‘I told you, he’s the favourite,’ Petya muttered in her ear. ‘What on earth does he see in this primitive amoeba? Aha, this is Avaddon, he’s at university with me. He’s the one who brought me here.’
Now it was the turn of the ill-favoured youth with blackheads who had been talking to Petya earlier.
The Doge nodded patronisingly.
‘Very well, Avaddon, we are listening.’
‘He’s going to read “Angel of the Abyss”,’ Petya told her. ‘I’ve already heard it. It’s his best poem. I wonder what Prospero will say.’
This was the poem:
Angel of the Abyss
Columbine liked the poem very much, but she was no longer sure what she ought to think about it. What if Prospero thought it was mediocre?
Their host paused for a moment and then said: ‘Not bad, not bad at all. The last stanza is good. But “flourish their sharp barbs” is no good at all. And the rhyme “death” and “breath” is very hackneyed.’
‘Nonsense,’ a clear, angry voice exclaimed. ‘There are almost no rhymes for the word “death”, and they can no more be hackneyed than can Death itself ! It is the rhymes for the word “love” that have been mauled by sticky hands until they are banal, but no dross can stick to Death!’
The person who had called the opinion of the master ‘nonsense’ was a pretty-looking youth who seemed hardly more than a boy – tall and slim, with a capriciously curved mouth and a feverish bloom on his smooth cheeks.
‘It is not a matter of the freshness of the rhyme, but of its precision,’ he continued somewhat incoherently. ‘Rhyme is the most mysterious thing in the world. Rhymes are like the reverse side of a coin! They can make the exalted seem ludicrous and the ludicrous seem exalted! Hiding behind the swaggering word “king” we have the banal “thing” and behind the gentle “flower” we have “power”! There is a special connection between phenomena and the sounds that denote them. The person who can penetrate to the heart of these meanings will be the very greatest of discoverers.’
‘Gdlevsky,’ Petya sighed with a shrug. ‘He’s eighteen, hasn’t even finished grammar school yet. Prospero says he’s as talented as Rimbaud.’
‘Really?’ Columbine took a closer look at the irascible boy, but failed to see anything special about him. Except that he was good-looking. ‘And what’s his alias?’
‘He doesn’t have one. Just “Gdlevsky”. He doesn’t want to be called anything else.’
The Doge was not at all angry with the troublemaker – on the contrary, he smiled paternally as he looked at him.
‘All right, all right. You’re not really very strong on theorising. Since you got so steamed up over the rhyme, I expect you have “breath” and “death” too?’
The boy’s eyes flashed, but he said nothing, from which it was possible to conclude that the perspicacious Doge was not mistaken.
‘Well then, recite for us.’
Gdlevsky tossed his head, sending a strand of light hair tumbling down across his eyes and declared:
Untitled
This was Prospero’s commentary. ‘Your writing gets better and better. You should think less with your head, listen more to the voice sounding within you.’
After Gdlevsky no one else volunteered to recite a poem. The aspirants began discussing what they had heard in low voices, while Petya told his protégée about the other ‘aspirants’.
‘They are Guildenstern and Rosencrantz,’ he said, pointing to a pair of rosy-cheeked twins who kept together. ‘Their father is a confectioner from Revel and they are studying at the Commercial College. Their poems are never any good – nothing but “herz” and “schmerz”. They’re both very serious and thoroughgoing, they joined the aspirants out of some complicated philosophical considerations and they are sure to get what they want.’
Columbine shuddered as she imagined what a tragedy this Teutonic single-mindedness would produce for their poor ‘mutti’, but then immediately felt ashamed of this philistine thought. After all, only recently she had written a poem which asserted the following:
One of the other people there was a short, stout man with dark hair and a long nose that looked completely out of place on his plump face. He was called Cyrano.
‘He’s not particularly subtle,’ said Petya, pulling a face. All he does is copy the manner of Rostand’s Bergerac: “Into the embraces of she who is dear to me I shall fall at the end of this missive.” An inveterate joker, a buffoon. Absolutely desperate to get to the next world just as soon as possible.’
This last remark made Columbine look closely at the follower of the famous Gascon wit. While Caliban was declaiming his terrifying work about skeletons in a thundering bass, Cyrano had listened with an exaggeratedly serious expression, but when he caught the new visitor’s glance, he made a skull-face by sucking in his cheeks, opening his eyes in a wide stare and moving his eyes together towards his impressive nose. Taken by surprise, Columbine tittered slightly and the prankster bowed to her and resumed his air of intent concentration. Absolutely desperate to get to the next world? This jolly, tubby man was obviously not so very simple after all.
‘And that is Ophelia, she holds a special position here. Prospero’s main assistant. When we’re all dead, she’ll still be here.’