A Shadow All of Light (38 page)

“Yet it is the shadow of our Bennio,” said Astolfo.

“His true name is not Bennio,” I said.

“But that you knew already,” our client said. “All members of the Society go by that name. It is the one people know. My birth name is kept secret so that my words can have the smart of the whip-snap and my private house and family may go unharmed.”

“If this shadow is that of your true figure, the role of Jester must be onerous in the extreme. For it twists the actual person you are about its central axis like a well-rope around the winch,” I said.

“The part of the humorist is proverbially a heavy one, is it not?” Astolfo said.

“Yes,” I admitted, “but I had never expected to see the proverb so starkly illustrated.”

“Well, 'tis a burden he must take up again,” Astolfo said, “for Bennio has already chosen the shadow which is to replace the one we have severed. Shall we go into the hall of mirrors and try it on?”

“Yes,” said the man in a tremulous whisper. But he did not move forward. He fell face-first to the ground, senseless.

*   *   *

It required the better part of an hour and two cups of a fiery pear cordial brought from the cellar to restore our Bennio. Mars was dreadfully anxious, trotting round and round the chair in which we had deposited our Jester. He now professed gratitude for our bringing him into the cool dimness of the library, with its thick drapes and dark shelves. “Forgive me. 'Tis but a passing spell. I am sound.”

“We might have warned you,” said Astolfo. “Many there are to whom the sudden loss of his shadow brings on a fainting. Some are attacked by a vertigo; others suffer cold sweats and vomiting. It is no sign of a weakness within you.”

He breathed quickly and unevenly. “For me, it was the onset of a too-swift exhilaration. I felt such a high elation, so sunbeam-quick a happiness, that I fell down dazed. It was the sudden purity of an immense relief.”

“It may be you are ill suited to the Jester occupation,” Mutano said. “If the shadow of Bennio weighs so heavy upon you, perhaps you should not put it on again.”

“But I must,” he said, “for the burial ceremony is urgent and if I do not fulfill the part, many evils will ensue.”

“Evils of a kind you cannot describe,” Mutano said. To show his impatience, he poured a thimbleful of cordial into a glass and drained it off.

“This much I know,” the Bennio said. “The role of the Ministrant at the interment is supposed to be given out by lot. But there was no chance involved in the choosing of me. Because the steward who passed the box was clumsy, I saw that all the tokens were marked with my sign.” He extended his right hand with a gold ring on the third finger. The red stone was marked with a gold symbol of Mars.

“Might you have been allowed to see the deception on purpose?” Astolfo asked.

He pondered. “I cannot comprehend why that should be.”

“Do you know why you should be so singularly honored?”

“It is regarded as an involuntary honor—of a sort. But every Society member knows that this office entails the loss of shadow. That is the rule.”

“Could this be at least in part a reason your name was made certain to be drawn? Might some one or two of the Society desire to see you shadowless?”

“Again, I can fathom no purpose in't.”

“Nor can I. Let us go to the hall above where the shadows are stored and you shall choose one to replace the other.”

“It must be in the figure of Bennio.”

“Because you must act the Ministrant in that guise?”

“Yes.”

“Well, we shall think upon that point. But let us go up. We have only a small stock of Jester umbrae, but there must surely be one to suit for the time being. Mars will come with us. The dog will be the ablest judge of what best fits.”

*   *   *

Our plan of action required that we summon the aid of our crabbish old acquaintance, Maxinnio the ballet master. I did not dote upon his company, but Astolfo enjoyed irritating the irascible fellow, goading him to heats of exasperation. We found him in his rehearsal hall.

“Go away,” said Maxinnio. “Your breaths are unwholesome, your faces are ugly, and your bodies are clumsy beyond repair. Whoever admitted you into the house shall be dismissed upon this instant.”

“Good morning, Maxinnio,” Astolfo said. “I am pleased to find you in humor. The day is bright and inviting.”

“How did you gain entrance?”

“My colleague, the rash Falco, offered to slice the gizzard of your porter if we were turned away.”

“My ‘porter,' as you call her, is a female of but fifteen years. I do not doubt he would show courage sufficient to attack her.” He was seated at his desk in a small room adjoining the practice room of his dance studio. That space was deserted just now.

Whatever project Maxinnio had under way was in an early stage of progress. On the desk before him lay sheets of diagrams blocking out the choreography of a new ballet. There were about a dozen of these sheets, most of them disfigured across their expanses with large X's. He was searching his way to a scenario.

“It is you who are so severe upon young girls,” Astolfo said. “Falco is tender of heart on that head and would never threaten. A few polite words and a modest coin, and—lo!—she allowed us to enter. She smiled also, and that is a habit your Missana could not have learned under your tutelage.”

“Missana? I had not heard her name spoken. I suppose that you will tell me she is my newest discovery, a future ballerina of great renown.”

“I think not. She is plump and cheerful. You could not abide her presence.”

“I cannot abide yours, but here you are. By what means can I get you gone?”

“Let us be more amicable,” Astolfo said. “Did not the other girl I commended to your attention become a dancer of excellence? She too was a doorkeeper and hearth-sweeper, living here with her abilities unrecognized. I am of mind that you are in my debt for her discovery.”

“She was troublesome and still is.” He sighed dramatically and pushed his chair back. He gestured toward the papers strewn on his desk. “She hath conceived a grand new tragic role for herself as Queen Dido who dances many long, dolorous solo passages before she immolates herself at last.”

“Yet are you not her dance master?”

“Go away.”

“Thou'rt a lean and querulous creature,” Astolfo said. “A physician might declare that you are distempered by an excess of the bilious humor.”

Indeed, Maxinnio did appear changed since last we spoke with him. His face was drawn and more wrinkled than before and he appeared more restless in spirit.

“If I am peevish, thou'rt no palliative. Why have you not departed?”

“I desire your aid. Do you expect this new Dido piece to match the success of your ‘Sorrows of Petralchio'? I recall those performances with pleasure.”

“My ‘Petralchio' had the advantages of surprise and variety. The setting was a traveling carnival with animals and acrobats and fire-eaters. The dancers mimed many different roles.”

“Two clowns also were included,” Astolfo said, “the long-faced Petralchio and the mischievous jester Bennio, who led Petralchio's lovely Columbina astray. That was a sequence filled with interest.”

“What is it you desire of me? The last reserves of my patience? You are quickly draining those.”

“I recall also the shadow-play upon the backdrop as your Bennio tumbled and cavorted. It seemed that in watching I could almost hear his imbecilic and insulting rhymes. Did your dancer cut those shapes or was the figure of a puppet behind the scrim brightly illuminated from the back? The staging was so adroit, I could not tell.”

“That shadow belonged to the dancer, Cocorico, who was of great aid in designing his dance and its umbral counterpoint. In his narrowly limited fashion, he was a sort of genius.”

“
Was,
you say?”

“So far as I know, he no longer performs. We had a falling-out and he departed my troupe in a fury and forever, or so he vowed. He vowed also to take revenge upon me, but all the principal males who leave make the same identical threat. They are a contumacious flock, these dancers.”

“Why do they so cross thee? Certainly, you are a sweetly tempered man and as patient as a ten-year calendar.”

“Yes, that is so, though I am much a-weary of thee and thy Boffo.”

“Falco is my name,” I said.

“Falco, Flotto, Farto. Begone and take thy names with thee.”

“With whom has this Cocorico taken up in these latter days?” Astolfo asked. “There are some secrets of his craft I would learn of him.”

“
Purloin from him
is the truer phrase. Thou'rt in ill luck. He has given up the ballet for some trade more suiting his disposition. Treason, mayhap, or assassination.”

“Do you know of his whereabouts?”

“If I did, why should I tell you?”

“Why, to be rid of me. You make that out to be a happy state of existence.”

Maxinnio blinked weary eyes at us, then rubbed each with the heel of his palm. He was tired of staring at his papers. I deduced that a new scenario that would satisfy his diva was not easy in the conceiving. He leaned into the back of his chair and stretched his arms before him. “Yes, that would be a blissful relief. Yet I do not know for certain where he may be. If he has given up performance, as he threatened, he shall have found an ancillary employment—as a director's assistant or in the design of costume or the placement of lights. He would never wholly forswear Terpsichore.”

“If he is out of temper with you, he may hire out to your closest rivals. Which of the masters would that be?”

“There are none. My company is nonpareil.”

“Yes, of course. But if some ignorant rustic were to imagine that you had a close rival, whom should he choose?”

“If he were devoid of proper judgment, he might alight upon the Draponi Troupe. If he were curious about the art, he would seek out the Signora Anastasia. It is not usual for a woman to lead a dancers' company and I doubt that Cocorico would encamp there. The Signora will brook not the slightest insubordinate gesture and Cocorico is of a surly and disputatious cast of mind.”

“To the Draponi we shall march. I thank thee most prettily for your kindly aid and bid thee farewell. I hope you can forgive our hasty exit.”

He flapped at us a languid, dismissive hand, as if we were flies that had settled on the drawings before him.

*   *   *

Astolfo had no intention of visiting the Draponi. Knowing that Maxinnio would be pleased to discommode us, we found Buskers' Alley, leading off the waterfront, and halfway within it an old warehouse now partitioned into studio spaces. Herein the Signora Anastasia exercised her craft and art.

If she'd been a piece of cutlery, she'd have been a silver paring knife. Slight, small, compact, with bright gray eyes and hair, she seemed not to stand upon the floor of her studio but to come to a point upon it. I judged her to be well past her dancing years, but she showed the lithe strength and springy grace that the discipline confers. Her expression, a wry and quizzical smile, seemed never to change and I took it to betoken a lightness of heart that would be hard for a temperament like Maxinnio's to comprehend.

Two boys of about fourteen years were laying out squares of colored cloth on the floor as she directed them, turning one square that way to the angle of light from the tall windows and another square the other way.

She and Astolfo were old acquaintance.

“Tell me, Maestro,” she said, “will a curtain of that shade of green suggest the depths of a forest? I have my doubts.” She peered up at him as if she were testing, half in earnest, his judgment.

“My man Falco is ready to suggest such umbral tints and tinges as can lend it the cast of primeval creation,” he replied.

She gave me an appraising glance, from toe to head, past to present. I felt I had been read like a letter delivered upon a salver. “I suspect he is a quickly suggestive fellow, but can he describe a color amenable to the furtive appearances of fauns and satyrs?”

I made a polite and silent bow.

“If there be nymphs to follow your satyrs, he is your man,” Astolfo said.

“We shall have nymphs,” she said. “The flute-notes shall draw them forth like roses trailing along the stones of a wall.”

“You are reviving your happy production of ‘Faunus's Waking Dream'?”

“For a brief period, while we prepare to mount a new piece involving Andromeda and Perseus and the Mardrake. That piece will cap our season, and I hold strong hopes of it.”

“How can it fail?” Astolfo asked. “It is the favorite story told in Tardocco by means of dance, poetry, music, or painting. It is the signature of our city, with its attachment to local legends of the bay. And the Mardrake? That fearsome monster delights one and all. Who is to play that part? It is traditionally given to a Jester who enjoys the lascivious menacing of the maiden princess.”

“I have assigned it to a Jester,” she said. “You know of the renowned Cocorico?”

“We came seeking him. Your friend Maxinnio suggested—”

“Maxinnio would misdirect you,” she said. “There is ill will between those two.”

“Falco and I believed that this artful clown would delight in your productions over those of others. Maxinnio tried to misdirect, but we followed our own reasoning.”

“He is absent just now. The mechanisms of the Mardrake occupy his thoughts. The monster must appear to be vast and our Jester is a small and crook-shaped man. He must look something like a giant black squid or octopus or some more frightening creature, with tentacles and other appendages, and yet he must move in time with viol and aulos, advancing and retreating, while coming ever closer to Tantalia, who is to take the role of Andromeda.” She turned from Astolfo, looked in my face direct, and asked, “How do you think he might accomplish this task?”