City of Saints and Madmen

by Jeff VanderMeer

  by Orem Hoegbotton

  Nine souls we were in the old city. Now, there remain of us only two: myself and my brother Myon. Our father and mother knew what it meant to have a homeland, but lived to see it taken from them by the Kalif. Once, we were a united people living in Yakuda—a long, wide valley through which ran the Dalquin River. It was hilly territory and my ancestors liked nothing better than to ride through the thick forests on our sturdy horses. Before we settled in the valley, we had come from a place farther to the west where, for a time, we had been members of a mighty empire, much greater than that of the Kalif. Some even breathed the word “Saphant.” We were also known for our rug weaving and the elaborate ceremonies, lasting for weeks, by which we said farewell to our dead. But by the time I was born, the Kalif’s armies had driven us from our homes and we had become refugees. We lost our valley first. Then we lost our horses to the ice and cold as we circled far to the north to avoid death at the hands of the Kalif. As we entered the eastern lands, we lost our very name, “Hyggboutten” become “Hoegbotton” because this sounded less like the names of our distant cousins, the warlike Haragck.

  I have tried in this account to tell what our daily lives were like and how we came to survive and to prosper.

  The Early Days

  My brothers and sisters and I were all brought up in Urlskinder, south of the lands of the Skamoo, but far north of Morrow. Urlskinder lay upon the southeast bank of the Gebernia River, in that territory claimed by the Kalif’s Empire but rarely taxed or visited by his men. The city had been built on unending plains, with no escape from the cold winds that blew in from the river.

  Our house stood on a street that stretched from the Gebernia itself up to the market square and eventually to the larger city of Orsha, some seventeen miles to the north. My father would add rooms onto the house whenever we had the money. Behind the house, we made a very large garden, and in the front of the house a small garden with two cherry trees.

  I do not know the number of people who lived in Urlskinder, but I do know that we had one high church surrounded by five lesser buildings, all devoted to the northern-most outposts of the Truffidian faith. We had ten shops for supplies, 250 houses, and three schools. Everywhere, even with the muffling snow that caused such hardship, we could hear the students reciting from their texts through the late afternoon.

  The greatest majority of our people at that time were workers; very few merchants, although we would grow strong in that line. Most of them wove prayer shawls, shirts, and curtains. Some made the religious icons that the Truffidians used in their church and often exported to greater areas of worship in the south. Yet others learned to write the sacred words that were inserted into the icons.

  The best weavers were the artists who could weave as many as 60, 70, or even 80 threads into each inch of material. These weaver-artists were sought out by the wealthy buyers, and they were always busy. Everything they produced was bought. At the market, there would often be traders from far away, their ships anchored in the middle of the Gebernia and their longboats a common sight on the riverbank.

  We had five or six weaver stools in our house. Every adult wove, and even some girls were hired to work with us, but we were not of those who had steady work. There was a fixed price for the raw material, and every store would buy it in exchange for merchandise, but when we put our hard work into them and made the prayer shawls, few would buy them. They looked like the other shawls to us, but the people knew that we were not Truffidians.

  As I grew older, I could see that our father was a sick man. He could not work. In the summer, he would sit in our front garden trying to catch his breath. In the winter, he stayed in the house. His ambition was that at least one child of his should leave behind the old ways and become learned in the ways of the Truffidian priests, so as to advance the family. The old ways, tied more to the earth and the sky than to the idea of a God, marked us as different from the others. But, as insult added to injury, my father had to pay a fee for such teachings. I know this pained him since food was always scarce. An aura of poverty existed in our house. Sometimes I was sent away to the nearby town, to a hostel for the poor, and there I ate “days.” (This meant I was supposed to be given a meal in a different wealthy family’s house each day of the week. This was a customary way of seeing to it that students—who were generally poor—would get a good meal every day.) Often, there were “days” missing and I had to go hungry. I was ashamed to let anyone know of this, and I often starved. A few times, hoping for some frozen fish to thaw, I would go begging from the lone Skamoo who haunted the edges of the town like ghosts, but they were wary and would vanish into the snow before I could approach them.

  I remember that my father was learned in the old ways and read from the faded prayer books every afternoon, although he had to be careful to put such books away when the Truffidians made their rounds. Often, he would wake up in the middle of the night and study and groan. When I asked him why he groaned, he would say that it was his burden, which meant that ever since we had lost our home to Kalif and we were scattered throughout the world, his soul could find no rest.

  Our father was a wise man. People would come to him and ask him to settle their disputes. He would always give the verdict for the good of all, although in times of need our mother became mad at him because he refused payment for those services. He could also speak the language of the Skamoo and so he would help trappers discuss rights of land use. For this last service, he did accept payment.

  When I look back, I recall that we children lived in harmony together before we dispersed to our separate fates. There was even among us a certain discipline because we were careful not to mention our sick father. We felt a great respect for our parents and a special empathy for our mother, who constantly cared for us. She cooked and baked and was always busy, without rest.

  I can remember the serene atmosphere of the forbidden holy days when we would throw the windows open and those neighbors who dared came in to sing with us heartily and with pleasure. (We would always have a boy hidden on a rooftop to warn us of approaching priests.) After dinner, our father would go to his room to rest and my mother would read to a few women the battered prayer books. Already, our native language was beginning to be lost, because so few of the youth could read it, or wished to read it. Everything the Truffidians brought, they embraced, in rebellion.

  Sometimes, too, at night, by the fireplace, our mother would tell us stories of the old country, especially of daring raids on horseback against our enemies. I knew the stories of our resistance to the Kalif could not all be true or we would not have been driven from Yakuda, but I liked to hear them. Before we became displaced, my mother had been a great breaker and trainer of horses. There was no call for such a gift in our adopted home.

  Our father died at 48 years of age, in the year 7590 of our calendar. At the time, my oldest brother was in Kretchken, a village outside of Zamilon, with his wife and child. This left me as the oldest one at home, for my brother Myon was younger. I became the leader of the household. (I gave up my studies in the Truffidian faith, although I did not miss them.)

  It was recorded in the books of the local government that my brothers Myon and Bestrill were twins. According to the law, as the youngest brothers one of them had to go into the Kalif’s army, and this lot fell to Myon. But Bestrill felt that Myon could better help our household so he volunteered to go into the army. Bestrill died in battle against Stretcher John’s army, at a place called Thraan. We were told in a letter from one of his fellow soldiers that Bestrill had ridden to his death, his regiment attacking into the mouths of cannon. I am glad my father was dead before he could hear of this. When Bestrill died, they called up Myon to take his place. Our mother was heartbroken.

  Our Life Changes

  A short time after our father died and I became the head of the family, an organization of benefactors from Orsha tried to help the workers in Urlskinder in their poverty by constructing a big building for com
munal weaving. A man came from Morrow to manage the workers. His name was Frederick Alsomb, an agent of the respected Frankwrithe & Lewden. He raised wages and paid us with coins instead of the paper that was redeemable for food in the stores. It took from two to four sels per week for a family to exist in poverty and he paid six to seven sels.

  They needed a finisher (one who prepares the pattern) and they hired me because I knew how from preparing the pattern for weaving the prayer shawls. I do not remember my father ever weaving, but he prepared the threads and this I learned from him. (He was a big man and although he became gaunt in later years, his hands were always lithe and nimble.)

  I soon figured out quicker ways to make the patterns and Alsomb increased my wages. He also hired other relatives to work for him. We threw away our weaver stools and my mother had only to prepare meals for us. They spoke of us in the town: that we were buying bread in a bakery and that we ate meat every day and not just on holidays. Most important to me was the respect between Alsomb and myself. When he walked out of the office to inspect the weaving area every morning, he always talked to me for a few minutes. However, when he found out I was not a Truffidian, he began to ignore me.

  At that time all of the people in the town, especially the youth, were listening to revolutionaries and offshoots of religions. There were those who wished to raise an army and fight against the Kalif. There were those who called for a holy war against Morrow. There were those who wanted the mayor to make Truffidianism the official faith of the region. Everyone was against the Kalif, but most of it was talk only. We all knew that sooner or later the Kalif’s spies would make those who talked loudest disappear. And so it would happen—men and women taken from their homes, never seen again. It was rumored that in the prisons of the Kalif, the sound of our people chanting became ever louder.

  We had a bitter winter that year and because of this and the unrest, we received lower payment for our work. Some of us were let go, including me. As things became worse, many people wanted to settle in Morrow. It was a long journey to Morrow. It took a lot of money. I had already saved up enough money so that when Myon ran away from the army, I gave him money to go to Morrow, where I would go to meet him later. It took longer than I had thought, but eventually I made it to Morrow.

  Life in Morrow

  Morrow was usually not as cold as Urlskinder and its dark green forests reminded me of the stories our mother told of the old lands. We had already heard in Urlskinder that for one of us, displaced from our lands, to become employed as a weaver would be most difficult. Therefore, I began to learn how to make cloaks. My brother Myon was more worldly than I and more important he was sturdier; the army had strengthened him. Myon worked as a clerk for Frankwrithe & Lewden and we hoped to save enough to bring our whole family over. But the situation in Morrow became bad after we had been there for several months. Sometimes the agents of Frankwrithe & Lewden saw my people as competition and attacked us openly in the streets. There was no more work for Myon and he joined me in making cloaks and taking courier jobs. Still, we continued to send our money home.

  At that time, an office was opened in Morrow’s main square. It was supported by certain of our countrymen, to help the displaced spread even further south so they would not all have to live in Morrow. Myon went to the office and was advised to go to Nicea. There he would find work or he would be able to peddle in the “country.” We decided that he would go to Nicea and that I might follow later.

  In Nicea, my brother Myon used to ride on a cart and get off many miles from the city. There he would peddle at the farms where he sold various necessities that he had bought in Nicea on credit and sought to sell them for money. But as there was still a crisis, the farmers who purchased the merchandise paid with butter, eggs, and chickens.

  That second winter was long and bitter. Myon could not return to help and my peddling small articles from house to house made hardly enough money for one meal a day. My shoes were ruined and I could not afford to replace them. I gave up my living space in a loft to buy secondhand shoes and for two months I hid in the back of the Truffidians’ cathedral, sometimes stealing bread when I could not bear the hunger. If I was lucky, I could afford to buy a hard-boiled egg for lunch.

  When the winter had passed, I returned to peddling. For the first few days of the week, I would peddle in various parts of the city. Later in the week, I would stay around Dekkle Street, there to sell my merchandise to passersby in front of the furniture and antique stores. After a few months, one store owner took me aside and said, “I can see from the way you talk and your bearing that you are a fine young man and willing to work. I want to sell my store. I will teach you and you can buy my store. You have peddled enough. You will pay me weekly or monthly.” That was Wolf Shalzan, a kind man to whom I owe everything.

  Myon came home a few weeks later, broke and tired, and we talked it over. We decided to accept Shalzan’s offer. We had no choice. Through the office run by our countrymen, we were able to receive a loan with payments spread out over several years. After I bought the store, Myon also bought a store and we were partners until his marriage.

  Many more displaced peoples had arrived in Urlskinder by this time, some of them blood kin and others northern neighbors also forced to flee by the Kalif’s armies. The news spread that we had made more of our lot than most and there arrived in the city dozens of men and women who wished to work for us. Our credit was good, and through small banks we could borrow up to 500 sels to pay back in a year. As most of the newcomers were young unmarried men, we bought stores for them. We also lent them cash money from time to time and so each one lived sparingly and paid back the borrowed money. The result was that we assured all newcomers from Urlskinder that they could eat and sleep with us until they could become established for themselves. That was the beginning and the cause of so many new immigrants to Morrow becoming store owners.

  Gradually, our own family made the trip from Urlskinder to Morrow. When our mother arrived with Praidal, our sister, and “Itchi”, our young cousin, our whole life changed for the good. At the place where newcomers were inspected, the officials and doctors would talk to each person in his own language. Praidal and Itchi were immediately passed through, but mother was held back. It took awhile to examine her eyes. They were fearful of disease brought in by foreigners. We knew this and understood, and were satisfied, and then forgot it. Once, though, much later, when our mother and a few women were talking in Praidal’s house, she told them that at the examination the doctor spoke to her and asked why she had come to the city. When she told them that she had come to meet the Hoegbottons, her children, they then immediately let her through. This was not true, but it shows the pride she took in us.

  We had already prepared a house so that Praidal and my mother could live in a certain style. I, not being married, shared the house with them. We were all very happy. Then Praidal got married and my mother went to live with her. I would visit them during the week. Our mother visited us very often in our stores and would take money from us to send to her poor sister, who had moved to Nysimia (a far western province of the Kalif’s Empire) with her husband. Even when we had lived in Urlskinder she felt it was her duty to help her sister, who was poorer than us. My mother, when she went to the market in Urlskinder, would stop on the way home at her sister’s, who had not yet left for Nysimia and had a house full of children, and there my mother would leave some food and then come home. We all knew of this, except for my father, but none of us children ever said a word about it.

  Our mother felt quite content for a time. She sent money and letters to her sister and received letters in return, until the beginning of several wars conducted by the Kalif against his own people. The mail from the empire was discontinued abruptly. No more letters arrived from Urlskinder and mother became uneasy. We all assured her that the wars could only last a few months. That is what everyone thought at the time. But as each month went by, she became more concerned and worried, and she changed completel
y.

  She would sit for hours at a time in her room, often in silence. One evening when we were all sitting in the dining room talking pleasantly, our mother came out of her room upset and tearfully asked us how it could be that they wouldn’t let a letter through from a sister. She asked us to go in force to the Kalif and ask him how he could allow for sisters to be out of touch for such a long time. How could he allow such a thing! Such agony was in her question that we were gripped by more pain than we could bear.

  A few days later, we experienced the first death in the family since our arrival in Morrow. Somehow, I will always connect my mother’s distress and this death. Praidal became ill from wheat infected with fungus. Others recovered, but in Praidal the illness became more profound. It made her unable to keep down food and it changed the pallor of her skin so that it became almost clear. After four days, she died. This was a shock to us. We wept for days. We had survived so much and come so far that I suppose we had thought we could endure anything. Washing her body for burial and knowing the hardship she had suffered in Urlskinder, I could not forget her. It was then, in the cemetery, as I held mother close to me, that I first grieved for the homeland.

  What Came After

  At the present time, all of us original Hoegbottons have multiplied and become intertwined with other families. Because the agents of Frankwrithe & Lewden have been hostile to us, we have had to spread out—to Nicea, to Stockton, even, as I write this, to Ambergris. From the nine of our generation, most have gone to their eternity, including my mother, just two years ago. The children and the children’s children do not know who they are and how they came to Morrow. They are here and that is enough for them. They are different than us—sharper and less kind (although they will laugh if they read this).

  Some of our people still lived in Yakuda, under the Kalif’s rule, for many years. We did not hear from them, but we used to send money to Yakuda after the wars had ended, each to his own people. One time, we undertook to send a large sum of money through the Kalif’s ministers to Yakuda. We told them it was for everyone in Yakuda, even those who had been resettled there from distant lands and had helped to drive us out. We did this so as to not create any ill-feeling.