Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #66: "The Ghost-Doll of Valerian."

I don't like to write about politics. I don't write often about social issues. I think such matters are compelling only when they are framed as moral issues. William Dean Howells' famous story "Editha" is an open attack on jingoistic patriotism; and while that is something that certainly deserves to be critiqued, the  head-on, confrontational manner in which Howells frames the story and goes about criticizing the idea that war is glorious and romantic makes the tale gauche and propagandistic. Contrast this to Hemingway's A Farewell To Arms, which contains no overt criticism but is the most effective critique of war I have read because of the way it illustrates the moral chaos, stupidity, brutality, and waste of war. The same could be said of Winfred Owen's "Dulce Et Decorum." It is not a shrill denunciation of attitudes on armed conflict, but a memoir showing the horror of war and the glibness those who would romanticize it. 

The dramatic techniques used by Hemingway and Owen reflect my approach. You don't have to sing "War, what is it good for?" to point out the moral wound war creates. The same is true with other issues, and in my story "The Ghost-Doll of Valerian," I pointed out the crimes of tyrannical, intolerant government, religious persecution, and dogma. Rather than engaging in denunciations, as Howells did through the speeches of his characters in "Editha," I chose to point out how tyranny violates and destroys the very things that make us human and the things we most cherish.

Vahid Dabushi is a member of the Revolutionary Council of an un-named Middle  Eastern country (which is a lot like Iran). He presides over the trial of a Bahá'í woman. Bahá'í is a religion that grew up in the Middle East in the 1800s. A monotheist faith, it emphasizes the transformation of the human race and that God uses various human messengers to direct people toward moral improvement. The religion is non-violent and apolitical. But it has been severely persecuted, especially in Middle East. The Bahá'í woman in Vahid's courtroom has been accused of heresy. She is given the option to convert from her faith, but she refuses. Vahid sentences her to hang.

Valerian uses as a stepping stone

As he waits for the execution, he reflects on the odd events that have occurred on his estate the last week. Servants claim to have seen a naked man about the premises. His appearance is odd, they say; he looks puffy, like a stuffed doll, or a puppet, and only appears at night. Vahid, who claims descent from ancient pre-Islamic kings, wonders if it's a joke some of his more mean-spirited friends might be playing on him. It was Shapur, a pre-Islamic ruler of Persia, and of whom Vahid says he is a descendant, who captured the Roman Emperor Valerian. Legend had it that Shapur used him as a stepping stone to mount his horse and that, eventually, he had Valerian skinned alive and had his body stuffed by taxidermists and put on display in a pagan temple. Legend also had it that women would take their daughters, just before their wedding night, to see the doll of Valerian and get an anatomy lesson on the male body.

Bahá'í Temple, Chicago

The story, he knows, was apocryphal—anti-Christian propaganda aimed at the Zoroastrian Persians. And he has other worries to occupy his mind. He is concerned with his daughter, who has gone to school in England, returned, and is full of new ideas. He warns her that she must not be too vocal and keep her beliefs to herself. He has also learned, from a physician who conducted a physical on the young woman recently, that she is not a virgin—a thing she acknowledges. He warns her to be quiet and says he will arrange for an operation to, as he puts it, "repair" her (reconstruct her hymeneal tissue—a procedure done in some Middle Eastern countries where it is vital that a bride be a virgin). She also chides him for condemning the Bahá'í woman to death. After an angry debate on the manner of her behavior, she says she has seen the naked figured as well. He appeared to her the other night, she said, bare and wearing a rope around his waist.

Vahid is skeptical—then he himself receives as visitation from the ghost-doll:  Immediately he knew it was the Emperor Valerian. His face, with sharp Roman nose, blue eyes painted on glistening pearl plates, short hair framing a puffy head, gazed blindly in Vahid’s direction. He shrank back, his voice making a strangled, squealing sound.  He saw the misshapen legs, the arms like long loaves of soft bread, fingers like stuffed grape leaves. Its feet, flattened on the bottom, looked like pita rounds. Its member dangled obscenely where the legs met. No rope around his waist, he thought, remembering even through his terror what his daughter had told him. After the specter departs, he rushes to his daughter's bedroom to find she has hanged herself.

He reads her suicide note:  Father, please do not let mother see me. The Bahá'í woman—I had to exchange my life for hers. The ghost-doll of Valerian gave me the rope. I am so very sorry, but it was the only thing left for me to do. As Vahid sinks to his knees and gives vent to his grief, he hears the soft, swishing, paddling sound as the ghost-doll of Valerian goes out into the night.  

Tyranny and intolerance have innumerable negative effects. But the most serious is that it makes us less human. Ideology squeezes out love and affection. Dogmatism—whether it is religious, political, or both—interferes with relationships. The atrocities of the past (Valerian's supposed torture and mutilation) return to haunt us; so do atrocities that are more recent and more immediate. 

"The Ghost-Doll of Valerian" appeared in a journal called Orion's Child, now defunct. I can't find an archive for it. Once more, I see a story that perhaps needs to be resubmitted somewhere.

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