Jesse Ball: The Village on Horseback: Prose and Verse, 2003-2008

Not to the natural world, nor to celestial orders are such intentions bound. The Bank of Perth cannot be countermanded, is greater than the sum of all countries, for though every country has fallen and will fall, the Bank cannot fall, nor fail. Its location need not be secret, and yet it cannot be known. All currency is dispensed in its favor, and greed is the tool of its want.

Several times in our long history, a mystic or true philosopher has unearthed the deepest secrets of the Bank of Perth. But even to do this is to go beyond use, for those who have seen such sights may never speak of them, may never tell of them, may never treat of them. Save, of course, in parable.

A man was out taking the summer air when along the lane he saw a crowd approaching. Perhaps not a crowd. They were arrayed in a line, and each suitor was grander in dress and manner than the one who came before. The line stretched endlessly, over hill and dale. On the farthest hilltop, the man could see the crowns of kings and the scepters of emperors glinting in the sunlight. Where are they going? he inquired of the first, but his question went unanswered. Where are you going? he asked again. The man did not join the line, but went humbly beneath his roof and began to prepare for himself the smallest of meals, which he would eat without haste by the window, which he would eat with a tiny wooden spoon, making no noise that one might hear, were one to pass that way.

There was once in Bao Suk, at the end of a certain unmentionable dynasty, a seamstress living and working in a shop near the gates of the city. Her daughters were lovely and useless, but would serve to wear the clothing that she made, that it might be seen and sold to any who passed by. Her fame had grown over the course of a difficult life, difficult not by any curse of fortune, for indeed, her star had always risen, but difficult because her wishes were not the wishes of her fellow men and women, her ambitions were couched in an obscure turn of thought. As a child she had wandered far and wide with her old father through the mountain range which girdled that ancient piece of land. Of it no good can be said, and even in our modern times, the most scientific of men avoid the treacheries and infidelities of those nameless peaks. In her eighth year, on one such sojourn, she left her father sleeping, and went alone into places even he, faultless and intrepid man that he was, would not go. There she was told the things that she must do. There was given into her keeping the deep heart of her life which would eclipse all things and which in time would itself be eclipsed by a successive and deeper darkness.

Nightfall. An old man is leading a donkey through the city gates. He has come far, from So Lu Chen, and, eager to find a bed, he takes the first turning and passes before the seamstress’s shop where she is seated in the window, addressing herself to first this silk now that, first this thread now that. He stands, transfixed, as a gown takes form beneath her hands that run like water across the supple cloth. All the light in the world issues from a candle in a nearby window. As it gutters and the last light is cast off it like a cloak, the gown lies finished and laid across the arm of a mannequin. The seamstress’s shop is empty. Even the street is empty. The man has moved deeper into Bao Suk, and his donkey trails after him, insensible to the wonders of caprice and adornment.

As it happened, a young laborer was building a small house for himself and for his family. He was a poor man, and his family was poorer still, for money is lost in every passing of hands, not least from the wages of a dutiful husband. At any rate, the family was poor, and the house to be built would have but one room. Long hours

in the sun, the man had been planning the house, and he had come to the decision that his house should have but one door, as was the custom in those parts. Now the laborer’s wife was a lovely woman, and had been the prize of the district until she had taken his hand and let him lead her beneath the marriage arch. This was a strange thing, accounted strange by all concerned, for the laborer’s wife could have had any man, rich or poor, but of them all, she had chosen him. And it was not for his looks, nor for his wits, nor for his temper, as the laborer would in none of these ways impress. No, she had married him because of a certain child that had grown in the dark, deep inside her, and which, when she was aware of it, had told her by kicking and scraping that if she would be safe and whole and living, she should at once be married. And so she had done; the child arrived, and 3 long years had passed, living within the house of the laborer’s father, day and night, forever beneath the watchful eye of the laborer’s mother, who wondered day and night, why had she, the local beauty, married her plain son. And when the time came for their own house to be built, she had told her husband that they must have two doors, one to the east and one to the west, that the sun might be let in in the morning, and let out at nightfall. One door or two, the laborer asked himself, as he walked up and down in the fields. One door or two, he asked himself again, as he trudged home through a patchwork of hills. For his mother had told him, day in day out, you must watch a pretty wife. You must watch her with both of your god-given eyes, and with the others too, that are little spoken of. For she will squirm in your arms, and tell you that she is yours, but my son, beauty cannot be kept. It is restless, and will speak to every passing eye, will allow the lissome stares of every passing man.

One door or two. One door or two. It was to be but a one-room house. And as she says, day and night, the sun must be allowed to pass. Not just through all the broad and empty places, but through this town of man, and through that town of man, through anger and misfortune, through pettiness and filth. And every sun will be a deeper, a crueler sun. And every sun will know far better the shape, the broad dull shape, of the wound it makes on your face and arms, the wound it presses, deep through the windows of your eyes, where such things will be remembered, but can never be made good.

He had two little ones in his care. There there, he would say, and hold them one at a time, pressed up against his chest or leg. How they loved such times! With trumpeting cries they would race away and back. Were they children? Were they capable of such a brutal thing as childhood, such a sweet band of thieves as that? No, no, they remained just as they were, and sat about inventing riddles, which they would leave by the nearest road for travelers to find.

Everyone has moved away or died, but you are still quite young. You bathe each day in the salt sea, and ring your lonely shack with twined cornflowers. You are, it is said, expecting a visitor. If the others don’t speak of it, it is because there are no others. There’s no one but you, and you are too young to know how completely you have been beaten.

There were once two clowns who traveled the land. They would never be seen in the same city, nor would they speak of each other. However their hatred was a known thing, and everyone longed to see what would happen if they were brought together in one place. Many stories circulated about their hate, regarding how it was begun, and why. Some said they were brothers, others that they were father and son. Both were the favorites of equally prominent noblemen, and so one might not be humbled before the other without calling higher powers into contention.