28. Here, for once, Lacond proves useful. He puts forth two theories for the gray caps’ passivity: first, that Manzikert had landed in the midst of a religious festival during which the gray caps were forbidden to take part in any aggressive acts, even to defend themselves; second, that the gray cap society resembled that of bees or ants, and thus none of the “units” in the city had free will, being extensions of some hive intellect. This second theory by Lacond seems extreme to some historians, but the idea of passivity being bred into particular classes of gray cap society cannot be ruled out. This would support my own theory that the entire city of Cinsorium was a religious artifact, a temple, if you will, in which violence was not permitted to be inflicted by its keepers. Were Manzikert’s actions tantamount to desecration?
29. Typically, Sabon cannot bite her tongue and disagrees, citing the Calabrian Calendar used by the Aan as schismatic—most definitely not synchronized with the modern calendar. However, Sabon fails to take into account that Tonsure, as the non-Aan author of the biography and the journal, would have used the Kalif’s calendar, which is identical to our own.
30. Cynically, Tonsure reports, “Better to name a city after the nether parts of a whale than to actually go whaling, for Manzikert, lazy as he is, finds piracy much easier than whaling: when you harpoon an honest sailor, he is less likely to drag you 300 miles across open water and then, turning, casually devour you and drown your companions.” Other names Manzikert considered include “Aanville,” “Aanapolis,” and “Aanburg,” so we may be fairly certain that Tonsure suggested “Ambergris,” despite his ridicule of the name.
31. Or, as Sabon put it, “how cunning a fungus.”
32. Tonsure does, in his journal, write that the lichen in question “more closely resembled one blob rutting with another blob, but who is to doubt the vision of cappans?” Are we to believe that the carnage to come was all the result of two unfortunately-shaped lichen? Sabon points to the Holy Visitation of Stockton (alternately known by historians as the Sham Involving Jam), where a stain of blueberry jam resembling the heretic Ibonof Ibonof sparked seven days of riots. Lacond, in agreement with Sabon, relates the story that the Kalif’s order to attack the Menite town of Richter was the direct result of a Richter lemon squirting him in the eye when he cut it open. Unfortunately, Sabon and Lacond have joined forces to support an idea that lacks merit given the context. It is my opinion that, lichen or no lichen, Manzikert would have attacked the gray caps.
33. Tonsure never indicates what he did during the massacre—whether to participate or intervene; later circumstantial evidence indicates he may have tried to intervene. Nonetheless, Tonsure’s description of the massacre has a disturbingly cold, disinterested edge to it. Predictably, the biography account speaks of Manzikert’s bravery as, surrounded by “dangerous gray caps armed to the teeth,” (read: “wide-eyed, weaponless midgets”) he managed to cut his way through them to safety.
34. The bersar, an honorary title peculiar to the Aan and awarded only to men who had shown great bravery in combat.
35. All the information we have about the events that follow comes from Manzikert II, who is not nearly as entertaining as Tonsure, lacking both his wit and powers of description. Manzikert II was serious and 17—a disastrous combination for historical writing, as I can attest—and I have resisted direct quotation for the most part.
36. The gray caps must also have taken the fabulous golden tree, for there is no mention of it in Manzikert II’s account, or in any future chronicle. It defies the laws of probability that such a remarkable invention would not be mentioned somewhere, in some account, had it not already been taken back by the gray caps.
37. I will call him Manzikert I from this point on, so as to avoid confusing him with his son.
38. Lacond: “An act of utter barbarism, destroying the finest artifacts of a culture that has never been found anywhere else in the known world and destroying a people both peaceful and advanced. Genocide is too kind a word.” Sabon: “Without Sophia’s bravery, the new-born city of Ambergris would soon have perished, undone by the treachery of the gray caps.”
39. Sophia, in the biography, would have us believe that she destroyed all of the buildings, but since we find Manzikert II, 10 years later, using several of them for defensive and storage purposes, this seems unlikely.
40. We begin to wonder if Manzikert did believe in his heart of hearts that he should massacre the gray caps because of two oddly-shaped lichens.
41. So many that Manzikert II had to ban the feeding of rats during a time of famine.
42. Much to the disgust of Truffidians everywhere, Manziists often claim to be the Brothers and Sisters of Truff, a claim that has led to riots—and dozens of rats cooked on spits—in the Religious Quarter.
43. The impatient, feckless reader, possessed of no glimmer of intellectual or historical curiosity, should do an old historian a favor and skip the next few pages, proceeding directly to the Silence itself (Part III). I would assume that, in these horrid modern times, that will include most of you. Of course, those readers least likely to read these footnotes, and thus least likely to appreciate the next few pages, will skip this note and bore themselves upon the ennui of history . . .
44. Sophia was never the same after Manzikert I returned to her blinded and deranged—she died soon after him and while alive expressed little or no interest in governing, although she did on at least two occasions, at her son’s insistence and with great success, lead punitive expeditions against the southern tribes. Sophia had truly loved her brute of a man, although not in the maudlin terms described by Voss Bender in his first and least successful opera, The Tragedy of John and Sophia; it is difficult not to laugh while John dances with a man in a rat suit, which he has mistaken in his madness for Sophia, toward the end of Act III.
45. He was, by all accounts, a handsome man, if not possessed of the swarthy, thick handsomeness of his father; he had a slender frame and a head topped with a tangle of black hair, beneath which his green eyes shone with a cunning fierceness.
46. For a long time, these tribes avoided the city and accorded the new settlement an undue measure of respect—until they began to realize the gray caps had left, apparently for good, after which a vigorous contempt for the Aan became the norm.
47. For a thorough overview of the early political and economic systems, as well as particulars on crops, etc., see Richard Mandible’s excellent “Early Ambergrisian Finance and Society,” recently published in Vol. XXXII, Issue 3, of Historian’s Quarterly. Such detailed information lies beyond the brief of this particular essay, not to mention the patience of the reader and the endurance of an old historian with creaky joints.
48. A catalog kept during Manzikert II’s reign indicates that at least two of these relics were taken from saintly men while still living, and that although the Cappan’s agents bargained long and hard for the purchase from the Kalif of the “penis and left testicle of Saint George of Assuf,” they managed only to procure the testicle. (We can only imagine the bizarre sight of the testicle’s triumphant entrance to the city, borne upon a perfumed, gold-embroidered pillow held high by a senior Truffidian priest while the crowds cheered wildly.) At the height of the religious frenzy, the Church of the Seven Pointed Star even put together an array of different saints’ body parts—a head here, an ear there—to make a creature they called the “The Saint of Saints,” a sort of super saint. This was put on display for 20 years until several other churches, on the verge of bankruptcy due to their own lack of relics, launched a joint raid and “dismembered” this early golem.
49. The rebuilt palace elicited neither condemnation nor praise; indeed, its most interesting features were its many interior murals and portraits, several of which commemorate victories against the Kalif created out of thin air by Ambergrisian historians. Worse, the first two portraits in the Great Hall depict cappans who never existed, to gloss over the Occupation, a period when the city was under the Kalif’s control. To t
his day, Ambergrisian school children are taught the exploits of Cappan Skinder and Cappan Bartine. Braver if less substantial leaders have rarely trod upon the earth . . .
50. Evidence suggests he may have been poisoned by his ambitious son, whom he was always careful to bring on campaign with him, so as to keep the boy under a watchful eye. Manzikert II died suddenly, with no apparent symptoms, his body quickly cremated on his son’s order. If there was little protest, this may have been because he had never been a popular leader, despite his excellent record. He lacked the necessary charisma for men to follow him unthinkingly.
51. In the north, the Cappandom of Ambergris, as it was now officially known, encountered implacable resistance from the Menites, adherents to a religion that saw Truffid as heresy. The Menites would subsequently establish a vast northern commercial empire, based in the city of Morrow, some 85 miles upriver from Ambergris.
52. Sabon insists it was leprosy, while others believe it was epilepsy. Regardless, we can choose from three spectacular diseases with very different symptoms.
53. Jungle rot can have various manifestations, but, according to an anonymous observer, Manzikert III’s jungle rot was among the nastiest ever recorded: “Suddenly an abscess appeared in his privy parts then a deep-seated fistular ulcer; these could not be cured and ate their way into the very midst of his entrails. Hence there sprang an innumerable multitude of worms, and a deadly stench was given off, since the entire bulk of his members had, through gluttony, even before the disease, been changed into an excessive quantity of soft fat, which then became putrid and presented an intolerable and most fearful sight to those who came near it. As for the physicians, some of them were wholly unable to endure the exceeding and unearthly stench, while those who still attended his side could not be of any assistance, since the whole mass had swollen and reached a point where there was no hope of recovery.”
54. Although Manzikert III’s order (rescinded after his death) was extreme, his charge that the city’s doctors knew little of their craft is, unfortunately, true. In an attempt to upgrade its service, the Institute sent representatives to the Kalif’s court, as well as to the witchdoctors of native tribes. The Kalif’s physicians refused to reveal their methodology, but the witchdoctors proved very helpful. The Institute incorporated such native procedures as applying the freshwater electric flounder as a local anesthetic during surgery. Another procedure, perhaps even more ingenious, solved the problem of infection during the stitching up of intestines. Large senegrosa ants, placed along the opening, clamped the wounds shut with their jaws; the witchdoctor then cut away the bodies, leaving only the heads. After replacing the intestines in the stomach, the witchdoctor would sew up the abdomen. As the wound healed, the ant heads would gradually dissolve.
55. Although I have certainly devoted enough footnotes to him.
56. One menu for such a banquet included calf’s brain custard, roast hedgehog, and a dish rather cruelly known as Oliphaunt’s Delight, the incomplete recipe for which was uncovered by the Ambergrisian Gastronomic Association just last year:
1 scooped out oliphaunt’s skull
1 pureed oliphaunt’s brain
1 gallon of brandy
6 oysters
2 very clean pigs’ bladders
24 eggs
salt, pepper, and a sprig of parsley
I am unhappy to report that the search is on for the missing ingredients.
57. In all fairness to Manzikert III, Sharp had an insufferable ego. His autobiography, published from the unedited manuscript found on his body, contains such gems as, “From East and West alike my reputation brings them flocking to Morrow. The Moth may water the lands of the Kalif, but it is my golden words that nourish their spirit. Ask the Brueghelites or the followers of Stretcher Jones: they will tell you that they know me, that they admire me and seek me out. Only recently there arrived an Ambergrisian, impelled by an insurmountable desire to drink at the fountain of my eloquence.”
58. The Scathadian novelist George Leopran—prevented by Manzikert III from sailing home—had an experience almost as bad, returning to Scatha only after much tribulation: “I boarded my vessel and left the city that I had thought to be so rich and prosperous but is actually a starveling, a city full of lies, tricks, perjury and greed, a city rapacious, avaricious and vainglorious. My guide was with me, and after 49 days of ass-riding, walking, horse-riding, fasting, thirsting, sighing, weeping, and groaning, I arrived at the Kalif’s court. Even this was not the end of my sufferings, for upon setting out for the final stretch of my journey, I was delayed by contrary winds at Paust, deserted by my ship’s crew at Latras, unkindly received by a eunuch bishop and half-starved on Lukas and subjected to three consecutive earthquakes on Dominon, where I subsequently fell in among thieves. Only after another 60 days did I finally return to my home, never again to leave it.” If he had known that an arthritic Ambergrisian historian would some day find his account hilarious, he might have cheered up. Or perhaps not. In any event, we can certainly understand historical novelists’ tendency to vilify Manzikert III beyond even his due.
59. We will never know why Aquelus was accepted so readily, unless Manzikert III had proclaimed him ruler on his deathbed or Manzikert II, knowing his son’s sickly nature, had already decreed that if Manzikert III died, Aquelus should take his place. The story that, in his childhood, a golden eagle alighted at Aquelus’ bedroom window and told him he would one day be cappan is almost certainly apocryphal.
60. Three centuries later, city mayors all along the Moth would cast off the yoke of cappans and kings and create a league of city-states based on trade alliances—eventually plunging Ambergris into its current state of “functional anarchy.”
61. The first festival, held by Manzikert I, had been a simple affair: a two-course feast attended by an elderly swordswallower who managed to impale himself. More elaborate entertainments would mark the reign of Aquelus in particular. Such celebrations included a representation of the Gardens of Nicea, 300 yards across, built on rafts between the two banks of the Moth, complete with flowers, trees of brightly-colored crystal, and an artificial lake stocked with fish, from which guests were to choose their dinner before retiring to a banquet. In the year after the Silence, at a touch from the Cappaness’ hand, an outsized artificial owl sped around the public courtyard, sparking off a hundred torches as it, finally, came to rest on an 80-foot high replica of the Kalif’s Arch of Tarbut. But perhaps the most audacious presentation occurred during the reign of Manzikert VII, who resurrected the gray caps’ old coliseum, sealed it off, had the arena flooded with water, and recreated famous naval battles using ships built to 2/3 scale. All this pomp and circumstance served as genuine celebration, but also, in later years, to hide the city’s growing poverty and military weakness.
62. Fourth Census—on file in the old bureaucratic quarter.
63. Lacond’s most ridiculous “theory” according to most historians (and therefore well worth relating) postulates that some mushroom dwellers actually gestated within such mushrooms. This explains both why the axe blows to fell them caused the mushrooms to shriek and why their centers often proved to be composed of a dark, watery mass reminiscent of afterbirth or amniotic fluid. I myself now believe they “shrieked” because this is the sound a certain rubbery consistency of fungi flesh makes when an axe cleaves it; as for the “afterbirth,” many fungi contain a nutrient sac. We could wish that Lacond had done more research on the subject before venturing an opinion, but then we would be bereft of his marvelous stupidity.
64. By now in his late sixties, Bacilus was a fiery old man with a smoking white beard who must have made quite a spectacle in public.
65. In the Council’s defense, Bacilus had a rather checkered reputation in Ambergris. We have, today, the luxury of distance, but the Council had had no time to expunge from memory such Bacilus innovations as artificial legs for snakes, mittens for fish, or the infamous Flying Jacket. Bacilus reasoned that if trapped air will
make an object float upon the water, then trapped air might also allow an object, in this case a man, to float upon the air. Therefore, Bacilus created a special body suit he called the Flying Jacket. Made from hollowed out pig and cow stomachs, it consisted of three dozen air sacs sewn together. Without prior testing, Bacilus persuaded his cousin Brandon Map to don the Flying Jacket and, in front of some of Aquelus’ foremost ministers, to jump from the top of the new Truffidian Cathedral. After the poor man had plummeted to his death, it was generally observed within Bacilus’ earshot, if only to make the loss appear not completely pointless, that yes, perhaps his cousin had flown a little bit before the end. Another minister, less kindly, remarked that if Bacilus himself, surely a natural windbag if ever he’d seen one, had donned the jacket, the results might have been different, for it was obvious that Brandon had no air within him anymore, nor blood, nor bones . . . The Truffidians were, of course, horrified that their new cathedral had been christened with such a splatter of blood—and even more upset when they discovered Brandon had been an atheist. (I should note, however, that Truffidians have spent the last seven centuries being horrified by some event or other.)
66. This police report filed by Richard Krokus provides a typical example: “I woke in the middle of the night to a humming sound from the kitchen. It must have been two in the morning and my wife was by my side, and we have no children, so I knew no one who was supposed to be in the house was fixing themselves a midnight snack. So I go into the kitchen real quiet-like, having picked up a plank of wood for a weapon that I was going to use to reinforce the mantel, but hadn’t gotten around to on account of my bad back—I served like everyone in the army and messed up my back when I fell during training exercises and even got disability payments for awhile, until they found out I’d slipped on a tomato—and my wife had been nagging me to fix the mantel so I picked up the wood—from the store, first, I mean, and then that night I picked it up, but not so as to fix the mantel, you know, but to defend myself. Where was I? Oh, yes. So I go into the kitchen and I’m already thinking about making myself a sandwich with the left-over bread, so maybe I’m not paying as much attention as I should to the situation, and I’ll be f—if there isn’t this little person, this wee little person in a great big felt hat just sitting on the countertop, stuffing its face with the missus’ chocolate cake. I looked at it and it looked at me, and I didn’t move and it didn’t move. It had great big eyes in its head, and a small nose, and a grin like all get out, only it had teeth, too, real big teeth, so it kind of spoiled the cheerfulness. Of course, it had already spoiled my wife’s cake, so I was going to hit it with my plank of wood, only then it threw a mushroom at me and next thing I know it’s morning and not only is the cake completely gone, but my wife is slapping my face and telling me to get up have I been drinking again don’t I know I’m late for work. And later that day, when I’m setting the plates for dinner, I can’t find any of the knives or forks. They’re all gone. Oh, yes, and I almost forgot—I couldn’t find the mushroom that hit me, either, but I’m telling you, it was heavier than it looked because it left this great big bump on top of me head. See?”
City of Saints and Madmen Page 48
