Celebrant

by Cisco, Michael

  Hello... ’lo (he says)

  “You’re Knosp Knoak, aren’t you?” (the same one asks the assistant)

  Knosp Knoak, that’s right, (he says)

  Knosp Knoak, (Yolk Eye says, still without looking at him, his head nodding again slightly as he speaks)

  There is nothing really aloof about him; he’s not snubbing Knosp Knoak, who is a handsome, dark-skinned man with lines in his cheeks, thin arched eyebrows, almond shaped face with an aristocratic look when relaxed—his eyebrows rise when his face relaxes.

  Yolk Eye seems preoccupied. His left leg, folded and crossed at the ankle in front of him to form a leg diamond, is tapping the cushion of his seat.

  Knosp Knoak is a good luck name (he says, getting up suddenly, and without addressing anyone)

  He lumbers away toward the sideboard on the opposite side of the room while the other men chat among themselves.

  “What’s that you say?” (the first man asks, glancing at Knosp Knoak with a knowing smile) “Why do you say it’s lucky, Y.E.?”

  Come again? (Yolk Eye asks after a moment, all but mumbling)

  He is looking for something, then drags a heavy plume from a box set there for that purpose and turns around, holding the plume in his fist and wiping the area around his mouth with it in circles.

  “I ask why you think Knosp Knoak’s a lucky name.”

  I said it (Yolk Eye says)

  His eyes take them in without fixing on them, as he comes back toward them.

  It’s a good sound (he says)

  “It is a good sound,” (the man echoes—showing Yolk Eye off to his associates)

  Big, slow, deliberate Yolk Eye also has very dark skin, short, densely curly, shiny black hair salted with grey. He does everything he does with stubbornly unacceleratable concentration that leaves nothing incomplete. He turns toward the table in the middle of the room, still rubbing his mouth. Then he abruptly turns and walks up to Knosp Knoak holding out a big fluffy hand for him to shake.

  Yolk Eye nods and for the first time his eyes stay on Knosp Knoak. His features are slack as he shakes hands and then, as their hands separate, he pulls back out of his forward lean and smiles asymmetrically. For all that it is a kind of a grimace, as if he were trying to imitate with his face what he saw other people do when they wanted to look hospitable, there’s still a weird equanimity and warmth in it.

  The officials shuttle forever back and forth between parties—oh we can’t possibly accept—we simply haven’t the authority to accept or reject your proposals—we must consult with the capital—to and fro forever. Yolk Eye has gone, and Knosp Knoak is talking to a beautiful woman in a white dress.

  A hand appears on deKlend’s arm.

  I was afraid I’d have no one to talk to.

  Nardac has floated tipsily up beside him with a crystal goblet in her hand. In the dim light she seems younger, and the sheath of thin silk draping her, all pale tan pink, falls like water over a surprisingly shapely figure. deKlend had become accustomed to thinking of her as a head and hands protruding from a sail.

  Will you introduce me?

  Unfortunately, I am not acquainted with these people.

  How did I know his name was Yolk Eye (deKlend wonders) Did someone say it aloud?

  It’s hard to know with whom you are acquainted, here (she says)

  I don’t assume (they are walking together now, her hand resting in the crook of his arm) people are what they seem.

  No, of course. But I mean there are shape-shifters here.

  Yes (he says, looking at her) I know one of them.

  Whatever are you wasting your time with her for? She doesn’t know anything.

  Doesn’t she?

  You’re not in love with that mess, I hope?

  I am! (he thinks)

  But other quick-change artistes here? I thought each of us was unique.

  Of course, we’re all unique! But different causes will produce the similar ones. There are others who can fly in what seems the way you do, but for other reasons.

  I don’t fly (he says, and a barely discernible sadness comes into his face) I’m only a fast runner.

  Do you—(she asks, stopping and turning to him, bending a little backwards to look up at him, her hip touching his leg)

  What do you do? (he asks her at the same time)

  His question emerges more distinctly than hers.

  I? (she asks, distracted) Oh, this and that...

  He resumes walking with her.

  I certainly can’t measure up to your abilities (she says)

  I have no ability (he says quickly)

  But you’re being—

  He waves his hand, allowing hers to drop.

  All that—it’s just, it’s not anything.

  He notices that some of the people filling this room gradually have a peculiar habit. When separated, after a time one of them will start to whistle, not a tune, just a note, always the same, repeated at intervals, and the other will reply with a note about a full step lower. By this means they are assured of each other’s presence. deKlend has seated himself and Nardac has perched a bit flirtatiously on the broad arm of the chair, and he is making dreamlike conversation with one of them, who whistles at intervals. The other one, sitting across the room with other people in distinct conversation, answers with a lower whistle. They whistle without thinking.

  The practice (Nardac sniffs, with a sound like paper ripping) is called Wind God.

  deKlend believes he is being told something else as well, which is that mnemosems are strangers everywhere, behaving in accordance with customs no one can recognize, but which aren’t just affectations.

  Burn follows the gutter along the edge of the house, then squats and drops her head down to peer through the window below. There he is again! He sits in a chair, she can see the crown of his head, but the bald woman at the window is moving in and out of her line of sight. The bald woman sees her there and they regard each other.

  After a moment, the somber, dirty face of that little girl directs its attention toward something in the alley, shifting her gaze just like an animal. Nardac is struck by the plain, smirched beauty of the face, and of the gorgeous blonde hair that flutters in the wind against the stars.

  Pigeon girl (she says aloud) her hair streaming like a comet.

  I’m sorry? (deKlend bounces his shoulders to and fro against the bumpers in the wings of the chair as he turns toward her)

  There was one of those girls hanging down from the rooftop looking in at us—she’s gone now.

  Ah.

  She had blonde hair (Nardac says wistfully) and it streamed like the tail of Wan Refuser in the light from the window.

  Ah, your mind has taken a poetic turn this evening. Is it wine that...?

  It might be (she says, turning to look at him) I might be inspired by some other feeling.

  What is Wan Refuser?

  Hm? Oh, the comet! Didn’t you see it?

  I must have been travelling somewhere.

  It would have been visible everywhere, I should think (Nardac says, looking into space)

  She looks appetising, actually, like that (he thinks) Perhaps I overestimated her age.

  It’s only just left the sky (she says)

  He gets up and fills a glass of water from the table by the window. Outside, there is nothing to see but the shouting, transparent black. Nardac comes up behind him, putting one hand on his back and pointing to the horizon with the other.

  Where the sperm of the world, haunted by fires in the mountains, is found (she says, as if she were reciting)

  She is in his shadow when he turns around.

  Knosp Knoak is telling the beautiful young woman about his past life.

  By ancient tradition, strictly upheld, every king of Aufidia Conack must build his own household and accumulate his own wealth. As actually practiced, the tradition assumes that each king will rob his predecessors, quietly, to maintain appearances. After his death, a king’s palace becomes
his tomb, the king himself is mummified and continues to hold court in this condition. The current king is supposed to consult his predecessors regularly and in person, but there are so many dead kings, and to approach even one for advice is such a waste of time, that he will simply pinwheel his scepter above his head in a sweep meant to take in all ambient kings before making a decision, call that a consultation, and leave it at that.

  The king sits high at the center of an efficient, well-organized cobweb of officials... Officials are promoted along two lines, one of which is strictly linear and regularly gradated and the other of which is intermittent, occasional, and faster. Occasional posts are assigned at will by officials in superior grades, and can sweep the assignee into position to re-enter the linear promotional order at a point two or three grades above the one from which he was taken.

  One of these posts, King’s Companion, was, perhaps accidentally, assigned to me just out of school. For a year I was to reside in a tomb-palace and attend the mummy of a dead king. I would get him up in the morning, dress him, mock-feed him, mock-wash him, carry him into his throne room, and everywhere else, talk to him, entertain him, keep him abreast of current events by reading him the newspapers, undress him, put him to bed at night, and generally pantomime his life for him.

  Greater Chandelier Palace had been engulfed by a teeming, dense fleece of low closely-crammed houses. Gun to head he falls asleep a thousand years in empty palace. Famine killed most of those people, and at the time I lived there, the district was still largely deserted. The palace was half stripped of its ornaments, dark and small as palaces go, and quiet. It was a peaceful place to live for a year, but I was a young man. No one lived there but me, I was forbidden guests of my own, nor could I leave Quarviouk Tatanlasmaik Boma for any reason, although I was permitted out when he performed his state visits. The dead kings were constantly “arranging” to visit each other, as this was one of the only ways any companion could manage to see anyone else. Various persons came to the palaces during the day to bring in supplies and to keep the buildings and grounds in respectable condition, but these were so-called ‘menials,’ and many of the companions refused to socialize with them.

  ‘Under no circumstances are you to allude to his death,’ they said. ‘It may safely be assumed his majesty knows that he’s dead, but that doesn’t make it nice to remind him.’

  His head was kept concealed in the hood of a white satin wrapper. This is boring.

  No, go on! (the woman says, sniffing)

  Inside the wrapper reflected a clean, clear white snow light on a seamed brown head like a wooden carving, thatched with straw. I remember how it looked, especially when I would fill in crossword puzzles “at his direction.”

  A bit before sunset, on balmy days, Quarviouk Boma liked to “go riding.” This required me to prop him up on the back of his favorite horse, also mummified, with wheels bolted to the ends of its splayed, reinforced legs, and dragging him around the course at the end of a rope. This rope I harnessed to a living horse which I, as a common man, was not permitted to ride. To make the true standing of things less conspicuous I was required to drive the living horse from behind and to walk in such a way as to interfere, if only formally, with Quarviouk Boma’s “view” of the rope.

  He “ate” costly representations of food; I would fill his plate for him with a golden turkey leg, potatoes of white silk, astrakhan pods of jade peas. The mezcal though had to be real, and was burned after the meal.

  Nardac’s dress is lying on the floor. She appears around one of the upright posts, her long, bare body is younger (he thinks) Younger than he is—maybe that could be her spell. The hairless head seems to rise on an almost unnaturally elongated, swanlike neck. She lifts her arms, and he walks into her embrace.

  She minces out from behind the oriental screen, over which her every garment is flung, and pauses there a moment for Knosp Knoak to see. As he steps toward her, her anticipation grows so sharp she sniffs loudly with a sound like ripping paper, then holds her hand to her face, grinning foolishly with embarrassment.

  Not there! (she gasps)

  Beside herself with excitement, Nardac turns in his arms, turns her back to him and slides her hands down the curve of her back.

  Here! (she says)

  Not there! (she gasps)

  Beside herself with excitement, the beautiful woman, whose skin is the color of sand in the starlight, turns in Knosp Knoak’s arms, turns her back to him and slides her hands down the curve her back.

  Here! (she says)

  So (she asks faintly) you’re going on the pilgrimage?

  Hm? (he is drifting off)

  Where are you going again?

  Votu.

  But... (she lets air out through her nostrils, and sniffs again, abruptly) Do you even know why you’re going on this pilgrimage of yours, to the city you live in?

  ...I hate being confined.

  That isn’t a destination though (she says, her voice very low in the dark)—that just means you are travelling, but a pilgrimage... it amounts to more than that.

  ...I know, I know (he sounds half asleep)

  He draws a deep breath.

  ...s’perfection, perfections (he says groggily) hm’perfect.

  Imperfect?

  Perfect (he says and falls asleep)

  deKlend wakes with a gentle start. It is still night, nothing has changed, but he feels as though he’s been sleeping a long while, and as if he could go on sleeping. Phryne looks down at him, smiling, showing her glistening black teeth in an avid smile, leaning on her arms which rise like two white pillars past his eyes, her breasts brushing his chest. She hasn’t been drinking, because she doesn’t drink, but she seems drunk, she settles her body on him greedily.

  Phryne! (he says, snaring his hand in her braids) How beautiful you are!

  He’s tickled her vanity and she chuckles. More! (she says) More-more-more!

  Is it Phryne? It must be. She just sniffed. But wouldn’t someone disguised as Phryne make a point of sniffing?

  She has a cup of drink she pours into his mouth. He drinks it, the fumes spin in his head even before he swallows the drink. She chuckles again. It has a harsh sound. That chuckling seems to grate along his nerves and it’s as if he hears something, like a door splintering far away, an enemy rushing directly for him. deKlend fumbles at the bed beneath him and tries to turn but Phryne’s heavy body is weighing him down, she rubs herself on him and peppers his face and throat with passionate kisses. In a moment that enemy will be here and it is his body lifting Phryne high in the air, a stone arch that keeps collapsing and re-erecting itself, she running her hands avidly up and down his stony rigidity like fondling a smooth ivory carving—the keystone slips loose and the arch collapses—the keystone is driven back into place and the arch erects—the chuckling he hears coming from somewhere among the two slabs of darkness that are progressively mashing his brains between them beats in his raw throat,

  his aching, blind eyes stare like two full moons and his teeth are bared as though they were about to bristle out in two fans.

  Phryne rises and falls, and when he’s gone clonic she’s so high off the bed her legs hang at full length to either side of him and draw her face abandonedly along the canopy. As she comes down now she sneezes light and a huge dark shape is there in the flash glaring at her through a heavy veil. They are together with all the various features of the setting and its props, the night the house and the party, in a circular depression that dips and veers on a seething canvas of other scenes and places. Phryne feels herself growing taller, her body elongating and deKlend’s too, arching now high into the future so that she clings to him with arms and legs while avidly looking this way and that. Her head is broiling with inexorably telescoping desire but there is a lucid point that can see without being able to articulate the meaning just how her spell came about, that making love with deKlend—how was she making love with deKlend—had the white figure she’d seen been her own reflection in a mi
rror? She doesn’t remember—it doesn’t matter—she’d come to the party in disguise—she never shows anyone her true face—no one but deKlend—they are plunging together, like dolphins, she can see doorway and balcony beyond there to her left, and an alleyway on the right, with battered tables and unappealing food, heaps of books, a cold wind that plays over her skin—

  In Votu:

  There are galleries on the walls overlooking spring leaves in constant motion, trees with flexible whiplike branches adapted to the long winds. There are tides in the grass and in the trees wiped as the sky wipes, the sound they make is called “sifr.”

  From these galleries it is also possible to make out the sugar land, which from afar looks like a white triangular notch or pyramidal heap in the foothills. This is the opening of a deep canyon. Trees on inaccessible slopes growing in patches of rare earth are so wildly overfed their armpits exude a fragrant resin like frankincense and finely-powdered, pure glucose that floats to the valley below like waterfall mist. The valley has a barren sandy bottom littered with boulders, and an underwater river flows there, beneath a layer of groundwater that clots the sand so the ground looks like satin, faded patterns in the sand like the smooth back of a worn nickel. The drowned river emerges from beneath the water here and there to form small crystal brooks that retreat underground again after a short passage in the open air, looking like seams of trembling, clear stitches in the fabric of the ground.

  Few plants can grow here, and those that do are inedibly sweet—just licking a leaf one time will produce an intense sugar burn in the mouth, painful tingling in the gums, and to consume a leaf can bring on death from overstimulation. The fruit of these plants is so sweet it can’t even be touched, and they impart their fragrance and sweetness to anyone who even comes near them, making eyes water and smart. The flavor in the mouth is cold, glassy, liquid sweetness like caustic sugar slush, a taste known as ‘platium.’ Despite the sparse and deadly vegetation, however, the valley floor teems with life specially adapted to these conditions. These animals need to eat only occasionally, replenishing vitamins and minerals by chewing the stalks of woolly shrubs and the sluggish, floury termites that live at the edges of the sweetened zone in an area kept fertile by the droppings of the valley dwellers. These lively, hyperventilating creatures are brightly colored, red, orange, yellow, and purple things that absorb airborne glucose directly through their open mouths and the lungs beyond. Many move so quickly that they actually cannot be seen with the unaided eye and are known only by chance photography. The flesh of these creatures is overpoweringly salty, not sweet, and consequently also inedible in any appreciable quantity. Giant sloths, dholes, the gigantic snails of the sugar lands, entelodonts, wisents, nilgai, the different colored lamps in the windowless cells of the future parts of the city, all colors including white—soldiers come to hunt the giant sloths, when fear of whrounims doesn’t keep them off.