Senlin Ascends (The Books of Babel Book 1)

by Josiah Bancroft

  The thought of bursting into some strange room unnerved him, but not so badly as the hall of butlers. He tried a door at random and found it locked. He rattled another; it snubbed him, too. The next was no different. The sweat on his palm became a lubricant, and the doorknobs began to slip under his grip. His distress worsened with each rebuff. For a moment, he stood outside himself, watching as this frenzied, willowy fool wrenched doorknob after doorknob.

  His doppelgangers grumbled and threw their chins at him as he squeezed past. He bumped them against the wainscot and the gold leafed wallpaper without apology. He couldn’t help himself. He was being driven mad, not just by the familiar spasms of anxiety, but by the thought that Marya might be behind any one of these doors, acting in a play where she was one man’s wife and another man’s lover. He grasped the next doorknob as if he meant to strangle it.

  It turned. He rushed inside and swiftly locked the door behind him. The silence was wonderful.

  He stood at the threshold of a kitchen. It was as if he had walked through the backdoor of someone’s house. Split logs lay in a neat pyramid beside a potbelly stove. Nets filled with gourds and onions dangled from exposed square rafters overhead. Jarred preserves glowed brightly in the light of an unshaded oil lamp. The lamp also lit an oddly placed brass nub fixed high on the wall. Senlin was quickly distracted from this oddity by the ham. The ham, pinned with bright cherries, sat on an ornate platter on the servant's table. The aroma of wood smoke, cloves, pork, and seasoned iron warmed the air. It was undeniably delightful. And peaceful. He could hardly believe he was still in the Tower of Babel.

  He stoked the fire and refilled the cast iron kettle from a sturdy, green faucet. It was an automatic act; water was always on the boil in his cottage back home, ready at a moment’s notice for a cup of tea. The pipes gurgled and coughed like an old asthmatic. The domestic chore comforted him. The splatters of grease on the stove made him think of breakfast: griddle cakes, stewed apples, and greasy kippers snapping in the pan. He was hungry. No, he was more than hungry; he was ravenous. He abandoned his manners and pulled a thick piece of greasy bark from the bronze ham. Eating the strip in one crude bite, he returned for another, then a third. He chewed and panted and chewed again. He gorged himself, standing over the ham like a vulture, so happy to be alone. The salted meat stung his lips, which were cracked from thirst. He took a teacup from a hook and filled it from the faucet, drinking and moaning with relief. Once he’d scarfed down as much meat as he could stomach, he wrapped a few more pieces in a cloth napkin and slipped the parcel into his pocket.

  The porcelain teacup in his hands caught his attention, though it took him a moment to realize why. Its lip was painted with a quaint garland of dogwood blossoms. Just a few months earlier, Marya, in the process of melding their homes, had unpacked a straw-filled crate of china painted with a similar pattern. Her set was a family heirloom, a gift handed down from her grandmother on their wedding day. At the time, Senlin had observed several pieces of her set were missing, and, inspired by a desire to please and also by a preference for completeness, he had offered to locate replacements.

  Marya had thanked him and tugged at his neck to kiss some softness into his expression. (He wondered now: Did he always scowl, even when they were alone?)

  “The gaps are a part of the set, too,” she’d said. “You can’t replace them. I know how each piece was broken or lost. I broke a plate myself when I was nine. Now I’m an immortal part of the pattern. I’ll take my gaps, thank you.” She winked and pressed her tongue behind her upper lip. It was a face she had sometimes pulled in the classroom, many years earlier, and recalling it made him smile fondly.

  No, he did not always scowl.

  Senlin slumped into a chair in the warm sham-kitchen and buried his face in his hands.

  Chapter Nine

  “Inevitably, invariably, eventually you will discover you are unprepared to make an informed choice. When in doubt, say, Yes. Yes is the eternal passport. Yes is the everlasting coin.”

  - Everyman’s Guide to the Tower of Babel, I. XII

  The obnoxious clanging of a bell woke him. He was surprised to discover he’d fallen asleep. One bell, in a bank of many mounted over the stove, jerked up and down, pulled by a cord that disappeared into the wall. Reflexively, he leapt toward the door beneath the bells, still clutching the teacup he’d been meditating upon.

  He entered a long dining hall which, except for a complete lack of windows, could’ve been transplanted from a provincial mansion. A parliament's worth of high-back chairs ran the length of a dining table that gleamed from a recent polish. Brightly painted shields hung in the spaces between tapestries on the wall. Several more of the brass nubbins were set high on the walls. Perhaps they were some sort of air valve? A wide fireplace seethed with enough coals to roast a boar. Though the room was empty, Senlin heard the muffled echo of voices in an adjoining room.

  Deciding to avoid the other actors in the farce as long as possible, Senlin went to the rack of firewood, selected two quartered logs of wood, and angled them carefully upon the grate. He couldn’t tell which direction the voices came from. Whoever it was, they sounded passionate, though whether the voices were raised in amusement or anger, he couldn’t say. He was still groggy from his nap. He wondered how long he’d slept. Had the play already begun? He had expected some sort of introduction or preamble. He pulled at the bowtie unconsciously and wondered if he shouldn’t just hole up in the kitchen and wait for the melodrama to run its course.

  One of the dining hall’s many doors flew open, and a woman in a formal hoop-gown dashed in with her teeth bared in frustration or disgust, he couldn’t tell which. At first, she seemed unaware of Senlin, who stood frozen like a rabbit. When she spotted him, she covered her gritted teeth with an unconvincing smile.

  “Isaac, where is our tea?” she asked. Beyond the open door, two men’s voice volleyed back and forth intensely. “Didn’t you hear me ring for you?”

  It took Senlin a moment to remember he was Isaac. “Yes,” he said, feeling a little galled. He was used to being the one who rang the bell to call the children in. He’d not spent six years at university only to become some stranger’s imaginary manservant. But, wishing to avoid an argument, he forced himself to respond in character, though without a shred of enthusiasm for the part. “It’s not ready.”

  She closed the space between them and he saw her cheeks were flushed. Her hair, dark as a wet slate, was styled high on her head. Her complexion was the caramel color common in the south of Ur. Her charcoal eyes and thick eyebrows were striking, but not in a way that suited the frilliness of her peach-colored dress. She looked like an over-frosted cake. The effect reminded him of how easily a pleasant work of art could be overwhelmed by a glamorous frame. The neckline of her dress was low and crowded.

  She took the teacup from him, peered into it and then turned it upside down since it was empty. She gave him a disappointed look and foisted the cup back on him. “Leave the tea for the moment. My husband and Mr. Shaw are arguing in the study. I think it would help to have a calming presence in the room.”

  Senlin was confused by her theatrics. She seemed physically upset, frightened almost, yet she referred to the other men by their character’s names. Perhaps she was just a talented actress. It occurred to him that not everyone in the Parlor was the amateur he was. “What should I do?”

  She flung her hands out in a shooing gesture; it seemed more appropriate for steering a wayward chicken than a man. “Just go skulk in the study!” She had slipped out of character; her accent was suddenly rural. Recovering quickly, she concluded with a more staid, “Please.”

  Snatching the empty teacup from him, she began using it as a prop, drinking air from it with her pinky finger thrown out. If the act was meant to compose her or convince him that she was composed, it failed. The cup clattered noisily upon the saucer when she lowered it.

  He felt sorry for her; she seemed almost as out of place as he was.
>
  With a resolute little sigh, Senlin dipped at the waist and said, “After you, madam.”

  The chamber seemed more a trophy room than a study: old bugles, helmets, and sabers hung as decoration on the walls. An unwieldy musket, some six feet in length, stretched between pegs over the fireplace. He doubted it was real. An imposing stuffed animal dominated one corner of the room, its long, brown fur a little matted with age but still thick. It took Senlin a moment to identify the beast: it was a giant anteater. The black shock of fur at its throat, its splayed clawed fingers, and rivet-small eyes were made more dramatic by its sheer size—reared on its haunches, it stood nearly seven feet tall. The heads of deer, elk, and moose were featured on another wall. The low firelight made them appear as if they were leering at him.

  Two men in dinner jackets argued and paced about a mahogany bar, sometimes stopping to tip the contents of a crystal decanter into their tumblers.

  Senlin was surprised to recognize the slighter and younger of the two men. It was Mr. Edsel Pining, still with his hands behind his back, bobbing forward as he spoke like a pecking hen. Pining, obviously cast as Oscar Shaw, the young and romantic apprentice, was having a wonderful time waxing lyrical about the illogic of love and the sterility of business. Apparently, he hadn’t delayed initiating the crisis at the heart of the play. He had dived right in.

  The larger man, playing Mr. Mayfair, was red-faced, gray-bearded and, Senlin thought, alarmingly drunk.

  Hardly noticed by either man, Senlin moved to the hearth and began shifting the embers with a poker, adding a brighter, more theatrical light to the two men’s argument. The woman in the crinoline dress did not stray far from him. She settled her skirts over an ottoman by the fire.

  “I took you into my home, exposed my accounts to you, and how do you repay me? By pawing my wife?” The man playing Mayfair barked and jerked his arm in punctuation, splashing liquor on the fiercely posed anteater.

  “I repay your confidence by taking you into my own. I have shown you the ledgers of my heart. And just as a man of business cannot make the price of goods rise or fall as he pleases, a man of the heart cannot dictate how it swings. The stock market of the heart is a fickle thing. Mrs. Mayfair...”

  “…is mine! This is not business; this is theft,” he said, and surprised everyone in the room by dashing his glass on the floor.

  “Perhaps we’ll continue our conversation when your head has had a chance to clear,” Pining said, hardly containing his delight at the passion of the scene. He turned to the woman whose skirts overwhelmed the footstool and half the rug it sat upon. Pining dipped to kiss her hand. “My dear, I leave you now to sweeten our reunion! Is not the sun most splendid in its exits and entrances? May our setting and rising, our dusks and dawns, be every bit as colorful!”

  When Pining straightened again, a crystal decanter exploded against the back of his head. The halo of flying glass caught the firelight, causing Pining to appear, Senlin thought, briefly angelic.

  Pining crumpled to the floor at Mrs. Mayfair’s feet, a red spray freckling the front of her peach skirt. She reared back in horror, overturning the ottoman and crashing against Senlin who stood frozen by the mantel, still holding the poker.

  Mr. Mayfair, his jaw slack and his chin glinting with spit, stood over Pining. “She wants me,” he murmured, dropping the jagged neck of the decanter. Then more fiercely, he cried, “She wants me!” He pointed at the unmoving sprawl of Pining. “You are a fraud, a little boy fraud. You couldn’t satisfy this woman, you foppish, mouthy, fraud. She needs a man! She wants me!” Overcome by drink and fury, Mayfair pulled at his face and careened toward the door Senlin had entered by.

  Sensing his opportunity, Senlin went to Pining. He had to press his ear to the carpet to see a sliver of Pining’s face between the bars of his flowing blood. Through one open eye, Pining focused on him, managing a fragile and unguarded smile. He was alive. The revelation filled Senlin with hope. He was alive! Of course he was; this was only theater. It was crude theater, perhaps, but they hadn’t stripped off their humanity while pulling on their costumes. The main thing now was to suspend the play and tend to Pining’s wound. Senlin had seen many a boy crack his head in the schoolyard, and despite the great streams of blood, none were ever mortally hurt.

  The floor shook under heavy feet and the woman screamed.

  Senlin looked up to find Mayfair charging across the room. He had pulled a saber from the wall and held it in two hands like a man carrying a flag onto a battlefield. But there was no flag, no battlefield. There was only a wounded accountant in a costume, splayed on a paisley rug.

  Mayfair staked Pining between the shoulders with a brutal grunt.

  Arching as if he meant to crawl away, Pining showed that the saber had passed through him and bitten into the floor. He swatted the air twice, then slid back down the length of the blade. Floating on his own blood, Pining drew a breath that rattled like a snore, one that would’ve woken even the heaviest sleeper. But Pining did not stir.

  Senlin backed against Mrs. Mayfair who stood clutching her throat and mouth. Mayfair set his boot on Pining’s back and yanked the saber free. The blade shone darkly with gore. Trembling behind the poker, Senlin felt a tugging at his coattails; the woman was pulling him toward a door set beside the hearth. It wasn’t the door he’d come by, and he had no sense of where it led.

  Senlin resisted the woman’s pull, and instead moved nearer Mayfair, who stood heaving like an enraged bull in the middle of the room. Senlin was rattled; perhaps he was even in shock. But something had to be said. He drew himself up to his full lecturer’s height, and spoke in his most scolding tone. “Are you insane? He was acting! You have killed a man for his dialogue! You are not her husband. You are not Mr. Mayfair.” Senlin pointed vehemently at the ground: a man commanding a dog to heel. “This is a play, and you have ended it.”

  Mayfair dug his tongue about the corners of his mouth, as if clearing a bad taste, and then spat on the floor between them. He had the lumbering, apathetic posture of someone who has just risen from a bath. He swung the sword through the air almost languidly; a stripe of blood appeared on the rug. His eyes were red and haunted and dry as coals.

  “Get away from my wife, Isaac.” Mayfair said and leveled his sword at Senlin.

  Chapter Ten

  “Anything that distracts from the play becomes the play itself.”

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

  Senlin wasn’t exactly sure when the change had transpired, but at some point in the last dozen years spent as headmaster of Isaugh’s school, he’d begun to think of the entire village as his classroom.

  It hadn’t been out of snobbery; at least, he hoped it hadn’t. He did not think himself superior to the fishermen or their wives who dried, salted, and crated the cod and tusk. He did not tip his nose at the handful of sooty rail workers who operated their little station, or at the tradesmen who furnished the town with bread, clothes and ale. Yet, he couldn’t stop himself from supplying them with little tidbits of knowledge: an explanation of the uniformity of salt crystals, or a note on the evolution of the steam valve gear, or the exotic cousins of domestic yeast. The locals were tolerant of his impromptu lessons but did not enjoy them. They found such minutia useless because it made their immediate work no easier. Even so, Senlin persisted, driven by the ideal that knowledge was the great antiseptic; the more educated a society was, the more clean, safe, equal and prosperous it would be.

  Of course, the standard of enlightenment by which all else was judged was the Tower of Babel. The Tower was, he had been so certain, the great refuge of learning, the very seat of civilization. He preached its gospel and the villagers rolled their eyes.

  And perhaps they had been right to roll their eyes. Here he stood, caught in the throat of the Tower, preparing for his own violent death. He hadn’t a fact left in his head.

  Mayfair lunged forward. Even in that glimpsing second, Senlin saw no trace of conscience in
the man’s expression: his rage had purged him of all reason. Instinctively, Senlin flung himself backward through the open doorway, crashing off balance against a loaded book cart. The woman leaped around him as he fell and hurled herself against the heavy door. The latch caught just as the door was battered from the other side.

  “Alice, darling, open the door!” Mayfair shouted.

  “My name’s Edith, you lunatic, and if you come in here, I’ll claw your eyes out!” she cried back. Senlin was relieved that she had finally dropped the act, but he was taken aback by the ferocity in her voice.

  The door jolted on its hinges. “It’s not locked,” she hissed at Senlin. “Key! Where is your key?” When he took too long to respond, the gears of his mind frozen with shock, Edith began snatching up her petticoat. The voluminous underskirts bunched about her waist. The revealed leg looked like it belonged on a porcelain ballerina tucked inside a music box. The display did nothing to mitigate Senlin’s shock. She pulled a key from the top band of her white stocking, and with her back pressed against the door, tried to fit the key by feel.

  Before she could seat the key, the knob turned and Mayfair’s arm shot into the room through a widening gap. His hand groped after her furiously, snatching at her hair. “Do as I say, woman!” he bellowed.

  Her heels began to slide. She was losing the battle over the door. She screamed at Senlin for help, and the alarm in her voice was enough to break his petrification. He grabbed the nearest thing at hand, the librarian’s cart, racked full of books, and barreled toward the opening door, the cart leading him like a plow.

  Edith sprang out of the way, and Mayfair cast the door wide just as Senlin launched the cart. The rolling missile struck Mayfair and hurtled him back against the bar.

  For a moment, Senlin thought he’d knocked the man unconscious, but even as he turned toward Edith he heard the dashing of glass behind him and an irate, animal cry. Again, she threw herself at the door, nearly catching Senlin against the jamb in the process. She set the key and turned the lock.