The Broken House

by Tom La Farge

  To the north the cattlelands of the steppe were being carved smaller and smaller by advancing lines of blockhouses and barbed wire. More, siege-guns with barrels as long as the flatcars on which they were mounted had been seen rolling down the rails. To what target, in that vast emptiness, could they address themselves, if not the new hydroelectric dam? But of this they said little, turning instead to Shandimus’ Force, now fallen back on the Cut, holding only bridgeheads on the Hook side. It could not be long before he’d have to blow the great iron bridge. They could not get very worked up about the Hook. The City had turned its back on it, relieved, Drytung sensed, of the burden of all that authenticity. But Shandimus as always unlocked tongues, and from his brilliant figures of retreat it was a short step to the latest Hadu; now, omelette done and pitchers filled, they called to mind their favorite bits.

  A battle in a burning house. The house, old and noble, grew over centuries to house a multiplying clan. Far too large for Hadu’s dwindling squadrons to defend, yet they muster there, its very indefensibility the lure. Hadu makes a show of reinforcing the main gates and doors, blocking up the lower windows, placing sharpshooters above. But in the rear there are few lights. The enemy sneaks in that way, guided by a traitor with the key.

  After it’s a hunt through the maze of wings and pavilions, warren upon warren of rooms. Hadu’s troops, seen in a bright room across a patio, are never there when the door is blown in. What greets the invaders is fire: flames rushing into their faces. They resume the hunt, are drawn in deeper till there’s nowhere to go but burning rooms. Roofs fall in spouts of spark and flame. Screaming, they run out, beating at burning hair and clothes, and are cut down by the their own machineguns. Hadu’s men slip away through the orchard, where the enemy’s pickets, visited by loyal tribesmen, dangle among clusters of oranges.

  Drytung glowed with pleasure but at the same time wondered, Is that true, is that real, where did that dream come from? This success he was having now was one because it raised people’s spirits — like the Brothers’ play?

  26.

  The Air Tart

  In the middle of the table one dish had been left untouched, the puffing crust of an enormous tart. No one dared to be the first to broach it, yet everyone eyed it as the talk came back to the war and the strange turns history was taking while Shandimus gloriously fell back. Drytung learned that the cults of the Misprision had been clandestinely revived.

  Previus was speaking to Lady Fayte. “No, kyra,” said the pope, “my views in this matter are latitudinarian. I can see no profit in the persecution of the wretches who visit these shrines. Times are hard. Not every man can console himself within the austerity of the orthodox rite. The God is a forgiving deity who will not hastily judge the weak and anxious men these women must console.” He lowered his lids in a benign double wink.

  “But, reverend kyr, they are temple harlots!” snapped Lady Vinesap.

  “Temple harlots, yes, kyra,” he replied. “Votaries of banished goddesses. In my view, while false deities must be condemned with the utmost rigor, there is room for these women. As long as they redirect their spiritual orientation, their physical discipline can do much good. The One True God accepts all kinds of service and all kinds of servant. If nuns, why not whores? Any act committed in a spirit of love and submission to justice finds its way to Him. I can see no good reason to forbid their rites, under certain controls.”

  “I suppose they serve a purpose,” said the Sacellary. “A hygienic one.”

  “True,” replied Previus. “By their rites they draw off impure spirits from restless men, who might otherwise create unrest in the City. You may think of them as a sort of leach field for moral waste.”

  “Don’t they spread false doctrines?” asked Miyano.

  “The Kyr Sacellary will know that better than I,” said Previus. Everyone knew that the spies of Watch answered to the Sacellary. “But in the old days these women’s vocation never reached so far as to proselytize.” He paused and looked around the room, smiling. “Kyr Drytung’s excellent poem about the windows had me thinking of a story,” he went on. “One that brought me in contact with these women. A highly placed personage — but I should not detain you from our hostess’ noble tart. Look, it sits undevoured, a reproach.” He stared at ’Nna.

  “My tart grows tastier the longer it sits,” she said. “Your story will lend it flavor.”

  “So? Then I shall tell it. I am confessor to a certain lady,” he began, “the daughter-in-law of a great Personage, whom also, though far more seldom, I confess. Now this man wishes for grandsons to extend his line. His only son, a rising officer, sheds his uniform only to drape his martial form in articles selected from his wife’s wardrobe. For her part the girl spends her time with her dogs, a pack of halfwolves that mind no other human but her. There is in their marriage, otherwise amicable, little basis for hope of issue. But his daughter-in-law’s beauty is such as to make the Personage, eager as he is for such an event, still more eager to be the author of it. Nor is he beyond the use of force.” No one at ’Nna’s table gave any sign of recognition, but of course the Personage was the Megas Kyr. “For though he is aging, the mere sight of his daughter-in-law playing with the dogs renews his youth most urgently.

  “So it was that when I learned of a harlots’ shrine in the precincts of the Fondooq, not far from where we sit, whose matron had won fame as a spiritual bawd, capable of directing a diffused or thwarted desire towards its proper object, I visited her myself. I sat across from her just as I sit across from you now, Kyra ’Nna.

  “She creates tableaux. The Fondooq, you know, has countless narrow courts or wells, to let a little air and light fall down to the nether stories. Such a tableau is easy to mount on the far side of any of them. As things stand there is, alas, no lack of women or men eager to get such work. Seeing them enact fantasies, eventually the client recognizes his true dream. How long this takes depends on several factors, among them the fullness of his purse, his self-knowledge, his willingness to divulge what may assist the matron in directing his desires. But she rarely fails. In the case of my Personage there was little doubt how to proceed. I told the matron what I knew, and as the man’s confessor, of course, there was little I did not know. Yes: to heal his tormented soul, I, an ordained pope, sat down with a temple harlot and broke the seal of the confessional. Condemn me who dares!

  “I had mentioned the girl’s love of her dogs. The matron asked me how she played with them. And then I remembered, by quite casual association, something the Personage once had told me.

  “Once, as a little boy, he had been taken from his grandmother’s house in the mountains and put to bed in a palace. He was told that he could explore the rooms and corridors and look out over the City from its windows and terraces, taking a ruler’s view of what he never would rule. For though his father was a prince, his mother was a slave. The richness of all he saw could only write in his young mind the truth of his life, that he was an embarrassment. Brusquely tucked into a cold bed by contemptuous slaves, he was hours in getting to sleep.

  “He dreamt of a wolf. It circled his bed then put its forepaws on the mattress and raised its head to the level of his. It looked him in the eye. He did not feel any fear until he heard the word “wolf” spoken by a voice he knew but could never name. Then he screamed and shit his bedclothes.

  “The scream brought slaves and the shit brought a beating. A week later he was sent to a military academy, though not yet six.

  “Hearing this, the matron gave me my instructions. I was to bring the Personage at night in the Fondooq. ‘Tell him,’ the matron said, ‘that he will see what he desires.’ The next night he knelt at a window in her house, looking across a narrow shaft.”

  Everyone at the table, Drytung guessed, was now crouching beside the old man, naked on his knees, eyes pressed to the glass, watching a girl in a lighted room fondle the ears of a huge wolfdog.

  “The Personage had eaten and drun
k of the potencies of the field,” said Previus. “His guts were empty, clean and warm. All the caked filth of a wretched life had been scoured out, and now he understood that he wanted not the girl but the dog, not the dog but the wolf, not the wolf but the nightmare, not the nightmare but the night. The night lay behind him, warm in the shape of the matron herself; he could smell her. He turned from the window and thrust into her.

  “Since that night the Personage has quite lost interest in his daughter-in-law. He visits the Fondooq shrine and describes to me in detail the regimen he follows there. It does not seem unlikely that the matron will soon take her place as his official mistress. I’m sure it’s no more than she deserves.”

  The company laughed and applauded. Then Kalba said,

  “Kyra ’Nna, you have been spending money lately in renovating the Fondooq. As you do rooms over, have you never caught a whiff of this shrine of harlots?”

  “Tomorrow, if you like,” said ’Nna, “I’ll show you all around. If there are harlots nearby, I’m sure you’ll smell them. But for now, Kyra Kalba, you must be the first to pierce the tart.” Drytung silently translated: You’re the oldest whore in the room. Kalba, smiling pleasantly, stabbed her fork into the tart’s crown.

  The crust fell away in lappets like skin. There was nothing inside! Kalba burst out laughing. “Something distracted your girls, ’Nna, they’ve forgotten the filling!” she crowed.

  ’Nna laughed too. “This is an air tart,” she explained. No one had heard of an air tart. “It’s a country delicacy. I was taught to make it by an old woman in the market where my mother sold herbs. The dough is kneaded with a special leaven and then left where the air smells good. In an herb garden, maybe, or by the sea, or on a roof near the rose-distiller’s. The dough pulls in the smells. Then when you bake it, it swells with the humors inside it, a crust around a filling of fragrance. Taste!”

  They each tore off a rag of the buttery crust and nibbled. Drytung bit off corners and let them lie on his tongue. He could not name all he was tasting. He thought that the inner surface of the crust, a coarse sheet raveling in fringe, carried different savors from the glossy surface. He tried tearing off a larger wedge and turning it over on his tongue. Yes, no question, a difference was there, to be explained, perhaps, by the different atmospheres to which the surfaces had been exposed: the gases expanding in the tart, the breezes sweeping its surface.

  But was the tart impregnated with these odors, or were his tongue and palate making all this up out of sense-memory and powerful fancy? Even after he rinsed his mouth, later in his pavilion, he could not wash away the taste. He lit a candle, set it in the window, lay on his bed and waited, while the smells from ’Nna’s garden wove wreaths of deer, hen, rose, chalk, straw, scum, moss, and breathing dirt around his dizzy head.

  27.

  The Animal School

  When Drytung awoke next morning, though the pavilion was bright and loud with birdsong, he felt caught between a dark room and a lighted one. He knew where he was but not where he lived. He missed the farm that he had crafted to his needs; but his needs had changed. He wished to be here, in the City, and to drag the threads of himself here from the places where they trailed and weave himself anew.

  For he was launched! The Sacellary had taken him aside after dinner. The Despot, in the intervals of planning his nautomachy, meant to distribute honors to those who had contributed to the war effort. The Sacellary had strongly represented the claims of men and women in the arts, who kept up spirits in the City. Drytung and Root above all. Drytung could count upon a minor title; and the Sacellary chuckled. “‘Syr Drytung’! That will look very well on a title page, my dear fellow, that will raise your price on Mole Place.” Such titles did not come without more substantial benefits. Drytung’s military pension would be doubled. The freehold of the farm would be his for a price he could afford.

  Hamamra, the redhaired actress, brought him in his coffee. Last night his candle had summoned her. Fired with new power, he’d turned her on her belly and plunged in where “Syr Drytung” would never enter. At the memory Drytung grew flustered and erect. Hamamra, pouring coffee, cocked an eye. “Ready for more?” He drew up the sheet, but the effect was the opposite of what he had intended. She sat on the bed. “I’d use my mouth, love, but I know where you’ve been.” So she laid her broad hand on him and worked the sheet till his toes curled. “The sheets want washing anyway,” said Hamamra and pulled them off as he rose. “’Nna says to remind you you’re getting the tour today.”

  Last night, as he came back from his chat with the Sacellary, ’Nna had renewed her offer to show off her domain. “I’m reserving space for friends.” He was a friend. And now he had money, enough for rooms in the City, something a little spacious, a little elegant, where “Syr Drytung” could entertain. In the Fondooq? Well, he was not going to rub elbows with the patrikioi in their staid mansions. A quarter fashionably bohemian, what better?

  It must be paid for, however. On his way to wash he sat and opened DRYTUNGS BOOK to notes made after talking to Root. He read:

  “All true stories are unbelievable in the chamber where they’re told. Most chambers have such strong walls that true stories can’t happen in them. They come in from another place. When we call something fantastic, we mean that it happens in a scene where we can imagine ourselves acting. It’s not this room but the one next door.” Root had said that about the Letters from the Field. “Hadu is a fantastic creature. His effect is so strong because his actions are from another world, one where actions succeed.”

  He had asked Root if there was another scene, beyond this room and the room next door. Where did events occur in the Roohaneeya? He had suggested (and written down), “It seemed to me a world to which I was not necessary, in which I might not even be present, yet still was implicated. The outcome of the process was somehow critical. Like a dream, one sent me, not about me.”

  Root had nodded: “A meeting of the dead with the real. A scene where imagination frees itself from the imaginer, who disappears. Imagination can come up against the images it requires. The real ones can’t be told from the fanciful ones. Imagination can plunge as deep into the one as the other.”

  “But always following a trail? To what? A substrate?” Root had shrugged.

  “The thing itself, the underlying reality, that can only be led to, never found?”

  “Deep waters, Drytung,” Root had said. “I want to put a face on faceless things. I want to join theater with the world where things truly happen. I want to create solid theater, solid theater in a broken house, an eye in every space. I want to root a stair that will ramify to fill the whole house, it’ll be nothing but stair. Anyone can descend it, back to the hidden root, experiencing everything while forgetting without reserve.” He had looked exhausted as Drytung scribbled all this down. Then Lhool had come in and, after a dark look at Drytung, kissed Root with passion. Drytung had left them kissing. Now, reviewing these and other notes, he thought he had enough to make a start on The Art of Dramatic Poesy.

  A knock sounded at his door before he was ready. “Who!” he called, and ’Nna answered. He pulled on trousers and opened to her. “You’ll need shoes,” she said, pointing at his feet. Flustered again, he pulled yesterday’s shirt over his head and followed her into the jungle and on along a path through shrubdotted land and into low trees, untidy with birds’ nests. They had all been stripped of fruit. In the clearings he saw her, slight in an indigo wrap, hair in a yellow kerchief, haunches rolling more womanly than he remembered from their first walk through the Inner Curtain. Buttocks more rounded than they had been at the farm. When he’d had her, up there, a matter of pure need for release after the struggle of writing, he’d never liked to lie on her belly. He had always lifted up her legs till her feet rested on his shoulders; better yet, he had taken her from behind, quickly, not as with Hamamra, not that shame. Yet he had always been ashamed, was still ashamed now. ’Nna was in every way dark. “Syr Drytun
g” would never grasp why she was so sweet to him. Was it all performance? Drytung did not feel that Syr Drytung was in a position to answer that question, so soon after being assigned his own part.

  Was she using him to rise? Why did ’Nna want so badly to rise? She too was fleeing shame, but the army had been good enough to save her from her childhood. Now she was rich, the Megas Kyr’s mistress, gave soirées. How far did she need to go? And she was keeping the fount of shame, her mother, close by. To control her, he supposed, sanitize and tame her—but the Lhool who had clamped her mouth to Root’s had seemed purely, meanly feral.

  Why did he need to rise, why did Syr Drytung so charmingly beckon? Not, any longer, to bring himself level with Annag. To escape from the shame of the schoolhouse, to correct for his family’s ruin? Could he, disturbing thought, be copying Shandimus, had he taken the Domestic of Walls as a model?

  They climbed a sun-baked ridge to a crest from which, looking back, Drytung could see the old Fondooq wall and through the gaps in it rooftops, clothes drying in a haze of woodsmoke. ’Nna pointed out the gate that would serve him as entrance, though Syr Drytung had rather liked the thought of greeting fashionable neighbors in halls and courts. Street noise faded in a pulse of cicadas as they went on. The red escarpment of the Fondooq loomed before them, and shrill women were calling “Hlem!” over and over.

  They came to a door where a laughing stork wearing eyeglasses and a striped jersey flew across a sky of peeling blue. ’Nna handed him the key, and after a struggle he turned it. A weedy forecourt, some weathered bins and sheds; another squealing door, and in.

  The place was the opposite of an elegant bachelor’s rooms. It smelt of cement and mousedroppings and was lavishly hung in spiderwebs. A suite of empty rooms surrounded a patio where a cement tank gaped dry. Something scuttled or slithered in every room he entered, all of them long, low, windowless, with just a cement grill opening on the court side. In one he saw the wreckage of a narrow wooden desk.