Still Life with Woodpecker (24 page)

MAX’S FATHER,
King Ehrwig IV, had impregnated a kitchen maid. Captivated by the skinny child who grew from his careless seed, he went often, before Max was born, to the scullery where, among cabbage leaves and leeks, he bounced her on his elegant knee. Ehrwig offered to adopt her, but the child’s mother, as spunky and obstinate as Gulietta herself was to be, wouldn’t have it. “You’re content to leave me in the kitchen,” she charged. “The baby stays here, too.”

After Max’s birth, when King Ehrwig had at last a proper heir, he sought out Gulietta, then eleven, and into her jam-sticky, bony little hand pressed a document admitting paternity. “There may come a time when you will need this,” he said. A copy of the document was placed among his secret papers where many decades later it was found by a member of the revolution’s monarch selection committee investigating the Furstenberg-Barcalona lineage.

All along, Gulietta had known that she was Max’s half sister, but she chose to honor her mother, in life and in death, by never revealing that fact. However, when she was approached by agents of the revolution—they found her splitting cedar kindling beside a fireplace on Puget Sound—she chose to honor her father by freely confessing to the purple in her veins.

“We’ve lost faith in Max and Tilli,” they told her, “and besides, Max has renounced the crown. Their sons are beneath consideration, they are trash. We would have liked Princess Leigh-Cheri, but you’re aware of what she’s gone and done. You are left. And you will be perfect. You are representative of both our proud royal heritage and
our good common folk. Upon your head, the crown will not be just a piece of autocratic hardware, it will be an adjunct of democratic, socialistic rule. You will be a queen for the people because, though genetically royal, you come from among the people. Why, you even speak the mother tongue, the
old
language. On top of that, when it comes to Furstenberg-Barcalonas, you’ve got more sense than any of them.”

At first her age had worried them, but when they observed the vim with which she swung her hatchet, they nodded at one another and smiled. “She’ll outlast the twentieth century,” they predicted.

So, shortly after Christmas, old Gulietta acceded to the throne, and in the spring, she publicly accepted the elaborate tokens of regal responsibility—the scepter, the ring, and last, the crown itself. It was such a glittering, emotion-charged occasion, pompous in the best sense of the word, that not a soul, not even the premier, noticed that the old woman never at any time during the coronation un-clinched her left fist. And in the unlikely event that they had noticed, nobody would have suspected that inside the fist was a living frog. When the creature croaked, they attributed the sound to the excitement of ancient bowels and went right along with the ceremony.

Upon being crowned, Gulietta’s first act was to reaffirm diplomatic ties with Peru and Bolivia, to whose envoys she hinted strongly that some nice fresh cocaine, for medicinal purposes only, would be regarded a proper tribute.

Her second act was to personally request of the president of the United States of America the commuting of the sentence of a certain “political prisoner” held in federal jail in Washington State. As a matter of protocol, the president had little choice but to comply.

“HELLO, DARLING.
Any word about the limestone?” Leigh-Cheri embraced A’ben Fizel. She kissed his mouth and welcomed the hands that slid immediately inside her negligee.

“How can one speak of stone when there is flesh at hand?” A’ben asked. He drew her more tightly against him.

“Take it easy, darling. Don’t be in such a hurry. Meat won’t melt. I want to hear about the limestone.”

“Okay, there is the good news, finally. The ship she passes through Suez at this hour. Should to be arrival here before two day.”

“Ohh!” Leigh-Cheri squealed with happiness. “I’m so glad. Aren’t you glad? Maybe we’ll even finish on schedule. Do you think so?”

“You tell me take it easy. Now I tell you take it easy. Stone she not melt. Pyramid never melt. Pyramid will be here on earth long after
this
is in heaven.” His fingers, dripping with jewels, closed around her groin.

“Mmmm.
This
is in heaven already. Or it soon will be.” With a movement like a raccoon picking a fruit, like an outlaw striking a match, she unzipped his trousers.

WHAT HAD DISTURBED LEIGH-CHERI
most about Bernard’s note was its evidence of how poorly he knew her. Like women in general, like Aries women in particular,
like redheaded Aries women in greater particular, she loathed to be misunderstood. Injustice against others outraged her, injustice against herself set her to boiling like brimstone soup. After the sacrifices she had made, after the extremity of her commitment, to then be scolded like an errant tot, to be lectured condescendingly, to have her love, their love regarded frivolously was simply intolerable. The one man who might know how to make love stay—or so she’d thought—had behaved as if the moon were his personal wheel of cheese, and once again her heart’s natural inclination to contemplate romantic grandeur had been interrupted by the mundane, betrayed by the egotistical. Never again, by Jesus! Inside her, something had snapped. She couldn’t say that she no longer cared about Bernard, but she could say loudly and clearly that no longer would she be victimized by caring. She was a princess, a very special entity with very special graces, and from now on, when it came to men, she would call the shots.

It occurred to her that in every relationship in which she had participated, in every union older than a year that she’d observed, imbalance existed. Of a couple, one person invariably loved stronger than the other. It seemed a law of nature, a cruel law that led to tension and destruction. She was dismayed that a law so unfair, so miserable prevailed, but since it did, since imbalance seemed inevitable, it must be easier, healthier to be the lover who loved the least. She vowed that henceforth imbalance would work in her favor.

She vowed also, caressing the warped Camel pack as she vowed, to enlarge and explore what she’d come to call her “theory.” She viewed herself as some kind of Argonian link, and the vision that she’d had in that stuffy, silent attic was to be the foundation of her new life’s work.

To these ends, she sent for A’ben Fizel.

When he was courting her, upon her return from Hawaii, Fizel had been a gallant but unattractive companion. Excesses of liquor and rich foods had given him bulbous
jowls and a greenish complexion. He rather resembled a tall toad. But when she sent for him, suggesting that she might consent to become his wife, an amazing transformation took place. Putting aside his playboy ways, Fizel checked into a North Dakota health ranch where he was assigned a diet of grapefruit and raw garlic cloves and made to walk twenty miles a day. At the end of thirty days, he knocked on the door at Fort Blackberry a slim and handsome figure, reeking only moderately of garlic. Leigh-Cheri was amazed. Nothing the approval in her eyes, Fizel got right to business. He presented her with a diamond as big as a Ritz cracker. The Princess was not to be rushed, however.

“What do you think about the future of pyramids?” she inquired.

IT HAS BEEN ESTIMATED
that it would require six years and a billion dollars to construct the Great Pyramid of Giza with modern technology. To duplicate the Great Chicken of Itza would take even more time and money—but that was Col. Sanders’s problem. Leigh-Cheri’s scheme was not quite so ambitious. A pyramid one-third the size of Giza would still be an enormous structure and would suit her purposes just fine.

“Your country practically borders Egypt and has much the same terrain,” the Princess reminded A’ben Fizel, “but tourists never visit you because there’s no attraction. In fact, when your country is mentioned, most people draw a blank. If anything comes to mind, it’s oil wells, excessive profits, religious fanaticism, and vulgar taste. Suppose you were to erect the first full-sized genuine pyramid in the Levant in more than three thousand years. Not only
would it attract tourists from all over the world, it would serve as a popular symbol and give your nation an identity. The pyramid could become a showplace for your culture. In addition to bringing in revenue, it would be great public relations. Folks wouldn’t be so quick to think of you guys as nouveau riche barbarians with petroleum under your nails and sand between your ears.”

Fizel flinched at these words, but he was fascinated nonetheless. Her proposal made some sense to him as a businessman and a patriot. The icing on the pyramid-shaped cake was that she promised to marry him when the structure was complete. His pyramid would be a celebrated monument to his love for her just as the Taj Mahal was a monument to the love of Shah Jahan for his favorite wife. Fizel was one of the few men on earth who could affort to express affection in such grandiose terms.

Following a fortnight of deliberation—and consultation with his dad—A’ben agreed. Before slipping the diamond on the Princess’s finger, however, he made a stipulation of his own. It was practically common knowledge that his bride-to-be was no virgin. Fizel demanded, therefore, that while the pyramid was being built, she reside in his country, near the Fizel palace, and that one night a week she admit him to her chambers.

Since she had every intention of supervising the construction of the pyramid and since it behooved her to put distance between her and McNeil Island, Leigh-Cheri was quite willing to move to A’ben’s land. As for his demand to trespass weekly in her boudoir, she put it to a vote. Her heart said no, the peachfish said it was about damn time. Ambivalent on the subject, her brain finally decided to vote with the peachfish. Thus was the betrothal announced.

THERE WERE MOMENTS
before her mirror, brushing the hair that flowed like creeks of lava, that trailed like the woven trails of red-hot comets, when she would see a whore’s face looking back at her. At those moments, she felt hard and dirty, and she’d spatter the mirror-face with tears, mourning girlish innocence, romantic dreams, the dimming of the moon. But in the square beneath her Moorish windows, real camels chewed their cuds, when she parted the brocade draperies, she could see domes, minarets, and date palms strikingly similar to those on the cigarette package, and on the far horizon, a pyramid—
her
pyramid—was swiftly rising.

It would continue to rise until reaching a height of 160.6 feet. It would spread until it covered 4.4 acres. Its four triangular faces were designed to incline at an angle of 51 degrees, 52 minutes to the ground, precisely the same as Giza’s. Naturally, the pyramid would be accurately aligned to the cardinal points, while consultants from Cambridge’s astronomy department were assuring that it would have solar, lunar, and stellar alignments, as well. Its outer chambers would be given over to cafes, bazaars, and nightclubs, all of highest quality, to a trade exhibit and to a small but important museum of Levantine archaeology. The inner chambers were Leigh-Cheri’s alone. In them, she would oversee and conduct exhaustive experiments in pyramidology. Pyramid power, that energy frequency that preserves corpses, sharpens razor blades, amplifies thought forms, and increases sexual vitality, would be studied by the best scientific minds until it was thoroughly understood, and then every effort would be made to put it to the uses that the Argonian
masters intended. Perhaps through the impetus of her pyramid, the Red Beards somehow could be retrieved from exile, or a new race of modern Red Beards would be spawned and eventually regain control over solar forces.

When she thought of things pyramidal, which was most of the time, it no longer distressed her that she was using A’ben Fizel or allowing him to use her. Then, she would look in the mirror shamelessly. She’d brush her hair as if it were the aurora of a permanent moonrise. And sometimes she’d lift the Camel pack, crinkled and bent, from her dressing table and hold it up to the looking glass, smiling at how the great word CHOICE once more defied the inversions of normal reflection. She had freely
chosen
the life she now led, and if it had unsavory aspects, well, she must be brave and bear the taint. Not that the liaisons with her fiancé were ordeals for her.
Au contraire
. Oh, very
au contraire
.

THE FIRST TIME
that she spread her legs for him it had been like opening her jaws for the dentist. Clouds of dread, doubt, resentment, guilt, and sentimentality combined to shadow the faintest ray of pleasure. Eyes squeezed shut, she tried to imagine that it was Bernard inside her, but this new man felt so different, so strange that the fantasy never solidified. In the weeks that followed, she relaxed somewhat, primarily as a result of his unexpected gentleness. Eyes still tightly closed, she’d move against him as if he were a device from a sex shop, mechanically churning herself to the creamy brink of aloof orgasm. When she finally went over the brink, one twilight when incense burners were smoking up the flat and camel bells tinkled in the square below, she relaxed far
more. The next time he undressed at her bedside she kept her eyes wide open—and saw what she’d been missing.

Although A’ben had resumed an active nightlife—giving the discos one last whirl before marriage, he claimed—daily workouts in the family gymnasium were keeping him trim. His Semitic beak had a strong masculine contour, the teeth that armed his shy smile were brilliant and regular (especially in comparison to Bernard’s yellow wrecks), and there was a generous light in his chocolate eyes. His phallus was long, slender, and slippery, and as curved as a Phoenician eyebrow. Aroused, it stood politely on end, but bowed backward so that its head, as smooth and purple as eggplant, almost touched his belly. Even before A’ben could climb into bed, she was stroking that exotic fixture, marveling at its natural lubricity, rubbing it against her nipples, holding it against her flushed cheeks. The poor man barely got his feet off the floor before she had him in her mouth. As he throbbed in her throat, pumping jet after jet of that steamy translucent mucilage with which Cupid tries to glue the world together, she felt as if she were gulping concentrated ecstasy, and it made her blood croon. Later that evening he focused on her clitoris with unusual sensitivity, and as he was leaving to return to the palace, she hinted that one meeting a week might be shortchanging Aphrodite. “After all, you’re a sheik, and I’m a redhead,” she whispered. From then on, he visited her on both Wednesdays and Saturdays, and they fucked the night away.