by John Crowley
“This lady is amazing,” Sid said, passing them on his way to the buffet, and indicating the old Gypsy aunt with his thumb. “Don’t miss her.”
Olga had set up in a lamplit corner, a little table by her where she spread and gathered and spread a deck of cards.
“I’m next,” she who had just been kissing him whispered to Pierce. “I’m going on a trip.”
“Oh yes?” Pierce said. “Isn’t that what she’s supposed to tell you?”
“I need advice. I’m going to be gone a long time.”
A sense of loss absurd and total fled over Pierce’s heart, somehow only supercharging his present glee. “Where?”
“Europe. With a theater and mime troupe.”
“Mime troupe?”
“Did you forget I’m into acting?” she said with a grin. “Sort of mimes. Spontaneous theater. We’ve got dates and everything.” She took his arm. “I have a stage name,” she whispered.
“What is it?”
A superstar expression, dreamy and self-mocking, came over her intelligent fox mask. “Diamond Solitaire,” she said.
Olga beckoned from her corner with a hand, her other hand fanning and gathering her cards. “Listen,” Pierce said. “Can we go someplace?”
“Sure,” she said. “Later. Where?”
“My place.”
“Sure.”
Sure. He let her go, and went to look for more champagne; he was thirsty and gloating. There had come to be a steady tremble to him, a tremor, a standing wave of glee and triumph like the wave that stands in a silk banner in the wind.
What had Olga told him of himself that night? He couldn’t afterward remember clearly; sitting by her he had felt himself for the first time to be truly an actor, and in a play witty and brilliant, which he also watched, a box-holder, first-nighter, wondering what turn the plot would take next and having loads of fun.
A hiatus in his work: he remembered something about that: an uncompleted thing, she wasn’t sure what, a titanic sculpture (his thought, at her suggestion) that was to take far longer to complete than he had at first supposed, he should be patient. And—since he was thinking of moving far away (he didn’t know that he was)—she gave him a piece of advice, that he should write away to the chambers of commerce in the towns he was considering, and ask about job opportunities and housing and so on there; which struck him as sensible, as eminently sensible and a surprise coming from an old Gypsy woman in what appeared to be a semitrance. He remembered snow falling outside the window in which the lamp stood reflected.
Snow was falling too outside the window of his own little bedroom hours later, a silk banner of snow standing in the ghostly streetlight, filling the night with its waving.
Sid’s movie never opened. It was in that month or the next that there appeared in commercial theaters, uptown theaters, movies that broke open the whole box Sid was promising a quick peek into, broke it all open at last, and nothing done masked, nothing.
Oh antique innocence, Pierce thought, watching dawn come from the high tower to which she had at last led him; oh lost innocent days that we thought were so utterly, so brutally unrestrained.
Diamond Solitaire.
She had left for Europe in the spring, but she had come back; she had danced toward and away from him for a year before they became partners, and often enough had do-si-do’d away again thereafter, only to end up at the end of every figure facing him again, clap hands and promenade.
Not this time though. Why he was sure of it he didn’t know, but he was sure.
He went back to the Barnabas credit union to “renegotiate” his loans, to sell, if they would take it, his soul to the company store. There was an anxious wait of a week or more while they studied his whole financial and academic picture (Pierce groaned aloud sleepless on the bed, thinking of the classes he had missed, the office hours he had canceled, it had all got to be a little too much in the past months, too many ashen dawns, too wide and safe a bed) and in the end the news, in two parts, was given to him by the dean of arts and sciences, Earl Sacrobosco.
The first part of the news was that they would be willing to renegotiate his loans, though on harsher terms than he had hoped for.
“What’s with the money problems, Pierce?” Earl asked. “It really doesn’t look good. You taking flutters on the market?”
Pierce was mum. Never complain, never explain.
The second part of the news was that a special course that Pierce had long brooded on, a syllabus for which he had recently devised and which he wanted to try out on young minds the following semester, had been turned down by the curriculum committee. Which in turn, Earl had to be frank with him, was not going to help him with the tenure committee, not combined with this loan business and, let’s face it, Pierce’s continued difficulty in playing with the team, so to speak. A word to the wise; it didn’t appear at this juncture that Pierce had a good chance of being offered tenure at Barnabas.
“I get the general impression,” Pierce said, “that I’m being fired.”
“You have an assured contract for the next academic year,” Earl said gravely. “I’m sure the whole picture will look different by then. Your coming in to see me is a step in that direction. The way I see it.”
“On probation.” A cold rage was blossoming in Pierce; fled, discarded, and now to be caned and humiliated—he had stood sufficient. “It’s inadequate, Earl.”
“Once these present difficulties have been …”
“It’s just inadequate. I have taught here for some years, Earl. I don’t really feel I need to prove myself as some kind of slavey.”
He was trembling, and Earl saw it. Abashed, he said, “Well, let’s get it all on paper. And think further …”
“No,” said Pierce. He rose, almost knocking over his chair, anger always exaggerated his natural clumsiness. “Nope,” he said, towering over Dr. Sacrobosco, who looked gratifyingly alarmed. “Forget it, Earl,” he said, “that’s it,” and without another word—he could hear, through the roar in his ears, himself say not another word—he went out.
That’s it, he said to himself as he went down the terrazzo halls of Barnabas unseeing; that’s it, that’s it, that is it. With this last iteration, though silent, went a sharp downward chop of his hand, as though he were cutting an invisible partner from his side.
In his tower again, he took out the slab of black obsidian and with a single-edged razor blade crushed on it the glittering crumbs of the last of his store, more precious than gold, by weight far more precious. He took a crisp new twenty from his wallet, not many more where that came from, rolled it into a tube, and with it up his nose he inhaled the matter on the stone in long ardent sniffs, exhaling carefully away from the stuff, and then wiping up the powdery remainder with a fingertip to wipe on the inside of his lower lip, where there were fine capillaries to absorb it.
God damn Earl Sacrobosco, he thought. Tenure committee. That was Earl and who else. No, he only wanted Pierce for his proletariat, that’s all, piecework, day wages. And then the ax in June no doubt. And he thought Pierce would sit still for that, because of the loans.
Well, he’s wrong, quite wrong; quite, quite wrong.
He took from the freezer a bottle of vodka—the champagne was gone, all gone—and uncapped it. Outside, green lights like Japanese lanterns were coming on, outlining the bridges, and orange lights outlining the expressways east. Pierce opened the windows and inhaled a tepid and brackish breeze. May, the merry month of May.
On the long radiator that ran beneath the window a copy of the proposal he had written up for his new, now rejected course opened its pages one by one. Pierce picked it up and began to read, champing his teeth, which were as numb as for dental work.
The course was to have been a complement to History 101, its contents standing in relation to the contents of his history course as dreams stand to waking. History 101 would be a requirement for it. Better yet, History 101 should be taken simultaneously with it.
&n
bsp; The first sentence of the proposal was this: “Why do people believe that Gypsies can tell fortunes?” And the last sentence was this: “There is more than one history of the world.”
Pierce sat cross-legged on the bed, tugging at the vodka, the pages of the proposal spread out around him. At his present height (heart small and hard, ticking loudly in his breast) he felt no self-pity. He felt spurned but potent, Manfred in the Alps, Prometheus on the rock.
He thought: there’s more than one university in the world, more than one job on offer. There is more than one fish in the sea.
The closet doors stood open, and he could see the sleeves of her coats and sweaters, the tips of her shoes; in the drawers of the bureau were underthings, jewels, passport, a Florentine ring that had ceased to be capacious enough to bother wearing. He supposed he was to hold these things as hostages, or in trusteeship indefinitely. He supposed if he waited long enough she would at least return for them.
Change the locks, change the phone. He would do more than that. He would do as he had been done by. They can take nothing further from me, he thought, nothing.
In the morning though he felt only spurned, not potent; shipwrecked and at sea.
Spofford and he ate a simple meal, taken mostly from Spofford’s vegetable patch, and when it was finished and the dishes washed up, Pierce retired to the bedroom, the smaller of the little cabin’s two rooms, and lay on the sloping bed that Spofford insisted he take. Spofford took out paper and pen, and by kerosene lantern he wrote (with much pausing for stolid thought) a letter to his Rosalind, while Pierce looked through the introduction to the Soledades of Luis de Góngora, composing mentally the beginnings of his review. The Solitudes are the, are perhaps the best-known, least-read poems of the, de Góngora is perhaps the best-known, least-read poet of his age. Despite the enthusiasm of Shelley and. Despite the enthusiasm of such poets as Shelley. “Gongoristic” and “Gongorism” are terms we all think we, we all use thinking we, are terms everyone uses, but the poems themselves and their peculiar, their elaborate, their peculiarly elaborate, the poems themselves are. He turned to the First Solitude. In the sweet flowery season.
“How do you spell idyllic?” Spofford asked.
Pierce spelled it. Spofford wrote. Pierce read, trying to pick apart the monstrous metaphors that lay in the text like knots of varicolored string, comparing the clever verse translation to the Spanish opposite. Now what, he wondered, could be meant by a “stone whose light/ Is beautiful, however dark the night,” which crowns the unworthy head of a dark beast, whose temples (“it is said”) seem the bright chariot of a midnight sun? The moon, evidently; was this beast then Draco? Who knows? There were no helpful footnotes, footnotes would help the uninitiated reader, the absence of footnotes is. He turned the page. The broken-hearted Youth, shipwrecked while fleeing the wicked City, comes upon help and comfort among simple shepherds. The nerve of this Baroque tongue-twister, emblem-braider, gem-cutter, to imagine simple shepherds.
O fortunate retreat
At whatsoever hour—
A pastoral temple and a floral bower!
“Listen,” Spofford said, leaning back in his creaking chair. Pierce listened, hearing nothing but the constant night; and then, faint but near, like a whisper in his ear, a spooky hollow hoot.
“Owl,” said Spofford.
Who?
“Owl,” Pierce said. “Nice.” He read:
Here is no lust for power,
Nor thirst for windy fame;
Nor envy, to inflame
Like Egypt’s aspic race …
Aspic race? Snakes. Gitano is what the Spanish called them; that was “Gypsy” of course; Gypsy asps …
Nor she who, sphinx-like, wears a human face
Above her bestial loins,
Whose wily voice enjoins
Narcissus’ modern seed
To follow Echo, and despise the well …
Unbidden, she came so suddenly and vividly before Pierce that he drew breath: her bronze hair cut short like a soldier’s, her Gypsy skin satiny with oil, just returned from Europe by way of the beaches of Aruba, come to pay him a surprise visit. I’ve brought back a lady friend, she said. Her face clear, guileless, no customs cop could have had a hunch about her, but for sure she was she “que en salvas gasta impertinentes/ la pólvora del tiempo más preciso,” what Góngora could have meant by that he had no idea, she who in impertinent salvos blows away the powder once upon a time doled out more carefully—but that lady from Aruba was white, flaky as frost, bitter in the nostrils, they blew it in impertinent salvos, more where that came from.
… acaba en mortal fiera,
esfinge bachillera …
Sphinx. Below was all the beast’s: she sitting (he could see it, it tightened and warmed his breast like coke) in his plush armchair, still in her shirt and platform shoes but nothing else, a little embroidered pillow flung at her feet for him to kneel on and work.
ceremonia profana
que la sinceridad burla villana
sobre el corvo cayado.
Ceremonia profana: rustic simplicity leaning on his shepherd’s crook might look upon it with amused disdain. He doubted that. If the burly villain at work on his billet-doux in the next room could have been there, could have looked upon that ceremony …
“You want a beer?” Spofford said, rising.
“Um, sure,” Pierce said.
“They’re not so cold,” Spofford said, bringing him a dusty bottle. “But you’re a sophisticate, right? You can drink beer English style.”
“Sure,” Pierce said. “A sophisticate, definitely.”
“What’s the book?”
Pierce showed him. “Pastorals,” he said. “Poems about sophisticates who leave the city for the country.”
“Oh yeah? Interesting.”
“About how much nicer it is here than there.”
Spofford sipped beer, leaning on the doorjamb. “It is nice,” he said. “You should come and stay.”
“Hm,” said Pierce. “Don’t know if I could make a living.”
“Can’t you do history anywhere?”
“Well. In a sense.”
“Come up here, then. Set up as a historian.”
“Open a shop,” Pierce said, laughing. He put aside the book and rose. He and Spofford went out the screen door into the moon-bright night. Rover lifted his head and thumped his tail against the boards of the little porch. Spofford took a few steps away from the house to urinate.
So real, so real, Pierce thought; he had forgotten; had forgotten this alternation of real odors, this immense volume of air. Fireflies: he’d forgotten fireflies. I wish, he thought, I wish …
“You could write a history of the Faraways,” Spofford said, rebuttoning. “There’s material.”
“Local history,” said Pierce. “That’s a good field. Not mine though,” he added, thinking of it: a field, bounded by a low-piled stone wall, long grasses and lichened boulders, an old apple tree. Fireflies glimmering in the thistled darkness. Not his field: his field lay farther off, or closer in, beyond anyway, geometrical paths through emblematic arches, statuary, a dark topiary maze, a gray vista to an obelisk.
Open a shop. Once upon a time, when he was a kid, when he first decided or understood that he would become a historian, he had had the vague idea that he would do just that, that historians did that, kept shops, dispensed history somehow to those who needed it.
Turns out not so, he thought, looking at the moon, turns out not so. And yet.
A fortunate retreat, at whatsoever hour: escape made good. For sure, if he fled, she would follow. Esfinge, Sphinx chalkokrotos, not in her own person of course, she had made herself pretty clear to him on that score; not in her own person, no, but no less vividly for that.
“Listen,” Spofford said.
The owl, Athena’s wisdom bird or obscene bird of night (these Gongorisms are catching, he thought), asked again its single question.
FOUR
You
could be born, Pierce believed, with a talent for history, as you could be born with musical or mathematical talent; and if you were, it would, like those talents, show up early, as in him it had.
It was true, he thought, that lacking the born knack a person might still apply himself, and subject himself to the proper discipline, and through hard work and care do all right in the field without it—a thing that was probably not true of mathematicians or master chess players; but still such a knack existed. Nor was it solely a compendious memory, which Pierce didn’t really have; or a taste for the past and a delight in antiquity for its own picturesque sake, a quality Pierce’s father, Axel, certainly had, while lacking, to Pierce’s mind, anything that could be called a historical sense at all. Of course a vivid imagination was a help, and Pierce had that; as a student he had been able to browse happily amid statistical breakdowns of transalpine shipping in the sixteenth century or analyses of Viking boat-building techniques, because what he always saw proceeding in his mind was a drama, real men and women at real tasks, linked in the web of history of course but not conscious of that, men and women doing and saying, dreaming and playing, at once compelled absolutely to do what they had done (they were all dead, after all) and at the same time free in their moment, free to hope and regret and blame themselves for failure and thank God for success.
But Pierce’s knack had shown itself long before that, long before he had very many historical facts to apply it to, an oddity of his brain that seemed so natural to him that he was full-grown before he was really aware of it: for Pierce Moffett, as far back as he could remember, numbers—the ten digits—had each a distinct color; and while he could perceive those colors in, say, telephone numbers or equations, they were most vivid to him when arranged in dates.