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 chicken-feed. 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 mache 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 them 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.
I first beheld a beautiful view of the old capital, shown from above like a map, but with every building clear and distinct. Pink and green buds on the trees showed this was springtime. I looked down into a local garden of justice where a fat magistrate fanned by a singing-girl sat on a doorstep. A man, woman, and child lay flat on the ground before him and nearby a policeman held a dish with two yellow dots on it. I knew these were clogs with toads on the tips, and that the family was being accused of extravagance and would be released with a small fine. I looked again and saw a little house by the effluent of a sewage canal. Two little women sat sewing on the doorstep, it was you, mother, and your sister, my aunt. Outside the fence a man in a punt, helped by a child, dragged a body from the mud. The bodies of many members of the honoured-guest-class were bobbing along the sewage canals. The emperor’s cavalry were setting fire to the south-eastern slums and sabering families who tried to escape. The strangest happening of all was on a hill outside the eastern gate. A man held the rope of a kite which floated out over the city, a kite shaped like an eagle with parrot-coloured feathers. A child hung from it. This part of the picture was on a larger scale than the rest. The father’s face wore a look of great pride, but the child was staring down on the city below, not with terror or delight, but with a cool, stern, assessing stare. In the margin of this screen was written The rebellion begins.
I only glanced at the other screens. Houses flamed, whole crowds were falling from bridges into canals to avoid the hooves and sabres of the cavalry. If I had looked closely I would have recognized your figures in the crowds again and again. The last screen showed a cindery plain scored by canals so clogged with ruin that neither clear nor foul water appeared in them. The only life was a host of crows and ravens as thick on the ground as flies on raw and rotten meat.
I heard an apologetic cough and found the headmaster of literature beside me. He held a dish with a flask and two cups on it. He said, “Your doctor thinks wine will do you good.”
I returned to the throne and lay down. He sat beside me and said, “The emperor has been greatly impressed by the gravity of your response to his order-to-write. He is sure your poem will be very great.” I said nothing. He filled the cups with wine and tasted one. I did not. He said, “You once wanted to write about the building of the new palace. Was that a good theme for a poem?”
“Yes.”
“But the building of the new palace and the destruction of the old capital are the same thing. All big new things must begin by destroying the old. Otherwise they are a mere continuation.”
I said, “Do you mean that the emperor would have destroyed the old capital even without a rebellion?” “Yes. The old capital was linked by roads and canals to every corner of the empire. For more than nine dynasties other towns looked to it for guidance. Now they must look to us.”
I said, “Was there a rebellion?”
“We are so sure there was one that we did not enquire about the matter. The old capital was a market for the empire. When the court came here we brought the market with us. The citizens left behind had three choices. They could starve to death, or beg in the streets of other towns, or rebel. The brave and intelligent among them must have dreamed of rebellion. They probably talked about it. Which is conspiracy.”
“Was it justice to kill them for that?”
“Yes. The justice which rules a nation must be more dreadful than the justice which rules a family. The emperor himself respects and pities his defeated rebels. Your poem might mention that.”
I said, “You once said my parents were useless to me because time had changed them. You were wrong. As long as they lived I knew that though they might look old and different, though I might never see them again, I was still loved, still alive in ways you and your emperor can never know. And though I never saw the city after going to school I thought of it growing like an onion; each year there was a new skin of leaves and dung on the gardens, new traffic on the streets, new whitewash on old walls. While the old city and my old parents lived my childhood lived too. But the emperor’s justice has destroyed my past, irrevocably. I am like a land without culture or history. I am now too shallow to write a poem.”
The headmaster said, “It is true that the world is so packed with the present moment that the past, a far greater quantity, can only gain entrance through the narrow gate of a mind. But your mind is unusually big. I enlarged it myself, artificially. You are able to bring your father, mother and city to life and death again in a tragedy, a tragedy the whole nation will read. Remember that the world is one vast graveyard of defunct cities, all destroyed by the shifting of markets they could not control, and all compressed by literature into a handful of poems. The emperor only does what ordinary time does. He simply speeds things up. He wants your help.”
I said, “A poet has to look at his theme steadily. A lot of people have no work because an emperor moves a market, so to avoid looking like a bad government he accuses them of rebelling and kills them. My stomach rejects that theme. The emperor is not very wise. If he had saved the lives of my parents perhaps I could have worked for him.”
The headmaster said, “The emperor did consider saving your parents before sending in the troops, but I advised him not to. If they were still alive your poem would be an ordinary piece of political excuse-making. Anyone can see the good in disasters which leave their family and property intact. But a poet must feel the cracks in the nation splitting his individual heart. How else can he mend them?”
I said, “I refuse to mend this cracked nation. Please tell the emperor that I am useless to him, and that I ask his permission to die.”
The headmaster put his cup down and said, after a while, “That is an important request. The emperor will not answer it quickly.”
I said, “If he does not answer me in three days I will act without him.”
The headmaster of literature stood up and said, “I think I can promise an answer at the end of three days.”
He went away. I closed my eyes, covered my ears and stayed where I was. My entourage came in and wanted to wash, feed and soothe me but I let nobody within touching distance. I asked for water, sipped a little, freshened my face with the rest then commanded them to leave. They were unhappy, especially Adoda who wept silently
all the time. This comforted me a little. I almost wished the etiquette would let me speak to Adoda. I was sure Tohu talked all the time to his nurse when nobody else could hear. But what good does talking do? Everything I could say would be as horrible to Adoda as it is to me. So I lay still and said nothing and tried not to hear the drone of Tohu dictating all through that night and the following morning. Toward the end, half his lines seemed to be stylized exclamations of laughter and even between them he giggled a lot. I thought perhaps he was drunk, but when he came to me in the evening he was unusually dignified. He knelt down carefully by my throne and whispered, “I finished my poem today. I sent it to the emperor but I don’t think he likes it.”
I shrugged. He whispered, “I have just received an invitation from him. He wants my company tomorrow in the garden of irrevocable justice.”
I shrugged. He whispered, “Bohu, you know my entourage is very small. My nurse may need help. Please let your doctor accompany us.”
I nodded. He whispered, “You are my only friend,” and went away.
I did not see him next day till late evening. His nurse came and knelt at the steps of my throne. She looked smaller, older and uglier than usual and she handed me a scroll of the sort used for public announcements. At the top were portraits of myself and Tohu. Underneath it said:
The emperor asked his famous poets Bohu and Tohu to celebrate the destruction of the old capital. Bohu said no. He is still an honoured guest in the evergreen garden, happy and respected by all who know him. Tohu said yes and wrote a very bad poem. You may read the worst bits below. Tohu’s tongue, right shoulder, arm and hand have now been replaced by wooden ones. The emperor prefers a frank confession of inability to the useless words of the flattering toad-eater
Unlikely Stories Mostly Page 9