Mandragon

by R. M. Koster

  That thought blobbed up, muting the giggles. It bobbed about in his mind, muffling the hoots. The last titter had hushed and faded when, some twenty minutes later—booted, pistoled, kepi’d, combat-greened—he strode into the conference room of his work bunker for a breakfast consultation with his aides.

  Who congratulated mi general on the end of the drought. As if he’d accomplished it! as if he’d been more than a tool! As if the brush deserves praise for the triptych, or the laboratory rat a prize for the cure! Mandragon worked the miracle, not Genghis. Mandragon brought the rain, and no one in the conference room knew that Genghis was even tangently involved. But that’s the style with people in power: their sycophants miss no chance to stroke them. No matter how ridiculous the pretext, people in power receive congratulations, and accept them as their due as Genghis did, nodding curtly, giving his left hand a few sealish flaps, bending to slurp coffee. Then he leaned back, wiped his lips with his right index finger, wiped the finger on the front of his uniform, squared his beefy shoulders, fixed his bulgy eyes on Dr. Remo Lampazo Inmundo, his chief aide, and called for a full report on conditions in Tinieblas.

  Which Dr. Lampazo didn’t feel much like giving: conditions in Tinieblas weren’t good. Tinieblas was in the last stages of dismantlement, bankrupt, mortgaged to the fourth generation, flying apart. Dr. Lampazo longed for the days of drought when all he’d needed on his clipboard was a wire from a weirdo in Winnetka or some similar twaddle, which like as not he never even had to read—not all the way through—before the Cheese-in-Cheese coptered off into the yonder, or slunk away for a quick boff. Today, it seemed, he meant business, and Dr. Lampazo didn’t want to tell him about conditions, which were worse than they’d been the day before, for the government if not for the people. Drought relief was all that was filling the satchels; now it would end. The drought had absorbed much rage and hatred; now the dictatorship would have it all. But Dr. Lampazo had a young economist on his staff who was a genius for teaching figures to fandango and making data dance sarabands and gavottes, who could prove fourteen contradictory theses with the same statistics and had besides the most boring delivery conceivable, not simply dry but mumbled, halting, and confused. No disciplined thought went on behind mi general’s brow, so he’d scarcely keep track of all those nimble numbers. His attention span was at best but eye-blink brief, so he’d scarcely hear the economist through. There was every chance he’d doze off, or nip back across the way for a nick of nooky. Dr. Lampazo unleashed his data-dog and sicked him on the general—that is, he called the fellow forward (since secondary aides sat back from the table behind the principals) and gave him the floor.

  Harumphs and rustling of papers. At length a stumbling mutter pitched just above the air conditioner’s whirr:

  “Analysis of information for the month of April—those figures, mi general, so far reported to the national government and subject to revision and supplementation—suggest that the per capita national indebtedness—the republic’s obligations, mi general, divided by the best estimate of current population—has fallen, that is gone down, by point four two percent …”

  (Not because the debt was any smaller, because lots of babies had been born, but he didn’t say that.)

  “… whereas the rate of unemployment—the number of workers, mi general, divided by the number idle, that is, not working—declined also (a very encouraging sign) by point six two percent …”

  (Not because anyone had found work, because a good many who’d been looking had starved to death or committed suicide, but he didn’t mention that either.)

  “… while during the first quarter of the calendar year—January through March, that is, mi general—the rate of increase in inflation receded by nearly point eight percent …”

  (As if that meant inflation was subsiding instead of getting worse a little less rapidly.)

  “… and the national money, the Tinieblan inchado, that is, entirely ceased declining on all financial markets …”

  (Because it was totally worthless now, and no one bothered to quote it.)

  “… which, coupled with the fact that we project a point three six percentage of increase in revenue collection …

  The muttering ran on. Numbers thumped in it hypnotically, like devils’ names in an incantation—always percentages of this or that, never a hint of flesh-and-bone suffering humans. Yet mi general wasn’t lulled. Mi general was racked and moaning. Not with boredom either. The report had started a replay of a remake reflickering in mi general’s mind’s eye. His mind’s snout was being remashed in the mess he’d made.

  Rocking back and forth keening remorse. Beating his brow and gnawing his knuckles. Then, as the economist stuttered silent, Genghis unplugged. His shame was instantly replaced by righteous fury.

  “Hijo de la grandisima PUUUUUU-ta! Kids are eating dirt, there are beggars all over, and you give me diddle about point what-the-fuck up and down! Say it, man, this country’s in the shit up to the eyes! In the shit and sinking, you want to know why? Bungling, that’s why, and liars trying to hide it! If I’d had anything to do with it, I’d hang myself”

  Snorted and stared grimly round the table. “Well, it’s over. For good, as of right now, I won’t stand for it. I’m in charge now and my … Stop that laughing! There’s nothing funny here, stop it, I say! I’ll have no faggish laughing at my conferences! I wont stand for it! Bungling and lies!”

  And he flung from the room—hands clamped over his ears—up snickering steps, through a doorway that screeched derision, out under a cloud-strewn sky that was belching ho-ho-ho’s.

  Nevertheless, he kept trying. For seven days he tried his pathetic best. No doubt he’d done something foolish (though for the life of him he couldn’t think what), still the flagpole had no right to bray in mockery. He was chief of government! That thought blopped to the surface of his mind and deadened the laughter. It was barely audible by the time he reached his quarters and phoned the capital and ordered a cabinet meeting for the following morning. Then he slept, for to tell the truth he was weary. Threw himself down-not between two sides of prime, for with so many Tinieblans suffering it was unseemly for the head of government to revel. Went to bed totally tartless for the first time in years. No question, he was trying his pitiful best.

  But at the sight of his brother Akbar, the minister of public works, alighting from the first of a convoy of limos, a replay of a remake began rescreening back of his brow. Fiery stings sewed him, he wept and wailed. Then he began to harrangue his assembled siblings, attacking the government. Thieves and vandals who stole whatever they could and wrecked the rest! Highways to nowhere and bridges without rivers! Criminal lunacy, which (thank heaven!) he’d had nothing to do with. He bellowed on, though a mid-morning shower descended precisely on schedule, until the raindrops began tittering and the puddles on the asphalt started to chuckle, and the sea (blue-grey, immense, and placid under the rain) sent basso peals of laughter rolfing toward him. He screamed for silence and then clomped off, his hands pressed firmly over his cars.

  The members of his cabinet glanced about at each other, then hopped back into their cars and sped away, using the telephones with which ministerial limousines were equipped to alert their brothers and sisters, their spouses and children, their cousins and in-laws. Kublai phoned Intercontinental Airlines in Miami and chartered a jumbo. Mesalina phoned her ministry and issued a statement about a long-planned family excursion. That afternoon all the Manducos left Tinieblas. Flung clothing into valises, dumped jewels into handbags. Packed bankbooks into attaché cases, stuffed the last of the cash into satchels. Nero Manduco took a gunnysack round to the National Museum and collected the pre-Columbian gold figurines. Lucrezia Manduco made off with the presidential silver service. Each grabbed what he could and bolted. Limousine after limousine, sedan after sedan took the new toll road cut to the new airport. Manduco after Manduco scurried up the ramp, took one look over his shoulder, and leaped aboard. By sundown Genghis was the only member of
the family left in the country.

  By then the thought had globbed up in his mind that he was head of state. By then he had called the assembly into special session. By then the laughter had stilled and he was going to give his country fearless, wise, compassionate, manly leadership—exactly what, he didn’t know yet, but it would be the wonder of the world! The next morning he went down to Ciudad Tinieblas—bulletproof vestless! No question, he was trying—to steel the legislators for the hard task ahead.

  And rewitnessed the remake, and suffered the stings. And bellowed righteous rage, and proclaimed his innocence. Crazy laws! Institutionalized confusion! He’d had nothing to do with it, his conscience was clear. And heard the horrid laughter. And rushed from the chamber, hands clapped to his ears.

  For seven days Genghis spun in this spiral, toward the end making three or four circuits daily. Thought after thought glopped to the surface of his mind, pulling him from one spin and flinging him into another. He was maximum leader of the Revolution, so he coptered here and there to hastily arrange village meetings, where like an old-time feudal lord he heard peasants’ complaints but where, inevitably, he felt the stings of shame then disconnected, denounced the Revolution’s blunders and, at the last, rushed off tormented by mocking laughter. He was commandant of the Civil Guard, so he collected the general staff to plan new policy, but within minutes he was screaming accusations—seven years of terror! which, of course, he’d had nothing to do with—and finished by begging the stone portals of the headquarters not to gibe and cackle. He was a world figure, so he called a press conference. Journalists had flown in from all over to report the end of the drought—leather-hearted cynics who’d seen everything, but mi general soon had them blinking in amazement. He denounced the dictatorship in the third person, as if he’d just come to power and was doing his best to correct abuses he’d had nothing to do with, then shrieked for his audience to stop laughing at him. He was president of the republic, so he went about cutting ribbons and laying cornerstones, and at every stop whirled through the cycle again: felt the stings of shame and disconnected; denounced the government, claimed he wasn’t to blame, and fled away tormented by rude jeers. Whip-snapped through it dizzily. Faster and faster, on and on, round and round.

  The end came on the seventh anniversary of the majors’ coup when purpled in a dress uniform (a general’s gold palm fronds at the lapels), draped with the presidential sash, spangled with stars and crosses bestowed on him by other blustering thieves, he descended to the roof of the Excelsior. A reviewing platform seven stories high had been set up at the hotel’s facade. A great multitude thronged the plaza—dragooned peasants, lockstep-marched public employees, schoolchildren singing “Genghis Will Save Us.” Elite units of the Civil Guard were formed up in adjacent streets, ready to parade in his honor. But the instant he stepped from his chopper, his mind’s eye was filled with horrors, his mind’s snout was mashed in the mess he’d made, his mind’s ears were rasped and pummeled with laughter. The end and the beginning fell together. Shame and scorn buffeted him at once. There wasn’t an instants relief from either.

  At that moment Genghis Manduco gave up the struggle to be human. Then and there he renounced Mandragon’s barbed grace. Hauled himself back into his helicopter. Had his pilot fly him to a manduquized farm in a remote sector of Remedios. Dismissed the aircraft, headed for the sty.

  The celebration in the capital was held up, of course. A high-level search mission was organized. So it was that Colonels Atila Guadaña, Fidel Acha, and Lisandro Empulgueras found their commander-in-chief kneeling in mud and droppings grunting contentment, his dress trousers bunched at his ankles, his starred and spangled tunic smeared with slime, his genghishood porked deeply in a plump sow.

  Bye-bye, Blahisimo.

  Farewell, mi general.

  Adios.

  27

  With the passing of the drought and the Manducos, Tinieblas began to revive. The ranking officers of the Civil Guard formed a new junta but didn’t act like lobsters in a basket. None of them wanted to be on top of the others, not with so many problems to solve and nothing worth stealing left in the country. They didn’t even want to stay in power, not with what had happened to Genghis fresh in their minds. Let civilians try to clean up the mess. Let politicians run the risk of getting swined. They set a date for new elections and meanwhile did their best to make amends.

  Prisoners were freed and exiles welcomed home. Manduquized property was returned to rightful owners. Mangu’s crazy taxes were rescinded. Caligula’s mad fiats were repealed. Genghis himself was stowed in the Fasholt Clinic—no expense to the state, since the doctors there were so eager to study him they agreed to board and treat him free. The junta even considered issuing a group apology for having associated with him, but in the end that wasn’t necessary. The people weren’t vindictive. All the people wanted was to forget the seven-year “manducazo”—like an obscene assault committed on them, like a loathsome disease they’d caught and then been cured of. The government had stopped preying on them, that was plenty. Rain had come at last, that was enough. No one wanted to tempt fate by seeking vengeance. With the parasites gone and the drought broken, Tinieblans stepped from their long loneliness. Pseudopods of fellowship sprouted from them. Tendrils of love pushed out, touched gingerly, and merged. Bonds formed and energy was channeled. Bit by bit the country revived.

  In Otán, Mandragon labored. Mandragon was refurbishing maimed spirits. Mandragon was restoring damaged lives. Mandragon was renovating people and rehearsing them for full humanity. I knew my business and worked carefully, taking infinite pains crafting my remnant so they’d be fit to survive the old and seed the new. I knew my destiny and I worked ceaselessly, so that no moment would be wasted. The time of my extinction was approaching, but I refused to let that trouble or distract me. I had my gifts about me, that was plenty. I was power’s instrument, that was enough. I wore my fate as lightly as my skin, and went about my mission smiling gaily.

  Recollecting now, reaching to recapture. Before, when they put me in here, I lay remorsing and repining, flogging the stale moments by. Last night I began remembering who I was, and bit by bit power revives in me. In those days, though, I knew, and power filled me. I was at my post, doing my duty, obeying undisobeyable orders I chose freely, and from acceptance flowed constant joy and ease. Revelation, that might have made life bitter, made it tasty. Responsibility, that might have been a burden, buoyed me up. Just as now, in pale reflection, recalling and reclaiming my identity releases me from heaviness and fear, refreshes this last hour.

  Now everyone beyond these rooms is sleeping—thieves and brawlers in their cages, my girls downstairs: Apple and Nightandmist and Confort; Full Moons with Paloma in her arms. My keeper nods, eyes closed, before his monitors. Officers and guards doze at their stations. The sentinel leans drowsing at the gate. In the café the cook sleeps sprawled back in a chair, head flopped on his right shoulder, while at a counter stool a whore’s asleep hunched forward, face pillowed on her forearms near the cool tiles. I do not have to leave this chaise to see them. Men sleep on the stone floors of rude cantinas. Women sleep beside screenless windows in tenement flats. And in the palace Angela sleeps naked in silk sheet—curled on her side, hands bunched between her thighs—just as, during imperishable nights, she slept beside me, her smooth rump softly spooned to my male loins. Soon all will be called back to guilt and error, but for this interim they’re infanted in sleep. And, for this interim, Mandragon remembers.

  Sunlight spilled into a forest clearing. Breeze and birdsong stilled for my mute word. Mandragon remembers. My tribe around me, repairing joyfully toward a new world. I was the father who curbs, the mother who nourishes. I was the mother who scolds, the father who shields. I was the gloom that shrouds a dying epoch. I was the light that guides and beckons to adventure. I was the path and the goal, the scourge and the unguent, readying them for the end and the beginning.

  Without haste and without rest Mandragon l
abored, and each moment was fresh and precious.

  Word of me spread. I had brought rain and cleansed the land of vermin. I took young people and presided at strange rites. I preached world’s end and the earth purified. I promised both salvation and destruction. Word of me roused conflicting feelings—love-hate, hope-fear, desire and revulsion. Mandragon’s presence was disturbing, for Mandragon’s grace was barbed.

  The ritual of communal love, for instance, raised yaps and squawks and rantings, secret yearnings, lewd and shameful dreams, in every crevice of Tinieblas, though my tribe celebrated it but once a month and, for the rest, went chaste. It was a means of lifting people from themselves, of dipping them into undifferentiated unity—distinctions vaporized, sexes confused, loneliness shattered. It was the vulgar image of my neuter wholeness, at the reach of new initiates, and so the rite was held at crescent moon. But from the stir it caused one would have thought that all we did was orgy, night and morning, all the year around, and Mandragon (they said) chomped and was romped by everyone, when in fact I stayed apart in trance. Not surprising, though, this intense interest, this fierce reaction, and sex can’t account for all of it—no, not for half. Every effort to bridge opposites is both scary and seductive, for every human longs to escape himself, yet is afraid of losing his identity, of forgetting who he is. My tribe forgot themselves in me. I renamed them and created them new persons. That in itself was exciting and unsettling, orgies (which were just a means) apart. Infuriating too, for in their hearts heart many craved to join me, but fear overruled desire and transformed it to revulsion. Many of those howls of happy hatred will have been bred from thwarted love.

  Word spread, outsiders came. In curiosity, in reverence, in need. In anger and impiety and envy. To scoff or to believe, to sneer or worship, and from the way Mandragon received them word spread farther and more came.

  Mandragon received Gaspar Gaspacho and Melquior Melgacho and Baltasar Baldacho, the governors (respectively) of Salinas, La Merced, and Tuquetá. They came to salute the rainmaker and pay homage to the vermin-chaser, since their provinces had been savaged by the drought and their posts previously held by minor Manducos. But instead of receiving gifts from them, Mandragon gave. When the three governors returned to their cars, as they were driving off, there were three explosions without concussion like the timed-fire cracks of a high-powered semiautomatic rifle. An object appeared in air before each of them, hung spinning near the dome light of each car, then settled gently into each lap.