Cloud Atlas

Mackerras the Jackass with his Merry Band of Onanists.

Friends of Ayrs and Mrs. Crommelynck regularly visit. On an average week, we can expect visitor/s two or three nights. Soloists returning from Brussels, Berlin, Amsterdam, or beyond; acquaintances from Ayrs’s salad days in Florida or Paris; and good old Morty Dhondt and Wife. Dhondt owns a diamond workshop in both Bruges and Antwerp, speaks a hazy but high number of languages, concocts elaborate multilingual puns requiring lengthy explanations, sponsors festivals, and kicks metaphysical footballs around with Ayrs. Mrs. Dhondt is like Mrs. Crommelynck but ten times more so—in truth, a dreadful creation who heads the Belgian Equestrian Society, drives the Dhondt Bugatti herself, and cossets a powder-puff Pekingese called Wei-wei. You’ll meet her again in future letters, no doubt.

Relatives thin on the ground: Ayrs was an only child, and the once-influential Crommelynck family evinced a perverse genius for backing the wrong side at decisive moments throughout the war. Those who didn’t die in action were mostly pauperized and diseased out of existence by the time Ayrs and his wife returned from Scandinavia. Others died after running away overseas. Mrs. Crommelynck’s old governess and a couple of frail aunts sometimes pay a call, but they stay quietly in the corner like old hat stands.

Last week the conductor Tadeusz Augustowski, a great champion of Ayrs in his native Cracow, dropped by unannounced on a Second Day of Migraine. Mrs. Crommelynck was not at home, and Mrs. Willems came to me all of a lather, begging me to entertain the illustrious visitor. I could not disappoint. Augustowski’s French is as good as my own, and we spent the afternoon fishing and arguing over the dodecaphonists. He thinks they are all charlatans, I do not. He told me orchestral war stories, and one indescribably smutty joke that involves hand gestures, so it must wait until we meet again. I caught an eleven-inch trout, and Augustowski bagged a monster dace. Ayrs was up when we got back at twilight, and the Pole told him he was lucky to have engaged me. Ayrs grunted something like “Quite.” Enchanting flattery, Ayrs. Mrs. Willems was less than enchantee with our finny trophies, but she gutted ’em, cooked ’em in salt and butter, and they melted on the fish fork. Augustowski gave me his visiting card when he departed the next morning. He keeps a suite at the Langham Court for his London visits, and invited me to stay with him for next year’s festival. Cock-a-doodle-doo!

Chateau Zedelghem isn’t the labyrinthine House of Usher it seems at first. True, its west wing, shuttered and dust-sheeted to pay for modernization and upkeep of the east, is in a woebegone state, and will need the demolishers before v. long I fear. Explored its chambers one wet afternoon. Damp disastrous; fallen plaster hangs in nets of cobwebs; mouse, bat droppings crunch on the worn stones; plaster escutcheons above fireplaces sanded over by time. Same story outside—brick walls need new pointing, roof tiles missing, crenellations toppled to the ground and lying in piles, rainwater runneling medieval sandstone. The Crommelyncks did well from Congo investments, but not one male sibling survived the war, and Zedelghem’s Boche “lodgers” selectively gutted whatever was worth looting.

The east wing, however, is a comfortable little warren, though its roof timbers creak like a ship when the wind’s up. There’s a moody central-heating system and rudimentary electricity that gives one crackling electric shocks from the light switches. Mrs. Crommelynck’s father had enough foresight to teach his daughter the estate business, and now she leases her land to neighboring farmers and just about makes the place pay, so I gather. Not an achievement to be sniffed at in this day and age.

Eva still a prissy missy, as hateful as my sisters, but with an intelligence to match her enmity. Apart from her precious Nefertiti, her hobbies are pouting and looking martyred. She likes to reduce vulnerable domestics to tears, then flounces in, announcing, “She’s having another weeping fit, Mama, can’t you break her in properly?” She has established I am no soft target and embarked on a war of attrition: “Papa, how long is Mr. Frobisher to stay in our house?” “Papa, do you pay Mr. Frobisher as much as you pay Hendrick?” “Oh, I was only asking, Mama, I didn’t know Mr. Frobisher’s tenure was a delicate subject.” She rattles me, hate to hand it to her, but there it is. Had another encounter—confrontation more the word—on Saturday just gone. I’d taken Ayrs’s bible, Also sprach Zarathustra, to the stone slab bridge over the lake to the willow-tree island. A scorching hot afternoon; even in the shade I was sweating like a pig. After ten pages I felt Nietzsche was reading me, not I him, so I watched the water boatmen and newts while my mind- orchestra performed Fred Delius’s Air and Dance. Syrupy florentine of a piece, but its drowsy flute is rather successful.

Next thing I knew, found myself in a trench so deep the sky was a strip high above, lit by flashes brighter than day. Savages patrolled the trench astraddle giant, evil-toothed, brown rats that sniffed out working-class people and dismembered ’em. Strolled, trying to look well-to-do and stop myself breaking into a panicky run, when I met Eva. I said, “What in hell are you doing down here?”

Eva replied with fury! “Ce lac appartient a ma famille depuis cinq siecles! Vous etes ici depuis combien de temps exactement? Bien trois semaines! Alors vous voyez, je vais ou bon me semble!” Her anger was almost physical, a kick in your humble correspondent’s face. Fair enough, I had accused her of trespassing on her mother’s estate. Wide awake, I stumbled to my feet, all apologies, explaining I had spoken whilst dreaming. Quite forgot about the lake. Plunged right in like a b. fool! Soaked! Luckily the pond was only navel-high, and God had saved Ayrs’s precious Nietzsche from joining me in the drink. When Eva eventually reined in her laughter, I said I was pleased to see her do something other than pout. I had duckweed in my hair, she answered, in English. Was reduced to patronizing her by praising her language skills. She batted back, “It does not take much to impress an Englishman.” Walked off. Couldn’t think of a snappy response until later, so the girl won the set.

Now, pay attention while I talk books and lucre. Poking through an alcove of books in my room, I came across a curious dismembered volume, and I want you to track down a complete copy for me. It begins on the ninety-ninth page, its covers are gone, its binding unstitched. From what little I can glean, it’s the edited journal of a voyage from Sydney to California by a notary of San Francisco named Adam Ewing. Mention is made of the gold rush, so I suppose we are in 1849 or 1850. The journal seems to be published posthumously, by Ewing’s son (?). Ewing puts me in mind of Melville’s bumbler Cpt. Delano in “Benito Cereno,” blind to all conspirators—he hasn’t spotted his trusty Dr. Henry Goose [sic] is a vampire, fueling his hypochondria in order to poison him, slowly, for his money.

Something shifty about the journal’s authenticity—seems too structured for a genuine diary, and its language doesn’t ring quite true—but who would bother forging such a journal, and why?

To my great annoyance, the pages cease, midsentence, some forty pages later, where the binding is worn through. Searched high and low in the library for the rest of the damn thing. No luck. Hardly in our interests to draw Ayrs’s or Mrs. Crommelynck’s attention to their unindexed bibliographic wealth, so I’m up a gum tree. Would you ask Otto Jansch on Caithness Street if he knows anything about this Adam Ewing? A half-read book is a half- finished love affair.

Find enclosed an inventory of the oldest editions in Zedelghem’s library. As you see, some items are v. early, early seventeenth c., so send me Jansch’s best prices as soon as ever, and keep the tightwad on his toes by letting it slip you’ve got the Parisian dealers interested.

Sincerely,

R.F.

CHATEAU ZEDELGHEM

28^th—VII—1931

Sixsmith,

Cause for minor celebration. Two days ago, Ayrs and I completed our first collaboration, a short tone poem, “Der Todtenvogel.” When I unearthed the piece, it was a tame arrangement of an old Teutonic anthem, left high and very dry by Ayrs’s retreating eyesight. Our new version is an intriguing animal. It borrows resonances from Wagner’s Ring, then disintegrates the theme into a Stravinskyesque nightmare policed by Sibelian wraiths. Horrible, delectable, wish you could hear it. Ends in a flute solo, no flutter-bying flautism this, but the death-bird of the title, cursing the firstborn and last-born alike.

Augustowski visited again on his way back from Paris yesterday. He read the score and shoveled praise upon it like a boiler man shoveling coals. So he should! It’s the most accomplished tone poem I know of written since the war; and I tell you, Sixsmith, that more than a few of its best ideas are mine. Suppose an