The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 149

as long as we, the capitanes, survived our raids, Lykantropovin would suffer defeat though he controlled the length of the Bransfield Strait. Lazarus presented this dogma in an uncharacteristically colorful metaphor: Grim Fiddle was the head of an unkillable beast with a thousand fists. And the Grim Fiddle that was the head was not the human Grim Fiddle, was the man who was the hope incarnate of the wretches. Lykantropovin could sever a hundred fists, said Lazarus. He could never extinguish hope as long as I lived in the legend of Great Grim, Grim El Grande, Grimmagne, Der Gross Grim. More, as Lazarus gave the wretches Grim Fiddle as hope he gave my capitanes Grim Fiddle as their purpose. Lazarus preached that I was the way to victory because I was the victory, and that serving me was serving the future. Once, Lazarus took me aside; I could see his eyes were afire, and that he was gripped by one of his faraway visions. He told me, “Hell can be organized. I have organized it. The Devil cannot be killed. You cannot be killed. No matter what else, don’t leave me. I need you. Take your vengeance. Come back to me. What we have done. What I have done. What there is left to do!”

I have discussed Lazarus at length with Diomedes. Diomedes said that he too had struggled with men like Lazarus throughout his career. Diomedes thought Lazarus a man compelled by a bottomless ambition for power, yet at the same time a man who yearned to justify his greed by demonstrating intellectually that he was more worthy than the men he ruled and conquered. Diomedes said Lazarus was a usurper. Diomedes insisted there was no more to find. Lazarus usurped the Furore family after Cesare was murdered; Lazarus usurped South Georgia when it was cut off by the fleet of the damned; Lazarus usurped my office as president of the Assembly in order to aggrandize himself as the drafter of the constitution; Lazarus usurped Germanicus at Golgotha by preaching to the wretches that I was an angry god and that he had my ear; Lazarus usurped my authority at Anvers Island by sealing me in my sickbed and ruling through Cleopatra; Lazarus usurped my possession of Cleopatra in a way I shall soon relate; and Lazarus usurped my kingship once I had defeated Lykantropovin.

Some of this is true, some of it is not. I do not fault Diomedes, for his Greek learning did much to help me see Lazarus the better. It might be that I should ask, what did Lazarus think of himself? He called himself a revolutionary. I suppose he would not have, in the end, turned aside the applause that he was a hero of his revolution. There is merit to his heroism, and it would be a disgrace if I were not to emphasize the hero, the lover, the heroic lover that was Lazarus. He died for his selfless love. I do not have the details, or certainty, only a rumor that he was killed the year after my arrest, while helping to rescue an ice camp from an eruption; there was also a rumor that he was killed by panicked wretches escaping that same eruption. Either way, he died because he loved his ideas enough to act upon them.

And how did he love? Lazarus wanted to take mankind by the hand, as a lover, and not only lead mankind to a document but also show mankind how to write its names at the bottom of that document—conceived by men, written by men, intended for men—which would secure freedom and justice and, yes, charity for all just people. This introduces the major departure between Lazarus Furore and Grim Fiddle, and I would rather speak to his love of the wretched.

No, perhaps this is wrong of me. Perhaps I should speak to Lazarus’s sense of charity. Lazarus thought charity a form of love. Lazarus wanted to give men, unasked, his will and his law. He often said that if the wretched resisted, he would force them to accept his charity. He talked of how he would “forge” men. I heard this as a boast. I might now more completely regard it as also the bravura of a tyrant. He did not seem to believe that the wretched could build their own future. He believed that the future must be given, forced upon, rammed onto, the wretched. This might mean that Lazarus no more believed in the people’s will than I did, and he might have had less faith in the wretched than I did. Lazarus sought to dictate that document of freedom, justice, and charity; he did dictate in the end. That is not the mark of a compassionate republican. That is the mark of an arrogant, sinister, murderous man. That is the mark of a puppet-master.

I cannot agree to this. Lazarus sacrificed much for me. His grief over the loss of Cleo at Golgotha was complete; he could not speak of her. His grief for Violante, who died in an Ice Cross murder raid on Anvers Island our fourth summer there, was less sad, more complex. She had deteriorated before us at Anvers, as did many of the South Georgian remnant, so his mourning was mixed with ours for ourselves. Lazarus told Cleopatra about Violante: “She was hard enough.” By this I took that he did not think her death was a judgment on her resolve. She died for no reason. Lazarus often counseled me after another defeat on the ice, and especially after my murder of those wretches at Clarence West. He told me, “This was not useless, or meaningless, if we are not. Don’t speak of what is. Speak of what must be!”

I can speak to the only thing that Lazarus favored more than his masks of pedagogue, demagogue, kingmaker, and lawgiver. Lazarus Furore was in love with Cleopatra Furore. He loved her most humanly, and was perplexed by her most