City of Saints and Madmen

by Jeff VanderMeer

  The Dogghe worshipped what we now call the “Mothean Scuttlefish,” a dour type of squid, primitive by invertebrate standards, that likes nothing better than to wallow in the silt at the river’s bottom and siphon gross sustenance from the rotting refuse to be found there.

  The Dogghe believed—for reasons forever lost to us along with most of the Dogghe—that the flesh of the scuttlefish held regenerative powers and heightened the amorous abilities of those who ate of it. Their annual celebration, held at roughly the same time as the modern day Festival, culminated with the choosing of one man to hunt the scuttlefish. Given that the average Mothean Scuttlefish, flattened against the riverbed, forms a circle roughly six feet across and that their primary defense consists of stuffing as much of their invertebrate bodies as possible down their attacker’s mouth and other available orifices, being selected cannot have been considered much of an honor by the selectee. (Imagine being suffocated underwater rather than drowned.)

  No doubt the Manzikert clan, opportunists as always, usurped the Dogghe’s festival for the practical reason that it marked the start of the best (“best” is a relative term in this context) time to hunt the King Squid but also to replace the Dogghe’s rituals with stronger “magic.”

  From dubious sources such as Dradin Kashmir’s third-person autobiography, Dradin, In Love,39 we can extract a few additional “facts”:

  The Festival is a celebration of the spawning season, when the males battle mightily for females of the species and the fisher folk of the docks set out for a month’s trawling of the lusting ground, hoping to bring enough meat back to last until winter.

  Beyond the obvious errors in this silly passage, I would point out the pathetic phallacy of battle. No such contests occur, except within the syllables of overheated ultra-decadent purple prose. The depiction of a “spawning season/lusting ground” conjures up a depraved scene of tentacular orgies with great strobing bodies entangled and writhing as they thrash about in the silt. Alas, King Squid mate for life and do not congregate to breed.40 Only “widowed” or “unwed” squid maneuver for mates, and then only in solitary, scattered rituals that occur at another time of year entirely.

  No, in fact, the squid gatherings at Festival time appear to consist of an orderly convocation of conferences—a convention of squid, at which a good deal of intense strobing occurs, but very little sexual activity.

  I cannot overstate the dangers involved in disrupting such meetings for the purpose of hunting squid. One year, Ambergris lost 20 ships and over 600 sailors. On average, the squid-hunting season results in at least 30 casualties and the loss of more than a dozen ships.41 Even the casual researcher begins to wonder, scrutinizing the statistics, whether the King Squid congregate merely to hunt humans. what benefits does Ambergris gain from this yearly sacrifice of men and materials? The answer is “an abundance of riches,” from the skin used as airtight containers and the meat sold to the Kalif’s empire, to the experimental new motored vehicle fuels developed by Hoegbotton & Sons Industrial Branch from squid oil and ink. Every part of the squid is used for some product, even the beak, which, ground down, comprises a key ingredient in the perfume exports that have, in recent years, brought money pouring into the Ambergris economy (little of which has gone into invertebrate research).

  THE SQUID MILLS OF MY YOUTH

  As an offshoot of the hunt—and perhaps to offset its unpredictable nature, Ambergris and many other Southern river cities experimented with squid mills for a time. Such attempts to breed the squid in semi-captivity were doomed to failure: the mills required too much space, blocking river traffic, and the squid were, at best, uncooperative.

  In a depressingly familiar scenario, replicated throughout my life with regard to the objects of my desire, I remember the squid mills precisely because I was not, at first, allowed near enough to them to satisfy my curiosity (and when I finally was allowed, I could not enjoy the experience).

  Framed by the third-story window of the locked library, the River Moth wound its way through the vast expanse of grounds to the west. With the naked eye, all I could make out of the squid mills was a glint of sun off metal and a suggestion of movement. With the aid of a spyglass, smuggled up from my rooms, I could just discern the unsubmerged portions of the squid mills: the tops of the huge metal cages, the great white pontoons that separated and supported them. Around these cages, from which I often fancied I saw a tip of tentacle creep out, strode the squiders in their red boots, overalls, thick gloves, and wide-brimmed hats. The single-minded attention they paid to their tasks only underscored the dangers of farming the squid.

  Those men assigned to the deeper parts of the river, which contained completely submerged squid cages, used “squilts”—long, thick stilts that required great strength to maneuver through the turgid water. The top half of the squilts could be detached for use as a weapon against either the captive squid or the wild squid that often attempted to free their brethren.

  From my vantage, through the selective eye of the spyglass, those squiders in the deepest parts of the river seemed miraculous—“walking” on the water, the squilts completely submerged as they trudged along, gaze intent upon the swirling silt below them. The job of the squider took a tremendous sensitivity, for they “felt” the water with the squilts, searching for the vibrations of wild squid, sometimes sweeping special hand-held hooks through the water, hoping to encounter rubbery flesh.42 When the caged squid were used as bait for juvenile wild King Squid, the squiders would herd the wild squid into nets using nothing but the hooks and squilts. On one occasion, I observed a sudden frantic splashing of water, the suggestion of a large, dark body shooting up from the river bed, followed by a squider suddenly disappearing, his squilts still upright and vibrating . . .

  Little wonder that to be “put through the squid mill” still means accomplishments gained through tedious yet dangerous labor. As we were driven through the local village on our way to the Truffidian Cathedral,43 I would often hear the children of the squiders singing:

  Oh, stop the squid mill, stop it, I pray

  For I have been tending squid a good deal today

  My head is quite sore from the thrashing I’ve received.

  And my squilty bosses ache so much that sorely I am grieved.

  Oh, stop the squid mill, stop it today, and I’ll be relieved.

  For a long time, stuck in that library for so many months, forbidden by my mother to go outside, I wanted to be a squider. Alas, eventually the village children got their wish and the squid mills died out. I turned to squidology and the library became associated not with squid mills but with a series of other banal events.

  RELATED SQUIDLORE

  Many of the folk remedies attributed to lesser squid do not apply to the King Squid, which seems oddly resistant to being of use. For example, the old remedy in which one “lays a squid on the feet of the afflicted” to cure toothache or headache would take on a nightmarish context should a two-ton squid be winched into position and dropped on the patient! Nor does the ground beak of the King Squid, mixed with wine, stimulate sexual prowess or draw the poison from the bite of a venomous snake.

  This also applies to the “squid cap”—a popular folk remedy to cure headaches and insomnia, immortalized in these lines from a play by Machel:

  Bring in the squid cap. You must be shaved, sir

  And then how suddenly we’ll make you sleep.

  Traditionally, the “squid cap” placed on countless hapless heads consisted of a mixture of raw squid tentacles, milk, honey, rice, and wine, contained within a poultice. Relatedly, to have a “head squid” means to have a head cold—an apt metaphor since a cold could often feel to the patient as if a squid had reached its arms down into his or her skull. Alas, the squid cap has never been touted as a cure for the common head squid. Alas, too, some folks have a more serious, permanent case of squid head. (Not to mention “squidlick,” a badly curled haircut.)

  Actual squid recipes have been around for ma
ny hundreds of years, as exemplified by this children’s rhyme taken from the Blythe Academy Squid Primer:

  Here’s water in your eye

  From a half-baked squid pie

  With the tentacles still a’twitching

  And the gummy arms still itching

  To catch you up to the beak

  The beak beak beak beak beak

  The Ambergris Gourmand Society has recorded 1,752 squid recipes originating from Ambergris alone.

  Many squid-related words have entered the Ambergrisian vocabulary. While “ambiloquent” still means to be dexterous in doubletalk, to be “squidiloquent” is a much higher compliment. A “squid wife” sells squid. A “squidler,” as opposed to a “squider,” is one who handles squid for entertainment. Bauble would have been a good example of a squidler. A “chamber squid” is a common Mud Squid placed in a hotel room during the Festival for luck. A “squidpiece,” no longer much used now that Cappans do not rule Ambergris, used to refer to what can only be termed a kind of ornamental protective gear worn outside of the clothing, covering the genitals. An “obsquidium” would refer to an act of compliance in squid cult orations.

  Of course, squidanthropy is the most famous aspect of squidlore.

  SQUIDANTHROPY

  Squidanthropy is not, as some have misidentified it, the domain of squid philanthropists but, rather, a form of supposed insanity in which a man imagines himself to be a squid. This may result in the subject taking to the waters in an attempt to rejoin his squidkin, with often fatal consequences if one wants to be honest about it, or simply a confused physiology: the subject may believe he or she is drowning while on dry land or feel the absence of gills or a mantle, or lose the ability to walk and find oneself swimming around in public fountains.

  The most committed of amateur squidologists will always empathize with the underlying urge toward squidanthropy. It is no empty promise, no empty threat of a cure. It is simply one way in which to fulfill the dream known since childhood: to understand the squid in all of its manifestations. What squidologist has not thought of what it would be like to have a mantle? What squidologist, while spraying water on his boyhood friends, many or few, has not thought how much more fun to have a funnel? It is inevitable that in the quest to get under the King Squid’s skin, the squidologist learns to think like the squid. Like the detective who, in investigating a murder, loses himself in the identity of the murderer, the squidologist may, at times, lose himself in the identity of the squid (which, admittedly, has committed no crime). That some few do not come back out the other side to “sanity” is to be expected—and, perhaps, applauded. Those who follow a singular obsession their entire lives should not be castigated for achieving the object of that obsession. Would we punish an artist for, through one last burst of genius flecked with insanity, creating the masterwork for which the world had been waiting since the beginning of the artist’s career? For make no mistake—in squidanthropy, the amateur squidologist longs to make the final, synergistic leap that separates observer from observed, patient from doctor. The doctor studies the thing the patient has become, whereas the patient longs to study and understand himself. The correlation and the corollary are clear . . . 44

  NOTES

  30 Ironically, my mother loved the Festival for its colors and its spectacle. She truly believed the Truffidian Church’s proclamation that the Festival had been “reclaimed for God.” My father, on the other hand, found it frivolous and dangerous—he forbade me from going at first, although he would never tell me why.

  31 Sometimes, one’s freedom, as any squidologist knows, depends on the patterns a squid’s ink makes as it lingers in the water.

  32 The situation is not without humor, for it closely resembles the situation that exists within a mental institution: in tight quarters, in similar garb, dissimilar minds attempt to build a consensus reality that, with a monumental effort of empathy, cannot—can never!—take concrete form. (If you do not like this new tone I have adopted, O Reader, remember that tone can change depending on the mood of the day and the amount of medication.)

  33 Better that I be deprived of the “Festival” as practiced here—it resembles the real Festival only in the way a soggy cupcake resembles a wedding cake.

  34 Alas, young squidologists, you are unlikely to see a woman in the places you’ll be traipsing through in your waterproof boots. Only a female squidologist will truly understand you—and they are few and far between; not every Furness finds his Leepin. You may find some comfort in documenting the sensual activities of the female King Squid, but danger lies therein as well.

  35 Issues of Festival violence and the involvement of Ambergris’ subterranean inhabitants, the gray caps, lie outside of this section’s purview and therefore I have chosen to ignore such unpleasantries for the moment.

  36 See: Cane, Albert.

  37 At least at the level of drought-like fact, one may make statements about the history of the Festival that, while boring, could be sworn to before a board of inquiry.

  38 As do, to be brutally honest, half of Ambergris’ current stuporstitions, including raw, chopped-up rabbit as a cure for eating poison mushrooms and the enchanting thought that lying in a pool of blood extracted from deer livers will bring back the dead. Believe me, if I thought it worked, I would have tried it first. (See: Stindle, Bernard.) At least the modern welt that is psychotherapy cannot be laid at the Dogghe’s door.

  39 Written by a madman, if you can believe that, and yet still read today.

  40 Unlike many human beings. Some, like my mother, could not stop praying off the local help.

  41 Squid baiting has never been a popular sport.

  42 These silent, solitary men must be of the sternest and calmest disposition while pursuing their work. Many, in fact, left the employ of the squid mills to become solo squid hunters, or “squidquellers,” and were often found in remote parts of the River Moth, waiting patiently on their squilts for the slightest ripple of squid.

  43 My mother was a devout Truffidian. My father and I would spend an hour at night with her, praying. Although I did not, as a rule, get to go out—as now as then—mother did insist we go to church: that stale and perfunctory place where all the cattle sit like people in the pews.

  44 I feel a great (s)urge, suddenly, to wax autobiographical, but shall contain the impulse until once again among my ancestral books. (Is this the “breakthrough” in my personal development long promised by the resident gods? Strange. It feels more like a death knell. I sense a great abyss opening up beneath me, a vein of deep water not previously negotiated by fish or squid.)

  THE THEORY

  NOW, AS WE COME TO THE CRUCIAL POINT, I SHALL BEGIN TO shed my horrible verbosity as if it were just my human skin. My words, I promise, shall become sure and fleet, as if my feet were different than those a poet knows (this squidologist’s fleeting fancy).45 I realize that I have, for the most part, documented the ridiculous theories of others in hopes of dissuading the reader from holding credence in them. However, I beg for the reader’s indulgence and endurance as I expound upon my own, scientifically-based theory about the King Squid, derived from my ceaseless and exhaustive study of this fascinating creature,46 both in its natural state and flatly two-dimensional within the pages of various books. (I have tried to hold back and speak only of these matters at the end, when you might be most receptive to what could, in the light of day that is the beginning of an essay rather than the dusk at the end, appear absurd. But now I am duty-bound to discuss it.)

  Preamble is overrated: In short, I believe that the King Squid serves as host for the so-called King Fungus cultivated by the gray caps—the purple wedge of evil that so proliferated across the city’s streets and dwellings prior to the murder we call The Silence. I do not suggest, as some have, that the gray caps’ spores alone cause the violence and disorientation that is the Festival. No, the truth is more insidious and invasive, dear reader. The unique symbiosis between fungi and squid is the reason why we remain
in subconscious thrall to the gray caps.47 We should not eat the flesh of the squid, for it has been contaminated by the fungus. (I say this having momentarily set aside my mantle as squid advocate.) Or, more specifically, the fungus incubating within the flesh of the squid. The fungus in the squid.

  The concept may be difficult for the layperson to understand, or to accept, but I base it on very sound invertebrate intuition. Squidologists, for example, have long wondered how the King Squid attains the raw intensities of red and green that make it burn with light under the stress of hunger or courtship—intensities impossible in any other squid, and strangely akin to the lights seen over landbound Alfar directly prior to the mass murder of The Silence. Not to mention the evidence of intelligence, landward jaunts, and messages sent to squidologists writ in pulsing skin.

  As all of these developments have occurred over the past 100 years, I believe it is only recently that the gray caps have fed a special fungus to the squid, using their submerged metal boats. These feedings have increased the squid’s color intensity and its ingenuity, while simultaneously contaminating the meat in such a way as to make Ambergrisians more susceptible to the gray caps’ spores during the (ironically-named) Festival of the Freshwater Squid. From squid steaks to squid stews, we poison ourselves more and more each year. Thus does the Festival violence spread and intensify.48

  If this monograph serves any useful purpose beyond the mundane, it is to caution against the eating of squid flesh.

  A VISION

  A vision may have no place in a serious monograph, but having come this far, I am reluctant to stop. This vision comes to me on days when I am fed squid meat. Alas, I cannot, even now, knowing what I know, being what I am, stop eating squid meat, such is the compulsion of the fungus within the squid.