TWO
C a r d i n a l
H
e was called Cardinal from his habit of wearing a red leathertopcoat that he’d stolen from the costume rack of a travelingtheatre. It had been winter, and he’d taken it because the ensembleincluded boots and gloves as well as the coat, and at the time he was lacking all three. The boots and gloves had since been re-placed, but he had preserved the coat, despite wearing it throughall weathers. Though few men in his line of work sought to iden-tify themselves in any way at all, he found that, in truth, those whosought him out—for employment or punishment—wouldfind him even if he wore the drabbest grey wool. As for the name,however ironic or mocking, it did bestow a certain veneer of mission—given his life was a persistent and persistently viciousstruggle—onto his itinerant church of one, and though he knew in his heart that he (like everyone) must lose at the finish, the vaintitle made him feel less throughthe course of his days like an ani-mal fattened in a pen.He was called Chang for more immediate reasons, if equally ironic and mocking. As a young man he’d been deeply slashed by ariding crop over the bridge of his nose and both eyes. He’d beenblinded for three weeks, and when his vision finally cleared—asmuch as it was ever going to clear—he was greeted with the bluntscars that crossed and then protruded out from the corners of eacheyelid, as if a child’s caricature of aslant-eyed menacing Chinamanhad been scrawled with a knife over hisfeatures. His eyes werethereafter sensitive to light, and tired easily—reading anythinglonger than a page of newspaper gave him a headache that, as hehad learned many times over, only the deep sleep of opiates or, if
such were unavailable, alcohol, might assuage. He wore spectacles with round lenses of dark smoked glass in all circumstances.It was a gradual process by which he accepted these names, firstfrom others, and then finally used them himself. The first time hereplied “Chang” when asked his name, he could too easily recallthe taunting comments as he waited day after day in the sickroomfor his sight to return (it was a name to be always accompanied by a bitter smile), but even those associations seemed more real—more important to carry forward—than an earlier identity marked with failure and loss. More, the names were now a part of his working life—the rest were distant landmarks on a sea voyage,faded from sight and usage.The riding crop had also damaged the inside of his nose, andhe had little sense of smell. He knew abstractly that his roominghouse was more objectionable than his own experience told him—he could see the nearby sewers, and knew by logic that the wallsand floors had fully absorbed the fetid airs of their surroundings.But he was not uncomfortable. The garret room was cheap, iso-lated, with rooftop access and, most importantly, in the shadow of the great Library. For the smell of his own person, he contentedhimself with weekly visits to the Slavic baths near the SeventhBridge, where the steam soothed his ever red-rimmed eyes. At the Library, Cardinal Chang was a common sight. It wasknowledge that put him ahead of his competitors, he felt—anyonecould be ruthless—but his eyes prevented long hours spent in re-search. Instead, Chang made the acquaintance of librarians, engaging them in long interrogative conversations about theirgiven responsibilities—specific collections, organizational theo-ries, plans for acquisition. He pursued these topics in calm but relentless inquiry, so that eventually—through memory and rigor-ous mental association—it had become possible for him to isolateat least three-quarters of what he needed without actually readinga word. As a result, though he haunted its marbled halls nearly every day,Cardinal Chang was most often found pacing a Library
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Cardinal
corridor in thought, wandering through the darkened stacks by memory, or exchanging keen words with a blanching though pro-fessionally tolerant archivist as to the exact provenance of a new genealogical volume he might need to consult later in the day.Before the incident with the riding crop and the young aristo-crat who wielded it, Chang had been a long-time student—whichmeant that poverty did not trouble him, and that his wants, thenfrom necessity and now by habit, were few. Though he had aban-doned that life completely, its day to day patterns had markedhim, and his working week was divided into a reliably Spartanroutine: the Library, the coffeehouse, clients,excursions on behalf of those clients, the baths, the opium den, the brothel, and bill col-lecting, which often involved revisiting past clients in a different(to them) capacity. It was an existence marked by keen activity andopen tracts of ostensibly lost time, occupied with wanderingthought, thick sleep, narcotic dreams, with willful nothingness. When not so pacified, however, his mind was restless. Onesource of regular consolation was poetry—the more modern thebetter, as it usually meant a thinner text. He found that by care-fully rationing out how many lines he read at a time, and closinghis eyes to consider them, he could maintain a delicately steady, if perhaps finally grinding, pace through the whole of a slim volume.He had been occupying himself in such a manner, with Lynch’snew translation of the
Persephone
fragments (found in some previ-ously unplundered Thessalonikan ruin), when he looked up andsaw the woman on the train. He smiled to think of it, as he lay justawake on his pallet, for the lines he’d been reading at the time—“battered princess / that infernal bride”—had seemed to exactly illustrate the creature before him. The filthy coat, the blood-smeared face, her curls crusted and stiff, her piercing grey eyes—ameeting of such beauty and such spoilage—he found it all per-fectly impressive, even striking. He had decided at the time not tofollow, to allow the incident its own distinction, but now he won-dered about finding her, remembering (with a stirring of lust) the
the glass books of the dream eaters
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