by Paul Park
The apparition of the cat made chaos in the chamber. One priest shouted aloud, and others muttered prayers. The golden cord glowed hot white for an instant. But in a little while, above the noise of the outrage came the ringing of the secretary’s bell and his soft voice saying, “It is true. I saw her with the demon, not ten feet from the altar of our God. I saw her. With my own . . . eyes.”
As he spoke, the cat became a demon indeed, under the influence of his caressing hand. It grew huge, bigger than the bishop, with a distorted, masklike face, all lips and gaping eyes. It licked her breasts with its great lolling tongue, and scratched her shoulders until the blood came. And when it pushed her legs apart to penetrate her, even in that circle of eunuchs there were some who cried out, astonished that her small body could accommodate so furious an attack.
* * *
On the morning of October 45th, in the eighth phase of spring, the council passed a vote of censure, and in a rider to another bill, the bishop was condemned to death, for witchcraft and for heresy. The vote was close, the roll call taken in complete silence. Everybody understood the importance of what was happening. And when Chrism Demiurge cast his vote, a sigh rose up around the chamber, an exhalation of relief. Everybody knew that they had taken an irrevocable step. Later historians, describing the events that led up to the October Revolution, wrote that the council at this time was overtaken by a kind of frenzy, like a pack of starving dogs that, for want of further prey, finally turn upon themselves. They point to tyrants and oligarchs of other years, who by combinations of good judgment and good luck managed to keep their governments intact almost to summer. They conclude that the council of the Inner Ear, that spring, must have been in the grip of some collective madness, to persist so long in policies that led up to their own destruction. This is not true.
In fact that day, which was to end with the mutiny of the bishop’s private guard and two regiments of her soldiers, started in an atmosphere of calm. All night the crowds had rioted around the Mountain of Redemption, but by dawn they had dispersed back to their own parishes, where food was still being distributed at the end of morning prayer. And at nine o’clock the weather broke, and the sun came out for half an hour. Charity and Raksha Starbridge had stopped in a vacant lot where some buildings had been torn down. The princess climbed up on a hunk of masonry to look back at the palace where she had lived her whole life, while the parson squatted below her, wrapped in his filthy robe. “Come down,” he cried. “Don’t waste your time.”
Waste? thought Charity. The Starbridge towers rose above the house, delicate spires of glass and stone, glinting in the sun. Behind them the mountain filled the sky, tier after tier of battlements, and Charity could see soldiers pacing back and forth along the nearest parapets. The mist had parted on the mountain’s crest, and even at that distance Charity could see the work up there, the cranes and winches, the great soaring arches of unfinished stone, all covered with black scaffolding.
A wind blew down out of the mountain carrying noises from the work site, a muted throbbing and the grind of gears. Steel cables hundreds of feet long dragged a load of bricks and sand up towards the summit. Charity followed it with her outstretched finger. “What’s that?” she asked. Living on its lower slopes, she had never guessed the prison’s bulk. But the parson looked up grimly. “The time is coming,” he muttered, “when all men will be free. Women, too,” he muttered, smiling suddenly. That morning he had eaten three or four white pills, and his hands were shaking. When he got to his feet, he staggered and almost fell. “Come on,” he cried, lurching back across the lot to where a small alleyway led down towards the river.
Charity looked at his greasy head, his spotted neck. She too felt giddy, drunk from sensation, and she was staring wide-eyed at every new thing. She was standing on a broken block of carving two yards high, a piece from the shoulder of a fallen statue. She sat down and swung her legs over the side, kicking at the ridge of an enormous ear. She spread her hand over the surface of the stone. The rain had painted it with sugar scum; it was rough and pitted to her touch, and pools of sugar had collected in the joints between the stones. She brought her fingers up to her face, smiling at the sweet, nauseating odor, the taste of honey mixed with gasoline. So much smiling was making her cheeks tired.
Strange sounds came down the alleyway and drifted out into the lot near where the parson picked his way among the rubble. Charity could hear drumbeats and the sound of bells rising above a muddled, whining chant. The parson stopped and rocked back on his heels. He looked anxious and afraid, but the princess was happy because there, framed in the entrance to the alleyway, painted on a large square standard, was the portrait of a face she knew.
Caught by the breeze, it bellied towards her out of the opening, supported from behind by men carrying long poles. They strutted out into the yard, and behind them marched a procession of perhaps forty men and women. They blew whistles and rang handbells, and they had looted drums out of some temple, long black hollow logs covered with carvings. Each drum took two men to carry it; they took careful steps over the uneven ground, while others beat a ragged rhythm using sticks wrapped in red flannel.
Sitting on the fallen statue, Princess Charity clapped her hands and laughed, because the banner above them was unrolling on the wind, and the face that it carried was the face of her brother, Abu Starbridge. In a little while the marchers had found an open space, where the ground was clear for a circle of thirty feet. They put the banner up on poles stuck in the dirt.
They were a troupe of traveling dancers, and beneath the banner six or seven men and women went through a pantomime of recognition and welcome, embracing each other and slapping each other’s palms. The rest spread out in a circle around them, and Charity jumped down from her perch and came close, standing next to Raksha Starbridge in the crowd. The lot was filling up with people. Men straggled in from neighboring streets, and groups of children rolled their hoops and pointed and chattered to each other in high voices.
“What is it?” asked Charity.
“Passion players,” answered the parson. “It’s a play about your brother’s trial. Look, there he is.” He pointed to a dancer who was putting on his costume and his mask.
“Why? What happened?”
The parson looked at her. “I can’t believe you haven’t heard,” he said. “You must be the only person in Charn who doesn’t know. Today is his execution day.”
Suddenly there were tears in her eyes. “Don’t say it,” she cried. “They will not dare.”
The parson shrugged and turned his attention to the play. Around them the crowd was quieting down. One of the dancers had put on a quilted jacket and a mask: a bald head and a high white forehead. He drank liquor out of an empty bottle and made a mime of drunkenness, stumbling and staggering around the circle until the crowd roared. Then he held his hand up for silence. His palm was painted with the symbol of the sun.
“How dare they?” whispered Charity, tears in her eyes. “How can they make fun of him? He is a prince of Charn.”
“Hush,” warned the parson, and put his fingers on her arm. “They mean no disrespect,” he muttered. “On the contrary. You’ll see.”
The play started. It was in pantomime and hard to understand for someone who knew nothing of the story. In most cases people seemed to know, and those who didn’t know were quickly told by others in the crowd. All around there was a hum of talk. Charity plucked the sleeve of her companion after every scene, whispering, “What is happening? What is happening now?”
“How can you be so ignorant?” grumbled Raksha Starbridge. “The whole city knows this story. Look, there’s the church. You know, where the fire started.”
Four dancers sat cross-legged on the ground, joined at wrists and ankles with gray scarves, indicating manacles. Above them stood another dancer, dressed in the red robes of priesthood. His mask was grotesque and distorted, painted half face, half skull, and he held a pillow out in front of him to indicate his fat.
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“Parish chaplain,” muttered the parson as Charity tugged his arm. “Can’t you see? He’s delivering a sermon to the prisoners.”
The parish chaplain stalked around the circle, gesticulating and shaking his fists, while below him the prisoners groveled and hung their heads. But then Prince Abu stumbled in. Standing in the middle of the circle, he raised his right hand to show the tattoo of the golden sun. For an instant no one moved. And then the prince and the chaplain were struggling in elaborate mock battle, full of kicks and pratfalls, until the chaplain tripped and fell, and it was over. The prince stood above his fallen adversary. He took a drink out of his empty bottle, and then he squatted down among the prisoners, pulling the scarves away from their ankles and their hands, helping them to their feet.
But then more dancers were leaping into the circle from the crowd. Dressed in black, with black, empty masks, they joined hands around Prince Abu and the knot of prisoners. Again, the prince raised his hand, and for an instant everyone was still.
Then one of the prisoners jumped forward, swinging his gray scarf, and one of the black soldiers of the purge fell, holding his head. He had hidden some red paint in the palm of his hand, and as he fell, he streaked his hair with it, leaving a long red smear.
It was a signal for pandemonium, as prisoners and soldiers struggled together. They formed a spinning circle around the prince; he stood untouched. Then suddenly all was quiet. The dancers threw themselves to the ground, frozen in various attitudes of prostration, while a young girl stepped over them into the middle of the circle, and twirled a graceful pirouette. She was dressed in a ragged shirt of orange and red, and her mask was red, and her naked arms were decorated with a motif of flames as she raised them to the sky. Then she began to dance, graceful and slow, moving among the other dancers, and when she touched them, they collapsed and lay still.
“She’s the fire,” whispered Raksha Starbridge, as the princess tugged his arm. “Oh, you know. Your brother broke into the chapel while the chaplain was preaching to the condemned prisoners. Your brother freed them on his own authority, but then there was a fight. The building caught fire, that’s all.”
The girl danced around the circle, making exquisite gestures with her hands, while musicians in the crowd beat a rhythm on the drums. The drumming worked up to a frenzy and then stopped suddenly with a single hollow beat. The dancers got up and dusted themselves off and mixed in with the crowd, but the play wasn’t over. But it had changed direction, and for the princess the second part was easier than the first to understand. It was as if the first part were describing events that everyone already knew, and therefore did not have to be explained. But the second part was news. It was the story of Prince Abu’s trial and condemnation; a boy stood up to tell it in a high, sweet voice. He was dressed in white. As he spoke, one or more of the dancers behind him acted out the words. When the time came for dialogue, they supplied it, their voices faint and muffled through their masks.
“I know these things are true,” the young boy was saying, holding his hands up for silence. “I know these things are true because I saw them. I am witness to the truth. I was there, and when the roof of the chapel fell, I saw him shield my mother’s body with his own. I saw him on the floor, crushed under a fallen beam, his face covered with soot. And when they took him up and carried him to prison, they didn’t recognize him. They put him with the rest of us. This was in the Mountain of Redemption, in the second tier. I know it because I went with him. I was by his side when he woke up. There were three hundred of us there in the long hall, men and women and young children, and he lived there with us, and he shared our water and our food. We knew what he was, a prince sent down from Paradise to help us. At any time he could have raised his hand and made them set him free. He carried the tattoo of the golden sun. But he had covered it with soot and dirt, so that he would not be recognized. And the guards who came to bring us food never guessed who he was, but we knew. His flesh was sacred, and he had the healer’s gift. He touched us with his own hands. His pockets were full of candy, and he shared it with us. He showed us games like hop scotch and the jumping rope. And we were happy, until the day we came before the judge.”
A dancer near Charity was putting on his makeup and his mask. And when he stepped into the circle of the stage, there were shouts of anger from the audience, and people spat and shook their fists. She touched the parson’s arm. “Who’s that?” she asked.
“Lascar Starbridge. He’s the judge. They’ve really done him up. Look at his arms.”
Lascar Starbridge was taking his seat on the back of one of the other dancers, who knelt down on her hands and knees. He was a little man with trembling hands, and his skin was painted white, and streaks of black ran up his arms, to emphasize his veins. On the mask his eyes were painted red and black, and he had black teeth, red gums, and a black tongue.
“He’s an addict,” explained Raksha Starbridge. “Look how they hate him! Bastard! He knows he won’t live long. It makes him careless with the lives of others.”
Again people in the crowd were shouting and hissing, and some even threw stones. “I saw him once,” continued the parson. “In his court it’s a heresy to speak in your own defense. He says that in the time it takes to argue, other criminals might go free. He sits for six hours at a time, handing out sentences as the prisoners file past. He projects their tattoos onto a screen. He’s always mixing up the slides. He’s too high to see straight.”
Lascar Starbridge’s voice was slurred and feeble. As the dancers moved past him, he asked their names, and they would pantomine putting their hands into the projection machine. Another dancer held a spiral pad of drawing paper up behind the judge’s head, and as each dancer passed, he flipped another page over from the back, to show the different tattoos. Each page had a hand drawn on it, and on each palm was drawn one of the recurrent symbols of the criminally poor: a spiderweb, a checkerboard, a pick and shovel, a hangman’s noose.
In the audience, men and women rubbed their own hands together and they groaned. For Charity there was something poignant in the sound, so that for the first time the drama came alive for her, and she could see a picture of the strange scene in her mind as it must have been, the line of broken prisoners, and among them her own brother, Abu, not the dancer with his greasepaint and his mask but her own sweet brother, standing fat and tall.
“What is your name?” asked the beadle.
“Abu Starbridge. Prince . . . Abu Starbridge.” He was sweating heavily, and the light shone on his bald forehead. His face was dirty and his clothes were in rags, but at the sound of his voice, there was sudden silence in the courtroom. A dozen clerks stopped writing and looked up. The magistrate sat back in his chair, grimacing and showing his teeth. He looked terrified. Lifting his gavel, he half-turned so that he could see the slide of the prince’s hand, projected on the screen behind him. The tattoo of the golden sun seemed to spray the room with light.
“What’s the charge?” mumbled Lascar Starbridge, grimacing and shuffling his papers.
“Disturbing the peace,” said the beadle. “Inciting to riot. There must be some mistake. . . .”
“Enough,” interrupted the magistrate. “That’s enough. The prisoner is remanded to the psychiatric ward of Wanhope Hospital for observation. Next case.” His cheek was twitching and he raised one hand to smooth it. The pupils of his eyes were shrunken down to pinpricks, and his skin had an unhealthy pallor.
Prince Abu smiled. “There is no mistake,” he said. “Cousin, please. Might I remind you that the last nine men and women up before you on this charge were all sentenced to death?”
The magistrate glared at him and leaned forward over his desk. “Are you mad?” he hissed. “You must be mad. Take him away. No, stop,” he shouted, as the guards moved forward. “Don’t touch him. He’s a Starbridge. Are you insane?” he asked, stroking the twitch in his cheek.
* * *
He was not insane, not yet. But he was tired. All nigh
t he had sat drinking and listening to voices in the crowd outside his cell. Unable to sleep, he had pulled a chair up under the window and sat back with his head against the wall. And from time to time the wall would resonate to the sound of some speechmaker shouting through a megaphone. Once or twice he had stood up on the chair to look out through the bars, and then the noise of the people had risen like a wave. A thousand people stood outside his window, in the courtyard of the hospital, in the rain.
He had sat with a pen and notebook in his lap, thinking to write a poem before he died, something magnanimous and fine, but nothing came. And towards morning he must have slept, for he was jolted awake by the sound of gunfire and breaking glass. Spring sunlight was prodding gently through his window, making a white mark on the floorboards at his feet. The lamps had all gone out. His pen and his paper had fallen to the floor. And one of the hospital orderlies stood before him, holding breakfast on a silver tray.
Jolted from sleep, the prince woke with a cry. He heard bangs and smashes coming from the courtyard, and the sound of bells. “What . . . ?” he stammered. “What . . . ?” His eyelids fluttered with the effort of speech.
“A great change has come,” said the orderly. Sepulchral and grave, he stood like a statue, dressed in a white smock. His face had taken on that look of respectful reproach so familiar to the prince, and Abu closed his eyes to block it out. His mouth was foul with drinking, and his neck was sore.
“There’s been a change,” repeated the orderly. He was a middle-aged man. In those days superannuated and wounded soldiers were put to work in hospitals and prisons. This man’s cheek and neck were rough with scars, and his left hand was made of wood. His head was shaved in a style forbidden by law except to certain grades of soldiers.
