The Thoughtful Lawyer

The prince wished to improve the commerce of his towns, and sought out a learned man of law to draft his edicts and contracts. Most of his own barristers and solicitors were either corrupt or senile. He entrusted the task to his secretary. The secretary first went to the university, but found it hard to follow what the clerks said. Then he went to the mint, but their discussions of rising and falling prices, monetary theory and the various weights of coins left him numb. In the clothing ward and on the docks, he lost count of the prevarications and outright lies and ended up walking off in quite a steam. Arguments among the medical lawyers at the hospital made his blood run cold. At long last, he came to the court library. The librarian himself was a man who had been an agronomist, an army engineer, a lawyer and now a law librarian, a rueful man of letters who drank bitter tea and smoked cigars in a vast chamber full of books and cats. The law librarian answered his questions in slow but short sentences, and offered to draw up the papers. The secretary almost wept when he read the finished documents–they were as clear and graceful as a sundial casting crisp shadows. Some days later, the prince summoned the secretary and began to scream. What on earth was the trash he had submitted? It is the clarity of sunshine and shadow! the secretary exclaimed, bursting into tears. It is a coffin without breathing holes! the prince thundered. I don’t want clarity! I want ambiguity! Clarity is somnolence, sleepwalking and daydreaming! I want the force of gray clouds filled with rain!

The Railway

The carriages would travel quickly thanks to the steam engines, but the railway was long, stretching indefinitely through forest and steppe. Dining and kitchen carriages provided banquets at all hours of the day. Cafe carriages and lounge carriages provided quiet jazz from phonographs, carafes of dark coffee, smoked vanilla ice cream, rum and vodka and the printed weather reports to read. The sleepers were elegant, the linen immaculate; the showers offered fresh bars of lavander soap and boiling hot water. In the cinema carriages, one could watch black and white films wherein rifle-bearing villains hiding in the shadows of cypresses and colonnades gasped as pale beauties disarmed them. One could not complain. Many could remember the old days of train travel–of lining up to get tickets, of arguing with conductors and other passengers, of huddling around the only cast-iron stove per three carriages, of rusted hinges and tools, of gazing through cracked and frosted glass windows at landscapes of snow and cold stars, of reading bone-white pages of crime novels, history monographs and slender volumes of poetry by flickering kerosene lamps, of sneaking into the dining cars after hours to kiss or forage for matchbooks and cigarettes. Now, the fragrance of cigars, expensive soaps, good upholstery, alcohol, perfume, and ironed clothes followed one from car to car. It was the fragrance of cleanliness, progress and good times. The only curious rule of the new train was that only one side of every carriage had windows. The other side, the same side in every carriage, had been soldered shut with iron sheets–for the safety and comfort of the passengers. The connectors between the carriages had no windows at all. Conductors thankfully never appeared and one could just sink into the luxurious softness of the chairs in deep comfort, enjoying the quiet of the engines, the smoothness of the rails, even the soporific tone of the meteorologists in the railway newspapers. One evening, a magenta and crimson glow filled the twilight of the carriages as signal lamps glowed beyond the open windows. The train slowed to a halt. There was no station in sight–just some leafless trees and the snowbound earth. Disembarking, the passengers were surprised by the sight of hundreds of soldiers in gray coats directing them toward a barbed wire barricade with a checkpoint lit up by intermittent, meteor-red flares and the dull iodine glow of a signal light pointed at those waiting to pass through. Fireworks exploded overhead in celebration of the finished journey. An old margrave asked what lay beyond the gate. The firing squad, a soldier laughed. Through a sudden break in the crowd, the margrave saw a line of passengers fall as blood speckled the snow. Then, turning to a fellow passenger who was a thief, the old margrave asked why some of their traveling companions were not in the line. The other shrugged and shoved his hands into his pockets. The only thing the thief could remember was that he had seen some of the missing passengers tampering with the blocked up windows one night, when he had stolen into an almost empty dining carriage to search for matchbooks and cigarettes.

The Chemist

It was a long way down the colonnades, through labyrinths of high walls with terracotta roof tiles, past gardens with vines, cypresses and cats, and into the shadows behind an old church where he entered the arcade. An icon had been painted on the wall next to the entrance. Candles burned in niches. Passing a cloth merchant, a silversmith, and another cloth merchant, he came to the last shop, the apothecary. Inside, the wooden counter and cabinets were dark, almost black. Brass labels and numbers shimmered from drawers behind the counter. Cabinets and shelves sparkled with bottles and jars. It was a while before the chemist appeared, a statuesque woman in black with fiery red hair. She wished him a good evening, and took out paper and a quill to write down his order. I am not here for medicine, but for a consultation of sorts. It is said that you are not only a great toxicologist, but also the greatest amanthomancer, capnomancer, carromancer, cottobomancer, cryomancer, cyclicomancer, encromancer, eromancer, hematomancer, lampadomancer, letnomancer, lithomancer, logomancer, lychnomancer, oryctomancer, papyromancer, pessomancer, photomancer, phyllomancer, plumbomancer, pyromancer, sideromancer, somatomancer, spodomancer, stareomancer, umbromancer, and zygomancer. The woman laughed, and said, In other words, a good chemist? The visitor did notknow how to respond, and stood thinking for a while. At last, almost tearfully, he asked her if potions could tell anything about the times, the terrain and the tyrants who ruled? That sounds poetic, she said. I am not a magician or medium, but ask me your question, and I will try to answer. What indeed is the question? he thought aloud. Legends say that there is a flower in the east, which changes its colour from dark blue to white to rose depending on the soil it is planted in. And since people themselves have good and bad humours, might personalities or human characters also become either medicines or poisons to society and government? The chemist nodded thoughtfully, and said that it seemed possible that if vice or virtue mastered a soul, just as medicine or poison mastered a body, then a person could either be toxic or therapeutic. And some people were not merely poisons or medicines but reagents that revealed the medicine and poison in the citizens. What is the question? the man exclaimed once more. And how can I ask questions in a time of great lies, whispered secrets, closed doors and burned books? It is not easy, she admitted. Seeing him in such distress, the woman turned to a cabinet, fetched a bottle and poured out a liquid into an elegant but humble green glass goblet. The man took a drink, and asked her what it was. It is wine, she said. Good, he mumbled. It is wine, then. I want to know which tyrant and gonfaloniere is the poison and which is the antidote! The woman began to scribble on the prescription paper, and said softly that apricots are very sweet, but their seeds contain poisons that will kill you. Wolfbane and monkshood are beautiful, but if you touch their leaves too much, you will perish. Some medicines are very bitter, but once administered, cure a person quickly. And some bitter, foul-smelling herbs will cure one problem, but the body cannot tolerate the side effects or the damage done to stomach, heart and liver. And then there is belladonna–wonderful for the eyes and for cramps, harmless in small doses, but deadly in the right dose. Most citizens fear the belladonna, or the bitter herbs, and yet happily swallow apricot seeds by the mouthful as they play with the leaves of wolfbane. It ends before they are even aware of what they have eaten or touched. There is also another kind of sickness–when the body wastes away or its organs break down from excess. The body is broken, and no medicine can cure that. That is about all I know of politics. She fetched another glass and poured herself some wine. It is good talking to a sane person, the visitor said, and placed a mound of silver coins on the counter. She pushed the coins back toward him and sipped her wine.

The Four Riders

One of the four horsemen had been seen on distant highways. An astronomer ascertained with his spyglass that it was pest this time. The king summoned a priest and a natural philosopher to his court to hear their counsel. The natural philosopher recommended that the barons retreat to their castles where they had granaries, medicine cabinets, wells, walled game parks, and knights who could be sent out to forage. The peasants should burn and salt their fields and retreat to their cellars. The king ordered that these recommendations be implemented at once. When his heralds had departed, he turned to the priest and asked his opinion of the matter. It is a royal decree, said the priest, a very noble one. The king, furious, demanded to know what he meant. The priest looked him in the eyes and coldly replied, The king is very generous and has not deterred one rider but invited all four!

The Old Vault

For years, the bankers had argued and tampered with the safe codes of their vaults, their security protocols and even their transaction policies, stripping their clients of their wealth, borrowing from other banks what they could never repay, and printing lies in the newspapers to cover their financial crimes. The old vault, their largest vault in the bank, was a repository of some of the finest jewels and riches in the city state, treasures that had secured the very foundations of the law and the republic for centuries, some said. The campanellas, domes, cathedrals and bridges, the glorious paintings and marble sculptures, the florescence of every art and scienceowed something to the gems and bank notes stored therein. Reports began to circulate, however, that items had gone missing under different directors. An ancient crown here, a relic there, rings and swords of mystical value, even most of the coinage deposited by the ancient veterans and the poor citizens of old. One director, exploiting fears of foreign invasion, had all but stripped the clients of their rights in the name of security and had stolen wealth to fund disastrous wars. Another director had stolen more sums to pay off debts and fund his grotesque licentiousness. A third had attempted to reimagine the very articles of incorporation and the structure of the board, as he played off one faction of citizens against another in a dark and predatory game. Last but not least, a director who was passionately hated and loved by the citizenry played the belligerent madman with confusing communiques, unpredictable policies that changed with the wind, and a byzantine game of investigations, of himself and his enemies, that resulted in a revolt and his termination. One night, on the eve of the expiration of his directory, all of the former directors came back and proposed that he join them in robbing the bank once and for all on an apocalyptic scale. They would clear out the old vault, or what was left to steal. Nobody knows what happened, or how the plot unravelled, but the men of law and their gendarmes surrounded the bank just as the robbery was underway. The scrawny former directors made off with their take in the dark of the night, but the last director was caught clinging to a bag of obsolete coins. A mob rushed in and dragged the last director from the bank, hung him on the plaza before the old palace of the signoria, and burned him, blaming him for the many years of crimes and thefts. The old vault was empty.

The Terrain

At the crossroads, the postman encountered a sentry warming himself by a fire. Roasted potatoes cooked on a spit. The sentry offered the postman a bite, but the latter declined. They discussed the landscape–its escarpments and terraces, its chestnuts and pines. At one point, the postman interrupted to say that the sentry was not conjugating his verbs correctly. Surprised, the sentry casually mentioned that he was also a grammarian, and had merely joined the army to support his family. The postman laughed dismissively, explaining what notable scholars had decreed in various towns far away. Shaking his head, the sentry laughed in disbelief. The strange idea that strangers whom he had never met before would dictate the way his verbs were conjugated! That should be no surprise, the postman said with a shrug. They weighed and assigned the value of coinage and stamps and even calibrated the rifle that the sentry was holding. The fire hissed. The postman continued on his way, leaving the sentry alone to gaze into the landscape and into stars that formed no familiar asterisms.

The Friar

In the mornings, a franciscan in a dark gray hood would steal away to his favoruite fountain to watch the gray birds emerging from the shadows of the colonnades, rising and falling like angels above the stone steps. It was the hour of fragrant trees and plashing water, the quiet that was his sole refuge from the lies: the whispered lies, the printed lies, the unspoken lies. With his blessed cloud of witnesses pecking the stone steps as they walked, the friar would open up his secret psalter and read words of comfort and counsel. For ten turbulent days now this had been his ritual. On the eleventh day, reading the eleventh psalm, he began to weep, for he realized in his heart that at another fountain somewhere in the holy city, whether witnessed by birds or silent marble statues, a liar, an accuser, or an assassin was also reading that same eleventh psalm.