WRIT IN WATER, or, The Gingerbread Man
By degrees (not learned ones, though) the curriculum vitae of Dr. Eszterbazy is becoming known. A set of Enquiries of. . . was published a decade ago; this is the fourth new tale that the author has vouchsafed us — of a world with some odd survivals, mundane and otherwise.
The spirit of the wood, the spirit of the water, and the spirit of the wheat-plant: they three be sib.
— old Slovatchko saying
The former Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Empire rode side by side with Madama D’Attila in her trim little chaise through Klejn Tinkeldorff, one of the less-fashionable suburbs of Bella. Bella was the capital of the Triune Monarchy of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania. Who was the former Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Empire and who was Madama D’Attila? Madama D’Attila had at various times been the favorite of two European kings, one Turkish sultan, and three Latin American dictators; alas, the Sultan and one of the kings had gone ga-ga, the other king had been ignominiously deposed, and all three of the dictators had met ends too dreadful to be told in detail. Madama D’Attila presently lived very quietly under the aegis of the Triune Monarchy, now and then receiving the calling cards of the oldest (and youngest) members of the nobility. Once a day, bravely wearing a modest assortment of her best paste jewels, she bravely drove her one-horse chaise through the streets of her little suburb. His Royal and Imperial Majesty did not choose that she should come any closer.
“One never knows, you know,” said His Royal and Imperial Majesty.
The former Chief Eunuch, a martyr to the gout, had experienced increasing difficulty in the performance of his official duties; and, having taken a (platonic) fondness to Madama, had also (very quietly) taken his departure along with her own — and the privy purse of the ci-devant Sultan. “The mad do not need money,” he had observed as he bade farewell to his friend the Assistant Chief Eunuch. “By Allah, that is a true word!” replied the new C.E., raking in his own share of the ci-devant privy purse. So now the former Chief Eunuch sat upon the front seat (there was no back seat) with Madama D’Attila, and showed to the local burghers his immense pale swollen face with its pink eye-lids and rouged cheeks and rouged mouth and painted eyebrows and painted moustaches. The burghers calmly tipped their hats. “There goes the kings’ whore and the funny French gentleman,” they said. And tipped their hats again. Respectfully. (The ex-C.E. by the way was wearing a fuzzy brown suit and a fuzzy brown hat and fancied himself in the height of Western fashion; perhaps he was.)
A gentleman riding by on his horse just then raised his riding-crop in a polite salute. “Who is that? ” asked Madama.
“That is the famous Doctoor-Effendim,” said the ex-C.E. “His name is Eszter Ghazi.”
They stopped at Shueffer’s shop and bought marzipan. Then they drove home and really do not appear in this account again. Perhaps this is too bad. One might grow fond of them. But, as King-Emperor Ignats Louis observed, “One never knows.”
Dr. Eszterhazy did not stop at Shueffer’s shop and he did not buy marzipan.
Engelbert Eszterhazy, having already attained to three of the six learned degrees which he was eventually to have, was then engaged in preparing for the doctorate in music; he had spent a part of that morning in playing a series ofMozarabic masses (of his own arrangement) on the virginals (of his own design), to the great pleasure of the Papal Legate, one of the Examiners for that degree. Now he had come for a lesson with De Metz, in Composition. The great De Metz kept, in addition to his studio in Bella, a cottage in the suburb, regarding said cottage in the suburb as others might regard a chalet in the Alps or a villa on the Riviera. The lesson having been concluded, De Metz was observing as obiter dictum something on the nature of music and mathematic: “A single lifetime, sir, is not long enough to devote to the relation between music and mathematic . . . indeed, sir, one may begin by asking: relation? Music and mathematic? Is there a division? Song is number, sir, and number is song. What else is the Music of the Spheres but that song of all the morning stars singing together for joy?” Eszterhazy, assuming his instructor’s question to be rhetorical, forebore to answer it by more than a low, tactful hum, a sort of small, murmuring voice.
And while this mmmmm still sounded in the air, De Metz, still regarding his pupil with the same bird-bright gaze, in the same tone of voice asked, “Are you interested, Dr. Engelbert, in investment possibility?”
Engelbert could not have been much more surprised if the Emperor had asked him that.
“There is a man down the street who has invented an engine,” De Metz said, “and I thought it might have investment possibility. They say that engines do have. I myself, you know, well, it is not my field. But you, Dr. Engelbert —”
“Yes?” asked Engelbert, prepared to hear himself described as a sort of one-man Baring Brothers.
you have so many fields. . . .”
The street was lined with trees and shrubbery and gardens. It was not yet what the Indians call the cow-dust hour, but Dr. Eszterhazy knew that when it was, quite a number of many-colored kine would troop back from the common pasturage and, suburb or no suburb, each cow would turn aside and tread the almost invisible path between the street and her owner’s cowhouse. The ox knoweth his stall, and . . . But behind one of the houses the cow-house had been converted into a workroom; and though the lineaments of the once-spring-house next to it had been preserved, the cool water flowing from the hill behind no longer served to cool the pans of milk and keep them fresh while the cream rose. “Remind me, Engelbert, to tell you a very amusing story about the Gypsy and the mouse,” De Metz was saying; then De Metz said, “Ah, Engineer Brozz! Good later-afternoon. I have the honor
to present Dr. Eszterhazy.” Engineer Brozz was very tall. And very thin. And Eszterhazy had the fleeting impression that he had seen him before.
His appearance might not have led Eszterhazy to have thought, immediately, in terms of one who had invented an engine with investment possibility. Such a type did not precisely flourish in the Triune Monarchy (“fourth-largest empire in Europe”) ... as distinct from, say, the Nev- england Province of America, where, one understood, every Yankee kept next to his fireplace a device intended to provide either perpetual motion or a supply of wooden nutmegs. . . . Still, some years back, there had been Gumm. Gumm lived in the Scythian Highlands and was an engraver of religious woodcuts with brief texts, Gumm had been caught in flagrant delight, stripping the lead from the parson’s roof; and Gumm had said that he needed it because he needed a soft metal. For what? For a notion of his, that was his own word, the word invention seemed not to have been in his vocabulary; for a notion which would work a very great change in the production of religious engravings with brief texts: and what might this notion be — otherwise — called? Gumm, despite the seriousness of the case, wiggled in something like delight. “Movable type! ” said Gumm.
Unmoved by the simple splendor of his vision — a mere four hundred years after its time — they had charged him, not with Theft, but with Sacrilege, it having after all been the parson’s roof; and Gumm had been sentenced to recite The Ten Long Psalms three times a day for three years. Without remission.