As the sultry days of August reached their culmination the capital eased into a drunken stupor. The feasts and festivals of the preceding months began to exhaust the population of their customary revelry. Parades of strange beasts with their beady eyes, eunuchs with pinched faces, priests swaying to baritone chants, the gold and silk of the imperial city in full display; such are the images of an empire confident in its strength. Like a young athlete striding across the field or the chariot teams of the hippodrome rippling across the sands, so too did the Emperor appear arrayed in purple & pearls. In the marbled & mosaicked halls of the rich and the cramped inns of the commoner, the population debauched well into the night. Men drank without concern for morning, prostitutes plied their wares in sheer dresses. Indolence ruled the city.
The summer ended the same as anyone could remember; the white sails of the grain fleet peeked above the horizon and slid towards the harbor. They docked and unloaded their wares to be ground, baked, and distributed to the torpid populace. However, upon this tribute to Gluttony, another evil feasted. Rats, oily and black as night, marched down the moorings and into the streets where they joined the population in its eternal feast, growing fat on bread crusts and burst grapes and apple cores and spilt wine and stale honey cakes and wilted processional flowers. They crawled over the drunks who splayed in the streets, the urchins of the back alleys, they bit the beggars.
In those days a hermit descended from his mountain fastness. He hobbled into the city and up the high streets, past the spice markets, the roaring crowds of the races, and beyond the splendor of the imperial palace. The man planted himself on the steps of the great church in his ragged black robes. His mouth moved silently in his long beard. He sat unmoving for six days. The crowds of the city pulsed in a frenzy, the harvest festivals were gaining steam and heavy exactions upon the peasant, gaunt in his hovel, fueled the eternal gaiety.
By the third day the orphans had begun to gather around the man and taunt him in his vigil. On the fourth he received the drunken greetings of partiers. As the Sun rose on the seventh day the people lined the streets for another imperial procession, this to start the Autumnal festivals. However, to an outsider such ebbs in the eternal carnival must’ve been impossible to detect.
The senators and their families sat upon their terraces perched as parrots in all their finery, sipping the vintage of their country estates in delicate glasses off silver platters held by their mute servants. The bustling crowds decked streets in a cacophony of color. A great roar rose as the bronze doors of the palace swung open and the imperial household began its solemn march. The armor of the guards glistened in the morning Sun and the emperor showered gold and silver coins onto the pawing crowds. Across the azure sky a thunderclap rang and shocked the crowds into confused silence.
The hermit stood and bellowed,
“Woe unto the faithless!”
The Emperor turned his head to the steps of the cathedral.
“Woe unto the faithless!” He repeated.
A voice rose from the crowd, “Who are you to declare, old man?”
Another replied, “Perhaps he declares his grief, for he is underdressed!”
The crowds laughed.
“I come to this wicked city to speak of the great and terrible; for you have seen the blinding power of the Divine, and yet turned your heads to moderate climes!”
A curious silence spread over the populace.
“In your corruption, the Lord’s prayers have gone unuttered! The Temples lie empty and you fill the markets with preaching. Your God is of your own making and an idol to the world of your horizons! Have you not had a generous God? Has he not given you wonders to behold? Verily I say unto you; Man shall diminish away from God’s presence and the world with him!”
The hermit stood with piercing gaze for a moment and then eased himself down the steps, the stunned crowd parting for the aged man.
He walked under the silk canopies, beyond the antique statues with their blind gaze, past trees laden with swollen fruits. The cheering crowd’s roar receded and the city became a clutter of winking lights along the sea, the old man did not turn his head to look.
The next morning a drunkard awoke in an inn with a black boil on his neck. By the evening he was dead, purple sores had erupted over his body and swelled on his pallored skin.
After a day the back alleys soured with the smell of death and the streets began to clear. Befuddled doctors prescribed poppy and pierced black buboes that oozed putrid blood. Soon the doctors fell victim. Entire households sweat coldly in their beds moaning for water. Those who braved the streets with kerchiefs soaked in vinegar and rose water were greeted by the feasting crows. Eyeless corpses with their necrotic fingers ballooned in the September Sun. The cemeteries filled, then palatial gardens with their delicate orchids were given over to pits and trenches, bodies pulsing with maggots and black flies. The stalwart towers of the whitewashed walls were then filled to the ceilings with blue-lipped babes, silken-haired virgins, and nobles with fingers too bloated to remove their jeweled rings. Within a week there were too few untouched to remove the dead and they piled onto the cobblestones and against the marble pillars. Many fed the maggots and rats in their pus-stained feather beds.
The lamentations of the dying faded and a stillness hung over the city only broken by a crow’s echoing caw. Frost sprinkled the oiled hair of the fallen and the merciful snows buried them.
Wilhelm Steuerwaldt