8 Winderby's Last Case - Duncan McGibbon (read book txt) 📗

yourself, Mr Winderby. “

(Song. Close up.)
“Come, golden one
whose tresses fair
are finer spun
than strands of sun.
Whoses ankles turned
are smooth and neat,
whose blooming skin
beams tints of wheat.
Offered whelp , show
me your narrow
way to sleep,
the sheer perfection
of your deep.
The gestures of your
speech are strange.
I am a stranger
to words, Alcestis,”
(The girl backlit)
The man leaps out of my mind
gibbering, to run down
the town of Moliere
in a Mediaeval smock.
The girl lies asleep in the aisle.
Alcestis played for laughs
with Death and the Enlightenment heroes,
Leibniz and Voltaire
at each other’s throats.
23. Drawing the Love Lottery

Dear Tracy,

Due to your unfailing efforts
over the assembly of the Athanor,
Central Heating Showroom,
you have won a free trip to Kythira.
Due to the fact that love is an universal urge,
you have zero words in which to express
your preferences on this island
of love-making and myth.
You do not need to activate
this message as we will carry you away.
Note the baggage limitations:
you must be lighter than air.

24. The Wanderings of Winderby 5

I hear a shape in a dying catalogue
of my mind: the set of published stones,
intersecting with flinching surfaces.
the hover by me with silent pleas to speak.

Scene: the hallway of a French provincial Chateau
in the late Eighteen th Century
Genevieve wants to take a part:

(Maidservant)
Tell me what troubles you, Lady?
Does his blow still smart?
and so does Pina
(La Baronne)
The blunt wound was not as painful
as his first mistrust, but more deadly.
It was the final pain, an emblem of
an option that could not be changed.
Here, in a country whose manners
I despise, whose climate spoils my servants.
and my trousseau and which…

(She rises, as if gently wounded
and holds her petticoats in her hands,
stooped before the cold grate
in the morning room.)
"Puissance d'amour",
(She mouths the words silently)
“As if a flint could be sparked
from that phrase of Prévost's,
which would set alight
the pretty clothes he has given me.
My first doubts years ago
had grown from the lethargy
of a humid summer
and too much whispering
after le secret du Roi.
The letters I sent to my mother
were read by the king's censors
before they arrived at Dijon.
This is why my husband did not come to Rome.
My spies have attested my fidelity.
I felt humiliated, yet I had
Cardinal Silenzio as my companion
for public occasions,
such as the opening night of Alceste.
It was the custom in the Papal States
and he was my confessor.
Yet Monsieur Le Comte
has sent my name to Versailles.
(Outside the sound of restless horses)
The servants are busy on the stairs
She opens the chiffonière
under the gilded mirror
and takes out a lace shawl.
Her husband opens the doors
and looks at her with a glance,
I see at once its myself.
she would once have taken as unkind)

(Le Comte)“Life will be quieter in the country.
Even Vergennes could not understand
why the king had recalled Necker.
It is going to be a troubling time.”
(She gets up to leave)
(La Baronne)” Do you remember the picture
of the death of Alcestis we saw once
in England?

(Silence. La Baronne turns
to see her husband is not there.
Servants request
Monsieur Le Comte’s presence )

I must go. There is news about Paris…
(To her servant)
I will not return. The King has been discovered
I must help Barnave. Make sure my daughters get away
Look after my foolish husband. At least he is harmless.”
(Leaves)

Scene Two.
Mesdemoiselle s Alcestis, and Callisto de Beauregard
and La Marquise, pass by the vegetable market
at midday. Effie raises the coach
window and hold salts to her nose,
“Why should I, a pupil of Maine de Biran at Grateloup
be expected to endure physiological extremes.
(Man's désir naturel being his happiness)”
Her sister sits hunched in an opposite
corner of the coach. The Chargé d'Affaires
has not even looked at her.
His wife had though, a piteous
but wilful glance, implying
all of the disgrace she already knew.
In the city's dream-life whirl
of dances, liaisons and disguise
the amours went on without
a thought of reputation.
Now Callisto carried another husband’s child
and felt the cold keenly these mornings.
She wrapped the bear-rug more closely around her.
While her sister leveled her a pharisaical stare.
Her efforts to resist the same
seducer had been much praised. Now it
seemed the renowned Antiope was making
a Hyppolytus for herself. Effie smiled.
The graces in the Palazzo Farnese
would be homeless too,
Don’t you remember Mr Winderby/”

Callisto stopped reading,
bored with marriage and finesse.
The train rolled on, geometric,
through the Burgundy countryside.
I had created
to forget her accusations.

25. Attachments
Notice for a Conference, a Press Release.

Polyxena Smith, a witness to an Epiphantic sighting,
will land at Brindisi Airport, Immigration desk.
Then and there she will declare herself a refugee
from forces in America that want to have her dead.
Her trials began when friends in Troy asked
if she could have a dinner date at which
a blind ecclesiastic turned out to be
a covert bomb expert and signaller
with two inches of ivory in a public place.
The reason why the marksman is a crack shot
lies in his having only one eye
and he can estimate by Tantric mysticism.
while genuflecting just once.
America has also used quite corrupt courts
to strip her of her precious savings
under trite excuses, such as rents.
There should be no interim exchange.
Smith will wear a black ensemble,
thick black briefcase and a tote-bag, also black.
Allow her to proceed direct to immigration
upon deboarding from her New York plane
and from thence to her hotel.

26. The Wanderings of Winderby 6

I can only tell at a distance,
as I am accelerating through time,
become more derivative and
observant only of phenotypes.
Thus, this time the real Callisto narrates
“The coach wound its way
out of Lyons to Turin.
The journey would be long
and uncomfortable, but the mood was
angry in Rome and the directory seemed
as much against the popolo minuto
as they were against the ancien régime.
We slept through awesome days
and nights of mountain passes
and village inns where the inhabitants
seemed to suffer from every imaginable
physical malady and spiritual misery.
The final descent into the plain
found us hot humid and thirsty.
At length we turned into
an avenue of blistered poplars
just before San Stefano Belbo.
We found Padré Silenzio’s
palazzo a little overgrown to justify
the stay. The long driveway was mined
with potholes which jolted one
of His Majesty's less luxurious coaches.

But its many, half-ruined rooms
at least provided privacy.
Servants were numerous, however,
as, knowing our good luck, few
were not prepared to fawn,
dismissal could mean disaster.

We had, at first,
found it disagreeable that the
Chargé's wife should also
be quartered with us , but
the tearful reconciliations had
been good for our souls,
which , as Effie did not accept
any argument for its immortality
argued well for natural virtue,
despite my sister's claims for Rousseau.

Silenzio was an obscure host though
and the locked-up buildings which loomed
above the theatro were depressing
and had an inhibiting effect on all of our parties.
Tonight he has planned entertainment
but the rumour is that though
a chance of amusement should not be forgone
as it entails a certain risk of discovery
in his circle’s Arcadian exile.

That night, the amphitheatre has been
full of certain pifferari and hired bandits
together with displaced carnival actors
who are to perform Il Pastor Fido
from a text carefully edited by Silenzio

My sister Effie is unimpressed
with the décor of the Palazzo Silenti.
But one group of statues holds her attention.
Three maenads, or graces, are gathered around
an old mounting block in the centre of
the turfed courtyard. Their arms interlinked
in a strange manner that gives
the impression of a restless energy.
Her teacher had told her of the fact
of a power of action and of will, proper
to the thinking being as being as evident
to the self as the very fact of his own existence.
Yet these statues have muscular action,
without the self, yet they are not sensitive beings.
They had no 'I'. Effie has never seen anything like them
One in particular, smaller than the rest, has
a look of serious calm, yet seems surprised,
or perhaps shocked, a nerve translated
into the sculptures, which are bronze,
by a certain tightening of the figure's shoulder muscles.
The figures are missing Callisto,
if the name carved in Greek below
the front of the mounting block is a title.

The amusements begin with the chorus from
Aminta; the chorus is a talented group
from the Institute which has occupied the
Palazzo next door to the Farnese.
Men and women in equal numbers intone:

“Happy, happy now the golden age
not simply for the milk that ran
in rivers, nor the honey glaze
that every tree displayed.
Not simply for the blossoming land
nor man by cars undismayed
nor snakes which had no venomous gland

...Thus these were only happy days
before that proud and lazy word,
that lascivious image of malaise
unveiled by the manic herd
and named honour, and its gaze
had every beast shouting its praise

Then it deigned to vandalise
the hearts of those who loved...”

I hear no more, I am infused
by the sentiment, the Rousseauesque
freedom of the world it speaks of,
enraptured, I holds up my head
and think of the Chargé d'Affairs,
who turns out to be Silentio’s relative.

His wife too is touched that such
simple sentiments should infringe
upon such anxious times
she has heard nothing of her husband
Only Effie so far is uninspired.
What had de Biran said to her at Grateloup?
“Rousseau speaks to my heart, but sometimes
his errors afflict me.”
The Vicaire Savoyard
should have no new disciple.

The chorus ends and is replaced
by the actors from Act Four
“If the hurt had been my blame
and the punishment my shame.”
and concludes with Guarino's version.

“You are gold,
you are fire
Your gaze is obedient
your glance into the west
You are summer.
You seek the salamander.
You melt. You move.
You come alive
You lead him to a fullness.
Your thick hair burns
to your crown,
Your long white torch
is slendered to the legs
Your arms incline within
Your fire is bound
by the tendons of your knee
Your breasts enclose the rose
while the boughs of your shoulders
hold up the hanging air.

All three of us are invited on to the stage
to accompany the procession.
Then I seem to stiffen.
My clothes are torn
by emerging stone.

There is a commotion
of voices and horses’ hooves,
Alcestis’s mouth stills to silence.
The servant speaks in a lilting
Parisian acent:
“The directory's troops found
only the servants.
The chorus ended:
The first scene was from Beccari's Sacrifizio
An actress from the