Kalpa Imperial (11 page)

He built himself a palace. A real one this time, not a shapeless stone den but a palace bristling with towers, flanked by terraces and gardens looked out upon by the tall blue-paned windows of the dining rooms and retiring rooms and the tall red or yellow-paned windows of the gaming rooms and party rooms: a palace of limitless apartments and interminable corridors, with its own water-fountains for the sick emperor.

Blaggarde the Listener did not lay aside his duties. He no longer wore a coat of mail nor went to war, and day and night his life drained from the oozing wound, but he never ceased to busy himself with the tasks of empire. He saw his ministers first, then his secretaries. He had to keep in touch with the administrators and people in contact with the distant capital. Then noblemen appeared with their relatives and servants. And when the emperor brought the empress and his children to live with him, noblewomen came too, and teachers, palace provisioners, more noble families, and bodyguards and lickspittles and all the rabble that surrounds the powerful.

Once again the city changed. Many buildings came down to make room for the great houses of lordly folk; whole blocks were cleared for parks and gardens; the streets were widened so coaches could pass; the desert was watered to grow fruits and greens and flowers for a population now covering the mountains and overflowing onto the plain. Not everything was destroyed, though. Some things remained: the waters that cured all ills, or almost all, the Fountain of the Five Rivers, the underground tunnels of Drauwdo the Brawny, a few inexplicable foundations of rough stone, the mausoleum built by the city’s first mayor, and here and there an eccentric staircase in the middle of a street.

The emperor’s wound stopped oozing, but its inflamed lips would not join, even when painfully sutured or even more painfully cauterized. The emperor realized, or maybe the stones spoke and told him, that his life would end here. So he signed a decree making the mountain city the capital of the Empire. The whole Empire looked towards the new capital. All roads led to the mountains, across what had been the desert; all ambitious men dreamed of living there and some managed to do it, and for many centuries after that time there was no capital so splendid, so rich, so active, so beautiful, so prosperous. The dynasties of the Selbiddoës, of the Avvoggardios, and of the Rubbaerderum governed the vast Empire from that city, sometimes well, sometimes pretty well, sometimes badly, as usual; and the water went on welling up, and some palaces fell down and others were built, and some streets were closed off and others were opened up between the houses and the parks, and women bore children, poets sang, thieves stole, tellers of tales sat in tents and talked to people, archivists went on classifying ancient writings, judges sat in judgment, couples loved and wept, men fought for stupid things that in any case weren’t going to last long, gardeners produced new varieties of eggplant, assassins lurked in shadows, kids invented games, blacksmiths hammered, madmen howled, girls fell in love, unhappy men hanged themselves, and one day a girl was born with her eyes open.

It’s not so rare as most people think. Kids do get born open-eyed, though it’s true that they generally arrive with their eyes sensibly closed. But everybody believes that the open eyes of a newborn baby signify great events, fortunate or unfortunate, in the life of that child. And her parents committed the blunder of repeating that belief out of vainglory, and of repeating it to her, in order to prepare her for her destiny; and the girl believed them. If it had been anything else she probably would have smiled, as girls smile at the stupidities of their parents, and forgotten all about it; but if you’re told your life is going to be full of tremendous events you’re likely to believe it. When Sesdimillia was ten, she looked around and wondered where the great events were going to come from, the fame, the tragedy, the martyrdom, the bliss, the glory. The city worked and played and lived and died, and up there stood the shining imperial palace.

“I’m going to be empress,” she said to herself.

Her chance of coming to the throne was slight, as her ancestors weren’t royalty or aristocrats, only moderately prosperous merchants. But she got there.

When she was twenty the old Emperor Llandoïvar died at the age of a hundred and one and was succeeded by his great-grandson Ledonoïnor, all his children and grandchildren having already died. The new emperor came very near to marrying the daughter of a duke with whom he used to play in the palace gardens when they were little children. But Ledonoïnor the Vacant wasn’t called that for nothing. He didn’t love the duke’s daughter because, it seemed, he loved nobody and nothing and had no interest in anybody or anything. Nor did he love the dark-haired, active, efficient, handsome, hard girl who oddly enough held the post of Chief of the Internal Vigilance Forces in the palace, which she had won two years ago, disguised as a man, demonstrating greater skill and strength in armed and unarmed combat than her many male opponents. But two months before the emperor’s wedding with the duke’s daughter, an assassin somehow made his way into the palace and raised his sword against Ledonoïnor I, and the girl shortened him by a head with his own weapon, and the emperor married her, because when he promised her whatever reward she wanted for saving his life she said to him, “Marry me, sir.” Though there was no proof and no witnesses it was said that she had provoked the assault, had paid the would-be regicide, and had promised him he’d go free. It’s quite possible; what then? Greater infamies than that take place in the palaces of emperors, from which everybody suffers, nobles and commoners, rich and poor. In this case nobody suffered, not even the duke’s daughter, who took it hard at first, but who married a man she could love and hate and who could love and hate her. The emperor didn’t suffer because he didn’t know how to suffer. The empress got what she wanted. And the people were all right because she governed well, really well.

Fortunately Ledonoïnor the Vacant spent his time walking through the gardens and galleries with his empty eyes fixed on emptiness and his soul empty and inert in his empty body and left her to rule, efficiently, harshly sometimes, but always with style. Every now and then she called him to her apartments, and nine months later the Empire had a new prince, and so it went for five years, until the emperor died of a tumor in his belly, probably because there was so much emptiness in there that it could grow as it liked till it suffocated him.

And a short while after, another rebellion arose in the south. The widowed empress put on the men’s clothes she used to wear and her armor, and marched like so many other rulers to defend the unity of the Empire. She defended and won it in a single engagement, the Battle of the Field of Nnarient, on which the South bowed its fierce, rebellious head. She won the victory because she was brave, because she believed in what she was doing, because she knew to control armies, and because the leader of the rebellion was a fool. Handsome, ardent, but a fool.

The Treaty of Nnarient-Issinn was signed, unique in the history of the Empire: the South submitted unconditionally and swore fealty to the empress. She moved the capital to the border between the rebel territories and the states of the North, and married the ardent fool. Putting the capital on the border was a bold strategic move which assured peace for many years more than could have been expected when dealing with the South. Such was not the case with the empress’s marriage to the rebel chief. She married him because it was her destiny, or so say those who believe in the destiny of those born with their eyes open. I say she married him because she was one of those empresses who had enough power to do whatever she liked. And they were happy, and provided the Empire with more princes and a fresh royal lineage, but you can read all that in any historical treatise or booklet of love poems, and in any case it doesn’t matter to us.

What matters to us is what happened in the city in the mountains. People drifted away from the palaces, the great houses, the elegant shops, the parks and gardens and avenues. The nobles left, the gentlefolk, the rich folk, the field marshals, the ladies, the antiquaries, the jewelers, the cabinetmakers, they all left. People of no importance stayed on, some sentimentalists, owners of small businesses, owners of spas, people who had been there, like their parents and grandparents, for a long, long time. The mansions were divided and subdivided again and again, doors were cut in unexpected places, and ramps and staircases led up to higher floors that were no longer part of a house but a whole house, or several houses. Every bedroom, every spacious drawing room was made into two or even three apartments for humble families by putting up partitions and screens and enclosing balconies as kitchens. Corridors cut through rooms and, after various contortions, opened onto the street. The facades deteriorated, losing their paint and carvings. Some windows were sealed, others cut open; the street doors were no longer used, and their hinges and knockers didn’t work. As this went on the streets grew narrower because so many lean-tos and sheds and enclosures were built up against outside walls, and the city acquired a silence, a mystery, it had never had before. Yet it wasn’t a silence of menace, but of resignation. It went on so for years and years, growing ever more jumbled, more intricate, more improbable. Whole neighborhoods stood silent and abandoned. A street of elegant, unchanged houses, or of mansions bulging with labyrinthine apartments, behind which were precarious structures in what had been a park, led suddenly to a string of low, gloomy shop-buildings. And then came semi-detached palaces, and lonesome avenues where the grass grew and where many-colored awnings, now stiff with dirt, that had once sheltered the nobility at their games, now protected opticians, fortune tellers, dentists, masseuses, academies of physical fitness, dyers, and seamstresses.

For a time the palace of the Empress Sesdimillia stood closed but well maintained by servants who had remained behind for that purpose; but though the children the empress had with Ledonoïnor the Vacant and those she had with the Southerner respected her wishes, her grandchildren didn’t care much about a palace they’d never seen, and failed to replace the caretakers when they got old and died. One night somebody stole the great bronze and golden bell from the main door, and that was the signal for general looting. Not violent, brutal looting as in war, but a mild, intermittent, natural, easygoing depredation, not totally secret but not overt, that went on till nothing was left of the palace but the walls, the roofs, a few doors, and the stone and marble pavements.

The mysterious, peaceful, labyrinthine city continued to offer its waters to those who came seeking a cure for something, though they were far fewer than in the times of the Listener. The skeleton of the deserted palace was about to be knocked down when a mayor asked permission of the capital to take over what was left of it and turn it into a cultural center. They sent word that he could do as he pleased, which is exactly what this mayor, who had written poetry and plays as a young man, did. He repaired the ruinous building at a low cost, remodeling the rooms for readings, concerts, lectures, plays, dance, and exhibitions of art. There was a natural history museum, two libraries, and an historical archive. The people of the city never took a great deal of interest in so much art and culture, but the invalids and the convalescents paid money to go in and see plays or hear music, or merely out of curiosity, and so for many long years the great doors were never locked.

The Empire didn’t entirely forget the mountain city during this period, because its curative waters kept it in mind, and because vehicles carrying freight went on using the north road to and from the port, but indubitably its fame, importance, and attractiveness had declined. It was just another city: people knew somebody who lived there or had lived there, people had a relative who went to take the waters there, people consulted the annals in the archives seeking information on the various imperial capitals, people remembered a trip, a conversation, a name. And that was all. The city didn’t die, but it rested, it dozed. I’d say it was making ready for something.

Have you heard tell of Heldinav’Var? Of course you have, of course you have. I’ll bet my boots and buttons you’ve forgotten all the virtuous emperors, but who is there, eh? that doesn’t wink and grin as soon as they hear that name, Heldinav’Var? Well, I’m about to disillusion you, because I’m not going to talk about that lecherous and vicious emperor. Who did have some good qualities, though most people don’t believe it, or don’t want to. No, I’m not going to talk about him but about one of his relations, Meabramiddir’Ven, Baron of the Towers, Seneschal of the Walls, and a lot of other equally meaningless titles—and the emperor’s first cousin. That, now, is meaningful. It means, for instance, that he nursed certain pretensions about sitting on the imperial throne some day, despite the fact that he was ninth in succession. Heldinav’Var was a swine, but he wasn’t stupid, which was one of his good qualities. It’s always good not to be stupid, and when it’s the emperor who isn’t stupid, people can have hope; not security, of course, but still, hope helps. Heldinav’Var was Crown Prince and his father the Emperor Embemdarv’Var was dying. The prince began planning what he’d do when he succeeded to the throne. He knew, among other things, that his cousin the Baron of the Towers was capable of murder to clear his own way to the throne, and that the first to fall would be the Crown Prince, and since the Crown Prince had no interest whatever in dying, because he was having a stupendously good time and intended to go on doing so when he was emperor, and since—another of his good qualities—he wasn’t an assassin or a despot and therefore didn’t consider poisoning or hanging his cousin even if his cousin deserved it, he sent for the Seneschal of the Walls and informed him, in public, what he thought of him, and added that either his august cousin would depart from the capital before nightfall and go as far as he could possibly go, or the tenth person in the line of succession, Goldarab’Bar the Obese, the author, as you know, of the First Codex of River Commerce, would instantly become the ninth. Meabramiddir’Ven, who hadn’t expected this, sought a defense, an explanation, anything, but couldn’t think of anything, which suggests that he was considerably stupider than the future emperor. And the worst of it was that his illustrious cousin did not address him with indignation, nor demand justifications or avowals of innocence, but merely waited, almost smiling, arms crossed, to hear what the aspirant to regicide would say. He finally hit on a way out, not a very plausible one, but very seemly: He had no aspirations to the throne, to power, to be ruler of the Empire, oh, no no no; if he had been asking the opinion of some strategically placed persons concerning the desirability or indesirability of Heldinav’Var’s succeeding to the throne, it was because he wished to prevent the vice, the shamelessness, the indecency of his cousin from being openly displayed in the person of the emperor. What would become of the Empire? What would become of its subjects, with such an example at their head? And he went on to explain how good he himself was, how honest, decent, discreet, modest, and virtuous. All the same the future emperor sent him off, because he was not only dangerous and a very poor liar, but boring. And the Baron of the Towers had nothing for it but to go, not swearing vengeance because that wouldn’t have suited his role of redeemer, but declaring that he pardoned and forgave.