The Troubadour

Troubadour, by Robert
Augustine Ward Lowndes

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Title: The Troubadour
Author: Robert Augustine Ward Lowndes
Release Date: October 20, 2007 [EBook #23091]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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TROUBADOUR ***

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[Illustration]

The Troubadour
By Peter Michael Sherman
There was something odd about the guest attraction, Mr. Fayliss, and
something odder still about his songs.
So far as parties go, Jocelyn's were no duller than any others. I went to
this one mainly to listen to Paul Kutrov and Frank Alva bait each other,
which is usually more entertaining than most double features. Kutrov
adheres to the "onward and upward" school of linear progress, while
Alva is more or less of a Spenglerian. More when he goes along by
himself; less when you try to pin him down to it. And since the subject
of tonight's revelations would be the pre-Mohammed Arabian Culture,
I'd find Alva inclined toward my side of the debate, which is strictly
morphological and without any pious theories of "progress".
I'd completely forgotten that Jocelyn had mentioned something about
having a special attraction: a "Mr. Fayliss", who, she insisted, was a
troubadour. I didn't comment, not wanting to spend a day with Jocelyn
on the phone, exploring the Provence.
The night wasn't too warm for August, and there were occasional gusts
of air seeping through the layers of tobacco smoke that hovered over
the assemblage. As usual, it was a heterogeneous crowd, which rapidly
formed numerous islands of discourse. The trade winds carried salient
gems of intelligence throughout the entire archipelago at times, and
Jocelyn walked upon the water, scurrying from one body to another,
sopping up the overflow of "culture". She visited our atoll, where
Kutrov's passionate exposition had already raised the mean temperature
some degrees, but didn't stay long. Such debates didn't suggest any
course of social or political action, and couldn't be trued in to any of
her causes.
My attention was wandering from the Kutrov-Alva variations, for Bill
had only been speaking for ten minutes, and could not be expected to
arrive at any point whatsoever for at least another fifteen. From the east
of us came apocalyptic figures of nuclear physics; from the west, I

heard the strains of Mondrian interwoven with Picasso; south of us, a
post mortem on the latest "betrayal" of this or that aspiration of "the
people", and to the north, we heard the mysteries of atonality. It was
while I was looking around, and letting these things roll over me, that I
saw the stranger enter. Jocelyn immediately bounced up from a couch,
leaving the crucial problem of atmosphere-poisoning via fission and/or
fusion bombs suspended, and made effusive noises.
This, then, was the "troubadour"--Mr. Fayliss. The Main Attraction was
decidedly prepossessing. Tall, peculiarly graceful both in appearance
and manner, dressed with an immaculateness that seemed excessive in
this post-Bohemian circle. There was a decided musical quality to his
speech, as he made polite comments upon being introduced to each of
us, and an exactness in sentence-structure, word-choices and
enunciation that bespoke the foreigner. Jocelyn took him around with
the air of conducting a quick tour through a museum, then settled him
momentarily with the music group, now in darkest Schoenberg, only
partially illuminated by "Wozzek". I watched Fayliss long enough to
solidify an impression that he was at ease here--but not merely in this
particular discussion. It was a case of his being simply at ease, period.
Kutrov was watching him, too, and I saw now that there would be a
most-likely permanent digression. Too bad--I'd had a feeling that when
he came to his point, it would have been a strong one. "Hungarian, do
you suppose?" he asked.
Alva examined the evidence. Fayliss had high cheekbones, longish
eyes, with large pupils. He was lean, without giving an impression of
thinness. He had not taken off his gloves, and I wondered if he would
come forth with a monocle; if he had, it would not have seemed an
affectation.
"I wouldn't say Slavic," Alva said. He started off on ethnology, and we
toured the Near East again. I jumped into the break when Kutrov was
swallowing beer and Alva lighting a cigaret to observe that Fayliss
reminded me of some Egyptian portraits--although I couldn't set the
period. "If those eyes of his don't shine in the dark," I added, "they
ought to."

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