The Aldebaran Swan
Leadbelly Svoboda, scion of a proud but nearly extinguished line of river swans (genus honkus humungous), was nearing the end of his ride. To cap off a long and fruitful career of swanning around on the Vltava (he was a swan after all), Leadbelly yearned for—dare we say it—his swan song: one final, spectacular gesture which would forever secure his place in the annals of swandom. There was no hurry. Something would surface; it always did. Meanwhile, Leadbelly simply passed the time as he always had—paddling in circles near the Charles Bridge … day after day … waiting … waiting….
*
Eugene sat on the embankment in silence, watching the moonlight ripple across the Vlatava in the gauzy haze of a street lamp. He’d been on a dead run for so many years, it felt good to rest at last. A few pebbles fell into the water with a gentle “plop,” reminding him of the many joyful hours he’d spent throwing rocks into the lake as a little boy. He wished he had a large rock so he could make a big splash. Maybe later. For now he could only think of Irena. Slowly her smiling face gathered form on the water’s surface.
“Irena, you haven’t changed at all! Are the others with you?”
Yes, Yes, Yes, she nodded as the fresh breeze of the Prague Spring gently ruffled his hair.
“I’m so glad to see you are not alone.”
Irena looked sad. A tear crawled down her cheek. She pointed.
“Me? No, I’m alone.” Irena made a comically solemn face and then burst into laughter, motioning for him to join her.
“Do you still want me?”
Yes, Yes, Yes, she nodded and again motioned for him to follow.
Soon they were running along the embankment and laughing gaily in the bright summer’s sun. They stopped at the base of a familiar looking street. Smiling broadly, Irena pointed.
“My old student room is just up there!”
Yes, Yes, Yes, she nodded.
“Let’s go!” Reaching the building, they bounded up the stairs and entered his familiar old room. Nothing had changed in all those years.
Yes, Yes, Yes, she nodded.
*
Thinking the old man had just been sleeping one off on the embankment, three lager louts from the City of London—a banker, a lawyer, and a property developer—tipped Mr. Carter-Eugene Noll, U.S. citizen aged sixty years several months and a few days, into the Vltava at 13:00 on a chilly November morning. It was all great fun until they realized the cold water had failed to revive the object of their practical joke. In a panic they fished Noll’s body out of the river and tried to restart his breathing, only to be arrested moments later on a possible murder charge, pending the autopsy results. A highly publicized perp-walk into the courthouse and off to jail brought their weekend bachelor party celebrations to an ignominious end.
“Three wankers and a stiff,” medical examiner Barkov mused. “Sounds like a porn film gone very wrong.” Binning the newspaper, Barkov turned to the corpse and said, “It looks like you finally found what you wanted, my friend.” Noll stared contentedly at the glaring bulb suspended above Barkov’s antique marble dissecting slab, the original prototype for the Czech mattress industry. “You were lucky. Many don’t.” With that, Barkov went to work.
*
“Noll died from heart failure brought about by the misuse of Viagra and certain nitrate-based medications,” Barkov announced, gesturing towards the bag containing Noll’s body. “The lack of water in his lungs rules out drowning.” Pausing for dramatic effect, Barkov assumed his best deadpan expression and solemnly intoned, “Dead men don’t drink.”
Barkov was crestfallen when his small audience of reporters, police, and government hacks just stared at him pie-faced. Even so, he could have sworn he’d heard Noll chuckling inside the body bag. Resisting the urge to thank the dead man, Barkov sucked wind and forged ahead.
“Noll was dead before he hit the water, shortly after leaving one of Prague’s well-known brothels.”
With those words, the dots began to connect in the mind of Jennifer June Legrand, a femaloid life form better known to all and sundry as J-June. Charged with concocting tales to spin the donkey, J-June saw any death of an American in Prague as a potential source of the funding that keeps the hobby horses rocking. In fact, Barkov was still smarting from her attempt to get him fired for refusing to falsify evidence in a previous case. Today Barkov had taken the precaution of inviting Prof. Janus, his best friend from university and an adept hermeticist, to observe the briefing.
Quietly watching from a dark corner, Prof. Janus saw a small light dawn in the savage wilderness between J-June’s ears. Noll was looking like the magic crowbar she needed to unclench the Golden Sphincter of the Public Purse and launch the Second Funding. Smirking uncontrollably, J-June imagined herself leading the charge against human trafficking, AIDS, drugs, and (God she could only hope) terrorism. It was the Immaculate Quadrafecta of the Beneficent Bunghole—Four Wars No Waiting! Now all she had to do was manufacture the evidence and hang Barkov out to dry.
As the red glow in J-June’s eyes gained in intensity, Prof. Janus could see the future unfolding on her flat face: Emerging from the primordial ooze like the first amphibian, there appeared Spiritus Fundi—a shape with rhino body and head of sour cabbage, a visage glassy-eyed and moronic as a teddy bear—its flabby thighs quivering in orgiastic anticipation of a massive infusion of filthy lucre. The best gave up as the worst arose in frantic commitment to the final subornation of the contracting process. Jennifer June Legrand, that loathsome quota-filling beast, its free ride come round at last, was slouching toward Washington to be funded.
It was not a pretty picture.
“See to it that no stone is left unturned,” she snapped and waddled out the door, her sycophantourage of mincing maloids in tow. “Including the rock you crawled out from under, you slimy…,” Barkov thought to himself.
Prof. Janus donned his beret and followed her discreetly.
*
An exceptionally powerful wind swept across the Charles Bridge on that crisp autumn afternoon. Nosing her way through the bridge’s customary gaggle of tourists, trinket sellers, and musicians, J-June came alongside three whiskey guzzling louts celebrating their release from jail. Recognizing them as the City boys responsible for her great good fortune, she gladly accepted their offer to lead a conga line across the bridge. Imagining herself scoring a hat trick later that night with her new friends, J-June belted out “once, twice, three times a lady” and sallied forth. Soon the four of them were sitting atop the bridge wall, singing songs, and staring into the bright sun.
*
With a final nod to his skeptical companions on the river, Leadbelly struggled mightily to take flight directly in the fierce wind. The other swans watched breathlessly as Leadbelly rose higher and higher on an almost vertical trajectory. Soon he was suspended in mid-air some fifteen meters above the bridge with the blinding sun shining up his tail. When Prof. Janus saluted from the bridge, Leadbelly hurtled towards the parade of humanity below…faster…faster…faster….
*
“It must have come as quite a shock,” Barkov suggested to J-June as she stared bug-eyed and open-mouthed at the glaring bulb overhead. Turning back to the newspaper he read: “Some witnesses reported hearing a sonic boom just before a bolt of white lightening struck Ms. Legrand and the British tourists. One bystander claimed the four revelers were singing something about whiskey and a diving duck just before they plunged screaming into the river. In any event, the police do not suspect foul play.” Barkov burst out laughing.
With four bodies to examine there was no more time to waste. Sharpening his scalpel on an old barber’s strop, Brakov broke into song: “there may be trouble ahead” … strop strop strop …. “and tear drops to shed”… strop strop strop … “love and romance” … strop strop strop … “let’s face the music and dance!” When the scalpel gleamed like a ferret’s incisor, Barkov drummed out shave-and-a-haircut on the marble mattress and went to work. It felt great to be alive.
*
In an ancient cemetery on the banks of the Vltava just outside Prague, a large gathering of swans watched in silence as two men in white robes lowered Leadbelly into his final resting place. At the stroke of midnight, Prof. Janus intoned, “Good night, Leadbelly. Together forever with your one true love at last.” The swans wept. “And good night to you too, Irena,” Barkov added. Spreading their wings, the swans sang:
“Sometimes I live in the country,
Sometimes I live in town
Sometimes I take a great notion,
To jump into the river and drown.*”
They closed the ceremony with a twenty-one swan farewell salute to Leadbelly, the Legend of the Vltava.
* lyrics from “Good Night, Irene” by Huddie Ledbetter.
