In the Caucasus, among the glaciers west of Mt. Kazbek, icy streams and waterfalls cascade through gnarled rocks to form the Terek river. Midway in the course of its wanderings to the Caspian Sea, the Terek, over uncounted millenia, has hewn from basalt the deep Daryal gorge. An old Russian legend tells the story of a solitary, sullen tower that once rose among the crags of the Daryal and in which lived a beautiful witch Tamara. Enticed into her sumptuous chambers, travelers would be feasted to a night of wine and love. At the dawn, when the moon had disappeared, a corpse would be borne away by the river and Tamara's soft voice could be heard drifting over the swift waters: "Forgive me." Lermontov wrote a poem about her. Balakeriev composed music to her over which he labored fifteen years and which is now thankfully forgotten.
Towards the end, Tamara would often reflect on that, who had been the seduced and who had been the seducer. There had been many lovers. At times she had felt the need for a warm body to keep away the night terror. There were also those times when she had needed an object to bump up against in the morning to assure herself of orientation in a world that was itself without orientation. Often she had trouble remembering her lovers' names, not because of their numbers, but because she found them so uniformly uninteresting.
Years before the end, when Tamara had barely put the torture of adolescence behind her and entered the torture of young adulthood, she had decided to fall in love. After all, she had been so diligent in her studies that she had let her twenty-second year slip by without ever having managed to be deflowered, be presented to society as a debutante, or to be arrested after a drunken night on the town, not to mention ever having her nails done by a professional. So it was time. The unsuspecting victims were a man almost ten years her senior and Tamara herself. They had met at a performance of a Handel oratorio. Tamara sang in the chorus; the gentlemen in question wandered into the hall as the crowd was exiting, the axle of his coach having slipped out of the rear left hub. Tamara offered a hand and found a nailfile in her bag which would serve as a cotterpin. It was midwinter, a cold night and snow was falling. The gentlemen offered her a lift and warmth, and that was that.
He had found her beauty captivating as well as her quickness of wit-- not only could she find makeshift cotterpins, but by this age was fluent in Greek, French, English, German, and Russian, the last being her speciality. She also seemed to have read virtually everything ever written since Gilgamesh, had a special fondness for poetry, and was an excellent poetess herself. She never published. "There is a nobility in writing for the drawer." Her lover only belatedly admitted to himself that her wit was, in fact, far quicker than his own.
Tamara was oblivious to his failings and for two years contented herself cooking pastries and cakes, and fashioning little gifts that were her tokens of affection for him. She would send them to his apartment tied with paper ribbons. Tamara did not realize, or had forgotten, that the roots of the word "token" are also those of the word "substitute." The truth came crashing in on her one day when she entered her friend's flat only to find him in bed with the laundry maid, munching on her own strudle.
In Alexandria, it was said that for seven years Tamara refused to allow a man to remain the night. Three A.M. was curfew. "I like to wake up a free woman," she would say. Recently, Tamara had a scene with a fellow to whom she had given the keys to her apartment on Peter the Hermit Street. One evening he appeared unannounced, doffed his top hat, brushed off his double-breasted coat, and declared his intention to move in with her.
"How dare you?" she cried in outrage.
"Don't you love me?" asked the lover, taken aback.
"Don't be a fool."
"I thought...otherwise."
"I prefer my house empty."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"I have work to do. Please."
The heavy iron keys fell to the table; the door shut quietly. Tamara sat down, relit the candle which had blown out when the door closed, and began to work on her gargantuan dissertation. Quill dipped in ink and poised above paper, she spent the next half hour debating between a colon and a semi-colon, wondered at these men who subjected her to their slow, ponderous minds, and completely forgot what she was writing about.
She recalled her first encounter with a quadratic equation. The terrifying event took place during her second semester at the University. As she stared at this string of symbols, she could not conceptualize that it represented a curve in space. While with great effort she could commit to memory foreign nouns, adjectives, declensions, and conjugations, she absolutely failed to grasp the meaning of a quadratic equation. It would not decline; she could not put ax^2+bx+c into the dative or ablative cases. She tried the vocative: "Bozhe Moi," she pleaded in Russian, hoping for divine intervention. It did no good. As she read further in the text, she became aware that a quadratic equation could be solved. This impressed her greatly. The previous day she received an unacceptable grade on a paper because the professor had objected to her interpretation of a Fiorellan sonnet as "unabashed erotica." She was impressed that a quadratic equation seemed to have an answer (though she would never find it), and that the answer would not change depending on this or another view of politics or religion. From that day on she held a great deal of respect for scientific reasoning. "Clean," she would call it.
By the time Berlioz and the others entered Alexandria and the real events got underway, Tamara and Kiril had evidently known each other for some time, {\footnote The chronology here is confused--Editor.} but that is another story. In any case, their first meeting certainly came about after Tamara's audition at the Conservatoire.
The Alexandrian Conservatoire, though belonging to the University, stands a thing apart. Its remains lie at the extreme northeast edge of the campus, far from any other buildings and surrounded by a thick stone wall which, when reconstructed, stands three times the height of a man. The Conservatory building itself must have thus remained entirely hidden from human sight. Excavation has proven exceedingly difficult but preliminary results indicate that the structure was of palatial dimensions and designed in elaborate rococo architecture.
As the fall approached, Tamara sent in an application for an audition with the voice department and received in reply only a brief note ordering her to appear at the Conservatory Recital Hall at a certain date and time. She would be assigned an accompanist, after which she would audition. The entire episode was the fault of Tchaikovsky. Or his temperament.
There is a theme in Tchaikovsky, you see; it is the theme upon which the variations are based in his great A-minor trio. Haunting, the guise of a folksong, but not indigenously so, tinged with slavic melancholy, it seems to go with Tamara, though she would strenuously object ("All Tchaikovsky's music, don't you see, is written for ice-skating.") Perhaps then the theme of the Schubert four-hand piano fantasy, the opus posthumous ("Better, but Schubert is too much gurgling brooks and trouts you know. I prefer his {\sl lieder}, it goes without saying.") Yes, strings and hammers are the real stumbling blocks in this discussion--for Tamara the voice was supreme. Her conviction that the human voice was an instrument superior to all others in its ability to transmit--well, this point never became clear--whatever it is that music transmits--bordered on a mysticism that one would have naturally associated with Joan of Arc.
The martyrdom of the latter is not at stake here, but we may wonder if on that day when Tamara flung strudle across her ex-lover's face and was plunged into the depths of despair, scribbling acid-tipped stanzas and consigning her frozen landscape sheet by sheet to the raging flames, she were not intent upon destroying her own soul, verse by verse.
She survived. But on another day when her dissertation--already hailed by her advisor as the Definitive Work--reached a state of convolution from which Tamara saw no exit and cul de sac was complete, she hurled it to the fire in disgust, vowing to sing professionally and to hell with comparative literature. Tamara did not escape so easily; the weight of the dissertation itself extinguished the flames and the treatise was barely singed (to the everlasting gratitude of future scholars). But during those few hours of mental freedom, when she thought that literary criticism had passed through the chimney with the hot air, she acted. That is, she applied for an audition with the Faculty of Music. Fall was approaching.
On the morning of her audition, Tamara rose early from excitement, went to the nearest bath house to wash, donned her finest dress--a gown of ivory, d\'ecolletage low to bias the jury--and hired a calash to take her across town. The wooden wheels clattered against the cobblestones, rolled across five of the innumerable bridgelets that spanned the canals--the webbing of the town--skirted the University, and finally creaked to a halt.
"I'll take you no further, Miss. The Conservatory is off limits for me."
Tamara, piqued--really, such service--alighted, paid the driver but did not leave a tip, and walked the remaining distance to the Conservatory wall. She found no entrance. She circled the fortress several times and was convinced the obvious had escaped her but, in the end, remained {\sl extra muros}. "This is exceedingly curious. Not to mention te-di-ous." She opened her watch, which hung suspended from her neck by a golden chain, and glanced at the time. Still an hour to go, but to what comfort, the Conservatory walls still standing unbreached? Firmly resolved not to slide into the psychic swamp that she already felt creeping upon her, equally determined not to be overcome by the fits of weeping that had ruled her life in the last months, Tamara remained intent upon finding a way in. She hailed a passing farmer who was driving his two-wheeled cart from the northern plains to market.
"Excuse me, Sir, could you help me?"
The reaction of the farmer to these simple words was characteristic. "Tamara's voice," wrote Monk in the Zen Sobor(ZSCFT1A), "was not high, neither was it low. I would say it was, by and large, in the middle. A mezzo by the grace of God. But--may the Lord strike me down if I do not truthfully report this--there has never been such a voice. It made you listen--vox Tamarae, vox Dei. It would sometimes become soft like a child's, then hard. She would rush her sentences, then suddenly pause and slow down. Yes, I think it was the pauses. Is this a cause? Let me make a note somewhere. Tamara's voice breathed. I have been melted by Tamara's voice. So have many others. Amen and ex post facto." The passing farmer instantly reined his horse. Tamara unthinkingly brushed back her waist- length hair, which was today woven into loose braids, and the farmer's jaw dropped. He was firmly held captive. He jumped from the cart, bowed ridiculously in his coarse jerkin, doffed his floppy moth-eaten cap, and said, scratching his beard, "I'm at your disposal, ma'am."
Tamara's effect was universal. Berlioz writes: "She was a tall woman in her early thirties, with splendid shining eyes and a mass of hair which might have waved over the casque of Achilles. Her breasts--I cannot go on. She devastated me, everyone. I was desperately, hopelessly in love, but she ignored me as if I were a lowly ant. Every time I thought of her I felt an electric shock shoot through the spine and I spent my nights in sleepless anguish. In the daytime I crept away like a wounded bird and hid myself in the fields and orchards of Alexandria. I was haunted by love's ghostly companion, jealousy, and suffered tortures when any man approached my idol--"
"She was everyone's idol."
"It makes me shudder when I recall the ring of Kiril's spurs as he danced with her."
"You were lucky, Hector: to you she was an idol. To me...I not only had the misfortune to fall in love with her, but we had the double misfortune to fall in love with each other."
"Woe to this house, such passions assail it."
"You, Sphinx, are merely jealous."
Tamara explained her problem to the peasant. The honor of helping such a goddess was overwhelming; without hesitation the farmer produced a stout rope and large meat hook from his cart. He knotted the one to the other, Tamara took it from him and hurled the self-made grappling iron over the wall. A sharp tug satisfied her that it would hold, as indeed she was satisfied that the most sensible route into the Conservatory had been found. Tamara climbed. "Well, you know me--I need my exercise or it's a bad day for sure." Now standing atop the wall, she refastened the hook and rapelled down the inner side. She shouted thanks to the farmer, brushed off her dress, and treated herself to a sigh of triumph. "Let us be valiant/Let us assume the glory of the past/Let us divide amongst ourselves the glory of tomorrow. Sigh."
The Conservatoire itself, in Tamara's eyes, was a rather plain building constructed of solemn brown wood. There were few ornamental columns or scrollwork. There were no window shutters, nor gables nor water spouts. It lacked a chimney as well as a main staircase. Shrubbery was all but absent. Not only were there no window shutters but there were no windows either. In fact, as far as Tamara could see, the building resembled nothing so much as a large cube. But this did not particularly disturb her. "What was it that Goethe said? '{\sl Ich die Baukunst eine erstarrte Musik nenne}--I call architecture frozen music.' Which, of course, raises the question whether music is melted architecture. In any case, clean, I dare say the cleanest building I've ever seen."
Throughout the courtyard, musicians practice their scales, solos, duos, trios, and quartets, filling the air with a cacophony of perfection. "Music is the greatest gift. So much more to the point than literature-- '--what about Bruckner?' objects Kiril.
'Hmm. Yes, rather discursive, isn't he?'-- I would sell my soul to produce such a flawless sheet of glass." Suddenly, as Tamara contemplates perfection, a wrong note shatters the clean air. The music stops all around. A hushed silence; the musicians hold their collective breaths; a cowled figure emerges from the building, casts his gaze around and grabs an unfortunate clarinetist, cowering under a chair. Together they disappear into the building. The clarinetist's screams echo from the walls.
Tamara, taken aback, blindly stumbles over an inert iron ball and tumbles onto the grass. She props herself up and observes the ball is chained to the leg of a cellist who sits alone quietly practicing orchestral solos. Tamara sits erect and watches the cellist in perplexion. "How curious," she whispers aloud. Infrequently, the musician makes a small mistake or plays a passage with slightly less grace than is satisfactory for his exacting standards. He then stops, lays down his bow, lifts a pencil and crosses out the third row of numbers from a chart resting on his music stand. By this time his flawed technique is worth no more than 2650 alexanders per year.
Horrified, Tamara gets to her feet and takes up her search for an entrance. She circles the mausoleum as she had previously circle the outer wall and again is met with failure. At length she is stopped by an elderly gardener who, having no shrubbery to tend, is content to lean lazily on his shovel.
"May I help you, Miss."
"Yes please, I'm trying to find a way in."
"And why would you be doing that?"
"I'm auditioning for the voice department."
"Then I shouldn't bother if I was you."
"Why not?"
"Have you studied with any of your judges?"
"No."
"Well, has your teacher paved the way?"
"What do you mean? Of course not."
"Have you seduced the Director?"
"Really!"
"Don't get me wrong. It should be an easy job for you. Does your audition piece end allegro with lots of high C's?"
"I'm a mezzo."
"Well, Miss, you're totally unprepared for an audition, I'd say. You don't stand a chance."
"I...I don't understand," stutters Tamara, barely getting the words out. "Music is something sacred to me...When I sing...I feel I'm bearing an important responsibility, a message, you know. I would like instruction so that my voice can better carry my message."
"Look, Lady, this is a conservatory, not a church. Feeling is for amateurs."
"Please show me the way in," Tamara says suddenly. "My audition is in half an hour. I must find my accompanist."
The gardner reluctantly shows Tamara a small door located around the corner. He surreptitiously guides her past the receptionist, making certain the sentinel is glancing in the opposite direction, for the Office of Reception is under oath to refuse entrance to any non-student. At each intersection the gardener motions Tamara to halt, peers around the corner to make sure the coast is clear and signals her forward. Finally, he leads her into the accompanist's cubicle and hands her a flower as a parting gift. To Tamara's infinite surprise, the pianist is not practicing the assigned music, but is scribbling down on twelve-stave paper what seems to be a mathematical equation.
"Success!" he cries suddenly, striking the opening chords of a Beethoven sonata with glee. "Success! I've found it!" He does not conceal his elation as he rechecks his figures. "Velocity: 16 notes per second; volume: fortissimo--" he glances at a crude seismometer fashioned from a straw swinging on the piano--"yes, 7.8 exactly. Tone quality of this piano: 4.9. That gives me an over all Impression Factor of 5.9. The public will love me!" He launches himself again at the Beethoven.
Later, Tamara would ask herself why she had not left that very moment. She already feels like the abandoned slave girl in the {\sl Satyricon} , "although that side of Petronius is a little more difficult to take in bulk, you know...I just can't say no. I can't tell people they are ridiculous to their faces. If I could, all my problems would be solved. Well, some; all is admittedly asking for a lot. Sigh. I don't want to think about it."
Tamara does not leave. She persuades the accompanist to run through her material, though due to the acute lack of time, they only rehearse the major entrances. Finally, the fateful moment arrives and the pianist leads Tamara to a stage that faces a blackened auditorium.
"Number 87," a voice sounds from the rear of the hall, "what do you have for us?"
Tamara peers into the gloom but can see nothing. "What am I doing here?" she asks herself. To the voice in the auditorium she replies: "My first piece is by the contemporary Alexan--"
"Con--con--con--contemporary? Wha--wha--what--what do you mean 'contemporary?'"
"I...I mean he is alive--"
"A--a--a--alive? Don't you know it is against the rules to perform living composers at the Conservatoire?"
Tamara involuntarily shakes her head and answers softly, "No, I wasn't aware."
"Are there living composers in Alexandria?" chimes in a second voice.
"How did you come by this piece?" asks a third. "On the black market?"
"It...it was written for me."
"A commission?" asks the second voice.
"No," Tamara blushes to no avail. "It was dedicated to me."
"Nepotism!" shouts the third voice. "This is inadmissable audition material. What else do you have?"
"I have," Tamara says with effort, wiping her forehead, "an aria by the baroque master Spontinelli. I have provided the embellishments myself."
"Wh--wh--what! What do you mean, 'embellishments'?"
"The score is not ornamented, but embellishment is clearly called for."
"Embellishment is never clearly called for...Some people are anti- establishment; I am anti-embellishment. I will--will--will {\sl not} permit you to sing an ornamented aria. What else do you have?"
Tamara ponders the question. I have a professor who expects me to transport his children as well as translate his third-rate works; an ex- lover who threatens to kill himself if I don't go back to him; an advisor who expects from me a brilliant thesis on a non-existent subject; and now a conservatory of conservatives. Why do I let these people ruin my life? Why have I made myself a slave to their petty illusions? At least I could be a slave, I dare say, to reality, but I--it must be confessed--am a slave to illusions, and the worst part of it is, they're not even my own illusions. How awful...{\sl Spasi menya}...And aloud: "I have some poems of Villon set to music by--"
"Poems by whom?"
"Villon, the great French poet of the fifteenth century."v "I for one have never heard of him."v "I'm sorry..." Why am I always apologizing to him? Why am I always sorry?
"What else do you have, number 87?"
"Nothing. I'm sorry."
"Th--th--then I {\sl forbid) you to enter the Conservatoire. Accompanist, sh--sh--the contestant out..."
The accompanist folds the music, hands it to Tamara, and gently leads her off off the stage.
"By the way, number 87," calls the third voice, "don't you think a darker dress would be more appropriate for auditions?"
"I'm sorry," says Tamara and she exits.
To think the fresh air would ease her mind may have been delusion; nonetheless Tamara decided to return on foot to her apartment on Peter the Hermit Street. Within moments she was totally lost to her thoughts, which turned to fantasy. On other days she would claim it was during this walk, in her daydream, that she betrayed her city and first met Jenghiz Khan, the Merciless Son of Heaven. This, however, is a long story and best delayed for some time. Those who are anxious to hear it are referred to chapter thirty-one.
By the time Tamara awoke from her ruminations, she had strayed far off course and had reached Market Square. Market Square occupied the center of old Alexandria. On the eastern edge, along Haymarket Street, stands the reconstructed Corn Exchange. Opposite, on the western edge, along Lasts of Rye Street, stands the old Town Hall, at one time renovated into a concert hall and opera house. The northern and southern sides of the square are both occupied by cathedrals, about which more will be said later. Market Square, until sometime in the as-yet-to-be determined past, was used both as a market by the townspeople and as a gathering place for students. A favorite meeting spot was the statue of the engulfed sorcerer and his victim.
A crowd gathered near the statue to attend a gray and wrinkled fellow who from his soapbox hawked a new product. Fully disgusted with her own life at the moment, Tamara decided to listen to another's. As the salesman prepared to launch into his schpiel, Tamara caught from the corner of her eye the figure of a young man. His black lecturer's gown identified him as from the University and his age put him somewhere in that nebulous region between student and faculty. He walked quickly by, apparently engrossed in thought and unaware of the surroundings. Suddenly, his attention attracted by the scene, he swiveled sharply to the speaker and stepped quietly to the back of the crowd. "He was quite close to me," Tamara remembered. "I noticed him because he was unkempt. I find that lean, misplaced look somewhat attractive, you know."
"My good people," began the salesman, "your sufferings are over. With this magnet, all diseases can be transplanted from the human frame to the earth. If any of you suffer from diseases, either local or general, let the following remedy be tried: Take a magnet, impregnated with mummy and mixed with rich earth--. What is mummy, you ask. My dear gentlewoman, mummies are of six types: There are first the four from Egypt, Arabia, Libya, and Pisophaltos which the ancients used to preserve their dead. The fifth is made from criminals who have been hanged. This mummy is particularly potent, for it expunges the watery humor without destroying the spiritual, which is cherished by the heavenly luminaries and celestial spirits. Therefore, we may truly call this constellated mummy. And the sixth, the most wondrous of all I might add, is made from corpuscles of the spiritual effluences radiated from the human body. That, my dear, is mummy. And what will you do with it? Into the earth mixed with mummy, sow some seeds which have a congruity or homogeneity with the disease. Mix the earth well and lay it in an earthen vessel. Be sure to water the seeds daily but with water that has been used to cleanse the diseased limbs. Thus will the disease be transplanted to the earth by the magnet and, as the seeds sprout into plants, the disease will lessen, and as the herbs reach their full height, the disease will vanish altogether."
The crowd murmured its assent; magnets were handed 'round and silver clattered in the money box. Tamara herself was tempted to buy a magnet. Her recent bouts with lovers, dissertations, and conservatoires had left her vulnerable to attack from all quarters. A magnet would be just the right thing to protect her from unwanted diseases. She would wear the magnet around her neck to repel all hurt and would not have to search any further for a universal cure. But she was too late; the magnetizer continued:
"For the gentlemen, allow me to introduce a new wonder from the East-- the weapon salve. This is a cure for any wound inflicted by a sharp weapon, except such that may penetrate the brain, heart, or arteries--" "{\sl Caveat Emptor}," muttered the young man in the lecturer's gown loud enough so that Tamara heard and smiled.
"First, magnetize the offending sword or knife with three strokes of the magnet. Then, take of moss growing on the head of a thief who has been hanged and left in the air; take of real mummy and of human blood--of each one ounce; of human suet take two ounces; of linseed oil, turpentine, and Armenian bole--of each, two drachmas. Mix all the ingredients in a mortar and with this liquid salve the weapon, after dipping it in the blood of the wound. I say to you, the wound will be healed instantly. Instantly. But I hardly need to speak of the rarity of the ingredients to this salve. To the East I have journeyed to Cathay, and I have braved the gallows in the northlands of Hyperborea--all for the benefit of you, my generous patrons."
As Tamara watched, the student (if that was what he was) pushed his way through the crowd and stepped up to the table.
"How much?"
"Two alexanders."
The student dropped two heavy coins on the table, picked up a magnet and salve. He turned to the audience, pushed aside the folds of his gown, and drew his sword. With one quick stroke, he made a clean slice across the back of his left hand. Thrice, he stroked his sword with the magnet, touched the flat of the blade to the fresh blood, uncorked the bottle of salve, and poured it liberally over the weapon. For five minutes, he held his left hand aloft as it continued to drip blood. Then he turned to the magnetizer, flung the bottle on the table, spit at his feet, and walked away.
The crowd rapidly dispersed. Tamara smiled again, but bought a
magnet anyway.
Throughout its history, internal tension and internecine strife have periodically beset Alexandria. Some speculate that the Times of Illusions appeared, as they did to the ancient American Indians, in 52 year {\sl bakhtuns}, cycles produced by the meshing of two calendars. The first of these was a solar calendar, the second was a nine-month calendar thought to be based on the human gestation period or the orbit of Venus. Alexandria itself did not use such a two-calendar system, but the periodicity of illusions cannot be denied and suggests a definite Aztec influence.
In 1581 a dispute arose which nearly resulted in a permanent rift among the Alexandrian faculty. The issue was Pomp and Circumstance. The crime was fraud.
Before graduation, a Master's candidate had gone to the tailor to have a new gown sewn especially for the occasion. By this time, the system of gowns in Alexandria had grown hopelessly complex and bordered upon chaos absolute. The Doctoral gown, of course, requires a four-foot hood, while the Master's gown is accorded only three and one-half. The tailor, then entering his ninety-third year, mistakenly produced a hood of 3 feet 9 1/2 inches, which made identity ambiguous. The problem was compounded. Doctors' full dress gowns are in general more elaborate than Masters'; however in Alexandria at the time, they were also black like the Masters', the only distinction being a color facing for the Doctoral gown and the sleeves gathered into a yoke.
Graduation day being hot, the candidate gathered up his sleeves. The inevitable occurred: he was spotted from behind by a senior faculty member from the Department of Metallurgy. To the professor the sight was exceedingly strange, for the dark green hood with a steel gray lining constituted the colors of his own Department. Yet the doctoral candidate himself was no metallurgist. The professor, livid with rage at the unfolding hoax, jumped up from his chair on the platform and halted the procession. "What is the meaning of this?" he demanded of the unsuspecting Master's candidate.
The young man, in shock absolute, remained entirely speechless and could not prevent the honor guards from hauling him away. Several days later he received an official letter, stamped with the University seal: Dear Mr. R***:
While the case of the student was resolved amicably, the larger issue threw the University into turmoil. The progressives called for a complete overhaul of the heraldic system. The conservatives said nothing of the kind was needed. Finally a task force was set up. The tincture rule was examined which stated that silver and gold could not be used with one another and that a charge of one color could not be laid upon the other. The seven color limit also came under scrutiny.
Several of the more rabid reformers attempted to do away with the distinction between chevrons and chevronels; bars, barrulets and fesses; pales and pallets. This first required setting up an {\sl ad hoc} committee to decide what the terms meant. The committee finally reported: "Careful research into the subject has led to the tentative conclusion that the distinction between bars and fesses may be ignored, although the distinction between fesses and pales may be important, unless one wanted to introduce the two subclassifications 'vertical fesse' and 'horizontal fesse.' Note: common charges would not be effective for differentiating hoods since they would be lost in the folds."
The struggle went on for several decades. The Chancellor often changed his chevrons from up to reversed in order to please the faction currently in power. Sometimes he wore both which gave his hood a curious cross-hatched appearance and which eventually led to the suicide of his tailor.
After 27 years, the matter was laid to rest. An inter-university
{\footnote We tend to disagree with this reading of the original source
material. "Inter-university" is probably a misprint for "intra-
University." See Chapters 12 and 13 for the Alexandrians' views of other
universities.} commission was established. Doctoral gowns were set at a
certain level of elaborateness to make them indistinguishable from the
Master's gown. Color standards for various degree levels and faculties
were made uniform across the world [{\sl sic}]. Each faculty's colors
differed markedly from any other so that no mistake in identity was
possible. The new system was hailed by all as being one marked by
simplicity and wisdom. Unfortunately, within several decades the number
of colleges, faculties and departments had increased so tremendously that
it became impossible to remember all the colors. The system, while simple
in conception, had become infinite in extent. The result was chaos
absolute.
Tamara's curiosity had been aroused by the stranger and she followed him across the square, overtaking him as he was about to vanish among the small alleyways which wound their way north to the University. The weather, as is often the case in Alexandria, had turned misty. The student had become enveloped in the fog and even at this close distance remained little more than a nebulous shadow. Tamara tapped him lightly on the shoulder. She found it puzzling that he hardly turned, acknowledged her presence as if expected, kept walking as if something were awaiting him beyond the next step. His features, enshrouded by the descending mists, were impossible to discern. Tamara was suddenly, inexplicably afraid to speak. She would withdraw the gesture, apologize, and retire. But he said, straightforwardly, "Please walk with me."
Tamara felt outmanuvered and could only capitulate. "I saw you defeat the magnetizer--"
"Two alexanders! I won't eat for three days!"
"You have--I dare say--a taste for the dramatic."
"I'm not interested in drama. Are you?"
"Yes I am...very much."
"Then you might try auditioning for the part of Ophelia. The Drama school is planning a Town Hall production Hamlet."
" Really? I didn't know." When Tamara stressed Really with that delightful diphthong and rise of intonation, a pause in the conversation invariably ensued while appreciative smiles were raised. There, now we can continue. "But I'll certainly keep it in mind...You really very effective."
"What's your name?"
"Tamara."
"Are you a witch?" The question was posed pointedly, instantaneously. Tamara blushed. "Oh, you know. How very interesting. Sometimes I think I am."
"I hope not. Do you have green eyes?"
Tamara was taken aback and bit her thumb. The stranger was talking to her with complete familiarity though not over thirty seconds had elapsed since they first met and though she could not see him clearly amidst the shadows and fog. She would make a hasty retreat, withdraw. Withdrawal was always the safest course through treacherous waters. "Green eyes...yes...Will I see you again?"
A hesitation, a matter-of-fact reply: "I hope so." Then the student disappeared into the fog without having revealed himself to Tamara.
Still determined to find life beyond Literary Criticism, Tamara took the stranger's suggestion and, several weeks later, when the auditions for Hamlet were opened, she tried out for the part of Ophelia. From Tamara's point of view, the audition was a disaster. She hesitated on several lines, almost breaking into an open sigh, and her hair kept getting in the way so she would be forced to brush it back with too-extreme gestures of her hand. By the end she was on the verge of tears and left the hall devastated. The director of the play would later tell his associates that Tamara appeared like a sensuous goddess on stage, her ankle-length hair streaming behind her--just the physical instrument needed to portray the effects of madness, her clear and sighing voice and sad face excactly what was necessary to express the sorrows of tortured love. "I was devastated," said the Director. Tamara got the role.
In the Zen Sobor Chronicles(ZSCT1B), Monk writes: "Later, after I knew Tamara better, I asked her why she thought so many men fell in love with her. She said, almost mockingly I thought, 'Men like to destroy themselves.' I remember the words very well as by the Grace of God I was then in my listening mode, which must be somehow related to the wet mode. Kiril probably would have mentioned imperfective. When I told Tamara I didn't understand, she replied, 'I am an illusion, it must be confessed.' (She was always confessing.) 'I project a quality which men desire but which I do not possess--vulnerability.' 'And why do you do this?' I asked in my best analytical tone. 'It's not intentional, Monk.' 'And Kiril?' 'That, it must be confessed, I have not yet understood.'"
When Tamara was pressed for details of her past, she shrugged as many do. Consequently, details of her childhood have remained sketchy at best. "I grew up in a small town in America. Then I came to Alexandria."
"America!" cried Berlioz. "The idea is too comic. Tamara is a clever artist and a clever woman. Do not attribute to her such a pack of fables and absurdities."
"A...Am...America!" exclaimed Monk. "It d...does seem u....unlikely, doesn't it?"
"America," said Kiril. "No."
Many researchers also refuse to believe that Tamara was from America. Spurred on by such doubts, a recent expedition set off for Daryal and confirmed the remains of an ancient tower or castle. Amid the rubble were found several goblets and bracelets. The investigators point out the likelihood that a beautiful woman or witch lived there at some time. Others disagree with the analysis. They point out that, just as modern Biblical scholarship has arrived at the remarkable conclusion that women and men are "equal" because "Eve was not created from Adam's top or bottom but from his exact middle," so is there compelling Old-Testament evidence that Tamara did not hail from either America or the Daryal but the Middle East.
Several Tamars, another form of the name "Tamara," inhabit the Old Testament. The first is Ta-mar, wife of Er, daughter-in-law of Judah. When Er died, Judah ordered Ta-mar to remain a widow until his son She-lah was old enough to marry her. By the time She-lah had grown, however, Judah's wife had died and he had forgotten his oath to Ta-mar. Seeking revenge for the betrayal, she posed as a whore and succumbed to the entreaties of her father-in-law. Later, when the ruse was exposed, Judah apologized for the broken promise and Ta-mar gave birth to twins. In the Gospel according to St. Matthew, she is called Thamar, which is French for Tamara.
The second Old-Testament Ta-mar is Ta-mar. It was her misfortune to be raped by her half brother Amnon. She remained desolate in her brother Absalom's house and King David became very wroth. Events are then enshrouded by history and no one knows what became of her.
Absalom had a daughter who was named Ta-mar, who was a woman of fair countenance.
The lives of all the Tamars were so similar that some have supposed they were all in fact the same woman, failing to conceal her personality by the camouflage of different ages and locations. In any case, those who support a Middle-Eastern origin for Tamara bring to bear the added evidence that the Old Testament mentions a town called Ta-mar in Palestine. An expedition sent to the presumed location, Southside Southward, to determine if this was Tamara's home, returned empty handed. The city could not be found.
In the Arabian Nights, Tamara is a flower.