Jack Faust - Michael Swanwick

by Unknown Author

  "And then we can cap the wells?"

  "Then we can cap the wells."

  They passed by Hochsalzer's body not five streets from the tavern. It had been stripped naked and poured over with hot pitch, though whether before or after his death was difficult to determine, and then feathered over with his own handbills. The teeth had been kicked out of its grin to make room for a dead rat.

  Wagner's step faltered at the gruesome sight, but Faust, who had been expecting something of the sort, strode firmly on. He could not mourn the death of such a man, no matter how lawless the actions of his victims' vengeful relatives.

  Much to Wagner's scandal, Faust began to whistle.

  It was wondrous what miracles a word in the ear of the right woman could accomplish.

  * * *

  THE SERMON

  It was almost Easter, and the roads could be traveled again. All the world was promise and green shoots, dragonflies, and mud. Streams, gorged with water, leaped wildly down the mountainsides, joyfully collapsing banks and washing away bridges. Birds nested in the tangles of deadfall that February's storms had deposited on the wagon routes. Gnats rose in spirals over the reeds. New life was everywhere.

  Margarete's heart sang.

  Spring was like a return to the Garden after the purgatory of winter and Engelthal. It was there they had fled, where her father owned a house and a share in an orchard. There they had lived, purposeless among strangers, for half a dismal year. There the influenza had come upon the family like a wolf from the dark woods, taking the weakest lambs with it. Father was not fully recovered yet. Mother stayed ever at his side, while the hired wagoner cursed the horses and the roads, and the cart slowly bumped its way home.

  When the walls and towers of Nuremberg rose up before them, grand and familiar all at once, Margarete's eyes filled with tears. The customs officer at the city gate waved them through, and into streets that ached with a thousand memories. Inexorably, she was put in mind of all who had died. Sophia. Agnes. Uncle Zieler and Aunt Zielerin. Great-Aunt Niitzel. Old Reisterbeck who lived across the street and his boy Wilhelm. Young Biedermeier. The Saurzapfs. The Kres-sners. Valentin Sebold. It seemed like all the world was dead, and the buildings left behind for gravestones. She was almost surprised to see familiar faces on the street, to learn that people she knew yet lived.

  Faust had not been at the gate to greet her.

  Well, how was he to know? By the time the plague had run its course, there was not a person in Bavaria who doubted that Faust was the greatest man in all of Europe. Many, indeed, thought him the equal or better of such ancients as Aristotle, Cicero, and Hermes Trismegistus. At every inn and watering-stop on the road from Engelthal, Margarete had heard of his works, his charity, his fearlessness in the face of death. Had heard him praised as the one true ornament of this dim and lightless age.

  The wagon pulled to a stop in front of the Reinhardts' house, and for a melancholy instant all was still. Then servants appeared out of nowhere. Neighbors shouted from windows and ran to help. There were tears and laughter, hugs, shrieks of happy disbelief. Doors slammed open. The street was suddenly full of workers and artisans. And flowers! Everywhere there were flowers, by the basket and armload. They were poured atop the wagon and strewn upon the cobblestones.

  Apprentices stood on the rooftops throwing petals by the double-handful so that they fell like snow.

  Mother helped Father up the steps, and there was a respectful silence as he produced the house key and turned it in the lock. The door opened and everybody cheered. Father turned, his worn face all smiles, and, waving the key, bowed again and again.

  Faust was not at her house to greet her either.

  Margarete waited, half beside herself with impatience, for somebody else to ask. While children were hoisted into the air with whoops of admiration and exaggerated astonishment at their growth and size. While foremen came forward, one by one, to report each factory safe and running at full production. (Surely, Margarete thought, they had not so many factories when they had left?) While the willing hands of a dozen new servants emptied the contents of the wagon into a clean and freshly aired house.

  Finally, Mother squinted into the crowd and said, "Where is our mechanic?"

  "He's the one who told us you'd be coming back today," said a shop foreman. "He's the one who arranged for the flowers."

  "Where—where did these flowers come from?" Father asked. "So early in the season, it's like a miracle."

  "They came from your glass-houses."

  "Glass-houses? What need have I for glass-houses?"

  A lean young man pushed his way forward, his voice high and almost lost in the babble of the street. "We have been growing medicinal plants ... vegetables from the New World ... chocolate, tobacco... a new fruit called tomato, a new drink called coffee."

  "But this is—glass-houses? No, no, no, who can afford such expenses?"

  "Oh, but the money is pouring in, sir. The ledgers have all been prepared for your inspection. You will be satisfied, sir, I am assured of it."

  "But where," Mother insisted, "is he?"

  "At the church, making preparations."

  "Preparations? For what?"

  "He's preaching tomorrow's Easter sermon."

  Then, one by one, the men were coming forward with ledgers, blueprints, and order-books to explicate the Reinhardts' newly expanded holdings, to enumerate the new factories, new buildings, new enterprises.

  Listening, bewildered, Margarete could hardly keep track of all the family now owned. I suppose we're rich now, she thought. How odd.

  That night Margarete was combing her hair when there came a rattle of pebbles thrown against her window.

  Holding closed the neck of her nightgown, she threw open the shutters and looked down. Wagner stood in the street. In his conical felt hat and workman's blouse and pantaloons, he looked like an Italian clown. He bowed deeply and then raised high a forked stick in the cleft of which was a folded square of paper.

  "Wagner!" Smiling, Margarete reached out to take the proffered paper. His round face stared up at her, a pale terrestrial mirror of the solemn moon above. "It's been so long! How is your mas—"

  Wagner burst into tears and fled.

  A blank second later Margarete thought: Of course. Sophia. She did not look at the paper clasped in her hand. Knowing what it had to be, she felt her chest tighten. But she didn't want to read a letter from Faust tonight. She didn't want to add one grain more emotion to this horrid, wonderful day.

  Shutters closed, she took her candle back to the bed and sat down. It was weakness that made her open the letter, just to see the handwriting. It was weakness that made her read.

  Belissima,

  Do not charge me with absence, I pray, when all my thoughts throng like shadows about your feet. Gladly would I consign wealth, honor, and all the world's machineries to eternal darkness just to gaze once more upon your dear, beautiful face. Yet I confess it is not duty that keeps me away but fear. Yes, fear! I, who dread neither Man nor Truth, tremble at the thought of your scorn. For what are we to each other but shades, thoughts, surmises—uncertain, never touching, still untried by the fierce sun of love? Your absence has made me all unpracticed at deceit, unable to hide my ardor. One glance would tell you all. My traitor face would declare to you what I dare not. And then—? If my love is to you abhorrent, the sight of so bitter a truth on so sweet a face would burn my eyes like fire. Flee me then, and for my part I shall not pursue, but rather withdraw into the Tartarus of misery, resignation, and despair. Yet if by a miracle my suit should please you, come to me tomorrow night, and so shall we make of our shadows a substance and of our love a glory.

  Your adoring servant,

  J. W. F.

  Margarete read it through several times, to make certain that it said what it seemed to say. Such mingled alarms and excitements she felt as were impossible to sort out. She knew what Faust wanted of her, and why it was wrong. It was coarse of him to ask her, howev
er indirectly, to endanger her immortal soul for what were, by repute, momentary and transitory pleasures.

  She lay long abed, thinking about the letter and the choice it put to her, of salvation on the one hand and of damnation and Faust on the other. Until finally, while she was still wondering how she would respond, she felt sleep coming upon her.

  Nonetheless, she thought, and regardless of how she chose—that was the way a man ought to express himself.

  Easter morning dawned bright with bird-song, exuberant with clouds and mischievous zephyrs. It poured sunshine over the rooftops and hammered airy fists upon all the doors. Margarete considered every dress she had—none seemed right for this enormous thing she was considering—before settling on modest white. Then, somehow, it was time to go and her parents were calling to her from the front door.

  She joined them.

  They walked slowly to church, Father supported by a cane on one side and his solicitous wife on the other. He looked so frail. Margarete flushed with guilt just seeing how pale and fragile his hands were, and weakly resolved to be virtuous, to put aside all thought of doing this thing she had as good as determined upon.

  But it was as if a satyr had come down from the hills, wild and pagan, and stood, pipes in hand, just beyond the garden gate, calling to her. Her body ached and yearned to leave the safe and predictable behind her. She felt as restless as the Easter winds, just cold enough to be bracing, that danced down the street and tugged at her dress and cried: Away, away! Away to her mythical demon lover, to his impossible Arcadian fields where she could kick off her shoes and cast away her clothing, and laugh and flee and be pursued and, yes, lie in rut with him.

  "Sweetheart?" her mother said. "Dearest one, we're here."

  Only Margarete suspected why, of all the pulpits in the city, Faust had chosen their tiny parish church's.

  Ushers stood guard at the doors, keeping out all but the regular attendees. They were burly, ruddy-faced men and, though there was grumbling, nobody they turned away dared challenge them. One, who had been as good as an uncle to her in her youth, winked a greeting at Margarete as she and her parents passed within.

  Crowded as the church was, the Reinhardts' pew had been saved for them. They sat through the readings without seeing Faust. He must have been hidden in a small room off the narthex, for when Father Imhoff smilingly announced that there would be a guest to preach the sermon on this Feast of the Resurrection, he strode up the aisle from the back of the church. There was a stir of whispers and craned necks as he passed.

  With a solemn bow, the priest stepped aside.

  Faust climbed the stairs to the pulpit. Dark brown and deeply carved with a hundred suffering martyrs, it leaned over the congregation like the prow of an oncoming ship. With the sun in shadow, small light came through the leaded windows. A single lantern lit his face, bright on his brow and aquiline nose, forcing shadow into his eyes; it formed a pool upon the top of the pulpit where his strong hands rested.

  The radio-men huddled in the front pew over their acid batteries and boxes of electrical equipment. An antenna wire had been laid up the side of the steeple. By special arrangement Faust's sermon would serve as the first public display of this wonderful new technology. There were receivers in all the churches in the city. On this historic day, every ear in Nuremberg would be straining to hear a single set of words.

  A technician stood on tiptoe to place a microphone, in size and shape strikingly like a monstrance, before him.

  Faust leaned forward, looking out over the darkness, the masses of candles, the congregation. All about Margarete, vague faces yearned upward toward him.

  He smiled and spread his arms. A tilt of his head brought his chin up so that his eyes caught the light and blazed. He was clearly a man in the transports of a great passion. Then his mouth lifted sardonically on one side. When he spoke, his voice boomed through Margarete's belly and made her breastbone buzz.

  "The Emperor loves you," he said.

  "Seated on his golden throne at the center of the universe, he is the most vigilant of monarchs. His mind is everywhere. His eyes see all. He never sleeps. There are many inhabited spheres, not Earth alone, but thousands, billions, worlds beyond number. His domain encompasses myriad lands, many surpassingly bizarre, with races both grotesque and of angelic beauty. Some have dogs' ears; others are headless, with their faces in their chests; yet others hop about on a single leg. Some have wings but no arms, and are incapable of working evil. But to the Emperor they are not strange. They are all his children.

  "Yet in all these worlds, realms, lands, cities, the Emperor's mind is fixed on you and you alone. He loves you best. His deepest wish is for your happiness.

  "It is good to have such a friend.

  "Nor did you ever need his friendship more. For you are in deadly peril. Intending nothing but good, you are about to make a mistake you will regret forever. The Emperor sees this, where you cannot, and immediately sets all other business aside to warn you.

  "At his command messengers fly off in all directions—an infinite number of them, and even the one who is surest of never arriving, he who is flying directly away from you, is fanatically dedicated to his task. He will never betray his trust. He cannot be turned aside. He will never die.

  "How much more intrepid is the messenger headed straight your way! He knows he is your best and only chance of hearing the sweet words of that most puissant power, he who loves you best. He exists only to bring them to you. Faster than any eagle, he speeds your way!

  "Alas, we live far, far, impossibly far from the Emperor's court. A ray of light, swiftest of all things in the cosmos, would take hundreds of millions of years to reach you. The messenger, though scarce slower, cannot possibly come in time.

  "But the Emperor is not so easily thwarted.

  "Before the creation of the world he foresaw this crisis. He knew that, cut off from his oversight and admonition, you would fall into error. So, even then loving you, he wrote down the clearest possible counsels for your guidance. Five times he set them down, first in letters of fire, each a mile high. Then, digging his fingers into the ground, he carved the streams and rivers and lakes, making of each a single rune in his great message. Then, rolling up his sleeves, he molded the land like clay, each syllable an Alp, every word a chain of sky-defying mountains. In the firmament he wrote out his intent with stars. But the lands cooled and the flames dwindled to nothing. The rivers wandered and the lakes silted up. The continents drifted apart, scattered across the oceans, collided, swallowed the old mountains, and raised up new. The galaxies spun and the stars sailed apart to form new constellations.

  "Finally the Emperor wrote his message into the physical constants of the universe, into the very stuff and limits of existence itself. Here at last was a medium immune to time and untouched by entropy!

  "Further, the Emperor created a priesthood from among the First Men. He taught them to read this holiest of texts, and charged them by the most solemn vows to transcribe and transmit his words faithfully.

  "Yet even this most ancient of sects was not proof against time and schism. See how the servants of truth have betrayed their trust! Some declare allegiance to Moses, others to Mahomet, and others still to a demon named Mammon. So willfully deluded are they, so passionate in their folly, that it is not possible to distinguish the true servant from the false. Nor can their transcriptions be trusted. Over the ages mistakes were made in the copying. Corrupt texts were accepted as authentic. New books were forged. Until finally, no scripture can now be trusted. For every text an antitext can be found; for every interpretation, its opposite. The Emperor's message has been lost among a million lies.

  "Reason is of no help to us here. Reason can tell us how to invent an explosive or create a gun—but not whether to employ that explosive to build roads and dig mines or in wars of conquest. Not whether to use that gun for fowling or for murder.

  "The problem is that logic does not know should or ought but only how. It can
not teach us faith, but only doubt. We live in an uncertain, unfathomable world, about which the only

  thing logic can tell us is that logic has nothing to tell us.

  "The Emperor's message lies all about you, and yet logic cannot reveal it. Reason cannot read it. Your mind cannot unpuzzle it. And, therefore, you will never know."

  Faust paused.

  "You will never know," he repeated. His arm reached out yearningly into the emptiness above the congregation. It froze for a long, tragic moment.

  "You will never know."

  Then, in the tone of one offering hope to a prisoner held long in darkness, he said, "You will never know, if you rely upon your logic, your reason, your head. But your heart knows, for it is nestled deep in your body and your body is part of physical Creation, upon which the message is written. Listen to your heart. Hear what Nature tells you. You know what is right and, knowing it, no earthly authority can ever again lead you astray.

  "Obey your heart. Obey your will.

  "Know your will and follow its dictates, and you will always go right. You will never be lost again. For this is the Emperor's message, written into the matrix of being before human ever set foot on this Earth: Nothing is forbidden. Do What Thou Wilt shall be the whole of the law."

  Faust's arm again shot out over the congregation, and this time it triumphantly clenched a fistful of air. For a breath he held this attitude. Then, slowly, he lowered his arm to his side. He turned from the congregation.

  Faust descended from the pulpit through a stunned silence. He walked down the aisle, looking neither to the right nor to the left, as the congregation found voice in a hundred wondering murmurs. The voices rose higher, and sharper. Then he was gone, leaving the church in turmoil behind him.

  People sprang to their feet. Some were red with choler, others white-faced and trembling. One portly fellow stood bellowing and shaking his fist, but the import of his words could not be made out over the general din. The dismayed Father Imhoff ran up to the altar now, shouting, trying to quiet the uproar. His words too were lost in the tumult.