City of Saints and Madmen

by Jeff VanderMeer

  Alas, muddleheads with all-powerful spectacles pushed up on their brows, doltish jury lumps with puddings for brains—what constituted Established Squidology—swept Furness and Leepin’s findings aside as easily as their houseboat and they were lucky to escape that catastrophe with even the integrity of their earlier studies intact. Confined to the bin of rejects, labeled as “lunatics,” despite having made perhaps the single most important squidology discovery since Rebecca Yancy’s revelations concerning the air-water gill ratio, Furness and Leepin descended into that nightmare half-lit world of pseudo-science and alcoholism that so many of our practitioners enter never to return.25 (For more information on the circumstances surrounding this, our primary affliction, please refer to Hops and the Amateur Squidologist by Alan Ruch and The Squid on Our Backs, The Tentacles in Our Brains: An Account of a Descent into Madness by Macken Clark.)

  SQUID CROSS-COUNTRY ADVENTURES

  Reliable scientific study aside, at least two pieces of anecdotal evidence also point to squid intelligence and squid creativity.

  The first evidence concerns reports of squid perambulations on solid ground! On six separate occasions, individuals reported seeing groups of giant squid come up out of the water and “walk around” using shimmering globes of water encased around their gills and eyes to protect them from the villainous air. In all cases, the globe of water, tension unbroken, was held in place by four arms wound above the head, while the remaining four arms and two tentacles sufficed for the King Squid to drag itself over the grass. As they gafflocked along (a term I myself coined while experimenting with the squidly means of transportation out in the yard), intense communication shimmered like heat lightning across their skin, strobing from silver to red to blue to green to purple to black and back again within a matter of seconds. Where these adventurous squid were headed, the eyewitnesses could not say,26 being too shocked at the sight of these hardy invertebrate explorers of terror firma to do much more than bleat in panic and run away. One man even dropped his pipe and started a fire—quickly put out by a nonchalant water blast from the squid.

  As further proof of squid wiles, every witness encountered the squidpeditions in sparsely habitated regions near dusk, while walking alone. In each case, the delusional local authorities explained it away as a result of “poor light and bad eyesight.” In one case, the witness was asked if she hadn’t in fact seen a “balloon of some kind.” However, the more advanced and dedicated squidologist will note that the King Squid is, in its natural habitat, most active at dusk—and surely a cross-country jaunt of some length suggests a high level of activity! Alas, all of the accounts on this matter are protected under the quaint laws governing doctor-client privilege, as each witness has since been hospitalized for various and sundry psychological ailments, squidanthropy chief among them.

  HELLATOSE & BAUBLE: FACT OR FICTION?

  It has been more difficult for skeptics to scuttle the case of Baron Bubbabaunce & His Amazing Performing Squid. This act, associated with many a circus, from the Amazing Two-Headed Trilobite Brothers’ Cavalcade of Miracles to High Priest David Thornton’s Abyss of Sinfully Good Fun, consisted of George Bubbabaunce (known by his carny friends as “Bauble”) and his King Squid Hellatose Jangles performing a water puppet show. While “Bauble” narrated from the side, Hellatose Jangles created complex psychodramas based on the work of the obscure playwright Hoffmenthol (an influence on the great Voss Bender). Flanked on three sides by bleacher seating, the “theater” consisted of a rectangular pool of murky water siphoned in from the River Moth. Hellatose’s mantle and head provided an island or “stage” within the pool. Bauble would fit Hellatose’s arms with tentacle puppets. This meant that up to 10 puppets could inhabit a single scene—leading to extremely sophisticated productions27 that rivaled the pomp and circumstance of Machel and Sporlender. Two of Bauble’s comrades at the Abyss of Sinfully Good Fun recall that he did not seem to be the one in control of the artistic relationship. As quoted in Sneller’s A History of Traveling Medicine Shows and Nefarious Circi, the Four-Faced Lizard Boy, Samuel Pippin, indicated that “In their tent at night, they would have long arguments. Bauble would shout. Hella would respond with high-pitched squealings from his traveling pond. If the light was on in the tent, you could see Hella’s arms writhing as he tried to make some point with body language. Bauble would just stand there with shoulders slumped, like a hen-pecked husband.”

  Three-Jawed Shark Fin Girl claims to have witnessed even more damning evidence of squid intelligence. She entered the Bauble-Hellatose tent only to find the squid dictating new scenes to Bauble, Bauble reacting with severe annoyance as he wrote down a line only for Hellatose to object and force him to erase it and start over. “It seemed,” she said, “as if Bauble was just a scribe for Hella, the master playwright.”

  Certainly, the very public argument over set design that ended their relationship conveyed a succinct affirmation of squid intelligence, as Hellatose used his arms to make a rude gesture in Bauble’s general direction. Following this altercation, recorded in Elaine Feaster’s article for The Amateur Squidologist (see: Feaster, Elaine) neither man nor squid was ever heard from again.28

  Much nonsense has been expelled into print over the years about Bauble and Hellatose. The worst of this revolves around rumors, silly to the extreme, that both Sporlender and Bender owed many of their best lines to “a mysterious Mr. H,” to whom they would send dead scenes when their creativity had dried up . . . only to receive back, by anonymous messenger, a fortnight later, wonderful revisions . . . in a delicate handwriting that used squid ink.”29

  I need not point out the ridiculousness of this assertion—a squid would rather write with its own vomit than use its ink. The very thought is repugnant.

  NOTES

  6 A classic case study of the day-to-day reality of a noun transformed into mad adverb.

  7 My father’s eyes were a steely gray that locked in on the subject of his stare with a scientist’s ardor. Once seen, you could not be unseen by his gaze, even were he to turn away. My mother had pale blue eyes that never stared for long. They did not follow the fastidious detail of the stern words that issued from her mouth, but fluttered here and there. I recommend to every young squidologist that they study first their parents’ eyes before looking into the eyes of a King Squid. For you will then be surprised by how similar, despite the differences, the two species, in such different families, can be . . .

  8 Truant or troublemaking squidologists may actually know more but find themselves confined to restrictive settings in which it is difficult to obtain the proper books and tools to advance themselves in their chosen profession. See: Footnote #3. (In those early years, some sort of transformation may seem necessary, even desirable. Usually, this is just a condition of youth. However, in rare cases, it may develop into something miraculous. Refer to Roberts, M.A., for more information.)

  9 I would compare the problem to my father’s reliance on “fruiting bodies” when discussing mushrooms with the general populace. My father was a firm believer in the Invisible World simply because so much of his research depended upon the microscope. This formed a marked contrast to my mother, who used the widest celestial and psychic telescopes in hopes of catching a glimpse of God. Somewhere between the two extremes lie the young of the King Squid, which, although observable by microscope, must often feel like tiny gods adrift in some limitless expanse of darkness.

  10 See: An Amateur Squidologists Journey Toward Self-Realization: The Squid and I, by Richard Smythe.

  11 See Frederick Roper’s fascinating study, Incidences of Squid Incursions Among the Communities of the Lower Moth: Anecdotal Evidence Supporting the Need for Squid-Proof Habitats.

  12 Which leaves Edgewick with one valid conclusion, only implied by his book: “George Edgewick follows garbage scows.” My father used to call this sort of thing the “bookless theory.”

  13 It would be easier to just show you the infernal and uncomfortable thing than have to
describe it, frankly.

  14 Eyewitness accounts convey a sense of embarrassed terror. John Kuddle, a financial officer and former banker-warrior under Trillian, related that “I was walking down a quiet path by the river, on my way to the town of Derth, a big bag of money over my shoulder, when suddenly something hit me and knocked me off my feet. The coins in my bag went flying. It was only when I got up and surveyed my situation and found I was all wet and covered in bits of algae that I realized I had been doused—and there the big brute of a bastard was, lazing in the water with his mantel up, that tin plate eye staring at me as if to say ‘What are you going to do about it?’” (Local washerwomen also tell of being taunted by squid for sport.)

  15 As for evidence of souls, I can offer no evidence more circumstantial than the words of my mother upon our frequent returns from the Truffidian Church: “Nothing without bones to rattle can truly be said to have a soul.” (She was herself merely parroting the priest to whom she had expressed concerns about my interest in squidology. Needless to say, such fears were unfounded.)

  16 Zoologists have never caught a good glimpse of this whale, let alone been able to perform a taxonomy.

  17 Some squid have even been known to camouflage themselves perfectly as human beings. (See: Kranch, George, who claimed that he “often came upon squid masquerading as human beings.” How to tell the difference? “You must look at the purported human being from the corner of your eye. If you experience a shimmering ripple effect around the edges of its form, then it is actually a squid.” The ridiculous Kranch then writes, “Of course, sometimes I just see sunspots. And it can be embarrassing to net a squid camouflaged as a human and then have to let them go.”)

  18 Brod is clearly a congenial idiot hailing from a long line of idiots of the first order who would be better off counting the fins of the dull fish with which his name rhymes. Brod’s dive took place within the confines of a metal suit connected to an airhose. Assuming Brod was even receiving enough oxygen through his fragile lifeline to avoid brain damage, he had less than a slit of visibility through the poor quality glass of his face plate. Such visibility is, as I have previously pointed out while disposing of the mal-efficient Floxence, rendered moot by the silt content of the Moth anyway. I therefore have great difficulty believing his description of an “intricate device of communication that held me in thrall, the lithe sweep of tentacles forming signs and arcane letters that I could not decipher but nonetheless held me in awe of their magical meaning.” To which I reply: it’s the silt, man! The silt! Remember the silt before you fabricate outrageous lies. (This is good advice for any aspirating squidologist, I believe.)

  19 A replica of the blind has apparently been put on display in the Morhaim Museum for Scientific Advancement in the Biological Sciences just this past Thursday, according to a letter I have received.

  20 It would be of benefit to the general populace if this inversion of the usual professional relationship were applied to other fields.

  21 By an odd coincidence, the color scheme matches that of the Ambergrisian flag.

  22 That the notebooks of these two pioneers in squidology remain unpublished and must be crudely mimeographed by attendants and passed around to their colleagues at squid conferences is a travesty of science, the blame for which falls squarely upon the anti-invertebrate shoulders of the so-called “academic” journals.

  23 My father suffered from a similar affliction in his relationship with my mother. Although he did not allow it to ruin his studies, it did “mute” them to a degree. I would like to say that my mother misunderstood my father’s work, but I am afraid she understood it all too well. I loved her very much, despite the circumstances, but I do wonder what might have been for my father if she had left him to his own devices for more than ten minutes at a time.

  24 Of Science, one assumes. Not, as one twisted ambivert with mesomorphic tendencies shared with me recently, some anti-squid terrorist organization. Most of the theories one hears are not worth repeating.

  25 I sneer at those who claim Furness and Leepin were drunk long before they recorded the fateful events that ruined their reputation. As for a plot to collect insurance on the houseboat—such a rumor will not even receive a reply from me.

  26 Certainly not to rescue me, apparently, despite my efforts these many years on their behalf.

  27 Eyewitnesses believed Bauble used ventriloquism to create the voices of the characters. However, what if, instead, Hellatose was throwing his voice?

  28 Except for the odd children’s comic strip “The Adventures of Hellatose & Bauble” that ran for several years in local broadsheets. A sample of the text:

  Bauble & Hellatose are sitting in their circus tent, Bauble on a chair, Hellatose in his wading pool. Bauble is reading a broadsheet on the current state of Ambergrisian politics. Hellatose is imbibing, through a very long straw, a slightly alcoholic beverage with a tiny umbrella in it. It’s been a long day performing complex psycho-dramas for uncaring snot-nosed children . . .

  Hellatose: Bauble?

  Bauble: Yes, Hellatose?

  Hellatose: Bauble, why aren’t I better known?

  Bauble: Better known as what, Hellatose?

  Hellatose: As a playwright, Bauble. A playwright. I should be as well known as Voss Bender.

  Bauble (absorbed in his broadsheet): Really?

  Hellatose: Yes. I should be. I definitely shouldn’t be here. (Waves tentacles around to indicate the confines of the tent.)

  Bauble: You’re a squid, Hellatose.

  Hellatose: All the more reason. I should be splashing around in my very own place of honor in a private puddlebox at the theater.

  Bauble: There’s no such thing as a puddlebox, Hellatose.

  Hellatose (sighing): There should be, Bauble. There should be.

  29 My family used squid ink to write with for a time, while we had the squid mills. The squiders would bring it up in a glass container whenever we needed a refill. If I had known what indignities squid endure during ink collection, I would have used more conventional substances. My father, however, continued to use the ink and so it was never entirely exorcised from our house.

  A WARY INTRODUCTION TO THE FESTIVAL 30

  THOSE WITH MAGGOTS FOR BRAINS, WHO NUMBER MANY AND cure so few, often refer to the “misunderstood” Festival, as it were some sort of sorely maligned creature, unfairly subjected to electric shock therapy and short rations due to a vice that, if viewed in a more symphatetic light, might be revealed as virtue. The boobish Bellamy Palethorpe, in his weekly tirade for the Ambergris Daily Broadshoot, “Bellamy Retorts,” would take precious column inches away from spraying the arterial blood of his enemies across the printed page to reminisce about youthful, festival indulgences, referring to them as “innocent,” “fun-loving,” and “harmless antics.” Even the great lackbrain Voss Bender would at times shrug his shoulders and look to the heavens, as if the Festival existed independent of its participants. It is this kind of cloddish thinking that my mother, for all of her faults, railed against on a weekly basis. For if this theory of non-responsibility were universally applied, many an insensate, myopic fool, tripping through life in undeserved freedom, could hope for “redemption through reinterpretation”—a ham-fisted piece of Truffidian theology and a favorite dream of prison/asylum inmates.

  The “truth”—and every squidologist is always painfully aware that today’s truth may be tomorrow’s chum—is that the Festival, as Martin Lake once put it, “exists whole and darkly glittering in the mind of each citizen of Ambergris.” I would travel farther than Lake and state that each separate version/vision creates a splinter Festival—and another, and another, until, turning upon that distant stage, no stars above for comfort, one finds oneself trapped in a hall of fractured mirrors comprised of so many reflected Festivals that it becomes impossible to choose the real Festival, even should freedom depend upon it.31 The various accumulations of rituals and odd customs, gathered together and twisted into a beggar’s pack befo
re being offered up by smug experts as the “festival experience,” have no intrinsic worth.32

  The true “festival experience” cannot be fully explained even by the most learned squidologist. At the height of the Festival, one almost feels at home as, surrounded by squid floats and revelers in squid masks and squid balloons and the musky odor of fresh fish and seaweed, one can almost pretend that the trail of the light-festooned street is the Moth itself, and the revelers freshwater squid, gathered for social intercourse. The giddy energy, the sense of swimming upstream caused by the heavy thickness of the people you must brush up against to walk along the sidewalk, the sloshing of drinks in their glasses and cups, the wild surge of conversations, like the trickling of water over rocks downstream . . . There is such longing in these memories.

  I experienced my first Festival more than 15 years ago.33 Freed finally from the ancestral home, from the magnifying-glass attentions of my mother and the febrile energy of my father, I was taking classes with the esteemed squidologist Chamblee Gort and breathing in such liberty as I have not known since. The Festival came as a revelation to me. It wakened in me all of those long-repressed feelings that I had accumulated in my youth among the books, reading tome after tome in that library as large as many people’s houses. Like many others, I ran naked34 through the revelers, clad only in my squid mask and lost myself in the crowds. It was only later, when I remembered the attendant violence,35 that I realized the Festival was a poor substitute.36

  AN ATTEMPT TO ATTEMPT THE SUBJECT REGARDLESS

  However, despite my introduction, why not attempt (and tempt) the impossible.37 Therefore:

  The Festival did not originate as so many feckless historians (from Mr. Shriek on down) have suggested—namely, with an order by Cappan Manzikert I, first ruler of Ambergris, a year after founding the city. No, the Festival echoes a much earlier Festival put on by the indigenous tribe called the Dogghe.38