Gene Wolfe - The Shadow of the Torturer

“What are you talking about, Baldanders? Oh, you mean the optimate here. He’s not going to do you any hurt—he shared the bed with you, and now he’s going to join us at breakfast.”

“He slept here, Doctor?”

Dr. Tabs and I both nodded.

“Then I know whence my dreams rose.”

I was still saturated with the sight of the huge women beneath the monstered sea, and so I asked what his dreams had been, though I was somewhat in awe of him.

“Of caverns below, where stone teeth dripped blood… Of arms dismembered found on sanded paths, and things that shook chains in the dark.” He sat at the edge of the bed, cleaning sparse and surprisingly small teeth with one great finger.

Dr. Tabs said, “Come on, both of you. If we’re to eat and talk and get anything done today—why, we must be at it. Much to say and much to do.” Baldanders spat into the corner.

It was on that walk through the streets of still slumbering Nessus that my grief, which was to obsess me so often, first gripped me with all its force. When I had been imprisoned in our oubliette, the enormity of what I had done, and the enormity of the redress I felt sure I would make soon under Master Gurloes’s hands, had dulled it. The day before, when I had swung down the Water Way, the joy of freedom and the poignancy of exile had driven it away. Now it seemed to me that there was no fact in all the world beyond the fact of Thecla’s death. Each patch of darkness among the shadows reminded me of her hair; every glint of white recalled her skin. I could hardly restrain myself from rushing back to the Citadel to see if she might not still be sitting in her cell, reading by the light of the silver lamp.

We found a cafe whose tables were set along the margin of the street. It was still sufficiently early that there was very little traffic. A dead man (he had, I think, been suffocated with a lambrequin, there being those who practice that art) lay at the corner. Dr. Talos went through his pockets, but came back with empty hands.

“Now then,” he said. “We must think. We must contrive a plan.” A waitress brought mugs of mocha, and Baldanders pushed one toward him. He stirred it with his forefinger.

“Friend Severian, perhaps I should elucidate our situation. Baldanders—he is my only patient—and I hail from the region about Lake Diuturna. Our home burned, and needing a trifle of money to set it right again we decided to venture abroad. My friend is a man of amazing strength. I assemble a crowd, he breaks some timbers and lifts ten men at once, and I sell my cures. Little enough, you will say. But there’s more. I’ve a play, and we’ve assembled properties. When the situation is favorable, he and I enact certain scenes and even invite the participation of some of the audience. Now, friend, you say you are going north, and from your bed last night I take it you are not in funds. May I propose a joint venture?”

Baldanders, who appeared to have understood only the first part of his companion’s speech, said slowly, “It is not entirely destroyed. The walls are stone, very thick. Some of the vaults escaped.”

“Quite correct. We plan to restore the dear old place. But see our dilemma—we’re now halfway on the return leg of our tour, and our accumulated capital is still far from sufficient. What I propose—” The waitress, a thin young woman with straggling hair, came carrying a bowl of gruel for Baldanders, bread and fruit for me, and a pastry for Dr. Talos. “What an attractive girl!” he said.

She smiled at him.

“Can you sit down? We seem to be your only customers.” After glancing in the direction of the kitchen, she shrugged and pulled over a chair.

“You might enjoy a bit of this—I’ll be too busy talking to eat such a dry concoction. And a sip of mocha, if you don’t object to drinking after me.” She said, “You’d think he’d let us eat for nothing, wouldn’t you? But he won’t.

Charges everything at full price.”

“Ah! You’re not the owner’s daughter, then. I feared you were. Or his wife. How can he have allowed such a blossom to flourish unplucked?”

“I’ve only worked here about a month. The money they leave on the table’s all I get. Take you three, now. If you don’t give me anything, I will have served you for nothing.”

“Quite so, quite so! But what about this? What if we attempt to render you a rich gift, and you refuse it?” Dr. Talos leaned toward her as he said this, and it struck me that his face was not only that of a fox (a comparison that was perhaps too easy to make because his bristling reddish eyebrows and sharp nose suggested it at once) but that of a stuffed fox. I have heard those who dig for their livelihood say there is no land anywhere in which they can trench without turning up the shards of the past. No matter where the spade turns the soil, it uncovers broken pavements and corroding metal; and scholars write that the kind of sand that artists call polychrome (because flecks of every color are mixed with its whiteness) is actually not sand at all, but the glass of the past, now pounded to powder by aeons of tumbling in the clamorous sea. If there are layers of reality beneath the reality we see, even as there are layers of history beneath the ground we walk upon, then in one of those more profound realities, Dr. Tabs’s face was a fox’s mask on a wall, and I marveled to see it turn and bend now toward the woman, achieving by those motions, which made expression and thought appear to play across it with the shadows of the nose and brows, an amazing and realistic appearance of vivacity. “Would you refuse it?” he asked again, and I shook myself as though waking.

“What do you mean?” the woman wanted to know. “One of you is a carnifex. Are you talking about the gift of death? The Autarch, whose pores outshine the stars themselves, protects the lives of his subjects.”

“The gift of death? Oh, no!” Dr. Talos laughed. “No, my dear, you’ve had that all your life. So has he. We wouldn’t pretend to give you what is already yours. The gift we offer is beauty, with the fame and wealth that derive from it.”

“If you’re selling something, I haven’t got any money.”

“Selling? Not at all! Quite the contrary, we are offering you new employment. I am a thaumaturge, and these optimates are actors. Have you never wanted to go on the stage?”

“I thought you looked funny, the three of you.”

“We stand in need of an ingenue. You may claim the position, if you wish. But you must come with us now—we’ve no time to waste, and we won’t come this way again.”

“Becoming an actress won’t make me beautiful.”

“I will make you beautiful because we require you as an actress. It is one of my powers.” He stood up. “Now or not at all. Will you come?” The waitress rose too, still looking at his face. “I have to go to my room . .

.”

“What do you own but dross? I must cast the glamour and teach you your lines, all in a day. I will not wait.”

“Give me the money for your breakfasts, and I’ll tell him I’m leaving.”

“Nonsense! As a member of our company, you must assist in conserving the funds we will require for your costumes. Not to mention that you ate my pastry. Pay for it yourself.”

For an instant she hesitated. Baldanders said, “You may trust him. The doctor has his own way of looking at the world, but he lies less than people believe.” The deep, slow voice seemed to reassure her. “All right,” she said, “I’ll go.” In a few moments, the four of us were several streets away, walking past shops that were still for the most part shuttered. When we had gone some distance, Dr. Talos announced, “And now, my dear friends, we must separate. I will devote my time to the enhancement of this sylph. Baldanders, you must get our collapsing proscenium and the other properties from the inn where you and Severian spent the night—I trust that will present no difficulties. Severian, we will perform, I think, at Ctesiphon’s Cross. Do you know the spot?” I nodded, though I had no notion of where it might be. The truth was that I had no intention of rejoining them.