Khassian lay watching the raindrops slowly trickle down the unshuttered window panes. Beyond, a rainmist hid the distant green hillside from view. Did it always rain at this accursed spa? It had been raining since before dawn; he had lain awake listening to the drops pattering against the windows until the first wet light illumined his room.
Sleep eluded him. Whenever he drifted into a doze, images of flame and fire scored his dreams and he woke, sweating, terrified. There were other dreams too, drugged dreams, poppy-drowsed and darkly narcotic. Teetering on the edge of a black abyss, a stinking pit from whose smoke-wreathed deeps shrouded things crawled, clawing at him, threatening to pull him down into the depths.
Better to stay awake than to dream these terrors. Better to watch the dawn bring in yet another day.
I am twenty-five – and my life is over. All I have ever known, all I have lived for, is music. What use is a musician who cannot play? What use is a composer who cannot write down the music he composes?
He looked down at the burned ruin of his hands. He forced himself to try to move his right thumb, then the left. The new skin cracked and groaned. He bit his underlip until he tasted blood.
Nothing happened. He was willing the damn things to move – and the message was somehow not transmitting itself from mind to hand.
Fear. That was it. Fear of pain.
He must make himself endure the pain. It must be possible to make the mind triumph over the flesh, to learn to concentrate on the act of movement itself, not the sensation…
Exhausted by the effort, he slumped back, overcome by a sense of self-loathing. His physical frailty disgusted him. How could he be so weak-willed?
There was so much he still had to do. The opera. The burned opera. His most dearly cherished work. He had devoted a whole year of Ms life to the writing of Elesstar. It had become an obsession. It had not merely been a statement of his personal philosophy, it had become something of far greater import. It had become a plea for freedom, an anguished cry against the repression of personal liberties and the loss of free speech. It had been a single torch burning against the oncoming night.
And the forces of repression, they who proclaimed themselves to be the enlightened ones, had all but destroyed it and its creator together.
‘Better they had destroyed me,’ he whispered into the grey dawn. ‘Better oblivion than this dragging life-in-death…’
It was all still there, in his mind. The score, the instrumental parts, the libretto, had burned to ashes along with the sets and costumes. But the phenomenal memory, legacy of the rigorous training his father had subjected him to from early childhood, retained every nuance, every note. Girim nel Ghislain might be congratulating himself that all trace of the heretical opera had been eradicated.
Girim was wrong.
There was some irony in that, at least, Khassian thought, a bitter smile twisting his lips. Somehow he would find a way to write it all down again. And, once it was written down, he would gather musicians, singers, to him here in Sulien… and there would be nothing the Grand Maistre and his Commanderie could do to silence his voice this time.
Another, more pressing, need had been nagging him for some while. He had tried to resist it but the urge to void a painfully full bladder had become inescapable.
Shamed, Khassian tried to reach for the bell on the table. Impossible to pick it up, let alone ring it! If no one came soon, he would wet the bed. Helpless as a doddering old man. His face burned with embarrassment at the thought. He leaned over the table and, after a few redundant attempts, caught hold of the bell handle in his teeth, shaking it from side to side.
In the distance he heard the sound of footsteps coming nearer. The bell dropped with a jangle to the floor as he lay back, exhausted by the effort.
When the nurse had departed with the noisome bedpan discreetly covered by a cloth, Khassian lay back and tried to forget the humiliation.
In the space of a few days, his life had shrunk to the confines of this room, his needs to the basic human necessities. He could do nothing for himself. He must be washed, shaved, dressed, fed like a baby. He, who had been the idol of the court at Bel’Esstar, was now reduced to this halflife –
‘Illustre.’
Khassian looked around, startled. He had not heard the door open. And now a stranger stood in the room, a tall man, sombrely dressed.
‘Who in hell’s name are you?’ Khassian stared at him through narrowed eyes.
‘My name is Korentan,’ said the stranger quietly. ‘Captain Acir Korentan of the Commanderie.’
‘So you’ve come to arrest me? Where’s your warrant?’
‘No warrant,’ said Captain Korentan. He lifted his hands to show they were empty, as though yielding to an opponent in battle. ‘And I come unarmed, as you see.’
‘Get out.’
Captain Korentan stood his ground.
‘I have nothing to say to you – or to any member of the Commanderie. Understand me? Nothing.’
The Captain sat down on the chair at Khassian’s bedside. Khassian glared at him.
‘At least listen to what I have to say, Illustre. The leader of our order, the Grand Maistre, is exceedingly distressed at what has –’
‘Exceedingly distressed?’ Khassian repeated, trying to hide the catch in his voice. Anger threatened to unman him, self-righteous anger that flared up, fiercer than the Opera House conflagration. ‘Look, Captain Korentan. Look at my hands.’
Maybe he had hoped to see revulsion in the Captain’s eyes, revulsion – and guilt. But the expression that momentarily softened the formal military mask was one of compassion.
‘This should never have happened,’ Korentan said.
Khassian heard the softer nuance in Korentan’s voice but was so absorbed in his own anger that he ignored it.
‘The Grand Maistre realises there is no way he can make adequate reparation to you,’ Korentan instantly became formal again. ‘He wishes at least to ensure that you have the very best medical treatment available.’
‘And what’s the catch?’ Khassian said sneeringly.
‘No catch.’
‘Oh, come, Captain Korentan, do you think I’m that naive? What service must I then render in gratitude to the cause of the Commanderie?’
‘No service, Illustre. We are a charitable order –’
‘I don’t need the Commanderie’s charity,’ Khassian said, almost spitting out each word in Korentan’s face. ‘Go back to your Grand Maistre and tell him he can keep his money. I want nothing from him.’
The Captain paused a moment as though about to speak – and then seemed to think better of it. He clicked his heels together, gave Khassian a curt bow and left the room.
In the kitchens, Cook was chopping vegetables and herbs for the lunchtime soup: leeks, waxy potatoes, spring parsley and chives.
‘Morning, Demselle Orial,’ Cook grunted, hardly glancing up from her work.
‘Shall I help you?’ Orial had been sent to restock the linen cupboard with clean towels from the laundry but if she was a few minutes delayed, no one would complain. And this was a good time to talk to Cook whilst no one else was around.
Cook shrugged and passed her a knife.
‘Mind your fingers. It’s sharp.’
‘Cook…’ Orial said, carefully shredding a leek into fronds of the palest green. ‘What exactly did my mother die of?’
‘She got sick,’ Cook said bluntly. ‘And there wasn’t a cure for her sickness.’
‘But what exactly was the sickness?’
Cook did not stop her work; if anything she seemed to chop rather more vigorously.
‘I never knew the name for it. Doubtless your father did.’
‘Cancer?’ Orial said. ‘Diabetes? Or was it some kind of contagion? Plague, cholera, smallpox?’
Cook slapped her knife down on the table.
‘Heavens, child, why this sudden morbid fascination?’
‘I’m not a child anymore,’ Orial said defiantly. ‘And I need to know. I deserve to know. Why won’t anyone tell me the truth?’
Orial slammed her door shut and flung herself headlong on the bed.
Why would no one speak of it? Were the facts of her mother’s death so horrible that they were trying to shield her from the truth?
Morbid fantasies invaded her mind, sickroom visions of decline and decay. These fever-tainted imaginings were beginning to distort her most cherished memories of her mother.
A loose tile in the bedroom fireplace concealed a hiding place where Orial had secreted her treasures since childhood. It was one treasure in particular which she sought now for comfort.
She drew out from the dusty crevice a slender volume wrapped in cloth. Opening the leatherbound book, she let her fingers stray over the yellowed title page, caressing the faded writing. The book’s title, A Treatise on Musical Notation with Divers Examples, was underwritten in a graceful script ‘Iridial Capelian’. This volume had escaped the bonfire Jerame Magelonne had made of all the musical scores the day after her mother’s death, by virtue of its slenderness; it had slipped down behind the armoire where Cook had found it some weeks later and kept it hidden for Orial.
She had copied the exercises out, painstakingly ruling each stave line with care. She had set about the task of instructing herself in the finer points of musical theory with dedication, wrestling with the problems of ornamentation and transposition, trying to perfect her musical hand. She felt a closeness in working the theoretical exercises that her mother had once worked too; here a page was blotted with ink, there a passage was underscored with several lines and a question mark, where the young Iridial had laboured over its complexities. The image of her mother, hair in plaits, sucking her pen-top in concentration as she tried to work out how to complete a difficult exercise, always made Orial smile.
What possible harm could Papa have imagined would come to her through such dry, dull exercises? Did he fear her myopia might deteriorate? Certainly, as she moved the book closer to her eyes, the narrow stave-lines and tiny notes seemed harder to read than before. She held the spectacles up to the light and squinted through each lens in turn – but there was no trace of dirt.
I must be tired, that’s all…
She unfolded her latest composition, smoothing the paper, and let her finger-tip move over the page, tracing the rise and fall of the melody. She could not but feel a swell of pleasure as she read through what she had written; it had taken a long while to translate the notes that flowed so easily on to the cithara into legible musical notation.
Her finger came to a halt over a passage where bars were crossed out, rewritten and crossed out again. She knew it was incorrect. She needed advice – musical advice of a kind that the Treatise could not give. She was so eager to learn, to improve her craft –
She shut the composition in the Treatise and sat with the closed book on her lap, lost in an impossible dream where Cramoisy swept her away to the Conservatoire as his protégé…
‘How is my Amaru today?’ Cramoisy leaned over to kiss Khassian’s cheek, half-stifling him in a cloud of sweet perfume: orange blossom and syringa.
Khassian closed his eyes. He felt too weary, too soul-sick, to make the effort to talk.
‘Shall I read to you from the Sulien Chronicle?‘
He shook his head.
‘Oh, my poor sweet. I know what’s troubling you. It’s your hands, isn’t it? You’re wondering to yourself what your future can possibly be… Now you mustn’t fret.’ Cramoisy stroked Khassian’s cheek soothingly. ‘I’ve had an inspiration. You need an amanuensis.’
Khassian opened his eyes.
‘Dictate my music, note by note?’
‘It’s not a perfect solution, I realise that. But your faculties, thank the muse, are as acute as ever.’
To have to enunciate each note in turn, its pitch, precise time value, dynamic…
The act of composition had become as natural to Khassian as breathing. Long ago he had learned to weave and blend sounds upon the page, to translate the soundworld in his mind through the medium of pen and ink directly on to paper. The thought of trying to communicate his intentions through another appalled him. It would be like – like making love by proxy, giving instructions to a surrogate lover as to how to kiss, to caress, to arouse the object of his affections – whilst he watched, a helpless voyeur. The image, at once obscene and absurd, repelled him.
‘No,’ He closed his eyes again. ‘It’s hopeless. I could never do that.’
‘At least let’s give it a try,’ Cramoisy said coaxingly. ‘We’ve known each other a long while, Amar. I know your music better than most people. And my musical hand was praised for its neatness at the Conservatoire…’
At last Khassian realised what the Diva was suggesting. He should transcribe the music: he, whose concentration barely lasted the length of an aria!
‘Diva –’ Khassian began.
‘No, no, you mustn’t try to dissuade me. It’s a sacrifice I’m more than willing to make. A little less time in the coiffeur’s, or with the tailor being fitted for new clothes, that’s all it will mean. It’s the least I can do for my oldest, dearest friend.’
It was, he had to allow, a noble offer. And Cramoisy, his Firildys, knew his vocal style more intimately than anyone else… anyone else in Sulien. But as to acting as an amanuensis, little more than musical secretary –
‘Besides, the role of Elesstar was to be the greatest triumph of my career,’ Cramoisy went gliding away across the room, one hand upraised in a theatrical gesture, the other clasped to his breast. ‘The world must not be deprived of my definitive Elesstar because of a few canting fanatics.’
Khassian shook his head. The castrato’s chatter was wearying him; he knew Cramoisy was only trying to distract him in his own inimitable light-headed way. But he didn’t want distraction. Why didn’t anyone understand? He wanted to be alone. Alone to mourn the loss of his life’s work. Alone to mourn his spoiled dreams, his ruined future.
Orial could not rid her mind of Firildys’s air. It wove itself into her dreams, it wound obsessively round and around her brain until she felt she would go crazy with the repetition. When she extinguished the lamp and lay down to sleep, her fingers began to itch to play it on the cithara… but to venture out alone on to the streets of Sulien in the middle of the night required more courage than she could muster.
She lay in the darkness, her thoughts constantly straying to Amaru Khassian lying in his plain Sanatorium bed two floors below. Could he really be the creator of that elusive, poignant melody? An aching envy racked her, that he should have been fortunate enough to be given all the opportunities to develop his gift whilst everything she had learned, she had been obliged to teach herself in secret.
At first light she rose. Going to the washbasin, she poured water in and splashed her face until the cold water made her shudder.
She sat desultorily dragging a brush through her hair, wincing as the bristles tugged at the snarls.
She could not blame her father for depriving her of a musical training. If anyone was to be blamed, it was long-dead Iridial. If she had not died, Dr Magelonne would not have banished all music from the house. If…
Orial threw the brush down on the floor. ‘If, if, if. What’s the use of wishing? Wishing won’t bring her back.’
When she entered the morning room, she found her father reading the Sullen Chronicle.
‘Listen to this, my dear.’ He cleared his throat and began to read aloud:
‘“DISASTROUS FIRE DESTROYS OPERA HOUSE.
‘“Reports from Bel’Esstar, capital of Allegonde, tell of the destruction of the city’s Opera House. The blaze is believed to have started in the green room during a rehearsal and spread rapidly to all areas of the theatre. All of the company escaped with their lives although there were several casualties, amongst them the Illustre Amaru Khassian. The Commanderie has paid for the Illustre to go to Sulien to recuperate.”
‘Well! What are we to make of that?’ He folded the paper and cast it down upon the breakfast table.
‘The Diva told us the Commanderie torched the Opera House.’ Orial picked up the pot to pour herself some qaffë.
‘But can we believe him? He has a penchant for self-dramatisation. Perhaps he concocted this tale to elicit our sympathy…’
‘And this version? Is it not equally likely to be propaganda put out by the Commanderie to cover their crime?’ Orial said vehemently.
‘You look a little pale, Orial. Have you been overtaxing yourself? And… I was probably mistaken… but I thought I heard you singing under your breath as you came down the stairs.’
‘Singing?’ Her hand shook, slopping her qaffë into the saucer. ‘Surely not? It must have been Cook. She forgets sometimes.’
He took out his fob watch and checked the hour.
‘I must go to take a look at our patients. See if they have passed a comfortable night. Take things easy this morning, my dear. I’ll arrange for Sister Crespine to cover your first duty.’
Orial shakily poured the spilt qaffë back into her cup. A few stray drops spattered the Sulien Chronicle. As she mopped them up with her handkerchief, she stopped, seized with a sudden inspiration.
The Chronicle. Surely they kept records of all that happened in Sulien at their office? Iridial’s death would not have passed unrecorded. Maybe there was some clue as to the cause of her mother’s demise in the obituary column. And her father had just excused her the first duty of the day…
Dr Magelonne frowned down at the day’s schedule.
He had not imagined it. Orial had been singing. In a low voice, soft and sweet, eerily reminiscent of Iridial’s. And she had not even been aware – or so she claimed – that she was doing it!
It could only be the influence of the Allegondan creature. Orial had become rather secretive of late, disappearing on errands that should only take five minutes but took much longer. He could trace this behaviour to the night Cramoisy Jordelayne and his companion made their dramatic entry into the Sanatorium.
Well, it would all stop now. Khassian was out of danger. His bills had been settled. He could return for therapeutic treatment, if he so wished. Or – and Dr Magelonne lifted his pen and dipped it in the inkwell – he could be referred to another clinic on the other side of the city. Yes. That might be for the best…
‘Dr Magelonne!’
The Diva swept into the office. Curse the man, was he psychic? The singer had dressed himself all in black: his chosen role for today, Magelonne guessed, was taken from tragic opera.
‘I can pay Khassian’s fees, Dr Magelonne.’ He extended one hand and deposited a velvet purse upon the desk. ‘No – don’t ask me how I managed to raise the funds. I may regret the sale of my jet and diamond star, given to me by Prince Ilsevir himself… but we have to make sacrifices for our loved ones. It is all in the best interests of my poor Amaru.’
‘Diva,’ Dr Magelonne lifted the purse and held it out to him, ‘the account has been settled.’
‘What?’ Surprise erased the tragic note from Cramoisy’s voice.
‘Captain Korentan paid the Illustre’s fees last night. The Illustre is well enough to leave the Sanatorium. I have done all I can for him. Besides, it will be better for his morale to move into the city, where there are more diversions to keep his mind from morbid fantasies, from dwelling too much on what has befallen him.’
‘He can leave?’
‘Would you be so good as to arrange transport to your lodgings in the city? I will be needing the room for a new patient due to arrive later today.’
‘You’ve done all you can? But he can’t move his fingers! What are you saying, Doctor?’
‘As his closest friend, you are going to have to be a support to the Illustre. Medically, the scars are healing. But the internal scars may never heal. He is crippled, Diva. If I were you, I would spend half that purse on hiring him a valet to attend to his personal needs. A discreet, quiet servant, who will not embarrass him by drawing attention to his disabilities.’
‘La!’ Cramoisy sat down in a flounce of black taffeta, as suddenly as if he had been pushed. He seemed utterly deflated. ‘But – but what can I encourage him to do? His life has been dedicated to music.’
‘He may in time become reconciled to teaching,’ Dr Magelonne suggested, relieved that the Diva had not thrown a fit of artistic temperament in his office. ‘I am sure he has much to impart to pupils from his own experience,’ His words sounded fatuous even to his own ears.
‘But – you’re not going to give up?’
‘We can offer therapeutic treatment, but his hands are too badly damaged. It would take a miracle to restore them.’
Cramoisy gazed up at him, his eyes blank and stricken, and the doctor glimpsed for a moment the man behind the white mask of make-up.
‘Do you really believe that Amaru Khassian can bear to continue living without the ability to make music?’
Khassian was dozing… until he slowly became aware that someone was watching him. Someone whose blue-steel stare could pierce even through layers of sleep.
Acir Korentan.
‘You are not welcome here, Captain,’ Khassian said icily.
‘I am aware of that.’
‘Have you come to preach? My injuries a divine punishment for a dissolute life, the usual cant…
‘You’ve been badly hurt.’ Korentan’s voice was quiet. ‘It takes time to let the wounds heal. And it takes a particular brand of courage to fight back when you’ve lost everything.’
More hurt than you have any capacity to imagine, Acir Korentan.
Khassian regarded the Guerrior through eyes burned dry with anger, an anger that still smouldered like an incurable fever. One foot tapped an obsessive tattoo. Yes, he had been hurt. And now he was seized with a vicious desire to strike back, to hurt those who had hurt him.
‘And now you’re going to tell me that if I have the courage to start out along the Path of Thorns, I’ll find consolation for my injuries. You’ll tell me about your moment of revelation, how your life was changed forever by one flash of insight. Look – spare me the sermons, Captain. Leave me to work through this by myself.’
‘But you’re not alone.’
‘Don’t waste your breath. I don’t want to be consoled. Consolation’s a meaningless concept.’
‘Amar! Amar!’ Cramoisy burst in, then stopped, seeing Acir Korentan there. ‘Oh. It’s you. The Commanderie agent.’
‘My name is Korentan.’ Acir bowed to the Diva. ‘Captain Acir Korentan.’
‘I suppose you think us in your debt, Captain,’ continued Cramoisy, not in the least put out. ‘Is that why you’re here? What do you want of us now?’
‘You are in no way indebted to me or to the Commanderie, Diva.’ Acir’s manner at once became austerely remote. ‘I merely acted on the request of the Grand Maistre.’
‘What,’ Khassian demanded from the bed, ‘are you both talking about?’
‘He,’ Cramoisy stabbed his quizzing stick at Acir, ‘has paid off your bill. Dr Magelonne wants you out.’
‘And what does your Grand Maistre expect in return?’ Khassian said, face immobile.
‘Nothing but your full restoration to health, I assure you, Illustre,’ Korentan said stiffly.
The offices of the Sulien Chronicle were in Angel Lane, housed in a crooked little building with its upper storeys timbered, overhanging the narrow street. A clerk was seated at a desk inside, a pencil stub stuck behind his ear, another in his hand as he busily annotated a handwritten sheet.
‘Yes?’ he said without even glancing up. From somewhere at the back Orial heard the whir of machinery from the printing presses. A tang of ink hung in the air, rich and darkly bitter.
‘I wish to look at the Chronicle for the year ‘85.’
‘Upstairs.’ He gestured behind him to an ironwork spiral staircase which wound perilously upwards to a gallery above. Orial gathered her uniform skirts in one hand and climbed up slowly, step after narrow step.
The top gallery was lined from floor to ceiling with leatherbound copies of the Chronicle. Orial made her way along, craning her head to read the dates in the dim light. They appeared to be in chronological order.
At last she found the volume she had been searching for and hefted it out in a puff of dust. It was too heavy to hold, so she placed it open on the floor and knelt over it, leafing through yellowing page after yellowing page of old newsprint.
She could not have missed it. It was on the front page.
DEATH OF THE SULIEN NIGHTINGALE
It is with great sadness that we record here the untimely and tragic demise at the age of twenty-nine of Iridial Magelonne, renowned throughout all Tourmalise as the Sulien Nightingale. Her vocal artistry and sensitivity of interpretation were without parallel. Famed for her operatic career, she retired early from the stage on the birth of her daughter to devote herself to her family. However, she was soon persuaded back to the concert platform and her recitals in the Pump Room and Assembly Rooms in Sulien always drew large and admiring crowds.
Mourned by her pupils and admirers alike… etc, etc.
Orial scanned the columns in vain for any clues as to the cause of the ‘untimely and tragic demise’.
The bland words in fading print intimately concerned her – and yet how curious it was to be reading about her own family, her beloved mother, as if of a stranger.
A later issue recorded details of the funeral procession to the Undercity: ‘Crowds of mourners, many openly weeping, followed the singer’s bier.’
Orial shivered; rubbing her arms, she found that her skin had prickled into goose pimples. Fragments of memory drifted through her mind, unconnected as gilded motes floating in a shaft of sunlight… and, just as swiftly, were gone.
Just five years old, she had witnessed scenes, experienced emotions, too terrible to understand.
‘Not in front of the child…’ ‘Take her away, quick…’ ‘There’s nothing you can do now, Jerame…’
It still did not make sense.
‘All right, up there, demselle?’ called the clerk below.
Orial blinked. His cheery voice jolted her back from the shroud-black corridor of her early childhood.
‘Found what you were looking for?’
‘Maybe…’
She was about to close the heavy cover when a name caught her eye. The official obituary column. The stark details set out in tiny, precise print:
‘Iridial Magelonne (née Capelian), singer, in her thirtieth year. Cause of death: an ancient malady known as the Accidie.’
‘What?’ murmured Orial aloud.
‘Beg pardon?’ called the clerk.
The Accidie. It meant nothing to her. Orial lifted the heavy volume and replaced it on the shelf. An ancient malady…
She came slowly, carefully, down the spiral stair. At the bottom, she paused in front of the clerk’s desk.
‘Have you ever heard,’ she said, ‘of an illness called Accidie?’
He glanced up from his corrections, smiled and shrugged.
‘Never heard of it.’
Orial stepped out into the lane. The Accidie. She had grown up in a Sanatorium, her father was a doctor, she had heard him and his colleagues use innumerable medical terms… and yet this one was unfamiliar to her. And why use an ancient term in a contemporary journal?
Dr Magelonne’s study was lined from floor to ceiling with books of medicine and bound journals. Orial tiptoed inside, after first checking the corridor to make sure that no one had seen her come in. Her father was down in the treatment rooms, overseeing the first immersion of an elderly dowager crippled with rheumatism. Rheumatism was his speciality; he had written several papers on the subject and Orial was confident he would be busy for at least a quarter of an hour.
Dr Magelonne’s obsession with order revealed itself in the meticulously organised shelves. Everything in its proper place, every shelf labelled: ‘Anatomy’, ‘Rheums and Phthisis’, ‘Gout and its Treatments’.
Where to begin? An ancient malady might be found in an ancient tome… She pulled out the most decrepit volume she could see and started to check its yellowed pages.
‘Orial!’
The book fell to the floor. Her father stood in the doorway.
‘Sorry, Papa.’ She dipped down and hastily retrieved the book, slotting it back in place, standing with her back to the shelf.
‘Don’t apologise. It’s good to see you so interested in your work. When it comes to treating the frailties of the human body, one can never do too much research.’ He came towards her. ‘What were you looking up?’
‘Oh – oh, nothing important.’ Her hands were shaking; she hid them behind her back.
‘You can always ask me. You know that, don’t you?’ He drew her to him, gazing earnestly into her eyes. ‘I’m afraid I must seem somewhat preoccupied at present, Orial. My work takes up so much of my time. I want you to know that you can always come to me… and ask me anything.’
He kissed her on the forehead, his lips smooth and dry.
Anything, Papa… but the one thing I want to know.