Logorrhea

by John Klima

  Thank you for your kind attention,

  Saladin Davidos, Esq.

  Pococurante

  From the Book of Smaragdine, 212th Edition:

  A careless person has no cure, unlike a careless thought or animal. Calling a careless person a ‘pococurante’ or other fancy name will not, by the precision of the term, suddenly make the careless care ful. Once, a careless farmer living outside of Smaragdine lost his own name and had to take the name of his ox, Baff, much to the delight of the villagers (one of whom found the farmer’s name and used it as his own). A woman once lost her vagina and by the time she found it she had twelve children. Losing one’s shadow is perhaps the most common affliction of the careless, which explains why, on a hot afternoon day, you will find so many little dribbles of shadow in every lonesome crack and crevice. A lost shadow has no wish to be found, because, inevitably, it will just be lost again.

  But the truly careless—the person who has descended into a place that not many can understand—will lose much more than that. These truly cursed people can lose even a love so strong that it radiates like heat. The kind of love that creates laughter around even the simplest act. When enough love is lost to this kind of indifference or carelessness, wars begin—sometimes in lands far distant from the occurrence, but always these wars come home. Such effects are magnified depending on the status of the individual. Thus, when statesmen, when queens, when caliphs, become careless, they lose whole armies and people die on vast scales in foreign lands. The innocent taste sand in their mouths, not the green spring air of their native country. Their bones line the roads of places so far away and exotic that not even the wind through their skulls can say the names. A careless commoner often loses hate as well, even though such hate will replace itself indefinitely and the person therefore never realizes their own carelessness. But for this reason, many careful kings and queens find the hate of others and use it as if it were their own.

  Alas, a careless person has no cure, unlike a careless thought or animal. It is just the way of the world.

  Psoriasis

  ANYONE WHO HAS SEEN Psoriasis’s act for the Babilim Traveling Circus knows it is only matched by the equal and opposite reaction created by Eczema.

  Myths about Psoriasis’s act abound, but this is what eyewitnesses report: Psoriasis, so nicknamed by her late doctor father for the predominant condition of her formative years, dressed as a man with a fake mustache, in clothes similar to whatever the locals favor, sits in the stands with the audience while below Eczema enters the ring in her sultan disguise accompanied by helpers who carry several small boxes. Eczema begins her act, which consists of an insect re-creation of a mythical Smaragdine battle.

  At the same time, Psoriasis begins to complain about the act from the stands, in oddly modulated tones. The loudness and quality of this disturbance varies from city to city. Woven in with the complaints are phrases such as “The father of it is the sun,” “The wind carried it in its belly,” and “So the world was created,” all delivered in a peculiar singsong intonation. These phrases come from the fabled Emerald Tablet, attributed to the ancient alchemist Hermes Trismegistus.

  After a time, the people listening to Psoriasis experience a heightened sense of happiness, followed by a profound drowsiness. One boy of thirteen recounts that “I know I must have fallen asleep, because my next memory is of feeling something smooth in my left hand and finding a strange green coin there.”

  That Psoriasis attempts to aid in the audience’s enjoyment of her sister’s insect battle seems apparent. Whether this is by simple hypnosis or some deeper technique is unknown. What, if anything, the audience does while under this possible hypnosis is also unknown. However, in the weeks and months after seeing the performance, many people report intense shifts of emotion, visions, and a desire for the color green.

  Psoriasis does not join Eczema until the end of the act. That Eczema and Psoriasis are Siamese twins only becomes evident when they stand together and bow, and the declivity between them—that outline, that echo—tells the story of another act altogether.

  Semaphore

  WHEN TRUEWILL MASHBURN turned eighteen, he left the U.S. with forged documents and passed himself off as a thirty-something ESE teacher at a Costa Rican university. He’d always looked older than his age and at six-four with sandy blond hair and a Viking’s eyes and chin, people usually believed what he said. By the time he left Latin America at the age of twenty-two and headed for Europe, he’d hitchhiked through twelve countries, been a missionary, a doctor’s aide, and a bank teller.

  Now twenty-five, Mashburn found himself living in an abandoned semaphore tower on the banks of a Central Asian river that eventually wound its way down to the ruins of old Smaragdine and the tired modern city that surrounded it.

  He’d read about the semaphore towers while hanging out in a Tashkent library. They’d once been vital in Smaragdine’s epic battles against the dreaded Turk. Now they were just free apartments ripe for the taking, in Mashburn’s eyes.

  Mashburn took the book—The Myth of the Green Tablet—and headed south. By the time he found the towers, he was ready to settle down awhile anyway, having been hassled at half a dozen borders. He could fish in the river, exchange some of his limited cash for food in the nearby village, read the book he’d stolen, or just hang out with the locals smoking dope. A few times a week, the village women walked past, giggling and talking about him. He couldn’t understand them, but he knew what they were saying.

  It should have been perfect, but an odd sense of responsibility began to grow inside him with each day he lived there. He felt it in his chest every time he walked up the three stories of crumbling stone steps to stare at the tower a half-mile downriver that doubled his own.

  The book was to blame, even though the author seemed contemptuous of the subject. On some level, the more Mashburn read about the fascinating history of Smaragdine, the more he couldn’t help but feel an obligation to continue its ancient fight against the Turk. It didn’t make sense, and yet it did.

  Mashburn decided to become the true keeper of the tower. He removed the weeds inside and along the circular fringe. He did his best with his limited knowledge of drywall to repair the worst areas. He began to wear his tattered army surplus jacket all the time. He bought a pair of old binoculars from a villager. He even assigned himself guard duty, more often at dusk than during the day.

  At night, the tower looked less ruined and it was easier to imagine he was back in Time and that he might need to use the tower’s windmill-like semaphore spokes to warn of some danger.

  Then, too, Mashburn saw many strange things the longer he stood watch at night. Fish that bellowed at him from the water. Debris and bodies from some battle that had taken place many countries upriver. A man in a motorboat who looked vaguely American in a leather jacket and dark shades, a gun holster on his exposed ankle. Something was happening, Mashburn was certain. He just didn’t know what.

  One moonlit night just before dawn, he saw the most curious thing of all: a river cruise ship with several smaller boats pursuing it. When they caught up, what looked like a band of circus performers jumped on board: a couple of women dressed like caliphs, a snake charmer, a mime, and a fire-eater, among others. The battle raged as Mashburn looked on with mouth open.

  By the time the conflict had subsided, far to the south of his position, he couldn’t tell who had won, only that the boats remained empty and most of the river cruise crew was walking around on deck again.

  Sometimes Mashburn felt prematurely old from all of his travels, but in that moment, he felt both dumbfounded and oddly blessed.

  By midmorning, he had the semaphore spokes turning for the first time in two centuries and he was sending his message out across the water. He didn’t care if the next station was manned or not. That wasn’t the point.

  Smaragdine

  “IN THE VAST CITY of Smaragdine on the edge of a dying sea-lake, from which come palm trees and a wasting disease, t
he color green is much prized. It matters not where it is found, nor the exact shade. The cloth-makers produce nothing but clothing in green, so that the people of the city are always swathed in it. The buildings are painted in emerald, in verdigris, edged in a bronze that quickly turns. Even the white domesticated parrots that the denizens have such affection for—these birds they dye green. Year by year the lake becomes smaller and the river that feeds into it more of a stream. Year by year, the palm trees become yellower and fewer. Yet the people hold vast and expensive festivals in celebration of the arcane and the uncanny. There is a constant state of celebration. Yet also it is a point of pride for buildings to fall into disrepair, if at the limits of their disillusion there creeps into the corners of rooms, across the ceilings, some hint of green. Someday, Smaragdine will be as a ruin and the lake will be gone and the river with it. But, in the end, it will not matter, for even when the last water is gone, this city will still be rich and fertile in color. This is all the inhabitants ask. It is all they can hope for. I know, for I lived in Smaragdine for a time. I knew the calm beauty of its streets, the dyed-green water of its many fountains, filled with green carp. I knew the slogans of the leaders in their green cloaks. I knew, too, the feel of the hot sun and was blinded by the mirage of sand eclipsed by the shimmer of the ever-more-distant lake. One day, I will return and know once again the richness of that place by its devotion to its color. One day I will walk through those empty streets and know the very definition of madness.”

  —Told to one of Marco Polo’s men by a merchant selling green cloth in a Mumbai marketplace

  Sycophant

  THE YOUNG MAN who sat down beside the writer Baryut Aquelus in a Tashkent coffeehouse wore a black blazer over a green T-shirt and blue jeans. He had sallow skin, an open, round face, and thick eyebrows. His mouth was fleshy, as if he’d suffered a split lip.

  The writer thought he recognized the type. The first words confirmed it.

  “Are you—? Are you really—?” The rasp of a mouthbreather, along with the stain and smell of betel nut.

  “Yes.”

  He no longer bothered to smile or straighten his jacket when people came up to him. It had been a few years since he’d removed himself from the great, the smoldering, eye of fame, but he remembered its heat.

  “I’ve read all of your work, sir. Even Myths of the Green Tablet. A very brave book.”

  “You speak like a native Smaragdinean,” the writer said.

  The man looked away, actually blushed. The writer found this charming.

  “Thank you. I came there as a child. I know English. And French, too. A little. I read you in French, at first.”

  How long ago? He’d been out of print in France for at least half a decade.

  “That’s very good, um…?”

  “Oh—Farid. You can call me Farid Sabouri.”

  “Nice to meet you, Farid.”

  The notebook in front of him now seemed inert, useless. The thoughts welling up behind the pen receded into some middle distance, waiting for him to call them forth again.

  “Tell me, if I’m not bothering you,” Farid said, “how you came to write Myths of the Green Tablet.”

  “You mean you don’t know?” He’d meant it as self-deprecating but it came out vainglorious. “I guess I’ve told it so many times I expect anyone who wanted to know would know.”

  It had gotten him in trouble. Vague death threats from a bunch of doddering priests. A shorter stint at the university in Smaragdine than he would have liked. The Green Tablet not the gospel, not even vaguely true? He hadn’t realized the effect it would have when he was writing it—he just wrote it.

  “I know, but it’s different reading it in the paper.”

  “Well, if you insist.” Do I really mind that much? “I wrote it because I think that Smaragdine has suffered from its fetish for the color green. It keeps us looking at the past. I feel that, for the average Smaragdinean, the future is behind him. I mean, it’s practically fantastical. Medieval. Alchemy? Airy-fairy about earth-air-water-fire? No offense,” he added, noting the intent look on Farid’s face.

  Farid smiled, revealing yellowing teeth, and said, “I am fascinated by the bravery in the act. To become a…a lightning rod for many difficulties.”

  “Yes, well…”

  Above them the fans swirled slowly and out on the street a steady procession of outdated vehicles used the worn street. The waiter came with two coffees.

  “My gift for our meeting,” Farid said. “Please, enjoy it.”

  “Thank you,” the writer said. And he was, actually, surprised. Usually the people who came up to him wanted something but offered nothing, no matter how trivial, in return.

  “So what brings you to Tashkent?” the writer asked.

  Farid did not look away this time. “I came to see you. I studied your work at university. I’ve studied your life, too.”

  Oh no, the writer thought, here it comes. Sometimes he felt his personal life had become the size of a postage stamp.

  “And did I measure up?”

  “Oh, you are very brave,” Farid said. “Although I don’t know if you understand that.”

  “It’s kind of you to say,” the writer said, although Farid’s syntax seemed odd.

  Farid almost said something, stopped, bit his lip, leaned forward. “No, it’s the truth. It makes me weep a little, thinking about it. If you don’t mind me saying it. You’ve used your talent for things that don’t always make sense to me.”

  The writer tried to shrug it off with a chuckle.

  Is this where the conversation turns obsessional?

  “And here I took you for a bit of a sycophant, Farid. A bit of a hanger-on, as the Brits here like to say.”

  “Not in the least—you believe too little but know too much,”

  Farid said, and pulled out a gun and shot the writer in the stomach.

  Baryut had the odd sensation of Farid walking over him and past while he lay there staring up at the ceiling fan and people were running around screaming. There was no pain. Nothing so fast could really be painful, could it?

  Possessed of a sudden and terrible clarity, Baryut thought: What can I write in the next few minutes?

  Transept

  WHY CHURCH BROKE? That question all ask when get Barahkad? Though no many tourist now—just detective last week, bad circus week before. But I tell you—even drunk sitting end of bar give answer if you want answer—he say we run out money when no water. That man, head on table, see? He tell you merchants. Merchants of Barakhad break church because priests too big, too big. Or I, sir, I tell you Devil visit Barakhad when church of Smaragdineans building and break it.

  Or it could be that the architect’s plans were too complicated and they planned not one but three transepts, with gold leaf that wouldn’t flake off for the archways and brushes made from the tongues of hummingbirds to paint the column detail.

  What? Oh, don’t be mad. Just a little joke I like to play on tourists. So many of you think that our command of English is crumbling along with our infrastructure. But I went to university, even spent a summer at the University of San Diego on an exchange program, a long time ago. You’re lucky you bumped into me, my friend. That young man over there, for example—he doesn’t want to speak English anymore. His whole family died last year. Mother, father, daughter.

  But do you really want to know why the church isn’t “finished”? Why not get a drink and sit down. It won’t take long, but you might need the drink. Don’t worry, I’ll keep it simple. I know the names around here confuse foreigners.

  So: The real reason the church looks unfinished is that until recently we had a civil war in this country. Hadn’t heard of it? Well, we’re not in an area with anything of any value, really. Not anymore.

  First one side held Barahkad. They starved us and killed some of us and took some of us away. Then the other side took over. They starved us and killed some of us and took some of us away. Then the peacekeepers came t
o our country, although we never saw one in Barakhad, not once, and a coalition of countries so far away that none of us here in Barahkad had ever visited any of them began to use planes to bomb us. I believe your country participated in that effort.

  We already had little food, no electricity. Now when people walked down to the market, they might become splintered bones and shredded flesh and a stain of red on the roadside in a blink of the eye. We lost maybe half of the people in Barakhad during those months.

  Now that the bombs have stopped, we are doing our best. The priests who might have helped are gone. There has been no time to rebuild the church, my friend. We haven’t had time to rebuild many things, as you may have seen when you came into town.

  So at the moment the church is crumbling and overgrown with weeds. It’s green enough to make even a Smaragdinean happy. The north side of the transept remains one wall and a promise of a roof. No one likes a church where the wind can catch you up like the breath of God. No one likes a church with the rain on the inside. Except me, since that’s where I’m forced to live for now.

  Am I talking to you? Are we speaking? Are you hearing me?

  Vignette

  ONCE, A VERY LONG TIME AGO, an adventurer became a problem for the King of Smaragdine. Something to do with the king’s daughter. Something to do with the king’s daughter and wine and a dance hall. So the king decreed that this adventurer should be sent “on a long quest for the good of the Green.” The quest? To find the lost Tablet and bring it back to Smaragdine. The Tablet was in Siberia or Palestine or somewhere in South America or even possibly on the Moon, depending on one’s interpretation of the writings. Regardless, this fit the very definition of “a long quest.” Unfortunately for the adventurer, he had earned the nickname of “Vignette” because his adventures, although intense and satisfying in the retelling, were always short and occurred in and around the city.

  Vignette wasn’t very happy about the king’s decision, but a long quest was better than immediate death, so off he went. Through Samarkand and East Asia he traveled; up into Siberia and around Lake Baikal; down to Mongolia; across China to Japan; by sailing ship to India; a brief stop in North Africa; up into the Mediterranean; over to Greenland; doubling back to England; braving the trip to the New World for several storm-tossed months; finding nothing there and sailing briefly down to South America.