Stephen Fry - The Liar

The Liar

The Liar

STEPHEN FRY

Copyright 1991 Stephen Fry
Published by
Soho Press, Inc.
853 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fry, Stephen, 1957
The liar / Stephen Fry.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-56947-012-1
I. Title.
PR6056.R88L5 1993
823' .914dc2 0 92-4040-7
CIP
The author and publishers are grateful to the
following for permission to use copyright material:

Shakespeare and Tragedy. John Bayley
quoted by kind permission of Routledge Ltd
"Maria" (Richard Rogers / Oscar Hammerstein II)
1959, Williamson Music International, USA
Reproduced by permission of EMI Music Publishing Ltd, London wc2h oea
'Puppy Love' composed by Paul Anka
and reproduced by kind permission of M.A.M. Music Publishing Ltd
'I Don't Know How to Love Him' by Tim Rice
reproduced by kind permission of MCA Music Ltd
Manufactured in the
United States
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12

To

(insert full name here)

Contents

Not one word of the following is true

A Fame T-shirt stopped outside the house where Mozart was bom. Helooked up at the building and his eyes shone. He stood quite still, gazingupwards and glowing with adoration as a party of Bleached Denimsand Fluorescent Bermuda Shorts pushed past him and went in. Then heshook his head, dug into his hip pocket and moved forwards. A thin highvoice behind him caused him to stop mid-stride.

''Have you ever contemplated, Adrian, the phenomenon of springs?''

'Coils, you mean?'

'Not coils, Adrian, no. Coils not. Think springs of water. Thinkwells and spas and sources. Well-springs in the widest and loveliest sense.Jerusalem, for instance, is a spring of religiosity. One small town in thedesert, but the source of the world's three most powerful faiths. It is thecapital of Judaism, the scene of Christ's crucifixion and the place fromwhich Mohammed ascended into heaven. Religion seems to bubble fromits sands.'

The Fame T-shirt smiled to himself and walked into the building.

A Tweed Jacket and a Blue Button-down Shirt of Oxford Cottonstopped in front of the steps. Now it was their turn to stare reverentlyupwards as the tide of human traffic streamed past them along theGetreidegasse.

'Take Salzburg. By no means the chief city of Austria, but aJerusalem to any music lover. Haydn, Schubert and... oh dear meyes, here we are... and Mozart.'

'There's a theory that special lines criss-cross the earth and that wherethey coincide strange things happen,' said the Oxford Cotton Button-downShirt. 'Ley-lines, I think they call them.'

'You'll think I'm grinding my axe,' said the Jacket, 'but I should saythat it is the German language that is responsible.'

'Shall we go up?'

'By all means.' The pair moved into the interior shadows of the house.

You see,' continued the Tweed, 'all the qualities of ironic abstractionthat the language could not articulate found expression in their music. '

'I had never thought of Haydn as ironic.'

'It is of course quite possible that my theory is hopelessly wrong. Paythe nice Frdulein, Adrian.'

In a second-storeychamber where little Wolfgang had romped, whosewalls he had covered with precocious arithmetic and whose rafters he hadmade tremble with infant minuets, the Fame T-shirt examined thedisplay cases.

The ivory and tortoise-shell combs that once had smoothed the ruffledringlets of the young genius appeared not to interest the T-shirt at all,nor the letters and laundry-lists, nor the child-size violins and violas.His attention was entirely taken up by the models of stage designs whichwere set into the wall in glass boxes all round the room.

One box in particular seemed to fascinate him. He stared at it withintensity and suspicion as if half expecting the little papier mch figuresinside to burst through the glass and punch him on the nose. He appearedto be oblivious of the group of Bleached Denims and Acid-coloured Shortsthat pressed around him, laughing and joking in a language he didn'tunderstand.

The model that so particularly engrossed him was of a banquetinghall in which stood a dining table heaped high with food. Two littlemen had been placed by the table, one crouched in terror, the otherstanding with hand on hip, in an attitude of cavalier contempt. Bothfigures looked upstage at the model of a white statue which pointed downat them with the accusing finger of an Italian traffic policeman orwartime recruiting poster.

The Tweed Jacket and the Blue Button-down had just entered theroom.

'You start at that end, Adrian, and well meet in the middle. '

The Jacket watched the Oxford Cotton move to the other end of theroom and then approached the cabinet, whose glass was still being mistedby the intense scrutiny of the Fame T-shirt.

'Don Giovanni,' said the Tweed coming up behind him, 'a cenar teco m'invitasti, e son venuto. Don Giovanni, you invited me todinner, and here I am.'

The T-shirt still stared into the glass. "Non si pasce di cibo mortale, Chi si pasce di cibo celeste,' he whispered. 'He who dineson heavenly food has no need of mortal sustenance.'

'I believe you have something for me,' said the Tweed.

'Goldener Hirsch, name of Emburey. Small package.'

'Emburey? Middlesex and England? I had no idea you were interestedin cricket.'

'I get it out from a newspaper. It looked a very English name.'

'And so it is. Goodbye.'

The Tweed moved on and joined the Blue Shirt, who had fallen intoconversation with a Frenchwoman.

'I was telling this lady,' said the Shirt, 'that I thought the design for The Magic Flute over there was by David Hockney.'

'Certainly so,' said the Tweed. 'Hockney seems to me to paint in twostyles. Wild and natural or cold and clinical. I seem to rememberremarking that there are two kinds of Hockney. Field Hockney and IceHockney.'

'Please?'

'It's a joke,' explained the Blue Shirt.

'Ah.'

The Tweed was examining an exhibit.

'This figure here must be the Queen of the Night, surely.'

'She is a character altogether of the most extraordinary, I believe,'said the Frenchwoman. 'Her music - my God, how but that it is divine.I am myself singer and to play the Queen is the dearest dream of mybosom.'

'It's certainly one hell of a part,' said the Oxford Cotton. 'Prettydifficult I'd have thought. What's that incredibly high note she has toreach? It's a top C, isn't it?'

The Frenchwoman's answer to this question startled not just the BlueButton-down Shirt and his companion, but the whole room. For shestared at the Blue Shirt, her eyes round with fright, opened her mouthwide and let go a piercing soprano note of a purity and passion that shewas never to repeat in the whole of her subsequent, and distinguished,operatic career.

'Good lord,' said the Tweed, 'is it really that high? As I remember