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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Acknowledgments

  About The Carpet Makers …

  I. The Carpet Makers

  II. The Hair-Carpet Trader

  III. The Hair-Carpet Preacher

  IV. The Lost Hair Carpet

  V. The Peddler Woman

  VI. The Man from Someplace Else

  VII. The Tax Collector

  VIII. The Hair-Carpet Robbers

  IX. Flute Fingers

  X. The Emperor’s Archivist

  XI. Jubad

  XII. The Emperor and the Rebel

  XIII. I’ll See You Again!

  XIV. The Palace of Tears

  XV. When We See the Stars Again

  XVI. The Return

  XVII. Vengeance Is Eternal

  Epilogue

  Praise for Andreas Eschbach and The Carpet Makers

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  It was Orson Scott Card who first introduced me to Andreas Eschbach’s books, and then to Andreas himself. I was delighted to find that I not only enjoyed reading the novels and short stories, but that I liked Andreas very much as well: he is a man of charm and intelligence. So I am grateful to Scott for that introduction, and also for the years of friendship that he and Kristine have extended to my family and to me.

  Das Europäische Übersetzer-Kollegium in Straelen, Germany, also deserves my special gratitude. I spent very productive weeks there while working on The Carpet Makers. Their reference library is superb, but the real pleasure of working there is the interaction with the staff and with the ever-changing coterie of other translators. I have seldom been in the company of more literate, intelligent, and helpful colleagues and friends.

  Of course, I am always thankful to my four daughters—J.R., Emily, Kathryn, and Amanda—for their support and love, for their occasional reading of my translated texts, and for their willingness to offer insightful suggestions.

  Doryl Jensen

  Greensboro, NC

  About The Carpet Makers …

  I was at a science fiction convention in Poitiers, France, and all that anybody could talk about was this fantastic German writer, Andreas Eschbach. He wasn’t the best new German writer, or even the best new European writer. He was, in their estimation, the most exciting new writer in the world.

  I met him there, and found him a gentle, funny, wise young man without pretension or visible ego. I wanted very much to read his fiction, but I don’t read German. And while there’s plenty of translation from English into the languages of Europe—which is why I had been invited to the convention in the first place—there is very little translation into English.

  I did, however, have a very good friend, Doryl Jensen, who not only speaks German fluently, but is also a fine writer and poet. “Do you have something short?” I asked Andreas. “Something I could take home and ask a friend to translate for me?”

  It turned out that the first chapter of Eschbach’s most noted novel had existed first as a short story. So I took that, and his synopsis of the rest of the plot, to Doryl, and asked him to translate it for me.

  The result was a story that blew me away. Not only did Doryl assure me that Andreas was a superb writer in German, but he was as enthusiastic as I was about trying to get a Doryl Jensen translation of the entire novel published in English.

  I was delighted when my own publisher, Tor, agreed that this was a book that transcended boundaries. Doryl’s translation doesn’t feel translated; it’s so good that it seems as though the novel were originally written in English. Thus, Andreas Eschbach’s novel has a good chance of meaning as much to American readers as it has to readers in Europe.

  I know what it means to me. Eschbach is a novelist with vision, with compassion, and with a sense of tragedy, of character, of spectacle, and of human possibility, and also human inevitability. Sometimes, when I read a good book by someone else, I find myself wishing I had written it … but with The Carpet Makers, I was delighted that I did not write it, because I far preferred being able to discover it page by page, like any other reader.

  I’m proud to have had the small role of bringing author, publisher, and translator together. But now my job is done. It’s your journey now, into the pages of this unforgettable, beautiful, perpetually entertaining novel.

  Orson Scott Card

  Greensboro, NC

  31 August 2004

  I

  The Carpet Makers

  KNOT AFTER KNOT, DAY IN, day out, for an entire lifetime, always the same hand movements, always looping the same knots in the fine hair, so fine and so tiny that with time, the fingers trembled and the eyes became weak from strain—and still the progress was hardly noticeable. On a day he made good headway, there was a new piece of his carpet perhaps as big as his fingernail. So he squatted before the creaking carpet frame where his father and his father before him had sat, each with the same stooped posture and with the old, filmy magnifying lens before his eyes, his arms propped against the worn breast-board, moving the knotting needle with only the tips of his fingers. Thus he tied knot upon knot as it had been passed down to him for generations until he slipped into a trance in which he felt whole; his back ceased to hurt and he no longer felt the age in his bones. He listened to the many different sounds of the house, which had been built by the grandfather of his great-grandfather—the wind, which always slipped over the roof in the same way and was caught in the open windows, the rattling of dishes and the talking of his wives and daughters below in the kitchen. Every sound was familiar. He picked out the voice of the Wise Woman who had been staying in the house the past few days in anticipation of the confinement of one of his wives, Garliad. He heard the muted doorbell clang; then the entry door opened and there was excitement in the murmuring of the voices. That was probably the peddler woman who was supposed to bring food supplies, textiles, and other things today.

  Then heavy footfalls creaked up the stairs to the carpet-knotting room. That must be one of the women bringing him his midday meal. Below they would be inviting the peddler woman to the table to learn the latest gossip and to let themselves be talked into buying some bauble or other. He sighed, tightened the knot on which he was working, removed the magnifying lens, and turned around.

  Garliad stood there with her enormous belly and with a steaming plate in her hand, waiting to come in when he gave permission with an impatient gesture.

  “What are the other women thinking, letting you work in your condition?” he growled. “Do you want to deliver my daughter on the stairs?”

  “I feel very well today, Ostvan,” Garliad responded.

  “Where’s my son?”

  She hesitated. “I don’t know.”

  “Then I can imagine where he is,” snorted Ostvan. “In the city! In that school! Reading books until his eyes ache and having his head filled with nonsense.”

  “He tried to repair the heating and left to get some sort of part.… That’s what he said.”

  Ostvan hoisted himself up from his stool and took the plate from her hands. “I curse the day I allowed him go to that school in the city. Was I not bles
sed by God until then? Didn’t he first give me five daughters and then one son, so that I didn’t have to kill any of my children? And don’t my daughters and wives have hair of all colors so that I don’t have to dye the hair, and I can tie a carpet that will be worthy of the Emperor one day? Why can’t I succeed in making a good carpet maker of my son, so that someday I can take my place beside God to help him tie the great carpet of life?”

  “You’re quarreling with fate, Ostvan.”

  “Should I not quarrel—with such a son? I know why his mother didn’t bring me my food.”

  “I’m supposed to ask you for money to pay the peddler,” said Garliad.

  “Money, always money!” Ostvan put down the plate on the windowsill and shuffled over to a chest with steel fittings. It was decorated with a photograph of the carpet his father had tied and contained the money left over from the sale of that carpet, packed in individual boxes, labeled by year. He took out a coin. “Take it. But remember that this must last us for the rest of our lives.”

  “Yes, Ostvan.”

  “And when Abron returns, send him to me immediately.”

  “Yes, Ostvan.” She left.

  What kind of life was this, nothing but worry and aggravation! Ostvan pulled a chair up to the window and sat down to eat. His gaze became lost in the rocky, infertile desert. He used to go out occasionally, to look for certain minerals needed to make the secret compounds. He was even in the city several times to buy chemicals or tools. In the meantime, he had accumulated everything he would ever need for his carpet. He probably would not go out again. He was no longer young; his carpet would soon be finished, and then it would be time to think about dying.

  Later, in the afternoon, quick steps on the stairs interrupted his work. It was Abron.

  “You wanted to speak to me, Father?”

  “Were you in the city?”

  “I bought sootbrick for the heating.”

  “We still have sootbrick in the cellar, enough for generations.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “You could have asked me. But any excuse to go into the city is good enough for you.”

  Unbidden, Abron came closer. “I know it displeases you that I’m in the city so often and read books. But I can’t help it, Father. It’s so interesting … these other worlds.… There’s so much to learn—so many different ways for people to live.”

  “I want to hear nothing of it. For you there is only one way to live. You have learned from me everything a hair-carpet maker must know; that is enough. You can tie all the knots, you have been instructed in soaking and dyeing techniques, and you know the traditional patterns. When you have designed your carpet, you will take a wife and have many daughters with different colored hair. And for your wedding, I will cut my carpet from the frame, bind it, and present it to you, and you will sell it in the city to the Imperial trader. That’s what I did with the carpet of my father, and he did the same before me with the carpet of his father, and he with the carpet of his father, my great-grandfather; that is the way it has been from generation to generation for thousands of years. And just as I pay off my debt to you, you will pay off your debt to your son, and he to his son, and so on. It was always this way, and it will always be so.”

  Abron gave a tortured sigh. “Yes, of course, Father, but I’m not happy with this idea. I would rather not be a hair-carpet maker at all.”

  “I am a carpet maker, and therefore you will also be a carpet maker.” With an agitated gesture, Ostvan pointed to the uncompleted carpet in the knotting frame. “For my whole life, I’ve worked on tying this carpet—my whole life—and from the profit, you will one day eat for your entire life. You have a debt to me, Abron, and I require that you pay off that debt to your own son. And God grant that he will not cause you as much sorrow as you have caused me!”

  Abron did not dare look at his father as he replied, “There are rumors in the city about a rebellion, and rumors that the Emperor must abdicate.… Who will be able to pay for the hair carpets if the Emperor is gone?”

  “The glory of the Emperor will outlast the light of the stars!” Ostvan said threateningly. “Didn’t I teach you that phrase when you could barely sit up next to me at the carpet frame? Do you imagine that just anybody can come along and change the order of things, which was set by God?”

  “No, Father,” mumbled Abron, “of course not.”

  Ostvan watched him. “Now go to work on your carpet design.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  Late in the evening, Garliad’s birth pangs began. The women accompanied her into the prepared birth room; Ostvan and Abron stayed in the kitchen.

  Ostvan got two cups and a bottle of wine, and they drank silently. Sometimes they heard Garliad crying out or moaning in the birth room; then again there was nothing for a while. It was going to be a long night.

  When his father fetched a second bottle of wine, Abron asked, “And if it’s a boy?”

  “You know as well as I do,” Ostvan responded dully.

  “Then what will you do?”

  “The law has always said that a carpet maker may have only one son, because a carpet can support only one family.” Ostvan pointed to an old, rust-flecked sword hanging on the wall. “With that, my grandfather killed my two brothers on the day of their birth.”

  Abron was silent. “You said that this is God’s law,” he finally erupted. “That must be a cruel God, don’t you think?”

  “Abron!” Ostvan thundered.

  “I want to have nothing to do with your God!” screamed Abron, and flung himself out of the kitchen.

  “Abron! Stay here!”

  But Abron tore up the stairs to the bedchambers and did not return.

  So Ostvan waited alone, but he did not drink any more. The hours passed, and his thoughts became more gloomy. Finally the first cries of a child were mixed among the cries of the mother, and Ostvan heard the women lamenting and sobbing. He stood up heavily as though every movement were painful; he took the sword from the wall and laid it on the table. Then he stood there and waited with somber patience until the Wise Woman came from the birth room with the newborn in her arms.

  “It’s a boy,” she said calmly. “Will you kill him, sir?”

  Ostvan looked at the rosy, wrinkled face of the child. “No,” he said. “He will live. I want him to be named Ostvan after me. I will teach him the craft of a hair-carpet maker, and should I not live long enough, someone else will complete his training. Take him back to his mother, and tell her what I’ve said.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the Wise Woman, and bore the child out.

  Ostvan, however, took the sword from the table, went with it up to the bedchambers, and killed his son Abron.

  II

  The Hair-Carpet Trader

  YAHANNOCHIA WAS GEARING UP for the annual arrival of the hair-carpet trader. It was like an awakening for the city that would lie motionless under the searing sun for the rest of the year. It began with garlands that appeared here and there under the low roofs, and with meager sprays of flowers that tried to cover up the stained walls of the houses. Day after day, there were more colorful pennants fluttering in the wind that swept, as it always did, over the ridges of the rooftops. And the smells from the cooking pots in the dark kitchens settled heavily into the narrow streets. Everyone knew it was important to be ready for the Great Festival. The women brushed their hair, and that of their mature daughters, for hours. The men finally patched their shoes. To the constant chatter of excited voices everywhere came the dissonant blaring of trumpets rehearsing their fanfares. The children, who usually played quietly and somberly in the alleyways, ran about yelling and wearing their best clothes. It was a colorful whirl, a feast for the senses, a feverish anticipation of the Great Day.

  And then the day arrived. The riders who had been sent out returned and dashed through the streets trumpeting the news: “The trader is coming!”

  “Who is it?” a thousand voices shouted.

  “The
carts bear the colors of the trader Moarkan,” the scouts reported, then spurred their mounts and galloped on. And the thousand voices passed the name of the trader along through every house and hut, and everybody had something to say. “Moarkan!” They remembered when Moarkan had last been in Yahannochia and what goods he had had to offer from distant cities. “Moarkan!” They speculated where he might be coming from and from which cities he was bringing news and maybe even letters. “Moarkan is coming!…”

  But it still took two whole days before the trader’s enormous caravan entered the city.

  First came the foot soldiers, marching ahead of the train of wagons. From a distance, they had seemed like a single, gigantic caterpillar with glittering spines on its back, creeping along the trade route toward Yahannochia. As they got closer, it was possible to distinguish the men in leather armor carrying their spears pointed skyward, so that the polished spear points caught the gleam of the sunlight. Tired, they trudged along, their faces crusted with dust and sweat, their eyes dull and clouded with exhaustion. All of them wore the colored insignia of the trader on their backs, like a brand.

  Behind them rode the trader’s mounted soldiers. Barely keeping their snorting mounts in check, they rode up the trail, armed with swords, maces, heavy whips, and knives. Some proudly bore old, scratched ray-guns on their belts, and all of them looked down with disdain on the city folk lining the road. There was trouble for anyone who came too close to the procession! Whips responded immediately, and with the loud crack of leather, the riders opened a wide ford for the carts that followed them through the stream of curious onlookers.

  These wagons were pulled by large, shaggy baraq buffalo with matted pelts; they stank as only baraq buffalo can stink. The carts came creaking, rattling, and jolting along, their uneven, iron-rimmed wheels grinding dry furrows into the road. Everyone knew that these wagons were laden with costly items from distant places—that they were packed full of bags of exotic spices, bolts of fine material, barrels of expensive delicacies, loads of luxurious woods, and strongboxes filled to the brim with priceless gems. The buffalo plodded along good-naturedly, but the carters, sitting on their coach-boxes with grim expressions, drove them forward to keep them from stopping when confronted with the unusual excitement all around.