Sugar Rain

by Paul Park

  Prince Abu rubbed his forehead with his hand. “Are they trying to set me free?”

  “No, sir,” replied the orderly. “Where do you want this?” Without waiting for a response, he turned back towards the table and put down his tray.

  The prince rose to his feet. He stepped up onto his chair to look out his window into the courtyard. It was a weak, milky morning, and the rain had stopped. The crowd was still there, in diminished numbers. But it had lost its singleness; no one looked up towards Abu’s window now. People stood arguing in groups or sat glumly on the ground. The torches and the bonfires had all burned out, and columns of pale smoke rose up from the cinders.

  “What happened?” Abu asked.

  Behind him the orderly stood still, his wooden fingers clamped around the saucer of an empty coffee cup. “Forgive me, sir,” he said. “I want to ask you something. I’ve never met a prince before. I’ve never seen one, not up close. What I want to know is, are you a different kind of man? Physically, I mean. Genetically.”

  The prince leaned forward until his bald head rested against the silver bars. He had such a headache. Behind him the orderly was still talking: “Forgive me, sir. I feel that I can speak freely, because soon you will be dead. It’s just that you don’t seem to be behaving rationally. Not just you. When I was with the army, the priests and the officers behaved like crazy men. I saw a priest set fire to a powder wagon. He blew himself to pieces and twelve of his own soldiers. Coffee, sir?”

  “Thank you. Milk, no sugar.”

  In the courtyard, in the crowd, a group of soldiers stood arguing. One of them was making furious gestures with his fists; he broke away from the others and ran a few steps forward, and then he stripped his black cap from off his head and stripped off his black tunic, and threw them down into the mud. Abu watched him.

  “It’s not rational,” said the orderly behind him. “And you’re just as bad, sir. I mean no disrespect. But I can tell, you’re going to let them kill you. And there’s no reason for it. You could just walk out of here. They’d do anything you said. They’d have to.”

  Prince Abu raised his fingers to his head. “I refuse to claim my privileges under a system I despise,” he said. In the courtyard a scuffle had broken out. The man who had taken off his coat was being kicked and beaten by two of his companions.

  “Tell me what happened,” said the prince.

  The orderly raised Abu’s coffee cup to smell it and then lowered it again. “The council’s voted to condemn the bishop,” he said. “The announcement just went up. Tomorrow night she burns.”

  Abu’s cell was large and spacious. Its walls were lined with silk. The door was set into an alcove, behind some curtains, and as the prince turned around he saw that someone was standing there. Someone had entered without knocking, an old priest in purple robes.

  As Abu looked at him over the orderly’s shoulder, the priest smiled and put his finger to his lips. Unaware of him, the orderly was still talking: “I’m not a religious man. But even so, it’s lunacy. You make someone into a living goddess and then you burn her at the stake. I tell you, they must be insane. Whole regiments have taken oaths of personal allegiance to the bishop. Half the city worships her. If the council tries to burn her, there’ll be civil war. There’ll be a revolution.”

  “How interesting,” said the priest behind him. “How very . . . interesting.” He was an old man, with white hair and a predatory face. On his collar he was wearing the ensign of the Inner Ear, an anvil, a stirrup, and an eardrum, fashioned exquisitely in gold. Unlike most priests, he wore no other jewelry. His robe, too, was plain and unembroidered.

  Abu had not seen his uncle since he was a little boy, yet he was sure this man was he, Lord Chrism Demiurge, secretary of the council. It was not that Abu recognized his face. But his voice seemed to speak out of the quietest recesses of the prince’s childhood. Gentle, barely audible, it seemed to linger in the air and fill it with softness and dry menace. The silence that surrounded it was absolute. In perfect silence, the orderly turned his head. In silence he replaced the prince’s coffee cup on the tray. In silence he began to make the gestures of respect.

  “Don’t,” said the priest, still smiling, holding out his hand. “In the past minute you have already committed two crimes. You have slandered the bishop’s council and you have spoken the word revolution. Both are forbidden under emergency Statute Two-twenty-one-J, among others. The Prophet Angkhdt tells us . . . but no matter. No, don’t go,” he continued, as the orderly changed his gestures to imply an urgent duty elsewhere. “I am interested in what you have to say. Only be careful, I warn you.”

  Prince Abu stepped down off his chair. “Please, Uncle,” he began, but the priest held up his forefinger. He had a circle of silver lips tattooed around his fingertip, and his fingernail protruded like a tongue. The mark entitled him to talk without being interrupted. “Go on,” he said. “Speak, my son. Go on with your analysis. Only be careful.”

  Slowly, stiffly, the orderly went down on his knees. His face was slack with fear, and he stammered when he spoke. “My Lord,” he said. “Oh God, please . . .”

  The priest smiled, as if the name of God contained a private joke. “Ah,” he said gently. “Perhaps it is not true, then, that you are not a religious man. But to call on God now, in this context, couldn’t that be called hypocrisy?”

  “Uncle, stop,” said Abu. “Don’t bully him.” But again the old man lifted up his forefinger. There was silence for a full minute, and then the orderly began to speak. Kneeling on the floor, his head bowed and turned away, amid much swallowing and hesitation, he said, “I knew it. It’s true. You’re not human, are you? You have no hearts. My mother used to say that. Starbridges. From another star. And now I know it’s true.”

  Lord Chrism chuckled, a dry rustling in his throat. “Your mother sounds unorthodox. Is she still alive? It would surprise me if she were still alive.”

  Ignoring the old man’s uplifted forefinger, the orderly leaped forward, and grabbed up at his throat. The priest stepped back and made a little gesture in the air. And whether it was magic, or perhaps some subtler power, the orderly never touched him. He stopped as if he had run into a wall of glass. His arms grew slack, and his wooden hand caught fire suddenly and flared up.

  And that was all. In perfect silence he knelt down again and bowed his head as his hand burned down to a cinder and burned out.

  The old man’s voice was soft as spiderweb. “Correct me if I’m wrong,” he said. “You were a soldier once.”

  The orderly said nothing, but he bowed down to the floor. And in a little while the priest continued: “Yes, I see. You are a brave man. A commendable quality in a soldier. Very . . . commendable. You may go now.”

  “Sir?”

  “Go in peace. I am not as interested in you as you might think. I thought perhaps that I could goad my nephew into some display of strength. Yet I find he could not raise his hand to save an innocent man. Is it because he lacks the courage of a common soldier?”

  But before he had even reached the end of speaking, the orderly had scuttled out the door, while the curtains whispered after him. Lord Chrism took no notice. He was smiling, and his blind eyes glistened and shone. “Well, Nephew,” he said softly. “Say something. I know you’re there.”

  Abu reached down to pick up the whiskey bottle from beside his chair. There was a glass beside it with some whiskey in the bottom; he picked it up and rinsed his mouth out with the dregs, sucking it around his teeth before he swallowed it. Then he poured himself some more.

  The old priest cocked his head to listen to the sound. “Ah,” he said. “They treat you well.”

  “I don’t complain.”

  “No? But that’s good. And what is this—breakfast?” He stepped to the table and passed his hand over a basket of croissants, picking at the crust.

  The prince’s bed stood along the far wall, across from the window. Unused the night before, it was still neat, piled high wit
h blankets and silk pillows. Abu walked over and sat down. He felt ashamed, mocked, soiled, suddenly filthy in the clothes he had been wearing for a week. His teeth felt furry and ill used.

  When he was a child, his uncle’s presence had been enough to frighten him into fits. He looked down at the tattoo on his palm. “Is that why you came?” he asked. “To laugh at me?”

  “No. Or rather, not entirely. It was too long a trip just for that. I came from Kindness and Repair. Six miles, underground. The streets this morning are unsafe.”

  “It will get worse.”

  “Indeed. Burning you will not be popular, I fear. Burning my bishop, that will be a national catastrophe. But what choice do I have? She was guilty of an imperfection, poor child. A chemical impurity. It is . . . unfortunate.”

  “So you don’t care if there’s a civil war or not.”

  The secretary smiled. “I am an old man,” he said. “And there are always wars. It is God’s way. Perhaps when I see Him I will ask Him why, if I remember. It doesn’t matter. On Friday I return to Paradise.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I have seen it in my dreams. The streets are paved with silver. The women all have flowers in their hair. I will have a palace of my own, built of lapis lazuli. And God will take me in His arms, and He will make me young again.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  “But I do. I have seen it. And something else: My palace has a dungeon, below the level of the street. It is not like this one, no. It is much . . . harsher. It is all prepared. There is one cell for your sister and one for you.”

  “My sister . . .”

  “Yes. It is what I came to tell you, partly. She is on her way. Last night she took poison. My agents found her body, but her soul had fled. Like you she had no courage. No courage and no brains.”

  Prince Abu sat back on his bed and drank deeply. The whiskey in his glass was almost clear, a grade reserved for princes and for priests. It came from far away, distilled from the flowers of some distant southern desert, harvested by hand among the sand dunes. Popular among lovers, it was called Heartsbalm.

  The prince lifted the bottle into the light. There was more than a third left. The old man was still talking, but Abu couldn’t listen anymore. He felt the first effects of drunkenness—it seemed impossible to do more than one thing at a time, and right then he was thinking about his sister. The Heartsbalm had a mildly hallucinogenic effect, and when he closed his eyes, he could see her clearly. Her black braids were tied up around her head, and she was turning from the bathroom window, a pencil in her hand. He took another swallow of drink and watched the image fade. In his mind’s eye he saw her change—Charity Starbridge, older now, soon after she had married the old commissar, bending down over a bouquet of herbs, her small body constricted in the tight, soft robes of matrimony, her face already tired. And then again—later still, her cheeks pale and her hair unkempt, smoking marijuana from a silver chillum, in bed in the middle of the afternoon.

  He opened his eyes and looked down at the whiskey in his glass. He swirled it in a circle around the bottom. “Where is Thanakar?” he asked suddenly. “My cousin Thanakar?”

  “With the army. Not for long. My agents have gone out to bring him in. I tell you, burning you will be my melancholy duty. Hanging him will be a pleasure. Ever since he was a child, he has thwarted me. Broken my law. Debauched my niece. He has . . . thwarted me.”

  Abu closed his eyes. In his mind he saw his sister. Once she had stopped eating, and he had persuaded his brother-in-law to consult a doctor. The old man had chosen Thanakar. And within a week she had been better. He remembered her standing in the hall, looking at the clock, waiting, counting the time until her consultation, and when he had laughed at her, she had turned towards him, blushing, angry. How pretty she had looked.

  “She poisoned herself,” he said.

  “Yes. A peculiar kind of poison. It seemed to burn her from within. One wonders how she purchased such a thing.”

  “I would like to see her.”

  “Ah. In fact, there is nothing left to see. So I am informed. My agents were attacked outside the gate. As they were bringing her to me. The crowd broke into her bier. They were looking for jewelry. Her body broke apart under their hands. Inside, there was nothing left but ash.”

  “Rejoice at every death,” counseled the Starbridge Catechism. Nevertheless Abu felt tears on his cheek. The old priest stared at him, peering intently, but in the manner of the blind, he missed Abu’s eyes. He could see movement and color, but not form, and Abu had not moved in a long time.

  The old man peered into a corner. As always, it was as if he were surrounded by a mist of light, as if he stood swaddled in color, the pink walls and the red carpets and the changing morning, the silver tray, the golden tablecloth all smearing into one another all around him. Looking down at his own body, he saw a smear of purple and scarlet, mixing together as he raised his arm.

  “Are you . . . crying?” he asked softly, lifting his arm. “Be comforted. You will see her soon, in Paradise.”

  “In a prison cell.”

  “Be comforted. A prison cell in Paradise is better than the richest palace here. It will be summer there.”

  “I’m surprised you want to go,” remarked the prince. “I’m surprised you think that God will be so glad to see you, after you have wrecked this city and brought it to the brink of revolution.” He poured some whiskey for himself.

  The old man shook his head. “You still don’t understand, do you? You still don’t understand what I have done. You must think that I’m a madman. No, but listen: Do you think I don’t know what is happening outside? There are demagogues on every street corner preaching revolution and predicting the apocalypse. I had to creep here through the catacombs, six miles underground. I was afraid, I, who have ruled this city since before your birth. Don’t be a fool; if I were so in love with power, wouldn’t I have contrived some way to keep it? If I had believed in power? No.”

  The old man made a gesture, and all around him the glowing mist started to dim; to Abu it was as if the sun outside had gone behind a cloud. The room settled down to darkness and deep shadow, and the old man’s voice grew louder, more intense.

  “There is a myth,” he said, “about a world where the seasons change so fast, two hundred, three hundred times in a man’s lifetime, and the harvests just a few short months apart. If such a world exists, they must have no such thing as war. Fathers, sons, and grandsons all must understand each other. But here, when I was born, it was already winter, and winter is a season that requires strength of will. Therefore I have ruled this city with a desperate jealousy. And I am not ashamed; now, only now have we run out of food. In my great-grandfather’s time half the diocese was dead by this phase of spring, and even Starbridges were eating straw. I am not ashamed.

  “But it is spring now. Already times are not as hard. Soon there will be food to eat, birds on the trees. I have designed a system where men worship their oppressors. In winter that was necessary, but times have changed. Can I now go before my ministers and tell them Paradise is just an empty rock, that the God who granted them the right to rule does not exist? Can I go before the people and explain that all their misery has been for nothing? No—let them find out in their own way. The best I can do is make the change as quick and sudden as I can. Therefore I will burn my bishop, and there will be a revolution. The council will ascend to Paradise, and for twenty thousand days the name of Angkhdt will be forgotten. New politics will come. But don’t misunderstand—I have planted a seed. Now, even now, all over the city, actors and musicians are spreading word of you. They are in my pay.”

  Prince Abu stared at him. He suddenly felt very drunk; lifting his glass to his lips, he slopped whiskey on his shirt.

  “I have planted a seed,” repeated the old man. “I have been dreaming of this moment ever since your mother came to me when you were just a baby. Have you ever wondered why I gave you your tattoos? Why I put
such power into your hands—you, a weakling and a fool? It is because I needed a seed for a new faith, not now, but fifty thousand days from now. Here, now, perhaps you think you symbolize something new, a spirit of resistance, perhaps, of godlessness and revolution. But I have seen a vision of a new church. Fifty thousand days from now, no one will remember then your foolish scruples. No, they will remember the myth that now, right now, I am devising: of how a Starbridge prince suffered for them and led them to salvation. And fifty thousand days from now, when winter comes, they will be eager to surrender all their freedom into the hands of your ministers and your family. Just as they were eager to let me rule them, when I was a young man. All the temples and the shrines will be rebuilt, and your face will be on every altar. That is my dream.”

  Prince Abu sat forward. He had heard enough. Summoning strength, he rose to his feet. “I forbid it,” he said. “I won’t be part of it; I’ve changed my mind. Set me free.” He raised his hand. But in the darkness and the shadow, the great golden tattoo was invisible. It had no power to illuminate. And Lord Chrism laughed, a dry, feathery sound. “Too late,” he whispered softly. “Too late.” He made a gesture with his little finger, and two soldiers stepped out of the curtains behind him. Each held in his hands a length of purple rope. Like Lord Chrism, they were blind.

  * * *

  Charity broke away from the circle of dancers and pushed away out of the crowd. She felt stifled by her own breath. “They won’t kill him,” she said aloud. “They can’t.” She pushed out through a mass of people, holding her hands spread out in front of her, and when they saw her blank, tattooless palms, people stood aside to let her pass, afraid of the pollution. Her palms had begun to itch under the greasepaint; her whole body had begun to itch.