“I wouldn’t know, and in any case I’m disinclined to believe that wallabies are human.”
“I can see you’ve never met my wife.”
“You have a wife?”
“Yes. Although actually I suppose I don’t anymore. The marriage vows state ‘till death do us part,’ so I would presume we’re no longer married.”
“Oh, right, I keep forgetting you’re deceased. Still it comes as a surprise that you were ever married.”
“Why is that?”
“I’ve been reading your memoirs, and there is no mention whatsoever of your ever having a wife. It strikes me as a surprising omission.”
“In that case you will be amazed to learn that my life has been crammed full of startling and remarkable events, countless instructive occurrences, actions of the most outstanding consequence, all of which I have omitted.”
“That is a novel and I would say almost an inexplicable authorial strategy.”
“I have my reasons.”
“And I dare say they’re the very reasons you’ve been elaborating. Since those events are worth remembering, why would you write them down?”
“I wouldn’t, of course. It would be a waste of paper.”
“Although unlike the events you have recorded in your memoirs, I think your marriage to a wallaby would have made for some interesting reading.”
“What are you talking about? Why would I marry a wallaby?”
“I’m certain you said your wife was a wallaby. My memory could not be that undependable. It’s hardly been five minutes since you said it.”
“No, I brought her up by analogy as it were. She’s just reminiscent of a wallaby. If my wife was human, and there’s good reason to think she was, it’s possible wallabies are also. Ah, here’s my pen. Now I can record all these ideas we’re having that aren’t worth remembering.”
“I don’t see the need for even having ideas that aren’t worth remembering, much less recording them.”
“I rarely have any other kind. My God, can you imagine if I had to remember every idea I’d ever had? There’s a terrifying thought, best put that one right out of my mind.”
“I see what you mean. You know, I’m starting to see the value of these sort of Socratic dialogues we have.”
“Socrates. Now there was a philosopher worth emulating. He never wrote anything down. Probably saw what was coming though. I mean my god, there was Plato staring him in the face. Probably why he drank the hemlock when he did. Said an unexamined life wasn’t worth living; next thing you know he killed himself. If only all the philosophers since his time had possessed his wisdom. This whole enterprise of civilization would likely never have gotten off the ground. A couple of chaps, chaps like us, sitting around shooting the breeze one day, they start to get ideas, you know, like agriculture, geometry, domesticating animals, the square of the hypotenuse, what not, they take a pause to eat their raw buffalo, one chap says what were we talking about? No one can remember – poof – there it goes. Civilization never gets started. It was writing was at the root of it all.”
“I’m beginning to be of the opinion that I have been here far too long, because the things you’re saying are starting to make sense.”
“You mean up until now you never thought the things I said made sense?”
“Well . . . No . . . Not really.”
“That’s discouraging. But now I’ve said a sensible thing?”
“Yes, I think you have.”
“What was it?”
Tom paused to think. “I can’t recall.”
“Should’ve written it down.”
“Maybe it was when you were saying you wouldn’t marry a wallaby.”
“Oh, that was sensible?”
“I thought so.”
“Let’s get it down then.” Here Colophus took a fresh piece of paper and wrote. “I will not marry – how many l’s in wallaby?”
“Two I think.”
“I will not marry a wallaby. There. At least we’ve preserved that gem for posterity.”
“At first I thought all the things you said were just childish mistakes, but I’m starting to believe you’ve actually acquired a certain amount of wisdom.”
“That’s the curse of being a philosopher. You read the works of the really great ones and from time to time you can’t help but wonder ‘My God, what was he thinking?’ Take Socrates, for example, whom we were just talking about. He believed that the things of this world are not real, because they are imperfect. A strange idea when you first consider it, is it not?”
“Where are the perfect things?”
“He believed that they existed in the real world. In the real world were all the ideals of which the things in this world were but imperfect copies . . . From what we know about him I’m convinced this idea must have come to him one day when he was complaining about his marriage, and all that allegory of the cave rubbish was just something Plato dreamed up to put some meat on the philosophical bone. Which just goes to show that the path to acquiring wisdom is often one which a wise man might choose not to follow.”
Tom returned to his reading. After a moment he said, “And there’s another question I’m having about your memoirs. From time to time I come across all these blank pages. What’s the meaning of these?”
“They’re just in there by mistake. They got included when I was gathering the pages together to give you. You can ignore those.”
“Actually I thought they were the best part.”
“Thought they were the best part,” and he laughed. “You’re having me on of course. You liked the blank pages best?”
“They’re certainly to be preferred over the other bits. I’ve come to look forward to them, these passages where nothing is written.”
“The passages where nothing is written . . . Well . . . Their blank perfection makes a mockery of the drivel that’s on the other pages, is that so? You’d probably like it better if the whole thing were blank.”
“I can’t help but think that would be an improvement.”
At this Colophus was very crestfallen. He stood and walked about awhile, kicking some of the small fish heads and other debris in his way. Then he sat down again. He put his head in his hands. He said, “At a stationer’s they’ll sell you blank paper, so many pence for so many sheets. Of course they couldn’t sell it to you if it had been written on, could they? You wouldn’t want to buy that. At the end of the day, when a writer concludes his work, he discards the pages he’s written that he no longer needs. He wouldn’t throw away his blank paper, that would be senseless. The dust man picks up the discarded newspapers and throws them away. If he found any blank paper, he would doubtless hoard that for a future day. And you prefer the blank pages to the pages I’ve actually written. So what am I doing, senselessly defacing blank pieces of paper? It seems this whole literary endeavor amounts to nothing more than taking a valuable commodity like paper and turning it into worthless rubbish by writing on it.”
“Don’t take it so hard now.”
“But of course I take it hard. This whole time I’ve been industriously scribbling away, and what have I accomplished? Nothing. It’s been a complete waste of time. The paper would be of more value had I never written anything on it.” He stood up again and knocked over the keg he’d been sitting on. “Why am I doing this? There’s no reason. There’s nothing I’ll ever achieve.” He set about bashing the various machines and cases in his way. He picked up stacks of his memoirs and was tearing them to bits. Tom tried to intervene, but he gave him a whack and shoved him away. “This is all pointless!” he shouted. “A complete waste of time!” Then he took his flint and iron and tried to strike a flame.
“Don’t do that!” Tom shouted in alarm.
“No, there’s nothing for it. Waste, all waste!” And he set fire to the pile of manuscripts at his side. Several of the pages caught alight, and he took these and threw them around, starting small fires in other parts of the enclosure. The walls began to shudder a
nd the pearly glow, which up until then had shown at a fairly steady level, was flickering abruptly, sometimes illuminating the space in a blinding light and then throwing everything into darkness. Tom tried to stamp out the flames, but he could not keep up with Colophus who kept setting more things ablaze in his desperate abandon. Water came sluicing up from the various canals and tunnels and was swirling about the two, but the fires once set were finding more and more tinder to consume. There was a sound like an angry wailing and the walls of the space were rippled and tossed. A huge wave of briny water came in, sweeping everything before it and Tom was knocked off his feet and submerged. Trying to catch his breath, he lost sight of Colophus and felt himself being doused and ducked and plunged into violent criss-crossing currents of water. All the contraptions and cases and furniture and bric-a-brac that had been in the enormous space were being heaved around and past his head, and all the while the luminescence was flickering unsteadily. Finally, his lungs bursting, he felt himself propelled upward and through a series of ducts and conduits like a fish in a millrace until he was expelled with the utmost turbulence into airy space where he gulped down huge breaths, filling his exhausted lungs, and then, feeling the water’s force diminishing, the wave broke downward with himself on the surface and he saw he was floating on the sea, amidst a mass of other objects, boards, large pieces of wood and papers, many of them partially burnt, all floating in the spume. Suddenly he was slapped upward again by the tail of the mighty leviathan as it turned its back and set its course once more for the bottom of the sea. And then, the violence over, save for a few small whirlpools quickly subsiding into the substance of the sea, he looked up and saw the sky, blessed blue that he’d never thought to see again. And on the horizon, not too far, he saw the green of vegetation. Freeing himself from his shoes and his pants he struck out for the shore. It took longer than he’d expected – there was a current running strong across his way – but after much swimming finally a great landward rolling billow took him in and he felt the ground beneath his feet again. He staggered, the muscles in his legs trembling with exhaustion, past the wash of ripples onto a sandy beach where he collapsed, with no idea of where he was, or how much time had passed since he’d fallen off the ship, knowing only that against all odds he’d returned to land again at last.
Chapter Thirteen
FREEDOM AND ITS DISCONTENTS
Deep in the Forgotten Forest a large band of slaves who had freed themselves from their masters sought to create a community of people living together, founded on the common good. These were people from many disparate families, men, women and a few children who were attempting to join together in their mutual interest. It was a chance for a fresh start. They all knew that valuables and responsibilities would have to be shared around the group. Famularis, who took the role of leader of these people, said they must put their property and possessions into the common pot, that there would no longer be any property except the property that was owned by all. He also laid down three rules that all must live by. He thought three was the right number. Fewer than three would not be enough to cover all situations. More than three and the rules were likely to conflict. So there were to be three rules. The first rule was: all are equal. There would be no hierarchy. The second rule was: the group cannot grow so large that all the individuals who make it up do not know one another. If it were ever to become that large, it must divide itself in two. And for the third rule he was uncertain. After some thought he said the third rule was: whatever the group decides to accomplish, it will put all its will and might into the effort to accomplish it. After some reflection he thought perhaps the third rule was a bit more rhetorical than the first two, and of course there was some question as to how it could be enforced, but the sentiment it gave expression to was a true one, so he let it stand.
This group of freed slaves lived and worked together. All things were held in common. When decisions had to be made, they were made by the consensus of the group. The few children in the group were the children of all the adults. There was no money. Since these people had been brought to this place with a total absence of specie of any kind, at first this was simply a bare statement of fact. But in Famularis’s mind it took on a greater significance. They would build a society that did not use money. In truth, there was no need for money. In fact, Famularis realized, money did not even exist. It was simply an idea, with no more reality than other ideas like truth, and justice. And Famularis realized that the bits of paper and the golden coins that people made such a fuss over were only counters in a game. It amused him to think of the measures men took to dress up these toys with laurels, portraits and lofty slogans he couldn’t read, when what put ‘money’ into them was only the imaginations of men, and they were only worth what men agreed to think they were worth, no more and no less. He also saw it was a game played with great intensity, because it was this game that separated those who had power from those they had power over. In the society he envisioned there would be no need for any such game. Surely human society must be more than just a game.
Having put paid to money, Famularis went on to conquer mankind’s other ills. They all committed themselves to live without alcohol, tobacco or gambling. That third was easy, since without money there was nothing to gamble for. The first two, however, drew complaints from some adherents of those substances. When Famularis went to round up all the rum and tobacco which some had been hoarding they entreated him earnestly not to waste it, so the supplies of these banned substances were placed under a large pile of banana leaves outside the central clearing where they all lived, on the side opposite the latrines. Just two problems were found with this. The first was immediately apparent and that was that these substances were under no circumstances ever to be consumed, which meant that from time to time the pile of banana leaves had to be moved. The second problem became evident after some time had passed, and that was that the supply of these substances could not be refreshed by the hunters in their daily forays in search of food, but rather required that a raid be made on the local town, which occasioned some trouble with the outside world they would rather not have undertaken, to say nothing of the loss this entailed to the group’s dwindling supply of ammunition.
Men and women were equal in the group, this was fundamental. However, their talents, and as a consequence their tasks, were not the same. Famularis could not see his way past this. The men must be the hunters and trappers of food and the warriors who defended the group from their old masters. The women must do the housework. This way the tasks were fairly distributed. And when it came time to perform certain tasks such as digging and maintaining the latrines, or cleaning the clothes, Famularis observed there were certain individuals who were slow to undertake these and who cast animadversions on those of the warrior class who felt justly that these tasks should not fall to them. There were even some who grumbled to the effect that being free wasn’t much different from being a slave, except their clothes were more ragged and the meals weren’t so regular. These disorderly grumblers were a tribulation to Famularis. However, he observed that these disorderly individuals who would argue and stamp and hold their ground no matter how clearly he explained the theory underlying the distribution of tasks, would be much more agreeable and show little inclination to protest when he gave them an abbreviated version of the theory, while holding a rifle in his right hand. Therefore he decided that although in theory all property was held in common, in practice it was best to make sure that the limited number of guns the group held were in the hands of those he could trust. And when he made an honest effort to determine whether his idealism had been compromised by his practice, he was happy to find that in fact this was not so, and that he must have had some arrangement such as this in mind when he had framed the third rule, the one he had at first suspected of being mere wind, because otherwise nothing was ever going to get done.
Nero was a member of this band. He’d formerly been a house slave on the plantation of Master Andrew Merriwether in Trento
, where he’d been brought up to be cheerful and well-spoken, and to carry himself with pride as befitted his master’s place in society. He’d had buckles on the knees of his breeches, and his hair had been regularly oiled and powdered. He was accustomed to being treated as a thing of value. Though he never admitted this to others, he was coming to see freedom, with its attendant worries and sacrifices, to be a harsh and demeaning disappointment. There were times when he regretted his spur of the moment decision to join Famularis in his hare-brained revolt, particularly since, as he recalled the events of that day, it was clear the revolt could never have succeeded without his involvement. In his former state, when he had imagined himself a free man, he had always envisaged himself as holding possession of the chief and foremost perquisite of freedom, namely some slaves of his own. He saw now that being a free man had placed him in an unnatural state relative to the rest of the world. He was owner only of himself, and with no one to put him in his place, he understood now why his masters had so often seemed to hold the world in a sort of belligerent contempt, something he had formerly attributed to the effects of hard liquor, or misadventures with the other sex. It was this very liberty they extolled that was the root of their trouble. With every free breath they drew they came to expect more from the world than a man could reasonably expect, and this made them unhappy, and caused them to treat themselves as things of no value, going on binges and engaging in duels and carrying on like the eternally discontented and reckless children they were. Nero thought the world would be a far better place if all men were slaves, or at least acted as though they were slaves, regarding themselves as being worth something, and knowing their place. This whole experiment with freedom was bound to come to no good. Heavens, what was the point of telling people all were equal when anyone could see with their own eyes that was not the case? What sort of nonsense would they expect you to believe next? There was a reason only free men went mad.
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