Ser Jaramey Slizzard
An unfinished, mostly lost and certainly misguided operetta from that impenetrable Austrian plowwright Otto Büchstein.
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The complete works of Otto Büchstein
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It is notable for the line — one of few lines of dialogue in the fragment that remains — that has now entered the negotiators’ lexicon:
For all his baffling obliquity, Büchstein did have a knack for the occasional pithy aphorism.
Ser Jaramey Slizzard appears to have been assembled, as was Büchstein’s habit, from conflicting and dubious readings of financial mythology — this time, the legends and fables from the time of The Single Agreement, the First Men and the Children of the Woods. From this material Büchstein appears to have extrapolated an entire chivalric order of Swap Knights that are not reported in any other reliable source.
In any case, Ser Jaramey Slizzard is the story of a young ISDA Knight. The proceedings of that ancient order were, and remain, mortally secret, but the “Wording” — a sacred rite whereby fully-armoured ISDA knights are said to have wrangled canonical text through the medium of hand-to-hand fighting — has some mentions in the contemporaneous historical record. As an aside, this strikes us as plausible: phrasing as pained as ISDA’s can surely only come from martial combat: no sound mind, in a state of peaceable reflection could possibly perpetrate such tortured syntax.
The central drama occurs when a young Ser Jaramey confronts the elders of his calling during the Wording session convened to finally consecrate the definition of “Event Determination Date” in the 2014 ISDA Credit Derivatives Definitions.
Sadly, only a fragment of the libretto now remains, but it is reproduced below. Unusually, it is in English, apparently transcribed by longtime Büchstein antagonist, Winthrop Grumman, who took notes while the author mumbled incoherently from the depths of a malarial swoon in an opium den in old Mandalay.
The Grand Knight-Convenor of ISDA’ s crack CDS drafting squad surveys the wreckage across the mead-hall. At last, the hall falls silent. Echoed scuffles, bootfall and clankèd chainmail sublimate into the musty vaulted beams — perhaps a saucepan lid lazily circles. A curl of incense wafts up, the chimney smokes white and before the exhausted combatants there lies, upon a table, this careful calligraphic parchment.
- Regolamento: Fine ninjas, knights and champions —
- Brave chevaliers of our spidery art! Lay down your arms.
- Though be you bruised and battered, soiled and scarred —
- The meaty thrust and counterthrust that boiled within these cloisters
- And lent heft to this most blasted of all Wordings —
- Is now done.
- Triago, Herculio, arise! We are at one.
- Holster thy syntactic catapults;
- Demob that giddy mace of outlandish sophistry!
- Behold, clandestine league, anoint the golden hour!
- Apply thy merry unguents: our wranglement is at an end.
- Grand Knight-Convenor: Are we — are we done, then? My brother, sister knights: are we done?
The rambunctious Ser Jaramey Slizzard, a young knight from the court of Milbank, stirs. He gets unsteadily to his feet. His countenance is dark.
- Ser Jaramey: Prithee, the conch.
- Grand Knight-Convenor: Denied.
- Ser Jaramey: So be it, milord, but I shall speak. Now, As the case may, for the time being, be deemèd —
- Grand Knight-Convenor: No. This must stop now. The time for pedantry is over, Ser.
But the young knight is hot blooded, wild. We can hear him mutter the Swappist Oath.
- Ser Jaramey: What is dull is never done.
The young knight draws, but the Aïessdiyé have seen all this before. They are faster. They anticipate his stroke and the watch commander, Inclusivia Libertardia cuts the young knight down with a blow to the back of the knees.
- Ser Jaramey: Doth it befit our order, good lady knight
- Our sainted equal guild of taker and of giver —
- To strike so low a blow as that?
The young knight buckles.
- Inclusivia: ’Twas the cheapest to deliver.
The company of knights of the Aïessdiyé escort Ser Jaramey away to the Protocolia where he will serve a period of nettance.