The Big Book of Modern Fantasy

by The Big Book of Modern Fantasy (retail) (epub)

  I said I did not.

  He said, “A poet needs an adventurous, sensuous infancy to enlarge his appetites. But large appetites must be given a single direction or they will produce a mere healthy human being. So the rich infancy must be followed by a childhood of instruction which starves the senses, especially of love. The child is thus forced to struggle for love in the only place he can experience it, which is memory, and the only place he can practise it, which is imagination. This education, which I devised, destroys the minds it does not enlarge. You are my first success. Stand up.”

  I did, and he stooped, with difficulty, and tied the dark green ribbons round my knees. I said, “Am I a poet now?”

  He said, “Yes. You are now the emperor’s honoured guest and tragic poet, the only modern author whose work will be added to the classics of world literature.” I asked when I could start writing. He said, “Not for a long time. Only the emperor can supply a theme equal to your talent and he is not ready to do so. But the waiting will be made easy. The days of the coarse robe, dull teachers and dark room are over. You will live in the palace.”

  I asked him if I could see my parents first. He said, “No. Honoured guests only speak to inferior classes when asking for useful knowledge and your parents are no use to you now. They have changed. Perhaps your small pretty mother has become a brazen harlot like her sister, your strong silent father an arthritic old bore like the emperor Hyun. After meeting them you would feel sad and wise and want to write ordinary poems about the passage of time and fallen petals drifting down the stream. Your talent must be reserved for a greater theme than that.”

  I asked if I would have friends at the palace. He said, “You will have two. My system has produced one other poet, not very good, who may perhaps be capable of some second-rate doggerel when the order-to-write comes. He will share your apartment. But your best friend knows you already. Here is his face.”

  He gave me a button as broad as my thumb with a small round hairless head enamelled on it. The eyes were black slits between complicated wrinkles; the sunk mouth seemed to have no teeth but was curved in a surprisingly sweet sly smile. I knew this must be the immortal emperor. I asked if he was blind.

  “Necessarily so. This is the hundred-and-second year of his reign and all sights are useless knowledge to him now. But his hearing is remarkably acute.”

  * * *

  —

  So I and Tohu moved to the palace of the old capital and a highly trained entourage distracted my enlarged mind from the work it was waiting to do. We were happy but cramped. The palace staff kept increasing until many honoured guests had to be housed in the city outside, which took away homes from the citizens. No new houses could be built because all the skill and materials in the empire were employed on the new palace upriver, so all gardens and graveyards and even several streets were covered with tents, barrels and packing-cases where thousands of families were living. I never used the streets myself because honoured guests there were often looked at very rudely, with glances of concealed dislike. The emperor arranged for the soles of our ceremonial clogs to be thickened until even the lowest of his honoured guests could pass through a crowd of common citizens without meeting them face-to-face. But after that some from the palace were jostled by criminals too far beneath them to identify, so it was ordered that honoured guests should be led everywhere by a janitor and surrounded by their entourage. This made us perfectly safe, but movement through the densely packed streets became very difficult. At last the emperor barred common citizens from the streets during the main business hours and things improved.

  * * *

  —

  Yet these same citizens who glared and jostled and grumbled at us were terrified of us going away! Their trades and professions depended on the court; without it most of them would become unnecessary people. The emperor received anonymous letters saying that if he tried to leave his wharves and barges would catch fire and the sewage ditches would be diverted into the palace reservoir. You may wonder how your son, a secluded poet, came to know these things. Well, the headmaster of civil peace sometimes asked me to improve the wording of rumours authorized by the emperor, while Tohu improved the unauthorized ones that were broadcast by the beggars’ association. We both put out a story that citizens who worked hard and did not grumble would be employed as servants in the new palace. This was true, but not as true as people hoped. The anonymous letters stopped and instead the emperor received signed petitions from the workingmen’s clubs explaining how long and well they had served him and asking to go on doing it. Each signatory was sent a written reply with the emperor’s seal saying that his request had been heard and respected. In the end the court departed upriver quietly, in small groups, accompanied by the workingmen’s leaders. But the mass of new palace servants come from more docile cities than the old capital. It is nice to be in a safe home with nobody to frighten us.

  * * *

  —

  I am stupid to mention these things. You know the old capital better than I do. Has it recovered the bright uncrowded streets and gardens I remember when we lived there together so many years ago?

  * * *

  —

  This afternoon is very sunny and hot, so I am dictating my letter on the observatory tower. There is a fresh breeze at this height. When I climbed up here two hours ago I found a map of the palace on the table beside my map of the stars. It seems my requests are heard with unusual respect. Not much of the palace is marked on the map but enough to identify the tops of some big pavilions to the north. A shining black pagoda rises from the garden of irrevocable justice where disobedient people have things removed which cannot be returned, like eardrums, eyes, limbs and heads. Half-a-mile away a similar but milk-white pagoda marks the garden of revocable justice where good people receive gifts which can afterwards be taken back, like homes, wives, salaries and pensions. Between these pagodas but further off, is the court of summons, a vast round tower with a forest of bannerpoles on the roof. On the highest pole the emperor’s scarlet flag floats above the rainbow flag of the headmasters, so he is in there today conferring with the whole college.

  * * *

  —

  Shortly before lunch Tohu came in with a woodcut scroll which he said was being pinned up and sold all over the market, perhaps all over the empire. At the top is the peculiar withered-apple-face of the immortal emperor which fascinates me more each time I see it. I feel his blind eyes could eat me up and a few days later the sweet sly mouth would spit me out in a new, perhaps improved form. Below the portrait are these words:

  Forgive me for ruling you but someone must. I am a small weak old man but have the strength of all my good people put together. I am blind, but your ears are my ears so I hear everything. As I grow older I try to be kinder. My guests in the new palace help me. Their names and pictures are underneath.

  Then come the two tallest men in the empire. One of them is:

  Fieldmarshal Ko who commands all imperial armies and police and defeats all imperial enemies. He has degrees in strategy from twenty-eight academies but leaves thinking to the emperor. He hates unnecessary people but says, “Most of them are outside the great wall.”

  The other is:

  Bohu, the great poet. His mind is the largest in the land. He knows the feelings of everyone from the poor peasant in the ditch to the old emperor on the throne. Soon his great poem will be painted above the door of every townhouse, school, barracks, post-office, law-court, theatre and prison in the land. Will it be about war? Peace? Love? Justice? Agriculture? Architecture? Time? Fallen apple-blossom in the stream? Bet about this with your friends.

  I was pleased to learn there were only two tallest men in the empire. I had thought there were three of us. Tohu’s face was at the end of the scroll in a row of twenty others. He looked very small and cross between a toe-surgeon and an inspector of chick
enfeed. His footnote said:

  Tohu hopes to write funny poems. Will he succeed?

  I rolled up the scroll and returned it with a friendly nod but Tohu was uneasy and wanted conversation. He said, “The order-to-write is bound to come soon now.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you frightened?”

  “No.”

  “Your work may not please.”

  “That is unlikely.”

  “What will you do when your great poem is complete?”

  “I shall ask the emperor for death.”

  Tohu leaned forward and whispered eagerly, “Why? There is a rumour that when our poem is written the wounds at the top of our thighs will heal up and we will be able to love our masseuse as if we were common men!”

  I smiled and said, “That would be anticlimax.”

  I enjoy astonishing Tohu.

  Dear parents, this is my last letter to you. I will write no more prose. But laugh aloud when you see my words painted above the doors of the public buildings. Perhaps you are poor, sick or dying. I hope not. But nothing can deprive you of the greatest happiness possible for a common man and woman. You have created an immortal,

  Who lives in the evergreen garden,

  Your son,

  Bohu

  DICTATED ON THE 19th LAST DAY OF THE OLD CALENDAR

  THIRD LETTER

  Dear mother, dear father, I am full of confused feelings. I saw the emperor two days ago. He is not what I thought. If I describe everything very carefully, especially to you, perhaps I won’t go mad.

  * * *

  —

  I wakened that morning as usual and lay peacefully in Adoda’s arms. I did not know this was my last peaceful day. Our room faces north. Through the round window above the door I could see the banners above the court of summons. The scarlet and the rainbow flags still floated on the highest pole but beneath them flapped the dark green flag of poetry. There was a noise of hammering and when I looked outside some joiners were building a low wooden bridge which went straight across the maze from the platform edge. I called in the whole household. I said, “Today we visit the emperor.”

  They looked alarmed. I felt very gracious and friendly. I said, “Only I and Tohu will be allowed to look at him but everyone will hear his voice. The clothes I and Tohu wear are chosen by the etiquette, but I want the rest of you to dress as if you are visiting a rich famous friend you love very much.”

  Adoda smiled but the others still looked alarmed.

  Tohu muttered, “The emperor is blind.”

  I had forgotten that. I nodded and said, “His headmasters are not.”

  * * *

  —

  When the janitor arrived I was standing ten feet tall at the end of the bridge. Adoda on my right wore a dress of dark-green silk and her thick hair was mingled with sprigs of yew. Even Tohu’s nurse wore something special. The janitor bowed, turned, and paused to let me fix my eyes on his kneebands; then he struck his gong and we moved toward the court.

  * * *

  —

  The journey lasted an hour but I would not have wearied had it lasted a day. I was as incapable of tiredness as a falling stone on its way to the ground. I felt excited, strong, yet peacefully determined at the same time. The surfaces we crossed became richer and larger: pavements of marquetry and mosaic, thresholds of bronze and copper, carpets of fine tapestry and exotic fur. We crossed more than one bridge for I heard the lip-lapping of a great river or lake. The janitor eventually struck the gong for delay and I sensed the wings of a door expanding before us. We moved through a shadow into greater light. The janitor struck the end-of-journey note and his legs left my field of vision. The immortal emperor’s squeaky voice said, “Welcome, my poets. Consider yourselves at home.”

  I raised my eyes and first of all saw the college of headmasters. They sat on felt stools at the edge of a platform which curved round us like the shore of a bay. The platform was so high that their faces were level with my own, although I was standing erect. Though I had met only a few of them I knew all twenty-three by their regalia. The headmaster of waterworks wore a silver drainpipe round his leg, the headmaster of civil peace held a ceremonial bludgeon, the headmaster of history carried a stuffed parrot on his wrist. The headmaster of etiquette sat in the very centre holding the emperor, who was two feet high. The emperor’s head and the hands dangling out of his sleeves were normal size, but the body in the scarlet silk robe seemed to be a short wooden staff. His skin was papier mâché with lacquer varnish, yet in conversation he was quick and sprightly. He ran from hand to hand along the row and did not speak again until he reached the headmaster of vaudeville on the extreme left. Then he said, “I shock you. Before we talk I must put you at ease, especially Tohu whose neck is sore craning up at me. Shall I tell a joke, Tohu?”

  “Oh yes, sir, hahaha! Oh yes sir, hahaha!” shouted Tohu, guffawing hysterically.

  The emperor said, “You don’t need a joke. You are laughing happily already!”

  I realized that this was the emperor’s joke and gave a brief appreciative chuckle. I had known the emperor was not human, but was so surprised to see he was not alive that my conventional tears did not flow at the sound of his voice. This was perhaps lucky as Adoda was too far below me to collect them. The emperor moved to the headmaster of history and spoke on a personal note: “Ask me intimate questions, Bohu.”

  I said, “Sir, have you always been a puppet?”

  He said, “I am not, even now, completely a puppet. My skull and the bones of my hands are perfectly real. The rest was boiled off by doctors fifteen years ago in the operation which made me immortal.”

  I said, Was it sore becoming immortal?”

  He said, “I did not notice. I had senile dementia at the time and for many years before that I was, in private life, vicious and insensitive. But the wisdom of an emperor has nothing to do with his character. It is the combined intelligence of everyone who obeys him.”

  The sublime truth of this entered me with such force that I gasped for breath. Yes. The wisdom of a government is the combined intelligence of those who obey it. I gazed at the simpering dummy with pity and awe. Tears poured thickly down my cheeks but I did not heed them.

  “Sir!” I cried. “Order us to write for you. We love you. We are ready.”

  * * *

  —

  The emperor moved to the headmaster of civil peace and shook the tiny imperial frock into dignified folds before speaking. He said, “I order you to write a poem celebrating my irrevocable justice.”

  I said, “Will this poem commemorate a special act of justice?”

  He said, “Yes. I have just destroyed the old capital, and everyone living there, for the crime of disobedience.”

  I smiled and nodded enthusiastically, thinking I had not heard properly. I said, “Very good, sir, yes, that will do very well. But could you suggest a particular event, a historically important action, which might, in my case, form the basis of a meditative ode, or a popular ballad, in my colleague’s case? The action or event should be one which demonstrates the emperor’s justice. Irrevocably.”

  He said, “Certainly. The old capital was full of unnecessary people. They planned a rebellion. Fieldmarshal Ko besieged it, burned it flat and killed everyone who lived there. The empire is peaceful again. That is your theme. Your pavilion is now decorated with information on the subject. Return there and write.”

  “Sir!” I said. “I hear and respect your order, I hear and respect your order!”

  I went on saying this, unable to stop. Tohu was screaming with laughter and shouting, “Oh, my colleague is extremely unconventional, all great poets are, I will write for him, I will write for all of us, hahahaha!”

  The headmasters were uneasy. The emperor ran from end to end of the
m and back, never resting till the headmaster of moral philosophy forced him violently onto the headmaster of etiquette. Then the emperor raised his head and squeaked, “This is not etiquette. I adjourn the college!” He then flopped upside down on a stool while the headmasters hurried out.

  * * *

  —

  I could not move. Janitors swarmed confusedly round my entourage. My feet left the floor, I was jerked one way, then another, then carried quickly backward till my shoulder struck something, maybe a doorpost. And then I was falling, and I think I heard Adoda scream before I became unconscious.

  * * *

  —

  I woke under a rug on my writing-throne in the hall of the pavilion. Paper screens had been placed round it painted with views of the old capital at different stages of the rebellion, siege and massacre. Behind one screen I heard Tohu dictating to his secretary. Instead of taking nine days to assimilate his material the fool was composing already.

  Postal pigeons whirl like snow from the new palace [he chanted]

  Trained hawks of the rebels strike them dead.

  The emperor summons his troops by heliograph:

  “Fieldmarshal Ko, besiege the ancient city.”

  Can hawks catch the sunbeam flashed from silver mirror?

  No hahahaha. No, hahahaha. Rebels are ridiculous.

  * * *

  —

  I held my head. My main thought was that you, mother, you, father, do not exist now and all my childhood is flat cinders. This thought is such pain that I got up and stumbled round the screens to make sure of it.