Senlin Ascends (The Books of Babel Book 1)

by Josiah Bancroft

  Ogier retucked his hair, the tips of which were stained blue and green by the transference of paint from his stained fingers. “I only tell you this to warn you. If you are waiting for him to help you, he will ruin your patience, or worse, he will break your heart. I, on the other hand...” He rose and walked, stiff as a man pacing out a map, to one of the many piles of canvases leaning against the parapet. He flipped through the boards until he found the one he was looking for. It was a small work, no larger than a schoolboy’s slate. He returned to present it to Senlin. “Let me turn up the lamp for you.” As he raised the light, Marya’s face emerged from the gloom, captured in Ogier’s strange but affecting pointillism. Her hair was loose and she was not wearing her red pith helmet. She was posed with one shoulder forward, her head turned so that the slope of her nose seemed to echo the waves of her auburn hair. Behind her, ivory, tangerine, and canary orchids flowered, making the setting immediately recognizable as the same terrace he occupied now. Her expression was one Senlin had never seen before. It reminded him of the rapturous yet glazed expression of old icons. But, of course, what Senlin absorbed most was that she was undressed to the waist.

  Senlin understood that violence was probably the expected response. He should be outraged to find his wife naked, her beauty exploited. But his emotions were too disorganized. He felt flashes of sorrow and shock, anger and desire. It was like two great horned rams were butting their heads violently together in the very center of him. Confronted so forcefully by this likeness of her, he could no longer console himself with reason. His prudishness could not repair the world; his search would not turn back time. His old comfortable sense of himself and his wife and their life together was lost. His shoulders began to shake. He could not keep from weeping.

  When Senlin looked up, he found the artist reared back in embarrassment. Ogier seemed startled by this sudden collapse of composure. Strangely, the artist was pointing the heavy key at Senlin, though as Senlin regained himself, Ogier turned the key away. “I’m sorry,” Ogier said, his active eyes finally meeting Senlin’s. They were luminous, intelligent eyes. “I forget that not everyone is as ruthless as the Tower. Alright, let us discuss this as gentlemen. I’m laying down my arms.” He gingerly set the key again on the table. “Will you do the same?”

  “I’m not armed,” Senlin said, looking at the key in confusion. “What is that?”

  “It’s a very discrete and ingenious pistol. Are you really not carrying any protection at all?”

  “Why would I?”

  Ogier shifted his hump against the back of his chair, crossing his arms with an expression of pleasant surprise. “You really are as naive as you seem. Spectacular. I can hardly hold you responsible for befriending Tarrou. I bet you would befriend a badger.” He indulged a brief, light laugh. “Alright, I will tell you about your wife. But I doubt you will like it.” Ogier said, nodding at the nude of Marya, which Senlin still held slackly on the table.

  *

  A month ago, Ogier had been painting by the shore of the reservoir, at a spot not far from his usual haunt outside Cafe Rossi. It was late morning when a woman in a red pith helmet came and sat down on the bench before him. Typically, Ogier did not include occasional pedestrians in his work, not unless they were in the distance and could be captured in a few strokes. But this woman had sat in the very center of his view, had sat there as if transfixed. She hardly stirred, only stared over the artist’s head for hours. So, Ogier had included her in his scene. Then, when the afternoon glare was beginning to diminish, Ogier packed his paints and collapsed his easel. As he was leaving, he interrupted her reverie briefly to thank her for being such a willing subject.

  And that, as far as Ogier was concerned, was to be the end of it.

  Only, the woman began to follow him.

  He didn’t notice until she caught him going up the stairs to his scent-soaked terrace apartment. She, seeming a little embarrassed but nevertheless brave, asked if he ever paid anyone to model for him. He said that he generally did not, with the occasional exception of the nude models he sometimes hired, most often a poor maid or au pair.

  The red-hatted woman went away, apparently upset, though, Ogier assured Senlin, he’d made no overtures of any kind. He hardly expected a tourist to be interested in posing for him, nude or otherwise. He put it out of his mind, in fact. Chalked it up to a momentary fancy by a tourist caught up in the exoticism of the Baths.

  But she returned the next day, determined to model for him and to be paid for her work.

  “I hope that you take me at my word when I say that nothing inappropriate occurred.” Ogier emphasized the oath by laying his hand over his heart. “She sat for me. I produced the painting you hold before you. I thanked her. I paid her, and she left. Again, I expected that would be the end of it.” The blue moonlight shimmered across the mirror balls far above, making them spangle like fishing lures. Ogier’s cigarette flared its orange eye and then was crushed into the darkness. “But I did see her again. And every day for a week after. In that time, she told me many things. She spoke of tragedies and disappointments and her plan to rescue herself and, she hoped, her husband.”

  “I will give you everything I have...” Senlin began in the firmest voice he could muster.

  “Thank you, but you don’t have what I want,” Ogier interrupted, his sympathetic simper hardening now. “You have lost something that you love very much. I have also lost something that I love. So I have a very simple, very fair proposal. I wish I could say that we could be friends, and assist each other out of the valor of friendship. But there are no friends in the Tower. There are only partners in business. So. If you will help me recover what I have lost, I will help you.”

  “I’ll agree to any terms,” Senlin said quickly.

  “A painting of mine was taken. Stolen, I should say. I realize one painting might seem inconsequential. I have many, and I can always make more. But I am not a printing press. I am subject to fits of inspiration and ability. I can count on one hand the works that I’d consider to be my true successes. It was the greatest of these successes, my one true masterpiece, that was stolen. I cannot remake it. I have spent years trying.”

  Ogier leaned forward, his eyes no longer darting about. He seemed to have finally arrived at his point. “Two years ago the Commissioner fabricated an excuse to seize my masterpiece. Mr. Senlin, I want you to steal it back for me.”

  Chapter Six

  “Tourists who talk too often and too fondly of their homes can expect a lukewarm reception. Locals call such nostalgic tourists ‘dirt-headed’ or ‘mud-minded.’ One can hardly blame them. ‘Home’ is an exaggeration made true by distance.”

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

  Since the day he’d let her slip from his sight, this was the first genuine hope of finding Marya he’d had. The thought that she might still be, or at least had recently been in the Baths, gave him hope enough to endure the perils that lay before him. He was prepared, if necessary, to knock the Tower down for her.

  Senlin spent the night conspiring with the artist. He learned much about the Commissioner: his palatial home, his opulent galas, his allergies and galleries. Whenever possible, Senlin tried to curve the subject back to Marya to learn more of her time with the painter, her current situation, her condition. But each time Senlin approached the subject, Ogier locked his lips. Senlin pleaded with him to accept some other payment, going so far as to empty his boots on the table, but Ogier was unmoved. He would only accept his masterwork. It was love in exchange for love; nothing else would sway him. Senlin had no choice but to listen and to learn about the eccentric tyrant and the Baths’ societies, which included, in part, Tarrou’s troubled history and the painter’s own fallen star. The Headmaster felt like a freshman studying for his exams; he was overstuffed with facts.

  Every new piece of information he learned only made the task seem more impossible. The Commissioner’s mansion was under heavy guard. Every hour of the d
ay, there were two armed agents posted at each entrance and window. Many of the guards were armed with flintlock pistols, and the rest carried clubs or sabers. Worse yet, the house was also patrolled by a unique breed of dog that had a singular talent for ratting, for catching a scent and chasing it down.

  Ogier’s painting hung in the ballroom under an inch of glass. It was displayed near a balcony entrance, which seemed a stroke of luck until Senlin learned that the balcony was considered the keep of the mansion, and so was fortified with two thirty-pound demi-cannons and six men with long guns. As if that wasn’t enough, there was also the Red Hand to worry about, who regularly prowled the grounds. He was rumored to walk the mansion at will, or perhaps he slept at the foot of the Commissioner’s bed, or perhaps he lived in the walls, or perhaps he merely appeared when his name was spoken too loudly.

  “What a desperate mess!” Senlin moaned.

  “Precisely. And so it calls for a desperate man,” Ogier replied.

  As the embers of morning appeared on the streets, Senlin left the painter with a promise he had no hope to keep: he would return with his masterpiece.

  Senlin walked the nearly deserted thoroughfares of the Baths. The distant burble of the fountains sounded like the ocean caught in a shell. He felt a vague annoyance at the Bath’s nauseous impression of the seashore. It was a shore without a sea; it was a shallow, stupid place. But what of it? His mind was roving away from the matter at hand, turning to the comfort of criticism to distract himself from the looming reality.

  Even if he’d had the courage to run at the Commissioner directly, it would take an army to make it past the door. No, it simply couldn’t be done by force. Senlin tried to imagine himself sneaking through the mansion at night, a black scarf wrapped over his face like a common burglar, a gangly, graceless, and loping burglar. No, stealth was out of the question, which left only deceit. The Commissioner would have to be tricked into giving him the painting or moving it out into the open where it was vulnerable, if such a place existed in the Baths. The Commissioner was a deeply suspicious and conservative man. Fooling him would not be easy. Senlin was not used to conniving.

  The music halls stood silent; the brasseries were empty. It was beyond late; it was early morning now. It occurred to him that a bath might focus and inspire him, but he quickly dismissed the idea as a cowardly indulgence. He must face the challenge. He must transform himself into a criminal mastermind. The thought made him laugh. If his students could see him now, stripped of all confidence and authority, a fish out of water. A sturgeon indeed.

  He wondered how all his old virtues had become failings. His calm, his patience, his love of deliberation, his rationalism and fair-mindedness: all were now flaws. He needed to be cocksure and shrewd. But even then how could a cocky bookworm compete with a powerful Commissioner? Senlin couldn’t challenge him on any point, unless it be a contest of flaws.

  A contest of flaws. The thought made him laugh and, soon after, made him plot.

  Morning vendors began to walk the streets behind carts heaped with fresh pastries and fruit. Then came the early bathers and the elders who spoke incessantly about vitamins and their constitutions. A pair of plump children under the watchful eye of a governess broke the glass of the reservoir, splashing the flamingos awake. The coral-colored birds began breakfasting on the abundant algae pooled about their stalks. A customs agent flirted with a young woman selling bathing salts and scented soaps from a tray hung about her neck. The clockwork hippo resumed its impressive gout. Senlin passed through it all so lost in thought that he hardly realized where he was going until he arrived.

  He stood before Tarrou, snoring under a towel in his usual lounge chair near the tidy shoreline. Senlin pulled the towel from Tarrou’s face and slapped him with it until he awoke with a snort.

  “Muddit, man! Let me be.” Tarrou’s grimace hardly softened when he realized it was Senlin who had disturbed him. “I know, Headmaster! I’ve missed my ship. Don’t whip at me. My head is ringing!”

  “Get up. I’ll buy you a coffee.”

  “I haven’t even had my morning steam yet. Why are you pestering me so early?”

  “Because there is much to do, my friend. Tonight, you are escorting me to a gala.”

  *

  Over coffee at Cafe Rossi, Senlin explained his plan between Tarrou’s bursts of ironic laughter. The giant, despite his hangover, was entertained by Senlin’s audacious scheme. He thought it a lark, an articulate jest. Who would be mad enough to steal from the Commissioner, from the man who held the leash of that psychotic dog, the Red Hand? Besides the absurdity of the proposal, Tarrou was mystified by Senlin’s sudden desire to help the painter.

  “What do you care about him? Let him fetch his own master-scrawl. I wouldn’t take two steps to pick it off the street,” Tarrou said, his head tracking the passage of a fresh-faced young woman in high-waisted shorts. When Tarrou turned back to Senlin, he found the Headmaster was studying him closely. “What?”

  “A few facts came to light last night while I was owling with the painter. Sixteen years ago you did not, as you say, lose track of time, Tarrou. You came to the Tower with your wife, and you lost her.” Senlin’s words bleached the mirth from his friend’s face. “You waited for her, certain she would find her way back to you. But she didn’t.” The young tourist with scissoring, bare legs passed by again, apparently lost, but this time Tarrou did not inspect her. “You could’ve gone home, but what if she was not there? And what would you tell her father, her mother? No, don’t fidget and slouch down in your chair, Tarrou. I am not chiding you; I am reminding you how it was that you became lodged here, became a lump that could neither move up nor down. You searched for her, you waited, sick with despair and humiliation. The flights of hope were no less painful. Your funds dwindled. Then, just when hope was all but eclipsed, a miracle occurred: a letter from your wife arrived at your hotel. Somehow, over the weeks after your separation, she’d beaten a path home. She feared you were lost or dead, but sent money anyway, just in case. And you...”

  “Please, no more,” Tarrou said pitifully.

  “You,” Senlin pressed on, “took the money. You repaid some debts, dallied off the rest, but wrote nothing in response... because what was the need? You’d go home and explain everything in the flesh. But shame kept you from going home. The next month, another letter and another sum arrived. She was tithing the universe. Seeding some of your fortune just in case you were alive to enjoy it. And you had new debts to pay, and not quite enough left over to pay for a flight home. You spent weeks swinging between shame and indulgence, boasts and self-reproach. Gradually, you fell in with the local socialites. You became a staple of soirees; you could fill a room. Ogier tells me that many, many parties were born on your toe and died at your heel. Still, you didn’t write your wife because it was better for her to think you were dead.”

  “I will whip that painter with his own tongue!” Tarrou said, but looked as if he were going to strangle Senlin, if for no other reason than he was nearest at hand. His dark eyes burned under his flushed forehead, and he fairly trembled with rage. “He hasn’t told you half the story. Don’t pretend to stare through me!”

  Senlin shook his head with the stiff severity of a patriarch, “He showed me a portrait he painted of you in the days of your friendship. There was a little less gray in your beard then, but there was no mistaking, it was you. He told me all about your falling out after you drunkenly confessed everything to him. After that, you couldn’t bear his company.”

  “Oh, is that his story of our souring!” Tarrou snorted and rapped his fist on the table. “Let me tell you the other half, and we’ll see who looks gallant then!”

  “I don’t care. I am not scolding you!” Senlin grabbed his friend’s hand. “We are the same man. I have recited my own story in telling yours. Listen! I have lost my wife in this terrible place. I have searched and floundered and proven myself a coward. I’ve gone half mad with hope and guilt. I’ve drunk mysel
f stupid. I’ve hidden from my life. I am ruined, Tarrou. I can never go home. Not alone.”

  For the second time in recent hours, Senlin found himself recounting the saga of how he lost Marya. His tragedy revealed, he then shared what he’d learned from the painter, sparing no detail, despite the discomfort it caused him. It was so galling to think that she had been so close at hand. They may have passed each other a dozen times on the street, and only looked the wrong way each time.

  Ogier had said Tarrou was unreliable, a false friend, and Senlin could only hope that his present abject honesty would be enough to prove him wrong.

  At the conclusion of Senlin’s startling confession, Tarrou sighed and rounded his shoulders. His eyes glowed wetly as he gazed out at the evanescent traffic that passed under the churning mosaic of sunlight. “I’m sorry about your wife, Tom. I’d not wish this demoralization on anyone. It is the most hollow feeling...”

  Senlin couldn’t afford to let Tarrou slip into self-pity, though perhaps a better friend would’ve offered some consolation. It was too late now for pity. “I haven’t much time. I may seem reckless, but I have a chance, a small chance, to find her. My wife is not safe at home, Tarrou. She is here, somewhere, and lost. I have proof of it.” Senlin heard the echo of Ogier’s warning under the words that were rising now in his throat, felt the old dread return. Perhaps the painter was right to say that the Tower made friendship impossible. But what other hope did he have? “Please, my friend, for my sake, for my wife’s sake, help me steal this painting.”

  “You are running at the wrong end of the rabid dog, Headmaster. Why risk your life when we could more easily confront the painter and compel him to talk,” Tarrou said. “He’s stubborn, to be sure, but we could work the truth from him.” Tarrou raised and squeezed his fists.