Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice

by James Branch Cabell

  24.

  Of Compromises in Cocaigne

  Thus Jurgen abode for a little over two months in Cocaigne, andcomplied with the customs of that country. Nothing altered inCocaigne: but in the world wherein Jurgen was reared, he knew, itwould by this time be September, with the leaves flaring gloriously,and the birds flocking southward, and the hearts of Jurgen's fellowsturning to not unpleasant regrets. But in Cocaigne there was noregret and no variability, but only an interminable flow of curiouspleasures, illumined by the wandering star of Venus Mechanitis.

  "Why is it, then, that I am not content?" said Jurgen. "And whatthing is this which I desire? It seems to me there is some injusticebeing perpetrated upon Jurgen, somewhere."

  Meanwhile he lived with Anaitis the Sun's daughter very much as hehad lived with Lisa, who was daughter to a pawnbroker. Anaitisdisplayed upon the whole a milder temper: in part because she couldconfidently look forward to several centuries more of life beforebeing explained away by the Philologists, and so had less need thanDame Lisa to worry over temporal matters; and in part because therewas less to ruin one's disposition in two months than in ten yearsof Jurgen's company. Anaitis nagged and sulked for a while when herPrince Consort slackened in the pursuit of strange delights, as hedid very soon, with frank confession that his tastes were simple andthat these outlandish refinements bored him. Later Anaitis seemed todespair of his ever becoming proficient in curious pleasures, andshe permitted Jurgen to lead a comparatively normal life, with onlyan occasional and half-hearted remonstrance.

  What puzzled Jurgen was that she did not seem to tire of him: and hewould often wonder what this lovely myth, so skilled and potent inarts wherein he was the merest bungler, could find to care for inJurgen. For now they lived together like any other humdrum marriedcouple, and their occasional exchange of endearments was as much amatter of course as their meals, and hardly more exciting.

  "Poor dear, I believe it is simply because I am a monstrous cleverfellow. She distrusts my cleverness, she very often disapproves ofit, and yet she values it as queer, as a sort of curiosity. Well,but who can deny that cleverness is truly a curiosity in Cocaigne?"

  So Anaitis petted and pampered her Prince Consort, and took suchopen pride in his queerness as very nearly embarrassed himsometimes. She could not understand his attitude of polite amusementtoward his associates and the events which befell him, and eventoward his own doings and traits. Whatever happened, Jurgenshrugged, and, delicately avoiding actual laughter, evincedamusement. Anaitis could not understand this at all, of course,since Asian myths are remarkably destitute of humor. To Jurgen inprivate she protested that he ought to be ashamed of his levity: butnone the less, she would draw him out, when among the bestial andgrim nature myths, and she would glow visibly with fond pride inJurgen's queerness.

  "She mothers me," reflected Jurgen. "Upon my word, I believe that inthe end this is the only way in which females are capable of loving.And she is a dear and lovely creature, of whom I am sincerely fond.What is this thing, then, that I desire? Why do I feel life is nottreating me quite justly?"

  So the summer had passed; and Anaitis travelled a great deal, beinga popular myth in every land. Her sense of duty was so strong thatshe endeavored to grace in person all the peculiar festivals held inher honor, and this, now the harvest season was at hand, left herwith hardly a moment disengaged. Then, too, the mission of Anaitiswas to divert; and there were so many people whom she had personallyto visit--so many notable ascetics who were advancing straighttoward canonization, and whom her underlings were unable todivert,--that Anaitis was compelled to pass night after night inunwholesomely comfortless surroundings, in monasteries and in thecells and caves of hermits.

  "You are wearing yourself out, my darling," Jurgen would say: "anddoes it not seem, after all, a game that is hardly worth the candle?I know that, for my part, before I would travel so many miles into adesert, and then climb a hundred foot pillar, just to whisperdiverting notions into an anchorite's very dirty ear, I would letthe gaunt rascal go to Heaven. But you associate so much withsaintly persons that you have contracted their incapacity for seeingthe humorous side of things. Well, you are a dear, even so. Here isa kiss for you: and do you come back to your adoring husband as soonas you conveniently can without neglecting your duty."

  "They report that this Stylites is very far gone in rectitude," saidAnaitis, absent-mindedly, as she prepared for the journey, "but Ihave hopes for him."

  Then Anaitis put purple powder on her hair, and hastily got togethera few beguiling devices, and went into the Thebaid. Jurgen went backto the Library, and the _System of Worshipping a Girl_, and theunique manuscripts of Astyanassa and Elephantis and Sotades, and theDionysiac Formulae, and the Chart of Postures, and the _Litany ofthe Centre of Delight_, and the Spintrian Treatises, and the_Thirty-two Gratifications_, and innumerable other volumeswhich he found instructive.

  The Library was a vaulted chamber, having its walls painted with thetwelve Asan of Cyrene; the ceiling was frescoed with the arched bodyof a woman, whose toes rested upon the cornice of the east wall, andwhose out-stretched finger-tips touched the cornice of the westernwall. The clothing of this painted woman was remarkable: and toJurgen her face was not unfamiliar.

  "Who is that?" he inquired, of Anaitis.

  Looking a little troubled, Anaitis told him this was AEsred.

  "Well, I have heard her called otherwise: and I have seen her inquite other clothing."

  "You have seen AEsred!"

  "Yes, with a kitchen towel about her head, and otherwiseunostentatiously appareled--but very becomingly, I can assure you!"Here Jurgen glanced sidewise at his shadow, and he cleared histhroat. "Oh, and a most charming and a most estimable old lady Ifound this AEsred to be, I can assure you also."

  "I would prefer to know nothing about it," said Anaitis, hastily, "Iwould prefer, for both our sakes, that you say no more of AEsred."Jurgen shrugged.

  Now in the Library of Cocaigne was garnered a record of all that thenature myths had invented in the way of pleasure. And here, with nocompanion save his queer shadow, and with AEsred arched above andbleakly regarding him, Jurgen spent most of his time, ratheragreeably, in investigating and meditating upon the more curious ofthese recreations. The painted Asan were, in all conscience, foodfor wonder: but over and above these dozen surprising pastimes, thebooks of Anaitis revealed to Jurgen, without disguise or reticence,every other far-fetched frolic of heathenry. Hitherto unheard-offorms of diversion were unveiled to him, and every recreation whichingenuity had been able to contrive, for the gratifying of the mostsubtle and the most strong-stomached tastes. No possible sort ofamusement would seem to have been omitted, in running the quaintgamut of refinements upon nature which Anaitis and her cousins hadat odd moments invented, to satiate their desire for some more suaveor more strange or more sanguinary pleasure. Yet the deeper Jurgeninvestigated, and the longer he meditated, the more certain itseemed to him that all such employment was a peculiarlyunimaginative pursuit of happiness.

  "I am willing to taste any drink once. So I must give diversion afair trial. But I am afraid these are the games of mental childhood.Well, that reminds me I promised the children to play with them fora while before supper."

  So he came out, and presently, brave in the shirt of Nessus, andmimicked in every action by that incongruous shadow, Prince Jurgenwas playing tag with the three little Eumenides, the daughters ofAnaitis by her former marriage with Acheron, the King of Midnight.

  Anaitis and the dark potentate had parted by mutual consent."Acheron meant well," she would say, with a forgiving sigh, "andthat in the Moon's absence he occasionally diverted travellers, I donot deny. But he did not understand me."

  And Jurgen agreed that this tragedy sometimes befell even theirreproachably diverting.

  The three Eumenides at this period were half-grown girls, whom theirmother was carefully tutoring to drive guilty persons mad by thestings of conscience: and very quaint it was to see the young Furiesat practi
se in the schoolroom, black-robed, and waving lightedtorches, and crowned each with her garland of pet serpents. Theybecame attached to Jurgen, who was always fond of children, and whohad frequently regretted that Dame Lisa had borne him none.

  "It is enough to get the poor dear a name for eccentricity," he hadbeen used to say.

  So Jurgen now made much of his step-children: and indeed he foundtheir innocent prattle quite as intelligent, in essentials, as thetalk of the full-grown nature myths who infested the palace ofAnaitis. And the four of them--Jurgen, and critical Alecto, andgrave Tisiphone, and fairy-like little Megaera,--would take longwalks, and play with their dolls (though Alecto was a triflecondescending toward dolls), and romp together in the eternalevening of Cocaigne; and discuss what sort of dresses and trinketsMother would probably bring them when she came back from Ecbatana orLesbos, and would generally enjoy themselves.

  Rather pathetically earnest and unimaginative little lasses, Jurgenfound the young Eumenides: they inherited much of their mother'snarrow-mindedness, if not their father's brooding and gloomytendencies; but in them narrow-mindedness showed merely as amusing.And Jurgen loved them, and would often reflect what a pity it wasthat these dear little girls were destined when they reachedmaturity, to spend the rest of their lives in haunting criminals andadulterers and parricides and, generally, such persons as mustinevitably tarnish the girls' outlook upon life, and lead them tosee too much of the worst side of human nature.

  So Jurgen was content enough. But still he was not actually happy,not even among the endless pleasures of Cocaigne.

  "And what is this thing that I desire?" he would ask himself, againand again.

  And still he did not know: he merely felt he was not gettingjustice: and a dim sense of this would trouble him even while he wasplaying with the Eumenides.