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Diary of Kaidan Žambey
Episode 9: "cramp and cactus"
21 reli ceďnare (Brac Eleďei) 3422
On board, CK to Ulian
I was too tired to write last night. In spite of which, I barely slept, caught in a noose between daydream and nightmare: the spectre of seeing Ulian again, of seeing the sites of my courtship, of witnessing Como's absence from it, of walking its damp stone steps around the locations of my careen from grace — the ghost of myself taking me almost whole into a familiar abyss. I survived the night, notwithstanding. Now here I sit starboard on the Sariley biding the time, the waterclock of the Svetla dripfeeding the anxiety of arrival with each langorous bend. It rains gently sometimes, smudging these sentences into the forgiving grey of the page, droplets fine as vapour mingling with my ink, diluting it by degrees to meet the paper's blankness.
Yesterday was far from without event, and so I write, if only to escape the present moment. In fact, I met quite a figure, whom I should, normally, be enthralled to describe. Such enthusiasm I shall try to summon, to make a record of him to enjoy once my mind is at play in happier times. Though inside my case there is something which tends to dampen one's love of life...
The inn by the dock in Cuenda Kainei was called
So Šažy Nuržoš, which seemed more fitting than the name of the town. Dinner was a minor atrocity, leftover
zëdenei. Zevy and Mëfa being straight to bed, and I already preoccupied and far from sleep, I ordered a mead, and asked the rough-spoken bartender who or what was of note in this nondescript rivertown, whose type I have come to know just a tad too well.
To my surprise he responded by asking if I enjoyed the teclora. "Uhm, yes!", I responded, shaking my instrument case at him. "I've played, a little."
"Then you should call on Gn. Belgey, in the workshop along the Beldan Road. He keeps late hours. Just be careful, he can talk the raindrops out of a cactus…"
I was intrigued. It was the last building of the town; beyond its glowing windows lay the thick, reddish darkness of a cloud-buried Iliacáš, onto which I painted imaginary horrors of the forest and swamp. I knocked readily and waited, watching my breath condense on the engraved doorplate, merging the BELGEY and the
znak alaďee.
A tall, grey-skinned, grey-haired man appeared in the sudden light of the open doorway, stretching a curious expression over a pinched, lined face. He was wearing a yellow and purple striped nightrobe and a matching hat. Bright black eyebrows the length of cherry stalks jumped out of his face roadwards and waggled erratically at me with his every movement, and he held the lamp that lit him, while others shone more dimly from behind.
"I'm dreadfully sorry, I was told you keep late hours," I said, already making my retreat back down the silent road.
"And what makes you think I don't?" he said, with a
sëte like a rusty razor.
"Erm, sir, your robe…"
He snorted. "When you get to a certain age, lad, you learn something about nightrobes. You can wear them whenever you
bloody well like."
His accent was odd, socially unplaceable — a noble common voice, a common noble voice. I couldn't think of anything to say except "So there's something worth sticking around for, then." This seemed to earn me entrance to the yard; chuckling, he stepped back and bowed himself down to offer me a way in.
I felt I had to offer him my card, even as a mere pleasantry. He chuckled again and said "A Žésifo Žambey, eh?", which had the effect of making me feel both welcome and horribly unwelcome at the same time. "Renár Dambesei Belgey, teclora builder and technician, at your service," he said, and led me to the front door.
After a short, squat foyer I found myself in a room the likes of which I have never before seen, though I hope I do again. It was a magical space, yawning backwards for what seemed like half a cemisa, smelling of lamp oil and sawdust, and filled with the light of lanterns on heavy workdesks stretching off into the distance. On each of these sat a different console or contraption, halfway through an agonising birth, abandoned by their daytime nurses. And everywhere, everywhere, were spiders' webs. I thought for a moment that they were real, that this eccentric workshop was infested with spiders the size of cats. After a couple of blinks the vision coalesced into reality: it was a network of metal strings festooning the walls from ceiling to head-height. Then, in a second jolt of realization, I noticed that there truly were insects everywhere, in glass jars lining shelves and clustered on some of the desks. Spiders in each one. Spiders, spiders, spiders… I was being greeted by a hundred sets of ten glistening eyes.
Spider-web diagrams adorned some walls, with, as I could make out, the note letters EVCBO… surrounding them. I grew irrationally frightened. I was in a dream, only it was a waking one, and it belonged to Gn. Belgey.
"This is the workshop of Ďacdolina," he announced. Now this I had heard of: an upmarket teclora manufacturer whose base I had imagined to be a palace in Verdúria-city. I could barely believe it, and yet I could see the name on a line of beautiful fully-assembled instruments near the entrance to my right. The spindly figure of him whisked itself around me and started gesturing to this oddity and that, telling me about the half-born instruments on the desks as if he thought I was here to buy them. This emphatically could not have been the impression given by my travellers' clothes, but I listened, fascinated, as he told me of the types and provenances of wood for frame and key, the pressure of the strings, the weighting mechanism, the placement of pins and action of hammers, the processes of coiling the wires which stretched above us.
"You are a
dičurom, yes?" he said, gesturing to the faded red case over my shoulder. I nodded. "I will show you how your instrument gave birth to mine." And he took me to a table where lay a strange thing, a chromatic dičura, with one string for each note, rather than the standard variable V/C, B/O, A/I, M/S, R/N strings. This he began to hit with two hammers. I took the point immediately.
"The teclora is a mechanical dičura," I said, "just with a hammer for every string, and one string for every note."
"One string per note? One? No. Only in the bass, where such economy is justified. Elsewhere two or three. See…" and he showed me carefully the inside of a nearby instrument, and its parallel beds of strings, one set above the other. Most of the keys indeed played two or three identical strings, unlike the uniform single- or double-strung instruments I had seen in Žésifo. "For clarity, and equality, of the sound. For balance. For — like the spider's work — an achievement of patience."
It was the first he had mentioned the spiders. It galvanised me to pry.
"Gn. Belgey, your workshop is truly a wondrous thing, and your instruments peerless throughout the Plain. Only, I must ask you, why do you work amongst all these spiders sitting there in bell jars?"
For a moment I thought he looked angry, but it may only have been his eyebrows dancing at the mention of their favourite word.
"They are my pets," he said, as if that explained it. He seemed suddenly unwilling to explain this part of himself. He must, though, have seen from my face that that wasn't going to be enough to stop me asking questions. He sighed. "Oh, by the saints… I collect their webs for study, of course. What do you know of
roheica?"
"Cramp?" I said, repeating his word and automatically patting my leg, though quickly realising I had missed the point.
"Nothing, then," Belgey drolled. "The octave is like a web; it circles and repeats. Roheica, the ancient word for twisting, is the balance in the spinning of the web. It is the process by which the spider, by which I imply, the musician, fine tunes the nodes of its web, by which I imply, the notes of the octave, so that they repeat perfectly and sit at balance with one another."
"Roheica is tuning?
Royi?" I asked.
"The roots are the same, yes. But royi is base, often instinctual, always imperfect. It is a jongleur's toy. Roheica is… a pearl of mathematics. A natural wonder, captured in the human ear, the human hand. The elusive sound of divinity."
I struggle to remember exactly how else he waxed lyrical about roheica; it passed something like half an hour. At some point he took me to a novelty wooden percussion instrument laid out like a scorpion, whose relevance was lost on me — but it was pretty. I began to tire and yawn, though he still held my attention in a distant sort of way — but I was exhausted from the previous night's exertions.
"You have heard of the royi of Řasmesti?" Belgey asked, at one point.
"Of course," I said. "It's elementary for musicians."
"Well, forget it!" Belgey said emphatically, with venom. "My roheicî are more subtle by a factor of ten! Every note can sit with every note, one can play in every key, and yet the principal intervals are pure as Divinity made them… One day the Guild will recognise my work…"
He went on. As someone who works with notes every day I must record that whilst for the most part I understood his points, I thought he had lost his mind. The royi of Řasmesti has been in use for over a century. It works fine. It's not a perfect science. It pleases the ear, not some kind of divine musical accountant. The colour differences between the keys are rather pleasant. Some people use other royî and they are generally fine too. I struggle to see the concept of a perfect temperament: some individuality will always be compromised; and why an ancient word is needed where a common one was perfectly good for Řasmesti, I cannot fathom.
I started to make my excuses when I felt my bones giving up on me, but Belgey had quite a surprise in store.
"Well, my dear boy, I have enjoyed our chat, and as you are headed to Verdúria-city I would like to give you a gift: a chromatic dičura. There's only one thing I ask in return: you show it to the awful imbeciles at the Guild who insist on debasing my instruments with
bloody Řasmesti nonsense. And you keep it tuned properly, as I told you — it hardly takes a
megua, once you get used to it!"
I protested, I protested, but his eyebrows! — they terrified; and he was offering me his card to take to the Guild. That would be a lofty introduction — a ticket from the master of Ďacdolina — and, perhaps, a way to transcend my own scandal with babbling on at them about roheica.
How would I carry a second dičura? But Belgey answered that one for me: a beautiful case made for a travelling minstrel which would hold both. It is a greenish leather with brass fixtures, and I am resting on it now to write. The extra instrument is bulky, but not heavy, and the improved straps of the case mean I am in less discomfort carrying it all than before. I am sad to have said goodbye to my red case, but it was fraying rather into submission.
For the new case, though, there was another price. This one I am quite certain I shall regret. I am carrying, in a lacquer jar with tiny holes in the lid which, too, sits in the case, a rare and poisonous spider. "A fascinating specimen, fascinating! Bloody dangerous, too. See that she gets to Šm. Neskaryu at the University and he will make your efforts worth your while. You must feed her weekly, of course — she loves cockroaches…"
Turns out I was the cactus.
Now… Ulian looms. Řavcaëna, protect me. From the past… from overly persuasive men… and from the
bloody spider.
Notes:
So Sažy Nuržoš — The Empty Trough
the name of the town — Cuenda Kainei means 'Festival of Kaino'
leftover zëdenei — Zëdenei is a stew already made of leftovers.
teclora — a Verdurian keyboard instrument, similar to the early piano or clavier ['collection of hammers']
znak alaďee — the pan-Eretaldan symbol of music, a ligature of the letters A, L, Ď and E in Verdurian script.
sëte — Verdurians classify voice parts into five categories, the middle of which, sëte, is shared by male and female voices; hence this is a high male voice.
dičurom — dičura (Verdurian zither) player
roheica — temperament. Also means cramp / sprain. For anyone to whom this is all Kebreni: we have to temper perfect fifths somehow, because we are supposed to tune instruments by making a stack of perfect fifths, but a stack of absolutely perfect perfect fifths produces a gap (comma, Ver.
fäsul 'remainder') between the note you get to and the note you started with. Tempering the fifths in one of myriad ways has been done since ancient times to share out this comma.
royi — tuning; also, key
(N.B. Between these two, in Verdurian terminology, there is indeed a technical difference, but it is of little relevance in Kaidan's era. The terms don't directly map to their English equivalents, at least, not at this date; Belgey is using a particularly narrow definition of roheica, as is probably evident; royi is quite a broad term.)
Řasmesti — Forigar Getemilei Řasmesti (3264-3349), prolific Eleďe dynasty composer and music theorist, whose work is considered transitional between the First Érenati School and the Abolineron School. Řasmesti's name and work is as well known on Almea as Mozart's on Earth.
megua — 1/12 of an hour, 5 minutes
Appendix 1: the royi of Řasmesti
Instructions which were widely followed in the 34th and 35th centuries to achieve a cycling temperament (one in which playing in all keys was possible, though not identical), popularised through publication for a pagan audience by Řasmesti in 3301:
To Tune the Octave with Grace
- Begin with the Enäron most central to the instrument. Governor of gods and of notes.
- Tune the next four cumî (in ascendence) slightly narrow (e.g. embre) — until, that is, we reach Oruseon — the Knower. When his note is in perfect accordance with its phantom upon Enäron, the narrowing is in accordance with Oruseon's wisdom.
- Next, tune cumî (in ascendence still) perfectly pure, until reaching Išira. It is well to remember that Oruseon is well-placed to advise both the Lord and Lady of the gods.
- To complete, return to Enäron, and tune cumî downwards, that is, next Ažirei, then Řavcaëna, etc., continually loosening them a little wider. This will be complete when you have reached Išira, which should be brought into perfect consonance with its counterpart we reached before.
- The final cumî will be a little egre, but this is preferable to our prior methods, which created the dreadful cuma of Ďic between Mëranac and Boďneay. Now, divine grace (šeli) exists between each god — praise be!
Notes:
cuma — perfect fifth ['hearth']
embre — flat, low ['bitter']
phantom — Ver.
fant, harmonic, 'ghost note' (harmonic type)
egre — sharp, high ['acidic']
Ďic — god of the underworld, entrusted with keeping the dead from the living
cuma Ďicei — the dissonant 5th created in Pythagorean tuning, the 'wolf fifth'
šeli — grace, also a term for 'semitone'
Appendix 2: So Siiru Alaďee (The Wheel of Music)
Belgey's diagrams are reminiscent of
these, which show strings of perfect fifths and semitones arranged into a wheel, and were used to calculate and track the minor adjustments made during temperament, or, in Řasmesti's terms, "tuning the octave with grace".
Almean spiders have 10 legs, and with some (like some Earth spiders) having long pedipalps, the spider became for Belgey a symbolic analogy of a 12-pronged shape at the centre of a wheel or spiral as seen in the Siiru Alaďee.
