The Tale of Gold and Silence
Page 22
Against a polychromatic wall, red strewn with gilded passion-flowers, the somber body of the clock massed its precious woods and the gold of its polyphony. At the base lay an old man crowned with laurels with a long beard, as pagans had once been accustomed to represent venerable rivers. His urn was empty, and metal children pressed around him; the forms of branches and garland emerged from their hands, which climbed up the case made of black wood, over which beautiful reflections ran and quivered as on the lustrous pelt of a beast in bright sunlight.
Along one side of the case was a tall gray form, the color of iron, holding a staff; his arm rose up under the slow pressure of a spring, and struck the central panel. In order to extend the arm it rotated slightly; only the iron-colored folds of its robe were perceptible, and its monkish hood, which covered its head and its extended arm.
The panel opened; two enamel birds sung, over which two hands clapped, and a ballerina appeared from a little door, bowed and disappeared. Death followed, carrying a scythe, but a richly-gemmed enamel robe covered the skeleton, falling in small heavy folds, and apart from the hollow face, the only other bones that could be see were those of the hands and feet.
Halter in hand, Death was leading the twelve apostles, which followed him, then a pope, a crowned emperor, a young woman and a soldier, and behind them, almost crouching, ran a bent old woman making the gesture of picking something up and nibbling it—and then a carillon of bells tolled, slowly and funereally. But the old woman turned round, abruptly stood up, and touched a door with her finger.
Then, on a higher balcony, a man dressed in red with a gilded head emerged and dropped into a metal basin, loudly, a dozen pieces of gold, whose ringing signified the hour of noon; and the entire summit of the clock was garnished with enamel heralds, and the notes of the carillon sounded like a golden fanfare of triumph. Above them, a large eagle shook its wings, until the large form the color of iron touched its staff once again to the flap that had opened, and the entire clock returned to silence and immobility.
“What do you mean by that?” asked the Emperor, brusquely.
“Nothing, Seigneur—it’s only a mechanical toy. If you care to, however, you might admit that an obscure creative power emanates from the living forces of Nature—of her rivers, her flowers and her branches in your realm. Here is this statue, made of ordinary metal because it is the everyday labor of your subjects—but that robust labor opens the entrails of time. Death passes, taking away saints, apostles, popes, the Emperor himself, and goes back behind them to make sure that everything has been properly scythed down; and everything that can be gleaned, he carried away in his bosom—but as soon as he disappears, with his cortege of calamities, Gold arrives, whose power and dominion he has been unable to take, and Gold awakens with its joyful ringing the bells of your power, and the eagle of the Empire beats its wings, and everything is resuscitated.”
“But I say,” suggested a cleric, who bowed to the Emperor, “that this is a carefully-meditated, carefully-accomplished blasphemy and an insult to Your Imperial Majesty, as to that of the Church, your mother, your guide and your support. This river, according to the forms of the ignorant pagans, indicates the forces that lie in the Earth or the demons forging the golden boughs in the treasure-mines of the Evil One that are the branches of his power. That iron-gray form, whose features cannot be seen, is what philosophers worthy of pyres call Nature; careless of the power of God, they imagine her as a tall blind form, and her mantle is colorless because it is, in their view, within the power of humans to enamel it with the richest colors, at their whim. But to those rich adornments, they prefer the emblem of Death, the Death that is fruitful for hem, which has scythed down so many just individuals, including popes, emperors and kings. And behind that brilliant cortege, Sire Emperor, is their patience, long bent low, creeping along and picking up everything—their image of themselves, perturbers of power and faith—and that man, the golden idol, whose costume parodies the scarlet that comes of counting gold, their god, and then the heralds of the Empire’s rebirth, for after a dead Emperor comes a new living Emperor, and the eagle spreads its wings, the indecisive statue of Nature and the Future come to close the hour with its iron wand and the last hour of power has sounded.
“That is what this symbol, in your capital, in our Church, recounts. A just presentiment has led you to remove it from your palace. We do not want it in our Church, where the people would read its dangerous exhortation. We refuse the gift of the Evil One, and accuse Laurent Télice of being his accomplice, with all his soul, and we demand that you deliver him to our justice.”
The Emperor reflected. “Get that out of here.” He pointed to the clock.
“You’re according the man to our justice, Seigneur?”
“No,” said the Empire. “He’s subject to mine.”
In the palace prison, where Télice’s hands and feet are enchained, and his midriff fixed to the wall, the Emperor has entered.
“Télice, if the accusation brought against you is true, will you not have to defend yourself against it before me? I have removed you from the vindictiveness of the clerics; it might be mainly your skill that offends them—but the meaning that you have put into your work is also obscure to me.”
“Sire Emperor, there is none. It’s merely a mechanism, dressed with the most appropriate and amusing sculptures and ornaments I could find.”
“They tell me that the little old woman who follows the powers, if she is not, as they have said, the patience of the ambitious who want to put an end to God-given rights, is even more blasphemous—the image of a second and more total death, which accumulates souls in the colorless networks of oblivion.”
“I didn’t think of that.”
“And what does the man in red signify, who chimes midday with the ring of his gold coins?”
“Isn’t it a simple and new way of sounding twelve strokes, striking a metal disk with twelve balls?”
“Don’t lie to me, Télice. I know what people say about you, and perhaps those who spy on you are right. If you will put your power in my service, I’ll save you from the arms of the Church.”
“What power? It’s very small. I’m skillful in all the arts...”
“Télice, your soul is not our own and you know how to make Gold. It’s that power that you wanted to affirm. I sense it; I divine it. I want to confiscate it, or you’ll die. Make gold for me, or you’ll die.”
“You can put me to death, but I can’t make gold.”
“Be careful—torture is harsh. You’ll make gold for me or you’ll die. It’s not without reason that the King of Hibernia is claiming you. He knows your power. How did you get here?”
“By going straight ahead, at my pleasure; I can’t make gold.”
“Be careful, my torture is severe.” He called out, and men came in with a brazier and nailed boots.
“I can’t.”
The Emperor reflected. He sent the torturers away with a gesture.
“Don’t be stubborn, Télice. I know that you’re the Master of Gold; I’d dearly like to suspend your torture, but your bones will crack, be sure of it.”
“Oh, Sire, perhaps I said that I was the Master of Gold; whoever has a little of it is its master, can go right or left, north or south and remain free and proud; he gives and does not ask. By means of the mechanical arts I’ve obtained enough to remain free and idle for long hours, having worked for a long time, and perhaps I shall find secrets by means of which river-boats will travel more rapidly or workmen labor more nimbly and more happily. But all that’s a problem of divination. The gold you seek, Sire Emperor, and which lies nowhere in the entrails of the Earth within your realm, is in the brains of your subjects, their fingers and their rapidity...”
“But then they will become, thanks to their activity, Masters of Gold, and more powerful than me.”
“You are their Master and they love you.”
“Let’s sing,” said the Emperor. He recalled the torturers.
The torture was interrupted.
“Well?” said the Emperor.
“Oh, Sire Emperor, I’m cruelly punished. Oh, for having juggled with words, for having been specious, droll, witty, oh, for having summarized thoughts, for having said long things briefly! Everyone is the Master of Gold who knows how to fabricate it with his labor, but I have none, I cannot make it...”
“You shall reflect,” said the Emperor. “Good torturers will reckon with this brutal stubbornness. In the meantime, you’ll guard my prison—or rather, it will guard you. Powerful as you are, and in spite of the diabolical auxiliaries you possess, you’ll talk; you’ll be mine, you and your power, or you’ll rot.”
And Télice remained alone and bloody in his dungeon.
The Emperor had gone back to the Palace. He summoned his wisest advisers and said to them: “Am I right to act thus? And give me the reasons that prove that I am right.”
The oldest of the old men spoke.
“Sire, everything that exists, until the irrespirable region of the sky, within the limits of the Empire, is, by rights delegated by God, and transmitted by inheritance, Imperial property. First and foremost, it is incontestable that the land is yours—that what the land produces, above all—the crops, the earthly bread that you distribute on God’s behalf, the flowers that velvet the Earth, the thick forests, the enormous granaries of winter food-supplies, and the rivers and streams, the roads through our domain, and the gushing springs—is yours. The beasts of the air, the waters and the forests, necessary nourishments, are also yours. This is sanctioned by the most ancient laws; Bounty, which is one face of Authority, deigns that domestic animals appear to be the property of those who raise them, as vegetables belong to those who water them with their sweat, but your possession, if it exercised all its rights, would be entire, and the tribute that everyone owes you is the sign of that, and the ever-evoked truth. Everything adherent to the ground—the houses, the palaces in which you lodge your faithful subjects, as well as the fields with which you nourish them—is yours. Everything on the land is yours.
“The people who live in your Empire, who lodge there and nourish themselves there, are therefore full of your substances—for which, in spite of all rents, they owe you recognition. They owe you their service and their affection. As thoughts cannot be born without the permission of God, of whom you are the perpetual legate, without the fortunate accord in the human body of the food that your broad reserves provide, their thoughts must be yours. Thus, Laurent Télice, who lives under your domination, in the immense enclosure of your property, if he is solvent—and the means for that are unlimited in your hands—ought to pay you tribute, in silver, for that patch of ground and wall that he occupies, and mentally, for the thoughts that exist within him, under your protective right. Thus, if he possesses some marvelous secret, he is in your debt, unless you dispense him of it and return possession of it to him, in return for a reasonable tithe, while he has usage of all inventions in Your city and lives in your lands. Moreover, in order that an evaluation of the tax on this idea and its accomplishments should be possible, it is necessary that he communicates it to you. You are therefore retaining him in your prison justly.”
“You’re forgetting that, immemorially,” another old man objected, “hidden treasures can only be revealed on the condition that the Sovereign’s property is increased by the largest share. In your list of the wealth of which the Crown may make the luxurious and beneficent display, have you not omitted to include the mines and the fortunate veins that run through the Earth? By analogy, one may deduce from the prerogative of the Emperor in respect of such treasures abruptly brought to light, an incontestable right to treasures discovered by skill and experience. This does not undermine what you say, but fortifies it with another reason. I agree that the thoughts hatched in this expanse of land, falling under the same authority, are vassals of this authority, and that Télice’s invention is subject to the imperial will, and that he is obliged to render to Caesar that which is Caesar’s.”
“Yes, but can the clerics say so? Will they not attempt to prove to you that the Spiritual domain is theirs? To that, Sire Emperor, we submit that you should reply that this is not purely the Spiritual domain. Doubtless Caesar, vicar of God on Earth, may hand over to the power of the Church, to its strong and frail hands, the blasphemer and the unbeliever, but there is no proof, and can be no proof, if the door of the dungeon remained solidly bolted and if one does not listen to any solicitation by the captive, who might desire the presence of a chaplain, that Télice is a blasphemer. He is, at this moment, like a pirate’s ship traversing the estuary of your river laden with a rich booty. If you seized it, would you give a share to the clergy, or let them claim a right, on the grounds that the pirate was probably a miscreant? No, Sire, the Church is in charge of souls, and has no power over bodies. It is you who has jurisdiction over Télice’s rebellion, if he remains mute, or the benefit of his speech, if you induce him to tell you everything.”
“What if they’re not content? I don’t like having interminable difficulties with them.”
“Then, Sire Emperor, abandon something else to them, which quite clearly concerns the Kingdom of the Heavens.”
“But what?” said the Emperor, thoughtfully. “Who’s that? What does he want?”
“It was an officer from the prison, Sire Emperor; we have, according to your orders, requisitioned the most experienced of your city’s physicians—it appeared to us that the man in question must be old Ezra. Summoned, he came in haste, but when informed of the situation and introduced into the dungeon, he limited himself to zealously applying unguent to the captive’s wounds. He refused to assist in the questioning. ‘Call me,’ he said, ‘to cure the harm that you have done; it will be my duty to tend this unfortunate and soothe him, but I will not lend myself to the task of giving strength to calibrate the instant of weakness in which his soul will belong to you, and in which your hands might collect the red and wounded bird of his secret from his heart.’ He laid his hands on the sick man, who went to sleep, and he left.”
“What—you let such a rebel escape?”
“He had such a grandiose air about him, such an aspect of venerable strength, that it was as if our hands were nailed down. No one dared make a move against the old man.”
“Find him and bring him back. Your head...”
The officer bowed and went out.
“Sire Emperor,” said one of the counselors, “this is the fruit of the great generosity of your law, and the suavity of your welcome. The city is a paradise for these people of another race, for these people of another land, who come here to live as in their native land, and do not like you and do not like us. They are scarcely ever seen frequenting the Church; on the other hand, they are a strong presence in the markets, on the bridges of commercial barges and the profound storehouses that border the river. Undoubtedly, they pay Caesar’s denier, but what is that denier by comparison with the mass of gold that their hands ought to be pouring into your coffers? I do not know whether Laurent Télice’s secret will bring you any great profit. Certainly, if the rumor is true…and the person is enigmatic, and I believe that he does indeed possesses marvelous secrets…but these foreigners, Sire Emperor…you have them in your hand, you have only to press and the wine of wealth will flow into your vats. For that, there’s no need of tortures; let your heralds touch their rods to the doors of their palaces, let your soldiers take possession of their warehouses and their ships, and I warrant that you’ll be twice as rich as you are now.”
“My right is certain?”
“Certain? Most certain. What are they doing in your land? Like trees brought from elsewhere, they have put down roots here, they produce fruits. Pick them—pick them without dread.”
“I wouldn’t like to deprive so many people; I’d
dread seeing their pale and sad faces looking at me at the festivals, accusing me of having caused bitter weeds to grow where once a beautiful fruit-tree prospered.”
“Banish them. You won’t see them any more—but only banish their persons, so that their wealth can continue to decorate our fatherland. Or deliver them to the Church; it will be able to discover their crime and punish their thought, while you will have taken care of their body.”
“Thank you, my sages, my faithful followers, but will I not become a man cited as avaricious. Will not men attribute to me the color of gold amassed instead of the color of gold conquered and won from the enemy?”
“Gold is the color of the Empire, Sire Emperor, the gold of the land is the property of Caesar.”
“I’ll think about this. Go and question Télice for me again, and make sure that old Ezra is sent to me.” He rose to his feet.
The counselors went out, offering one another mutual encouragement and congratulating one another.
The Emperor walked back and forth in a vast gallery adjacent to the hall.
“Sire Emperor, Sire Emperor, don’t you want to hold your true counsel now, with a true sage?” And the fool Thrasylle, clad in red and yellow, with little bells on his belt and the bracelets around his wrists and ankles, and cowbells on his cap and bat, pug-nosed and deformed, with a child-like face, enormous eyes and a decrepit gait, advanced toward him with all the rapidity of his short twisted legs.
“Hold counsel with you—oh, undoubtedly! To whom ought gold belong Messire Fool?”