A Stranger in Olondria: A Novel Read online

  “I am sorry,” I said.

  “He is not dead. He is only very quiet.”

  I glanced at her mother, who kept her head lowered.

  “Why are you smiling?” asked the girl.

  My conciliatory half-smile evaporated. “I’m not smiling.”

  “Good.”

  Such aggression in a motionless body, a nearly expressionless face. Her small chin jutted; her eyes bored into mine. She had no peasant timidity, no deference. I cast about for something to say, uneasy as if I had stepped on some animal in the dark.

  “You spoke as if he were dead,” I said at last.

  “You should have asked.”

  “I was led astray by your choice of words,” I retorted, beginning to feel exasperated.

  “Words are breath.”

  “No,” I said, leaning forward, the back of my shirt plastered to my skin with sweat. “No. You’re wrong. Words are everything. They can be everything.”

  “Is that Olondrian philosophy?”

  Her sneer, her audacity, took my breath away. It was as if she had sat up and struck me in the face. For an instant my father’s image flared in my memory like a beacon: an iron rod in his hand, its tip a bead of fire.

  “Perhaps. Perhaps it is,” I managed at last. “Our philosophies differ. In Olondria words are more than breath. They live forever, here.”

  I held out the book, gripping its spine. “Here they live. Olondrian words. In this book there are poems by people who lived a thousand years ago! Memory can’t do that—it can save a few poems for a few generations, but not forever. Not like this.”

  “Then read me one,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Jissi,” her mother murmured.

  “Read me one,” the girl insisted, maintaining her black and warlike stare. “Read me what you carry in the vallon.”

  “You won’t understand it.”

  “I don’t want to understand it,” she said. “Why should I?”

  The book fell open at the Night Lyric of Karanis of Loi. The sun had moved so that my knees were no longer in shadow, the page a sheet of blistering light where black specks strayed like ash. My irritation faded as I read the melancholy lines.

  Alas, tonight the tide has gone out too far.

  It goes too far,

  it stretches away, it lingers,

  now it has slipped beyond the horizon.

  Alas, the wind goes carrying

  summer tempests of mountain lilies.

  It spills them, and only the stars remain:

  the Bee, the Hammer, the Harp.

  “Thank you,” said the girl.

  She closed her eyes.

  Her mother took her hand and chafed it. “Jissi? I’m going to call Tipyav.”

  The girl said nothing. The woman gave me a fearful, embarrassed glance, then stumped across the deck and called down the ladder.

  “Brother.” The young girl’s eyes were open.

  “Yes,” I answered, my anger cooled by pity. She is going to die, I thought.

  A puff of air forced itself from her lungs, a laugh. “Well—never mind,” she murmured, closing her eyes again. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Her mother returned with the servant. I stood aside as the old man knelt and the woman helped the girl to cling to his curved back. The old man rose with a groan and staggered forward, his burden swaying, and the woman rolled up the pallet, avoiding my eye. . . . I pulled my chair farther into the shade of the awning and opened my book, but when they reached the ladder the girl called back to me: “Brother!”

  I stood. Her hair was vibrant in the sun.

  “Your name.”

  “Jevick of Tyom.”

  “Jissavet,” said the dying girl, “of Kiem.”

  In my twenty-ninth year, having lost my heart to the sea, I resolved to travel, and to come, if I might, into some of the little-known corners of the World. It was with such purpose in mind that I addressed myself to the captain of the Ondis, as she lay in the harbor of Bain; and the captain—a man distinguished, in the true Bainish style, by an elegant pipe and exquisitely fashioned boots—declared himself very able to use the extra pair of hands on board his ship, which was to go down the Fertile Coast. We would stop at Asarma, that capital of the old cartographers, and go on to fragrant, orange-laden Yenith by the sea, and finally travel up the Ilbalin, skirting the Kestenyi highlands, into the Balinfeil to collect our cargo of white almonds. The arrangement suited me perfectly: I planned to cross into the mountains and enter the formidable country of the Brogyars. I little knew that my wanderings would last for forty years, and bring me into such places as would cause many a man to shudder.

  I will not, O benevolent reader, spend time in describing Bain itself, that city which is known to lie in the exact center of the world—for who, indeed, who reads this book will be unfamiliar with her, incontestably the greatest city on earth? Who does not know of the “gilded house,” the “queen of the bazaars,” where, as the saying goes, one can purchase even human flesh? No, I begin these modest writings farther south and east, at the gates of Asarma, which, seen from the sea, resemble a lady’s hand mirror. . . .

  I lay on my pallet, surrounded by the rocking of the sea, reading Firdred of Bain in a yellow smear of candlelight. But I could not keep my mind on the words: the letters seemed to shift, rearranging themselves into words which did not exist in Olondrian. Kyitna. And then, like a ruined city: Jissavet of Kiem. I laid the book aside and gave myself up to dreams of her. I remembered the clarity of her eyes, which were like the eyes of Kyomi, the first woman in the world, who had been blessed with the sight of the gods. I thought of the city whose name she had said so carefully, A-lei-lin, Aleilin, Leiya Tevorova’s city, the city of violent seasons. What I knew of that city was Leiya’s story of how she was declared mad and shut up there for the winter in a great tower of black bricks. I looked at the city on Firdred’s map, which, like all Olondrian maps, showed painted cities of exaggerated size. Aleilin: a city like the others. The Place of the Goddess of Clay. And near it the moon-colored oval of the Fethlian, the lake where Leiya had drowned, where a nurse, as I knew from the preface to her autobiography, had found her with her shoe caught in the weeds. There, after long torments, the girl from Kiem would die—for was it not futile to struggle with kyitna, the just punishment of the gods? “And perhaps, the gods of the north—” the mother had said, hesitant, desperate; but what had the gods of the north to do with us? They were tales, pretty names. I turned on my side, restless, thinking of the strange girl with sadness. The bones of her face as she lay beneath the awning like a jade queen. She came from the south, from the land of doctors, wizards, and superstition, from the place which we in Tyom called “the Edge of Night.”

  At length I blew out the candle and slept, but did not dream of the girl, as I had hoped I would; she had fled with the tiny light of the candle. I dreamed instead of the sea, raging, crushing our fragile boat, drowning the spices, splintering planks and bones with its roaring hands. . . . And then of the monkey, leaping from tree to tree, weighing down the branches. The way it looked over its shoulder, the way its tail hung, teeming with lice. And last of all the courtyard, patches of sunlight, the sound of hurried footsteps, closer now, the sound of breath. Jevick. My mother’s voice.

  Chapter Five

  City of My Heart

  On the bridge of Aloun I gave up the great sea

  Bain, city of my heart

  That I might never weep for the memory of thee

  Bain, city of my heart.

  Let me gather the light that I saw in the square

  Bain, city of my heart

  And the jewel-haired maidens who walked with me there

  Bain, city of my heart.

  Oh the arches, the lemons, the cinnamon flowers!

  Bain, city of my heart

  What we abandon must cease to be ours,

  Bain, city of my heart.

  Bain, the Gilded House, the Incomparable City,
splits the southern beaches with the glinting of her domes. On either side the sands stretch out, pale, immaculate, marked with graceful palms whose slender figures give no shade. Those sands, lashed by rain in the winter, sun-glazed in the summer, give the coast the look of a girl in white, the Olondrian color of mourning. Yet as one approaches the harbor this illusion is stripped away: the city asserts itself, Bain the exuberant, the exultant. And the vastness of the harbor mouth with its ancient walls of stone, with its seemingly endless array of ships, blocks out the southern sands.

  From this raucous, magnificent port the Olondrian fleet once set out, adorned with scarlet flags, to conquer the land of Evmeni; from this port, ever since the most ancient times, “before the Beginning of Time,” long merchant ships have embarked for the rivers, for apples, for purple, for gold. Still they come, laden with copper and porphyry from Kestenya, with linen and cork from Evmeni, with the fruits of the Balinfeil, ships that have sailed north as far as the herring markets of the Brogyar country and south as far as the jewels of the sea, as far as Tinimavet. Here they gather, so many that the sea itself is a city, with rope bridges thrown between ships so that sailors can visit one another, with the constant blasts of the brass horns worn in the belts of the harbor officials, the sinsavli weaving among the ships in their low yolk-colored boats. “Forward!” they cry. “Back! You, to the left, a curse on your eyes!” And before them, around them, rises that other city: a glittering mosaic of wind towers, terraces, flights of whitewashed steps, cramped balconies and shadows hinting at gardens of oleander.

  Bain is, of course, the name of the Olondrian god of wine, whose eyes are “painted like sunflowers,” who plays the sacred bone flute. “Come before him with honey,” exhorts the Book of Mysteries, “with fruits of the vine both white and red, with dates, with succulent figs.” Perhaps it was the presence of this strange god with the ruddy cheeks, who bewilders men with his holy fog, that dazzled my eyes and brain—for though I thrust myself against the rails and gulped the air, though I looked wildly about me, staring as if to devour the harbor, my first few hours in Bain—and indeed, the whole of that first day—I dwelt in a cloud pierced now and then by images like sunbeams. There was the great neighborhood of ships, most of them almond-shaped, blue and white, the Olondrian river boats with their cargoes of melons; there were the shouts, the clankings, the joyous, frenzied activity as we made our way to the bustling quay and the gangplank rattled down; there was the heat, the brilliance of the light, the high white buildings, the shaking of my legs as I stood at last on the quay, on land, the way the stone seemed to roll beneath my feet, the shifting trees, and the sudden, magical presence of what seemed more than a hundred horses. Olondrians love these noble beasts and harness them to carriages, and the city of Bain is full of them—their lively, quivering noses, the ammoniac smell of their hides, their braided manes, their glittering trappings, the clop of their hooves, and the piles of their dung steaming on the cobblestones. My fellow Kideti merchants and I disembarked under jostling umbrellas with our clusters of servants and porters, eyeing the carriages anxiously, and at once a number of slit-eyed, disheveled youths with leather knapsacks descended on us, crying out “Apkanat,” the Kideti word for “interpreter.” One of them clutched my arm: “Apkanat!” he said eagerly, pointing to himself and breathing garlic into my face. When I shook my head and told him in Olondrian, “There is no need,” he raised his eyebrows and grinned, showing a set of narrow teeth. For a moment there was the vivid sight of his black, greasy curls, his head against the blinding white of the sunlit wall behind him—then he was gone, bounding toward the others of his mercenary trade who crowded around the gangplank, shouting.

  The success of our journey lay entirely in the hands of Sten, who seemed immune to the charms of that exotic capital. While I stood gazing stupefied at the towers, the glazed windows, he arranged for one of the large open wagons to carry us and our merchandise. When he plucked at my sleeve I followed him numbly and climbed the wooden steps into the wagon where my fourteen servants crouched among sacks of pepper. The wagon driver leaped into his seat and snapped the reins on the backs of his horses. “Ha!” he cried, and the tall vehicle lurched into life. I came sharply out of my daze for a moment, long enough to gasp, long enough to think, now it is true, we are leaving the harbor, long enough to turn and look back at the elegant Ardonyi, floating against the quay, her gangplank thronged with interpreters. Another ship was unloading fruit; the air reeked of oranges. In the crowd I made out the Tinimaveti woman: she was arguing with the interpreters. And there, being borne away on a sort of litter, the sick girl with the coppery hair. . . .

  The wagon turned a corner and the ship disappeared from view. The harbor receded after it, shrinking between the walls of the buildings. Sten, sitting at my side, neat, drab, and unruffled as ever, touched my knee. “Ekawi, you will soon be able to rest. Your father always frequented a particular hotel, not far from the harbor and also conveniently near the spice markets. I hope that it will suit you as well. The price is not overly high, and nearby there are smaller inns, very cheap and, I think, ideal for the men. . . .”

  I stared at him and muttered: “Of course, of course.” His face was the same, dark, triangular, with the pale scar over one eye; yet it was framed by the passing white walls, the walls of the city of Bain with their wrought-iron gates, their carved doors crowned with amaranths. We rattled under narrow stone bridges connecting these high, solemn buildings, raised walkways with curved parapets above the echoing street, we passed under balconies trailing languid white and indigo flowers, through sunlight and abrupt shadows cast in that stone-paved passageway. With a shock that came over me as a physical chill, making me feel faint, I recognized the moment in which the imagined becomes visible. For these were the streets, despite their carefully cultivated blossoms, of which Fodra had written: “There it is autumn, and always deserted.” The old iron gates were eaten by rust, the walls streaked with green moisture, the buildings encircled by empty alleys too narrow for carriages; these were the streets which that doomed, exalted, asthmatic youth from the Salt Coast, whose poetry seduced a nation, called “the unbearable quarters.” “O streets of my city,” I whispered, “with your walls like faded tapestries.” Sten glanced at me swiftly with a trace of alarm in his eyes. I clutched the rough material of the sacks on either side of me and breathed the hot, dry, scented air of the passageway. Eternal city of Bain! We turned a corner, the street went on, we burst into a secluded square with walls of rose-colored stone; a flock of swallows, disturbed by the wagon, lifted into the air; and the statue of a young girl watched us go by, her arms stretched out.

  The Hotel Urloma, the “Arch of the Dawn,” stands in the Street of Copper, in the lively mercantile district to the north of the Great Harbor. Here the walls of the buildings are thin, so that one can hear voices and thuds from inside, feet clattering up and down the stairs, flute-playing, the cries of cats. The hotel is a tall old building of wood and stone with a roof of coppery slate, one of those roofs, turned greenish now, which gave the street its name. As we drew up before its wide, pillared porch flanked by a pair of cypresses, a fresh burst of sweat bloomed over my skin like a cool dew, and I shivered.

  “The hotel,” said Sten, looking at me with veiled eyes, gauging my approval. I nodded and tried to smile, my dry lips cracking. Then the door flew open and a tall, portly Bainishman emerged and hurried down the steps, clumsy in loose leather slippers.

  “Welcome, welcome!” he cried out in abominable Kideti, waving his arms in their billowing white shirtsleeves. He hastened toward the wagon as the driver took down the wooden steps and placed them at the side for our descent. “Welcome,” shouted the gentleman. His mild, gold-colored eyes flickered nervously across my servants’ faces. “Apkanat?” he asked, again mangling the word in Kideti. “No apkanat? You have no apkanat?” Meanwhile the driver, ignoring the gentleman’s impatient cries, looked up at me with black and steady eyes, reached out his hand, and stamp
ed one boot on his steps with an almost scornful confidence, as if declaring that I might trust them absolutely. I gripped his hand and rose, swaying, surrounded by worried murmurs, the sound of the servants and Sten, who placed his hand on the small of my back; the strange hotel and the dark, bristling spears of the cypress trees seemed to leap and swing in the sunlight as I clambered down from the wagon. When I reached the ground and the driver released me, I stumbled. The portly gentleman supported me with a large hand on my shoulder. “Welcome,” he said; and then, in Olondrian, shaking his head as he spoke to himself: “Poor soul! Nothing but a boy! And he calls himself an interpreter!”

  I felt that I should correct him but could not find the words in his language. I looked up into his ruddy face and compassionate topaz eyes; his gray hair, sculpted so that a curl lay precisely on either temple, exuded a powerful odor of heliotrope. I felt that sensation of smallness which our people must feel in the north: my head barely reached the scented gentleman’s shoulder. I was fascinated by his great hands, so moist, with their moon-white nails, on which he wore several rings set with aquamarines.

  “Apkanat,” he said slowly, peering down into my face. I cleared my throat and opened and closed my mouth. He sighed, turned, then rolled his eyes in despair at the sight of Sten and the wagon driver, who were communicating with energetic gestures. This method, however, seemed to succeed, for Sten hurried toward me and said: “Ekawi, I will escort the servants to their own inn. After some days you may wish to see their accommodations yourself—but for now I suggest you rest and await me here. . . .” He looked at me uncertainly, then glanced at the Bainish gentleman, who was looking at us both with intense interest. I felt, like a heavy blow, the shame of being unable to speak—of proving, at the great moment, such a poor student.