The Traitor

by Michael Cisco

  That night, when I passed that way a second time, I saw someone coming, although it was late, the stockade—there was a stockade surrounding the town, what in the world they had to defend I couldn’t imagine, but perhaps it was to keep people in—the stockade was shut up for the night and the lights were all doused, that same boy was running through the clearing toward the trees. I couldn’t see clearly though I could see more clearly than most in that light, I saw the bruised expression on his face, he was running, it was clearly him, he ran to the treeline and stopped on the ground, by the roots, under cover. I couldn’t see him through the bracken and I started looking for him as quietly as I could. I pawed my way down through the bracken toward the spot where I had last seen the boy, the spot at the treeline where he had vanished under cover, and after a moment I could hear him, his breath was coming in short gasps, a little faint, and sometimes his voice would pass through, he gasped or moaned at intervals. I remember I had been looking for some amount of time and listening to his little faint pants and gasping, when I saw that what I had been taking, at the corner of my eye, for a patch of light from the moon, was, when I looked directly, the boy’s chest, I hadn’t expected his shirt to be open but he was lying on his back propped up against the roots, his shirt was open and I had been taking his little ribs for a patch of light from the moon. I could see him clearly, and when I saw him, he was holding his arm and only just noticing me. I came up closer, his face was turning a bit green and he was holding his right hand, his whole body—his body was still pretty small—his whole body was rigid and shaking with pain. I came right up over him, he smelled like burnt toast.

  I saw—they had broken his hand. I reached and fixed it at once—I was still able to do that, nothing had changed. I don’t know what I did then, I only stood around, probably not sure what to do. Children almost always make me nervous, they’re so fragile that only a moment’s awkwardness can damage them. I’m most afraid of causing invisible damage, one thoughtless word . . . It’s hard not to resent children for being as vulnerable as they are, it’s a whole separate effort not to blame them for being as vulnerable as they are, I never knew what to do with my son or what I was doing with a son in the first place, a person like me has no business bringing more sufferers into the world let alone raising one, imparting my knowledge of life to it! There’s no point in trying to impart knowledge of life to children, there’s nothing any adult can tell a child about how to live that they could possibly understand, at best an adult can equip a child with prejudices that way, sow the seeds of confusion as I’m sure I did, sow the seeds of disillusionment as I’m sure I did, there’s no imparting wisdom to children. The only thing I ever taught my son was how to hate me. I did it unwillingly and without knowing that I was teaching him to hate me, but it was my only unique personal contribution to his upbringing. I think my wife’s only unique personal contribution to his upbringing had been that she taught him to hate her as well and for much the same reasons. He was a good boy. We were happy with him when he was young, but as he grew older he turned his back every day a little bit more from both of us and left the moment he didn’t need us anymore. He wouldn’t have anything to do with us, neither of us knew why he left, there was no chance for anything more to happen, because he wouldn’t speak to us anymore. After my wife died, I learned that he had gone to live with my family to spite me. I’m sure they were happy to have him, to spite me. I’m sure they took him to heart and cherished him as a real member of the family to spite me and in spite of me. Spite toward me was the common family trait that brought them together. This boy in the cover by the treeline was nothing like my son as far as I could tell then. He was looking between me and his perfectly unbroken hand, I was not looking directly at him, I was not giving him any reason to think I wanted anything from him. I could see, peripherally, that he was trying to ask me several questions at once, or that he was trying to think of something to say. This was taking too long so I left. He came after me and told me that he didn’t want to go back—he asked me if I expected him to go back. I said I didn’t expect him to do anything, but that it would make sense if he didn’t want to go back. I still remember this conversation, by some miracle. He asked how I thought he’d broken his hand. I told him I was sure he’d had his hand broken for him. He asked me what I’d done to his hand. I told him that his hand was really no longer broken, that the effect was permanent. He asked me what I had done exactly to his hand again. I said that I was a spirit-eater. He didn’t know what a spirit-eater was so I explained that to him and answered a number of other unimportant questions, I gave him my name and he gave me his, a name you won’t get from me—instead I’ll call him Tamt, which was my wife’s dead brother’s name. Tamt is alive and still free, as far as I know, and I’m sure that Alaks know about him already without reading any of this, they’re already searching for him—I won’t have them learn anything from me. When I told Tamt I was traveling, Tamt had thought I was living in the woods outside Kursick, he asked me a number of questions about where I was going, I eventually told him I was probably heading to Lohach, he kept on asking questions until I sheepishly understood what he was doing and invited him to join me, Tamt agreed. Tamt agreed to come with me without hesitating. He was my good boy.

  I asked Tamt who had seen him run off, he said no one had, he’d waited until they were all asleep. I told Tamt, that when his people missed him in the morning, they’d start searching. They’d search until they were satisfied, as long as they cared, then decide he was dead and give up—I asked Tamt if he wanted them to imagine him dead. Tamt said no. I told him to let them know. I think I said, “If you don’t want them to think you ran off you have to show them you’ve run away.” After one moment Tamt picked up a branch and ran to the treeline. He started battering the blue gills off the trees. In no time he’d pried all the blue gills off the trunks and trampled them to bits. When Tamt finished he came up to me, breathing hard. His eyes were shining at me and he was breathing hard through his grinning mouth. I remember standing there in front of him in the shadows of the trees and getting an idea. It took a long time, but I got an idea and asked Tamt how they grew the gills. He said they would chop at the bark here and there, near the roots of the trees, and the spores would set in the gaps. Did the spores always need a break in the bark? I asked. “Yes,” Tamt said. I now had a complete idea. I went down to one of the trees and knelt by it, with its trunk in my two hands down by the roots where the bark was broken and there were blue scars where Tamt had ripped the gills off, and I fixed the bark so that it came up solid from the ground, without a chink and hard as rock. Tamt saw what I did, he saw at once that I was ruining that tree for the purposes of growing blue gills of fungus. I knelt and fixed the bark, and I could see right through to the heart of the wood, I saw the spirit there, it was vast. It was thinner than tissue and slow, vast, it noticed me so slowly I could see the little shimmer, that was its noticing, go along its length. I was kneeling and the bark was coming up and growing solid, and then I felt Wite come up. He just came up out of nothing all around me, this was a feeling like standing in the water when a wave rolls by and lifts you a bit, then broadly pulls you rushing on all sides until you don’t know whether you’re standing still or moving, I went to the shore once with my wife and was terrified, especially when I stood in the water with the waves coming all around me, Wite was coming up around me out of nothing, through the earth. When I looked here and there, after I stood up, I saw that all the trees had solid bark coming up from the roots, sometimes as high as the lower branches, the bark was solid, without a chink and hard as rock. Tamt was looking at me. He saw what had happened and he wasn’t sure about me. I remember it being quiet, a few crickets. I offered Tamt my hand and he took it at once. Tamt and I left and went back into the forest. When the sun started to come up, much later, we hadn’t spoken, we’d been going over rough ground and we both had been picking our way in the dark. When the sun came up, I saw a low hill and had another thought. I tur
ned and looked at Tamt. We had been awake all night, moving very fast through the forest, Tamt’s eyes were glassy from lack of sleep and stared back at me, but he was grinning, he was filled with vitality, and I was in exactly the same state, I’m sure I glanced at him with glassy, bulging eyes and a grinning, alert face. I felt full of heady, weightless energy, my eyes were extra open and everything seemed especially bright, the air felt sharper, I was exhausted and nearly panicking with energy at the same time, and Tamt was the same as me, at the same time. We had both looked at each other the same way at the same time, with glassy eyes, exhausted and nearly panicking with energy. I wanted Tamt to come with me to the top of the hill. From there, I showed him Wite’s mountain. It was towering over the trees. I pointed directly at the cave. I told Tamt everything, I told him about Wite, I saw a glint from the mountain while I was telling him about Wite and I saw his eyes were brimming, every word fell through their transparency and struck root in his head, I looked up at the mountain and saw the glinting from the slope, then a sound boomed from the woods between us, between the mountain and our hill, the sound boomed from the woods, as if the trees were all living horns—its tone rose and fell, it was so loud I could feel the air rumbling and the air seemed to become clearer still—the hair was raising all over my head, I was paralyzed, the sound was rising and falling over our heads, coming from the woods, now and then it would stop and I would hear its echoes disappearing, and I would feel my body go a little slack and my hair fall flat—then it would come back and I would be paralyzed again—this went on and on. It was Wite acknowledging me and Tamt, my first convert. Tamt was converted then. Things were started growing then, with Tamt. But that sound was also the trees and the mountain addressing us directly. Imagine being addressed directly by a mountain! It poured out on us like sunlight, while the sun rose. Imagine being directly addressed by nature. The sound was so loud it nearly knocked me down, it came from everywhere. Wite was one of the elements, like the weather, he wasn’t anything like a person anymore. He’d made himself into an element. I was going to bring him from there, to every city in the world.

  Chapter Eleven

  Let me tell you why directly. If you don’t understand you never will. I was sustained through everything by my fancy that the whole world will end, my days have at least beaten that into me without knowing it, every time the next day struck me I fell more in love with the end of the world, I’ve loved it more and more. I’ve come to depend on it, the end of the world is something I look forward to, and that I imagine often, with great pleasure. The end of the world exists, it is present immediately. It is touching every moment, so to speak it’s standing outside the door every moment, it could come in at any moment. I depend absolutely on that, for the wherewithal to draw my next shallow imperfect breath, like any hopeless person would, but there is more in the end of the world than an idea for me, because I’ve seen Wite. The whole of the world at long last no more, there’s no imagining it. I went to Lohach with a picture in my head of a completely ruined city, nothing but rubble, all my life I’ve been drawn and drawn to ruins, I’ve pictured everything around me in fresh ruin, I imagine a city freshly ruined, and see all the everyday faces changed, the citizens wander around in a daze, stripped naked by the ruination of their city, they have nothing to say to each other, they can’t speak, they can’t desire, they’re barren, crippled, they have nothing. I wanted to live inside those ruins and make nothing out of them, without so much as shifting a few planks to patch the holes in the roof, not so much as picking up a broom to sweep away the broken glass—leave it, let it lacerate my foul hateful feet. Leave the clutter in the streets, let the city go down as it is, where there’s nothing to be done, nowhere to go, nothing moving, no business, no conversation, no inanities, only silence and resignation. Let them know, and leave them nothing. Throw them down. A full stop to everyday business, the ruination of the city, that is the only completion that can be hoped for, or that should be hoped for. It’s the only hope that isn’t an obscene hope. A ruined city is the only sort of city I could live in. I could walk to and fro, one place looking much the same as any other, just piles of rubble, and I could meet people in the street and in the ruins, and feel at home with them, when it didn’t matter any more who they were supposed to be. Who we are would also be in ruins, and our language would be ruined and just barely intelligible. They wouldn’t be anybody, that’s how I would resemble them. We would all be at the mercy of the elements, all the same—that’s what I want to bring to every city in the world, I want to see every city in the world ruined like that, every abominable family, church, army, hanging in rags, all those abominable groupings of people smashed to pieces, leaving only the handful of permanently stupefied survivors and debris as far as the eye can see. All I wanted—although I loved Tzdze, and at the same time it seems more and more idiotic that I should bother to speak of wanting and loving—all I wanted was to see the end of the world. Wite selected me and sent me instructions, and I was a willing instrument, I am Wite’s willing instrument, to bring about the end. Wite has made himself into an element, Wite will strike blindly and follow in my wake where I go, here and there wherever I go, and bring down whatever has been built up there. You must understand that he will act blindly, with no more reasoning or totting up of plans than a fire. Tzdze will survive unharmed with Wite’s protection, I love her and for that reason say nothing to Tzdze, I go away, nothing will change for Tzdze though the world may end, don’t imagine I’ve forgotten her. You may think I’m weak and tired and resentful, and you’re entirely right, but even though I admit shamelessly to babbling here like a half-wit I will insist to the end that I am not inventing and I am not tailoring circumstance to please me. But even if I were, what business is that of yours? Are you so honest? Tzdze was no more in the world than I, and she will be safe even if I am not kept safe—why should I be kept safe? Do I care so much what happens to me? Let the wall cave in and crush me this moment. Tzdze will be spared, as I know, and that’s all—

  I went to Lohach on Wite’s instructions. Tamt and I walked in the road like regular people and eventually we found a coach road and followed it, Tamt on my horse and I on the ground leading them both. My horse was ailing, it was moving slower every day, it seemed only to want to rest, I could never tell what an animal was thinking, what its gestures meant, I decided it was either too sick or too old, or too tired, and I released it in one of the last few wild spots before the coach station at Klosdanz. Wearily it sauntered into the woods and disappeared. I hated to take the coach but there was no going on with that horse, it had finished. For all I know, it’s still there in the woods near Klosdanz, roving in the trees foraging. Or lying flattened into the ground like a leather satchel, a feast for worms. Tamt and I released him in a wild spot and walked into Klosdanz. I didn’t think anyone would recognize me there, the station was attached to a greasy little inn, neither Tamt nor I had any desire to “refresh” ourselves in there, I think we got hold of some dried cherries somewhere and ate those, waiting for the coach. Nothing could have been more strange than to stand there as I did, eating cherries, of all things, so dry as to be virtually without flavor but nevertheless, after that it began to seem that anything was possible. I looked forward to the coach ride with dread, I’ve always hated coaches, I’ve always hated anything that thrusts strange people right under my nose, ever since my first coach ride to the capital, when I left my uncle Heckler. Tamt and I took the coach when it came and had the seat to ourselves, I remember the appalling people sitting opposite us, I remember sitting there helpless in the dank, humid air inside the coach, helplessly breathing their air, I spent the whole trip hammered back into my seat by an endless soliloquy, one of the passengers was soliloquizing to another in a so-called foreign language, I could hear him inside the coach when it pulled up to collect us at the station, he soliloquized continuously without pausing for breath from Klosdanz to Lohach, yammering in a disgustingly liquid foreign language, without a single hard co
nsonant, and at the top of his lungs, as if he were standing in a colossal amphitheatre and not sitting in that humid little box of misery, yammering in the full confidence of his kind that he naturally had every right to bleat out his shapeless words at the top of his lungs, without a thought in his head, like a machine; he would go on with his perfectly meaningless soliloquizing even if the world was ending around him, perhaps, if this isn’t expecting too much, he might, at the last moment, suddenly look around him in complete disbelief, that there might be something in the world to stop him prattling on forever. Perhaps you think I’m no better, but I have a story to tell, and I don’t go chewing it into the air for hours on end, where I’m not wanted. I have chosen to write my words in secret and in silence, so that I alone will hear them. Sometimes I imagine that you ask me how I could turn against the city, all the humanity, I imagine you bringing up this so-called humanity, I don’t imagine you’re trying to pass judgments on me, but I do imagine that you might not understand, and you’d bring up humanity as an honest question—whenever I think of humanity I think of that torture-oration I endured between Klosdanz and Lohach, I can’t help but think of that reeking animal flapping his jaws in front of me for hours like a machine, and all the people like him, there are legions of identical copies of this one appalling specimen making life unbearable for numberless victims all over the world, I can only picture humanity as a mob of those orators and the wretches like me who are longing to put out our ears with hat pins—I love Tzdze, I love Wite, I love them more and more, and more and more, every instant my love for them grows, because they were inhuman, there was nothing of that chattering general character about them, they were inhuman and only inhuman things are worth loving—perhaps there are human things that cause me to feel love but they’re not worth loving, I’m not sure they’re worth loving, I’m not sure that I love those human failings, certainly not my own, and for others I think I can only be indulgent from time to time.