THE CITY OF THE GONE AWAY
by Ambrose Bierce
I was born of poor because honest parents, and
until I was twenty-three years old never knew
the possibilities of happiness latent in another
person's coin. At that time Providence threw me
into a deep sleep and revealed to me in a dream
the folly of labor. "Behold," said a vision of a
holy hermit, "the poverty and squalor of your lot
and listen to the teachings of nature. You rise
in the morning from your pallet of straw and go
forth to your daily labor in the fields. The
flowers nod their heads in friendly salutation
as you pass. The lark greets you with a burst of
song. The early sun sheds his temperate beams
upon you, and from the dewy grass you inhale an
atmosphere cool and grateful to your lungs. All
nature seems to salute you with the joy of a
generous servant welcoming a faithful master.
You are in harmony with her gentlest mood and
your soul sings within you. You begin your daily
task at the plow, hopeful that the noonday will
fulfill the promise of the morn, maturing the
charms of the landscape and confirming its
benediction upon your spirit. You follow the
plow until fatigue invokes repose, and seating
yourself upon the earth at the end of your
furrow you expect to enjoy in fulness the
delights of which you did but taste.
"Alas! the sun has climbed into a brazen sky
and his beams are become a torrent. The flowers
have closed their petals, confining their
perfume and denying their colors to the eye.
Coolness no longer exhales from the grass: the
dew has vanished and the dry surface of the
fields repeats the fierce heat of the sky. No
longer the birds of heaven salute you with
melody, but the jay harshly upbraids you from
the edge of the copse. Unhappy man! all the
gentle and healing ministrations of nature
are denied you in punishment of your sin.
You have broken the First Commandment of the
Natural Decalogue: you have labored!"
Awakening from my dream, I collected my few
belongings, bade adieu to my erring parents
and departed out of that land, pausing at
the grave of my grandfather, who had been a
priest, to take an oath that never again,
Heaven helping me, would I earn an honest
penny.
How long I traveled I know not, but I came
at last to a great city by the sea, where I
set up as a physician. The name of that place
I do not now remember, for such were my activity
and renown in my new profession that the
Aldermen, moved by pressure of public opinion,
altered it, and thenceforth the place was
known as the City of the Gone Away. It is
needless to say that I had no knowledge of
medicine, but by securing the service of an
eminent forger I obtained a diploma purporting
to have been granted by the Royal Quackery
of Charlatanic Empiricism at Hoodos, which,
framed in immortelles and suspended by a bit
of crepe to a willow in front of my
office, attracted the ailing in great numbers.
In connection with my dispensary I conducted
one of the largest undertaking establishments
ever known, and as soon as my means permitted,
purchased a wide tract of land and made it
into a cemetery. I owned also some very
profitable marble works on one side of the
gateway to the cemetery, and on the other an
extensive flower garden. My Mourner's Emporium
was patronized by the beauty, fashion and
sorrow of the city. In short, I was in a very
prosperous way of business, and within a year
was able to send for my parents and establish
my old father very comfortably as a receiver
of stolen goods--an act which I confess was
saved from the reproach of filial gratitude
only by my exaction of all the profits.
But the vicissitudes of fortune are avoidable
only by practice of the sternest indigence:
human foresight cannot provide against the
envy of the gods and the tireless machinations
of Fate. The widening circle of prosperity
grows weaker as it spreads until the antagonistic
forces which it has pushed back are made
powerful by compression to resist and finally
overwhelm. So great grew the renown of my
skill in medicine that patients were brought
to me from all the four quarters of the globe.
Burdensome invalids whose tardiness in dying
was a perpetual grief to their friends;
wealthy testators whose legatees were desirous
to come by their own; superfluous children of
penitent parents and dependent parents of frugal
children; wives of husbands ambitious to remarry
and husbands of wives without standing in the
courts of divorce--these and all conceivable
classes of the surplus population were conducted
to my dispensary in the City of the Gone Away.
They came in incalculable multitudes.
Government agents brought me caravans of
orphans, paupers, lunatics and all who had
become a public charge. My skill in curing
orphanism and pauperism was particularly
acknowledged by a grateful parliament.
Naturally, all this promoted the public
prosperity, for although I got the greater
part of the money that strangers expended
in the city, the rest went into the channels
of trade, and I was myself a liberal investor,
purchaser and employer, and a patron of the
arts and sciences. The City of the Gone Away
grew so rapidly that in a few years it had
inclosed my cemetery, despite its own constant
growth. In that fact lay the lion that rent
me.
The Aldermen declared my cemetery a public
evil and decided to take it from me, remove
the bodies to another place and make a park
of it. I was to be paid for it and could
easily bribe the appraisers to fix a high
price, but for a reason which will appear
the decision gave me little joy. It was in
vain that I protested against the sacrilege
of disturbing the holy dead, although this
was a powerful appeal, for in that land the
dead are held in religious veneration.
Temples are built in their honor and a
separate priesthood maintained at the public
expense, whose only duty is performance of
memorial services of the most solemn and
touching kind. On four days in the year
there is a Festival of the Good, as it is
called, when all the people lay by their
work or business and, headed by the priests,
march in procession through the cemeteries,
adorning the graves and praying in the
temples. However bad a man's life may be,
it is believed that when dead he enters
into a state of eternal and inexpressible
happiness. To signify a doubt of this is
an offense punishable by death. To deny
burial to the dead, or to exhume a buried
body, except under sanction of law by
special dispensation and with solemn
ceremony, is a crime having no stated
penalty because no one has ever had the
hardihood to commit it.
All these considerations were in my favor,
yet so well assured were the people and
their civic officers that my cemetery was
injurious to the public health that it
was condemned and appraised, and with
terror in my heart I received three times
its value and began to settle up my affairs
with all speed.
A week later was the day appointed for the
formal inauguration of the ceremony of
removing the bodies. The day was fine and
the entire population of the city and
surrounding country was present at the
imposing religious rites. These were
directed by the mortuary priesthood in
full canonicals. There was propitiatory
sacrifice in the Temples of the Once,
followed by a processional pageant of
great splendor, ending at the cemetery. The
Great Mayor in his robe of state led the
procession. He was armed with a golden
spade and followed by one hundred male and
female singers, clad all in white and
chanting the Hymn to the Gone Away. Behind
these came the minor priesthood of the
temples, all the civic authorities, habited
in their official apparel, each carrying a
living pig as an offering to the gods of
the dead. Of the many divisions of the
line, the last was formed by the populace,
with uncovered heads, sifting dust into
their hair in token of humility. In front
of the mortuary chapel in the midst of the
necropolis, the Supreme Priest stood in
gorgeous vestments, supported on each hand
by a line of bishops and other high
dignitaries of his prelacy, all frowning
with the utmost austerity. As the Great
Mayor paused in the Presence, the minor
clergy, the civic authorities, the choir
and populace closed in and encompassed
the spot. The Great Mayor, laying his
golden spade at the feet of the Supreme
Priest, knelt in silence.
"Why comest thou here, presumptuous mortal?"
said the Supreme Priest in clear, deliberate
tones. "Is it thy unhallowed purpose with
this implement to uncover the mysteries of
death and break the repose of the Good?"
The Great Mayor, still kneeling, drew from
his robe a document with portentous seals:
"Behold, O ineffable, thy servant, having
warrant of his people, entreateth at thy
holy hands the custody of the Good, to the
end and purpose that they lie in fitter
earth, by consecration duly prepared against
their coming."
With that he placed in the sacerdotal hands
the order of the Council of Aldermen
decreeing the removal. Merely touching the
parchment, the Supreme Priest passed it to
the Head Necropolitan at his side, and raising
his hands relaxed the severity of his countenance
and exclaimed: "The gods comply."
Down the line of prelates on either side,
his gesture, look and words were successively
repeated. The Great Mayor rose to his feet,
the choir began a solemn chant and, opportunely,
a funeral car drawn by ten white horses with
black plumes rolled in at the gate and made
its way through the parting crowd to the grave
selected for the occasion--that of a high
official whom I had treated for chronic
incumbency. The Great Mayor touched the grave
with his golden spade (which he then presented
to the Supreme Priest) and two stalwart diggers
with iron ones set vigorously to work.
At that moment I was observed to leave the
cemetery and the country; for a report of
the rest of the proceedings I am indebted to
my sainted father, who related it in a letter
to me, written in jail the night before he
had the irreparable misfortune to take the
kink out of a rope.
As the workmen proceeded with their excavation,
four bishops stationed themselves at the
corners of the grave and in the profound silence
of the multitude, broken otherwise only by
the harsh grinding sound of spades, repeated
continuously, one after another, the solemn
invocations and responses from the Ritual of
the Disturbed, imploring the blessed brother
to forgive. But the blessed brother was not
there. Full fathom two they mined for him in
vain, then gave it up. The priests were visibly
disconcerted, the populace was aghast, for that
grave was indubitably vacant.
After a brief consultation with the Supreme
Priest, the Great Mayor ordered the workmen
to open another grave. The ritual was omitted
this time until the coffin should be uncovered.
There was no coffin, no body.
The cemetery was now a scene of the wildest
confusion and dismay. The people shouted and
ran hither and thither, gesticulating, clamoring,
all talking at once, none listening. Some ran
for spades, fire-shovels, hoes, sticks, anything.
Some brought carpenters' adzes, even chisels
from the marble works, and with these inadequate
aids set to work upon the first graves they came
to. Others fell upon the mounds with their bare
hands, scraping away the earth as eagerly as dogs
digging for marmots. Before nightfall the surface
of the greater part of the cemetery had been
upturned; every grave had been explored to the
bottom and thousands of men were tearing away
at the interspaces with as furious a frenzy as
exhaustion would permit. As night came on torches
were lighted, and in the sinister glare these
frantic mortals, looking like a legion of fiends
performing some unholy rite, pursued their
disappointing work until they had devastated
the entire area. But not a body did they find--not
even a coffin.
The explanation is exceedingly simple. An important
part of my income had been derived from the sale
of cadavres to medical colleges, which
never before had been so well supplied, and which,
in added recognition of my services to science,
had all bestowed upon me diplomas, degrees and
fellowships without number. But their demand for
cadavres was unequal to my supply: by even
the most prodigal extravagances they could not
consume the one-half of the products of my skill
as a physician. As to the rest, I had owned and
operated the most extensive and thoroughly
appointed soapworks in all the country. The
excellence of my "Toilet Homoline" was attested
by certificates from scores of the saintliest
theologians, and I had one in autograph from
Badelina Fatti the most famous living soaprano.
~~~~~~~ THE END ~~~~~~~
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