“I killed her I did I killed her I didn’t kill her I didn’t mean to I meant to I didn’t mean to she made me I let her I wanted her I couldn’t have her I never wanted her I wanted her not the way I wanted I couldn’t I meant to I couldn’t have meant to but I did it I don’t know if I did it—I can’t remember!”
Dradin slid to the floor and lay there for a long while, exhausted, gasping for breath, his mouth tight, his jaw unfamiliar to him. He welcomed the pain from the splinters that cut into his flesh from the floorboards. He felt hollow inside, indifferent, so fatigued, so despairing that he did not know if he could ever regain his feet.
But, after a time, Dradin looked full into the woman’s eyes and a grim smile spread across his face. He thought he could hear his mother’s voice mixed with the sound of rain thrumming across a roof. He thought he could hear his father reading the adventures of Juliette and Justine to him. He knelt beside the head and caressed its cheek. He lay beside the head and admired its features.
He heard himself say it.
“I love you.”
He still loved her. He could not deny it. Could not. It was a love that might last a minute or a day, an hour or a month, but for the moment, in his need, it seemed as permanent as the moon and the stars, and as cold.
It did not matter that she was in pieces, that she was not real, for he could see now that she was his salvation. Had he not been in love with what he saw in the third story window, and had what he had seen through that window changed in its essential nature? Wasn’t she better suited to him than if she had been real, with all the avarices and hungers and needs and awkwardnesses that create disappointment? He had invented an entire history for this woman and now his expectations of her would never change and she would never age, never criticize him, never tell him he was too fat or too sloppy or too neat, and he would never have to raise his voice to her.
It struck Dradin as he basked in the glow of such feelings, as he watched the porcelain lines of the head while shouts grew louder and the gallows jerked and swung merrily all across the city. It struck him that he could not betray this woman. There would be no decaying, severed hand. No flowers sprayed red with blood. No crucial misunderstandings. The thought blossomed bright and blinding in his head. He could not betray her. Even if he set her head upon the mantel and took a lover there, in front of her, as his father might once have done to his mother, those eyes would not register the sin. This seemed to him, in that moment, to be a form of wisdom beyond even Cadimon, a wisdom akin to the vision that had struck him as he stood in the backyard of the old house in Morrow.
Dradin embraced the pieces of his lover, luxuriating in the smooth and shiny feel of her, the precision of her skin. He rose to a knee, cradling his beloved’s head in his shaking arms. Was he moaning now? Was he screaming now? Who could tell?
With careful deliberateness, Dradin took his lover’s head and walked into the antechamber, and then out the door. The third floor landing was dark and quiet. He began to walk down the stairs, descending slowly at first, taking pains to slap his feet against each step. But when he reached the second floor landing, he became more frantic, as if to escape what lay behind him, until by the time he reached the first floor and burst out from the shattered front door, he was running hard, knapsack bobbing against his back.
Down the boulevard, seen through the folds of the squid float, a mob approached, holding candles and torches and lanterns. Stores flared and burned behind them . . .
Dradin spared them not a glance, but continued to run—past the girl and her phonograph, still playing Voss Bender, and past Borges Bookstore, in the shadow of which prowled the black panther from the parade, and then beyond, into the unknown. Sidestepping mushroom dwellers at their dark harvest, their hands full of mushrooms from which spores broke off like dandelion tufts, and the last of the revelers of the Festival of the Freshwater Squid, their trajectories those of pendulums and their tongues blue if not black, arms slack at their sides. Through viscera and the limbs of babies stacked in neat piles. Amongst the heehaws and gimgobs, the drunken dead and the lolly lashers with their dark whips. Weeping now, tears without end. Mumbling and whispering endearments to his beloved, running strong under the mad, mad light of the moon—headed forever and always for the docks and the muscular waters of the River Moth, which would take him and his lover as far as he might wish, though perhaps not far enough.
I
HE HISTORY OF AMBERGRIS, FOR OUR purposes, begins with the legendary exploits of the whaler-cum-pirate Cappan John Manzikert,1 2 3 who, in the Year of Fire—so called for the catastrophic volcanic activity in the Southern Hemisphere that season—led his fleet of 30 whaling ships up the Moth River Delta into the River Moth proper. Although not the first reported incursion of Aan whaling clans into the region, it is the first incursion of any importance.
Manzikert’s purpose was to escape the wrath of his clansman Michael Brueghel, who had decimated Manzikert’s once-proud 100-ship fleet off the coast of the Isle of Aandalay. Brueghel meant to finish off Manzikert for good, and so pursued him some 40 miles upriver, near the current port of Stockton, before finally giving up the chase. The reason for this conflict between potential allies is unclear—our historical sources are few and often inaccurate; indeed, one of the most infuriating aspects of early Ambergrisian history is the regularity with which truth and legend pursue separate courses—but the result is clear: in late summer of the Year of Fire, Manzikert found himself a full 70 miles upriver, at the place where the Moth forms an inverted “L” before straightening out both north and south. Here, for the first time, he found that the fresh water flowing south had completely cleansed the salt water seeping north.4
Manzikert anchored his ships at the joint of the “L,” which formed a natural harbor, at dusk of the day of their arrival. The banks were covered in a lush undergrowth very familiar to the Aan, as it would have approximated the vegetation of their own native southern islands.5 They had, encouragingly enough, seen no signs of possibly hostile habitation, but could not muster the energy, as dusk approached, to launch an expedition. However, that night the watchmen on the ships were startled to see the lights of campfires clearly visible through the trees and, as more than one keen-eared whaler noticed, the sound of a high and distant chanting. Manzikert immediately ordered a military force to land under cover of darkness, but the Truffidian monk Samuel Tonsure persuaded him to rescind the order and await the dawn.
Tonsure—who, following his capture from Nicea (near the mouth of the Moth River Delta), had persuaded the Cappan to convert to Truffidism and thus gained influence over him—plays a major role, perhaps the major role, in our understanding of Ambergris’ early history.6 It is from Tonsure that most histories descend—both from the discredited (and incomplete) Biography of John Manzikert I of Aan and Ambergris,7 obviously written to please the Cappan, and from his secret journal, which he kept on his person at all times and which we may assume Manzikert never saw since otherwise he would have had Tonsure put to death.
The journal contains a most intricate account of Manzikert, his exploits, and subsequent events. That this journal appeared (or, rather, reappeared) under somewhat dubious circumstances should not detract from its overall validity, and does not explain the derision directed at it from certain quarters, possibly because the name “Samuel Tonsure” sounds like a joke to a few small-minded scholars. It certainly was not a joke to Samuel Tonsure.8
At daybreak, Manzikert ordered the boats lowered and with 100 men, including Tonsure, set off on a reconnaissance mission to the shore. It must have been a somewhat ridiculous sight, for as Tonsure writes of Manzikert, a man possessed of a cruel and mercurial temper, “he must occupy one boat himself, save for the oarsman, such a large man was he and the boat beneath him a child’s toy.”9 Here, as Manzikert is rowed toward the site of the city he will found, it is appropriate to quote in full Tonsure’s famous appraisal of the Cappan:
I myself marveled at the man; for nature
had combined in his person all the qualities necessary for a military commander. He stood at the height of almost seven feet, so that to look at him men would tilt back their heads as if toward the top of a hill or a high mountain. Possessed of startling blue eyes and furrowed brows, his countenance was neither gentle nor pleasing, but put one in mind of a tempest; his voice was like thunder and his hands seemed made for tearing down walls or for smashing doors of bronze. He could spring like a lion and his frown was terrible. Those who saw him for the first time discovered that every description that they had heard of him was an understatement.10
Alas, the Cappan possessed no corresponding wisdom or quality of mercy. Tonsure obviously feared his master’s mood on this occasion, for he tried to persuade Manzikert to remain onboard his flagship and allow the more reasonable of his lieutenants—perhaps even his son John Manzikert II,11 who would one day govern his people brilliantly—to lead the landing party, but Manzikert, Truffidian though he was, would have none of it. The Cappan also actively encouraged his wife, Sophia, to accompany them. Unfortunately, Tonsure tells us little about Sophia Manzikert in either the biography or the journal (her own biography has not survived), but from the little we do know Tonsure’s description of her husband might fit her equally well; the two often waxed romantic on the pleasures of being able to pillage together.
And so, Manzikert, Sophia, Tonsure, and the Cappan’s men landed on the site of what would soon be Ambergris. At the moment, however, it was occupied by a people Tonsure christened “gray caps,” known today as “mushroom dwellers.”
Tonsure reports that they had advanced hardly a hundred paces into the underbrush before they came upon the first inhabitant, standing outside of his “rounded and domed single-story house, built low to the ground and seamless, from which issued a road made of smooth, shiny stones cleverly mortared together.” The building might have once served as a sentinel post, but was now used as living quarters.
Clearly Tonsure found the building more impressive than the native standing outside of it, for he spends three pages on its every minute detail and gives us only this short paragraph on the building’s inhabitant:
Stout and short, he came only to the Cappan’s shoulder: swathed from head to foot in a gray cloak that covered his tunic and trousers, these made from lighter gray swatches of animal skin stitched together. Upon his head lay a hat the color of an Oliphaunt’s skin: a tall, wide contrivance that covered his face from the sun. His features, what could be seen of them, were thick, sallow, innocent of knowledge. When the Cappan inquired as to the nature and name of the place, this unattractive creature could not answer except in a series of clicks, grunts, and whistles that appeared to imitate the song of the cricket and locust. It could not be considered speech or language. It was, as with insects, a warning or curious sound, devoid of other meaning.12
We can take a farcical delight from imagining the scene: the giant leaning down to communicate with the dwarf, the dwarf speaking a language so subtle and sophisticated that it has resisted translation to the present day, while the giant spits out a series of crude consonants and vowels that must have seemed to the gray cap a sudden bout of apoplexy.
Manzikert found the gray cap repellent, resembling as it did, he is quoted as saying, “both child and mushroom,”13 and if not for his fear of retaliation from a presumed ruling body of unknown strength, the Cappan would have run the native through with his sword. Instead, he left the gray cap to its incomprehensible vigil, still clicking and whistling to their backs,14 and proceeded along the silvery road until they reached the city
Although Tonsure has, criminally, neglected to provide us with the reactions of Manzikert and Sophia upon their first glimpse of the city proper—and, from the monk’s description of aqueducts, almost certainly the future site of Albumuth Boulevard—we can imagine that they were as impressed as Tonsure himself, who wrote:
The buildings visible beyond the increasingly scanty tree cover were decorated throughout by golden stars, like the very vault of heaven, but whereas heaven has its stars only at intervals, here the surfaces were entirely covered with gold, issuing forth from the center in a never-ending stream. Surrounding the main building were other, smaller buildings, themselves surrounded completely or in part by cloisters. Structures of breathtaking complexity stretched as far as the eye could see. Then came a second circle of buildings, larger than the first, with lawns covered in mushrooms of every possible size and color—from gigantic growths as large as the Oliphaunt15 to delicate, glassy nodules no larger than a child’s fingernail. These mushrooms—red capped and blue capped, their undersides dusted with streaks of silver or emerald or obsidian—gave off spores of the most varied and remarkable fragrances, while the gray caps themselves tended their charges with, in this one instance, admirable delicacy and loving concern . . .16 There were also fountains which filled basins of water; gardens, some of them hanging, full of exotic mosses, lichens, and ferns, others sloping down to the level ground; and a bath of pure gold that was beautiful beyond description.17
We can only imagine the slavering delight of Manzikert and his wife upon seeing all that gold; unfortunately, as they would soon find out, much of the “gold” covering the buildings was actually a living organism similar to lichen that the gray caps had trained to create decorative patterns; not only was it not gold, it wasn’t even edible.
Nonetheless, Manzikert and his men began to explore the city. The most elemental details about the buildings they ignored, instead remarking upon the abundance of tame rats as large as cats,18 the plethora of exotic birds, and, of course, the large quantities of fungus, which the gray caps appeared to harvest, eat, and store against future famine.19
While Manzikert explores, I shall pass the time by relating a few facts about the city. According to the scant gray cap records that have been found and, if not translated, then haltingly understood, they called the city “Cinsorium,” although the meaning of the word has been lost, or, more accurately, never been found. It is estimated by those who have studied the ruins lying beneath Ambergris20 that at one time Cinsorium could have housed 250,000 souls, making it among the largest of all ancient cities. Cinsorium also boasted highly advanced plumbing and water distribution systems that would be the envy of many a city today.21
However, at the time Manzikert stumbled upon Cinsorium, Tonsure argued, it was well past its glory years. He based this conclusion on rather shaky evidence: the “undeniable decadence” of its inhabitants. Surely Tonsure is prejudicial beyond reason, for the city appeared fully functional—the high domed buildings in sparkling good repair, the streets swept constantly, the amphitheaters looking as if they might, within minutes, play host to innumerable entertainments.
Tonsure ignored these signs of a healthy culture, perhaps fearing to admit that an almost certainly heretical people might be superior. Instead, he argued, in the biography especially, but also in his journal, that the current inhabitants—numbering no more, he estimates, than 700—had no claim to any greatness once possessed by their ancestors, for they were “clearly the last generations of a dying race,” unable to understand the processes of the city, unable to work its machines, unable to farm, “reduced to hunting and gathering.”22 Their watch fires scorched the interiors of great halls, whole clans wetly bickering with one another within a territory marked by the walls of a single building. They did not a one of them, according to Tonsure, comprehend the legacy of their heritage.
Tonsure’s greatest argument for the gray caps’ degeneracy may also be his weakest. That first day, Manzikert and Sophia entered what the monk described as a library, a structure “more immense than all but the most revered ecclesiastical institutions I have studied within.” The shelves of this library had rotted away before the onslaught of a startling profusion of small dark purple mushrooms with white stems. The books, made from palm frond pulp in a process lost to us, had all spilled out upon the main floor—thousands of books, many ornately engraved with strange lett
ers23 and overlaid by the now familiar golden lichen. The use the current gray caps had made of these books was as firewood, for as Manzikert watched in disbelief, gray caps came and went, collecting the books and condemning them to their cooking fires.
Did Tonsure correctly interpret what he saw in the “library?” I think not, and have published my doubts in a monograph entitled “An Argument for the Gray Caps and Against the Evidence of Tonsure’s Eyes.”24 I believe the “library” was actually a place for religious worship, the “books” prayer rolls. Prayer rolls in some cultures, particularly in the far Occident, are consigned to the flames in a holy ritual. The “shelves” were rotted wooden planks specifically inserted into the walls to foster the growth of the special purple mushrooms, which grew nowhere else in Cinsorium and may well have had religious significance.25 Another clue lay in the large, mushroom-shaped stone erected just beyond the library’s front steps, since determined to have been an altar.
Sophia chose this moment to remark upon what she termed the “primitivism” of the natives, chiding her husband for his “cowardice.” Faced with such a rebuke, Manzikert became more aggressive and free of any moral restraints. Fortunately, it took several days for this new attitude to manifest itself, during which time Manzikert moved more and more of his people off the ships and onto the lip of the bay, where he commenced building docks. He also appropriated several of the round, squat structures on the fringes as living quarters, evicting the native inhabitants who, burbling to themselves, complacently walked into the city proper.
Not only were Manzikert’s clan members glad to stretch their legs, but the land that awaited them proved, upon exploration, to be ideal. Abundant springs and natural aquifers fed off of the Moth, while game, from pigs to deer to a flightless bird called a “grout,” provided an ample food source. The curve of the river accentuated the breeze that blew from the west, generally cooling the savage climate, and with the breeze came birds, swallows in particular, to swoop down at dusk and devour the vast clouds of insects that hovered over the water.