Zimiamvia: A Trilogy

by E R Eddison

  Amalie spoke: 'It was in my mouth to answer, dear my Lord, (but I've changed my mind): "Ah, what world if not this? But this made sure of, secured. Roses, but no thorns. Change, but no growing old. Transfiguration, but no death".'

  'A world without stoat or weasel?' cried Anthea, laughing a little wild-cat laugh, very outlandish and. strange.

  'I note in such a world,' said the Admiral, 'some breath of an overweeningness apt to tempt in a manner the jealousy of the Gods'.

  'I hold it flat impiety, such talk,' said the Vicar, scarlet with furious feasting, and emptied his brimming cup of muscadine.

  'Nay, you ought not so ungroundably,' said the Chancellor, 'my good lord Admiral, to imagine Gods distrained with such meaner passions as do most disbeautify mankind. Yet I see in such a world an unleefulness, and a want of logic'

  ‘A pool without a ripple?' said Campaspe. 'A sky with never at any time a hawk in it? Day, but no night?'

  Again Anthea flashed lynx-like teeth. 'Because She is turned virtuous, shall there be no more blood to suck?'

  The Duke tightened his lips.

  'I could teach stoat and weasel to be gentle,' the Duchess said, very low; slowly with her fan tracing little pictures on the table. 'But I changed my mind.'

  The King waited. 'What then, madonna mia?' he said, and opened his hand, palm upwards, on the table. The Duchess's came: daintily under its shimmer of rings touched with its middle finger the centre of his open palm: escaped before it could be caught

  'For I bethought me a little,' said she, 'of your highness' words awhile since, that there's a blessedness in not knowing—yes, were we God and Goddess in very deed;, and a zest, and a savour. So that this world will I choose, dear my Lord, and choose it not caponed but entire. Who e'er could abide a capon unless to eat? and, for a world, 'tis not eat but live withal. And be in love withal. And time hath an art, and change too, like as the lantern of the moon, to make lovely and lovable. Beyond that, I think it best not to know.'

  While she so spoke, Barganax's gaze, chancing upwards, was caught by the sapphired gleam of Vega shining down through vine-leaves overhead: some purer unfadable eye, joining with the common and unevitable mortality of these candleflames to survey the things which these surveyed and, albeit more distantly and with less flattering beams, caress them, pronounce them good. In that star's light he followed his mother's words: the honeyed accents, the owl-winged thought, the rainbow-shot web of memories, the unheard inwardness of laughter under all, as a night's dewing of grace and sweetness. Then his eye, coming down again, met with that Dark Lady's. There shone a fire there starrier than that natural star's, greener than the glow-worm's lamp, speaking, too, in articulate shudders down the spine. As to say: Yes, My friend. These words are My words: Mine to You, even just as they are Hers to Him.

  'Time. And Change. But the last change,' said the King: 'your own word, madonna: "last mischief, Death".'

  For a minute, the Duchess held her peace. Then she said: 'I will remember you, dear my Lord, of the tragical story of the Volsungs and the Niblungs, after the battle in King Atli's hall, and they had fallen on Hogni and cut the heart out of him; but he laughed while he abode that torment. And they showed it to Gunnar, his brother, and he said, "The mighty heart of Hogni, little like the faint heart of Hjalli, for little as it trembleth now, less it trembled whenas in his breast it lay." And Death we know not: but without that unknown, to look it in the eye, even as did Hogni, and even as did Gunnar after, when he was cast into the worm-close: without that, I wonder, could there be greatness of heart and courage in the world? No: we will have this world, and Death itself. For we will choose no world that shall not be noble.'

  XVI

  The Fish Dinner:Caviar

  'So YOU AND I,' said the King, Still have this world? Well, I am answered. But the game's ended ere well begun; for this world's ready made to our hand.'

  'If we must try tricks elsewhere, let her choose,' said Amalie, looking at Fiorinda. 'She is too silent. Let her speak and decide.'

  ‘Better not,' he said. 'She is in a contrary mood tonight. A world of her choosing, as now she is, should be a strange unlucky world indeed.'

  'Nay, but I am curious,' said the Duchess. 'Nay, I will choose her world for tonight, whatever it be. Come, you promised me.'

  'Well?' said the King.

  In Fiorinda's eyes sat the smile, unrelentless, Olympian, fancy-free, of Her that leads at Her train the ancient golden world. "The choice is easy,' she said. ‘I choose That which is.' There was a discordancy betwixt her words, so plain and so simple, and the manner of their speaking, as from an imperial lust that, being unreined, should hardly be resisted anywhere.

  The King held his peace. The Duchess looked round at him, sitting so close at her left hand that sleeve brushed sleeve, yet to look on as some watch-tower removed, black and tremendous among hills: as Our Father Zeus, watching out of Ida. 'That which is?' he said at last. 'Out of your ladyship's mouth we look for meanings in such simplicities, as for colours in those shining exhalations that appear in tempests. Come, is't but this world again you mean?'

  'I speak,' answered she, 'in honest plainness. I would wish your serene highness to receive it so.'

  Campaspe and Anthea laughed with one another in secret way behind their fans.

  'That which is, then: in honest plainness what can that be,' said the King, 'but the ultimate Two alone? They, and the blessed Gods and Goddesses Who keep the wide heaven, of a lower reality, may be, than His and Hers, yet themselves more real than such summer-worms as men? Is this your choice, then, and the golden mansions of the Father? If: then picture it to me. Let me perceive it'

  That lady smoothed her cheek, cat-like, against her ruff. To look in her eyes now was to see strange matter, as of something dancing a dance untowardly about a pit's brink. 'No. No,' said she. 'Like as her grace, I also will change my mind too: look lower.

  'Well,' she said after a minute, ‘I have thought of a world. Will your highness create it indeed for me, as I shall specificate?' The dying fall of her voice, so languefied in its melodious faint discords, held in the very sloth of it some menace, as of one in her affections unbitted, intemperable by her estate, raging by her power.

  The King beheld her so an instant in silence; then said, ‘I'll do my endeavour.'

  Fiorinda lifted her head, as a she-panther that takes the wind. 'Good,' she said; and her eyes, leaving the King's, rested now constantly on Duke Barganax's who gazed upon her as a man carved in stone. 'And ere we begin upon our world for to-night's disport,' she said, ‘I, as so peerlessly to be doted upon, will lay you down your terms of service, as master-builder of my worlds. Seeing I am She, I will be content with no outward shows. The wine of our loving-cup shall be the chosen butt of the chosen vintage. The very cobblers of my shoes shall be the wittiest and honestest and goodliest to look on in the world, and the best at their trade. One world shall not be enough for me. Nor one in a life-time. No, nor one a day. Aeons of unremembered ages, shall go to the making of the crumb I brush from my dress upon rising from board. Generations of mankind, innumerable as the generations of the may-fly through a hundred years, shall live and die to no purpose but to merry my senses for five minutes, if I affect for pastime before my looking-glass to untwine my tressed hair. The slow mutations of the immemorial rocks of the ancient earth shall be but for the making ready of a soft cushion of turf for me upon some hillside, in case the fancy should one day take me there to recline myself after my walking in the mountains. Upon millions of trees millions of millions of leaves shall sprout, open, turn colour, and begin to fall, only but to give me a sweet prospect from my window some sunshiny November morning. Because of me, not Troy nor not this world only, but even the whole wide universe and giant mass of things to come at large, shall be cast away, abolished, and forgot.'

  Amalie's eyes, resting in the King's, read there, clear as if his lips had spoken: Yes, madonna. These words are your words: Yours to Me, even just as they are Her
s to Him.

  But the Duke, paler now than grass in summer, rose up, thrust back his chair, taking his stand now a little behind the King his father and his lady mother, he leaned against the bole of a strawberry-tree. Here, out of the lights, himself but hardly to be seen, he could sideways over their shoulders behold her: that mouth unparagoned, the unhealable plague of it, dark characters which who can uncypher? that moon-chilled imperial pallour of cheek and brow: all those provocations, heats, enlurings, and countermatchings, tiger's milk and enlacements of black water-snakes, which (when she turned her head) nakedly and feelingly before his eyes lay bound where, in the nape of her delicate neck, the black braids crossed and gleamed and coiled upwards: last, (and unspeakable uniting together of all these), ever and again an unmasking of her eyes to meet, conscient, the burning gaze of his, constant upon her out of the shadow of darkness.

  'Speak on,' said the King, to Fiorinda, but his eyes always with Amalie. 'All this is true and just and condition absolute of all conceivable worlds. Now to particulars.'

  'I will desire of you, here and now,' replied that lady, 'such a world as never yet was nor was thought of. And for first principle of its foundation, it shall be a world perfect and sufficient unto itself.'

  'Well,' said the King. 'What shall we frame it of?'

  'You shall frame it,' answered she, 'of the infinities: of Time without beginning and without ending; and of Space without centre and without bourne.'

  'Of what fashion shall it be?'

  'O I will have it of infinite fashions. But all by rule.'

  'But how, if you will have it of these infinities, shall it be perfect? Perfection reasoneth a limit and a bourne.'

  That is easily answered. It shall be of Time and in Time: not Time in it. And in Space and of Space: not Space in it.' '

  'So that these infinities stand not part of your world,' said the King, 'but it, part of them: as this bread was made of wheaten flour, yet there's wheaten flour enough and to spare, and was and shall be, other than what this bread containeth, and of other shapes too?' He dipped a piece in the gravy, and gave it to his great dog to eat that sat beside him. 'Well, I have it so far,' he said: 'but is, so far, yet but the shadow of a world: but empty space and time.'

  She said, ‘I will desire your serene highness fill it for me.'

  'And what to fill it withal?' ,

  'O, with an infinity of little entities, if you please: so tiny, a thousand at once shall dance upon the point of a needle. And even so, betwixt and between them where they dance, shall be room and to spare for another thousand.'

  'Another thousand? No more than so?'

  'Oh, if you will, infinitely more: until you, that are tireless, tire. Crowd, if you will, infinities betwixt infinities till thought swoon at it.'

  Presently, 'It is done,' said he. 'And yet remaineth, spite all this multitudinousness, a dull uniformity of a world. What then?'

  'Then (with humility) is't not for you, Lord, to lay to your hand: devise, continue? Have not I required it to be of infinite fashions? And must I instruct you, the great Artificer, what way you shall do your trade?'

  'You must. Nay, mistress, what is the whole matter but some upstart fancy of your own? Nay, I'll read you your mind, then. You would have me set 'em infinite dances, infinite steps and figures. Behold, then: though every dancer be like as every other, the figures or patterns of their dancing are infinitely various. Of a pavane, look, I make you gold: of a coranto, air: of a bourree, granite: brimstone, quicksilver, lead, copper, antimony, proceed but each out of his several figure of this universal dance, yes, and the very elements of fire and water, and all minerals that compose the earth's natural body; even to this, which I have made for you of the allemande: this iron, which is the archaean dreamless soul of the world. Well?' he looked piercingly at her.

  She, superciliously smiling, and with a faint delicate upward backward motion of her head, answered him, 'So far, I'll allow, Lord, 'tis not so greatly amiss.'

  'Pshaw! it is a dead world,' he said. 'A dead soul.'

  'Nay, then, let it teem with life,' said she, 'if needs must. And that horribly.'

  'And what,' said the Duchess, 'is life?'

  Bending with a fastidious daintiness above her plate, Fiorinda selected and held up to view upon her fork a single globule of the caviar. ‘In such a world,' she answered, offering to her nearer inspection upon the fork's prong the little jellied fish-egg, 'what else would your grace desire it to be, if not some such trash as this?'

  'A fish-like world!' said the King.

  'Nay, but here's a most God-given exquisite precision in it,' Fiorinda said. 'Life! But a new dance only, but in more complicated figures, enacted by your same little simplicities. Sort but the numbers aright, time but their steps aright, their moppings and mowings, their twirl-ings, curvets and caprioles—'tis done. Out of dead substance, living substance: even such a little nasty bit of sour jelly as this is. And, for the more mockery, let it arise from the sea: a very neoterical Anadyomene, worthy the world it riseth on.'

  The King's hands, beautiful to watch in the play of their able subtle strength, were busied before him on the table. Presently he opened them slowly apart. Slowly, in even measure with their parting, the world of his making grew between them: a thing of most aery seeming substance, ensphered, glimmering of a myriad colours where the eye rested oblique on it, but, being looked to more directly, all mirk, darkling, and unsure. And within it, depth beneath depth: wherein appeared as if a seething and a churning together and apart continual of the dark and the bright. 'Well, I have given it life, as you bade. Life only. Not living beings.'

  Fiorinda, considering it awhile in silence, nodded a soft assent. All else gazed upon it with eyes expressionless, unseeing, as though encountered, sudden out of light, with a void or a darkness: all save the Duchess only. Her eyes, beholding this toy, were wide with the innocent wonder of a child's.

  'Well?' said the King of Fiorinda. 'Is your ladyship content, then?'

  'Your highness hath been sadly badly served of your intelligencers if you conceive I should ever be content. Generality of life, thus as you present me withal, is life indeed, but 'tis not enough.'

  The Duchess looked at it closely. 'You have given it life, you think?' she said very softly. 'What is life?'

  'It is,' answered he, 'as you may perceive, in this world of our devising, a thing compact but of three ingredients: as, first, to feel, to wince, to answer to each intrusive touch of the outward world: second, to grow: third, to engender and give birth, like from like.' His gaze, unfastening itself from her, came back to that Dark Lady, and so again to Amalie. 'You,' he said to both: 'You, that wast with Me in the beginning of My way, before My works of old: what next?'

  Fiorinda, still curiously beholding it, gave a little silent laugh. But the Duchess, shivering suddenly in the warm night air, leant back against King Mezentius as for warmth.

  'I will,' said the Lady Fiorinda, and each honeyed word seemed as a kissing or a handling lickerously of some new-discovered particularity of her thought: 'I will that you so proceed with it, now from this beginning, as that even out of such contemptible slime as this is, shall be engendered all myriads of living creatures after their kind: little slimy polyps in the warm seas: little sea-anemones, jelly-fishes, worms, slugs, sand-hoppers, water-fleas, toadstools, grass and all manner of herbs and trees which grow. Run through all the lewd forms of them: fishes, birds, beasts even to human kind.'

  'Even to human kind? what, men and women, as we be?' said the Duchess.

  Fiorinda, as not having marked the question, but continued; but slowlier: ‘I will,' said she, 'that this shall be the life of them, of every thing that breatheth the breath of life in this new world of ours: to be put part of the waters as it were of a whirlpool, wherein is everything for ever neither produced nor destroyed, but for ever transformed: the living substance for ever drawn in, moulded to some shape of life, and voided again as dead substance, having for that span of ti
me yielded its strength and purpose to that common sink or cesspool of Being. So in this, my world, shall all proceed, self-made, self-sought, out of one only original: this little spittly jelly.'

  'A world,' said the King, 'of most infinite complication.'

  'Nay, but I give it simple laws to work by, for makeweight.'

  'What laws, then?'

  'First, (to order perfectly my perfect world, as perfect in action), this law: that at each succeeding moment of its existence the sum and totality of my world, and all that in it is, shall be determined reasonably and inevitably by that which was the moment before.'

  'Sensible chaos, yet grounded in an infinite order.'

  ‘Which is,' said that lady, 'the strainable force of destiny. No chanceableness. Nor no meddling finger of God neither, to ruffle the serenity of my world's unfolding. As a rose-bud discloseth itself and spreadeth abroad, so shall its processions be: as inevitable as one and one is two, one and two is three, and so on for ever, ad infinitum. The general forms, constant, unchangeable, un-transformable; but all else changing as oft as weathercock in wind. Truly a world most exquisitely well fitted to be comprehended by a man of law?' She glanced at the Lord Beroald, who, for answer, but smiled his unbelieving smile.

  'But no world, sure,' said the lord Admiral, 'for the living beings that must live in it. What manner freedom have they, where all must be predetermined and like a clockwork?'

  There was a cruel look of that lady's lips and teeth, daintily eating up the little piece of caviar. She turned upon the King eyes over the balls of which suddenly a film seemed to be drawn, as they had been the eyes of an empoisoned serpent. ‘I think,' she said, ‘I will tease them a little with my laws. They shall seem indeed to themselves to have freedom; yet we, who look on, know 'tis no such matter. And they shall seem to themselves to live; yet if, 'tis a life not their own. And they shall die. Every one that knoweth life in my world shall know also death. The little simplicities, indeed, shall not die. But the living creatures shall. Die, and dissipate as children's castles in sand when the tide takes them, but the sand-grains abide. Is it not a just and equal choice? either be a little senseless lump of jelly or of dead matter, and subsist for ever; or else be a bird, a fish, a rose, a woman, 'pon condition to fade, wax old, waste at last to carrion and corruption?'