Ursula K. Le Guin

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  It was an old bitterness to Brelavay, to Itale a blow; he could not escape the conviction that to have suffered, to have submitted to evil, though he had had no way at all to refuse it, had made him a cause of evil. It was because of him that Frenin had given up. In the conscious and painful acceptance of this responsibility, he sat silent for a minute; he weighed a broken inkstand that was on the table in his hand, and said finally, “Tomas, did you . . . do you know anything about Isaber?”

  “Absolutely no trace. Nothing. They denied consistently, from the beginning, that he was in St Lazar; claimed he’d been released with an order to get out of the province. Beyond that, nothing.”

  He had lived with the boy’s death for two years in prison; he had not known till the hope was taken from him how much hope he had kept, hidden, that when he came out he would find it had been a mistake, a cruel hoax, a nightmare of his own, and Isaber was alive.

  This also, this inescapably, was his responsibility; he was answerable for this death.

  Brelavay asked him nothing, seeing that he was distressed and assuming that he knew even less than they about what had become of the boy. Sangiusto stood up, stretching, and said in English, “To fresh fields and pastures new. . . . I have eaten nothing.”

  “Come on, I told Givan I’d meet him at the Illyrica at one,” Brelavay said, relieved to get away from the unlucky subject.

  Givan Karantay had not changed; he was dark and warm as a banked fire. They sat two hours over their coffee-cups, talking. Two or three young men came up and asked if they might be introduced to Mr Sorde. Itale shook their hands and was short with them; they went humbly away.

  “You’re their hero, their Valtura, dear fellow,” said Karantay.

  “God forbid!”

  “God forbid indeed,” Brelavay said. “Valtura’s dead. Died in the Spielberg in ’28.”

  “Where Silvio Pellico, who knew Byron, is now,” said Sangiusto in his calm voice. “There must be good company in the Spielberg prison.” Now Itale knew why Sangiusto looked at him as if there were a tacit bond between them. There was. Sangiusto had spent three years in the Piombi in Venice as a political prisoner. Brelavay, Karantay, the young men wanted to hear and dared not ask about his jail term. Sangiusto did not want to hear, did not need to ask. Foreigner, exile, he was Itale’s compatriot.

  Arguments concerning Stefan Oragon surfaced occasionally, and in the course of one of them Sangiusto put in, “But he is a professional, isn’t he? and you are amateurs, myself too. The coups d’état are made by professionals. They succeed. The revolutions are made by amateurs.”

  “And fail?” Brelavay inquired.

  “Of course!”

  “But listen, Sangiusto,” Karantay said, “the words are good, it was amateurs that made ’89, all right. The crowds, the people that walked to Versailles and took the Bastille. And the Assembly, the Girondins, the Jacobins, they were lawyers, provincial men of letters, not politicians. But as they learned their trade, as they became professional, the Revolution began to fail, to lead inevitably towards the coup d’état that betrayed it.”

  “They did never learn their trade,” the Italian said. “Robespierre is always an amateur. The professional is Napoleon. The question is really this, what is failure, what is success? The Revolution failed, yes, and Napoleon is a very successful man, a conqueror, an emperor, but it was the failure, not the success, that gives hope to our life.”

  “Vivre libre, ou mourir,” Itale said, and laughed.

  “Exactly, Vergniaud. A professional lawyer, very successful in his profession. A nice lazy fellow, an amateur deputy, unsuccessful. Sklk!” Sangiusto cut his throat with the side of his hand. “A fine career cut short. But first he told us to live free or die. Why did you laugh, Sorde?”

  “Found I’d rather stay alive even if not free.”

  “Of course. For two years, three years. Or longer. But here we are now, alive and free.”

  “Alive,” Itale said.

  His money problem had been promptly solved, as Brelavay told him peremptorily that he had twenty-eight months’ wages waiting at Novesma Verba. “It’s been very useful, the most cash we ever kept on hand, I don’t know how many loans we’ve made from it to get people over a thin time. But they always repaid because it was your money, if it was my money or our money they’d have embezzled freely. . . .” Karantay had asked him to come share his rooms; he hesitated. “A friend was keeping my old rooms for me when I went to Rákava. I should go see whether he’s there.”

  Karantay went with him into the River Quarter, past St Stephen’s and the Street of Hangman’s Feast, the swarming courts and alleys under toppling houses in the shadow of the Hill of the University. “No change here,” Itale remarked. “Not for five hundred years,” said Karantay. At 9 Mallenastrada, Mrs Rosa, cat-beleaguered, greeted her long-lost tenant without warmth. “Your things are here, Mr Sorde. I’ll be glad to have ’em out of my way.”

  “Is Mr Brunoy here?”

  She looked him up and down. “No.”

  She knew him to be a jailbird. But his voice and clothing said gentleman. She wanted him to be a gentleman, she had had enough of jailbirds in her life, but she could not trust him; he had let her down, and her voice was vindictive as she said, “He died here, two years ago. Kounney’s got the rooms.”

  “I see,” Itale said. After a moment he asked submissively if Kounney was in. Mrs Rosa stood aside, and he and Karantay climbed the dark rickety stairs. Kounney came from behind his loom: “We was very sorry to hear, Mr Sorde,” he said. “It’s good to see you.” Itale shook his hand, and stopped to play with the baby, not born when he left and now a solemn two-year-old. The delicate face, the dark eyes gazed into Itale’s. “What’s her name, Kounney?”

  “It’s a him, he’s on the small side, makes him look like a girl. We called him Liyve. There’s a couple of things I kept for you here.” Kounney rummaged in the other room and returned with a small packet of papers which he gave to Itale: several letters written from Malafrena in the autumn of 1827, and a scrap of paper, one downhill scrawl of barely readable writing on it—“Prometheus no chains eternal.”

  “Mr Brunoy wrote that for you a day or two before he died,” Kounney said.

  Itale gave it to Karantay and walked away to the window.

  “Did you know him, Givan?” he asked.

  “Not well. He used to come to the office for word of you.”

  Itale stood with his back turned. “He was an upright man.”

  “That he was,” said the weaver. “And a good death. He couldn’t talk when he wrote you that, but at the end he spoke; he raised up and said, ‘I’m ready,’—like a bridegroom going to his wedding. I looked to see who he was talking to. And he lay back quiet and content, and his breath caught like, and he died. I wished the priest had stayed. I never saw a better death.”

  “Aye,” Itale said. “It was what he knew how to do.”

  He took the slip of paper back from Karantay and slipped it folded into the back of his watch.

  “How does it go, Kounney?”

  “I’ve kept working.” He looked up at Itale. “We’re in your rooms now, there being six of us we spread out a bit, but if you want—”

  “No, I won’t be coming back, Kounney. Did she raise the rent on you?”

  “No, and she didn’t ask rent of Mr Brunoy at the end, so that the little he had put by for it and the books and his watch paid to bury him. She’s all right. Knows when times are hard.”

  Kneeling, Itale put out his hand to the frail, solemn little boy in his sexless, shapeless, worn dress. “Goodbye, Liyve,” he said. The contrast in size of their hands was too much; he touched the child’s cheek. He stood up, shook hands with Kounney, bidding him goodbye.

  They went on to Karantay’s rooms south of the Eleynaprade. Karantay had kept a letter for Itale from Amadey Estenskar, dated February 6, 1828. Itale began to read it, laid it down, and put his head in his hands. “I can’t read any more lette
rs from the dead,” he said.

  Karantay had the top floor of a house, a set of big rooms, sparsely furnished, with high, large windows. Itale paced down the uncarpeted floor and back, and sat down again, wearily.

  “They all died today,” he said.

  “They haven’t been very good years, these last two or three,” Karantay said gently.

  “What’s wrong—what is it that’s wrong, Givan?”

  “I don’t know. Speaking for myself, nothing. I go on writing, it’s all I care about, you know, really. I make a living by it; I’m going to get married in September.”

  “Married! —To Karela?”

  Karantay nodded. He had been in love a long time, and had never been willing to talk about it; Itale could not tell even now whether his reticence expressed coolness of feeling, or suppressed a happiness he felt egoistical and unseemly.

  “So as I say, I have all I have ever asked for, for myself. But for us all together, they haven’t been good years. You in jail, Amadey dead, Frenin giving up. . . . Who can blame him? We knew all along we were pounding our heads on a stone wall trying to knock it down. But one’s head gets sore. And addled. . . . Then there’ve been so many searches. And summonses—Tomas has been called up three times now. And these damnable administrative sentences, they frighten us all. And the censorship so heavy I wonder why anybody still bothers to read Verba, sometimes. . . . But they do read it. Our subscription list has doubled in the last year and a half. And there are young men coming up, and men like Sangiusto—there are more of us than there used to be. It’s only that the waiting’s long, and we’ve never known for certain what it is we’re waiting for. No change there. But we’re a couple of years older.”

  Itale smiled. The kind sobriety of Karantay’s temper refreshed him now as always. “Waiting . . .” he said. “That’s not true of you, Givan. You have your work. But I have never worked. I’ve only made ready.”

  “The time will come, Itale.”

  “Will it? Is there any time but now?”

  Karantay did not answer.

  “I don’t know, Givan. I have lost—I have no right to speak of this.”

  “You have earned the right to speak of anything.”

  “No. That’s exactly it. I have earned nothing—nothing. You don’t earn, you don’t gain, where I was, Givan. You lose. You lose the right to talk to people who have—who believe in the powers of light— What I learned there was that I have no rights, and infinite responsibility.”

  “That would be infinite injustice. It’s false, Itale.”

  “I would rather trust you than myself,” Itale said. “I wish I could. I was—I was a better man, before—” He cut himself off, standing up abruptly. “I’m very tired, maybe I should lie down for a while.”

  He went off to the spare room. At eight Karantay looked in to go out to supper with him. He was sound asleep, and Karantay hesitated to waken him. He looked down at Itale’s face, worn and sleep-submerged, and then out the uncurtained, open window westward over roofs and gables and chimneystacks, the high view smoky and shadowed in long evening light. It was hot; there was no wind. Karantay stood there beside the friend he had not hoped to see again, wishing that there would be a wind off the river, darkness, rain. But the weather was steady, it would not change. On the bureau a silver watch lay open. It said two-thirty. Karantay tapped it, but it did not run. He spoke to Itale at last, rousing him, and they went down to the inn where Karantay took his meals.

  July passed, a long, hot July, and August came in hot. Itale was still with Karantay. The novelist had pressed him to stay, and he had yielded easily, lacking any real wish to go out and find himself a room. The impermanence of the arrangement, Karantay’s affectionate, reserved companionship, suited him. Companionship, friendship, he wanted very much, but he could not take hold here, he could not recommit himself to anything but his friends. He waited, irresolute, drifting, and increasingly tense, though his health continued to improve; taking comfort in being with Karantay, Brelavay, Sangiusto, and the others; waiting for alternate Mondays when the mail from the Montayna Diligence came in; waiting to decide where he was going to stay in Krasnoy and whether he was going to stay in Krasnoy; waiting, he did not know for what.

  George Helleskar was travelling in Germany, not due back for a few weeks. Itale had gone to pay his respects to the old count and had been received with emotion that was painful to him. The tough old man was over eighty now, and his invitation was pleading: “You could stay here, you know, I’ve lost count of the rooms standing empty. . . .” He asked about Luisa, and even mentioned Estenskar, whom he had never liked. “A bit of the real fireworks, that lad. One fine burst and it was over. He had the sense to know it, and not go sputtering on for fifty years, boring the cosmos. . . .”

  “I wonder if most of us don’t bore the cosmos,” Itale said to Karantay as they strolled back through the Eleynaprade in the fag end of the warm evening.

  “It’s my profession,” said the novelist. “Anyhow, I’d rather bore it than be bored by it.”

  A man in what had been a respectable coat came up to them begging; Itale talked with him a while. “That’s a new trade for him,” he said when the man had gone off with their small joint contribution. “How many out of work now? One of every three or four, I should think.”

  “Vernoy says the river-docks are working less than half the men this summer.”

  “So’s the Assembly,” Itale said with a glance at the Sinalya Palace looming pale and somber behind the splendid chestnut alleys.

  “I wonder why the grand duchess has shut herself up in the Roukh.”

  “Afraid of demonstrations, Oragon says.”

  “The Sinalya is more vulnerable. I wonder what it is she really fears.”

  “Damned Austrian cow in the throne room of Egen the Great. She needs to be taught her place.”

  Karantay laughed. “You’re fierce, lately.”

  “So’s everyone else. It’s hot. We’re tired. My God! we’re tired. Will it ever change? I came here five years ago. All that time—all my life, all our lives, Givan—since we were born, the net’s been drawing tighter, the air’s been getting staler, there’s been less and less room to move. Europe is like a pond in drought, drying up. . . .”

  “And the Austrian cattle drinking the last of the water,” said Karantay. They walked on. An owl flew across the path in front of them from one oak to another, hunting, soft as a tossed ball of dark wool in the dusk.

  Brelavay, who had taken over Itale’s editorship of Novesma Verba, wanted to give it back to him, but Itale had temporised, and most of the others agreed with him that they had to be cautious: he was, after all, a convicted seditionist, and any public act put both himself and his collaborators at risk. He had drawn enough to live on out of the fund that Brelavay insisted was his back wages, but was not currently on the staff. He served, however, as an unpaid employe, along with Sangiusto, who was working as a very slightly paid reporter at the Assembly. Their reportership was more than anything else a test, to find if they could with impunity reconnect themselves with the journal. So the two of them sat in the gallery of the Assembly Room in the hot afternoons listening to the order of the day dragging on, in Latin, below them among the scanty ranks of the Eastern General. No other reporters ever bothered to attend; the Courier-Mercury got its list of motions direct from the president. Sangiusto and Itale allayed their boredom one afternoon by inventing the debates in the Egyptian National Dynastic Assembly of Both Kingdoms on August 11, 1830 B.C. —“The President: I recognise Mr Aphasis, the Deputy from Karnak. Mr Aphasis: My lords, gentlemen! Are we to credit the unsupported allegation of the honorable deputy from Ptu-upon-Nile that two wagonloads of perishable produce such as pullet-eggs and radishes and a small cart containing mummified cats were detained for sixty-two hours for examination at the West Gate of His Divine Highness’ capital city? Is it positively known, can it be subject to material proof, that the pullet-eggs and radishes were rendered unfi
t for consumption and that the mummified cats deteriorated in quality due to the alleged detention for examination? . . .” Brelavay slipped their farce into Novesma Verba, signing it “Cheops,” and the Censor passed it. It was the journal’s last report of debates in the Assembly.

  At the opening next day, Prime Minister Cornelius appeared on the rostrum to request adjournment of the Assembly until October, on the part of the Grand Duchess Mariya, whose indisposition, aggravated by the inclement weather, forbade her the study and exercise of judgment required for the sanction or veto of decrees voted by the Assembly convened by her gracious favor. The president, a rightwing noble, closed debate and adjourned the session, and as protest began from the left a concerted exit by the right took enough deputies out that the protesters lacked the quorum of seventy. It all took six or eight minutes. Itale and Sangiusto had to compare notes to be sure they knew what had occurred. They went off at once to the Cafe Illyrica with the news, but it had preceded them; men out of work wanted nothing better than a subject of talk, a subject of indignation. The closure of the parliament to which nobody had paid any attention drew the attention of the whole city. Itale and Sangiusto, themselves out of work again, wandered the hot, restless streets watching and listening. The park was full of people, as if it were some festival day. The City Watch had been posted at the gates of the Sinalya Palace, empty now at the end of its long chestnut-shaded mall. The Palace Guard were on duty at the Roukh, which stood tawny and dour over its square, baking in the August sun. Shops along Palazay Street between the two palaces were mostly closed and shuttered as if for holiday. Molsen Boulevard lay long and empty above the empty river; one barge came down, black in the blinding sun-glare, as Itale and Sangiusto strolled to the journal’s office. Oragon was there, fresh from Court. All doors there, he said, were locked, all mouths shut. Only one rumor was afloat, that a courier had arrived last night from Vienna. But couriers were always arriving.