The Lute and the Lamp
by
Rhys Hughes
The first of three stories
in
The
Don Entrerrosca
Trilogy
The
town
was in uproar, which was difficult, for the wind blew from the
south and tumbled the shouts back down into the streets. The
scent of the mountains came too, cool and lonely, and because
the windows of the tall houses were open, it mistook rooms for
gullies and filled them. Some people decided this was a relief
and newspapers were read instead of waved like fans. It had been
hot, and many kind looks had been lowered on ice, in drinks and
dreams, but now the breeze took away the need for such
expressions. Yet the sky was still the blue of steel, a colour
which sharpens thirst and forgets the sea.
The rumours had started themselves. A man was committing a
crime, breaking the law in public. Was he an outsider? Was he
ignorant of the rules in Córdoba? No, he did not have this
excuse. Of mitigating factors there were none: he was a blatant
minstrel. And his name and face were familiar to all the locals.
He called himself Don Entrerrosca, by which it was surmised that
he was of dubious parentage, or none at all, because the name
has no basis in any meaning. He created himself, in a sense, by
lisping instead of talking, for he thought he was a romantic.
And so he was, but not a very good one.
Fancy you asking me now about Eber Marcela Soler! She lived in
the house with the most inaccessible balconies. This situation
was not of her own choice. The senate and the chamber of
deputies had decreed it, so that when a minstrel paused under
her windows and looked up, he might be discouraged by the height
and difficulty of angle. The aim of a song is too imprecise to
be certain of reaching her ears up there, and if the minstrel
was a fraction of a degree out, he might accidentally serenade
an inappropriate target: a man or a room of furniture or an
empty balcony, and then be forced to fight a duel for their
honour. And fighting a duel for something you do not love, such
as a chair, is a bad idea. You will not fight with any spirit
and thus you will probably lose and not even care.
The
fair Señorita Soler had been causing enough trouble in Córdoba.
Let us talk about obstruction of the highway! Before the
authorities made it illegal, men travelled from all over
Argentina to serenade her. Sometimes they came from much
further, so far that they could not sing in Spanish. But she was
fluent in many languages. Her hair was black and lustrous,
darker than the worst bruises on the men who fought over her.
And you, dear reader, would hope to win her too, if you could
see her now. Her smile, her laughing eyes; no, I do not want to
share her with you! Find your own southern beauty if you wish
for a full description; but even so, she will not be so lovely
as mine.
Not that I possess her: that is just my idle wish. Eber Soler
was not a prize to be won; she is a woman, and she, and you,
should know what that means. Anyway, the congestion in her
neighbourhood was considerable. The streets around her house
were always so thick with troubadours that not a single vehicle
might pass. Delays of this sort cost money. The authorities did
not view such financially ruinous incidents with tolerant eyes.
They grumbled about Argentina being a country of vast resources,
and fated always to remain so, for nothing could ever be
harnessed properly, and beautiful women who turned all working
men into lovers were as much to blame for this as bribery and
corruption. And Señorita Soler was the most gorgeous of all and
thus synonymous with economic recession.
They banned all suitors from her window and decreed an exclusion
zone around her house with a radius the length of the echo of a
plaintive note; later this was increased to that of a passionate
chord. Transgression of this rule would be punished by forced
eating of the instrument of melody, generally only with a light
salad as an accompaniment, which explains why the few suitors
who dared to woo the fair Eber after the passing of this law
favoured the mandolin over the larger guitar, and never used a
trumpet or bagpipes, as they do in Mexico and Scotland, but less
in that latter country, on account of the climate. Plus it is
easier to aim a mandolin.
No
guards were paid to ensure the keeping of the peace, because of
the expense, but the authorities relied on Señorita Soler's
neighbours to crease the ambitions of her suitors, in a manner
of squealing, by informing them on the telephone. The moment a
hopeful young valiant, with his heart worn on his sleeve so
often that the pin holding it there had rusted quite through,
letting the organ drop into the hollow soundbox of his
instrument, raised his voice to the window of his beloved, which
was always Eber Soler, of course, and nobody else, the moment
this happened, I repeat, some virtuous citizen, mostly a young
lady herself, would call through to the authorities and cry into
the mouthpiece: "Hurry! There is a serenade in progress! The
sentimental content is very high!" And the police would fly to
the scene of the chorus, with their sirens screaming WOO! WOO!
so that everybody knew what was going on and who was going down
and why this should be so. These young ladies must have studied
alchemy in their spare time. How else did they convert their
personal jealousy, which is a base mettle, into the pure goal of
public duty?
And so the adorable Eber remained unattached, though fiercely
loved, and Córdoba went about its business without surplus
traffic accidents. Until Don Entrerrosca appeared again from
nowhere. Who was he? Imagine a Macbeth without a blasted heath,
except on the heels of his shoes. Picture to yourself an Orpheus
with a head which would not float in water or wine, but which
could swim on the surface of a mirror. It is not that
Entrerrosca was vain and loved his own reflection; no, but he
knew every song of Carlos Gardel and Eduardo Arolas, and this
gave him an excess of justified pride. He was famous for his odd
ideas. He claimed that Astor Piazzolla wrote real tangos and
that men and women should talk to each other at barbecues.
Almost as outrageously, he believed that a stubborn donkey
should be beaten with a carrot, and that the original colour of
that vegetable was purple. He also theorised that the most
effective lutes are carved in one piece from a whole tree. And
now he was ready to prove it.
Perhaps
what followed has nothing to do with magic. It could be simply
that his voice was very fine, and that the tips of his fingers
were just soft and furious enough on the strings. Or maybe he
really had discovered the lost songs of Orpheus, which can charm
all living things. I am sorry to say that I have no mechanical
explanation. The general view, which nobody else has bothered to
question, is that he made his lute from a tree which was already
a saturated sponge for love, and that his playing merely
squeezed these essences back out, all at once in a concentrated
form. Certainly the bark was scarred with hearts and initials
from long ages past. Some wounds had started to heal, others had
faded altogether and were overlapped by newer hearts. But every
message had a total meaning. "Yo soy el árbol, conmovido y
triste; tu eres la niña que mi cuerpo hirió," as the Cuban
composer, Eusebio Delfín, puts it. Don Entrerrosca knew all the
Cuban songs too. His repertoire was definitive.
He had wandered Patagonia, playing to the wind and perfecting
his style. At last he was confident enough to make an attempt on
Eber's heart. Let us discuss this heart! It was made of stone.
That is a cliché, is it not? But it also happens to be true.
Please do not accuse me of lazy writing. I am a faithful
reporter of what actually happened. Metamorphic rock. It was
marble, actually. In that case, how did it work? Well, it is
true that the stunning Eber had been anaemic for some time after
the petrification, but she had conquered that now and was
better. Probably dancing the tango kept her circulation going,
even though she had to dance it with her own shadow instead of a
man. But no, that is silly. How could her shadow tap her on the
back to give directions? The truth of the matter is that she had
no use for her own heart because the hearts of so many men beat
for her. That is the answer. A million other hearts, mine
included; and soon, yours too.
What
are the exact circumstances surrounding the turning of her heart
to stone? I shrug, because I really do not know. Some people say
that a gorgon cast a glance at it. As proof, they cite that
gorgons no longer take their vacations in Asia Minor and that
Argentina may be a substitute destination. I call this evidence
purely serpentstantial and therefore worthless. It is also
gliglic, whatever that means: another invented word. But the
gorgon connection is probably correct. I think the great Jorge
Luis Borges had the solution. He wrote about the cockatrice, a
mythical beast with a look which can kill. If the egg of a
cockatrice was mistakenly hatched by a gorgon, the supernatural
powers of the two beings might get mixed up. It is far more
plausible to my mind that a cockatrice with a glance which can
turn objects to stone must have caught sight of Eber's heart.
But why was her heart not tucked up safely inside her bosom? She
must have taken her emotional armour off, exposing it. That is
my best guess. What was the cockatrice doing in Argentina? It
must have been touring the world. Others think that the turning
of organs into stone is a calamity which could only have come
from outside this planet, from the stars, and that it is a type
of disease. This hypothesis seems awfully cryptic and occultist
to me. Its supporters must be masons.
Now then: the imminent serenade! Don Entrerrosca had his song
ready, safely sheathed in his throat. It was an unused weapon,
lethal. He entered the outskirts of Córdoba with his giant lute
on little wheels. He dragged it behind him. Because of the law
and the exclusion zone, he did not find it difficult to walk
down the roads to Señorita Soler's house. The traffic flowed
smoothly. Soon he was parked far below her window. He called up:
"Eber! Eiiiiibbbbaaa! I am here to melt your heart, and to defy
the authorities, and to make a sweet din, which should
accomplish both my desires simultaneously!" And before he could
be sure that his shout had roused her from her siesta, he began
to pluck the strings. No troubadour worth his boots will sing to
a lady in the middle of the afternoon, but fear not that
Entrerrosca had lost the soles of his senses. Dusk was drawing
on, and the moon. The fair Eber generally took a longer siesta
than most of her neighbours. Her beauty had earned it.
Did his song reach her? LOVE is not just a word, but a word on
stilts; which is how it is able to touch even the highest
balconies. It was the first time he had sung it all the way
through. It was so potent that he had composed and rehearsed
small passages in isolation. Now he was fitting them together.
Any living thing which heard the whole song would instantly fall
in love with him. Imagine it! The most beautiful song ever
written played on a lute which was already soaked through with
desire. How could Eber fail to be moved? Even her marble heart
would have to turn liquid under this amorous assault. I know
what you are thinking. Córdoba is renowned for its beautiful
women. If Don Entrerrosca finished his song without interruption
from anybody else on the street, such as a robber or drunkard,
then all the ladies of the entire neighbourhood would fall in
love with him, and throw themselves off their balconies into his
arms, one at a time, and he would try to catch them all, from a
sense of duty, and soon he would be crushed to death under a
rain of accelerated caresses.
But
Entrerrosca was clever and had anticipated this. He was also an
amateur philosopher and knew the difference between logic and a
good time. They are two separate things, but he hoped to finally
blend them together, or rather to harness the former in service
of the latter. He had considered the problem of courting the
fair Eber to a much greater depth than his rivals. They simply
launched themselves into the task without restraint. In a sense,
their efforts were all feeling and no mind. But Entrerrosca, as
we have already learned, was a bad romantic. Unlike his rivals,
he had no natural charm. Thus he had been forced to study the
ways of seduction; he had employed his reason. He knew that the
inaccessibility of Eber's balcony was the doom of all other
snipers of love. Invariably they chose small instruments, partly
because these were easier to aim, mostly because these were
easier to digest if they were apprehended by the police. But the
angle was just too difficult for any aim, and they always
missed. And then the neighbour who had been accidentally hit
with the song would reach for the telephone. We know the
outcome. WOO! WOO! Oh, those jealous Señoritas!
Don Entrerrosca's first idea was to perfect the accuracy of the
aim of a mandolin, perhaps with the aid of a telescopic sight
and parabolic dish, to catch and concentrate any potential echo.
He soon abandoned the scheme as unworkable. Any instrument which
achieved the desired accuracy would be too small to be actually
heard! So he decided to adopt the opposite approach. He would
not bother with secrecy. He would play to the entire
neighbourhood! It did not matter if the whole of Córdoba heard
him! Because his song had more love in it than any other. It was
a song of total love. What does this mean? How would it save
him? Well, the answer can be found at the end of a simple
logical exercise. If all the girls fell in love with him
simultaneously, they would not throw themselves off their
balconies. No, if they felt true love, rather than just carnal
desire, though lust is certainly a part of love, but only in the
same way that the taste of an apple is a component of an
orchard, with all its trees and paths and fences and ladders and
thieves hiding in the dark of a moonless night, concealed as
cunningly as a pithy saying in an overlong sentence, which
reminds me of the paradox that when a heart is stolen its
recovery is the crime, but let me return to the point, which is
that if the love inspired in the Señoritas was total and true,
what they would wish most of all is the happiness of
Entrerrosca. And thus they would not interfere with his courting
of Eber Soler. For his blessed sake, they would allow him to
continue his song. This paragraph has been clumsy and strained.
I have exhausted you, dear reader. Please boil a kettle and make
yourself a refreshing drink.
Now
then, let us examine more closely his giant lute. It was a whole
tree, as we already know, and had been uprooted without undue
fuss from a Patagonian valley. Because it was an old tree, an
ancient lovers' tree, it was gnarled and hollow. An owl had made
a nest inside it. This space acted as a natural soundbox.
Entrerrosca had strung it with silver wires, not just the six of
a guitar, nor the doubled seven of a traditional lute, but a
hundred, which made it impossible to play, but he could. He did
not use ten fingers and a tail to sound inhuman chords: that is
a conceit for a different story by a better writer. Besides,
Entrerrosca was no devil. He relied on hope, luck and his
burning love to master the instrument. When he plucked it, the
owl flew away and the leaves on the branches of the tree
trembled. All the accumulated love in the trunk was squeezed
out. It radiated over the whole street, and yet it seemed that
two soundboxes were amplifying the note rather than one, for the
interior of Entrerrosca's chest also throbbed with the song, as
if there was a space inside there too. He continued to play and
every balcony in the neighbourhood was swept by waves of love.
The jealous Señoritas leaned out to see what this beautiful fuss
was about. They peered down at Entrerrosca and fell in love with
him. First they wanted him for themselves and they unpinned
their hair, which was swept back and secured in big chignons,
then this impulse passed: they noted that the troubadour was
gazing up only at Eber's balcony. So they rushed to their
telephones to report him to the authorities. But before they had
crossed their rooms, they thought to themselves: "I love this
fellow and therefore want the best for him; and he desires only
Eber Soler, so I shall fondly allow him to continue singing to
her and I will not spoil his attempts to win her." And they
disconnected their telephones and sat on their chairs, sighing
and pouting and growing their fingernails. And nobody else who
heard his song, male or female, felt the need to betray him,
even with the promised reward for doing so. The stratagem had
worked.
And what of beautiful Eber? What did she think of the song? I
fear that at this point you may accuse me of writing a contrived
fiction instead of reporting the facts. I swear that I am not
playing a literary game. I would like to say that she was
convinced by the melody and came down to her lover and so began
a fabulous affair. Alas, the truth is more complex. At twilight,
Señorita Soler always placed a lamp in her window, to let the
world, and any passing troubadour, know that she was in. It was
a political act, a challenge to the authorities, who had decreed
an end to romance in her part of Córdoba. Don Entrerrosca knew
this from his researches and he had seen the light.
Unfortunately, this flame did not belong to the lamp. A minute
before he started his song, Eber had ignited her little stove in
order to boil her kettle. She had felt a sudden need for a
refreshing drink. But then she realised that she was out of tea.
There was no yerba mate in her cupboards. So she had gone to the
shops to buy some. She descended and left her house through the
back entrance. She never saw Entrerrosca, who was standing at
the front, and he never saw her. He played to the flame of the
kettle and she did not hear a single note. It was a stroke of
very bad luck. But why did she feel the urge to make tea at that
precise moment? Somebody must have suggested it. Somebody who
loved Eber but who did not hear the song and who was thus free
to sabotage the poor minstrel's efforts. A deaf rival, perhaps?
No, I am being disingenuous. But let me tell you the remainder
of it: how Entrerrosca finished his song on a bended knee, and
how he was carried off against his will by his own instrument.
It was the first time the entire song had been played. It was
powerful enough to win the affections of any living thing. The
tree had been uprooted whole and thus was still alive. Being a
tree, it knew nothing about Eber Soler and did not care to
withhold its spontaneous passion for her sake. All it understood
was that it was madly in love with the man who was already
cradling it in his arms. It snatched him up with its branches
and started running on its exposed roots, using them as legs. It
had so many that its velocity was considerable. My best guess is
that it intended to run with him out of Córdoba and all the way
back to Patagonia, perhaps to live together in a casita blanca
on the pampas, surrounded by rheas; probably not. Who can say?
Its romantic plans remain a mystery, for it was knocked down by
a vehicle where the main avenues, General Paz and Colón,
intersect. Knocked down and smashed into little splinters!
The
lesson of this accident is that all troubadours should beware of
what they sing to their sweethearts, for their instruments are
closer to them. Anyway, Don Entrerrosca was deemed absurd and
exiled from this story forever. The remains of the tree were
eaten by him, but he was allowed to spit them out as pulp and
they were turned into paper. Córdoba is a major publishing
centre. Oddly enough, the vehicle in question was a police car,
but with its siren turned off. It could not have known about the
serenade, because nobody had reported it. A pure coincidence. I
did not sustain any injuries in the collision, though I was
later reprimanded for dangerous driving. I managed to obtain the
paper which was made from the tree. It was suffused with love.
Here it is. I cannot play a note on a lute, nor can I write
poetry. But when she reads this story, which is also my official
report, she might fall in love with me. It is my only chance to
win her. It is my offering. What are you thinking? That this is
too self-referential for a proper twist and that I am a
postmodern fool? No, just a lovesick one. And what about Eber's
heart? Will it finally melt? Impossible for me to know, unless
she presses this tale to her bosom and the droplets dry here on
the page . . .
The
Don Entrerrosca
Trilogy
Continues with
The Toes of the Sun
The Lute and the Lamp
previously appeared in
STORIES FROM A LOST ANTHOLOGY,
a collection of short stories
by Rhys Hughes
published by Tartarus Press,
a notoriously fine publisher.
Read the review
by William P. Simmons
in infinity plus
 Rhys
Hughes is, by his own
admission, a heterochromic logodaedalus much
concerned with ontological fripperies, the deep
pondering of which has turned his static nimbus into a
corybantic fulgor. He may get better.
He is also the author of 350 short stories and many
books, including
WORMING THE HARPY, THE SMELL OF TELESCOPES,
NOWHERE NEARMILKWOOD, JOURNEYS BEYOND ADVICE,
THE PERCOLATED STARS and
A NEW UNIVERSAL HISTORY OF
INFAMY. For the past ten years he has been working on a long
novel. It is nearly finished!
He enjoys travelling — when he
can afford it — and in an ideal world would spend all his time
visiting other countries. He also loves music, cooking and
reasonably light physical exercise. His literary hero is Italo
Calvino. His puppet hero is Bagpuss.
Rhys Hughes can be contacted at
rhysaurus (at)
yahoo.co.uk
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