Gears of the City (18 page)

“That sounds familiar.”

“One of Olympia’s?”

“One of Olympia’s what?”

“One of what do you
think?”

“Please, sir, your cane.”

“Are you or aren’t you?”

“You would know better than me, Mr. Brace-Bel. I remember nothing. If you know me, if you know anything of my past, I beg you to …”

“Ah! Now I see. You went up on the
Mountain.”

“So I understand.”

“More fool you. You people and your
explorations.
Was your expedition a success? Did you chart it?”

“I don’t think so. Please, Mr. Brace-Bel, if you would take one step back …”

“Your exploration was always outward, you see, and physical; mine was inward and more subtle.”

“Mr. Brace-Bel, if you can tell me anything …”

“See?” Brace-Bel—
-finally!
—stepped away from Arjun, and gestured with his cane at the dancers, who mostly stood in a row against the far wall. There were about fifteen, twenty of them, each more ridiculously dressed than the last—men and women, thin and fat, young and old. Seeing themselves observed by their master they straightened up and hid their cigarettes behind their backs and pulled their masks back on, if they had them. “See?” Brace-Bel repeated, as if the point was too obvious to be worth explaining.

Brace-Bel Explains Himself-
Under the Rose-A Man Out of Time-
A Little Song about the Dawn

Brace-Bel

M
y name is
Brace-Bel, and a byword for evil. Here, now, in these last days, my reputation is still young; a poisoned seed yet to grow. My time, like yours, was many centuries ago, and far away, and I am forgotten. Like you I am a man out of time. Once I was before my times; now I am behind them. But if all time in the city is one time—as I believe that it is—and down some strange turn of hidden streets we may wander into years thought lost to us and find the long-dead still living and breathing and fucking into existence generations paradoxically unborn in one place and gone to dust in another—well
then
there still exist places where mothers warn their children to behave or Brace-Bel will take them; where preachers bellow against Brace-Bellism; where gutter-witches invoke those potent syllables
Brace
and
Bell
against their enemies, to make maidens sterile and young men mad. A byword for evil. And
why?
Brace-Bel; it’s a pretty sound. My father was a nobleman and noted merchant of wines, and well thought of in the councils of princes. My mother—well, in truth she was a serpent, a foulness, a barren womb; had my father’s seed been planted in more hospitable soil it might have grown straight and true, and not into the ugly fat creature you see before you. For science teaches us that it is the father’s seed from which the child grows, and the mother provides
only a temporary housing, which may fall short of adequacy, but can not exceed it, so the mother may contribute to the child’s defects, but not to its excellencies; and this is why all men of learning and sensitivity revile their mothers. A serpent! Yet she was publicly reckoned a great woman of the city, and notable for her work with orphans and charity and sponsorship of the arts and other things that make me sick to think of. No, the black stain on the Brace-Bel name is my work alone, mine alone, and …

… yes, yes. I’ll be getting to you—Arjun? Odd name. Where was I? I am suddenly very tired. I make use of certain drugs in preparation for the ritual. They give me vigor but confuse my thoughts. Where shall I begin?

I was only an indifferent student of divinity. I’ll not bore you with the details of the scandal which resulted in my first expulsion, my first return in disgrace to my father’s house, and in the
hanging
of my tutor and partner in depravity, who was of less noble family … Now, were it sane to punish crimes of love or passion, then punishment would fall in some scientific and regular fashion, and there is no question that I was more deeply at fault than him; that arbitrary scattering of punishments taught me all I ever needed to know of the law.

It is well known that a man will spend his seed in the moment of hanging. I watched him struggle and jerk on the rope. A public hanging, in Tiber’s Square. Afterward they cast the body into the Gods’ imperious fire. What dry and dark pleasure did it give the priests and the judge to procure that joyless spending? I realized that I had been outdone in depravity. It was not Law. There
is
no Law. Much sinned against, I am. I promised I would meet the city’s challenge; I would exceed it in depravity.

When I returned home my father struck me, and I struck him back, and soon I was on my own in the city and …

No, sir! Damn you, sir, no! I will not clothe myself! My nakedness offends you? Here I bare my soul to you, and you balk at a little flesh?

Mr. Basso, take my arm please. I need to sit.

Dancers, away!

Where is Ivy? Basso, bring Ivy to me. Well,
find
her then. Am I not the master here?

Come, sit closer, Arjun. My voice is tired.

I
had a little flat in Foyle’s Ward. There I was attended by guests, so long as my father’s money lasted. I was never physically well favored, even when younger, and that money was much of my charm. Those were happy days, though I had not yet found my purpose. The quality of whores has declined precipitously in this city.

Godsdamn it, where is Ivy? She calms me when I am sick. The drug tires me and the ritual tires me. Nightly I bang my head against the walls of reality like a moth against a flame; is it any wonder I am tired?

…
happy
days. I made the mistake of embarking on an affair of sorts with a young relative of the Countess Ilona. A little too vigorous a hand with the whip left marks on him that were
unpresentable
in company. And that time
he
received only a dressing down, while I, the less noble man, spent a season in the Iron Rose …

Yes, Arjun, it’s a prison! Gods, do you remember
nothing}
What monstrous defenses the Mountain must have. It puts my garden to shame. I was wise to flee from it.

The Iron Rose was a prison, then: far to the south, and far lost in time; five great ancient towers broken and slumping, bound together with iron. A maze. A thousand cells, a thousand thousand; the Rose’s million bloody petals exceeded all record keeping. Traitors and poisoners and witches and blasphemers and seditionists— criminals by the reckonings of one or other of the city’s thousand lords and laws—laws so various and perverse and contradictory that there was never a man in all of Ararat who was not a criminal by
someone’s
reckoning
somewhere
, and so it was pure chance who did or not end up in the Rose.

In these last days the whole
city
is a prison. I have never cared for democracy or leveling.

During my incarceration I wrote, and my letters were smuggled out. Wonderful slashing letters to my old clucking tutors in the School of Divinity, expounding upon my theories. So blasphemous were those letters that those old men might have been struck blind reading them. What more could they do to me? I was already in the Rose.

And through those letters I came to the attention of Nicolas Maine and his Atlas-makers.

No? Nothing, Arjun? No memory? Not a glimmer? Yes, I
think I see a glimmer in those pretty dark eyes of yours … I most certainly
did see
you among them, in the last days. No? Still nothing?

Maine, then, brought together all the most brilliant minds of the city, among whom I was most certainly to be counted, even in those days when the city was full of wit and brilliance—now, in this stagnant backwater of time, I am entirely without peer—and he set them to the work of mapping the city; of recording not only every last street but every last fact about those streets and the men and Gods who walked them; every last idea in the city; the last great work of knowledge. A blasphemous business, said the priests and censors, because it was not for men to reduce to understanding the perfect complexity of the city—and so my blasphemous path traveled alongside Maine’s, for a time. I contributed the Atlas-entries on the
Prison-State
, and the
Orgasm
, and the twin Gods of the Iron Rose, and on
Menstruation
, and on
Suicide
, and on
Prostitution
, and on a great many other topics. I essayed a number of contributions on the
Womb
and on
The Maternal Impulse
, which were repeatedly rejected, I’m sorry to say.

You? You came in the last days, long after Maine was exiled, in the days when he’d briefly come back, only to die … You had inquiries of a theological nature. You wanted to find a God or possibly get rid of one. I think you were one of Olympia Autun’s lovers. Awful arrogant woman. Because she played a few flummery lawyer’s tricks in court to spring me from prison once or twice she considered it her place to lecture me on my proclivities. She took exception to my fondness for the whip. Once she struck me! And you were one of Holbach’s creatures. You were a translator for him, weren’t you?

Well?

Akomoffen lindur olmik, agalom dolmik!

Hah! Don’t look so offended. My Tuvar is weak and I only remember their curses. Well, then, you were his translator; there’s no doubt in my mind.

You were there for the end.

H
old me up! Hold me! I do not remember the stairs being so treacherous. Look how they slip and slide beneath my feet.

Carry me swiftly to my toilet or I cannot be accountable for what will happen to your shoes, sir.

Oh, Basso, who is this oaf who handles me so roughly?

Oh yes. Yes. I remember.

Ahhh.

Don’t be shy. You may sit on the bathtub, there.

The end? The end of what? Oh yes. How tiresome. Let me tell you of my theories, instead, my marvelous theories.

By fucking we are brought into this world and by fucking we shall pass beyond it.

That’s the essence of it. All else is footnotes.

Help me downstairs, will you?

S
ee? My dancers, my girls and boys and men and women, my creatures. In old Ararat I had my pick of the finest dancers and beauties of the city’s most splendid brothels; I had my pick of the wildest freaks of its circuses and sideshows. All those brilliant impoverished artists, eager for my patronage! Here I make do with more ordinary persons. There are no dancers, no freaks, and no artists left in the last days. Yes, yes, wave to them as we pass.

Ivy alone is not ordinary. You shall not take her from me.

Each one incarnates symbolically a God of the ancient city. I have only seventeen dancers here, because money is not inexhaustible; but the Gods were infinite in number, as many as the moods of the city, its cobbles and leaves and windows and iron bars. Thus we have frequent changes of costume, and some must do mul-tiplicitous service.

See this one? I dress her in armor; she stands for the God Addartta, bloody in battle, resplendent in victory; God of the triumphal march and the conqueror’s golden statues and the bringing back of spoils in chariots down cheering stamping streets. But she is also Querl, the mailed fist of the lawman. And she is also Vulmea, God of freebooters and bandits and drunks. The whore beneath those clothes has a gifted tongue but she also has the clap; be warned.

This one in the jewels is Orillia, spirit of the lights, spirit of the illuminations, of torchlight and gaslight and bright glass and open
fires blazing over the dark hills of the city, the bright flash of its arcades—in these grey days it is hard to imagine the city was bright, once, but it was. She also does service as Keba, the whore. And so on and so on. This one here who rings with chimes is all the spirits of music the city had, which were
many.
This one in rags is the Beggar, and also the Typhon, murderous stinking river-spirit, greedy for sacrifices. This young man in his mirror-masks is Lavilokan, God, of course, of the mirrors. This is the Spider. Ivy, wherever she’s gone, stands for the Bird, most beautiful white-winged bird of
freedom
, on which I meditated long and hard during my time in the Iron Rose. Ivy is my favorite and you shall not have her. This young lady here is …