It was the Park as Milena remembered it on her birthday. Light flowed in and out of the trees, as Rolfa’s music flowed. But there was one new tree.
It was superimposed, slightly floating, on the memory of the Park. It was a huge tree, with graceful dangling branches delicately supporting leaves like those of a maple. Its bark was in sections like a puzzle. In the Comedy and in reality, the tree was called the Tree of Heaven. The sight of it made tears start in Milena’s eyes, though she did not know why. She did not remember where she had ever seen a Tree of Heaven before.
A costermonger’s cart had been chained to the Tree of Heaven. It represented truth. In Dante, it represented the real Church, to be borne away by the dragon, the old serpent. This Comedy was two allegories, one old, one new, both intelligible to an audience of viruses.
The old cart was taken over by the Vampires of History and the Beast that Was and Is Not. The old snake’s skin glistened with light and in the light of its scales were glimpsed old scenes, ghostly faces. The snake was history. The snake was memory. It stole the truth, to a clashing and banging of Rolfa’s music. The end of the previous Canto had been recapped. The new and final Canto was to begin.
There was a moment of silence, of darkness.
Out of the silence, and into the silence said the voice in Milena’s ear.
‘Will you stop talking!’ she said, turning on Mike Stone. He stared at her blankly. It wasn’t him, thought Milena. So who is talking? She pressed a hand across her forehead.
Voices began to sing in Dog Latin. They were the Naiads. The viruses knew they represented the seven cardinal and three theological virtues. Milena made them real people. We are all virtues, now.
There was Billy the King, and Berowne. There was Hortensia. There was Jacob, and Moira Almasy. There was Peterpaul, and Al, and Heather. There was the Zookeeper. And there was Chao Li Song.
Deus venerunt gentes, they sang.
I don’t want to hear this now, thought Milena. Her head swam. The very walls and air sang at her, and the light seemed to dazzle, as if she had a migraine. I’m too ill. She could go inside, but there would be no escape from the light, from the sound.
And she saw all the faults. There was a slight jerk of transition here. Unlike the text of the Comedy, a complete Psalm was sung.
The Naiads were singing Psalm 78. There was no clue in Dante or the opera as to how much of it should be sung. There had been a note from Rolfa in the great grey book. See setting of Psalm, the note had said.
Where? What setting? Milena had always wondered. When the orchestration by the Consensus arrived there was a setting of the complete Psalm. From nowhere.
Milena fondled Piglet. She stroked his ears. He was wearing out.
Suddenly his zipper burst, as the virtues sang.
Piglet split open and a tiny black book slipped out of him.
Something silent, something hidden, something dark. The flickering light in the sky reflected on gold lettering on the binding. HOLY BIBLE said the words.
Milena’s hand fluoresced to make light to read by. She opened the book. The Old and New Testament said the words.
And in writing, underneath it — For an audience of viruses.
‘Oh my God,’ said Milena.
She flicked through the pages. There, almost infinitesimally small there were staves and notes. How small could Rolfa’s writing get? How small and hidden in the dark. It was as if Rolfa wrote fractally, each part leading to a smaller part.
‘Mike! Mike!’ Milena cried out. She held out the book to him, open, her hand shaking. ‘Mike! She did it again! She set the whole ficken Bible to music!’
Mike took it from and looked at it, stunned. Each word of the King James version had been given a note.
And Milena knew then. There would be other books.
‘Mike,’ she said. ‘Have them search. Have them look all through her house. There will be more. There will be others.’ Milena made a guess.
‘Have them look,’ she said, ‘for a complete Shakespeare. Have them look for Don Quixote.’’
Have them look for A la Recherche du Temps Perdu.
Milena lay back, suddenly queasy.
It wasn’t meant to be performed. It was all more original than that. For an audience of viruses the notes said, and I didn’t understand. It’s lazy just to listen to music — Rolfa had said that and I didn’t understand. It wasn’t written to be performed! She said that, too, the last time I ever saw her.
The Comedy wasn’t a new kind of opera. It was a new kind of book.
A book you read and while you read, your viruses turned it into music. Like the words Satie added to his piano pieces — there only for the pleasure of the pianist, and not be recited to an audience.
The performance was all my idea.
Milena was giddy, giddy again, as if weightless. The fire water in her stomach burned. ‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ she said. Mike tried to rock to his feet, to get a bowl or a towel. He was too late.
Milena, to her surprise, was too weak to swing her legs off the chair. Vomit spewed all down her chin and over her blankets and dress. Piglet would now smell of adulthood sick as well.
‘Oh, Milena,’ said Mike, in sympathy.
‘Ficken Naiads,’ said Milena, as he fought his way to his feet.
Milena lay helpless on her bed, and looked at Lucy. Lucy was Beatrice. Beatrice was Wisdom. She looked on calmly, with a faint smile and sang in an aged voice:
Lucy, who had disappeared, had somehow recorded all of her part in the Comedy. Another strangeness.
Milena lay still, as Mike folded away the sick-covered blanket. Things like that did not matter any longer. Beatrice’s face mattered now. This Beatrice had gone on ageing. She was no longer beautiful except in the ways her face had crinkled, in its ruggedness like the rocks. She looked immortal, as if she had gone sailing on, resolving human weakness, discarding as unnecessary the human beauty of youth. The Queen of Dante’s soul, his love, his reminder of goodness. More stern than the rocks, a love as deep as the Earth, whispered in memory, and now restored on top of a mountain in a forest.
People don’t love like that, thought Milena. Not for a lifetime with just a memory.
And on that hill the voice in her ears said, a small boy and his bear will always be playing.
‘That’s the wrong opera!’ shouted Milena.
Then the helicopters came. There was a great shuddering in the air, and a shadow fell as if materialising out of the darkness and moonlight itself, blue-black and gleaming. It turned around over the pavement, over the heads of the Bees, scattering dust, lifting up their human foliage and rattling it, making a sound like the ocean.
‘Leave them alone!’ begged Milena, too weak to move on her long chair. The Bees hurt no one: they left after each night’s performance; this was the last night; why come now?
Two helicopters. They landed, springing on their sled-like feet, the Bees retreating to the walkways and the walls. The blades kept spinning. Milena felt the air rush past her face. It was as if she were moving at a hundred miles an hour.
‘Mike?’ she asked, but the words were drowned in the sound of the rotors.
Mike was standing, looking out over the balcony.