“As good a reason as any to remember the young lady,” muttered Klein, who had become entangled in his robe.
“No,” said Chaser, “you do not understand. Aalish was the first to use prose as an art form. At least, she is the first that we can recall. She was an essayist.”
“It’s hard to believe,” I said, “that prose could develop so early in a culture. We may have to rethink a few things.”
“These are people who love books,” observed Klein. His eyes were closed. “They have a passion for all the literary forms. Maybe it explains why their sciences never got off the ground.”
Chaser sniffed, but otherwise ignored the remark. “That was also the age,” he said, with cool condescension, “of Sesily Endine—” He paused to allow us to respond. When we did not, he added, quietly, “—the first great novelist.”
The two Tyr volumes were expensive editions, bound in tooled leather, with several woodcuts in each. Chaser argued good-naturedly with Klein about the state of Melchior’s science while I paged through them. There was a portrait of the great dramatist himself, in three-quarter profile. He had penetrating eyes, a round, almost hairless, skull, and the unmistakable stamp of genius.
There was also a schema for a Colosian theater, which was more or less in the round, and not at all like the one in the park; some lines of original text; and a broken column with an inscription. Everything was apparently in the ancient Colosian which, of course, I could not read.
“His memorial,” Chaser said, when I asked about the column. “It’s still there, but so are the barbarians. You would need an armed party to visit it.”
“What does the inscription say?”
The bookseller lowered himself stiffly into a worn upholstered chair. “The Colosians,” he said, “were alone in a world of savages: slave empires north and south, fierce mounted tribesmen on their flank. They were under constant military pressure, and had been defending their borders for three generations when, for a time, their enemies finally succeeded in resolving their own quarrels, and combined forces. The barbarians attacked by sea, landing a huge army in the heart of Colosian territory, and struck toward the capital. The defenders fought a series of brilliant delaying actions, and then unexpectedly counterattacked on the beach at Ananai.” Chaser paused for dramatic effect. “For six hours the issue was in doubt. But in the end, the Colosian navy sealed the area off, and the invaders were pushed into the sea. It bought security for almost a century. Tyr was a foot soldier in that battle…”
“Wait,” I said, suddenly chilled. “The inscription: it says nothing of his reputation as a playwright. It says only that he fought at Ananai, with the Colosians.”
Chaser stared at me. “You’ve heard the story before? They felt it was the highest honor they could bestow.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve heard the story before.”
When we were back in the store room, Klein asked me to explain. Each of us was somewhat wobbly by then, and I led the way into the kitchen, and pointed to the coffee pot. “Aeschylus’ tomb had the same inscription: ’He fought at Marathon with the Athenians.’ ”
Klein shook his head. “More plagiarism. And we still don’t really know who’s guilty.”
“Yes, we do. On a world full of booklovers, the historians should be fairly accurate. If so, Aeschylus died about the time Tyr was born. So that, I think, pins it down.”
“Well,” said Klein, “I’m glad your faith has been rewarded.”
I said goodnight and hurried home through a light rainfall. But I couldn’t sleep, and ended the evening on my front porch, listening to the wind beat against the windows, and the water rattle through the drains.
Tyr had apparently been a scientist in a society devoted to the arts. I wondered if he’d envied Aalish in the way that I envied Klein. (Living next door to genius can be painful.) Somehow, he’d learned to travel, and had visited Athens, probably during the time of Pericles. He would eventually have been drawn to the theater, although disguise must have been difficult. Maybe he hid in a tree. Hell, if he could walk between galaxies, maybe he could make himself invisible. And one evening he’d seen his first Sophoclean drama.
He must have returned to Colosia with a collection of plays (and an admiration for Aeschylus’ tomb), selected one, and released it as his own. My God, how he must have savored that moment! I wondered which it had been, that first night? Oedipus? Electra? Do you start with a blockbuster? Or work up to it gradually? I tried to imagine how it would feel to sit in the audience as the creator of a timeless masterpiece, watching it play the first time, and knowing, really knowing, the significance of the moment.
I returned to Melchior one more time, to deliver an Oxford Shakespeare, a Webster's Unabridged, and my own translation of Lear into Chaser’s language. The bookdealer could not conceal his joy. He pounded my back, pumped my hand, poured wine, and gave me three of Endine’s novels, some poetry, and a collection of the surviving essays of Aalish. We talked and drank, and at one point during the evening, Klein predicted that rational cultures will turn out to be quite alike in their essence. “There will be trivial differences in the ways that we greet one another,” he said, “or in the manner that we conduct business, or in our views on clothing and entertainment. But in the qualities that define civilization, we will agree. The proprietors of secondhand bookstores,” and his eyes locked with Chaser's, “will be found to be everywhere the same.”
He could not have been more wrong.
Two months later, Klein was dead. He was stricken in the middle of the night, and died in an ambulance. I was, at the time, lecturing on Horace at the University of North Dakota.
When I got home, ten days later, the store room had been taken down. I offered my condolences to his daughter, and inquired, as diplomatically as I could, what care was being taken to preserve his papers. At her father’s direction, she said, they’d been gathered and burnt the day after the funeral. She cried a little, and 1 thought about the bedrooms of the universe, and walked around to the rear of Klein’s house and looked at the pile of lumber, which had not yet been hauled away. After making the discovery of the ages, he’d elected to let the credit slide, and had gone silently to his grave.
And I? I was left with some newly-discovered Sophoclean plays, and some alien masterpieces, none of which I could account for.
I tried to lose myself in my work, but my classes were tedious, and I grew weary of the long struggles with semiliterate undergraduates.
I read extensively from Chaser’s books: Endine’s dark novels were Dostoievskian in scope and character. They left me drained, and depressed me even more.
I was glad to retreat from those bleak tales to Aalish. She must have lived near a coastline: the distant roar of the tide is somehow present throughout her work. One has a sense of the author alone among rocks and breakers and stranded sea creatures, the universe itself reflected on deep water. But her vitality and her laughter (it is difficult to believe that she is not somewhere still alive) reduce the cosmos to a human scale: it is a thing, like an old shell found on the beach, that she turns and examines in her hands.
Her essays maintain everywhere a spirited wit, and an unbending optimism, a sense that, if it all ends in a dark plunge, there is meantime starlight, good wine, good books, good friends.
No wonder Tyr loved her.