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is a boy with neither hands nor lower legs. Somehow, blocks of wood have been
affixed in their place. He crawls around with a bowl in his mouth. Every
cripple over the age of fifteen claims to be a wounded hero of the wars. The
children are the worst. Often they have been maimed deliberately, their limbs
deformed evilly. They are sold to men who then feel they own them because they
feed them a handful of toasted grain every few days.
A new mystery of the city is that men of that stripe seem to run the risk of
cruel tortures and their own careers as deformed beggars. If they do not watch
their backs very, very carefully.
My route took me near one such. He had one arm he could use to drag himself
around. The rest of his limbs were twisted ruins. His bones had been crushed
to gravel but he had been kept alive by a dedicated effort. His face and
exposed skin were covered with burn scars. I paused to place one small copper
in his bowl.
He whimpered and tried to crawl away. He could still see out of one eye.
Everywhere you looked, life proceeded in the unique Taglian fashion. Every
vehicle in motion had people hanging off it, sponging a ride. Unless it was
the ricksha of a rich man, perhaps a banker from Kowlhri Street, who could
afford outrunners armed with bamboo canes to keep people off. Shopkeepers
often sat on top of their tiny counters because there was no other space.
Workmen jogged hither and yon with backbreaking loads, violently cursing
everyone in their way. The people argued, laughed, waved their arms wildly,
simply stepped to the side of the street where no one was lying to defecate
when the need came upon them. They bathed in the water in the gutters,
indifferent to the fact that a neighbor was urinating in the same stream
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fifteen feet away.
Taglios is an all-out, relentless assault upon all the senses but engages none
so much as it does the sense of smell. I hate the rainy season but without its
protracted sluicings-out, Taglios would become untenable even for rats.
Without the rains, the endemic cholera and smallpox would be far worse than
they are--though the rainy times bring outbreaks of malaria and yellow fever.
Disease of every sort is common and accepted stoically.
And then there are the lepers, whose plight gives new depth of meaning to
horror and despair. Never do I find my faith in God so tested as when I
consider the lepers. I am as terrified by them as anyone but I do know enough
about some individuals to realize that very few are being visited by a scourge
they deserve. Unless the Gunni are right and they are paying for evils done in
previous lives.
Up above it all are the kites and crows, the buzzards and vultures. For the
eaters of carrion, life is good. Till the dead wagons come to collect the
fallen.
The people come from everywhere, from five hundred miles, to find their
fortunes. But Fortune is an ugly, two-faced goddess.
When you have lived with her handiwork for half a generation, you hardly
notice anymore. You forget that this is not the way life has to be. You cease
to marvel at just how much evil man can conjure simply by existing.
Chapter 12
The library, created by and bequeathed to the city by an earlier mercantile
prince who was much impressed by learning, strikes me as a symbol of knowledge
rearing up to shed its light into the surrounding darkness of ignorance. Some
of the city's worst slums wash right up against the wall enclosing its ground.
The beggars are bad around its outer gates. Why is a puzzlement. I have never
seen anyone toss them a coin.
There is a gateman but he is not a guard. He lacks even a bamboo cane. But a
cane is unnecessary. The sanctity of the place of knowledge is observed by
everyone. Everyone but me, you might say.
"Good morning, Adoo," I said as the gateman swung the wrought iron open for
me. Though I was a glorified sweeper and fetch-it man, I had status. I
appeared to enjoy the favor of some of the bhadrhalok.
Status and caste grew more important as Taglios became more crowded and
resources grew less plentiful. Caste has become much more rigidly defined and
observed in just the last ten years. People are desperate to cling to the
little that they have already. Likewise, the trade guilds have grown
increasingly powerful. Several have raised small, private armed forces that
they use to make sure immigrants and other outsiders do not trample on their
preserves, or that they sometimes hire out to temples or others in need of
justice. Some of our brothers have done some work in that vein. It generates
revenue and creates contacts and allows us glimpses inside otherwise closed
societies.
Outside, the library resembles the more ornate Gunni temples. Its pillars and
walls are covered with reliefs recalling stories both mythical and historical.
It is not a huge place, being just thirty yards on its long side and sixty [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]