LUDIC LOG

As your honored Lordship has requested, for reasons I have neither the ability nor the authority to understand, transcripts of all meetings between the man Kenneth Swallowtail and your servant Mordecai Spitnof, such it is my honor to provide. Below find for those free hours in the bath or conference hall a recent conversation between these two gentlemen after the former's most recent time in our progressive and well-maintained dungeons. I hope it is to your satisfaction; since being elevated to the post of Senior Supervisor of Transcriptions and Dictation, I have endeavored to improve my skill at penmanship, spelling and the stationery arts. Allow me to add, as a personal note, my immense gratitude to you, your honored Lordship, for allowing me the opportunity to perform the duties of the S.S. of T.&D., if you will forgive the informality. It is a great improvement over my previous employment in your honored Lordship's service as a bucket-and-crab man at the sporting grounds, and the concomitant decrease in pay has taught me a much-needed lesson in humility. I would eagerly remind your honored Lordship that should you ever have need of an attorney specializing in estate matters, I would be most happy to fill that need as my particular training is in that field, but certainly I am content with hours of poring over conversations between the man who cleans the guardhouse of the Western Wall of the Summer Palace during the daylight hours and the man who cleans the guardhouse of the Western Wall of the Summer Palace during the night hours, in those brief moments when the latter relieves the former and vice versa. My arrest, conviction and subsequent fine of twelve hundred gold crowns for the crime of tax fraud, which led to my current indenture in your honored Lordship's benevolent service, was a long-overdue clarion call for me to "let go" of my nefarious ways; I was a manipulator, careerist and schemer whose great drive for status led me astray. Your honored Lordship's forward-looking views on criminal justice have shown me the light, and I seek to climb the ladder of wealth and esteem no more. No, happy is each day I spend looking up the precise etymology of the various obscenities your honored Lordship directs at his honor the Minister of Public Welfare. Joyful is each moment I spend editing and correcting papers written by the Executive Supervisor of Transcriptions and Dictation; his work is as important as mine and your decision to place someone of limited literacy in a position so contingent on traditional spelling and grammar is not mine to question, because you are the Lord Mayor and I a humble civil servant. Rewarding is every hour I spend in the fine company of the Undersecretary of Financial Accountability and Rectification, recording each series of increasing integers as he calls them out, in aid of your directive that the coins in your honored Lordship's petty cash bowl be recorded each day. It is impossible to express in words the thrill I feel each day in your service, carrying out the very necessary tasks. I almost rue the day when my exorbitantly fair debt to the glorious city of Kurtana is finally paid off, for on that day I will no longer be required to execute whatever duties you have decided, in your wisdom to have me do! Please enjoy this fascinating transcript; if it brings your honored Lordship one hundredth of the glee in reading it that I had in writing it, your honored Lordship will in some small way understand my appreciation for all you have given me.

I remain, your faithful servant,

Peter Straitmann, Esq.
Senior Supervisor of Transcriptions & Dictation
Ministry of the Chancellery
Offices of the Lord Mayor of Kurtana, Kingdom of Ronomo
Scriptorium 14, High City

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: These notes were taken in the offices of Mister Mordecai Spitnof, Special Coordinator of the Visitors' Bureau, in the Upper City. Special mention was made by Mr. Spitnof of the unsuitability of the offices for his needs, in particular its distance from the Summer Palace, its lack of space and its draftiness in winter. While it is neither the station nor the intention of this transcriber to support Mr. Spitnof's allegations, it will perhaps be instructive to mention that while confined to the pantry (a necessary concealment given your Lordship's insistence that the notes be taken in secret), he noticed a bothersome cramping in his upper thighs. Mr. Swallowtail was accompanied by a sizable barbarian who, if one is inclined to judgments of this nature, may be said to have been even more poorly dressed and hostile than Mr. Swallowtail himself. Both, additionally, seemed to be drunk, although this is scarcely possible given the earliness of the hour and the fact that it is expressly forbidden to drink intoxicating beverages in His Honor's carriages. We begin:

MISTER SPITNOF: Kenneth. To what do I owe this visit? Your appointment is not until tomorrow.

MISTER SWALLOWTAIL: You know why I'm here, Mordecai. Why do you
have to play this game? You'd make a great Burger King manager.

MISTER SPITNOF: It is very hard to understand you at times, Kenneth, but I'm
sure you're right. So you have been arrested again.

MISTER SWALLOWTAIL: Yes. I have been arrested, again, for fighting, again,
at the Mermaid's Cove, again, drunk, again. I was taken to the dungeons, again,
and beaten by the guards, again. I would like you to pay my fine, again, so I can
get out.

MISTER SPITNOF: Kenneth, I will certainly do so, as is my duty. But this sort
of thing is not to your credit.

MISTER SWALLOWTAIL: That's true. And I'm sure that I am only hurting
myself.

MISTER SPITNOF: This is all very amusing to you, isn't it?

MISTER SWALLOWTAIL: No, Mordecai. It's not amusing to me at all. Very
little amuses me.

MISTER SPITNOF: Why do you keep doing it, then? Why am I forever being
called out of my office to rescue you from the consequences of your bad
behavior? To what end, all these uncivil outbursts?

MISTER SWALLOWTAIL: Fuck you. You know why I came here. You know
what I wanted. And you know why it's all gone to hell: because of you.
Because of you and everyone like you. You're what's wrong with this world.
No, let me amend that: I have lived now on two worlds, and you're what's
wrong with both of them. If I were allowed to gamble, which I am not, I would
bet that you're what's wrong with every world.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: At the mention of gambling, the barbarian your honored
Lordship, being no doubt an attentive reader of these notes into which I pour all my mind and heart, remembers my mentioning above became visibly agitated. Such distress was not evident in Mr. Spitnof, who if I may be allowed an editorial content that certainly is beyond my station, displays an admirable tolerance for the lack of respect shown him by Mr. Swallowtail. To continue:

MISTER SPITNOF: No, Kenneth, you're mistaken. You would lose the bet. I, and those people I represent, are what is right with every world. We are the ones who implement and follow procedures. We direct our energies not towards the sort of juvenile fantasies harbored by your kind, but towards building a world in which people can comfortably live. You look at the world and see nothing but a playground in which you may indulge your basest whimsy. We see a place where people have needs that must be met, and where responsibility must be taken in order to meet those needs. In pursuit of progress and civilization we come up with rules for the common good, and the sort of rebellious contempt you harbor for these rules is better suited to a two-year-old child than an intelligent adult; you scream 'no' at every stricture with no regard for its wisdom. Your questioning is not probative, but is the pestering 'why' of an attention-seeking boy.

MISTER SWALLOWTAIL: You sound like a particularly bad passage in an
Ayn Rand novel.

MISTER SPITNOF: It is difficult for me to respond to that, since I an unfamiliar
with Ayn Rand and I do not know what a novel is. My point, however, remains.

MISTER SWALLOWTAIL: Your point remains muddled and self-serving. You
seek praise rather than admit responsibility for your part in building a
straightjacketed world.

MISTER SPITNOF: And what world would you prefer? Certainly not a world
of personal accomplishment and the rewarding of hard work and virtue. You
fled such a world, leaving behind a family who depended on you. Deserting
your family, this is no crime in your ideal world? Or is it justified by the fact that
your paternal commitments interfered with your ambition? And certainly not a
world of benevolent order and simple progress. You arrived on such a world ­
our world ­ intent on twisting it around your finger and jerking it like a dancing
puppet. What world would you see? A world where you can ride the hills in
your infernal machines, doing whatever you like, spitting death from your awful
hands? You envision a world where you are a god of doom, where your special
knowledge sends us simple fools scuttling about to fulfill your adolescent needs.
One can scarcely believe your arrogance.

MISTER SWALLOWTAIL: You talk of arrogance! It's laughable. Who is the one who has appointed himself authority over all of the world? Who, of we two, uses his special knowledge to impose his arbitrary moral code on those who aren't privy to the secrets he shares? You hypocrite! Talking of progress and order, as you strangle the life force of progressive forces, and you throw chaos into the lives of those who can lead your land into the future. God damn you!

MISTER SPITNOF: The gods will damn us all, Kenneth. But you, I think, are
not their medium. Not you, you helpless drunken flotsam of a man. In the
deserts there is a god-man. He is said to be a deity, more powerful than any
other (which is the sort of blasphemy of which you would doubtless be fond),
and yet he is in the form of a common man. Perhaps this is true, Mother Mary
forgive my impertinent speculation. But no god would choose a shambulant
wreck such as yourself as his avatar.

MISTER SWALLOWTAIL: These personal attacks are ill-suited to a mole in
human shape, an empty torso in a full tunic. Besides, it is you who sets yourself
up as deific; you are a fascistic bully dressed in the noble robes of human service.
You hide your goal of domination and control under a false piety and a bogus
benignity.

MISTER SPITNOF: And what of your goals? You want the world to be a
treasure chest, filled with phantom people and free of moral weight, which you
can plunder and despoil as you will. You would be happier in the savage
company of this barbarian's brethren.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Here the other gentleman, do you remember? Yes, we have spoken of him before. makes a low rumbling sound in his lower throat, which I represent extraneous to the transcript proper as "huuurrrrrraaaaaaaaaagh" (the extra 'a' sounds indicating a sort of choking gurgle as he restrains himself from executing what must have been an assault on your honored Lordship's servant Mr. Spitnof after that worthy gestures to the armed guards anterior to him, who are for the sake of completeness Mr. Lars Blenhesse [three hundred gold crowns, extortion] and Mr. Jaco Orenthe [one hundred gold crowns, burglary]). Mr. Spitnof continues, this time addressing the northlander:

MISTER SPITNOF: Well? What have you to do with all this?

MISTER BINGAND: Stand down your guards and fight. You call me barbarian, I will teach you, I will show you my name.

MISTER SPITNOF: I know your name. You are Brog Bingand of the red clay village near to the great Sleeping Forest of Verbyr. You are a barbarian and I will address you as such, and I warn you that if you rise from your chair without my leave these men will cut your throat before you are stood to your full height. Tell me now why you are in the company of this man Swallowtail.

MISTER BINGAND: He says he will pay, to free me from the place of chains.

MISTER SWALLOWTAIL: I say, and I will. If you please, Mordecai, I have
had enough of your insults and moralizing for a thousand lifetimes, let alone a
single morning. I wish to go now, and I will pay for Brog Bingand's fine out of
my personal savings.

MISTER SPITNOF: Very well. Goodness knows it is no good talking to a recalcitrant misanthrope like you anyway, but I suppose I think everyone can be made useful.

MISTER SWALLOWTAIL: Spare me from the hell of a useful life.

MISTER SPITNOF: I certainly shall not. The barbarian will be your
responsibility, then, as long as he remains in the city. Mind that you don't
deplete your savings or you shall be made to work for a living, and you wouldn't
want that. I will see you at the regular time tomorrow.

MISTER BINGAND: Someday I will kill you, little man.

MISTER SWALLOWTAIL: The waiting list for that honor is long and starred.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Here from my sight, and therefore from my provenance, departed Mr. Swallowtail and his new friend: Praise to your honored Lordship, thrice elected.