Now, I suspect my passing was made mild by my new friends here. I suspect that whatever dwells in my nature that loves tales and falsehood and shining, pretty stories commended me to them and made me attractive, so that they drew my ship over the high blue sea and down into their country. A country, finally, strange enough that I do not have to lie in relating it to you (though I may if I am moved—I cannot be blamed, I am the man I am, and if my nature brought me here I shall follow it and not grovel to be forgiven. God made me, Christ drank my health, and the Devil took the rest).
Given how the rest of my writings have exaggerated and aggrandized as I saw fit I did think it would be amusing to set down the very truth of the underworld in which I beached my Proserpina, and from which I have slim hope of departing. I shall make a good work, and I believe this will be a good work, to shine in the dark when I cannot.
I shall organize my thoughts and set them down as an encyclopedia of the end of the world, after the fashion of the Spaniard Isidore who jotted down this and that about the nature of everything, and in future days perhaps you will call John Mandeville a liar, and my shade will laugh at you and say: true, true, I was, but not always, not so. When the world was good enough in my sight, when it behaved as wildly and gorgeously as I always knew it could, I told the truth of it.
How to Use My Most Excellent Encyclopedia
I believe the following two scenes will illuminate how I would prefer this compendium to be used by whatever poor devil comes upon it after I have gone.
When I was a boy and avoiding my lessons for some superb reason or another, an erstwhile and much beleaguered tutor said to me: John, what is it you hate so about books?
I replied to him as quick as a bite: Books think they can boss me about. They think they have the upper hand, and can make me read them and pay attention to them and say nice things about them after I am done. They are snooty and think they are smarter than me. They insist on being read page one
to page whathaveyou, and no stopping for good behavior. Well, I cannot be held still! I shall jump about and today read the machinations of the dark prince of Motteringdale and how he beheaded his herbalist, and tomorrow I shall read about how the herbalist wished his country to be free of taxation and red dragons, then next Thursday I shall read about how it was all an allegory concerning some early Popes I don’t care about. That’s how it is in real life, anyway! You hardly ever know anything important until the thing it was being important about is already over. Books think they can rule me, but I shall show them.
My tutor disapproved of this first attempt at philosophy.
And later, when I resided at the Sultan’s court, I heard from a eunuch who had it from a concubine who had it from an alchemist-astrologer with a weakness for certain pleasures that the Sultan had a great book in his innermost chamber, and in the great book lived a demon. The demon and the book could not be separated; the demon was the book and the book was the demon. The demon lived in the spine of the book, had skin of iron and golden horns, and was called something irrelevant and unpronounceable. The Sultan was utterly in thrall to the demon, who each night took the form of a maiden with those selfsame golden horns and iron flesh, and when he made love to the succubus she whispered a chapter of the book of herself in his ear, and the writing meant to be in the pages of the tome scrawled itself instead across her breasts in fiery letters, and the Sultan loved the book to distraction. All of his concubines went unused and to be honest they were glad for it, having none of them been what a generous soul could call love matches. Every night when it came time for him to sire an heir with a woman of less metallic and sulfurous disposition the Sultan whispered: only a little more. I shall just read a little more, then on to a proper bed. When asked what enthralled him so in the book the monarch could only answer: I have only just begun it, I cannot say, I cannot say. Who can say what a book is about until one has nearly finished it? Even after five years of intent study and molten lovemaking and the searing reading of the flaming chapters upon the cold iron bosom of his beloved, the Sultan would insist he had hardly begun the tale, had scarcely turned the first page.
It went on in this way until the demon had by degrees succeeded in drawing out all the life of her besotted reader and he was discovered one morning slumped over the book, which looked as innocent as you please, while an iron ball with golden sigils worked upon it rolled discreetly away from the palace, cheerful in the sun, gaining speed as it went.
What I mean to signify by all this scene-making is that books can harm you, and a careless John I would be if I were to let you open this volume and think you had a nice plump dog on a satin leash who would do your bidding and ask for no more than you liked to give. Books are not like that. They want to eat you up. They want you to spend yourself on their iron hearts and submit to their wills. An unsuspecting man who happens to find himself in this unfortunate world which is practically ruled by books has but two choices—give in and go under the page with the secret smile of the slattern on one’s lips, or become the thing the book spends itself upon, become himself the iron princess with horns of gold, become fantastical and gorgeous beyond measure, nearly impossible to believe, but not so impossible that the spell is broken. Become the thing the tale tells of, something so strange that some book somewhere simply bursts into being to record your supereminence.
I have chosen this latter route in order to reign this book into the world. It is my hope that you will joust with its boisterous nature, struggle with its lack of alphabetization or order beyond my own sense of what thing should follow which; for I am a kind tyrant, and will not force such snooty, bossy schemes on you, my reader, my alchemist-astrologer, my eunuch, my most gentle concubine. You must always fight with a book, or else how do you know who has won when the last page is cut?
I am the demon of this book. I am the book itself, and I am the iron thing lying next to you in the morning.
1. On the Wall
They told me it was made of diamonds. Countless enormous gems, piled one atop the other a thousand years ago and more, diamonds so massive that two giants had to lift them into place, and in raising these prisms toward the sun thus blinded an entire generation of blue-bellied lizards. They tell me all blue-bellied lizards are now blind, as the elders told the youngsters that the world was white and featureless, and out of deference the little ones went right on behaving as though they could see nothing, and now no one can tell the difference. My friends in this country enjoy perverse stories with no moral or point. It appeals to their conglomerate nature, I think. In any event, the wall was raised and put in place and now it is so clotted with moss and tangled roots and stiff leaves and fern fronds like quill pens frozen in the act and huge orange blossoms that smell like bitter tea that I could not testify to the truth of the jewels—I suppose there could be diamonds under all that verdancy. I would like to believe it, or else what happened to the poor lizards?
According to my hosts, the Wall divides us from the fallen world on the other side; it keeps the fell knights of that world at bay and preserves our pleasant land of red stones and pomegranate orchards. On the other side of the Wall lie ugly, bloody, profane places called Nural and Nimat, called Babel and Shirshya, called Lost and Perdition and Decadence. Be happy we dwell on this side, where the phoenix still sing at dusk, they said at supper. Praise the Wall and love it, for it is all that stands between us and ruin. They touched my hands and whispered: The day it closed we could breathe, and sing, and delight again. Should it ever open, well, it is too much to think on. Everyone knows it is our shield; everyone knows those on the other side possess a monstrousness best left unconsidered by virtuous souls.
So they regaled me when I first arrived. Isn’t it interesting, to know what everyone knows?
THE BOOK
OF THE RUBY
The cranes say the Sedge of Heaven was ruled over by thirteen clouds, each of them extremely complex and cold, but beautiful, frightening, heavy. In the long life of a crane one might encounter a single True cloud, drifting among the lesser and unintelligent wisps of moist or frozen air, moving stately and alien as a whale crusted over with diamonds. In her youth, before her Fall, Kukyk had come upon the Wooden Cloud, and she felt its presence like a blow against her body, as though something inside her was battered and squeezed with a hundred hands; yet the pain gave her also a ferocious pleasure, and she both forgot and remembered her name several times as the gold-tinged cloud passed by her, whispering its many canticles into her heart.
John the Priest said the Kingdom of Heaven was ruled over by a man on a throne, seated on a sea of glass. He is unencounterable, and unknowable. He is not fertile, having only managed one child since the beginning. He should not be blamed for this—mothers are rare on the sea of glass.
What do my stepdaughter and I have in common? The gates of both universes are closed to us. They are very pretty gates, but they cannot let us pass. We can neither of us fly, and will never find ourselves in the presence of a cloud, and—well. Our bodies are too shocking to be permitted entrance to the Kingdom of Heaven, even if we should build a ship of glass to sail it.
What do you do with a girl with only one wing?
Half the things you’d do to a girl with two.
The letter Anglitora had wrested from the mouth of her soldier’s skull came among us like a True cloud, its complexities beyond us, its weight hideous but invisible, inciting a horror and an unseemly pleasure. I heard it read so many times before we launched the ships. I remember it perfectly, every word, as if it were written in oil and set blazing.
Emanuel, prince of Constantinople and the Eastern Empire, to John, priest by the almighty power of God and the might of our Lord Jesus Christ, we send you greetings in return, and all good wishes for your health, the peace of your nation, and all the divine gifts of this Earth.
Our Majesty has received your letter and taken it to our bosom. With great interest did we read of the glory and power of your Kingdom in the East, and with delight did we read of its great Conversion to Christ. In brotherhood therefore we greet you, Prince to Prince, and Christian to Christian. We have sent some few objects that represent our affection, made of gold and emerald and costly perfumes beside, and look forward with joy to the day when we may meet and clasp hands in true friendship.
However, our missive is not an idle one. Having subdued a country of infidels, we trust you will have some sympathy for our plight, as we are beset on all sides by the armies of the unfaithful, and moreover the unfaithful are uncommonly prosperous and numerous, and threaten to overcome our walls and claim both Constantinople and Jerusalem under their sway. We are strong in faith but admittedly weaker in arms, and we beseech our friend John to take up his great armies and come forth from the East to defend us, leaving behind only those souls who remain undedicated to Christ. If victory follows, which surely it must, Our Majesty will be pleased to divide the spoils of the Holy City with those we hold in blessed fraternity and grant whatsoever lands, titles, and honors such men may desire.
Surely the favor of God is with Us, whether or not Our Eastern Friend arrives to deliver Jerusalem into the bosom of the Church, however, the turning of the infidel tide would be much delayed if you do not immediately set out for our country with a great force at your command. We trust that you will accomplish this with swiftness and come to our aid no later than September, since you have at your call such flying creatures as you have described to us, which will be much use against the enemy. In utter faith we make this compact with you and take your assent as granted. We have set the table already in anticipation of your arrival, draped as you are in the blessings of the Lord.