“My words, Majesty, are not calculated to gain your sympathy. I say that this is so because I feel it to be so. To understand things once more as they were understood prior to 1793 (when Louis was guillotined) or even to 1649 (when Charles was beheaded). Or as if the interval between 1917 and today did not exist. The horror of the two wars erased, a time in which, from the porthole of my ship, I see no blue sky and purple clouds or planets below, only death, — isms, genocidal camps. Is that life? Yes, but not in human form. A pseudoformation, a gulf in time, a shoot or bud that must be eliminated. I’ve repeated this to myself over the course of countless nights, for if there are so few flowers and only one sun, then why pretend to be all of us flowers, all of us suns? And the ether in which they breathe and exhale their fragrance? And the branches, Simeon, that hold up the sun, which shines and revolves amid their green formations?
“Without lingering for a second, Usia, over the fallacious argument that such an idea is outmoded, that this is an anachronistic form of government, from which it could be deduced that more modern or advanced forms, methods for governing that are intrinsically better, or more progressive and advanced forms of government … That a community (European) is better than an empire (Asiatic), a president better than a king, that Francis Bacon’s Innocence X (a commentary) is better than Velázquez’s Inocencio X (the text commented upon). Placed at different points along a scale or hierarchy, and not as I see them: equidistant, equivalent, combinable. All the arguments in favor of a regime of direct or indirect representation also easily applicable to a king. Against Lucius Tarquinus Superbus, the last king of Rome, and in favor of Lucius Tarquinus Superbus …”
Batyk took full advantage of the time it took Lifa to reach us with the drinks. He seemed to materialize in discrete moments or pulsations of time: at the door of the drawing room, one; in the center of the drawing room (on the tiger-striped rug), two; next to the Pool, three; then next to us, to Simeon and myself. Unctuous as an usher, fawning as a vizier.
“You talk like a book!” he interjected, bowing low before Simeon. “You don’t know how right His Excellency is” (this to me) “for there is already the basis for a terrible argument against republics in the single fatal fact that any monarchy can in twenty-four hours be transformed into a republic, while, on the other hand, no republic can, in twenty-four hours, improvise itself back into a monarchy. To return to nature, to fall into barbarity, to go back to the primitive state, is always very easy, because one need only let oneself go: nature is always there, in the background, lying in wait for us. What isn’t always there is civilization: that is, work, conquest, discipline, time, and patience.”
I could not believe my ears! I was about to say something to refute his ridiculous argument, but just then the Emperor, your father, made his entrance. One by one the swimming pool’s lights came on. Inside, a light awoke the Pool.
4
I warbled sonorously, my chest rippling like a bird’s: Vasily I, Emperor and Autocrat of All Russia, Moscow, Kiev, Vladimir Novgorod, Czar of Kazan, Czar of Astrakhan, Czar of Poland (we’d see about that), Czar of Siberia, Czar of the Tauric Chersonese, Czar of Georgia (and that), Grand Duke of Finland (and that, too), etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Nelly glittering at the top of the stairs like a real queen, a thousand times more luminous and radiant than Maha, daughter of the king of Thailand. The majesty and grace with which she swept through the crowd, the aplomb with which she allowed some men and many women to kiss her hand. How I approached her, my chest still palpitating, shaken by the vision of her torso transformed into a bird. The grace with which she turned toward me, came down to me, lowered herself to me as slowly as a goddess, the polychrome statue that comes to life in a fairy tale, miraculously bending at the waist, its painted wooden dress rippling as it leans down to you, kisses you. She said to me, she whispered into my ear: “I thank you for all of it, all your effort, Psellus: you will be rewarded.” Laughing in amusement at my childish whim, for I was about to fall to my knees and kiss her hand, and she detected that impulse and placed her hand on my forehead. How she floated then across the drawing room and went to take up a place against the blue-green background of the Pool. Nelly settled into her pose and fell still, hands clasped in front of her. She, too, glittering like a star.
Vasily, gleaming in his Savile Row, illuminating everyone else, the group of tourists toward whom he graciously swiveled his torso. Sweeping them with the light of his infinite goodness as well as that of the diamonds studded across his chest and at the jacket’s cuffs and the waistcoat’s buttonholes. Blue and red gems covering his enormous body like tears of resin on a tree: a patch of night sky revolving majestically, stars glittering in the dark abyss or fathomless universe of his body. Stopping and bowing strangely, extending the hand — the darkness visible — greeting the assembly with full mastery of his voice, for your father had changed, dropped his cover, shucking off his petty carapace; he had donned the constellated suit of the superior man. He knew he must reign, do justice to the people of Russia, the vacationers from Irkutsk, the odious professor Astoriadis, the sublimely beautiful Claudia, revolve glitteringly above them with the serenity and parsimony of a star that brings well-being and mutual comprehension, a sun of justice.
You in your Pierrot cape, the fulfilled promise of an entirely new fashion in children’s wear. Your dirty jeans cast aside for breeches made of some new material, an intelligent fabric that at a command from its owner enfolds him and rises, snaking up the entire leg, covering his body. The owner, standing before the mirror in amazement, his garment responding, corresponding, conforming to the mind’s most delicate impulses, the most capricious sketches, the strangest arabesques, total personalization (and democratization? And democratization!), Hilfiger and Dolce&Gabbana surpassed and forgotten, a unique nanotextile prototype, the nobility and taste and intelligence of each one clear to all eyes, on display for all to see.
More brilliant than your mother’s Rabanne, still more magnificent than your father’s solar attire, the imagination of mankind, your subjects, captivated by it. To begin again, I thought, exactly where the previous dynasty ended: with the hand-tinted photos of the grand dukes on sale across Russia in the year ’14 as well as the years ’15 and ’16 and ’17. A publicity campaign using deaf mutes to distribute them in trains, interrupting conversations, the passengers’ insipid chitchat. They studied the postcards devotedly, breaking off their inane and resentful commentaries, their faces illuminated by the vision of Nelly, your resplendent mother, of Vasily, emperor of gemstones, of you, Petya, like a child of the future, the image in platinum and titanium of the Doncel del Mar, the youth from the sea.