by Jake Arnott
But while we in Wisdom seemed lost in futile scholarship, a vernacular narrative was emerging outside the confines of the Library. The whispered story of the man who had endured the worst of all tortures and kept silent had continued to circulate. Though we are loath to give credit to any rumour or heresy, in desperation we picked at any meagre fruits of the grapevine. And though no one had yet named or given any description of this supposed man, the nomenclature of his persecutors had been sporadically voiced as the ‘Congregation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition’.
It did not take us long to establish the nature of this body. Though we found many references to various holy inquisitions, this one was said to have been founded by the great hierophant of a city called Rome, a place distant in time and space. Many great philosophers were punished by this organisation. One who claimed rightly that the earth goes around the sun was shown their instruments of torture and forced to recant; another who wrote of a plurality of worlds in an infinite universe, of every star being a sun with its own planets, was burnt alive.
In time our attention was drawn to the life of the rebellious monk Tommaso Campanella who as a novice had been briefly imprisoned and tortured by the Inquisition for offences ranging from composing a blasphemous sonnet to harbouring a familiar demon under the nail of his little finger. He went on to engage in practices forbidden in that land: natural magic, astrology and the belief in heliocentrism. He led a revolt in the South that was both a revolution against worldly authority and an evocation of a great cosmological shift in the heavens, a mutazione in the local dialect of the rebels, that would bring about a paradise on earth. Guided more by the inspiration of portents and prophecies than practical strategy, the uprising was quickly suppressed.
Campanella was imprisoned once more and tortured more severely. His one defence against the penalty of death was to assert that he was insane, but in order to prove this he would have to face a dreadful ordeal. The test that the Inquisition used on one claiming madness was forty hours of la veglia. His torturers would watch all the while for signs that he was feigning his lunacy and wait for him to call out in confession. Tommaso Campanella survived. It seemed we had found our rumoured man.
If we felt something of a respite in locating the cause of our mental anguish, this relief did not last long. Soon came a foreboding of a deeper disquiet. Campanella was imprisoned for twenty-six years or more in appalling conditions of deprivation, yet his literary output during this time is remarkable. In the darkness of his cell he wrote or dictated in secret, risking further punishment by smuggling manuscripts out into the world. Many of his works were confiscated and destroyed; we examined what remained in the Great Library with awe and astonishment.
We know not whether the world was made from nothing or from the ruins of other worlds, but we certainly think that it was made and did not exist from eternity. We worship the sun and our unnamed creator and we do not question our origins. So it seemed a superstitious conjecture that many of Campanella’s sonnets appeared to be reworkings of our ancient folk-songs and that his philosophy of a sentient world was identical to ours. In his book on metaphysics he writes that man lives in a double world: according to his body, he exists in only so much space as is least required, held fast in prison and in chains; according to the mind, he is contained by no physical space and no walls; he is in heaven or earth, in Italy, in France, in America, wherever the mind’s thrust penetrates and extends by understanding, seeking, mastering. We found a description of hermetic magic that he practised to ward off the ill effects of the sun’s eclipse: in a sealed room two lamps and five torches were lit and hung to represent the planets and the signs of the zodiac — just as they are in our own solar temple.
A seditious memory threatened our right of permanence. Our provenance at once became momentary, fleeting, obscure. When we finally unearthed Campanella’s greatest work, The City of the Sun, it was with recognition rather than enlightenment that we discovered its pages to be blank. We knew at once what we had always known: that we are his book, his great vision of an ideal world.
The nightmares come no longer; the reality that conjured us has passed, as will all things. Tommaso Campanella composed our happy city from the depths of his suffering; our bright existence was conceived from hellish darkness. We cannot exist but as shadows of an imagined sun, letters that crawl like insects across this page. But we console ourselves that for our creator, words are not merely cyphers for the thoughts they represent; they have a power of their own; they are analogues of a divinised cosmos, evocative, charmed, incantational.
Larry came to visit in the afternoon. Mary-Lou didn’t know what to say when he asked her what she thought of the story. He had been so keen for her to read it that she had imagined it might reveal something urgent and emotional, some deep truth about himself. Instead it was some sort of conceptual parable. Clever and well crafted, maybe, but dry as dust. She couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed.
‘It’s wonderful,’ she told him, hoping that he would not detect the hesitancy in her voice. ‘It’s a great conceit.’
‘Well, Campanella’s notion of the world as a book, it’s something like the hologram theory.’
Mary-Lou recognised a nervous crease of a smile. Larry had always looked like this when he thought he had come up with a good idea.
‘But I don’t understand,’ she went on, annoyed at him now. ‘You said you wrote it for me.’
‘Don’t you remember? That series you did for Superlative Stories. You never finished it.’
‘Christ. “Zodiac Empire”. I’d forgotten all about that.’
‘And remember Nemo was obsessed with Campanella? I suppose they both had this idea of cosmic heretical socialism.’
‘Maybe you should have dedicated it to him.’
‘I wanted you to have it.’
‘Thanks, but—’
‘It’s about all those ideals we used to have.’
‘So you finish a series I wrote for a pulp magazine that paid a cent a word.’
‘Yeah, it’s dumb, I know.’
‘What is it, some sort of closure?’
‘Oh, please, Mary-Lou. Don’t you hate that word? No, I just wanted to revisit the sort of stories we used to believe in. As I get older I think about those times a lot.’
‘When we were young and had all those dreams.’
‘Yeah, and, like I said, ideals. And, you know, you were my ideal, Mary-Lou.’
‘Oh Christ, Larry. I really wish I wasn’t.’
‘Well, it’s the truth.’
‘Right.’
‘And we still need ideals, don’t we?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, do we?’
Larry felt frustrated by the way the conversation was going. Couldn’t they just talk about the story he had given her? He had thought there was some point to it. What he had learnt from their strange century: that utopia can come from suffering; that suffering can come from utopia.
‘You used to believe in so much, Mary-Lou,’ he said.
‘Yes, and then I became a cynic. A hard-nosed television producer.’
‘I don’t believe that.’
‘Good, because, like I said, I don’t regret my life.’
‘Not even Jack?’
‘Oh, please, Larry.’
She glared at him with a sudden feeling of resentment. Why had he brought this up again? That far-off world of the past. It was a distant planet yet it still held an influence, a faint gravity of sadness.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s just—’
‘Do we really have to go through all of this?’
‘You still find it hard to even talk about him.’
‘Maybe I just don’t want to. All this stuff about ideals.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘Yeah, okay.’ Mary-Lou got angry. ‘Okay, let’s talk about all the dreams that never came true.’
‘Yeah,’ he retorted. ‘Why not?’
‘All the ide
alistic communes that never worked, the revolutions that failed. Let’s talk about how you still feel guilty because Sharleen went and drank the fucking Kool-Aid.’
‘Hey!’ Larry called out and held up a hand.
He glared back at her. Mary-Lou closed her eyes and shook her head slowly.
‘Jesus, Larry,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Really, it’s—’
‘I don’t know where that came from.’
‘It’s okay.’
‘No.’ She opened her eyes. ‘That was a horrible thing to say.’
‘Maybe it needed to be said.’
‘No, it didn’t.’
‘Well.’ He shrugged.
‘Look, maybe you are right about Jack. Maybe I never did get over it.’
‘I shouldn’t have brought it up.’
‘But I got through it. That’s what I did. That’s what we all did. Those of us left.’
‘Yeah.’
‘And maybe you want to live in the past. I don’t blame you. We had better dreams back then. Some grand cosmic vision of the City of the Sun, or whatever. You want to go back to those times when we used to sit in Clifton’s and talk about that future. Well, here we are in the year 2000 and we’re old and worn out. And all we talk about is the past. Even all that space stuff, it’s in the past, Larry. I want to talk about the real future, not some hypothetical idea of it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean me and you.’
‘What?’
‘Yeah. We’ve got precious little time left, Larry. And I’m tired of that boy from the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society, still desperate for my approval.’
‘Christ.’ Larry winced. ‘I’m sorry, Mary-Lou.’
‘Look, don’t act all hurt. I mean it about me and you.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘We know each other so well. Too well, maybe. But we still get on in our own particular way. And I’ve really liked spending time with you.’
‘That’s good.’
‘But I want to keep going, not look back at things too much. And I really don’t want to be the person you want to impress with your writing. I was never meant to be your muse, for Christ’s sake.’
‘Yeah, but you were.’
‘Not any more, okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘And I don’t want any closure either. Maybe we could try something new.’
‘What?’
‘Well.’ She smiled at him. ‘You know what really impresses me?’
‘What?’
‘That you still might find me attractive after all these years.’
‘Huh?’
‘Yeah. Well, you do, don’t you?’
‘Yes. Yes, I do.’
‘Good. So, what are you going to do about it?’
Larry stared at her.
‘Don’t look so scared, Zagorski.’
‘I’m not, well, I guess I am, but—’
‘Come here.’
She got up slowly and beckoned to him. He went and stood before her. They reached out and held each other in a tentative embrace.
‘Well, I’m nobody’s ideal any more, Larry. Maybe you don’t fancy the reality.’
‘Hey,’ he whispered, moving in closer, sliding his arms around her. ‘You’re in pretty good shape.’
‘Yoga.’ She shrugged. ‘A bit of power-walking.’
‘The blood-type diet.’
‘The blood-type diet. Hell, Larry, I’ll try anything.’
‘Well, you’re looking better than I am. I don’t see how you could find me attractive.’
‘Don’t worry. I don’t have any illusions. I just want a bit of companionship. Some comfort, maybe.’
‘That’s probably all I’m good for.’
‘Listen.’ She stroked his face. ‘You’ve still got a bit of passion left in you, that’s the main thing. That night at the party, when you kissed me—’
‘Like this?’
He pressed his mouth against hers and they held on to each other. For dear life. Against decrepitude and mortality. Closing their eyes and travelling in the time machine of the imagination. Pressing their old bodies together, seeking sanctuary from the shadow, feeling for remnants of desire. Mary-Lou drew her hands up to his chest and pushed him away from her.
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘If this is going to work we’re going to have to take it slowly.’
A low sun strafed the city as they drove east on Santa Monica Boulevard.
‘A date,’ he said, repeating what she had requested. ‘What kind of date were you thinking of?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. A movie and then dinner?’
‘Okay. You know Battlefield Earth has just opened.’
‘Christ, that Hubbard thing?’
‘Yeah. We could go see Travolta as a giant humanoid alien.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘No, me neither. What then? A romantic comedy?’
‘Yeah. Something like that,’ she said and shielded her eyes from a sudden blast of pale light.
Larry glanced across at Mary-Lou, her profile mottled, reptilian. Ancient beauty mutated with age. Yes, he thought, time makes strange aliens of us all. Rare creatures facing extinction. She was right: not much future left. Precious little, she had said. And the thought of that made him happy. So close to the end, there still seemed some absurd sense of hope. All the years lost in a flicker of expectation.
Beyond, Los Angeles was drowning in fire, a gilded sprawl burning with memories. A lifetime flashed on steel and glass, on the hot asphalt of the freeways. The sun itself seemed exhausted, a weary god descending. But this was all his. Matter, energy, information, it all belonged to him in that moment. The past was getting closer with time. Home, a humming chant, an incantation. LA, that dystopian utopia: heaven in the hills, hell in the valley. A simple illusion, fleeting and terminal, but he had found it after all. This, yes this. This was his City of the Sun.
20
judgement
‘In order that I may be allowed to continue to attend my trial and to hear its judgement alongside the others, and in order not to be declared unfit to plead, I submit the following declaration to the court.’
He stared directly at the judges and prosecutors as he spoke, carefully unfolding the scrap of notepaper he had taken from his pocket. Then he looked up to the press box beyond, pausing to allow for the delay as the translation was relayed through their headphones.
‘My memory has returned,’ he went on, ‘and is once more at the disposal of the outside world. The reasons for simulating loss of memory were of a tactical nature.’
He continued with his prepared statement but already the courtroom was stirred into commotion, the time-lapse of comprehension adding to the drama. Gasps of shock and anger from the court officials, a wave of laughter breaking out along the gallery. He declared his willingness to accept responsibility for his actions while insisting on the incompetence of the tribunal. He referred to the good faith of his defence counsel who had been taken in by his antic disposition, but already the chamber was in uproar. He smiled, savouring this moment, this great coup de théâtre. As the president of the court rapped his gavel for silence and called for an adjournment, there was yet another clamour as the reporters rushed to their telephones.
Oh yes, there is an art to forgetting.
The day before, the defendants had been shown a documentary film of concentration camps made by US troops in the final stages of the war. Darkness in the court but for the fluorescent strip lights built into the edges of the dock that underlit the faces of the accused. The flicker of the projector pulsing out its ghostly parade. Hess’s attention was caught at once, rapt with wonder, his sunken features hollowed in white-face, a gaunt pierrot caught in the footlights. On the screen the grounds of a slave labour camp: a harvest of corpses, the bodies starkly exposed as if broken out of the earth like the dead on Judgement Day.
‘I don’t believe it!’ he called out.<
br />
Earthbound oblivion, then a rush of wind, a blast of moon, a violent spasm wrenching his shoulders. He was dragged out of his blackout by the parachute that pulled him across the field in spastic convulsions of flight. Like a trapped bird. He rolled onto his back and tried to unbuckle his harness. There was somebody there, calling out, grabbing at the cords, taking the strain so that he could free himself. Hess crawled a few paces, tried to stand. His right foot gave way. The other man reached out and held him.
‘Are you German?’
A civilian. A farmer or farmworker. Hess tried to catch his breath.
‘Yes,’ he panted, his English halting but precise. ‘Please. Take me to Dungavel House. It must be close by. It is most important I speak with the Duke of Hamilton. I have an important message for him.’
But he never reached his intended destination. The man fetched the Home Guard. Hess was taken into custody, handed over to the regular army. By the next morning he was in a barracks hospital in Glasgow. Hamilton finally arrived but did not acknowledge all the intricate overtures for peace that had been set in motion. He claimed to know nothing of the contacts in Lisbon, the letters from Albrecht Haushofer. When Hess asked the duke to assemble members of his party to discuss peace proposals, Hamilton replied that there was only one party in the country now. Hess continued to outline what German terms might be but Hamilton told him that any kind of agreement was unlikely.
He wondered, was this some kind of ploy in the negotiations? He asked the duke to request parole for him from the King. He had come unarmed and in good faith yet they treated him as their prisoner.
They took him to London. To the Tower. This gave him some hope. He was under the protection of the King. The guards that paraded outside his window were merely ceremonial. The peace talks might soon begin.