Seven Days in New Crete (Penguin Modern Classics) (11 page)

‘Tell me, what do your Golden Archives contain, more or less?’

‘A hundred volumes exactly.
The Myths of Crete. The Myths of the Ancient World. The Brief History of the World
in nine volumes.
The Canon of Poetry
in fifteen. Four books of ancient melodies: two of recent ones.
The Book of Sums and Numbers.
Twenty-eight
Registers –
of plants, birds, fishes, stars and so on. Thirteen
Manuals –
of surgery, dyeing, metallurgy, navigation, meteorology, apiculture and so on. Twelve dictionaries. Three
Books of Maps.
Five volumes of
The Book of Precedents.
Five volumes of
The Book of Secrets. The Book of Death.
And that’s all. It took a century or more for these records to be gathered, sorted, simplified and engraved on gold plates, but once this had been done the subsequent additions and emendations weren’t very numerous. The editors spent as much thought on discussing what didn’t need to be included, as on what did. They argued that it was better to record too little than too much.’

When I questioned See-a-Bird further, he told me that the archives gave no information whatever about philosophy, advanced mathematics, physics or chemistry, nor about the motivation of any machine more complicated than the water-wheel, pulley or carpenter’s lathe. Silver plates, he said, were used for records which, though believed to be durable, were still on probation. For example, every poet on the occasion of his ‘acceptance’ was given twenty small silver plates on which to record his life’s poems; it was assumed that no poet could write enough true poems in his lifetime to cover more than twenty. He was expected to keep a record on clay-boards of all he wrote and consult his friends, from time to time, as to which of them, if any, should be transferred to silver. He might take their advice or not, as he pleased, and everyone respected him if he ‘kept his plates bright’ until he was about to become an elder, when he could judge the value of his work more objectively. If he kept his plates bright to the end, this earned him posthumous praise, whether or not a poem worthy of engraving on either silver or gold was found among his clay-boards. See-a-Bird quoted the record of Solero: ‘the Goddess tormented him greatly and when he was killed by the fall of a poplar at the shrine of Mari the Silent, a pile of clay-boards and slates were found on his cupboard-top. There now are forty plates in gold of Solero, who had kept his silver plates bright.’

‘Never to commit one’s poems to silver seems an easy way of getting a poetic reputation. In practice, does anyone ever use up his plates?’

‘The poet Robnet had used all his twenty within a year of receiving them.’

‘The Goddess must have tormented him pretty badly.’

‘She did. She also put it into the minds of his poet-friends to present him with twenty-one more plates, three from each, so that she could torment him further.’

‘He could surely have kept his poems on clay-boards like Solero?’

‘The Nymph Fand, whom he loved, wouldn’t let him do so.’

‘What happened then?’

‘He used all the new plates within six months; and then he took his life and became Fand’s servant.’

‘Say that again!’

‘When the Goddess torments a man beyond his power to suffer further he goes to her principal shrine, removes his name from her register, and expires. He’s re-born under a new name into the servants’ estate; unless, of course, as sometimes happens, he has expired completely.’

‘What did Fand do then?’

‘She took another young poet as her lover; and presently disappeared.’

‘You mean, that the jealous Robnet strangled her and disposed of her remains?’

But I had said the wrong thing again and had to make another apology. No: Fand, it seems, simply disappeared.

The New Cretans, I found, did not mine precious metals, but were still drawing on the huge hoard at Fort Worth in North America which had been discovered and excavated by the Sophocrats. Indeed, they had no need to mine for any metals. Their population was kept stable at a low figure, and large stocks of copper and malleable stainless steel were left over from the Pantisocratic, Logicalist and Sophocratic epochs, which served them for all domestic and agricultural uses.

Our lane passed over a railway bridge and we leaned on the coping as we talked. After a time, three four-wheeled trucks in close succession crawled slowly and soundlessly underneath. They were graceful boat-shaped structures, with painted timber and basket-work curving down within an inch or two of the track. A man of the servants’ estate – one could tell them by their closely cropped heads – sat in the bows of each heavily-loaded truck, which was not power-propelled, but drawn by oxen. See-a-Bird told me that custom forbade passengers to ride in the trucks, except in special circumstances, and never for more than short distances. Travelling was done on foot or on asses, or by ass-cart in the case of elders. Horses were reserved for the magicians and captains. ‘The railways,’ he explained, ‘are a legacy of the past. The trucks and rails were discussed at a Council of the Five Estates in the time of Cleopatra. It was clear that their construction was not according to the rule of love, yet the principle was a humane one. Cleopatra herself intervened in the debate: “If the principle, which is represented by the track and the flanged wheels, is judged to be humane, let that be preserved. It remains to exert love on the rest, namely the coachwork and the track, and incorporate it in our kingdom.” The making of the new trucks was entrusted to the coach-builders, who copied the flanging of the original wheels.’

When I climbed down the embankment and poked about with a stick I found that the steel sleepers had not been removed, but covered with a few inches of soil which was then sown with a moss-like, drought-resisting grass. The trucks looked rather like gondolas and the drivers were, indeed, called gondoliers.

‘Why the restriction on the use of horses?’

‘People who walk feel an instinctive respect for those who are mounted, and this is why we give captains the privilege of riding horses – by custom theirs are any colour but white. Magicians ride on white horses, because magic is connected with the moon, to whom the white horse is sacred. White asses are reserved for high-priestesses, priests and school-mistresses.’

‘But why the restrictions on passenger travel? And why not use fast-trotting horses and lighter trucks?’

‘The poet Vives wrote:

‘With wheels and wings and rockets
The outlanders have shrunk their territory
(Which is a thousand times more wide
Than yours, noble New Cretans)
To a mere village green and duckpond.

 

But ride no faster than a man may run,
And soar no higher than a man may leap,
Count distance by the day’s march or day’s sail:
Respect the fertile spaciousness of earth
As you respect Her who here reigns.

‘Your policy seems to be to cut off your noses to spite your faces.’

‘Do you really enjoy long, breathless journeys?’

‘No, but I shouldn’t like to feel that if I wanted to go, say, from New York to Hollywood, I’d have to do it in thirty-mile stages instead of flipping across the continent by plane in a few hours.’

‘Why should you be in such a hurry to go to Hollywood?’

Antonia had asked me that very question only a week or so before and I couldn’t think of any better answer than a weak: ‘Oh, I don’t know.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I told See-a-Bird.

To my surprise we found Sally already at the Record House. She was in the archive-room, reporting my evocation in matter-of-fact detail to the Chief Recorder. I caught: ‘… white bull-hides stretched across hazel wattles; rowan-wood and vine-stocks kindled with need-fire in a gravel pit… the siren call sounded, nine drops of blood drawn from the evoker’s left breast and let fall on the instrument of induction. The charm: “Living, living, live and quick”, five times repeated… After the first appearance of his wraith, its embodiment with the sacred potion; also herb-Edward, sea-anemone and a net of white horse hair.’

Her voice dropped a little when she saw me come in and there was a line or two of the story she reported in finger language; the whole affair was more sinister than I had been allowed to realize. I hate being the subject of hypnotic experiments and fight the anaesthetic whenever I have an operation; but even ether or chloroform would have been less humiliating than this Druidical nonsense. I felt a sudden intense disgust; why did I ever consent to visit this place? Curiosity had borne down my commonsense. I didn’t belong, and I dislike Utopias.

The Chief Recorder noted the report in shorthand on a clay-board and handed it to Sally for checking. She read it carefully, made a few alterations and said curtly: ‘It must be engraved on silver by noon tomorrow.’

As she left us, the Chief Recorder turned to me with a grave bow: ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘yesterday’s events are, I believe, destined for gold.’ Then he stroked his chin meditatively and looked me up and down. ‘This is a day of change. Our engravers have been idle for nearly two years.’

‘I’m glad that my arrival has done something to check unemployment.’

‘You misunderstand me,’ he answered rather stiffly. ‘The less there is to record, the greater our honour.’

‘Very well, then; in that case I’m sorry that my arrival has caused your engravers unnecessary labour.’

‘You have no need to be sorry,’ he said in the same stiff tones. ‘The engravers love their work.’

‘Indeed? They love their work, yet it dishonours you? Would you mind explaining the paradox?’

‘With pleasure. The occurrence of recordable events does not cause positive dishonour, though bright plates are positively honourable. The engravers are pleased to perform a necessary task, as the undertakers of your age took pride in their profession, though they had no greater love for death than anyone else.’

‘Thank you for the explanation, though I don’t think your analogy is a very happy one – it makes me feel like an exquisitely groomed corpse in a quilted coffin.’

Five sleek-haired commoners in white smocks, with brightly polished copper basins slung around their necks, came trooping up the stairs. ‘You will excuse me,’ the Chief Recorder said, ‘but here are the barbers. They come every Sunday afternoon from their villages to repeat the gossip of their shops. We collate these reports and each barber takes back a summary, which we call the
pravda
(a word of obscure origin, supposed to be a survival from the Pantisocratic epoch), to his own village for public recitation. Once a month the district pravdas are combined into a regional one; and this is returned to the village in the same way. From the monthly pravdas of our many regions an anecdotal history of the whole kingdom is compiled at irregular intervals. Custom rules that it must not take longer than three, or less than two, hours to recite. It then becomes part of the oral stock-in-trade of the district historian, who is a recorder. The histories of the various kingdoms are reviewed and collated, at irregular intervals again, and their golden elements, if any, combined with those of our magical, meteorological, agricultural and similar records, are incorporated in the
Brief History
, or the
Registers,
or the
Manuals
.’

‘The rest is lost?’

‘Unless it is preserved by local tradition. One of the duties of the barbers is to memorize the more entertaining anecdotes of their district. We have local records, in rough rhyme, going back for many generations.’

‘Do they recite these anecdotes while they’re cutting hair?’

Certainly not. Custom does not permit us to do two things at a time. We recorders, for example, never discuss our business or listen to music during meals, as I understand is always done in your age.’

‘Not quite always,’ I said. ‘But don’t your ploughmen whistle as they follow their team?’

This suggestion seemed to surprise and shock him. ‘Here only certain women whistle,’ he answered, ‘and then only on solemn occasions.’

Shortly after the evening curfew, I heard the sound of horses’ hooves on the road and leaned out of my bedroom window. Sapphire and the two brothers were returning from Court. She rode side-saddle and looked splendid: not in the least like one of those berry-faced women in long riding habits who used to ride side-saddle in the days of my childhood, but rather like ‘the lady upon a white horse in the Caldecott picture book. The childish simplicity of the New Cretan scene and the stern rules of propriety that guarded it invited constant quotation from the nursery classics. ‘Rings on her fingers and bells at her toes!’

I waved to the party but nobody looked up; they were all too busy soothing their jittery horses.

‘Strange,’ I thought. ‘After a longish trot to Dunrena in the morning and back again in the afternoon, those hacks ought to be manageable enough. They look as though they’d suddenly run into a steam-roller – how horses hate steam-rollers! – but there could hardly be one on the roads in this post-civilized age.’

They turned into the yard, dismounted, and handed the horses to the grooms. See-a-Bird and Sally had come out to greet them in the Goddess’s name and Sally asked: ‘Whatever’s wrong with the beasts?’

‘We ran into a brutch,’ Fig-bread answered shortly.

‘Where? Not near home, surely?’

‘In the village itself, just outside the Nonsense House,’ Sapphire answered. ‘We cut across the corner of the mill-field and suddenly my mare reared as though a snake had bitten her. And then the other beasts plunged about like mad things. Starfish took a toss, and we had to chase his horse twice round the park before we caught him.’

Sally nodded. ‘The farmer tells me that he’s suspected a brutch at that spot for some time: he came to report it formally not long before you came back. He says it’s suddenly flared up. I told him we’d inspect the place as soon as you returned.’

‘Let’s all go, as soon as we’ve had our smoke,’ Sapphire said, frowning a little.

I spent the quiet quarter of an hour over my cigarette, thinking about the brutch. Was a brutch a malevolent spell deliberately cast – no, it could hardly be that, because Sally had made it clear that witches here were naturally benevolent – or could it be what, in our epoch, is called a ghost? Being a poet, not a scientist, I have a commonsense attitude to ghosts. I think that one should accept them very much as one accepts fire – a more common but equally mysterious phenomenon. After all, what is fire? It is not really an element, not a principle of motion, not a living creature – not even a disease, though a house may catch it from its neighbours. It is an event rather than a thing or a creature. Ghosts, similarly, seem to be events rather than things or creatures – and nearly always disagreeable events.