Welcome to the Greenhouse

by Gordon Van Gelder

  “I’m touched that you’ve taken the trouble to learn so many nouns. So. What is your name, sir? My friends call me Mellow Julian Nebraska.”

  “You give me money for her,” the soldier demanded, pointing. “You take her away, I buy shelter, water, food, fish, vegetable!”

  “I have some money,” offered Bili.

  “Don’t get hasty, Bili.”

  “But I think I understand what this foreigner is saying!” said Bili. “Listen! I want to try out my Old Proper English on him. I buy this woman. You take my money. You eat your fish and vegetables.” Bili pointed at the boy and girl. “You feed these children. You wash your clothes. You comb your hair.” He glanced at Julian. “That’s the right English word, isn’t it? Comb?”

  “It is,” Julian allowed.

  “You wash yourself in the public bath,” Bili persisted. “You stink lesser!” He turned to Julian triumphantly. “Just look at him! Look at his eyes! He really does understand me! My lessons in the Academy of Selder… That dead language is practical! I can’t wait to tell my dad!”

  “You should no longer call this city ‘Selder,’ Bili. The true name of your city is ‘Shelter.’ ‘The Resilient, Survivable, Sustainable Shelter,’ to list all her antique titles. If your ancestors could see you speaking like this—in their own streets, in their own language—they’d say you were a civilized man.”

  “Thank you, maestro,” said Bili, with a blush to his pale, beardless cheeks. “From you, that means everything.”

  “We must never forget that we descend from a great people. They made their mistakes—we all do—but someday, we’ll surpass them.”

  “I’m going to buy this woman,” Bili decided. “I can afford her. The Selder Academy doesn’t cost all that much.”

  “You can’t just buy some woman here in the public street!” said Julian. “Not sight unseen, for heaven’s sake!”

  Julian untied the mouth of his scholar’s bag and rustled through the dense jumble within it—his watercress, spinach, scarf, pipe, scissors, string, keys, wax tablet, and magnifying glass. He pulled out one ancient silver dime.

  Julian crouched beside the cowering woman and placed the time-worn coin into her blistered hand. “Here,” he said, “this coin is for you. Now, stay still, for I’m going to examine you. I won’t hurt you. Stick out your tongue.”

  She gripped the coin feverishly, but she understood not one word.

  “Stick out your tongue,” commanded Julian, suiting action to words.

  He examined her teeth with the magnifying glass.

  Then he plucked back the slanted folds of her eyelids. He touched both her ears—pierced, but no jewels left there, not anymore. He thumped at her chest until she coughed. He smelled her breath. He closely examined her hands and feet.

  “She’s well over forty years old,” he said. “She’s lost three teeth, she’s starving, and she’s been walking barefoot for a month. These two youngsters are not her children. I dare say a woman of her years had children once, but these are not them. This brute here with the leather belt, which he used on her legs… He’s not her husband. She was a lady once. A civilized woman. Before whatever happened, happened.”

  “How much should I pay for her?” said Bili.

  “I have no idea. This is no regular auction. The Godfather is a decent man, he prohibited all that slave-auction mischief years ago. You’d better ask your father how much he thinks a house-servant like her is worth. Not very much, I’d be guessing.”

  “I’m not buying her for my house,” said Bili. “I’m buying her for your house.”

  A moment passed.

  “Bili—,” Julian said severely, “have I taught you nothing with my lectures, or from the example of my life? I devote myself to sustainable simplicity! Our ancestors never had slaves! Or rather, yes they did, strictly speaking—but they rid themselves of that vice, and built machines instead. We all know how that ugly habit turned out! Why would I burden myself with her?”

  Bili smiled sheepishly. “Because she is so much like a pet bird?”

  “She is rather like a bird,” Julian admitted. “More like a bird than a woman. Because she is starving, poor thing.”

  “Maestro, please accept this woman into your house. Please. People talk about you all the time, they gossip about you. You don’t mind that, because you are a philosopher. But maestro, they talk about me! They gossip about me, because I follow you everywhere, and I adore you! I’d rather kneel at your feet than drill with the men-at-arms! Can’t you do me this one favor, and accept a gift from me? You know I have no other gifts. I have no other gifts that even interest you.”

  After Mellow Julian accepted Bili’s gift, Bili became even more of the obnoxious class pet. Bili insisted on being addressed by his antique pseudonym Dandy William Idaho, and sashayed around Selder in a ludicrous antique costume he had faked up, involving “blue jeans.” Bili asked impertinent, look-at-me questions during the lectures. He hammed it up after class in amateur theatricals.

  However, Bili also applied himself to his language studies. Bili had suddenly come to understand that Old Proper English was the language of the world. Old Proper English was the language of laws, rituals, boundary treaties, water rights, finance arrangements, and marriage dowries. The language of civilization.

  That was why a wise and caring Godfather took good care to see that his secretaries wrote an elegant and refined Old Proper English. A scribe with such abilities could risk some personal eccentricities.

  Julian named his new servant House Sparrow Oregon. Enquiries around the court made it clear that she was likely from Oregon. War and plague—they were commonly the same event—had expelled many of her kind from their distant homeland.

  Deprived of food and shelter, they had dwindled quickly in the cruelties of the weather.

  Sometimes, when spared by the storms, refugees found the old grassy highways, and traveled incredible distances. Vagrants came from the West Coast, and savages from the East Coast. Pirates came from the North Coast, where there had once been nothing but ice. The South was a vast baking desert that nobody dared to explore.

  Once a teenage boy named Juli had left a village in Nebraska. Julian had suffered the frightening, dangerous trip to Selder, because the people in Selder still knew about the old things. And they did know them—some of them. They knew that the world was round, and that it went around the sun. They knew that the universe was thirteen thousand, seven hundreds of millions of years old. They knew that men were descended from apes, although apes were probably mythical.

  They had also built the only city in the known world that was not patched-up from the scraps of a fallen city. Created at the sunset of a more enlightened age, Selder was a thousand years old. Yet it was the only city that had grown during the long dark ages.

  The court of the Godfather was a place of sustainable order. The council-of-forty, the Men in Red, were its educated, literate officials. They held the authority to record facts of state. They knew what was meet and proper to write, and what was of advantage to teach, and what should be censored. They had taught Julian, and he had worked for them. He had come to know everything about what they did with language. He was no longer overly fond of what they did.

  House Sparrow Oregon had no language that Julian understood. To test her, Julian inscribed the classic letters of antiquity into his wax tablet: THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG. PACK MY BOX WITH FIVE DOZEN LIQUOR JUGS.

  In response, Sparrow timidly made a few little scrapes with the stylus. Crooked little symbols, with tops and bottoms. They were very odd, but she knew only ten of them. Sparrow was nobody’s scholar.

  Julian was patient. Every child who ever entered a school was a small barbarian. To beat them, to shout at them, to point out their obvious shortcomings… what did that ever avail? What new students needed were clear and simple rules.

  This aging, frightened, wounded woman was heartsick. She had lost all roles, all rules, and all meaning. She w
as terrified of almost everything in Selder, including him.

  So: it was about a small demonstration, and then a patient silence: the wait for her response. So that Sparrow’s dark eyes lost their cast of horror and bewilderment. So that she observed the world, no longer mutely gazing on it.

  So: This is the water. Here, drink it from this cup. It’s good, isn’t it? Yes, fresh water is good! The good life is all about simple things like clear water.

  Now, this is our bucket in which we bring the water home. Come with me, to observe this. There is nothing to fear in this street. Yes, come along. They respect me, they will not harm you.

  You see this? Every stranger living in Selder must learn this right away. This is our most basic civic duty, performed by every able-bodied adult, from the Godfather himself to the girl of twelve. These waterworks look complex and frightening, but you can see how I do this myself. This is a water-lever. It holds that great leather bucket at one end, and this stone weight here at our end.

  We dip the great bucket so as to lift the dirty water, so that it slowly flows in many locks and channels, high back up the hillside. We recycle all the water of this city. We never spill it, or lose its rich, fertile, and rather malodorous nutrients. We can spill our own blood in full measure here, but we will never break our water cycle. This is why we have sustained ourselves.

  After we heave this great bucket of the dirty civic water—and not before!—then we are allowed to tap one small bucket of clean water, over here, for our private selves.

  Now you can try.

  Don’t let those stupid housewives hurt your feelings. We all look comical at first, before we learn. Yes, you are a foreigner, and you are a curious specimen. That is all right. In the House of Mellow Julian Nebraska, we embrace curiosity. Our door is always open to those who make honest inquiries. We house many things that are strange, as well as you.

  Now for the important moral lesson of the birds. Yes, I own many birds. I own too many. Some are oddly shaped, and special, and inbred, and rather sickly. Quite often they die for mysterious reasons. I cannot help that: It is my fate to be the master of an aviary.

  Yes, the name I gave you is Sparrow, just like that smallest bird hopping there. These are my pigeons, these are my chickens, these are my ducks. In antiquity there were many other birds, but these are the surviving species.

  One can see that to care for these birds suits your proclivities. When you chirp at them in your native language, they hear you and respond to you. As Sparrow the bird-keeper, you have found new purpose in the world. We will have one small drink to celebrate that. It’s pretty good, isn’t it? It isn’t pure clean water, but a moderate amount of sophistication has its place in life.

  Now that you have become the trusted mistress of the aviary, it is time for you to learn about this cabinet of curiosities. Being a scholar of advanced and thoughtful habits, I own a large number of these inexplicable objects. Old drawings, fossil bones, seashells, coins and medals, and, especially, many arcane bits of antique machinery. Some are rare. Most are quite horribly old. They all need to be cleaned and dusted. They break easily. Be tender, cautious, and respectful. Above all, do not peel off the labels.

  My curiosities are not mere treasures. Instead, they are wonders. Watch with the students, and you will see.

  Students, dear friends of learning and the academy: Tonight we study the justly famous “external combustion engine.” Tonight we will make one small venture in applied philosophy, revive this engine from its ancient slumbers, and cause it to work before your very eyes.

  And what does it do? you may well ask me. What is its just and useful purpose? Nobody knows. No one will ever know. No one has known that for three thousand years.

  Now my trusted assistant Sparrow will light the fire beneath the engine’s cauldron. Nothing sinister about that, a child could do it, an illiterate, a helpless alien, yes, her. Please give her a round of applause, for she is shy. That was good, Sparrow. You may sit and watch with the others now.

  Now see what marvels the world has, to show to a patient observer. Steam is boiling. Steam travels up these pipes. Angry steam flows out of these bent nozzles. This round metal bulb with the nozzles begins to spin. Slowly at first, as you observe. Then more rapidly. At greater speed, greater speed yet: tremendous, headlong, urgent, whizzing speed!

  This item from my cabinet, which seemed so humble and obscure: This is the fastest object in the whole world!

  Why does it spin so fast? Nobody knows.

  It is sufficient to know, young gentlemen, that our ancestors built fire-powered steaming devices of this kind, and they wrecked everything. They utterly wrecked the entire world. They wrecked the world so completely that we, their heirs so long after, can scarcely guess at the colossal shape of the world that they wrecked.

  You see as well, little Sparrow? Now you know what a wonder can do. When it spins and flashes, in its rapid, senseless, glittering way, you smile and clap your hands.

  In the summer, a long and severe heat came. The wisdom of the founders of Selder was proven once again.

  Every generation, some venturesome fool would state the obvious—why don’t we grow our crops outside of these glass houses? Without those pergolas, sunshades, reflectors, straw blankets, pipes, drips, pumps, filters, cranes, aqueducts, and the Cistern. That would be a hundred times cheaper and easier!

  So that error might well be attempted, and then disaster would strike. The exposed crops were shriveled by heat waves, leveled by storm gusts, eaten by airborne hordes of locusts and vast brown crawling waves of teeming mice. In endless drenching rains, the tilled soil would wash straight down the mountainside.

  In the long run, all that was not sustainable was not sustained.

  Brown dust-lightning split the angry summer sky. Roiling gray clouds blew in from the southern deserts and their dust gently settled on the shining glass of Selder. There were no more pleasant, boozy, poetic star-viewing parties. People retreated into the stony cool of the seed vaults. When they ventured out, they wore hats and goggles and wet, clinging, towel-like robes. They grumbled a great deal about this.

  Mellow Julian Nebraska made no such complaint. In times of civic adversity, it pleased him to appear serene. Despite this unwholesome heat and filth, we dwell in a city of shining glass! We may well sweat, but there is no real risk that we will starve! Let us take pride in our community’s unique character! We are the only city of the world not perched like a ghost within the sprawling ruin of some city of antiquity! Fortitude and a smiling countenance shall be the watchwords of our day!

  Julian sheltered his tender birds from the exigencies of the sky. He made much use of parasols, misting-drips, and clepsydra. The professor’s villa was modest, but its features were well considered.

  Dirt fell lavishly from the stricken sky, but Sparrow had learned the secret of soap, that mystic potion of lye, lard, ashes, and bleach. Sparrow spoke a little now, but not one word of the vulgar tongue: only comical scraps of the finest Old Proper English. Sparrow wore the clean and simple white robes that her master wore, with a sash around her waist to show that she was a woman, and a scarf around her hair to show that she was a servant. Sparrow would never look normal, but she had come to look neat and dainty.

  Julian’s enemies—and he had made some—said dark things about the controversial philosopher and his mute exotic concubine. Julian’s friends—and he had made many—affected a cosmopolitan tolerance about the whole arrangement. It was not entirely decent, they agreed, but it was, they opined, very like him.

  Julian was not a wealthy man, but he could reward his friends. His small garden was cool in the stifling heat, and Sparrow had learned to cook. Sparrow cooked highly alarming meals, with vegetables cut in fragments, and fried in a metal bowl. This was the only Selder food that Sparrow could eat without obvious pangs of disgust.

  His students ate these weird concoctions cheerily, because healthy young men ate anything. Then they ran home in darkness to boa
st that they had devoured marvels.

  The wicked summer heat roiled on. It was the policy of the finer folk of the court to dine on meat: mostly rabbit, guinea pig, and mice. Meat spoiled quickly.

  When he fell ill, there were rumors that the Godfather had been poisoned. No autocrat ever died without such claims. But no autocrat could live forever, either. So the old Godfather perished.

  On the very day of the old man’s death, the dusty heat wave broke. Vast torrential rains scoured the mountains. Everyone remarked on this fatal omen.

  It was time for the Godfather’s cabal to retire into the secret seed vaults, don their robes and masks, and elect the successor.

  Julian’s students had never seen a succession ritual. It was a sad and sobering time. Men who had never sought out a philosopher asked for some moral guidance.

  What on earth are we to do now? Console the grieving, feed the living, and lower the dead man into the Cistern.

  What will history say of Godfather Jimi the Seventh? That the warlike spirit of his youth had matured into a wise custodianship of the arts and crafts of peace.

  Then there were others with a darker question: What about the power?

  There Mellow Julian held his peace. He could guess well enough what would happen. There would be some jostling confusion among the forty masked Men in Red, but realistically, there were only two candidates for the Godfather’s palace. First, there was the Favorite. He was the much-preened and beloved nephew of the former Godfather, a well-meaning idiot never tested by adversity.

  There was the Other Man, who had known nothing but adversity. He had spent his career in uniform, repressing the city’s barbarian enemies. His supporters were hungry and ambitious and vulgar. He would not hesitate to grasp power by any means fair or foul. His own wife and children feared him. He was stubborn and bold, as Julian knew, because he had once been Julian’s classmate.

  Who would complain if a professor, in a time of trouble, retired into his private life? No rude brawling for the thinking man, no street marches, no shouted threats and vulgar slogans. No intrigues: instead, civility. The cleanly example of the good life. Food, drink, friends, and study. Simplicity and clarity. Humanity.