The Broken House

by Tom La Farge

  Sliding by the benches, back to the wall, he saw the light take the shape of a cone spreading from the back of the hall. A cinema! He remembered skipping school with a classmate, Robart, to see the antique reels projected in the Old Firing Range. Robart went to see them all. All the way there and all the way back Robart had spoken never a syllable. He had advanced as in a trance till he found his seat, as far forward as possible, and then sat with his eyes on the screen as if glued to the images. Root sat in the same row but on the side. He’d enjoyed the films, the way they unveiled some other place where people moved too fast and spoke in print. More than that, though, he had taken pleasure in twisting to look around this hall, where light sprang from a point and lit an area, catching in its spread the edges of heads and hats, and swimming with dust.

  He watched those particles now. Some rose, some fell, moved by currents of breath and draft in different directions, in all directions. Not thoughts, not images, hardly even objects, they sparked and danced like a carnival crowd. Germs of feeling awoke in response, old passions, new ones, joined in that cone of light in shifting combinations. You could not watch one, you must watch them all.

  A woman slid sideways on a bench, and Root sat beside her. Now he faced a rectangle of light invaded at the bottom by bulbous shapes and dimmed by images. This other scene was like the one he occupied, a cellar, dark. A lamp spread light on the broad flank of a cow. Seated on a stool, a girl was milking the cow, fingers working long udders. An unseen man nearby was talking, but she did not like to hear him. What he said was printed on the screen in packed lines of poetry, love-sentiments from the grand tradition. The man in the film moved forward and raised the lamp. His shadow stood up on the cow’s flank, an eloquent hand was dancing on the cow as he recited erotic verse. He was reaching for the girl with words of intense feeling packed in lines of force, but they could not get past the great blankness of the cow. The girl buried her face in the cow’s side, that warm world of speechless darkness. Only her fingers showed she was there, squirting milk into the pail. The man, wishing to see her, advanced with the lantern.

  The image disappeared in a glare that printed the watchers’ silhouettes stark in the space on the wall. They all turned. Behind the projector, still whirring on its tripod, double-doors had opened. From the market light rushed in and the shouting of men. Root rose to his feet and fixed his bayonet. Murmuring politely, he moved down the row past women’s knees, careful of their feet. In the aisle he turned toward the door and charged the shape that stood in the dazzling opening.

  33.

  War News, Society News

  The Despot wore a doublebreasted suit! Clutching his chest, panting, the Sacellary stared at the slim young man in grey, his pantlegs tucked into riding boots, his curls, trimmed and oiled, shining redgold in sunlight.

  “Please sit,” said the Despot politely and pointed to a chair beside his. The Sacellary sank gratefully onto the brocade. From beyond the window the Bay of Rhem dazzled his watering eyes; the Despot must have thought he was staring tearfully at the Hook. “We have lost it. For now, it is gone. It must remind us, now we are awake, how we let our energies sleep.” A shade of reproach there.

  “Sir,” he said enthusiastically, “good news! Our troops have won a battle! The Athletes Legion has prevailed in its very first engagement!”

  “At Zbaqdeem,” said the Despot.

  “Yes,” replied the Sacellary, surprised to find his master so well informed. The Despot shot his cuffs; the old man spotted the golden horseshoe of Stables.

  “A rearguard action,” the Despot went on. “A rescue more than anything. A troop of women penned in one of those country markets by Old Believers. Annag led V’Hastray to the place. Still, good press for the Legion. Is it written up?” He nodded at the newspapers under the Sacellary’s arm, and the old man unfurled the first of them, The New Current. The Despot peered at the other and smiled. “Do you take The Hook Telegram, Sacellary?”

  “Sir, I make it my business to inform myself from every source available. The Telegram has often let slip valuable military information, especially about the war in the North.”

  “Where our own intelligence services can find out little,” his master replied, smile broadening. “But read to me, please.”

  “ATHLETES ROUT RHEMOTS,” the Sacellary declaimed.

  Yesterday near Zbaqdeem Motherland troops routed an enemy unit and secured the rear of Shandimus’ Force. With all the skill and élan we are accustomed to cheering at the caneball pitch, the troopers of the lately formed Athletes Legion have vanquished a force of interventionist invaders far superior in numbers. This first successful counterattack of the war, led by Oykie-Protokynegos Miyano V’Hastray, has driven the enemy back upon Goobla. In so doing the Athletes have covered the last stage of the Domestic Shandimus’ Long Fall Back, now triumphantly completed with all loyalist troops safe within walls.

  The engagement began late yesterday afternoon. The Legion’s commander was alerted at 1420 by an officer of Stables, the corsator Annag V’Detsiniya that the enemy was advancing up the coast, outflanking our rearguard positions in the coastal hills around Zbaqdeem and dropping shells containing poison gas. A troop with a machinegun had been encircled at the Judwal market. They were all women and so subject to the atrocities commonly practiced by the interventionists.

  “By the Old Believers,” said the Despot.

  “Sir, it is editorial policy not to name them specifically, in view of the support they enjoy among dissidents here.”

  “Among the Blues. I know all about it. Read on.”

  The Protokynegos moved with decisive speed. Corsator V’Detsiniya guided a battalion of Athletes to the market. Though laden with gear, they covered the ten miles in an amazing two hours and twelve minutes. “We will have to work bloody hard to beat that speed,” a decarch of the Legion commented. They found the females valiantly resisting the enemy, with the help of some local tribeswomen and the Protostrator Syr Root, known to theatergoers as the author of difficult plays.

  The enemy, already unnerved at the game shown by women armed with scythes and pitchforks, soon found themselves under attack from all sides by warriors whose agility and teamwork, outclassed their sluggish defense, fanatically violent though it was.

  The Legion, we are happy to report, suffered no casualties beyond flesh wounds and sprains. Among the heroic females of the market, several gave their lives, but none were dishonored. We regret to note, however, that Syr Root received a dangerous wound to the groin. He is in the City and receiving medical care.

  “Well,” said the Despot. “Well done, Miyano! And hard cheese, Root! By the way, Sacellary, where does this leave the script for my nautomachy?”

  “Sir, Root gave me only the scenario and lighting plot before he left. I cannot say what state the script is in.”

  “Well, he won’t be writing it. Send someone to retrieve any notes he left. We’ll need a replacement.”

  “Yes, Sir,” replied the Sacellary, who had anticipated this demand. “I suggest that, since the spectacle must resolve happily, we engage the services of Tauber.”

  The Despot studied his nails. “Tauber is dead,” he said. “Had you not heard?”

  Of course he had. Of course he had. But had forgotten!

  “We’d better have the Bros. Crow,” said the Despot.

  “The nautomachy’s been put off again,” said Piptiyya.

  Drytung looked up from the pump he was rebuilding. They’d gone yesterday to Thursday auction down in the village. Men walked in a circle, holding up objects, chanting. She’d found a food mill, useful now that the twins were eating. He’d picked up this old army pump he meant to install at the Animal School.

  “Does it say why?”

  Piptiyya shook her head. “Only that it will now coincide with the solstice, at the end of the month.” She spread the paper on the terrace table, where the sun shone down between the leafy vines, not far from meeting ove
rhead. The afternoon was quiet, the twins asleep, Mshi warm and smelly at her feet. Early roses laid a light flavor on the air. Bees came and went, ’Nna’s huge scary bees from the hives that Drytung had repaired. She turned to the Society Pages.

  “Read to me.” He watched her lean forward, hands on her thighs, every turn reshaping the fall of fine, loose hair. He was home from war and wished to attend to small matters.

  She read:

  NEW-SPIRIT PARTIES

  DRAW PATRIOTIC YOUTH

  In the last two months young men and women of family and means have rallied to the Motherland. They gather to celebrate their Despot and his lovely Despina, and the radiant vision they embody of a brighter future, despite the siege, as we await the birth of an heir to the Throne. So, as the Metropolitan Previus preaches, old tragedies will be forgotten. Iftooby!

  In this spirit, the lively young have set a new fashion for “new-spirit fêtes.” No fewer than three patrician unions, lately announced, have resulted from these jolly get-togethers.

  Drytung tinkered. At the Battle of the Cut he had seen a barge full of men burn, out on the water. And Root was terribly hurt. He’d see him when he went to the City, but he did not want to go to the City. Studying the metal bits in his palm and smelling oil, he listened to Piptiyya’s voice.

  When a pitch of good feeling has been reached, these noble partygoers stream forth and march, singing, to a place where some good is to be done. It may be a school, to help poor children learn their letters and reform their accents. It may be a hospice, to entertain the dying with charades. Money has been raised to roof a deserving unfortunate’s hovel or to strap a wooden leg or iron hook to a disabled veteran. It is now common, even in our least salubrious districts, to see a file of young patrikioi march down a dirty lane in riding habit, off to do some good in the new spirit of the Motherland.

  “Sounds like Thorn,” commented Drytung. “Where did I put that gasket?” He groped behind him. “You might have been at one of those parties, Pip,” he added after a pause. She looked up. He had forgotten how much she hated being reminded of that life, Lakikia’s world. “This pregnancy of the Despina’s,” Drytung went on, working the pump, “I’m puzzled. I thought she wasn’t pregnant, back in December when Embrose examined her. Yet now it’s May and she’s nearly due.”

  “DESPINA’S HEALTH ‘TOP-HOLE,’ DOCTOR DECLARES,” read Piptiyya. Their eyes met, and they laughed.

  Dr. Embrose, Logothete of the Medical Faculty, has declared his entire satisfaction with the Despina’s condition, as she approaches the event that everyone so keenly awaits. “Her Grace radiates well-being,” he told us. “I would describe her health as top-hole.” He has words of praise, as well, for the Despina’s attendants. “Her Grace’s Women have shown themselves fine nurses. They could all make a living as midwives,” the doctor humorously remarked, before noting the assistance of an actual wisewoman, Madame Lula, mother of the celebrated actress and hostess Kyra ’Nna.

  “Lhool!” exclaimed Drytung, shaking his head. “She must be near her term too.” He wondered at the coincidence. Root’s child and the heir to the Throne might wind up milk-siblings.

  Then Piptiyya read: “CORSATOR ANNAG OF STABLES TO WED.” Drytung looked up from his pump. “‘The Sevastos Borly V’Detsiny has announced the engagement of his daughter, Annag, Corsator in the Company of Stables, who distinguished herself in the recent action at Zbaqdeem.’”

  Drytung, picking up his soldering iron, thought, another rough pebble fallen in the stream, to be tumbled downhill and rounded. “Whom is she marrying?”

  “She’s marrying Shandimus,” she told him. Drytung looked up and whistled.

  A month later Piptiyya was again reading from the newspaper, while Drytung smoked at a distance. Slanted accounts of bad news. The war was close enough without having to read about it. It was eight o’clock of a fine June evening, yet he could hear loud voices, muledrivers’, in the lane behind the house, and often the mules replied, for they were overloaded and hard driven. At Piptiyya’s insistence he’d made them a trough by the gate. She filled it three times daily with the hose.

  To get away from shouts and whips, he’d walked down earlier to his ledge. His garden had never looked so well. Every time he went away it seemed to step forward. The gully stair was thick in moss, the walls all hung with delicate growths, and he’d counted five frogs in the cliffside pool.

  Peace, spaciousness: there was the coil of the Mother of Gardens. He could look down into the Vale of the Mother, but he could no longer go there. There, empty, was the road he drove. The Nahloon had been invested by a Protectorate regiment. The valley was stopped up. Across its mouth veterans of Walls had built a line of entrenchments and forts, with lavish coiling of wire. Troopers of Mules manned the line; no one, even friendly troops, wanted to go near them. All the foodstuffs now had to travel by mule along the lane up past his farmhouse and down the track to the Postern Gate. It needed constant repair, and Drytung had spent the morning, as he spent most of his mornings now, helping to mend and widen it so that the file of men and mules descending could squeeze past the file of men and mules climbing back.

  That was how they got their paper every day. Piptiyya flipped a densely printed sheet and leaned, but over what? In a world so constricted, how much news could there be? Drytung uttered impatience in smoke.

  Suddenly she laughed and looked up. “There’s going to be a state funeral,” she said, “for the Sacellary’s phaeton!”

  “For his motorcar?”

  “Yes! They’re giving it nobilissimus honors. Listen:

  The Senate has unanimously approved a motion by Senator Miyano V’Hastray to award the honors of a nobilissimus’ funeral to a hero of our times. The recent demise of the Empire Swan Mark VI, so long a fixture of our City’s streets —

  “‘Fixture’ is good,” Drytung laughed. “It was always breaking down and blocking traffic.”

  — has lent a sad tinge to the euphoria caused by the birth of Kyra Anna, heir to the Throne. Indeed we have learned that she herself, upon being informed, uttered a cry from the depths of her swaddling. The Kyr Sacellary is said to be immobilized by grief.

  “That’s harsh,” said Drytung, who knew that the Sacellary could hardly walk now for arthritis. As Piptiyya read, Drytung recalled the old car forcing its way down narrow streets, swaying on its chassis, chugging and farting, hood flanked by green sweeps of mudguard mounted with huge brass lamps, while the old man, legs wrapped in fleeces, chattered literary gossip. That day is past, he thought. The new spirit does not ride in motorcars. Indeed, it appeared that the phaeton had been the last not in military service.

  The funeral oration will be read in Basilica Square by the Metropolitan Previus. The deceased will then be towed to honorable ensepulture in that mausoleum of heroes, the Motor Repair Shop of Walls, where while alive it made pilgrimages with most pious frequency. It will be escorted by an Honor Guard led by the motorcycle of Corsator V’Detsiniya of Stables, which is expected to say a few words in its usual terse style. No more fitting tribute could be paid than by this warrior which has covered innumerable miles during the Long Fall Back and may be said to have the dust of the Hook ingrained in its tires.

  “Your Sacellary’s out of favor,” she added. “It’s him they’re retiring, not his car. Sevene and Miyano have all the influence now. And ’Nna.” He blew out smoke.

  More, he thought. The Sacellary’s phaeton, and by implication the Sacellary himself, were being made symbols of the ineffectual old order that had lost the Hook and left the City besieged. The elaborate, costly uselessness of the old car was to be applied to the whole court culture of patrician theatricality. Everything Shandimus wanted to become had followed the phaeton into the Motor Repair Shop, the splendid shell to be put on display, the moving parts parceled out for practical uses. Shandimus had planned to rise along the gradient of delight, growing larger and freer in the City he worshipped, but the gradient, behe
aded, now rose to just those altitudes that money can attain. Shandimus had formally presented his demand to be enrolled in the hereditary senatorial caste. It might be accepted, might not. What difference did it make? The senate had given dictatorial powers to the Despot and his ministers; they would never again decide anything more important than whether Shandimus should be one of them. Awarding funeral honors to an automobile was the most they could do.

  “So this was ’Nna’s revenge!” Drytung blurted out. Piptiyya looked up and, after a second, nodded. “He rejected her because she was bound to a slave’s fate. She has done everything in her power to grant him his wish to rise.”

  “Including persuading you to sing his praises as ‘Hadu,’” she put in, and he broke off, stunned.

  “Yes. And now what he fought for is worthless.”

  “Well,” she said, “he’s still marrying my sister. Page 10, column D.” She pushed the newspaper at him and went into the house to answer a knocking at the gate. Drytung read:

  A WEDDING ON THE HOOK?

  Senator Borly V’Detsiny and his wife, Kyra Karikia, have sent out this season’s most intriguing wedding invitation. The betrothal of their daughter, Kyra Annag, to the Megaduke-Strategos Shandimus, Domestic of Walls and now charged with the City’s defense, was announced in these pages two months ago. The handsomely engraved invitation, long awaited, was mailed yesterday to a very select number of the V’Detsiny circle.

  What makes it unique is the place and date of the wedding. Syr Shandimus and Kyra Annag are to be married at the V’Detsiny estate on the Hook, now the property of the Domestic and deep inside occupied territory.