My Beautiful Life Read online

  And then he grinned at me and grabbed me by the shoulders. But we’ll be all right, he said, you and Edax and me. I’ve got it covered. I know what I’m doing.

  I DON’T LIKE talking about myself, for obvious reasons. I’ve felt that way all my life. It’s always seemed so unreasonable, if you see what I’m trying to say, like a bad joke or a prank.

  Doesn’t he take after his mother, they used to say when I was a little kid. Then, later; when he grows up he’ll be a real heartbreaker (like that’s a good thing). Then, later, who’s a pretty boy, then, as the other kids threw stones at me, because they were jealous, and I was my mother's son.

  Sometimes I ask myself; did my mother pray, when I was born? Did she say, Lord, make him handsome, the best-looking man in the world? And were her prayers answered, or did I just turn out that way because of chance?

  The stupid thing is, Edax and I look quite alike— not Nico; big and dark, with a broad face, though he got our mother's eyes. But Edax and I have got the same nose and chin, the same forehead. But he turned out small and scraggy, and I’m tall. And for some reason, the things that look good on me make him look sly and evil. You can’t go by appearances, obviously, though people do.

  Nico said, and I agreed with him, that the best thing we could do with Edax was keep him indoors, with lots of nice things to play with, so he wouldn’t be tempted to make trouble for anyone. What about me, I asked him, is there anything I can do to help? Funny you should mention that, Nico said.

  (LATER, I ASKED him how it had been. What do you mean, he said. Oh, that. Well, I can’t say it’s bothered me particularly, what you’ve never had you don't miss, and I’m glad to have done without the distractions. It’s like an archery match. You shoot the arrow, but it’s got a hundred yards to fly, and the wind’s blowing on it all that way. You allow so much when you let fly, but even so, it’s much better to shoot on a still day. Me, I’ve never had so much as a slight breeze between me and where I needed to go.

  But what about a family, I said, and kids? And he laughed. I’ve got you two, he said.)

  SO NICO GOT me a job as an equerry. To this day—and I have a hundred of them at my command, day and night; lucky me—I have no very clear idea of what an equerry actually does. What I mostly seemed to do was stand about, something I'm not bad at, though I do say so myself. First I stood about in the anteroom outside the Purple, which is the throne-room. Then I stood about inside the Purple, near the doors, at the back. Then I graduated to about halfway up, where I was occasionally called upon to fetch things, or laugh at someone’s joke. I must have done that very well indeed, because before I knew it I was Standing about at the far end, from where you can actually see the throne, if you’re tall and you stand on tiptoe and peek over people’s shoulders. And the man sitting on it.

  From where I was standing, he didn’t look so bad. He was a big man, with a fine head of snow-white hair, a firm chin, piercing blue eyes, broad shoulders, and he sat there with dignity, talking in a low, pleasant voice; and what he said seemed to make sense, except I didn’t know the context. Anyway, he seemed to be doing a fine job; just like me, I guess. And he seemed to spend most of his time listening, which always makes a man seem wise; philosophers and scholars and theologians, I couldn’t follow most of what they said but he could, or he looked like he understood every word, and every now and then he’d nod gravely. Apsimar the Wise, which would do, at a pinch.

  One day, when I got off work, some clerk came up to me and told me my brother wanted to see me in his office. So off we went, up a mountain of stairs and down again, along corridors, down tunnels, up towers, until I had absolutely no idea where I was, though my feet told me I must have walked at least two miles. And then he suddenly stopped, in front of a plain dark oak door looking exactly the same as the thousand-odd plain dark oak doors we’d walked past; no name or number on it, goes without saying. In there, the clerk told me. I knocked and waited, and I heard Nico telling me to come in.

  I’d never been in that part of the palace before, and I was under the impression that Nico's room was in the Stables—

  That’s right, he said, that’s exactly where we are. And he explained that there were corridors that ran through the attics and the cellars, all the way from the palace to the Stables—about two miles, he told me—which meant that government clerks could come and go from one department to another without ever seeing the sun, or being seen. I’d have thought you'd have a bigger place than this, I told him, and he looked at me. What for? he said. I couldn’t think of an answer to that.

  Anyhow, he told me, good news, you’ve been promoted. Why? I asked him, and I don’t think it was the question he was expecting. I haven’t done anything clever, I explained, I just stand there. He nodded. Very well too, so I gather, he said, and so they’ve promoted you. From tomorrow, you’re going to be chief equerry to her majesty the empress.

  Why? I asked him.

  Nico didn’t lose his temper, the same way poor men generally don’t drop gold coins in the Street. She asked for you, he said, by name. But she’s never seen me, I said. He scowled. Well, he said, someone obviously has, because she’s asked for you. And it’s a big promotion and double the money, and you should be bloody grateful instead of standing there saying why, like a corncrake.

  I didn’t say anything. Nico sighed. All right, he said. This is just a theory, and I may be completely wrong, but her previous equerry, who had to quit the post on account of being indicted for treason—

  You're kidding, I said.

  Treason, Nico repeated. Anyhow, he was seventy-two and bald and only had three teeth. I fancy her majesty would like something a bit prettier to look at.

  I’m not sure I like the sound of that, I said.

  Nico wasn’t happy. Who gives a damn what you like or don’t like, he said. You’ve got your orders. Do you want to make trouble for me?

  THIS MAY TAKE some explaining, and it’s not something I’m comfortable talking about, but here goes. At that point in my life—well, think about it. Use your imagination. Back home in the village, everybody reckoned we were the plague, and you don’t get to meet girls that way. Then we were thieves, in Chastel and Roches, doing our level best to be completely invisible. Also, to be absolutely honest with you, it wasn’t something I was, well, all that interested in. I think to a certain extent it was about Nico, what he’d done to himself; and what my mother had been, and what people thought about her because of that. All in all, that stuff only made people unhappy and led to a lot of trouble.

  Edax didn’t think so; but he’s always looked quite a lot like a rat, so what he got in that line he mostly had to pay for, and generally speaking we couldn’t afford it.

  So—what Nico said, what you’ve never had you don’t miss. Also I was awkward about how I looked, guilty even, as though I'd been given more than my fair share— and it wasn’t something I could hide, it was like a rich man’s kid sent to work down at the docks, kitted out in twenty-thaler shoes and a silk shirt. I felt ridiculous, a walking contradiction; because it says in Scripture, the beautiful is good and the good is beautiful. Anyway, you get the general idea.

  With an attitude like that, you won’t be surprised to learn that I hadn’t had very much to do with women generally, apart from my mother, who doesn’t count. They scared me; partly the way men scared me, because I was afraid they were going to throw stones at me or hit me with a stick, partly because I was worried they might like what they saw and want it. I’m not excusing any of this, incidentally, I’m not asking you to forgive me or say that I was right, or anything other than a mess. I’ve always had a thing about not being touched. It makes me feel sick.

  THE EMPRESS BIA lived in the North Tower, everybody knew that. You can see the North Tower from practically anywhere in the City, because it’s so very tall. People liked that. They felt safe because the old emperor’s daughter was watching over them, they said.

  It takes a very long time to walk
up all those stairs. It’s one of those horrible spiral staircases, with nothing to hold on to, and if you meet someone coming up when you’re coming down, both of you are screwed. By the time you get to the top, your knees have turned to jelly and you get splints in your shins enough to make you burst into tears.

  Her majesty’s apartment was the whole of the top floor. It was huge. There were no walls dividing it up; there in the far distance was the Imperial bed, hung round with curtains, and all the rest of it was a tumultuous sea of cushions, with benches, like in a carpenter’s shop, all round the walls. All the benches were crowded out with bottles and jars and iron stands fitted with clamps, and there were these little charcoal stoves under tripods, with pans and glass jars bubbling away. The place stank of roses and violets and honeysuckle, and there was a thick bank of fog about two feet thick directly under the ceiling.

  There was no door at the top of the stairs, so I just walked in and there I was. And there she was, bending over the bench, looking at me over her shoulder. Who the hell are you, she said.

  I explained. She looked at me. Well, don’t just stand there, she said. Come over here and make yourself useful.

  Things never seem to turn out the way I expect them to. I never imagined I’d ever be useful. I never thought I’d learn the perfume trade. I never thought I’d fall in love with an old woman, or an empress. Come to that, I never expected my prayers would be answered, ever.

  She taught me the perfume trade, which was the first useful thing I’d ever learned in my life. You make perfume by crushing, infusing, distilling and corn pounding. It involves a lot of hard, repetitive work, grinding stuff in a mortar, and a lot of standing around holding things steady over a flame, and an awful lot of washing out bottles. I enjoyed it. The empress said I was good at it, which pleased me a lot. She talked to me— mostly things like hold this, do that, no, you’re doing that all wrong, but sometimes explaining why this added to this was so much more than just the sum of its parts, and why that essence added to that oil worked, and that added to that didn’t. It was as though she’d known me all her life, and we were just two people working together.

  And she was beautiful. Her hair was dyed—she told me the ingredients and how to mix them, and why she used this rather than that—and there were crow’s feet round her eyes and the backs of her hands were all veins, but she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever stood close to. Her arms were long, a bit skinny, with muscles like a man’s, but she shaved off all the hair (I’d heard of that but never seen it before). She had about two dozen porcelain jars full of stuff she put on her face and arms, and the edges of her eyes were traced round with a sort of blue pencil.

  NICO SENT FOR me. By now I was used to long walks and long staircases. You’re looking good, Nico said. How’s it going?

  I told him I was happy and doing well. He looked at me as though I was talking a foreign language. How's it going, he repeated. Come on, don’t be all shy, I’m your brother.

  I just told you, I said.

  He looked at me like I was simple. The old woman, he said. Has she jumped you yet?

  SHE’D TOLD ME about her life; not a single, sustained narrative, just little scraps here and there, which I’d stuck together like the bits of a broken pot. When she was a girl, she was given to understand that she was sitting on a golden throne on top of a very high mountain, and all the world was at her feet, and that was exactly how it should be. One day, they told her, her prince would come; but not just any prince, oh no. Actually, her prince wouldn’t be a prince. For her to marry into the ruling house of another nation would be to imply that that nation was equal in stature with the Empire, which was utterly ridiculous. So, her prince would be an Imperial subject, but that was all right; and he’d be a member of one of the twenty or so great and honourable families, but no problem there. And she wouldn't be able to marry until his imperial majesty Daddy had given her a baby brother; well, that was all right too, because Daddy was trying really, really hard on that score, and what Daddy set his mind to do, Daddy did.

  (She saw him, she said, on average twice a month— when he wasn’t away at the wars, which was actually most of the time. Nurse and a small army of handmaidens would take her through the corridors, under all the mosaic ceilings and past all the gilded murals, to a little room with plain whitewashed walls, where Daddy went to sit when he wasn’t on duty. She remembered him as a short man with a mostly bald head burnt brown by the sun, looking up at her from a jumble of papers, which he’d be staring at through a thick circle of glass on a golden stick. He’d look at her as though he’d never seen anything like her in his life, then smile, and ask her some questions about things he obviously wasn’t interested in, and then she could go. She was a bit scared of him but she quite liked him, because he looked so funny.)

  But there was no baby brother. So she waited, spending the time improving her already perfect self. She learned all the languages that ever there were, read all the books, studied music (stringed instruments, because blowing into a tube isn't ladylike). She was taught how to glide rather than walk, the exactly ideal way of sitting, back and neck straight, chin at precisely ninety degrees to the horizontal, checked from time to time with a set square. She learned to be witty without being insufferable, and how to be bored to death without showing it.

  The longer she had to wait, the more lessons she had time for, therefore the more perfect she got. And she knew she was the most beautiful woman in the world, because everyone told her so, and she believed them because her father was Daddy, brother of the Invincible Sun, so it was just common sense, really. And she waited, growing steadily more perfect, like a stalactite built up by drips; and still no baby brother, and time was getting on. There's plenty of time, her maids and tutors told her; but they were starting to sound worried when they said it, and maybe (it occurred to her for the first time) perfection isn’t something you can hold on to for ever. True, with every day that passed she was getting more fascinating and brilliant, but now her maids were taking longer and longer to do her face, and there were all these creams and ointments for her skin, and then she noticed her first grey hair, and then a few more.

  Now she’d started looking at boys around the age when girls do that sort of thing; but she knew who she was, and it wouldn’t do to burn the poor creatures up with her unattainable radiance, now would it? One of her tutors had a serious talk with her when she was fifteen. Think of the Empire, he said, and there’ll be plenty of time for all that later. And day followed day, and every day was pretty much the same. She was content to drift, she said, because she had faith. She had faith in God, and Daddy was God’s brother, it said so on the backs of the coins.

  And then she stopped looking in mirrors, and took up perfume-making instead. It came, she said, as a complete revelation to her. Something she could do, and do well. I knew how she must have felt, I told her, and she looked at me.

  Then Daddy died, and suddenly everything was different. She was the princess again, and everything depended on her. She could come down out of the Tower now, if she wanted. She could do anything she chose. She could marry that nice boy she’d noticed, a few years back.

  She’d been looking forward to it, she told me, for twenty years, and when it happened, it was horrible. Partly the disappointment. She’d imagined what it must feel like, over and over again; like it feels when you use your finger, she reasoned, only so much better. Instead, she told me, she panicked, and started yelling; keep your voice down, he’d hissed at her, they’ll think you’re being murdered. So; back to square one. But she remembered that she was Daddy’s daughter, and you keep trying, and you never give up, no matter what. And then, she told me, suddenly it was wonderful, and she loved her handsome husband, and she couldn’t stop thinking about it, every minute, every day. True, it didn’t seem to be having the desired effect. But that only made him try harder—like Daddy, presumably—and she didn’t mind that at all.

  And then, one morning,
she woke up to find maids and equerries packing her clothes and pots and hairbrushes into big wicker baskets. What’s going on, she asked, and they told her, she was being moved, back to the North Tower. She was furious about that, but it turned out that there was nothing she could do—which came as a bit of a surprise, since she’d been under the impression that she was the Emperor’s daughter and niece of the Invincible Sun, but apparently not.

  Since then—Do what you like, he’d written to her, (written, mind you; maybe all those stairs were too much for him, at his age) so long as you don’t make trouble and don’t leave the Tower. So she lit her little stoves and sent out for herbs and oils, and she created the post of principal equerry to the Empress. Five or six of them had come and gone, and nobody seemed to care what a barren old woman got up to at the top of a tower, and she realised she simply wasn’t interested any more. So she got rid of the handsome young men and appointed an old one who knew a bit about alchemy. But he didn’t have much conversation and his eyes were bad so he started knocking over bottles, and then there was me.

  YOU ARRANGED IT, I said. You fixed it because you wanted her to—

  Well yes, Nico said, surprised by my stupidity, of course I did. Catnip to a cat.

  Why? I asked him.

  You keep asking me that, said my brother. It’s obvious, isn't it? You’re going to be the next emperor.

  SO I WENT to the empress and told her everything.

  Not sure what I expected to happen. Most likely, she’d send for the guards and have me and my brothers executed. Or she’d look at me like I was something she’d walked in on the sole of her shoe. Or she’d start crying, or yelling. She looked at me. Why not, she said.