3172 - In the music of the night

N. Lygeros
Translated from the Greek by Vicky Baklessi

Little by little things were being set in place within his spirit. After all, wasn’t the entire world telling him that he was a scholar? He couldn’t refrain from smiling because he knew how insulting this was in a society that was searching nothing but the happiness of an immortal present. Even the gift of the armagnac wasn’t without innuendo. He leaned again over his book. It allowed him to think. He had read that it was in Cyprus, in the year 1223 that for the first time the knights and the ladies interpreted roles taken from novels of chivalry at the occasion of a tournament. It had influenced the whole evolution of tournaments and even gave birth to the “masks” of court ballets of the XVII century. He hadn’t paid attention and now it said to him that the greek titled codex wasn’t but a supplementary indication on the cypriot origin of one of the effigies. How had these men managed to reach the knight without armor? Was it the same reason that had pushed them towards meeting him? He decided that he would return to the crypt, alone, the next day in order to examine in detail all the characteristics of each effigy. They were still unknown to him but he was already experiencing a form of attraction. Could a scholar admire strangers from the depths of the ages? He thought that on the contrary only a scholar could commit this mistake. For the others, only the present counted. The chimney was still not extinguished. Without truly realizing what he was doing he chose a disc of Luigi Boccherini. He wanted to listen to Quintettino opus 30 number 6 of composed titled Musica notturna di Madrid. Yes, that was it! He was sure. But why this choice? Was it the five effigies? Was it something else? Or even the spirit of the master? He couldn’t decide. But he knew that he had to listen to it. He closed his eyes and sank into the music of the night. He imagined the life of the five effigies and the death of the knight without armor. Because he had no information neither on one nor on the other. He knew that the role of the heralds and the evolution of the personal blazons testified of the presence of a large and attentive audience which should be able to recognize the fighters. Hence, to deduce that the knight without armor was an ancient fighter who had abandoned the curtain walls to devote himself to the war against barbarity, there was a step that a scholar couldn’t overcome. Only the time of this music of the night, it liked caressing the idea that a knight without armor made a tabula rasa of all this sophisticated pageantry to help his people. Only who could be the people of the master if it wasn’t the entire humanity! He would learn something without a doubt from his examination of the effigies the next day.