The Night of the Swarm

31

I see them sometimes, in the lanes and gardens of this academical village, this haven untouched by war. Among the lecture halls in red brick and green marble, the rose beds and Buriav lilacs, there suddenly will shamble Fiffengurt, scowling, kindly, pushing a pram with a burbling daughter, studying the path before him with his one true eye. A little further, and there is Big Skip Sunderling carving meat in the butcher’s shop, up to his elbows in the job as always, happily a mess. Neda Pathkendle I have seen at the archery range, a strong, straight-backed woman of forty, teaching students to use a killing tool as a kind of diversion, a means of disciplining hand and eye, a game. I have seen Teggatz in a doctor’s coat, Bolutu pushing a broom, Lady Oggosk in the tavern where the fire is never lit, cloudy eyes on the window, eating alone.

They do not know me, of course; or if they do they know the professor whose reputation is so odd and dubious that all familiarity is feigned, A very good day to you, sir, and how are you enjoying this fine summer morn? I don’t like it when they speak to me. Not their fault, of course, but whoever could have guessed that in telling their story I should also be al icted with their faces, that a girl in her first student year would glance up from her book and pierce me with Thasha’s beauty, those questing eyes, that hunger for experience, for change?

Nilus Rose teaches physics in the Advanced Science Building; Marila storms by in a barrister’s robes; Ignus Chadfallow haunts the faculty club in the guise of the eldest waiter, who will tell you softly that food is not an entertainment but a sacrament, that the rice dishes are superior to the soups. Pazel has made but one appearance, at twilight on the wooded path behind the graveyard, hand in hand with an ethereal beauty whose face was not familiar at all.

They are here until they speak, or until I look a second time, until I summon the memories that sweep phantoms away. Sometimes I will look for them, when I am grumpy and tired of solitude, when living for the past seems less noble than cowardly, a betrayal of the warm blood still in me, a waste. The old spook at the faculty club, who is almost a friend, asked once if I didn’t also see myself about the school? Oh yes, frequently, I answered, and let it go at that. He is a gentleman; he assumes that I am sane. What would become of that charity, if he knew where my own doppelgangers appeared? The flash in the alley, the desperate little life, always hungry, always hunted, with senses too sharp for his own happiness, addicted to dreams that call him, nearer, ever nearer, dreams that terrify when they seem most true.