Alberic the Wise and Other Journeys Read online

  Since he had no place else to go, Alberic returned to the square each day, and each day the crowds grew larger and larger around him. At first it was only the children, but soon everyone, regardless of age or size, crowded close to listen—and patiently he tried to tell them all they wished to hear. For many of their questions his own experience provided the answers, and for those he could not directly answer he always had a tale or story whose point or artifice led them to answers of their own. More and more he began to enjoy the days and soon he learned to embellish his tales with skillful detail, to pause at just the right time, to raise his voice to a roar or lower it to a whisper as the telling demanded. And the crowds grew even larger.

  Workmen came to listen and stayed to learn the secret ways and methods of their own crafts. Artisans consulted him on questions of taste or skill and when they left they always knew more than when they came. Alberic told them everything he had learned or seen through all his failures and his wanderings, and before very long he became known throughout the realm as Alberic the Wise.

  His fame spread so far that one day the King himself and several of his ministers came to the square to see for themselves. Cleverly disguised so as not to alert the old man to his purpose, the King posed several questions concerning matters of state and situations in far-off corners of the kingdom. Everything he asked, Alberic answered in great detail, enlarging each reply with accounts of the lore and customs of each region, condition of the crops and royal castles, local problems and controversies, reports on the annual rainfall and the latest depredations by various discontented barons. And for added measure, two songs and a short play (in which he acted all the parts) which he had learned before being dismissed from a traveling theater company.

  “You are the wisest man in my kingdom,” the astonished King proclaimed, throwing off his disguise, “and you shall have a palace of your own with servants and riches as befits a man of your accomplishments.”

  Alberic moved into the new palace at once and was more than content with his new life. He enjoyed the wealth and possessions he had never known before, slept on feather beds, ate nothing but the most succulent and delicate foods and endlessly put on and took off the many cloaks, robes and caps the King had graciously provided. His beard was trimmed and curled and he spent his time strolling about the gardens and marble halls posing with proper dignity before each mirror and repeating to himself in various tones and accents, “Alberic the Wise, ALBERIC THE WISE, A-L-B-E-R-I-C T-H-E W-I-S-E!” in order to become accustomed to his new title.

  After several weeks, however, the novelty began to wear thin, for a sable cloak is just a sable cloak and a poulet poêle à l’estragon is really just another roast chicken. Soon doubts began to crowd out pleasures and by degrees he grew first serious, then sober, then somber and then once again thoroughly discouraged.

  “How is it possible to be a failure at everything one day and a wise man the next?” he inquired. “Am I not the same person?”

  For weeks this question continued to trouble him deeply, and since he could not find a satisfactory answer he returned to the square with his doubts.

  “Simply calling someone wise does not make him wise!” he announced to the eager crowd. “So you see, I am not wise.” Then, feeling much better, he returned to the palace and began to make ready to leave.

  “How modest,” the crowd murmured. “The sign of a truly great man.” And a delegation of prominent citizens was sent to prevail on him to stay.

  Even after listening to their arguments Alberic continued to be troubled and the very next day he returned to the square again.

  “Miscellaneous collections of fact and information are not wisdom,” he declared fervently. “Therefore I am not wise!” And he returned and ordered workmen to begin boarding up the palace.

  “Only the wisest of men would understand this,” the people all agreed, and petitions were circulated to prevent his leaving.

  For several more days he paced the palace corridors unhappily and then returned for a third time.

  “A wise man’s words are rarely questioned,” he counseled gently. “Therefore you must be very careful whom you call wise.”

  The crowd was so grateful for his timely warning that they cheered for fully fifteen minutes after he had returned to the palace.

  Finally, in desperation, he reappeared that very afternoon and stated simply, “For all the years of my life I have sought wisdom and to this day I still do not know even the meaning of the word, or where to find it,” and thinking that would convince them he ordered a carriage for six o’clock that afternoon.

  The crowd gasped. “No one but a man of the most profound wisdom would ever dare to admit such a thing,” they all agreed, and an epic poem was commissioned in his honor.

  Once again Alberic returned to the palace. The carriage was canceled, the rooms were opened and aired. There was nothing he could say or do to convince them that he wasn’t what they all thought him to be. Soon he refused to answer any more questions or, in fact, to speak at all and everyone agreed that because of the troubled times this was certainly the wisest thing to do. Each day he grew more morose and miserable, and though his fame continued to grow and spread he found no more satisfaction in his success than he had in all his failures. He slept little and ate less and his magnificent robes began to hang like shrouds. The bright optimism that had shone in his eyes through all his travels and hardships began to fade and as the months passed he took to spending all his time at the top of the great north tower, staring without any interest at nothing in particular.

  “I am no wiser now than I was before,” he said one afternoon, thinking back across the years. “For I still don’t know what I am or what I’m looking for.” But as he sat there remembering and regretting, he sensed in the air the barest suggestion of some subtle yet familiar scent that drifted in on the freshening breeze. What it was he didn’t know—perhaps the pungent tangled aroma of some far eastern bazaar or the sharp and honest smell of a once-known workshop, or it might have been simply the sweet clean air of an upland field the memory of which had long been lost in detail yet retained in some more durable way; but whatever it was it grew stronger and stronger, stirring something deep within him and taking hold of all his thoughts and feelings. His spirit suddenly quickened in response and each breath now came faster than the one before.And then for just a moment he sat quite still—and then at last he knew.

  “I am not a glassmaker nor a stonecutter, nor a goldsmith, potter, weaver, tinker, scribe or chef,” he shouted happily, and he leaped up and bounded down the steep stone stairs. “Nor a vintner, carpenter, physician, armorer, astronomer, baker or boatman.” Down and around he ran as fast as he could go, along the palace corridors until he reached the room in which all his old things had been stored. “Nor a blacksmith, merchant, musician or cabinetmaker,” he continued as he put on the ragged cloak and shoes and hat. “Nor a wise man or a fool, success or failure, for no one but myself can tell me what I am or what I’m not.” And when he’d finished he looked into the mirror and smiled and wondered why it had taken him so long to discover such a simple thing.

  So Alberic picked up his bundle, took one last look through the palace and went down to the square for the last time.

  “I have at last discovered one thing,” he stated simply. “It is much better to look for what I may never find than to find what I do not really want.” And with that he said goodbye and left the city as quietly as he’d come.

  The crowd gasped and shook their heads in disbelief.

  “He has given up his palace!”

  “And his wealth and servants!”

  “And the King’s favor!”

  “And he does not even know where he is going,” they buzzed and mumbled. “How foolish, how very foolish! How could we ever have thought him wise?” And they all went home.

  But Alberic didn’t care at all, for now his thoughts were full of all the things he had yet to see and do and all the times he wou
ld stop to tell his stories and then move on again. Soon the walls were far behind and only his footsteps and the night were there to keep him company. Once again he felt the freedom and the joy of not knowing where each new step would take him, and as he walked along his stride was longer and stronger than was right somehow for a man his age.

  His name was Claude, but it could have been Gerald or Malcolm or Arnold or Harold or Samuel. It made no difference to him at all—hardly anything did. If something was or it wasn’t, if it happened or it didn’t, were it hispid or glabrous, it was all the same to Claude, for he had decided at his last birthday that there was no way to be absolutely sure of anything. There were always two sides to every question and for every yes a no (not counting all the maybes). What one person liked another despised. What someone thought was surely right another was bound to find as surely wrong. And then besides all that, everything was always changing anyway. As soon as you’d become accustomed to summer, it became winter, afternoons invariably turned to evenings, the sixth grade to the seventh and friendships to only memories. Every time he thought about it he became more convinced that there was nothing that was really true and even less in which to believe. So it was simpler not to care about any thing, for in that way he was never disappointed.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he’d often say, or, “It’s not my concern,” or, “I couldn’t care less,” or simply, “So what?”

  It was difficult, however, to determine all this just by looking at him. At first glance, in fact, he was not too different from any other twelve-year-old boy—smaller than most perhaps, but still bigger than some. His hair was long and dark, his eyes quiet and almost brown (they were almost green and almost blue also, depending on the light and the color of his necktie). His nose, with only the slightest hesitation, pointed generally in the direction he was going and his mouth, since he rarely either smiled or frowned, held a neutral ground between the two. You could almost say he was handsome, if you didn’t say it loud enough for him to hear you.

  Of course, if you happened to be looking at him when he was shuffling through the snow with his hands buried deep in the pockets of his shaggy overcoat, his collar up, his cap down and a long scarf wrapped around what was left, it would have been difficult to tell anything at all—except, perhaps, that his shoes were wet and, if he was moving a little faster than usual, that he was most probably on his way to the museum.

  Now if it could be said that Claude enjoyed anything, it was his visits to the museum. At least there the pictures never changed. From one day to the next you could be sure they would remain exactly the same, and then too the skies were bluer than real blue skies, the trees fuller, the victories more heroic, and the flowers never died. So those afternoons on which there was little else to do found him wandering through the quiet halls and galleries—on a ship that always sailed a brilliant sea, in a parade that went on and on forever, as an emperor whose word was always law, or at a banquet where the good things never ran out—and even knowing, as we all do, that such things are impossible, he did, on occasion, forget, and often it was only the closing bell echoing off the great rotunda ceiling which reminded him that, for better or worse, he was here and not there.

  Before long Claude had come to know each and every painting in the collection, or so he thought, for late one day as he was returning from the exhibition of Spanish masters he saw one that he had never noticed before—hanging in the little alcove behind the marble stair which led to the collection of bronzes, faïence, terra cottas, enamels, ivory and wood carvings, plaquettes, medals, coins and wax reliefs on the second and third floors.

  It was a small painting in a modest frame, carved and gilded. A plaque identified it simply as “A Young Lady in a Make-Believe Landscape,” and while it could not be said with certainty who the artist had been, it was thought most probably to have been painted in the late fifteenth century by someone of the Florentine school.

  The young lady stood in the center foreground of the picture. (Although it seemed odd to call her a lady, for she looked scarcely older than he.) Her right hand held a flower and rested gracefully on the edge of a table, the kind that appears so often at the corner or bottom of a painting so that ladies will have a place on which to rest their hands gracefully. Her dress was red, cut low and straight and laced down the front in the fashion of the day. Her hair: parted in the middle with most of it pulled back into a little white cap, while the rest hung in loose curls at the sides. She was fair and pale with only the faintest touch of color in her cheeks and she was very beautiful. From her left a road entered the picture, disappeared behind her, then reappeared at her right shoulder, curved, dipped and appeared again at the left before turning to follow a slow silver river back into the landscape. Whether the landscape was real or make-believe he couldn’t say, for to him it was no more real or make-believe than the lady herself, but there were hills and paths, an arched bridge across the river, a few boats, some pine and poplar, a manor wall and garden some distance away, a castle not quite seen in the background and a suggestion of much more just out of sight in the distant haze.

  It was pleasant enough, he thought, though hardly worth a great deal of his time. Nevertheless, there was something in it that held him. Perhaps it was the composition, or the quality of the line, or the delicate use of color, or even the lady’s eyes. Yes, most probably her eyes, for they were so very sad—and it was the kind of sadness that expected nothing ever to change. Yet with that they seemed also, in some way, to be searching and questioning and what was most disturbing was that the longer he stood there, the more they seemed to be questioning him.

  “She’s a sad one all right,” said a guard who had paused for a moment behind him in the dimly lit alcove. “Hardly ever has a visitor. I expect she’s lonely.” He smiled at his little joke and then moved on again to the other side of the hall.

  “Sad indeed,” Claude mumbled, for he didn’t like to be told what he had already seen for himself. “What does it matter anyway?” He turned and headed for the large glass doors in the lobby. It was late and so he pushed quickly out into the street without giving it another thought—but then how could he have known what was to happen?

  On his next visit he spent most of his time in the south wing with the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French paintings and it was late afternoon again when he suddenly remembered the Young Lady. Without knowing why, he returned to look at her once more before leaving.

  During the following weeks he found his thoughts returning constantly to the little painting, no matter where he was in the museum or what he had come to see, and for some unaccountable reason felt compelled to spend a part of each visit with it. Why? It was not the most beautiful painting there, nor the most interesting nor the most famous, and they couldn’t have thought much of it themselves, hanging it in that dark, out-of-the-way place.

  “I really don’t care one way or the other,” he found it necessary to tell himself repeatedly. Yet there he stood, studying it, examining it, trying to understand the reason for each brushstroke and marveling at the skill with which the artist could suggest a leaf or a bit of silk or the warmth and softness of her cheek with no more than paint on canvas. Soon he knew every jagged edge of every improbable rock, the number of silver links that shone in her necklace and even the time it would take to walk from where he stood to the farthest hill. Each time Claude returned he found himself drawn more closely to it and at times it even felt as if the soft warm light which filled the picture extended beyond the edges of the frame to fill the alcove around him. And then, what of her? Who was she? And what caused her such grief? For despite his determination to remain unconcerned, these were questions that troubled him.

  “How would I ever find out, though?” he asked himself finally. “And why should I bother? It’s silly and so is the museum.” And so from that afternoon when he left he didn’t return for almost a month.

  When he did, it was to the alcove that he went first. Perhaps she was no longer
there? But of course nothing had changed. Everything was exactly as it had been—well, almost everything, for just as he was about to leave again his attention was drawn to something on the floor directly below the painting. It was a small clear pool of liquid. Now that was curious. He looked from the pool to the painting and from the painting back to the pool—but how foolish! What could the painting have had to do with it?

  “I didn’t know she would miss me enough to cry,” he said, pretending to be quite serious, and he laughed, but right in the middle he stopped, for the idea suddenly did not seem too far-fetched. After all, in a way he had missed her too.

  “That’s ridiculous,” he insisted, and now he was impatient with himself for considering such nonsense. “There are a hundred explanations and that’s the least likely. Anyway it will be gone tomorrow.”

  But it wasn’t, for he returned to make certain, and this time the pool of water was ever so slightly larger. Now he was not sure what was ridiculous. He stepped closer to examine the painting carefully, looking for some clue or sign or perhaps even the beginning of a tear. How quiet the museum was that afternoon—more quiet than he had ever remembered—and the air seemed warm to him, sweet and summery. Another step, still nothing, and another, still closer, leaning forward until he was no more than a few inches from the painting and still he could see nothing. There was now a clear smell of pine in the air and with it the vaguest hint of a delicate perfume. A rustling sound, like a gentle gust of wind through leaves, broke the silence and something very like a strand of long blond hair brushed his face.