Review of Australian Fiction, Volume 9, Issue 6

by Alison Croggon

  Review of Australian Fiction

  Volume Nine: Issue Six

  rafed

  Review of Australian Fiction

  Review of Australian Fiction Copyright © 2014 by Authors.

  Contents

  Imprint

  The Letter Alison Croggon

  The Green Lamp Leah Swann

  Published by Review of Australian Fiction

  “The Letter” Copyright © 2014 by Alison Croggon

  “The Green Lamp” Copyright © 2012 by Leah Swann

  www.reviewofaustralianfiction.com

  The Letter

  Alison Croggon

  A court scribe writes down what she is bidden. She may, like Jul Ibar, second scribe in the court of Xantain in the illimitable kingdom of Antobar, pursue her personal interests in her own time, as long as they are considered to add to the prestige of the city. The prestige of Antobar was once without rival in the known world: but now it is long laid waste, shown its limits at last by the mercenaries of Cantab, who burned down the libraries and palaces and temples in rage when Xantain inexplicably overlooked the small matter of their pay. The rubble of its sublime architectures is overgrown with grass and thistle, or has been stolen stone by stone to build shepherds’ huts and long houses to keep the cattle warm over the bitter winters, and the wind scuttles like a bored kitten here and there on the rocky slopes which once teemed with markets and flowered balconies, and all its deep learning is scattered in isolate scraps through the darkening world, or has been utterly forgotten.

  On the fifth day of the Hungry Month in the year 948 by the Larandic Calendar, when Jul Ibar lifted her brush and inked it, peacocks still strutted on the steps of the palaces and lilies in the water gardens opened shy pink buds. The pale spring sunlight glanced across the linen paper that she steadied with her left hand as she paused, her heart beating fast with her temerity. If Xantain knew what she intended, he would not consider that it would add to the prestige of his city.

  Xantain maintained a liberal court; the motley crowd of theologians, mathematicians, magicians, poets, architects, philosophers, dancers, astronomers, and artisans who flocked to his largesse made Antobar the most admired and beautiful city in the known world. They filled his labyrinthine libraries with knowledge, they adorned his palaces with treasures and stimulated his leisure with delight. Talent was the only coin that mattered; race, language or creed were no barriers to the king’s curiosity and bounty. As a young poet, Jul Ibar was drawn to Antobar like so many others, finding an ear for her lyric and a home for her lonely soul. That she had risen to second scribe in less than a decade despite the calamity of her sex had set some tongues whispering; but in this she was protected by her plainness. No king who had access to the most beautiful women in his realm had need to satiate his carnal desires in such unpromising soil.

  The brush trembled as Jul Ibar brought it to the fine white surface of the paper to begin her letter. She took a deep breath, fearing she would smudge the page, and when her hand at last was still, she wrote: ‘Jusaf of Khaz: Most Holy Potentate and Revered Queen of the Northern Realm of Lazakh, from Jul Ibar, humble second scribe at the Luminous Court of Antobar, flower of Xantain’s Reign.’ And then she paused again.

  Three months earlier, at the beginning of winter, the celebrated traveller Helioban the Elder had visited Antobar, bringing marvellous tales of lands far away: the two-headed tribes of the Isles of Malaga, who lived entirely on grains and had no knowledge of war, or the mermaids of Janatolia, half fish, half human, or the ice leopards that swim across the emerald seas of the arctic in search of prey. And he spoke too of a marvellous realm called Lazakh, ruled entirely by women. The king laughed, as the notion of such a place was so absurd, and so the court laughed too. Encouraged, Helioban extended his tale. At the centre of Lazakh was the city of Khaz, known as the Jewel of the North, the crown of a domain which stretched from the Sea of Lind to the Krokian mountains. It was protected by an army of men and women, and both men and women held the important posts in the city. The army’s general was a woman, and this was considered no odd thing, but perfectly natural. He said Khaz was ruled by a great queen, Jusaf of Khaz, and that the city’s culture and learning, the majesty of its palaces and the richness of its libraries, were matched only by Antobar.

  As Helioban spoke the king’s face darkened, and the court hushed. At last Xantain interrupted the traveller, asking him if this city indeed existed, or was but a fabulous tale he had heard from some intoxicated sailor. Unwarily Helioban said that he had travelled there himself ten years before and had seen it with his own eyes, and had been received with great honour by the queen herself. At this Xantain frowned, and the court fell completely silent. Helioban, sensing at last the king’s displeasure, said that, impressive though the city was, it had great problems of administration, due to the innate weaknesses of women, who were forced to stay indoors for one week a month, at which times brigands ruled the streets and the populace lived in fear. He added that he was certain that the city would collapse, perhaps even in the following year. Jul Ibar, who was watching him closely, was certain that he lied: but the frown lifted from Xantain’s face and the court breathed out, and Helioban turned his narration to other marvels and the moment passed. No one spoke of Jusaf of Khaz again.

  But Jul Ibar had listened with all her body, and she did not forget. A city of culture and art, ruled by a woman! The mere thought made her shiver with joy. It was as if all her life she had unknowingly lived in a low hovel, and suddenly the roof were removed and she could see stars and clouds and sunlight for the first time. She could scarcely imagine what it would be like to live in such a place.

  As a woman celebrated for her skills in that city of artisans and intellectuals, Jul Ibar wasn’t alone. Others had also risen to prominence: the astronomer Nasil, for example, who theorised the Nasil Spheres that explained the eccentricities of planetary orbits, was second maintenance officer in the palace observatory. Nasil had fled to Antobar after her ideas became dangerous in Unzek, when another astronomer used her theory to demonstrate that the earth was not the centre of the cosmos, and was duly executed; but in the court of Xantain she was welcomed as a luminous addition to a culture already so incandescent it was in danger of blinding itself. Likewise the mathematician Irbik had travelled to Antobar all the way from the Horn of Fire, far in the south, on the mere rumour of its libraries, having been forbidden to practice the arcane art in her own country.

  Some grumbled (in private) at such appointments, few though they were. If a woman were to take her place among the publicly honoured intellects in the city, the sacred symmetry of the family, and therefore of the social bond, was disturbed. What if others followed their lead? What was to be done if the women of Antobar decided to study the stars rather than to bear children? It was, many said, against the natural order. There was for a time a fashion among the rich daughters of Antobar for studying astronomy and mathematics, that seemed to bear out such warnings. But few of them managed more than the beautifully illuminated star charts now kept in the museums of Soho and Halvard, and almost all these daughters obediently married where they were told and bore the requisite heirs.

  Yet, for all the disquiet, none spoke openly against the king’s appointments. Those who shone in Xantain’s eye were careful to keep themselves there. They all remembered what had happened to Hasin, first scribe and annotator, recorder at the kings pleasure and many sundry honours besides for more than twenty years, after Unjab arrived with the revolutionary metrics that united sacred texts with the courtly poetics of the Zanzibs. Hasin, a man of austere intellect, had objected fiercely to the melding o
f sensual and earthly melodies with holy scriptures, but fashion and the king’s favour moved against him. When he refused to cease voicing his objections, even after the king had arbitrated the dispute and found in Unjab’s favour, he was thrown into prison. He was released some months later, broken and bitter, on condition that he write no more, and now he lived on the outskirts of the city, visited by few and honoured by none.

  Despite this, the ambitious young playwright Periphas, perhaps angered by Nasil’s appointment, wrote a satirical drama in which women ruled a nameless city where men were mere slaves, child-rearers, and vessels of sexual pleasure. In the histories this play, now sadly lost, is mainly noted for the fact that women, scandalously, were employed to perform it. It is now impossible to say whether, as Xenobarb argued, the play exposed the enslaved state of womanhood, and thus implicitly praised Xantain for his enlightenment in recognising their intellectual skills, or if it was, as was more widely published, a stern warning against what would happen, should women be permitted authority in the state.

  Although the king failed to attend the performance, thus ensuring that the venture was a failure (the ruinous expense cost Periphas his favourite racing horse and his summer house), the playwright, notably, wasn’t punished for his critique. Moreover, after this play, disastrous though it was, his fame began to rise. A decade later it seemed, from the number of those who spoke of being there, that almost everyone in Antobar had secretly attended the sole performance, although it was said at the time that the theatre was all but empty. It was generally agreed by then that the premise was so nonsensical that such mischief was permissible, as an early fancy of this playwright’s febrile, brilliant and sometimes transgressive imagination. Certainly, Periphas took care never to transgress quite so wildly again.

  Jul Ibar had seen that performance, as she took a keen interest in all the writers of Antobar and was an acquaintance of Periphas. She never spoke of it afterwards, and in her diary merely noted her attendance. But she remembered that play as she sat on the scribe’s bench in Xantain’s court and listened to the traveller. That night, and for many nights afterwards, she dreamed that she entered the gates of Khaz, and as she walked down the grand colonnade that led to the queen’s palace (for so she imagined it) a line of women, each of them wearing the brooch and torc of command, bowed to welcome her. She always woke up as she set her foot to the first step of the flight of stairs that led to the high brazen doors of the palace, and so she never saw inside it.

  She spent the winter in a fever of longing. Before Helioban’s visit, she had been grateful for the haven she had found in Antobar, where at last her lyrics had been published and read; but now she wondered why she had accepted all her life that second scribe in the court was the summit of her ambition. To be sure, it was an exalted post, and she was envied for it. But she had always known that she could never hope to be appointed as first scribe, no matter how learned her expositions on prosody, how searching her experiments in the new metrics, no matter how profoundly she incised her soul and etched its blood on the empty page. She was praised because she transcended her sex, but her body, with its cold, damp humours, could not but dim and corrupt the generative fires of her mind. Sometimes, when a man of meaner talent derided her verses as the virtuosic performances of a well-trained monkey, or ridiculed her physical appearance by comparing her to a pig or a nanny goat, reflexive contempt sparked a secret rebellion against these supposed laws; but she never answered such criticisms, choosing instead to sharpen her control of rhyme or to invent new subtleties in metrical form.

  She knew that if she wrote to Jusaf of Khaz, offering her services to her court, Xantain would never forgive her disloyalty. She told herself that she was perfectly content where she was, where she had unusual honour; but then she found herself wondering what it would be like not to be exceptional, where such recognitions as she had gained were available to any woman of talent. She wondered what it would be like not to be ashamed of her plain face, and whether she would no longer be mocked as a failure, despite her high position, because she had found no lover and had borne no children. She wondered what it would be like not to live with the constant petty burrs that irked her pride, and that she had learned to ignore. For she was a proud woman.

  Her mind then turned to practicalities. How could she write to the queen, without Xantain coming to hear of it? In those times, sending a letter such a great distance was not a simple matter. It happened in early spring that an opportunity arose: one of her close friends, a minor diplomatic functionary, was appointed as part of an embassy to Pirilissum, a settlement on the south side of the Sea of Lind. It was a month’s voyage by trade boat to the port of Corambatine, and from there a tiresome trek inland on mule-back for a further two months. The region was notorious for bandits and local warlords, and the embassy was furnished with an armed guard. Once her friend reached Pirilissum, Jul Ibar reasoned that it would be a relatively simple matter to discreetly command a delivery to Khaz: there must be trade across the sea, no matter how wide it was. She took her friend into her confidence, without revealing that she intended to request a place in Jusaf of Khaz’s court, and he agreed to help her as far as he could.

  Even after that, she hesitated. Her friend was leaving the following day, and if she were to write this letter, it had to be now. She sat at her table unmoving as the ink dried on her brush and the shadows lengthened in the courtyard outside. She thought of the old proverb about travellers’ tales. It could indeed be a fabrication, which she had leapt to believe because it was the shape of her desire. She had always prided herself on her scepticism: was she now to gamble her achievements, perhaps even her life, on a moment’s childish credulity? And yet she knew she would regret it all her days if she didn’t. She was seized by a strange, paralysing panic, unable to decide one way or the other.

  At last, when the final light had ebbed out of the sky, she lit a branch of candles and began to write with a furious urgency, scarcely thinking as she did so. She finished the letter and sealed it and slumped exhausted in her chair as if she had completed a long and difficult work, although the letter was only one page long. She slept badly that night, turning restlessly on her mattress as if it were stuffed with thistles. At dawn she met her friend and gave him the package, with some coins to cover expenses. He grasped her hand and smiled, and rode away.

  Jul Ibar calculated that the earliest she could expect to hear any news was the end of autumn, when the embassy was due to return. At first she thought of the letter every day when she awoke, wondering if her friend had safe passage across the sea. She prayed daily that his ship should evade pirates and sea monsters and storm. Summer winds rolled across the mountains, scorching the grasses gold, and then the swallows gathered in their flocks to fly south for winter. She sniffed the cooling air and waited. The embassy returned just before the passes were choked with snow. Her friend embraced her and told her that he had found a holy man who wished himself to visit Khaz, and who said he was willing to bear her letter to the queen. So she waited again.

  Spring returned, and then summer, and no answer came. Now Jul Ibar no longer thought of the letter each morning when she woke. She remembered it in idle moments, smiling sometimes at her folly. Perhaps the holy man was a fraud, and her gold had been stolen. Perhaps even now he laughed as he thought of the gullible foreigners, who swallowed marvellous tales as fact. Perhaps he was an honest man, but had been waylaid by brigands or mountain lions. Perhaps the letter lay rotting in his ragged purse, whipped to and fro as the starving wind picked his bones.

  Autumn arrived again, and brought no news. When winter snows sealed the mountain passes, Jul Ibar stopped waiting. Spring brought new hope, and she thought again of her letter, but no answer came. And so it was that year, and the next, and the year after that. At last Jul Ibar no longer dreamed at night of the colonnades of women and the white steps of the palace. She bent her head to her work, transcribing speeches for the king, or recording judicial decisions, or meticulo
usly illuminating letters for diplomats to carry to other kingdoms, to negotiate matters of war and trade and marriages and alliances and territorial disputes.

  In her spare time Jul Ibar wrote an epic poem about a city of women. She ransacked the king’s libraries, taking notes about any women who were mentioned in the chronicles, and she put all these women into her poem. Those mentioned in the records, brief though the references often were, had shown exceptional learning or heroism; they had tricked demons and outwitted kings, or discovered how the earth moved by observing the shadows of apples, or led armies and commanded empires in the ancient world, or were famous poets and thinkers. But Jul Ibar also wrote about women she had known, who raised children alone in poor houses and showed them the miracle of creation every morning when they lit the fire to make bread, and she wrote of the illiterate singers of the plains where she had been born, who had taught her the real meanings of poetry. She showed her verses only to her closest and most discreet friends, for it was inconceivable that such a poem would be published; but she knew it was her great work.

  When at last she finished her poem, in the decade before the burning of Antobar, she caught a wasting sickness that physicians could not heal. Almost the last thing Jul Ibar did was to burn her manuscript, page by page. She watched the ashy flakes spiral up in the convections of heat and thought how the breath of these women she had so passionately imagined was now returning to the living air, to be breathed by other women she would never meet. She felt no regret, for the poem was perfect.

  She never knew that her letter did reach the city of Khaz. By the time it arrived, Jusaf had been unthroned and killed by a rising conqueror of the north, her city looted and her people scattered. The holy man sat long on his mule looking over the blackened ruins, which were already crumbling back into the indifferent breast of the earth. He pulled the letter out of his purse, broke the seal and read it. Then he turned his weary mount and rode the long trail back to Corambatine, where he placed the letter in the library. Two centuries later that library was also burned down in the Sack of Corambatine, and Jul Ibar’s letter, the last of her writings to remain on paper, was one tiny part of the great smoke that rose over the blazing city and turned the moon the colour of blood, watched from afar with dread by friend and foe alike.