City of Saints and Madmen Part 31

In Ambergris, despite all of the city's quirks, food does not squirm and wrestle with itself on the plate. In Ambergris, most things are possible, but not that. I do wonder about the nature of "food" in The Exchange. In all the literature I have read about the city, there is scarcely a recipe to be found, not even in the Hoegbotton guides. Yet here, we have a very explicit mention of a meal, in a pamphlet that serves as a Festival grace note. Odd.

This panel shows Verden's devotion to Strattonism--apparent in the leaf patterns, the clouded moon, the squid tentacles. In the upper right panel, the number of leaves equals the number of Strattonism's Commandments. In the upper left panel, the number of leaves matches the list of proscribed activities set out in the Book of the Stratton. The moon? A moon as a lidded eye is a secret symbol of Strattonism. As for the tentacles, observe how two Strattonists greet each other when they meet.

Some have thought that Sporlender, intentionally or not, used Verden as his model for the wife. This would certainly have rankled Verden, as it comes close to revealing one of his many secrets. From Ambergris' outlawed squid clubs, Madnok has told me, comes the rumor of a woman resembling Verden who used to frequent the most diabolical of establishments. After paying for a night's entertainment, this woman would take out a sketch pad and begin drawing the debaucheries.

Certainly, with some embellishment the description of the old man fits Sporlender quite well. It is for this reason that many experts less eccentric than Madnok believe that The Exchange was meant as a complex allegory--describing the creative process Sporlender and Verden went through on each project.

It is, perhaps, key that Verden takes credit for suggesting the hidden "I" narrator who suddenly manifests within the narrative.

Madnok believes that this ill.u.s.tration predicts a terrible act committed in Ambergris, an act known to only a few. His further observation that the squid "seem less irritable than sensually disposed" toward one another reflects, I believe, his only failing as a reliable observer.

Sporlender often made it a point of pride that he had few social graces, but Verden's editing from the original ma.n.u.script has softened the mockery of the old woman in this section.

Madnok suggests that Sporlender here provides a glimpse into secret Fighting Philosopher rites. I have no way of verifying this information given the restrictions put on my movements.

I surmise that the "exchange" is clearly an exchange of ideas. That the ideas ultimately prove incompatible may be unimportant--if the friction created during conflict is recorded as art, so to speak.

Is this how Verden felt about his creative relationship to Sporlender? Bound to Sporlender, trapped by him? Did Sporlender feel just as much of a need to break free as Verden? The moon is almost completely covered by clouds. The squid are ready for just about anything. The squid look oddly identical to me. Could it be that Verden and Sporlender were too much alike?

Here, Sporlender teases Verden, by making the creature frog-like. Verden hated frogs. He grew up in an old rotted mansion by the River Moth. The bas.e.m.e.nt and ground floor of that place had been flooded for months at a time. From the safety of his bedroom on the third floor, he had for years heard the incessant bleat and croak of the frogs--"as if they mocked my family's old money poverty."

Sporlender had an obsession with the idea of flesh and metal interwoven, as a way of staving off death. A coward in many ways, Sporlender came closest to acting on his desires by adorning himself with metal bracelets, earrings, and rings. At one point, he commissioned the great inventor Porfal to construct a metal "skin suit" for him, but the execution of the plan proved too much even for the likes of Porfal.

Combat joined! The Dogghe versus Manzikert I! The Kalif versus Stretcher John! The gray caps versus Ambergris! The Festival versus itself! Mimicry of Ambergris' great history of conflict. The night before Sporlender left for Morrow, abandoning Ambergris forever, a mob armed with flaming torches gathered outside the gates of his house. A band of Strattonists, out late carousing, irritable and high-strung because of the recent spate of uncommonly mild Festivals. Soon set upon by a group of pa.s.sing adherents of the Fighting Philosopher.

According to his alibi, Verden was on the other side of town when the melee broke out. It was a cloudy night. Cast in darkness, the city became unfamiliar even to the most hardened nighttime traveler. What had at first been an organized battle between religious fanatics became a miserable chaos of wounds and shrieks.

In the great slaughter, very few from either side survived. But where was Sporlender during all of this? Those few who bothered to look up from their work saw two shadowy figures in the window of Sporlender's living room. They appeared to be arguing with one another. Most are certain that one was Sporlender and the other was not his wife. The second figure appeared to be sitting down. No one could tell who it might be.

A light came from the window, so bright that it blinded the combatants. Sporlender's house, the figures inside, became momentarily illumined, yet none could see them.

The light disappeared. The figures remained. Then there was the sound of gla.s.s breaking and the window exploded into shards. Something small and round and heavy rolled to a stop at the feet of the Strattonists and the followers of the Fighting Philosopher . . .

A moment later it disintegrated and disappeared into the air. Each Strattonist who saw it thought of it as something different. To some it was a seed pod. To others, a small mushroom. To yet others, a child's ball. But to a man, the followers of the Fighting Philosopher saw a curled up flower inside of a dodecahedron. Meanwhile, both figures had disappeared from the window. When the Strattonists stormed the house a few minutes later, it was empty. Sporlender was never seen in Ambergris again, nor was his wife.

As Madnok was fond of saying about this page, "Here they rest side-by-side even though in life, they are as distant as can be possible." Does Sporlender actually reside in the city of Morrow with his wife, as many claim? Every once in a long while, a letter will come, or a new story, stamped "Morrow," but no one has actually seen Sporlender since that night.

The editors of Burning Leaves launched an investigation into the odd occurrences that night. They charged both Hoegbotton & Sons and the Fighting Philosopher's acolytes with collusion in Sporlender's disappearance. When a letter arrived from Sporlender indicating he had simply moved to Morrow to "get away from Verden," Burning Leaves dropped its investigation and published the story Sporlender had attached to the letter, "In the Hours After Death," with the appropriate editor's note.

As Madnok reminded me, Verden has also retreated from the public eye since that night, although perhaps not in such a dramatic fashion. He is rarely seen without a robe with a cowl, due to, as he puts it, "a disease of the skin that has reduced my handsomeness to whatever comes out of my pen and pencil." He has also done far fewer ill.u.s.trations in recent years.

The houseboat theatre production "Remarkable Water Puppet show" is excellent. The two main puppets are modeled after Sporlender and Verden. This puppet show postulates that Sporlender and Verden were visited by the gray caps that fateful night. It chronicles Sporlender's slow disintegration into fungi in Morrow. It also shows how Verden is permanently disfigured by spores. In the dramatic finale, Verden and Sporlender meet one last time when Verden visits Morrow in search of his former friend. They dissolve in one another's arms. Not recommended for children.

I have almost all of these pamphlets. The Guide to Literary Walking Tours includes a section on Sporlender. The Sporlender Walking Tour includes a stop at Sporlender's former house, as well as stops at the various publishing houses that presented his work to the public. For a rather steep fee, a Hoegbotten guide will accompany you. According to Madnok, the weekend narrators are the best, and will provide you with the most entertainment value.

The Guide to Bars, Pubs, Taverns, Inns, Restaurants, Brothels, and Safe Houses contains several mentions of Verden. It appears he had quite a reputation.

The Hoegbotton Safe Houses still give out The Exchange and the deluxe Exchange box during the Festival. Due to an error in the contract, neither Sporlender nor Verden receives any monies from sales of the booklet. However, the widespread popularity of the booklet still gains them many new admirers each year.

Once we get out of here, Madnok has promised to show me some of his favorite Festival haunts. As far as I'm concerned, it can't be too soon.

1 . By Manzikert's time, the rough southern accent of his people had permanently changed the designation "Captain" to "Cappan." "Captain" referred not only to Manzikert's command of a fleet of ships, but also to the old Imperial t.i.tles given by the Saphants to the commander of a see of islands; thus, the t.i.tle had both religious and military connotations. Its use, this late in history, reflects how pervasive the Saphant Empire's influence was: 200 years after its fall, its t.i.tles were still being used by clans that had only known of the Empire secondhand.

2 . A footnote on the purpose of these footnotes: This text is rich with footnotes to avoid inflicting upon you, the idle tourist, so much knowledge that, bloated with it, you can no longer proceed to the delights of the city with your customary mindless abandon. In order to hamstring your predictable attempts-once having discovered a topic of interest in this narrative-to skip ahead, I have weeded out all of those cross references to other Hoegbotton publications that litter the rest of this pamphlet series like a plague of fungi.

3 . I should add to footnote 2 that the most interesting information will be included only in footnote form, and I will endeavor to include as many footnotes as possible. Indeed, information alluded to in footnote form will later be expanded upon in the main text, thus confusing any of you who have decided not to read the footnotes. This is the price to be paid by those who would rouse an elderly historian from his slumber behind a desk in order to coerce him to write for a common travel guide series.

4 . Today, the salinity of the river changes to fresh water a mere 25 miles upriver; the reason for this change is unknown, but may be linked to the build-up of silt at the river's mouth, which acts as a natural filter.

5 . Almost 500 years later, the Petularch Dray Mikal would order the uprooting of native flora around the city in favor of the northern species of his youth, surely among the most strikingly arrogant responses to homesickness on record. The Petularch would be dead for 50 years before the transplantation could be ruled a success.

6 . And yet, what is our understanding of the monk's early history? Obscure at best. The records at Nicea contain no mention of a Samuel Tonsure, and it is possible he was just pa.s.sing through the city on his way elsewhere and so did not actively preach there. "Samuel Tonsure" may also be a name that Tonsure created to disguise his true ident.i.ty. A handful of scholars, in particular the truculent Mary Sabon, argue that Tonsure was none other than the Patriarch of Nicea himself, a man who is known to have disappeared at roughly the same time Tonsure appeared with Manzikert. Sabon offers as circ.u.mstantial evidence the oft repeated story that the Patriarch sometimes traversed his city incognito, dressed as a simple monk to spy on his subordinates. He could easily have been captured without knowledge of his rank-which, if revealed, would have given Manzikert such leverage over Nicea that he might well have been able to take the city and settle behind its walls, safe from Brueghel. If so, however, why didn't the Patriarch make any attempt to escape once he had gained Manzikert's trust? The case, despite some of Sabon's other evidence, seems wrong-headed from its inception. My own research, corroborated by the Autarch of Nunk, indicates that the Patriarch's disappearance coincides with that of the priestess Caroline of the Church of the Seven Pointed Star, and that the Patriarch and Caroline eloped together, the ceremony performed by a traveling juggler hastily ordained as a priest.

7 . For reasons which will become clear, Tonsure could no longer complete it; therefore, 10 years later, Manzikert's son had another Truffidian monk summoned from Nicea for this purpose. Unfortunately, this monk, whose name is lost to us, believed in wearing hair shirts, daily flagellation, and preaching "the abomination of the written word." He did indeed complete the biography, but he might as well have spared himself the effort. Although edited by Manzikert II himself, it contains such prose as "And his highly exhulted majesty set foot on land like a swaggorin conquor from daes of your." Clearly this abominator's abominations against the Written Word far outweigh any crimes It may have perpetrated upon him.

8 . If the careful historian needs further proof that Sabon is wrong, he need look no further than the inscription on the monk's journal: "Samuel Tonsure." Why would he bother to maintain the pretense since the contents of the journal itself would condemn him to death? And why would he, if indeed the Patriarch (a learned and clever man by all accounts), choose such a clumsy and obvious pseudonym?

9 . All quotes without attribution are from Tonsure's journal, not the biography.

10 . Quote taken from the biography. One wonders: if the Cappan was so fierce, how much more fearsome must Michael Brueghel have been to make him flee the south?

11 . The Cappan's appending "II" to his son's name gives us an early indication that he meant to settle on land and found a dynasty. The Aan clan would have thought the idea of a dynasty odd, for usually cappans were chosen from among the ablest sailors, with hereditary claims a secondary consideration.

12 . I find it necessary to interject three observations here. First, that the paragraph on the gray caps written for the Cappan's biography is far worse, describing as it does "small, piglike eyes, a jowly jagged crease for a mouth, and a nose like an ape." The gray caps actually looked much like the mushroom dwellers of today- which is to say, like smaller versions of ourselves-but the Cappan was already attempting to dehumanize them, and thus create a justification, a rationalization, for depriving them of life and property. Second, and surprisingly, evidence suggests that the gray caps wove their clothing from the cured pelts of field mice. Third, Tonsure appears to have given away a secret-if, in fact, the gray cap they met came "only to the Cappan's shoulder" and the gray caps averaged, by Tonsure's own admission, three and one-half feet in height (as do the modern mushroom dwellers), then the Cappan could only have stood four and one-half feet to five feet in height, something of a midget himself. (Is it of import that in a letter concerning future trade relations written to the Kalif, Brueghel calls Manzikert "my insignificant enemy," since "insignificant" in the Kalif's language doubles as a noun meaning "dwarf" and Brueghel, who wrote his own letters of state, loved word play?) Perhaps Tonsure's description of Manzikert in the biography was dictated by the Cappan, who wished to conceal his slight stature from History. Unfortunately, the Cappan's height, or lack thereof, remains an ambiguous subject, and thus I will stay true to the orthodox version of the story as related by Tonsure. Still, it is delicious to speculate. (If indeed Manzikert was short, we might have hoped he would look upon the gray caps as long-lost cousins twice removed. Alas, he did not do so.)

13 . We can only speculate as to why Manzikert should find children and mushrooms repulsive. He certainly ate mushrooms and had had a child with Sophia. Perhaps, if indeed undertall, his nickname growing up had been "little mushroom"?

14 . As this is the first and last time the gray caps actively attempted to communicate with the Aan, one wonders just what the gray cap was saying to Manzikert. A friendly greeting? A warning? The very loquaciousness of this particular gray cap in relation to the others they were to encounter has led more than one historian to a.s.sume that he (or she-contrary to popular opinion, there are as many female gray caps as male; the robes tend to make them all look unis.e.xual) had been a.s.signed to greet the landing party. What opportunities did Manzikert miss by not trying harder to understand the gray cap's intent? What tragedies might have been averted?

15 . Tonsure was criminally fond of Oliphaunts. References to them, usually preceded by mundanea like "as large as" or "as gray as," occur 30 times in the journal. Possessed of infinite mercy, I shall spare you 28 of these comparisons.

16 . Tonsure's description in the biography also includes a series of mushroom drawings by Manzikert-an attempt to "appear sensitive," Tonsure sneers in his journal-from which I provide three samples for the half dozen of you who are curious as to the Cappan's ill.u.s.trative skills:

17 . Apparently, since Tonsure fails to describe it.

18 . The mammologist Xaver Daffed maintains that these were "actually cababari, a stunted relation of the pig that resembles a rat." (Quote taken from The Hoegbotton Guide to Small, Indigenous Mammals.) If so, then, as subsequent events will show, the rats of Ambergris have managed something of a public relations coup; the poor cababari are today extinct in the southern climes.

19 . James Lacond has suggested that the fungus had hallucinogenic qualities. Tonsure, for his part, sampled a "fungus that resembled an artichoke" and found it tasted like unleavened bread; he reports no side effects, although Lacond claims that the rest of Tonsure's account must be considered a drug-induced dream. Lacond further claims that Tonsure's later account of Manzikert's men glutting themselves on the fungi-some of which tasted like honey and some like chicken-explains their sudden mercilessness. But Lacond contradicts himself: if the rest of Tonsure's account is a fever dream, then so is his description of the men eating the fungus. As always when discussing the gray caps, debate tends to describe the same circles as their buildings. (A similar circularity drove a subdivided Lacond, late in his life, to declare that the world as we know it is actually a product of the dream dreamt by Tonsure. Since our knowledge of our ident.i.ty as Ambergrisians, where we came from, is so dependent on Tonsure's journal, this is close to the heresy of madness.)

20 . Admittedly, a perilous and notoriously inaccurate undertaking; the mushroom dwellers tend to look unkindly upon intrusions into their territory.

21 . The question of where the gray caps came from and why they were concentrated only in Cinsorium remains a mystery. The subject has frustrated many a historian and, to avoid a similar fate, I shall pa.s.s over it entirely.

22 . But surely they farmed the fungus?

23 . Tonsure reports the following symbol showed up repeatedly:

24 . Volume XX, Issue 2, of The Real History Newsletter, published by the Ambergrisians For The Original Inhabitants Society.