Hello friends. Welcome back to Tall tales on you’re listening to radio revel. This episode, called He was walking slowly, is the second fragment from the 1989 novel Exile which I began reading last time. I don’t know how many of these I’ll share with you all, it’s been an interesting exercise in editing and evaluating the actual value of this material from over three decades ago. So, here goes….
He was walking slowly down the cool, dim hallway. Dim because the windows were small and high, the sun directly overhead, little light passed down into the hall. It was cool, for the walls were constructed of stone, many arms’ length thick, cool like a cave. His tread was careful and measured. He had measured it himself in his earliest years walking in the hall, being careful where placed his feet, always within the center of a tile, never on the cracks. There were seventy steps from his chamber to the scriptorium, sixty-one from his chamber to the dining room, fifty-two from his chamber to the cloister where the fountain burst with thin streams of water in four compass directions into a large pond in which three geese made soft clucking noises as they swam.
The men in the scriptorium hurried back to their desks. They’d heard the latch to his chamber door catch, one scribe posted at the door as a sentinel counted his steps to thirty and all were bent over their tasks by forty-three and seemed to have been working for hours by sixty-one, so that when he opened the door at seventy, he feigned satisfaction on seeing that all of his keeps were copying the texts, had been copying the texts faithfully for hours, though he knew, and they knew he knew, that they slacked around when he was not in the room with them. The problem was that he was there at least six of the seven hours they worked on the manuscript.
The scriptorium was a rectangular space, seven desks in a row on one side, seven on the other, a long aisle between, a row of small windows high on the wall, fourteen rose windows in the domed ceiling that cast light down upon each of the fourteen desks. Seven scribes worked in the room during the daylight hours, occupying the desks to the right. These men copied the words of the manuscript, needed the natural light to recreate the intricate details of the symbols of the text.
As each scribe finished a page, he took it over to a desk on the left and left it there for the ink to dry, aiding its progress by sprinkling fine sand over the page. On regular days, each of these seven men would finish copying seven pages of material. Of the seven pages, five would need total illumination, two only border illumination. Illumination was the night work, done by the light of huge candelabras placed at the head of each of the seven desks to the left, each candelabra holding twenty-one candles.
As daylight waned at the end of their day, the scribes would replace the candle stubs in the candelabras to the left, stubs burned out during the previous night’s work and would light them, then leave the scriptorium through the door to the right. Through a facing door to the left the seven illuminators would pass into the room, sit at their desks and begin their work. Each man illuminated seven pages of work, five totally, two with borders only.
The total manuscript was made up of five hundred eleven pages, and in this way each seventy-seven days the fourteen men completed seven copies of the book. In a year thirty-four copies were completed. These copies were gradually collected from the shelves in the back where they had been stored by other men, taken to another shop be bound and covered, but that was not his concern, he had only to oversee the work of the scribes.
Scribes and illuminators had come to this place when quite young, usually sent by a father full of pride. Each spent seven years learning to copy or illuminate, and at one time it had been his task to teach copy to the young who came in, but it was difficult work, especially now, for his blood, and he had been moved to supervision, where his only responsibility was in looking over shoulders occasionally, seeing that it was indeed a copy being made and not an embellishment. They all worked seven days each week, seven hours each day. There was no break in work, each ate well before and after, but fasted during.
He did not, of course, oversee the illumination, that was a different matter altogether, and his life-long brother, Syrgyl, took the night shift with the illuminators. Syrgyl and he had come to this place in the same year, many more years ago than either of them could remember. In those days, as even now, boys were put to task for a year in both copying and illumination. Those who showed a bent for one spent the next six years perfecting it, the others were trained in the other, and those boys who proved useless at either were trained in binding or gardening or candle making. Another friend of his and Syrgyl’s had not lived up to expectations, had worked for a while in the binding room, had left to work on a farm, Syrgyl and he did not even know that this friend was no longer in this place.
During these seven years of apprenticeship, the two boys were able to develop a close friendship, the teaching schedules were adjacent, as were their desks in the teaching chambers, illumination taught at the same time as copy. The illuminators-to-be had access to the desks best lit by natural light, while the scribes-to-be had to be contented with seven candles atop their desks. Once the two had taken their places in the scriptorium though, during the forty-nine years following their apprenticeship in which he copied during the day and Syrgyl illuminated at night, the two friends were not to see much of one another.
The rules did allow note passing between the two men. The notes had begun as innocent sharing of gossip and mundane daily events. As time went on, though, he would begin drafting out fantastic tales, sometimes of valiant adventures, others of romantic relationships between warriors or serfs. Syrgyl would illustrate these stories and send them back, drawing out battles, coloring lust blushes on the faces of embracing men. Now, note passing was a series matter in this place, the words contained considered more secret than thought. He and Syrgyl would put the couriers to test, they wrote and drew even more fantastic epics, then observed the couriers’ faces closely, peered deeply into their eyes looking for some trace that their private correspondence had been breached. They never caught anyone.
Once both men had outdone their comrades in experience and been advanced to posts of training, Syrgyl slowly stopped the note passing. Both growing older and taking the younger men under his wing led Syrgyl to worry that some of his stories were jeopardizing Syrgyl’s pious nature. In quiet moments during a class, while boys practiced, Syrgyl found himself fantasizing beyond the romantic stories, replacing the fictional warriors with students in the teaching room, leading to overpowering visions of the boys frolicking among the desks, groping, kissing, rubbing, hugging, writhing in total abandon.
Syrgyl became incautious, began to illuminate these fantasies during class, overtaken by imagination. Someone asked a question that went unnoticed, the boy came to the teacher’s desk, looked over the master’s shoulder. Syrgyl only noticed when the boy reached with a trembling hand and a flushed face to touch the teacher’s arm.
Over the years he began missing Syrgyl’s illustrations as his friend gradually ceased returning the notes, but he continued writing the stories for himself. He figured that they had both grown out of such tests for their messengers, their superiors, themselves. Now that they were both supervisors, they enjoyed free hours each day, and they generally spent those hours together, laughing at their early anxiety, warmly regretting in indirect insinuations that they had never taken action on their fantasies themselves. It was recently, during one of these intimate interviews, sitting in Syrgyl’s chamber, that he reached out and touched his friend, asked what prevented them now.
– Ah, my dear friend, we are so old, think of how ridiculous we would seem doing such things.
He stood and looked at his own hands. They were pale and spotted, greenish-blue where the blood coursed through to the fingertips. White spots showed on the nails, reminding him to ask for more milk at dinner. He rubbed his face with these hands, let his fingertips smooth the wrinkles around his eyes as if they were not now there. His fingers came away moist and Syrgyl asked him if he had been hurt by the memories, but he replied no, abruptly begged leave. He walked, slowly, steadily, the fifty-two steps to his own chamber, opened the door, closed it. In the scriptorium the scribe sentinel counted the two latch sounds without subsequent steps, knowing that he was not coming to supervise but was instead entering his chamber to rest.
He asked himself what kind of rest could he possibly find in his chamber? The shelves along one wall were full of those rolled-up parchments full of the stories he had continued to write long after his friend had ceased illuminating them. He went to his private desk, opened the single drawer and removed the small knife he used to sharpen his quills. He sat on the edge of his bed for a long time looking at the knife, turning it now and then so that its fine edge would catch the last of the day’s golden-red light as it entered his window. Some hours later he rose and put the knife back in the drawer, removed his robes, climbed into his bed.
In his dream he felt a horrible urge to urinate. This need ate at his viscera, sent chills vibrating through his spine into his shoulders and neck, bolting out of the top of his head. As long as he walked the pain was bearable, but when he stopped to try to figure out where he was, the spasms would cut deeply where his legs joined his body, he would rush on again, shivering violently.
He finally stopped in front of a multi-storied building and knew that the golden key he held in his hand would open the glass and iron door he faced. He slipped the key in its hole and turned it, entering. There were two doors, one of them closed, the other slid open by itself onto a small closet. There were buttons on the wall, etched into the buttons were letters and numbers: PB, Etlo, 1, 2, 3, A, SA. He reached out and pressed SA, the door closed by itself, he felt the closet rising to the top of the edifice. The closet stopped, the door opened again, he was in a short hallway with two doors. He knew that the silver key would open the second door, he slipped it into the keyhole, turned it several times to the right, pushed the door, and it swung open away from him. A dark hall with a closed door at the end, voices coming from the other side of that door:
– I can’t be who you want me to be!
– I only want you to be who you can be.
– Then why are you angry with me?
– I am not angry with you.
– You act like you are angry.
– Don’t generalize my emotions. It is more complex than anger.
– What is it, then?
– Anger, frustration, patience, surprise, to name all but exasperation. Let’s just stop this now, it’s obvious neither of us is ready to approach this as adults.
– Just like you to start an argument then leave the other hanging.
– We both began this discussion, friend.
He could not wait any longer, he walked to the door despite his fear of intruding, pulled it open, saw two men sitting at the round table, a candle lit between them. They did not see him, though, they simply fumed at one another, their frustration with each other hanging in the air over the table like a red haze. He noticed another door, went to it, found an urn, finally relieved himself, for hours he pissed, when he awoke his blanket was drenched in his sweat and urine. Syrgyl was knocking at his door, asking through the panel:
– My friend, are you all right? You have missed your work for two days! They have sent me to look after you, will you not let me in?
He sent his friend away, excused himself with an imaginary fever he had just broken. Once he was sure that Syrgyl had gone, he took up his bedding and walked to the washing room, where he soaked the sheet and blanket himself in a tub overflowing with icy water, water that splashed about his sandal-shod feet as he agitated it with his hands, then a long wooden paddle. The numbness the water had brought to his fingers triggered a decision. He left the bedding in the tub and went back to his room, hurrying lest someone caught him in the hallway, caught in his actions before he could carry them through.
He retrieved the knife from his desk and again hurried back to the washing room. He removed his robe and sandals, stepped into the tub, slowly sank himself into the water, the chill running through his body numbing his skin so that it was hard and taught, as when he was a boy. He did not feel any pain as he sliced his arms from the wrists to the elbows, each arm sliced three times. He felt himself slowly relax back into the water, his head submerged, he did not drown, he was already dead.
you're listening to radio revel 