400 Boys and 50 More (23 page)

Images of dangerous beauty, of course these dominate the memory.

But had the scandalized church fathers even looked at half the images they snatched down? What of the street scenes? What of the portraits? These were the people of Bruno's day, the people of any day. Laughing, grieving, beautiful, and disfigured. One was a man who posed for the sculptors of gargoyles, his face hideously contorted by a syndrome which has yet to be named. Then a succession of dark-eyed Magdalens, all of them different yet somehow similar. Bruno’s lovers? I wonder. I wonder that these marvels have survived.

The door creaked and swung open, taking Bruno's captive shadow with it.

“Wait,” I told the keeper. “Just a moment longer. I’m not quite finished yet.”

He peered in at me, puzzled, and shrugged. “As you like. Knock when you're ready.” He shut the door.

I set my lantern on the high window ledge and set it at full radiance. Crouching, I let my eyes rove over the entire surface of the wall. They returned again and again to the door, the praying hands, the profile. A curve of the doorway hid the cuff of Bruno’s sleeve; I moved the lantern slightly to one side so that the entire shadow lay revealed. When I was satisfied, I unsnapped the leather cover on my own camera and peered down into the lens. Bruno’s wall more than filled the ground glass. There was no room to move back, to encompass more of the wall.

I took in a deep breath, let it out, and at the turning of the next inhalation—the moment of greatest stillness in the soul—I triggered the shutter, exposed my image.

One was all I made. Like Bruno, I felt I had one chance.

It was as I approached the door for a final time, to leave the cell, that I noticed faint scratches within the head of Bruno's shadow: lines of poetry, engraved there by the prisoner himself:

“Escaped from the narrow murky prison

Where for so many years error held me straitly,

Here I leave the chain that bound me

And the shadow of my fiercely malicious foe.”

"My fiercely malicious foe
. . .
”

Had he meant the Inquisition or himself?

I sensed the frustration in the scratched handwriting. If only he had been quieter, subtler in his methods, the Church perhaps would have let him go on with his work, even ignored him. Other chiaroscurographers had thrived, albeit on other continents. With time the world might have come to appreciate him. He might not have had to die upon the pyre. But Bruno was Bruno. He could be no one else. And who can escape his own shadow?

Moments later, I stood in the corridor with my camera packed away, my lantern dark, watching the back of the old gatekeeper as he led me out of the prison, amiably chatting the whole way. I did not hear a word he said until we stood nearly on the threshold of the building, when he opened the last great set of doors to let me out onto the street. The noise of the world pressed in, with all its sights and sounds, its complex shadows and harsh images. I wondered what Bruno would have made of this.

I wondered how different this street might have looked today had the Church reconsidered its position in Bruno's hour and let him continue his work—with some modification—under its aegis.

I could not envision it. The lens of time lay focused on this moment to the exclusion of every other. Combustion carriages roared and fumed in the street, terrifying the few remaining horses. I prefer to walk, to take my time in this swiftly changing world, to look for images that seem to embody our progress—and our decline.

The doorman fell silent, as if in sympathy. I turned back to him. He had a good face, skin that held the light. I thought of taking his image as he stood there half in shadow, dwarfed by the huge iron doors. The sun's position was ideal.

“Would you mind?" I said, raising my camera slightly.

His eyes widened. “Are you allowed?”

“Allowed?” I asked, uncovering my ground glass.

“I didn’t think—well, you being the Vatican 'scurographer and all. . . Someone like me is of no importance.”

“On the contrary.” I uncapped the lens. “The sun shines on us all.”

He stood waiting, stiffly posed, his eyes appearing empty as a statue’s in my viewing lens. I wondered how to unlock his face’s expressiveness.

“You know the reason why I've come here today, don’t you?” I asked.

“Not exactly, sir,” he answered, still looking somewhat awkward and expectant.

“I wanted to get a record of Bruno's cell. You see, they’re planning on tearing this old prison down.”

The doorman whistled between his teeth, eyebrows raised. Now there was a look worth capturing. In that instant I exposed the image.

“And what’s to go in its place? Another bank? Will they be needing a doorman, do you think?”

“I imagine so. It's to be a gallery, a museum of art. The Giordano Bruno Institute of Chiaroscurography.”

And with that, I bid him good day.

* * *

“Bruno’s Shadow” copyright 1988 by Marc Laidlaw. First appeared in
Omni Magazine
, August 1988.

YOUR STYLE GUIDE—USE IT WISELY

by Marc Laidlaw

Director, Style Enforcement Agency

WHY A CONVENTIONAL FORMAT?

Your reader has just come out of a Phom McNguyen Shoe Store and is standing on the curb, expecting answers. It is always advisable to make an attempt to link disparate images in order to create the illusion of causality:

·Peering through side window of lowrider car as it waits at stoplight.

·Pulsebeat music, foam dice, soccer scores.

·Clear catheters trail from young driver’s intestines into vinyl dashboard. Gauges register fuel, speed, rpm, blood pressure, heat of digestion, petroglobin viscosity.

Subjectivity is the chief variable, but several constants must be taken into consideration:

F = Feitzer’s Reader Credulity Quotient (calculated by sexual precocity indices and National Debt at date of birth)

A = Avogadro’s Social Security Number

Mister X = Number of times reader has encountered references to faceless technicians in genre literature (Western, Romance, High Finance)

It is important to explain all facts and insinuations, especially those which are most easily accessible in other textual works, for purposes of providing internal coherence to 20th Century Prosody and in order to facilitate cross-referencing careers to 21st Century librarians. Supervisual footnotes are the most acceptable format for such interpolations.

Example:

I never shop at Phom McNguyen’s despite the weekly sales. I am afraid that people might look at my shoes and know that they are a generic brand, or the next worst thing, and not the work of a reputable Italian designer.

Example:

By "lowrider," the author is referring to an automobile, preferably of mid-20th century American manufacture, favored by urban North American Hispanic adolescents, equipped with a mechanized suspension system whereby the relationship of the chassis to the street may be varied by remote control. For social context, ask your librarian to matriculate the glossary.

If you are contractually bound to the conventional design, precede as outlined in Author’s Guide to Plot Concretization published by the National Arts Task Force. For the convenience of such authors, the work has been done for you. Please recast in your own writing, or enter attached soft-mag cartridge into any UPS-compatible text generator with your personal access code and savings account number.

For Manual Entry

·Reader spied by Hispanic driver; laser-guided eyes fix on reader’s tennis shoes; face shows no expression but bioregisters on dashboard betray slight fluctuation.

·Sourceless panic.

·Standard chase.

·Agency intervention. (File Form XT-1023 for list of Agencies possessing Intragenre-Specification license. Unauthorized mention of any Agency, licensed or otherwise, is punishable at discretion of Civil Service Defense League.)

·Enforcement of judgment. If your reader is still permitted access to literature after sentencing, hse may finish the story in hsis own words, expressing sorrow for any ethical-civi1 violations, and include completed work with Form RHB-1134, Plea for Rehabi1itation. Otherwise, drive to next corner and check pedestrian shoes. (GOTO "Riverrunrrex:Joyce". )

Authors who have been granted permission to proceed by a licensed organization (National Semiconductor Foundation for the Arts, President’s Council on Fractal Plot Exploitation, North American Treatise Organization) may continue in accord with principles and intentions as detailed in the approved Proposed Request for Funding. It is advisable (although not enforceable) to employ abstract verbs instead of nouns, and to make liberal use of excessive clauses, empty phrases, promotional sex defects, and dehumanizing slang. Such techniques will give the innovative work a superficial resemblance to standard texts and therefore render it palatable to the general audience.

·Driver nods. Silver-nailed finger lifts from the steering wheel three times.

·Covert code recognition.

·The crowd pushes out around you but you keep your place on the curb, nodding three times back at him.

·He looks away from your shoes.

Obviously the Style Guide cannot follow authors beyond this point. Until the artist files the Provisional Acceptance Form, hse must follow hsis best judgment, as provided by the strictures indicated on all credit allotments.

·Finger the cold plug in your belly; you touch a leak, wishing that it looked more like a sweat stain, wondering who in the crowd can see.

·Shrill brass horns. The sun caught in the cement warren. Oven temperatures.

·Lowrider rumbles and pulls away into traffic.

·Jealousy, you know?

DEALING WITH REJECTION

If the text is rejected, the author must first submit to involuntary screening and accept the possibility of holocortical revision by a qualified editor or hsis editorial consultant. Emotional quotients will be rebalanced to offer increased objectivity, and then recommendations will be made by the PolyDecisional Authority Board. The author at this point may wish to return to the conventional format (see previous instructions), or else hse may further develop the work until it is considered suitable for social integration. Once approval has been granted, the artist has cause to rejoice. (See form RJC- 465. )

·The light changes back to red. Trapped again.

·Another lowrider pulls alongside you. Driver glances out.

·You decide to make contact.

WHAT HAPPENS TO THE TEXT AFTER ACCEPTANCE?

For the dedicated artist, this may be the most difficult phase of creation: artifactual collaboration. An acceptable text is immediately distributed nationwide and judged for applicability by a wide range of media utilities, including cinevideo inducers, sociocultivators, satellite principalities, light rail surgeons, hive designers, rheological medics, extermination surveyors, and UPS-compatible academicians. All of these departments and many others are required by law to put your text to work.

·The finger lifts three times from the wheel.

As the social order encounters your text, facilitators will first reduce it to the basic constituents, then "predigest" any content for maximum bioavailability. A consumable product may take the form of a mass-marketed "Eat&Learn" planarian diet, or it could be as homely as a mandatory printed-wall feature. There can surely be no thrill to compare with that of the author whose work has been injected into the economy, to become part of every citizen’s neutral baseline status.

·You give three nods.

WRITER’S BLOCK

This maladaptive syndrome has become less common in recent years. At one time, authors stated that the sight of a sheet of blank paper waiting to be filled was an obstacle to the first stroke of creation. We have tried to remedy this problem by providing a plethora of forms and flow-sheets, many of which are already at least partially completed for the author’s convenience. In addition, there are many public domain programs designed to break the seemingly endless sheet of ice represented by 93.5 square inches of white paper.

·The light changes.

For further information, file Form PTW-109 (Permission to Write), or present your Querent’s License Number to the Style Enforcement Agency. Please check the Information Etiquette Access Guide for your social classification and save yourself time and money by making sure that your question is not forbidden before you ask it.

·Ah, brotherhood!

·You step down from the curb.

·"I have a message—”

·Squeal of tires, stench of burning rubber.

·Spiderwork cracks infiltrate your vision as your windshield eyes shatter.

·You’re not my reader, and you never were—

USER INTERRUPT

USER INTERRUPT

BUDGETARY VIOLATION

BUDGETARY VIOLATION

TRAGIC RESTRICTION 7998

TRAGIC RESTRICTION 7998

THIS WORKSTATION HAS BEEN REVOKED

THIS WORKSTATION HAS BEEN REVOKED

* * *

"Your Style Guide - Use It Wisely" copyright 1989 by Marc Laidlaw. First appeared in
Semiotext[e] SF
(1989), edited by Rudy Rucker, Peter Lamborn Wilson and Robert Anton Wilson.

MARS WILL HAVE BLOOD

“Too much ichor,” said red-faced Jack Magnusson, scowling into a playbook. “The whole tragedy is sopping in it. Blood, blood, blood. No, it won’t do for a student production. We’re not educating little vampires here.”

“That remains to be seen,” said Nora Sherman, the English office head. She stared into Magnusson’s round obsidian paperweight, which he had pushed to the center of the table. Little Mr. Dean’s hand kept darting toward it and receding.

Magnusson, the chairman of Blackstone Intermediate School’s Ethics Advisory Committee, threw the playbook at Steve Dean, who was sometimes mistaken for a student. Dean flinched but caught it.

“Well, Jack . . .”