by Paul Park
The commissar sighed. “They are all religious controversies. In my lifetime we have fought a dozen heresies and crushed them all. We had limited objectives, always. At Rangriver, we couldn’t spare the troops to get bogged down. We needed them for other wars—this war with Caladon was already old when I was a child. To tell the truth, we cannot win. Yet it, too, started as a war of conscience, more than a year ago, a heresy peculiar to that winter. Argon Starbridge—not the present king, you understand. His great-great uncle shared the same name. They are all named Argon, the kings of Caladon, but this one was not as foolish as the rest. He was a mystic. He taught that men, ordinary men, you know, can . . . what? Effect their own salvation? Themselves. It’s a dangerous belief. I’m not saying it’s not dangerous. Dangerous and wrong. But I don’t mean that. I mean, how did it start?”
“I don’t know. It seems a natural thing to believe.”
“Yes. Perfectly natural. It’s strange. When I was young, everyone knew this story. It doesn’t matter. I’ll tell you.” The commissar paused, then continued. “King Argon Starbridge, the first King Argon, had no son until he was an old man. Late in life, past the time when women, generally speaking, have children . . . amid much public rejoicing, I imagine. But the difficulty was the boy was marked—physically perfect, you understand, but with one blue eye. The queen refused food and locked herself into her room. It must have been something from her family, and the shame, well, you can imagine. But some people thought that in this case, the old king’s only son, some exception might be made. At least the king thought so. Especially since the bishop there in Caladon was his own brother. Barred from succession; leave it at that, they said. But the bishop, maybe because he was the king’s brother and wanted to show himself impartial, I don’t know—whatever the reason, it was a terrible mistake. When the baby was presented, he announced the child was cursed, a great criminal, enemy of God, marked for damnation, everything. I don’t know, perhaps he was. But the bishop condemned him on the spot to life imprisonment, and the king was broken-hearted. When the boy was taken away, he collapsed on the floor because, of course, nobody survives that kind of treatment, especially not a child, and in fact the boy died . . . soon. The king neglected his duties and brooded by himself. And when the news came that the boy was dead, he insisted on giving him a royal funeral, against all custom. He wasn’t going to see him burnt like a criminal. He carried the body in his own hands. The bishop was outraged, but when he moved to act, the king had him arrested, him and all his priests. There was bitter fighting, but in the end the king crucified his brother and hanged the rest. That was the start of it—in my great-grandfather’s time. Clarion Starbridge mobilized our army and marched north. We’ve been at war since then. In my childhood, the front line was more than two hundred miles north of the city, way on the other side of the Caladon frontier. Now, of course, it’s very close.”
There was a long pause. The commissar had moved around the room as he spoke, gesturing with short, brisk movements of his fists. As he concluded, he stood up straight and again clasped his hands behind his back.
Thanakar sat, confused. If there was a connection between this story and his own, he couldn’t see it. But he believed there must be, for the stories seemed to resonate together without touching at any point. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked.
The commissar frowned. “Well I would have thought it was obvious. The war’s not going well. The bishop is afraid of people who don’t seem quite resigned to their fate. Young men with grievances . . . of that kind.”
Again Thanakar felt a flush of confusion in his cheeks. “The circumstances are not the same,” he said.
“Aren’t they? You believe they’re not. It was an accident, you know. What happened to you.”
“He dropped me. Everyone knows it. He threw me down deliberately. Down the steps.”
“It was an accident,” repeated the commissar. “Otherwise they wouldn’t have done it like that—not if they were punishing your father, or stealing from him. Not at your final presentation, after you had already gotten your names and your tattoos. They would have done it at your birth, like young Prince Argon. Not, of course, that they weren’t right. One blue eye. Bad business. You were just unlucky.”
Thanakar said nothing.
“Anyway,” continued the commissar, “You can rely on me. Nothing to fear. I won’t let them touch you. You’re like a son to me.”
“Thank you.”
“Not to say that you shouldn’t give it up. Visiting the prisons. The painkillers, I mean. The medication. You can’t do much good that way. The real problem’s something else.”
Thanakar stood up. “Thank you.”
The commissar looked at him anxiously. “Sometimes I express things badly,” he admitted. “You forgive me?”
“There is nothing to forgive.”
“Then why don’t you stay to dinner? My wife will join us. The four of us. Quite a . . . jolly party.”
* * *
These conversations transpired on July 92nd of the eighth phase of spring 00016, in the holy city-state of Charn, in the northwest corner of the possessions of the emperor, in the hundredth month of his interminable reign. That year it was an old-fashioned city of twisting alleyways and wooden houses, a trading center for the region. Formerly most shipping had run by sea, but in those bitter days the gulf was choked with warfare, and so the priests shipped their goods by rail, overland, down through the infant deserts to the great manufacturing centers of the South—in summer, oil of roses, prayer birds, sandalwood, rubber, black ivory, and orchids; in autumn, lumber; in winter, quarried glass; and in springtime nothing at all, for there was nothing. The war was very bad.
That year, Paradise was visible for one hundred and eighty-four days at the beginning of spring, at the time of the solstice thaw and the last antinomial crusade. The next time Paradise was visible, more than eight thousand days later, it rose on the night of August 7th, in the eighth phase of spring. That night there was a great festival in Charn, and all the temples of the city were full of candlelight and incense and the urgent, huddled faithful, filling the vaults with old-fashioned chanting—the forty-eight names of self-denial, the seventeen obligations of parenthood, the nine kinds of love. In celebration, the bishop’s council had arranged a truce in the eternal war and exchanged prisoners with Argon Starbridge. There were numerous misunderstandings and delays, but in the end the first trucks arrived after sunset of the first day, and unloaded in the packing yards outside the city gates. There was a big crowd to welcome them, and a complicated official reception, but in spite of that it was the dreariest, most dismal spectacle that anyone had ever seen: more than twenty thousand broken-down old men, veterans of forgotten campaigns, men whose whole lives had been spent as prisoners of war. And even though the worst had been culled out at the border, and the rest washed and fed and issued new uniforms, nothing could disguise the fact that few knew even where they were, and few could recognize the families and friends who had been rounded up to greet them.
One of the oldest, however, was still cogent, and had been asked to address the crowd. He was a small, wrinkled, obsolete old soldier, wearing his white hair in the style of a previous generation—long down his back and fastened with an iron ring. But his eyes were still bright, and he reached the top of the dais without assistance, and in fact he began beautifully, describing the conditions of his captivity—the snow, the stink, the grinding work—in words too weathered and old-fashioned to offend. He was making an excellent impression, and the curates in the bleachers behind him were whispering and smiling, the captain of the purge nodding benignly, the canon expanding with relief, until the soldier paused and swallowed, and started again.
“Sweet friends,” he said, in his old, quavering voice, but the effect was like a needle or a shock, because the canon and the clergy sat bolt upright at the sound and looked towards the speaker with expressions of horror and disbelief. The greeting “sweet friends” was st
rictly adventist. The old soldier was a heretic. “In all this suffering,” he said, “it was easy to submit. Thousands did, died in their sleep, or with their shovels in their hands, or in attempts to escape that never could have succeeded. The men you see here around you are just one sad fragment of the proud regiments that marched out so long ago, flags flying, chanting the names of victory. Some died in battle, some were captured, and some came home to die in bed. The ones who survived, it is because they made a purpose out of living. For once I lay down with a defeated heart, I prayed for death in my little cell, sweet friends; I prayed for death to take me as I slept. I curled up on the floor of my cell, and in the middle of the night I dreamt that I woke up to someone shaking me, and a voice calling me by my name. ‘Wake up,’ it said, ‘Wake up, Liston Bombadier,’ the purest voice, it was a light in that dark room, it was like a light glowing all around me. I staggered up awake—‘Lord, Lord,’ I cried. ‘Where are you? Why can’t I see you?’ ‘But I am with you after all, Liston Bombadier. I am with you every day.’ ‘Lord,’ I said, with tears in my eyes, ‘Why can’t I see you?’ And the voice said, ‘Listen to me. What you hear and feel around you now is just a dream. It has no substance but to reassure you. And to promise you that you will not feel death until you see me face to face, standing in my flesh. In my flesh. And on that day . . .’ ” Up to then, the canon had seemed to hope the man would keep his talking within the bounds of orthodoxy, or perhaps he was too stupefied to speak, but at that point there was a hissing stream of bad language from the captain at his side, more furious for being whispered, as if it were escaping from under pressure. “Sweet balls of Beloved Angkhdt,” swore the captain. “Whose idea was this?” and all the curates looked at one another.
“What’s to be done?” whispered the canon, and in fact there was nothing; the effect of arresting the man, or dragging him away from the podium, was unthinkable. The crowd around was staring at him with open mouths.
“ ‘And on that day,’ ” continued the soldier, “ ‘I will wash all the pain of living from your body, and all the memory of suffering from your mind. On that day, the earth will bring forth her fruit without tending, fish will fly, and animals will talk. And it will never be winter anymore, never anymore. The powers of earth will be overthrown, and no man will be hungry, and all men will be free . . .’ ”
“That’s enough,” whispered the captain, and a few curates scuttled away to pull the power on the microphone. But whether they were confused by urgency, or whether there were some jokers among them, after a few moments’ fumbling all the lights went out in the arena, and the soldier’s voice boomed out, unimpeded in the sudden dark, seeming louder than ever: “ ‘On that day I will gather up into my hands all the oppressed. But all the rich men and the priests, the Starbridges and torturers, they will wish they never had been born—’ ” And then the power was cut, and there was silence.
Thanakar and Abu Starbridge were wandering through the crowd. They had stood among the people, listening awestruck to the soldier’s speech. The lights went out, and then the soldier’s voice, extinguished as a plug was pulled. But around them, the crowd of people seethed and whispered in the dark, as if the broken current had been transferred to them. Vague shadows moved and blundered, and from the direction of the dais came the sound of muffled banging and soft yells. The people shouted angrily and stamped their feet, but it was dark and there was no direction for their anger. In the dark, the doctor put his hand out and took his cousin by the arm.
And then, as perfectly as if it had been rehearsed, a man cried out, and then another, and then the whole mass of people were crying and groaning with wonder as the white rim of Paradise showed among the hills of the eastern horizon, hours before it was predicted. As it rose, white and mystical, seeming to take up half the sky, the noise around the cousins loudened and then died away. And in the new, stark light, they could see men and women falling to their knees, their lips trembling in prayer, and some, more miserable than the rest, perhaps, shook their fists and whispered curses, tears standing in their eyes. From somewhere near, a temple bell tolled deeply, and then another and another, all over the city, searching for unison, until finally they all swung together in a dolorous harmony. All stopped at once, and there was quiet for the obligatory count of twelve, and then from every mouth in the vast crowd, and from the festival grounds close by, and from all the people in the streets and slums around them, spilled out in unison the first words of the great psalm of despair: “Break me, oh God, break my hard body into dust, for I have forgotten every lesson from Your lips. Poison every cup, every dream, every attempt. No rest, no peace, no happiness, no. Never, never, never,” and on these words the temple bells swung again—“Never, never, never. But.”
Thanakar and Abu looked around them at the different faces. Defeated old women sat back on their heels and whispered it, defiant young men spat it out as if they hated every word. But they did recite it, all of them, whether with anger and disgust, whether with tears and broken hearts, whether they mouthed the words only or spoke them from their souls. It was proof of the enduring power of the myth, of its effect on every life, the power of the risen Paradise, the planet that could melt the snow and pull the tides three hundred feet in a single night. People knelt with outstretched hands, praying to its bright surface, as if in its shadows and its mountains they could see the palaces and the bright castles of the blessed, perhaps even the windows where they once had lived, the faces of the loving friends that they had left behind when they were born.
“Never. Never. Never. But. But oh my God, accept my life as payment towards the debt I owe, and help me to bear what is to come.” The psalm ended. Under the bleak light, Abu and Thanakar looked towards the deserted dais, the empty arena, the black uniforms of the bishop’s purge, hundreds of them, materialized from nowhere: stiff black uniforms and the silver dog’s head insignia; in those days their mere presence was enough to disperse the thickest crowd. They weren’t even armed, but already people were getting to their feet, dazed, their wits scattered, clearing away down side streets and through the mass of trucks. In those days it was enough for the spiritual police just to stand there, relaxed and even smiling, and in a little while the packing yards were empty, the war veterans hastily paraded away somewhere, down to the festival grounds.
The cousins barely noticed their departure. They stood alone in an empty, widening circle, in the middle of the draining crowd, looking upward, entranced, for they were Starbridges, and the purge meant nothing to them, and at that moment the festival had begun, in a frenzy of fireworks and light. First the guns on the Mountain of Redemption fired an evil, sulphurous salute, and laid down a pall of smoke over the whole city. It extinguished the sky, the face of Paradise, and people put their hands over their ears. Then there was quiet, and as the smoke thinned away, people could see emerging out of it the lights of the Temple of the Holy Song, far away above the mountaintop, glistening among the delicate threads of steel like drops of water in a spider’s web.
The silence was broken from the other side, beyond the eastern gate, by a single muffled report, and the first rockets burst over the fairgrounds in a tangled spray of silver and lime green. With interruptions, the fireworks would continue the entire night. The separate provinces of the empire were holding a competition, and a man could see the different character of different areas in their choice of colors and forms. Squat, stone-headed Southerners preferred only noise, huge rhythmic spatterings of explosions. Pallid, angular Gharians had developed projectiles made up of whistles and singing bells. Complicated urbanites from the immense, remote fire-cities of the Far West made lingering patterns in the sky, shimmering dragons and exploding birds with long red tails and exploding eyes. Sibilant weavers from the lakes of Banaree, where in springtime it was always milky morning, preferred calm and sparsity and empty spaces. Their rockets rose slowly: a small light would ascend, drawing a straight stalk behind it, and then petals of color would open noiselessly against
the sky—gentle, silent blossoms of amber, lavender, and a hundred shades of blue, sent up separately into the expectant sky. There were spaces of darkness in between each bloom.
Abu and Thanakar were in the crowd once more. They had passed beyond the city into a great promenade of stalls and booths and garish lights, sweetshops, wheels of chance, bumper cars, barkers, soothsayers, and drunks, dressed in all the colors of the spectrum, because for the three nights of the festival, obligations of class were forgotten and people mixed freely. Still, there were few Starbridges in the fairgrounds, so the two cousins found themselves moving in a circle of eager familiarity. They loitered, and ate ice cream, and watched the fireworks burst above their heads. An old palmist with an old beard and yellow teeth grabbed Abu by the hand, to croon over his lines. Abu laughed. “Go on,” he cried over the pressing din. “Tell me the girl I’ve got to marry. Tall and thin? Short and horrible?” He was partly drunk, and held a plastic bottle of wine in his other hand.
The old man peered, and frowned, and shook his head. “Abu Starbridge,” he said slowly, as if he could read it in the lines. “Marry? No. You will not marry. I don’t think so. No.” He rubbed the prince’s palm. “No, see. Look here. Death by fire. Not far away.” He brought his own hand up and peered at it. “I have the same mark.” He traced along his own lifeline with a withered finger. “Here. Death by fire.”
The crowd had quieted down. People stood around them in a circle. Some squatted on the ground. “See?” the old man continued. “All in the same place. My grandson has it too. One man out of six. I’ve counted.” He gestured vaguely around the circle of faces and looked up, his eyes puzzled and worried. “What does it mean? Death by fire. So many of us, all at the same time.”
“It can’t come soon enough for me,” said Abu, and he put his bottle to his lips. But before drinking he paused, because the old man was still staring at him with the same puzzled expression, and all around the small circle, people shuffled and looked down.