The Book of the New Sun

“Melito believes me much cleverer than I am,” the blond man rumbled. “I had no such thoughts. What matters now is not land or skins or gold, but who tells the best tale. And I, who know many, have told the best I know. It is true as he says that I might share my family's property when my father dies. But my unmarried sisters will have some part too for their marriage portions, and only what remained would be divided between my brother and myself. All that matters nothing, because I would not take Foila to the south, where life is so hard. Since I have carried a lance I have seen many better places.”

Foila said, “I think your Uncle Gundulf must have loved Nennoc very much.”

Hallvard nodded. “He said that too while he lay bound. But all the men of the south love their women. It is for them that they face the sea in winter, the storms and the freezing fogs. It is said that as a man pushes his boat out over the shingle, the sound the bottom makes grating on the stones is my wife, my children, my children, my wife.”

I asked Melito if he wanted to begin his story then; but he shook his head and said that we were all full of Hallvard's, so he would wait and begin next day. Everyone then asked Hallvard questions about life in the south and compared what they had learned to the way their own people lived. Only the Ascian was silent. I was reminded of the floating islands of Lake Diuturna and told Hallvard and the others about them, though I did not describe the fight at Baldanders's castle. We talked in this way until it was time for the evening meal.

The Pelerine

By the time we had finished eating, it was beginning to get dark. We were always quieter then, not only because we lacked strength, but because we knew that those wounded who would die were more liable to do so after the sun set, and particularly in the deep of the night. It was the time when past battles called home their debts. In other ways too, the night made us more aware of the war. Sometimes — and on that night I remember them particularly — the discharges of the great energy weapons blazed across the sky like heat lightning. One heard the sentries marching to their posts, so that the word watch, which we so often used with no meaning beyond that of a tenth part of the night, became an audible reality, an actuality of tramping feet and unintelligible commands. There came a moment when no one spoke, that lengthened and lengthened, interrupted only by the murmurings of the well — the Pelerines and their male slaves — who came to ask the condition of this patient or that. One of the scarlet-clad priestesses came and sat by my cot, and my mind was so slow, so nearly sleeping, that it was some time before I realized that she must have carried a stool with her.

“You are Severian,” she said, “the friend of Miles?”

“Yes.”

“He has recalled his name. I thought you would like to know.” I asked her what it was.

“Why, Miles, of course. I told you.”

“He will recall more than that, I think, as time goes by.” She nodded. She seemed to be a woman past middle age, with a kindly, austere face. “I am sure he will. His home and family.”

“If he has them.”

“Yes, some do not. Some lack even the ability to make a home.”

“You're referring to me.”

“No, not at all. Anyway, that lack is not something the person can do something about. But it is much better, particularly for men, if they have a home. Like the man your friend talked about, most men think they make their homes for their families, but the fact is that they make both homes and families for themselves.”

“You were listening to Hallvard, then.”

“Several of us were. It was a good story. A sister came and got me at the place where the patient's grandfather made his will. I heard all the rest. Do you know what the trouble was with the bad uncle?

With Gundulf?”

“I suppose that he was in love.”

“No, that was what was right with him. Every person, you see, is like a plant. There is a beautiful green part, often with flowers or fruit, that grows upward toward the sun, toward the Increate. There is also a dark part that grows away from it, tunneling where no light comes.”

I said, “I have never studied the writings of the initiates, but even I am aware of the existence of good and evil in everyone.”

“Was I speaking of good and evil? It is the roots that give the plant the strength to climb toward the sun, though they know nothing of it. Suppose that some scythe, whistling along the ground, should sever the stalk from its roots. The stalk would fall and die, but the roots might put up a new stalk.”

“You are saying that evil is good.”

“No. 1 am saying that the things we love in others and admire in ourselves spring from things we do not see and seldom think about. Gundulf, like other men, had the instinct to exercise authority. Its proper growth is the founding of a family — and women, too, have a similar instinct. In Gundulf that instinct had long been frustrated, as it is in so many of the soldiers we see here. The officers have their commands, but the soldiers who have no command suffer and do not know why they suffer. Some, of course, form bonds with others in the ranks. Sometimes several share a single woman, or a man who is like a woman. Some make pets of animals, and some befriend children left homeless by the struggle.” Remembering Casdoe's son, I said, “I can see why you object to that.”

“We do not object — most certainly not to that, and not to things vastly less natural. I am only speaking of the instinct to exercise authority. In the bad uncle it made him love a woman, and specifically one who already possessed a child, so there would be a larger family for him as soon as there was a family for him at all. In that way, you see, he would have regained some part of the time he had lost.” She paused, and I nodded.

“Too much time, however, had been lost already; the instinct broke out in another way. He saw himself as the rightful master of lands he only held in trust for one brother, and the master of the life of the other. That vision was delusive, was it not?”

“I suppose so.”