by John Boyne
An hour passed, and another, and another, and I was looking forward to being allowed to escape the festivities for my bed when Abrila approached my table and touched me on the arm, indicating that I should follow her. We left the hall together and ascended the staircase, making our way along the viewing gallery toward a smaller flight that looked down over a galley area. The further we progressed, the louder came the sound of grunting mixed with the sound of crying. My sister pointed toward our right, where, in the candlelight, I watched as Attila engaged in the marriage act with a girl who could not have been more than twelve years old. The girl was weeping as he took her, thrusting himself in and out as he stole his violent pleasure, and throughout his exertions he gnawed on a leg of lamb that had been almost cleared of its meat. Eventually, he threw himself forward with a triumphant cry before pulling out and pushing her onto the floor and then tossing the spent meat bone on top of her. She lay there, curled in a corner, as he marched away, barely taking a moment even to tie his tunic to cover his indecency.
“And that girl,” said my sister quietly, nodding toward the child who lay on the floor, tears rolling down her face, blood tainting the hem of her gown. “You know who she is, don’t you?”
I shook my head.
“The youngest daughter of Kreka.”
I swallowed in disgust and felt the food that I had consumed at the banquet churning in my stomach in revolt. Kreka had been an earlier wife of Attila, dead these ten years now. The child with whom he had been fornicating was his own daughter.
“So, Brother,” she said. “Are we going to let him do that to me? Or, worse, to the children that he might give me? Or do we take action?”
* * *
• • •
The dyes that I used in my dressmaking were composed from various ingredients, depending on the color required, but almost all required nightshade, sapphire, keese wing, the leaves of the silent princess plant, Octorok eyeball, swift violet, thistle and hightail lizard. In addition, for the red I had used for Abrila’s dress, I employed spicy pepper, the tail of the red lizalfos and four Hylian shrooms. Despite the abundance of component parts, the resultant mixture was as inoffensive to the nose as it was damaging to the body.
I was overwhelmed with fear as Abrila and I entered Attila’s bedchamber, for to be discovered there would have led to me being put to death in the most creative fashion, but I summoned the courage to follow, carrying a vial of the poisonous liquid in the pocket of my tunic. The room itself was enormous, the bed large enough to fit four or five people, and rumor had it that he took advantage of its size frequently when he was in the palace.
On a table in a corner sat a flagon of wine and two cups.
“There,” said Abrila, nodding toward the jug. “Pour it in.”
I took the vial from my pocket and walked slowly toward the table, glancing back time and again toward the door in case one of the Hun soldiers entered, but there was no one standing guard outside, as all the men were still enjoying the revelry taking place in the great hall. Uncorking the small glass bottle, I held it aloft, but something prevented me from following her instructions.
“I can’t,” I said, turning to my sister.
“You can. Just do it. We don’t have much time.”
I tried, I truly did. But this was not like the time I had discovered her being raped by that pig of a boy. My actions that day had been spontaneous and he had deserved to have his skull caved in. This, on the other hand, was an act of premeditated murder. I shook my head and stepped away.
“Give it to me, then,” hissed Abrila when she saw my hesitation, grabbing the vial off me and emptying it quickly and without any sign of remorse into the jug, lifting the vessel to swirl it around so the dye would be evenly dispersed in the liquid. “Good,” she said then, smiling in satisfaction as she walked toward the door. “Come on, Brother, I am saved.”
She returned to the wedding party then, while I stepped outside into the night air, questioning how culpable I was for this deed. True, I had not poured the toxic mixture in myself, but I had provided it and allowed the act to happen before my eyes. I could hardly claim innocence and the gods saw all.
The next morning, the palace came alive to a great cry of consternation. Abrila had run screaming from her marriage bed after waking to find her new husband dead beside her, having choked on his own blood. As the men took the body for burial and wept that they had lost the greatest Hun who ever lived, the women surrounded his bride to offer comfort in her loss. When she caught my eye, however, I saw the hint of a smile upon her face and she nodded, as if to acknowledge my complicity in her actions. Her cold-heartedness unsettled me and later that day, when I returned to my workshop, I found that, for once, the urge to create was lost to me.
AFGHANISTAN
A.D. 507
WHENEVER MY SPIRITS were low, I made my way into the barren wasteland of the Bamiyan Valley, where I felt a certain intimacy with the sandstone mountains surrounding the basin of our town. As a boy, when I first grew interested in masonry, I spent most of my time there, selecting blocks of stone that had fallen from their moorings and using my hammer and chisel to create replicas of animals, people or whatever strange fantasies appeared in my mind.
Often, my ideas emerged directly from my dreams—a boy in shackles; another climbing a rope into the sky; a boat overturning on a stormy sea—and I would wake with the images pulsating so vividly through my mind that re-creating them in stone seemed almost as necessary to me as breathing.
My workshop was thriving now, my order book filled with commissions for religious icons, usually statues of the Buddha, which could be placed in a doorway to ward off evil spirits. Soon after the dramatic events of my sister’s marriage, my cousin, Hakang, began to look after the financial side of my business so I could concentrate exclusively on my craft, a fine arrangement since he was skilled with numbers while I was not.
Perhaps it was a combination of both our talents, however, that led to my reputation growing further afield and to an unexpected summons to the palace of Vārāha Rilna, where I was offered an opportunity that was as intimidating as it was exciting.
A messenger arrived unexpectedly one morning with instructions that I was to ride with him to the city, where the Sultan wished to meet with me. What could a man as great as he want with one as simple as I, I wondered? But of course I had no choice but to obey and when I arrived in the city after several hours’ riding, I was brought to a bath-chamber where four young women waited to wash me, a most embarrassing ritual but one which was deemed necessary, as the messenger said that I smelled like a donkey who had been rolling in its own filth for a week and that to present myself before His Majesty in such a disgusting manner would be the gravest of insults.
The women removed my clothes and led me toward a deep bath. Steam rose from the surface of the water, infused with the most intoxicating perfumes, and it was a relief to submerge myself beneath its dark surface. I had not received the touch of a woman since my wife had been killed and I found myself torn between desire and embarrassment as the women removed their clothes, too, stepping into the bath with rough sponges to rid my skin of the dirt and dust of the road. My lust betrayed itself easily but they seemed immune to my discomfort and, when I was eventually clean and dry again, they dismissed me as if I had been of no importance, just another priapic visitor, albeit one who had not tried to molest them.
Dressed in fresh clothes, I was led into the receiving chamber, my body scented with exotic oils and my hair pressed slick against my head, and fell immediately to my knees to kiss the floor, holding this position until I was given permission to rise. When that moment came, I found myself too intimidated to look directly at the Sultan himself, keeping my focus somewhere around his chest area, while trying to ignore a pair of monks standing at his right hand, one of whom was smirking at my obvious uneasiness.
“You
r reputation has reached our ears,” said the Sultan, who was short and squat with an extraordinary pile of yellow hair that sat in a pyramid formation on the top of his head, culminating in a peak that looked as if it might be sharp to the touch. He lifted a bunch of grapes from a bowl and examined them for a moment before tossing them to a young boy seated at his feet on a turquoise pillow. The child snipped a few off with a pair of sharp silver scissors, tasted a handful, did not die instantly, and threw them back to his master, who ate a few noisily, masticating them between his teeth. “They say that you are the finest stoneworker in the region and have crafted many beautiful Buddhas for your neighbors.”
I thanked him for his kind words and agreed that yes, I believed I had some skill in this area.
“Your father works with stone, too?” he asked me. “You have followed in his footsteps?”
I shook my head. “My mother, Your Majesty.”
“Your mother?” he repeated, sitting forward in surprise.
“Naturally, not as an occupation,” I said, correcting myself. “But she has always been skilled with stone and chisel and she taught me proficiency as a child.”
“Most peculiar.”
“In another world, she might have been a fine mason,” I added.
“Thankfully, we do not live in such a place,” he grunted, waving this observation away. “Let us speak no more of women. I was asking about your father. What sort of man is he?”
“He’s a soldier, Your Majesty,” I replied. “Or, rather, he was a soldier.”
“He’s dead?”
“No, but having spent a lifetime fighting, his body begins to betray him. He has taken to his bed, where my mother and aunt wait upon him and are martyrs to his every whim.”
“He is a difficult patient?”
“A very difficult patient, Your Majesty.”
The Sultan nodded and considered this for a moment. “Still, he must be proud of you,” he remarked, and I decided not to admit that my father had, in fact, little regard for my work, simply bowing my head in agreement, at which point he introduced me to the older of the two monks who stood by the throne, a man named Sanavasi, who walked forward now in tiny, pitter-patter steps that reminded me of a small duckling. He pressed his hands together, closed his eyes and bowed before me and I mirrored the greeting.
“It pleases us to commission a statue of Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha to be built into the rockface of the mountains in the Bamiyan Valley,” said Sanavasi in a voice that was so high I wondered whether those parts that made him a man had been removed at a young age. “It pleases us to invite you to take charge of this project. It is to be a birthday gift for the Sultan’s wife and in honor of his fourteen children.”
I looked at him in surprise. It was true that all of my work to date had been constructed from stone taken from the valley, but it had always been my practice to transport large blocks to my workshop, where I would create my idols. I had never even conceived of carving images into the rockface itself. Still, there was no reason why such a thing could not be done and I found the idea intriguing.
“Am I to think that the statue would be visible to those who pass by the mountain?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“A statue somewhat larger than a man, then. Somewhere for travelers to rest and pray?”
“Not quite,” he replied, in a perfect soprano. “It pleases us to imagine a statue so enormous that it could be seen from a great distance. In doing so, it would show our devotion to the Buddha, may his name be remembered forever in glory, and become a source of great inspiration to our people.”
I considered it. “How big are you thinking?” I asked.
“Imagine one hundred and twenty men standing atop each other,” said the Sultan, rising from his throne now, thrusting his hand beneath his robes and scratching his manhood. When he was done, he reclaimed his throne and held the same hand out for one of his dogs, who came and licked it hungrily.
I stared at him, uncertain that I understood him correctly. I had never heard of such a structure before. The tallest statue I had carved to date had been only twice my own height, and even that had taken some considerable effort. To make a statue sixty times those dimensions would be an astonishing feat.
“I hope you are not going to say that it is impossible,” said the Sultan, narrowing his eyes.
“No, Your Majesty,” I replied, even though I thought that it might be the case. “However, for such an edifice, I could not possibly work alone. I would need many men to work under my command, obedient to my orders, while I designed and supervised its construction.”
“How many men?” asked the Sultan.
“At least forty,” I said, plucking a number from thin air, uncertain whether he would laugh at my request or not.
“It pleases us to afford you this number,” said Sanavasi, so quickly that I assumed he’d already thought this far ahead and would have offered me more, had I asked for them. “The statue you create will survive through the ages and the name of our great Sultan will be spoken of with reverence by children many centuries from now. We thank you.”
At this point, the Sultan dismissed me and Sanavasi led me into a smaller room nearby, where we discussed the logistics of the project, the time it would take to complete and my payment. It was a sizeable amount, but more important than this was the honor that they were granting me. When I left the palace a few days later, I was determined to create the greatest statue that the world had ever seen.
* * *
• • •
The first months on the project were the most difficult. It took time for the scaffolding to be erected and for the sanding down of the surface to be completed, a process that made the stone flake, which in turn led to many of the workers coughing up blood as they dug deeper into the rock. I spoke to Sanavasi about this, who declared that anyone who died during the creation of the Buddha would surely be taken directly to heaven on the wings of an angel in gratitude for their sacrifice, a response that did not seem a great reward to the men when I passed it on to them. Alerted to the disquiet, Sanavasi sent soldiers to patrol the site, ensuring that the men worked even harder.
As the statue began to take form, I directed operations from a group of huts that had been erected at the foot of the mountain. Hakang continued to assist me and, as well as keeping a careful account of the daily costs, he ensured that my sketches and plans for each different part were carefully numbered and filed. But as I was the only designer, I struggled to keep up with the pace of the work and worried that it would not be finished on time. As the Sultan had remarked on my last morning at Vārāha Rilna that any delay would be met by the forfeiture of my head, I had good reason to want everything completed by the agreed date.
To an outsider, therefore, it might have seemed like a stroke of great fortune when a young man named Peren arrived one morning in search of work, but the truth was that his appearance, innocuous as it originally was, would prove the catalyst for the chain of events that would dominate the next decade of my life and lead to more betrayal, bloodshed and grief than I could ever have possibly imagined. If I could return to that day, I would have stood by the entrance to my hut and, at the moment of his first appearance, slapped his horse to turn it around before sending him directly back to the town that had spawned him.
He was an exceptionally handsome young man with thick dark hair and bright blue eyes, and had grown up further east, toward Kamboja. Word had spread from village to village of the Sultan’s commission, and he had been drawn toward it by a passion for working with stone. When we first met, however, he shocked me by declaring that he did not actually believe in Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha—he credited no supernatural entity or deity for our existence—and saw our work as having only an artistic value, not a spiritual one. I had never encountered anyone who would dare to utter such blasphemous remarks and, while my init
ial instinct was to invite one of the soldiers in to draw his pulwar and decapitate him on the spot, Hakang, who had been seated in the corner of the workshop, watching the young man intently as he spoke, was more gracious and asked him to wait outside while he discussed the matter with me in greater detail.
“Men are different in that part of the country, Cousin,” he told me, laying a hand on my arm, for I had grown light-headed with rage. “They do not all believe as we do.”
“But would it not be a sacrilege to permit an infidel to work on the statue?” I asked. “What if someone discovered his heresy and word got back to Sanavasi or, worse, to the Sultan himself? We would all lose our heads.”
Hakang glanced out through the open door to the valley, where Peren was seated on the ground, his head thrown back in the sunshine and his eyes closed. Who did he think provided those glorious rays, I wondered, if not the divine Buddha? A moment later, the boy removed his tunic to reveal an impressively muscular frame, carved as fluently through his skin as the stone we worked on. While I turned away in contempt for both his atheism and narcissism, Hakang seemed captivated and continued to stare at Peren with an expression on his face that I had never seen before. A moment later, he lifted his crutches and carried himself to the hut’s entrance, where he called out to our visitor, inviting him back inside.
“Show us what you can do,” he said, picking up a tooth chisel, a rondel and a carving hammer and nodding in the direction of a block of stone some three feet in height and two feet in width. “If you can discover something beautiful within the stone, then my cousin might think you worthy of a position here.”