Celebrant Read online

  How cold it is! (he thinks)

  And later,

  What has this shrinking or this tingling or this flashing silvericity have to do with ‘cold’?

  And later—a moment later,

  But then what does silver, or what has ink, or paper, or a sound made with the vocal folds, have to do with temperature? Or ‘cold’ with cold?

  When deKlend wakes up again, a number of students sit around him. According to the chalkboard, the subject of the class is FLATTERY.

  Do they know I am already an expert? (deKlend wonders) I could be teaching this class.

  There are four teachers roaming the irregular aisles in this one room. The students are informed that attendance is not compulsory and all of them immediately leave.

  I don’t want to sit in here either (deKlend thinks)

  In the halls, teachers mill in among the less numerous students a bit like contented nuns, trailing contrails of secondgradeteacherperfume. To deKlend this already seems like an anomaly; there’s something about the place that is fundamentally disengaged from activity. Nothing happens here.

  A tug on his arm summons him to meet Dr. Politte, the acting dean. The interview is conducted in her high-ceilinged, gaunt-windowed office, faceted in shape; a dim white vault, icy as a refrigerator.

  I’m Dr. Politte.

  She introduces herself without getting up or doing much else but shivering, as though stirring herself even that little, just to greet him, had unsettled an invisible envelope of warmth.

  It’s always so cold in this building! (she says)

  The tailings of her words repeat and fade.

  —cold in this building!—cold in this building!—cold in this building...

  She gestures at the windows, crowded with dark branches.

  With those hemlocks blocking the windows, no heat can get in at all (she complains softly) And look—Look where that leak was—

  She points to water damage on the ceiling, but deKlend has to squint for some time at it before he sees the bulge; some crumbling building matter, pale blue foam with flowers printed on it, not at all conspicuous.

  Her desk is surrounded by a circle of wire wastepaper baskets. Perhaps, deKlend thinks, she has one for each hour.

  I’d like to examine your credentials, if you please, (she says)

  Sitting behind the desk she seems too small for it, and like a half-melted candle, just starting to lose its shape.

  Certainly, (deKlend replies) and begins rummaging in his empty, rusty leather portfolio. Flakes of leather crumbling from it slide down his pant legs to the floor.

  May I borrow a pen? (he asks without looking up)

  Without a word, she hands him a fountain pen across the desk. He leans way over to take it and thanks her, fumbling with half-melted zippers and rusty snaps.

  And (he adds a moment later)—a large sheet of paper, or vellum... or parchment, anything like that... would you happen to have?—About this dimensions?

  He is trying to keep the portfolio from spilling onto the floor, and bunches it up roughly under one arm while making squirrelly gestures with his hands.

  She smoothly opens the right upper side drawer of her desk, reaches in and pulls out a paper tube, which she holds out to him gently, so as not to crush it. He thanks her, taking it in his hand with care. He closes his portfolio and sets it across his knees, spreading the paper on it, pen between his fingers like a cigar, leaning too close to the desk.

  Ink?—Please, ink?

  From the same drawer, which she hadn’t bothered to close, she produces an inkwell and passes it to him. He thanks her, puts it on the edge of the desk nearest him, fills the pen, and begins to draw.

  The hours pass in silence, except for the scraping of the nib. Dr. Politte sits behind her desk, gazing at nothing with a wistful expression.

  deKlend abruptly passes the rattling paper to her, making a little inarticulate noise of satisfaction. She examines its curlicues, the incantatory inscription coolly glowing with prestige, noting the superb draughtsmanship, and scans the text in both calligraphy and black letter.

  Where is your name? (she asks finally)

  —Isn’t it there?

  Your name isn’t anywhere on this (she says gently, brushing the paper with her hand)—No one’s is. I’m afraid I can’t possibly accept this.

  She rolls it up and sets the tube on her right shoulder, balancing it there. She lowers her hand, looking at him sympathetically. Then, raising her hand again, and without removing her eyes from him, she pushes the tube with her index finger until it slips off her shoulder and down into one of the trash baskets.

  He screws the cap back onto the fountain pen despondently.

  If only someone suitable had applied (she sighs)

  Presently the faculty secretary accosts him in the hall.

  You can sleep on the sofa in there tonight.

  —in there tonight,—in there tonight,—in there tonight...

  The staff lounge is also dark and narrow, with a splintery wooden table running along the only wall with windows. Staff come in and out constantly. deKlend misses him at first, but the music director is sagging directly behind the door, under the unlit reading lamp, looking like an epitomization of fatigue. Two persons, and since the power is out it’s of course too dim in there to see them, but they sound like teachers, go striding by at a rate better suited to walking out-of-doors.

  So-and-so was the worst mortician in the business. He was so bad his clients walked out on him.

  Oh I think you’re crazy, (the other snaps peevishly)

  —And? (is the dry rejoinder)

  uhahem... well...

  —Is this a sanatorium? (deKlend wonders, suddenly frightened)

  He looks at the thick, bilious paint on the walls, the cruel, gleaming stone floors, polished with bloodstain-resistant wax. The sofa he lies on is not only narrow but so low to the ground no one could sit on it without their knees coming up around their ears. So, could it be he lies on a cot, actually? He jerks his blankets together and grips them tightly.

  —I am not in the madhouse (he tells himself fiercely)

  In Votu:

  The shadows in Votu all look like shadows only as long as you don’t examine them too closely—then you notice they’re actually all a very dark white.

  The stones of the city are blue and green as long as you don’t look at them too closely—if you do, then you see right away they’re all as white as snow, which is actually transparent, having no color at all, even though snow is white.

  *

  Citizens of Votu resort to litigation, even where crime is concerned, only as a last resort. All cases are tried in a chamber of the city factory called the court shop. This court is directly presided over, not quite in person, by the Goddess of Justice. This is a huge bronze machine, whose design applies certain principles gleaned from close observation of the natural robots. She approaches the bench from behind, with a tread so heavy it shakes the room, emerging from the gloom of a narrow recess to take her position at the gavel. Her position is so lofty, no one can see whether or not she takes up and strikes the gavel, or simply emits the knocks. Technically naked, she robes herself in rippling air, whose distortions help to preserve her dignity. She listens impassively to each counsel, who is permitted a fixed time in which to plead his case. It is understood that the attention of the Goddess is available to the speaker only during that time, and that, once its duration has elapsed, not another word can she hear. When the attorney is done, or when the time is up, a chime is rung.

  A girl of no more than fourteen years is attached to the court, and her voice is the last to be heard by the Goddess in each case. The girl speaks and rings a chime, and then performs her particular function. Before giving a verdict, the Goddess of Justice always drinks a glass of water. The girl’s task is to pour the glass and offer it to the Goddess. The water is specially treated by the selzoids—people who live in the hinterlands and cannot survive without constant carbo
nization—so all its residues are exactly balanced. The girl pours this glass of water from a steel ewer and carries it to the bench on a round lacquered tray. The Goddess takes the glass in her hand with a faint click. When her lips, which had till that moment seemed welded shut, part—everyone present holds breath an enchanted moment—a shining meniscus can be seen inside them. She drains the glass at a draught, with audible gulps, followed at once by a hollow sigh, and the verdict, after which she turns and walks back into her alcove. The justice of her verdicts is not often questioned, but there is no legal reason that a case cannot be brought before her again and again until the more persistent side gets the answer it wants. Her impartiality is guaranteed because she is completely apart from the life of the city.

  The Goddess is only one of a great many different kinds of machinery produced in the shen processors of the city factory. This edifice is a long building that snakes up into the mountains, the only building in Votu, apart from the outer walls, to cross the boundary line into the future districts. The factory groans at intervals, a drawn-out rasp like a hoary, chain-smoking old ram clearing his throat, to signal changing shifts. The workers are unionized by the Motheaten socialists, their books turning brown.

  The factory produces a form of spectral wafer known as insulation, which is traded on long thin chrome spindles, and adminicules, made from ordinary water. The heavy water that this process creates is used to run the machinery that produces the celestials, and the light water is pumped throughout the city grid. Adminicules are microscopic particles of administration which, when combined in sufficient numbers, form decisions, usually in the shape of metallic statues or cylinders—the Goddess of Justice being a rare and prohibitively expensive ultradecision. Ordinary decisions are used to monitor other production processes, including the layering of insulation on musculosks (musculo-skeletal units) in the incubators, thus producing the artificial people called modets. Some modets are thought to be incarnations of persons engendered by sexual intercourse not resulting in pregnancy.

  The inhabitants of Votu believe that every sexual act engenders life. This life may be produced in the usual way, or in some other way, and the power to create life sexually is not in any way confined in space or in time, nor with respect to persons. Unmoored in time and place, some sexual acts drift on a kind of conatus peculiar to them until intercepted by some sort of an opportunity, and then incarnate in new life: animal, or “minate” [the sages of Votu consider the mineral to be living precursor to the vegetable, so the latter two categories are both equally indicated by the Votuvan term “minate”]. In some cases, the unmoored sexual act produces human forms, who appear in the future districts of the descending city. The circumstances of their invisible parturition are unique to each case. These beings are physically identical to humans engendered in the usual way, although they can be born at any age. A handful are born old and decrepit, living only a short time. The brains of these others are developed for the most part in keeping with their apparent age, so the aged newborns appear stocked with full memories. At least one proved to be highly accomplished, and lived long enough to compose an influential dance.

  In most cases these others simply join the people of Votu and lead lives no more or less likely to be remarkable in any other way. They can however be distinguished by a special birthmark, a sooty smudge that appears persistently on the skin’s surface at a particular spot, different for each. The smudge can be marred by rubbing, or scrubbed entirely away; it will return in roughly the same place. The mark actually consists of soot, graphite, charcoal, lead, minates, or combinations of these.

  In reference to the mark, which resembles a smoke-stain, the others are colloquially referred to by the nickname, “Burn.” This is not a generic name; they are not collectively known as Burns. If someone exhibits the mark, one is free to say to him or her, with a jaunty air, Well Burn, how’s the family? Or, casually, Come back later, Burn.

  The whispering statue teacher, ivy blanketing the ruined church is its nervous system... the blindfolded upraised face the light on the face... cheek-to-cheek with its marble slab, the cadaver murmurs, It is their statues who rule us.

  The teachers! False modets! They’ve come, creeping out of the ground and street, curling around the edges of the houses like scraps of mist... but they are hard as stone, their livid, unblinking eyes burn with white rage, the earth trembles beneath their silent feet, gelatinous smoke creeps from their lips, parted in a grimace like the fixed spasm of some feebly-remembered anguish. When they become aware of the presence of a child of school age, their smooth, gliding motion abruptly changes, and they advance in galvanic vibrations, snaking out their arms and legs in rigid angular ways.

  Citizens of Votu defend their homes and places of work by decking them out in enchanted awnings, made by the carpet weavers. Votu is a city of vividly-patterned awnings; the buildings all look half-asleep unless a breeze is stirring. Then, they’re like the lover who wakes up next to you, fluttering eyelashes and inviting you to pick up where you left off, unless the breeze becomes a strong wind. Then, they’re like bedraggled, unshorn sheep turning their flanks to the elements and the wiser folks will roll or crank them in again. Awning up, shutters closed, an old man surprised by sleep, his eyebrows still raised.

  The magic land: where corpses mill... a corpse strolls by, whistling... sounds are sometimes visible, the shape and color of his words... don’t listen to that melody if you want to stay sane...

  Studious in the magic land the brain grows heavy with powers, enacting the conflict in itself, the crash of desires in a hermetic ghetto, on the brink of the land of no memory, inhabited by neither rich nor poor but those who are sealed into a dream of magic and the supernatural, by turns tormented and enraptured over correspondences and omens, who can see the sun shine at night and the moon by day, whose torches candles and fireplaces shed darkness in ghoulish old houses, where the corners, attics, closets and basements blaze with light.

  Like it?

  “Like it, Burn?”

  deKlend:

  The Madrasa Dabeb Chafif is still a family business, run by Mrs. Manoah’s son Julien. The next morning, deKlend watches from the window of the teacher’s lounge as Julien’s smoking helicopter hacks up from behind the hemlocks and lands on a ledge thrust out into the void.

  Oh, they’re back early, (the music director groans)

  deKlend spends much of the day delivering messages, going to and fro and up and down among the rainstreaked concrete buildings, which are scarcely less run down than the teachers. There is a canal of caustic-looking black water and a loading dock where barrels of fresh explanations are unloaded on a regular schedule. Manoah is able to procure them through his black market connections.

  deKlend finds Manoah interesting, and would cultivate his acquaintance if he didn’t refuse all unnecessary conversation with anyone he regards as a social inferior: a narrow circle, extending only to his immediate family. To the best of deKlend’s knowledge, this storied family consists in Julien and his sister Angela, a big oafish woman with steel-grey hair who stomps around in old brogans and short khaki pants. A few inches of wide, mayonnaisey knees peep out from above the tops of her long stockings, made from black sponges.

  Manoah attires himself in the most insanely flamboyant style deKlend has ever seen. He teases his pale red hair out until it radiates from his head in a fantastic ginger corona that would have made a thinner man look like a giant dandelion. His broad, flat upper lip is smooth and a little oily; he has a carroty goatee and a ruddy-purplish, terra-cotta complexion. Everything he wears is copious, flowing, gauzy, flame-colored, and surmounted by capes with stiff collars, so he always looks as if his head, wanly flaming, had broken through, and gotten stuck in, the bottom of a decoratively-ornamented colander. He keeps his hands in magnificent condition; the nails gleam like opal flakes—but deKlend’s are still more beautiful. Manoah snatches papers from him without turning toward him, nostrils flickering, and without swivelli
ng his piggy little eyes. deKlend thinks he is jealous.

  Scuttlebutt solemnly avers there is a wife somewhere, although it is hard to imagine what species of womanhood would freely join herself to such a creature, but evidently it was, and still might nearly be, a great aesthetickal affair of the heart. According to rumor, she, who is never reliably named but could be anything from Yvelynne to Mulcybirette, is a votary of the muse. Her sensibilities are of such a lofty delicacy that she foreswears to commit her works to writing, let alone anything so vulgar as print. The hieroglyphs of her virtually imperceptible melodies are written only with the ethereal pencil of subtle, starlike inspiration on the tenuous pages of her memory, and she herself is never seen.

  As a rule, Manoah holds diwan during his prolonged imperial baths and expects his retainers and attendants to take notes and recite information to him while he talks suavely on a meerschaum phone or as he scrubs and salves his acres of pink flab.

  “Every night at midnight, Manoah strips naked, puts a tasselled hat on, hops into bed, and reads slave narratives. He’s a completely unreasonable person.”

  deKlend overhears most of this from the staff quidnuncs and the rest from Nardac, the art historian. She’s an elderly woman, completely bald, who wears caftans and ungainly jewelery.

  Nardac seems to take to deKlend.

  Come have a look at our gardens.

  —gardens,—gardens,—gardens.

  Looking up at the brownish nothingness overhead, deKlend experiences horror, and for a moment seems about to suffocate under the heavy lid. This impression fades, without entirely disappearing, as he walks with Nardac. She talks at random about the gardens, the whrounims, the scene.

  The overhanging mountains are filled with haunted houses, and from a distance one can often make out people fleeing from one or another of them, aghast. In their frenzy to escape they often collide with each other at crossroads. Traffic congestion is at its worst around midnight. In recent years this problem has diminished a bit with the establishment of a refugee network, by means of which the gastered visitors rotate from one haunted house to another, in the belief that one who has been marked for destruction by a particular house is thereby immunized against the depredations of any other.