The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 12
The lift arrived to interrupt my study of Charity Bentham’s letter thanking the Nobel Prize selection committee for her award. She seemed, in her letter, very smart and very happy. This was the woman Israel called “hot.” I pictured a goddess, granite-hard and all-knowing, like Frigg, Odin’s wife and first among the Norse goddesses, but this distortion was because I understood little of her biography. I did congratulate myself for what I presumed was an adult understanding of Peregrine’s anguish. Here was Father’s first and, from what I believed to be true, only love, who had risen to incomparable heights in America while he had remained a bottom-dweller. In my sentimental way, I supposed I could feel how Peregrine must feel—hurt, ashamed, afraid, robbed. It did not occur to me that such emotions in an immature man like Peregrine, who believed himself persecuted by ghosts, could lead to far worse than self-pity.
As the lift delivered me to what I thought was the first story of the castle, I considered how bizarre it was that Charity Bentham was said to be descended from royalty. I wondered if Peregrine had knowm this pretentiousness when he courted her. I imagined it would have disgusted him, descendant of German and Irish swineherds. I did not think that such strangeness might have compelled him to possess her, nor did I think that his possession might have proceeded to marriage. I never asked myself what it was that Israel had “skipped over” in his version of their romance. I did wonder if her royal blood was true, since Israel had told me that the worse snob in America could at best lay claim to ancestors that had been either too incorrigible or too wretched to have remained in Europe. The America that Israel described to me was a huge, fertile, noisy, greedy land of outcasts from the collapse of European. Asian, and African decency, rushing like lunaucs to construct a new and greater amalgamation of indecency. That was where Charity Bentham flourished. That was where Peregrine could never go again. I asked myself, what would such a woman make of my father, after all her victories and all his defeats.
Stupidly, I got off the lift on the first floor, in the servants’ corridor beneath the grand staircase. I panicked that I might lose my wages for truancy. I charged out of the small grillwork door and into the milling celebrants. I blushed at the stares of the women in the Earl of Gotland’s party. I could not rush the staircase. I tried stealth, ducking my head, edging along the wall, it not occurring to me that no six-feet seven-inch gold-maned ice hockey prodigy in ill-fitted livery does anything unnoticed. The stares became more intense. I shrank closer to the wall.
It was luck again, and perhaps bad luck, that one of the few people in the hall who did not notice my awkward chagrin was Peregrine. He was slumped at the end of the bar top in the cloakroom, his hands folded piously before him, his head bent in the most tender pose, his attention fixed upon the willowy, gray-haired, glimmeringly gowned lady of charm and authority before him. They chatted and smiled. Peregrine Ide, pauper, fugitive, servant’s servant, flirted with his long-lost Charity: and Charity Bentham, heiress, stateswoman, and honored guest of the Kingdom, flirted with her long-lost Peregrine.
Israel was not pleased when I told him what I had seen. We did not have time to debate. Rinse rushed over and threatened dismissal. I saw Mrs. Bad-Dober scowling in the distance. We took a cue from the simpletons and feigned obliviousness. We huffed and puffed until midnight, when our gang got a half-hour tea break, because the King’s speech was due to interrupt everything. I wanted to get as close to the dais as possible, hoping Charity Bentham might be there. Israel grabbed me and pulled me along with the other workers to the rear service stairs, where, on the chilly landing, everyone relaxed with tobacco and quiet.
“Surprise, mon guerrier!” cried Guy, charging up with a birthday cake held high. Behind him came Molly Rogers and Thord Horshead, followed by Thord’s lover, Orri Fljotson, and Orri’s younger brother, Gizur, called Sail-Maker, both of them with armfuls of drink and utensils. Last up the stairs was the immense shadow of Earle Littlejohn, his arms crossed oddly. They sang to me a suggestive limerick to the tune of “Happy Birthday,” in English, Swedish, and French. I was embarrassed, because many of the simpletons joined in the shouting. Israel pounded me on the back; Molly and Guy, pulling me down to their height, kissed me wetly; and Orri—a ravenous man at five feet tall—demanded we cut the cake. I asked, “How did you get in here?”
“Trifling matter, birthday boy,” said Thord. Thord’s English was peculiar, learned mostly from eighteenth-century English novels. He was tall, wraithlike, bright and gentle, might have been pretty were his features and person less elongated. His great talent was patronage. As art dealer, he was owed favors by most of the well-placed members of the homosexual community in Stockholm. As “extraordinary tradesman,” his term for smuggler, he simply owned every other third-level official in the government. He could get what he wanted when he wanted it. There were limits, but not for social functions. His taste was for the shadows, however, so though he wielded a carte blanche in the then casually carnal and corrupt Kingdom of Sweden, he exercised his power eccentrically. The only man I knew who did not approve of Thord’s manner was Guy, but Israel assured me that this was just one of Guy’s personality quirks, nothing mean-spirited.
Once we were arranged on the landing like a picnic party, Molly had me blow out the candles. Orri and Gizur took charge of distributing hats, cake, and wine. I leaned against