by Gene Wolfe
I had been so entranced by the spectacle below me that I had not noticed when Hildegrin left the roof. Now he darted — if so large a man can be said to dart — into the crowd and laid hold of Apu-Punchau.
What followed I hardly know how to describe. In a way it was like the little drama in the house of yellow wood in the Botanic Gardens; yet it was far stranger, if only because I had known then that the woman and her brother, and the savage, were chant-caught. And now it seemed almost that it was Hildegrin, Dorcas, and I who were wrapped in magic. The dancers, I am sure, could not see Hildegrin; but they were somehow aware of him, and cried out against him, and slashed the air with stone-toothed cudgels.
Apu-Punchau, I felt certain, did see him, just as he had seen us on the rooftop and as Isangoma had seen Agia and me. Yet I do not believe he saw Hildegrin as I saw him, and it may be that what he saw seemed as strange to him as the Cumaean had to me. Hildegrin held him, but he could not subdue him. Apu-Punchau struggled, but he could not break free. Hildegrin looked up to me and shouted for help.
I do not know why I responded. Certainly I no longer consciously desired to serve Vodalus and his purposes. Perhaps it was the lingering effect of the alzabo, or only the memory of Hildegrin’s rowing Dorcas and me across the Lake of Birds.
I tried to push the bandy-legged men away, but one of their random blows caught the side of my head and knocked me to my knees. When I rose again, I seemed to have lost sight of Apu-Punchau among the leaping, shrieking dancers. Instead there were two Hildegrins, one who grappled with me, one who fought something invisible. Wildly, I threw off the first and tried to come to the aid of the second.
“Severian!”
Rain beating upon my upturned face awakened me — big drops of cold rain that stung like hail. Thunder rolled across the pampas. For a moment I thought I had gone blind; then a flash of lightning showed me wind-lashed grass and tumbled stones.
“Severian!”
It was Dorcas. I started to rise, and my hand touched cloth as well as mud. I seized it and pulled it free — a long, narrow strip of silk tipped with tassels.
“Severian!” There was terror in the cry.
“Here!” I called. “I’m down here!” Another flash showed me the building and Dorcas’s frantic figure silhouetted on the roof I circled the blind walls and found the steps. Our mounts were gone. On the roof, so were the witches; Dorcas, alone, bent over the body of Jolenta. By lightning, I saw the dead face of the waitress who had served Dr. Talos, Baldanders, and me in the café in Nessus. It had been washed clean of beauty. In the final reckoning there is only love, only that divinity. That we are capable only of being what we are remains our unforgivable sin.
Here I pause again, having taken you, reader, from town to town — from the little mining village of Saltus to the desolate stone town whose very name had long ago been lost among the whirling years. Saltus was for me the gateway to the world beyond the City Imperishable. So too, the stone town was a gateway, a gateway to the mountains I had glimpsed through its ruined arches. For a long way thereafter, I was to journey among their gorges and fastnesses, their blind eyes and brooding faces.
Here I pause. If you wish to walk no farther with me, reader, I do not blame you. It is no easy road.
APPENDIXES
Social Relationships in the Commonwealth
One of the translator’s most difficult tasks is the accurate expression of matter concerned with caste and position in terms intelligible to his own society. In the case of The Book of the New Sun, the lack of supportive material renders it doubly difficult, and nothing more than a sketch is presented here.
So far as can be determined from the manuscripts, the society of the Commonwealth appears to consist of seven basic groups. Of these, one at least seems completely closed. A man or woman must be born an exultant, and if so born, remains an exultant throughout life. Although there may well be gradations within this class, the manuscripts indicate none. Its women are called “Chatelaine,” and its men by various titles. Outside the city I have chosen to call Nessus, it carries on the administration of day-to-day affairs. Its hereditary assumption of power is deeply at variance with the spirit of the Commonwealth, and sufficiently accounts for the tension evident between the exultants and the autarchy; yet it is difficult to see how local governance might be better arranged under the prevailing conditions — democracy would inevitably degenerate into mere haggling, and an appointive bureaucracy is impossible without a sufficient pool of educated but relatively unmoneyed executives to fill its offices. In any case, the wisdom of the autarchs no doubt includes the principle that an entire sympathy with the ruling class is the most deadly disease of the state. In the manuscripts, Thecla, Thea, and Vodalus are unquestionably exultants.
The armigers seem much like exultants, though on a lesser scale. Their name indicates a fighting class, but they do not appear to have monopolized the major roles in the army; no doubt their position could be likened to that of the samurai who served the daimyos of feudal Japan. Lomer, Nicarete, Racho, and Valeria are armigers.
The optimates appear to be more or less wealthy traders. Of all the seven, they make the fewest appearances in the manuscripts, though there are some hints that Dorcas originally belonged to this class.
As in every society, the commonality constitute the vast bulk of the population. Generally content with their lot, ignorant because their nation is too poor to educate them, they resent the exultants’ arrogance and stand in awe of the Autarch, who is, however, in the final analysis their own apotheosis. Jolenta, Hildegrin, and the villagers of Saltus all belong to this class, as do countless other characters in the manuscripts.
Surrounding the Autarch — who appears to distrust the exultants, and no doubt with good reason — are the servants of the throne. They are his administrators and advisors, both in military and civil life. They appear to be drawn from the commonality, and it is noteworthy that they treasure such education as they have obtained. (For contrast, see Thecla’s contemptuous rejection of it.) Severian himself and the other inhabitants of the Citadel, with the exception of Ultan, might be said to belong to this class.
The religious are almost as enigmatic as the god they serve, a god that appears fundamentally solar, but not Apollonian. (Because the Conciliator is given a Claw, one is tempted to make the easy association of the eagle of Jove with the sun; it is perhaps too pat.) Like the Roman Catholic clergy of our own day, they appear to be members of various orders, but unlike them they seem subject to no uniting authority. At times there is something suggestive of Hinduism about them, despite their obvious monotheism.
The Pelerines, who play a larger part in the manuscripts than any other holy community, are clearly a sisterhood of priestesses, accompanied (as such a roving group would have to be in their place and time) by armed male servants. Lastly, the cacogens represent, in a way we can hardly more than sense, that foreign element that by its very foreignness is most universal, existing in nearly every society of which we have knowledge. Their common name seems to indicate that they are feared, or at least hated, by the commonality. Their presence at the Autarch’s festival would seem to show that they are accepted (though perhaps under duress) at court. Although the populace of Severian’s time appears to consider them a homogeneous group, it appears likely that they are in fact diverse. In the manuscripts, the Cumaean and Father Inire represent this element.
The honorific I have translated as sieur would seem to belong only to the highest classes, but to be widely misapplied at the lower levels of society. Goodman properly indicates a householder.
Money, Measures, and Time
I have found it impossible to derive precise estimates of the values of the coins mentioned in the original of The Book of the New Sun. In the absence of certainty, I have used chrisos to designate any piece of gold stamped with the profile of an autarch; although these no doubt differ somewhat in weight and purity, it appears they are of roughly equal value.
The
even more various silver coins of the period I have lumped together as asimi.
The large brass coins (which appear from the manuscripts to furnish the principal medium of exchange among the common people) I have called orichalks. The myriad small brass, bronze, and copper tokens (not struck by the central government, but by the local archons at need, and intended only for provincial circulation) I have called aes. A single aes buys an egg; an orichalk, a day’s work from a common laborer; an asimi, a well-made coat suitable for an optimate a chrisos, a good mount.
It is important to remember that measures of length or distance are not, strictly speaking, commensurable. In this book, league designates a distance of about three miles; it is the correct measure for distances between cities, and within large cities such as Nessus.
The span is the distance between the extended thumb and forefinger — about eight inches. A chain is the length of a measuring chain of 100 links, in which each link measures a span; it is thus roughly 70 feet.
An ell represents the traditional length of the military arrow; five spans, or about 40 inches.
The pace, as used here, indicates a single step, or about two and a half feet. The stride is a double step.
The most common measure of all, the distance from a man’s elbow to the tip of his longest finger (about 18 inches), I have given as a cubit. (It will be observed that throughout my translation I have preferred modern words that will be understandable to every reader in attempting to reproduce — in the Roman alphabet — the original terms.)
Words indicative of duration seldom occur in the manuscripts; one sometimes intuits that the writer’s sense of the passage of time, and that of the society to which he belongs, has been dulled by dealings with intelligences who have been subjected to or have surmounted, the Einsteinian time paradox. Where they occur, a chiliad designates a period of 1,000 years. An age is the interval between the exhaustion of some mineral or other resource in its naturally occurring form (for example, sulfur) and the next. The month is the (then) lunar one of 28 days, and the week is thus precisely equal to our own week: a quarter of the lunar month, or seven days. A watch is the duty period of a sentry: one-tenth of the night, or approximately one hour and 15 minutes.
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