into my quarters, I want to talk.’ He agreed. Amiably enough. I felt it as a kind of indifference. And while we walked to my verandah that I had built to overlook the gardens and the sea, I thought what that ‘we* could mean.
We sat, I clapped my hands for refreshments and I looked for signs of impatience in my son and thought that I saw them. It was some time since we had talked. Years, I think. This was because when we did talk I always felt I was knocking on a locked door.
‘Bora,’ I said, ‘there will be no more gardens, or projects for buildings, or anything at all. You must know we have been denied labour, except for field work.’
At this he turned on me eyes which seemed puzzled. He even scratched his head, an oafish gesture he had certainly never learned from us, his parents.
‘But we are building the wall. That will be a fine sight, when it’s done.’
‘Hut the wall won’t make fields and gardens and dams. There is need for labour for maintenance. The silos are dilapidating. The roads are too.’
‘Well, we’ll attend to it.’
That we again.
‘Bora, DeRod has never repaired anything, mended anything, planted so much as a tree.’
Again he seemed to be working something out. ‘But Father, everyone admires DeRod. When we had the Feast of Praise for him all the armies were singing about the new garden and the new silos too.’
I understood. It was such a blow to my sense of probability: Bora believed - they all believed - that DeRod was the originator of wonderful accomplishments.
‘Why didn’t you come to the ceremony? It was noticed. You and the old gang never do come.’
‘Were we sent invitations?’
And now he was openly irritated. ‘Since when did the old ones need invitations.’
‘The Twelve,’ I said. ‘The Council of Twelve. The ones that look after The Cities.’
‘But you are family,’ he said. ‘You are part of The Family.’
I had not heard that term.
‘Now, listen to me,’ I said, ‘It’s important that you should understand: And I listed our achievements over the past few cycles. ‘This is what we did. The Twelve. Not DeRod. And now we cannot get on with the work we should be doing.’
‘Well, it’s all part of the same show,’ he said at last.
I did not know how to counter this, how to explain. Instead I saw the heart, the very heartbeat, of our complaint. The festivals of songs and tales. Bora would remember all that. He would have to. He was brought up with it. I did not often talk to his wife, who was a decent enough woman, though without any depth to her, because when talking about anything but the children or practical things I met with incomprehension. Bora did not meet me with the perfect understanding of shared experience. But it was not with her ignorance, her blankness.
‘When DeRod abolished the old festivals,’ I said, knowing my voice was full of bitterness, ‘he killed the heart and soul of The Cities.’
‘But we have festivals,’ he said. ‘There was a big army rally and there were some fine songs.’ And on his face appeared a grin, as if he were laughing with some accomplice I could not see. ‘We’ve got some great new songs.’
‘Bora,’ I said, ‘don’t do this. You must remember. It was different then - wasn’t it?’
He screwed his face up, he leaned forward, his forearms on his thighs, as if about to jump up and go off. He gave me glances he was not trying to conceal. He knew what I was talking about. I could see that at some time, probably when offered a job in DeRod’s armies, he had come to some accommodation with his conscience, if not his memory.
‘I don’t see the point of that,’ he said. ‘But that was then. And the old gang did it well. I’m not denying it.’
‘The old gang - your grandmother, the great Destra, and the Council of Twelve.’
‘But DeRod was part of all that, wasn’t he?’
He did not know just how painful a question this was. How often had I tried to remember just how much DeRod had been part of it. I could remember him singing. Not the storytelling, though: he had no aptitude for that. To what extent had he been part of it?
Bora got up, ending k.
‘[ don’t see what you are worrying about,’ he said.
It was shortly after that he too built himself a wing to retire into and my grandson, Ins son, became head of the household, this young man brought disgrace on the family, which was after all DeRod’s too, because he chose a wife his father, Bora, told him he would not acknowledge. She was a Barbarian from one of the cities over the mountains, captured as loot. She was beautiful in their wild immodest way, and had been a dancer in one of the taverns. My grandson was wild, mocked his father and mother, and earned his living buying and selling the unwanted babies of the new immigrants, the Barbarians. He did until DeRod heard of the marriage, and that his father had disowned him. DeRod gave him a job as supplier to the armies, where he makes his living still just on the edge of legality. Bora does not speak to either his son or his daughter-in-law.
This new woman, Raned, has achieved what every Barbarian girl wants, marriage with a citizen, and, in her case, into the leading family. If my grandson had not been such a poor type of fellow he would have aimed higher, perhaps at one of DeRod’s descendants. When challenged - by me - he babbled and boasted about love. In my experience love doesn’t come so cheap, though I have to say she is a beautiful thing. And there is more. She had none of the manners used by us - I should say, once used by us - and is free and easy with everyone, and thinks nothing of running up to me as I wander in the gardens to show me some garment she had acquired or made for her children - my great-grandchildren - or to tell me in her pretty voice that seems to sing some of the gossip from the lower town. I knew I could easily be in love with her myself. I thought her too good for my grandson. One day
