Read Closing Accounts Page 10

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  When Thaddaeus returned to The Tower, he found the Great Hall crowded with those who had come to the feast of MidWinter’s Eve; they were just sitting down to table. Thaddaeus took his seat with the children and the white-haired scholar sat with them. Prince Edward had been allowed downstairs and he sat on a cushioned chair, a little like a throne, between his sister and little Emmie. Winnie sat in the crowd, as well as several farmers and merchants who had come into town from the countryside. The street folk were all there; some sat and some helped to serve. Tom, Hyla, and Grissle brought out food and drink. Bill carved a great roast goose. A mood of hilarity prevailed: old jokes were brought out, old stories retold; they toasted each other and praised the food. Where had Grissle come by a goose? She wouldn’t say. At the end of the meal, Thaddaeus stood up and said,

  “Who will come with me to see the stars?”

  Everyone wanted to come. Edward rode on Bill’s back, Hyla carried Emmie, and they followed Thaddaeus to the roof. From this high point, they could see over the whole city, and in the clear air, some thought they could discern the distant line of the sea. There was a great show of shooting stars, and by midnight a red moon hung in the middle of the black sky. The air was becoming warmer, and no one wanted to go inside: Grissle passed cups of hot toddy to the jovial crowd. They began to sing as the stars fell: not boisterously, but quietly: a solemn tune of MidWinter. Only Thaddaeus remained strangely silent.

  Finally, Emmie fell asleep in Hyla’s arms. Hyla, Tom, and Bill took the children downstairs and put them to bed. Winnie and several other women went down to the kitchen to wash up the dishes and have a cup of tea. The street folk wrapped themselves in blankets and settled down to wait with Thaddaeus since it appeared that he had no intention of going down to bed.

  “MidWinter is the longest of nights,” Thaddaeus said.

  “And this night will be longer,” Grissle replied.

  “I wish the morning would come,” Thaddaeus said. He sighed and looked up at the black patches of sky devoid of stars. Since his meeting with the mayor he had felt increasingly dispirited, his mind a grey wasteland. For the first time in many months, the light of his inner vision was dimmed and he felt as if he stood on the edge of a black pit.

  “I have watched and waited for a lifetime,” Grissle said. “I will not give up now.” She lit a fire in a metal barrel and stood warming her hands. Thaddaeus joined her. Around them, the street folk slept.

  Suddenly a wild wind tore through the sky. Passing over The Tower, it whipped up the hill like a wrathful serpent. Thaddaeus looked up in time to see the University’s bell tower sway and crumble as the mighty wind, roaring like a lion, battered college towers, shattered windows, and uprooted trees. Wailing cries went up and then, as suddenly as it had come, the wind and wailing ceased and there was silence. Deep darkness settled on the hilltop. What was this strange vision? Thaddaeus turned his eyes away.

  The white-haired scholar appeared at his side, bringing wood to feed the fire. “Everyone downstairs is asleep now,” he said.

  “Then only we three keep watch this night,” Thaddaeus said.

  “No. We’re not the only ones,” Grissle replied. As if at her word, other lights sprang up along the coast and further inland. “Those are watch fires burning,” she continued. “We are not alone.”

  Thaddaeus looked at the watch fires spread out under the red moon, but felt little consolation. He searched his mind for light, for the metrical stirring of familiar words, but he found only the edge of an abyss. He sighed aloud, but could not speak. The old scholar beside him began to sing,

  I bind unto myself this night

  A refuge under mighty wings

  A fortress in the time of storm

  A shield from terror in the dark.

  It was the young soldier’s verse and Thaddaeus grasped at the memory as a drowning man grasps a life preserver. Still, he could not call forth the words he needed: the words that had woken him, sustained him: the words by which he’d thought, painted, waited. Then Grissle began to sing in her strange harsh voice,

  I bind unto myself this night

  The flashing of the lightning free

  The whirling wind’s tumultuous shocks

  The steadfast earth

  The deep salt sea . . .

  Without warning, a violent gust of wind swept down, roaring like the discharge of a canon. The blast seemed to part around The Tower so that the three watchers heard, rather than felt, its devastating power. Lightning flashed out of the whirling wind, striking the City. Flames erupted in the Market Square, City Hall, the Palace, and in every other quarter of the metropolis. The Palace exploded like a magazine of gunpowder, revealing the entrails of its dungeons and writhing torture chambers. Prisoners spilled out of its guts, pursued by soldiers brandishing swords and pistols. In the lurid light of blazing market stalls, a crowd gathered in the Square, attacking each other with clubs and knives, screaming and screeching obscenities. Fire bells clanged and shrill whistles raised the alarm, but it was no use. The wind whirled down, whipping up towering flames as lightning struck again and again. The Market Square, the center of the city, the crucible of the country’s finance, was now a furnace of a different kind. Smoke and wailing rose over the clash of bells and toppling towers. Then, as if someone had thrown a switch, the fires went out and there was silence and total darkness.

  The red moon hung low on the horizon. Thaddaeus drew a deep breath and looked at his two companions. The old scholar stared musingly into the friendly flames of their fire. Grissle’s expression was inscrutable. At their feet, the street folk slept on undisturbed. Then, in the silence, Thaddaeus heard the sound of footsteps echoing along the empty street below. Looking over the parapet, he saw a lone man coming up the hill. Was that the mayor? The man carried a lamp. He turned to The Tower, hesitated at the door, then knocked. From down below, Thaddaeus heard Tom’s surprised voice, then a murmured conversation. The man went in and the door closed.

  Thaddaeus went back to the fire and stood looking out to sea. Slowly the red moon slipped down beyond the distant hills and the only lights left in the velvet darkness were the watch fires spread out across the land like distant sparks. A gentle wind blew in from the sea, lifting their hair and bringing a delicious scent. The three companions were filled with longing: the scholar cried out softly and began to weep; Grissle sighed aloud and clutched at her heart. Only Thaddaeus stood like a stone, his eyes wide open, searching the dark sky for light, for sound, for anything to beat back the dark abyss that threatened to swallow his mind. He was trapped in his own wasteland; he could not get out; he would suffocate under a black sky in a grey and silent land. Where was the white light? Where were the words he needed, the words once so familiar that he could not now call to mind?

  Then he heard a sound. His companions heard it too.

  “What is that?” the scholar cried. “I hear marching feet!”

  “It’s the sound of beating wings,” Grissle exclaimed.

  But Thaddaeus was silent. He heard a beating heart. He felt a rhythmic pulse beneath his feet, above his head, behind his back, before his face, within his blood, beside his self, winning back his mind. With each pulsation came a word, each word drawing him back from the pit and out of the dark lands. He closed his eyes and began to sing in his tuneless way. He heard the sound of doors opening and closing below, of many footsteps on the stairs. He heard beloved voices, joyful cries, and felt small arms wrap around his leg, small hands grabbing his fingers.

  “Look!” they cried, “Look!”

  He felt the heat of a bright light. Opening his eyes, he saw the white light come. He flung himself forward into its embrace.

  EXTRACT FROM THE BOOK OF TALES

  The Poor Man and His Treasure

  Once there was a poor man who discovered a chest of gold buried in a field. He kept it secret, then went and sold everything he had, bought the field, and claimed the treasure. He became rich—t
he richest man in the kingdom—and for some time he was happy. Yet, he forgot what it was like to be poor and to work hard for a living.

  One day an old woman came knocking on his door. He looked through the peephole and saw her simple clothes and her strangely carved staff. She carried a loaf of bread and called to him: “Come! Let me in. We will eat together.” But he trusted no one; everyone wanted his gold. He would not let her in.

  The next day the old woman came again, and the day after that. Each day she brought a loaf of bread and called to the rich man with the same words: “Come! Let me in. We will eat together.” She would knock and call out, and then continue to knock for an hour. The rich man would not let her in. “Go away!” he would shout, but she would not and so he would cover his ears and busy himself at the opposite end of the house. She continued to knock day after day, for weeks and months, perhaps years. The man began to hear the knocking day and night, even in his dreams, but he would not open the door. He bought a heavy bolt and fixed it to the door. Now it could only be opened from the inside.

  Years went by; the man grew old. His vision dimmed and the sound of the knocking faded. He had become a miser and driven all his friends and family away, even the beloved son who was meant to inherit the treasure. His door was shut and bolted against the world. No one dared approach him. Visitors stopped coming to his house.

  Then, one day, when he was very old, he woke to the sound of someone knocking at the door. After all these years, he thought, who could it be? And suddenly it came to him that he had become a wretched man. His linen robes, once so grand, were now soiled and tattered, smelling of age and neglect. Mice rustled and gnawed in dusty corners and water dripped onto tiled floors. He was completely alone.

  The knocking continued. A familiar voice called to him: “Come! Let me in. We will eat together.”

  I’ll have a look at my treasure, then go to the door, he said to himself. He always looked at his treasure first thing in the morning.

  But hunger spoke to him, “Old fool. You cannot eat that treasure.”

  Loneliness said, “Treasure is no comfort in death.”

  Stumbling in his sudden urgency, he felt his way down the stairs and along neglected passages, making his way to the front door. A light shone under the threshold and when he saw it, he realized that his house was very dark.

  “Wait!” he called out. “I’m coming! I’m coming! Let me open the door!” And before he could stretch out his hand to slide back the bolt, the door opened and the room was flooded with light. He heard the sound of singing and the wild sweet music of pipes. Then someone touched his eyes and he saw dancers and merrymakers streaming into his house. He was dressed in clean clothing and made to sit at a table laden with food. The old woman stood before him, leaning on her staff.

  “Why?” he said over and over. “Why? I have caused so much sorrow in this world.”

  To this the old woman made no reply, but sat and feasted with him.

  He lived long enough to give all his treasure away and to see his son. He died in peace.

  EXTRACT FROM THE BOOK OF TALES

  The Ungrateful Guests

  Mr. and Mrs. Pillar were pleased to receive the important wedding invitation, yet were somewhat offended by the parcel that accompanied the gold embossed letter.

  “Why does the Groom send wedding garments?” Mrs. Pillar said. “I have a gown much finer than this.”

  “We haven’t seen him for some time. Perhaps he hasn’t heard of our good fortune,” Mr. Pillar said.

  On the day of the great event, the couple donned their finest clothes, hired a cab, and rode to the heart of the city where the wedding feast was to be held.

  At the entrance, they presented their invitation to the doorman who said, “Why aren’t you wearing the wedding clothes provided by the Groom?”

  “We don’t need them,” Mr. Pillar said.

  “As you can see, our own clothes are much finer,” Mrs. Pillar said.

  “You cannot enter unless you are wearing the wedding garments. Your own clothes are far from suitable, but if you will step aside to this changing room over here, other wedding clothes have been provided for guests who overlooked the clothes that were sent to them.”

  “Ridiculous!” Mrs. Pillar cried.

  “An insult!” Mr. Pillar said and pushed past the doorman.

  Before they had gone ten steps, they were confronted by the Groom himself.

  “You’re not wearing the clothes I sent,” he said.

  “My dear boy,” Mrs. Pillar began.

  But the Groom was angry. “Don’t you realize what I paid for those garments? You insult me by not wearing them.”

  “But our own clothes,” Mr. Pillar said, “come from the finest tailors.”

  “Then you were cheated,” the Groom said. “Those glad rags aren’t fit for a monkey.”

  “How dare you!” Mrs. Pillar cried.

  “You’re just like all the other guests on the first list! Get out! Now! I’ll get the street folk to come to my wedding! They’ll be glad to have new clothes!” the Groom said. Strong hands grasped the Pillars from behind and pushed them out into the street. The door banged shut behind.

  They were too outraged to speak and, supporting each other, they walked through the city streets for some time without seeing where they were going.

  Suddenly Mr. Pillar stopped. All about them was quiet. His anger had cooled somewhat, and he’d been thinking.

  “That gown really does make you look fat. See how your stomach bulges over your undergarments?”

  The embers of Mrs. Pillar’s wrath flared up. “Well look at your stomach hanging over that ridiculous belt buckle. Anyone would think you’re six months pregnant!”

  “Now, now, dear. I was only trying to be helpful. Perhaps the Groom is right. That color is most unflattering against your skin. Did the tailors actually tell you it was suitable?”

  Mrs. Pillar snatched her hand away from her husband’s arm and stood trembling with anger.

  He continued, “I think the tailors did well by me, but perhaps they did cut corners a bit with your frock.”

  Mrs. Pillar finally found her tongue and it was sharp as a whetted knife. “Well! They couldn’t cut corners with you, could they? They had to cut those trousers for a hippo! Cripes! The color of your shirt makes me sick!”

  “Then you might have said so at the time instead of letting those tailors bamboozle us!” Mr. Pillar cried, gnashing his teeth.

  “It’s not my fault,” Mrs. Pillar shrieked.

  They might have come to blows right there and then if it had not been for the old lady who came walking up the street. She leaned on a strangely carved staff and hummed a tune. She stopped beside them.

  “Are you lost?” she said.

  “No,” Mr. Pillar said gruffly.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Pillar said, looking around the unfamiliar street.

  “Which is it?” the old woman said.

  “Perhaps we are a bit turned around,” Mr. Pillar said, and then, because the old woman held an understanding look in her eye, he explained their predicament.

  “Why don’t you just go back and ask the doorman for wedding clothes? It would be simpler than going all the way home at this time of night,” the old woman said.

  But our clothes . . .” Mrs. Pillar began.

  “Are dirty,” the old woman finished.

  The Pillars looked down and saw that it was true. They must have, unwittingly, walked through puddles of mud as they’d wandered the streets. Mrs. Pillar had stepped in dung; her hair had come undone and straggled over her shoulders.

  “Well,” Mrs. Pillar said, “this gown is too tight. It pinches. Perhaps the wedding clothes will be more comfortable.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Pillar said. “If truth be told, my clothes, which the tailors insisted were made of the finest fabric, are scratchy. I am itching to death.”

  The old woman led the Pillars back through the dark streets. How had they passed this way w
ithout assault or attack? They wondered. Everywhere they looked there was misery and distress, although when the old woman offered to help, the wretched only stopped up their ears.

  The Pillars stayed close to the old woman. She led them a long way before they reached the door of the feasting place. Lights shone in every window; the sound of merry music spilled into the street.

  “Will they let us in again?” Mr. Pillar asked.

  “Knock and find out,” the old woman replied.

  The Pillars knocked and the doorman gladly let them in. They washed and changed into the clothes provided, admitting to each other that the wedding garments were indeed superior to their own.

  When they were ready, a servant led them into the feast where they were seated at the lowest table, far from the important people. But the Pillars were content. For once, they did not complain and—who knows?—perhaps they carried their contentment home and lived in peace.

  EXTRACT FROM THE BOOK OF TALES

  The Girl Who Was Robbed

  One morning, when the world was younger, but just as perilous, a girl set out from home to visit her cousin in the hill country. Just five miles out from the gates of the city, she was attacked by a band of robbers who delighted in waylaying innocent travelers. They jumped out of a ditch and pulled her in. Overpowering the poor girl, they did to her as they would, beat her, and stole what little money she had. Indeed, it seemed to her that they tore open her very soul. Then they threw her to the side of the road and left her for dead.

  Was she dead? The first person to come down the road denied that the poor girl existed at all. Professor Edith Germaine was on her way to a conference; she was to be the keynote speaker at a world gathering of philosophers and scholars. Indeed, Professor Germaine was counted great among the sages of the time; she was a doctor of humanities; she had read all the great literature of the world and it was said of her that she could fathom all mysteries and all knowledge. She was on her way into the city and was just passing the heap of humanity that lay on the other side of the road when her driver stopped.

  “What is that?” he said.

  The Professor looked hard. “It’s nothing,” she finally declared. “It’s a pile of abandoned clothing, no doubt filthy and crawling with lice. Drive on. There is nothing to stop for here and I cannot be late for my first public lecture.”

  The girl was nothing. Perhaps the good Professor was right.

  A student on his way to the world gathering of philosophers and scholars wondered what the heap might be. But he was accustomed to seeing the dregs of humanity: he volunteered two evenings a week at a local soup kitchen. Indeed, the study of human nature was his special field of scholarship. He was scheduled to read his major thesis at four o’clock that very afternoon, and, as a rising star in the academic world, it was his chance to be heard--perhaps taken seriously--by eminent philosophers and doctors of the humanities. He could not be late.

  He stopped directly across the road from the heap of girl and peered at her, adjusting his glasses. He saw the bare limbs, the torn dress, the blood.

  Clearly, he thought, she is dead; she must have been out begging--or worse--by the roadside. Perhaps she got what she deserved. People of the lower orders so often do.

  He walked on.

  Sometime before sundown, an old woman came along the road leading an ancient donkey. She was a bread merchant, on her way home from the city market. As she walked she hummed a lively tune, but stopped when she saw the broken girl on the roadside. “Oh dear, oh dear,” the woman said, picking up the girl and laying her across the donkey’s back.

  “Oh dear, oh my,” she sighed, taking up her carven staff and leading the donkey on. Soon she began to hum again, but this time she hummed a lullaby: for the girl was alive. “But broken. Oh so very broken. Torn to shreds.” The old woman sighed and took the girl to her home.

  The girl healed, but it took time: the wounds were severe. Then one day, months and months later--perhaps years--when most of her hurts had healed well enough, the girl thought she might be ready to travel again.

  “I never did get to the hill country to see my cousin,” she said to the old woman.

  “Then it’s time you went. We’ll go together. I can take bread to the village market.”

  “I’ll load the donkey,” the girl said.

  From that day on, they traveled together, visiting villages in the hill country and towns by the sea, delivering bread wherever they went and singing as they journeyed. And always, wherever they walked, the girl kept her eyes open.

  “Look Mother! Look there! We must stop.” And they would stop and, together, lift up the broken and lay them gently across the back of the ancient donkey.

  “He’s still alive, Mother!”

  “Yes dear.”

  “But broken. So very broken. Torn to shreds.”

  In this way the band of travelers grew, day by day, year by year. So many have been added to their number.

  Perhaps, reader, you too will meet them on the road one day.

  EXTRACT FROM THE BOOK OF TALES

  A Tale of Two Sons

  Now all the world knows that few things in life are fair, but it is always brothers and sisters who find this truth most irritating. The village carpenter’s sons were no different.

  The village carpenter was unusual: he was rich. Not only had his business prospered over the years, but he had inherited a fortune from a distant relative. He lived well, yet he never forgot the toil of his early apprenticeship and so taught his two sons the value of honest work with their own hands.

  The oldest son learned his lessons well and in time became a fine carpenter. But the youngest son’s craftsmanship was superior to that of his brother, and even surpassed his father’s skill. For some time they worked prosperously together until one day the youngest son said to his brother, “I am tired of sawdust and splinters. I was made for more than this. I want to try my fortunes in the city.”

  “What could be better that this life?” the oldest son said.

  “Many things,” the youngest replied.

  “You don’t know. You don’t know anything about the world,” said the oldest.

  “Neither do you,” the youngest said, and went off to find his father.

  In the end, he did go to the city, but first he convinced his father to give him his portion of the family estate.

  “How can you ask for such a thing!” the older brother demanded.

  “It was easy,” said the youngest.

  “It’s an insult! Have you no respect? That money shouldn’t come to you until he dies!”

  “I won’t be back. If you want to stay to bury him, then stay.” And the younger brother packed his things and left the village.

  The father was very sad and the older son was very angry. “How could he treat our father this way,” he would say to himself whenever he saw his father sighing over the empty workbench.

  At first, the older son was run off his feet, trying to pick up the jobs his brother had left behind. On top of this, he was often criticized by customers because his finish work was somewhat inferior to the younger brother’s.

  “When will your brother return?” customers would ask.

  “He said he would not come back,” the older brother would reply.

  “Ah. Then we will have to be satisfied with your work.” And the older brother would grit his teeth and finish the job.

  Yet things settled down eventually. Many years passed. The oldest son had a family of his own and built a house beside his father’s. The old father’s sorrow became less sharp: he stopped sighing aloud over the empty workbench, and took great joy in his grandchildren. Customers forgot the younger brother and, if truth be told, the older brother became known for his excellent craftsmanship. If he thought of his younger brother at all, it was only in passing, as one might think of a distant relative who lives in a far and unknown country. His old anger was nothing more than quiet embers under a layer of cold ash.

  T
hen one evening, after a long hard day of labor under the eye of a critical customer, the oldest son came home to find the family in an uproar.

  “Uncle’s come home!” his little daughter cried. She had been waiting on the porch for him, as was her habit. “Grandpa is so happy!”

  Yes, the absent brother had returned because he needed help and had nowhere else to go. He was sorry now for ever leaving in the first place.

  In the great city he had found a niche in politics. Yet perhaps it would be more accurate to say that politics had found him: a large purse and generous party donations can buy important friends. It had all been highly satisfying for a while, and he had learned the easy sacrifice of honor as he’d bought his way up the ladder, the only real price of belonging to the cult of significance. But three wives, several lovers, multiple party changes, and a bankruptcy later, he was no nearer to the top of his profession than the average career politician. No. Instead he’d found himself in real trouble, caught between an anvil and a hammer, so to speak. He had two choices, really: either to murder his confederate, or to pay him a substantial amount of hush money, which he didn’t have. Either way, he would have to disappear when it was over. His career was finished; he blamed himself entirely.

  “And this is the way you account for yourself? For Father’s sorrow? For your wasted inheritance?” the older brother said. “Have you nothing more to say?”

  “Only that I did not bloody my hands,” the younger son said, his head bowed before his brother’s wrath. “I have never been guilty of that.”

  The older son saw by his father’s face that all would be forgiven, the hush money paid, and the past forgotten. He stormed out of the house and into the workshop where he picked up a hammer. He heard his brother’s words rising from the flames of the past: “I am tired of sawdust and splinters.”

  “So was I!” he said, bringing the hammer down.

  “I was made for more than this,” he heard his brother say.

  “I was too!” he brought the hammer down again, smashing, blindly smashing, until the first force of his rage was spent. Then his vision cleared.

  “Oh. What have I done?” he said. He had vented his rage on a set of small chairs that he’d built for his youngest child. He had taken great pains in the carving and finishing. They were meant for the child’s birthday, day after tomorrow, and he had smashed them to splinters.

  “Oh, what have I done,” he said again.

  And he thought of his youngest child, the fat little legs and the two front teeth; he thought of each of his five children, and the middle daughter who waited on the porch for him every evening. He pictured his father who liked to sit at the supper table and feed the little one. He looked down at his hands, calloused and rough; hands big enough to smash and destroy; hands gentle enough to love one wife; hands old enough to have held years of children, years of work. Every house in the village was a witness to his labor; every chair, table, bookcase. He had worked at his father’s side for years on end, and they shared everything. Yes, he realized that now. Everything.

  He picked up his tools and worked far into the night, reconstructing that which could easily be reconstructed; letting go of that which could never be recovered: time.

  By morning the new chairs were finished: not as fancy, not as intricately carved, but well-crafted.

  By midday he had the cheque in hand and he took it to his brother. He could well afford it; he was his father’s son. There was no better life and he knew it.

  QUIETUS

  The Diary of Mayor Jared Hobic

  May 16, --41

  I met a man in the market today who has affected me strangely. He’s an old man with snow-white hair and something about him makes me think he’s from the University. He seems the scholarly type. He was holding a loaf of the kind of bread my grandmother used to make. I remember the smell and the taste of it when she brought it out of the oven…curse that old man! He’s brought on a flood of memories I could do without and now I can hear that infernal knocking again. Damn him and his bread! It is—hopefully—only a temporary affliction of my inner ear; but next time I see that old man, with or without a loaf of bread, I shall have him arrested! University scholar or not!

  He did, however, ask a question that has started me thinking: “Why haven’t I had my portrait painted, like every other mayor before me?” I had no answer, only that I had not thought of it before. It is a good idea. Why not? I shall mention it to Kara Mia and see what she thinks.

  May 17, --41

  Kara Mia is positively wild about the idea of a portrait and has already begun looking for a painter. My dear wife! Her belief in my abilities has sustained me all these years, not to mention her connections with just the right people in government. This is, perhaps, the advantage of having a wife ten years my senior.

  May 18, --41

  Oh that Fran Zlindric! How she does warm the cockles of my heart! She comes to me with her troubles, believing I can help her with them all. Perhaps I can! She’s asked me to tackle her tax forms which should be an easy thing. She really should be making more money. I think she deserves a wage increase, or perhaps a promotion! She works well as my assistant, but she says she wants more scope. She wants a staff of her own. I think I could see to that.

  Mutchmor, our Permits Officer, has been asking too many questions lately. He insinuated—in a council meeting—that someone in city government is taking bribes. Well of course! How else can government operate with speed and efficiency! People who don’t mind bureaucracy can certainly use it if they like, but I like to operate in a sort of flattened system. Why should anyone have to go through all the “proper channels” when they can come directly to me? The exchange of a few well-chosen words and a little extra cash, and we all get what we want in a timely, democratic way. Why shouldn’t the voice of the people speak with the crinkle of banknotes? Kara Mia has always backed me on this.

  Well, if Mutchmor wants to keep his job, he’d certainly better become “Mutch-more” obliging. Otherwise, I know a pretty little secretary who, with a little vetting (perhaps I really mean petting!), will slip neatly into his position. It makes my tingle all over just to think how she might reward me!

  May 19. --41

  The trouble with commissioning a portrait seems to be the difficulty of finding a painter. I had no idea there is such a dearth of artists in this city! As Mayor, it is my duty to see that the pursuit of art is promoted. I will speak to the General about this matter.

  May 20, --41

  I have just spoken with the General, and he agrees that art and culture should certainly be promoted throughout the kingdom, though he himself is too busy at present to lend a hand in this endeavor. He did advise discretion and the necessity of vetting artists with potential. He spoke of propriety in culture and I suppose what he means is that art should promote his ideas of the state and that artists cannot be given a free hand. I’ve no problem with this kind of control over “optics.” Indeed, putting a good face on things is one of my talents and who better to help me along than a portrait painter! Ha! Put a good face on things! Portrait painter! Kara Mia is right: I do possess a certain agility of language.

  The General made the useful suggestion of checking with the University. He had a dim recollection of a famous painter among the scholars there who may have been the one commissioned by the King to paint the portraits of the royal family. I don’t know why Kara Mia didn’t think of this. She assumed a painter would be a derelict living on the streets. Acting on this assumption, she asked me to order my City Guard to question the street folk throughout the city, and even down in Belltown. She may be right, but I think The General’s tip more likely.

  However, I think it wise to take up these inquiries myself. If there is a painter who remembers the royal family . . . well, I shouldn’t want him questioned by the General. One can’t be too careful. I shall go to the University myself and speak to the Provost. Fran can make the appointment for me. Perhaps while I’m there I’ll see
that little white-haired scholar. I’d love to arrest him on some pretext! I’m still plagued at night by that dratted knocking!

  June 16, --41

  Eight a.m.

  Four weeks of searching, and still no one has turned up a qualified portrait painter! I must be patient, but I would like to have the portrait by Mayor’s Day.

  Yes, my visit to the University was fruitless. The Provost knew of an artist among his collection of antiquated scholars, but he retired from painting many years ago. The Provost was even under the impression that this painter had gone blind. In fact, he didn’t seem entirely sure the artist was still alive! He might be living in one of the colleges, but if so, he never comes to the dining hall. The Provost couldn’t remember when he’d last seen him! Imaging running a university—or any organization—in this slipshod manner. And he had no memory of a university artist commissioned by the King. “But,” he said, “I was appointed Provost just ten years ago. The artist we’re speaking of evidently retired well before my time.” This was hardly conclusive, but I could get no more information.

  I did not see the white-haired old man on my visit, so perhaps I was wrong about him being a scholar.

  Half past ten a.m.

  Fran has become so quiet and morose lately. I shall have to find out what troubles her. She is hard to work with and no longer seems interested in our lunchtime rendezvous. She is an attractive, though troublesome, assistant.

  Four p.m.

  An informative meeting with the General: he has decided that for the economic good of the kingdom, he will be forced to suspend our side of the peace treaties with neighboring nations and prepare the country for war. He has asked me to take over preparations in the capitol. We will house the largest garrison and he believes I am the man to organize the entire operation. I told him I felt honored to think he would rely on me. He told me that was nonsense and that of course he considered me his RIGHT HAND MAN! Yes! Those words are better than any promotion! He was also kind enough to say that my wages would increase.

  Incidentally, He believes we should drop the word ‘kingdom’ from official correspondence and unofficial conversation. He intends to build a ‘nation-state’ and these are the words we are to use. Indeed, he has been building a nation-state these past ten years, since the very day of the King’s death.

  I’ll never forget that day. It was rather horrible to walk in on that bloody scene. Yet the General—even with blood on his hands—took me into his confidence, and there I have remained, and now he acknowledges that I am indispensable to him! No doubt my old grandmother would say that I have entered deep and treacherous waters, but even she could not deny the steady increase of my wealth and prestige over the past ten years.

  Still, there is one of the General’s orders that I failed to carry out. Fortunately he does not know of it; not even Kara Mia knows. I was supposed to “take care of” the little prince and princess. I should have done as the General did, and slit their throats as they slept. I admit that I could not. I am a tenderhearted man and they were so young! The day of the King’s death, I sent them to the Palace Dungeons with Captain William Standall, one of the King’s Guard whom I thought was loyal to the General. It was the Captain who suggested we do the deed in the dungeon. I was under the impression that he was willing to do it himself, but by the next day, he and the royal children had disappeared.

  I searched everywhere, but never found a trace. Fortunately no one asked questions. The General took my word for it that the prince and princess were dead. He had somehow fabricated evidence of a virulent epidemic in the Palace and news of the death of the entire royal family and Palace staff was proclaimed throughout the land. I told him I’d also had to kill Captain Standall who had turned traitor. Would that I had!

  The Captain and the children must have fled the country or died trying because, to this day, I’ve never heard even the smallest whisper about them. They just vanished.

  Oh! What a fool I am! As long as they may be alive I will never feel safe!

  This is why the very idea of finding the old royal painter makes me shiver. He might recognize the royal children if he saw them.

  Oh! If only this blasted knocking in my ears would stop!

  June 18, --41

  10:00 a.m.

  What a morning! Two members of my City Guard brought me a beautiful silk coat, just as I was dressing for the day. They say the coat was confiscated from a notorious tax evader whom they’d finally caught. The coat looks to be the work of our city’s finest tailor—a man who somehow never has time to sew for me. My guards insist they acquired the coat fairly. Kara Mia came in and made me try it on. She says it suits me wonderfully and thinks it should become my mayoral coat. I suppose she’s right. I told her it’s a tight fit and that I thought it made me look fat. She assured me that I am certainly not fat. I sometimes wonder if she isn’t pulling my leg.

  It’s just two weeks until Mayor’s Day and the mayoral elections. I wanted to have the portrait completed for the Mayor’s Day celebrations, but I despair of finding a painter in time.

  5:00 pm

  What a day! Just when I’d given up hope of ever finding a portrait painter, I stumble on one in the Market! And all in one afternoon the painting is finished and sitting here in my office, leaning up against the bookcase. Tomorrow it shall be hung in the lobby of City Hall with proper lighting. Fran unearthed an art critic from the University who knows all about the correct way to display paintings. But I should begin at the beginning and record this momentous event in an orderly fashion.

  At about eleven o’clock this morning, I was walking through the Market Square with members of City Council. A little boy caught my eye: a ragged street urchin holding before him a piece of paper. “What would a street boy be doing with a piece of paper?” I asked myself. “Reading? Ha!” Perhaps he’s stolen a market license, I thought. I caught him by the shoulder, but he ducked and slipped away in the crowd before I could grab the paper. Yet in that moment, I had seen that it wasn’t a license. It was a drawing, and what a drawing! Vivid faces seemed to leap off the page in that brief glimpse! I had to know who the artist was, but the boy had disappeared.

  Never mind. I kept my eyes and ears open and little more than half an hour later, found the source of the drawing. The artist was a young girl! She was surely no more than fifteen and fresh from the country: quite delectable really, but I was not to be distracted. The young are easy to persuade, and with a few suggestive comments, I had her painting away.

  She refused to leave the Market Square or her father (a dumpy little man in such an old coat!), but instead of forcing the issue, as my councilors were wont to do, I—being who I am—immediately saw the possibilities. Yes! Why not have my portrait painted in the middle of Market Square, in front of an admiring populace? And that is exactly what happened!

  It is a very large and magnificent portrait and will look very well in the lobby. There is not another portrait like it in the whole of City Hall.

  9:00 pm

  Kara Mia has just been admiring the portrait, yet she is not so admiring as I could wish. She thinks I should have the painter touch up the portrait a bit, perhaps even have her do it again! She says it’s too bad that the picture should depict City Hall before its scheduled improvements. Why did I not think of that? Certain renovations to the building’s face are to begin next week in preparation for Mayor’s Day. I suppose I could have the painter touch it up, but the trouble is…I let her go! I don’t even know her name and on closer inspection, I see that she did not even sign the painting. I’ve no idea who she is or where she came from. Of course, I did not tell this to Kara Mia. I do not like to appear a fool.

  Well, never mind. I expect I’ll see the girl again in the Market.

  June 19, --41

  I had the strangest dreams last night and woke up with that blasted knocking sound just on the edge of my mind. What in blazes brought that on?

  I dreamt about a door, though it wasn’t a door I recogn
ized. That’s no surprise in a dream, I suppose. However, my grandmother was in the dream, and so was I. I was a boy again, taking money from her jar. She thought that jar a great secret. Ha! I dipped into it many a time, though I remember being uncomfortable afterward. And not because she ever caught me! No. I remember now. The dream has brought it all back. I used to hear that knocking sound whenever I did anything she thought was naughty. It must have been because of those stories she used to read to me at bedtime. That one about the rich man and his treasure was especially horrible and sometimes gave me nightmares.

  I talked it over with Kara Mia once, and she said those stories were a form of brainwashing inflicted by an ignorant generation of fools, which is why their books were taken away and destroyed.

  For decades, men such as the General have been working quietly behind the scenes to purge our society of that old tomfoolery. Yes, though our Kings and Queens sought to uphold those old ways of bondage, they could never subdue the undercurrent of powerful mental forces of men like the General. And now the last of the old ways has gone with the last King, which is why I must be careful not to mention my dreams to anyone, not even Kara Mia! It would never do to appear as some delusionary throwback, still suffering the nightmares of antiquated generations.

  June 21, --41

  I received word this afternoon that a man from the University came to view my new portrait. Councilor Jones met the man in the Lobby, but was stupid enough not to get his name.

  At first I thought it might be that white-haired old man (I still believe he’s a scholar), but on probing the depths of my councilor’s shallow mind, it appears the University man was very large, almost bear-like, and my white-haired man is of smaller proportions. Councilor Jones did manage to remember one thing: the man mentioned that he is a retired art professor.

  So, perhaps the Provost’s misplaced art professor is neither blind nor dead! Could he be the painter commissioned by the royal family?

  Weeks ago, when I was hunting for a portrait painter—and specifically the King’s man—I searched the palace archives for the royal portraits. The General had ordered their removal from all public places nearly a year after the King’s death, no doubt hoping this would help to efface memories of the King from the public mind. I wanted to see the portraits because I hoped to find the painter’s signature and perhaps learn his name. Unfortunately I could not find a single royal portrait, though I probed the deepest corners of the Palace basement.

  I found only one clue for all my labor: a closet stacked with ornate empty frames. The canvases had been torn out; shreds were still visible along the inner edges. I understand the General’s reasons for a vigorous purge, but really it is too bad! How will I ever find out the name of that royal painter without having to ask questions which might get noticed? Of course, even if he still lives he probably has no connection whatsoever with the royal children now. And, of course, it is more than likely that the children are dead. Am I running after a slender thread? Yet better safe than found out by the General!

  I must make sure that this retired art professor is not my man. I shall have to make my own inquiries so that I do not arouse suspicions of any kind in any quarter.

  July 8, --41

  The renovations to City Hall are nearly finished. My portrait is hung prominently in the Lobby and adds just the right patrician atmosphere. The Mayor’s Day celebration is just a week away!

  Today, though, I am concerned about my City Councilors. Kara Mia thinks they are the best I’ve had, but I sometimes wonder if they are too ambitious. They agree with all my plans and proposals, but sometimes grudgingly. Councilor Hinkup does like to go on about money and the city coffers and all that. I understand budgets! I’m not an infant! And, they have too many ideas of their own which must all be carefully talked down. It’s such a waste of time! And I do prefer short council meetings. At least none of them have objected to the recent improvements of the city streets. I’ve told them again and again that the streets are no place for widows and orphans. The General built Belltown specifically for the benefit of the poor! The recent clearances and removal of the homeless to Belltown were a charitable public service that will have far reaching beneficiary effects beyond the Mayor’s Day Parade.

  July 9, --41

  Now that all the Mayor’s Day arrangements are nearly complete, I come to my favorite part of the preparations, and –dare I say?—the most publicly anticipated part of the celebrations: the Mayor’s speech. The Mayor! That’s me! There are still moments when I can hardly believe my good fortune! From the humble beginnings of a farm boy in the unimportant village of Larkness, motherless two days after birth, and raised by a stern grandmother of the old schools: compelled to learn the drudgery that is farming though my mind yearned after higher things: finally, through cleverness, luck, and the love of the right woman, I moved up in this world to prestige, wealth, and a worthy title.

  Yes!

  This is my history!

  An abbreviated version, of course. The General says I am a model man of his new nation-state: a man who has raised himself from misfortune! A man who has risen out of obscurity and the darkness of the feeble social enterprises of past generations!

  I feel it today! I feel my power and position, my importance, my invulnerability! Yes, I am in just the right frame of mind to write my speech. I will put away dreams of doors and knocking. Such folly has been banished from my life and from the times in which we are privileged to live.

  On to my speech!

  July 10, --41

  My speech is finished, and it’s a good thing. I see in my last entry that I wrote in high spirits, but when I’d finished, cruel memories settled in. They are with me even now, like too many pointing fingers, and I have spent a miserable night and day. Kara Mia was out with friends, so I had no one to distract and console me. Dear Fran is so morose these days, I thought it best not to compound my misery with her moods.

  It is always a mistake to walk down memory lane. Thinking of my rise from lowly farm boy to lofty Mayor brought back—oh!—so many different recollections. It is dangerous to reflect on the possibility that I am still enslaved by all the things my grandmother said.

  She constantly read those archaic stories to me, all meant to define right and wrong, and to form that idiotic thing she called “my conscience.”

  How grandmother harped on the idea of a conscience! But beyond saying it was a little voice inside me that told me when I was doing wrong, she could never really define it or tell me its location. “Is it near my heart? Is it in my left foot? Is it in my right earlobe, grandmother?” I used to ask, half teasing, knowing she would only huff and puff and tell me I’d asked the wrong questions. “Make up your mind, boy! Be good or be bad! Be black or be white! Don’t try to stand in the middle!” she’d say.

  It was my dear Kara Mia that reformed me. Her ideas gradually quelled the insistent voices of the past, until I was able to put aside those childish things and go to work for the General. I’ll never forget my first job! Kara Mia’s father got me a position in the Palace as a mail clerk, and then the General himself gave me a special assignment. I secretly opened and read all the King’s correspondence and then reported what I’d read to the General. It was so easy and I was so young. Ah! Those were good days: receiving a paycheck from the Palace and one from the General!

  After two years in this double employment, I remember the General said to me, “Jared, you will never rise in the King’s service, but with me you’ll go far. Stick with me, my boy.” And I did. And I have risen, though plagued by dreams of doors and grandmother’s voice inside my head during those early years.

  So why do I feel so miserable tonight? Because the knocking has come back. Why now, after all this time?

  July 17, --41

  Mayor’s Day was a complete success. I have just been reading the reports from the General’s men in the countryside, and they all say that the celebrations in the villages were fulsome and joyful. The only place where a l
ittle force was needed to encourage the festivities was my own birthplace, Larkness. It’s just as the old proverb says: a great man is never really appreciated in his hometown.

  I imagine the family farm has passed into other hands. Surely my father is dead. When I left, over twenty years ago, he was already on a course for drinking himself to death. He told me, on the last day I ever saw him, that he would disinherit me if I took up work in the city. I’ve always supposed that he did, but now I wonder. Could he have left me the house and farm? If so, it must be a wilderness by now, and the house fallen down! I shall have the General’s man in Larkness check on this. Yet why should I bother? Farms are of no great value these days and hardly worth the trouble of selling.

  But I do wonder why the simple country folk of Larkness should be so reluctant to celebrate Mayor’s Day. Anyone would think I’d be a hometown hero! All this makes me wonder if my grandmother isn’t still alive, telling tales about me.

  August 16, --41

  The General’s Day celebration went off without a hitch this year, which shows that his popularity must be growing. It was a balmy, grey day, typical of late summer, and not a single protestor appeared to mar the festivities. Perhaps the General has finally succeeded in suppressing the last of the Royalists. It wouldn’t surprise me.

  September 16, --41

  I’ve finally given Mutchmor the sack. I gave his job to Fran, and still she isn’t happy! Poor thing. She may never feel right in life given her restricted upbringing. Imagine a child being forced to eat bread for every meal! She says it’s the source of all the digestive problems she’s had in her adult years.

  She came to me earlier this evening while Kara Mia was out with friends, but she didn’t want a cuddle. So I gave her a glass of wine and she talked and even cried a little. She does not like her new position as Permits Officer and finds the work boring. What she’d really like is a position in the Palace, like Kara Mia.

  I told her not to be silly! Kara Mia doesn’t have a job at the Palace. I’m the Mayor and a rich man; Kara Mia doesn’t need to work!

  Fran said she was sure Kara Mia has a position of some sort at the Palace, and would I ask her to use her influence?

  I was about to protest when Kara Mia walked in. Fran looked uncomfortable, but when I related her request, Kara Mia looked thoughtfully at Fran and said, “Well, I do have friends in the Palace. I’ll see what I can do.”

  That’s my darling wife! Always doing her utmost for the welfare of others. Needless to say, Fran left in better spirits, no doubt anticipating her future prospects.

  And upon further reflection, I believe it may be in my interest to help Fran get a position in the Palace. Irresistible as she may be, she is a whisperer and she is ambitious. As she has moved between different departments—one rung up the ladder at a time, you might say—odd whisperings and quiet accusations and sackings have often cleared the way before her, though I cannot concretely say she was ever directly involved.

  I made her my personal assistant a little over a year ago, and now I’ve sacked a man for her sake. She’ll have to stay where she is. Permits Officer is not such a bad position.

  September 30, --41

  On rereading my last entry, I find I’m glad I gave Mutchmor a letter of introduction to the King of Z---. I know he thought it odd that I should sack him, and then write him a letter of introduction, but I hope the letter proved useful. Since I fired him, I’ve heard that he has a wife and children, and that he’s packed them all up and moved away. I don’t know where.

  Kara Mia would tell me to forget him. I know she’d say that my present feelings are the residual effects of grandmother’s “educational methods.” I’m sure it’s Kara Mia’s method which is right: “The purpose always justifies the means,” yet some things I do still trouble me.

  October 5, --41

  I’ve just come from a meeting with the General. He outlined the first stage of his plans for waging war on neighboring kingdoms.

  First, we must raise the requisite revenue. I am to levy higher property taxes here in the capital, increase municipal fees, and create new bylaws attached to fines and stiff monetary penalties.

  The General will appoint someone to oversee the collection of goods and taxes in all the villages throughout the countryside. Naturally I asked if this was not already being done. He said it was, but not to his satisfaction. He wants a tax overseer who will not only enforce higher tariffs on all farm production, but someone who can suppress rebels and prevent tax evasion. He seemed to have someone in mind for this position, but appeared reluctant to divulge the name. I can’t say I blame him; there is so much jockeying for power in this business of government; a man like the General must be very careful of the people he places around his person.

  October 25, --41

  I managed to raise property taxes and pass several new bylaws with barely a whisper of protest from City Council. I even levied higher sales tariffs and raised the market license fees and no one voiced an objection. The increases are quite high, more than twenty-five percent, and the penalties for violating the new bylaws are very stiff. All this makes me wonder if perhaps the Council members were stunned into silence.

  However, I think it likely that their acquiescence is due to the addendum which specifies that all upper level members of city government are exempt from these taxes. I think they realize what a fair and generous Mayor I am.

  October 31, --41

  The rise in taxes and city fees aroused little protest from the populace. At this time of year, most farmers are only anxious to renew their licenses as efficiently as possible so they can sell their goods as quickly as they can. It’s always this way during the harvest season, which is the very reason I chose the autumn months to implement the new tax scheme. The market farmers who complained about exorbitant license fees were few and were detained for two or three days in the city jail. That quieted them.

  I’ve been half hoping to see my little painter again. I’m sure she came in from the country; her father certainly looked a typical farmer. I haven’t forgotten those touch up jobs Kara Mia suggested for the portrait, and I have one or two suggestions as well.

  It really is an odd painting; it seems to change. For instance, when I’m passing through the Lobby and happen to glance at it sideways, the expression on the face alters and it’s far from flattering. It’s very alarming. And, the tree in the lower right hand corner sometimes looks like a man!

  At first I thought I might be going mad, but Ms. Kane, the city’s most able prosecutor, sees a man in the lower right corner all the time. She says the man is a farmer and is an “expression of the mayor’s history, portraying the noble struggle of the common laborer’s rise to power.” I suppose she would agree with the General’s assertion that I represent the model citizen of our new nation-state. All this only makes me feel a little better, but not much. Who wants a portrait that appears to be more of an optical illusion? And besides, whenever I catch a glimpse of my altered likeness, I hear that damnable knocking.

  November 5, --41

  The General has ordered construction of the army garrisons to begin. I know just the place: there are several empty warehouses and derelict factories in the southwestern quarter of the city that can be quickly converted to barracks, offices, and a training center.

  The city’s lead builders have agreed to begin work immediately. It should all be ready by MidWinter.

  How the General plans to handle conscription, I do not yet know. I suppose he’s already organized a department specifically for this task.

  December 10, --41

  Well, well. Not only am I in charge of building and outfitting the army garrison, but I am also to be head of conscription and recruitment here in the city. If I didn’t believe that I am the General’s right hand man before, I believe it now!

  I have been given broad powers for defining how military recruitment is accomplished. Indeed, the General dismissed the usual protocols of forming a committee and putting
procedures on paper. He suggested that I simply choose a handful of men—“tough” men is the way he put it—to enforce compliance and encourage volunteerism. In fact, he suggested the names of certain men who do special jobs for him on occasion; he thought they might “appreciate the fresh air, as a change from their work in the Palace Dungeons.” He laughed when he said this. I’m not familiar with any of the men he named. This made me wonder if the General is operating a secret police force.

  There are no fitness requirements in his army: as long as a man isn’t stone blind or overly lame, he will do. “I want a vast army,” the General said. “I plan to intimidate the enemy with sheer numbers.”

  He also said that a man’s criminal history was irrelevant and that, in his opinion, a man with a record might be an asset. “So you may as well begin recruiting in the jail,” he said. “Give them a choice: the cell or army barracks.”

  December 22, --41

  Yesterday, Kara Mia and I spent such a satisfying day together. It was the MidWinter celebration. Usually this particular holiday sends my wife into an irritable temper. She detests anything even faintly reminiscent of the old traditions and tales. It’s no use reminding her that it’s always been a meaningless festival. It’s just one of the three yearly government holidays when everyone eats a great deal and drinks more than they should. I rather like this particular day: the whole city is quiet: Market Square is empty; the factories are still and the horizon is fairly clear of their black smoke; even the Palace is silent and resting. Snug in our apartment on the top floor of City Hall, we can look out on peaceful streets and frost-covered roofs.

  Yet Kara Mia has always loathed MidWinter and never fails to spend at least one hour of it ranting about the idiotic customs practiced by the common folk: “the ugly stick huts and clay animals! The tacky garland! The government should ban it from the marketplace! The artisans who make these things and sell them are nothing more than highway robbers taking advantage of an unsuspecting public! They are greedy charlatans whose only motive is a pocketful of cash!”

  I’ve tried reasoning with her. What is it to us if they sell meaningless junk and the people are willing to pay for it? They have bought the market license; they make a contribution to the economy; they pay their (increased!) taxes. Why should their baubles make her any angrier than the cheap baubles sold by the glassblower?

  “But it’s what the MidWinter rubbish represents,” she says.

  “What does it represent?” I ask.

  “Nothing! It’s completely meaningless!” she proclaims. “Whatever it once meant is lost!”

  “Then if there’s nothing behind it,” I reply, “why lose your temper?”

  This argument of mine usually takes the wind out of her bluster. Every year it’s been the same: she rants until she exhausts herself, and then we take a quiet walk and eat a large dinner.

  This MidWinter was so different! She was in good spirits all day, with not a hint of irritation. We took walks and ate, and walked some more. On one of our outings, we even stopped in the Lobby and she admired my portrait, saying she liked it very well and it was a wonderful likeness.

  There was only one small incident. As we passed through the Market Square after breakfast, we saw two children playing in the gutter. They were building a small hut out of sticks and straw left by some untidy farmer. Kara Mia stopped and stared at the children. At first they were too busy to notice us, but after a few minutes, they stopped and looked up. I tried to urge Kara Mia forward, but she was like a stone statue, staring with cold eyes. The children looked at her for a moment, then jumped up and ran away. Without a word, Kara Mia smashed the little hut with the toe of her boot, then kicked it to pieces. Perhaps this little act relieved her feelings. All I know is that this year, I was spared her MidWinter rant!

  I can’t help comparing my lovely day with Kara Mia to the General’s unhappy holiday. I’ve just come from my weekly meeting with him, and he was more than downcast. His youngest daughter is in the Palace infirmary, dangerously ill with some sort of digestive ailment. He does not expect her to live out the week. And yet, he pushes on with his duties. He is a stalwart man. Though depressed, he received my report on the progress of army enlistments with all graciousness and gratitude. I am fortunate indeed to have found favor with such a man.

  December 25, --41

  The garrison is finished. The regular barracks are, admittedly, a bit rough. The city building inspector had to be handsomely bribed before he would give his written approval of those buildings. However, the officers’ quarters and meeting rooms are rather fine, and I think the building inspector agreed with me on this point, though I do wish he hadn’t been so grudging about it. He complained that the whole project should have been done to the same standard throughout. I told him that many of the soldiers will come from the jail or the streets, so even the regular barracks would be an improvement in their lot.

  In a few minutes, I’ll go over to the jail to have the first batch of recruits sent to the new barracks. I enlisted them over a week ago and I expect they’re anxious to leave the cells and take up their new duties.

  Had another dream last night about a door, but really, I’m so busy these days I don’t have time to dwell on it and I hardly hear the knocking. All that nonsense takes up only a small part of my mind now: like a small wooden sliver on the surface of the skin.

  March 16, --42

  The General’s daughter is dead. Kara Mia just brought the news. The girl was in the Palace infirmary for three months, since MidWinter. They didn’t think she’d make it this long.

  Apparently the General’s wife is so distraught she is blaming him for the girl’s death. According to Kara Mia, the General’s wife insists that if the girl had been allowed to eat bread, she might never have been ill at all. Evidently the girl had been begging her father for bread, but of course he would not allow it. Then, as the girl’s illness progressed, her mother began to demand bread, though the General was firm in refusing. Imagine crediting the lack of bread with ill health! Kara Mia says that this has been going on for some time. She believes the General’s wife is deranged. I had no idea he was plagued by such family troubles! I’d always thought him a bit unkind for seeming to prefer work to time with his family, yet now I see that he has no consolation at home.

  All this does make me appreciate my dear Kara Mia. I think I shall stop seeing the magistrate’s cute little secretary on my lunch hours. I’ll stop today. Instead, I shall take Kara Mia to the new chocolate café.

  March 21, --42

  Today is the first day of spring, though it’s not evident in the air. Come to think of it, I cannot remember when I last saw a spring with blue sky, or flowers in window boxes. Why does no one plant flowers in this city anymore? And why is the sky always overcast? It’s our factories, I suppose.

  Damn. Now that knocking has begun again. I shall take an aspirin, then run down to the jail to see if there are any fresh recruits. No use sitting still and letting wild thoughts get me down.

  April 30, --42

  So many people are coming to the capitol to find work. They are mainly farm laborers from the countryside. Most are too rough and ignorant to work as servants, and there is no employment in the factories. The truth is we have a surplus of labor in this city! And with our new vagrancy fines, the jails are full of men and women, young and old

  Of course all the men are conscripted and the women are employed by the army as cooks, servants, and nurses. They receive a uniform, a small stipend, and the assurance of daily meals.

  The children are sent to Belltown where, I am told, they are cared for by the same agencies who are employed to look after the poor.

  Yes. Between the army and Belltown, we are able to accommodate this recent influx of stragglers from the countryside, and keep our streets clean and clear.

  May 25, --42

  Yet another day of heavy enlistments, yards of the requisite paperwork, and too much time spent with my vulgar assistants. I would n
ever have considered these men for the work of recruitment. They are dirty, rough, and cruel. I do not like their methods. However, they are the General’s men; I hired them at his “suggestion.”

  “They’ll appreciate the fresh air,” he said. “It’ll be a nice change for them after working the dungeons.”

  I’m sure it is a nice change for them, but I happen to know the only air they really appreciate is the murk inside the lowest taverns. Kara Mia says they’re useful and will get the job done quick and fast, so why complain? I suppose she’s right. We’re more than halfway to the General’s enlistment goal after just a few months.

  June 10, --42

  I went down to the jail today and found that my recruiting assistants had rounded up another parcel of vagrants. Two of them were young men, and I soon realized that one of them is a drunkard—the kind with the perpetual pocket flask. The other is a country boy of the old schools. I expect he has or had a grandmother like mine. He didn’t say anything, but because I am acquainted with this type, his face and manner gave him away. When I saw him he looked very near despair which was the only good thing about him I could see. Despair can bring enlightenment, as Kara Mia is fond of saying.

  When I sent these boys to the army barracks, the country boy actually asked for the time to post a message home! He certainly is tied to the old apron strings. I was generous and allowed him half an hour.

  Well, army life will harden both those boys and cure them of their nonsense. I did them a favor and made their choice easy: enlist or stay in jail until you pay the fine for vagrancy. I’m not usually so explicit, but these boys need the army as much as it needs them.

  June 15, --42

  Surprising news: a reclusive and forgotten artist has come out of retirement and is exhibiting new paintings at the University Gallery. There are no other details available. Could it be the Provost’s forgotten art professor? The one who may or may not be blind and who hasn’t been seen in years? Perhaps is it the retired art professor who came to view my portrait last year.

  The University sounds like a labyrinth of colleges and departments more confusing than the General’s network of Palace dungeons! Which, by the by, are rumored to be filled with more dissidents than ever. It seems that certain segments of the populace blame the General for food shortages. They come here to the capital to rally and complain, and when they are refused an audience with the General (as they always are!), they instigate all manner of trouble. The largest group, the Royalists, claim to have unearthed some distant relative of the former King whom they intend to put on the throne! Imagine going back to a monarchy!

  All the talk of food shortages makes the General angry. Reports from the rural areas indicate widespread crop failure, but the General firmly believes that these reports are fabricated by rebel Royalists. Feeling for the King has historically run high among the more ignorant rural populace. He believes the farmers are actually withholding products and taxes, and he intends to collect, by force if necessary. He insists there are no food shortages, no crop failures, and every reason to believe his campaign of war will bring great prosperity to our nation-state.

  He may be right about all this, but I wonder. One of the city councilors just delivered a report showing a marked decrease this year in the number of market licenses purchased by farmers. It may be a result of the increased license fees. But then, where are the farmers selling their goods if not in the Market Square? The Council has formed a committee to investigate.

  June 17, --42

  Kara Mia does not think she will be successful in securing a Palace job for Fran Zlindric in the near future. I told her Fran would be disappointed, but Kara Mia says there is nothing more she can do at the moment.

  I’m sure my Kara Mia used all her influence and did her best, but it really is too bad. Surprising too, when I think about it. Kara Mia has a considerable number of friends and acquaintances among the Palace staff. I do believe she spends nearly every day there and at least two evenings a week. I’ve never asked her how she occupies her time while I’m in my offices, but she busies herself somehow while still managing our household affairs. She really is the most resourceful person I know.

  June 20, --42

  I’ve just returned from the University. The General and I went to view the new art exhibition after hearing ugly rumors about the paintings. I do believe the artist—whom the Provost calls Master Thaddaeus—is the man who came to view my portrait last year. He matches the physical description given by Councilor Jones: very large like a bear.

  This artist is supposed to be a master painter, but I could see nothing special in his work. The paintings show nothing but cataclysmic natural disasters falling upon the countryside, and violent scenes in cities that look a little too much like our own.

  The artist’s paintings and his demeanor offended the General and—dare I say it?—may have actually frightened him. I’ve never seen the General unnerved by another man, but he was certainly ruffled by the presence of that artist. As we left the gallery, he sent a messenger ahead to organize a press conference at City Hall. At that meeting, he told the assembled journalists that the artist is obviously insane. He declared the whole exhibition “the work of a diseased imagination.” Though the artist might once have been great, he is obviously now “affected by age and senility.”

  The artist did not look insane or senile to me, but of course I did not contradict the General. I thought the man looked rather dangerous, and I could see the Provost was nervous and embarrassed. It’s obvious he doesn’t know what to make of the artist either.

  June 21, --42

  It troubles me that the artist I met yesterday at the exhibition may have been the royal portrait painter. He’s certainly old enough. If so, he would remember the royal children. I woke in the early hours of the morning with this thought niggling at my mind.

  Thank goodness the General isn’t interested in pursuing the man or his history. He came to our apartments last night for dinner and only mentioned the artist once as the butt of some joke. He seems to think that his pronouncement to the press will be enough to close the exhibition and send the artist back to his reclusive hole in disgrace.

  I hope the General is right, but you never know what these academic types will do. That Provost doesn’t seem to have an ounce of business sense in his head.

  June 23, --42

  Oh! I have been a fool! I decided my best course of action would be to go back to the University and question the artist myself, but I got busy and two days slipped by. Now I find I am too late! The artist is gone! Flown the coop! And no one—least of all the Provost—can tell me where. He had a servant named Grimple or something, but she is gone too! I’ve made discreet inquiries, but could pick up no trail. How could a man that big disappear so completely? And with all his paintings! He left not a single picture at the University; not even an empty frame!

  To make matters worse, I’ve just received a message from the General, asking me to have the City Guard conduct this artist to his office at the Palace! Perhaps he has suddenly decided to detain the man in the Palace Dungeons; if so, the artist has had a lucky escape.

  My only consolation in this matter is that I will be able to send the General an immediate response. He will believe I have anticipated his concerns. Yet he will be far from pleased with my answer. I can only hope that he will be satisfied with the closure of the exhibition, as well as my assurances that I am already actively seeking the man.

  My secret hope is that this matter will drop from the General’s mind altogether. The last thing I want is for this man to be interrogated by the General before I’ve questioned him myself.

  June 30, --42

  It’s been a week since the artist’s disappearance and, on reflection, I believe my fears are unfounded. My last entry borders on hysteria, but the whole matter seems to have dropped from the General’s mind, just as I’d hoped.

  If that university artist was the royal portrait painter, he’s apparently been a reclu
se for many years now, living shut up in the college. The royal children would be thirteen and fourteen years old by now, if they are still alive. How would he ever recognize them? He painted their portraits when they were mere babes! I think I have nothing to fear.

  If they were alive, surely those Royalist rebels would have gotten hold of them. What better way to bolster their cause than to produce the young prince, the “rightful” king. I shudder to think what would have happened to me if they had! Yet they have only gotten hold of a distant relative whose royal connections are weak and who has done nothing to rally public opinion to the rebels’ side.

  The possibility of the King’s painter, the royal children, and even their old guard Captain Standall coming together is so far-fetched! I can’t believe I’ve let the idea keep me awake at night.

  Still, it’s always wise to keep my eyes open. What was it my grandmother used to say? “Shrewd as snakes, innocent as doves.” Yes that shall be me.

  July 15, --42

  Today was Mayor’s Day. I must admit that it was a very lackluster affair. There was not a juggler or a magician to be seen. Usually they come to the city in high numbers on this day, taking advantage of the crowds who fill the streets looking for entertainment. This year, even the traveling puppet show stayed away; not that it mattered. I saw very few children in the crowd.

  I have to admit that the populace grows discontented. Rumors of crop failure and decreased production in the countryside cannot be ignored. Recently the word “famine” was mentioned by a certain journalist in his weekly column, and the General, who wields a usually tight control over local and national newspapers, publicly denounced the man who then disappeared. I don’t believe this action served to boost the public morale, however. The people at today’s festivities wore long faces. My cheerful speech seemed to have no effect and all my clever jokes and stories fell flat.

  The fireworks were rather good this evening. I hope people noticed.

  July 27, --42

  I just found out that Mr. Machenmyer, the owner of our leading dairy processing plant, has been detained in the dungeons because he filed a complaint regarding a backed up sewer pipe. Why is that a matter for the dungeons?

  I do wish the General would not be so harsh. I find his method of dealing with the malcontented somewhat barbaric. His dungeon system may be effective for quelling rioters and rebels, but using it for the average citizen who lodges a complaint is extreme. This kind of behavior does not increase his popularity or instill faith in our new nation-state.

  And how is it that complaints, always filed with our department at City Hall, are reaching the ears of the Palace staff? I plan to look into this matter today. Personally.

  July 28, --42

  10:00 am

  Complaints filed here at City Hall continue to turn up at the Palace. The secretary in charge of receiving and filing complaints is genuinely baffled. The paperwork seems to vanish somewhere between her desk and the various departmental offices. She suspects the mail clerk, and the mailroom is the obvious hub where anything might happen (I should know, having begun my career there!). Yet we both agree that the mail clerk is an unambitious fellow, and not very bright. Even if bribed, I’m not sure he could successfully carry out any kind of subterfuge, which is precisely why he was hired as mail clerk.

  Yet now, at last, I do have one interesting clue: the mail clerk is so slow at his work that he is often still sorting mail after hours. I wonder if, lately, someone has decided to “help” him in the evenings. I have only to watch the mailroom door. In the meantime, I’ve asked the secretary to bypass the mailroom and personally deliver all complaints directly to the appropriate departments. She did complain about the extra running around this would require, but I tactfully reminded her that she could use the exercise.

  The fact that the Palace does not return the complaints to City Hall is troubling. Why should they bother about blocked sewers and broken market stalls? These are citizens reporting genuine inconveniences and disturbances to the public order. There is no need to haul them off to the dungeons! I will certainly ask the General about this in my meeting today. Not directly of course. With him, the indirect approach is always wisest.

  4:00 pm

  Odd. The General seemed to know nothing about the misdirected city complaints. He would, however, talk on and on about his wife and daughter. His wife remains inconsolable after the death of their youngest girl. She and the surviving daughter insist on the importance of obtaining bread, but the General refuses so they have moved out of the Palace and taken other apartments somewhere in the city. “I cannot run the country alone, Jared,” he said. “I work better in tandem. My wife has disappointed me.” Then he told me he has been forced to find peace and consolation elsewhere, and thanked me for my understanding and support.

  July 29, --42

  My suspicions are confirmed. Someone is helping the mail clerk after hours. I hid myself in a dark corner near the mailroom door this evening, and saw Fran enter in what I can only call a furtive manner. Half an hour later, she came out with the mail clerk and he was apologizing and groveling about something. Fran looked rather peeved for, of course, she found no complaints in the mailroom today.

  So. Fran, in her restless ambition, is colluding with someone in the Palace. I might have known.

  I heard that Mr. Machenmeyer was detained in the dungeons for only a few hours. They must have realized that his complaint about a blocked sewer was reasonable and not a symptom of rebellion or discontent.

  He is one of the richest men in the city. Why treat him in that bullish way? And who in the Palace is behind such tyranny?

  July 30, --42

  I think it best not to confront Fran directly about this little incident. It will never do to make her my enemy. I never did tell her that Kara Mia failed to find a position for her at the Palace. I thought that if she continued to hope, she would settle down and make the best of her present job while she waits. Yet she has grown restless and spiteful.

  Why can’t she just be happy as Permits Officer? The only solution is to find her another position that she will find important and interesting: some place where she can do no harm. The trouble is, I can think of no place in City Hall where I would wish to place her.

  She told me once that if she can’t get into the Palace, she wants the job of Undersecretary to the Director of City Works. This position is coming up vacant soon: the current Director is retiring in a month’s time and his long-time Undersecretary, Jorgins, will naturally move up to take his place. But I could never give Fran the job of Undersecretary. Imagine her working for Jorgins! I happen to know that he has no liking for Fran. She was a clerk in his department two years ago, and it was he who requested her transfer to another office. I’ve no doubt he wanted to be rid of her when he realized her ambition outstripped her actual capabilities. Granted, she could have gained the necessary experience in time if she had really settled down to her work, but her thoughts seem always turned to the next rung up the ladder.

  If only she would behave in a straightforward way, but she is secretive and conniving. I am rather glad that she is no longer my personal assistant.

  August 2, --42

  Two negative reports this morning from very different quarters, and I shall mention neither in my meeting with the General this afternoon.

  The first comes from the department of Internal Affairs, detailing in numbers, graphs, maps, and undeniable intelligence, the actual state of the countryside. If even a quarter of this report is true, it corroborates the worst rumors heard on the street: the land is failing: crops, cattle, poultry, all. It is not the result of laziness or poor husbandry on the part of farmers. No, the report is clear: there seems to be some sort of blight on the land which no one can explain.

  Humph. Let someone else bring this report before the General. I’ve no wish to stoke his wrath.

  The second communiqué came from a source little known to me, though I have seen him many times in the market
place. He claims to run some sort of humanitarian operation down in Belltown. When I asked his name, he replied, “Joe,” and offered no surname. I wondered why my secretary had let him into my office for a private interview. He is a shabbily dressed man with a demeanor I can only describe as odd.

  At any rate, the report he brought was disturbing. It was a detailed account of the conditions in Belltown, complete with statistics, charts, and graphs. I must say it was a much finer report than anything we’ve ever produced here at City Hall. If this report is true, the conditions and abuses—nay, atrocities!—require some sort of investigation. I shall relate our conversation:

  “Look here,” I said, after reading the report, “this can’t be true. We’ve built poorhouses and orphanages down there. The General saw to it all himself.”

  “The buildings remain,” he said.

  “Then why are people living in shacks on the street, as your report indicates? I thought the General’s institutions were more than adequate.”

  “His institutions have only tightened the yoke, and out of them other things have grown. Surely you’ve heard the rumors.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” I said. Indeed I couldn’t imagine what he meant.

  “When were you last in Belltown?” he asked.

  I had to think about this. Was it really the day the General opened Belltown for settlement? That grand opening day was ten years ago. Belltown then had been new, if not exactly attractive.

  “I have to admit that it’s been some time,” I replied.

  “And yet you continue to send people there, in spite of the rumors? This report corroborates all the rumors.”

  “I care nothing for rumors,” I said, “and the data in this report will have to be confirmed.”

  “Perhaps you will go there to see for yourself?”

  I most certainly will not, I thought, but I said, “I will take your report to the next City Council meeting.”

  “And you will tell them about the children and the trafficking?”

  “I will show them your figures. I hope, for your sake, they are correct.” I was really having a hard time believing the bar graph which reflected a breakdown of the population by age. Is the population in Belltown really ninety percent children? Then I thought of the recent Mayor’s Day with so few children in the crowd. There had been the usual Clearance and Removal of the homeless from the streets before the celebration. I never ask who is being transported to Belltown.

  “Meanwhile,” he said, “we will begin bringing the children out, and others who want to come.”

  “Bring them out? Hold on. What do you mean?” I said.

  “We must save and heal as many as we can before the end.”

  “End? What end? What are you talking about, man?” And then that infernal knocking in my head began again. It has not bothered me much for some time. Now it pounded through my head, loudly and painfully, like an explosion.

  I do not remember what happened after that. I must have fainted. When I woke, I was lying on the couch in my office with a cold compress on my forehead. I was alone. I could still hear the knocking, but it was quieter and the pain had gone. My secretary entered and was surprised to see me lying down.

  “Are you unwell, sir?” she asked.

  “No,” I said, immediately getting up. “Where is the man who was here? Did he leave?”

  “What man?” she said.

  “The man you let in with the Belltown report.”

  “I haven’t let anyone into your office all morning,” she said.

  This was odd. Her desk is next to my outer door. No one can pass without her knowledge.

  “But a man was here,” I said. “You must have stepped out and he let himself in.”

  “No,” she said. “I’ve been at my desk all morning, working on the minutes of the last council meeting. No one called to see you.”

  I did not like the way she was looking at me, so I said, “Well, well. I must have fallen asleep and dreamed. Certainly I’m more tired than I thought. I’ll just nip up to my apartment, take an aspirin, and rest for an hour or two.”

  She looked relieved, but said, “Shall I notify your wife?”

  I told her not to bother, that it was nothing and I should be fine after a short nap. I signed the documents she’d brought in, and left.

  When I returned to my office after lunch to record my strange experience and to prepare for my meeting with the General, I found Kara Mia sitting at my desk with the Belltown report in her hands. I kissed her and she smiled and said she’d heard I’d been unwell. I told her it was nothing.

  “And what do you think of this report?” I said.

  “Completely untrue,” she said. “I’ve recently visited the poor in Belltown and I can tell you this report is spurious from beginning to end.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” I said.

  “You weren’t thinking of showing it to the General this afternoon, were you?”

  “Oh no,” I said. “I’d thought of taking it to the Council…”

  “No need for that. These kinds of things only inspire discontent. I’d like to know where it came from.”

  “A man by the name of Joe brought it,” I said. I certainly was not going to tell anyone about my morning’s experience.

  “A man like that should have been detained.”

  “I’ve seen him often enough in the marketplace. He should be easy to lay hands on,” I said. Why did she think she needed to tell me my job? I didn’t like the look in her eye; her mood reminded me of her rants against MidWinter’s Day.

  “And yet he has slipped through your fingers,” she said.

  “Really my dear, at the time I had no idea that his report was all lies. I was suspicious and assumed it would all need to be verified. How was I to know he is a crackpot who needs locking up?”

  “True,” she said. “I don’t suppose you’ve been to Belltown in a long time.”

  “Not since the General opened it for business.”

  The look in her eyes softened and she patted my arm. “Dear Jared, promise me you won’t go down into Belltown. You have enough to do here in our own city. Anyway, if you remember, the General appointed a deputy mayor for Belltown and he’s capable enough. It’s really a separate municipality, so it’s best if you don’t get involved. You’d just wind up stepping on someone’s toes.” As she said this, she began tearing up the report.

  “Besides,” she continued, “the General built Belltown for the good of our nation-state. It would never do to question his priorities.” The report pages were now the size of confetti. With her last sentence, she swept the pile into the waste bin.

  She got up and kissed me fondly. “I’ll go now. I know you must get ready for your meeting with the General.” With a little wave, she swept out the door.

  Though all her looks were loving, as I sit now and record our conversation, I feel a cold fear in my gut. She was warning me. Me! What does she have to do with the running of this government? And yet I realize that I don’t dare contradict her or put her in her place. She has many contacts in high places. I’ve always known that.

  Something has changed between us. I cannot put my finger on it.

  August 9, --42

  It is a week since my last entry. All events move toward war. I hope the General is pleased.

  Since the strange visit from the man with the Belltown report, the knocking has become the permanent background noise of my mind. It’s not loud; it is insistent. I find I am able to ignore it during the day while I am busy, but not in the evenings when I am alone.

  I am alone most evenings now. Kara Mia comes home late, happy and flushed; the wives of the Palace officials must be a jovial bunch and difficult to part with.

  At night, when I close my eyes and the knocking cannot be ignored, I often see a door; it is a small wooden door set in a dark stone wall. Who is knocking? The only way I can get to sleep is by imagining a beautiful woman on the other side. I imagine that I let
her in, then I think of all that might follow. Eventually I fall asleep.

  I must admit that something is wrong here. I dare not tell anyone. A man in my position should not be hearing things. Clearly it is some psychological remnant of my childhood. Perhaps I have been working too hard and a short holiday would clear it all up.

  August 16, --42

  I’ve just come from the doctor. He conducted a thorough physical examination and declared me to be the healthiest man he knows. This was encouraging, but I had hoped he would find some little malady that might explain my present mental disturbance. To be congratulated on the lack of even minor digestive complaints was hardly helpful. I could hear the knocking clearly during the entire examination: knock, knock, knock, pause, knock, knock, knock. The rhythm of the rapping often varies, but it is always there: gentle yet insistent. What can it mean?

  September 5, --42

  Kara Mia sent a message saying she would be out all evening and not to wait up. Curious. This is our usual evening together. I wonder what could be so important or so interesting to keep her at the Palace day after day. I hardly see her anymore. She often comes in very late, but instead of stealing softly into bed, she sits up reading or writing letters. This morning I found her asleep on the sofa.

  Since I cannot have Kara Mia’s company, I will take Fran to dinner. She seems very low these days; perhaps an evening out on the town will cheer her up. Also, I wish to probe her mind if I can and find out what she’s up to.

  Sept. 6

  Half past twelve a.m.

  It is late and Kara Mia has not yet returned. I cannot sleep.

  Dinner with Fran was not a happy affair. At first she wouldn’t talk; I spent an hour trying to draw her out over a plate of expensive, yet barely tolerable appetizers, and a bottle of mediocre wine. The Rose and Crown is Fran’s favorite pub, not mine. Yet I do try to please.

  By the time dinner came (such slow service!) Fran’s spirits were lifting a little, enough to tell me yet again that she is tired to death of her work. I watched her pick at her food and sincerely wished I’d stayed at home. It is always a waste to buy dinner for a moody female. At last, over coffee, she began to talk and I did not like what I heard.

  First she told me that she has been trying hard to get on the good side of the General’s chief advisor, but she does not seem to gain any credibility with this person at all. I told her that I am the General’s chief advisor. “I’m his right hand man. He told me so himself!” I said.

  She looked at me in a queer way. “Come, Jared, you may be one of the General’s main dependables, but we all know Kara Mia is his chief advisor now.”

  What?

  I had not replied to this strange statement, but Fran didn’t seem to notice. She talked on about a little scheme of hers that had recently gone bust. “I was sure I was scoring points with Kara Mia,” she said, “but my source of information dried up.”

  I didn’t ask her about the scheme. I knew. I’d seen her come out of the mailroom. She’d been passing city complaints directly into Kara Mia’s hands. Too bad it was the wrong kind of information. Fran is certainly not astute and my Kara Mia is too smart for her. My Kara Mia…

  As I watched Fran talk, a jumble of horrible thoughts flooded my mind: Kara Mia shredding the Belltown report; Kara Mia grinding the MidWinter’s Day baubles of children under her boot; Mr. Machenmeyer detained in the dungeons for reporting a blocked sewer…even now I cannot bear to remember certain things.

  My heart felt like a cold stone, but Fran was oblivious to my mood. She actually became angry with me! She began blaming me for her inability to curry favor with Kara Mia. If only we hadn’t come together in the way we had; if only I hadn’t seduced her. What had she gained from it all? Just a second rate post as the Permits Officer in City Hall. Clearly she was beside herself. The wine must have gone to her head. She seemed to realize, suddenly, that she’d put her foot in it, and resumed her earlier silence.

  I’d had enough, but maintained my cheerful exterior, glossed over her insults, paid the bill, and sent her home.

  As I write this I can’t help but wonder if Fran was merely repeating idle gossip. Surely my Kara Mia is not the chief advisor. She cannot be involved in…but what if she is? And why hasn’t she told me? My only consolation at this moment is that I keep this diary locked up.

  I will wait and watch.

  It is now past one o’clock and still she is not home.

  September 25, --42

  At our meeting today, the General told me that at last he has managed to provoke the government of L---. He believes their declaration of war is imminent and he is still hoping to stoke the fire of armed hostilities with our neighbors to the west and also to the south. I’m not certain why he seeks war on three fronts at once, but it has all been harder to provoke than he expected.

  “Those foreign governments actually believe their own lands are in danger of famine! Their farm reports are, apparently, similar to ours, but they believe every word!” the General complained. “All they want to do is hunker down and find a solution to this perceived blight on the land that does not exist. Not even the assassination of important officials seems to move them,” he said.

  I tried to sympathize with him, but all I could think of was Kara Mia. Is she his new Chief Advisor? Was she in the next room? He did say that he is very pleased with the numbers of soldiers garrisoned in the city. He urged me to continue recruitment and to build new barracks if necessary. I’m sure I agreed with everything he said, but I was distracted.

  Near the end of our meeting, he talked once again about his wife’s removal to another house in the city.

  “I miss my wife and daughter,” he said to me, “but they have both become unbalanced. Yet I must have consolation, and you’ll be glad to know that I have found it. Thank you for understanding.”

  I had no idea why he was thanking me, but assured him that, of course, his well-being was of the utmost importance to anyone seeking to advance our nation-state.

  Then he said something that chilled me to the bone: “Thank you. She said you would see it that way.”

  She? Even now I cannot write or say what I suspect.

  The knocking sounds in my brain throughout the day, like a marching drumbeat that would lead my feet away on paths where I do not wish to go.

  October 25, --42

  I find it difficult to sleep at night. I am always listening for the click of the latch, for her footsteps in the room. She comes home in the wee hours of the morning, falls asleep on the sofa, and does not wake until after I have gone to work. I want to go to her, to hold her, but she wears a new perfume.

  I am weary and find it hard to concentrate on my duties. Perhaps I should go to the doctor for sleeping pills.

  November 8, --42

  I woke late this morning, after a restless night, to find Kara Mia sitting at her dressing table. She was wearing a new dress and a diamond bracelet I had never seen before. When I wished her good morning, she asked me why I had overslept. Was I feeling ill?

  I told her that I had, of late, had difficulty sleeping and had arranged to take a day or two off work so that I could rest.

  Oh, she said, and asked me why I hadn’t tried sleeping pills?

  “I see the doctor today,” I told her, “to ask for a prescription.” I suddenly noticed that the grey streaks were gone from her hair and that she was delicately applying face powder. I had never known her to use face powder before. In truth, she looked ten years younger.

  I took a chance and asked her if she didn’t feel tired these days? She seemed to be staying such long hours at the Palace and getting home so very late.

  She laughed, then came over to the bed and lightly pinched my cheek. “Don’t worry about me,” she said, smiling broadly. I noticed her lipstick was very red. She gathered up her bag and a briefcase I hadn’t seen before, and as she was leaving said, “The General has revived an old custom called the ‘siesta’. Do you know what that is? I think you mu
st. I believe you and certain members of your staff used to practice this noontime tradition? I remember that you did.” And she was gone.

  Then Fran is right when she calls Kara Mia the Chief Advisor to the General. Does everyone know she is that and much more? No wonder the General’s wife moved out of the Palace. At least Kara Mia has the decency to come home and sleep on the sofa for a few hours.

  As I write this, I feel a great weight settling in my heart. I never once thought that Kara Mia really minded about me and Fran, and the others before Fran. Perhaps I should have been more discreet, but it is too late now. I am losing Kara Mia. I want to protest, but I dare not interfere in the General’s private affairs. He must believe that I am willing to give up my wife for his personal consolation and in the interests of our nation-state. Indeed, I practically told him so at our last meeting. Although, at the time, I didn’t know what I was agreeing to do. I distinctly remember the General saying, “she said you would see it that way.” She: Kara Mia. She has chosen her way apart from me.

  December 6, --42

  Eleven p.m.

  Damn! I am so distracted I hardly know what to write! As I walked through the Palace Gardens this evening, thinking of Kara Mia, I came face to face with Captain William Standall! He was dirty and grizzled, but I recognized him instantly, even after so many years, and he recognized me. He sprinted away before I could even shout.

  What to do? I cannot call on the City Guard to find him: he is supposed to be dead! The General thinks I killed him myself! No one else must know and yet how can I find him without help? For find him I must. Without delay.

  December 7, --42

  In the wee hours of the morning as I lay sleepless in bed, it came to me: if I want to find Standall then I will have to hire men privately. Yes. I must form a secret company of man hunters.

  December 14, --42

  A week has gone by and still Capt. Standall manages to elude us. The men I’ve secretly hired have sighted him twice, and once they came upon his freshly abandoned camp in a deserted house. So far, there is no evidence that he travels with anyone, and this at least is good news. However, I won’t rest easy until he is caught.

  Private Kurt Cummings leads my band of merry, secret men. He’s a man with a ready eye, a quick wit, and not opposed to the kind of cloak-and-dagger work I offered. I found him in the 10th Street Garrison and remember recruiting him from the jail. Then, he was a drunkard, but army life has done wonders for him. I’ve no doubt he maintains a close relationship with his pocket flask, but he is now more circumspect about his plunges into drunkenness. All the other men are from one garrison or another: it was easiest to hire soldiers.

  I gave Cummings and his crew just enough information so they could do their job: I told them to look for an old man wearing a uniform with the King’s insignia. I did not tell them the man’s name, only that he must be a soldier from the King’s Guard and probably a rebel Royalist. “He may be traveling with two young people,” I said. “If he is, it is imperative that you capture all three.”

  Kurt asked me if they were to be captured alive. All I could say was, “not necessarily.”

  So there it is. I am as secret as Kara Mia.

  Shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves.

  December 19, --42

  Another week of sightings and evasions. Who would have thought a man as old as Capt. Standall could be as slippery as an eel? Yet it seems to be so. Unless…

  Surely my men are not drawing out the hunt for monetary gain? Perhaps I should not have set their daily pay so high.

  I will tell them tonight that there is a hefty bonus for a quick capture.

  Just one thing bothers me. Why does Capt. Standall continue in the city at all? Surely it would be more prudent to disappear into the countryside, even if it is winter. Yet he stays though he knows he is closely hunted. I think it can only mean one thing: he still has knowledge of the royal children. They are somewhere in the city and he knows where.

  If only this infernal knocking would quit and I could think straight! It plagues me night and day. In my nightmares it is the General or Kara Mia knocking at my bedroom door. They carry manacles because they know…they know too many things about me.

  December 23, --42

  Cummings has just told me something very queer. On December 20th, three nights ago, my men came very close to catching Standall and believed they were hot on his trail. Then, not long after midnight, somewhere in the old neighborhoods around The Tower Inn, they lost him. Cummings tells me they spent hours turning that neighborhood upside down, breaking into deserted houses, knocking on doors, waking people from their beds and searching every nook and cranny of every building, but toward dawn they’d realized the trail had gone cold.

  Since Standall only moves at night, the men rested for several hours and took up the search again before dusk on MidWinter’s Eve. They spread out east and south of Tower Road, searching the University grounds and even Belltown. They had arranged to meet up again in the Market Square at midnight and, at the appointed hour, they gathered.

  When they met, one of the men, Private Angus, reported an odd thing. As he’d entered the Market Square at the bottom of Tower Road, he’d seen an old woman plying her wares at a market stall. Angus told Kurt that she was singing and giving bread away. When he asked her why she hadn’t packed up and gone home, she said she never did.

  Queer. I’ve never heard of anyone selling bread in the Market. I must check over the licenses tomorrow. She shouldn’t be there at night; it’s not allowed.

  It is a strange report, but not the strangest thing Cummings had to tell about that night. As the men stood in the dark Market Square, arguing about where they should take up the search for Standall, they saw a light coming from the street that leads to the Palace Gardens. As the light came closer, they saw the figures of two huge men. One carried a lantern: he had wild grey hair and was as broad as a bear. He held the other man by the elbow and seemed to be pulling him along by force. Cummings thought the second man, who was wearing an old uniform, might be Standall, but as he cried “Halt!” and his fellows ran forward, the first man began swinging his lantern and chanting strange words in a loud and terrible voice. A bright light blazed out and next thing Cummings knew, he was lying on his backside in the dark. He jumped up and shouted, but his scattered troop did not answer. The two men with the lantern were gone.

  Cummings did not find the other soldiers until dawn, and each one of them had a different story about what had happened in the Square. One or two saw the bright light; another heard a tremendous roar, and still another said the ground had bucked like a horse and thrown him down. Every one of them had blacked out and woke to find themselves alone in the dark.

  I’m not sure I would believe this story but for one odd outcome: Private Angus, the one who told the curious tale of the midnight bread stall, is missing. He has not reported to Kurt or to his garrison. No one has seen him all this week and he has not been heard of.

  Did those two strange men take him away? Was one of them Standall? They obviously have explosives of some kind, though…it’s odd…an explosive would have been heard by many and there were no reports. Also, though Cummings and his men were knocked senseless, none of them was hurt: not a scratch or a bruise. It’s all very strange and doesn’t sound like something the Royalists would do. No. They would have blown up the entire Market Square.

  I’ve warned Cummings to keep all this quiet. To cover the disappearance of Angus, I’ve sent word to his garrison to say that he applied directly to me for special leave. His commanding officer wasn’t pleased. Angus had better return soon. I can’t hush this up forever.

  December 29, --42

  Our third week of hunting and not a single sighting. I fear that Capt. Standall has gone underground and will never be caught. My only consolation is that he was traveling alone.

  I cannot rest easy until he is found.

  January 2, --43

  A new year and I can only report
bad news. Captain Standall is still at large, Kara Mia continues her secretive behavior, and there are dark rumors circulating about our government tax collectors.

  They say these men are brutal and have killed farmers and destroyed villages. They have been ordered to execute anyone who does not deliver the required tax. Never mind that the farmers may not actually have the money. It is always assumed they are holding something back. Anyone who does not or cannot pay is accused of supporting the Royalists. I have spoken with many of our market farmers and they consistently attest to the brutality of the tax men and to public hangings and violent policies in villages around the country. I can hardly believe it, but it must be true. They say this savage treatment of the country folk began about six months ago.

  Six months ago. That is about the time the General spoke to me of finding a new tax overseer: someone who would enforce collection of goods by any means.

  And now I think of it, it was six months ago that Kara Mia began spending so much time at the Palace.

  Dare I put two and two together? Fran slips the city complaint files to Kara Mia and people end up in the dungeons. The new tax overseer’s collection scheme ravages the countryside. But why? And is all this really the doing of my wife?

  January 9, --43

  Today my doctor congratulated me on my trim figure. He asked which reduction plan I’ve been using: was I trying the new Primeval Regime so talked of in the news?

  How could I tell him that between sleeplessness and pining after Kara Mia I find I cannot eat? And since she is nearly always away and has stopped shopping and cooking for us, I eat only boiled eggs and cheese when I remember to eat at all. There is no longer regularity in my home life. I work longer hours simply to keep busy. My mayoral coat—the silk one—is certainly a better fit now, but not because of any discipline. I suppose I could have told the doctor that I’ve been following the Loss-of-Wife Regime, but instead I told him I’d been getting more exercise, which is true.

  Ever since hearing the story of Private Angus, I’ve been determined to find the bread stall. I’ve checked through our market license files and I can find no record of a bread merchant. Indeed, the last time anyone was registered with a bread license was more than ten years ago! Odd. Perhaps Private Angus was mistaken.

  I suppose I could ask Cummings to find the bread seller and have her brought in for operating illegally, but I can’t bring myself to speak of this matter. I prefer to deal with it myself and so I’ve begun to take daily strolls through the Market Square.

  My manhunt list grows: Joe, with the spurious Belltown report, Private Angus, the girl painter, and of course, Capt. Standall who began all this business of a private guard. I have a hunch that all these people are connected somehow. Call it instinct.

  January 17, --43

  Now whenever I pass my portrait in the Lobby, the knocking sound in my head takes on a certain rhythmic patter: tap, tappity-tap-tap, tap-tap. It is the way my grandmother used to knock on my bedroom door when I had locked myself in to sulk.

  And, the figure in the lower right corner is never a tree anymore; it is always a man in a black shabby coat: it almost looks like the man Joe. His face in the painting is serene and bright while my face looks more diseased by the day.

  January 21, --43

  I have never before paid much attention to the passing of seasons. When I left the farming life behind and took up government work, I found I was no longer tied to weather conditions from one year to the next. I began to mark the seasons by the routine of administrative events.

  Yet now I find myself depressed by the winter; it is a foul season: heavy, grey, and interminably cold. It makes me feel alone.

  January 26, --43

  Three days ago, a man approached me in the Market Square and belligerently asked how he was expected to feed his family when prices had more than doubled in the past year. A crowd immediately gathered. I loudly explained that the General expects a change in the economy very soon—a marked change for the better. “Besides,” I said, “we are all suffering together under the present strain,” and I asked him to notice my own weight loss. “See?” I said, “I pay the same prices as you, my friend. I am a public servant, after all.” This, of course, is not quite true. The merchant who supplies the garrison also supplies my pantry, and no doubt the General’s. Still, it was best to get out of a potentially ugly situation in any way I could.

  January 31, --43

  Two months have gone by in the search for Standall. My men tell me they have completely lost his trail. Ever since MidWinter’s Eve, the night Private Angus disappeared, it’s as if Standall has vanished from the earth. Cummings believes he is dead; he thinks he must have starved to death since—as he puts it—food scraps are getting hard to come by in the gutters. “Then find his body,” I said.

  “It’s probably been thrown in one of the mass graves outside the city walls,” Cummings replied.

  “Well, continue to keep your eyes open,” I said, and gave new orders to find the man called Joe, and the girl who painted my portrait. Oh yes, I finally put them on the trail of the rumored bread stall. Maybe tying up these loose ends will ease the pressures that weigh on me.

  I outlined all the particulars I knew about each case, then stressed the importance of locating their comrade, Angus.

  “We can’t leave him at large,” I said.

  “He mighta been hurt or killed. He was closest to them two men and that blast,” one of the soldiers said.

  “Then search the infirmaries,” I told them, “and the morgue. A man in uniform wouldn’t have been put in a common grave without attracting some notice.”

  I thought I heard someone mutter, “that’s what you think,” but I ignored the remark, gave them each a bonus—hush money in my mind—a bottle of beer, and let them go.

  Cummings remained behind.

  “Excuse me sir,” he began, “but am I right in thinking that you don’t want the City Guard or the Palace Police to find this old soldier? Not Angus, but the one who’s the Royalist.”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “Why is that, I wonder?” The look in his eye when he asked this was a little too shrewd for my liking.

  “As I’ve said, I believe this old soldier has connections to the Royalists and is a threat to the safety and stability of our city and since the well-being of our citizens is my highest priority, I believe it worth my while to expedite his capture in any way I’m able. I believe hiring a dedicated group of soldiers is one way.”

  “But still, you’d rather not tell us his name.”

  “I don’t see that his name matters even if I knew it.”

  “Yes, sir. And what about the two youngsters who may or may not be traveling with this soldier?”

  “What about them?”

  “Well, just to be clear, are they important?”

  “No,” I said, thinking fast. “I only mentioned them because on the evening I sighted the soldier I spotted two youth running after him. They may not have had anything to do with him at all.” This was a fiction, but it was the first thing that came to mind.

  “Was it a boy and a girl, sir?”

  Blast his impudence. Does the man have second sight? “I don’t know, Cummings. It was dusk and I only saw their backs. Why do you ask?”

  “Only because, sir, I heard that about a week after you saw this soldier, Captain Martin of the City Guard found two young people coming out of the Palace Garden gate, a boy and a girl.”

  “Oh?” I said with admirable control. “Why should that interest me? The city folk have free access to the gardens and many are fond of walking there.”

  “It was night and they were acting suspiciously, sir, and when Captain Martin asked where they lived, the girl started to cry and begged him not to take them to the Palace.” Kurt stopped here, eyeing me carefully.

  “So?” I said coolly. “What of it? Most people these days have a healthy fear of the Palace Dungeons. I imagine parents use the dungeons as
a threat when their children misbehave.”

  “Yes, sir, but these two weren’t dressed like beggars, according to Martin, and when he asked them where they lived, they clammed up and wouldn’t say anymore, so Captain Martin had his men take them to Belltown.”

  “Exactly the place to take two homeless youth,” I said, but I was thinking, “Cripes! I’ve been a fool!” However, I believe I controlled my face.

  “The boy was sick and the girl a bit of an innocent. I don’t expect they’ll live long down there, sir.”

  “Nonsense, Cummings. The Belltown institutions are just the place for the destitute. They were amply designed by the General himself. They have the best reputation.”

  “Well, sir, they do have a reputation,” Cummings said and had the effrontery to smirk.

  I had no wish to argue with him, so I simply said, “Well, Cummings, I don’t know why you’ve told me all this, but I’m sure Capt. Martin did the right thing. He’s a reliable fellow.”

  “That’s as may be, sir. I just thought you’d like to know.” Then he stood for a minute looking at me. What is it he suspects? Surely he’s too young to remember the prince and princess.

  “Well, Cummings,” I said, trying to strike just the right tone of restrained impatience, “is there anything else on your mind?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “I was thinking you might make me captain of our group. Aren’t we a sort of private guard?”

  “Well I have been thinking of making it official…”

  “But secret,” he smirked.

  I knew I had to go carefully here. I could see I would have to make an explanation, but not of everything. “Yes. It is a fact that much in the city has come under the control of Palace officials, even my City Guard. Forming a “private guard,” as you call it, allows me to keep some parts of city government separate from the federal nature of the Palace concerns.”

  “Right, sir,” he said.

  “If you wish to be called by the title of captain,” I said, “that promotion will have to be done through regular army channels since, according to the nature of our arrangement, it must appear that you are all on regular army duty.”

  “On account of our group needing to be secret. Naturally, sir.”

  “I am not opposed to this,” I said, knowing he thought he was twisting me around his finger. “I’ll see what I can do. It may take some time.”

  “Thank you, sir,” he said, and finally left.

  I know very well that he’ll be watching me. He thinks I’ll go straight to Captain Martin, and then to Belltown. Well I won’t. I shall do nothing. Not for a while. Instead, I shall keep my eye on Cummings. I may very well give him his promotion if it suits my ends, but I will be watchful. He’s up to something.

  Shrewd as snakes, innocent as doves. There’s no need to hurry. If those stray youngsters are the royal children, it appears that they are separated from Standall. And if they are the royal children and they are now in Belltown, it would be prudent to find out the true conditions of that little municipality. Kara Mia may be right about the state of Belltown, but I’ve reason to question her honesty. If the man, Joe, is right, then what Cummings says is more than likely: the girl and boy won’t live long. I’ve only to wait.

  February 2, --43

  Fran sent me a note today, asking if I’d join her for dinner tomorrow evening, or maybe a lunch hour rendezvous: “like the old days” she said.

  As if I would even be tempted now; she is the reason I lost Kara Mia. Besides, I know something of Fran’s mood swings. She wants something.

  I replied saying I am too busy.

  February 7, --43

  Upon reflection, I think it wise to separate my men from the army. In the last week it has become clear that their night duties as my private guard are interfering with their regular daytime responsibilities as soldiers. Three of the men have been repeatedly reprimanded for oversleeping, and two were called on the carpet for dereliction of duty. Cummings has managed to hold himself together, but even he is looking blood-shot and ragged.

  I have quietly arranged an honourable discharge for all my men. The garrison is overcrowded, so the officers in charge seemed only too glad to release them, no questions asked. Naturally, a certain amount of money changed hands.

  My Private Guard is now official—at least amongst ourselves. I’ve drawn up a contract which each man signed, and we held a very merry swearing in party. Cummings was appointed Captain and he did seem pleased.

  My men do not, of course, wear uniforms, but I gave them money for new clothes. In addition to their regular salary, they will also receive a monthly housing allowance to set themselves up somewhere in the city—preferably close by.

  I also managed to finagle an honourable discharge for Private Angus who is still absent. How can a man just disappear like that? And in uniform! Far too easily it seems, in this city.

  Naturally all this would be a drain on my personal resources, so I have appropriated funds from the Public Garden and Leisure Department, which was due for a cutback anyway. It was simply a matter of swamping the Secretary of Finance with enough paperwork. When I personally presented him with the one hundred page budget amendment, he sighed and said, “Really?” then immediately signed and stamped the whole thing. He’s a lazy blighter and never reads anything if he can help it, which is why I keep him on. He’s the reason I don’t really need a City Council for financial decisions, but the councillors don’t know that!

  The real reason I cannot afford to run a private guard at my own expense is the need for secrecy. If I begin to use money from our shared savings account, Kara Mia will ask questions. We have always spoken of it as our retirement nest egg. I had thought of asking her about the money: perhaps it’s time to split it now? But no. She and I have an unspoken agreement never to talk of our present situation, though it is becoming intolerable. I dare not mention it. To all the world we are a happy couple.

  March 1, --43

  One of the city councillors greeted me cheerily in the hall today. “Spring is just around the corner!” he said.

  Spring? Has anyone in this city ever noticed just how grey the sky is? Now that I think of it, I cannot remember the last time I saw the sun clearly; it always looks like as a dimmed, murky orb—when it appears at all.

  The most radical and annoying of our city councillors is always nattering on about pollution and the need for factory emission controls. I’ve always thought him a useless crackpot, but maybe there’s something in what he says.

  March 3, --43

  My meetings with the General have become increasingly brief. He gives me an update on the progress of his war, then asks about the mood of the people.

  Today, our meeting took exactly fifteen minutes. He asked me to prepare a report on the available food resources in the city, and to be prepared to present my findings in mid-June. Perhaps the purport of talk in the market has finally penetrated his office.

  Also, he’s heard rumours of a new artist at the University. I am to find out what this artist is up to and report at our meeting next week.

  I felt exactly like a junior clerk receiving orders.

  March 4, --43

  My secretary made an appointment for me with the University Provost for tomorrow afternoon. As a rule, I dislike these overeducated university types; they always seem to talk in circles. However, I am only there to glean information for the General. I did not bother to invent a pretext for this meeting, but had my secretary convey my intentions to inspect the work of the new artist. It’s best to strike a note of fear into these people. The General’s government could so easily dissolve their organization, but it seems that, at present, he bears the University no ill will. Yet they should remember that he will never allow them to become a hotbed of revolutionist thinking. I believe my visit will serve as a warning.

  Fran came to my office today bearing wild tales about Jorgins, Director of City Works. According to her, Jorgins is carrying on with three different secretar
ies at once, which seems far-fetched, but not impossible. What does she expect me to do? Sack him? If I did that, I’d have to sack nearly all the staff in City Hall: everyone’s got some game going. I’d wager my silk coat that Fran herself regularly takes bribes of one sort or another from those who wish to expedite the process of getting a building permit.

  I know what’s eating Fran: she knows Jorgins dislikes her and had her transferred out of the Works Department when he was Undersecretary. She can’t stand to see him elevated to Director when she is only the Permits Officer. She wants satisfaction. Well she won’t get it from me.

  March 5, --43

  I must admit that I approached today’s meeting with the Provost in a spirit of antagonism. I fully expected the artist to be the revolutionary type, and the Provost to protect him. What a surprise to be welcomed with open arms! This new artist, Maxim Belle, obviously has his head screwed on straight. When I arrived in his studio, he was just putting the finishing touches on a portrait…of ME! It’s a wonderful, flattering picture and I said so. Maxim immediately offered to give it to me; he is indeed a thoughtful and sensitive young man.

  He also showed me a sculpture he has recently begun; it is made of white stone and is skilfully shaped into a likeness of the General. Maxim has begun with the face and the General’s aquiline features are unmistakeable. It will be called, “Man in Flight.”

  The Provost took me on a tour of the colleges and then we had tea in his rooms. I have not had such a pleasant afternoon in some time. I am invited to High Table next Tuesday evening.

  The University is really such a wonderful place. I had no idea! And to think I’d been avoiding it all these years because I thought it was full of intellectual and political snobs.

  Oh! I shall have much good to report to the General! How nice to deliver a positive report for a change!

  March 6, --43

  Cummings thinks Standall is dead and I am inclined to agree, but I’ve asked the men to continue searching for Private Angus and the man called Joe. I had only given them a physical description of Joe: tall, dark-haired, wearing a shabby black overcoat; now I’ve told them of his connection with Belltown, his trumped up report, and the need to silence seditious propaganda of this sort.

  One of the men asked, “Gov’nor, what did this fella’s report say?”

  So I told them: it claimed that Belltown had become a sewer of human degradation and abuse. This could not be true because the General had built it to be of benefit to the poor and still maintained it as such.

  The men looked at each other and one of them said, “You must not a been in Belltown for a while, Gov’nor. Who told you it’s a good place for the poor?”

  I hesitated. “Someone close to the General. One of his chief staff.” I dared not mention Kara Mia’s name. I’m still not sure her position in the Palace is exactly official, or widely known.

  “Well I don’t know why they’d say such a thing. I reckon it’s this man Joe’s report that’s true. Most everyone knows Belltown’s a place what you wouldn’t send your dog to. Leastways, not if you wanted him to keep livin’.”

  Of course Kara Mia lied about Belltown, but why?

  Because she knew I’d stop sending people there. In my mind I see her sitting at my desk, shredding the Belltown report to confetti with a look in her eyes that is colder than ice

  March 7, --43

  Fran came to my private apartments last evening with a bottle of wine and a box of my favourite pastries. What could I do but let her in? I knew Kara Mia would not come home until the small hours of the morning. Yet I was immediately suspicious of Fran’s motives.

  “Is Kara Mia home?” she innocently asked. I noticed she carried her large mauve handbag, the one she always used when she expected our meetings to end in the bedroom.

  “No,” I said, “but I expect her anytime.”

  She smiled a knowing smile, held the wine bottle up, and said, “Shall we drink to her health?”

  I decided to give half an hour to her charade, only wanting to learn what she was after. I uncorked the bottle.

  For the first little while, our conversation ranged over many topics: the war, the price of food, the small gossip of City Hall. I was careful to take only small sips of wine; too much always loosens my tongue. Meanwhile, Fran, who seemed to feel entirely at ease and was in a voluble mood, made her way through three glasses and two pastries in the space of half an hour. Yet, having known her for some time, I knew she could put away four or five glasses without losing sight of her real objective. I smiled and laughed and let her ramble on. At last she said:

  “I heard a strange tale recently. You granted an honourable discharge to six soldiers who, from all I hear, weren’t all that honourable. I wonder why you did that?”

  So. She’s been nosing about. No doubt she’s vamping the senior army officials. “Did I?” I said. “So much paperwork flows over my desk from so many different departments. I may have discharged some men. I seem to remember a batch of requests from soldiers with extreme family circumstances, now that you mention it.”

  “They requested the discharge? I heard the request originated from your office.” She gave me a sly, knowing look, but I met it head on.

  “Well of course the request originated from my office,” I said with a good show of impatience. “Any request like that from a soldier must be filed here at City Hall. I am Director of Recruitment.”

  “Oh. Of course,” she said, clearly crushed. She tried again: “but I heard all six forms bore the same handwriting. That sounds like some sort of conspiracy to me.”

  “Nonsense,” I said. “Most of the soldiers can neither read nor write. If they need a spot of paperwork done or a letter read, it’s not uncommon for them to hire a soldier who can read and write. They do it all the time. I expect the soldiers you speak of all happened to get hold of the same person.”

  “Oh,” she said crushed again. Then she rallied, “I suppose it’s not many of the soldiers, then, who can read or write?” Her air of innocence was too clearly feigned. Transparent little fool: she intends to look for the soldier who filled out the forms. But why?

  “That’s correct. It’s only a fraction who can read or write,” I replied.

  Then—ooh! I could have been an actor—I hastily set down my glass, jumped to my feet, and moved toward the door, exclaiming, “I think I hear my Kara Mia!” Of course I had not heard anything, but Fran was entirely taken in. I actually opened the door and looked out into the corridor, and by the time I returned to the sitting room, Fran stood white-faced, buttoning up her coat, her mauve bag slung over her shoulder. After that it was easy to get her out the door.

  I will no longer be tempted by shapely knees and the promises of mauve handbags and I’ll be Fran’s protector no longer.

  March 8, --43

  I’m giving Capt. Cummings a special assignment: Fran Zlindric. I want to know where she goes and who she talks to; in short, I want to know what she’s up to.

  How like me to be one step ahead of her game!

  March 10, --43

  What an evening! I must say that dinner at the University was a complete success! The Provost and the professors welcomed me warmly and I have not spent such a pleasant evening since Kara Mia and I used to dine with the General when his daughters were very young. Really, it’s too bad the way things turned out in the General’s family, but I digress.

  Most of the professors are ancient men. Their stories and anecdotes were all of university life, and I got the feeling that everything they told me had already been said many times before. The artist, Maxim Belle, sat at High Table with us. He is a most pleasant and witty fellow, and has recently been installed as the Durant Coates Chair of the Arts. Apparently the University recently received a generous endowment from Mr. Durant Coates, owner of the nation’s largest (and only) textile manufacturing and design facility, and one of our city’s leading citizens. He also has the largest private art collection in the country. Durant happens t
o be Maxim’s uncle, and I suppose artistic ability and interest run in the family.

  Maxim reminded me that I could come and take my portrait any time, generous young man! I thanked him and told him I would be very happy to donate the portrait to the University. When I said this, the Provost immediately accepted and said my portrait would be hung in the dining hall among the portraits of former Provosts and college dignitaries. This, of course, is a great complement to the young artist: to have his work hung beside the work of past masters is a testimony to his accomplishments. I was also highly flattered.

  The truth is, I thought about replacing that troubling portrait in City Hall, but Max’s painting is too small. It’s unfortunate; that damned City Hall portrait is a better and larger picture—if only I could see it as other people see it: as I saw it when it was first painted. No doubt all my personal troubles are muddling my psychology and affecting my eyesight.

  At the end of the evening, the Provost invited me to dine with him again next week, and I accepted readily. New faces, new friends, a new atmosphere: the University is just what I need.

  March 11, --43

  The General was pleased to hear about the new artist and indicated his willingness to accompany me to the University to see his sculpture in progress. Was it a good likeness, he wanted to know? I assured him that, so far as I could tell, it was shaping up to be a most complimentary public statement.

  “I shall increase my involvement at the University,” I told him, “just to make sure things are going our way, and to monitor the new artist’s activities.”

  This pleased the General greatly and he once again thanked me for my support. “I know you have made many sacrifices on behalf of our nation-state,” he said.

  I acknowledged his thanks and left as quickly as I could. Though I never saw her, I know Kara Mia was close at hand during our meeting; I could smell her new perfume.

  April 15, --43

  Fran is indeed vamping the army officers and she is trying to find out which soldiers can read and write. Surprise, surprise. Cummings and I had a laugh over her methods. She operates exclusively as a honey trap.

  I can’t help but speculate about her motives. Why does she want to dig up dirt on me? I’ve been very decent to her. The only thing I can’t give her is a Palace job; it’s just not in my power. Maybe she’s sore about Jorgins. Maybe she’s…maybe she’s…oh damn. Maybe she’s working for Kara Mia! Is Kara Mia spying on me?

  But no. If she is, Kara Mia’s too smart to hire a clumsy two-bit hustler like Fran.

  But then what is Fran’s game?

  April 20, --43

  I know a bread stall is operating in the Market Square. Just yesterday I saw a man carrying half a dozen loaves up Tower Road. How is it this bread stall eludes us? It’s not as if we’re blind.

  May 15, --43

  The data for the city food report is quite alarming. Warehouses of our major distributors are less than half full and very little in the way of raw materials is coming in from the farms. I knew that farm report from two years ago was accurate; there is some sort of blight on the land and it has overtaken neighbouring countries as well. It is the General who is operating under the illusion that war will bring us wealth. Yet what can be done? I doubt anyone can dissuade him from his chosen path of war, and this food report will only stoke his anger at the people.

  Perhaps I should show the report to Kara Mia first. Of course, I can’t just take it to her and say, “Should I alter this?” She and I still do not openly acknowledge her work relationship with the General. No, I think I shall leave the report on the coffee table in our apartment and see what happens.

  May 16, --43

  When I got up this morning, Kara Mia was making breakfast in the kitchen. She kissed me on the cheek and said, “I’ve made your favourite pastries. Just like old times. Will you pour the orange juice?”

  “Is there orange juice?” I said. Things like that had not been available for months, not since the General had declared war on our southern border.

  “Yes,” she replied. “I brought over several containers from the Palace storerooms.”

  Palace storerooms. Of course. They would be better stocked than the storerooms in City Hall; Kara Mia would see to that. I glanced at the coffee table in the sitting room: the food report was gone. So. I only had to play the lamb and wait.

  We held a strained, yet cheerful conversation over breakfast, talking of this and that. She was interested in the University artist and said she might pop in to view my portrait and the General’s sculpture.

  “He asked about you,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Maxim Belle. He wants to paint your portrait.”

  “Oh no,” she said. “I could never allow that. The whole of my success depends on obscurity.” She smiled warmly as she said this. It was the closest we had ever come to talking about her work.

  As I dressed, I could hear her tidying up in the kitchen and could almost believe things between us were as they had always been: that the past nine months were only a bad dream.

  “Will I see you this evening?” I asked as I left for work.

  “No,” she said, simply.

  In my office, two hours later, I received an envelope from the Palace labelled “Private.” My secretary said it had been delivered by special courier.

  “Courier?” I said. “Do we have special couriers?”

  “The Palace does, apparently. They wear black uniforms,” she said.

  The envelope contained my food report. Many changes had been made in red ink: data and statistics had been altered, whole paragraphs concerning shortages were crossed out; in short, it had been edited for the General by someone who understands exactly what he wants to hear. At the bottom of the last page, the red ink had written two paragraphs of its own: a directive for me:

  This report must be rewritten according to the marks and instructions provided, and presented to the General only in its edited form. Any deviation will be noted.

  Nevertheless, because the information collected is known to be accurate, you are advised to make ready a Food Distribution Agency.

  This agency is to be fully operational by, and not before, the middle of November, to provide food for citizens who apply at City Hall. The rationed food is to be paid for; barter for services will be acceptable. Nothing is to be given away. This agency is to operate at the City’s expense and within its means, from mid-November until such time as Palace officials deem the present shortages to be at an end.

  The red ink simply ended. There was no signature, and yet I knew who had written it. This was Kara Mia’s hand, and I don’t think she meant to hide the fact from me.

  Since receiving this message, the knocking in my head has become a positive banging. I have returned to my apartments to rest, entrusting the rewriting of the report to my secretary. I wish she wouldn’t tsk tsk so much.

  I cannot tell my troubles to anyone: only this notebook. No one can be trusted. There is not a one of my acquaintance free from intrigue.

  May 27, --43

  Dinner at the University this evening: the banging in my head had relapsed into the old quiet knocking which I have learned to ignore, so it did not interfere with conversation at the High Table.

  The Provost thinks I should plan a large scale celebration for Mayor’s Day followed by a vigorous re-election campaign. He believes it is just what the city needs at this time and that I should take advantage of the large numbers of resident soldiers from around the country.

  “It’s a good time to increase your visibility,” he said, “and we at the University will give you our full support.”

  I do believe he’s right! Tomorrow I shall call my most trusted staff together and begin planning for a stupendous Mayor’s Day. And…oh my! Here’s another stellar idea! I’ll put Fran in charge of organizing Kara Mia’s Food Distribution Agency! This will keep her busy and out of trouble for a few months. I’ll tell her it’s a Palace directive which will, hopef
ully, distract her from the fact that it’s really a dead end position. I’ll give her a small staff and place Cummings as her assistant so he can keep an eye on her. Ha! Brilliant!

  June 1, --43

  I had a strange dream last night. A courier wearing a purple hat and coat delivered an invitation at my apartment. I answered the door wearing my pyjamas. The invitation was to a wedding and I wanted to go, but told the courier I had another engagement, though I could not remember what it was. The courier, on hearing my refusal, simply handed me a parcel and said, “In case you change your mind.”

  In typical dream fashion, I suddenly found myself sitting at my desk in my office downstairs. My secretary was standing nearby saying, “Open it! Open it!” It was a soft, squashy package and I felt reluctant to see the contents. I looked up to tell my secretary to be quiet, but she was gone. In her place stood the man Joe. “Open it,” he said, “there’s nothing to fear.” In the dream I shuddered, groaned, then tore open the package: it contained a white silk suit. “Wedding garments?” I said. The man Joe stood grinning and strange bright shapes protruded from his shoulders. “Not me! Not me!” I cried. “Why not?” he said, and suddenly we were standing before the door of my usual nightmare. I cringed as the knocking began. “Open it,” he said, “open it.” Then the knocking grew sharp and seemed to pierce my brain. I woke and found myself twisted in my sheets. I had a splitting headache that is only just lifting.

  Why should I have a nightmare like that? It was so very strange and vivid.

  The wedding invitation reminds me of a story grandmother told, but I can’t remember the details now. I haven’t read or heard those old stories for ages. I don’t even know where I would find one of those old books of tales. I wonder if…

  Oh! Good Grief! ENOUGH!

  June 10, --43

  The planning for a grand Mayor’s Day, which brought me so much delight at first, seems foolish now. Whatever the General wants to believe, food is becoming scarce. My daily walk through the Market Square has shown me that. There are so few farmers coming into the city; milk and cheese have become a precious commodity. It is depressing to see a once vibrant business center stagnate into a smattering of stalls hawking useless baubles.

  Finding a marching band for Mayor’s Day has been harder than I thought. When I was a boy, every village had musicians who played at dances and parties, but now that I think of it, all the musicians I ever saw were over fifty. They must have been trained by parents who went to the old schools of my great-grandmother’s time. I expect they’ve all died off. Yet surely they passed their knowledge to their children.

  Cummings thinks he can find musicians among the soldiers here in the city. He thinks that the real problem will be finding instruments.

  June 17, --43

  I met with the General this morning. Kara Mia’s perfume lingered in the air and I noticed her second pair of reading glasses sitting on a small table near the fire. The room was warm and the General wore a spring suit of light fabric, quite in contrast to my own thick tweeds. He was dressed for the season; I was dressed for the actual weather. Though the calendar tells of mid-June, the cold grey skies and frosts of winter linger on.

  He read over the food report very carefully, then said, “Well, Jared, I see that we are holding our own and doing quite well compared to the reports I’ve been hearing from enemy nations. Our Farm Collection Unit looks to be a great success, yes?”

  “Yes,” I replied. By ‘Farm Collection Unit’, I assume he meant the tax collection gangs.

  “And the Market Square is buzzing with activity, no doubt,” he said.

  “I hesitated just long enough to hear a rustle in the next room and to catch a glimpse of movement behind the partially closed door.

  “Oh yes,” I lied, as heartily as I dared.

  “Glad to hear it. Keep up the good work, Jared.”

  Obviously he never leaves the precincts of the Palace, never ventures into the market, or he would know this trumped up food report is a lie.

  “And how is the war progressing?” I asked. “I read very little news about it in the newspaper.”

  “All very well,” he said. “Battle lines are drawn and we shall soon engage our enemy to the north. Your recruitment work has not been in vain. Unfortunately, our adversaries are ridiculously reluctant to fight. All they want to do is talk and we have wasted many months with emissaries and diplomats going to and fro.

  “How cowardly of them,” I said, hoping I had struck the right tone of empathic indignation.

  “Yes, cowardly is the word,” he said. “And the trouble is there’s not a journalist I can trust to report the war news from my expert perspective, which is why you read so little of the true tidings in the paper. If you weren’t so busy with city affairs, Jared, I’d have you write the war news for me. I know I can trust you.”

  I thanked him for his confidence in me, all the while feeling very glad I have little to do with Palace affairs. Lies and intrigue hang heavy in the air and I began to find the warm room stifling. For the first time in my long acquaintance with the General, I itched to get away from him. I was already caught in a web of lies of my own making: why should I entangle myself further in his?

  June 21, --43

  Fran came to me this afternoon vexed and very cross. She has just discovered that her predecessor in the Permit’s Office, Mutchmor, is one of the chief administrators in the court of King Z---, our neighbours across the northern sea.

  “He was only the Permits Officer, like me,” she fumed, “yet now he’s succeeded to a much higher position, while I am only Director of Food Distribution. Arghh! How did that happen?” she raged. “Did you write him a letter of reference?”

  “My dear, I’m the one who sacked him,” I said, laughing inwardly at her thwarted spite.

  “He was such a stupid man: a stupid fricked-up breadeater.”

  “Well, consider that he went over to the enemy,” I said.

  “Oh! He got the job months before the General declared war. He’s got a palace job somewhere and I’m still stuck in City Hall!”

  There was nothing I could do, but let her shed her tears of spite.

  The truth is, Mutchmor probably did get his job because of the letter I wrote for him, and I’m glad I did it. I remember at the time feeling a bit guilty about sacking him for no real reason except to give his job to Fran. That letter was the result of a glitch in my conscience, and I framed it in a way to imply that he’d lost his job entirely because of bureaucratic restructuring.

  Now, in retrospect, I see that Mutchmor was a good, steady man. He was honest, took no bribes, and discharged his duties well without complaining. I am glad for Mutchmor’s advancement and—dare I say it?—yes, I often wish I was out of the country too, far from this dirty tangled web: far from people like Fran Zlindric.

  June 23, --43

  Well, the Mayor’s Day plans are rolling along, like a train set in motion. At least we’ll have a marching band. Cummings has managed to scrounge up a dozen musicians and some instruments. Now if only the winter weather would loosen its grip on the land.

  June 30, --43

  Today one of the Council members asked me why I use the back entrance to come and go from City Hall. I lied and told him it is part of my reduction regime: I get more exercise using the back stairs. He understood and complemented me on my trim figure.

  The real reason, of course, is that I cannot use the main stairs or enter the Lobby without seeing my portrait, and my portrait has become too horrible to look at.

  The face is diseased and twisted. Why has this happened? Down in the lower right corner, the man that used to be a tree is definitely Joe, but Joe with a glowing face and wings. And the background, our beautiful City Hall, has become a dark and dreary building, overflowing with refuse. I cannot bear to see the picture. It makes my head pound with the sound of knocking.

  July 12, --43

  Kara Mia came home this evening at twilight. I did not expect her. I
was sitting alone in our apartment, looking out the window at the darkening sky. If truth be told, I was remembering the June evenings of my boyhood when the skies were blue and the scent of roses stole into the open windows. How odd to be thinking with fondness of the old home place and then to look up and see my wife appear, like an apparition, her dress spattered with dark blotches.

  I must have jumped to my feet in alarm because she said, “calm down, Jared. It’s just me. Why haven’t you lit the lamps? You’re sitting in the dark. I thought you weren’t home.”

  “Kara Mia, is everything alright?” I cried.

  “Of course. Don’t be silly.” She sounded tired and impatient. I could not see the expression on her face in the evening gloom.

  “But your dress!” I said, fumbling with the lamp.

  “This will teach me to keep a change of clothes at the Palace,” was all she said.

  By the time I’d got the sitting room lamps lit, she was in the bedroom, putting on clean clothes. I followed her, but one look at her face and I knew I should leave her alone. Yet I could not help noticing that the dress she’d discarded was covered in blood. I went back out to my desk, opened a sheaf of papers, and tried to look as if I was busy. All the while, my heart was pounding. All that blood on her dress: what could it mean? She must have helped someone who’d been badly injured; that was it. My pulse began to slow, but I looked up warily as she came back into the room.

  She was clothed in a skirt and blazer, but a long silk evening dress was draped over one arm and a pair of high-heeled sandals dangled from her fingers.

  “Is everything alright?” I asked. I did not like the look on her face: she was smiling a little too widely, but her eyes were cold and hard.

  “Oh yes,” she replied. “If you’re wondering about the state of my dress, my men in the dungeons needed help with a recalcitrant journalist, that’s all. He would insist on blathering to the world about food shortages and conditions in Belltown, but I think he won’t trouble us in that way anymore.”

  “Oh,” was all I could say.

  “I trust you can keep this to yourself, Jared. My activities at the Palace are best kept—well—quiet.” Her voice was soft, yet it sent fear to my heart.

  “Of course,” I replied.

  “Are you spending the evening alone?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well, what a surprise. Don’t wait up for me,” she said, and was gone.

  I looked out into the street a few moments later and saw her walking away toward the Palace. A group of men stepped out of the shadows and one of them saluted; they flanked Kara Mia and then they all walked away.

  I cannot write what is in my heart. I have no words. I want to move away, to fly away, but I don’t know where to go.

  July 14, --43

  Our savings account, the nest egg Kara Mia and I had been building, is half gone. I should be glad she left me half. The money was withdrawn two days ago—the day after I saw her dress covered in blood. I suppose she’s decided our little charade is over. Yet why does she continue to come home for a few hours each night?

  I’ve taken out my half of the money and closed the account. I know exactly what I shall do with it. I shall invest in the future.

  Tomorrow is Mayor’s Day and the plans for a grand celebration are all in place, but my heart is no longer in it. I found my personal staff and several City Councillors gathered in front of my portrait and they were all for erecting the painting in front of City Hall for the celebrations tomorrow. Obviously they don’t see what I see. So I told them to organize guards and a cordoned area in the Lobby where people might step in to view it.

  One thing about that blasted painting was different today. Instead of the vicious leer, the eyes were sad and the mouth set in a grim line. The face looked stricken by its own disease and by the state of its decayed setting.

  July 15, --43

  Mayor’s Day went off very well. Even Kara Mia sent congratulations.

  The crowd that came was smaller than last year, and it was mostly soldiers. I saw no children and few women. Where are the leading families? The merchants? The farmers and their wives who used to come from the country for this holiday? Did people stay at home, or have they moved away? It seems ominous to me that soldiers outnumber the civilians at a public event. Perhaps it’s time for another census, though maybe not before the election.

  August 10, --43

  I’ve just made a generous endowment to the University: the largest they’ve had for many years: even larger than the one recently made by Durant Coates. This is how I’ve decided to use my half of the savings. I think it a wise choice to invest in the future. The Provost was beside himself with thanks. Now I have a permanent place at High Table and plan to make use of it at every opportunity.

  September 6, --43

  Summer is over and yet it never arrived. Summer frosts have given way to autumn frosts: hard frosts that never melt under these iron skies. I keep saying I need to get out of the city for a holiday, but somehow I never do.

  General’s Day was a peremptory affair. He came out onto the Palace balcony and made a brief speech to a large crowd of soldiers and a very small crowd of civilians. There was a gun salute in the Market Square, and that was that. I think the whole Palace staff is taken up with the war effort. From what the General tells me, we are to engage the enemy in about two months’ time.

  Our enemies are extremely reluctant. One of the Palace staff told me, unofficially, that the General has sent out bands of mercenaries who have been harrying our enemies on all three fronts: bombing, assassinating, and trying to create as much ill will as possible. Yet our enemies are only mildly provoked and the General is becoming very short-tempered.

  September 30, --43

  Earlier this evening I made my first campaign speech to the soldiers as they ate supper in the mess hall. It went well enough and I was feeling cheerful, but there was a surprise waiting for me at home.

  When I entered our apartment, all the lights were on.

  Kara Mia was in the bedroom packing her clothes into a suitcase.

  “Hello, Jared,” she said, “I’m afraid I bring sad news. The General’s wife is dead.”

  “Oh, I see,” I managed to say rather stupidly. As she talked, Kara Mia continued to move about the room, gathering all her personal belongings from bureau, vanity, closet.

  “Yes,” she continued, “She was so tormented by fantasies these past months, poor woman. She’d gotten hold of an old book—one of the books from the old schools which I thought had all been rooted out and burned. She said an old man had given it to her daughter, you know, the one that died last year.”

  I nodded, and for some reason, a face appeared in my mind: the old white-haired scholar who told me to have my portrait painted. I’d forgotten about him.

  “The old man died?” I said.

  “No, no. The General’s daughter died, remember?”

  “Oh yes. Yes.”

  “That book filled the girl’s head with nonsense, and the mother’s too.” Kara Mia paused and looked at me, apparently expecting a response. Her eyes had lost all their old tenderness.

  “Oh. That’s too bad,” I said. I wanted to say, “weren’t you happy living with me?” and “we might have talked about our savings account first,” but I instinctively knew the conversation shouldn’t go that way.

  “Yes, too bad,” she continued, her tone slightly mocking. “You would know all about it, having spent your childhood listening to the same silly stories.”

  “But you saved me from that,” I said.

  “Yes. You do have me to thank,” she sneered, and it was at that precise moment that the sorrow which had been building in me over the past months popped like a soap bubble and was replaced by relief. I only wanted her to finish packing and leave.

  “Well, the General’s wife died believing in those old fables. I was with her at the end.”

  Were you, I thought, and wondered exactly how th
e General’s wife had died. “And what is to become of the oldest daughter?” I asked.

  “Oh, she ran off. Within an hour of her mother’s death she was packed and gone. She took that old book with her, silly little fool. I intended to burn it, but she made off with it when my back was turned.”

  “I suppose the General will want to find her as soon as possible,” I said.

  “Well, of course. She can’t be left running loose with a book like that in her possession.” As she said this, my wife snapped shut the suitcase and opened another. She unlocked a small filing cabinet and emptied the contents into the suitcase: files full of documents that have always been a mystery to me. Once, several years ago when I asked her what she kept in those locked drawers, she had laughed and said, “Insurance. Against poverty in my old age—in case something happens to you.”

  “Really?” I’d said, “What kind of insurance?”

  “Evidence,” she’d replied. I hadn’t understood then because I’d underestimated her, but now I knew. Those were her blackmail files: files she’s been amassing for years. I wondered for one panicked second what information she’d collected against me. All my indiscretions are well-known, as are everyone’s these days. The only real violations in society are political, and that all depends on who’s in power and whether you get caught at some game. Some might say my only offence worthy of blackmail was not killing the royal children, but I’m the only person alive who knows of that.

  It struck me then how very inconsistent Kara Mia is. She convinced me that the old stories of my grandmother were false and that the old ways and laws did nothing but bind the human spirit. I learned to live by Kara Mia’s ideas, yet now she is leaving me because of it! Why would she keep records of the so-called ‘vices’ when, according to her, there are none! It seems she is the one bound by the old ways while at the same time violently working to stamp them out.

  All this passed quickly through my mind as I watched her fill two more suitcases and a trunk. Suddenly realizing that I must appear an idiot as I stood there watching her pack, I said, “When did all this happen? When did the General’s wife die?”

  She looked up at me with obvious amusement. She was taking great delight in what she thought of as my discomfiture.

  “She died this evening at six o’clock, and the book and the girl went missing by seven. The General is very distressed by the whole affair. It’s a sad reflection on his personal life, but none of it is his fault. Of course it will all have to be hushed up.”

  Six o’clock. That was just three hours ago and here was Kara Mia moving in with the General. No doubt he expressed a wish for her consoling presence in a more permanent way.

  “How did she die? I knew she was unbalanced, but I did not know she’d been ill,” I said.

  “She wasn’t ill. She cut her own throat. The coroner has reported suicide.”

  “Oh,” I said. Then I left the bedroom and shut myself in the bathroom.

  Yes, there it was on the floor: I peeked into the bag containing the bloodied blouse and skirt. Kara Mia had indeed been with the General’s wife at the end.

  I left the apartment without saying goodbye: it seemed pointless. I went down to the Lobby, sat on a bench, and took a good long look at my ugly portrait. Down in the corner, the bright face of Joe looked out at me steadily.

  I was startled by the sound of tramping feet; a troop of men from the Palace Guard marched through the Lobby and up the stairs. Minutes later, they came tramping down again bearing Kara Mia’s trunks and bags. Kara Mia came last, dressed in a low-cut silk gown, leaning on the arm of a handsome young soldier. She was smiling tenderly up into his face and I thought that she had more than one reason to move into the Palace. She has come to a position of power in which she can have anything or anyone she wants. She no longer wants me.

  When they were gone I sat for a while, listening to the night sounds of City Hall: a distant door shutting as the cleaning crew made their rounds: the tick of the great clock and the occasional clank of a water pipe. I have spent many years proudly working in this place and living comfortably in its grand penthouse apartment. Now, as I sit in my office and write, I feel the vast emptiness of this magnificent building; I feel myself a hollow shell with only the sound of a gentle knocking echoing inside me.

  October 1, --43

  A bad night followed by a depressing day. I dreamed of that purple-suited courier again. In the dream he delivered another parcel which contained the same white, silk wedding suit. He also delivered the same invitation, but this time, in the dream, I read the date: December 21, MidWinter’s Day. He asked me if I would come. I asked him how far I would have to travel to get there. “My shoes are all worn out,” I told him.

  “Oh, you don’t have to go far at all. It’s straight through the door.”

  “What door?” I cried loudly, because he was leaving, running along a path ahead of me and calling out, “See you there!”

  I tried to follow, but my feet hurt and when I looked down, they were covered in ugly sores, just like the sores on my face in the portrait.

  I woke to find that I had fallen asleep with my clothes and boots on. I remember that, after recording the events of last evening, I came upstairs and lay down on the bed, intending to get up again and undress. I was feeling so wretched; I never thought I would fall asleep at all, much less sleep until morning.

  After an early breakfast, Cummings met me at the office to give his weekly report: there is still no trace of Private Angus. They found out that the girl who painted my portrait came in from the countryside with her father, a regular marketer; I suspected that, but I should be grateful to have my suspicions confirmed. Apparently the girl’s father is one of the few marketers who continues to bring goods to sell and he never stays long. The men have made several unsuccessful attempts to tail him: they claim that he seems to vanish about two miles up the North Road that leads out of the city.

  I reminded Cummings that there is a large tavern situated exactly two miles up the North Road.

  “Oh, but he never goes into the tavern. The men have searched it several times,” Cummings said.

  “As I thought,” I replied. “They go into the tavern and the man disappears. Naturally.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Cummings said.

  After he left my office, several City Councillors came in demanding that something be done about the dead that are found frozen in the street each morning.

  “Dead in the street?” I must have looked shocked because one of the councillors said, “Don’t you walk through the Market Square every mornings?”

  “Not lately,” I replied, “it’s been too cold.”

  “Ah. Well. Then you’ve not seen the frozen bodies.”

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “Too long. About a week. It’s this unseasonable weather, and no one picks up the bodies. We want you to organize some kind of clean up.”

  “Clean up?” I said, stupidly.

  “To collect the bodies, of course. It’s becoming a problem. Fortunately the weather is too cold to allow them to thaw.”

  I found it hard to believe, but a short walk through the streets proved that, for once, the councillors were not exaggerating. People, citizens of the General’s nation-state, were lying dead in doorways where they had been sleeping, on the steps of the great abandoned houses that are boarded up, and in the road where they had presumably dropped from hunger and exhaustion. Their faces, beautified by white frost, were thin. Why has the Palace not yet ordered the opening of the Food Distribution Agency? We can’t wait until November.

  In the bitter cold I counted two dozen bodies. One of them was the General’s daughter.

  She was always a beautiful girl, but the thick frost that covered her face and her long golden hair gave her an unearthly radiance in the grey morning light. She looked so thin and delicate, lying curled on her side, still clutching something against her bosom. Hardly thinking of what I was doing, I pried
the thing gently away and, yes, it was the book. I slipped it into my coat pocket and looked around. Finding the girl’s small reticule lying beside her, I pushed it into the space where the book had been. A few moments later, a member of the City Guard came around the corner and I called to him.

  “It is the General’s daughter,” I told him. “Notify the Palace at once. I’ll wait here until you return.”

  When the guard from the Palace arrived, he said, “Have you touched anything here?”

  “No,” I replied.

  He pried the reticule out of her hands and searched it. Then he noticed her satchel and searched that. I asked him if he was looking for anything in particular and he said, yes, a book bound in black leather. He began to search through the debris in the gutters on both sides of the street. I left him to it.

  I spent the rest of the morning organizing a Clearance Brigade, much like the one that used to move the derelicts down to Belltown. The bodies will be taken to the morgue and if they are not claimed within three days, they will be buried outside the city walls--if picks and shovels can penetrate the iron cold earth.

  After a hasty lunch at home, I spoke with the Maintenance Director about changing the locks on my apartment door. It seems a wise precaution. I noticed that Kara Mia must have come back sometime this morning; there were several paintings missing, an antique lamp, an entire set of china, the silver, and the rosewood vanity I bought for her forty-fifth birthday. The lock will be changed day after tomorrow, which gives her plenty of time to retrieve whatever else she may want. As far as I’m concerned, she’s welcome to everything; let her clean out the apartment if she likes.

  I returned to my office and began to prepare for my afternoon meeting with the General. I’m not sure why he wants to meet with me unless it’s to check the pulse of my loyalties. I had only begun to jot down a few notes when I was interrupted by a knock at the door. Even before I said, “come,” the door opened and a man in a black uniform walked in followed by my secretary who was flapping her hands and saying, “you can’t just walk in like that! You’re supposed to give the memo to me!” Then she looked at me and cried, “I couldn’t stop him, sir!”

  “A courier from the Palace?” I said.

  “Urgent message. Sign here,” the man said.

  “Sign here, sir!” my secretary cried.

  The courier never acknowledged her presence and seemed hardly to notice mine, though he carefully examined my signature.

  “Are you to wait for a reply?” I asked.

  “No reply,” he said as he turned and strode out the door.

  “No reply, sir!” my secretary called after him.

  She was near tears and I tried to comfort her by saying, “never mind. It doesn’t bother me.”

  Certainly no reply was needed to the message I received:

  Your meeting with the general has been cancelled.

  Indeed, this was hardly surprising given the death of his wife yesterday, followed hard by the death of his daughter.

  I will come to meet with you shortly.

  Now this was ominous. I knew who’d sent it even without a signature. Dismissing my secretary for the rest of the day, I returned to my desk to wait, making sure to leave the office door wide open. The ever present knocking sound rapped out the minutes.

  At three o’clock, Kara Mia marched in flanked by two burly members of the Palace Guard. I offered her a comfortable chair.

  “Where is your secretary?” she asked.

  “She is unwell. I sent her home shortly after lunch.”

  “I suppose you know why I am here,” she said.

  “Yes. To relay the General’s orders since our meeting was cancelled. How is he? The two deaths, so close together, must have been a shock.”

  “I’ve come for the book.” Her eyes wore the hard look I so hated, but I was prepared.

  “I do not have the book,” I said, looking her coolly in the eye. I was not stupid enough to say, “What book?”

  “It wasn’t found on the body.”

  “I know,” I said. “I looked.”

  She seemed surprised by my answer. “You looked for the book? You admit that?”

  “Yes. I know you want it and for good reason. A book like that is dangerous. I am one who would know the damage it can do.”

  The hard look shifted into a slight smile. “Yes. I suppose that, like me, you would wish to see it destroyed?”

  ”Of course. When I found her, I immediately called the guard. It was shocking to see that beautiful girl a frozen corpse.”

  Kara Mia eyed me carefully, silently. “What were you doing there this morning? You don’t usually take walks in this bitter cold, do you?”

  I explained about the City Councillors’ complaint. “I couldn’t believe it at first. I went out to see for myself.”

  “Yes. I don’t venture far beyond the Palace, but I have heard rumours. What are you going to do about it?”

  I told her about the Clearance Brigade and she congratulated me on my quick solution. “I suppose we should open the Food Distribution Agency, though it’s six weeks ahead of schedule. See to it tomorrow, Jared.” She said this in such an offhand way; I knew what was really on her mind, but I kept quiet.

  The silence between us grew; I suppose she thought I would find this intimidating. One of the guards standing behind her chair shifted uncomfortably. I felt only quiet resignation to what she had become. At last she said, “What do you think I should do about the book?”

  “Perhaps a search could be organized,” I said.

  “Yes. Of course. I’ll start here,” and the Palace Guards poured in and turned my office upside down. I was strip searched under the amused gaze of my wife, and was assured that her men were also searching my apartment. The whole thing took less than half an hour, and then they were gone.

  “Of course I never thought you had the book, Jared, but I had to be sure,” she said as she left the office.

  I had fully expected the search. I was just zipping my trousers when, unfortunately, Fran walked in.

  “What happened?” she cried, seeing the mess.

  “The Palace officials are looking for something.”

  “What is it? Will they search everyone’s office?”

  “I think not.”

  “But why you?”

  “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  She had nothing to say to this, though I didn’t doubt she would spread her own version of the story.

  “Tomorrow you are to open the Food Distribution Agency,” I said to her. “Make sure there is an announcement in the evening paper.”

  “But we’re not ready! I thought we had six more weeks.”

  “Palace orders. People are dying in the streets.”

  She left in a huff.

  Half an hour later, my secretary reappeared. News of Palace officials searching the Mayor’s office had spread quickly. I was glad to see her: she is a matronly sort, about the age of Kara Mia, and though she is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, I trust her.

  “Who did this? Shall I call for your wife?”

  “It was my wife who did this.”

  She was stunned into silence. When I asked if she would finish cleaning up, she merely nodded.

  I went up to my apartment, thinking to get an aspirin for my pounding head but I had forgotten that my rooms had also been searched, so I was momentarily surprised to open the door on a scene of chaos. No, call it vandalism. My desk had been ransacked, its contents spilled and trampled by heavy boots. Every cupboard and drawer in every room had been opened and the contents strewn about. Chairs and pillows and mattresses had been slashed; paintings had been thrown on the floor, their glass smashed or the canvas ripped open. As I drifted among the wreckage, I realized that much of the furniture was missing and what remained had been mostly ruined by swords and boots. Apparently Kara Mia has finished moving out.

  I found an aspirin, though I had to pick it off the bathroom floor, then went t
o find the Maintenance Director for the second time that day. I offered him a substantial sum for taking his entire staff to my apartment to clear the mess, make repairs, and change the locks by tomorrow afternoon. I also asked him to install a sliding bolt inside the door.

  When I returned to my office, I found that my secretary had enlisted the help of three junior clerks who were busy filing papers, shelving reference books, and setting the furniture to rights. She herself was replacing the contents of my desk and organizing the important paperwork.

  “Go home, sir,” she said. “We’ll be finished here in half an hour or so.”

  So I left my office, but didn’t go home. Instead, I walked out of City Hall into the grey afternoon.

  Where I went next and who I met I hardly dare to write; I hardly dare to think of it for fear of someone finding out.

  This morning, on my way back to City Hall after finding the General’s daughter, I met Joe at the bottom of Tower Road. He came right up to me and said, “You’ve been looking for me.”

  “Yes,” I said, though at that moment I couldn’t remember why. We stood looking at each other, when some sudden inspiration, or maybe a premonition, made me say, “Will you keep something for me?”

  He didn’t seem at all surprised. I gave him the book and also this journal which I have taken to carrying on my person at all times.

  “I would like them back by nightfall,” I said.

  “Meet me at the top of the Belltown Road on hour before dusk,” he replied.

  So I did. At four o’clock, leaving the wreckage of my office and apartment, I walked to the crossroad above Belltown where Joe returned my parcel, now wrapped in a purple woollen scarf.

  “You risk much by keeping these,” he said.

  I only nodded. What was there to say? Why am I keeping the book?

  ”Now, don’t linger in this place. The crossroads aren’t safe after nightfall. Go, while it’s still light.”

  “Who are you?” I said.

  “My name is Joe.” Then he turned and walked down the Belltown Road.

  I went to the University and dined there, though I know I was not my usual self. The Provost would glance at me every now and then and say, “All well, Jared, my boy?” I was touched by this kind familiarity, and after dinner, as we sat smoking in his rooms, I told him of the Clearance Brigade and of finding the General’s daughter.

  “Shocking. Just shocking,” he said, over and over.

  Finally I told him that my private apartments at City Hall were under renovation and asked if it would be possible to spend the night in one of the colleges.

  “Why of course, my boy! Nothing easier,” and he called the porter, which is how I find myself, at this very moment, in front of a blazing fire, writing about this dreadful day.

  I will return to City Hall in the morning, but for now I hope to enjoy a night of peace and safety.

  October 2, --43

  Eight a.m.

  Before I return to City Hall, I must set down an odd occurrence.

  I had just finished dressing and was about to leave for breakfast with the Provost, when there was a knock at the door. It was the white-haired man whom I had not seen for over two years. He looked the same.

  “Good morning, Mayor,” he said. “I’ll be quick. I know the Provost is waiting.”

  Before I could reply he continued: “I have a new coat for you; it’s thicker, warmer, and it has deep pockets: one of them is hidden in the lining. Don’t you think it time to change that fancy silken thing for something more practical?” He held out a black overcoat made of fine wool.

  Quite suddenly, I recalled the day I’d received my silk coat, confiscated from some tax evader. I had never given the circumstance much thought, but now I remembered Kara Mia’s face and voice as she said, “it suits you beautifully! It doesn’t make you look fat.”

  “Did you say it has a hidden pocket? How much do you want for it?” I said.

  “Just give up your old coat in exchange.”

  So I did. This new coat is twice as warm and fits as if it were tailored just for me. It looks well with the purple scarf Joe gave me. The pocket in the lining suits my needs exactly. When I turned from the mirror to thank the old scholar, he was gone.

  Eleven p.m.

  As I write this entry it is night and a bitter sleet falls on the city. I look around my office and everything looks ordered and peaceful as it was before the search, and yet nothing is the same.

  On my return from the University this morning, as I passed through the Market Square, I saw the Clearance Brigade at its work. What an awful pass this city has come to.

  Fran and her staff opened the Food Distribution Agency today. From my office window I could see the line of people spilling out the side door into the street. I hope Fran will distribute food with leniency, although Kara Mia—that is, the Palace officials—insist that nothing is to be given away.

  My secretary was the only one to complement me on my new coat. No one else seemed to notice, though I felt the need to wear it all day in this chilly building--but I’m not bothered. I’m only too glad that my coat exchange has gone unnoticed. The contents of the hidden pocket were a fearful weight against my chest all this long day.

  After lunch, I went upstairs to inspect the progress of repairs to my apartment. With the floors cleared of debris, I saw that Kara Mia had left me with the bare essentials. I have my desk and an armchair in the living room, a small table and one chair in the kitchen along with a few dishes and half a dozen pieces of cutlery; in the bedroom she left a bureau and, oddly enough, the bed, canopy and all. The Maintenance Director was apologetic about the stripped appearance of the rooms.

  “We saved as many dishes as we could,” he explained, “but we could not salvage a single painting.”

  I gave him the agreed upon sum, plus a generous bonus, and assured him that I was satisfied with his department’s work.

  I left him to finish installing the new locks and he brought the keys to my office at the end of the work day.

  Now I hear footsteps outside the door. It is very late and the cleaning girl has come. I’ll have to go up to my apartment. The maintenance director said he left a fire burning on the hearth, but that was a few hours ago. I imagine it has dwindled to a handful of embers.

  October 11, --43

  Seven p.m.

  I gave a campaign speech in the Market Square this afternoon because my election staff insists I keep to their campaign schedule. I should never have initiated this election in the first place. It’s not as if there is an opposing candidate or even an opposing party anymore! For the past ten years I have always been the sole name on the ballot.

  At any rate, the Market Square speech was a bust: there were very few people about. Yet my campaign staff were pleased and clapped like mad at the end.

  At the dinner hour I delivered the same speech to the soldiers in the mess hall. They clapped and cheered and they all appear to be on my side. Not that there is another side. No. I recruited most of the soldiers, after all, and usually under duress. They joined the army to stay out of prison and now they cooperate because they are well fed. Well…they’re fed well enough.

  In truth, the soldiers now constitute the bulk of the city’s population and, in my opinion, have the greatest potential for rebellion and violence in these dark economic times. If I can appear to them as a friend, so much the better. I certainly put on a jolly face for them tonight. Tomorrow the campaign staff plans to herd the soldiers through the Lobby to view my portrait. I hope they do not see what I see, or we may as well cancel the election.

  Half past ten p.m.

  Curiously enough, I find the stark appearance of my apartment pleasant when I thought it would be depressing. The rooms have been stripped of Kara Mia. I feel as if I’ve been given a fresh start. It’s as if I’m standing at a crossroad and can take whichever way I choose. Perhaps, after the war, I will leave this city; I could be the mayor or magistrate of a smaller town far from
the Palace, far from my associations here. I think this election campaign shall be my last.

  I’ve drawn the blinds and taken out my contraband book. I intend to read it and write down my impressions. The pages of history, filled as they are with calamities and disasters of mass proportions, have become dark to us who live in this present age. Few things remain, but I see by the title page that this little book contains something of humanity’s questionable past. The General’s daughter thought this book worth dying for.

  Its title is The Book of Tales, and judging by the Table of Contents, these are the same stories my grandmother told. I recognize this title here: “The Poor Man and His Treasure.” She told that story often, but I’ve forgotten some of the details---

  Damn! There’s a knock at the door! Who could it be at this hour? I cannot be caught with this book! Into the hidden pocket it goes—along with this journal…

  It was only the janitor from the night shift come after some cleaning things inadvertently left in my coat closet by the Maintenance Director. He apologized for taking the liberty at this late hour, but he’d seen the light under my door. He hoped I didn’t mind.

  Yet how he did look about! I could almost believe he’d been sent by someone to look around my apartment, were it not for the bucket and mop in the closet. It seemed to me he looked especially hard at my desk, but perhaps that was only my guilty imagination. The desk’s surface was completely clear; only my coat was visible hanging over the back of the chair. He did comment on the nearly empty closet—why hadn’t I hung up my coat?

  I told him that I was returning to my bachelor ways and he chuckled at that as I showed him out.

  If it weren’t for the new sliding bolt on my door, I would not feel at all safe.

  I’m going to bed. Reading can wait for tomorrow.

  October 12, --43

  Nine a.m.

  The Provost asked to meet with me this afternoon. Perhaps he intends to ask for more money.

  This morning I read, “The Poor Man and His Treasure.” I had forgotten many details over the intervening years. I see how the idea of perpetual knocking could have entwined itself throughout my consciousness, especially when it was connected with ideas of wrong-doing from an older tradition. It is clear to me that I could never take the path Kara Mia has taken. She never really succeeded in silencing my grandmother.

  I ought to hide this book somewhere, but I can’t think where. My apartment isn’t safe unless I am inside with the bolt drawn. I’ll just have to carry it, along with this highly incriminating journal, within my coat’s hidden pocket. I’m not sure why I’m reading this book except that it gives me a strange exhilarating thrill to possess a forbidden secret and to have tricked Kara Mia.

  Eight p.m.

  Well! The Provost did deliver a bombshell at our meeting today! He told me that the University’s Board of Governors has decided to use my generous donation to fund a new post called “The Dr. Jared Hobic Chair of Civic Government.” And he handed me a Diploma! An honorary degree!

  I’ve been in a flutter all evening. Me! Dr. Jared Hobic!

  October 30, --43

  There are too few students in the University, but I have done something about that. I have dared to authorize an exemption from military conscription: full-time enrolment at the University. That was one week ago and so far there has not been a peep of disapproval from the Palace. This exemption obviously favours the minority who can read and write, and I’ve heard there was a quiet exodus of intelligence from the city barracks.

  It was the Provost who gave me the idea in the first place, and he’s been delighted to see enrolment triple in just a short time. Of course, most of them are enrolling in my department, and classes are full

  November 9, --43

  Election Day snuck up on me! In fact, it has come and gone with barely a flutter in the city. My campaign staff tells me that I won by a landslide and attribute this colossal success to my status at the University.

  My inauguration parade is scheduled for tomorrow at noon. I’ll march through Market Square wearing the customary robes and chain, followed by a train of Councillors; I’ll make a short speech to a crowd organized by my staff, and that will be that. Anyway, the less time spent out of doors the better; this winter is infernally cold. The frost on the windowpanes never thaws and I’m told the strongest man on the Clearance Brigade can’t get a shovel into the earth. They’ve taken to burying the bodies under piles of stones. Fortunately, the ruins of the old city are nearby: Cummings tells me they use the stone rubble from that.

  November 10, --43

  I saw the bread stall today! Marching along the inaugural parade route, I saw it. An old woman, the bread merchant, held out a loaf to me! And I heard her singing an old lullaby my grandmother used to sing. For a minute, I was a little boy again, holding out my cup and plate, my stomach squeezed by hunger as only a little boy can feel. Then the entire scene vanished, we marched out among the regular market stalls, and I found myself looking at City Hall, the knocking sound louder than ever.

  After the ceremony, I rushed back to the place, but it was gone! How can that be?

  It’s most important that I find this stall: beside the bread woman stood Private Angus.

  November 11, --43

  Damn. Last night I dreamed of the bread seller and my grandmother.

  And still I cannot find that bread stall!

  November 16, --43

  Yesterday the entire army marched out of the city. In one of his rare public speeches, the General informed us that, contrary to rumours, an invasion of our northern coast is not immanent. I don’t see how this statement will reassure the citizens: not five minutes after the General’s speech, the army marched out the North Gate and up the North Road obviously headed for the coast.

  Now that the army is gone, the city is very quiet and—in my opinion—safer. Yet I do not need a census taker to tell me that the civilian population is less than half what it was three years ago. I asked my secretary where she thought everyone had gone. A hard, angry look came into her eyes and she said, “check the Palace Dungeons.”

  I have heard rumours, but I seriously doubt this is the entire explanation. Joe’s Belltown report comes to mind, but its inferences and conclusions are too terrible to think of. Did we, with our street clearances and removals, slowly move a famine stricken people down to hell?

  For our land is gripped by famine; that much is clear, even if the Palace officials won’t admit it. The other day, on my way to the University, I met Mr. Duncston who was headed for the food lines. Mr. Duncston! He’s the owner of the two largest food processing plants here in the capitol, and one of the richest men in the kingdom. I asked him why he, of all people, was going to the Food Distribution Agency and he said it’s the only place to get food now. He grimly laughed and said he’s closed his factories because he can get no raw materials anymore. His warehouses are empty. The farms have simply stopped producing. What is happening to this world?

  December 3, --43

  With the soldiers gone, my staff are twiddling their thumbs: few complaints are filed, there are no permit applications, lawsuits have ceased: it’s as if all the remaining citizens have shut themselves up in their houses and gone to sleep. Who could blame them for deciding to hibernate like bears? The temperatures are bitter and everything is covered by thick frost day and night.

  The City Guard, the Palace Guard, and my private guard are the only soldiers left in the city. Of course, no one knows about my private guard and they have cleverly spread themselves out disguised as bartenders and watchmen, no doubt hoping to catch Private Angus. I called them off the other jobs.

  Two of my men are particularly clever and discreet and I have given them the task of keeping an eye on Capt. Cumming and Fran. Those two I do not trust since I spied them kissing in the Palace Gardens last week. It’s true that they were thrown together—my own doing—yet Fran never falls for a man without some motive of her own. And Cummings can easily play
both sides of any street, though he may find he’s met his match in Fran.

  December 9, --43

  The MidWinter celebration is two weeks away and I foresee a lonely holiday, my first without Kara Mia. I wonder if she misses me even a little? We did have good times together. I haven’t seen her since the day of the search.

  With Kara Mia to influence the General—in whatever way she does—this may very well be the last MidWinter Celebration in our nation-state. I suppose it hasn’t happened this year because she and the General are distracted by war games.

  War. I read about it in the newspaper, but it’s all incomprehensible rhetoric. I hope the General knows what he’s doing. I have my doubts though.

  December 14, --43

  MidWinter day is next week. The Provost has invited me to breakfast on MidWinter’s Eve, which is kind of him; he knows I’ll be alone.

  Last night I dreamed of grandmother. She was baking bread, and in the dream I could smell that lovely aroma again and feel my stomach rumbling. I haven’t tasted bread like that for years. She had a special recipe for MidWinter Day: in addition to honey and butter, she put in dried fruit and a certain spice—cinnamon, I think. The two of us would eat around the fireside and she would tell me stories—until my father came home, drunk and angry.

  December 17, --43

  The General sent for me today. I was to appear at his chambers at exactly seven o’clock. I wondered about the late hour: was I invited to dinner? I received this message mid-morning and spent the rest of the day fidgeting.

  When I arrived at his chambers, I found him seated comfortably in a plush chair, dressed for dinner, his white shirt front gleaming in the light of a roaring fire. Indeed, the room was very warm and I began to regret the extra layer of woollens I always wear. City Hall and the University are, like everywhere else, on strict fuel rations.

  It was a queer meeting. Never rising from his chair, he offered me his hand in greeting, looked me over for a split second, then turned his eyes to the firelight and never looked at me again. He talked though: on and on about his plans for the nation-state once the war was over: improved farmlands, efficient factories, a properly trained labour force, and a submissive media.

  He talked about me, a politician and a University man (so he’d heard!) as the model representative of his ideas. I should have been flattered, but I was suddenly aware that I probably owe my present status as Mayor, not to Kara Mia, but to the General and his high opinion of me. If left to her own devices and revenges, she might have put me in the dungeons long ago.

  I was uncomfortably warm and I could hear the rustle of soft fabrics in the next room and smell a familiar perfume. The General’s voice droned on and I allowed my mind to drift. The knocking sound, always hovering on the edge of hearing, became louder. I turned my eyes away from the open door of the adjacent room and looked out the window; these days it is unusual to see a pane of glass without patterns of thick frost on the inside. I wondered how long this meeting would last, and what the outcome would be.

  Then, what I wanted and feared most suddenly happened: Kara Mia came into the room. She was dressed in a long, low-cut evening gown. Jewels at her wrists and throat sparkled in the firelight and she looked almost beautiful. She laid an elegant hand on the General’s shoulder, and greeted me with barely disguised amusement. I understood then that I had been summoned to the General’s chambers for this moment only: to see Kara Mia in her triumph.

  “How nice to see you, Jared,” she said, “or should I say Dr. Hobic.”

  I ignored the last mocking comment and said, “It is good to see you looking so well.”

  “Thank you,” she said, then added, “Any sign of that missing book?” Her eyes glittered with malice: she had never looked so lovely…or so repulsive, but—was it a hallucination?—I thought I could see blood on her hands and dress.

  “No, I am sorry to say,” I lied. I had to keep my face steady. I could feel the forbidden book pressing against my chest.

  “I’ve had no luck either,” she said. “I suppose the book’s owner,” here she glanced slyly at the General, “disposed of it before she…departed.”

  The General looked up at Kara Mia and lightly touched the jewelled hand resting on his shoulder. “Are you still worried about that book? It’s really of no importance. Shall we go to dinner?”

  Kara Mia smiled at him, then said to me, “thank you for coming. The General insisted on seeing you.” Her voice had lost all its warmth.

  “Yes, I did,” he said from the depths of his own world. “Keep up the good work, Jared.”

  I was dismissed. I rose. They took no further notice of me and I left quickly.

  I am back in my apartment now, far from the Palace charade, yet not far enough.

  Tonight I think I shall do a little reading. I have not opened a certain book for several weeks, though I doubt it will bring comfort.

  December 18, --43

  Noon

  Damn and blast! The Furies take Fran to hell! She’s as bad or worse than Kara Mia! Demanding slavery, entire savings accounts—for food! My poor secretary just came to my office, shocked and angry. She had lined up at the Food Agency in place of a sick friend and Fran actually told her that if she wanted food she would have to send her daughter to work in the City Guards’ barracks! At night! It seems only too clear what this means. The girl is only fifteen!

  I stormed down to the agency and demanded to know the meaning of such a sordid request. Fran just looked at me sullenly and said, “It’s none of your business. I’m under Palace directives.”

  “And yet,” I reminded her, “you’re operating out of City Hall and at the city’s expense. I am the mayor. I demand an explanation.”

  She shrugged, as if nothing I said mattered, and said, “What is there to explain?”

  “Telling my secretary to send her daughter to the barracks in exchange for food!”

  A member of the City Guard stepped into the room and shut the door on the inquisitive citizens lined up outside. “Is there a problem?” he said.

  “The Mayor,” Fran said in a mocking voice, “is upset about our proposed arrangement with his secretary’s daughter.”

  “Interesting,” the guard said, “and what’s wrong with it?”

  “Why ask her for such a vile service when she has money to pay?” I said.

  Fran shrugged. “She was after food for a friend, not for herself. I thought I’d do her a favour, save her the money. Besides, what use is money these days? What she was asked to do is easy.

  “For you perhaps,” I said. That wiped the smirk off her face. I heard the guard chuckling as I left.

  As Mayor, I have adequate food supplies, as does the entire staff at City Hall. It’s ample for myself, though I suspect it would not be for a family of three or four. I had not thought of this before. My secretary has mentioned providing for three children and her mother.

  Three p.m.

  I have gone to the staff food supply room, taken out my share for the next three days, and given it all to my secretary. That should get her family through the MidWinter feast comfortably, as well as provide for her sick friend. I think I still have ample stores in my apartment.

  She thanked me over and over. She also said that she plans to move her family to the tower. She feels they will all be safer there. Then she thanked me again and hurried home.

  What does she mean by “the tower?” I’m sure I don’t know. There’s an old inn called The Tower, but it’s always been a low-class affair, situated on a little-used road above the Market Square. I suspect it’s gone out of business by now. She couldn’t have meant that place, but she left before I could ask and I won’t see her until after the holiday. I gave her the next two days off in addition to MidWinter Day.

  Seven p.m.

  After giving my secretary my own food supplies, I find that my cupboards are emptier than I’d remembered. I shall be alright tomorrow, and fortunately I’m invited to breakfast at the University the
day after, but I fear my own MidWinter’s Day feast will be meagre.

  I shall be alone.

  How did I come to such a pass?

  December 19, --43

  Eight a.m.

  Last night I dreamed of my grandmother. She was baking bread and saying: “Make up your mind, boy! Be good or be bad! Be white or be black! Just don’t try to stand in the middle! Listen to the knocking at the door!”

  So I listened to the knocking at the door, for the rest of the night.

  What does it mean?

  Noon

  Today is Saturday and tomorrow is MidWinter’s Eve. In the past, business here at City Hall slowed a bit during the week before the holiday. This year I would say that business is dead. Even the lines to the Food Agency have dwindled. I suppose it’s only the most desperate who apply now.

  Two p.m.

  The quiet that has settled over City Hall is nothing compared to the unusual silence of the city. I took a short walk over my lunch hour—just a circuit through Market Square and around the Palace—and found our once thriving marketplace completely deserted.

  It was not until I went near the Palace that I encountered signs of life. First I met the poor souls recruited to scrape the heavy frost from the footpaths: our once important and wealthy citizens forced into this bitter work in exchange for food. Then I saw the Palace itself, a bustle of activity. There was a light in every window and smoke from every chimney. I heard the laughter of ladies and saw the elegant fur-cloaked figures of officers coming and going at the gates. They all belong to that special club assembled by Kara Mia and the General: no doubt a club of bloodied hands. I hurried by, hoping I wouldn’t be noticed.

  Eight p.m.

  I was reading my forbidden book this afternoon.

  There was absolutely no business, but I was sitting in my office out of habit. With my secretary away and nearly all the staff on extended holidays, I felt little fear of discovery.

  The story I read is called “The Recalcitrant Guests.” It’s a good story in which everything works out alright, but I don’t like Mr. and Mrs. Pillar very much. If I were the doorman, I would not have let them back into the feast.

  I had just finished reading this story and was looking absently out the window when I saw the very last person I expected: Private Angus was walking past!

  I put on my overcoat and hurried outside. It was four o’clock and the daylight was waning, but he was easy to spot: he still wore his old army uniform.

  I caught up with him in a narrow aisle of the market and saw, at last, the bread seller. She was singing a song my grandmother used to sing. Angus bowed to her and then turned in my direction. His face was all alight and when he saw me, he cried out, “Mr. Mayor! I was hoping I’d run into you!”

  I didn’t know what to think. “Where have you been all this time,” was all I could say.

  “I been down in the dungeons, as a matter of fact. I’m headed back there now.”

  “The Palace dungeons?” I said, stupidly.

  “Sure. There’s many there that still want a bite of bread. Though,” here his face sobered, “most have passed on now. There’s only one or two under my care these days. Still,” his face brightened again, “the end is pretty darn near, so it ain’t no never mind.”

  “Jared,” the old bread seller said softly. I turned to see her holding out a loaf. “Come. This is for you.”

  I’d been thinking about bread all afternoon: my grandmother’s bread, fresh from the oven, spread with butter and strawberry jam. My own food stores are low.

  I must have been gaping at her like a landed fish, because she suddenly laughed and said, “Take them, son. Don’t be afraid.”

  So I took the bread from her. It was surprisingly heavy, not at all like the manufactured pastries I’ve been consuming for the past thirty years. She also gave me a flask of water which she poured from a jug. The water was scented somehow and put me in mind of summer afternoons under green trees, and fishing in sun-bright books as a small boy.

  “Thank you, mother,” I said. I wanted to hear her laugh again. I haven’t heard real laughter like that for such a long time.

  Then Angus said, “I’ll walk you home, gov’nor. The light’s about gone, but you’ll be safe with me.”

  As we were leaving, a man came up to the table. She said to him, “Hello Tom. How many today?” And he replied, “Twenty, mother, if you please.”

  Twenty loaves? How many people in this tired city are eating from the bread stall?

  All the way back through the Market Square, I never once thought of asking Angus why he’d failed to report for duty. Now that I think of it, it doesn’t really matter anymore. He’s better off doing whatever it is he’s doing. Yet how does he explain his presence in the dungeons to the officers in charge? Does Kara Mia know he is taking bread to her prisoners? Surely not.

  And why didn’t I ask to see the bread lady’s market license? I never once thought of it.

  December 20, --43

  MidWinter’s Eve

  Half past Eleven a.m.

  Breakfast with the Provost was a jolly affair—jolly, that is for an assembly of ancient duffers and a middle-aged mayor with a constant knocking in his ears. The Provost seemed distracted too. Still, we made as merry as we could over eggs and cheese, a light wine, and dried fruit. Apparently food stores at the University are dwindling just like those at City Hall.

  At eleven o’clock, when the Provost set out for the country to visit his mother, our party broke up. Before he left, I asked him about the little white-haired scholar who had given me my coat; he had not been present at our breakfast party.

  “Dear me,” he said, “I’ve no idea. I think I remember him. I hope he hasn’t…you know.” The Provost looked at me apologetically. “Well they sometimes do, you know, and then we find them later, sitting in a chair or something, somewhere or other.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about, but now, as I write this, I think he was wondering if the little white-haired scholar had died. I never even knew his name; the Provost couldn’t remember.

  Noon

  I saved the bread for today as a sort of MidWinter’s Eve feast. It’s all I had. I’ve just devoured the entire loaf and drunk all the water from the flask; the bread was just like grandmother’s. I couldn’t stop eating, just as I can’t seem to stop writing. Strangely, the knocking seems louder and more insistent than ever. When I close my eyes, I see a door and a bright light shining under the threshold. I cannot get the bread seller’s song out of my head; it joins with the knocking in perfect rhythm.

  I am going out for a walk.

  One p.m.

  As I walked in the deserted Square, a wind began to blow: a strong wind that swept the sooty cloud cover away! It reminds me of early spring days when I walked through fields of tulips with my grandmother. After picking as many flowers as we could carry, we’d take them home and set them in clay jugs all around the house. I have not seen flowers like that for some time. When did the flower sellers stop coming to market?

  Quarter past one

  Something about the clear stark sky and the wind whistling around the building has made me feel lonelier than ever, which is odd because City Hall is busy as a beehive. Yes, it’s true!

  When I returned from my noontime walk, I found nearly all the staff had come back to work and they are rushing around as if business is booming and their lives depended on getting it all done today. I know I sent around a memo giving everyone two extra days of holiday. They aren’t due to return to work until the day after tomorrow, but here they all are, working with strange urgency like a nest of hornets stirred up with a stick.

  Well, let them. I’ve shut myself in my office where it’s quiet. My secretary was smart enough to stay at home, and I’ve put the “Do Not Disturb” sign on my door. Now I shall read for a while. Let’s see, what story is next…oh yes: “The Girl Who Was Robbed.” I don’t remember this one . . . .

  Quarter past two

>   Curious. Whenever I read this book, the knocking stops. I’ve only just realized.

  I’m going out now to get more bread.

  Quarter to three

  I had just finished eating and reading another story when there was a banging on my door. I had barely enough time to hide my book when another of those blasted Palace couriers burst in and delivered this message:

  DATE: December 20

  TO: Mayor Jared Hobic

  FROM: Chief Advisor

  RE: The Tower Inn

  It has come to my attention, through the good services of the Food Agency Director, Fran Zlindric, that The Tower Inn, located at 23 Tower Road, is in possession of large quantities of food and firewood without application to the Palace or the Food Agency. Furthermore, it is suspected that the proprietors may be harboring a seditious artist, as well as other dangerous criminals.

  You and your “private guard” are hereby ordered to investigate and make the necessary arrests. This action is to be carried out immediately. Failure to do so will result in the immediate suspension of your duties and the detention of all members of your private guard.

  Oh horrors! She knows about my private guard! What else does she know? What information has Fran weaseled out of Cummings?

  There they are now, Fran and Cummings, outside, walking arm in arm! I must go and order Cummings to summon the others . . . .

  Half past three

  I have sent Cummings off to summon the men. How smug Fran looked; I could have strangled her. What she has wanted all along is now completely obvious: she wants to be Mayor! She wants my job! I’m damned if I’ll lie down and let her have her way. I’ll fight first.

  Four p.m.

  Half an hour has passed and Cummings has not returned with our men. I’d suspect him of conspiring with Fran and dragging his feet, but I made it clear to him that if orders weren’t carried out immediately, he would be detained in the dungeons along with the rest of us, by order of the Chief Advisor. That seemed to surprise him. He glanced sharply at Fran, but she never lost her self-satisfied look. Silly man. He probably thought she’d really fallen for him. Ha!

  Quarter past four

  Still no Cummings. The sun is rapidly disappearing; I can see it now just over the tops of the buildings. What a strange sight! I’d almost forgotten the look of a sunset.

  Five p.m.

  Where is Cummings? Where are the men? Surely an hour would have been sufficient to gather the guard—why is it taking so long?

  My job, probably my life, is in jeopardy now. All my service to the city, my sacrifices of conscience to the General’s agenda, my reputation, all could very well be snuffed out in a moment at an order from Kara Mia. What good has it been? Any of it?

  Sounding above all these horrid thoughts is that blasted knocking, and now the bread seller’s song.

  If only my men would come.

  Quarter past five

  Perhaps I don’t care about losing my position.

  The truth is I don’t care whether or not the people at The Tower Inn have obtained food illegally or not. What does it matter? They are not Fran’s slaves and they have not greased her palm; that’s probably all they’re guilty of.

  Sure I’ve taken bribes to shorten bureaucracy, but I would never have demanded heavy prices in money or servitude for something as fundamental as food. Would I?

  I begin to regret this life at City Hall. It seems, somehow, I’ve missed my way. If only some of my days and years could be swept away by the wind that cleared the sooty sky.

  It is half past five.

  At last I hear footsteps. My private guard is at the door. I must go now.