Death of East

by Michael John Grist

  As I walk from the room and leave him to die behind me, I only think of Allory, and how at last I can save her.

  * * *

  Riding my barge up the Nile to Memphis, the illusions fade away like water evaporating from a bucket of brine, leaving only the hard and clear crystals of salt remaining. There is no Allory trapped in a bull, waiting for me to come. That was just a wish, something childish from my past. I am the crystals of salt now, hard, unyielding, and sharp.

  I close my eyes and remember how Bes always ate more than the others of his share, how he always smirked when I came into his presence, how he never fully bowed at my feet. Of course he was hiding his diamond from me. He was growing it for himself, to take my place at the Pharaoh's side. All along he has been stealing from me. He came to kill me, came to my own rooms with a knife to crack me open and take out the diamond inside.

  Why else would I have done as I had done? Allory died years ago. I hold the rough diamond before me, still clotted with his blood. I lift it up to the dawn, and I watch as it burns hot as a second sun in the sky.

  * * *

  There is enough time to heat, facet, and plane the diamond. Completed, it is the most stunning thing I have ever seen; an immense bead of burning blood, fire captured in glass, shedding its own light from within. Now I realize that Bes was glad to give it to me. Now he bent his knee and offered it to me. He loved me, as a servant loves his master. I weep for his self-sacrifice.

  I drop to my knees and await the Pharaoh.

  Ktolemy is watching me curiously. There are no one thousand diamonds in my hand, only one, wrapped in satin.

  The Sun King comes before me. He asks after his thousand, and instead of answering, I lift up the bag, decant the bloody paragon into my palm.

  His breath stops. Moments pass. It is surely the most wondrous jewel in the world.

  "Where did you find this?" he asks at last.

  "In the body of a living Nubian," I answer. "A man named Bes, who gave his life that you might know the beauty in his heart."

  The Pharaoh lifts the jewel from my hand.

  "The diamond of a man," he breathes.

  "The heart of a man," I reply, daring to correct the Sun King himself. I no longer care if my tone lacks deference. I am not for the bulls, I know this now. The Pharaoh must surely realize it too.

  "As you say," he whispers. His golden-sandaled feet carry him away. I am left with Ktolemy.

  "Not bad, polisher," he admits.

  * * *

  I return to Bes' land weighed down with orders from the gentry, my barge stocked with the Pharaoh's men. My men.

  We sweep across the spawning fields, gathering the workers at their fields. They are dull and sullen-eyed. They allow themselves to be herded into position, their eyes cast down, kneeling amongst the safram. They know the power of the Sun King. They know my power. They have all seen the corpse of their Bes, spread-eagled and bloody in his bed. I made no effort to hide what I had taken from him. They know it could be infinitely worse.

  The Abindian boy meets my eye, from his knees. This does not appear unseemly to me. He once poled me to this place. He must know his role in this was essential.

  "No suffering," he says. It is not a question, neither a command, just a statement. I nod. He has the right to name this. There is no need for pain.

  My men line up behind them. Bes' workers kneel quietly. They are dignified; befitting men, women and children who are to give their lives for the greater glory of their God. This is their honor.

  I raise my hand, let it fall, and fifteen copper spears move as though my shadow.

  I walk amongst the dead with my shears, furrowing their flesh as though it is earth, mining within their shoulders for diamonds, all done with the Sun King's grace.

  I pay my men in seedling diamonds from animals. They take them gladly, eagerly, their eyes glowing. They set to the bodies by my side, flaying the skin back that I might gain access to the bone.

  I look out over them all, the living stripping the dead, and allow the thought to cross my mind, to surpass the memory of the sister I once failed to save. It is not vain to rise with the sun. I will not only be rich, I will shine with the strength of the Pharaoh himself.

  * * *

  Within ten years my estates range almost the length of the fertile Nile, every inch of land bought with bone diamonds, every inch sown with wild safram grass. On my estates roam crocodile and ibex, leopards and river-horses, elephants, cows, eagles, goats, camels, and on, all of them fed upon safram or upon creatures that have fed upon safram, and within them all growing like pearls in oysters, are diamonds.

  From an elephant the jewel is immense, glowing with a dim grey blaze. From leopards and tigers the jewel burns green. From eagles and kites it is small, colored a wispy pink.

  From within men it is red like fire, without fail.

  The Pharaoh summons me to his palace, and I go. Carried on my palanquin through the streets, I see my diamonds gracing the necks and fingers of the populace, and I feel pride. It is an industry I have kept well. At my estates men slay the beasts, hand them to others who transport them to butcheries in the city. The meats are prepared and sold, so my animals now feed the city. The bones are crushed by medicians, others carved by jewelers, as I once was.

  The clavicles alone are delivered to a single room of old blind men, who powder them seeking what they believe to be chunks of gristle. These rough diamonds are collected daily and brought to my cutting factory, where a hundred-strong team of bruters, grinders, faceters, and polishers prepare them for their settings.

  In the early years some of them stole. They were as unreliable and greedy as Bes, despite my generosity in rewards. I might have forgiven them, but they were brazen. They cast my diamonds into mounts that belied the secret of their origin; grey diamonds set into the carved ivory of elephants, pink diamonds inlaid about torcs of stiffened alligator hide.

  I cast a hundred bronze bulls and filled them with those men. I fed them on safram-raised meat. The diamonds cut years later from their desiccated flesh burned a cold red, as bright as their greed.

  Now I watch the people flowing by my palanquin borne on the back of ten slaves. They are all my estate. All of them eat the safram, the weed that once was so rare, in every bite they take. It is everywhere, in everything, and the diamonds bloom in us all.

  I walk the long colonnade of bulls with Ktolemy two steps behind, his eyes downcast. Now I am the master. The bulls please me, to know that the order of things is respected.

  The Pharaoh greets me with an embrace. For a moment I am permitted to look into his eyes.

  "I have a treat for you, my friend," he says in that soft voice. He takes me by the elbow and leads me to his quarters.

  Here there are women everywhere, and eunuchs and dwarves, painted gold, painted in blood, tables laid out for feasts, whole animals roasted and stuffed with other animals, the sweet sound of birds trilling in the cages overhead.

  He leads me through to a dark room, the walls hot with red velvet. There are two children, naked from the waist up, lying on their chests, barely breathing.

  "They are the first," says the Pharaoh. "Twins. I thought you ought be the one."

  I bow my head at the immensity of this honor. "Please, great lord of the sun, you honor me too much. I cannot."

  He smiles. His face is so radiant. He is indeed the sun.

  "Very well, as you wish it," he says. I hand him the bone shears, and he bends over beside the girl. I crane to watch. Her breathing is slow and even. He splits open her back with scarcely a movement from her, as though peeling a passion-fruit. Dark blood rolls from her like sap.

  He reaches inside, slurrying his coppered hand in the meat of her back, until he comes out with the left clavicle of the first child to have eaten nothing but safram since birth.

  The diamond has grown through the thin bone. It is like a blazing coal in that dim room. It lights the Pharaoh's delighted face red. He hands me the bone
shears, steps back.

  I kneel by the boy. For a moment I listen to his soft breathing. His eyes flicker, and he sees me. I look down on him with affection. I love him, as I loved Bes, as Bes loved me.

  "Please," he murmurs, as I stroke his feverish cheek. "Please, don't hurt my sister."

  The words make me love him more. I close his eyes gently. I take the bone shears and snip through him as though a bundle of river-grass. He sighs, and the blood rolls out of him. The stone is a twin to his sister's.

  The Pharaoh rolls my fingers around it, after I proffer it to him.

  "It is yours," he tells me. "My gift. It is yours."

  I stare enraptured into its burning depths, overcome by the heights to which I have risen.

  * * *

  His words crystallize in the night. I wake in my cavernous bedchamber, surrounded by my women, my attendant slaves, all softly sighing, spent with our celebrations. Something is missing, but I do not know what it is.

  I climb to the fine dome of my palace, lean against the marble balustrade and look out over the city of Memphis. The stone from the boy, his heart, is in my hand. It burns hot in my palm, like a reminder. His words echo back to me, but I cannot understand why they might matter.

  His devotion touches me. Then I remember that it was not meant for me, or the Pharaoh. It was for his sister. That puzzles me, for she was already dead.

  I hold the stone up beside the sphere of the moon. Of the two, his heart shines the brightest, as though a bloody sun risen at night over the palaces of Memphis.

  Then I begin to remember Allory.

  The diamond beats in my palm like her fading heart.

  * * *

  I am not a weak man any longer. I do not beg or cry. I am not afraid.

  I am trusted, and walk into the Pharaoh's presence holding the tool that will do the job in my hand.

  A spun silver blade, hafted with the boy's diamond. The Pharaoh begins to speak, and I bury the blade in his heart. In his eyes I see fear, perhaps for the first time. How many souls had those eyes watched die, I wonder. I feel his hot blood flush over my hand, like a fever.

  "Not a God," I whisper, as he sags.

  Next is Ktolemy. I find him without, waiting. It is a simple matter to hurl blinding emery in his face. He falls back, screaming, his tulwar clattering at his feet. I chase him down easily, blade him with the same dagger I used to kill the Pharaoh.

  "Shh," I tell him, watching their blood commingle. "It is a great honor."

  "Polisher," he hisses through gritted teeth, reminding me at last of who and what I am.

  My work with the vise and shears takes moments only. I am a practiced hand, now. I leave their bodies behind and walk back down the colonnade of bulls. At each I hammer the locking clasps away with a mallet. The stink rises up in the morning air, and the first few frail, filth-slicked arms lift out.

  "Go," I tell them. "You are free."

  I am not stopped. None know yet what I have done.

  In the grand square I take to the orator's stage, looking out over the market as it begins to bustle with morning hawkers and slaves from all the greatest houses of Memphis.

  "Here are your riches," I call to them, and disgorge the first leather bag of diamonds into their midst. The stones sparkle in the air like rain after a drought, and I imagine each one an animal fleeing, running from the thing I have become.

  The people mass and clamor. The market fills, and I stand before them. They know me, the Pharaoh's most trusted adviser, and here I am, slathered in blood.

  I watch them in silence, and soon they fall silent too, staring up at me as though I am the last legless slave to climb the arena's safram pole. My silence spreads like water through them, over them, over the stalls they have trampled in their hunger for riches.

  I hold up the stone from the Pharaoh's clavicle and feel the madness of ten years of shame and fear rising up off me like vapor, leaving only the last crystal remaining, the one over my heart.

  "The diamond of man," I call to them, as the jewel burns red above me. "Cloven from the living bone of the Sun King himself."

  They look up at me with faces grown fearful.

  "You know the source of the stones you wear," I call. "Surely you know the riches sown within your own bone?"

  I see no recognition in their eyes. Perhaps they truly do not know. But no longer. They will find it in their Pharaoh. They will see it in me.

  I strip my bloody finery from my chest, toss it into the crowd. They gasp as I turn and show them the skin missing from my shoulder, flayed by a weeping slave that morning.

  I kneel, weak with loss of blood, but then Allory is beside me. She is holding her cool hand to my forehead.

  "I'm sorry," I whisper to her. Tears pour down my cheeks, and she takes my chin, kisses me lightly on the eyes.

  There is a crunch as the bone shears cleave the articular process in my shoulder. The agony is indescribable. I have threatened my slave with death, but soon he will understand how free he is. I sag down, hear voices call out in horror behind me. Let them know at last what I have done for ten years. Let them see the ultimate source of their wealth.

  My foramen cleaves free, and the feeling of the bone being tugged from my back is sickening. I am a bag of sticks and meat. Silver lights flash. I am barely conscious to hear my slave shouting out the diamond in my clavicle, holding it up for all to see.

  I slump against the stone plinth, and I see the crowd before me transform, their bodies blooming into safram shoots, long stalks bursting up through the market, spreading out until before me is only a field of the waving pestilence weed.

  Behind me is Allory, still hot with fever. I realize that at last I can save her. Joy fills me. The safram is so beautiful around us, I can smell the heathery scent of it in the air. I take a step forward, feel it enfold me, and know that I will be with her again.

  2. CATERPILLAR MAN

  I fell in the hole on a Tuesday.

  The hole is a hole in the road. It's not such a busy road, sure. Maybe 50 people walk by a day.

  I fell in by accident and now I can't get out. The sides are steep, and there's nothing down here for me to eat but this damn banana tree and rat bones.

  There's a lot of dry and desiccated rats down here. It doesn't make any sense to me. But I have to eat, so I crack the bones and slurp down the dry marrow; like molasses, but not as sweet.

  I see people walk by above me. I'm reminded of the man in the well in the Murakami story. Even in the day-time, I can see stars.

  * * *

  The boy came by on the third day I was in the hole.

  "Are you OK down there?" he called from above. I could see he had white hair. It haloed his head with the night sky behind him. His left eye was where Orion's third star in the belt would be.

  "I'm fine," I said. "Just, it's rather cold down here. Do you have any spare blankets about you?"

  "No," he answered. "I'm afraid I don't. Is there anything else I can do for you?"

  I thought about that for a while. He was clearly a kind boy, but I couldn't expect him to bring blankets from his home just for me.

  "No, no, but thanks for stopping by. I'm quite alright really."

  "Well, sorry to bother you then," he said, and moved away.

  But I wasn't alright. The bananas were running dry and I was moving onto the apricots. I've always hated apricots, except in jam; horrid, chewy things.

  Oh, and the cold.

  The first night I think I lost a finger to the cold. It's so dark down here though I can barely see. Are these bananas I'm eating? I don't know.

  * * *

  The fourth day he came back and brought me a flashlight and a book. He lowered them down on a string, in a bucket.

  "I hope you don't expect any water," I called up to him.

  He laughed.

  It felt nice to make somebody laugh. It made the apricots less chewy and the stars more bright.

  The book he had given me was called, 'The Hu
ngry Caterpillar.'

  "I've found it to be very helpful," he called. His voice echoed down the hole's sheer walls. "Whenever I get stuck in a rut."

  "This is more of a well than a rut," I said.

  "I wasn't talking about the well," he said. "Only try it, you may be surprised."

  * * *

  I wasn't surprised.

  Though it spoke of such things, the book didn't sprout me any wings. It didn't give me a ladder. It didn't turn the walls to rigging or the floor to a trampoline.

  But the boy kept coming, and that helped.

  "Hello down there," he would call, as he stopped by. "I've brought more for you to read."

  "Hello up there," I'd call back, my voice echoing like a fog-horn in that small space.

  He'd lower books, and sometimes a mug of steaming cocoa, down in the bucket. He never brought me blankets, which I thought strange, but it was too late really to ask.

  Still, I was losing fingers at the rate of maybe one every few days. I could feel them freezing solid knuckle by knuckle. It made it harder to read the books. I had to lie upside down on my back, legs up the wall, so I could pin the book against my chest with my chin.

  I was probably losing toes as well, but who needs toes?

  * * *

  He brought me books every day for a year. I didn't read them because it was too hard to read as I lost more fingers.

  By the end of the year I had no fingers, and no hands, and most of my arms were gone. My legs were gone to the knees. I sat on a mound of books, and they kept me comfortable and warm.

  I called this up to him one fine day.

  "The books are better than a blanket," I called. "They're so warm and soft at night- it's like a feather bed."

  He snorted at this. "The books are not for sleeping on or keeping warm. They're for edification. Please tell me you're still reading them."

  "I'm afraid I don't have any fingers or toes left," I said. "It's become quite difficult to read."

  "Well that's your own fault for falling in a hole," he said. "I didn't make you do it."

  "I realize that," I said. I undulated like the worm that I was, so as to see him better against the night sky.