January 17, 2004 - Allegheny Mountains
In my life it was just yesterday and I write from memory not hagiography. .
"Oh Rodya Afanasiev, you fool." She laughed as I scrambled to pick up the shards of the tea glass and bumped my head on the table sending her tea spilling down her rassa.
Fool? Me? No. I've seen the fools and heard the chorus of the prelude. Fools charred clean beneath their skin; bowed and bent engwar who sing notes I hoard. I am not them.
"Perhaps if you finished writing the brothers, Matushka." I found myself grumbling as I fished about in my rucksack. "See I have brought you tempera pigments, and fresh eggs. Perhaps I would not be so shaken and bereft."
"And what of the waste of this, Rodya Afanasiev?" she cast her hand imperiously over the small pile I had stacked on the table. "And you, you gave away your brothers the week before last, at the markets. Did you not stop to think you might miss it?"
"I'll make merengi. See, the countess gave me some sugar and some cherry conserve." She was scowling at me, but her song made me a child, anxious to please despite my mind's darker wanderings. "The fish mongers were fighting. Are you unhappy with me?" I resumed my chair.
"The countesses, Rodya child, you act like a common slut for a cashmere scarf or cherry conserves. These flawless God given gifts, you would do well to regard them more." Her touch, taking my hands, was searing and my toes curled in my boots.
"It's nothing. They want an easy piano lesson, a handsome arm for the opera. That is all Matushka. Would I not confess was there more?" For a joyous note, I would have groveled.
She sighed and set my hands back on the table, patting them with strokes of lightning. "Appearances, Rodya Afanasiev. I think too much of appearances when you have brought conserve and the world comes to this." Her hand waved to a pile newspapers. "You also teach at our little shelter, and now my Yuri will arrive within the month and I need someone who knows trouble to keep him out of it. I don't have all the time."
"I will reform Matushka, I promise." I refilled her tea and then reached for the pile of newspapers. The print blurred and burned redblack flames before my eyes. "How, how could this... Wrong! They must stop. It's madness!" I looked into her eyes and the song's sorrow written therein. I knew it was simply a beginning. "Kin slayers" the words' weight I spoke bowed me low in shame and horror.
"Child, they are laws of men, evil false vaine laws. You know the one Law. Live by that child, not by anger or fear at laws of men. I will write your picture today and you will make merengi, and the soup for supper. We have things to do. Many things to do."
I cupped my hands before her, unable to speak and welcoming the silver-gold fire that drew me back to my senses as she blessed me and sent me in my way to the kitchens.
I had arrived in Paris some years previously, after the war of poison fumes. I followed the victors. My home of well on a millennia was now cold and countesses scarce and the madness made treason of jests.
I'd come to that place from the north, trading in the tears of Akallabêth I gathered from the beaches. I lived there from the day when I, along with everyone else, was herded down to the Dnieper. I remember grasping to keep my hat on my head as I was plunged into the ice of the waters, and how that hat floated away, and how nothing was said of misshapen wights. I was not displeased. I decided to stay to see what else might be conjured. My voice was welcome and my origin not questioned by Despota, who listened as I told of all I had slain and said I was a new creature in need of a warm home. He cut my hair and laughed with delight as I grew the beard that was another conjure upon me. I saw the brothers, both of them. They sang together with light and compassion. I saw them kin-slain. Princes and sons of men marred the land once more. I feigned death by drowning and left Kyiv.
For a few yen I traveled and traded up and down rivers, following the land's advance. I learnt their secular songs and sang for my supper and played s much as I could play. "You can't play with a cold hand, conceited creature." I remember the gnarled strong claw of the emaciated man who grabbed my hand and sent my pipes skittering down the icy road. "Warm up!" he shrieked and cast me hand first into a snow-bank. "They aren't dead you idiot."
"Who?" I rose shaking the snow from my furs.
"The brothers. Here remind yourself." He thrust small icon into my hands, The Brothers! And he walked away before I could offer him at least one of my furs. He was naked. I tucked the brothers into my sack and retrieved my pipes. My hand, before my eyes it was as new without. I moved my fingers and they bent and flexed almost as if naught was marred. A few weeks later he pushed me in church.
"Find them you lazy idiot. Open the ears of your eyes. Find them all and you may sleep." He pushed me forward and said he confessed me and I had to receive and I would stay and sing And all believed him. I believed him. His voice rang in the cathedral's deepest bell. I was housed and clothed and set to regularizing music for voices. I began to hear notes and see wise madness. I lived for a note. I still do.
Yes, I've read my histories. I know of the Tsar who did not order us both executed. Kin-slayer, yes. He had my father's eyes and Novgorod was no different than Swanhaven. But remember this, in the west they did no less than that. And against the low and unarmed they raised their brands in their refashioning frenzies. So I stayed. I drowned myself from time to time to reappear elsewhere anew.
Courts, tsars, instrumental music, countesses, I made my way. But like Akallabêth their pride in the end smote them and brought down shadow. When the western kinsmen started their viciousness so too did my home turn in and eat itself asunder. I went west then, thinking that they would from this learn some modicum of reason.. Stupid hope.
I went west and drank and taught piano and harp to countesses in tattered sables who bartered their pearls for moments of beauty and reminiscence. There was no reason. There was only demand for more and ever more, until les Halles when I heard a note amid the dark morning butcher-saws. I followed.
I brought cherry conserve and made soup and crafted meringi and drank tea and was at peace I think until that shadow spider-legged devoured my singer.
I had a place for her. One of my countesses gave me an extra ticket. I begged her.
"Oh Rodya Afanasiev, you fool." She shook here head and wiped her hands on her apron. "I have a supper to prepare."
"Matushka please." I was on my knees by then. "Yuri then, let Yuri come."
"Yuri has to do the dishes." He was handsome by even the measure of the eldar and laughter was in his voice as he stepped into the sunlight. "Get up" He helped me to my feet and he looked me in the eye and he was stern and ancient. "We all do what we must Rodya. You must take two."
"Two. Yes, here, take my ticket." I tried to push both steamship tickets into his hands. I'd find another way around or under.
"No."
And Father came to the door and handed me a suitcase and a letter and two children small enough to both tidily fit in the lower bunk of my cabin. He blessed them and blessed me and the taxi horn screeched impatience. I left. She stood. She stared the spider-legged shadow in the face.
That holiest Saturday when our hopes were high and the walk from Victoria Station a pleasure, memory eternal is clearer than the colors I write today for this most blessed glorification.
The gates shattered at her song. The notes rang as a thousand bells at the word "Arise!" I wept loss and laughed invincible music.