Aurelia

by R. A. Lafferty

  And the “passion,” the emotions that are spoken of as psychic powerhouses what do they generate? One of the emotions, love, is the cause of almost everything we do. But there are other things and games that borrow and use that name, so that makes confusion. But love is indeed a powerhouse in the pursuit of happiness, for love is a sort of premonition or paragon of final happiness.

  What I am trying to get you to do is to govern yourselves more, so I will get by with governing you less. I am lazy in this. Strong passions are more easily governed than are weak passions, just as a three-foot-long steel sword can be more deftly and swordfully manipulated than can be a three-foot-long piece of spaghetti.

  Right along here, but only in this one place, am I at a little bit of a disadvantage in lecturing to you. I am only fourteen years old, and on ‘Shining World’ we don’t experience the deeper emotions till we are fifteen.

  FIRST CENA

  “Your murderer is surely in our company, Aurelia,” Marshal-Julio the famous bodyguard said. “But it is difficult to sift one of a dozen out of five thousand persons. Do you have a hint?”

  “Not the least. And I believe that the murderer, if there is one, has not yet selected himself from the mob. If I were following Aurelia though, and biding my time, I would not hide in her own camp but in the neighbouring crowd. They’re quite close.”

  “Yes, yes, that’s possible,” Marshal-Julio said. “Aurelia, did you ever wonder how your shadow moves and acts when you’re not there? When I was a child and in the house sick, I used to wonder how my shadow moved out in the sunshine. Did it move more freely when it wasn’t tied to me? Or did it move cautiously and with hesitation when it had no one to give it leadership?”

  “Let’s go see,” Aurelia said. “It isn’t everybody who can spy on her own separated shadow. We can easily drift back there, but won’t the people here wonder where Aurelia has gone?”

  “No. I’ll have it told that you’re resting for a little while, in one of the slowly-rolling carnival vans.”

  The bodyguard did have it told. Then he and Aurelia did go into one of the vans, and when they came out again they were in total masquerade. The Julio Cordovan part of the bodyguard had always been known as “The Men With a Thousand Faces,” and Aurelia herself was a girl of dozens of faces. They came out with other faces, and they were in carnival costumes. And then they dropped back several hundred yards to mingle with the retinue of Cousin Clootie, also known as the Dark Counterpart or the Dark Antagonist.

  “You also are under my governorship, so I must know who you really are,” Aurelia said as they went. “Are you Julio Cordovan or are you Marshal Straightstreet?”

  “Possibly I’m both,” Marshal-Julio said, “and most likely both of them are false names and false faces. My parents did not entail either of those names for me. I became Julio Cordovan when I was guard and protector of whole realms. And I was a good and air-tight guard for a while. Nothing could get by me. When I was in an early realm (not the realm that the international characters on the River Boat believe me to represent,) I began to hear about the tyro bodyguard in this country named Marshal Straightstreet. So I had an imitator, but with a curious turn, for I had used the name of Marshal Straightstreet when I had gone to college in this country. I checked on him, of course, and I found that he was indeed playing my double in appearance. I also found that he was in frequent contact with Rex Golightly who had known me well in college and who should have recognized an imitator as such. Or was there something else going on there?

  “But in my Julio Cordovan person I guarded a dozen realms well, and this for several decades. And then I came to my last realm. For a while I did well. Then one of the high persons whom I was to guard disappeared. No, he was not to be found anywhere. He had gone. I had to cover. I assumed his face and some of his duties, and I delegated the rest of his duties. It worked well except when the two of us had to appear at the same time. Then I resorted to illusion. As part of my early training, I was a stage magician and master of all the easy illusions.

  “Then a second high person disappeared, and a third. That made the illusions more difficult, especially when persons of the opposition raised clamours that the leaders should show themselves together. The disappearances increased. Finally there were twenty-three top persons of the realm who had disappeared, and this included the President, Premier, Prime Minister, First Marshal, All-Bureau Chief, and Autocrat of Big Labour. I took the place of all of them for a while. Aurelia, did you ever try to play the roles of twenty-three other persons all at the same time?”

  “No. I got up to four in mimes class at school. Some of the others got up to seven.”

  “It was too much for me. I broke and ran. Then there was chaos, very temporarily, in that realm. There was the legend of twenty-four leading men of that country all kidnapped at once. As the fabulous ‘Cloak-and-Croak Chief I was the twenty-fourth disappeared man. Well, twenty-three of the twenty-four men had indeed been kidnapped, but not all at one time. It had been a one-and-two business.

  “The new persons in the realm were in control within an hour, but perhaps I myself hadn’t disappeared as completely as I’d thought. The new persons knew where I was, and they contacted me and offered me a job. They said that I had talent, I may take that job after your own case is completed. It’s possible though that they’ll kill me, talent or not, if I ever put myself in their hands.”

  “What if you should somehow un-play those twenty-three roles you played, one at a time, bodyguard? Run the whole thing backwards. And what if the twenty-three persons should somehow reappear one at a time again?” Aurelia suggested.

  “They may yet reappear,” the bodyguard said, “but not until the political climate of that realm has changed.”

  “I like your story,” Aurelia said. “But what is the truth of it all? I am the governor and I insist on knowing. Really, it’s my curiosity that insists on knowing, and not my authority.”

  “Variation, that’s the thing,” Marshal-Julio said. “I could appear under a thousand faces. But then, to throw the hounds off, I wanted to appear twice under one face, just for a change of pace. So I set up two characters, Julio Cordovan and Marshal Straight-street of the same appearance. Julio was mostly for foreign work, and Marshal for feats in this country. And both contributed to my mystery.”

  “But there were two of you physically when you had a showdown with Rex Golightly. And two of you went into the blind-sack room, and only one of you came out.”

  “Oh, I really can maintain a double-man illusion for several minutes,” the bodyguard said, “but I just barely stretched it in that confrontation. Needless to say, when the door of that little room was closed and triply-locked, the illusion collapsed completely. And I was again myself only, as I have always been. And yet I must continue under the Marshal-Julio illusion. It’s part of my mystique.”

  There were banners up in the Cousin Clootie Cavalcade. “Repent, Repent!” some of them said. “This Day Shall Thy Soul Be Required of Thee,” said others. And Cousin Clootie himself could be heard, walking apart and talking to a small and select group of his leading people.

  “I know how to disguise it,” Aurelia said, “but do you? You weren’t able to disguise it from me, bodyguard. Don’t you know enough to give every character you play a different odour-signature, a made-up one if there is no original one to imitate?”

  “You can identify persons by their body-odour?” Marshal-Julio asked. “Can Cousin Clootie do it also?”

  “Likely he can,” Aurelia said. “I’ve never heard of a place, until this one, where people are so smell-less. It’s coming into a blind world or a deaf world, only one doesn’t notice so quickly that the people are handicapped. Well, let’s stay to the leeward of them at least.”

  “Repent, repent!” Cousin Clootie was saying in a voice that was frayed from much talking. “It looks as if I arrived at this world at the very last possible time to call you to repentance. This is one thing that a good governor must d
o continually, call his people to repentance. I do not know which is the most urgent, that you should repent of your fiscal outrages, or your aesthetic, or your intellectual, or your practical, or your moral. I suppose that your fiscal and monetary outrages are the most enormous. Evil people, you have become ugly in your outrages!”

  “He’s right, of course,” Aurelia said. “The teen-aged curmudgeon is right.”

  “But he’s so rough about being right,” the bodyguard commented. “The saying is that you can catch more flies with sugar than with vinegar.”

  “Look at the difference in the caught-flies though,” Aurelia said. “The sugar-fed flies are always sickly, and what good are they when you have caught them? But the vinegar-fed flies at least give you something to work with. They seem strong and hard. They have a gloss on them. They may come with resentment, but at least they come with something. We do need vinegar always, and I had almost forgotten it.”

  “Don’t you people know what money is for?” Cousin Clootie was asking with emotion. “It is for the corporate communion of all the people in the world. Let us not make it out to be either more or less than it is. It is the most workable and universal mechanical contrivance for effecting the communion of peoples. There is no absolute or personal ownership of money, not ever. Money is like office. It may be occupied and administered, but it may not be owned. We may not say that one who controls more money is worse than one who controls less, any more than one who administers a high office is necessarily worse than one who administers a lower one. Misuse of money is really the sin of gluttony or obesity. Taking into oneself more money than one needs is as bad as taking into oneself more food than one needs. Corporations of persons demanding more money than they need are corporations of persons demanding damnation for themselves and deprivation for others.

  “Each world is a corporation of people unto itself, open only on the transcendental end. To break this corporation of people by greed or by grub is to bring on a reign of loneliness and misery, for they are the fruits of a broken corporation.”

  “Shadow and sunshine, shadow and sunshine,” Marshal-Julio mumbled to Aurelia. “You don’t say such things, Sunshine Aurelia, Governor of the Light Side. Why do you not?”

  “Oh, I keep forgetting to say them,” Aurelia answered. “I’ll say them by and by. Maybe I’ll say them tomorrow. You do not sense my murderer in this camp?”

  “No, but I sense many murderers of Cousin Clootie in this camp. He may be a much-murdered young man if these indications take flesh.”

  “If you put on money as a false flesh, as something as close to you as your flesh, then may you bleed out of that false flesh to your death and perdition,” Cousin Clootie was saying to an ever-increasing group of his followers. “No, I do not mean the persons on the hill there. I do not mean the person next to you. I mean you. I say it again, may you bleed to death and perishing out of that false flesh.”

  “Yes, he can stir up a lot of murder that way,” Aurelia said, “but it makes me feel guilty that I don’t stir up more enmity against myself. I will see that I do stir it up.”

  “The governor is worthy of his mansions,” Cousin Clootie was saying to a larger and even more doubtful group of his partisans, “and I will have mine this night, or I will cause bolides to rain down from the gawky sky onto those who have not provided for me. At a certain hour after dark tonight, I will reach out my hand to where the doorknob of my night mansion should be. It had better be there, and somehow I have the assurance that it will be there. And it is being brought about by a queer intervention by I don’t know whom.

  “Ah, my sunshine counterpart is present. I sense her but I cannot see her. Ours are parallel governorships, but they do not have to be contradictory.”

  Cousin Clootie had a throaty and difficult way of talking, especially when he was very much in earnest. And he had other awkward mannerisms. More persons have been hated and killed for having awkward mannerisms than for any other thing.

  Aurelia and the bodyguard Marshal-Julio returned to the Aurelia Cavalcade just at dark, and they also returned to their proper appearances. The people formed their five thousand unit intimate circle on the grass and began to eat the cena meal. Cena was a very long meal, with persons conversing far into the dark hours. There was first cold fare and shell-fish, olives, mushrooms, eggs, and first wine. Then kids, beans, chicken, ham, and second wine. Then pastry, fruits, hare, nuts, and third wine. A little music and poetry then, and much talk. And there was not the same break-up after cena as after the other meals, for the people would night it here in this neighbourhood, whatever arrangements they could make. What Aurelia cried out for the fourth-corner-of-the-day homily was this:

  Be you unrushed, and let the night come over you. I give you a darkness insight now. After the Passion in Large, there are the particular passions, or the style-passions of a particular world. I believe that they are really the mildest of the passions. Even when they are outrageous, it is with a small, tired, and toy-like outrage, or such it seems to be with you here. There isn’t much nobility in these particularities, not those of this world, not those of most of the worlds. What should a sincere governor do then? Gloss it over? I really don’t know yet.

  What we come up against with the particular passions in non-authenticity or unreality. But our life-goal, our final happiness, is real. And the unsubstantial miasma of the particular passions often stands in the way of it. Yes, it is much of the daily world that is unreal. But we shall come to reality finally, for our loss or for our gain.

  Joy is a bit higher than pleasure. They can both be minor happinessess. Or both can turn sour, when they are disordered or ungoverned. It is said that, for sorrow to be present, there must also be evil present. What, will not a mere misfortune cause sorrow? Yes, but it may be that a mere misfortune is evil. But cannot a misfortune or disaster be sent to us to test us and be for our ultimate good? It can be, but such a disaster or misfortune will not cause sorrow. It will cause something else, the name of which I know on “Shining World” but not here. It is something between sadness and pain.

  What is the name of the feeling in one when a loved friend or familiar has gone wrong or evil? If a good person cannot feel sorrow, what is it that a good person feels when confronted with evil, not in himself, but in someone very close to himself? There is a feeling of rebellion against the idea that sorrow is tied to evil. The death of a husband may bring sorrow to the wife, but where is the activating evil that is supposed to be attendant to it?

  To some extent, any sorrow in a governorship is charged against the governor. I am responsible, at least slightly, for all the sorrow in this world while I am governor here. Does anybody know about any sorrow in this world anywhere? Please tell me about it if you do, for I must try to remove it.

  People began to find themselves houses or nests for the night. There was a lot of tenting and of open camping. And some very big (hundred room or bigger, seven story or higher) tents were erected from their rolling wagons. These were the tents of the nomad kings, of the three, or of the twelve, or of the ninety-six of them. Even the Prince of Nysa was a magus with his pavilion. Who would have guessed that?

  Potlatch, the great tent of the nomad king Rex Golightly, was erected again, but Aurelia would not stay in it. She had already experienced its grace. Another great tent-mansion, that of the magus Melchior Rixthaler, was put at her disposal. It was a luxury place.

  “They don’t have such mansions on Skokumchuck, I bet,” the magus Melchior gloated. “This is bigger than that of Rex, and almost as big as that of Balthasar.”

  “Why do you suggest that I am from Skokumchuck?” Aurelia asked over-sweetly.

  “So that you might slip and tell us where you really do come from,” said Marco Rixthaler the son of the Magus Melchior.

  And, a little bit later, and no more than half a mile from there, the High Governor Cousin Clootie put out his hand in the dark for the doorknob of the night mansion that should be provided for him. And he
found it. It was the giant tent of the Magus Gaspar Grootgrondbezitter that was originally intended for Aurelia for the following night. It was fortunate that this mansion was ready and waiting or there would have been exploding bolides raining down out of the gawky sky.

  SECOND IENTACULUM

  “Through natural exuberance and curious mental exploration, certain men have grown into a peculiar curiosity and classification themselves, and have had a most singular sign placed upon them. This is sometimes understood to be one of the evil signs, but it is not so. Careful examination will always reveal that the two manifestations are quite different. The antler is rather the sign of excellence and achievement in a rational way, but in an unusual field of action or study. It is a sign of real discovery or rediscovery of forgotten things. While horned men are justly under the suspicion of evil, antlered men should not be.

  “So far as I know, there are no antlered women.”

  About Antlered Men from The Back-Door of History, by Arpad Arutinov.

  “You are sure that they are not true horns, Aurelia?” Herr Boch asked. “Then what sort of a ‘boch’ am I?”

  “You are a ‘boch’ of the analogous deer or odocoileus family, I suppose,” Aurelia said. “Is not the deer your totem animal? But you said that you had the growths in your youth and shed them and that you have been without them for twenty-one years. Oh, familiar, familiar! It’s an authentic pattern.

  “But only those who prowl through the forests of curious information will grow them at all. Well then, I will question you out of your forest of curious information.”