City of Saints and Madmen

by Jeff VanderMeer

  Lake frequently visited the post office and must have been familiar with its former function. When the old post office burned down and relocated to its present location in what was little better than an abandoned morgue, it is rumored that the first patrons of the new service eagerly opened their post boxes only to find within them old and strangely delicate bones—the bones Lake has “woven” into the “fabric” of his painting.

  Lake’s interpretation of the building is superior in its ability to convey the post office’s psychic or spiritual self. As the noted painter and instructor Leonard Venturi has written:

  Take two pictures representing the same subject; one may be dismissed as illustration if it is dominated by the subject and has no other justification but the subject, the other may be called painting if the subject is completely absorbed in the style, which is its own justification, whatever the subject, and has an intrinsic value.

  Lake’s representation of the post office is clearly a painting in Venturi’s sense, for the subject is riddled through with wormholes of style, with layers of meaning. —From Janice Shriek’s A Short Overview of The Art of Martin Lake and His Invitation to a Beheading, for the Hoegbotton Guide to Ambergris, 5th edition.

  Lake lived farthest from the docks and the River Moth, at the eastern end of Albumuth Boulevard, where it merged with the warren of middle class streets that laboriously, some thought treacherously, descended into the valley below. The neighborhood, its narrow mews crowded with cheap apartments and cafes, was filthy with writers, artists, architects, actors, and performers of every kind. Two years ago it had been resplendently fresh and on the cutting edge of the New Art. Street parties had lasted until six in the morning, and shocking conversations about the New Art, often destined for the pages of influential journals, had permeated the coffee-and-mint flavored air surrounding every eatery. By now, however, the sycophants and hangers-on had caught wind of the little miracle and begun to masticate it into a safe, stable “community.” Eventually, the smell of rot—rotting ideas, rotting relationships, rotting art—would force the real artists out, to settle new frontiers. Lake hoped he would be going with them.

  Lake’s apartment, on the third floor of an old beehive-like tenement run by a legendary landlord known alternately as “Dame Tuff” or “Dame Truff,” depending on one’s religious beliefs, was a small studio cluttered with the salmon, saffron, and sapphire bluster of his art: easels made from stripped birch branches, the blank canvases upon them flap-flapping for attention; paint-splattered stools; a chair smothered in a tangle of shirts that stank of turpentine; and in the middle of all this, like a besieged island, his cot, covered with watercolor sketches curled at the edges and brushes stiff from lazy washings. The sense of a furious mess pleased him; it always looked like he had just finished attacking some new work of art. Sometimes he added to the confusion just before the arrival of visitors, not so self-deluded that he couldn’t laugh at himself as he did it.

  Once back in his apartment, Lake locked the door, discarded his cane, threw the shirts from his chair, and sat down to contemplate the letter. Faces cut from various magazines stared at him from across the room, waiting to be turned into collages for an as-yet-untitled autobiography in the third person written (and self-published) by a Mr. Dradin Kashmir. The collages represented a month’s rent and he was late completing them. He avoided the faces as if they all wore his father’s scowl.

  Did the envelope contain a commission? He took it out of his pocket, weighed it in his hand. Not heavy. A single sheet of paper? The indifferent light of his apartment made the maroon envelope almost black. The seal still scintillated so beautifully in his artist’s imagination that he hesitated to break it. Reluctantly—his fingers must be coerced into such an action—he broke the seal, opened the flap, and pulled out a sheet of parchment paper shot through with crimson threads. Words had been printed on the paper in a gold-orange ink, followed by the same mask symbol found on the seal. He skimmed the words several times, as if by rapid review he might discover some hidden message, some hint of closure. But the words only deepened the mystery:

  Invitation To A Beheading

  You Are Invited to Attend:

  45 Archmont Lane

  7:30 in the evening

  25th Day of This Month

  Please arrive in costume

  Lake stared at the message. A masquerade, but to what purpose? He suppressed an impulse to laugh and instead walked over to the balcony and opened the windows, letting in fresh air. The sudden chaos of voices from below, the rough sounds of street traffic—on foot, on horses, or in motored vehicles—gave Lake a comforting sense of community, as if he were debating the mystery of the message with the world.

  From his balcony window he could see, on the right, a green-tinged slice of the valley, while straight ahead the spires and domes of the Religious Quarter burned white, gold, and silver. To the left, the solid red brick and orange marble of more apartment buildings.

  Lake liked the view. It reminded him that he had survived three years in a city notorious for devouring innocents whole. Not famous, true, but not dead or defeated either. Indeed, he took a perverse pleasure from enduring and withstanding the city’s countless petty cruelties, for he believed it made him stronger. One day he might rule the city, for certainly it had not ruled him.

  And now this—this letter that seemed to have come from the city itself. Surely it was the work of one of his artist friends—Kinsky, Raffe, or that ruinous old scoundrel, Sonter? A practical joke, perhaps even Merrimount’s doing? “Invitation To A Beheading.” What could it mean? He vaguely remembered a book, a fiction, with that title, written by Sirin, wasn’t it? Sirin, whose pseudonyms spread through the pages of literary journals like some mad yet strangely wonderful disease.

  But perhaps it meant nothing at all and “they” intended that he waste so much time studying it that he would be late finishing his commissions.

  Lake walked back to his chair and sat down. Gold ink was expensive, and the envelope, on closer inspection, was flecked with gold as well, while the paper for the invitation itself had gold threads. The paper even smelled of orange peel cologne. Lake frowned, his gaze lingering on the shimmery architecture of the Religious Quarter. The cost of such an invitation came to a sum equal to a week’s commissions. Would his friends spend so much on a joke?

  His frown deepened. Perhaps, merriest joke of all, the letter had been misdelivered, the sender having used the wrong address. Only, it had no address on it. Which made him suspect his friends again. And might the attendant, if he went back to the post office, recall who had slipped the letter through the front slot of his box? He sighed. It was hopeless; such speculations only fed the—

  A pebble sailed through the open window and fell onto his lap. He started, then smiled and rose, the pebble falling to the floor. At the window, he looked down. Raffe stared up at him from the street: daring Raffe in her sarcastic red-and-green jacket.

  “Good shot,” he called down. He studied her face for any hint of complicity in a plot, found no mischief there, realized it meant nothing.

  “We’re headed for the Calf for the evening,” Raffe shouted up at him. “Are you coming?”

  Lake nodded. “Go on ahead. I’ll be there soon.”

  Raffe smiled, waved, and continued on down the street.

  Lake retreated into his room, put the letter back in its envelope, stuffed it all into an inner pocket, and retired to the bathroom down the hall, the better to freshen up for the night’s festivities. As he washed his face and looked into the moss-tinged mirror, he considered whether he should remain mum or share the invitation. He had still not decided when he walked out onto the street and into the harsh light of late afternoon.

  By the time he reached the Cafe of the Ruby-Throated Calf, Lake found that his fellow artists had, aided by large quantities of alcohol, adopted a cavalier attitude toward the War of the Reds and the Greens. As a gang of Reds ran by, dressed in their patchwork crimson r
obes, his friends rose together, produced their red flags and cheered as boisterously as if at some sporting event. Lake had just taken a seat, generally ignored in the hubbub, when a gang of Greens trotted by in pursuit, and once again his friends rose, green flags in hand this time, and let out a roar of approval.

  Lake smiled, Raffe giving him a quick elbow to the ribs before she turned back to her conversation, and he let the smell of coffee and chocolate work its magic. His leg ached, as it did sometimes when he was under stress, but otherwise, he had no complaints. The weather had remained pleasant, neither too warm nor too cold, and a breeze ruffled the branches of the potted zindel trees with their jade leaves. The trees formed miniature forests around groups of tables, effectively blocking out rival conversations without blocking the street from view. Artists lounged in their iron latticework chairs or slouched over the black-framed round glass tables while imbibing a succession of exotic drinks and coffees. The night lanterns had just been turned on and the glow lent a cozy warmth to their own group, cocooned as they were by the foliage and the soothing murmur of conversations.

  The four sitting with Lake he counted as his closest friends: Raffe, Sonter, Kinsky, and Merrimount. The rest had become as interchangeable as the bricks of Hoegbotton & Sons’ many trading outposts, and about as interesting. At the moment, X, Y, and Z claimed the outer tables like petty island tyrants, their faces peering pale and glinty-eyed in at Lake’s group, one ear to the inner conversation while at the same time trying to maintain an uneasy autonomy.

  Merrimount, a handsome man with long, dark lashes and wide blue eyes, combined elements of painting and performance art in his work, his life itself a kind of performance art. Merrimount was Lake’s on-again, off-again lover, and Lake shot him a raffish grin to let him know that, surely, they would be on-again soon? Merrimount ignored him. Last time they had seen each other, Lake had made Merri cry. “You want too much,” Merri had said. “No one can give you that much love, not and still be human. Or sane.” Raffe had told Lake to stay away from Merri but, painful as it was to admit, Lake knew Raffe meant he was bad for Merri.

  Raffe, who sat next to Merrimount—a buffer between him and Lake—was a tall woman with long black hair and dark, expressive eyebrows that lent a needed intensity to her light green eyes. Raffe and Lake had become friends the day he arrived in Ambergris. She had found him on Albumuth Boulevard, watching the crowds, an overwhelmed, almost defeated, look on his face. Raffe had let him stay with her for the three months it had taken him to find his city legs. She painted huge, swirling, passionate city scapes in which the people all seemed caught in midstep of some intricate and unbearably graceful dance. They sold well, and not just to tourists.

  Lake said to Raffe, “Do you think it wise to be so . . . careless?”

  “Why, whatever do you mean, Martin?” Raffe had a deep, distinctly feminine voice that he never tired of hearing.

  The strong, gravely tones of Michael Kinsky, sitting on the other side of Merrimount, rumbled through Lake’s answer: “He means, aren’t we afraid of the donkey asses known as the Reds and the monkey butts known as the Greens.”

  Kinsky had a wiry frame and a sparse red beard. He made mosaics from discarded bits of stone, jewelry, and other gimcracks discovered on the city’s streets. Kinsky had been well-liked by Voss Bender and Lake imagined the composer’s death had dealt Kinsky’s career a serious blow—although, as always, Kinsky’s laconic demeanor appeared unruffled by catastrophe.

  “We’re not afraid of anything,” Raffe said, raising her chin and putting her hands on her sides in mock bravado.

  Edward Sonter, to Kinsky’s right and Lake’s immediate left, giggled. He had a horrible tendency to produce a high-pitched squeal of amusement, in total contrast to the sensuality of his art. Sonter made abstract pottery and sculptures, vaguely obscene in nature. His gangly frame and his face, in which the eyes floated unsteadily, could often be seen in the Religious Quarter, where his work enjoyed unusually brisk sales.

  As if Sonter’s giggle had been a signal, they began to talk careers, gauge the day’s fortunes and misfortunes. They had tame material this time: a gallery owner—no one Lake knew—had been discovered selling wall space in return for sexual favors. Lake ordered a cup of coffee, with a chocolate chaser, and listened without enthusiasm.

  Lake sensed familiar undercurrents of tension, as each artist sought to ferret out information about his or her fellows—weasels, bright-eyed and eager for the kill, that their own weasel selves might burn all the brighter. These tensions had eaten more than one conversation, leaving the table silent with barely suppressed hatred born of envy. Such a cruel and cutting silence had even eaten an artist or two. Personally, Lake enjoyed the tension because it rarely centered around him; he was by far the most obscure member of the inner circle, kept there by the strength of Raffe’s patronage. Now, though, he felt a different tension, centered around the letter. It lay in a pocket against his chest like a second heart in his awareness of it.

  As the shadows deepened into early dusk and the buttery light of the lanterns on their delightfully curled bronze posts held back the night, the conversation, lubricated by wine, became to Lake’s ears tantalizingly anonymous, as will happen in the company of people one is comfortable with, so that Lake could never remember exactly who had said what, or who had argued for what position. Lake later wondered if anything had been said, or if they had sat there, beautifully mute, while inside his head a conversation took place between Martin and Lake.

  He spent the time contemplating the pleasures of reconciliation with Merri—drank in the twinned marvels of the man’s perfect mouth, the compact, sinuous body. But Lake could not forget the letter. This, and his growing ennui, led him to direct the conversation toward a more timely subject:

  “I’ve heard it said that the Greens are disemboweling innocent folk near the docks, just off of Albumuth. If they bleed red, they are denounced as sympathizers against Voss Bender; if they bleed green, then their attackers apologize for the inconvenience and try to patch them up. Of course, if they bleed green, they’re likely headed for the columbarium anyhow.”

  “Are you trying to disgust us?”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me if it were true—it seems in keeping with the man himself: self-proclaimed Dictator of Art, with heavy emphasis on ‘Dic.’ We all know he was a genius, but it’s a good thing he’s dead . . . unless one of you is a Green with a dagger . . .”

  “Very funny.”

  “Certainly it is rare for a single artist to so thoroughly dominate the city’s cultural life—”

  “—Not to mention politics—”

  (“Who started the Reds and the Greens anyhow?”)

  “And to be discussed so thoroughly, in so many cafes—”

  (“It started as an argument about the worth of Bender’s music, between two professors of musicology on Trotten Street. Leave it to musicians to start a war over music; now that you’re caught up, listen for God’s sake!”)

  “—Not to mention politics, you say. And isn’t it a warning to us all that Art and Politics are like oil and water? To comment—”

  “—‘oil and water’? Now we understand why you’re a painter.”

  “How clever.”

  “—as I said, to comment on it, perhaps, if forced to, but not to participate?”

  “But if not Bender, then some bureaucratic businessman like Trillian. Trillian, the Great Banker. Sounds like an advertisement, not a leader. Surely, Merrimount, we’re damned either way. And why not let the city run itself?”

  “Oh—and it’s done such a good job of that so far—”

  “Off topic. We’re bloody well off topic—again!”

  “Ah, but what you two don’t see is that it is precisely his audience’s passionate connection to his art—the fact that people believe the operas are the man—that has created the crisis!”

  “Depends. I thought his death caused the crisis?”

  At that moment, a group
of Greens ran by. Lake, Merrimount, Kinsky, and Sonter all raised their green flags with a curious mixture of derision and drunken fervor. Raffe sat up and shouted after them, “He’s dead! He’s dead! He’s dead!” Her face was flushed, her hair furiously tangled.

  The last of the Greens turned at the sound of Raffe’s voice, his face ghastly pale under the lamps. Lake saw that the man’s hands dripped red. He forced Raffe to sit down: “Hush now, hush!” The man’s gaze swept across their table, and then he was running after his comrades, soon out of sight.

  “Yes, not so obvious, that’s all.”

  “Their spies are everywhere.”

  “Why, I found one in my nose this morning while blowing it.”

  “The morning or the nose?”

  Laughter, and then a voice from beyond the inner circle, muffled by the dense shrubbery, offered, “It’s not certain Bender is dead. The Greens claim he is alive.”

  “Ah yes.” The inner circle deftly appropriated the topic, slamming like a rude, massive door on the outer circle.

  “Yes, he’s alive.”

  “—or he’s dead and coming back in a fortnight, just a bit rotted for the decay. Delay?”

  “—no one’s actually seen the body.”

  “—hush hush secrecy. Even his friends didn’t see—”

  “—and what we’re witnessing is actually a coup.”

  “Coo coo.”

  “Shut up, you bloody pigeon.”