the store, he remembered.
But over the course of a few weeks, as he dealt with other readers' mail, the envelope reached the top again. One evening Henry was at rehearsal. The theatre where his amateur troupe put on its plays was a former greenhouse for a large horticultural business-hence the name of the company, the Greenhouse Players. A versatile stage had been built and the rows of shelves for potted plants had been replaced by rows of comfortable seats, all thanks to a philanthropist. The precept that location is the key to the success of a business applies to art, and even to life itself: we thrive or wither depending on how nourishing our environment is. This converted greenhouse was a striking setting for a theatre, allowing one to view the world while walking a stage (or, more prosaically, to glimpse the cold outdoors while coddled within the warmth and intimacy of the indoors). There Henry was sitting one evening, in front of a stage and witness to some artful hamming, and it occurred to him that this moment was as good as any to glance at his Flaubert reader's theatrical effort. He pulled it out and read.
The scene ended with that silence. Henry recognized the names of the characters from Dante, having read The Divine Comedy at university, but that didn't help him any. He didn't know what to make of this self-contained playlet; it was a drop whose reflection of the universe was uncertain. He liked the line "Those who carry a knife and a pear are never afraid of the dark." And the cadence was good; he could imagine two actors getting into the scene. But what linked the story of Saint Julian Hospitator and this single-minded, hunger-driven dialogue about an elusive pear escaped him.
Also in the envelope was the following typed note:
Dear Sir,
I read your book and much admired it.
I need your help.
Yours truly,
The signature was barely legible. The second half, symbolizing the last name, was nothing more than a curled line. Henry couldn't make out a single letter or even the number of syllables this scratch might represent. But he could decipher the first name: Henry. Below the careless signing off was an address in the city and a phone number.
His help-what did that mean? What kind of help? From time to time readers sent Henry their writing efforts. Most were no more than proficient, but he wrote encouraging words nonetheless, feeling it was not for him to kill someone's dream. Is that the help this reader wanted: praise, editorial feedback, contacts? Or was it other help? He did receive strange requests on occasion.
He wondered if Henry was a teenager. That might explain the attraction to the blood and guts in the Flaubert story and the lack of interest in the religious theme. But the play was fluidly written, the sentences clean, with no spelling or grammatical mistakes, or syntactical blunders. A bookworm who had a good teacher? With a mother who proudly edited her little budding author? Would a teenager write such a terse note?
Again Henry put the envelope away. Weeks went by this time. Work at The Chocolate Road, two music lessons a week and daily practice, play rehearsals, a burgeoning social life as he and Sarah made friends, the many cultural offerings of a big city, and so on. And Erasmus and Mendelssohn also kept Henry busy. They involved him far more than he expected, Erasmus physically and Mendelssohn philosophically, it might be put, as Henry explored with her the stillness that cats so cultivate, which is to say that when she lay on his lap and he scratched her gently and she started to purr, Henry was reminded of a Buddhist monk meditating to the mantra Om, Om, Om, and he fell into idle contemplation himself-and suddenly the day was half over and he had achieved nothing. The solution to this lack of accomplishment was often a long walk with Erasmus. He was a cheerful dog, responsive and forever game. It surprised Henry how much he enjoyed the dog's company. To his embarrassment, he found himself talking to Erasmus not only in the solitude of their apartment, but even during their outings. From the expressions on the dog's face, it seemed he always knew exactly what Henry was talking about.