The Double's Complaint

--I am become a name
               Tennyson, Ulysses

THE HAREM HAS THE FLU TONIGHT. The Emperor, dressed in red, the color of his anger, has ordered the wind lashed. It rages still, streaked with poison. From the ramparts I watch the spy, my dozing senile creature, who was to supervise the ferashes, conducted into the sanctuary to punish the atmosphere. Blind mutes they may be, but spotty and hormonal they are, and hairy beyond belief. Never trust a child to a dog, or a harem to a spy.         "Over there," someone titters, "not there, there," a lasciviously sneezing woman's voice, full of longing, forbidden to the ears of men. I leap. The speaker withdraws, sensing, perhaps, my ponderous shadow, as I trundle after it. A door shuts softly. The latch clicks into place. A minute late, impeded by my voluminous trousers, I confront the forty identical doors which open onto forty more and the labyrinth of his Majesty's pleasure dome. I pause, call vainly, a comical shriek. My spy slumbers. The slaves, terminated or striking, have dispersed. If I pursue the transgressor, enter the endless corridors beyond where even the infinitely wiser Emperor, on an assignation, must resort to maps, I leave unchecked the hirsute fellows below. I turn and curse. They are the troubles of my days, the material of my nightmares--these younger wives, the cheaper stuff of the royal entertainment.         The chided wind abates. My spy awakens with a groan in the still of dusk, smooths the superfluous veil in which she is hedged and laced, grasps her cane. The ferashes congregate. She leads them away by tapping on the ground. I watch, in their wake, in my solitude, the desolation of our grounds, the deserted avenues, the decayed arches, the barren trees touched with frost under a low sky. A sulfurous mist descends upon the columns of the dead. The winter and debris of empire, I think. The gates are bolted, the captive world delivered to melancholy.         I potter to my worries, a unique man, cleaved from myself and entrusted with women. I frustrate their aims, prevent them from their amusements. Virtue, chastity, obedience--these are my constant refrains. They delight in tormenting me, in having me called at all hours. One wants a water pipe, another tea flavored with orange juice. They simulate fears and alarms: somewhere a seance is in progress, a man conjured to be made love to, a scarved Italian rake. For an hour I scuttle after the apparition and they mock my fears and responsibilities. Power, in this way, ebbs and flows between us. In his Majesty's august embrace, that intimate place, while I patrol the foot of the bed with a fan and cigarettes, they denounce me mercilessly--my mannerisms and habits, my constant air of contempt, how I carry coffee or pour, how badly I fold towels, my carelessness with the salt shaker. I may retire from the vigil in favor, and awaken disgraced. Once I was whipped.         The halls resound with the voluble sighs of the sick and the phlegmatic. I listen at the doors. I must hire the geomancer to complement his majesty's wrath against disease. In my room, I fasten the parchment to my desk, resigned to it and the discomfort of the chair, whims of his Majesty subsequent to our European tour. I dip my quill in ink. Among my many duties, that of the intelligencier combines my natural curiosity with my devotion to his Majesty, whose eyes and ears I am. It is here, through the medium of my epistles that his Majesty peruses at his leisure in his morning bath, that I counter the calumnies of my charges, where I restore my self. I remain apprised of the incidents of the harem, the innuendoes and imputations which, between my inmates, poor dears, pass for conversations. I investigate; I learn; I inform. He arbitrates and rules.         A crash--I spring. For our harem is under siege, our powers declining beyond the walls. A boy with a nascent mustache preens and prowls about our gates. I have intercepted a letter in a bowl of prunes. Determined, this time, to apprehend the tottering virtue, I tumble into the corridor and encounter the Majesty's double knocking on a spurious chest.         He coughs. I retch. He asks, "Have you seen my crown?"         "It won't be there. That contains my double."         The arched eyebrows of his befuddlement dimly recall his Majesty's rare moments of expressive confusion.         "A mannequin, for when I tire of the photo-ops. The real thing quit." I steady my turban, disturbed by the exercise, and raise my voice. "First the orb, now your crown?"         He ignores my ironical tone. "There lurks, I suspect, a kleptomaniac amidst the concubines."         "I shall authorize a search. A misunderstanding, I am sure. A child bride, after all, rather innocently mistook," I chuckle, "your scepter for a baton."         He lingers in the cold, gray shadows. "Isn't it brave to be king?"         I endeavor to retreat. He calls, "Did I mystify you?"         "Absolutely. You do a wonderful king."         "By God I must have it, then. I thought I needed more practice."         "At what?"         "At him, playing me. It is an intricate business--to impersonate someone who, for a living, mimics you."         The veil parts. I see. I see. I rush forth, falling to my knees. His Majesty has honored me, with the inscrutable mystery of his purpose incomprehensible to mortals, in the guise of his double, gracing the environment with the sweet breath of his person. "My Lord. My Lord." I grovel. I press my cheeks to his feet.         "Careful, my good man: corns." He whispers aromatically, "Should I have used the plural form?"         "Your Majesty is the most informal of sovereigns."         "That is the point--isn't it?--to keep the performance honest, one must, from time to time, slip, just so the artifice shows. A difficult thing, really, after a lifetime of training, to be superficially regal. What? Are you crying?"         He enfolds me in the arc of his beneficence. I whimper, for a moment, in his arms. "Tears of joy, of repentance and joy. My Lord, I prayed for this moment. I believed, I feared I had lost favor."         "Nonsense. It's just that your Orientalisms occasionally get on my nerves. I mean, look at you--is that giant key jangling from your sash necessary, or those slippers with upturned ends, or that turban? Maybe it's inflatable and lighter than the real thing, but I bet you can't walk through a doorway without seriously endangering yourself. Why not wear suits and ties like every one else? And these reams you write. Type, on a letterhead. I must say, every time I see you, I feel remiss if I haven't beheaded somebody within the hour. Or, for that matter, why am I threatening the sky? Everyone knows germs carry the common cold."         "Pathology sells, your Majesty."         "I detest it. It's ignoble, this constant scrounging for money to feed my wives (give or take a hundred), and, forget the daughters, all these sons, vying for succession and thirsting for my blood."         "Your Lordship deprecates his potency. In this past month, I believe, you tamed fifteen virgins."         "There you go again. This is another problem. (Virgins, my foot.) You're always crunching numbers. Tell me, what's the use of it? I would have to average two a night--my capacity--just to see them once a year and suffer their insults. Take the other day, for instance. There I am unwinding on my throne, doling out laws to my subjects, the astrologer (strange character; look into him) and ministers in attendance, a few mendicant plebes going through the motions, when a self-proclaimed wife (now I would have to take her word for it, wouldn't I?) dragging her boy by the hand (couldn't place the shrieking brat) accosts me for money, very brutally and before a rare hammy-legged busload from Hamburg, I might add." He inclines towards my insignificance. "Which reminds me. Something ought to be done about the utility bills. Lanterns are quaint, but I have it on good authority that the feminist faction is contemplating arson."         Our voices echo under the vaulted ceiling, continuing in the middle distance a fragment of our conversation. We listen to ourselves in the past. "If you would only consider, your Highness, the A Couple of More Nights proposal. A harem, Majesty, like any business, must generate revenue or disband."         "To clown after a lifetime of constitutional rule? Not another word of it. That scatological documentary fellow you had stalking me last year, literally urging me to an atrocity in Vienna--one ought to observe some boundaries, even with a touring king. Haven't I been a punctual king? Don't I put on a good show? Haven't I conceded enough, sitting, hour after hour, on that damned, defective carpet?"         "Levitation is a matter of concentration. If only you applied yourself. I, corralled by the paparazzi who mistook me--me with my unworthiness and putrefaction--for your Lordship, have taken the liberty of squatting on the carpet. (You were, mischievous autocrat, engaged in incandescence, out of order, with a favorite.) I thought and deliberated and, in a pinch, I managed a lift, not much to speak of, just enough to send them away satisfied. That's the aim of celebrity; to send them home smiling. So imagine, my soul, if I, the most superfluous of your subjects, can manage, in the shadow of your greatness, what miracles you could perform, the laughter you could elicit, and the rewards, the rewards. Why, you are no less than any other king."         "No less, no more." He waves a robust arm. "I am a king, not a helicopter. Have them go to the airport, if they're interested in flying objects." He perfumes my wretched contours with a thunderous sneeze. "That's the other thing. All these ellipses and panegyrics, half the time I have no idea what you're saying."         I listen, nod. My soul has calmed. I bask in his resplendence. He has shed his anger, is in peach. I observe redundantly, "My Lord demands solitude."         "Hold on a minute. Isn't this an urgent need for company?"         "That's creamy orange, your Kingship. Peach is meditation's hue."         "Never could keep them straight."         Astonished, flattered beyond measure, I remind him in an undertone accompanied by a suitably enigmatic gesture, "Walls have ears." Aloud, I opine. "We must discuss the upcoming Grand Seraglio competition. This way, your Majesty."         He issues; I twaddle, bolt the door to my chambers and make a show of tending to a fire in a brazier. Then I bound, tearing at my rags. "Usually, in these scenes, my Lord," I explain breathlessly, finding nothing but a square of dim shadows, "a chamberlain lingers behind the draperies."         "You're perpetually yourself." He staggers in the clutter of my chambers, the usual harem knick-knacks, my urns, my globes, astrolabes. "That's wonderful and so forth. Do you ever tire of it and step out?"         "Step out, my Lord?"         "Outside of yourself, of your character?"         I blush and blubber. "The Emperor likes me. He does. Should I lick his footsteps with my tongue?"         "Good God, no. That's disgusting. Just sit somewhere quietly."         He reposes on cushions. I sink at his side. This is the sum and substance of his Majesty's confidence: the double has suffered a paralytic stroke. Ten days have passed. The apothecary despairs. The attending physician has fled the realm, and the double, the finality of his condition communicated to him, lies on a bed of his Majesty, a bed upon which he has interloped and which he defiles, blaspheming.         "What does he say, my Lord?"         "That he is king--what else?"         "Isn't that our requirement of him?"         "So long as he remains a phantom, rumor of my fame. He aspires with his disease, the charlatan, to personhood."         "This is dangerous."         "And not just to my ego, friend, even though some of my shameless wives ask about him. He plans to be me full-time, now that he can't be fully himself; and I can frustrate him, pretending to be us, for so long. It's arduous work; I am no longer a team, and someone might recognize me, one of my sons, for example, who could slit my throat claiming that I was him, and put in an application for regency."         I ponder the matter. "Cut his tongue."         "You are graphic. I haven't supped."         "Think of it, your Brightness. He shall be pliant in our hands. We shall wheel him to dull work--to sit in a theater aisle, say, or the sporting arenas. He could gurgle, in appreciation, if he can't clap."         "Are you blind? Can't you see? I wouldn't stand a chance. He's an actor. I'm just a king."         "What could he do--a tongueless, paralyzed man?"         "A tongueless, paralyzed king, my confrere, that's what, and far better, than I could do a healthy monarch. He was always better at it, better at my idioms and idiosyncrasies, my passions and wants, because I am forgetful, because he took being me far more seriously than I did. That was his job."         "Are you saying, my Lord, that he was you, more often than you?"         "Of course. I was very content being him. Haven't you ever wished to be someone else?"         "If I may be permitted the boldness--I have often entertained the secret thought of being king."         "Really? What on earth for? Although I must confess, I myself, on occasion, have longed to be you."         "Me? My dear Lord, I am melancholy, a hypochondriac with a malady."         "Yes. Yes, and you haven't got a wife to your name."         We listen to the distant hum of the harem, the creak of beds, the sighs of our subjects, the caged odalisques. We blow our (respective, not plural) noses. I spit. He expectorates imperiously. We think.         "Naughty, naughty despot," I say. "We face a dilemma."         "There is one horrible option. I could abdicate myself, let him have me, if you gather my meaning, while I play him, more or less permanently."         "Doubles are notoriously without character, my Lord. Many are paranoid schizophrenics to boot. Who is to say he would curb his ambitions? Before you know it, he shall be both of you, and then my Lord, whom shall you be?"         Silence droops between us. We ruminate. We muse. The thousand clocks, in the thousand rooms, the ante-rooms, the dungeons and towers, chime, drumming out our lives. He shifts his masculine hulk. His shadows cavort upon the walls. I cry, "My Lord, I have rarely seen you sport this face."         "What's the matter with it?"         "It's the wrong shade, for a king. For one, the wrinkles are wrong. The nose should exude contempt. This way, and the forehead and the brows--"         "Well there you have it." He exclaims, "I never thought that I should have to defend myself against the charge that I do not double my double."         "Defend yourself, my Lord, to your dog? I was merely stating that you must regain yourself, if you will, having withstood the challenge. Emboldened, I might add that I pressed unlikely candidates on your Majesty fearing exactly such a catastrophe. It was I, my Lord, who suggested assigning different men for different roles--one to do your stunts, a body double for the dark, a biceps character for the beach."         "Enough is enough: an obese albino with a bum leg, that was your approximation of me."         The explosion is deafening. Dazed, I stare at us, at him and him. Shards wheel in the air. I step incautiously close to a lantern.         "There," he says. "What did I tell you?"         I arrest my truant breath, possess and grow into myself. The inner tube, the sole remnant of my glory, has survived the blast. I recover my argument and declare, "My Lord, had we hired my candidate, we would not face the chasm today. Instantly we would know who was whom. You are the Word incarnate. The double replicates you by virtue of your desire, not physical resemblance."         He is a child in my hands, my coy dictator. I caress him with gentle reproof. I remind him of his errors and excesses, his neglect of my advice, his cavalier approach to power, losing his crown, for that matter, or calling his scepter a motivated cane. Gently I reprimand his lackadaisical enjoyment of polygamy, his oxymoronic debaucheries ("They're fastidious, if you insist on knowing"), how in his bath he deviates into pleasure, how, in short, he has let himself slide. "A sullen harem is a rebellious harem, your excellency. What could it do but cause an uproar in a loyal labyrinth that subsists on the sparse but vigorous exercise of your bed, to see your divine majesty, clinging to your Walkman, even at the supreme moment?"         "My dear fellow, the television was repossessed."         I wear a frown, coiling and blowing upon the tube.         "All right," he rustles. "I'll tell you something in the strictest of confidence. That was my double, subbing for me, listening to instructions. How else was he to know who was whom and what to say and how to love? He was learning on the go. Will you stop fiddling with that thing? You can have my chapeau."         "It won't go, my Lord--a chapeau with my robes?"         "Ridiculousness is a prerequisite for living. Will you stop, or must I kick you in your unmentionables?"         I quake with enthusiasm, stuffing the shreds in my girdles. "If I may be equally frank, your Majesty, your double was the worst of students. The ruse was exposed; the royal instrument has been too often admired to be mistaken for a pallid imitation. I consider myself a connoisseur of your amours. From my perch, I have learned all the tricks, and I must submit to your Grace that your double had a completely pedestrian approach to love, at most an enervated five minute predilection. All these clocks installed in all the rooms could not have escaped your notice. Yet even so he managed to botch things up, despite your deified know-how buzzing in his ears, calling out the wrong name, names I should say, as he very despondently shouted a series, hoping one would stick."         He rises, inflamed in his imperial excitement, my puissant king with come-hither eyes. For it is commonplace, at this stage in the narration by a harem groupie turned lady novelist, for some movement within. A strumpet might purr, drums sound. An exit may be effected by a member of the Dramatis Personae who soon thereafter sustains a mortal wound in the bowels of the stage, a courtier of sorts, a messenger perhaps. Thrown on our own devices, we pace and pause and ruminate. I would have chucked the whole episode, a useless exercise and a drag on sore feet. But his Majesty, from a sense of duty, takes manly strides; in his wake, I shuffle and, true to form, stub my toes. We gaze from latticed windows upon the coral lagoon, a backdrop. We recline on the divan where I invent history for tourists' consumption.         At length he says, "There is so much back to a body. It's not just the labor of the thing which God knows is taxing enough; you've got to talk to them, to inquire after their mothers, to rebut recriminations that you are an absentee father."         I bristle, objecting. He dismisses my concerns with a sublime snort. "Now that I have been us for a few days, exhausted and troubled as I am--as we are, I should say--exerting and loving in a dual capacity, I/We have half a mind to prohibit lovemaking now and then. Just a minute. I would have to abide my own edict, wouldn't I? That's all I ask, one day a week, a brief twenty-four-hour respite, so I can replenish myself."         "Your majesty might as well abdicate."         "What's the use of being King if I can't dictate anything grander than memoranda?"         "Rule capriciously, I have often pleaded in advocations that you don't read, my omniscient cherub. Don't threaten to kick--kick. Be wanton. Be cruel. Appoint a beggar as your treasurer. Molest a page. Wed a two-year old. Exile goats, say, from the kingdom. But love-making constitutes your noblesse oblige. These are uncertain times, your Majesty. The harem is the bright spot in the past to which we look forward to, where we will reside, living and loving through the body of the king, vicariously."         "My heart--I shall die, in bed."         "A dream for most; remember the Bastille. Tyrants are status-quo men. The public takes its kings plain: rape, debauch, a suggestion of incestuous pedophilia, your multi-purpose depravity when all else fails. My lord, my fickle fascist, you must promise me, promise me solemnly, on the knees of your reputation, if you can't dissipate properly to do, at least, your own loving. It has demoralized the harem, to admit a partner to your bed and escape your fury. You don't want prostitutes for your wives, your Majesty."         "Good morning! I do have prostitutes for my wives. At least a third, by my count, are retired harlots I've married under contract with the State. I did my bit, cleared them off the streets, but did I ever get their welfare benefits? Never mind that they rob me, feeding on my liver. For all I know, one of them stole my crown."         "Your Majesty, your Majesty, you are my father, the son of my right hand. Don't speak. Don't say another word. Facts wither, unless we acknowledge them. Refuse. Refuse. We are better than what we         "For God's sake man, I lie in bed to save my clothes. Open your eyes. Look. Look at me. Look at us. What do you see?"         "My Emperor and my Lord, bowed, in tatters and barefoot, but illumined by his pain, by his suffering. Your Majesty, we are together again. Tomorrow we shall call it one; today we shall treat it as such. This is a story, my Lord, our story. When we know a thing exactly, know it in the light of complete truth, know the causes of a sorrow or the evidence which surrounds a drop of pain, then life becomes a story and stories are bearable in a way that life isn't."         Dawn helpfully breaks above the cardboard seascape. The birds chirp. The dog performs. I have alluded and punned. I have hovered upon the point. He blinks, my winsome potentate, in the bliss of his innocence. I lay a paw on his celestial index finger. "My Lord, time is short. One of you must die."         He winces. "Perhaps if I spoke to him in person."         "You may go to him, but who shall emerge?"         "My dear, I am a tested king, equipped, solid in my self-knowledge, and look what he has done to me. I'm losing my grip. The man is a fraud through and through, a natural. If you go to him, he will most definitely come out."         I remind him of a malady that cannot be faked. I prepare him, for his command, the odious task, with grave counsel. I cite items from history, regale him with anecdotes of fratricide, parricide, and all sorts of ther "-cides" and asides practiced by our illustrious predecessors. "The harem," I argue, "shows you the way. It has done its part, you must do yours."         He stares in the gloom. To be king, to be innocent and king. "My Lord," I ask for the nonce, "should we wait until the harem develops a conscience?"         "I certainly wouldn't mind."         "You should, my Lord. A harem which abnegates, a harem which banishes intemperance and imprudence, a harem in which eroticism is in remission, why that's no harem, that's a dormitory, that's a club. My Lord, it's their duty to stray, yours to prohibit and punish. If you disturb this equilibrium and they adapt to suit you, if they begin to guard their own virtue, why my Lord, the harem shall cease to mean."         "We have never shed," he mutters, "real blood."         "Violence and intrigue are inextricable elements of the genre; harems rest on the firm foundation of self-interest and espionage. If they reform themselves, we are superfluous. We shall perish--you and I--with our functions. My Lord, the harem has proven its love by betraying you."         He temporizes. I militate. "This is not right, that grimace--it just won't do. That's a double's frown, not a king's scowl. He must die, for you to live, for you to be you. Get yourself a mirror and work on your menace. Practice yourself. Knit your brows. Growl."         I bid him rise. He sashays. I do my best. His mountainous majesty casts a dozen vacillating shadows in the chiaroscuro of the corridor. "When we were young, you wished to leave my service and marry. Forgive me."         "What could I be to a wife, or a wife to me? You saved me from the disappointment of waking."         We trample in stealth to the forty portals. "How shall I find him, my Lord?"         "A quadriplegic, I hope."         "I mean, where is he?"         "Take every right turn, to the center. Or is it every left? Labyrinths just aren't what they used to be." He grasps my arms. "You must, you must find him, for this to be a story."         I loosen his grip and kiss his hands. "Ascend your throne, flaunting your scarlets and reds. Impose a strict quarantine, on pain of death. (Where is the court jester when we need someone on the rack?) When I have undone the wretch, I shall send word. Grant me an audience. Lift your sanctions. Declare universal amnesty. An orgy then, at siesta, should buck up everyone's spirits. Now to a mirror, my Lord, and quickly."         I pick a lock, clutch at a handle, whisper the command. The abracadabra nonsense is a bust. I deliver a lusty kick. The hinges creak. The door swings open. I step into the maze. The vestibule slopes and forks. I trudge randomly, inspect by turn, a gracious hall (gracious, careless reader, painted in polite pink), and abandoned banqueting hall, an adjacent prayer room, a library stored with all the surplus whatnots of harem whodunits. In the audience chamber crowded by tailors' dummies who swell the King's progress, I have the throne to myself and the harem under wraps, so I try it, for kicks and size.         I espy the monster, as I must, in his lair, a vast apartment brightly lit with tapers, its walls encrusted with mirrors. The profligate lies motionless on the bed of his last passion. He gazes at me, while I peer at him, and we are scrutinized from the mirrors by ourselves. I tire of the motif already.         "Don't you recognize us?"         "I'm not the one," I retort, "experiencing an identity crisis."         "That was the imperial we, imbecile." His tongue curls to wet his lips. "Don't slouch addressing your king."         "You're a cheeky doppelganger, aren't you?"         "I shall have you flailed. Guards," he cries. "Guards."         "You would know, wouldn't you, if you were king, that we've sacked all the domestics."         "My fans, my people."         "Hush. Every two-bit town has its harem and king. Hush, I said. No one can hear you. This is a labyrinth, remember?"         He spouts his nonsense. His figure is twisted, his features larger than his wasted face, but he does a passable king. The voice is resolute, and the haughty stubbled chin encompasses with confidence the arc of unreality. Intrigued, I lift his powerless, emaciated limbs. I examine the locations of his moles, appreciating the prescience of his Majesty. His double duplicates him exactly. I admit to my victim, "You're a principled character thief, I'll concede. Even in your sickness, you continue to perform him."         "That's because," roars the brazen rogue, "we are him."         "Speak for yourself. I'm quite satisfied with my own personality."         I tidy the room. The blackguard has tussled with demons. Feminine paraphernalia hang from candelabras. Conquered keys to vanished cities are scattered about; peace treaties litter the floor. His desk spills with papers. The apoplectic lad has been legislating. One, wonderfully forged in the Emperor's hand and subsequently used as a napkin, adds a thousand years to the calendar. Another exerts the copyright on the manufacture of condoms embossed with the imperial seal. While I erase the scene, revise the much lived-in room into a chamber peacefully and for long abandoned, the stooge prattles and yaps in royal-speak. "An aging King in a graying harem, out of work, in discord with our times, administering to barbarians, a restless mob--we staggered in the present, lost ourselves in our duties. Sixty years passed, adjusting a ceremonial sword in a tired pose, speaking to dull supplicants in endless functions, acknowledging behind bullet-proof glass adoring crowds on our birthday whom we paid, out of our own pockets, to adore us. We lived the life of cheap actors with predictable scripts. We said what our speech writers wrote. We ate what our food tasters sampled. So we fancied one day: if only for a while we could imply, be monogamous, be I."         Underneath the bed I find incontrovertible proof of intimacy with pigeons and (surprise) the crown, a little worse from wear, plucked of its jewels and gills. I gaze at the withered tusk. Though confined, he brims with life, the old knave. He squints and smirks, bats and winks. I interrupt the veritable Bildungsroman. "You're a pervert, my friend."         "Aren't we all?" blusters the shyster.         "Honestly, I understand your frustrations with the doldrums of the self. The King and I debated this very point; I experience it all the time. But we're all that we've got and your promiscuities with ambiguous pronouns--well, it goes against the grain, and it's also quite confusing. You've got to be understood to be king."         "We are trying to explain to you the germ of the story, our error and yours." He fixes me with keen, roving eyes. "For an earthbound king who lost his faith, who believed in fear alone and death--it was a form of resurrection, a second birth, which we willed with our authorial powers to short circuit God. An atheist is more fanatical in his fear than the believer in his faith, and we escaped, you see, perhaps not the promise of death, but the insult of a single existence, the prison of time, into a parallel universe. We became, truly, we, lived, through our double, a separate and simultaneous life."         "Clever fool, you forgot your place. Examine yourself and see my Lord, the creator, who envisioned you, the willing audience who empowered and animated you. You existed in this suspension of belief, in dreams. The more I see you, the more you chatter, the less you resemble the king. He is tall, you're a dull squirt."         "How could I know who you are? You could be anyone: you're a professional nobody."         "Whatever we are, I am."         "You slipped there, chum. Although I tend to agree with you. The first person is too much with us."         "We are trying to speak your language and having a time of it, constantly double checking one's pronouns." He squawks to move an arm. "Look. Look at this celebrated body, my tapering fingers--aren't they aristocratic?--at my slender feet and small tongue, my coveted utensil. You led wives to my bed. You tended to us in our intermissions. You fanned and patted us while we went at it full blast."         "Shame, traitor. Do you dare compare your ignoble parts to the appendage, the masterpiece? You are about to die. Die with dignity. Be in death what you were never in life--yourself."         "Myself, myself--don't you understand? Myself was stolen from me--not by just him; he filched scraps from my ruins--but by mundane existence that sapped my optimism and my hopes; by wives, by children, by a hundred and one obligations, by myself who mislaid myself, who betrayed the promise of myself. In the end we are a name that makes us cry."         "Prepare yourself." I pull the strap under my chin and don the crown. "Reflect. You have so little time on the page."         The clocks should chime to punctuate my terse response. We flounder, instead, at the half hour. No audible portent, no visible flash marks his sentence or ends his pleas. I would have paid him solemn music, a mournful tune. Alas, alas, I am no novelist, and our author is a hack. Yes, my readers, it is time to acknowledge him sotto voce. The man clamors for attention with cliches, is slow on the uptake. He neglects his prominently featured theme, the epidemic motif--in truth, I suffer from allergies and am rarely susceptible to a commoner's cold--and I thought delivering the coup de grace to my head-gear in a transparent attempt at foreshadowing my crowning moment was a particularly cheap trick, especially since the turban came in handy as leg wrappings on frosty nights. Never mind; I have ways to go--or however that line runs.         The wretch has observed a respectful silence during my soliloquy. I scoop his miserable body into my arms. His neck dangling on one side, his legs twisting on the other, I stumble into the corridor. Panting, I find a way, a niche, a secret door, the cold open air.         The clay birds bray in the simulated trees, a mechanical mishap. I trudge, with my burden, in the real snow, lost among the props, the facade of minarets and golden domes. Through the rents in the blue canopy, a chill wind blows and another sky is visible speckled with disappointing clouds, nothing like the Old Testament colossus of our Heavens, copied from nature but idealized by art. The bull-horned dog gnarls at my specter.         Neighs the cad, "I am the king. I should die like a king. Give me powdered diamonds in a cup of wine."         "A king with a crooked smile. You are not fit to be a double, let alone die like a king."         He spews his vile. I keep my peace. I don't think I should. Memo to the author: a few pithy lines for my side. Let's get it going on.         My frigid peers, comrades, I must interrupt the narrative. You may have noted, as I certainly have, that for some time another voice has crept into mine. This has aggravated me also, I assure you. I blame not so much our apprentice author who has abdicated all responsibilities, as the wizened ape in my clasp who clings so steadfastly to his role as to shatter my belief in the consistency of the self. What's more, I'm lost. (Ah, contractions.) I see again, what I have seen. That damned dog barks at me again. Perchance I should defy our author. It is contrary to the character of a man accustomed to the soft luxuries of the harem, a feeble aesthete, slightly shrill, a temperamental sort who faints at the sight of blood, to have to carry loads like a bronzed toy-boy. It taxes the patience to be bossed in this way, to be monkeyed with. I obey my inclination. I dump the psychotic to the ground, am born. Ladies and gentlemen of the universe, it's good to join your three-dimensional ranks. Let us take a moment to enjoy corporeality. That's better. Back to the salt mines over here. With my new self-confidence I batter through a tableaux of cheering natives. One slippered foot, then the other, I push through the jagged tear, pulling the screaming himself by the legs. For the first time in years I step into the wilderness. (Womb imagery, my readership; it's embarrassing, laden with auctorial cares, to have to point these things out.)         The rival sun is lusterless; the horizon merges with a livid sky. I plod and sink and curse, struggling to keep my feet. The earth appears hard; it is rotten. The scrub meager, the snow crusting layers of moving sand, nothing except toil holds us to the ground. My cloak flaps. We sway under the columns of the dead. He wails seeing them, disintegrated and exposing bones. I deposit him by a broken marble fountain formerly of our grounds, before austerity programs contracted our spheres. I emerge, from among the philistines, into the ur-harem, fetch a shovel, pick, bucket.         He has shed a single tear. Moans my prey, "Bury me. Let me rot."         "His Majesty shall have you as a fresh example of presumption, constantly before his harem."         "To die in this way," he says, "as I am, frightened, alone, confused. We should die with friends, at a table spread and crowded beneath trees. You condemn me to eternal solitude."         "Unhappy thoughts for a Godless man." I add in freezing reproof. "Life is not a French movie."         I shall spare my esteemed customers much of the rest of his mummery, and kindly direct your attention to the star of these proceedings. I climb, as I speak, onto the frozen pond, preceded by my shadow who has made inexplicably few cameo appearances in this epic. Presently we skid on the icy surface in the interest of verisimilitude and off it goes. (So long shade, you faithless minion, you.) I break the ice, filling the bucket.         The ape is intent on delivering a eulogy. "We are men of sound education, but darkness slithers into the blood. We believe in science and nursery rhymes. If what they say is true, if a soul is condemned to relive the body's last hours in perpetuity, I shall remain forever beyond the reach of human contact."         "Absurd. Your hereafter, for all we know, may be fraternity where you mingle with your fictional kind. Think of it: the doubles of Poe, of Hoffmann."         "In that case," he bluffs, "Who shall keep you company--a few creeps by Montesquieu?"         "Try to understand," I say. "You're a character. I'm real."         "Since when?"         "Since I developed volition, that's when. Now, if you live, get up and walk away."         My response confounds him. He croaks meekly of an inappropriate diet and weak genes. In any case, rather preoccupied, back and forth I scamper, between the fountain and the lime pit. The ground softens with my splashing. I wade, ankle deep in the ooze, mixing the gravel and the watered lime. When I dump the first bucket of mortar on his legs, he gnashes his fangs and his lecherous grin shames his Majesty's. "We should not begrudge him. We breathed life into him. He is our son, a child of fancy, but a child nonetheless, and all children leave a parent's harboring arms. His ambition paces him, but he's inexperienced. I would have scripted any number of these scenes differently."         "You're a character. A character." I bend on his crushed form in a maddening desire to shake him out of his torpor, to make him see. "We invented you. You never lived."         I knock the stuffing out of him till he cries. Then I resume my chore, filling the bucket and dragging it to him. Once, falling, I lose a slipper in the slime, thrash miserably, lose hope. I continue, hopping, piling him with the sludge. The heap thickens. The mortar congeals. I cover his extremities, leaving his wicked tongue for last, in case he wishes to repent and make his peace with the Gods of the fabulous netherworlds. His eyes roll. His pallor fades. He says nothing, acting the farce to the bitter end. The wind hardens, howling through my pitted crown. My cloak flaps in a wild gust, and I feel aerodynamic as I step onto the mound, stomping upon it to squeeze out pockets of air. From its depth resounds a steady, plaintive wail.         The day passes in the usual mortifications. Two concubines scuffle. A reporter fondles the PM. Vainly we mount ladders to sew the sky. Arrangements must be made for a trip in litters. I spend hours haggling at the eastern gate with the painter who draws our canvas scenery and the zoo keeper, our provider of transport. Another caravan has reserved the camels; I settle on a dozen misshapen mules. The king pauses briefly on the balcony, taking in the air and the obeisance of his nobles. All day he is shut up with the favorites, assuming his duties with commendable aplomb, and when, late in the afternoon for the second time I request an audience, he denies me the benediction, my daredevil megalomaniac.         At dusk the gongs are sounded, the gates locked, the birds turned off. The ferashes, under their capricious watch, chastise the recalcitrant wind. But some hitch occurs. A windlass jams. Our experimental winged chariot overturns upon its braces, and a backdrop, half-raised, blends a fair meadow with a stormy sea. I must take to the ramparts to shout at the stage hands straining at the pulleys and cogwheels. Deep in the wreck of our world, they too shudder at the premonition of night. The kingdom shrinks and frays. The future is the desert encroaching upon us.         For an hour or two I sit at my desk, describing for posterity the paltry events of our days. I doze. I sort my papers, my prayers, and dreams. If it is my curse to love this world, the enigmas and contradictions of this sham past, this bubble--my soul out of corruption takes wing. I see my harem for what it is, its crumbling gates, its fading paper turrets, the decayed arches where we lounge to be ogled at and I want to live, to succor and mend it, to fight the approach, the fall of night. My Lord, my Lord, have you forsaken me?         Colleagues, my readers, my supporting cast, intercede. Rescue me. Printer, I entreat you, scramble these words. It is an ominous plot. Footsteps patter in the corridor. A familiar hand rattles my door. I answer my generic fate in the full splendor of my crowned glory and socks. It is my forgetful spy who bears a cup of coffee on a tray. The accompanying note from his Majesty reads, "My dear fellow, just rent a van for the picnic."         "Has my Lord any other word for me?"         She nods in assent or denial, I could never tell. She has helpers, the ferashes. They shall have me drink it.         "Do you," I ask her, "do you remember us, this room before this business began?"         I lift the placid weight of her hand to my cheek. It lingers where I place it. She stares vacantly, thick-witted, true to her role. Why should it be otherwise? She finds safety in the script, while I, beyond the abyss, am cognizant and stifled by life, knowing what I must do, knowing that I must die. I raise the cup to my lips. The dull mortal aroma of opium turns the marrow in my bones. I think: we are entitled to the dignity of ignorance, to grope blindly in the dark, to our illusions. I think: why should death be any less frightening, any less confusing than life? I drain and dash the cup on the floor. She collects the pieces of my heart. Her companions, spitefully unrealized symbols, bolt my door.         I lie on the bed, crouching, in a difficult posture, retaining my crown, listening to the receding pad of their soft shoes. How do I end? Where do I begin? Your name is on my tongue, and your poison in my veins. My Lord, if you were to ask me, this is what I would say: this is my story; this is our story. My soul's nakedness I delivered into your hands. I saw, I learned. My Lord, we are brothers, born of one father, sired in this same poem. How could I betray you, when to expose your insubstantiality is to reveal my own?         My legs disappear. My hands disobey me. My Lord, there is time. Pick up your pen. Erase this scene. I will suggest other satisfactory denouements. I could be your double. I am your double. Thematic justice for the discriminating: in the envelope of a man, I represent the king's negation, an absence of ability, desiring and incapable. Or, I could play a curiosity or a wag, the punishment for my hubris, a moral conclusion. My Lord, I am fit for masquerading. I could skip and skid, populate a scene, crash through a table or two. Only, in a background, the peripheries of your grace, in the margins of the text, let me be, let me breathe. One has only words to play with and to spare. Let me speak in a living tongue. Let me live in the white smooth blankness of the page. Lend me another paragraph and I shall tell you another story, a wonderful story where nothing ages and no one dies. My Lord, these are tears. I must not cry.

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