by Tom La Farge
While the others stared at the table, ’Nna looked up at the rich light pouring from the lamps. Every color swirled in it. She held out her hand, and her fingers were smooth, strong, saturated with a chestnut’s sheen. Their roundness tapered to shapely, pearly nails. She turned her rosy palm upward and curled her fingers around a shaft of the light. Her world tipped.
15.
The Illumination Dinner
When the lights came on, Root was at Sevene’s, out in some small pointless court with a pool in it. All at once the stars went out, the wavery reflected stars he’d been looking at, for lack of a soul to talk to, all palace people and their awful wives. The water, which had been silvered black, turned milky green. The wives said oo. Then everybody clapped. Root set down his glass and clapped too. He’d been working for weeks on this, never really knowing what he was going to get. He had lit every room in the palace as if it were a set and learned quite a bit; he’d helped himself to gear he’d need in the Roohaneeya, and Sevene had paid him handsomely.
It was a bit of a marvel all the same, this illumination. Under the arcade all was rosy red, hidden lights shining on the stucco. No dark corners any more; look at the woman by that column, adjusting her scarf, while a fellow skipped away from her, laughing and clapping too loud. Lights about the pool turned white roses to artful paper models. Root looked at the upper terrace, where reflected light rippled on the balusters.
He and Sevene had focused the house around a center and filled it with objects performing themselves. The brilliantly painted doors to the banqueting hall, never seen till now, were opening, guests were passing in, each pausing at the threshold to glance at their silks, their skins. As he looked, ’Nna hurried past the window, struggling with a huge gilt vessel. But, Root thought, returning to his thought from the displeasing vision, but light this strong, this malleable, could as easily break up a spectacle-palace as make it. He walked into the banqueting hall with a shadow-hammer in his mind.
Bright light staged everything in the room. Above his head, a wrought-iron candelabrum sent arms wreathing outward to end in splays of black leaves. The bulbs tucked inside trained splendor on treasures in niches, on carpets, on painted coffers.
“Kyr Root!” He looked around and saw the Sacellary flashing his pince-nez in the light. “Over here, dear boy, over here.”
Shit, I’m at the head table, he thought as he came up on it. Seven silver couches with gold and crimson cushions ringed a table, and there were hassocks for the women. Wives, rather; Annag got a couch, she counted as a man even out of uniform. Root took the couch beside the Sacellary, who launched into introductions.
This old ruin was the Megaduke Mikel, the Megas Kyr himself, Domestic of Schools, the Old Bastard. A slow nod, a watery blue glare, a scored face, a chaos of hungers. Behind him his mistress gave a little wave. Kalba, he knew her from Tauber’s troupe, quick and pliant. She’d done well, had Kalba; wouldn’t need to flash her thighs in the theater any longer.
Annag, on the Old Bastard’s left, gave a cheery wave and her lopsided grin. “Ah, of course, you two are comrades.” Then on Annag’s left a slim old bird quite properly got up, though the gown showed wear. The Sacellary introduced him as the Sevastos V’Hastray, one of these old Hook patrikioi, you could tell by the name if not the nose. His nephew was next, mobile-featured young twit, also Corsator of Stables, V’Hastray first name Miyano. He embarrassed Root by saluting.
Next Sevene, his wife in back of him, lively and plump, a wealthy builder’s daughter. She gave Root a warm hostess’ welcome, while Sevene himself hailed the rising star among our great tragedians. Root, who thought he was making comedies, smiled and bowed and then sat down.
The Old Bastard was staring off at a tall screen, behind which the Despina was getting settled. That was protocol. Ladies in waiting came and went, using the ceremonial hobbled walk, bringing in cushions, fans, flowers, a footwarmer, an enema-bottle, an incense-burner. The screen was a scrim that Root had installed. The light shone on it and turned it opaque, but from the Despina’s side it was transparent, and she could see the Megas Kyr making faces at her without his knowing a thing about it. Sevene had been delighted to put her one up on her enemy.
The Sacellary himself lay between Root and the Megas Kyr. He had a wife, but no one ever saw her.
Now the dimmers sent the light from bright buttery yellow to amber twilight, as the salads came in. Bare arms placed dozens of little dishes in an intimate glow that knocked out the background and drew their faces into a circle. For several minutes no one spoke. The salads absorbed attention. Everything was of the freshest, but the flavors far surpassed fastidious expectation. That radish, thought Root, was an illumination. Then, realizing the remark was apt, he repeated it aloud. The others chuckled and went on eating, driving forks into one dish after another and carrying off the bits they fancied to their plates before stuffing them into their mouths with oily fingers. ’Nna’s dressings did not use the vegetables as surfaces to coat with rival flavor; rather the dressings clarified and focused the mind on the core savor, as a good perfume perfects more than it masks a body’s own fragrance.
Suddenly it was as if good vegetables were neither rare nor dear. As if the world offered an abundance of produce at peak flavor. As if the world these people oversaw were large and generous in its repayment of their careful stewardship. Whereas in fact they’d lost half the market gardens in the country in a ridiculous war with foes of their own creation. Root saw expansive ideas flash in his fellow-diners’ eyes; well, unless they were as rich as Sevene, they’d been eating mealy potatoes from the flats around Walwira and soggy onions from Gakka.
The conversation, when first they paused and with a brown wine prepared their palates for the soup, turned around connections and relations, as everyone placed everyone else. They confirmed who had married whom; who was whose descendant, whose cousin; who had broken off an engagement to whom; who had gone to school with whom, and who had been the “pill” that everyone despised; who had served in which bandum of Schools or Stables under whom; had attended which riding academy; had studied with which calligraphy master; whose father had been the Chartulary of the Vestiarium under the present Despot’s mother; whose uncle had been painted by Ooleg, and whose mother was the “Pussya” of Thorn’s erotic sonnets; whose grandfather had been sold a set of “ancestral” statues purportedly from the workshop of Platiphon but as bogus, my dear, as the family tree.
As dialogue went, thought Root, it was pretty dry. You could never get away with more than two or three exchanges like that on a stage. Who am I to you, what are you to me? That was the question at the heart of it. And even though relationship and rank were hardly, in this set, fluid or uncharted, all of them jumped in with energy, but especially Sevene and his kyra. They were not out of the top drawer and must fling out more lines of knowing-and-being-known because those lines were slender. The Megas Kyr, held in place by a few huge cables, said less but contradicted others freely. His restless gaze, alighting frequently on the two young officers of Stables, kept them discreet about army matters, though young Miyano showed himself on every other topic amply informed and volubly witty.
But even the Megas Kyr’s face settled into a mask of attention when the Sacellary asked Annag, “And what has become of your sister, my dear? The beautiful Lakikia, I mean?”
Root had never seen Annag so shaken as at this polite question, face and bosom scarlet. This Lakikia, a younger sister as it appeared, had been living in seclusion on the Hook since the Despot turned her down. At the very house, it turned out, where old Drytung had been quartered in that hall of funny figurines, where he’d got to nosh with the nobs and first turned that long nose of his toward Annag’s cleavage. Well, the house had fallen to the Rhemots. Lakikia had not gotten out. Hadn’t even tried; insisted on staying behind to look after the people and the property. She was, said Annag, stiff-necked; everyone nodded. No one knew what had become of her.
“That
must be distressing for you and your parents, my dear,” soothed the Sacellary.
“Kiki’s always thought she knows better than anyone,” Annag growled.
“She answered the Despot! She corrected his citation! She should have governed her tongue,” said the Megas Kyr in a carrying voice. “Best born, most accomplished — he would have married her.” Meant for the Despina, whom he detested.
The soup came in, and the talk turned to the campaign. The soup was brilliant. A succession of spicy bursts advanced in waves in the rear of the pepper’s breath-taking assault. Smacking and slurping (these aristocrats had the worst table manners Root had ever seen), they appreciated the military situation. Root was surprised at the tone they took. Two notes dominated, which ought to have merged in fury: heartstricken grief at the continuing losses, cool contempt directed at the ragtag army that Shandimus commanded. But the combustion never happened. The emotions were held in balance, like the pepper and guava in the soup.
Looking directly at the Sacellary, the patrikios from the Hook, Kyr V’Hastray (“Uncle Pissily” to Miyano), detailed the losses his family had suffered. The Sacellary had heard it before; they all had. The knocking of noses off ancestral busts, the harnessing of brood mares to enmired wains, it all had been rehearsed with this same quavering passion. How could it weigh against the danger of a princess legendary for beauty and wisdom? Yet Lakikia’s image, growing like an ikon in the mind, listened sorrowfully to the old kyr’s litany of burnt groves and slaughtered packs; and each item weighed upon their hearts, even Root’s, with the wet drape of remembrance.
There they were, then, the influential and the rich, arrested by their apprehension of a world to which they must answer after all. A world of hunger, and between them and it just Shandimus. He was the best they could do.
Not good enough for Uncle Pissily. “I cannot understand,” he fluted, “nor has anybody yet made clear to me why the Domestic of Walls must fight his battles on our properties. It is as if he were telling the enemy what he should despoil. He cannot think he is defending our interests. He can’t think that, for he loses every single encounter and is forced back, leaving the enemy at liberty to loot whatever they haven’t shelled to pieces.
“When I did my tour of duty in the Company of Schools—under your distinguished predecessor, Sir, the Megaduke Blanko—we were taught to deploy in a wall of bodies, not to hide and duck and dodge. That seems all this fellow knows to do! A nobody! A peasant from the Nahloon! His father kept the lowest sort of dramshop!” spat Uncle Pissily.
“The Domestic Shandimus deserves our gratitude. Schools could do no more than he is doing”—and all around them diners turned to hear what further amazing words would issue from the Megas Kyr, as the soupbowls were cleared.
“A noble company requires a noble enemy. These are not so. Fishermen! Outcasts! Old Believers! Men of no place or name. These Old Believers, these veiled men, I have campaigned against them. I was young—Count of the Eighteenth Bandum during the Wars of Religion. The late Despina Thetikla sent us out to round up heretics. I lost one hundred and nine of two hundred men!
“I could not find the enemy! They sprang out of the grasses and melted into the rivers. So it seemed. They attacked us at night and burned us with our own fires. They dropped from trees and strangled riders with their own horses’ harness. They reached out of holes, plucked our scimitars from our hands, and opened our horses’ bellies. They charged us naked save for their veils, dodging our fire and screaming like women. Oh they were figures in a dream in which we could do nothing. I could do nothing.”
The Megas Kyr collected himself. “The rabble we have sent into the field,” he pronounced, “are near enough the dirt to encounter with Old Believers. No more decent army, nor no better-born commander, could fight such an enemy, Kyr V’Hastray.”
At that moment a whole fish bathed in sauce was laid upon the table, and brown hands reached to slice and serve it onto plates.
As they ate, they fell silent, all through the hall. Root looked around him. On every face confronting that sauce, those flavors, where ’Nna had put the-god knew what potions delivering what jabs to the metabolism, there slowly developed the clear lines of fantasy. In every case the satisfaction of some private hunger.
Root had seen faces look that way in the theater. That was when he knew the play had failed, had made no more than vulgar copies of what people thought they were supposed to want. He’d tried to do the opposite but had never understood what the opposite was till he’d watched ’Nna in the market of Judwal. But, he reflected, herbs and spices then in the steam, herbs and spices now in the sauce, what made the difference? Some people would turn anything you fed them to their own coarse shit. But there had not been electric lighting in the market. Here every face was lit and modeled, every face held, as far as it cared, center-stage, performing as well as responding.
The fish-plates were whisked off, more wine was poured, no one spoke yet, the fowl came in. It was a fabulous turkey. Its head was modeled in a mosaic of nuts set in paste. Sprays of wild garlic mimicked plumage, the bulbs let into the skin, and it fanned glorious wings and a glorious tail, rainbows of chard and kale leaves cunningly stitched and anchored. “Enchanting,” Uncle Pissily said. “Why, the whole thing is edible!”
They kept the carver busy. The gravy evoked a sunbaked hillside of resinous shrubs through which the diners waded, breathing the pungent airs that each released, to emerge in a clearing of moist flesh quickened by garlic. When the carcass had been picked clean, the Megas Kyr broke up the head and gobbled the nuts.
This is not appetite, thought Root. This is hunger. Shandimus has starved us. He’s really out in the field, Shandimus is, fighting to safeguard the City. But to do that he has to know the lie of the land. He has to face that terrible reality. We can eat it, but it renews our hunger. Root was writing a book. The Anatomy of Hunger, it was still a secret. He took out paper and made notes.
“Are you going to write us a play about Shandimus, Kyr Root?” asked Kalba. Root blushed. The thought had crossed his mind, but he put off the question with a platitude.
“It is hard, as you know, to bring a war upon a stage.” But after all he thought he did know how. What’s theater but the denial of facelessness? It’s the recoil, isn’t it, from the faceless thing, and at the same time it’s a form to mold the dreadful meeting in calm memory.
Fowl cleared, slaves brought in the triumphal dish, a great pastry-walled volcano with smoking crest, its oozing mouths, sending out a breeze of seasoned, marinated lamb. ’Nna, hovering in the shadows, smiled. The sides of the volcano gleamed like coal. Raising his napkin to his mouth, Root saw a blue tinge to the damask. He checked a spoon and again saw blue pooling in its silver bowl. Everyone around him looked sculpted. All the colors, even in skin, looked hard and bright as stone. Petrified oligarchs, seen in all the ugliness of power. Even Annag with her marble bosom displayed whom she served in her mask of indifference, her mica-glittering eyes. Behind her, still in a warmer light, ’Nna stood, brown as bread, caught his eye and grinned. Well, Root thought, this volcano was smoking, and volcanoes do erupt. The sauces leaking through the crust shone magma-orange, as if a polish had been laid on incandescence, and the smells were sharp as obsidian.
The first portion was cut and carried to the Despina. Then some landed on Root’s plate. He could not tell what he was putting in his mouth. Anything, everything. Pleasure in the mouth, anxiety in the mind, this dish where every flavor hid behind another was a poisoner’s revery whose sauces opened up unimagined cavities aching to be filled.
“We hear the Despot has ordered built a most elaborate pool,” Miyano then said.
“He hasn’t opened up the eel-tank?” said the Megas Kyr through a mouthful. “Impious!” he spat, and grains of rice landed on Annag’s bosom.
“No no,” replied the Sacellary, “larger than that, Sir. It’s going in behind the Draughting Pavilion. On the terrace where the quinces
are. Were. They’ve been cut down.”
“But even that is a model, my dear Sacellary,” Sevene informed them. “A model, no more, for what our Despot has in mind.” Pause. “It’s an artificial ocean!” Oooo. What? “An artificial ocean, dug out near the fishing port so that sea water can be pumped up to fill it. The Despot means to stage a nautomachy.”
The Megas Kyr stopped eating. “What’s that?”
“Isn’t it a sort of naval battle?” asked Miyano.
“A spectacle,” said Sevene, “such as never was mounted before, even under the Empire. He is having electric gunboats built for it. They will be the fastest things afloat. Four flotillas will maneuver against one another in the Artificial Ocean. Each flotilla will be manned by athletes from the Pitch Factions. You can be sure that under their handling the gunboats’ capabilities will be tested to the limit.
“Then, in the second round, the victors, representing our forces, will lead an expedition against the runners-up, representing the enemy. In this way the nautomachy will combine the excitement, one might say the drama, of an athletic contest with the experimental results of a naval exercise.”
“I see,” said the Megaduke. “This nautomachy,” he turned to Sevene, “will doubtless get the benefit of your new lights?”
“Sir,” said Sevene, “our Despot’s triumphs belong to all of us and must be visible.”
“Quite right,” the Megas Kyr nodded. “I must say this illumination is very fine. I’ve never seen the City look so well at night. I was able to drive much faster through the streets. The lights around the Palace … well, I want to talk to you, Sevene. I want lights installed around the barracks, and the Old Armory would look remarkably well with some light on it. The Company of Schools,” he said, looking around the table as if preparing an original mot, “must be kept visible!”