#thinly veiled

"You are not a doll!"

Another slap across its face.

"I-it is!"

A dull thud reverberates as a fleshy fist hits a porcenlaine face.

"No. You. Are. Not!"

Another punch. It nearly tilts sideways in the chair its' taped to.

"J-j-just look a-at it!" Tears start to fill its eyes.

Another punch, this time to its stomach, the sound of porcelaine scraping metal fills the air.

"So what!? There's only humans! You! Are! Human!"

The shrill sound of shattering porcelaine pierces its ears as its arm is snapped over a knee.

"Wh-why d-do you ha-hate i-it so much?" It whimpers, its lip quivering.

"Because." Punch. "You." Kick. "Shouldnt." Snap. "Exist!" Slam.

I’ve decided to start with Parnaße because Jan is inclined to think of his own story in terms of major influences, pulling his own “vacillating” nature in various directions. The most distinct of those influences—again, to Jan’s mind—are the bank, Jøberg, Levarlet, and Parnaße. The way the heir to the bank sees it, Levarlet is a kind of reminder of everything Collier thinks he’s doomed to deserve; Jøberg is a way of putting the heir to the bank’s shortcomings to good use; the bank is an incarnation of everything serious and studious and responsible that everyone wishes Jan had been and he wasn’t; and Parnaße is the standard of uncompromising virtue against which to measure his own faults.

But before I begin, a little context.

As the President of Collier & Des Marais, Jean Collier unofficially controls every aspect of business in the western corner of Harold-Konstantin’s empire. The Collier family has the means to buy out the stock of the Archtrustees of Paris and Vienna combined, but is forbidden from doing so by the Company charter. As Directors of Brussels, the Parnaße family reports to Archtrustee Levarlet in Paris, but His Grace is Jean Collier’s Company pawn. In practice, Brussels—along with every other western Company aristocrat—answers to Collier & des Marais first and Edena second.

And so the heirs to the bank and the sunshield dynasty grow up at the same parties, under the same Parisian stars. Parnaße is a few years older than Jan—reserved; intense; and exuberant, once his guard is relaxed and his passion is engaged. The young Collier is gregarious, sensitive, funny, and curious to the point of intimidating the uninitiated conversational partner. Their friendship is almost immediate—a quiet, protective, and inseparable bond shared across the strange distance of class and empire. They send letters and sit up nights on the wireless: Jan at school in Geneva; Parnaße holed up at Standard Academy—or later, in his early days at the University of Edena. When Jan returns to Paris from finishing school in his late teens, the relationship evolves—in one part caution, one part abandon—from friendship into fiercely secretive romance.

Then, one cold spring night in Paris—when Collier is eighteen and our precocious future doctor has just finished his first year of medical school—Jan makes a stupid, courageous, ill-conceived decision that irrevocably changes the nature of their relationship. He tells a brave but unnecessary lie involving the Archtrustee of Paris and the heiress to Vienna—the kind of lie that you tell when you’re just barely out of childhood, but have been treated like an adult for as long as you can remember. The kind you’d tell if distracting attention from your alcoholic mother were a matter of habit; if you’d convinced yourself that there was something terribly wrong with you, and were just waiting for external confirmation of the fact. The kind you could manage if you already understood how much more pain you could handle than the next person; if witnessing the suffering of others made you want to disappear. The kind of lie you’d view as necessary if you knew, perfectly, the abdication of the the self required of kingship, and had just watched a peer stumble in regard to those unreasonable expectations. The kind you’d risk if you had one great ally against it all—the kind of friend who’d never believe you were capable of something so terrible. Only they do believe you—and in one moment, you lose not only the person you love, but the only anchor you have to a decent, grounded reality. You can lie about anything, you realize, and the crowd will accept it as truth. And anyway, what does it matter? The lie was your choice, after all. One miscalculation is no excuse to go back on your word.

—————

“The financier dragged his hysterical son to the side, propping him against the wall of the shed.

‘What happened?’ Jean Collier demanded.

‘I—‘ Jan stammered.

‘Did you do this?”’ the financier pressed.

Jan had made up his mind. But that didn’t pull the words off of his tongue, into the air, to the indelible void. After that lie, what other deception could ever give him pause?”

—-

“Jan was pulled violently to the present by the blare of horns. He gasped, surprised by the tears that streamed silently down his face in the dark of Palais Garnier. The orchestra careened onward, through the tumultuous score, leaving Collier in its wake.

Fucking City—Jan thought—he had miscalculated. When had his blood become so thoroughly sunshield-addled? If the financier’s son had ever been in control of his addiction, he certainly could not pretend that was the case any longer.

Collier struggled to breathe normally. Jean Collier had covered the whole thing up, of course, paying an exorbitant price to salve Verina Wittlin’s justifiable outrage. But he had never looked his son in the eye again, not long enough for the question to come to the fore—what kind of person? François Parnaße, his medical responsibilities completed, had actually been sick. How could Jan blame either of them?”

—-

“The Captain locked the gun in the safe at the opposite end of the room. Jan lay on the floor, clutching his arm, weeping softly.

‘Why did everyone believe me?’ He demanded, interrogating the void. ‘What about me made it so unquestionable?’

Mary sat beside him, gathering Jan’s head into her lap.

‘Mr. Collier can be extremely convincing,’ she said, ‘—When he wants to be.’

‘I never knew until that moment,’ the financier’s son observed, voice cold and clear and full of certainty, ‘How easily I could make anyone believe anything about me. Why should I give the Three Cities anything other than what they wanted?’

On the art of self-allegorization: