TIMEezine at l'atelier bonita
established since december 2002
ONCE
UPON a
TIME
ezine at l'atelier bonita
established since december 2002
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City of Masks
by Jacob While on a recent trip to Argentina (for dry, academic reasons with which I will not tire the reader) I met a strange woman, beautiful, yet discomfited by all around her, with whom I immediately fell in love. Gabrielle Hernandez was a native of that country, visiting it after a period of some years in Seattle as a Research and Development engineer to a well-known consumer electronics corporation gradually being sold off to superior Asian conglomerates. She suffered my clumsy advances with a mixture of indifference and good humour that goaded me to greater and more futile efforts. I suspect she tolerated my undapper English presence only because she felt an alien in her own land and wished to have the comforting presence of one whose alienness in Buenos Aires was more pronounced than her own. For a week she showed me the sights of the city, pretending not to notice that there was only one sight before my eyes. Then, in the course of a conversation about the merits of Spanish as a literary language, she admitted to being a moderately distant cousin or niece (I forget which) of the legendary writer Jorge Luis Borges. This was enough finally to force my attention away from the speaker towards her words. Did she have any mementoes of him? I enquired hopefully. Letters perhaps? Even a postcard would satisfy my thirst for the great man’s compositions. To my joy she revealed that she was in possession not only of many letters he had sent her over the years, but also an unpublished story that would remain so forever under the articles of Borges’ final will. In ecstasies of anticipation I extracted from the inestimable Gabrielle an invitation to her home to peruse the priceless and hitherto unknown documents. The invite was for the following day and having barely slept I arrived at the gates of Gabrielle’s home half an hour early. Betraying no surprise at my eagerness, and only a small pout at my unusual inability to focus solely upon her, she showed me into a dim, whitewashed study whose single window threw light upon dust and papers intermingled upon their inadequate shelves. She handed me a bundle of letters, tied untidily with string. Standing at the window for a light I reverently perused the words of the Twentieth Century’s greatest man of letters, while Gabrielle left the room to fetch the unpublished story from elsewhere in the house. The prose even of these banal epistles was instantly recognisable as Borgesian and I greedily consumed it, cursing the mediocrity of my Spanish. When Gabrielle entered with the sheaf of papers bearing the promised story however I let the letters fall on the table like so much rubbish. What were inquiries about the family’s health compared to the prose fiction of the master? With my nose to these fresh pages I ignored the faultless female presence lurking behind me and called upon all the Spanish in my possession to decipher this, the only Borges story in fifteen years that I had not read ten times before. The story was titled City of Masks. Its introduction immediately placed it in Baghdad under the Caliphate, in the glorious reign of Harun al-Rashid. That most perfect of despots, required to depart the city in order to intervene in a tedious border dispute, had left it under the guardianship of a trusted wazir by the name of al-Hamid. Before leaving, the ever insightful al-Rashid had pointed out to the wazir that, calm as the city was in those happy days, the most pressing issue he would need to confront would be that of the latest fashion for wearing masks. This tiresome fad of wearing false faces had been waxing for many months under al-Rashid’s nose, but since many of his nobles had adopted the folly in spite of a carefully worded decree to the contrary, it had become increasing difficult to suppress the practice. Al-Rashid trusted that this problem was not beyond the wazir’s abilities to solve. When al-Rashid had departed for the monotonous borderlands, al-Hamid, after some thought and taking appropriate advice, not only negated the aforementioned decree, but issued a new one in its place, stating that every person in the city – rich or poor, Sunni or Shia, male or female – should now wear masks at all times while in public places. With irrefutably logic he argued that the masks would increase the freedom of their wearers, for they would allow them to wear any expression they desired, even before the most high authorities. The poetic citizens of Baghdad responded to this decree with alacrity, thus affirming the authority of the wazir to command the citizenry. All was well for some days, and al-Hamid himself gloried in the richest, most expensive masks in all of Baghdad. His fellow wazirs universally congratulated him on his adoption of such a progressive stance. In those few weeks while al-Rashid was gone the city must have been a strange place indeed for a visitor. Only masks could be seen in every square and marketplace; even in the public bath houses, healthy, toned bodies were topped by some fanciful representation of a king or thief. But the citizens were content; they did indeed feel a certain liberation of their facial expressions, they no longer need pretend that they cared to hear their neighbours’ stories, or show respect for the tax collector. In the presence of a dullard or an officer of the law they could stand without obligation, mask before mask, and allow their minds to wander freely, without fear that indifference would show upon their faces. The comforting peace of the city was tragically soon broken however by the brutal murder of a peacock-feather-faced merchant in an empty bazaar late one night. The man had no enemies, indeed was loved by all who knew him, and had been returning home after an uneventful evening smoking among friends. The city guards were at a loss. This first death was rapidly followed by a series of further murders, each similarly motiveless and hideously perplexing to the authorities. The wazir al-Hamid shouted at his advisors and guards all day, demanding a solution to the murders; but no solution was available, at whatever volume the requests were delivered. The murders continued; at least one, sometimes two or three, every night. The wazir was inconsolable, and feared for his head. When the blessed al-Rashid returned from acts of shrewd decisiveness in the mundane border regions to the now terminally interesting capital city, al-Hamid threw himself at his master’s feet, begging forgiveness for his inability to end the murders. This act may have saved his life. The judicious al-Rashid, on hearing the catalogue of decrees and horrors that had passed in his absence, instantly issued a new decree banning mask-wearing except at special festivals. Overnight the brutal, motiveless murders ceased, and never again were known in Baghdad of old. Hailing al-Rashid for his infinite wisdom, deservedly known to every nation, al-Hamid asked, “O Great one whose astuteness exceeds mine as a mountain to a pebble, how do you now intend to capture the culprit or culprits of the heinous crimes that occurred under my incapable rule?” “I do not intend to capture them,” said the inscrutable al-Rashid. “The murders are over, the problem is solved in spite of your incompetence. Death however is irreversible, so what would you have me do?” “Far be it from me to advise Harun al-Rashid in his indisputable Magnificence,” said al-Hamid, “but will the people not demand justice and revenge?” “If they demand justice I shall send them to the Mosque to request it of God,” said the pitiless al-Rashid. “And if they demand revenge, it may be that I hand to them the only culprit I know: yourself. I advise you therefore to cease this foolish talk of revenge, before a wandering ear overhears and stirs up a mob.” Here the story ended. I had read the whole of it as I stood at the window, with the hovering Gabrielle behind me. At first I had rejoiced in the familiar elegant style, but in time a sense of wrongness had slunk over me. Turning to Gabrielle I looked long and slowly upon her divine form, noting an uncharacteristic nervousness in her fingers. “Why did Borges commit this story to your keeping?” I enquired. She remained silent. “It is not genuine is it? In fact, I would be happy to bet that you wrote this yourself.” “How did you know?” she said witheringly. “The style is admirable,” I pointed out. “Indeed, distinctively Borges; yet the details reveal it to be bogus. A Borges writer, as a Borges reader, must pay attention to the details.” “What ‘details’ are you referring to?” muttered her incomplete American accent. “You quite rightly selected an exotic location for the story,” I said, “And who could find a richer, more evocative location in time than Baghdad under the fabled Harun al-Rashid? Your elementary error however was the introduction of masks. While happy taking liberties with history and biography, the vastly erudite Borges would never have introduced a completely alien object into a culture that knew it not. No Caliph or wazir would have permitted the blasphemous wearing of masks in public; indeed there were no such masks known to the culture of which you write. Borges, you understand, would never have allowed himself such an anachronism, except deliberately, for some specific purpose, which is not here the case.” The inescapable Gabrielle looked downcast for the first time since I had met her. I longed to take her in my pallid arms. “Do you not know the first proverb of the writer?” I said gently. “Write of what you know.” “But I do, I do,” she cried brokenly. “Yet it always comes out so wrong.” And she would not be comforted; or at least, not by me. ©2004, 2005 Jacob |
ONCE
UPON
a TIME
ezine at l'atelier bonita
established
since december 2002