10.
In a cold room in the tower above her chambers she wrote, facing an oval mirror on the wall. Whenever she stopped writing, she looked up and stared at her own face and long, white neck and smooth shoulders, her panther-black hair tumbling down in cascades, her delicate, plum-shaped breasts, her meticulous, ivory-skinned hands, the single lily in the vase on her desk, the gold pen, vellum sheets of paper bound in brocade, her intelligence, passion, imagination, craft. She wondered what it was going to be like as a famous lady novelist. Then she would go back to her writing. Scratch, scratch, scratch.
11.
Naomi Ruth, like most normal persons, slept, and when she slept, she had a dream. It’s possible, therefore, that one would wonder about Naomi Ruth’s dream. What can be the dream of a queen? one would humbly, especially if one were a man, wonder.
12.
She rang for the wine steward, and rang, and rang, and rang.
3
1.
While making his morning toilet, Egress the Hearty thought aloud (so as to better remember his thought): Reality unperceived is form without content … and thus the hedonist becomes metaphysician, the mere student of consciousness becomes epistemologist, whilst the phenomenologist ends divided against himself, a self-willed irrelevance for a state of mind…
His broad face covered with a thin film of sweat, the king lapsed momentarily into a deep and intense silence. Then he finished his toilet, washed his hands carefully, and strolled downstairs to the veranda for breakfast with the queen.
2.
Egress the Hearty (sometimes the Bluff), Duke of Sunder: son of Donald the Flailer, son of Jack the Boor, son of Moran the Tick-minded, son of Orgone the Tree, son of Hannigan the Pus-filled, son of Bob the Boy-killer, son of Vlad the Sad, son of Roger the Lodger, son of Sigmund the Camera, son of Sabu the Dwarf, son of Egress the Obvious, son of Dread the Courteous, son of Norman the Shopper, son of Grendel the Theorist, son of Warren the Fist-faced, son of Arthur of the Direct Vision, son of Ray the Innovative, son of Ralph the Meatpacker, son of William the Roadbreaker, son of Harry the Hat … and so on … to the beginning, the word.
3.
In any Kingdom, the most important person is the king. Period. Everyone should know that, but if someone does not, it doesn’t matter. That’s how true it is.
4.
In a hurry, the king took a shortcut to the office, crossing the great yard to a cut stone walkway that bordered the head-high hedge that surrounded the queen’s own knot garden. The hedge had been shaped by gardeners, sculptors, actually, into the form of a mountain range, and as he walked hurriedly along the side of the range, he suddenly stopped, for, from the far side of the mountains, he heard the queen weeping. He listened for a moment, and then he thought: The worst thing about being a king is that you’re still a man, goddamnit. And a man has feelings!
He thumped himself on his broad and thick chest and walked swiftly on, and quoting to himself a poem by Robert Frost, he sang, — … and miles to go before I weep, miles to go before I weep… O!
5.
As soon as he reached the carpeted, air-conditioned privacy of his inner office, the king picked up his telephone and, bypassing his secretary, personally put through a call to the Loon.
KING: Loon? This is Egress…
LOON: Oh. What do you want? More?
KING: No, no, no! I… I was just … thinking about you, and … just wanted to hear your voice, I guess. That’s all…
LOON: Well … you’ve heard it.
KING: Yes, I have. So, how are you, Loon? Well, I hope?
LOON: Yes. I’m well.
KING: Good, good, good. And … so’m I. Well.
LOON: Oh.
KING: I know I wasn’t going to call you anymore, but … as I said, I was thinking about you and just wanted to hear your voice. Actually, I had a very vivid dream last night, a dream in which you figured rather prominently … and you know how it is. I had this tremendous urge to hear your voice…
LOON: Okay.
KING: Yes. Well, good-bye, Lon. Loon.
6.
When a king is ashamed of his weakness, to whom can he speak of it? Any mention would precipitate a political crisis. Egress kept silent, except when he could be hearty. He was, before all else, a good and faithful ruler, in the Victorian mold. — That’s got to be worth something, he said to no one but himself.
7.
Full of melancholy, he left his office by a hidden door and strolled the parapet adjoining, walking along it to a watchtower at the far end, which he entered. Secreted there, he stood for some time peering into himself near a window that opened onto the great yard and quarters below, when he glanced up from himself and saw a figure he recognized as belonging to the wine steward, saw it exit somewhat furtively, though staggering, from the queen’s apartment, slip through her knot garden, cut through the hedge, and limp down the walkway to the servants’ quarters, where it ducked into the door that led to the PX.
The king clapped the palm of his hand against his forehead. — Oh, Jesus! he groaned. — Oh, sweet Jesus, what now? I need an unfaithful wife like I need a wine steward!
8.
This story is not about what the king will tell the Robin Hood figure, the youth in the slick green suit. It’s about what happens while everyone waits for him to show up in court after the three days are up and face down that brassy bastard of a green-suited youth. So one needn’t worry, one is missing nothing, nothing important; for it’s all right here in black and white like a series of svelte bruises laid along a frail lady’s lovely arm.
9.
The king was reminded of his father, Donald the Flailer, who, for no apparent reasons, had beat his eldest son mercilessly, constantly, while never touching the boy’s five brothers, except to caress them affectionately. Once, after a particularly bad beating, Egress, then twelve years old, cried out, — Why, Papa? Why? Why?
— What do you think should be done with a man who beats women and children? the then-king demanded.
— He should get to a doctor, Egress blubbered. — He’s sick!
— Wrong! the king screamed, flailing his son about the head and shoulders. — You’re going to be king, goddamnit, and a king has to know that a man like that must be killed! When you know that, I’ll stop beating you, he promised his son.
10.
Egress the Hearty loved his sons no less than his own father had loved his. It was a family tradition. So many things simply cannot be helped.
11.
— I want the wine steward killed immediately, the king said to the Sergeant of the Guard, who ran to the servants’ quarters as fast as he could and fragged the PX with a hand grenade, blowing the wine steward to pieces.
12.
The king reasoned with himself thusly: The meanings of most things lie in our descriptions of them… Explanations, the good ones, are always reenactments… The man with the greatest access to reality is the man possessing the most comprehensive mode of perception… And that man will end up not merely wise and useful, but also sated, glutted with meaning…
He picked up the intercom and called to his secretary in the outer office. — Miss Phlegmming, come in here, will you? I have a few thoughts I want you to take down for posterity, for The Library.
— Certainly, Your Majesty, she murmured slavishly.