The Tyrant's Novel Read Free

as I need you. I imagine grandchildren I may never have asking, What did you say when the government locked up the asylum seekers? And my grown daughter, their mother, can at least say, Well, he visited Alan. He made an attempt. He went to the detainees.
    I don't like that word, said Alan.
Detainees.
    Neither do I, Alan.
    He said, Alice said those things about me because she thought it meant something. A human touch, I suppose. I wish it meant what she thinks it means. She is an innocent girl.
    In our terms, I told him, she's worldly.
    He made a balancing gesture with his hand, indicating either that innocence and worldliness were mixed in her, or else that my idea of both qualities didn't match his. He said, I decided while I was ill that I wanted to tell my story. I thought I would tell you. In confidence. You are not kiss-and-tell. I do not wish to kiss you anyway.
    He laughed.
    I'm relieved, I said.
    And I don't want to kiss Alice either. Though she likes to think so. If I touch her wrist, I do it to be courtly. What's another word for silly?
    Useless? Futile?
    Futile. My English has gone off a bit. It was better, or seemed better, in the old days. I translated my own prose.
    Oh? I said.
    But he covered his eyes. He didn't want to talk about that.
    He savored the word. He said,
Futile.
    A crow flew above the nearby bush, mourning dryly.
    You like to talk man-to-man, said Alan. I like fellows who enjoy gossip but have obviously managed to keep secrets. You're that sort of man.
    I conceded, I've kept a lot of secrets. Though it's hard to do so when they have a good punch line at the end of them.
    Punch line? This hasn't a punch line, he assured me. And you won't keep this secret forever, but long enough. You'll want to tell it in the end. Because it is the saddest and the silliest.
    So he began.

A tyrant builds up around him more titles than the most slavish subject could possibly utter or remember. Tyrants abound in superlatives. Chosen One, Commander-in-Chief, Regulator of Laws, Supreme Judge, Overchief. If the tyrant goes on naming himself with names implying broad power and intimate connection with the people, he will come up in the end with a title which can be used ironically. In my land,
Great Uncle
was it. Everyone remembered that one. Great Uncle of the People. I suggest you call him Ian Stark, since Stark is a name associated with tribalism and toughness, and he came from a tribal, tough background—the clan symbol of five dots was incised on Great Uncle's wrist.
    Great Uncle was, as the name implies, both kindly and justly severe. Imagine you're far back, two hundred years ago, when in the West the bodies of criminals were displayed. Not a long time ago, two hundred years. Remember that then when I say it happened in my home city, when Mrs. Douglas's nephew was so displayed for wronging Great Uncle. The nephew was in charge of the fountains and swimming pools at the Bellevue Palace, and Great Uncle had not spent any time there for the past two months. The chlorine and pH levels had built up under Mrs. Douglas's nephew, whose mind was on a particular soldier's wife living two streets from the Bellevue's broad, lion-engraved gate. Great Uncle made a surprise visit to Bellevue one afternoon and began to swim in his pool—his favorite exercise now that his hip and back were said to be playing up. He came out of the water with a rash between the legs. Various members of the Overguard stood above Mrs. Douglas's miscreant nephew while the pH levels were tested, and then he was taken in a van to Wolfmount, the prison, and shot dead, and his naked corpse displayed from the ramparts of the place. Wolfmount was often called the Palace of Disappearance, but the nephew's body was all too visible. He would have better been employed in California, where clients, though litigious, do not usually resort to capital punishment for a high pH. Not that Great Uncle or any of the Overguard gave an explanation of why the well-molded