The Historical Present, or Three Diminished Sevenths

Leghorn
The Historical Present, or Three Diminished Sevenths

How he had come to this point, Charles Beasley could not quite remember, but hither he had come. He had the day off from work—or was it from family? Who were his family? He tried to remember. At any rate, he had the day off, and he was terrified: “What shall I do, what shall I do today?” he kept asking himself. He didn’t remember ever having a day off before. This was totally new to him.

He found himself walking along the city streets, wondering what he ought to do, whither he ought to go: these were his thoughts. “Whither,” he repeated to himself, “whither.” Such a strange old word, but one that came off his tongue like a graceful bird in flight. “Whither shall I go?” he told himself, laughing at his own old-fashioned eloquence, when he suddenly remembered something, something that had been embedded in his brain: he wanted to go to the new museum.

The new museum: how did he even know that there was a new museum in town? He couldn’t remember, but he—somehow—knew it was true. Where was it? He had no idea. He kept walking, trying to remember, when all of a sudden he looks up and sees,“The Museum of Arts and Sciences” printed in bold letters on a wide and tall banner hanging from an old stone building. “This must be it!” he said out loud, and looked around to see if anyone had heard him. The passers-by seemed to give him no regard.

No one was either going in or coming out the double glass doors of the entrance, and Charles could see no light emanating therefrom. “Aw, it might already be closed,” he moaned, but decided to go test his suspicion. He grasps the handle and pulls, and it yields to this effort, to his delight. Soon he stood in a darkened foyer of sorts, and walked on through the entryway.

A long dark hallway met his gaze, and as his eyes became acclimated to the darkness he heard voices and saw dim light emanating from an adjacent room. It seemed there were men in there involved in disputation, their voices rising and falling as they became more or less heated in the argument, sometimes punctuating their earnestness with jokes and laughter, sometimes becoming quiet and pensive. So he made his way thither and entered.

There he saw a large group of old gray-haired men sitting opposite one another at a long table. On one side they sported wild flowing locks, on the other, closely trimmed scalps; the latter, clean-shaven, the others with long unkempt beards. They take notice of him, but continue in their discussion.

Charles could make neither heads nor tails of what they were saying, but he could tell by the vehemence of their conversation that they were deeply invested in it. He stood there long, listening and trying to understand, when suddenly one of the unkempt long-beards turns to him and announces, “It seems, gentlemen, that we have a visitor. Who are you, sir, an ancient or a modern?” All became quiet, expectant of his reply.

“Why, I don’t guess I rightly know,” Charles blurted out, turning a pale cast of crimson.

“Well,” asked one of the short-crops, “who do you side with, Plato or Machiavelli?”

Charles thought about it for a moment, and since he remembered there was something bad associated with the name Machiavelli, replied, “I think I side with Plato.”

Uproarious hurrahs burst forth from the hoary hirsutes, and they clear a space in their midst, pull up an extra chair and insist he join them. They put their arms about him on either side, pour him a drink and make a toast, “to teleology and spiritual causes!” He clinked his glass with theirs and smiled nervously as he turned to greet each welcoming glance.

But after everyone had settled down, Charles looked across the table and was confronted with the stern unimpassioned faces of his newly acquired mates’ shorn opponents, one of whom looked him directly in the eyes and asked, “So, you really believe that the Ideas are the only real things? What if I were to take this unreal example of a cane,”—he holds it up high, menacingly brandishing it—“and struck you over the head with it really hard? Would you still side with Father Plato?”

Charles looked to his new friends left and right for help: all were silent, all hung their heads, their long beards flowing down their chests. “No sir, no!” he cried out, “If it is your idea to strike me with that cane, I side with...with..,” he couldn’t remember the name...

“Machiavelli!” cried one of the opposition.

“Machiavelli!” repeated Charles, “I am for Machiavelli!” and all the close-crops rose up and applauded him, and invited him to come across the table and join them, clearing a space in their midst and pulling up an extra chair. He begins to rise to go, but one of his long-bearded allies puts his hand on Charles’ shoulder and stops him.

“Don’t be daunted by him,” he told Charles, “that is Thrasymachus. We’ve known about him since Socrates trembled before him. But Socrates didn’t back down, and neither should you! He won’t strike you with his baton; we’ll make sure of that, won’t we fellows?” and all the long-beards cry, “here, here!” and nod in assent.

But Charles had had enough of this and, not knowing who to trust, got up as though to join the other side, but instead headed quickly toward the door he had entered. As he hasted thither he hears a sudden outburst of general hilarity, and turns around to see both sides engulfed in a sea of laughter, reaching across the table to clink glasses in toasts of merriment. The long-beard who had urged him to stay says to the man across from him he had called Thrasymachus, “You did it again, Ethan! That ole cudgel of yours straightens ‘em out every time!” at which the whole assembly redoubled their laughter. Charles blushed in anger, hurried out the door and found himself back in the darkness of the long hallway. He turned toward the museum’s exit and would have headed straight for it, still rattled from his having become a plaything of the philosophers’ club, if he hadn’t heard the shuffling of shoes and faint sound of voices coming from a dimly lit place somewhere far opposite down the hallway. Having regained his composure enough for his curiosity to get the better of him, he says to himself, “That must be the museum proper,” and heads toward the new sounds and light.

He enters a great hall where people roamed about examining various displays of art and artifacts. “This is it!” he whispers to himself, hoping no one heard, and starts to join the others to circle about the room and enjoy the fare, when suddenly he heard a “Physttt, physttt!” beckoning him from the entrance to an adjoining chamber, and looks to see an old grizzled man dressed in a wizard’s gown motioning for him to come thither. He looked around at the others: no one was paying attention. “Physttt! physttt!” came again the call, so he approaches the man, who recedes and disappears therein, and Charles follows him...

As his eyes become accustomed to the darkness he is able to make out a large room whose walls are covered by expansive canvasses of unrepresentative art, with variegated colors and graceful curves and grand swirls that were astonishing. Charles circled the room with his head flung back and eyes fixed, mesmerized by the beauty of what he saw. Then he noticed the man in the wizard costume standing before one of the canvasses. It was a work in progress, and he dipped his wide brush onto a large easel that stood before him—now in this color, now in that—mixing them in various spots on the palette in different combinations and proportions before applying them expertly to the canvass, and the work seemed to come to life right before Charles’ eyes.

He briefly wondered why the other guests had not been invited along with him into this special chamber, but soon he no longer cared at all, for he was entranced by the vision. Long watched he the elaborate evolution of the piece, and when it was at last complete, the wizard stood back, breaking the trance, and he noticed that the artist was staring at him, shaking his head up and down and grinning, as though expecting his approval, and a long string of thick mucous trailed out of one nostril, slowly making its way to the floor.

Repulsed, Charles backs away, giving the man a reassuring smile and a thumbs-up, before turning to head back to the main gallery. As he went he heard the wizard cackle madly, then announce loudly, “What then went thou out to see? an artist of nobility? who dons a collared shirt and tie and walks about his gallery? and chatters on unbearably, delighting in his gallantry, and pleasing all the gentry folk with snotless nose and stainless cloak?”

Back in the main gallery, Charles uttered a deep sigh of relief, and vowed to himself to avoid all sideshows, no matter how much he be enticed or encouraged to enter therein. Here again he found the same regular guests circling the exhibits as at first, and, determined to join them, got on queue in back, when he notices out of the corner of his eye a woman standing in the midst of the room in a spotlight, who appeared to be in her forties, with short blond hair. She stood stock-still, eyes closed, arms to her sides, body extended upward, seeming to breath in the atmosphere, awaiting something. Distracted from the exhibits, he watched her: she stood thusly for a long time, before at last she moved. And when she moved, despite all that he had already experienced in the new museum, Charles least expected this...

...She began by uttering pure gibberish, but eloquent gibberish—if there be such a thing; eloquent gibberish, nonsensical utterances that seemed to say something profound, accompanied by hand gestures; not expansive gestures, but ones close to her body and accompanying and punctuating the utterances. Then, in the midst of this gibberish, would she suddenly raise her voice to a high musical pitch sustained for some time, with slight expert modulation, before returning to the nonsensical utterances and hand movements. As she did this, she began to walk about the room, and to Charles’ astonishment, none of the guests took any notice: they went about looking at the displays as though nothing else was going on.

But Charles was fascinated by this woman, and watched only her as she moved about the room gesticulating, uttering gibberish and singing perfectly modulated high tones. He watched her as she left the chamber, and follows her into another room, where anonymous patrons were viewing other exhibits, ones he was heretofore unaware of; yet Charles is not interested in them, only in her.

Then he watched as she descended a set of marble stairs, and with each step she made she sang the next tone down of a diminished-seventh chord, hitting each note perfectly; and when she had reached the chord’s root, she began a new one a half-step lower from the one previous, singing the new chord’s tones down from the seventh likewise. When she took her last step, she had sung each of the three diminished sevenths in descending order, and arrived at the bottom of the staircase. Then she disappeared into the darkness below...

Long stood he there, straining his eyes and ears to either hear or see her again. He thought about descending the stairs, to go looking for her, but better thought, “I will come again tomorrow. Maybe I will have tomorrow off too! If I do, maybe she will reappear.” So Charles turned and made his way back through the side chamber to the main one, and from there to the exit via the long dark hallway. As he went he noticed that there were no longer any museum goers present: he was all alone, and no sound or light came from the door to the philosophy club.

As he approaches the exit, two women in white uniform going the opposite direction meet him, and stand in his way.

“Where are you going, Charles?” asks one, with a benevolent smile.

“Why, I’m going...How do you know my name?”

“Come, Charles,” she replies, taking him gently by the elbow, “you’re always forgetting where your room is,” and leads him back down the long dark hallway; and as they proceed, Charles can hear again—faintly yet hauntingly, as though from far away—the mad woman’s soprano tones echoing off the walls.