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.
The great attraction of Qipty’s theories, and of Jing’s drummers, demons, rabid flying fish, killer worms and blood-sucking ghosts is that (always) the horror is generated by ‘the other’; by the abnormal presence, or influence, or trend; by something trespassing on the safe, kind, loving and lovable world of the ‘normal’.
In fact, the ‘normality’ which is posited by Qipty and Jing alike does not exist. Never has existed. Never will exist.
In proof of this, we need make no mention of the horrors of a world ruled by the threat of war; we need say nothing of the starvation which squalors in the backstreets behind prosperity’s mansions; we need make no mention of mortality, that great doom which threatens one and all with ultimate oblivion; we need say nothing of the cold wastelands between the stars and the heat-death of the universe which promises the destruction of all the works of man and woman alike.
We need make no mention of any of the above, for those who are alert to reality have realized the true horrors of everyday reality already; and it is a waste of time trying to convince the worshippers of ‘normality’ of the emptiness of their beliefs.
So, while ‘drumming’ truly existed on Untunchilamon, and while ‘drummers’ sometimes committed suicide, the realist will surely not join the eminent Yumbert Qipty in thinking the mere beating of drums to be the cause of adolescent self-destruction.
Rather, the realist will recognize that the world is a much harsher place than the self-deluded followers of the ‘normality’ cult would have us believe. Realists will recognize that it is very tough being an adolescent, and the problems of this age of life sometimes compound themselves to the point of causing suicide.
While it is difficult to be an adolescent, this fact is often obscured by another fact: namely, that it is exceptionally difficult (few things could be harder) to be a mature adult trying to deal with the insolence, foolishness, insensitivity and unconscious selfishness of children who are between the ages of thirteen and twenty-three. In despair, adults often seek a simple answer for the monstrous behaviour of such children, and find it comforting to pretend that it is abnormal, and to blame it on some simple external source of horror such as a ‘cult’.
But the fact is that every younger generation is destined to be a trial to the older generation. Thus it has always been, and always will be, though it is denied by professional myth-makers like Yumbert Qipty, he with his much-loved concept of ‘normality’. Qipty would have us believe that children ‘at the age of the blood’s turmoil’ (as the poet puts it) can be sane, rational, loving and law-abiding human beings. Qipty declares that in a ‘normal’ world, the young are polite, and considerate, and clean the dirt from beneath their fingernails without being told, abjure alcohol and other strong drugs, and unflinchingly cleave to truth, justice and the imperial way.
It is true that this desirable state of affairs has sometimes been obtained in certain closed societies where severe sanctions (not excepting banishment and death) are available for the chastisement of the young, and where adults unite to impose upon their progeny a degree of authoritarian control which even Aldarch the Third would envy. However, the strenuous nature of such social engineering is itself sufficient to refute the contention that the happy state of affairs thus obtained (a younger generation meek, quiet, obedient and fearful) is in any sense ‘normal’.
Rather, the realist recognizes that the young are by nature unruly and discontented; not least because they wish for the same freedoms their elders enjoy in the realms of action (and in sexual action in particular) but largely lack the means, money, skill, ability and power to make such wishes come true. This discontent expresses itself in many ways, with ‘drumming’ being but one such way; and one which arguably (though your sensationalist would have it otherwise) should not be greeted by hysterical fear on the part of their elders.
So, while this text does touch upon ‘drumming’ on occasion, please do not get the wrong idea. This is not a lurid assemblage of horrors designed to titillate and excite. Rather, this is a sober history which will proceed largely by careful analysis and exegesis, not by exclamation marks. Here you will find no gaudy tales of monsters and maidens; and, likewise, no breathbating stories of midnight raids, of cannibalism and torture, of blood-spouting torsos and amputated ears.
This — this is a work of scholarship, not to be confused with trite and trifling books about swords and slaughter, rapine and rape, battle and barrat. If you have an appetite for such, then you are advised to flee from the presence of these civilized pages, and find refuge from the world of reality in a romance like Chulman Puro’s famous magnum opus, The Bloodstained Dream.
In those pages of ill fame, you will be able to indulge your purile appetites by following at length the exploits of Vorn the Gladiator, who bellows his defiance to the world as he is driven into the Grand Arena at Dalar ken Halvar. A jeering crowd cheers for his destruction. But he is yet to be destroyed!
‘A hero’s weapon!’ he roars, holding aloft the great sword Zaftig.
Huge is that sword, a weapon too heavy for any mortal to lift from the sands. But Vorn the Gladiator bears its weight with ease; and, indeed, twirls it between two of his fingers as if it were a wieldy drumstick rather than a humungous weapon of murder.
Then the Great Gates of the Great Arena are opened, and the crowd screams for murder as a huge malatotha-pus lurches out on to the burning sands. The brute is a ghastly red. It is hideous to look upon, for it looks like an obscenely mutated Ebrell Islander grown to historic size, like the worst nightmares of prejudice made flesh. The thing is so huge that its shadow alone would crush any ordinary mortal to death.
But Vorn the Gladiator holds his ground.
The malatothapus advances.
The brave sword Zaftig gores the monster. But it sneers at the wound. Vorn is barely able to throw himself to one side to avoid his immediate extinction. Down to the burning sands he falls. He rolls sideways. Not away from the malatothapus but Under it!
He grabs at the brute’s testicles and fastens his teeth in its scrotal sac. Mad with rage and pain, the malatothapus charges the wall of the arena. It rams that wall, which is made of huge slabs of iridescent opal — wealth which is typical of Dalar ken Halvar, a city where the streets truly are paved with gold, and the buildings made of silver and ever-ice.
The slabs split, crack and crumble. Unfortunately, the ornamental chair which sustains the delicious rump of the Princess Nuboltipon is seated upon the uppermost of the slabs so destroyed. She falls screaming to the sands. She stands up, still screaming. Then she runs, fleeing across the burning sands like a common slave doomed to die for some unpardonable crime, like spilling soup over her master’s robes.
The malatothapus snorts with fury.
It starts after the Princess Nuboltipon.
Following behind is Vorn the Gladiator. His feet are braced upon the shield of a lesser warrior who died earlier in the day. He is clutching the short tail which waggles behind the malatothapus. Sand spurts out from either side of the shield as it furrows its way across the sands of the arena, as the tail-holding hero is dragged along by the monster.
The Princess Nuboltipon stops, for she can run no longer.
She turns.
She sees the malatothapus bearing down on her.
She screams.
The impact of her scream shatters every crystal wineglass brought to the Grand Arena by the wealthy members of the leisure class.
Then Vorn the Gladiator acts. He has noticed an orifice at the rear end of the malatothapus. Keeping hold of the brute’s tail with his left hand, he plunges the right into this orifice, driving his right arm into the hot and humid flesh until it is buried to the shoulder. Vorn claws at the monster’s innards with his fingernails, which are specially sharpened so he can gouge out eyes in close quarters combat.
The malatothapus bellows with agony, then faints from a surfeit of pain. As the monster swoons, Vorn pulls his arm free. He recovers the great sword Zaftig and hacks off the head of the brute.
‘My hero!’ says the Princess Nuboltipon, running to him with open arms.
Von embraces her, though one arm is smeared with hot brown dung from fingertips to shoulder, and the other is much besplattered with the blood of the malatothapus. He crushes her to his breast. And, that night, duly reprieved and happily married, he crushes her to the bed, her perfume swooning around her as he thrusts an unmentionable part of his anatomy into a princessly orifice of hers which is equally unmentionable.
If you have an appetite for tales of such things, then by all means turn to the indulgent pages of the books of the above-mentioned Chalman Puro. But do not expect to find any such frivolous amusement here! The historian is happy to say that no such lurid incidents will be recorded in this tome. Instead, here we have a sober book of history, complete with statistical analysis where appropriate. Here is one such analysis:
It has been reliably computed that if the eyeballs of all the inhabitants of Untunchilamon were pulped together in a barrel, this would yield enough fluid to provide three baths for Aldarch the Third, Mutilator of Yestron. With equal reliability, it has been computed that the same amount of eyeball juice could provide the formidable Al’three with an infinite number of baths were he prepared to reuse the substance indefinitely.
This statistic has been derived from firm experimental evidence obtained by torturers working in the employ of the Mutilator of Yestron, and is mentioned here in order to indicate something of the character of Aldarch the Third to anyone who may by chance be unfamiliar with his history.
That character is part of the necessary background to this history, for virtually everything that was done in, on, around and underneath the city of Injiltaprajura in the final days of the reign of the Empress Justina was done with reference to the tastes, manners and mores of Al’three.
Even people’s dreams were conditioned by the activities of the Mutilator. Though that tyrant was many leagues from Untunchilamon, it was customary for the blood spilt by his armies to pour in smoking rivers through the dreams of the people of Untunchilamon. Blood smoking, stinking, drenching, drowning — of such things is nightmare made.
Of such we will not speak again, trusting that the reader will hold it in mind throughout the rest of this history, and will not need to be reminded from paragraph to paragraph that ‘when x did y he had the rightful expectations of Aldarch the Third very much in mind’.
However, while we trust the intelligence and intellectual powers of our readership, repetition of some thematic motifs will be necessary if only because pattern (and, hence, repetition) is an unavoidable part of life. Therefore it will (for example) be recorded (more than once) that the sun rose; and, again, that it set. From this, only the rash will presume that the historian presumes his readers to be so imbecilic that they need to be regularly reminded of the behaviour of the sky’s major luminary. Likewise, only a harebrained speculator would presume that the succession of night by day and day by night speaks of some hidden symbolic scheme.
The historian makes mention of this because the world is not free from either the rash or the harebrained.
With particular regard to the harebrained, it needs to be stressed that this is a history written with painstaking regard to fact, and the historian has nowhere indulged in any poetic flights of fancy or invention. Thus, while blood is necessarily one of the dominant thematic elements of this text, no ‘symbolic scheme’ is intended or implied, for such nonsense belongs to the province of the poets. Rather, it happens that the ruling colour of Untunchilamon is lifeblood red, and this is a fact of geography which the historian did not invent and cannot alter.
The island of Untunchilamon has red rock known as bloodstone, reefs of red coral, seas of red seaweed, intermittent plagues of red plankton, beaches of red sand (ground coral and bloodstone mixed), and tropical sunsets which tend to be of a singularly sanguinary nature. The historian might therefore in fairness say:
Untunchilamon: island of blood!
But to say this is not to imply (after the style of Greven Jing, whom we have neatly disembowelled above) an atmosphere of horror. True, what one remembers most after a prolonged incarceration upon the island is the oppressive bloodstone, the sweltering heat, and the edible fires of the heavily spiced food in which the local inhabitants tend to indulge themselves.
But the fact is that, overall, Untunchilamon is a tolerably pleasant place. One can escape the heat by retreating to the labyrinthine underground mazes Downstairs. Or, if you do not care to venture Downstairs yourself, you can ameliorate the effects of heat by indulging in ice which others have rescued from those ancient machineries which fabricate that useful substance in the depths. Apart from ice, hidden machines also make (or so we presume, for it is the simplest of available explanations) the potable water which feeds Injiltaprajura’s eversprings.
Injiltaprajura is, of course, the capital city (the only city) of Untunchilamon, and is sited where it is (on the shores of the Laitemata Harbour) expressly because of the water, ice, dikle and shlug manufactured by the machines of Downstairs.
On the Laitemata one might find (at night) Shabble admiring Shabbleself in the nightwater lightmirror. One would also find (at any time of day or night) the island of Jod. This was (and, doubtless, is still) a small island notable chiefly for one building in spectacular white marble, that building being the Analytical Institute which housed Jod’s Analytical Engine.
On a hot day on the island of Jod, we find the master chef Pelagius Zozimus preparing a platter of tolfrigdala-kaptiko, that dish which consists of fried seagull livers plus a dash of basilisk gall, the said dish being served with side helpings of baked yams and lozenges of dried jelly fish.
The perceptive reader will recall that the very same dish was mentioned in the first chapter of this history, and may suspect the existence of an unpardonable coincidence.
The true explanation is that the historian is working with a complete set of Pelagius Zozimus’s favourite recipes on his desk, and is interleaving the labour of composing this history with the pleasures of trying out those recipes (to the extent to which the ingredients are obtainable in this region of the island of Quilth).
Thus, when the historian came to record the departure of Jean Froissart from the city of Bolfrigalaskaptiko on the River Ka (just upstream from the great lagoon of Manamalargo on the western shores of the continent of Yestron) it happened that tolfrigdalaptiko infiltrated the text because the recipe for the dish was on his desk; the very taste of the stuff was on his tongue; the pan in which he had cooked it was sitting in a washing barrel together with all those pans, pots and casserole dishes used by the historian over the last ten days; and the historian’s favourite cockroach was feeding on one stray seagull liver which, having fallen to the floorboards, had failed to slip between the cracks between those boards.
In addition to all the above, the notes for this second chapter were on hand when the first was written, and tolfrigdalaptiko was much on the historian’s mind because Pelagius Zozimus is recorded to have cooked It for the Empress Justina on no fewer than ten separate occasions; and, when working in the premises of the Analytical Institute on Jod, to have prepared it on every second day for the Crab.
The historian trusts that the reader’s mind has been set at rest. A coincidence exists; but, rather than undermining the validity of this text, it serves merely to emphasize and underline the stringent research which has gone into this work of surpassing scholarship.
Let would-be critics further note that any attempt to studiously avoid coincidence would result in the most perverse perversion of history. For it is a statistical truth that, when Aldarch the Third sits upon his throne in the city of Obooloo and drinks wine or water (or blood, or the juice crushed from the eyeballs of his enemies, or the semen of his favourite dog), there will simultaneously be other people elsewhere who are also drinking wine or water (or other substances); and the historian cannot reasonably ask all these people to cease and desist from their activities merely to avoid the occurrence of a coincidence, that entirely natural pattern of synchronic correspondences which some schools of criticism find so intensely distressing.
Readers raised on histories of the weird and the wonderful raise another serious objection to the events of this narrative; namely, that the events it deals with are so close to those of their own lives and their own times.
This objection can only be answered by stating an unpalatable truth: the weird and wonderful histories which gratify the appetites of such readers are nothing but a tissue of untruths.
It is a great principle of historical philosophy (though one as yet far from universally acknowledged) that all lives are but variants of one common pattern; to the point that, were all the lives of all people from the beginning of time to be compounded into one Life Experience then divided by the number of the whole, the statistically accurate Average Life thus produced would be little different from the one the reader is living now.
While those who deal in weird and wonderful untruths are reluctant to admit it, the truth is that all the lives of all the peoples of all of humanity are, were and always will be very much alike.
Wherever we look, we find the same patterns repeating themselves. The gods are (and were, and will be) always distant, bad tempered and less than perfectly understood. The younger generation is always a trial to the older. Slaves are always idle and stupid, and a cause of exasperation to their masters. Chastity is everywhere preached, and the preaching is nowhere a solution to venereal disease. Youth acts in haste and age repents at leisure. Inflation prospers everywhere. Everywhere, scholarly talent starves while Chulman Puro and Greven Jing grow rich. And all cultures (regardless of what superficial differences exist between them) recognize that very special and peculiar difficulties inevitably exist between a man and his mother-in-law.
As this is a sober history, it follows that nothing is recorded in these pages which cannot happen in your own life, or at least in your own lifetime. The Empress Justina is not the first person to struggle valiantly to secure the liberties of her kingdom against the oppressions of a foreign empire; and the fact that her best efforts ended in general disaster merely indicates a principle well known to all historians, which is that might is might and right is easily forgotten.
One final comment.
Great differences will be found between this history and others now extant.
The greatest difference is that of treatment; for this is a singularly intimate history.
It is intimate largely because of the very special advantages enjoyed by the historian. Personal experience is one of these; for the historian was actually on Untunchilamon when the events herein recorded took place. Furthermore, since the historian writes late and last, he has access to the documents of all those who have written earlier.
But the historian’s greatest advantage is that he was for long a confidante of Shabble; and Shabble was everywhere, and saw everything, or at least learnt of it thereafter by way of confession or hearsay.
Shabble was in the kitchen attached to the Analytical Institute when Pelagius Zozimus was preparing that platter of tolfrigdalakaptiko. Shabble was there listening to one kitchen slave telling another about the delinquencies of her grandmother’s neighbour’s daughter’s son, who had run away from home and was living on the streets as a drummer.
Later, Chegory Guy came into the kitchen to collect that tolfrigdalakaptiko, and Shabble went with Guy to the cave where the Hermit Crab lived, and watched as that formidable monster ate its way though its meal with a pair of chopsticks which its huge claws handled with the most exquisite delicacy imaginable.
Olivia Qasaba was present at that same meal, for she had made herself the Crab’s servant. This she had done in order to have an excuse to associate with Chegory on a regular basis.
In truth, the Crab needed no services apart from the regular provision of its meals. The Crab was a philosopher of a singularly unambitious kind, and did very little apart from sitting still, thinking, and waiting for the inevitable onslaughts of those human beings who from time to time (for selfish reasons of their own) would try to kill it.
However, Olivia had invented a great many jobs for herself to do. Early on in her service, she had taken to adorning the Crab with flowers. Daily, she brought fresh frangipani blooms for the Crab, and glued them to its carapace (the Crab being possessed of no human-style ears behind which such flowers might have been stuck). Later, thinking the Crab in need of some more permanent form of adornment, Olivia went to work with a stronger kind of glue, and began to cover the Crab with a mosaic of white marble, cowrie shells, chips of bloodstone, old fish-hooks, brass rings, worn-out cogs from the Analytical Engine, fragments of blue and yellow glass and rags of silk.
Thus festooned, the Crab looked more than a little ridiculous. Olivia was taking a fearful risk, for, had the Crab resented its transformation, it might have lost its temper; and in its incontinent rage it could easily have destroyed Injiltaprajura, if not Untunchilamon as a whole.
But Olivia Qasaba never worried her head about that, because it never occurred to her for even a moment that the Crab might not take kindly to the programme of beautification on which she had embarked. As for Chegory Guy, he never sought to restrain the hand of his beloved Olivia; though surely concern for the common good (if not for Olivia’s safety) should have led him to veto her artistic efforts.
Chegory’s dereliction of duty — the insouciant manner in which he allowed his true love’s whim to endanger his whole world — is easy to understand when we note that he was an Ebrell Islander. The Ebrell Islanders have never been noted for caution, reason or responsibility.
That explains Chegory’s actions; or, rather, his inaction. But how are we to account for the fact that Injiltaprajura allowed a feckless Ashdan Lass and a reckless Ebrell Islander to minister to the most powerful and most dangerous entity to be found anywhere west of Yestron and east of Argan?
In explanation of this incongruity, the historian has a duty to explain that everyone else on Untunchilamon was far too scared of the Crab to go anywhere near the thing. And with good reason! Among other things, the Crab had perfected a method for turning people inside out; and such topological rearrangement is compatible with neither sanity nor survival.
So Chegory and Olivia had the Crab to themselves.
Chegory regularly brought the Crab those meals cooked for it by the master chef Pelagius Zozimus, and Chegory relayed to the kitchen any demands the Crab might have with respect to its menu.
And Olivia adorned the Crab in the manner described above, polished the unadorned parts of the Crab’s carapace with coconut oil, and persuaded Shabble to act as a globular mirror so the Crab could admire its changed appearance.
For her own amusement, Olivia recovered the frail shells of lesser crabs from the shore, and arranged them in niches around the cave ‘so you can pretend they’re statues of your mummy and daddy and all your brother crabs and sister crabs’. Often she sat beside the Crab, comfortably embraced by Chegory’s arms, and made up stories about those lesser crabs, telling of their loves and lusts, their griefs and sorrows, their victories and triumphs, their counters with malicious seagulls and hungry octopuses, their heroic quests and territorial disputes, and their secret love for the great Crab of the island of Jod.
The Ashdan lass also made the Crab a set of wind-chimes out of coconut twine and cards of copper stolen from the Analytical Institute. She even got the Crab its own drum, in case it wanted to participate in the latest youth cult; and, since the Crab had no hands, Olivia got the thing its very own drumstick.
‘Or,’ she said, ‘you could beat it with your chopsticks.’
This should not be taken as implicating Olivia Qasaba herself in active participation in the ‘drumming’ cult, for there is no evidence that she herself ever beat upon a drum; though it is inevitable that she was sometimes in close proximity to adolescent youths who were ‘drumming’.
By now the reader may be getting restless, and may be wondering why the historian has chosen to adduce so many trivialities concerning the Crab and its servants.
The answer is that these trivialities are not trivialities at all. Rather, they are important items of evidence which help explain why the Crab, this Power of Powers, played such a slight role in the politics of Injiltaprajura.
The Crab was not one of your active Powers which daily demand homage and sacrifice; which lust for praise, and burn incense, and the flesh of virgins; which build palaces and organize empires; which like to get drunk and be jolly; which collect gold and diamonds and all things rare and precious.
No, the Crab was not like that at all.
The Crab was a singularly retiring person, its demands being merely that it be fed at regular intervals and otherwise left in peace. While it was prepared to permit Olivia’s ministrations, it had never demanded them, nor did it praise or encourage them. And as for homage, or gold, or virgins, or palaces, or other such materialistic rubbish — why, the Crab had no use whatsoever for any such frivolities.
While this eremitic and philosophical Crab was loathe to take an active claw in Untunchilamon’s politics, it was nevertheless manipulated on occasion by the devious Justina Thrug and others — as we shall see in due course.
You will be assisted in seeing this if you will now clear from your field of vision all those distorted images and outright hallucinations practitioners of fiction and even other ‘historians’, so-called, have brought forward to gratify a debased public taste.
Pay no attention to the gross distortions of Greven Jing, the rambling inaccuracies of Thong Sai Stok, the pretentious pedantry of Morton Plum or the romantic mistiness of the anonymous author of Untunchilamon: An Account of the Isle of Many Splendours and the Unfortunate Contretemps which Occasioned Sundry Lapses of Public Order and Good Discipline in that Paradigm of Paradise.
This is the true history of the final days of the rule of Justina Thrug upon the island of Untunchilamon, and it is the only such history which is worth the price of the fooskin upon which it is written.
And remember: your historian was there!
Your historian will not, as a rule, intrude upon this narrative. I will not mention my arthritic fingers, for instance; or the outrageous price of fooskin; nor complain about the racket from the craftshop next door, where, from the sound of it, they are trying to reinvent the skavamareen.
But I will say this:
I was on Untunchilamon when the great troubles beset Justina Thrug. I myself have stood upon the balcony of the pink palace atop Pokra Ridge; I myself have looked down Lak Street to the waters of the Laitemata, and across those waters to the island of Jod where the white marble of the Analytical Institute stands like a block of chalk riding atop a bank of congealed blood.
And I have been to those places elsewhere mentioned in this history.
I myself have been to Manamalargo; and have ventured up the River Ka to the city of Bolfrigalaskaptiko. In that city, I myself have sat within a tent of mosquito netting, enjoying a meal of roast crocodile meat while watching a professional child beater clean the blood from his whips. In that same city, I have enjoyed the delights of non-insertive ecstasy in the House Without Fleas.
And, more to the point, I have interviewed many inhabitants of Bolfrigalaskaptiko. Their testimony justifies and supports the claim made in the first chapter of this history:
That Jean Froissart, a man of 32 who was much worried about his heart, left Bolfrigalaskaptiko in the company of Manthandros Trasilika.
The fat and fleshy Manthandros Trasilika planned to sail to Untunchilamon, to land at Injiltaprajura, to declare himself the rightful wazir of the place, to denounce Justina Thrug as a witch, and to order her immediate execution.
But, as stated at the end of the first chapter, the first trouble which would befall Justina Thrug would not come from Manthandros Trasilika but from the Inland Revenue Department; and nothing written above should be taken as altering or modifying that fact.