Windmills: A book of fables

by Gilbert Cannan

There was a great fire in the middle of the square, and round this was a tatterdemalion crew of men and women. They were roasting an ox, and, as they waited for it, they sang and danced. When we approached near enough to hear what they were singing I blushed and felt aggrieved for Audrey. Many of the men and women were perfectly shameless in their gestures, and I wished to go back the way we had come. However, we had been seen, and were drawn into the light of the fire and asked to give an account of ourselves. I told them I was an American citizen only too anxious to return to my own country now I had seen the pass to which theirs had been brought. Audrey clung to me, and I said she was my little cousin whom I had come to deliver, and that, having wandered hungry for so many days, we had taken refuge in the town in the hope of faring better. We were given stools to sit on, and slices of the best cut of the ox were put before us. The rest drank spirits and wine from some cellar in the town and were soon more crazy than ever, and more obscene, but with my belly full of good meat I was not offended and preferred their debauchery to the icy virtue which had so horribly oppressed me at the homestead. Audrey was excited by it all, but I knew that her innocence could take no harm.

Presently there was only one man sober besides myself. He came towards me and invited me to stay the night in his house where he lived alone with his son. I liked the looks of the man. He was poorly clad, but in the old fashion of coat and trousers, whereas the costumes of the men in the square were strange and bizarre.

As we walked through the dark streets our new friend told me that all the great cities of Fatland were in this condition, abandoned to the dregs of the population, degraded men and women, idle and lawless, with the leaven of the few proud spirits who would not accept the new regime and found a world governed by women as repulsive as a world governed by men. I was astonished at this, for I could not then see, as later I saw, the abomination of civilised life as I had known it at home. Perhaps a sailor, for whom life ashore means pleasure and relief from responsibilities, cannot feel injustice and inequality. On the sea he has his own way of dealing with those poisons.

The house we came to was small but comfortable. My new friend explained that he was able to keep alive by dealing with the outlaws, who kept money current among themselves, and, indeed, had come to regard him as their counsellor and peacemaker, and never returned from their raids without bringing him some tribute. Seeing me dubious of the morality of this, he explained that under the old order he had been a shareholder in joint-stock companies and accepted his share of the profits without scruple as to how they had been obtained. He told me further that he was quite alone in the city, and that no one else maintained the old life. He had registered himself in compliance with the law, but could not leave the mathematical work to which his life had been devoted, for he believed that he would achieve results which would survive all the vicissitudes of Fattish civilisation even as the work of Pythagoras had survived ancient Greece. The number of outlaws, he said, was growing, and there would eventually be a revolution, to lead which he was preparing and educating his son, Edmund. His own sympathies, he declared, had at first been with the women, who had been driven to extricate the country from the vicious circle of war into which it had been drawn by the egregious folly of men. But when, having achieved this, they abused their power and, in the intoxication of their success, defied nature herself, then he had abandoned all hope and had taken the only means of dissociating himself from the life of his country, namely, by staying where he was. To be sure the women had established agriculture on a sound basis, but it was vain for them to breed cattle if they would not breed themselves.

I asked him if he was a widower. He said No.

XI: EDMUND

This man’s son was the most charming boy I ever set eyes on. He was eighteen, but had the carriage and assurance of a young man in his prime, most resolute and happy. He liked talking to me and was more communicative than his father. For a fortnight he would work steadily at his books, imbibing the principles of government in the philosophers from Plato down. He thought they were all wrong, said so, and but for his simplicity I should have put him down as conceited. It was very slowly as I talked to him that I came to realise the revolution in thought produced by the great European wars and the terrible consequences, how fatal they had been to the old easy idealism. The new spirit in its generous acceptance of the gross stuff of human nature and its indomitable search for beauty in it has been expressed for all time by our poet, Hohlenheim, and I only need state here that I encountered it for the first time in that ruined city. Not, however, till Hohlenheim expressed it did I recognise it.

But for Hohlenheim I could believe in a Providence when I think of Edmund and Audrey. They were as bee and flower. The honey of her beauty drew him and he was hers, she his, from the first moment. I had regarded her as a child and was amazed to see how she rejoiced in him. I had expected more modesty until I reflected how in such darkness as that which enveloped Fatland love must blaze. It flared up between them and burned them into one spirit. So moved was I that all other marriage, even my own, has always seemed a mockery to me.

How gracious Audrey was to me! She promised me that Edmund would hurry up his revolution so that I could return to my own country, but I was given to understand that the position was very difficult, because his own mother was Vice-Chairwoman of the Governing Committee. For a week at a time Edmund would be away rounding up outlaws, and, at great risk, preaching to the kilted and registered men in the fields. Had he been caught he would have been tickled to death.

After a time I went with him on his expeditions. It was amazing how his eloquence and his personality produced their effect even on the dullest minds. The stream of men proceeding to the ruined city increased every day, and we began to have enough good people to suppress the reckless rioters somewhat and to organise the life of the town something after the fashion of the Italian city-state, except that we made no warlike preparations whatsoever. Most encouraging of all, we had a growing number of young women coming into the place, and thankful as they were to escape the nunneries or the spinsterhood of the farms, they quickly found mates and produced children. The birth of every baby was made a matter of public rejoicing.