Lemprière's Dictionary

by Lawrence Norfolk

  Qui mirare meas tot in uno corpore formas,

  accipe Vertumni signa paterna dei

  The impossible choice. Lemprière matched verbs, subjects and objects one to the next, arranging and revising, and relished the slow movement into clarity as he construed the lines.

  Who marvels, no, whoever marvels, or supply a pronoun, more dramatic…. You who marvel at so many forms, shapes, better, in one body, a single body, accept the fatherly signs, no, ancestral signs of the god Vertumnus. Accept into your mind, learn. Yes, learn was right. Formae, corpus, a good tension for late Rome, the first city of deceits.

  The gold greyed and turned leaden, the sky darkened. Clouds of insects swarmed in the dusk and fed hungrily on the soft necks of the cattle grazing under the trees. The fields were untended; lead turned to iron, turned to rust on the plough as the light decayed and released the forms of night. The single light of a cottage some two miles away weighed anchor and drifted in the gloom, trees shifted and merged with the sky behind. The fields rolled and rippled. He was sweating. The trench the stream had gouged for itself down the slope before the trees seemed to suck the sheets of turf into its maw. Learn what? The last light floated down to the fields on either side to be snatched by some tremendous undertow towards the long, thin mouth which snaked away into the dark, wavered, and now, his hands whitened around the bed-frame, widened. Opened, a monstrous, formless mouth, like the victim of an hideous burial, the face decayed and interlaced with roots which writhed and tore through its surface, falling away in clods. The face was crumbling away and beneath it a dull glint shone feebly. He tried to work his tongue, his throat was knotted and dry. The black slash of its mouth writhed, its lips splitting in tatters, peeling away until the bronze figure beneath began to emerge. It melted then recomposed. It softened, then redefined. It formed only to collapse. Its aspects shifted second by second, each complete metamorphosis being the herald for the next. But through it all the bronze eyes remained fixed and focused on the young man who breathed in quick, shallow gasps, chest tight, limbs rigid on the bed.

  And the eyes too melted, after a fashion. For they cried. The shining drops gathered in the corners of his eyes and fell soundlessly to the earth below. Huge, sad eyes spoke soundlessly through the voided air which closed around them, of youth, courting Pomona through the orchards inland from the shores of Laurentum, winning her. Garlanded, handsome I was when the crown of plenty dangled from my fingers, and the songs sung of me and how they were sung less, later not at all…. Of my silence! The black earth which reclaimed me, I would speak of it…. And yet the dark interment weighs heavy on my thoughts, too long in silence, too long…. And through his rambling melancholy the tears fell, until the darkness thickened around him. His eyes fell back into the forgetful, sad centuries of which they spoke, narrowing to points, to pin-pricks until they vanished mutely into the dark. The tears of an abandoned god, a last appeal before dark.

  Lemprière jerked violently as every sinew in his body snapped out of tension. He was shaking. He drew his knees up and rocked on his heels. His breath came quickly and his neck ached. What have I witnessed, he wondered. It cannot be, it cannot…. Better that I am mad than it be true. He looked out of the window. The stream, trees and fields looked much as they ever had. No trace remained of the vision he had witnessed. The god may have returned, may have risen and mourned his neglect, but no sign remained to betray the fact. And what of me, he thought then. It is I who read of him. Did I call him? But the other possibility hammered insistently in his skull, the thought that could not be faced for fear that it was true. I called him, I must have called him. He clasped his head in his hands. His temples pounded and a low groan gathered in his throat. Hammers in his head. He threw himself off his bed, ran to the window and, drawing breath, shouted into the dark,

  ‘I called him!’

  The darkness was blacker than he could ever remember. An absolute silence followed the falling off of his voice. But the sound within was still there, barely audible, there, like the drops of water which as a child he had seen falling from the glistening roof of the cave at Rozel Bay and which, given time, produced the squat stalagmites on the cave floor. One might catch an hundred, a thousand, a million of those drops, they would produce the stalagmite just the same, each tiny deposit adding its layer until it reached the roof. He turned from the window and walked back to his bed. Lying there, staring into nothing, he opened the gate in his mind.

  ‘It is me.’ He spoke the words aloud and would have chuckled at how simple and how terrifying a statement he had just made. Somewhere within me, he thought, is a god who tears his face out of the ground, who has not walked the earth for two millennia and who walks outside my window. Then he wondered, what else walks within me?

  The room was silent for some time. A few splutters were heard which gradually grew more frequent until they became recognisable as high-pitched giggles. Alone and in the dark, Lemprière laughed to himself without the least idea how or why he did so. The laughter rose and fell. Gaps of silence between the outbursts grew longer, until, exhausted at last, he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. Outside the window the moon broke through the clouds and cast a bleaching light over the young man’s face. His limbs twitched periodically as his body released its inner tensions; his face was white in the moonlight and calm. He slept on.

  Father Calveston applying grease to his contraption, dammit he hadn’t wanted to be a priest anyway, a shepherd for wayward sheep. He snorted. Constant interruptions, cretinous old women asking if they’d go to hell for being rolled in the hay forty years previously, a miserly stipend. Every week the sermon, every other week another puking, screaming brat that would piss in the font while its clottish parents trod mud down the aisle and pondered, ‘should we call him Ezekiel?’ when there were already four in the parish and four too many at that. He wasn’t suited for the job, he had no vocation. They’d told him as much at Oxford. ‘Calveston’, they’d said, ‘have you considered fully the fact that many are called but few are chosen?’ Considered! Dammit, he’d thought of little else. Except he’d been sent, not called, and when the sender was his father he was destined for the Lord’s service whether the Lord wanted him or not. On balance, he reflected, He probably did not, but what choice was there? Dear brother Michael had the land, and sold it with father’s body still warm. He had the church. Dammit! He cursed aloud, not so much at brother Michael, conniving little spendthrift runt that he was, as at his own clumsiness - he had jammed his thumb in the complicated piece of machinery he was cleaning and it was proving hard to extricate. Aah! It came loose and he stood back to survey the object of his labours.

  It stood about four feet tall, its cast iron sides gleaming dully. It looked something like a waterpump except that the cylinder through which the water would have been drawn up was partially cut away. A complicated mechanism of meshes and cogs could be seen together with the end of a piston-like object which presumably extended the length of the cylinder to the handle. It was his own invention, the first he had seen through successfully from conception to existence. His chicken-plucking engine had been too ambitious a project. It had worked well as a chicken disemboweller, but a disembowelled chicken with feathers had proved a commodity without a market on Jersey. The hair-cutting engine too had had its problems. No wonder the Crewe boy had made such a noise. Still, the hair had grown back to cover the marks. But his latest and greatest invention was of a different order. Ouch! He pulled his thumb out of the mesh which had pinched it for the second time and sucked it ruefully. He would be a great Inventor, a Man of Science yet. If only his duties were not so time-consuming.

  Thoughts of his flock did not soften his mood. Damn it, only this morning that priggish young ass had burst in demanding that he exorcise the field behind his house. Exorcise it! There hadn’t been an exorcism on Jersey for two-hundred years and if John Lemprière wanted one he could damn well do it himself. The little twit, babbling on about ancient gods rising out of the ground
and grinning or crying, one of the two. If the idiot wanted a pope, there was always Italy. That should have shut him up but in the end he fobbed him off with one of those pamphlets On the Right Guidance of the Rectal Soule or somesuch. Old Eli kept printing the damn things and delivering them by the crateload. God might know why, but he didn’t. He doubted if Eli did either, stupid, old …’ But his machine awaited, there were more important things to occupy him than Eli’s stupidity. It was high time to operate the engine.

  He picked up one of the five potatoes which lay on his work-bench, feeling its smooth, cold skin in the palm of his hand. Father Calveston braced himself and took a firm hold on the handle. An expression of pleasurable anticipation spread across his face making him seem, for a moment, rather younger. His bald head shone gloriously as little beads of oily sweat percolated up through his skin to form a reflective sheen on its surface.

  Lemprière walked back from Calveston’s cottage, and only occasionally did his thoughts stray into the forbidden areas of which he had spoken to the minister. The priest had seemed preoccupied when he had walked in, had seemed sceptical when asked for guidance, and scornful when Lemprière had brought himself finally to tell of what he had seen. He had not raised his expectations overmuch.

  The sun shone down. On impulse he made a run at the venerable and ancient tree about which the lane ahead curved respectfully. Without stopping, he shinned up the trunk and swung himself into the cage of branches where he sat and enjoyed the novel prospect the height afforded him. The baying of hounds could be heard faintly from some miles away and the sun broke through the leaves in vivid flashes as the breeze rustled the canopy of leaves which shaded him. A long line of ants was making slow progress along the branch to his left. He perched there and watched them for some minutes. He had not thought of ants as tree-dwellers. What determination was it that marshalled them in so orderly a file? He heard the sound of light footsteps below. Lemprière turning and angling himself to get a view. His hand reached out for a branch to steady himself. Alarums and calls to battle among the ants go unheeded by Lemprière. Fat white insect larvae crawling with ants are exposed briefly as Lemprière’s hand takes hold of the rotted branch and it crumbles like paper beneath his touch.

  The sun was suddenly very bright as Lemprière made an uncontrolled descent from the tree and landed heavily in the dust of the track. As he struggled to right himself, an unknown hand took firm hold of his collar and helped him to his feet.

  ‘Your liking for the soil befits a farmer, not a scholar,’ said a familiar voice.

  Stumbling and dusting at the same time, her words brought his head up with a start. Juliette smiled her sweetest smile. A strand of jet-black hair had escaped the clutches of her bonnet and lay across her cheek, dimpled. Lemprière was shaken and tongue-tied. How ridiculous he must seem to her, five years her elder at least and behaving like a truant. No wonder she wanted to laugh at him. But she smiled with, not at him. He coughed and managed a smile in return.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Casterleigh.’ That seemed acceptable. A silence followed. They looked at each other. He should try something else, a compliment.

  ‘Your hair….’ And he stopped. Anything he said about her hair would border on the scandalous, so black and thick….

  ‘Oh dear.’ She caught the loose strand and tucked it beneath her bonnet. ‘I would not have noticed,’ running her fingers over her ears, her head tilted back a little.

  ‘No, no I didn’t mean to…. I mean, it looked very nice, at least I think it was very….’ It was all going terribly wrong. Perhaps he should feign madness and run. Madmen could make the most appalling indiscretions and be excused. But Aphrodite, with the experience of two and one millennia behind her, seemed to understand John Lemprière well enough.

  ‘Your fall has saved me a journey,’ she announced brightly. ‘Father has a favour to beg of you….’ And Lemprière listened, as much to the sound of her voice as to the message, while Juliette explained that the Casterleigh library, which had been bought wholesale from a bankrupt estate on the mainland, had a very curious omission.

  ‘Of the several thousand volumes….’ She dropped the figure lightly but saw from the expression on his face that the hook had caught. Several thousands! An almost unimaginable figure in Lemprière’s experience. ‘Of the several thousands of volumes,’ she continued, ‘there are none of those in whose study you have distinguished yourself, Doctor Lemprière.’

  ‘Not yet a doctor,’ Lemprière murmured.

  ‘Among them all, the Ancient authors go unrepresented and Father believes this is a matter for concern, you would understand, and that you are the man to redress it.’ She talked on lightly. Her father would be grateful if Lemprière might advise on some suitable editions, he had heard that Lemprière was a scholar of great promise, his advice would be invaluable. He would be free to use the library whenever he desired … could he come next Thursday? Had it been a century hence in the East Indies Lemprière would not have refused. He blushed at the compliments and fidgeted with his eye-glasses as Juliette said that they would expect him after lunch. She offered him her hand, bade him good-day, and walked off down the lane. Ten paces and she turned.

  ‘John Lemprière!’ she called after him. ‘Tell me, is Father Calveston home today?’

  Five potatoes all in a row. How hungry would he be that night? Three potato hungry or only two potato hungry? Only two potato hungry, he thought. Good, three for the engine. Humming to himself and moving purposefully in quick strides, the Reverend Calveston gave the first potato an affectionate squeeze and popped it into the cylinder.

  ‘Pull down,’ he said aloud as he did so. In the bowels of the engine a complicated system of pistons and cogs ground the meshes together in a blur of metal. They clattered against each other for a moment before biting into the fibrous potato-flesh. At the bottom of the cylinder a gleaming metal tray collected first a drip, then a large glutinous dollop of the thoroughly mashed potato. Father Calveston regarded his invention with pride: it was a potato-masher. But now he was getting that tickly-prickly sensation all over his sensitive white skin…. Just the sight of the cool purée. He popped another potato into the cylinder and pulled down hard.

  How foolish Lemprière had looked, all arms and legs in the middle of the road. Why was he up a tree? Papa had said he was very clever. Very learned, even if he did go red as a beet every time he looked at her. Red as a beet. But she liked that too. Papa would be angry if he knew that. He would guess anyway, she knew. Papa knew everything. He had known John Lemprière would fall for her head over heels, and there he was, falling and grinning and stammering every time she tossed her head.

  ‘Ho, there!’ She barely glanced up. The farm-hand hailed her again. Silly man in a silly cocked hat. How could they do that, work in the fields all day? But everyone has to do things they don’t like sometimes, she thought. Why else would I be going to talk to the egg-pate? There was the rectory cottage ahead. Her feet dragged her reluctantly onward.

  Cool, squelchy, pulpy potato. White and gooey, grey and gluey. Handfuls and dollops and slimy slurps of splodgy, sweaty mashed potato. He loved to slap it on, a great generous handful of it. Father Calveston, naked. With potato. He writhes, he slithers, he oozes potato-paroxysms of joy. A freezing wad on the nape of his neck trickles down his spine to disappear between quivering, globular buttocks. Slimy coatings all over his chest, harden his nipples, tighten his navel. Gelatinous gloops slap and splat all over his nakedly naked body. All over his utterly naked body. How he loves it, so exciting and disgusting, how his sap rises to join with the potato sap, to join, as the doorknob turns, unseen on the far side of the room, to join, as the hinge creaks, alerting him too late, he turns, to join….

  ‘Good morning, Father Calveston.’

  The Reverend Calveston, defrocked, froze. Slowly, and with a patience only possessed by the insentient, a modest dollop of mashed potato eased a passage down his stiffened penis and trickled off his right tes
ticle to land with a muted slap on the floor. Its passing revealed the fiery, shiny red head of that erstwhile exulting (now wilting) implement which, within the taxonomy of reds currently offered by the Reverend Calveston’s naked body, was only exceeded in radiance by the very top of his head. He blushed from the cranium down, as if his very humiliation threatened to burst the bounds of his body like a chick from its egg.

  ‘Sit down Father Calveston. Please.’ But the iron tone of that voice, sounding almost grotesque from one so young, belied any notion of this being a request.

  ‘Now,’ she paused, leaned back against the work-bench and folded her arms, ‘let us talk.’ He seemed to have no choice.

  He was in love. There was no doubt as he made his way back up the lane towards his home. She had charmed him and he would follow her anywhere. He would range widely over what territory he might, pursuing her wishes over seas and oceans, through lands where strange and fierce peoples lived, the Hyrcanians, Sacians and Parthians who twisted backwards on their horses to fire arrows in retreat. He would follow the Nile until it split in seven and tinged the Middle Sea, scale the utmost peaks of the Alps from where he would view the monuments to his victories and beyond, the alien seas which lapped at the outermost isles of Britain that even now he heard faintly as their whispering reached him across the hospitable curves of the lush summer landscape which held him safe to its bosom while his imaginings sought out the most perilous corners of the earth in tribute to his Aphrodite. His Aphrodite. That thought was bittersweet, tainted with the accompanying thought that it would never be true. She had invited him to her house; that was something. The Lemprière household came into view. He would tell his mother of the invitation first.