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theseaofskulls-blog · 7 years ago

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Beethoven Escapes a Dinosaur

Beethoven Escapes A Dinosaur

A tragedy

Ludwig Van Beethoven was a man whose music spoke of a sorrow at the very centre of our lives, he was rarely demonstrative but explosive when so, and even more elusive than numerous biographies would have you know. Born in 1770 during a particularly bitter winter, Ludwig inherited two gifts. The first was esoteric at best, he was in possession of a soul in tune with the vibrations of the universe. His ability to pick out echoes from the air, and distil them into music was peerless, and as he closed his eyes, he’d sense the very fabric of reality vibrating around him. Like a taught animal hide stretched across a drum, he’d trap the sounds he heard within his belly, and allowed them to echo through him. Plucking at his tendons like harp strings, he became the very music itself.

The second gift was from his Grandfather on is his mother’s side, and that was the ability to time travel. He didn’t require a machine, or huge swathes of energy. Johann Keverich’s family had come unstuck from our universe’s time stream in the late 1600s when one of his ancestors made some catastrophic agreements with beings he shouldn’t have. However this story isn’t about time travel, it isn’t about dinosaurs though both have key parts to play. This, as with all great stories, is the story about a boy and girl.

Beethoven’s first, and some say only true, love was Giulietta Guicciardi, a young countess to whom he gave private piano tuition. As a man not of noble birth, society would never have allowed such a partnership, decorum and her decisions dictated otherwise, but that didn’t stop this love burning brightest during his life. He tried to liken his dutch Van with the noble German Von, but to no avail. This small, impossible love drove him to do many foolish things. She was a flighty love, warm and cold, near and then distant. Ludwig provided her the emotional love she’d always dreamt of, and she thought of their affair as an echo of Tristan and Isolde. She imagined their impossible union in the vernacular of Shakespeare’s doomed loves and all the while, they both knew it would never happen. Neither would be able to throw off the shackles of decorum to allow their love to blossom and grow. It was always fated not to be.

Things were in constant flux around Ludwig, and often he’d unstick himself and fling himself wildly through time for his rage was the only outlet for his seemingly unrequited love. Many believed that when he’d first begun to show signs of deafness, that it was due to this temper. He’d been working furiously on a new piece of music, or so they thought, when he was interrupted by his staff. Ludwig had never been in the best of health, and so when he exploded in rage people felt this had caused his subsequent deafening. However this was not the case.

Ludwig had come to the end of another lesson with Giulietta, and as Ludwig gathered up his papers, he made trivial small talk.

‘And what would you most like to hear Giulietta, if one was to magic these sounds out of the air for you, what would you most like? A lark’s song? The crack of a mountain glacier?’

Ludwig believed that ideas as such were the way to her heart. As if to understand her wants, and to provide them, that would make her love him completely. Or at least enough to break all the social structures that prevented them being together. However one doesn’t merely throw away generations of breeding on the whims of what her father called, a bard who doesn’t sing.

Giulietta, with all her beauty, and genuine affection for Ludwig, was also a caustic presence in his life. She chafed and irritated, at his heart and at his mind. She played with him as a cat with a ball of yarn, batting him away, only to draw him closer than anyone else.

‘Ludwig,’ she said in her lilting Italian accent, ‘I’d like to hear a dragon’s roar, I’d like to hear god’s words as he breathed life into his creation, and I’d like to hear the moon’s lament.’ She laughed coquettishly, coming over to him and resting her thin fingers on his upper arm and squeezed. ‘But these are the wishes of a little girl, foolishness in the light of God’s eye.’ She turned and left the room, and immediately the cogs in Beethoven’s mind began to spin. This was almost as if in a fairy tale, with him being the titular hero of his own tale, off on an adventure to win the hand of a capricious queen. He saw the curtain of reality peel apart for him as he tried to imagine what a dragon even was. To contemplate a monstrous creation on God’s earth was in itself ridiculous, but having already had a lifetime of maladies and illnesses, he knew that the God that created sunrises, humming birds, and Giulietta could also create the black bile that was drained from him. He could create winters that took the elderly and the young. He was an old testament God who’s love was paid for in blood and suffering.

But dragons? How would one find them? He’d heard of the skulls discovered in the Orient, buried under centuries of earth so that they could only be freed with a pick axes. He’d heard that Prince Lobkowitz, an early patron of Ludwig’s, had recently acquired one and so hastily packed up his manuscripts, and hailed a carriage to the Prince’s abode. On approaching the palace, he heard the Prince call from his balcony.

‘Is that Young Ludwig? Maybe he has come to play me some new song he has stolen from heaven?’

‘Prince Lobkowitz’ Ludwig hailed, ‘It is an honour to see you this fine day, I was hoping I may take up some of your time.’ He disembarked from the carriage, papers bundled under his arm.

‘Of course, Ludwig, curator of my soul, come in come in come in’ The prince excitedly exclaimed as he ran down to his entrance hall. He was sprightly for his age, and his eyes shone with a joy that spoke of a heart unburdened. ‘How may I help you my wonderful man?’

‘Prince, I believe you have recently acquired, I cannot believe these words are to leave my lips, the skull of a dragon.’ Ludwig raised his hand to his eyes, as if to cover his embarrassment of asking such a silly question.

‘Dragon? Ah yes, you mean the dinosaur. The TERRIBLE lizard! For it IS monstrous Ludwig. It’s fangs, its huge empty eye sockets. Come see, Ludwig, come behold the horror!’ The prince escorted Ludwig through his gold encrusted palace till they came to a small chamber, hidden away. The prince rest his hand on the door and placed the other on Beethoven’s heart. ‘I can feel your heart beating, it is racing Ludwig, as it should. I assure you, it is perfectly safe.’ And with no little showmanship, the Prince swung open the door to reveal the giant skull of what we now know to be a Tyrannosaurus Rex. The Terrible King.

It was pale, as one would expect of petrified bone. It stood over the height of a man both tall and long. And as Ludwig’s eyes rested on its alien curvature, he felt the soul of this beast stir in him. He approached tentatively, his arms out wide as he gingerly felt each foot forward. He could hear the laughter in Prince Lobkowitz silence, he saw it reverberating beneath his iris and in his body. But the Prince understood the thrill of what Beethoven was experiencing, something he’d never seen, something the great man couldn’t even imagine was now in front of him.

‘To see this your highness, is to see my own death.’ Ludwig said forlornly, ‘My own fragility is laid bare by the demise of this once great beast.’ His arms could barely stretch wide enough, so he thread his arm into the various crevices and sockets of the beast. He rolled his open palms around the nasal cavity, he ran his fingers gently down the serrated teeth that would terrify a lion and he turned his back on it and sat by it. Dwarfed by every proportion, he sat in the shadow of the monster.

To see this creature, once great and resplendent, calcified, exposed to Ludwig that even the giants that made the mountains quake were destined for the same end.

Prince Lobkowitz had tired at Ludwig’s groping of the skull, did a needlessly dramatic yawn and spoke.

‘Ludwig, I shall leave you to distil whatever beautiful liquor you can from this titan’s skull, I feel like going on a hunt. I’d ask you to join me, but I know you’d only refuse.’ And with that, the Prince departed leaving Beethoven with the skull and some wan candle light. When he was quite sure he was alone, Ludwig turned to the skull, placed his ear against, and tried to listen for its song.

When Ludwig had been a small child, he’d visited his grandfather who had taken him into the family barn. In it were a couple of disgruntled farm yard animals annoyed that they’d been found by their masters. His grandfather cleared the centre of the room and stood opposite young Ludwig. He drew a circle in the hay and dirt by scoring his heel into it. When they were both within the ring, his grandfather spoke in a solemn manner.

‘I am going to teach you something Ludwig. And it isn’t going to be easy, but it will open up the world to you.’

‘Is it a new song?’ he replied.

‘It is the only song. It is the song of time.’

‘How do you play it? What instrument?’

‘You don’t play it Ludwig, you merely listen. And the instrument, well it is you, and me, and everyone else.’

‘I’m not sure I understand grandfather?’

‘It is difficult to explain, but easier to show. Think of the last time you were truly happy.’

Ludwig paused, happiness was always such a fleeting emotion. Transitory and weak he thought to himself.

‘It was last Sunday grandfather, we’d been to church and it was sunny. I could smell the grass that had been shorn on the hill, and the wind would catch the smell and bring it to us.’ His grandfather smiled, and took his hand.

‘Now I want you to think of that moment, specifically that hill. Can you remember it? Can you smell it? Close your eyes and keep thinking of that hill. Can you smell it?’

It was a short while, no more than a minute, and then Ludwig spoke.

‘I can smell it Grandfather, I can feel the wind on my neck. I can hear the birds in the trees.’

‘Open your eyes.’

Ludwig gasped a sharp intake of cool fresh air. They were stood on the hill, down at the bottom he could see himself walking with his family. The clock in the town square rang out once, and he saw birds murmur on the horizon. It was hard for his mind to form the correct questions. He passed out. When he awoke he was back in the barn.

‘Grandfather,’ he said pulling himself from the dirt and straw while patting himself, ‘H-how did we do that?’

‘You closed your eyes, and thought in such a way that the universe heard you and took you there.’

Ludwig just looked at him, eyes glistening with tears of joy. He ran and embraced the old man, his body physically shaking as the reality of what he could do coursed through his body.

Ludwig closed his eyes and let his mind think of this animal, the sounds it made, the breath it breathed. His eyes still closed, he first heard the faith mechanical buzz of insects. He then saw the light change from beneath his eyelids. The faint red flicker was replaced by a bright red wash across the black. The smooth skull under his fingertips was replaced by what felt at once like scales, but also feathers. It was then he heard it, a deep and guttural growl. He heard lungs wheeze like bellows before a bellicose fire. He slowly opened his eyes. He was no longer in Prince Lobkowitz palace in Vienna. Instead he was in a forest the likes of which he hadn’t seen. It was teeming with life, in shapes and form unimaginable but there was only one life that mattered. He looked to where his hand had been resting, on the side of what could only be described as the most terrifying dragon ever to stalk the earth. Its eye opened, a yellow sun iris with an obscene black gash of a pupil scratched down its centre. It began to move as Ludwig slowly edged away, trying to make as little sound as possible. The creature, once it had reared itself to full size towered over the tree canopy. Taller than the clock in Vienna, taller than the siege towers he’d seen paintings of. It moved its head like a bird, almost quizzically looking at this dressed monkey that stood before a king. Then, without warning, it opened its giant maw a let rip a noise that shook the very earth they stood on. It was a rasping thin noise where it took in air from its nose and mouth, and then the roar. If Ludwig was to imagine the voice of Yaweh, he’d imagine it was this. A noise that would have terrified the bravest soldier, so for a musician like Ludwig, it consumed the very idea of fear within him. Beethoven stood stock still, petrified. It was only when the beast closed it’s mouth that Ludwig realised something far worse, He could merely hear the echo of the animal, nothing else. Not the buzzing that first greeted him, not even the beat of his own heart. He was deafened and that fear crushed that fear of the dragon, for that loss was more terrifying than the loss of his life. The loss of his legacy. He’d not thought of Giulietta his entire time in this pre-history. But now she was all he could think of. Of her, then of his parents, of his brothers, of Vienna and that skull in Prince Lobkowitz’s grand palace. He thought of the millions of futures snuffed out by his recklessness.

The Tyrannosaur had picked up his scent, it was different and incongruent in the creature’s world. It had no idea what a powdered wig was, but it would consume it. It knew not what pantaloons were, but it would consume them. It looked down, and amongst the gently swaying ferns and trees it saw Ludwig. It saw Ludwig running, hand on wig and coat unbuttoned and flapping, and gave chase.

Ludwig closed his eyes and continued to run, he thought of anything he could, but nothing seemed to pull him out of where he was. He thought of his grandfather, he thought of the sound Vienna’s cobbles made against a carriages wheels. Nothing seemed to work. He thought of that skull, the way he’d fingered it. Something then hit him from behind. At first he thought it was the tail, but it was another roar so loud it sent him stumbling over roots and earth till he collapsed in a heap. He pushed himself up with the palms of his hands, breathing heavily. He knew that if he survived this, he’d already pushed his fragile body too far and that he’d fall into another sickness. But even a sickness was better than this. To be ripped from time before he could share all the songs he’d heard was devastating. Still on his knees, he closed his eyes and thought of what he’d miss. Of all the important and life changing things he could feel, the thought that came to him was of the strudel from the shop down the road. When he’d smell the sugar turning to caramel he would put on his jacket and walk down, icing sugar pluming from the shop onto the street, enticing anyone caught in the sweet fog. Ludwig smelt it, and when he opened his eyes, he was in the back larder of the local bakery. Just then, the door opened and the owner was stood there, agog.

‘Mr Beethoven, is that you?’ he asked into the poorly lit larder.

Ludwig burst into tears as he shook. The baker merely walked to him, and gently lifted him from the floor. He called for one of Beethoven’s household to come collect him. His doctors were called and they said that the stress of composing, along with his weak constitution had resulted in a psychological incident. It was on a day shortly after his incident with the dragon when he lost his temper. He’d tried to grasp for any indication that his hearing was returning, so when he was interrupted by a member of staff he flew violently into a rage. Grasping and ripping he shouted unrepeatable curses to the heavens, and then finally retreated to his bed where he fell into a fever and had to recuperate for several months.

As he lay invalid on his bed. He thought of his hubris, his idiocy in travelling to a world he had no idea about in the hope of winning the affection of someone who would never feel truly the same. He was willing to tear the world down for this woman, but she was never willing to do the same for him. He thought of any potential legacy that had been snuffed out. He thought of the 3 things Giulietta had asked of him. How she’d wanted to hear the roar of a dragon, something he’d never wish on anyone. He thought of her wanting to hear the breath of god, and he thought of waterfalls. How Giulietta wanted someone to present these ideas to her as gifts or prizes because she wasn’t willing to look for them herself. To actually try and hear the voice of god in the sound of a stream or the gentle hum of bees. He then thought of the lament she wished to hear. He thought that this was the gift he would give her. He wanted to give her the sorrow she was lacking.

The music he created was stronger than something static like his bones. He didn’t want to calcify till he was static and unchanging. He wanted to live on through others experience of the world. He wanted the world to be seen as through his prism. His soul. His music.

Giulietta and Beethoven began to drift apart when he returned to good health. She had decided to marry Count Von Gallenburg, a low level musician but someone far more suited to her station, and return to her native Italy, settling in Naples. Before she left they had one final lesson. Giulietta had long given up playing, but the pretence enabled them to have one final goodbye.

Giulietta was sat at the piano when Beethoven entered the room. Time had always moved in a strange and organic way when they were together. It was only now, as they sat side by side, that time actually stopped. Ludwig looked at her. She was motionless, held in a breath that he’d caught. He smiled at her, but it was hollow, and from his bag he withdrew the music he’d written for her. At the top it said Sonata No. 14.

She still sat motionless. He smelt her hair, and it smelt of rose water. He looked at her small mouth, and he wished to kiss her. One stolen moment for himself. But she was engaged and was to leave Vienna, and Ludwig, if he was honest to himself, loved unrequited love the most. He walked to the door, took one last look at her and left. Time started the moment he’d stepped out the room. In front of Giulietta was the music for the Moonlight Sonata, and when she pressed the C sharp minor, tears sprang from her eyes as her heart tumbled inwards.

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