Escape Velocity

 

It was nearly midnight, and while an episode of "Rumpole of the Bailey" murmured on the Talking Pictures television channel, Richard Troup, M.D. retired, was lost in a very pleasant daydream though day was long over.  He had put a deposit down on a holiday in the eastern Mediterranean, where he would soon be on a terrace overlooking the Aegean from Rhodes, the water a kaleidoscope of unnameable blues and greens, with just the right sprinkling of jolly cotton-white clouds drifting by.  He would make the acquaintance of an olive-complected lady, worldly, distant, even dismissive at first.  One could see in her visage the heredity of centuries:  Greek, Roman, Anatolian, maybe some ancient Phoenician.  Things to guess, not to know.

The phone was ringing, rudely evaporating his reverie.   What now?  A distressed-sounding son Arthur needed him, he said, and could he bring a certain sum of cash?  He gave the location to meet but no further explanation.  Click. No lawyers or guns? 

There was, of course, only one source of cash (not only at this hour but due to circumstances Richard faced these days after the divorce):  the holiday fund.  He was going to enjoy spending it on a delightful trip since, as it had been built up from his cash-paying private patients, and neither ex-wife nor the Revenue  had any knowledge of it.  One had to keep some things for one's self.  Well, maybe not.

Next door, Mrs. Swann was also up unusually late due to the Agatha Christie in her hands.  There was little point in going to bed before the ending -- how could there be any sleep!  Neighbor Dr. Troup's headlights swept an arc by the window.  What could that be about? she thought, always on the alert for an intriguing story.  Turning her attention back to the old paperback, she would at least find out what the deadly party guest was really up to.   Mrs. Swann had been up to something herself, with a mortifying, but not mortal, result.

 Upon Richard's arrival at the old church he drily called Our Lady of Modest Aspirations, the man present (who most closely resembled a potato)  explained the situation while Arthur kept silent and fiancee Helena glared.  Arthur, a freelance advertising rep for several local publications by day, ardently pursued his passion, a music career, at most other times.  He had recently convinced this promoter (instant relief at this revelation -- not a kidnapper, drug dealer or loan shark) that he would bring enough of a crowd to bigger venues beyond Cranleigh village -- Barnstable and Woking, for example, then on to London -- to make an investment in him worthwhile.  Ever the salesman! thought Richard.  The crowds had not appeared.

"I should have known better, even with a signed contract; I'll admit it.  But I'm out a considerable amount.  Considerable.  You can make it -- some of it, anyway -- good or I can go public with a civil suit.  My lawyer has had these want-to-bes for breakfast before."

Richard, after a frozen moment of hesitation, handed over a thick envelope.  

"Well call it even, then," the potato allowed.  "Best not to say another word, all of us."

After a straight gaze lasting several seconds directed at Arthur, the promoter got in his small van and headed back home, smacking both his forehead and the steering wheel.

"I am beyond embarrassed," Arthur said to his father.  "And I just wrecked everything, Hels.  I'm so sorry."

"Yes, you are!  And don't call me 'Hels' ever again! I hate it.  Better -- don't call me again at all."  She would have thrown her engagement ring in his face before she stomped over to Richard's car, if she'd had one.  It looks like none of us is going anywhere but home.

Mr. Swann, retired from HM Revenue and Customs, happily spent time working on the detailed Waterloo diorama which had taken over the den and at The Richard Onslow with his mates.  The silence around the house discomfited his wife not so much in itself, but did allow for too much solitary time for regret.  After years at the newspaper writing articles that quickly ended up in dustbins, she, in retirement, finally finished her mystery novel (with some added romance threaded in) and her agent got to a publisher.  

Then the roof fell in, or so it felt.  Her manuscript was rejected; some junior reader there found it was too similar to one of Emma Frances Dawson's short stories.  She could not argue her case.  It was.  The rare, obscure 19th Century volume she had found in a village used bookstore should not have been known to anyone anymore.  What luck.

Mrs. Swann had an even grander plan than a big city book signing or two.  With the proceeds from what she was sure would be at least a modest success, she was going to visit a good friend from youth who was now living in Queensland.  Tropical trees, flowers and birds...

Having to tell her husband she was not going to be published (carefully editing out the reason why), or going to Queensland, was deflating.

"Well, we can all just enjoy who we are where we are," was Mr. Swann's honest attempt at comfort.  Ugh.  Old Sartre got it right.

 

Warrior Princess

 

A local high school senior wrote a newspaper essay recently about the problem of women in history still being passed over or getting very few words in books and articles written by men.  We're missing out on true stories that make mass-market fictional characters look pale by comparison.  Let's take the Way Back Machine to a thousand years ago to meet "the closest approximation in history to a Valkyrie."*

Lombard princess Sikelgaita of Salerno (Italy)  was titled the Duchess of Apulia when she became the second wife of the Norman Duke Robert Guiscard.  He divorced first wife Alberada to make this union, and he could not have found a closer equal.  Guiscard was called "the weasel;" despite the nickname he was anything but, being much more like a Kodiak bear.  "He had a thoroughly villainous mind...was a man of immense stature...his bellow put thousands to flight.," according to a contemporary Byzantine account.   Not content with his domain in southern Italy, after taking Bari, the last Italian outpost of the shrinking Byzantine Empire , he crossed the Adriatic to begin a conquest of the rest of it.

Sikelgaita was right by his side in all her six feet of armored glory, charging into the battle for the port city of  Dyrrhachium shouting, long hair streaming, a real life Brunnhilda and true daughter of Wotan.  When the Anglo Saxon axemen in the employ of the defending Byzantine Emperor boldly attacked the mounted Norman knights, sending them running (they were still pretty ticked off about the Norman conquest of their England fifteen years earlier),  "Gaita" loudly called on her horsemen to return:  "Stand and fight like men!"   When that did not have an effect, she seized a spear and took after them.  Shamed or inspired, they returned and destroyed every one of the Saxons.

Guiscard had to abandon the invasion to deal with rebellion at home.  Gaita accompanied him on his return three years later to trash the Empire again.  And once again Fate intervened to stop his victorious advance, when Robert and many of his army succumbed to a typhoid epidemic.  His loyal wife and warrior was with him until the end.

That was not all Sikelgaita was, although she had even commanded a successful siege of the city of Trani by herself.  She had also studied medicine in the most advanced school of the time, and somehow found time to have eight children! 

After spending time in religious seclusion in the Abbey of Monte Cassino, the princess, duchess and general died five years after Robert.  

Maybe Sikelgaita should return to educate some male writers (this one gets a pass).

_________________________

*from author John J. Norwich

        

Das Rad

 

Though the child's year is slow

And the aged one's runs fast,

Serf and king alike must go

All that lives must pass.

Some Wise Guys

 

"These may be platitudes, but they are framed in wit, the swift phrase firmly lodged in the brain."  -- Louis Untermeyer

From distant Epictetus to Washington (Rules of Civility) and Franklin, to the more contemporary Ambrose Bierce,  Mark Twain, H.L. Mencken and Will Rogers, aphorists and writers of epigrams have surely been better guides to ethics and living than those who suck up our airspace such as celebrities,  economists, evangelists, dunces and murderous dictators.

A while back, we took a look at another gem of this genre, The Wisdom of Amenemopet from ancient Egypt.  I had not heard of this before; it's always surprising to discover how the more you know about a subject you discover how much more you don't know.  It would have been a much better use of time to have read this in school rather than Great Expectations.

And I had never heard of Balthazar Gracian's The Art of Worldly Wisdom either.  This volume of 300 maxims was published in 1647 by Gracian, a Jesuit teacher and preacher, under a pseudonym as with all of his other books but one, because his sort of Rabelaisian satire and irreverence was not appreciated by his employer.  After he read a "letter" supposedly sent by the Devil from the pulpit, however, he pushed the unamused Church too far and was censured and sent into internal exile.  Gracian won this tiff in the end; his Wisdom was a best seller in both 1892 and 1992!  Some examples:

-- Never compete with someone who has nothing to lose

-- A synonym is a word you use when you cannot spell the right one

-- Never open a door to a lesser evil for other and greater ones slink in after it

-- A single lie destroys a whole reputation of integrity

-- The wise at once does what the fool does at last

-- Dreams will get you nowhere; a good kick in the pants will take you a long way

-- Every fool stands convinced...the faultier a person's judgement the firmer the convictions (T. S. Eliot completely agreed)

-- Always act as if you were seen...if you can't be good be careful

-- Politeness is the chief sign of culture (That one's for you, Canada)

***

And from our more misanthropic and cynical countrymen:

Bierce:  He who thinks with difficulty believes with alacrity

Twain:  Never refuse to do a kindness unless the end would work great injury to yourself, and never refuse to take a drink -- under any circumstances

Rogers: Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggie" until you can find a rock

Mencken:  Puritanism --  the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy

Wit and wisdom make a perfect cocktail.