** A Letter Found Beside a Riverbank **

Whoever discovers this message, I hope you will read it with pity in your heart, pity for a vanished brother! For I, Pasquill, will long since have vanished. The river will have taken my body - far away! Already I see myself, gliding through the river-weeds, beneath the gloomy arches of our city, out into the meadows, among the darting fish, a pale limp peaceful Pasquill, struggling no more.

But as I write this I am struggling still, and I urgently must, O unknown reader, I must impress upon you my most earnest wish, that you will have honour enough to take these bank-notes I herein enclose, and deliver them to a room on the Street of Three Bats, above the boiling-shop of the soap-makers. There ask for Lena, Pasquill's assistant (or Katja the maid, if she has returned to that name), and tell her: here are all the wages she is owed, a small fraction of all that Pasquill still owes her, which no bank-notes could ever make good!

And if you have not honour enough to fulfil this, my dying wish? No matter. It is natural enough. For I have ceased to expect honour from the dog-men who populate our city. Yes, not men, I say, but dog-men! A cunning, canine, most beastly breed, who will tear to savage pieces any Pasquill they come across, just to fill up their ravenous bellies. I have seen their teeth flash!

But this is no way for a dying Pasquill to speak. I bay and slather like a dog myself. To such baseness does this city reduce us. Steal my bank-notes, then, I cannot stop you. I will lay no curse upon you. I have glided far away. Pocket my bank-notes (which would never, at any rate, make good what I owe her). Purchase yourself a pleasurable evening, what does it matter? Take yourself to the Plaza Songwilliam, with your sweetheart, with lavender sorbets, with the dog-trumpeteer playing love-tunes to the indolent dog-crowd who sprawl there!

But linger (will you, reader?) at the far end of the plaza, where the trumpeteer's song dies away, and the only sound is the roar of the fountains, filling the air with light mist. Do you feel the spray, so fine and so cool on your face? I, Pasquill, once loved that coolness, in the evening air.

And do you see, beneath the statues of the Songwilliam Sisters, a modest patch of weedy paving? Perhaps you have been there before, and walked past a man in dull home-stitched robes, while a woman stood aloft on a platform? That man you walked past was Pasquill, that woman, sublimest Lena! And you flashed your fangs, and slobbered your sorbet, and walked on. What a life I am leaving.

No platform stands there now, no Lena. It is all too late, it is over. But if you had stopped? And seen what transpired on that platform? If you had looked in her eyes, as I spoke the secret words? Those few who did stop, who did look, said, A trick, A sleight of hand, and dropped derisive coins to the paving. Perhaps you saw me once clutch them up, robed head hanging down so dog-like? Pitiful, yes. But under the hood I was smiling. For I knew it was no trickery.

I knew, and Lena knew, and you will never know. Farewell. I glide down the river, smiling, unrobed, and speak those words no more.

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Pub: 05 Apr 2025 12:18 UTC

Views: 139