The Traitor

by Michael Cisco

  Not loving, but indulgent from time to time. By and large humanity means being buried alive in a humid little box of misery like that coach with a handful of human beasts heaped on top of you, the sweat dripping straight from the center of your forehead and the tip of your nose, your nose and mouth full up with human stink, feeling more desperate to escape every moment. I remember that bleak instant when I saw the trees falling away into the distance, I was completely out of place and alone without them, they fell away, I imagined the complacency with which the forest was regarded from the safety of the city, as something scenic. I watched the city rise up around me, as it closed around me, I remember how intense my desperation and disgust was—it peaked the moment we entered the main gate of Lohach, I saw the jumbled buildings all around me through the windows, Tamt and I watched them attack and eat up space on all sides, jumbled there at a bend in the Werse like a mass of rotting stuff clogging the river, and when I finally dragged myself out of the coach there was no relief, there was only more of the same on all sides; the air was just as rancid and stale, if not worse, for stinking with greater complication. Tamt and I couldn’t rest, the noise and the stink were overwhelming, they wouldn’t stop until we had been obliterated by them, the stink and the racket, I finally led Tamt to the Werse, not downstream where all the city’s filth collects, becoming truly disastrous, but as far upstream as possible, by the first and second flood bridges, where the water flowed into Lohach from the woods too far away. Tamt and I were only able to catch our breath there in the middle of the second flood bridge, where the air was clean and a bit cooler, and there were very few people, and the forest was visible in the distance. That was the first place Tamt and I found rest, from there, we were able to go out into the city again after dark, when things grew more quiet, and the air a little fresher. Tamt and I were able to go back into the city, into Lohach, from the second flood bridge, only after dark, and we resumed searching the streets in complete silence, in the dark lanes, we took the empty streets from the second flood bridge into the empty lanes of the worst part of Lohach, Tamt and I made our way into the worst part of Lohach like a pair of bats, stealthy, silent, unseen, in utterly dark streets with buildings as tall as trees on either side of the lane, the buildings in this part of Lohach were left completely to the elements, they sagged out over the street or leant back away from the street, they were partially decomposed, every street smelling strongly of partially decomposed houses, but these houses would, I saw without much reflection, never fall over of their own accord—they needed to be pushed. We were there, in the worst part of Lohach, and there were a few others but they didn’t notice us, Tamt and I kept to the stealthy streets and slipped past them all unseen. I wanted a brick building, without any special reason; I found a brick building and we set up house on the roof, inside the water tower. The building itself wasn’t fit for us to live in but the water tower was ideal. Tamt and I weren’t visible, there was an upright brick rampart screening us from the busier side of town, and we were high and near to the river, we could breathe. I had chosen the only brick building around—it was in the worst part of Lohach, but it was also right around the corner from the third city marketplace, which was by the river. We were in the worst part of the city, and right around the corner from the third marketplace.

  Can you imagine that marketplace—in between the heaps of trash and the stalls; these stalls are always completely formless, these stalls are half-melted in appearance; in between them an endless stream of squat bawling housewives staggering up and down the aisles on their jointless legs, grossly inflated ankles, braying to each other at the top of their lungs, their deaf heads turning neither right nor left, their mouths hang open and as they never hear anything that’s said to them from these open-hanging mouths they’re forever groaning “—uh?” “—eh?” and they turn and bray that back and forth to each other. In the marketplace and throughout the city in Lohach there was almost nothing like my language, no recognizable language, what a hopeless pidgin these people made of my language! Here and there one might observe the atrocious guards with their moustaches, they were the most atrocious of the male type in Lohach, this impossible male type that is found everywhere and which must be utterly annihilated, the guards were gaseous red-faced Lohach men with moustaches, out of their inanimate eyes they would stand and glare impudently at each passerby out of their own undimensioned measure, out of their own undimensional measure they judge me, let them condemn me in the worst possible terms, let me know with pride that they excoriate me with the most abysmal curses they can muster—I’ll help them, I’ll join my voice to theirs! Horrible horribly self-important men, the men at arms and the citizens, these self-important city jailors and impossible men with ideas of the world that stupidity must set far beyond the reach of discovery. I can’t to this day imagine what idea such men might have of the world, except to say that it seems to me it must be hopeless, impossible to correct or to expand, they could not be more certain that their understanding of the world is total, they are certain that their hopeless, pitifully thin and watery notion of the world is total, they lack even the meagre resources of mind to see that their hopeless, undimensioned, single-pointed notion of the world is not total—they admit of nothing else, they attack without provocation, they cannot be spoken to, they are too eager to feel their self-righteousness, to fall back on their paltry single-pointed certainty, whoever you are, they will come for you first, they are the ones to fear, and they own Lohach, Lohach is all theirs, it is the city that they built and it is the city that built them. This is what comes of building cities.

  Tamt found our first convert in Lohach, the so-called third market blacksmith. He was not the bonded blacksmith. He had actually stolen his smithy from the bonded blacksmith in the third market, Tamt and I asked this person and that person—that is, we asked the fruit seller, the glazier, and the butcher—who the third market blacksmith was. Tamt had drawn the blacksmith to my attention, because he was enormous even for a blacksmith, and because he was continually working and continually making mistakes. He barely sold anything, because he barely had anything worth selling. Tamt told me about him and drew him to my attention, I heard him long before I saw him. He struck everything he worked with such force that he could be heard a quarter of an hour before he was seen, he could be heard everywhere in that part of Lohach, even from our water tower. Tamt drew my attention to the sound in the morning, at the water tower, where I first heard it. The blacksmith barely made anything worth selling because he simply pounded away without any restraint and ruined everything he worked on, striking everything with such force he ended up battering his horseshoes and shovel blades and so forth all out of shape, he didn’t think while he worked. He had too much force in him, or he couldn’t hold himself back. Tamt pointed him out to me, the source of the sound I had heard from the water tower. He was enormous, and he struck his iron with so much force that sparks showered out onto the street, and sprayed across his face and his forearms, which were uncovered, although the sparks did not seem to scar him. His face and forearms were completely unscarred, even though they were regularly bathed in sparks from the forge. I watched him beat out a nameless thing, part of a carriage maybe, he struck it with more and more force, until finally he seized his long sledgehammer at its end and leaned over backwards until the sledgehammer’s head grazed the ground behind him, at full length, and then swung it forward again with a stroke so swift I couldn’t quite see it, the anvil groaned under the stroke and everyone within view, and Tamt and I, drew back sharply with the sudden and piercing sound, and the carriage part, or whatever it was, broke apart completely, its fragments, which were still glowing with heat, scattered across the floor, so that the floor and the walls smoldered where they fell, and the pieces smoked against the stones of the floor.

  The smith immediately went to find another piece of iron and began again, to produce, I suppose, another part of the same kind. I watched all this. Tamt and I began asking about him, we as
ked the fruit seller, the glazier, the butcher—they knew all about him, they had made up their minds about him years ago. We were told by the fruit seller that the smith had been an unwanted child, his parents hadn’t wanted or named him, they called him “blunder.” The glazier said he was called “blunder” and had been sold by his parents to the bonded blacksmith here, he had been a slave in that smithy. When the bonded blacksmith died, “blunder” refused to leave the smithy, he drove off the bonded blacksmith’s replacement, he forced the new smith to set up a stall at the other end of the third market (according to the butcher) because he refused to leave and couldn’t be removed by force. “Blunder” was too strong to be removed by force, and he never left the smithy. What little he made well enough to sell, the butcher said, he traded for food, for iron, for fuel, and “blunder” never left his smithy. The bonded blacksmith had gone to the so-called authorities with his complaint but nothing was done about it, he had wanted to catch “blunder” at an off moment, out of the smithy, then seize hold of it. The bonded blacksmith imagined locking “blunder” out of the smithy, according to the butcher, but nothing came of it. The bonded blacksmith had more or less given all that up, according to the butcher, because “blunder” was no competition for him. “Blunder” struck the iron too hard and deformed almost everything he made uselessly.

  Tamt and I took up with “blunder” effortlessly. He accepted us at once. I asked Tamt to look after “blunder”’s needs, to run and fetch whatever “blunder” needed. I designed a padlock for “blunder”’s smithy, so that he could leave it, so that he wouldn’t have to guard it every moment. I designed the lock and “blunder” expertly made the pieces to my specifications. While I assembled the lock, “blunder” forged the chain. In my presence, he never struck the iron too hard, he forged a heavy chain for the lock. Then “blunder” was free to leave the smithy, the bonded blacksmith came almost immediately; the second time “blunder” left the smithy to go off with us, with Tamt and me, the bonded blacksmith tried several times to get into the forge, but the chain wouldn’t break and my lock was too clever to pick and too strong to be broken. I had made all manner of things for my wife, for the house we shared, or had things made in my own way. I never trusted anyone to make anything properly, only an idiot trusts other people to make the things he surrounds himself with.

  Shortly after Tamt and I took up with him, “blunder” made his first sword. He worked it endlessly with strokes of such force that Tamt and I were driven outside, I remember how exhausted I was from wincing. Every blow on the iron clanged on the air and Tamt and I would recoil. There was no getting near “blunder” while he was working. The sword he made was blunt and unpolished, it was the color of lead, or soot. He made it and put it aside, he paid little attention to the hilt, the hilt was actually extremely crude. To our surprise, to his surprise, I suppose, as well, the Baron’s functionary purchased it right away, the Baron had lost his sword, according to the glazier, or broken it, according to the fruit seller, and urgently needed a new one, it was unclear why, or no one knew why. By that time I had acquired spies, and I could ask the spirits. The Baron had received “blunder” ’s sword and been very dissatisfied with its bluntness and crudeness, the Baron had called it a “crudely made, blunt sword.” There was no question that this was an accurate description. The Baron used it only in practice, because it was extraordinarily heavy. My spies told me that the Baron had noticed that, no matter what, “blunder”’s sword never chipped, never bent, and he tested it further, more and more ruthlessly, to try to break it, but it simply would not break or bend. The Baron had done everything short of melting it down, but the sword would not break or bend. The Baron had the blade sharpened, and this with great difficulty, and found that the edge would not dull, that nothing would diminish its sharpness or nick the edge. The Baron began to carry “blunder” ’s sword. He brought off a number of glorious feats with “blunder” ’s sword, and “blunder” was all at once receiving requests for swords. “Blunder” accepted only very few of these; he seemed to work in a trance, and without any thought of profit. The bonded blacksmith left the third marketplace. When he found his wife alone with her lover the Baron impaled her with the sword “blunder” had made, this I heard from my spies, although it wasn’t long before everyone in Lohach was telling each other again and again that the Baron had impaled his wife on that sword, and had pursued his wife’s lover, as he fled, while she was yet impaled on the sword, and had also impaled him, her lover, on the same blade, so that the two of them were impaled, with a brief interval between, on the same blade side by side. The Baron had then driven the point of that sword into a stone of the castle wall, the stone walls of the Wersecastle, pinning there his wife and her lover, before he hurled himself into the Werse. The Baron drowned himself in the Werse, and his wife and her lover are still pinned to the stone wall of the Wersecastle, on the sword “blunder” forged for the Baron, so that the Wersecastle was soon abandoned, because no one could bear to hear their screams, and no one could manage to pull the sword from the stone wall of the Wersecastle. My spies tell me that the Baroness’s family have sent workers to the Wersecastle and had erected scaffolding there, against the stone wall, with the intention of removing the stone in which that sword is embedded and freeing the Baroness and her lover. The Baroness’s family intends to free the sword by battering apart the stone, once it is removed from the wall, but the scaffolding is needed first lest the wall collapse and crush the Baroness and her lover, who are still alive, impaled on that sword. My spies tell me that the stone in which “blunder”’s sword is embedded has begun to turn into iron. The spirits tell me that the Baroness and her lover are turning into iron, the sooty lead-colored iron of “blunder”’s sword. I had always felt that they ought to have asked “blunder” himself to extract the sword from the wall. I still can’t imagine why they never did. “Blunder” was filled with Wite’s spirit—when I told him about Wite, he believed at the first moment, he listened to everything I said in silence, and when I had finished he went off by himself. I came across him later that night, after sunset, when the market is closed, I found him behind the smithy in a small sheltered spot, I found him gazing at Wite’s mountain, which was shining a little with snow on the horizon, the gleam from Wite’s mountain was the same color as starlight and only a little dimmer than starlight, and the stars were very bright that night, I remember. The sky was clear and the stars were all visible and very bright, and from where “blunder” was standing Wite’s mountain was visible in the distance, deep in the forest. When “blunder” turned to me his features were indescribably transfigured, he stared at me, I especially remember how liquid and bright his eyes were, what a fierce light there was in his eyes and behind his face! “Blunder”’s unscarred face was bright and fierce, and transfigured, I’m trying to say he was somehow taken out of himself, he seemed to have gone over. When he recognized me, he didn’t speak, but his transfigured face shone with gratitude, and all at once he did speak. It’s not for me to repeat what he said; it’s better, I think, the words remain with me.

  “Blunder” was the first convert in Lohach. With his chain and my lock he would close up his smithy and come with Tamt and with me to our water tower. We would sit together there. I was almost ready to begin building the lamp, but the idea was still only just conceived in me and I needed to work out the design with care. The only things worth doing—well, I would sit on the roof gazing off at Wite’s mountain, and of course at Tzdze’s mansion invisible in the distance, behind ramparts of beautiful trees. I would stand on the roof and I would want to reach out my hands and lift the forest into the air and quench my face against it, raise it to my face as I would raise the hem of Tzdze’s dress to quench my face against it and breathe the fresh air, the air in Lohach is lifeless, I want a great wind to blow all this stagnant, fetid air away, but the air in the forest, and the air in the mountains, is fresh. With that air in my sick lungs life would be possible again even after all this
sick time. “Blunder” was the first convert in Lohach. I didn’t gather my converts around me, except Tamt and “blunder.” I sent out into the city like a spy and made conversions there, with Tamt’s help, with “blunder”’s help. I walked through all of Lohach every day with my eyes open. I found a young woman, the first after “blunder” in Lohach, I found a young woman first. “Blunder” was the first, I’ve said that.

  Her family were monsters, they had decided she was insane. Her family had locked her in the basement, I was drawn to her window, by the curb, next to the garden, by her musical shrieks late at night. The window was dingy, it was cracked toward the top and barred, there was a small chink removed in the crack and I was able to see into the basement through the chink, I could see her there wandering back and forth. I came back a number of times and would see her there at any time of day, sometimes giving little screams. Screaming with frustration and impotent anger, there was nothing alarming or hard to understand about that. I attracted her attention finally, she would bring her bestial face up to the window and gibber at me through the chink as best she could. I would stand and listen as long as I could, although she never spoke intelligibly. I didn’t try to speak to her. I passed her a note, finally, through the chink. I passed her many notes over a number of weeks, I had no way of knowing what she did with them, or even if she could read them, but over time the face she brought to meet me at the window became more composed and she stopped babbling. She didn’t speak a word to me, soon. She received my notes quietly. One day, when the air was clear, the sky was completely blue and clear, I came to her window, I was going to her window by the garden when I saw the mountain on the horizon, clearly, where I never saw it before. I called her to the window and pointed it out to her, she could crane herself to one side and see it, and when she saw it there was a little glint from halfway down the mountain, it was bright enough to throw reflections on the wall—she saw it and made a little scream, the sound boomed out from the far distance and she made a little scream when she heard it and saw the glint, and she fell back from the window shaking. I didn’t go back. I learned through my spies that her family had taken her out of the basement, that she seemed rational. She was acting rationally and her family was satisfied that she was cured. Later my spies informed me she had been taken on a family outing to the forest. They had gone together to the forest for a day and within moments she had disappeared without a trace—I can’t describe my hysterics when I heard that! She’d convinced them to take her to the forest and then disappeared; I could see her grow lighter than air and blow away into the forest forever. One by one they would go haunt the forests with blank animal faces living in the trees, with Wite.