Soldiers of Paradise (11 page)

Thanakar shrugged.

“Well,” exclaimed the commissar with sad heartiness, “I didn’t mind a drink myself when I was young. When I could get it. Tell me,” he said. “Where does he get it?”

“No one you know.”

“I’ll bet. I’ll bet. Yes, well, I suppose it’s better not to know. It’s for the best.” He paused and looked around the room. “But no. Listen. I want to talk to you about my wife.”

“Have you seen a doctor?”

“No.” The commissar sighed. “No. It’s not that easy. You’re not married, are you, Thanakar?”

The doctor felt the blood in his cheeks. “You know I’m not.”

“No. Of course, how could you be? Well, in some ways you’re lucky. It’s very complicated. All these regulations. I don’t give a damn about them myself,” said the commissar, and unconsciously he touched the tattoo of legal immunity on the thumb of his right hand. “But in a way, it’s a question of duty. And some of them are for the best. I can see the sense in some of them. But when something like this happens, it’s not … convenient. I should be able to send her to a doctor. But there aren’t any women doctors anymore, except for midwives, and that’s not the problem. I wish it were. So I thought you wouldn’t mind having a look at her yourself. I mean, I could describe the symptoms, but it’s not the same.”

“It’s against the law. A married woman.”

“Yes, I know. I’ll understand if you refuse. But I thought, well, you’re practically a member of the family. And you’ve been so good for Abu. So discreet.”

Thanakar said nothing.

“I’m sorry to put you in this position, my boy, but I’ve been worried.”

“It’s serious?”

“No. Well, I don’t know. It’s … peculiar.”

Thanakar looked down at his boots. Then he nodded.

“You’ll do it?”

“Yes. For a fee.”

The commissar looked surprised. “Well, yes, of course. I suppose so. Anything you say.”

“Not like that. I want your help.” And Thanakar described his conversation with the bishop’s secretary. “I need your protection,” he said.

The commissar waited before replying. “Sit down,” he said, and then he moved over to his desk and stood by the window looking out. When he spoke, it was to change the subject. “The war’s not going well,” he said. “Did you know that?”

“I had heard rumors.”

“Yes. It’s hard to hide so many deaths. Do you know why we’re fighting?” he asked, standing with his hands behind his back, his back to Thanakar. “I mean, not the history, of course. The cause?”

“I suppose it’s a religious controversy. The kings of Caladon are heretics.”

The commissar sighed. “They are all religious controversies. In my lifetime we have fought a dozen heresies and crushed them all. We had limited objectives, always. At Rangriver, we couldn’t spare the troops to get bogged down. We needed them for other wars—this war with Caladon was already old when I was a child. To tell the truth, we cannot win. Yet it, too, started as a war of conscience, more than a year ago, a heresy peculiar to that winter. Argon Starbridge—not the present king, you understand. His great-great uncle shared the same name. They are all named Argon, the kings of Caladon, but this one was not as foolish as the rest. He was a mystic. He taught that men, ordinary men, you know, can … what? Effect their own salvation? Themselves. It’s a dangerous belief. I’m not saying it’s not dangerous. Dangerous and wrong. But I don’t mean that. I mean, how did it start?”

“I don’t know. It seems a natural thing to believe.”

“Yes. Perfectly natural. It’s strange. When I was young, everyone knew this story. It doesn’t matter. I’ll tell you.” The commissar paused, then continued. “King Argon Starbridge, the first King Argon, had no son until he was an old man. Late in life, past the time when women, generally speaking, have children … amid much public rejoicing, I imagine. But the difficulty was the boy was marked—physically perfect, you understand, but with one blue eye. The queen refused food and locked herself into her room. It must have been something from her family, and the shame, well, you can imagine. But some people thought that in this case, the old king’s only son, some exception might be made. At least the king thought so. Especially since the bishop there in Caladon was his own brother. Barred from succession; leave it at that, they said. But the bishop, maybe because he was the king’s brother and wanted to show himself impartial, I don’t know—whatever the reason, it was a terrible mistake. When the baby was presented, he announced the child was cursed, a great criminal, enemy of God, marked for damnation, everything. I don’t know, perhaps he was. But the bishop condemned him on the spot to life imprisonment, and the king was broken-hearted. When the boy was taken away, he collapsed on the floor because, of course, nobody survives that kind of treatment, especially not a child, and in fact the boy died … soon. The king neglected his duties and brooded by himself. And when the news came that the boy was dead, he insisted on giving him a royal funeral, against all custom. He wasn’t going to see him burnt like a criminal. He carried the body in his own hands. The bishop was outraged, but when he moved to act, the king had him arrested, him and all his priests. There was bitter fighting, but in the end the king crucified his brother and hanged the rest. That was the start of it—in my great-grandfather’s time. Clarion Starbridge mobilized our army and marched north. We’ve been at war since then. In my childhood, the front line was more than two hundred miles north of the city, way on the other side of the Caladon frontier. Now, of course, it’s very close.”

There was a long pause. The commissar had moved around the room as he spoke, gesturing with short, brisk movements of his fists. As he concluded, he stood up straight and again clasped his hands behind his back.

Thanakar sat, confused. If there was a connection between this story and his own, he couldn’t see it. But he believed there must be, for the stories seemed to resonate together without touching at any point. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked.

The commissar frowned. “Well I would have thought it was obvious. The war’s not going well. The bishop is afraid of people who don’t seem quite resigned to their fate. Young men with grievances … of that kind.”

Again Thanakar felt a flush of confusion in his cheeks. “The circumstances are not the same,” he said.

“Aren’t they? You believe they’re not. It was an accident, you know. What happened to you.”

“He dropped me. Everyone knows it. He threw me down deliberately. Down the steps.”

“It was an accident,” repeated the commissar. “Otherwise they wouldn’t have done it like that—not if they were punishing your father, or stealing from him. Not at your final presentation, after you had already gotten your names and your tattoos. They would have done it at your birth, like young Prince Argon. Not, of course, that they weren’t right. One blue eye. Bad business. You were just unlucky.”

Thanakar said nothing.

“Anyway,” continued the commissar, “You can rely on me. Nothing to fear. I won’t let them touch you. You’re like a son to me.”

“Thank you.”

“Not to say that you shouldn’t give it up. Visiting the prisons. The painkillers, I mean. The medication. You can’t do much good that way. The real problem’s something else.”

Thanakar stood up. “Thank you.”

The commissar looked at him anxiously. “Sometimes I express things badly,” he admitted. “You forgive me?”

“There is nothing to forgive.”

“Then why don’t you stay to dinner? My wife will join us. The four of us. Quite a … jolly party.”

 

These conversations transpired on July 92nd of the eighth phase of spring 00016, in the holy city-state of Charn, in the northwest corner of the possessions of the emperor, in the hundredth month of his interminable reign. That year it was an old-fashioned city of twisting alleyways and wooden houses, a trading center for the region. Formerly most shipping had run by sea, but in those bitter days the gulf was choked with warfare, and so the priests shipped their goods by rail, overland, down through the infant deserts to the great manufacturing centers of the South—in summer, oil of roses, prayer birds, sandalwood, rubber, black ivory, and orchids; in autumn, lumber; in winter, quarried glass; and in springtime nothing at all, for there was nothing. The war was very bad.

That year, Paradise was visible for one hundred and eighty-four days at the beginning of spring, at the time of the solstice thaw and the last antinomial crusade. The next time Paradise was visible, more than eight thousand days later, it rose on the night of August 7th, in the eighth phase of spring. That night there was a great festival in Charn, and all the temples of the city were full of candlelight and incense and the urgent, huddled faithful, filling the vaults with old-fashioned chanting—the forty-eight names of self-denial, the seventeen obligations of parenthood, the nine kinds of love. In celebration, the bishop’s council had arranged a truce in the eternal war and exchanged prisoners with Argon Starbridge. There were numerous misunderstandings and delays, but in the end the first trucks arrived after sunset of the first day, and unloaded in the packing yards outside the city gates. There was a big crowd to welcome them, and a complicated official reception, but in spite of that it was the dreariest, most dismal spectacle that anyone had ever seen: more than twenty thousand broken-down old men, veterans of forgotten campaigns, men whose whole lives had been spent as prisoners of war. And even though the worst had been culled out at the border, and the rest washed and fed and issued new uniforms, nothing could disguise the fact that few knew even where they were, and few could recognize the families and friends who had been rounded up to greet them.

One of the oldest, however, was still cogent, and had been asked to address the crowd. He was a small, wrinkled, obsolete old soldier, wearing his white hair in the style of a previous generation—long down his back and fastened with an iron ring. But his eyes were still bright, and he reached the top of the dais without assistance, and in fact he began beautifully, describing the conditions of his captivity—the snow, the stink, the grinding work—in words too weathered and old-fashioned to offend. He was making an excellent impression, and the curates in the bleachers behind him were whispering and smiling, the captain of the purge nodding benignly, the canon expanding with relief, until the soldier paused and swallowed, and started again.

“Sweet friends,” he said, in his old, quavering voice, but the effect was like a needle or a shock, because the canon and the clergy sat bolt upright at the sound and looked towards the speaker with expressions of horror and disbelief. The greeting “sweet friends” was strictly adventist. The old soldier was a heretic. “In all this suffering,” he said, “it was easy to submit. Thousands did, died in their sleep, or with their shovels in their hands, or in attempts to escape that never could have succeeded. The men you see here around you are just one sad fragment of the proud regiments that marched out so long ago, flags flying, chanting the names of victory. Some died in battle, some were captured, and some came home to die in bed. The ones who survived, it is because they made a purpose out of living. For once I lay down with a defeated heart, I prayed for death in my little cell, sweet friends; I prayed for death to take me as I slept. I curled up on the floor of my cell, and in the middle of the night I dreamt that I woke up to someone shaking me, and a voice calling me by my name. ‘Wake up,’ it said, ‘Wake up, Liston Bombadier,’ the purest voice, it was a light in that dark room, it was like a light glowing all around me. I staggered up awake—‘Lord, Lord,’ I cried. ‘Where are you? Why can’t I see you?’ ‘But I am with you after all, Liston Bombadier. I am with you every day.’ ‘Lord,’ I said, with tears in my eyes, ‘Why can’t I see you?’ And the voice said, ‘Listen to me. What you hear and feel around you now is just a dream. It has no substance but to reassure you. And to promise you that you will not feel death until you see me face to face, standing in my flesh. In my flesh. And on that day …’ ” Up to then, the canon had seemed to hope the man would keep his talking within the bounds of orthodoxy, or perhaps he was too stupefied to speak, but at that point there was a hissing stream of bad language from the captain at his side, more furious for being whispered, as if it were escaping from under pressure. “Sweet balls of Beloved Angkhdt,” swore the captain. “Whose idea was this?” and all the curates looked at one another.

“What’s to be done?” whispered the canon, and in fact there was nothing; the effect of arresting the man, or dragging him away from the podium, was unthinkable. The crowd around was staring at him with open mouths.

“ ‘And on that day,’ ” continued the soldier, “ ‘I will wash all the pain of living from your body, and all the memory of suffering from your mind. On that day, the earth will bring forth her fruit without tending, fish will fly, and animals will talk. And it will never be winter anymore, never anymore. The powers of earth will be overthrown, and no man will be hungry, and all men will be free …’ ”

“That’s enough,” whispered the captain, and a few curates scuttled away to pull the power on the microphone. But whether they were confused by urgency, or whether there were some jokers among them, after a few moments’ fumbling all the lights went out in the arena, and the soldier’s voice boomed out, unimpeded in the sudden dark, seeming louder than ever: “ ‘On that day I will gather up into my hands all the oppressed. But all the rich men and the priests, the Starbridges and torturers, they will wish they never had been born—’ ” And then the power was cut, and there was silence.

Thanakar and Abu Starbridge were wandering through the crowd. They had stood among the people, listening awestruck to the soldier’s speech. The lights went out, and then the soldier’s voice, extinguished as a plug was pulled. But around them, the crowd of people seethed and whispered in the dark, as if the broken current had been transferred to them. Vague shadows moved and blundered, and from the direction of the dais came the sound of muffled banging and soft yells. The people shouted angrily and stamped their feet, but it was dark and there was no direction for their anger. In the dark, the doctor put his hand out and took his cousin by the arm.