by Tom La Farge
Of course they all laughed and clapped. Then, after Sevene had assured the Megas Kyr that he would do himself the honor of waiting upon him next day in person at Schools’ headquarters, all of them let fly with the praises they’d been holding back till they knew the Old Bastard’s mind. The excitement poured around the room, and everyone at every table was shouting and reaching over to tweak Sevene’s robe, or waving and winking congratulations from afar. The light turned bright white. The volcano emitted violet plumes.
Root kept his mouth closed around rage while the rest all spoke, all brought out ideas into the blued light that flashed off their hair and excited eyes. ’Nna’s sauces were working through their arteries. From which were the visions coming?
But as to where they were going, well, these were the powerful ones. Sevene was just a curopalates now, but he would be appointed Prefect of the City. The Sacellary held the Despot’s ear and the pursestrings of the Church; the popes and metropolitans would back the Spreading of the Light. If the Megas Kyr stood behind illumination, then the army stood behind it. The Hook clans might listen to Uncle Pissily. Kyra Sevena’s people would sway the merchants, bankers, landlords, manufacturers. Workers would be kept busy. Hard to see where resistance could spring from.
The City, everyone riotously agreed, would be the stage for a glorious conversation in the light. The citizens, drawn into the glow, would know each other in some unimaginable new way, and every encounter would be an intercourse of rounded personhoods against a common backdrop. Differences in form, in color, in rank would be noted, but they would all be subject to a common measure. Everyone would have a face and figure, the best he or she could put on, and every act would be a gesture.
The Sacellary predicted beauty. The shabby, the seedy, the down-at-heels no longer would be tolerable in any district to which the illumination came, “even the suburbs!” Property-owners would cooperate to spruce up the neighborhood, where dilapidation would be hard to conceal. The Sacellary foresaw a boom for nurserymen as gardens and allées were planted, for statuaries and stonecutters. Architectural detail! Doors and windows, gates and balusters, columns and cornices; and as he imagined the niceness to come, it appeared to everyone, spreading down the mountainside from the Palace through the aristocratic quarters and up Citadel Hill, into the commercial districts and the low-lying squares by the Mother of Gardens. Root saw it all and hated it. He also saw what would happen to the theater.
“Take the theater,” said Sevene. “What have we had till now, to bring to life the fine conceptions of Kyr Root, the comedic imbroglios of Kyr Tauber, the epic actions of the Bros. Crow? Footlights, limelight, glare. Any action is reduced to a tableau in such a lighting. Actors advance into light or withdraw into shadow; they might as well be flat! But electric lamps can be positioned anywhere to give a strong or a nuanced light, to shine white or in colors, steady or fluctuating, to light a spot or create a diffused ambience. Then the stage can be a room like this, rounded bodies brought together in a rounded situation. No more stiff artifice: think how much easier it will be to imitate the real thoughts and feelings of real characters, ones like the people we all know.” Not in my shop, thought Root.
“Everyone will flock to court,” added his wife. “Why, where will the noblest, richest lighting be but there? Everyone will go to be seen, and then we’ll be together, looking, conversing, dancing.” And rose from her hassock as if she meant to cut a few capers on the spot.
Then the lights went dim, and they were left at one another’s shadow-modeled faces, just as they always had done in days that now seemed antique. But soon another light played through the room. The slaves were carrying in bowls trays from which beams of color spiked. She can’t have got the dessert to throw off light, thought Root; but when the fruitbowl had been set down, Root saw that every slice and sphere and cube was radiant with jewel-color. Icemagpies perched on the rim threw off rainbows that played on diners’ faces.
The greater marvel rode in on the trays, architectural pastries clustered like bright-lit buildings; the image of an Illuminated City, in fact. Arches, domes, colonnades, basilicas, a coliseum, a hippodrome, all was there. A wave of applause spread through the room.
“I suppose these are good to eat?” said the Megas Kyr, as he selected a luminescent purple temple and popped it in his mouth. Everyone clamored to know how it was done, but Sevene would only say, smiling, that the secret was his cook’s. Pay her handsomely, then, Root thought.
They stuffed themselves as if they had eaten nothing till now. They were devouring the light; did they hope it would light up their souls? Root studied the Illuminated City as eager forks tore it apart and rammed it down gullets. It’s pretty like that on a tray, he thought, small and shining.
Out in the garden he heard a hunting owl cry, and dogs were baying in the slums nearby. The Megas Kyr, his plate cleaned, drank down his wine and spread his legs. Leaning on his elbow he unbuttoned his trousers. He’s going to have a piss, right at the table, thought Root. The Megas Kyr snapped his fingers. Kalba leaned. She had a silver basin in one hand. With the other, she reached in and extracted the Megas Kyr’s member, blanched as white asparagus, and pointed it at the bowl. A play of tragic recognition crossed the Old Bastard’s face before the stream came rattling into the bowl. Root looked to see if it gave off light. It didn’t. Perhaps it will later. Is this some sort of weird prerogative?
In truth the other diners, finishing now and raising napkins to their faintly glowing lips, were acting more than a little drugged. They did not react in any marked way when Kalba, having shaken the final drops into the basin, placed this on the table and began to stroke the Megas Kyr’s sex, at times even bending over to kiss it or nuzzle it with her cheek. If the Megas Kyr enjoyed this ministration, it did not at once appear in his member’s aspect. He was studying Annag’s décolletage. At his peremptory bidding she swung around on her couch till her fair head was inches from his silver one. Then, reaching, he twitched the thin straps off her shoulders and tugged her breasts free from the black silk of her gown. For a while he fondled them and pinched at the nipples—could this really be happening?—while Kalba ran her fingers down his shaft. Was this what they did after dinner, back on the Hook?
Then the Megas Kyr pushed his forefinger into the fruit bowl and crushed a luminescent section of tangerine. He held up his finger, and the tip shone orange. With it he painted circles around Annag’s pale nipples, the color coming out more distinctly with each turn. It seemed not to please him. He turned and squashed a cherry, then plied his fingertip again till Annag’s areoles glowed like peaches. Annag lay back, but her breasts stood up like marble domes with finials of sunset copper as the Megas Kyr (and now his sex was rigid all right, as Kalba worked his scrotum and fingered the head) heaved up, hiked out, and brought his gaping mouth down.
No one looked surprised. Their eyes seemed glazed as if their regard had turned inward, toward some private fancy, and they settled on their couches. Sighs and murmurs began to echo round the fruit-and-pastry-lighted hall. A large man from another table dropped his trousers and offered his bum to Miyano, who entered him with military briskness. Uncle Pissily had snatched a decanter from a serving-girl and with one hand was pouring and tossing back glass after glass of self-illuminating yellow wine while with the other he gripped her hair and forced her face down on him.
Root had had enough. He went out to walk by the pool. The air was still, the water was stirring, and he watched the ripples reflected on the lit smoke from his cigarette. It hung and waved in colors like aurora borealis; then he began to see images in it. He knelt and touched the water at different points, tossed in gravel to alter the patterns, see what he could make appear in the smoke. Creatures; animals; some of them the ones that slid from ’Nna’s vulva in the Judwal market.
’Nna had used her sorcery then, nothing else, besides Jbeeba’s drumming, had led them all into trance. Here at Sevene’s the same herb-sorcery was working with the ligh
ts to release images of aristocratic fury at being deprived of privilege. Strong images, those were. He in the Roohaneeya would have just the lights and whatever sorcery his words could build. He wondered if they could ever form themselves as powerful as spells, healing spells to release better images than were coming out here. He wasn’t going to give these people what they wanted; he was going to give them what they didn’t want.
Now the shadow-hammer, helved and ready, fit itself to his hand and pleased him. He set to work breaking up the lighted house. First to the kitchen, where he wandered around the preparation table, licking spoons and tossing scraps into his mouth, feeling them wash the cavities of his gut with their dark energies. Then Root went to the door and looked out in the lane. The sky was starless, there was little to see; he inhaled the stink of the middens. Returning through the rooms, Root and his shadow-hammer smashed the lamps, broke up the stoves, and then with shadow-sword and shadow-torch wandered through Sevene’s delicious palace slashing, burning, murdering, overturning lamps, shredding hangings and setting a coat of soot and gore on carven stucco. He turned half-naked bodies into corpses and filled the pool with them. He blew out walls and brought down ceilings, and in this way achieved a broken house quite to his taste.
16.
The baby on the bayonet
The next day Root awoke refreshed. He’d slept sounder than usual. The room was quiet, that was why; there were for once no babies milking ’Nna and squalling. Where had they gone? He didn’t much care; let them stay away, but he needed ’Nna, he had to talk to her, he’d been having ideas, strong visions with ’Nna at the center of them.
She came in with coffee and sat on her heels beside him. He heard her explain that she’d hired a wetnurse for the twins. And showed him gold. Sevene had paid her handsomely, as he ought. She pressed most of the roll of coins on him, and he pocketed them, but his new thoughts, turning with a golden jingle to his theater and his play, did not remove from ’Nna; on the contrary, he more than ever imagined how he could stage and light her.
“What’s become of the twins then?” he asked at last.
“With Umm’.” Who was Umm’, the army whore? Oh, the wetnurse. Well, that was luck, finding a girl with milk in her. Now if this Umm’ would only carry off the twins, then he and ’Nna could get to work. Root felt very refreshed, full of energy in fact, in spite of having made a night of it.
“I want you to take the children to the farmhouse,” said ’Nna. “They’ll live there with Umm’.”
“All right,” he said. No quarrel there.
“Take them today, please. And I’ll need some of the money.” He found his purse and counted out coins into her palm until she closed it and smiled.
“Expensive piece you are.”
“I must fix up a room for my mother!” ’Nna laughed.
“Your mother! Where, here?”
“In the cellar. There’s a room that opens on the garden.”
“This shithole has a garden?”
“Yes, I’m going to plant things from the farm. Herbs for my sauces. My mother will tend them.” She gave him a list of the plants she wanted. He knew some of them, and she drew pictures of the rest. “You must teach me to act in your theater, Root,” she added as she studied the leaf she’d drawn.
Later he was on a donkey, plodding down the towpath by the canal. He had the wetnurse in front of him, tight fair body, and the twins, breathing milk, were sleeping in their slings. He’d come in upon her before, nursing them. Her breasts by themselves had rung a bell; then he’d had a good look at her face, while she was swaddling and setting things to rights. Her skin was Annag’s, her capable hands were, even her smell was, strong fresh sweat over a memory of expensive soap, with a tinge of blood to it. If ’Nna knew whom she’d hired, she’d given no sign.
Root said nothing about it while they rode through the City. The ramparts drew down on their left, the canal spread green and scummy on their right, some narrow barges tied to bollards, some bargefolk to greet, women laundering on the stairs, they always asked after ’Nna. But when they’d turned through the postern and been saluted by the sentry on duty (for Root, though grubby, wore his Company insignia) and started up the stony track that climbed to the upper Nahloon, then he asked to hear her story. Umm’ Piptiyya was reticent. He let her speak and did not pry, and bit by bit she came out with it.
She’d been raped. An enemy soldier, an Old Believer, had come into the clearing where she was grubbing for mushrooms. When he finished, he turned to spit, and she’d brained him, but he’d left her pregnant. Then, softly, she accounted for her staying on at the Hook with a baby coming, hiding out in tenants’ hovels, accepting their help, learning their stories, recipes, remedies, charms; schooling their children with books she’d stolen from the family library, sneaking in at night.
Umm’ Piptiyya was veiled where Annag was bluff, attentive where Annag was impulsive, gathered where Annag sprawled. Her baby, a boy, had come eight days ago, she told him in a low, dead voice; just when it was due, on a night of full moon. She had gone into a ruined mill to have it; had borne it after short sharp labor, hoping the millwheel covered up her moans. She’d tied up its knot, washed it from the millrace, and then settled down beside the pond to feed it when its cry, the first it uttered, had drawn a drunken Rhemot. He had not paused but spitted the boy on his bayonet and held him up against the moon.
There was an image to work from. A baby on a bayonet against the full moon. Yes, Root felt the inevitable blade cut cold through his own bowels.
They fell silent as the donkey clambered up the final slope. There were the tops of the familiar trees, a reaching holmoak and some olives silver-green; the great fig by the upper garden wall. Root got down and led the donkey across the slippery bare rock at ridgetop, then down till the shady lane closed above them and brought them to the gate.
Umm’ seemed to know at once where everything was. She secured the babies in the shade and flitted through the farmhouse, testing bedding, sniffing linens, brushing crocks and pots with her fingertips, reviewing the iron spits and ladles, turning the small stone grinding-mill, then out to locate the well, the oven in the yard. She helped Root identify the plants that ’Nna had drawn, wrapped their roots in damp sacking, and stowed them in the donkey’s panniers. They ate some bread and figs in silence, and then Root, having set some coins on the table, left her drawing water from the well and trotted back to the City, his theater, and his newfound strength.
PART THREE
THE GARDEN
17.
Memory and Anticipation
When Drytung returned to the farm, to see what was (dreadfully) what, he took the paved highway to Walwira, but when it turned south along the river, he swung off north on the graded road that served the Nahloon. And in he had gone, thundering past staring cows and camels, and then, as the road climbed, past orchards, vineyards, terraced plantations, hedged enclosures and tomato frames. A gloved and goggled officer of Walls to all who cared to look, turning at last into the well-remembered lane overhung by veteran walnut trees. They were being whacked with brooms, now, by broad-faced women standing on army blankets spread to catch the harvest. A nut bounced off his mudguard as he fought up the rutted incline, his mind very ill at ease. Distraught.
Many factors joined to trouble Drytung’s mind as he approached the farmhouse at lane’s end and ridge’s crest. He had ridden now for five days, why not keep riding? His machine felt a part of him, responsive, reliable, but a man cannot be just a motorbike’s sensorium and intellect. A man is answerable too, not least to himself.
To his love. Drytung felt his eyes leak into his goggles as he thought of Annag. Over the last several months he had watched his desire for her swell like a tumor pressing on his brain. Why? She was not lovely, she was not a mystery, she was not gentle, she did not care specially for him. She was kind in comradely fashion, no more. She laughed at his blurtings, thought him silly, a puppet lover. How could he
want her so much?
Was it because her white body had grown to ripeness within the aura of the V’Detsiny estate? Drytung knew himself to be not, not immune (the bike’s wheel kicked pebbles from the ruts), very far from immune to rank. The V’Detsiny house, where he had been quartered, was a stark old barn whose high-ceilinged gloom and grandiloquent stairs and fireplaces had not been to his taste, but that was not where she lived, really. She was another motorcyclist.
There had been in his love, as in the war, no release opening into calm and understanding. The tangled lines of act and motive never sorted out in meaningful direction, and he was left with scenes going nowhere, disturbing images he didn’t know where to place.
Annag and Shandimus seated at a table in the Domestic’s tent. On the eve of another brilliant defeat, Drytung had been called in. “They want you for a witness,” the orderly had said. Well, in a sense he’d never been anything else; still, Drytung was puzzled. He wasn’t a historiographer now but a proximus on the Domestic’s staff, with maps, balloons, and signals as his charge. The map on the table spread out the V’Detsiny estate. Beside it title deeds were heaped. Annag, acting for the family, was selling the estate. Shandimus scrutinized each clause with a peasant’s thoroughness, reading slowly, weighing as he read, setting a price on every manorial perquisite and right, including the hereditary title: sevastos. Annag protested every estimate, but the V’Detsinoy were in no position to back out. The place was worth nothing. Shandimus knew to a hair what devastations and spoliations had been practised there: the house a roofless shell, the ground water contaminated by corpses, the garden pocked with craters.