Victory City(6)

“That’s debatable,” Hukka said. “However, I’m the oldest.”

“And I’m the most likable.”

“Again, debatable. But I repeat: I’m the oldest.”

“Yes, you’re old. But I’m the most dynamic.”

“Dynamic isn’t the same thing as regal,” Hukka said. “And I’m still the oldest.”

“You say that as if it’s some sort of commandment,” Bukka protested. “Oldest goes first. Where does it say that? Where’s that written down?”

Hukka’s hand moved to the hilt of his sword. “Here,” he said.

A bird flew across the sun. The earth itself took a deep breath. The gods, if there were any gods, stopped doing what they were doing and paid attention.

Bukka gave in. “Okay, okay,” he said, raising his hands in surrender. “You’re my older brother and I love you and you go first.”

“Thank you,” said Hukka. “I love you too.”

“But,” Bukka added, “I get to decide the next thing.”

“Agreed,” said Hukka Sangama, who was now King Hukka—Hukka Raya I. “You get first pick of bedrooms in the palace.”

“And concubines,” Bukka insisted.

“Yes, yes,” Hukka Raya I said, waving an irritated hand. “And concubines as well.”

After another moment’s silence, Bukka attempted a great thought. “What is a human being?” he wondered. “I mean, what makes us what we are? Did we all start out as seeds, are all our ancestors vegetables, if we go back far enough? Or did we grow out of fishes, are we fishes who learned to breathe air? Or maybe we are cows who lost our udders and two of our legs. Somehow I’m finding the vegetable possibility the most upsetting. I don’t want to discover that my great-grandfather was a brinjal, or a pea.”

“And yet it is from seeds that our subjects have been born,” Hukka said, shaking his head. “So the vegetable possibility is the most probable.”

“Things are simpler for vegetables,” mused Bukka. “You have your roots, so you know your place. You grow, and you serve your purpose by propagating and then being consumed. But we are rootless and we don’t want to be eaten. So how are we supposed to live? What is a human life? What’s a good life and what isn’t? Who and what are these thousands we have just brought into being?”

“The question of origins,” Hukka said gravely, “we must leave to the gods. The question we must answer is this one: now that we find ourselves here—and they, our seed people, are down there—how shall we live?”

“If we were philosophers,” Bukka said, “we could answer such questions philosophically. But we are poor cowherds only, who became unsuccessful soldiers, and have suddenly somehow risen above our station, so we had better just get down there and begin, and find out the answers by being there and seeing how things work out. An army is a question, and the answer to the question of the army is to fight. A cow is a question too, and the answer to the question of the cow is to milk it. Down there is a city that appeared out of nowhere, and that’s a bigger question than we have ever been asked. And so maybe the answer to the question of the city is to live in it.”

“Also,” Hukka said, “we should get on with that before our brothers arrive and try to steal a march on us.”

But still, as if dazed, the two brothers remained on the hill, immobile, watching the movement of the new people in the streets of the new city below them, and often shaking their heads in disbelief. It was as if they feared going down into those streets, afraid that the whole thing was some sort of hallucination, and that if they entered it the deception would be revealed, the vision would dissolve, and they would return to the previous nothingness of their lives. Perhaps their stunned condition explained why they did not notice that the people in the new streets, and in the army camp beyond, were behaving peculiarly, as if they, too, had been driven a little crazy by their incomprehension of their own sudden existence, and were incapable of dealing with the fact of having been brought into being out of nowhere. There was a good deal of shouting, and of crying, and some of the people were rolling on the ground and kicking their legs in the air, punching the air as if to say, Where am I, let me out of here. In the fruit and vegetable market people were throwing produce at one another, and it was unclear if they were playing or expressing their inarticulate rage. In fact they seemed incapable of expressing what they truly wanted, food, or shelter, or someone to explain the world to them and make them feel safe in it, someone whose soft words could grant them the happy illusion of understanding what they could not understand. The fights in the army camp, where the new people carried weapons, were more dangerous, and there were injuries.

The sun was already diving toward the horizon when Hukka and Bukka finally made their way down the rocky hill. As evening shadows crawled across the many enigmatic boulders that crowded around their path it seemed to them both that the stones were acquiring human faces, with hollow eyes which were examining them closely, as if to ask, What, are these unimpressive individuals the ones who brought a whole city to life? Hukka, who was already putting on royal airs like a boy trying on the new birthday clothes his parents had left at the foot of his bed while he slept, chose to ignore the staring stones, but Bukka grew afraid, because the stones didn’t seem to be their friends, and could easily start an avalanche that would bury the two brothers forever before they were able to step into their glorious future. The new city was surrounded by rocky hillsides of this sort, except along the riverbank, and all the boulders on all the hills now seemed to have become giant heads, whose faces wore hostile frowns, and whose mouths were on the verge of speech. They never spoke, but Bukka made a note. “We are surrounded by enemies,” he told himself, “and if we are not quick to defend ourselves against them they will thunder down upon us and crush us to bits.” Aloud he said to his brother the king, “You know what this city doesn’t have, and needs as soon as possible? Walls. High, thick walls, strong enough to withstand any attack.”