PIRIN

Breakfast

Breakfast CHAPTER III

By the end of the first week, Nhalfòrdon-Domenir decided to have breakfast with his foster-father. The servants had him wear a nice dress and escorted him before Helewen. In order to allow Domenir to visit the upper stairs of the estate, Helewen had had them mount an elevator in strong chestnut wood, working on pulleys, which Domenir might easily access on his wooden chair. This way, the young guest could go up and down the five floors of the mansion as he wished, if only with the help of a carer.

Meanwhile, anyway, the corridor leading to the dining hall was plain, and it turned about on its wide course through the ancient high doors.

Helewen was seated at the head of a princely table laden for breakfast. He wore, as usual, a white dress, and was looking serenely at the boy led before him.

“Listen to me, lad”, the lord started, comfortably seated, as though he were continuing a dialogue which had just been interrupted. “You know my son is sailing on that ship, am I right?”

The reference to the ship upset Domenir pretty much, and Helewen immediately recognized the sad look the boy had assumed. “I am telling you this so that you know I, as well, like yourself, have had to comply with the sorrow for the separation from a person I loved. The loss of this son, leaving while aware of sailing toward a place we do not even know the existence thereof, is perhaps even harder to live with than the sorrow for his brother, who already took his last breath”.

Domenir felt an inner motion of deep compassion for his interlocutor, although he managed to hide it. “You still have a daughter, my lord. I only saw her once. I was a child back then, but she seemed the most gracious and radiant creature in our universe”, he said, trying the best he could think of to console his generous lord.

“Indeed, you are right, Domenir. As you know, though, my daughter lives away from here, alongside her mother. She does not manage to visit me but once each three or four years, even then spending only a few months here, in Magnolias Estate. The bitter truth is I am left alone, here in this huge mansion of more than a hundred halls”. The King stopped for a little while. “I do not regret any of my choices… but it is good to be aware that any choice entails some renunciation”.

“Why did you leave your country? Why did you leave your beloved to end your days in this forgotten, scarcely-populated place, away from the Gods’ sight, my lord? I… cannot understand”.

Helewen looked intensely in the fifteen-years-old’s direction, who even looked him back. Domenir was too well aware he had asked a bold, tactless question, and was a bit afraid of the possible reaction of the old monarch, but Helewen appreciated the sincere intentions of the boy. He had lived too long to desire hypocrisy and formal manners. Therefore he did not comment the tone, perhaps too harsh, of his foster-son. He talked slowly and meekly. “I have no answers to this question, Nhalfòrdon-Domenir. But perhaps one day, when you better understand the happenings of my life and the story that led me in this silent habitation, you shall realize what has brought me to this choice… and my renunciation”.

The two of them stayed silent for a while, while they slowly savoured the prelibacies filling the long table.

When the meal was over, Helewen got up and had Domenir led to one of the adjacent rooms, a wide hall where he gathered his workers and servants. “These men and women, Domenir, are all here to serve you and satisfy your requests. Therefore I wish you come to know them, as though they were members of your family”.

The landlord came close to a tall, well-dressed man who, as he himself, was a Pirin, and tried to flaunt his best smile. He was a thin figure, with his hair braided, effeminate features and a sort of awkward shyness. “This,” Helewen continued, “is Hybàr-biltòin, son of Desisida. He is the butler at Magnolias Estate, besides my personal secretary. He is learned, eclectic, tidy, and a fine speaker. He could stand witty exchanges with our most honoured guests and the great intellectuals of our time. It has to be said, though, that the unbecoming and hermit-like quality of his host does not allow him to frequent his intellectual peers”, the monarch concluded with a smile, while proudly shaking his trustworthy secretary’s arm.

“He, instead”, he said, coming but a few steps from a man who looked as though he came from the south, “is Irinambhidan, my accountant”. Domenir, who had just moved his glance from the first collaborator, fixed his deep dark eyes on the second. The man had bronze skin, dark hair, black eyes, and a long, thin beard that, masterfully beaded with rings in gold, zinc, and copper, arrived about the height of his chest.

“You know, Domenir,” the sovereign reprised, “we Pirin lack a monetary system. In our country economics is not based on money, things are neither sold nor bought. One day I shall tell you more precisely about the laws governing our country… When I established myself here, in Magnolias Estate, I had to assume somebody who could administer my conspicuous wealth. Irinambidhan comes from the desert territories of the Kingdom of Noghard. Like your mother. He is a son of merchants, who in their turn were sons of merchants from thirty generations. Only a little older than childhood, he had doubled his parents’ fortune by acquiring and selling goods throughout the Country. Even the sultan asked him as his personal accountant. When the sultan died, Irinambidhan became my collaborator. Today his economics treatises are taught in the great universities! Thanks to Irinambidhan, my fortune in three years has tripled”.

Domenir struggled to follow the foster-father’s dissertations, who knew stories, anecdotes, romances, about each secretary, domestic, cook or peasant alike, and by listening to him one got the impression he was telling one about the lives of his brothers and sisters, children and relatives. Among them there were Men, Elves, Dwarves, Giants, and even some belonging to the curious people of the Fhegòlnori, who, besides some hair on the top of their ears, like lynches and squirrels, also have funny moustaches which, together with their thick eyebrows, depart from the bridge of the nose, similarly to owls.

That day, Helewen introduced Domenir to his three valiant cooks, his four gardeners, the stewards, the household of the peasants who took care of the orchards, the yards and the other fields of the mansion, as well as the servants who kept the mansion clean and ordered, the two guardians, the stable-boys and the squires.

Eventually, the old King introduced the boy to the three carers who, in turn, would take care of him, of his clothes, and his movements across the estate. Dhaldèrien, not much older than Domenir, blonde and thin, coming from the town of Oghenvill; Naroghesis, a stout thirty-years-old, chestnut curly hair, long till his knees, a son of artisans from a village in Folklord; and, last but not least, the awesome Kadman, disinherited from his rich family in Duhjum for wanting to marry the daughter of a smith and a waitress…