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Chapter Text

Dear Biffa:

I hope this letter finds you well. Half a year ago, I moved to Wales to make up for an empty space in the Glamorgan town hall. From the chit-chats I heard from disabled soldiers, widowed wives and orphans, the old magistrate who just passed away used to be a tactician working for the military. Instead of staying at Europe to fight back the French revolutionists, he looked upon Uncle Sam’s city on the hill with ambitious eyes. But the seemingly benevolent federal eagle had no great tenderness, even in her best of moods, and, sooner or later, -oftener soon than late, -is apt to butcher her enemies, with a scratch of her stained claw, a dab of her iron beak, or a rankling wound from her barbed arrows. He came back with his right leg amputated, and spent the rest of his life in this small, crowded town hall where I am at. And now, I sit in his chair that squeaks every time I move, write with his pen in which the dullness flows but inspiration clogs, and deal with problems that he used to face.

In the attic, at one corner of my room, are a number of barrels, piled one upon another, containing bundles of official documents. In this graveyard, large quantities of more similar rubbish lie unburied, lumbering the floor. It is sorrowful to think how many days and weeks and months and years of toil have been wasted on these dead papers, which are now only an encumbrance of earth, and hidden away in this forgotten, dusty place, never more to be glanced by human eyes. But, as the magistrate’s successor, I felt an obligation to read over all of them again, and organize them into, if not correct, at least pleasant-to-the-eye categories.

The tedious process continued for months. One idle and cloudy day, I was fortunate to make a discovery of some little interest. Aside from all the other paper works, there hid a piece of bloodstained cloth, carefully folded in a roll of loose papers, which to me seemed to be diaries of the magistrate himself. I could hardly imagine how fresh blood once made it sticky and putrid, and how, in the battlefield of New England, now United States this artifact has witnessed shrieks of cannons and barrels. Against my instinct, I spread the cloth in my hands, soon realizing it was either a bandanna or a bandage, with a letter “E” embroidered curiously in cursive, a work of delicate skills. In the scarlet pond, the capital letter remained silver, and when I hold it up to the stained glass panes, it glowed faintly as if the luminescent mushrooms at night.

For the words that the magistrate put down, it was merely a war record of what happened in 1812. If you have read any of those expedition reports that once were popular a century ago, like the one wrote by Spanish conquistador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, or fictional tales like Gulliver’s Travels, you would be familiar with the style he wrote. Now, my friend, I know it would be ridiculous if I tell you I have been seeing a phantom after I started reading the record, and you can choose not to believe me. But even when I’m writing to you right now, I can see a short-figured young man sitting on the table in a blood red sweater. His eyes are fatigued in dark chunks of chaos, but his legs are all-right, and sometimes he talks to me. “Do this, Xisuma,” said the ghost of Mr. Magistrate Grian, swinging his head and legs as if a marionette manipulated by invisible strings, “do this, and the profit shall all be yours! I charge you, in this matter of old General Etho, give him, and the other three generals the credit which will be rightfully due!” And I said to the ghost of Mr. Magistrate Grian, “I will!”

I have attached my handwritten copies of the war record in the envelope. On the occasion that you ran out of poems to read during your afternoon tea, I would kindly request you to read over this autobiographical record. It had been my subject of meditations for many an hour, while pacing to and fro across my room, or traversing, with a hundred-fold repetition, the long extent from the front-door of the town hall to the side-entrance, and back again. I doubt the record, like other bodies in the corner, would ever have been brought to the public eye. But to you I share this tale, of a British captive chief of staff, and four American generals.

Regards,

Xisuma

March 16, 1850

Chapter Text

It is a good lesson - though it may often be a hard one - for a man who has always dreamed of military fame, and of making for himself a rank among the world’s dignitaries by such means, to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized, and to find how utterly devoid of significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at. In the end of August 1812, I learned this lesson by being taken captive in the siege of Detroit, there I spent months with three American generals, and experienced, if not the darkest, the most fretful days of my life.

I was a chief of staff to general “Mumbo Jumbo,” a tall, bulky man who worked his way up from a grenadier. He was rich in emotions - his mustache wiggled every time he excited himself with news and strategies; the impulse and passion were both his strong suits and his weaknesses. A famous figure he was among the British army - mostly for his character and moniker rather than his actual battle achievements. I learned to bear his odd temper before learning his commanding habits, training myself day and night to try to understand this illiterate offspring of a winemaker. Like most generals, he despised the Indian troops which I value as precious allies, but eventually he became skilled at respecting them, and together we made remarkable progresses.

At the start of July we captured Cayahoga, an American vessel of a troop lead by Commander Etho “Slab” who was famous for his crafty strategies, and with the vessel we captured hundreds of the soldiers, including the commander. Of all the woes of luckless poverty none is harder to endure than this, that is exposes men to ridicule. But at first sight, I could tell his noble and heroic qualities which showed it to be not by a mere accident, but of good right, that he had won a distinguished name. Comparing him to “Mumbo Jumbo” would be that of Belisarius to Gelimer, Scipio to Hannibal, Odysseus to Polyphemus, Aztec gold to a Canadian diamond. The heat that had formerly pervaded his nature, and which was not yet extinct, was never of the kind that flashes and flickers in a blaze, but, rather, a deep, red glow, as of iron in a furnace - it was not in this man to give out or fail. Weight, solidity, firmness; this was the expression of Etho’s response, even in such a decay as had crept ultimately over him, at the period of which I spoke and interrogated.

It was not surprising a failure to try to get information from Etho. But General Mumbo was at rage, and he would abuse all things he in front of him - he scrolled notes and scrap papers into balls and shoot them at his door, then he took of his cocked hat and smashed in on the desk; soon the stimulation was not enough to satisfy his appetite, and he pulled out his bayonet to pierce through his own armour. “You are too soft an interrogator, Grian,” he got drunk on whisky whenever he was frustrated, “why don’t we torture him and threaten to kill all the other American dogs?” Silently and soberly I would turn away from his dancing mustache, not willing to admit that, I had tried everything I could, -and there were already hundreds of wounds on the commander’s skin, under his smeared uniform that was once exquisite, -kept as my deepest secret from public sight. No drugs, nor conjuration, nor sweet wine nor fine words, nothing in the world made Etho “Slab” yield.

As I failed General Mumbo’s expectations, our relationship deteriorated rapidly in a few days. Ironically, I still held my pride as a tactician. Etho’s virtue is only excellent in the dangerless Academy of Plato, but mine will show forth her honourable face in the battles of Marathon, Pharsalia, Poiters and Agincourt. I had proven my superiority in the first place, by capturing him and his soldiers; and not just my dominance, but the pride of Britain, the honour of the Queen - something these American barbarians could never hang on to. While constantly being humiliated publicly by the General, I did the exact same thing to Commander Etho, but in private and more severe. The weather was harsh in 1812, and we experienced an extremely short summer; still, it was longer than the General’s affection, and the Commander’s life. In the foggy morning of August 19, I found the granite stairs more slippery than usual. Walking past all the soldiers, at the end of the corridor, when I opened the wooden door with my key, I saw Etho’s head tilted to one side, body merely held by the loose straps on the seat, as if Jacques-Louis David’s painting of Jean-Paul Marat, the dead French revolutionist. The foreign mist shrouded him gently, with morning dew dripping from strands of his hair, as if, the softhearted Eos mourned for him, and shed her tears above Detroit.

This discovery ended his misery, and also my torture. Irrational ecstasy controlled me, for the General would no longer blame me, and I could declare to the American captives the death of their beloved Commander, though it better be kept confidential. I called one of the guards, a young man which I did not know of, to notify General Mumbo of an emergency. I perceived the same rapture and excitement flitting across his eyes; red spread his cheeks, ears, and neck, but I silenced him with an index finger on my dry lips. As I heard the unsteady steps echoing further away, I felt myself justified in - which I did - taking off his stained bandanna, and keeping it as an exhibition, a blazon of victory over the dead. But when I untied the cloth, a trident-like symbol stung my eyes: despite covered by blood, it was still silver, an  “E” in cursive: in the end, for eternity, an emblem that the enlightenment of humanity was slowly fading from my mind. I abused my enemy to death - and now the blemish was ironed forever on my sinful soul. It seemed to me, then, that I experienced a sensation altogether physical, yet almost so, as of icing cold; and as if the letter was not of silver cloth, but iron blade. I shuddered, and involuntarily let it fall upon the mossy floor, feeling December snow fall on my shoulder.

This matter bothered me constantly, whenever I was awake, pondering whose life was not the subject of respect, and thinking of mothers that lost their children, wives that lost their husbands, orphans that lost their parents, and the mourning dove that called for her partner that day when General Mumbo went hunting. It was hard of utterance, and misty to be conceived, a thorny question that would even prick the moral philosophers with books thick as bricks in their hands and knowledge rich like stars in the night sky, and make them bleed. I stood apart from mortal interests, yet close beside them, like ghost that revisits the familiar fireside, and can no longer make itself seen or felt; no more smile with the joy in battles, nor mourn with the numbing sorrow.

But the real purifying of wit, the enriching of memory, enabling of judgement, and enlarging of conceit, which commonly we call learning, in my case epiphany, came to me beginning from when I was captured with some fifty soldiers by the Americans shortly after this incident. Alone under escort, I was taken to three generals of the Americans: General “B-Double-O,” in command of Cavalry, General “Vintage Beef,” in command of Infantry, and finally, General “Doc Seventy-Seven” in command of Artillery. They were of very different heritages, and possessed personalities even richer than General Mumbo. I lived among the American troops for two months before their shirts were not thick enough to fight the cold, and the leaves turned red, the geese migrated, and the final negotiation was made between the besieged Detroit and the tired attackers. But for now, the subject should be the three Generals, as they are of great importance to the incident in the end of my captive life.

It was not difficult to recognize that General “B-Double-O,” which the other Generals refer to as “Bdubs” shortly, was born in purple and well educated. The loud, coarse voice and the outwardly short temper were merely disguises he put over the actual fertileness of his wit, when he was engaged in any private conversations with other Generals, he exercised his speech sometimes like a philosopher, other times a pastor giving sermons, but none of his words were pedantry. He said soldiers were the noblest estate of mankind, and horsemen the noblest of soldiers. He said they were the masters of war and ornaments of peace, speedy goers and strong abiders, triumphers both in camps and in courts. Then, if not interrupted by General “Doc Seventy-Seven” with a long debate, would he add certain praises by telling what a peerless beast the horse was, the only serviceable courtier without flattery, the beast of most beauty, faithfulness, courage, and such more. If I had not been reading and thinking before I came to him, he would have persuaded me, or anyone, to have wished themselves a soldier under him, or a horse.

It was also him, on his precious horse, Mi Amore, with a spyglass, who saw our troops and decided to charge at us. His courage was no slighter than Michel Ney, Napoleon’s Marshal of the Empire, who was lauded by the emperor with the honourary title of “the bravest of the brave.” He was a person of art, too, with rich knowledge in poetry from Homer to Milton, and sometimes composed his own. In personal contact, I found him being the most polite of the three Generals, and perhaps in relationship the closest to Commander Etho “Slab;” perchance, after a lighthearted discourse, in a manner that would not provoke any discomfort, he would ask thoughtfully about their missing friend, Commander Etho, and sigh after I made up lies like a poet who talks about a brazen world with gold words: “He is captured! I can’t believe such a thing would happen. We need him - I mean, I need him. In horsemanship only he comes close to me, and my skills are getting rusty without him.”

General “Vintage Beef,” on the other hand, seemed less prudent about his words. What impressed me was his ability to recollect the good dinners which it had made no small portion of the happiness of his life to eat. Of Basque heritage, his ancestors fished whales on the sea, and he was raised a butcher before going to the army. Deer antlers piled up around his camp, indistinguishable from firewood - he often went hunting, and brought back some extra food, with a luscious, fresh wind from the pines. His gourmandism was a highly agreeable trait; and to hear him talk of roast meat was as appetizing as a pickle or an oyster. His reminiscences of good cheer, however ancient the date of the actual banquet, seemed to bring the savor of pig or turkey under one’s very nostrils - to me, oftentimes it was tormenting, since as captives we only got hardened breads, and sometimes maizes, to uphold our basic needs. As a leader, he possessed a high attribute too in military works, and often devoted his energy and ingenuities to his men. God had a gift endowed in him that made him talented in giving speeches, that was, always being able to cheer people up, regardless of the desperate situations.

I always found myself losing to General Beef, if unfortunately, we had started a debate. He was not knowledgeable enough to realize that he was using the Socratic method, but his arguments were hard to object to, like those made by Socrates and Plato. He hid his hostility to me cleverly, but stressed every time that they wanted Commander Etho back. On an occasion when, a nervous young soldier imagined thoughtlessly about the case when the British army would not release Commander Etho, General Beef asked rhetorically: “Ha! What do you think will happen? First off, the captives are all going to hell, then we’re going to war!” Still, one night he opened my cell with fine Caribbean rum and a roasted chicken leg, and frantically he asked about his younger cousin, who he referred to as “Pauls” and was on that vessel with Commander Etho. But fortune was not his side; I was able to picture this valiant young man in my head with all the lifelike fractions the General provided, but had no impression of this captive among the hundreds. Oddly, Pauls and other captives, like dandelion seeds in the wind, it was as if, in the first place, they had never existed at all.

I had the most trouble with General “Doc Seventy-Seven,” a very well-built tall man at the age of thirty-five, one who got his moniker for teaching himself philosophy and history. It seemed to me that this man did not receive proper education, but his autodidactic nature made him more knowledgeable than some professors in many cases. He had slain men with his own hand for ought I know, -certainly they had fallen, without much struggle, like blades of grass at the sweep of the scythe. As a Prussian descendant, he had all the unyielding militarism passed from the Soldier King, Frederick William I; with a heavy accent he commanded, and soldiers respected him greatly with the fear of his strict rules and harsh punishments. He always seemed away from people, although we saw him but a few yards off; remote, though soldiers passed close beside his seat; unattainable, though one might have stretched forth their hands and touched his own. Only, when General Bdubs or General Beef passed by, and threw banters directly at General Doc, would the ice in his chest melt for the duration of a conversation. “You’d better treat your boys fairer,” jokingly said General Beef, “if you want something nice on your epitaph.” Smiling, General Doc responded: “I would rather have them dread me, than watch them fall like morons!”

General Doc’s outright animosity was sharp as blade, branding my sin afresh into my soul, though he knew not what vice I had committed. Histories which he learned from and based his success on, being captived to the truth of a foolish world, was many times a terror from well-doing, and an encouragement to unbridled wickedness. Being well aware of his frailty, he thus again underlined the importance of Commander Etho: “Our wickedness makes Etho necessary, and necessity makes him honourable.” Paradoxically, when his eyes were fed with the appearance of wild flowers, I also found a trait of native elegance, seldom seen in the masculine character after childhood or early youth - an experienced soldier might be supposed to prize only the bloody laurel on his brow; but here was one who seemed to have a young girl’s appreciation of the floral tribe. To me he never showed any mercy, and had always threatened to use violence on the captives, though he never did. “You are only alive,” in a rough voice he warned me, “because we will be trading you for Etho!” And I had schooled myself long and well; I never responded to any of his, or his soldiers’ attacks, save by a flush of crimson that rose irrepressibly and clear over my ears and cheeks.

Continually, and in a thousand other ways, did I feel the innumerable throbs of anguish that had been so cunningly contrived for me by the undying, the ever-active death sentence of Commander Etho which was delivered with my own hands. It seemed to argue so wide a diffusion of my shame, that, although it be a secret to the Americans, all nature knew of it; it had caused me a deeper pang, as if the leaves of the trees whispered the dark story among themselves, the summer breeze murmured about it, and the thunder blast shrieked it aloud. I suffered from my own sin, and gutlessly kept it to myself, that I was the filthy murderer of the admired Commander Etho, whom his comrades pined for his return! The sight of the three Generals, who optimistically imagined that Commander Etho was still alive as a captive, gradually became intolerable for me, and I knew my death would befall me soon.

From first to last, I had always this dreadful agony in feeling a human eye upon me, looking through me, perchance seeing the cloth with the silver letter, carefully hidden in my pocket. The spot never grew callous; it seemed, on the contrary, to grow more sensitive with daily torture. Surrounded by gloom, I thought of committing suicide a many times in my solitary fantasies - dying, and being held as a martyr by my allies. It would not happen - for, when the Americans find the silver letter on my body, I believed they would behead as if I was the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell, whose head stayed displayed outside Westminster Hall for decades. But sometimes, very occasionally, I felt an eye - from General Bdubs - upon my ignominious shade, that seem to give a momentary relief, as if half of my agony was shared. The next instant, back it all rushed again, with still a deeper throb of pain; for, in that brief interval, I had sinned anew.

The poor negotiation between Detroit and the Americas went on and on, and finally it was proved fruitless in an autumn day. Indeed, General Mumbo’s army was not able to provide a satisfactory solution, for I killed their chance of reconciliation, and my hope to live. Commander Etho was wrongly put to death, like Miltiades, like Socrates, like Severus, as if no doubt, by origin, occidendos esse (note: “that they must fall”). Soon, as we began to feel more insecure, one of the English captives cried to me with a face pale as a dead man, knowing not it was me who induced the predicament: “Officer Grian, save us! Our doom is here! They will kill us all!” But I gazed back at him feverishly, that my torture had ultimately come to an end, and, lying to myself, I was convinced that my death would be glorified, as it were, a worthy sacrifice. My wordless expression inflicted great horror in him, as he screamed and tried to run away, only to be beaten up and laughed at by another American soldier. Soon, the rumour spread, that the execution would befall us in a day or two; the American soldiers seemed more frequently drunk on rum or whiskey, and the three Generals disappeared from sight.

At some inevitable moment, will the branded soul of the sinner be dissolved, and flow forth in a dark, but transparent stream, bringing all its secrets into the daylight. From the tiny, dark cell room, I could hear from outside a sort of celebration, if not catharsis, with laughter, shrieks, so much the sorcerers’ anathemas in some unknown tongue, and see shadows flickering on the wall like ghosts. I harkened in the midnight a generous utterance echoing through the hall, that called all the guards, too, to join the feast and repose. My mind, alarmed by General Vintage Beef’s return, exhausted from the uncertain threats, and heavily burdened by a fearful guilt, forced my body to faint before the sounds died down.

What woke me up was a heavenly and distant call, with the voice enticingly dripping honey into my ears. I opened my eyes, and perceived in the dark, a sober figure standing in front of me, firm as a boulder. It was as if, crowned by an invisible aura, with his wings carefully hidden behind his back, an angel loomed in the shape of an earthly man. “Grian,” whispered the man, “prepare to take your leave, or get ready to water our crops with you and your men’s blood.” As I froze in reverence and fright, feeling frost in my nostrils and ice in my blood vessels, he walked towards me carefully, and unchained me from my seat.

“What being are you? Are you the Foul Fiend who lured humans to sin, or are you the Prince of Peace, the Bright and Morning Star?” I murmured with my shivering lips, and the man, slowly shaking his head, replied with a wicked humour: “I am the bogey!” As if a spell cast on me, warmth started to flow in my stiffed limbs again, and I perceived the countenance of General B-Double-O who held a candle stand that lit up his face, like a portrait which we often saw prefixed to old volumes of sermons.

With a voice solemn and majestic, he delivered the verdict, and started pushing me out of the cell: “You and your men must depart tonight; run, and run like Pheidippides. Now begone!” With me he went door by door, until the fifty-three men were all released, whose faces still twisted with writhing horror, but soon beheld the General as a godlike, sinless saint. I, feeling the fervent shame fight in my soul, stepped closer to him with doubt and anxiety, and could not help the tremor that escaped my mouth. “Why? Why, foolish General, that you are breaking your laws to let go of your enemies? Is it not an opportunity granted by God to eliminate them? Is it so that you want your men to hurt, bleed, and die hopelessly? Is it so, that somewhere inside you, still grows the childish, idiotic optimism like weeds in the garden, that your Commander would return, if you do good? Is it so, that you only wanted to see me suffer? Vanity! Vanity! You know not what you are doing, and you would not contain yourself when regret hit you!” But when his gaze fell on me, I panicked at the tranquility and determination, as if I was on a capsizing boat, and he was the foaming shore, the chided billows and the clouds: I lived, -like owls kept in the fine dames’ backyard, -dusted pens that a poet owned but never picked up, -wild daisies outside a prison window planted by migrating geese. The person at the mercy of the uncontrollable was me, and always me.

“Grian, you are very haughty. This is not about you English people. But I can’t do this - all the books I read and lyrics I heard had softened my heart, and all the years I spent to be civilized made it sensitive. And I firmly believe, that Etho would not want this, and would do just the same. What are us without humanity? Is it really justifiable that you sacrifice everything to succeed, which is, a vain social construct aforementioned by yourself? You are testing my creed and wisdom, -nevertheless, I shall not change my mind.”

“May God forgive you, good General!” I cried, struggling up out of a fathomless depth of remorse and woe, “but, I am damned - I have deeply sinned! Here stands a treacherous villain, inhuman murderer, a beast, whose roots corrupted in the fresh blood of your dearly beloved friend! Your Commander is dead and will never come back - and I killed him; it was me, Grian! God’s eye beheld it! Take revenge on me, I beg you, stab me with your sword!” But he, standing there, unwavering, only the sorrow deepened in his eyes, and drip by drip, autumn dew formed on his eyelids, and glided off his face like shooting stars. “Not until God takes you, Grian! You shall live!” He lamented, “the cycle breaks, right here, right now! You who share my despair and mourning, shall live and live long to bear the gushing wounds with you, and, burning day and night, may it never be a scar! Redeem all your sins, -though you never could, before the Judgement befalls you!”

We departed before the warm dawn could shed light on us, and arrived safely at Detroit. From news I heard, General Doc tried General Beef, suspecting that General Beef had a reason to release the captives - because of his captured cousin. The trial ended fruitlessly with General Bdubs’ suicide; a few days afterwards, General Mumbo’s head was hit by the Americans’ cannon, and he died at eventide. I was shot in the right leg on the same day, and got my leg amputated just in time to survive.