September 14, 2015 | Occasus | Issue 5 | Fiction

Un Ballo in Machera

        “If one speaks of absolute standards…” a rich, stentorian voice boomed over the light chatter that filled every room. “One cannot avoid Kant. The universalizability in categorical imperatives…”
        Words billowing out, a gust of wind, charged with decades of academic self-assurance, rolling outwards, through doorways, armchairs, between half-empty bottles of wine, past crystal glasses and plates of cheese until, finally, it was only the faintest breeze which drifted through the mind of the abstracted young man leaning on the windowsill.
        Stephen fingered the topmost button of his shirt, the collar tight around his neck. Words meaningless to him filtered vaguely into his consciousness, shaping themselves into a rollicking pentameter.
       The universalizability
        In categorical imperatives…
        A diminutive woman with fading red hair and a wizened face passed by, surveying the entire room with a watchful eye, making sure her guests wanted for neither conversation nor wine; an experienced hostess, a dinner-party veteran. She came up to him, her hand hovering over his back, as though she was enclosing them in a curtain against the window. “How are your parents, Stephen? Enjoying their vacation?”
        “Oh, good.” He cleared his throat. “They’re doing well, yeah. Mum’s glad to see the family again, and they’re both definitely happy to get away from the university a while.”
        Mrs. Staunton nodded, her brow wrinkled in sympathy. “They really did deserve a break. I bet you’re getting a taste of that professorial lifestyle though, aren’t you?”
        Stephen shrugged. “The prof I’m working with doesn’t much care for assistants. So far I’ve been entrusted with handing out worksheets.”
        She nodded again and murmured, but her attention was drawn by a boisterous outburst of laughter, and her searchlight eye turned away from him. “What is it, Dr. Anderson?” she cried, drifting away, her thin-lipped grin like a mask. “Wherefore such levity?”
        Stephen receded once more into social obscurity, an unknown, awkward young man taking up space by the window. He took another sip from his glass of red wine, his face contorting involuntarily at the bitterness of the vintage. His gaze drifted outside, across the vast and sweeping grounds, resting briefly on the guest-house where he had stayed often with his sister (memories of toy cars, jumping on the bed with Phoebe while their parents were in the main house), along that glorious, sparkling-blue pool, and followed the polished-white stepping stones, which curved gently against the wrought-iron fence gating off this little Eden from the grey and noisy city. And it was a paradise, to them—these awestruck children, whose parents rented a tiny basement-house with beige walls and cracked bathroom tiles. How wide-eyed they were at a gated gravel driveway, a glittering chandelier, the whole luxurious carpeted-mahogany ensemble—how they begged to stay a little longer!
        And now—well, now, his nephew was here—twelve, thirteen?—edging around the fringes of the room towards him. He said nothing, but looked at Stephen with his dark, tired eyes and a grin too wry for his age.
        “Alright, Jacob?” Stephen shifted to the right, making room for him on the window-seat. The boy nodded, leaning against the cold glass and closing his eyes.
        “Where’s your mum?” Stephen scanned the room for the tall, spindly form of his sister, her hair an explosion of brown curls. She’d always been easy to spot in a crowd.
        “Outside,” said Jacob, gesturing to the balcony. “Talking to…someone.” He looked frail, draped up against the window, his hand limp on his thigh, condensation forming and disappearing on the glass as he breathed. Hesitantly—awkwardly—Stephen rested his hand on the boy’s shoulder.
        As long as he was outside, among the grass and mulberry trees, tiptoeing around the edge of the stone fishponds with Phoebe, it was a season of glorious freedom. In summer they would lie in the shade, and Phoebe would take out her pencil and sketch some particular plant. Did she still have that sketchbook, filed neatly away at the bottom of a box somewhere in her new home?
        But the house, he knew, was the purgatory at the center of Eden. The bottomless fatigue behind his nephew’s eyes was all too familiar. As they grew older, somehow, they spent less time outside; nights seemed to come earlier, but the day dragged on in the Staunton house. Dinner parties, poetry readings; the dull, dismal droning of some well-respected writer, and Stephen starting as he almost slipped into sleep.
        Culture! He would say, to shake himself awake. It was an invigorating word, a word that filled his lungs as he gathered himself up, a word that shone in his eyes—that glorious feeling that swelled and burst with Tchaikovsky’s crescendos, that captivation with the stark reds and roiling flesh of Rubens. The Staunton house was the heart of culture, they said. But how lifeless was the atmosphere, desiccated husks shuffling around and issuing blank smiles, chattering; Panglosses all, self-assured that their world was the best one. He tried, at first, to assimilate; then he cultivated a contempt; then there was only resignation, defeat. But Phoebe…
        Well, there she was. She came in with a group of people, with Mrs. Staunton, came in from the cold night air in her backless black dress without a shiver. When they were young, she was stout and sturdy—always the first one in the dirt, better at climbing trees, fascinated by snails. It was bizarre, now, to think of this elegant woman ever staring at snails.
        “Hello, all. Hi, Phoebe. Oh, er—before I forget, mum wanted me to send her love,” he said, rising from the window-seat as they moved towards him. Jacob didn’t move, his head against the window, his eyes still closed.
        She smiled, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “Stephen! I didn’t know you were coming tonight.”
        “Well—ah, I texted you—”
        “Oh, I’m sorry. You know I never use that thing.” She turned to Mrs. Staunton, laughing.         “Cellphones! I just can’t figure them out.”
        The old woman nodded gravely. “My sons all have them, now. Couldn’t be bothered, myself. Just too old, you know.”
        There was a murmur of consensus from the group. They were all too old, or too academic—they took pride in their rejection of technology. Implicitly, they all believed it was a sort of crutch, stupefying its victims. Not us, they thought. We read books.
        “I say, is that Jacob, there?” Phoebe peered around her brother, concerned. “Jacob, dear?” The boy lifted his head from the window and looked over. He nodded, another wry smile.
        “Think he’s just tired,” said Stephen.
        “Odd,” she mused. “D’you remember, Stephen, when we were his age? We loved coming to this house.”
        Mrs. Staunton smiled. “Back when you were wee children! I remember.”
        Stephen smiled half-heartedly.
        “Oh, Stephen,” said Mrs. Staunton. “We were just talking—do you know about the opera coming up?”
        “Verdi,” said Phoebe, excitement in her voice. “Un ballo in maschera.” Her accent was flawless, but somehow uncontrived.
        “Oh, you know it?” asked Mrs. Staunton.
        “I’m sorry?” He glanced at his nephew—his eyes were open, now, looking back at him like a mirror from the past.
        “You know the play?”
        He took a sip of his wine and cleared his throat, turning back to the group. “Of course. I think it’s probably one of my favourites of Verdi’s.”
        They nodded. Dull, dead eyes, movements like marionettes, all except Phoebe—and even her fire was dying down. Paper could suffocate a flame as well as feed it.
        “I just love the costumes,” someone cooed. “Those masks—just lovely! We should have a themed dinner party here one day.”
        And with that, they all burst into chatter; suggesting the food, the date, the music, to a receptive Mrs. Staunton, who nodded thoughtfully. Jacob cupped his hands against the window and looked through them, through the shining reflections on the glass and out into the darkened garden, until he could no longer hear the clinking glasses and laughter but only the wild and desolate wind which bent the tree-leaves towards that wrought-iron fence.
        And vaguely, again, as Stephen smiled and nodded, those weighty and meaningless words drifted through his mind:
        Categorical imperatives…

RICHARD JOSEPH is a first-year student at the University of Western Ontario studying in the School for Advanced Studies in the Arts and Humanities.