A Walking Shadow, A Poor Player

Dietrich Bronner was familiar with the office: it was his office, at home. The walls were dark wood and covered with bookcases where there was room, but the gloomy effect of the furniture was softened by the windows, which were thrown open into a courtyard garden. They let in some semblance of fresh summer air, even if there wasn’t enough breeze to ripple the curtains. It was strangely quiet in the room. Usually, the city noises of Heinessenpolis were distantly audible over the high walls and chirping of birds in the garden, but today there was neither sound of birds nor city noise— just a stranger, dressed in a costume from hundreds of years ago, sitting at Dietrich’s desk and holding in front of his face the plastic skull that had featured in his high school production of Hamlet .

“Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio,” the man at the desk said.

“Poor delivery. Too affected,” Dietrich snapped immediately. “You sound like a student.” He should have asked how the stranger had gotten in, but he had instincts stronger than self-preservation.

“Perhaps.” He turned the skull around so that the empty eye sockets faced Dietrich, then put it down on the desk. “I was a student when I last played the part.”

Dietrich recognized the man, in the way that one recognizes one’s own reflection, though the man at the desk was some twenty years younger than himself. “Rear Admiral Bronner,” he said, the knowledge coming to him without him having to search for it.

Bronner clapped. “Good job. Now say the next line.”

“I’m dead,” Dietrich said. “Is that what this is?”

“Of course.”

The knowledge should have felt heavier to bear, but it wasn’t as difficult as he had expected. It settled naturally into his brain.

“What did I die of?”

“Something that only kills men who live alone, these days.”

“Pity,” Dietrich said. He walked over to the window and looked out at the garden. “You’re not real. Did Rome have you say that?”

“Of course. And your part, too.”

Dietrich barked out a short laugh. “Where’s the script? He should have given me time to read my lines over before we both walked on stage.”

“Right here,” Bronner said. He reached into one of the drawers of Dietrich’s desk and pulled out the rather worn review copy of Nat Rome’s latest work, the scarlet cover marred with creases and the pages littered with post-it flags. When Bronner dropped it on the table with a heavy thump, Dietrich turned around and his lips pinched. He looked back out the window before he said anything.

“Put that thing away.”

“Why should I?”

“It’s a tale told by an idiot,” Dietrich said.

“I’m sure he would agree.”

Dietrich scoffed. “He’s the one putting that line in my mouth.”

“Of course.”

 “What kind of stupid game is this?” Dietrich asked, turning around and walking over to the desk. Bronner didn’t move, and he picked up the plastic skull and looked at it, turning it over in his hands.

“A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy,” Bronner said, and this time his delivery was much quieter. “He hath borne me on his back a thousand times. Here hung those lips that I have kiss’d I know not how oft.”

“You skipped two lines,” Dietrich said. “Start from the top.” But there wasn’t any venom in his comment.

“Artistic license,” Bronner replied. 

“Rome doesn’t find me ‘abhorred in his imagination,’ is it?” Dietrich asked. There was a mirror above the fireplace on the other side of the room. That was usually where the skull lived, and Dietrich put the skull back where it had come from. He turned its grinning face towards the glass and looked at his own image next to the cheap prop. There was no luster of youth left, and his once thick hair had thinned to almost nothing. “I would.”

“Quiet,” Bronner said. “You’re not one now to mock your own grinning.”

Dietrich snorted and turned back around to Bronner, who was leaning forward on the desk, elbows on the polished wood. “You should take the opportunity to do so for me,” he said, and gestured to himself. “Memento mori.”

“Oh, I doubt I’ll get old,” Bronner said.

“You think Rome will kill you off?”

“Of course— I think I’ll have outlasted my narrative usefulness sooner or later, and it will be convenient for someone to kill me. Oberstein, maybe. Rome has plenty of options. The next books will have endless opportunities.”

“You have to keep playing the role for the story that he gave you.”

“No, no— don’t you see how interesting it would be, to have an event that would break the narrative structure he’s been setting up? To remove the string tying it to history, and the way it is a story?”

“No,” Dietrich said flatly. “I would hope that I have instilled in Rome at least the desire to write a coherent fiction. He won’t break the narrative enough to render it unrecognizable.”

“He still might want to remove one of Yang Wenli’s allies.”

“He won’t kill you,” Dietrich said, and when he said it, he felt very weary. He walked to the window again and leaned on the sill. The air of the garden stirred at last, rustling the leaves of the grand old oak tree and picking up wisps of Dietrich’s hair.

“Why not?”

“He’s too sentimental,” Dietrich said. “He might kill off anyone else— even the ones he likes most— but he won’t touch you. You’ll live.”

“And will he ruin the story to keep me alive?”

“Count yourself lucky that you have a bit part,” Dietrich said. “You’re small enough that his indulgences won’t matter.” He looked at the light as it rippled on the cobblestones where it passed through the greenery above. “Won’t matter to the world at all.”

“He’d want it to.”

“That doesn’t mean it does,” Dietrich said. He looked back at Bronner, an ironic glance. “He might have killed you off if I hadn’t died. You’re lucky.”

“And how would you have felt about that?”

“How am I supposed to know?” Dietrich asked. “Don’t ask me that question.”

“Of course. Rome is speaking through you. He couldn’t give himself that kind of reassurance.” Bronner’s smile was cruel.

“Is that what he wants here?”

“He wants you to tell him how the story ends.”

“If it was a story I wanted to write, I would have written it myself. I’ve told him that.”

“I know.”

Dietrich stared up into the sun, squinting at its perfect circle of brilliance, fixing his eyes on it like a stage light. It burned a hole in his vision, but he was dead, so what did it matter?

“He doesn’t need artistic reassurance,” Dietrich said. “He might say he wants that, but he wants something else.”

“To say goodbye.”

“He can’t.”

“Of course not. That’s why he’s not here.”

“He’s here— we’re not.”

“What’s the difference to me?” Bronner asked.

“It’s no difference to anyone. I said it wouldn’t matter to the world at all.”

Dietrich came over to the desk and picked up the worn copy of the book. He flipped through it, not landing on any page in particular, just feeling the paper move beneath his hands like a deck of cards. 

“You won’t make me say goodbye, Rome?” he asked the air. “Put it in the script. I’d have to say it then.”

“He won’t.”

“Of course not.”

“Give a bow, then,” Bronner said. “Walk offstage.”

Dietrich looked at Bronner— his eyes were amused— and nodded. That, at least, was something he could do. He stepped away from the desk, towards the door, but he tucked the book beneath his arm. With his hand on the door handle he began to speak.

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.”

When he finished, he nodded at Bronner, gave a deep bow to the empty center of the room, and left, shutting the door gently behind himself.