Chapter Seven
From Brewer’s The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable:
Strasbourg Goose. A goose fattened, crammed and
confined in order to enlarge its liver. Metaphorically,
one crammed with instruction and kept from healthy
exercise in order to pass examinations.
Sitting in a chair that seemed to be larger even than her bed at home, Freddy Wales felt remarkably, no stupendously, at home. She stretched out her arms to reach the outside edges of the chair’s arms. She was sitting upright and all the way back against the high, tufted firmly stretched lavender fabric that covered the chair. Her feet dangled over the edge of the seat cushion, but didn’t dangle far as the seat was too deep to allow her to lean back, sit upright and still bend her kness at the front end of the seat.
"This has to be the largest chair in the world," she said to Mikhael. "It just has to be."
"You know it isn’t so," the boy replied to her. "There are many much bigger. Even in Washington the city there is an enormous chair in which your former president Lincoln sits."
"But that’s not a comfortable chair," she said quickly. "That’s carved from marble." She let her fingers arch and grip then loose, arch and grip again. "This is a very comfortable chair."
"For you, perhaps," Mikhael said. "But for me, and for my father too, it is a chair that contains us and brings no joy at all."
"What do you mean, it contains you?"
"It is a seat of long tradition and it should not be here."
"What does that mean?"
"My father has taken it from his country without the permission of the state."
"Was it his chair?" she asked him.
"It was!" He said it proudly.
"Then what’s the problem? He has a right to sit in his own chair." When Mikhael didn’t answer her, she went on a bit.
"Well, doesn’t he have that right?"
"No. That is our trouble."
"Well, I don’t understand this at all. Mikhael you never tell me much. We’ve been friends now for a month and you never tell me anything."
"I tell you my secrets," he said sharply.
"Oh, yes, sure. But what secrets are they? ‘Nobody likes me.’ Well nobody likes me much either. ‘I’m everyone’s dog,’ well that’s no secret. You let them take advantage of you all the time. So what?"
"It is hurtful, Fredericka."
"It is hurtful...well, duh! Of course it is. If you let it be. You have to be more like me and just ignore the stupid ones."
"That is why I like you. Well, it’s one reason."
"And do you know why I like you?"
"Because I bring you home in a limousine. I know."
"No. Don’t be an ass. I like you because you’re smart, like me. I like you because you aren’t surrounded by shallow ones, just like me."
"It’s true."
"And I like you because you like me. That’s the most important reason."
Mikhael came over to where she was sitting in the grand seat and sat himself down on the small upholstered foot rest at the base of the chair. He reached up and touched her foot which she jerked away from his hand.
"Why did you do that?" she demanded.
"I just touched your foot."
"I know what you did. Why did you do it?"
"It seemed right, just then."
"Well, don’t do it again, hear?" She waggled a forefinger in his direction.
"Yes, your highness," he said, acknowledging her command. He bowed his head for a moment, then jerked it back upright to look at her. She was smiling, but trying not to and her smile became a smirk.
"You have the bearing of a queen," he said softly.
"I do not."
"You must not always be so adamant, or I will have to call you Queen Fredericka."
She was running her right hand forward and back along the swank arm of the big chair. Without taking her eyes off his she asked him, "Is that what this is, then? Is it a throne?"
His eyes stayed on hers, locked on hers really, as he slowly bobbed his head up and down a few times.
"So, does that mean your father is a king, then?" Mikhael didn’t reply.
"Is your dad a king, Mikhael? Is that what you tried to tell me?"
"No. I never tried to tell you that."
Freddy leaned forward, cinching her waist as she bent close to his face.
"You always choose your words so carefully, my friend."
"And you always assume you have the correct answer at the ready, Freddy," he replied. She laughed at the unintentional rhyme, but then caught herself mid-chuckle when she realized that he indeed chosen his words with care, for he had deflected her question with humor.
"You’re a clever boy."
"You’re a clever girl."
"We should be friends, right?"
"Correct."
She pushed herself forward until her legs were really dangling down, in front of the plush, pillowed armchair. She reached over and touched his hair gently, finger-combing it out of his eyes and back over his ear.
"You don’t want me to say anything to anyone, do you, about this chair, about your father?"
"No, please."
She smiled at him, but not a sly smile or a mean smile. This was real friendship and a soft smile was called for here. "All right. Secret’s safe."
Mikhael stood up and took her hands and helped her off the throne.
"In this country, anyway, a throne has a different meaning, you know."
Mikhael stared at her, not catching her drift.
"Here when you say you were on the throne, it means the crapper." She laughed and in an instant he was laughing also.
"My father would like that word," he said. "He always seeks new words to describe his situation. This would suit his mood, I know."
"Can I meet him some time?" Freddy asked her friend.
"Perhaps. Some time. This is not the good time, though. For now he is not available to be met by strangers."
"I’m not a stranger. I’m your best friend." She grinned. "Hell, I’m your only friend."
He shook his head for a moment, his smile reverting to a frown. "No. There is another friend."
"Another...? Who?"
"Someone you have not met. My mentor."
"Your what?"
"My teacher and my guide. My Mentor. In the evening when I am alone here he comes and for many hours will talk with me and lecture to me and give me guidance as to my lessons, and as to my role."
"What’s your role? What does that mean?"
"I am trained to succeed my father as heir-presumptive to... to what he would inherit if that was ever to be possible."
"So you study to be important? Mikhael, you’re important just being you."
"I must be made ready if things ever change in our favor, Freddy."
"What are you king of? I want to know."
"I am not a king. I am not a prince. I am Mikhael Staffiev of 154th Street." His tone was one of recitation, a childlike recitation that gave too much information and said too little to satisfy Freddy. She held him by his shoulders and gently shook him twice. "Why did you do that?"
"You were gone, Mikhael. You were totally gone from here just then. It was like your voice was coming out of the chair and not you."
"I was here, Fredericka. I am always here," and as he said it he touched the chair itself.
She moved away from him, over to a couch that faced a fireplace at the other side of the room. He watched her as she sauntered through the space, around the furniture and he watched her as she turned to look at him from this discreet distance she had now placed between them.
"I want to know," she said.
"What do you need to know?" he asked her.
"I want...."
He stopped her before she could continue. "What do you need to know?" he repeated, emphasizing the word "need."
She caught the tone and amended her question.
"I guess I need to know who you are, really."
"And I have told you. You know my name and my age and where I live and where I go to school. Those things define who I am, really."
"Then, I guess," she said, pausing to find the way to put this correctly, "I need to know who you would be if things were different for you."
He smiled at her, took two steps in her direction and stopped before responding. "If things were different for me, Freddy, I would be Cary Grant." He clapped his hands together twice, giggled and twirled in a circle, coming to a calm, complete stop facing her again.
Freddy laughed, then pointed at him. "You almost could be Cary Grant, you know. You have that cleft in your chin, just like his."
He poked himself in the chin. "I know. It is strange for no one else in my family has such a cleft."
"And he came from somewhere foreign too," Freddy added.
"And he was a stilt-walker, did you know that?" Mikhael asked. "I can do that. I can walk on stilts. Shall I show you?"
The boy’s eagerness to show off exposed a whole new side of him to Freddy. He wasn’t being careful suddenly of everything he said and did. There was a sudden spontaneity about him that she was enjoying very much.
"Show me? That’s not good enough. Can you teach me?"
"I can and I will do it." He raced out of the room and she followed him. Wherever those stilts were, perhaps there would be another piece of the puzzle that was Mikhael Staffiev. That was something she couldn’t afford to miss.
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