The Book of Heaven: A Novel (23 page)

The guests entered the courtyard, on the perfect evening of the wedding, through three of the arches. One arch was covered with peacock feathers, which shuddered in the breeze made by children with peacock-feather fans. One was outlined in silver ribbons of water that flowed perpetually down its curves, returning to the two fountains at its base.

The third was covered with masses of tiny candles, illuminating gilded reliefs of angels carved into the arch. And the fourth was for the entry of the bride and groom. One side of the arch, where the ceremony would take place, was covered with green palm fronds, roses, and cornucopias of fruit and wheat. They would step through the arch after the marriage had taken place, where the exact pattern of decoration was repeated, this time with the palms, roses, and cornucopias sculpted in transcendental gold.

The feast was flawlessly choreographed; the pilafs glittered in faithful imitation of the bride's necklace, and there were audible gasps of admiration when the roasts in their coronets of jewel-studded bones were carried in.

The sculpted glaciers of the Snow That Does Not Melt, ornamented with crystallized roses, soared dramatically over the pools of rose-scented cream in which they floated. “Snow That Does Not Melt,” the Princess explained to a military governor seated across from her. “A most original conception, Princess,” he said. She inclined her head graciously to accept the compliment.

When the last plate was cleared, glasses were brought for the traditional toasts. Since the High Priest Xe was an experienced rhetorician, whose homilies and political reflections many of the company heard weekly, the bride elected to speak first.

She rose. “My husband,” she began, “every couple married according to the Angelic laws is commanded to restore another fragment of our lost Paradise. We regain Paradise in pledging our undying love. Tonight I have given you all a symbol of my indestructible love in serving you and this company with Snow That Does Not Melt.

“I vow to you, my husband, that I will be to you as Snow That Does Not Melt. Until we make the earth again a Paradise, I will be all you know of Paradise on earth.” She lifted her glass, and the company toasted her. “Snow That Does Not Melt.” Her father raised his own glass, returning her toast.

The Priest, magnificent in a brocade robe worked with trees of paradise, which he resembled, soaring above the guests in his own dramatic height, stood up in his turn. The crowd consented to him, as they always did, raptly.

“We Angels are a feasting people,” he said. “We know that what a feast first accomplishes is to create a time and space in which, above all, the guests can be delicious. As a sports field creates a time and space in which our capacity to kill is crafted into discipline, diplomacy, and play, a festive dinner table creates a space and occasion for our lupine carnal impulses to glitter with disciplined genius and wit. At last they can attain the qualities that most often elude them—intelligence, elegance, courtesy.

“And as Angels, we know that God speaks to us not only through Scriptures, but through flavors. These tastes—of butter, of peach, of partridge, are remnants of what existed in the Paradise we lost. They enter us like invisible angels, even in this ruined world.

“Here, Paradise is inside us; but there, again, when it surrounds us, we will be nourished, as we once were, on tender breads wrought from obdurate stone. And the roast swans we consume shall leave one golden body on the plate, and simultaneously soar unharmed in the heavens above our table. And our hungers will not deplete us, but will be exaltations.

“Before a banquet, the experience of hunger, as in Paradise, is for once a luxury and a glory, since it is a desire that will surely be fulfilled. The detail and perfection of the cooking that we owe to our feast-maker, Savour, has changed our daily burden of appetite from stone to diamond.”

The Princess's eyes narrowed for a split second, as if she had been struck, until they were as thin as blades. She quickly recovered her composure, and resumed impeccable bridal serenity, but Savour had seen. She knew she would never be forgiven for diverting a moment's praise from the bride in a toast in which she alone should be celebrated. It was an insolence merely to exist outside the consciousness of the Princess.

She had at last grasped the true nature of the Princess's appetite; an appetite for love so all-consuming that she would destroy the beloved in the pursuit of it. For the appetite to be loved is murderous if it is not balanced and justified by the appetite to love.

“Hear, hear,” the military governor, who had not heard his own voice for too long, seconded the Priest's compliment. “Ornaments are forbidden to Invisibles, yet this one has scattered jewels on our plates.”

Savour exchanged a glance with Salt, and saw the foreboding in his eyes. The Priest, feasting with relish on his opulent speech, observed nothing.

“We all know the folktales of dinners that changed the fates of the hosts or the guests. And a wedding dinner is surely one of those, as the bride and groom preside for the first time over a shared table. A wedding feast serves to make the erotic social, general, and thereby, celestial.

“Tonight we have delighted each one in each other. Some say that in Heaven there will be no marriage. But we know otherwise. In Paradise, all will be married, as we have been tonight.

“We have all been each other's lovers at this table tonight: for once, without cruelty, without selfishness, without regrets. We have had a glimpse of Paradise together.” He raised his glass, and saluted the Princess, who stood up with the inexorable grace of the swans he had alluded to, and signaled the end of the feast.

If the court of Angels had hoped that the much-anticipated marriage would bring peace to the Princess, they were disappointed. If the Princess had hoped that marriage would create love, she, too, was thwarted. The Priest's perfect courtesy toward her was as relentless as her insistence on the marriage. His polished and formal self-possession was a display of freedom, a reminder that she was a stranger, that her will had not become his.

It was not long before she began to try to provoke him in small ways, interfering with messages to him, destroying in what she described to him as “accidents” garments or possessions he seemed to favor. At the same time, she made him gifts in public, so that he was compelled to express his gratitude to her gracefully in front of guests.

She fastened a massive golden chain around his neck at an assembly, like a leash. She enjoyed forcing him to accept something he did not want that she wanted him to have. Now he would always carry her around his neck. And if he did not, there would be an occasion to remind an audience of the splendid gift and of her generosity, by asking where the chain she had given him was.

The gold had its gleaming hypnotic effects on the spectators, plunging them into private dreams, for gold is like a magic mirror that shows ambitions satisfied, without effort or consequences.

The Princess longed to make him lash out at her, to entice at least a show of passion. If she could force him to strike her, she could have him imprisoned. And when he despaired, she could plead for his freedom, entrapping him in a silken web of public clemency.

She imagined herself in the center of that scene as if perceived by a painter. She mentally dressed herself, changing the colors several times, until she arrived at a rich dark blue, which combined elements of mourning, royalty, and the suggestion of Heaven inherent in all blue shades.

She could not kneel for the sake of dignity, but her eyes would be downcast, her lips soft, emblematic of someone whose love was infinitely superior to the wrongs she had endured.

She, who had been born a symbol, always imagined herself seen. And to be seen by an audience acknowledging the wrongs done her was to be cradled in a perfect embrace. Perpetual apology is a tribute greater even than the bent knee that acknowledges power.

Power can be shown to be corrupt and overthrown. But blessed are those with a wound that does not heal; for it is an ever-refreshed innocence, through which the rich become supplicants, the powerful helpless, vengeance perfect justice, and all life forfeit in compensation. Glory is due to those who rule; but blessed are those in possession of the debt that can never be repaid.

The Princess did not need to be so subtle in her behavior toward Savour. The Priest, like all Angelic men, was her superior. But Savour belonged to her; her body, her hours, her days, her skills, even the gift that distinguished her. She was outraged that Savour had not yet fully grasped that.

Now the Princess devised a way to torment Savour. She began to send the Mirrors on random nights to the kitchens as Savour was closing them. The Mirrors would utter in unison one choral message, “You did not please,” and then depart. The staff hurried away silently on those nights, their camaraderie broken by Savour's humiliation.

“Is this true?” Savour asked Salt. The question was real. She was deeply anxious that her hands might have lost their skill; she was ready to despair.

“She is trying to make it true,” he said. “She senses that to work well, you must entertain doubts about your work. If she can replace your legitimate doubts with an absolute conviction of failure, you will begin to call all your work into question.

“What you don't see is that the false certainty of failure is as deceptive as any smug conviction of success. Ask me. Listen to me. I am someone who knows your work.

“And isn't she still accepting praise for the work you have done while she sends messengers to insult it? Could she do that if your work were poor? No, she wants what you have—the Priest's praise, the Priest's respect. Only you can give her that. She cannot produce these dazzling banquets—or anything—so instead, she will eat you, like the parasite she is.” Salt spoke with the depth of experience of one who was accustomed to doing his most excellent work on behalf of people he hated.

A measure of comprehension is like a bridge over an abyss. Savour was strengthened, and her work held steady; with Salt's help, her judgment of its quality remained flexible and responsive as the measurement of a thermometer. The campaign of the Mirrors became intermittent.

It was followed, however, by the night of the Perpetual Banquet.

The Princess had ordered an equinox dinner for a hundred places. The difficulty of this dinner was that each of its seventy components were delicate and miniature, and must be served simultaneously, as soon as cooked, as if they were newly opened roses; the dinner was prized for the illusion that a diner was tasting what had just been born. It was always served with new white wine only, and was known to be a votive dinner offered as a prayer for conception. The Princess, it was clear, was enlisting her guests to add their communal hopes to hers.

Savour flew from grill to cauldron to oven, many-armed, overseeing the complement of twenty assistants, and fifty servers needed for the deft work an equinox dinner required. The plates were covered and swaddled ingeniously to preserve the heat, crispness, perfect colors of the cooked food, and then taken to the seaside reception room where they had been ordered. The servers found no one there. The dishes returned to the kitchen, no longer appetizing.

Savour sent a messenger to the Princess's apartments; the messenger returned to the kitchen to deliver a reproof. Savour was careless, the messenger reported. She had substituted her own will for the royal will. The guests were actually due within the hour, in yet another reception room.

The group began the process again, dicing, flouring, grating, boiling, frying, grilling, with a speed that would have been comic had they not been desperate. Savour improvised substitutes for the dishes that could not be completed within the hour. They served. They found the room empty of guests.

Another messenger was sent, another hour and venue designated. They prepared again, for ghosts. On the fourth try, the staff and servers, exhausted, bedraggled, presented their latest dinner to a real assembly, who fell on their offerings with hearty appetites. The next morning, Savour was called to the Princess's quarters, and sharply reprimanded for her mismanagement of the kitchen and for her extravagant waste of stores.

Even more unwelcome was a new royal caprice; the Princess began to make incursions into the kitchens themselves. Savour had been born into bondage; but she had managed, in a sense, to make herself free. She willingly offered a magnificent obedience to her work; ultimately she was the servant of a divine craft, the priest of the kitchen. It was this that infuriated the Princess. She was determined to crush Savour until the slave understood she had no other God than the Princess; she struggled to transform Savour's work into servitude.

“Why does she do this?” Savour asked Salt, resting her forehead on her hand, after the Mirrors announced an impending visit.

“The Priest did not really choose her,” said Salt. “He did, however, choose you. And undertook a long voyage to find you. Perhaps there is some destined relation between you. It is a mystery she wants to comprehend.”

The Princess wanted to observe the making of a game pie that she had noticed was a particular favorite of the Priest's. She would send a sudden command for it to be made, regardless of the day's other orders of work for Savour. If she were sleepless, she would send a messenger to force Savour to the kitchens from her bed. Savour would explain and demonstrate the procedures, and the Princess would somehow unravel the careful instructions between sessions.

“That wasn't what you said last time,” she would correct Savour. “You seasoned it differently.” “That isn't how it is prepared.” She harangued Savour with a barrage of accusations and commandments.

Worse, the Princess insisted that it was her prerogative to instruct Savour in the proper techniques. She would seize the meat, hack it, malseason it, and then accuse Savour contemptuously of deliberately spoiling the perfection of her finished dish.