Hamlet (12 page)

“Ophelia!” he screeched, in a voice he had never heard from his mouth before. “What are you doing? Nothing’s happened to Hamlet.” Though even as he spoke, he knew this was not true.

She glanced around at him. “Do not fear,” she said. “Say what you have come to say. Then I will stay, or fly away.”

He stared at her. “Are you crazy? Come back inside. I’m not telling you anything while you’re sitting like that. You’re twenty meters from the ground.”

She immediately became very docile. She climbed back in at once and came toward him, head bowed, hands clasped in front of her. “What do you have to tell me?” she muttered. “Go ahead, say it. I’ll be good.”

He took a deep breath, stood taller, and began. “Ophelia, a terrible accident happened last night. Quite late. There was an awful scene in the queen’s apartment. I’m still not sure of the details, but it seems that Hamlet . . . I think perhaps Hamlet mistook your father for an intruder. . . . There was some kind of fight. . . . Well, I don’t know how to tell you this, but . . .”

“He’s dead, he’s dead.” The girl began to rock herself. “He killed him. I knew he would. Oh, I knew he would. Sweet Jesus. Sweet mother.”

“It’s true, he is dead.”

“You said nothing had happened to him.”

Horatio realized she still had not understood the truth. He cursed himself for making such a mess of it. “No, no, Ophelia, it’s not Hamlet who has died; it’s your father. Hamlet mistook him . . . There was some kind of terrible confusion . . .”

She fell back onto a sofa, her hands covering her face. “Oh! My father! Then not Hamlet! Oh God, forgive me, I did not want it to be Hamlet.” Suddenly she sat bolt upright, took her hands away, and stared at Horatio. “Are you saying that Hamlet has killed my father?”

The boy nodded.

“He killed my father,” she whispered, unable to take her eyes from his face. “Oh, better that he kill his own father. To kill a father! But, God help me, I am as bad. The reek of this must reach to heaven itself. We will all be damned.”

“No, Ophelia, please, you cannot think like that. You must not. It was an accident. I don’t know the details, but I’m sure that when it all comes out, we will find that Hamlet’s honor remains intact.”

“Yes, yes, honor. That is everything. To keep honor intact. So, men fight. Oh, how little they know. How little they understand me. So, the young man must fight the old. They think that is the only way.”

Horatio did not know what she was talking about. He was greatly relieved when the door to his left opened and Ophelia’s maid came in. Ophelia had never had a maid until recently, and Horatio did not even know the girl’s name. She was from the north, daughter of a farmer, unused to the ways of the court, but Polonius had gotten her for nothing more than the cost of her board, in exchange for the promise of experience in serving a noble family. Well, Horatio thought, she’ll get a lot more experience than she bargained for.

Seeing her mistress’s distress, the maid hurried to her side. “Madam,” she said, “what is wrong?”

Ophelia turned away. Horatio, taking his opportunity, escaped, closing the door behind him and running through the other two reception rooms, desperate for space and open air.

That morning rumors flowed along the corridors of the castle like blood. Everyone whispered, yet no one could be seen whispering, and so the pantries and anterooms and storerooms and cellars were full of servants and nobles, tradespeople and courtiers, children and pensioners, feeding one another with the food that cannot nourish. The king’s sisters and cousins and aunts gathered in the banquet hall, too excited to eat, exchanging morsels and scraps of gossip instead. In the king’s apartments, Hamlet’s uncle strode the carpet as the queen stood watching.

“Killed him?”

“Ran him through.”

“No excuse?”

“Not a jot.”

“It could have been me.”

“I fear so.”

“Why, Gertrude, why?”

“He is mad.”

“And that’s all?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“This is terrible.”

“It is, my lord.”

“They’ll say it’s us.”

The room was furnished simply, after the taste of Hamlet’s father. Claudius and Gertrude had not yet indulged themselves as they had in her suite, with sumptuous carpets and lavish furnishings. Here, the floor of polished timber, two austere thrones made of a light white wood, and a dull red, padded sofa were lit by bright natural light through a row of large windows. Claudius always seemed ill at ease in the room, but never more so than now. He walked faster and faster, groaning and pulling at his beard, the sounds of his boots echoing like stones rattling on thick ice.

“They’ll say we’ve been negligent. Or that we’re part of a plot. They’ll say we’re responsible. We should have seen it coming. They’ll say we should have sent him to a doctor, a hospital. That we used Hamlet to get rid of Polonius. They’ll have us for bacon on their morning toast, Gertrude, unless we find a way to deal with this.”

“Yes.”

“Hamlet’s too popular; that’s the trouble. The people love him. He could get away with murder. Or so he thinks. To be loved by the mob, that’s not a fate I’d wish on anyone. But it means we must be bloody careful.”

“They do love him,” the queen said pensively.

“Get the guard. I want Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in here.”

When the two courtiers arrived, the king barked at them. “Are your bags packed?”

“Why, no, Majesty, we had not realized . . . But it will take us no time to prepare . . .”

“Well, do it!” Then he had another idea. “Wait! First,” he added, “find the body and have it brought here. No, to the chapel.”

“Hamlet, Your Majesty?”

“No, no, you fool, not Hamlet. Polonius.” Claudius threw himself down on his throne and sat chewing a loose fingernail. “Stop bowing!” he barked. “Just go. Do what I told you!”

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern withdrew and began their melancholy search. Polonius was not in the queen’s apartments, nor could they find a trail of blood or clue that might lead them to the old man’s corpse. They did, however, find another body, of a sort. Hamlet was sitting on a bench looking out over the turrets at the distant forest. A bowl of coffee was at his feet. It looked untouched. The two men approached him cautiously. As usual, Rosencrantz did the talking.

“Excuse me, Your Royal Highness, might we have a word?”

“Certainly, certainly,” Hamlet said affably. “What can I do for you?”

“Highness, we are charged by the king to find Polonius.”

“Ah, now there’s a problem, right away.”

“There is?”

“Why, yes. You see the problem is that Polonius no longer exists. It therefore follows that your quest is doomed from the start. A shame, as I know how much you seek to gratify the king in all that you do.”

“Why, yes, sir, he is, in all things, our ruler.”

“And you are a sponge.”

Rosencrantz had been moving forward a little with each address to the prince, but now he stopped. “A sponge? Sir, do you mistake me for a sponge?” He glanced at Guildenstern as if to say, It’s true, he’s quite mad; next he’ll tell us we’re eggplants.

But the prince was quite calm. “Oh yes, sponges, both of you, kept by the king to soak up his rewards, his orders, his moods, the spittle that drops from his lips. You soak them up, and when you are dripping with them, when you are saturated, then he squeezes you dry. You are his best servants, you sponges! And if not sponges, you are the piece of apple in the corner of his mouth, which he chews and sucks on until he is ready to swallow it. But the problem is, how does a prince answer a sponge?”

Guildenstern: “Highness, I do not understand you.”

Hamlet: “I am glad of it.”

Rosencrantz: “Sir, you must tell us where the body lies.”

Hamlet: “Must! Is ‘must’ a word to be used to princes, little man?”

Rosencrantz: “Well, it is the king’s wish that you tell us where the body lies.”

Hamlet: “It does lie, that much is certain. No one ever got a true word out of him while he was alive, and now he lies still.”

Rosencrantz: “Your Royal Highness, Hamlet, please tell us where the body is, and then go with us to the king.”

Hamlet: “The body is already with the king, but not the king you are thinking of, perhaps. And the king is not with the body. The king is a thing . . .”

Guildenstern: “A thing? Sir, the king is a thing?”

Hamlet: “A thing of nothing. Bring me to him.”

Claudius was distraught, unable to fix on a plan, an easy answer. He liked life to be obvious. “Hamlet’s too popular with the people,” he told his wife again. “Just because he’s good-looking, that’s all it is. But it makes him dangerous. He could kill their grandmothers, and as long as he keeps smiling at them and kissing their babies, they’ll forgive him. The people didn’t love Polonius, but as long as he was around, they felt secure. We have to get rid of Hamlet, but we must do it so it looks all right.”

“Get rid of him!” exclaimed the queen, showing for the first time an interest in the king’s fretful monologue. “Get rid of him?”

“No, no, I don’t mean like that. I told you, I’ve arranged for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to go away with him. But it mustn’t look like a cover-up. We’ll send him early, but we’ll say it’s for his own protection. And we’ll set up an inquiry, so it looks as though we’re doing something. In the meantime, while we’re establishing the terms of reference and so forth, he shall be sent to a safe place. Farther than England. To Australia. No, he’ll end up marrying some unsuitable girl. To Nepal. No, not Nepal. Bad idea. To the moon.”

“I fancy England will be far enough.”

“Yes, all right, England, then. Yes, as long as it looks as though we’re just bringing his trip forward. He must go now, straightaway. England will do nicely, I think. Keep him out of mischief and away from us.”

At that moment Hamlet entered the room, and the king wondered if the young man had heard his last comment. The prince looked composed, but a flush in his cheeks and a brightness in his eyes gave the appearance of someone who had just come in from playing a game of football, or skiing down a fast and dangerous slope. Claudius hurried forward. Behind Hamlet came Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Rosencrantz signaling that they were returning empty-handed: they had not found the body.

Claudius was genial. “Now, Hamlet, we can’t have this. Where’s Polonius?”

Deadpan, Hamlet replied, “At supper.”

“At supper?”

“Yes, there’s a regular feast going on, and Polonius is at the center of it.”

The king was still baffled until Hamlet pressed on. “The worms are having a great supper, and Polonius is their special treat this night.”

The king shook his great head and groaned. “Have you completely taken leave of your reason?” But all attention was on the prince, and it was not clear whether anyone heard the cry from Claudius’s heart.

Hamlet continued without pause. “This is the thing about worms — we fatten all other creatures so that we might fatten ourselves, but worms, and worms alone, grow fat on us. The worm is the most democratic of creatures. The fat king and the lean beggar are one and the same to him.”

“I will not hear this,” Claudius said to Gertrude in a roaring whisper.

“Hush, let him finish. We need to find the old man.”

“A beggar who goes fishing may use a worm that has feasted on a king as his bait,” said Hamlet blithely. He was now moving around the room like a philosopher developing an argument, at times gazing out through the heavy stained-glass windows as if seeking an answer in the filtered light. “And the fisherman may eat the fish caught with that bait. What does this tell us? Well, it tells us that a king may progress through the guts of a pauper.”

The queen laid an urgent hand upon her husband’s arm; nothing else would have stopped him from running across the room and throwing himself on his stepson.

“Thus,” said Hamlet, “we understand the democratic nature of the worm. In him all people are united; in him all people are made equal; the wise become foolish and the foolish wise.”

“Where is Polonius?”
roared the king.

“Polonius? You wish to be better acquainted with Polonius? Well, then, you had better send a messenger to heaven, and if your messenger does not find him there, go and look for him in hell yourself.”

“By heavens I’ll send you to hell, and soon enough,” growled Claudius, then glanced around guiltily. Gertrude clutched his arm more tightly.

Hamlet smiled at his mother. “If a month or so passes, however, and you still have not found the old man, I suggest you try the mezzanine that is reached by the southern staircase. You may smell him as you pass the red door.”

Claudius sagged back in his throne. It seemed almost too light to support him. He waved to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. “Go and look in the mezzanine.”

As the two young men departed, Hamlet remarked equably to them, “He will stay there till you come.”

Through hooded eyes the king gazed at him. “Hamlet, you have put yourself in a dangerous position by this — shall we say — unfortunate accident. You know how much your mother and I care for your safety. We put it above our own, even. We need to get you out of the country. Prepare for a long journey! I will arrange a boat, I will arrange letters, I will arrange a couple of associates for you, I would arrange a favorable wind if I could! You must be ready to leave today — for England.”