Senlin Ascends (The Books of Babel Book 1)

by Josiah Bancroft

  Before Senlin could begin his own approach, he was cut off by a swinging bustle of stiff crinoline. The bustle cage was attached to a young woman with rouged cheeks and bouncing ringlets of blond hair. She was pretty enough, but seemed cold and conceited. In response to her approach, the imposters stepped aside from the door, both bowing and scraping with dubious grace. Senlin recalled Finn Goll’s words: anything in a skirt floats.

  Soon as the pretty miss had passed through the warmly glowing glass doors, Senlin undertook what he hoped was a confident and resolute march toward the space between the guards, his head cocked high as a lord. But even as he approached, the gap closed, and he had to finally stop and recognize the imposters blocking him.

  “Not so quick, there, Master Long Shanks,” the larger guard said wryly. “There’s a two shekel safe passage fee to proceed into the Parlor.”

  In his most reasonable tone, Senlin said, “I noted the lady ahead of me was not taxed for her safety. It seems hardly fair that she be given an exception while I…” Senlin’s argument met a quick end as the shorter of the imposters drove his fist into his stomach. As Senlin doubled forward, a second rabbit punch followed the first.

  He had been naïve to think that such obvious thugs would respond to a rational discussion. There was nothing to do but learn the lesson, pay the two shekels and carry on.

  “There is a four shekel safe passage fee to proceed into the Parlor,” the larger guard said with mechanical grimness. The shorter guard smiled at Senlin greasily, as if he hoped Senlin might protest a second time.

  Senlin pulled himself straight and reached for his pockets. At that moment he would’ve emptied his boots if it meant getting free of that dank, beer-washed, and violent ground floor. The whole of the Tower yawned above him, and there he stood wallowing in the mudroom with the thieves and beggars. Muddit, indeed.

  The glass doors of the pillar opened onto a carpeted corridor that spiraled upward. It was like passing from night into day. The clean and empty passage was railed with brass and well lit by winking gas lamps. It reminded Senlin of the decor of an opera house he’d once visited while at college. The sweet-smelling air carried a deep, regular thrum that was almost womb-like.

  After a few minutes of ascending the carpeted helix, Senlin heard the murmur of a nearing crowd. Rounding a bend, he found himself joining a cue of travelers progressing at a shuffling pace. They were better dressed and more recently washed than most of the bedraggled people he’d encountered downstairs and outside. He was relieved he’d had the sense to buy a new suit.

  He noted that the woman in the crinoline bustle was nowhere to be seen, and he voiced this observation to the man queued ahead of him. The man, naturally gregarious, was quick to answer that she had been allowed to cut ahead. “Apparently,” the man explained, “there is a shortage of women for the scheduled play.” Senlin didn’t entirely understand this, but chose to carry on as if he did; there seemed little benefit to announcing his ignorance.

  Senlin’s new aquaintance was primly arrayed in a navy three-piece suit. His thin moustache was well groomed and waxed. He would’ve been a fashion plate if he ever appeared on the streets of Isaugh. He introduced himself as Mr. Edsel Pining. Senlin took him for a minor aristocrat.

  Pining inquired if this was Senlin’s first visit to the Parlor. And when Senlin attempted a reply, he swallowed at the wrong moment so that his words came out as a small grunt. He’d always been especially awkward around socialites. Their breezy manner only made him more nervous: their confidence sapped his own.

  “I only ask because you seem entirely too composed,” Pining said good-naturedly. “A man at peace, as it were. And here I am with my nerves in a knot, ready to run up the wall.” He bobbed forward when he spoke, his hands clasped behind his back.

  “I’d think a novice would be more excited than a veteran,” Senlin said, recovering his voice.

  “Not at all. You have no idea what you’re in for. It’s just a word to you: the Parlor. A paragraph in a book. A dot on a map. But once you visit the Parlor, you spend the rest of your life plotting a return.” Pining swept his hand along the greased temples of his dark hair. Senlin guessed Pining was about his age, though his years hadn’t translated into the same maturity. “Look at me. I’m giddy! I am not naturally so. In my home, I am a boorish, sullen invalid. I am an accountant. I have calluses on my fingertips from my abacus and pen. No, you can’t imagine how the Parlor transforms you, or allows you to transform yourself. This will be my fourth visit.”

  Senlin felt disoriented by their conversation, which was cordial and carefree. It seemed at odds with everything that had come before: the wretches at the Lost and Found, the crashed airship, Adam’s betrayal, and Finn Goll’s dire warnings about the Tower’s appetites and the ease with which it absorbed women. His gut still ached from the sucker punch he’d recently been dealt. Yet here he was, making small talk with a dandy. “Doesn’t it begin to bore?”

  “I promise, Mr. Senlin, it never bores. The plots are rewritten every month, the rooms redecorated, and the players, of course, are swapped about. I could visit the Parlor a hundred times and never get my fill. It takes only a little imagination. Having some wit certainly helps, but even a farmer would be entertained. It’s only a shame that the performances are so brief, generally a week. Then the play is over and we must return to ourselves.” He affected a pitiful look.

  Senlin wasn’t entirely sure what Pining meant. The Everyman’s Guide referred to the second floor of the Tower, the Parlor, as a theater district, one that had produced many fine acting troupes over the years. He and Marya had discussed taking in a show before retiring to the third level, the Baths, with its affordable rooms and numerous spas. The guide provided suggestions for analyzing plays and pointers on audience etiquette, but to save it from becoming immediately out of date, the guide offered very little by way of schedules or specific detail. Not for the first time since arriving at the Tower, Senlin felt unprepared. Yet, remembering Goll’s advice to try to blend in, to seek without being conspicuous, Senlin decided to do his best to appear unperturbed.

  Though he couldn’t imagine any play, not even the most sprawling epic, lasting a week. Surely, that was an exaggeration.

  The line inched onward. Pining prattled through his repertoire of humorous observations and uncolored philosophies, and Senlin, relieved to find that his companion required little assistance in the creation of small talk, was content to offer occasional encouragement by way of a smile. Before long, the upward spiral plateaued at the mouth of a curtained archway, and they found themselves in a level room that reminded Senlin of a theater’s lobby. They faced four ornately carved box offices, and beyond each stood a gleaming turnstile. Men in white coats and ash gray vests staffed the booths, which weren’t much larger than a casket. This was fitting because the ushers inside were as pale and waxy as corpses.

  Behind the uniformed men were four doors, the first marked with a brass letter “K,” the second an “S,” the third an “A,” and the final door with the letter “I.”

  “Those are the ushers of the Parlor. They tell you what part you’ll play, and explain the rules of the stage. Pay attention to the rules, Mr. Senlin. These things are tedious, but every cog has its purpose, right?” Pining said without a shred of real earnestness. He pulled on the stays of his collar and was called forward by an usher. Pining gave the man a cordial, but causeless, laugh. It was his way of lubricating the cogs, though it had little effect. The man’s expression was as dour as a bailiff's. For all of Pining’s enthusiasm for the Parlor’s charms, there was very little welcoming about the scene.

  Senlin was waved forward by another usher, who had a well-groomed skirt of white hair and furrow lines that seemed to begin at the bald egg-point of his head.

  The usher handed him a pocket-sized printed booklet. The book reminded Senlin of the basic primers his students used: rugged and unhandsomely bound with a serrated fore edge. “You will be playing the Butler,
sir,” the usher announced without disturbing the latitudes of his wrinkles. The front of Senlin’s booklet was stamped with the character’s name: Isaac.

  “I don’t understand. I’m not an actor. I would like a seat, perhaps something near the back...” Senlin said. The usher’s gaze was so blank Senlin couldn’t tell if the lengthy pause was meant to infer disbelief or loathing. The man was as expressive as a doorknocker. Senlin swallowed noisily.

  “You are both actor and audience, sir,” the usher said. “You can sit down, if you like. The rules of the Parlor are included in the back of the program; I suggest you familiarize yourself with them. Most important, sir, is that you only go through the doors that are marked with an ‘I.’ ‘I,’ for Isaac. Entering another character’s door will result in your removal from the Parlor.”

  “Could I just be removed now? I’m in something of a hurry to get to the Baths.” He wasn’t of a mind to attend the theater, no matter how novel and modern, while Marya was missing. Surely there would be some corridor for tourists passing through…

  “No one is removed to the upper floors, sir, only to the Basement. If you wanted to circumvent our entertainment, you should’ve booked passage on an airship,” The usher said dryly. “Secondly, we ask that you stoke the fires of the rooms you enter. Fuel has been provided, and I can assure you, all characters are required to tend the fires, not just those who’ve been given the role of the butler. Failure to keep the fires burning will result in your removal.”

  The usher asked for twelve shekels, which would’ve paid for a hotel room for three nights. Senlin was surprised and unhappy with the sum, but he didn’t see that he had any choice. He’d recently learned what dickering over entry fees won a person. He could turn back and return to the Basement, or he could pay and forge ahead.

  Paying required Senlin to remove his boot. His embarrassment would’ve been more pronounced if he hadn’t caught sight of his new acquaintance, Pining, removing his carefully polished slipper for the same reason. It seemed Senlin wasn’t the first to walk around on his bank. The discovery made him feel less clever.

  Senlin passed through the polished turnstile, but before he could open the door emblazoned with a brass “I,” Pining touched his elbow and said, “In a week you’ll be pulled from this adventure, and it will be like an alarm clock ejecting you from a wonderful dream!”

  Chapter Eight

  “Never let a rigid itinerary discourage you from an unexpected adventure.”

  - Everyman’s Guide to the Tower of Babel, III. II

  Despite the usher’s mysterious recitations and Pining’s enthusiasms, Senlin still expected to find rows of seats, upholstered in velvet, a stage, a proscenium, and curtain: in short, he expected a playhouse.

  Instead, he found himself standing at the threshold of a white-tiled hall that reminded him of the locker rooms at the boarding school he’d attended long ago. Cedar benches and stalls ran the length of the changing room. Dozens of humorless attendants in white strode about pushing racks of suits, carrying stacks of towels, rolling hampers full of polished shoes. Unlike the usher he’d just paid, these men’s suits held the rumple of labor. The air was heavy with steam and the aggressive camouflage of colognes, soaps, and hair tonics. He recognized the space for what it was: the backstage. He was backstage. But where was the stage? And who was on it?

  Senlin was adopted by an attendant who carried a neatly folded white towel with a pink soap cake squared atop it. His attendant had combed stone-colored hair and gaunt cheeks shaved to pinkness; otherwise, he exuded all the gentility of a bait man. Senlin was a little alarmed to discover that the man was armed. A single-shot pistol hung at his hip. A further glance at the other attendants in the room revealed that most were armed. Unaccustomed to seeing guns publicly displayed (not even Isaugh’s constable regularly carried one), Senlin took it as a sign that he was entering a more lawful section of the Tower.

  Senlin gave his unpolished attendant a cordial smile. The attendant did not so much guide Senlin as shove him toward an open bathing stall.

  Despite his anxiety, Senlin enjoyed the hot blast of the shower and the rough, sandalwood scented soap. It seemed the first bit of genuine luxury the Tower had offered him. He would’ve lingered under the steaming spray longer if his gruff attendant had not roused him.

  The attendant measured Senlin with a tailor’s tape while Senlin stood in his towel, then left and soon returned with a change of clothes: a butler’s tails and white starched dickey. Both fit, but neither flattered Senlin’s lanky build. He was an unconvincing butler. The red bow tie looked so absurd on him that Senlin immediately removed it. His attendant, however, quickly took up the discarded tie and returned it without gentleness to Senlin’s neck.

  “No changes to your costume, sir,” the steel-haired usher said. “Look to the rules in your program.” Slowly, the full implication of the usher’s words dawned on him: he was the actor and the audience. This wasn’t theater. This was a charade. This was a child’s game of make-believe. Of course there was no real audience. Who would want to watch?

  The attendant directed Senlin to pack his clothes and valuables into his satchel, which he did apprehensively. He loathed the idea of being separated from his money, train tickets, and guidebook, but he seemed to have no option in the matter. The fact that the operation was so efficiently run and included so much security gave him some hope. Besides, it seemed he wasn’t the only one to keep his money in his shoe, so how safe could it be?

  His satchel was then locked inside a heavy, rolling locker alongside the personal items of other men, all of whom seemed much more at ease with relinquishing their possessions. And why not? No one sitting in a theater worried that their coat was being stolen from the coatroom. These men had come to escape, to play, to act! They bantered and cackled and carried on like schoolboys, even though much of their hair was gray or gone. Younger men were present too, but they were generally a little fat, or awkward, or unattractive. It seemed that men who lacked a certain presence were selected by the ushers to play the butler. How fitting, he thought sourly, that he be among them.

  As he was dressed and primped by his attendant, Senlin read the program he’d been given. The program outlined the plot they’d be embellishing. The play took place in a mansion, so the set spanned multiple rooms, and included a dining hall, a study, a kitchen, and a dozen other domestic spaces. There were only four characters in the play: a wealthy husband and wife named Kerrick and Alice Mayfair, a young business apprentice named Oscar Shaw, and Isaac, the butler—his role in the farce.

  The players were expected to improvise a dialogue around the provided plot. The story was trite enough. The husband, Mr. Mayfair, is consumed with his business affairs. He thinks of his young partner, Mr. Shaw, as the son he never had, and spends much of his time grooming him for the business world. Meanwhile, Mrs. Mayfair, feeling neglected by her husband, has begun to flirt with Mr. Shaw. Mr. Shaw is forced to choose between his future as a businessman and the burgeoning feelings he has for Mrs. Shaw, a lovely, if not flawed, woman of many moods.

  Senlin was dismayed to discover that Isaac the butler would eventually have to decide whether to support the mercurial Mistress in her indiscretion or to reveal the potential affair to his employer, Mr. Mayfair. It was a nightmare. The plot was exactly the sort of tart melodrama he discouraged his students from reading. The subtext was obvious: love, pure and eternal, reigned supreme. Senlin did not believe in that sort of love: sudden and selfish and insatiable. Love, as the poets so often painted it, was just bald lust wearing a pompous wig. He believed true love was more like an education: it was deep and subtle and never complete.

  The usher grasped Senlin’s shoulder with a calloused hand, stirring him from his snit, and escorted him through the far end of the changing chamber into a carpeted hall. The passageway before him was reminiscent of something from a lavish hotel. Whitewashed doors were spaced regularly on either side of the hall, though unlike any hotel he’d e
ver visited, this hall had no corners. Rather, it stretched on and on until it gradually curved out of sight. The passage was filled with hundreds of men of varying shapes, but all dressed in the same black tails and starched bib that Senlin wore. The ubiquity of the red bow tie that itched at his neck made him feel less conspicuous but only more absurd.

  It was as if he had stepped between two mirrors and was now watching himself doubled and redoubled into a dimming infinity. The scene made him dizzy.

  His brusque attendant handed him a key and said, “Find an unlocked door in the hall. If it’s unlocked, the play inside still needs someone to play Isaac, the butler. The other players may already have begun the play. Lock the door behind you. Your key will open all the interior doors that are unmarked and the door you entered by. If you exit to the hall, you cannot reenter the play. If you exit through another character’s door, you’ll be removed from the Parlor. Do you have any questions?”

  A little stunned, but feeling in no position to quiz his handler, who seemed in no mood to answer anyway, Senlin shook his head.

  “Enjoy your performance.”

  Get through the Parlor. Get to the Baths. She will be there, Senlin told himself again.

  He felt the familiar cinching of his throat, the throbbing in his fingertips, the telescopic vision that announced the arrival of panic. There were too many people in the constricted corridor. He had to escape. He shouldered his way through the hall of milling, palavering butlers, none of whom seemed in much of a rush to find an open door. This was, after all, their holiday adventure! They experimented with theatrical accents and stage gestures; they blustered over which side they’d support once the play began. Love must win out! No, marriage is a sacred thing!

  He wanted to scream.