recounted so that it is clearly understood? Must you believe that all proceeds at a certain pace only to flower full and fulsome at the expected time? Am I slave to your expectations, sir? Does not a teller of tales serve oneself first and last?”
Calap snorted. “I have always argued thus. Who needs an audience, after all. But this situation, it is different, is it not?”
“Is it?” I regarded them both. “The audience can listen, or they can walk away. They can be pleased. They can be infuriated. They can feel privileged to witness or cursed by the same. If I kneel to one I must kneel to all. And to kneel is to surrender and this no teller of tales must ever do. Calap Roud, count for me the times you have been excoriated for your arrogance. To be an artist is to know privilege from both sides, the privilege of creating your art and the privilege in those who partake of it. But even saying such a thing is arrogance’s deafening howl, is it not? Yet the audience possesses a singular currency in this exchange. To partake thereof or to not partake thereof. It extends no further for them, no matter how they might wish otherwise. Now, Calap, you say this situation is different, indeed, unique, yes?
“When our lives are on the line, yes!”
“I have before me my audience of one, and upon her and her alone my life now rests. But I shall not kneel. Do you understand? She certainly understands-I can see that and am pleased by it. How will she judge? By what standards?”
“By that of redemption,” said Calap. “It’s what you have offered, after all.”
“Redemption comes in a thousand guises, and they are sweetest those that come unexpectedly. For now, she will trust me, but, as you say, Calap, at any time she can choose to abandon that trust. So be it.”
“So you happily trust your life to her judgement?”
“Happily? No, I would not use that word, Calap Roud. The point is, I will hold to my story, for it is mine and none others.”
Scowling and no doubt confused, Calap turned about and walked away.
Brash Phluster, however, remained. “I would tell you something, Avas Flicker. In confidence.”
“You have it, sir.”
“It’s this, you see.” He licked his lips. “I keep beginning my songs, but I never get to finish them! Everyone just votes me dispensation! Why? And they laugh and nobody’s supposed to be laughing at all. No, say nothing just yet. Listen!” His eyes were bright with something like horror. “I decided to hide my talent, you see? Hide it deep, save it for the Festival. But then, this happened, and suddenly I realized that I needed to use it, use it to its fullest! But what happened? I’ll tell you what happened, Flicker. Now I know why I was damned good at hiding my talent.” He clawed at his straggly beard. “It’s because I don’t have any in the first place! And now I’m sunk! Once they stop laughing, I’m a dead man!”
Such are the nightmares of artists. The gibbering ghosts of dead geniuses (yes, they are all dead). The bald nakedness of some future legacy, chewed down illegible. The torture and flagellation of a soul in crisis. The secret truth is that every artist kneels, every artist sets head down upon the block of fickle opinion and the judgement of the incapable. To be a living artist is to be driven again and again to explain oneself, to justify every creative decision, yet to bite down hard on the bit is the only honourable recourse, to my mind at least. Explain nothing, justify even less.
Grin at the gallows, dear friends! The artist that lives and the audience that lives while they live are without relevance! Only those still unborn shall post the script of legacy, whether it be forgotten or canonized! The artist and the audience are trapped together in the now, the instant of mood and taste and gnawing unease and all the blither of fugue that is opinion’s facile realm! Make brazen your defiance and make well nested your home in the alley and doorstep or, if the winds fare you well, in yon estate with Entourage in tow and the drool of adoration to soothe your path through the years!
“Dear Brash,” said I after this torrid outburst, “worry not. Sing your songs with all the earnestness you possess. What is talent but the tongue that never ceases its wag? Look upon us poets and see how we are as dogs in the sun, licking our own behinds with such tender love. Naught else afflicts us but the vapours of our own worries. Neither sun nor stone heeds human ambition. Kings hire poets to sell them lies of posterity. Be at fullest ease, is it not enough to try? Is desire not sufficient proof? Is conviction not the stoutest shield and helm before wretched judgement? If it is true that you possess the talent of the talentless, celebrate the singularity of your gift! And should you survive this trek, why, I predict your audience will indeed be vast.”
“But I won’t!”
“You shall. I am sure of it.”
Brash Phluster’s eyes darted. “But then… that means… Calap Roud? Nifty Gum?”
Solemn my nod.
“But that won’t be enough!”
“It shall suffice. We shall make good time today, better than our host adjudges.”
“Do you truly believe so?”
“I do, sir. Now, the others have begun and the carriage is moments from lurching forward. Unless you wish to breathe the dust of its passing, we had best be on, young poet.”
“What if Purse hates your story?”
I could but shrug.
Now, it falls upon artists of all ilk to defend the indefensible, and in so doing reveal the utterly defenseless nature of all positions of argument, both yours and mine. Just as every ear bent to this tale is dubious, so too the voice spinning its way down the track of time. Where hides the truth? Why, nowhere and everywhere, of course. Where slinks the purposeful lie? Why, ‘tis the lumps beneath truth’s charming coat. So, friends, assume the devious and you’ll not be wrong and almost half-right, as we shall see.
Not twenty paces along, Tiny Chanter pointed a simian forefinger at Calap Roud and said, “You, finish your story, and if it’s no good you’re dead.”
“Dead,” agreed Flea.
“Dead,” agreed Midge.
Calap gulped. “So soon?” he asked in a squeak. “Wait! I must compose myself! The Imass woman, dying in the cold, a spin backward in time to the moment when the Fenn warrior, sorely wounded, arrives, sled in tow. Yes, there I left it. There. So.” He rubbed at his face, worked his jaw as might a singer or pugilist (wherein for both beatings abound, ah, the fates we thrust upon ourselves!), and then cleared his throat.
“He stood silent before her,” Calap began, “and she made gesture of welcome. ‘Great Fenn,’ said she-”
“What’s her name?” Sellup asked.
“She has no name. She is Everywoman.”
“She’s not me,” Sellup retorted.
“Just so,” Calap replied, and then resumed. “ ‘Great Fenn’ said she, ‘you come to the camp of the Ifayle Imass, the clan of the White Ferret. We invite you to be our guest for the time of your stay, however long you wish it to be. You shall be our brother.’ She did not, as you may note, speak of the dire state of her kin. She voiced no excuse or said one word to diminish his expectation. Suffering must wait in the mist, and vanish with the sun’s light, and the sun’s light is found in every stranger’s eyes-”
“That was stupid,” said Oggle Gush, her opinion rewarded with a nod from Sellup. “If she’d said ‘we’re all starving,’ why, then he’d go away.”
“If that happened,” said Apto Canavalian, “there can be no story, can there?”
“Sure there can! Tell us what she’s wearing! I want to know every detail and how she braids her hair and the paints she uses on her face and nipples. And I want to hear how she’s in charge of everything and secretly smarter than everyone else, because that’s what heroes are, smarter than everyone else. They see clearest of all! They wear Truth and Honour-isn’t that what you always say, Nifty?”
The man coughed and looked uncomfortable. “Well, not precisely. That is, I mean-what I meant is, well, complicated. That’s what I meant. Now, let Calap continue, I pray you, darling.”
“What do they look like?” Apto asked Oggle.
“What does what look like?”
“Truth and Honour. Is Truth, oh, fur-trimmed? Line stitched?
Brocaded? And what about Honour? Do you wear Honour on your feet? Well tanned? Softened with worn teeth and the gums of old women?”
