Arguing With the Ghost of Dietrich Bronner About His 'Serpent's Mouth, Serpent's Teeth' Review
Author’s note:
Happy first (fourth) birthday WIAW, my leap year baby of a project 💙 menny happy returns, etc
_ March 14, 310 N.I.C. _
Spent three weeks on this ship and didn’t write a single word. Feels idiotic to the point of total worthlessness to try to document the journey now, when it’s done, and when nothing happened. What did I do? Slept the whole time. Tried to. Hid in my cabin. When I thought no one was around, I walked down the outermost and lowermost hallways and counted the ship’s frames. Why? The kind of curiosity that’s better known as professional habit.
The visa paperwork almost didn’t go through. I think someone at my publisher or from D’s estate had to call in a favor to get me past the border. The Heinessen style of protectionism is grating beyond belief to be on the receiving end of.
D never complained about it much, but he always was a beneficiary, so why would he complain? I have no doubt he was the one pushing to allow SMST to have a simultaneous release in Imperial with the rest of the galaxy, rather than waiting for the translation and the standard long delay. He has someone’s ear
Well he’s dead now, so he doesn’t any more.
He never would have told me he was doing me a favor, and K said that it was my Heinessen publisher that made it through to them, but I know it was him. I’d say I’ll never understand him, but I understand him completely. He’s a bastard like that. Doesn’t want thanks, will savage you in public, does you favors that you don’t want for the sake of a book that he hates.
We stopped right inside Ba’alat’s heliopause, at the checkpoint. It’s a nice space station, modern, at least on the outside. Imperial stations tend to be confined to the single, circular shell that liquid metal requires, but this one doesn’t have that layer of reflective shielding. Of course it doesn’t— it has pretensions at being a civilian port. Non-militarized. A checkpoint, not a threat. But that’s a lie if there ever was one, even if Heinessen’s entire military (sorry, Civil Corps, not a military) is as much of a threat to the Reich as a mosquito is to a lion.
I feel like there’s something wrong with me. I can’t even write that something is pretty without thinking about how to stomp it to pieces. Was I always like this?
The station is pretty. Blue. It has one central axis, and six spokes coming off it, each with an array of places for ships to land at. Looks like a flower. We all had to leave the ship during the search, but you can’t wander into the main hub unless your visa is cleared, so I just sat in the waiting area until it went through. The captain should have left without me— no one else had any issues— but he is a good guy, held everybody else up for half a day for my sake. But what’s half a day on three weeks anyway?
Last leg of the trip is the slowest, though it covers the shortest distance. Can’t go faster than light inside the system— even far from the star where it’s usually safe. They have a tech these days that jams it. I’m curious to how that works, but so is everyone. I wonder how much power it draws— if it’s something that _ can _ only be deployed within a star system— if it’s drawing power from Ba’alat itself— that will mean it’s useful only as an early warning system. They’ve only demonstrated it here, which proves that they have it, but nothing else. ‘Can it be deployed at will elsewhere’ is the trillion Reichsmark question. If it can be put along interstellar routes as a minefield, or deployed as an ambush for a fleet, that would change the way that battles are fought. It could permanently block the Iserlohn and Phezzan corridors.
I’m not thinking about this anymore. This is why I haven’t been writing. I’m always staring down the barrel of one gun or another, and if it’s not this one it’s some worse one.
We’ll be in orbit around Heinessen in an hour or so. I cleaned out my room in here. Lifted up the mattress and carved my name into the bottom of the bedframe, where no one will ever see it— that’s vanity.
We’ll take the shuttle down, and I’m told someone from D’s estate is meeting me at the spaceport. If they beg me to speak at the memorial, I will probably say yes, even though I don’t want to.
_ March 16, 310 N.I.C. _
RJ from D’s estate met me when I landed. Somehow in the years since I last came here I forgot how fucking cold this planet is. It’s spring here in the capital, and RJ was very very quick to tell me that if I’m staying a while, it’ll get plenty warmer, but that’s scant consolation for me now. I didn’t pack anything warmer than buttondowns, and so I had the humiliating experience of buying a tourist sweatshirt in the spaceport gift shop, just so I could walk outside without shivering. I picked the tackiest one— I guess because I wanted to add to the humiliation, or make myself unrecognizable, or make some kind of joke. It’s that statue of Heinessen that you can see from the air over the city, the one where he’s holding his arms out. The sweatshirt is printed like his headless torso. To be honest, when you aren’t stretching your arms out, it doesn’t look like anything other than a strange grey blob— it’s only recognizable when you move.
When RJ took me out of the airport I said to him that my agent had gotten me lodgings and he said yes, you’ve certainly got a place. Do you want to go right there, or are you up for dinner. There’s a little get together tonight at the university. And I said, no, just take me to where I’m staying. I’m going to have to face these people eventually— and sooner rather than later— but I couldn’t handle it tonight. I needed a shower. Aside from the cold, the one thing you always realize when you step off a spaceship is how much you smell like recycled air. You have to scrub that off you, and wash all your clothes, and air out everything else, before you can feel like a human being in polite society again.
So RJ drove me around, pointing out landmarks. I’ve been to Heinessen before— I really don’t need a tour of the capital. Even though I wasn’t paying attention that much, the further we got from the capital center, the more familiar the whole area felt, and I learned why as soon as we stopped. RJ brought the car to D’s house.
Of course, I immediately asked him what the hell we were doing there. Tried to be polite but it was hard. And he didn’t seem to understand why I was angry, rather than pleasantly surprised that D had given instructions in his will that I should have the whole pick of the house, and stay there for as long as I liked, before his estate took it and did whatever they’re going to do with it. A trust or headquarters for some foundation I guess.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been angry. It’s another one of those frustrating gestures that I should be grateful for, but can’t ever be, because this is the only way he knew how to do things. I don’t like to be forced to feel grateful. I don’t want a gift that’s an obligation. Have to spend the rest of my life being angry at a dead man for trying to be nice to me.
So, I’m in his house.
I put my luggage in the guest room, but I’ll sit at his desk.
It really must be spring here, because his office looks out onto a garden, and there’s flowers all over. Lots of perennials: daffodils and crocuses.
His house is really beautiful. His grandmother was an architect, and she designed it when he was young. He didn’t live in it as a kid, but got it when she died. It’s got a name (Tradewinds)— she was that kind of architect. It’s built to let the light in— almost the entire north side of the building is windows, and the roofline is staggered to evoke sails. Most of the beams are exposed wood, and everything is very airy and open. I don’t know if it’s the kind of house I would have associated with D if I hadn’t always known him living here.
Being here makes me feel out of place. But I’m more of his world than of my own now, and have been for a while, so I don’t know what that means for me. But I’m very much alone in this house, and with complete liberty over it, so I should get used to it for as long as I stay here. No point in being uncomfortable in the place I’m living.
Went through his closet and pulled out some sweaters. He wouldn’t care that I’m stealing those. He’d laugh at me for my Heinessen souvenier outfit, which makes me want to petulantly keep it on while I sit at his desk— bringing my unrefined mannerisms with me.
And of course I couldn’t help but be curious and open up the drawers of the desk. There’s SMST, of course, just sitting there. He read it— I knew he read it— of course he read it. But the thing is stuck with notes, which surprised me. I’m not going to look at them. I put it back in the drawer.
Maybe I will someday, and maybe he wanted me to see whatever was written there. But if he had something he wanted to say to me, he would have said it. Or maybe he wouldn’t have.
D isn’t really one for collecting garbage, so I know that every object in this office meant something to him in some way. The problem is that _ I _ don’t know what any of it means. Whatever signals and information that this plastic skull held, whoever’s hands once fashioned that clumsy wooden carving of a bear, whoever the woman touching his shoulder but turned away from the camera is in this photo of him sitting at a Heinessen cafe— no one knew but him, and so that information has been lost into the entropic current: unrecoverable.
The memorial isn’t until this weekend, so I have a few days to figure out what I’m going to say at it, and decide how long I’m going to stay on Heinessen. I hadn’t been intending to stay long, but
It really burns me that he was right— that I do want to stay here for a while because he let me set up in his house.
I should figure out how to start the next WIAW book— or at least _ something _ . Pretend like he’s still here with his red pen.
The funny thing is—
I’m going to bed. I can’t look at this today.
_ March 17, 310 N.I.C. _
Walked out to get breakfast at a little cafe not too far from here. I do know the Heinessen language, but I’m not adept in it, so it’s this clumsy, unpleasant fumbling for words when I order anything. The waiter had to give me a second while I sat there and mouthed back what he said to me until that moving of my mouth made me process what it was he was trying to ask. I’m sure I’ll get a handle on it in a few days of being immersed in it— it just is jarring in the meantime. I just have to lean on smiling and no one will hate me— I’m told I have an earnest face.
I’ll have to give my memorial remarks in this language though. That’s less of a problem than casual conversation is. D and I wrote to each other in his language, for the most part, unless we had to dip into some other idiom for a reason— citing someone or discussing specific events on my side of the galaxy. And Phezzani dialect has gotten more standardized over time, but it still maintains enough of a loanword vocabulary that the Heinessen language doesn’t sound out of place. I’ll still send it to K to look over— she’ll do me the courtesy of making sure that I don’t have any horrifying faux pas buried in there. I don’t want to cause a minor diplomatic incident and get my visa revoked. Or maybe I do. He’d find it funny.
The issue is that I don’t know what to say. But at least speaking outside of my native language gives me an excuse to keep it short.
They’ll want to hear about his artistic reception in the rest of the galaxy, talk about his influence on me as one of the Reich’s new generation of artists. He styled himself as Heinessen’s cultural ambassador, or other people styled him that way, anyway. That’s how we met, why he went to Phezzan. It’s funny—
Well, I might as well talk about it now. Last night on his bookshelf, I found— and God knows why he kept the thing— when he came to Phezzan, he was working on what ended up being his last major play. He only did film after that, and he was wrestling with the script back then, thinking if he should try to rip it apart and put it back together for the camera. He didn’t end up doing that— I don’t think he could ever quite get it to work the way he wanted it to. The stage always felt more immediate to him, and I think he wanted that simplicity— get down the bones of things. Anyway, while he was working on that on Phezzan, I went to his office hours just to chat, and he asked me to read the script. He handed me this galley copy of it and one of his red pens. Well they were fountain pens, and he just filled them with red ink. He let me keep that pen— I lost it at some point but, man, it probably cost more than what I was spending on food in a month at that point. I was so goddamn broke. But he had me mark up that script for him. And I did. And that galley copy with my handwriting from years and years ago, there it was on his bookshelf— right next to the finished version and the playbills from opening night.
I never saw the thing performed— though we did, before he left Phezzan. He invited me to the suite he was renting, and we went up to the roof— it was the kind of funny thing he used to do. We weren’t supposed to be up there for sure, wasn’t like a garden roof or anything— just us and the big heat pump boxes and the bird-shit gravel. We kept scaring away the pigeons who roosted up there. He made me read Arle Heinessen’s parts, and he read everybody else’s, stomping around. I don’t think I ever got the voice right, but he said, fuck it, Heinessen spoke Imperial; the whole play’s an anachronism, anyway. So that’s my memory of that. The hottest day of the year on Phezzan, and there we were, yelling in the heart of the Neue Reich about Arle Heinessen’s ice planet.
It was his most cynical work, I think, but probably his best. At least I thought so. If i recall correctly, the performances of it were controversial, and it never got put on on Phezzan or anything. So I don’t know how much reach it ever had. It’s not what they gave him the Tai-Long Prize for, at least not specifically, since that was for his whole career.
Thinking about that— I should write a story about that. Fredrica Greenhill wrestling with her own father’s legacy, and coming out of that by putting together her nation’s highest artistic honor, bearing the name of a father-in-law that she never met. I don’t know— maybe there’s nothing there. Or maybe it’s too obvious— you can see the structure of it just by mentioning the words, too simple to write. But I’m a simple man, and I haven’t written anything in a while. Maybe it’s worth a try. I don’t know.
Spent most of the day trying to work on my speech; didn’t make much progress. I have to finish that tomorrow. I should just read the obit I wrote— I already said everything that I have to say. What more is there to say.
_ March 18, 310 N.I.C. _
One of D’s university group came by today. It was KL— she apologized when she rang the doorbell, but she said that she wanted to talk to me, but had no idea how to contact me except for that I was staying in this house. I wasn’t that bothered by her showing up— all I’d been doing was staring down at my half written speech for a while. I know about myself that I should be trying to deliberately combat my predilection for lonesomeness, so I said sure, I’m happy to talk, come on in. I knew who she was because D sometimes mentioned her in his letters, so it’s not like there’s going to be random strangers showing up at my door asking about things, and it was probably through someone from D’s estate that told her I was staying here.
We went into his office, and she saw the copy of SMST on the desk. I couldn’t actually resist looking— I never ever can. She picked it up and flipped through it, asked if it was his handwriting. I said yes. And she said, “I read it, and I thought he was being a bit unfair to you. I thought it was good. The only thing I thought he’d complain about was the cliffhanger ending. Yang Wenli standing there, with all the blood— bit of a cheap shot for the audience.”
I just asked her how else I was supposed to end it, and she shugged and told me she’s not a writer. I knew that already— she heads the archaeology department over at HNU. And if she was a writer, she would have agreed with D’s review. He didn’t say anything incorrect in it— it’s all true.
And I had his copy of SMST on the desk next to that old marked up galley of _ Every Link Was Freedom’s Name _ and I was just thinking about how that was the one place— in criticism— that he treated me like an equal. That was the only gift he could give me that didn’t feel like it was coming out of his magnanimity but out of a real and important place. He always took me seriously— from the day we met. I don’t know. I couldn’t say any of that to her, and if she asked me anything about WIAW I couldn’t talk about it either— that’s dangerous territory.
I wish. I wish a lot of things. I wish I had talked to D about it from the very beginning, rather than pretending to myself that he was too busy to care or wouldn’t want me to. Well, it’s too late now. If I want to talk to anyone about WIAW I have to talk to E— I have to be careful what I say to everybody else.
So I asked her why she had come to talk and we had a good conversation about D’s, I guess, intellectual circle on Heinessen. Everyone in it is eager to meet me. It feels very uncomfortable to get invited to these places, but I should go. I asked her if everyone would be at the memorial and she said yes, certainly you’ll meet a bunch of them there, and you can come to my house for dinner on Wednesday, and talk in a more casual setting. You’ll like them for sure.
She sat down in one of the big open gathering rooms in this house and she gestured around and talked about all the people who used to come here and the parties they used to have and the conversations long into the night. I just stood in the doorway with my hands in my pockets.