Claude Nauge is a laborer, philosophy teacher and monk who founded a vow against slavery; a company summons him as its champion (“our champion”), and he sees “visions of possible occluded futures”. He is introduced by his “fists of stone”.
| Type | Character |
| Occupations | Miner, archaeological digger, hatter, philosophy teacher |
| Body assumed | Cvjetko Popović (Sarajevo, 1914) |
| Spanish entry | Claude Nauge |
Career
He began as a worker in distant mines, then moved to archaeological excavations, and now teaches philosophy in the ethnography department of a museum. He also worked as a hatter at some unplaced point. None of these places is fixed on the map.
The broken chains
He bore physical chains on his hands and broke them with a hammer. Monks of his world know different forms of vow; with that act Nauge founded one: a vow against slavery and against the subjection of others by sovereign power. The breaking of the chain constitutes the vow, and other monks can take it up.
Champion and raven
He is brought in when the company needs brute force. He carries a large hammer, a pointed spade (“that is, a glaive”) and a warhammer so large that “it carries the guy” rather than the reverse. When something else is needed, he is “in raven form”: he flies, runs and “gives a peck”.
Sight to 1980
He sees the future “at least until 1980”, as branching, covered futures. The visions come through some “bims” he has; the word is damaged in the record. That horizon is also the limit of knowledge of the whole company he serves.
Sarajevo and the stars
He took part in the Sarajevo assassination and “was one of the few who lived to tell it”. He traveled to the stars and returned with improved engineering equipment, of which only the existence is recorded.
Conflicting accounts
- Whether the pointed spade and the glaive are one weapon or two is unresolved.
- That Nauge is an oread worker circulates among copyists without support from the primary source; it is recorded as conjecture.
Open questions
- Why he was chained, by whom, and in what servitude.
- Who summons him, and on what terms.
- What the “bims” are; whether his sight came from the journey to the stars or preceded it.
- Which museum employs him, and how it relates to his excavations.
- When Sarajevo falls in the world’s chronology, and how it relates to the 1980 limit.
- What ceremony brought him something like a purification, and what it did.
Gallery
