The Meaning of the Nightingale's Song

The Meaning of the Nightingale’s Song

(PREFACE—Part of this story you will find in children’s storybooks. But the rest, the part that happened after the fairytale, is not for children. It is the story of the never-ending battle between nature and artifice, between art and vacuous mimicry, and between lies and the real nightingale’s song.

The fairytale began with an Emperor. A plump man with thin and auburn hair, a lock of which hung across his forehead like a banner. He wore jewels on three of the fingers of his right hand and on his left wrist a gold emblem that was half again the size of the cakes he was served each night for dinner. He had collected the most wondrous and fantastic creatures in the world to prove that nothing was beyond his control. He had lands and castles and vaults full and he left them in the charge of his ministers and their larceny did not trouble him because he had wealth to spare.

The Emperor possessed a kind of brilliance and his great mind absorbed things, not the mechanics of science or mathematics, but impulsive and referential things that had no context or merit. Because of this it is uncertain how the idea came to him. Perhaps in the gossip of house servants or perhaps it was expired in the steam rising from his bath. But there it was, a single thought: the nightingale’s song.

Of all the Emperor’s possessions, he did not have the power of the nightingale’s song: to inspire in the ‘poet a sense of morbid self-abandonment.' So, he told his ministers to bring him a nightingale so that he might find the secret to its song. His ministers responded grimly and out of a sense of self-preservation, but, for all their efforts, they could not find a single nightingale to sing its song before the Emperor. The Emperor’s craving grew and the palace fell into a state of anxiety. All seemed lost until at last, a piskie, who had neither comb nor cup in her company, heard of the Emperor’s search.

She was as old as the ferns and lichens in the forest and she had been there when the first nightingale sang its song. She knew all the sounds of the forest, from the trickle of a glacial stream to the rustle of the balsam fir, so it seemed unimaginable that anyone had not heard the nightingale’s song.

“Nightingale, nightingale,” she called out in the morning light. “Your song has always brought me tranquility and joy. I would like you to sing it for the Emperor. It will bring tears to his eyes and he will likely repay you with gold and diamonds.”

“If it will bring tears to his eyes, then I shall sing for him," replied the nightingale. "But I have no use of gold or diamonds. The tears will be reward enough. They are precious and irreplaceable.”

And so, they set off. But while they were on the road, a dark prince, carrying a music box, arrived at the palace before them. The music box was crafted of the finest gems and contained gears and springs and copper tines that played a stanza of notes that perfectly mimicked the nightingale’s song. When the Emperor played it, he fell into a trance and, though the sounds were similar to the song of the nightingale, they were but the twang and twill of a music box.

The piskie and the nightingale met the prince at the palace gate as he was making a hurried exit. He bore a birthmark on his cheek in the shape of a serpent that coiled when he grinned. The piskie drew back in fear for the sight of the man terrified her, but the nightingale continued on, flying up to the highest tower. There it came upon the Emperor and his ministers. They were staring in wonderment at a jeweled box that rested on a granite pedestal and the box was playing a contrived version of the nightingale's song. The eyes of the Emperor were filled with tears and this confused the nightingale and, in his dismay, he flew off without a singing a note.

The Dane tells how the nightingale eventually returned and saved the Emperor from his own misguided attachment to the music box. But the struggle between the real nightingale song and its proxy, that is his legacy, his story, is still unfolding. But not as a fairytale.)

June 16, 2015

It was the end of a long day of travel. Edun was tired and anxious and her great-niece had already gone to bed. She was pacing the kitchen with a soft sponge in her hand, wiping at reflections on the countertop. At 3 am she pulled a comforter over her and tried to sleep, but instead of sleeping she spent the night thinking of ways to explain her absence.

Above the fireplace sat the purpose of her visit: a gold-leafed music box. Its glasswork, etched in dragons, was faded and the edges pockmarked with insets where gems had been affixed. She knew that if she turned the crank at the back a bird would appear, poised atop a mirrored stage, and begin to sing the nightingale's song. Sitting there among the other artifacts, it might have been just another souvenir or a child’s plaything.

“Are you awake?” Dian asked as she pulled open the drapes.

“Barely,” Edun replied.

“Coffee?”

“Please. It was a long night.”

“That couch sucks, sorry.”

Edun folded the comforter, fluffed the pillows and then her hair. “Well, it’s fine. I know you didn’t expect me.”

Dian pushed a cup of coffee towards her and then pointed the remote towards the TV.

“I usually watch the news in the morning. Hope you don’t mind. I know it’s a stupid way to start the day, but there is so much shit happening now. I feel like I want to know if things will be getting worse or better.”

“Worse,” said Edun.

“You look good. Haven’t aged at all. How is that possible when I am seeing strands of grey in my own hair?”

The news was, as Edun had anticipated, bleak; floods in Texas, fires in Alaska, the Kurds were making progress in their fight against ISIS in Syria, and candidates were beginning to position themselves for the Iowa caucus that was just seven months way. A new candidate, an outsider with no political experience, had just announced his interest in the presidency. He wore a dark blue business suit with a red tie that contrasted his auburn hair and he looked comfortable, if not glib, in front of the cameras.

“Why now? Why did you come back?” Dian asked.

“Can’t we just spend some time catching up? It’s too early for that.”

“Too early to lie you mean?”

“How are you? How is your job?” Dian pushed.

“Same and same.”

“Well, you’re still in the same apartment, that’s either a good thing or a bad thing.”

“You mean bad cause I haven’t found a man? Or good because I haven’t found a man?”

“Good. A man doesn’t matter,” Dian offered, hoping it might be received as a sign of support.

“Maybe not to you.”

“There are more important things in this world than love.”

“So says the woman who slept on my couch.”

Edun stood at the window watching the traffic below. It was an unusually overcast day and some people were carry umbrellas.

“You think it will rain?” she asked Dian.

It seemed fitting really. Rain is always a sign of change.

Dian had been just a child when she gave her the music box and she would no doubt have a strong attachment to it. She had to decide whether she would tell her that she was taking it or simply take it without her knowing. Either way, it would be the last time she saw her.

“Now that you are letting the natural tones come out, you look more like your mother,” Edun said. “Good for you, better to be natural than be someone you aren’t.”

That was the point of it all, but Dian was not interested. So she inserting little hints along the way that might help her understand. Little breadcrumbs that might prepare her from the confrontation ahead.

“Truth, that is what’s important,” she said, definitively.

Dian ate a breakfast of yogurt and fruit and offered Edun only coffee. She had her reasons, Edun knew. The face of the new candidate appeared on the screen again surrounded by a supportive crowd. Next to him stood a man that Edun recognized even though he made efforts not to be photographed. She could see the serpent birthmark on his cheek.

“Truth,” she said out loud.

“You like that word,” Dian reacted.

Then Edun approached the kitchen and placed her coffee cup on the counter opposite Dian.

“It breaks my heart.” Edun. She wanted to tell her, to leave her with something, something that might help her in the future. But it wasn't that simple. Hints and breadcrumbs were all she had.

Dian grew uncomfortable. “I’m going to finish my makeup and then I’ve got to get to work. Will you be here when I get back?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe? That mean you’re going to disappear for another twelve years?”

“Has it really been twelve years?”

“Yes, twelve years, two months and a few hundred, thousand days. I counted. You are my only relative you know. Hard not to notice when you’re not here.”

“I’ll try harder,” Edun promised and she would, but there were things she needed to do and unlike all the time before, the battle was bigger and more important than it ever had before.

“I’ll lock up when I leave,” she assured Dian.

For an hour after Dian left for work, Edun stood at the window, waiting for the rain. She did not look at the music box until she was ready to take it down. When she did, she reached out slowly, hesitantly, expectantly. But it gave her no sharp jab. No burning sensation. But, she knew, the music box was more than glass and gold and gears and springs and the copper tines that dragged across a spinning drum. So much more. It had once blinded an Emperor to the difference between truth and lies. It had replaced the nightingale’s song with something false and it had caused an empire to fall into chaos.

As she carried the music box to her bag her finger caught the angle of the crank and a few notes rang out. She imagined for a moment that she was back in the forest and the nightingale was singing its song and that everything would be fine. But that would be true only if she could the box hidden.