Still Life by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Still Life

Page 73

Aurelius van Ratio arrived at De Haar Castle under a veil of morning mist, his sacred abacus wrapped in a velvet cloth embroidered with theological disclaimers. He had come to inspect the castle's rumored "Chapel of Approximate Grace," where whispers claimed a stained glass window depicted Jesus as a pie chart.

But De Haar, proud and baroque, stood not in Amsterdam but in Utrecht; a province governed by the Council of Ritual Boundaries, whose jurisdictional maps were drawn in calligraphy and enforced with ceremonial indifference.

At the castle gate, he was met by Captain Lotte van Threshold, commander of the Guard of Interpretive Defense. She wore armor polished with ancestral ambiguity and spoke in the clipped cadence of someone trained in both fencing and footnotes.

"Inspector Aurelius," she intoned, "your abacus is not recognized here. Utrecht does not quantify divinity. We prefer metaphor."

Aurelius bowed, but did not retreat. He remained on the grounds, setting up a small audit station beneath a weeping willow. There, he began clicking his beads in protest, measuring the castle's ambient holiness, its architectural sincerity, and the theological density of passing swans.