by John Gardner
Later that night they passed a harp--not the old Shaper's instrument, no one touched that--and the queen's brother sang. He was no artist, with either his fingers or his throat, but all the hall was silent, listening. He sang, childlike except for the winter in his gray eyes, of a hero who'd killed a girl's old father out of love of the girl, and how the girl after that had both loved and hated the hero and finally had killed him. Wealtheow smiled, full of sorrow, as she listened. The bear irritably watched the dogs. Then others sang. Old Hrothgar watched and listened, brooding on dangers. (The queen's brother had straw-yellow hair and eyes as gray as slate. Sometimes when he stole a glance at Hrothgar, his face was a knife.)
Toward morning, they all went to bed. Half buried in snow, the deadly cold coming up through my feet, I kept watch. The queen put her hand on Hrothgar's bare shoulder as he slept and looked at him thoughtfully, exactly as Hrothgar had looked at her and at his people. She moved a strand of hair from his face. After a long, long time she closed her eyes, but even now I wasn't sure she was asleep.
And so in my cave, coughing from the smoke and clenching feet on fire with chilblains, I ground my teeth on my own absurdity. Whatever their excuse might be, I had none, I knew: I had seen the dragon. Ashes to ashes. And yet I was teased--tortured by the red of her hair and the set of her chin and the white of her shoulders--teased toward disbelief in the dragon's truths. A glorious moment was coming, my chest insisted, and even the fact that I myself would have no part in it--a member of the race God cursed, according to the Shaper's tale--was trifling. In my mind I watched her freckled hand move on the old man's arm as once I'd listened to the sigh of the Shaper's harp. Ah, woe, woe! How many times must a creature be dragged down the same ridiculous road? The Shaper's lies, the hero's self-delusion, now this: the idea of a queen! My mother, breathing hard, scraping through her hair with her crooked nails, watched me and sometimes moaned.
And so, the next night--it was dark as pitch--I burst the meadhall door, killed men, and stormed directly to the door behind which lay the sleeping queen. Glorious Unferth slept beside it. He rose to fight me. I slapped him aside like a troublesome colt. The queen's brother rose, unleashed the bear. I accepted its hug in my own and broke its back. I slammed into the bedroom. She sat up screaming, and I laughed. I snatched her foot, and now her unqueenly shrieks were deafening, exactly like the squeals of a pig. No one would defend her, not even suicidal Unferth at the door, screaming his rage--self-hatred. Old Hrothgar shook and made lunatic noises and drooled. I could have jerked her from the bed and stove in her golden-haired head against the wall. They watched in horror, Helmings on one side, Scyldings on the other (balance is anything), and I caught the other foot and pulled her naked legs apart as if to split her. "Gods, gods!" she screamed. I waited to see if the gods would come, but not a sign of them. I laughed. She called to her brother, then Unferth. They hung back. I decided to kill her. I firmly committed myself to killing her, slowly, horribly. I would begin by holding her over the fire and cooking the ugly hole between her legs. I laughed harder at that. They were all screaming now, hooting and yawling to their dead-stick gods. I would kill her, yes! I would squeeze out her feces between my fists. So much for meaning as quality of life! I would kill her and teach them reality. Grendel the truth-teacher, phantasm-tester! It was what I would be from this day forward--my commitment, my character as long as I lived--and nothing alive or dead could change my mind!
I changed my mind. It would be meaningless, killing her. As meaningless as letting her live. It would be, for me, mere pointless pleasure, an illusion of order for this one frail, foolish flicker-flash in the long dull fall of eternity. (End quote.)
I let go her feet. The people stared, unbelieving. I had wrecked another theory. I left the hall.
But I'd cured myself. That much, at least, I could say for my behavior. I concentrated on the memory of the ugliness between her legs (bright tears of blood) and laughed as I ran through the heavy snow. The night was still. I could hear their crying in the meadhall. "Ah, Grendel, you sly old devil!" I whispered to the trees. The words rang false. (The east was gray.) I hung balanced, a creature of two minds; and one of them said--unreasonable, stubborn as the mountains--that she was beautiful. I resolved, absolutely and finally, to kill myself, for love of the Baby Grendel that used to be. But the next instant, for no particular reason, I changed my mind.
Balance is everything, sliding down slime. . . .
Cut B.
8
After the murder of Halga the Good, dear younger brother of bold king Hrothgar (helm of the Scyldings, sword-hilt handler, bribe-gold bender who by his wife had now two sons) came Hrothulf out of orphan's woe to Hart.
(O hear me,
rocks and trees, loud waterfalls! you imagine I tell you
these things just to hear myself speak? A little respect
there, brothers and sisters!
(Thus poor Grendel,
anger's child,
red eyes hidden in the dark of verbs,
brachiating with a hoot from rhyme to rhyme.)
SCENE: The Arrival of Hrothulf at Hart.
"Hrothulf! Come to Aunt Wealtheow!
You poor, poor dear boy!"
"It is very kind of you, madam, to take me in."
"Nonsense, dearest! You're Hrothgar's flesh and blood!"
"So I'm told." A mumble. Trace of smile.
The old king frowns in his carved chair.
The boy has the manners, he broods, of a half-tamed wolf.
Fourteen years old and already a God-damned pretender?
Age, old chain of victories, where is your comfort?
He clears his throat.
No no; I jump to conclusions.
The boy has been through a bad time,
naturally. Father-funeral and all the rest.
And gifted, of course, with a proud heart,
like all his line. (Oft Scyld Shefing . . .)
(The hawk in the rafters hands down no opinion.)
The Shaper sings--the harp soughing out through the long
room
like summer wind--"By deeds worth praise
a man can, in any kingdom, prosper!"
So.
The boy sits solemn and hears the harp
behind closed eyes. The October hills in his calm mind
run wolves.
Theorum: Any action (A) of the human heart
must trigger an equal and opposite reaction (A1).
Such is the golden opinion of the Shaper.
And so--I watch in glee--they take in Hrothulf;
quiet as the moon, sweet scorpion,
he sits between their two and cleans his knife.
SCENE: Hrothulf in the Yard.
Hrothulf speaks:
In ratty furs the peasants hoe their fields,
fat with stupidity, if not with flesh. Their foodsmells
foul the doorways, dungeon dark, where cow-eyed girls
give tit to the next generation's mindless hoe. Old men
with ringworm in their beards limp dusty lanes
to gather like bony dogs at the god-lined square
where the king's justice is dispensed; to nod like crows
at slips of the tongue by which a horse is lost, or delicate
mistakes
of venue through which murderers run free. "Long live
the king!" they squeak, "to whom we owe all joy!"
Obese with imagined freedom if not with fat, great lords
of lords look down with cowdog eyes and smile.
"All's well," they sigh. "Long live the king! All's well!"
Law rules the land. Men's violence is chained
to good (i.e., to the king): legitimate force
that chops the bread-thief's neck and wipes its ax.--Death
by book.
Think, sweating beast! Look up and think!
Whence came these furs on the backs of your kind
protectors?
Why does the bread-thief die and the murdering thane
escape by a sleight by the costliest of advocates?
Think! Squeeze up your wrinkled face
and seize the hangnail tip of a searing thought:
Violence hacked this sketch-filled hole in the woods where
you
play freedom games. Violence no more legitimate then
than a wolf's. And now by violence they lock
us in--you and me, old man: subdue our vile
unkingly voilence. Come into the shade.
I would have a word with you and your wart-hog son.
SCENE: Hrothulf in the Woods.
The nut tree, wide above my head,
stretching its cool black limbs to take
the sun, sends darkness down my chest.
Its dappled, highcrowned roadways make
safe homes for birds; quick squirrels run
the veins of its treasure-giving hand;
but the ground below is dead.
Strange providence! Shall I call the tree
tyrannical, since where it stands
nothing survives but itself and its high-
borne guests? Condemn it because it sends
down stifling darkness, sucks the life
from grass, and whitens the sapling leaf
for trifling, fluttering friends?
The law of the world is a winter law,
and casual. I too can be grim:
snatch my daylight by violent will
and be glorified for the deed, like him;
drain my soil of Considerations,
grip my desires like underground stones,
let old things sicken and fail.
She touches my hair and smiles, kind,
trusting the rhetoric of love: Give
and get. But the thought flits through my mind,
There have got to be stabler things than love.
The blurred tree towering overhead
consumes the sun; the ground is dead;
I gasp for rain and wind.
SCENE : The Queen Beside Hrothulf's Bed.
Wealtheow speaks:
So sad so young? And even in sleep?
Worse times are yet to come, my love.
The babes you comfort when they weep
Will soon by birthright have
All these gold rings! Ah, then, then
Your almost-brother love will cool;
The cousin smile must grind out lean
Where younger cousins rule.
When I was a child I truly loved:
Unthinking love as calm and deep
As the North Sea. But I have lived,
And now I do not sleep.
In short, I watched the idea of violence growing in him, and apprehension in all of them, and I enjoyed myself (old hellroads-runner, earth-rim-roamer), sucking glee from spite,--O sucking to the pits! He hardly spoke when he first came, skinny, pimply, beardless except for the babyhair on his upper lip and chin. At the end of a year he never spoke at all, unless he was forced to it or found himself alone with the foul old old peasant he met in the woods sometimes, his counselor. Hrothulf had hair as black as coal and hazel eyes that never blinked. He stood, always, with his head slung forward and his lips in a pout, like a man straining to remember something. The old man--he was nicknamed Red Horse--had a perpetually startled look, round, red eyes and mouth, white hair that flared around his high, empty dome like the beams of the sun: the look of a man who has suddenly remembered something. I followed the two down shaded paths, skull-lined, since I had used them often (but our travelers did not see the skulls)--Hrothulf stumbling over roots and stones, the old man swinging along on one stiff leg. He spit when he talked, his eyes bugged. He stunk.
"To step out of the region of legality requires an extraordinary push of circumstance," the old man yelled. He was deaf and shouted as if everyone else were too. "The incitement to violence depends upon total transvaluation of the ordinary values. By a single stroke, the most criminal acts must be converted to heroic and meritorious deeds. If the Revolution comes to grief, it will be because you and those you lead have become alarmed at your own brutality."
Hrothulf fell down. The old man went on swinging along the path, oblivious, waving his fists. Hrothluf looked around him in slight surprise, understood that he had fallen, and got up. He almost fell again as he ran to catch his adviser. "Make no mistake, my beloved prince," the old man was yelling. "The total ruin of institutions and morals is an act of creation. A religious act. Murder and mayhem are the life and soul of revolution. I imagine you won't laugh when I tell you that. There are plenty of fools who would."
"Oh no, sir," said Hrothulf.
"The very soul! What does a kingdom pretend to do? Save the values of the community--regulate compromise--improve the quality of the commonwealth! In other words, protect the power of the people in power and keep the others down. By common agreement of course, so the fiction goes. And they do pretty well. We'll give them that."
Hrothulf nodded. "We have to give them that."
"Rewards to people who fit the System best, you know. King's immediate thanes, the thanes' top servants, and so on till you come to the people who don't fit at all. No problem. Drive them to the darkest corners of the kingdom, starve them, throw them in jail or put them out to war."
"That's how it works."
"But satisfy the greed of the majority, and the rest will do you no harm. That's it. You've still got your fiction of consent. If the lowest of the workers start grumbling, claim that the power of the state stands above society, regulating it, moderating it, keeping it within the bounds of order--an impersonal and higher authority of justice. And what if the workers are beyond your reconciliation? Cry 'Law!' Cry 'Common good' and put on the pressure--arrest and execute a few."
"A stinking fraud," Hrothulf said, and bit his lip. There were tears in his eyes. The old serf laughed.
"Exactly, my boy! What is the state in a time of domestic or foreign crisis? What is the state when the chips are down? The answer is obvious and clear! Oh yes! If a few men quit work, the police move in. If the borders are threatened, the army rolls out. Public force is the life and soul of every state: not merely army and police but prisons, judges, tax collectors, every conceivable trick of coercive repression. The state is an organization of violence, a monopoly in what it is pleased to call legitimate violence. Revolution, my dear prince, is not the substitution of immoral for moral, or of illegitimate for legitimate violence; it is simply the pitting of power against power, where the issue is freedom for the winners and enslavement of the rest."
Hrothulf stopped. "That's not at all what I intend," he said. "There can be more freedom or less freedom in different states."
The old man stopped too, several steps ahead of him on the forest path, and looked back, polite by an effort. "Well, that may be," he said. He shrugged.
Hrothulf, though clumsy, was no fool. He said angrily (unaware of the irony that he, a prince, had a right to anger, and the old man, a peasant, did not), "Nobody in his right mind would praise violence for its own sake, regardless of its ends!"
The old man shrugged and put on a childish smile. "But I'm a simple man, you see," he said, "and that's exactly what I do. All systems are evil. All governments are evil. Not just a trifle evil. Monstrously evil." Though he still smiled, he was shaking, only half controlling it. "If you want me to help you destroy a government, I'm here to serve. But as for Universal Justice--" He laughed.
Hrothulf puckered his lips, stared thoughtfully past him.
Hrothgar's nephew was kind, for all that, to the cousins he half intended to displace. He was a moody, lonely young man, after all, afraid of strangers, awkward even with the adults he knew well, and the cousins were plump blond children of three and four. There was one other cousin, Freawaru, Hrothgar's daughter by a woman who'd died. Whenever Freawaru spoke to him, Hrothulf blushed.
He sat between the two boys at
the table and helped them with their food, smiling when they talked but rarely answering. The queen would glance at the three now and then. So would others, sometimes. They all knew what was coming, though nobody believed it. Who can look into the wet-mouthed smiles of children and see a meadhall burning, or listen past their musical prattle to the midnight roar of fire?