The Broken House

by Tom La Farge

  “A school,” ’Nna told him, unnecessarily.

  “What will I do here?” he wondered.

  “That’s for you to imagine,” she answered. “There’s no electricity. Gas you will bring in bottled, if you can find any. You have your own well, and the cistern catches water in the rains.” He stared into the tank, where a fluffedup sparrow bathed in dust. Then Drytung felt at peace. The mustiness and the sparrow held the schoolmaster off. Syr Drytung too stayed away, to his surprised relief. The rooms lay empty. There was no one else here in the sun but ’Nna.

  “I knew you’d like it!” He shook his head. He thought he did like it, but why did he? The sparrow flew off in a whir past his ear, and he turned and saw a spotted cat crouched on the dented gutter. Around its spots the fur was very yellow. Its prey gone, it looked at him. What did it see?

  Not “Syr Drytung.” He turned from ’Nna and walked into a classroom. That schoolhouse smell, chalk and anxious sweat — he remembered it but didn’t find it now, nor the assistant master who had breathed it. It was a masterless house, but complete. Could Syr Drytung live here? That light-hearted fabulist raised his readers’ spirits by offering them a hero in part their wish for success in time of defeat, in part the poet’s self. Could he live here and make of this a witty, charming house?

  ’Nna came in. “I’m going back to the war,” he said. She nodded. “Shandimus has blown the bridge. The Rhemots are building barges for the crossing. This may be the last battle, there’s nothing between the Cut and the City but a line of hills.”

  “Behind the market,” she said.

  “Yes, and they run along the coast, not across the line of march. I must go see what happens. I don’t think I can write more Letters like the first four, but I need to write one. I have questions, ’Nna, about who I am, what I write; I can’t settle them on my own, I need to bring them to the war for an answer.”

  “You must marry Piptiyya,” she told him and he stared. “You must make a will if you’re going to war. You’ll have the title to the farm soon enough, and the papers for this can be signed today. Leave them to your wife and children.”

  He looked at her to see what he might be becoming, but the image was confused. Where would desire come from? Piptiyya, he now knew, was Lakikia V’Detsinya. He had wanted her sister, Annag, with a puppet’s wanting. That puppet had gone on to become Syr Drytung and do some work of which he now was neither proud nor ashamed; the puppet-hand had been better employed. But Piptiyya had that same prestige, and he could not imagine his approach to her body. He could marry her and carry on down here with Lhiss and Hamamra, but then he would just be satisfying the schoolmaster, who needed to command desire. Well, he would do as ’Nna said. Desire would be another question to take to war.

  “You won’t be far?” he asked.

  “Not far,” she said.

  They skirted the schoolhouse’s rear and he noted the weeds, the well, the cesspit, the rusting tanks. The path became a corridor, and they were in the Fondooq. “How much of it are you taking over?”

  “All of it!”

  He was startled. “Do you have so much money?”

  “Enough. The sellers are eager.” He peered into rooms empty but for a rusting bedframe and stained washbowl, plaster dropping from the lath, windowglass starred and dusty, doors hanging from a hinge. “The work has been to locate all the owners. The history of this house goes back,” she waved. “Wings added on, sold off, or leased for centuries, or left in wills to temples. There are people who don’t even know they own property in the Fondooq! But I’ve had help. The Realty Bandum owns the largest share and is helping me locate the other titleholders.”

  “What will you do with so much property?”

  “Develop it.”

  “Why? To sell again?”

  “Yes. I will sell to friends. My prices are not exorbitant!” ’Nna named the sum that Drytung must pay for the schoolhouse.

  “’Nna, that is a gift,” he said gravely.

  “The cost of making it livable falls to you. I will sell to friends,” she repeated, “when I recognize the places they can thrive. Friends are like bats,” she laughed, “they need the correct environment!”

  “When you look at your friends, do you see bats?”

  “Or frogs.”

  “Well, which am I?”

  “No, no, Drytung, you are neither bat nor frog! You are … something more archaic. A lizard — a chameleon! Treedwelling. You can see colors and turn colors. You hold your eggs a long time before you lay them. You find your path slowly through the branching ways. For the most part you live alone. One does not know,” she laughed, “whether to take your advances for courtship or aggression!” He laughed with her, pleased. “Root has been good to me. You left in a hurry, Drytung, when you’d planted your hungry twins in my womb. Was the war so much less disturbing? Or Shandimus so much more tempting a subject? You don’t like to be disturbed — I know. And I forgive you. I’m your friend! You’ve written your Hadu, now you’ll write the book you promised me, about your friend Root’s theater and his actress ’Nna, for men to read in centuries to come. Here are my rooms,” she said, as they suddenly emerged into splendor. “I will see you at our next dinner. Give these to the babies for me,” and she kissed him twice, smiled widely once, and was not there.

  28.

  Lhool in Her Mirror

  A little later, standing among plasterers, ’Nna heard the sputter of a motorbike and looked out into the stable court. A door swung open; then in his leathers her poet rode out, slow, legs out stiff. ’Nna smiled. Drytung was not steady, but he was sweet. She had placed him now where his sweetness could grow stronger, make him happy, and benefit her. Of her projects Drytung was the one she could best see bringing to completion.

  She went down a broad flight of stairs into the cellars and followed a corridor, counting off doors till she found the right one and entered. Lhool’s room, as she had planned, stretched narrow and long between the garden door and another low hole opposite, by which her mother could emerge into an alley. Down it men crept after dusk or women by day, faces hidden by scarves. It was true that few men now came, and that the scarves had grown more elegant. In the crises of their lives these women came to consult “Madame Lula”: for so Lhool was calling herself now. Under such a name and in such a place Lhool could be contained. ’Nna must still make herself brave to enter it.

  Lhool did nothing to oppose or compromise her daughter. On the contrary, she had wed herself to ’Nna’s ambitions and did what her daughter asked. So she came in contact with new clients; and besides, ’Nna’s money was supporting her lover, Root, in his theater. ’Nna didn’t ask much, but she could not relax her awareness an instant. Lhool unleashed, even under her direction, could only devastate, destroy. ’Nna often asked herself which was being contained. Lhool lived very free, while ’Nna must arm for each encounter.

  The basement room she entered now had changed. The jars, flacons, urns of her mother’s craft, the boxes and bales stood all labeled on their shelves, a new note of order. The fronds and branches that hung from the ceiling had been arranged in decorative festoons. Across the room the old bed had gone, the broad love-stage piled with carpets and cushions. A fourposter matrimonial bed had replaced it, and its frilly canopy fluttered in the breeze ’Nna let in. A mirror she had never seen, a tall, oval chevalglass, was framed in lamps whose reflectors concentrated light upon the nakedness of Lhool.

  She was examining her body. After a twist to see who had come in, she looked back in the glass and advanced a paintbrush to her eyelid. ’Nna placed herself where she could see. Coarse hair hung down Lhool’s back, ridged with the traces of the lash. ’Nna had sobbed as she dabbed ointment on those weals after a public flogging, while her mother bent in black silence, twisting her hair in a rope between her hands. But now, when Lhool raised her arms to pull it into a knot, light spread beneath her arms, raising a glow where all was smooth and taut, and her b
reasts lifted. Golden skin, and her much-handled body stood strong and easy as a girl’s fresh from exercise. Lhool was a few years past thirty, yet her body looked younger than ’Nna’s, fuller, taller, far brighter. ’Nna could see little of herself in her mother, unless it was the long toes, the wide pelvis. Lhool’s sex was hairless. Above her prim slit a belly rounded. Lhool’s breasts were heavier than ’Nna remembered. She met her mother’s hard stare.

  “What do you want?” Then, buttering the rasp, “I won’t be long. Sit.” ’Nna sat. “Is the poet gone?”

  “Yes.” She waited.

  “Why do you let him think the twins are his? Everyone knows he’s not a man. All he can do is look.”

  “I think they’re his.”

  “They’re not!” This was new. “Root fathered them! Anyone can see just by looking. Root’s! Drytung couldn’t get a dwarf in the richest womb in the world, if he could find it.” She began in a dreamy way to oil her belly, and ’Nna silently catalogued the plants her mother had been culling lately. Lhool worked oil into knuckleskin, smiling fondly. Not at her daughter.

  “Maybe you’re right,” ’Nna admitted with uncharacteristic heartiness. In the mirror her mother’s eyes narrowed.

  “Of course I’m right.”

  “Root is gaining back strength every day. He’s more the man now than ever.”

  “His manhood is nothing to you now,” said Lhool. “In the theater you can do what he tells you. I’ll look after him here.”

  ’Nna had never seen her mother jealous. It seemed a role she was fit to play. ’Nna kept silent and saw that Lhool, in the mirror, was reading her expression.

  “What do you want from him? Not another kid?”

  ’Nna shrugged.

  “You gave away the ones he got on you!”

  ’Nna sighed. Lhool spun. Now her scars were lit and reflected, crisscross purple scorings, while her shadowed face advanced. ’Nna with an effort sat steady as Lhool caught up the long knife she used for mincing herbs. When she turned it towards ’Nna’s throat, the blade caught the light, and ’Nna saw a feathery blade of besbaas; her mother’s breath smelled of licorice. Besbaas seeds are chewed to augment breastmilk.

  “So much anger,” ’Nna murmured, “will poison the baby.”

  Lhool dropped her arms. “So you noticed at last. Yes, I gave him his manhood back! Now you want him, do you?”

  ’Nna let her mother do the work. All her own restraint, she knew, would read as a sign of the difference between them now. She gave her eyebrows a ladylike lift, and when Lhool said, “It’s because he’s Syr Root now, isn’t it?” she waved her hand and smiled. Then the blade was at her throat again, razorsharp.

  “I need a place,” ’Nna complained.

  “You can’t have mine.”

  ’Nna seemed to consider. “The Despina, then.”

  “You want to be Despina?”

  “No, a Woman.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not going to stay in the dark forever! I want my place at court. If you want me to feed Root money and leave him alone, then help me to become one of the Despina’s Women.”

  Lhool was incredulous but lowered the knife. “That’s for sevastoi,” she said scornfully. “For convent girls, not army whores.” ’Nna said nothing. “You’ll have to do her a service.”

  “You know what she wants.”

  “To be pregnant? Her husband’s out playing with toy boats.”

  “If,” ’Nna said, “she thought she were pregnant…”

  “She’d be wrong.”

  “… she might experience the joys of coming motherhood and give her husband some motive for renewing his attentions.”

  Lhool thought. “All right. But when you’re a Woman, I get a place as her wisewoman. We’ll do a hysterical pregnancy.”

  “The Despina is not hysterical!”

  “Not yet.”

  29.

  Allegory of Eel

  When Drytung next trod the path from garden pavilion to ’Nna’s diningroom, he wore his dress uniform as Signophoros of Walls, and his new wedding ring; he had finished a draft of the Art of Dramatic Poesy and was ready to go to war. Winter was coming. They were waiting for the rains. He had motored in through brown fields, trees white with dust. He’d kept his garden green, but the well was low. The eye did not travel out to many flowers, now, though those bloomed in feverish colors.

  One of the twins was feverish, the girl, Yoowa. Piptiyya had picked the name when the twins completed their ninth month out of the womb and became alive by law. Though reluctant to show her face in the City, she’d ridden in with them in the sidecar to consult with ’Nna. The boy, Dib, had ridden her knee and spread his chubby fingers on the windscreen, staring out while she gripped his tunic. Goggles made her nose jut like an archaic figurine’s.

  ’Nna had come out to the pavilion to dose Yoowa and bathe her in strong-smelling water. Now the girl was asleep, while Piptiyya played with the boy. Smoking as he walked away from them, he thought about the war. The Battle of the Cut was about to be fought. The event had found a name before taking place, more real than many a memory. Shandimus did not have the troops to cover the entire length of the Cut, and so the crossing would be preceded by a game of feints on both sides. Perhaps the enemy would have learned how such a game is played. Shandimus would delay them for a week or two, but no more, before they appeared in the truck gardens of the suburbs. The time was past for one of Syr Drytung’s emblem-battles, the extraction of cunning strategy in witty analogies. Yet he was Syr Drytung; the honors list had been published.

  On ’Nna’s terrace her other guests greeted him: Syr Drytung! Men and women he knew now, all but two: a doctor, an obstetrician, why was he there? The other was a Kyra Kaliskopa, one of the Despina’s Women. In her hobble dress she kept aloof behind an undirected smile and studied the decor. But when the conversation reached her she was affable.

  Soon they were at table and talking of the war. In the northwest a column of enemy troops had ringed Gnaupoor. A contingent of Mules had been dispatched to break the siege; the Politic Companies might yet go into action. But where was Schools? “Drilling in barracks. Their bayonet charges leave nothing to be desired,” said Miyano, “but enemy casualties.”

  To Drytung everyone there looked sick. The Sacellary might be ten years older than his fifty-seven. Kalba looked leathery, Annag anemic, Miyano so thin that his head, when he smiled, was a skull. Lady Fayte let her overcoiffed head bob towards her plate; Lady Vinesap craned and squinted. Thorn was wearing a corset! The poor old boy could hardly turn, his face swollen and red. Korto’s was yellow. Only Root looked fresher. He was working, Drytung had learned, on the Despot’s nautomachy. Things were going well for Root.

  Tauber had died that morning. “An epoch of theater has closed,” pronounced Lady Vinesap. Root twisted his mouth.

  “How is the Despina?” the Sacellary asked Kyra Kaliskopa.

  “Right as rain, I’m happy to say, thanks to the Dottore.”

  “A false pregnancy,” said Dottore Embrose, “nothing more. And yet, one of the finest cases of hysteria I’ve ever treated. The Despina, The God protect her, went into labor at a dinner with the Prefect of the City. Kyr Sevene,” he explained, looking around the table. “I was called in at once. With any patient less exalted I would have brought in my seventh-year students and a photographer. For the womb,” he lectured, “is a willful beast. Alone of the organs it has the power to escape its precincts and roam about the body. The womb, you see, is essentially male and of different substance from the rest of the female body. Now all men know how willful are their parts.”

  “They don’t try to run away, though,” said Miyano. “Best they can do is to get up on tiptoe and look over the wall.” Everyone laughed, including the dottore.

  “Good! Very good, Corsator V’Hastray!” he chortled. “Though you must confess they pull us into dark places! But you are in the right. In this the w
omb is more impassioned than the male member. It may try to escape the body altogether, but normally it plunges deeper in and compresses the woman’s liver, her heart, her spleen, her lungs; even climbs into her throat. Then it must coaxed or coerced to return.”

  “And how is that done?” inquired Lady Vinesap.

  “By fumigation. A tube is introduced. The substance to be burned must be most carefully chosen, for some smokes repel, while others attract. Garlic, for instance, is a strong warrior to beat a rebel womb back into place. Not suitable in this case, where the rank and condition of the patient and the movement of her organ to the liver required the finest, rarest, sweetest substances that could be found. There is only one garden in the City where such can be found, since the Faculty lost its herbarium in the bombardment. Kyra ’Nna, our gracious hostess, and her mother, Madame Lula, own a collection of herbs, growing and dried, and a fund of knowledge unparalleled in these depressed times. Knowing her goodwill, I sent to Kyra ’Nna, requesting a selection of herbs and essences. Madame Lula herself brought them and assisted me throughout the procedure.”

  Lhiss and Hamamra were bringing dishes in. ’Nna stood by the windows to the terrace, drawing curtains, as evening breezes blew in chill. “Aha, Kyra ’Nna,” bubbled the dottore, “I am happy to tell you that your mother is entering her second trimester in perfect health.” ’Nna nodded and thanked him.

  “The fumigation succeeded, I take it?” said Lady Vinesap.

  “Completely. Perfectly. The ingredients could not have been more judiciously chosen, though in all honesty there were substances put on the coals that I have never dared to use, some indeed whose names I did not know! I am the more indebted to my suppliers,” he said, with a kind nod to ’Nna, who now sat on her stool as usual, a few feet behind Kyra Kaliskopa. “My patient at once began to squirm, as her womb resisted and then grudgingly returned to its usual place and conduct. I could see her belly contract beneath her royal robe as the womb returned to its right place. Then all was well.”