Free City

By Eric Darton

First published in 1996 to international acclaim, Eric Darton’s Free City is the fictional journal of L., a seventeenth-century inventor caught in a precarious love triangle, even as his beloved northern European port town teeters on the brink of catastrophe.

In a tale laced with bawdy humor and elements of the fantastical, L. must balance the demands of his patron—a rapacious entrepreneur—against those of his sorceress lover. As L. attempts to avert calamity, he finds himself joined by the most unlikely of allies.

Weaving together historical, political and absurdist elements, Free City resonates more profoundly today than ever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Release date: Jul 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9781943150762

Eric Darton

Eric Darton was born in New York City in 1950. His books include Divided We Stand: A Biography of New York’s World Trade Center (Basic Books, 1999, 2011), and Free City, a novel. He teaches at Global College of Long Island University, Harry Van Arsdale Center for Labor Studies (Empire State College) and New York University. Previously, he has been an editor of Conjunctions, American Letters & Commentary and Frigatezine.

Book preview

FIRST DAY

That someone rearranged the furniture during the night, I have no doubt. This is how I came by the egg-sized lump above my left eye socket—my collision with the remarkably accurate clock young Christiaan sent me—it is a lucky thing its pendulum caused no laceration. Or per haps I forgot that I’d hung it from the seventh rafter. Do advancing years conspire to subvert my Art? The works sent off to Emmerich for refitting, so great was the impact. Adela must have sensed something amiss, for she arrived early and with a poultice already prepared. This temporary indisposition prompted some belated calculations. My progressed Mars opposes my Natal Saturn and the Dragon’s Tail is transiting, yet my work proceeds unhindered.

SECOND DAY

A welcome diversion. Roberto’s pebbles rattling against the transom just as my wandering imagination foundered on the unforgiving shoals of chemistry. Truth to tell, I’d sacrificed just the tip of my most inessential digit to an exploding beaker shard—I fear I have lost some portion of my former skill. Glad of help with the bandaging, during which Roberto informed me that he had caught a duck to speak.

It is important, I told him with gravity, now that you have made him the gift of language, that you give your fowl to understand that whatever form we may take, we are all stuff of the Creator’s essence.

Roberto paid scant attention to my injunction. Either he thought its triteness beneath comment or was, perhaps, too enmeshed in his own imaginings to respond. In any case, he turned on his heels and departed abruptly, only to return a moment later with the creature perched on his shoulder. After a long interview, it is clear that the duck can both speak our rich Saxon tongue—its slight inflections are due, I think, to the nature of the ornithic apparatus—and also, in some manner, reason, though how he came by these prodigious faculties is open to conjecture. This is either a rare pedagogy or something less natural. Roberto’s delight is inexpressible—he dotes on the creature, which, in its manner, returns the affection—but I cannot help bur think that this latest diversion betokens some more consequential deployment of his powers.

Having determined to elevate my injured member and spend the day in contemplation, I am now seized by an irresistible impulse to return to work. Might the duck be some sort of mechanism? If so, it is crafted by a subtler hand than mine.

THIRD DAY

There is not a vessel intact in the laboratory and fully half my manuscripts are reduced to ashes, yet I am infused with a great sense of accomplishment. I have eliminated a host of false possibilities and remain convinced as ever that the volume of a gas varies in relationship to pressure, yet am at a loss to find a means of proving this to my or anyone else’s satisfaction. At any rate, I have discovered a new and potent explosive. A lengthy walk for the first time in a fortnight—even the stench of the blubber works enchanted the evening air. Am I now prey to visions, or was one of our ubiquitous bay pochards lurking, its white feathers half obscured among the budding leaves of my linden? Surely this prosaic fowl is no itinerant muse in disguise. My sanguinity restored, I shall sleep like a lamb without intervention.

FOURTH DAY

O, black night and grateful dawn! For an eternity of darkness, Roberto’s duck declaimed at me from its perch on my bedstead. It has mastered Greek, Latin, and several Oriental tongues. It recites a burlesque Dante in the most degraded Veneto dialect, and I could not lift a finger to set it aflight. Instead I had to endure its infernal quacking, its coy and witless pantomime of the tortured Ugolino devouring his tender progeny. In vain I attempted to rise, with the intention of roasting and dividing the bird among the famished Count and his progeny. I am convinced that my dream is an augury and am resolved to inveigh upon R. to make gustatory use of the duck at once—since doubtless many financial and legal advantages would accrue to him as a result. I shall advise R. to seek amusements other than the needless betterment of wildfowl—why not, for example, take into his care some worthy young peasant? Certainly the countryside abounds in war orphans. I am too shaken to accomplish anything but a halfhearted ordering of my ever-diminishing instruments. I have coated the bed-posts with suet and hung impediments from all the rafters. Should the phantasm return, it will find itself able neither to perch nor fly.

FIFTH DAY

No recurrences during siesta, thankfully. Adela visited me, having dreamt that I was much discomfited. She appeared to be greatly relieved to find I am not in jeopardy. Though I judge her to be fairly advanced in years, her powers of seduction are prodigious, and consequently I am as exhausted in body as I am revivified in spirit. My venerable bed, however, already distressed, is now fatally stricken and has been transformed from a morphic impediment into a Procrustean calamity. I must now weigh the expense of replacing it against purchasing new alembics and paper for my latest treatise: repose versus posterity—was ever a dilemma more paradoxically set forth? Roberto called midafternoon and eyed my demolished pallet with an attentiveness verging on the prurient. Apparently he has seen fit to name his duck Friedrich—an indication that, despite my urgent counsel, he has no intention of dispatching the bird. I cannot experiment further today, as this distraction makes me unfit for such precarious employment. I regret my equivocation. The evidence of my dream seems clear—the fowl is an evil emanation in need of purification. I have found confirmation for my interpretation in the texts of the worthy Artemidorus—yet I am plagued by uncertainty and cannot formulate a plan.

SIXTH DAY

A sleep like imagined death shattered by the pounding of my landlord, a manufacturer in woolens, and a voice of parochial imbecility on the Council. Conveniently forgetting that it was I who suggested he might profit from the ownership of dwellings—forgetting that it was I who sold him this very house—that I might continue, in the absence of a consistent income, to furnish myself with materials—forgetting that it was I who taught his amanuensis bookkeeping when he himself proved too dense to comprehend the system, and without which he would no doubt long ago have fallen into the penury he deserves—this miser now plants himself at my threshold and demands his rent in the most strident and abusive fashion. I can only imagine that the wretched Croesus will use my few miserable rix dollars toward the purchase of further holdings and the eviction of their inhabitants. He is a great dishonor to the memory of the father to whom he owes his inheritance—a sea captain of great courage, a trader in fur and amber who, in my own father’s time, advanced the fortunes of our City beyond estimate by prevailing upon the Council to allow the Jews to reside among us, and found their bank.

So much for either a new bed or paper for my treatise. The landlord has made off with everyhing that could be readily exchanged. I am none theless unbowed. I can and will subsist.

Roberto’s proposal—which I submitted on his behalf—for further drainage and windmills along the northeastern marshes followed by the construction of a seawall and additional fortifications met with the Council’s favor, particularly since the burden of the levy will fall primarily upon the lower orders. His plans also call for dredging out much of the estuary silt and clearing the channel of the carcasses of ships sunk during the wars, as well as a new launch and dry dock to accommodate deeper-draft vessels. In addition he has been granted a monopoly on trade in Murano glass. R.’s foreign birth—which, by law, precludes his election to the Council—seems now the only check upon the limitless increase of his wealth.

A brief moment of triumph when the Council adopted my plan for improvements in our defense system—so far as I know the first of its kind—consisting of ditches and star-shaped salienrs projecting from stone-faced earthen ramparts. Perhaps the Diet’s memory of the flattening of half the town, including several of their own domiciles—and the attendant disruption of business activity—was sufficiently keen as to foreclose their usual obfuscation with regards to investments in the public safety. In urging this project, however, I forebore to explicate how new walls will indelibly put their stamp upon our City’s future. The expense of construction, the mass and permanence of these fortifications, will delimit our growth as never before—we shall have nowhere to build but upward—land values will skyrocket, and we will needs raze everything within cannon range of the walls to allow us an unrestricted field of fire.

During a recess, I challenged Roberto to prove to me that his duck is not a malefic emanation. He either did not hear or chose not to acknowledge my trepidation, but taking my arm with insinuating cordiality enlisted my support for seating the fowl on the Council forthwith. I can now confirm what formerly I merely suspected—his ambitions have succeeded all reason. Can this be the man I once called friend?

SEVENTH DAY

I am torn in twain, thrain, and quatrain! R. called at midnight and offered me a new bed, a complete refitting of my laboratory, and a vast quantity of paper—more than a lifetime’s publication could consume—if only I will intervene on behalf of his duck’s candidacy. How fortunes may turn! Roberto is brilliant, surely, and relentless in pursuit of his objectives, but the mechanism by which he has transformed so inauspicious a debut into such extravagant prosperity utterly eludes me. If I apprehended it even one whit, I might soon be quit of my present straits and independent of such compromised largesse. Queried once, when we had drunk more than our measure, he abruptly set his cup aside. Gaze averted, R. stroked the table’s edge with the fingertips of both hands, working outward from an imaginary center as though patiently smoothing the implacable creases in an unseen cloth. For some moments he said nothing. Then, when I had nearly despaired of a reply, he leaned forward and meeting my eye, spoke in his native Italian, yet so softly that I can scarcely vouch for having heard him aright. In my youth, circumstances dictated that I make an accommodation with pain. Since then, when I sight its vanguard, I never hesitate, but rush headlong toward its center. And pain, for its part, encountering my resolve, unfailingly disperses to find adherence elsewhere—in more susceptible flesh and bone.

EIGHTH DAY

Beginning at first light of dawn today we were visited with a terrific bombardment. Awakened by the cacophony, I was certain that the wars were beginning afresh. Though the herring plant and securities exchange were spared, the brewery, an easy mark hard by the embankment,