Love Song

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

There is a lake beside a small village in Scotland that many claim is haunted. They say that there dwells within something akin to the monster of Loch Ness, tabloid-exploited though the tale might be. It can be attributed, perhaps, to the sleepy verdure that cloaks the little village by the lake: such places are redolent of fairy tales, triggering some baser instinct to search out the best-beloved elements of children's tales, Keats rubbing shoulders with the brothers Grimm.

In the middle of the night, the lake shimmers to the ordinary eye.

This is magic, true and present, and no one in the tiny village sees, not the sleeping and therefore ignorant parents, the grandparents in bed with encroaching death, not even the teenagers with contraband cigarettes taking their faux-rebellious personas out for a walk. The village, to the magical eye, is turned inside out like a sock, and the other side glitters unseen.

On the other side, the village is filled with students let out from the boarding school on the edge of the lake, identically attired in ill-fitting black robes. They stuff their pockets with items the vendors of the fantastical doppelganger of the village hawk enthusiastically, items that would make no sense to the villagers. It sounds as if they're selling Roald Dahl's thoughts: Puking Pastilles, Sugar Quills, Fizzing Whizbees. Tonight is a marked night--All Hallows Eve.

In the castle in the dark, a rather ungainly man with an unfortunate nose regards the green and glassy lake from his window, and his mouth twists when the monster from the depths waves a glistening tentacle above the surface, though whether in amusement or disapproval is unclear.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

The portraits in his personal office are not of his choosing. Had he his way, Severus Snape's walls would be bare, free from the gossipy interruptions that constitute the majority of painted figures. Immature nosiness seems to come along with being two-dimensional. As it is, it is impossible to remove the portrait of Madame Rosier and her attendants; nor can he get rid of the little girl wearing her furs, one of which manages, even sans head, to be disturbingly sentient.

On Halloween night, all the portraits of the school are awake, creating a choral hum that begins in the bowels of the school, from the heart of the dungeons where the untoward portraits of the dark wizards are stored. Madame Rosier is not particularly dark (though Severus is not as certain of the little girl, nor of her adornments), but she is sufficiently irritating that it was necessary to regale her to the damp and clammy chambers belowground that do not reek of chirrup fodder as the rest of the school does. Even so, tonight she has managed to drag fourteen of her closest friends into her portrait with her. They lounge on the sun-warmed balconies of neo-classicism France, with the exception of Byron, who coughs rather piteously off to the side, looking distinctly consumptive and his dark oils out of place in the lighted contrast of the rest of the portrait's occupants.

Severus wishes they would all leave him to his dank and musty thoughts, but knows that if he dares to once again beg Madame Rosier to leave him in peace, she will retaliate by getting an even larger crowd to shriek shrilly at him, and his throbbing temples cannot have that.

"I say, milord," she says throatily, "I have always thought it was cruel of them to paint you on your deathbed. How pale you are!" She leaned forward, displaying an indecent amount of contrived décotellage. "I hear it was the result of the...oh, I forget the words...mélange adorer?"

"Love potions," he gasped, eyes watering, and his cheeks burned as he was racked with another barking cough. When it slowed, he took a deep breath and continued weakly, "Dearly did I pay for my years of debauchery--yet I would take none of it back! My youth was as twenty youths. It follows that my death should be as twenty deaths."

"I see," Madame Rosier said, though she did not. She was losing interest in the rather garishly garbed specter before her. "But it is the witching hour! Surely you can spare another hour of youth. To thee, and thee, and thee..." she nodded, finally coming to a stop beside a dirty man with tangled hair. "And thee? When did you arrive?"

"I heard about it from Viola," he told her. "I thought I would join the festivities."

A short, dark man on whose knee Madame Rosier reclined sniffed. "I don't remember inviting you, Michel," he drawled, using the French version of the name to see Madame Rosier's cheeks flush pleasurably.

"Do be quiet, Bramante," the other man said good-naturedly. "I'm only here for the wine." And he knocked back a glass without further ado, adding, after he swallowed, "To the witching hour!"

The witching hour it was, for as the portraits began to quibble and talk of the scandalous affairs amongst their canvas compatriots and their flesh-and-blood counterparts, the school and the lake were wreathed in fog, creeping eerily up from the village below. Those who lived in the little village by the lake thought it was a little spooky, and suited for the devil's night. Those who lived spookily thought it was appropriate, and danced as the moon shone forth.

Severus waited for the festivities to end, couched in his seat by the window.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:--
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

The leather seat made much of the expanse of his body, spreading it out across the fabric underneath his heavy robes. From where he sat, the fog began to writhe about his window, sneaking windy tongues into the room occasionally. He could feel the air upon his scalp, and the years upon his body.

He wondered if they spoke of him, the portraits, his colleagues, the students. He wondered if they saw, as he saw, the infinitesimal lines accumulating on his countenance, in the places where his skin folded to make way for a comfortingly vicious sneer. He had never been a vain man, nor had he reason to be. His face was unappealing, saddled as it was by a nose that it had taken him nearly thirty years to grow into. On a teenage boy, it was patently ridiculous, and those years were when he had perfected the sneer that now earned him his marks of age.

Nothing he did to slick his hair back hid the burgeoning bald spot on his head. There was no cure for age; or rather, no cure to his tastes. He found strands of hair on his pillow and felt a fist clench around his heart.

Did they notice, then? He thought he might have seen a hint of it, hidden behind a hand in class. He could not say for certain and so he was equally unfair, assigning homework as if he were unaware of the demands of other classes. He begrudged them their lithe and lissome bodies, the way they unfolded and entwined according to the statutes of their fragile hierarchies. Even Byron was a saw to his nerves tonight, with his talk of twenty youths. Severus could not help but feel that one of those youths was rightfully his.

Too many decisions hinged on him, this slowly decomposing man. He wished that he could slip into the lake and pull the waves over his head; he wished that he knew which path would bring him what he wanted, whether any path could bring him what he wanted.

Something Dumbledore had said, again--wasn't it always something Dumbledore had said! The man was a veritable factory of platitudes, Benjamin Franklin's long-lost kindred spirit. Severus had seen a portrait of the latter before, and thought there might have been some relation, despite the fact that Franklin had been a Muggle and Dumbledore was of good wizarding stock. They twinkled at one in much the same way. Severus thought that perhaps he would take the man's advice. It would be entirely unsafe, though. He twisted his hands together, the fingers gray and knobby in the moonlight. Did he dare? Did he dare?

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

He had been afraid--it was ludicrous, and all too common.

Most had forgotten what it had been like, but Severus had not. He could taste those years upon his tongue and see them tucked into the corners of his eyes. He remembered what it was like to live in places where the world seemed empty of people, unsettling, remote, and yet know that it was in fact teeming with those whose names were written on the list, those with mortal blood poisoning their veins. He remembered how slowly it had crept up, the speeches that filled listeners with bloodlust, the edge of suspicion riding on the voices of his chosen people, always finding new routes of exclusion. He was sly and untrustworthy; two virtues that had served him well in the new world. But always, always, he was afraid. Potter the Younger thought he did not know what it was like to receive those looks, the ones that slid beneath your skin and slipped away again, piercing, trying to find a chink, a fault, a foothold to justify hatred. Potter did not know what it was like to know that a foothold was one good investigation away. Potter did not know what it was like to live by your wits alone, and watch the sluggishly minded become ink-and-paper headlines.

He stayed alive. He bought his way. And still that taste of death lingered in the looks of the other followers, an unconscious threat. He is not good enough, their looks suggested. And was he?

Was he good enough?

His mind stretched sore from the weight of decision. Sly as he was, he could not see a way out of this, not when death skulked likely on either side.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.

He knew he was a supporting actor, but his decision came no easier knowing that the final scene did not rest with him. It was only his final scene he was worried about.

He played a dozen men, and none of them were the Snape who now cowered in his skull. The disapproving teacher, swooping down upon the errant children with a scowl. The subservient courtier bowing to his lord. The competent Potions master, the former Death Eater not quite turned to the right side. He could not choose among them all.

Severus watched the glazing lake, as the fog rescinded and the witching hour chimed to a close, and thought how much easier it would be if he could be sliced, like a peach, into his personas and each could wind its merry route to its proper close.

I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

He could see the uncanny faces rising inches below the waves, singing of some tragic end of a hero. He was not a hero, and so did not listen to the snatches of lyrics that drifted up to the open dormer. Songs were never sung of the supporting characters. Whatever he chose would end in uncommemorated death.

He thought about standing at the top of one of the school's many tilting towers and simply letting himself fall, gently, without fanfare. Would they mourn? He thought they would not, but did not pity himself.

A simple death, an easy death. Yes. A pleasant death. And how nice to escape the agonies of age! Severus waited by the window, torn, and then closed it with a sigh. Madame Rosier was gone from her frame. Byron regarded him with glassy eyes.

In the village, no one saw the window close, nor did they know when a body fell from the towers mere days later. The footman took his hand and, grinning with the ghastly look of bone and endings, skipped with him to the tallest tower. Severus escaped into the lake, wand in pocket, heart in mouth, and his years were swallowed up between the waves, his decision made.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.