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“It is a Great Comfort to Know One's Work is Appreciated” by Michel-Vincent Corbeaux and Rob MacWolf
In a bit of a mystery, three detectives argue over a clue: a cryptic poem. Which of them, if any, understand what it really means?
Today’s story is “It is a Great Comfort to Know One's Work is Appreciated” by Michel-Vincent Corbeaux, who is soon to self-publish his first poetry collection titled "From the Plume" and is also an admin for the Wildside Literature Telegram group; and by Rob MacWolf, recently published in When the World Was Young by the Furry Historical Fiction Society.
Read for you by Rob MacWolf — werewolf hitchhiker.
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https://thevoice.dog/episode/it-is-a-great-comfort-to-know-ones-work-is-appreciated-by-michel-vincent-corbeaux-and-rob-macwolf
Transcript
You’re listening to The Voice of Dog. I’m Khaki,
Speaker:your faithful fireside companion,
Speaker:and Today’s story is
Speaker:“It is a Great Comfort to Know One's Work is Appreciated”
Speaker:by Michel-Vincent Corbeaux, who is soon to self-publish his first poetry collection titled "From the Plume"
Speaker:and is also an admin
Speaker:for the Wildside Literature Telegram group;
Speaker:and by Rob MacWolf,
Speaker:recently published in When the World Was Young by the Furry Historical Fiction Society, and you can find more of his writing on SoFurry.
Speaker:Please enjoy “It is a Great Comfort to Know One's Work is Appreciated”
Speaker:by Michel-Vincent Corbeaux and Rob MacWolf I was in Lucky Jacques’s, down on St. O'Donnell street, of an afternoon,
Speaker:having a much needed brandy.
Speaker:I’d had a busy morning, let me tell you.
Speaker:It looked to be a busy evening as well:
Speaker:I needed to seek out offices of a prospective publisher or two,
Speaker:but it was still too early:
Speaker:all the editors and typesetters would still be busy themselves.
Speaker:My tranquil introspection was disturbed, however,
Speaker:by an argument carried in from the street outside.
Speaker:“Worries me that neither of you are taking this seriously, is all!”
Speaker:said the stag who shouldered his way to the table just behind my elbow
Speaker:to the hare and the cormorant that trailed in his wake.
Speaker:They were so clearly plainclothes police that they might as well not have bothered with the plain clothes.
Speaker:“We are taking it seriously!”
Speaker:insisted the cormorant as she signaled for a waiter.
Speaker:“You’re just wrong.”
Speaker:The hare took the seat in the corner.
Speaker:And yes, I know it is rude to eavesdrop,
Speaker:but the overheard conversation is one of the chiefest pleasures of a great city,
Speaker:at least among those that cost nothing,
Speaker:and it wasn’t as if I had anywhere to be just yet.
Speaker:Once they’d ordered
Speaker:—coffee and sandwich for the stag,
Speaker:onion quiche and whiskey and pineapple juice for the hare,
Speaker:sausage pierogi and a lager for the cormorant
Speaker:—the stag held forth once more.
Speaker:“This has the potential to become the kind of crisis that brings down a government!”
Speaker:“You say this based on a poem!”
Speaker:the hare replied.
Speaker:Which turned my curiosity to interest.
Speaker:“I don’t say it, it says it!
Speaker:It’s a clue,
Speaker:damn you!” “Allright!” the cormorant held up her wings like she was calling for silence among furious senators,
Speaker:“walk us through it then,
Speaker:because I don’t see it either.”
Speaker:“Thank you, I will!”
Speaker:The stag wore sharp, precise clothes and a bushy waxed mustache.
Speaker:He wore his trenchcoat ironed,
Speaker:and his antlers cut short and precise as if he might be called up to join a brigade at any moment.
Speaker:I couldn’t see what he pulled from his coat—not without abandoning all pretense of minding my drink and my own business
Speaker:—but I heard him slap it onto the table,
Speaker:and then read: "The Human Wage.
Speaker:He's given us a slip of paper To kill the Man upstairs;
Speaker:In screeching hues, there flashed the news —
Speaker:Yet no-one truly cares.
Speaker:Our lives will merely fade as vapor,
Speaker:When nothing left remains;
Speaker:Corroding shells in withered Hells
Speaker:Where hope is split from veins.
Speaker:veins." “Now tell me that doesn’t make your blood run cold!”
Speaker:he finished, then continued immediately so neither of them could say it didn’t,
Speaker:“A slip of paper to kill the man upstairs is this murder,
Speaker:obviously! The office was on the top floor, and the body was posed,
Speaker:post-mortem, to hold this ‘slip of paper’
Speaker:out of the blood on the desk. ‘He’
Speaker:gave ‘us’ this ‘slip of paper’ i.e. this poem, which means this murder was on somebody’s orders. Implies organization,
Speaker:a chain of command! ‘Us’
Speaker:and ‘our lives’
Speaker:imply a group, not a sole killer!”
Speaker:“So it was one of the mobs?”
Speaker:the cormorant finally got a word in edgewise,
Speaker:“they’re a concern, but hardly a governmental crisis.” “No, not a mob! Because ‘he’ didn’t just order Mr. DeLarynge’s murder, ‘he’
Speaker:gave them the slip of paper.
Speaker:Therefore part of the killing was making sure the poem, the explanation,
Speaker:was seen! Mobs, they don’t draw attention to their murders, least not like this!
Speaker:Leaving a deliberate
Speaker:and obvious clue means this death was to make a
Speaker:point, to send a message,
Speaker:and what a message: ‘no-one truly cares,’ ‘our lives will fade as vapor,’ and ‘nothing left remains!’
Speaker:Most damning of all, ‘hope
Speaker:is spilt from veins!’
Speaker:That is, hope is what comes of our killings,
Speaker:so we mean to continue them!
Speaker:That last line,” he snorted,
Speaker:“is a threat!” “A threat to what?”
Speaker:sniffed the hare.
Speaker:“Another murder, obviously!
Speaker:Look at the second verse: ‘our
Speaker:lives will merely fade as vapor’
Speaker:—haven’t the indolent young loudmouth types all been crying to heaven over updated artillery on the fortified northeast? ‘Corroded
Speaker:shells’ would be the gas canisters,
Speaker:announced for testing last month!
Speaker:And what was the late Mr. DeLarynge’s business?
Speaker:DeLarynge Foundryworks!
Speaker:Contracted to manufacture weapons for the army!”
Speaker:“It says, ‘Split,’ though.
Speaker:Not ‘Spilt,’” interjected the cormorant.
Speaker:“What?” “You said ‘blood is spilt,’ but that isn’t what it says,” she explained.
Speaker:“It says ‘blood is
Speaker:split from veins’”
Speaker:“Oh,” the stag stopped to consider,
Speaker:“ Well, that means close enough to the same that it changes nothing!”
Speaker:“In any case, some dissident students, no matter how murderous,” the hare shook his head,
Speaker:“don’t add up to a fallen government!”
Speaker:“If they’re funded and directed by a foreign power they do!”
Speaker:the stag gulped his coffee,
Speaker:even more ominously for the shocking lack of milk or sugar.
Speaker:“We all know what that pretend caesar across the river would love to do,
Speaker:if some moon-brained anarchists are emboldened enough to say, ‘well,
Speaker:we killed a warmongering robber baron,”
Speaker:he pitched his voice up, apparently in imitation, which still left him speaking at least an octave lower than anyone else in the room “‘well
Speaker:done us, but next must come the cabinet minister who signed the contract!
Speaker:The general who’ll use the weapons!
Speaker:The president who approved the plan!’
Speaker:Just the opportunity he needs, and then what follows?
Speaker:Chaos, and invasion!”
Speaker:“Even were your interpretation not
Speaker:laughably wrong, my friend,”
Speaker:the hare said, gently,
Speaker:“that would still be a reach.”
Speaker:“You see some other interpretation?”
Speaker:the stag harrumphed in the depths of his mustache.
Speaker:"Quite so." The hare cleared his throat and shifted in his seat,
Speaker:as if he had been sitting a certain way for listening
Speaker:and now had to sit a different way for explaining.
Speaker:"Now, you’re quite right that
Speaker:the position of the body holding the poem was deliberate,
Speaker:and that we are meant to find it.
Speaker:That it is therefore a message.
Speaker:But you've assumed that the important thing, to the killer,
Speaker:is the murder and the message is merely to explain it.
Speaker:But if that were so,
Speaker:then why not send a letter to the paper claiming responsibility,
Speaker:or hang up a notice board, or leave out pamphlets?
Speaker:There are a dozen
Speaker:safer and cleaner ways to do it
Speaker:if that is what he wanted.
Speaker:No, the message is not for the sake of the murder,
Speaker:the murder is for the sake
Speaker:of the message." "Get on with it,"
Speaker:growled the stag, who had a point.
Speaker:"Patience, my friend.
Speaker:friend." The hare was enjoying this.
Speaker:"Secondly, we need not yet assume
Speaker:more than one killer.
Speaker:It takes only one hand to write a poem,
Speaker:only one to cut a throat.
Speaker:I will grant, the poem says another decreed the killing—your hypothetical 'he'
Speaker:—but poems are not to be taken literally,
Speaker:and murderers are not to be taken at their word."
Speaker:"You think this was one killer, then?"
Speaker:said the cormorant.
Speaker:"Could this be done by one person?
Speaker:Yes. If so, would the sort of person likely to kill a complete stranger
Speaker:also be likely to write
Speaker:this poem? To need to express the kind of psyche that it expresses? 'Kill
Speaker:the Man upstairs' for example. You notice that 'Man'
Speaker:is capitalized, the same way one capitalizes 'God,'
Speaker:and would it not make sense to call Him
Speaker:'the Man upstairs?'
Speaker:So an intense religious obsession, perhaps
Speaker:anxiety that society has abandoned what he feels is sanctity, replaced it with godless industry.
Speaker:The result of which is the second verse, 'withered
Hells:' again the capital letter.
Hells:And the delusion that one’s own urges are imperatives
Hells:from some other party
Hells:is not uncommon, thus the killer thinks that ‘He’
Hells:gave this slip of paper.
Hells:Little realizing that ‘He’
Hells:is himself!" "So a fellow feels,"
Hells:the hare had built up enough momentum there was no stopping him,
Hells:"he has some vital message.
Hells:So strongly that it has overthrown his mind.
Hells:But, alas, 'no-one truly cares.'
Hells:He must make them care.
Hells:He must present the message in a way
Hells:that it cannot be ignored.
Hells:And to be honest he succeeded,
Hells:for here we are, talking about it.
Hells:We wouldn't be doing that if not for M. DeLarynge’s death."
Hells:"You think, then," the cormorant ventured,
Hells:"it was just a frustrated madman who wanted someone to listen,
Hells:and that’s the end of it?"
Hells:"A frustrated maniac, yes.
Hells:But the end of it?"
Hells:The hare gestured toward the stag with the handle of his fork,
Hells:"there I think the worthy inspector all too correct.
Hells:If they get away with this, why,
Hells:how long before they again feel they have something important to say?
Hells:It is not a question of if they will strike again, but when.
Hells:A grim prospect," finished the hare, though he clearly wanted to say 'fascinating' rather than 'grim.'
Hells:"Neither of you asked the question that's been bothering me,"
Hells:the cormorant stared into her empty glass.
Hells:"Why is it a poem?" "What
Hells:do you mean?" The stag was still grumpy. "Are we really about to discuss literary theory and the definition of poetry?"
Hells:"You hadn't noticed we already were?"
Hells:the hare interrupted, amused.
Hells:"No no, I mean…" the cormorant had to rush her words to get ahead of them and grab the conversational reins again,
Hells:"if it were just a manifesto,
Hells:or maniac ramblings,
Hells:then there's no need for it to be in verse.
Hells:Verse takes effort,
Hells:if someone writes it
Hells:they do so for a reason. So what was it?"
Hells:“You have a guess?”
Hells:It sounded like the stag was more prepared to consider this theory than the hare’s.
Hells:“Well, when you read it out in the office,
Hells:there was something about it that sounded familiar.
Hells:I couldn’t place it
Hells:until I smelled the lager.”
Hells:The cormorant lifted her glass. “That
Hells:took me back to Grandma’s kitchen,
Hells:to Grampa having a glass of beer in the afternoon while I did my homework on the kitchen table.
Hells:And to the record they’d play.”
Hells:“My darling light another taper
Hells:And sweep me up the stairs
Hells:To a hideaway, so fair and gay, For you and I to share.”
Hells:“Either of you ever heard that?”
Hells:When she apparently got no reply, the cormorant continued.
Hells:“It was very popular for couples, back in the day.
Hells:My grandparents danced to it at their wedding,
Hells:and they were about the same age as DeLarynge.
Hells:Look, whatever you think a poem ought to be about,
Hells:whether it’s a political statement or a reflection of psychology,
Hells:it’s still something
Hells:written by a specific person, to specific people.
Hells:Everything is there because someone chose it to be there, because
Hells:they thought it would mean something to
Hells:whoever it was for.
Hells:So if it matches
Hells:a sappy old romantic ballad,
Hells:then the writer meant it to.”
Hells:“You think you know why,”
Hells:the hare said, “I assume?”
Hells:“Well, the first thing I’d check would be,
Hells:is there a Mme DeLarynge?
Hells:If that was ‘their song,’
Hells:if the two of them are the
Hells:‘us’ and the ‘our’ the poem mentions,
Hells:then making what sounds like a bitter,
Hells:angry, despairing parody of it,
Hells:that might be because a wife or a mistress
Hells:found out about
Hells:some other wife or mistress.
Hells:I guess it could’ve been someone else—shouldn’t jump to the conclusion that the wife did it just because romance might be involved.
Hells:Isn’t unheard of for people to act on what they think is a woman’s behalf, to avenge her honor,
Hells:without even asking what she wants done.”
Hells:The cormorant finished,
Hells:“well, that’s where I’d start investigating,
Hells:anyway.” “Makes sense,” grumbled the stag as the hare flagged down the waitress and paid for their lunches,
Hells:“and it’s as good a place to start looking as any.
Hells:But if this is a secret society of anarchists after all, then-”
Hells:“Then you told us so, my friend. We know.”
Hells:The hare pulled on his coat.
Hells:“Back to work, then.”
Hells:I kept my face turned away
Hells:as they passed behind me.
Hells:I ordered another brandy once they’d left.
Hells:And I thought about Mr. DeLarynge.
Hells:“The doctors say I have a bad heart,”
Hells:was the first thing the old toad had said when he realized he wasn’t alone.
Hells:“It makes a man think,
Hells:to be told he does not have long to live.”
Hells:I told him that yes, in my experience that was so.
Hells:“In your experience, then,
Hells:do people wish they had never agreed to run the family business?
Hells:To have instead kept writing poetry,
Hells:gain skill until they could actually call themselves a good poet,
Hells:finally produce something beautiful and worthy?”
Hells:Perhaps not exactly in those terms, I assured him,
Hells:but more often than he might think
Hells:“Look at me,” he snorted,
Hells:“so old and apathetic that I just sit and chat with you, instead of
Hells:fighting or fleeing.
Hells:But then, who else is there to hear my last words?”
Hells:He looked wistfully out the windows, over the city,
Hells:a view too high for any other person to be more than a speck.
Hells:“I don’t imagine you can say who has
Hells:hired you.” I apologized,
Hells:it was a matter of client confidentiality.
Hells:A respectable businessman such as himself must know-
Hells:“Ah, of course. I quite understand.”
Hells:He tried to chuckle to himself,
Hells:but it came out as a disappointed sigh.
Hells:“And I suppose, given what I have made and sold these last years,
Hells:that you are not alone in making a living off the deaths of strangers.”
Hells:You see, sir, I said,
Hells:you are a poet after all.
Hells:“I was toying with the wording of something on that subject when you came in.
Hells:Instead of seeing to my work. Would
Hells:that I could have brought myself to abandon the wretched business altogether,
Hells:and could be remembered for something I actually believed in.”
Hells:He looked up at me sharply, then.
Hells:“Do you take last requests?”
Hells:I had to admit that I usually cannot.
Hells:Most things of that sort are beyond my capabilities.
Hells:“Ah. Well, I do not see how you could fulfill this one, at that.”
Hells:Might I at least hear it?
Hells:“If I were vouchsafed a request,
Hells:it would be that people read my poems. But then,
Hells:what could you do there?
Hells:Nobody wants to publish poetry, sir. Believe me I have tried.”
Hells:And I know I should have left well enough alone,
Hells:and yet I said: Well,
Hells:if it’s only some poems by some rich old fuddy duddy, you’d be right enough,
Hells:no interest there.
Hells:But poems by the victim of a shocking, unsolved murder?
Hells:He sat up at that.
Hells:One of which might,
Hells:who knows, secretly contain the clues to solve the mystery?
Hells:I saw excitement gleam in the toad’s eyes.
Hells:Why sir, the bookstalls won’t be able to keep up.
Hells:The talk in the cafes will be of nothing else, at least for a while.
Hells:He looked like an excited schoolboy,
Hells:who does not yet believe he’s being given a holiday.
Hells:“Does it not seem… cheap, and sordid, though?
Hells:I feel like a cheat,
Hells:dying just for attention’s sake.”
Hells:Well sir, I said, I’m afraid the dying is inevitable, now that I am here.
Hells:And even were I not, there is the heart condition you mentioned.
Hells:You may as well get as much out of the unavoidable affair as you can.
Hells:And that seemed almost to persuade him, so I pressed:
Hells:Perhaps, sir, you could select a favorite,
Hells:something cryptic
Hells:and ominous if you have it?
Hells:To whet the public appetite when the news breaks.
Hells:“Oh, oh indeed! I know just the one!”
Hells:he pulled a thick notebook, with pieces of scrap paper stuffed between the pages, from his desk drawer.
Hells:“You are an extraordinary assassin, sir.”
Hells:Thank you, sir, I smiled.
Hells:It is a great comfort to know one’s work is appreciated.
Hells:I finished my brandy.
Hells:The detectives were long gone.
Hells:The sun was setting as I left St. O’Donnell street
Hells:and went looking for a publisher with whom to leave,
Hells:anonymously, overnight,
Hells:the manuscript of poems in my inner pocket.
Hells:I have no doubt the public will appreciate them.
Hells:This was “It is a Great Comfort to Know One's Work is Appreciated”
Hells:by Michel-Vincent Corbeaux
Hells:and Rob MacWolf, read for you by Khaki,
Hells:your faithful fireside companion.
Hells:You can find more stories on the web at thevoice.dog, or find the show
Hells:wherever you get your podcasts.
Hells:Thank you for listening to The Voice of Dog.
