Hugh Cook: The Wazir and the Witch

‘Oh yes, oh yes indeed,’ says Doctor Anonymous, beaming all the more. ‘The mortality rate can run as high as fifty per cent. But for those who survive, the clearance test is infinitely reassuring. Their health is certified and assured. I believe you would pass this test, young man, and pass with honours. In any case — consider! If my diagnosis is incorrect, is not a swift death infinitely preferable to a long life as an invalid? One way or another, the clearance test will put your mind at rest.’ Jean Froissart declined to participate in the clearance test, but thanks the good Doctor Anonymous, pays the good Doctor Anonymous, then hails a water taxi and sets off for his ship. On the way, the taxi sinks, miring its young passenger in the sludge of a foul and pestilential sewage canal. Hence Froissart is both foul-tempered and foul-smelling by the time he reaches the brig which is to take him to Untunchilamon.

Aboard that ship is the man who has recently (and briefly) acted as the wazir of Manamalargo. This is Manthandros Trasilika, who expects to depart from Bolfrigalaskaptiko without futher delay. Already he has thrice practised a speech in which he announces himself as the rightful wazir of Injiltaprajura. In this speech, a speech which the orator plans to make as soon as he sets foot upon the island of Untunchilamon, he denounces Justina Thrug as a witch. Yes. He denounces Justina Thrug as a witch. And proclaims that justice demands her immediate death.

But the first trouble which will befall Justina Thrug will come not from Manthandros Trasilika but from the Inland Revenue Department of the island of Untunchilamon.

Mention of the Inland Revenue Department may lead some people to think this will be a horror story.

Certainly, horror and the Inland Revenue walk hand in hand. This you must admit. For, unless you were born blind or live with your eyes shut, you must have seen the headless corpses hanging by their heels outside the offices of your local taxation department; and, unless you have gone deaf or habitually stuff your ears with beeswax, you must on occasion hear the screams of the damned issuing from that grim building as the auditors go about their work.

However — and here the sensitive will doubtless breathe a sigh of relief — as little as possible will be said of the activities of the Inland Revenue Department. Furthermore, even were the affairs of that department to be explicated in full, nothing too hideous would appear in these pages.

You may find this claim startling, for the Inland Revenue Department of Untunchilamon is in many places synonymous with horror.

Untunchilamon: island of Norbik the Auditor!

Untunchilamon: island of Max the Inquisitor!

Untunchilamon: island of blood!

If your reaction is as above, doubtless the person to blame is Greven Jing. While Jing is doubtless a horror writer of exceptional talent, his treatment of certain historical events is far from accurate. Take for example his book The Bothopody, which purports to be a history of Injiltaprajura’s Inland Revenue Department. Despite Jing’s claim that ‘this is a true story’, The Bothopody is a book which has little more than a random relationship to the truth.

True, Norbik the Auditor lived and worked on Untunchilamon, and did extract teeth in the manner described by Jing; and those extractions were every bit as painful as Jing would have us believe. It is equally true that Max the Inquisitor used to shark people in the lagoon for the pure pleasure of it; and the number of tax defaulters thus disposed of cannot be fewer than two and a half thousands.

Even so, The Bothopody is a work of fiction rather than a work of fact.

For Norbik the Auditor worked for the tax department during the reign of Wazir Sin, he who was overthrown by Lonstantine Thrug; and the end of Sin’s wazirate saw the end of Norbik himself. On the other hand, Max the Inquisitor did not land on Untunchilamon until some time after the reign of the Empress Justina. It follows that the activities of these two men are separated (as far as Injiltaprajura is concerned) by a good seven years and more of peace and reason, yet Jing has written thus:

‘Trob the Lobble stared in horror as Norbik the Auditor fastened him to the table with the razor-sharp spikes of his steely gaze. There was an inhuman gleam of rabid lust in Norbik’s drug-crazed eyes. Merely to look into those eyes was unendurable torture. They spoke of the fiendish brutality of which only an accountant is capable. Trob the Lobble spat out another piece of his tongue. He tried to scream. He could not.

‘He was close to death. The heat of Injiltaprajura clogged his arteries and sweated through his bones. Malarial fevers shook his shuddering limbs. The drums, the drums, the pulsing drums of Untunchilamon throbbed in his skull like the pulse of hell itself. He wanted to die. But he could not. He was cursed with the constitution of a shark. After ten days of torture, he was still far, far away from the blessed release of death.

‘The sound of the devilish drumming intensified as the door opened. In through the door came Max the Inquisitor. Max carried a wooden bucket in his hands. Steam rose from the bucket, which was full of boiling water. Max smiled a gloating smile, raised the bucket on high, then began to empty its contents over Trob the Lobble’s bleeding face. Outside, the drummers screamed in manic glee.’

To the above one may object on many grounds. As has been stated already, it is false to history, since Norbik the Auditor and Max the Inquisitor never worked together on Untunchilamon. It is also unfair to accountants. Jing implies that accountants are the most inhuman monsters known to civilization, whereas in fact this description is rightly applied to lawyers.

Furthermore, the ‘drumming’ cult was not known to Norbik the Auditor, who died roughly seven years before that cult came into existence; and it had ceased entirely by the time Max the Inquisitor came to power. The ‘drumming’ cult obsessed the adolescents of Injiltaprajura for a very short time, that being the final days of the rule of the Empress Justina.

Let it be recognized, then, that the horrors of life on Untunchilamon have been grossly exaggerated by certain mercenary fabulists who have distorted history in the interests of personal profit; and, furthermore, that the ‘fiendish’ and ‘diabolical’ nature of the short-lived drumming cult is entirely the creation of such fabulists.

It is true that ‘drummers’ and ‘drumming’ existed. That is to say, young people sat around in groups and drummed the sun from dawn to dusk. Sometimes they also drummed right through undokondra and bardardor-nootha as well, only ceasing their activities when exhaustion set in. It is true that some of these ‘drummers’ also engaged on occasion in sexual intercourse, but such behaviour is not unknown even in those cultures where not a single drum is to be heard from one sunbirth to another.

It is also true that more than one ‘drummer’ committed suicide. Which has led the eminent psychologist Yumbert Qipty to assert that the beating of drums is itself a dehumanizing process which, by a complicated process of auto-hypnosis, encourages a person to self-destruct.

Qipty’s thesis has been seized upon, and enlarged, and exaggerated, by writers such as Greven Jing. Qipty’s thesis (whether in its original form or that elaboration of it which has been created by Jing) has won popularity because it is so reassuring.

Reasssuring?

Yes!

To contrast externalized sources of horror with the sane and sensible values of a putative ‘normality’ — and such a process is the essence of the analytical science espoused by Qipty and the fables created by Jing — is infinitely reassuring. For it allows us to indulge ourselves in a totally irrational delusion: namely, that such a ‘normality’ exists at all.