The whole country, the miners who crawl through underground tunnels dragging heavy pneumatic hammers behind them and then come out into the sun, their faces and lungs patched with black, getting blind drunk every payday because they’re terrified of dying young; the nurse who accidentally pricks herself with a needle she’s just used on an emaciated patient; the music teacher who takes out a wallet gone limp from use as she stands in front of a counter calculating that she only has enough for half a loaf of black and half a loaf of white; the master glassworker in Pskov, the gene counter in Perm: all of them would proudly hang the plastic reproductions of the imperial family on their walls and mutter to themselves, without taking their eyes from the tableaux or moving off to attend to other household duties: this one, yes, Our Father! He’ll put things in order, he’ll whip this country into shape.
5
And at this point the Commentator wonders, with an insufferable turn of phrase: “What does it seek to say? What message can be derived or liberated from the quoted passage?”
I answer: in the plainest possible sense, entirely contrary to any recherché or obscure interpretation, the idea of a king is simple, clear, and profoundly elegant, easily understood, perfectly coherent, spherical. And no one, ever, in Marbella (and why only in Marbella? In all Spain! You’re right, in all Spain), no one has ever seen a spectacle like this one. Never. The enthusiasm, the transports of joy awoken by the blue stone, the Pool, the deep throb it transmitted to the entire gathering, the confidence it awoke in me: We’re saved! My plan has worked!
The same miraculous transformation in the Verdurins, from entirely insufferable bores to the Prince and Princess de Guermantes. And in one-tenth as many pages as the Writer. Is it not prodigious? A miracle? Or does Simeon, present here, understand it as a farce, knowing full well that Vasily will never become czar, will never succeed in launching a dynasty?
Has Simeon read the Writer, who judges men’s souls with such good sense and benevolence, who does not label this plan a senseless one and recognizes the tragedy of the scientist, the man of talent, the person who believed it was possible to swindle the mafia, an essentially good man who chose the worst possible hiding place, in plain view of so many compatriots, the tourists who were still squeezing into the garden, dressed in all manner of strange garments?
Only one of them was elegantly garbed, someone from the A list, the first version of the guest list which envisioned the uncrowned kings and international jet set coming to the house to form a princely electoral college. His attire selected with impeccable taste and an air of ineffable refinement, red silk handkerchief peeking out of breast pocket. Distinction and years of training visible in the crease of the trousers, the way they fall over the high gloss of the polished boots. Standing out like a peacock in a flock of sparrows.
Certainly not one of the tourists that Claudia seemed to have an infinite supply of: people who were — ay! — not fully equipped for a party like this one. Nor the clever imitation of a gentleman, the Italian “spurious gentleman” who, in the Writer, has a rendezvous with Daisy Miller in Rome. A true air of lordliness here, the look of one who on learning of our party, this unique opportunity, had given instructions to his valet, selected his suit with great care, and stopped by the florist’s downstairs, next to the reception desk, to pick up a carnation for his buttonhole.
6
But the most striking aspect of the gentleman’s attire, Petya, the part that most leapt out at the eyes and that I couldn’t tear my eyes away from, were the two black lions he was leading on a leash and that were revolving powerfully around him, setting their heavy paws down on the grass, hating, it was easy to see, the yoke of their collars, advancing toward your father. And when your mother saw them and belatedly realized that what she’d taken for two large dogs, two mastiffs — the play of muscles beneath their silken shoulders — she let out a stifled cry and gripped my arm, white-faced.
I stepped back, the blood rushing from my face as well, and then there ceased to be a sky. How to explain this to you? There ceased to be a sky, the plane of the sky tilted away in silence, not even a faint crackle, as the vaulted roof of a stadium slides shut. No longer a sky: a broad red plateau at my feet and as far as my eyes could see: the red vastness of space in which floated or suddenly emerged, pushed toward the surface, the half circle of a blood-red sun. The rays of its dark light crossing all of visible space, powerfully illuminating it. The whole plane dotted with stars toward which — I had a sudden certainty — I could walk, reaching them on an endless but possible journey, never leaving the plane, across that two-dimensional world.
The silence of the empty air into which the laborious breathing of Simeon of Bulgaria suddenly erupted, rattling in panting acceleration like a diesel generator starting up during a power failure. And he blinked during the second or two before the lights came back on and grew brighter in brief bursts as they returned to their former brilliance, dazzled by the revelation, for he hadn’t imagined this, he had stopped believing in his mission after so many throneless years in Spain, had never expected to see the lions again.
But there they were, he saw them with his own eyes, to his great joy, and understood. He thanked the man, the unknown gentleman, for his gesture. Alerted to the presence of a king in Marbella, this gentleman had resolved to put him to the test, bringing the magnificent pair of black lions to the party. The resolute way that Simeon took a step toward the lions and reached out his hand, without the slightest doubt, without fear.
The lions felt it, the rounded front of his strength. They approached him like gigantic dogs, their flanks rippling tamely, arching their backs before the king, the taut, gleaming skin of their shoulders, hypnotic. The backlit agate of their eyes fixed on him.
Then the horizon returned, a slow swell of sky, there was a sky once more. From which a light drizzle began to fall, it seemed about to rain, but these were only the bubbles from the machine, falling from above, exploding on my cheeks like light, swollen drops of a cosmic, super-sized rain. I didn’t forgo the pleasure of catching them in flight, watching them come toward me, iridescing in the night air. But Batyk’s thick ignorance, his disorderly love of lies, made him open his mouth and allow these idiotic words to emerge: “We’ll have fireworks.” Because the purity of the test had been compromised by the presence of Simeon, a king, I won’t say a true king, but of ancient descent, the House of Saxe-Coburg. And the lions, who never attack a king, crouched before him. Not before Vasily.
I was hurt by that, I didn’t want to hear it. It was intended to blemish my happiness. Why fireworks? Why a false and inappropriate display of fireworks? I, who had triumphed, who had extracted and condensed the wisdom of the Book, overcome the dangers, woven the most delicate deception ever conceived by the mind of man, nourished its engines with the sale of the diamonds, conceived of the construction of the Pool, the diamond that would be seen, that would shine as the cornerstone of the empire, I, all this — fireworks?
I cut him off with a gesture, went over to the boy, and said (fully prepared to withdraw and let things take their course): “I no longer wish to speak.” I said to you: “‘I no longer wish to speak.’ You said, ‘Master, if you did not speak, what would there be for us, your disciples, to transmit?’ I said, ‘Does Heaven speak? Yet the four seasons follow their course and the hundred creatures continue to be born. Does Heaven speak?’”