Uncia or Precious Nothing

Chapter 2. Emergence of Nothing

Chapter 2

Emergence of Nothing

A light breeze stirred the curtains, and the mythical flora that inhabited them was truly lifelike in its movements. From the height of a window one could see clipper ships in the bay and a bulky black silhouette of a battleship at anchorage. The bell tower loomed on the opposite side of the Palace Square – the gilded snake-shaped hands writhed in the bright sunshine just seconds before noon. The clang of a bell resounded loudly over the square, sending the seagulls and doves from the rooftops up into the air.

“This is exactly how it happened,” Uncia turned to her mother. “The snakes writhed together and spit out a blinding shot of flames! Everything froze and stood motionless as the bells were tolling, and a fiery ball kept moving towards the window, and I saw a face, an unusual, beautiful face! I wanted to make it out better, and then, all of a sudden… a flock of doves let me through, very slowly… and a dove’s eye drifted next to me – a silly reddish eye! It was then that the other, thoroughly different glance embraced me!”

A shadow crossed Theresa’s face as if her daughter had again fallen past the window, momentarily screening the sun.

“And then came the voice,” the girl looked into her deep, anxious eyes. “It swept over me like an ocean, and its stars carried me on the ends of their rays…”

Applause sounded from the square. At the same time there was a tap on the door, and an old valet with the stern face of a skipper came in.

“The orchestra conductor is already at his stand, the audience is waiting,” he said.

“Thank you, Tristan.” Theresa stood up and turned to her daughter:

“The next time you mention your saviors, say ‘the Voice and the Glance’ rather than ‘the voice and the glance’,” she spoke, as if singing the words. “Can you tell the difference?”

“Yes, ma,” Uncia raised her intent face, and her mother kissed a golden curl on her temple.

Theresa was not a dazzling woman, but when she sang, her entire body began to radiate a serene, vivid glow. And her voice was also lucid and touching, which is why the people called her the Nightingale Queen. And, indeed, she was like a nightingale – small and fragile, charming everyone with her songs, helping others forget their troubles and inspiring hope.

Theresa always addressed ordinary people with ordinary words and in a manner as ordinary as if she had no title or fortune. And today, while opening the ceremony, she, as usual, began with words.

“The scientists were right, the sun had saved our princess,” she said. “But it was not the sun alone: the whole world sings, and its music doesn’t let us go under. These are the chastity and holiness that lift us up!”

A celebratory feast followed the great triumph of spirit. Loud masquerade uproar poured onto the streets and embankments. Princes and princesses, Harlequins and Columbines, tigers and dragons could be seen everywhere, and no one was troubled by the many iguanas in long traveling cloaks who appeared in town at dusk. They all kept together, and their number grew with every hour. Two of them stood in the middle of the crowd: a beard was sticking out from under the first lizard's mask, and long black curls showed below the mask of the other.

“At midnight sharp you will unlock the door in the northern wall,” said the bearded iguana.

“Yes, Karafa,” the long-haired one replied in a female voice.

The Festival Hall, adorned with live orchid garlands, was full of splendor and leisurely movement: jewels, stars, epaulettes and aiguillettes flowed as a shining river. The guests approached the podium, where the festivities' guest of honor stood beside her father.

Uncia pulled on the tassel of her father’s golden embroidered belt.

“Will we go sailing tomorrow?” she asked him when he had leaned down to her.

“Nothing is an obstacle!”

That's what father always said whenever she asked for anything.

“I'll tell you one secret,” she embraced his strong neck over the gilt tabs. “When we are out in the ocean.”

“Tell me now, darling.”

Uncia glimpsed at a guard with a ceremonial halberd.

“The warm air has nothing to do with the ‘flight’,” she whispered hastily. “It’s the Voice and the Glance that saved me!” she emphasized the invisible accents, and her father understood – he looked into her eyes and smiled.

“Let them always be with you, sweetheart,” he said in her ear.

A pair of courtiers approached the podium ceremoniously.

“The princess is a true angel!” the grey-haired cavalier bowed.

“No wonder that she can fly,” his spouse made a curtsy.

The crowd swarmed around the podium when Theresa came in, lighting up the hall with her singing, and all the glances turned to her.

“Music forever! Long live opera! Glory to the Nightingale Queen!” voices rang out here and there.

The lights were shining, and faces were shining. Uncia had never seen so much light in her life. She wanted desperately to stay in this hall for as long as possible, but when the chimes played half past ten, her father and mother blessed her and sent her to bed.

Uncia woke up because of the noise coming from the square, thinking that the guests were shooting fireworks, but suddenly something banged right outside her bedroom door. The very next moment the lights came on, and some strangers, splattered with cranberry juice from head to toe, surrounded her bed. They milled about and parted, allowing an iguana in an evening gown to pass. Scaly lizard skin slipped gradually off her head, freeing up the long black hair, and the gypsy eyes of Medina, a swarthy beauty, stared at Uncia.

The bedroom ceiling stayed behind; the muted lights of the corridors and stairways drifted by, and then, at once, the chandeliers of the familiar hall blinded her. The girl has barely come to her senses when she found herself standing barefoot on a silver dish. The cold metal chased off the remains of sleep, but she still refused to believe that everything was really happening.

Armed men were entering the hall, taking off their masks and revealing flushed, sweaty faces.

“Speak, Karafa!” they appealed to a bearded shorty, who got up on the table next to the princess.

The crowd drew near them, when the man lifted his hand, establishing silence.

“Hush!” he put a finger to his lips, curbing the last rustles. “Does anyone hear anything?”

“No-o-o!” the crowd responded discordantly.

“Not a single sound?” Karafa looked over the people. “Not a tiny note?”

“We don’t hear anything!”

“That’s right, brothers! The world is mute!” he raised his voice. “The world just can’t sing! This is unmistakable proof of our righteousness, my lions!” he swiftly shifted his glance off the lizard mask. “We are sick and tired of fairy tales and lies! And we will no longer listen to anyone’s voices, even as tantalizing as was the voice of the Nightingale Queen!”

A grumble ran through the crowd.

“I said ‘was’,” the man lifted his hand again, “because once started, everything must be completed. One can’t be half-bird and half-queen. But now, when her majesty has fully become a bird, we can take pride in the fact that we had set her free with these very hands,” he shook his spread-out fingers, “our hands! After all, nothing in the world is above freedom!”

“Nothing! Above! Freedom!” the words rolled across the hall.

“And woe, woe unto the tyrant who becomes a slave of his treasures!” Karafa turned to Uncia, who shuffled about on a cold tray wearing nothing but a sleeping gown. He pointed his tense forefinger at her, and everybody froze up, anticipating a revelation. “Yeah! That despot had even measured gold with his own daughter's name!” He exclaimed with righteous rage in his voice.

The princess’ golden hair falling down to her ankles left no place for doubts as to the fairness of his words. She felt glances, prickly like pins of cold in her feet, and gathered all her strength to keep from crying and giving away her fear – the last warm and dear thing remaining with her.

“But our new world has just one measuring system!” Karafa thrust his tanned fist in the air. “It’s freedom! And nothing is above freedom!”

“Nothing! Above! Freedom!” caught up the crowd.

“And nothing’s to the right of freedom!” he yelled with furious inspiration. “And nothing’s to the left!”

“Nothing’s to the le-e-e-e…” – the lizards in the square joined in.

“Not a dime – for the past!” he lifted the other fist. “Pound is nothing! Uncia is nothing!”

“Uncia is nothing!” thundered the crowd.

Heated up with militant passion, ‘nothing’ took off and ricocheted off the ceiling, covering the dish with the princess like a lid.

When Uncia opened her eyes, she discovered that it was daytime, and she was lying on the floor of her bedroom. The books thrown out of the bookcase were scattered around. Her splendid bookcase itself, adorned with carvings and mother-of-pearl, had disappeared. The iguana people dragged away all the furniture leaving only the gigantic, ceiling-high mirror. Familiar paintings and tapestries have been replaced with crooked sprawling graffiti: “Freedom!” and “Uncia Is Nothing!”

Her father the king had once ordered that the princess must learn to read before she lost her first baby tooth. His will was executed impeccably – the girl could read in three languages, but the meaning of what she had just read often remained vague to her. So the phrase “Uncia Is Nothing!” left her at a loss at first, but then she remembered her father’s favorite expression and decided that this “Nothing” was not an obstacle either. Quite differently she treated the detestable “Freedom” that had given her a splitting headache. Uncia was in the process of erasing, when the door opened, and Medina came in without knocking.

“You’re making a mistake,” she said expertly. “Freedom is what you’ll desperately need very soon.”

The beauty approached the wall with the only graffiti left intact.

“You were right to keep it: now you’re the emptiness, the same that I had been to your self-centered daddy.”

Uncia stepped forward ready to stand up for her father, but the traitress was in a peaceful mood.

“It’s a free country now, kid. The kingdom is gone, and this…” she spread her arms, “this will become a museum. They will put you on the inventory list and you’ll sit on a throne till you die!”

Having fixed her hair in front of the mirror, Medina left, and the girl began to contemplate how a person could be emptiness.

The words of the treacherous servant began to come true very soon. Monarchy was abolished, and, like a crew of a ship caught in a storm, the recent subjects have surrendered to the current of the times and proclaimed a republic. When the storm and the turmoil accompanying it subsided, the High Guardian Council attended to the country and the princess.

It was probably due to her short-lived childhood overindulgence, the ex-heiress to all of the perished kingdom's treasures was not allowed to leave her room or to receive visitors. But the citizens, who were busy with the daily grind, which traditionally meant growing fruit, fishing and pearling, seemed to have forgotten about her. Some of them gave up work entirely and plunged into marauding, which posed no risk of being eaten by sharks: for the time being the new authorities attempted to look humane and were turning a blind eye on everything. So the people led their diverse lives, unlike our acquaintance.

Day in and day out Uncia wandered from corner to corner, and kept her eyes closed every other time just for fun, and the loneliness kept pace with her. Sometimes it turned from apathetic observation to deeds, smearing the scribbles of the letters left unsent, or supported the elbow of her mistress, when she ate, sitting down on bare floor. The hand trembled, spilling soup, but the broth left no traces on her dress, which came to resemble the dress of a clown – the sleeves and the skirt were lengthened as needed, and the cuisine didn’t affect her waist.

The princess didn’t like her loneliness, though they were growing together like siblings, and she sometimes fought it, getting acquainted with the seagulls. But the flighty birds came to the palace in search of food, just as people did, and did not stay for long.

Abandoned by everyone, Uncia had trouble getting used to the idea that she would never see her parents again, and when despair came over her, recalled the Glance wrapped up in the Voice's melodious fabric, mending herself with hope that they still remembered her.

“You will come back,” she was saying to herself. “Because you are all I have left…”

In order to make her invisible friends respond sooner she recited verses – out loud and with great passion, as if giving them to someone dear. Reciting late into the night, she drove away her fear that the Voice and the Glance had forgotten about her, and she'd have to grow old all alone.

However, the High Council guardians occasionally dropped in at her single-room kingdom. Each time the visitors stared at the only graffiti on the wall, and one of them once said:

“And you really are Nothing – such a puny little thing! Why on earth do you keep this enormous mirror?”

After pacing the room, the guardian pensively added:

“Well, it is a perfect fit for my honey!”

With no regrets the princess let go of the one thing that had revealed her loneliness full-size every day. And, having ceased to see herself, she gave some serious thought to what Medina had once said.

For quite some time now, whether to humiliate Uncia or just for fun, the guardians called her no other name but Nothing. The girl even began counting, and when the number of times exceeded a hundred, decided to test her new name for secret powers. Once, finding the door unlocked, she slipped out of her room and, using the name as an invisibility cloak, headed towards the palace gates.

‘Nothing’ helped her cross the corridor with a drowsy guard, but was stopped at the staircase by a man in a pince-nez. Back at her room she thought that the bespectacled man had some special lenses, or the name hadn’t worked because was not her birth name. Or perhaps Medina had lied to her when she spoke about emptiness. She fell asleep not knowing that another prediction of the swarthy beauty would come true no later than next week.

The establishment of a museum in the palace was announced pompously: all jokes aside, for the first time in history a living princess was on display.

“Rejoice, little child!” an old matron laced up Uncia’s corset with ease. “Never had anyone your age been lucky enough to become a monument of antiquity!”

According to the Guardian Council's order, the palace cellars were turned into leisure venues – pubs and snack bars for the visitors to refresh and entertain themselves after the excursion, all while replenishing the young republic's treasury.

Now Uncia had to spend six days a week at her rightful place. But this seemingly easy part of royal labor turned into true penal servitude.

Since seeing monarchs close up has always been the privilege of elite, the people practically flooded the museum. The visitors were coming from as far as Europe and America, and they were so numerous that they often had to spend the night out in the open by the ticket-office. Some brought kids along if they had behaved well at home – a chance to gawk at the princess was a great incentive. But the adults were at leisure here, relaxed and not as strict as usual, and their children competed in marksmanship throwing anything they found in their pockets or on the floor at her.

Motionless on a large gilded chair, Uncia was stunned as she looked at all the cheerful people examining her like an exotic animal. Magnesium flashes caused floating iridescent circles to appear in her eyes. But shutting her eyes and fidgeting were only allowed during a fainting fit. Besides, some zealous visitors climbed over the barrier and touched her with their hands thinking that she was a doll. Very few believed that a child could remain motionless for such a long time.

Suffering from stuffiness, thirst and forced immobility, the princess resigned herself to static duties of an object, learned to cry with invisible tears and to endure hits of orange peel and lemonade corks.

“Dear Voice and Glance,” she begged her mysterious friends, “please, turn me into emptiness, into the air, into whatever you want, just take me away from here!”

When it became utterly unbearable, she recited her favorite verses under her breath and sometimes so desperately as if she were digging out a trench at a battlefield.

And, amazingly, the familiar stanzas shielded her like a parapet!

Sitting on the throne with a dead-pan face, Uncia millimeter by millimeter scratched out a crack in the strange substance that filled her expectations densely, and gradually started to hide out there like a snail in its shell-house. The shell protected her from direct hits and offensive remarks from the crowd.

Day by day, her ‘verse’ shelter was becoming deeper and deeper – the shell coiled once, then twice, and the noise of the crowd disappeared together with bits of garbage. But the verses not only helped her dig – they led her into the world created by the greatest dreamers. And once she found herself inside a popular French poem, wandering the ocean as she embraced a sailboat mast. Right there, out of the flourishing waters, gigantic caryatides emerged towards her with a heavy, dazzling rainbow that formed a portal on their heads.

One could only guess where this entrance led, but the glimmering flourishes of shooting stars in the transparent frame evoked such a wonderful feeling that the princess smiled for the first time in many long months.

And then an utterly incredible thing happened: the ends of that very rainbow appeared in the corners of her mouth, crawling out and illuminating the museum with magical light. And all the men and boys in the front row dropped to one knee, and all the women and girls made a curtsy. The second row followed the front, the third followed the second, and so on and so forth – as far as the end of the hall where one could see the portrait of King Burnabar the Thunderous, the founder of the Salamant dynasty. According to the legends, Uncia’s ancestor used to perform some tricks like subduing whole tribes with a mere shift of his eyebrow.

From then on Uncia secretly amused herself smiling with either the left or the right corner of her mouth and making the right or the left half of the crowd pay homage to their princess.

The windows at the museum had no curtains, and it was clear and sunny three hundred days a year, but the reporters somehow learned what the matter was and spread the news about the ‘magic smile’ all over the place. Even people known as smile-chasers emerged, because the tabloids had promised quite a fortune for a photograph.

One of these chasers was lucky enough to depict the sweet dimples surrounded with opalescent radiance. But the picture had to be destroyed because neither the lucky photographer nor his family members or curious neighbors could by any means take their eyes off it. The negative shared the same fate – it turned out to be twice as powerful, but had a reverse effect: the men were making a curtsey and women were dropping to one knee.

These pranks, which were harmless from Uncia’s point of view, had unpredictable consequences. The monarchist spirits began to revive, and some excursionists sang “God save the Princess” and behaved very defiantly after coming out of the palace cellars.

Karafa gave an order to detain such singers and check them for having an ear for music, which was taboo. The poor devils, though, while unanimously confirming the existence of the ‘magic smile’, failed to explain what made free citizens bow before the dethroned tyrant's daughter. The authorities tried to question Nothing, but the girl refused point-blank to smile at the secret police detectives.

The High Council was in session late into the night until someone recalled the ‘magic flight’ of three years ago. Things took an unexpected turn, and in order to avoid new, unplanned miracles a decision was made to remove the princess from display for a while.