Free Mawrdew Czgowchwz by James McCourt

Grudget of the Plaza staff fretted over Mawrdew Czgowchwz.
    â€œMadame, your gentleman is ever so past due. Mind you , no telephone call so as we might know what on this earth, or elsewhere, whether this shocking storm, or some sudden turn the gentleman might have took has ever—Gor, the bell! Madame, that’ll be your gentleman. Mind you, bundle now if you must go out in this shocking cyclone.”
    While Frau Langsam sat up late in her studio in Vienna, playing a certain 78 made in 1947, again and again, wondering why in all the years since...
    While in London, Dame Evangeline Tablowe and her last pupil, the mercurial, protean, unknown Jacob Beltane, left the Wigmore Hall with Percival Penpraz and Odo Bost after a strenuous rehearsal, discussing the implications of the term “oltrano”...
    While Lois, working overtime at the Met switchboard, dragged herself over to the Burger Ranch for a take-out cheeseburger and a word of commiseration with Rhoe, the waitress, over winter.
    While Arpenik, the Secret Seven, and the Captain of the Students on Line—the Mawrdew Czgowchwz stalwarts’ sodality—finished their decoration of Arpenik’s restaurant and sat down to a snack of madzoon, stuffed vine leaves, ekmek, and Armenian coffee, secure in their belief that in some ways all was right with the world.
    While Achille Plonque puzzled over Tristan’s monologue.
    While the eminent Dr. Zwischen pulled a switch in a white-tiled room in a clinic up in Dutchess County, and another patient’s mind blew out...
    While a man called Gennaio reasoned well...
    While again in London, the prima ballerina Fandole, back from a luncheon shopping spree in Paris, sat in her home in leafless Regent’s Park, looking out at the black night and at the white and black swans she kept in the little pond at the bottom of the garden, playing M. Czgowchwz Sings Oltrano , attempting to compare in her mind their two arts.
    While Leda Freitag, recalling her Isolde, claimed...
    While the talk of the town continued.
    Toward the solstice midnight, industry all over town relaxed. The storm’s furor diminished; the night grew steadily tranquil. The persistent delivery of snow fell off. At gentler velocity, it commenced resembling, passed approximating, and at length achieved mimetic perfection, carrying without and beyond the theater the most lavish scenic effect devised under hot lights in Gotham: the forest-snowfall interlude in the second act of the annual Nutcracker at City Center. (Pèlerin Deslieux thought all that, standing in the Fifty-sixth Street stage-door alcove, signing autograph on autograph for gyrating children mimicking the dance.)
    At the hearthside at Magwyck, hanging clusters of golden gorgets, torcs, and crescent lunulae reflected the steady bog-firelight, articulating festive space. Alone in the musky parlor, Rose(ncrantz) the saffron cat lay sloped over the gray-velvet arm of his Regency chair (big enough for two), his bushy tail plumb-hung in the still air, signaling complete repose. The guests were all in at dinner, all but Pèlerin Deslieux, left alone at last to make his anxious way up and over to Seventy-third Street. Shrouded in a sable coat that fell to his shagreen-booted shins, New York’s adopted premier danseur noble plowed around the corner to the Russian Tea Room. There, out front, as the result of an exquisite (if routine) courtesy on the part of the eternally resourceful Mme M. Czgowchwz, oltrano, he was availed of the use of a sled-runnered calèche, a Shetland-pony team, a driver, unperturbed and silent, lap rugs, and a thermos full of hot kvass. Moments later, entering the Park at the top of Sixth Avenue, thoroughly warmed within, and just as erotically chilled the length and width of his sun-child face-and-forehead, Pierrot, experiencing good gestalt, enthused. The shank of the evening split.

3
    T HE COUNTESS Madge O’Meaghre Gautier surveyed her nineteen guests at