With Ploetz aboard, Ewald ventured out for his first season afloat, hallooing and waving to join the fleet and exact his due from the brine. Fishing would be his sweet revenge on these sour waters, this soil-poisoning sea. But, breasting the swell, casting his net, steering his vessel in pursuit of the herring, Ewald soon noted that his boat was bigger than the others, rode lower in the water, rolled more, and despite a sail twice as wide as a man, seemed to have trouble keeping up. When the shoal moved farther out from the shelf, or darted along the coast, the Rügen boats would quickly spin about and scuttle after. If a gale got up, they merely scudded in to a sheltering lee, darting out once more when the wind died down. Ewald’s boat lumbered. It wallowed, and Ewald cursed Ploetz for his scrawny arms and lack of speed. And when a squall did blow up—half dreaded, half hoped for in Brüggeman’s violent secret dreams, a chance at last to pit his vessel against the damnableness of the sea—the Rügen boats simply ran before the wind and were gone, while his own more bravely built craft lurched about in a sea of glue, invariably catching the worst of the rain as they slogged the final league home. They would reach shore drained of strength and up to their knees in water, often too tired to drag their vessel beyond the negligible reach of the tide, which pulled at it, and tugged at it, and sometimes dragged it out to sea. It never seemed to drift far. He named his boat the Stormhammer. The Rügen men dubbed it the Anvil, but after the first season they did not see it often. Ewald and Ploetz fished alone.
Some ugly aura hovered about the the Anvil’s wales, something eerie about this particular death-tub. Oak is too heavy a wood for these fluxey waters, too obdurate for a sea mindful of its icy history. Pitting the strength of its grain against the rare flexings of these waters’ muscle, it is a craft more suited to shore than sea, a bearer of landlocked dreams. Afloat, and despite Ewald’s tinkerings with ballast and the height of the mast, it wallowed and lurched, getting itself into all kinds of watery trouble.
Contemplating it now, Salvestro reflected that it might be just as troublesome ashore: over the course of the winter the overgenerous heavens had spilled a small and somewhat mad sea into the uncovered vessel, its stillnesses and agitations, freezings, meltings, and refreezings telescoped into a single season. He looked down gloomily at a brimful boatful of rain.
The Boat Sea was muddy brown, with bits of straw floating on its surface. The bowl he had reserved for bailing it out was put to work, and soon the ground about him was swampy with water. He had worked close to an hour, and the Boat Sea’s level had fallen no more than three inches. Several times already he had tried to tip the boat onto its side. He tried again now. No luck. The vessel seemed to be made of lead. His bowl was small and awkward to hold. It was an unhappy afternoon. At least it was not raining.
“Good day, Salvestro.” The voice startled him. He had heard no approach. Standing by the edge where the ground gave out was Brother Gerhardt.
“Brüggeman’s boat,” the monk continued when Salvestro said nothing. He caught sight of the bowl. “You would be better served by a siphon.”
Salvestro nodded, not knowing what a siphon was, shifting uneasily in the mud as Gerhardt moved nearer.
“You are to return it?”
He nodded again, and the monk turned to look out over the sea, which swirled about and slapped at the red earth twenty feet below. He turned back.
“How?”
Over the past few evenings this question had been meditated in the dark of the beet loft: a rope would be needed, a winch mechanism of some sort or a brake, perhaps as simple as a stoutly anchored post with a couple of turns of the rope around it, Bernardo on one end, himself on the other armed with a pole to push himself clear of the drop, for the boat would swing and spin if dangled over the edge like that, would collide with the face, possibly. He thought of himself clinging within, Bernardo letting down slack artfully so that the prow would rear up at the moment of hitting the water. There was the mast to consider, too. It would get in the way. Masts did. And Bernardo would have to be instructed, drilled. … He thought of the launch of the barrel all those months ago.
“I don’t know,” he managed at last, still somewhat tongue-tied at being addressed by this person, the very person about whom his vaguest and most pervasive fears and misgivings had coalesced in the previous months.
They contemplated the boat, then the Boat Sea slopping in its hull, united for a moment in the conundrum.
“Bail her dry. I will have Hanno, Georg, and some others carry her down to the water tomorrow after Nones. Do you know when that is?”
“After midday,” Salvestro hazarded. The monk nodded, then abruptly continued past Salvestro, past the side of the church, disappearing from view around the corner as Salvestro thought to shout, “Thank you,” which was ignored. He had expected to be accused of something. Perhaps Brother Gerhardt was not so bad after all. Bail her dry. Right. He set to work.
Scoop, splosh, scoop, splosh, scoop, splosh, scoop, splosh …
Hanno and Georg. That was good. Gerhardt’s offer meant Bernardo’s services were no longer needed. That was good, too. He would want to come. He would have to be put off. Ewald would not want a great lump like Bernardo splintering his chairs and frightening his children. There had been children, hadn’t there? Now that was a strange thought. Ewald, and Ewald’s children.
Scoop, splosh, scoop, splosh, scoop, splosh, scoop, splosh …
For he wanted to see Ewald alone. Why? (Scoop.) Had wanted to since first planting his foot on the island, in fact; just the two of them (splosh) like old times, just as he had imagined. Then, the door opening, himself standing there, Ewald clapping him on the back (scoop), come in, come in. … But, as it had actually turned out that first day of his return, it was not Ewald at all but Mathilde who had looked the two of them over—with something like horror. (Splosh.) And Ewald, too, come to think of it, appearing in the doorway behind his wife. Horror. And no wonder! No wonder at all, considering the appearance of Bernardo. And so far as Ewald knew, he himself had been dead, drowned years ago. Obviously Ewald would be shocked. Yes, not horror, but surprise. And if he had been a little tight-lipped after that (scoo—a fumble, recovered— ooop) and puzzlingly absent sometimes, then that was undoubtedly for some similar reason. Shock, yes. He should have thought of that before. That was it. That was it for sure. He did not blame Ewald. He did not blame Ewald for any of it.
“You!” (Splosh.) The forgotten bowlful spilled down his front as he was jerked from this reverie, and for a moment it was as if time had twitched and fallen in overlapping folds, for there was the same gray-habited figure, standing in the same spot, shouting at him, “What are you doing here?” But it was not Gerhardt.
“Well?” HansJürgen insisted.
“Emptying the … Tomorrow I am to return Brüggeman’s boat. Brother Gerhardt will help me get her down to the water. …”
“Gerhardt? It was Gerhardt here?”
Salvestro nodded, which seemed to throw HansJürgen into a sudden ill humor, and waving Salvestro aside, he stamped off in the same direction as his enemy.
Scoop, splosh, scoop, splosh, scoop, splosh, scoop, splosh …
When there was no more than three thumbs of evil-smelling water standing in the bottom of the hull, Salvestro was able to tip the boat. He watched the last of the Boat Sea dribble out and add its moisture to the quagmire about him. It was almost dark. Later, it began to rain.
There was a commotion that night, a few shouts being enough in the hush of the monastery to wake the two of them. Then calmer voices muttering together, two or three of them somewhere outside the beet loft. Salvestro thought he caught the question “How long?” and its answer “Not long. Tomorrow.” A sudden silence followed, as though their own invisible presence had been wordlessly indicated. Footsteps moved away. One of the voices had been Gerhardt’s.
Tomorrow came. Monks were huddled together in little groups in the cloister, darting glances at one another, one occasionally marching to a
neighboring group. A few looked up as he stood there, but he was paid no more attention than that. Some of the monks were talking in intent whispers, hands being placed briefly on shoulders. An unfamiliar urgency was in the air. One of the youngsters, Wulf, brushed past him, followed by Wolf, whose sleeve he caught hold of.
“What is happening?” he quizzed the novice.
“The Abbot,” replied Wolf, white-faced.
“He is dying,” added Wilf, red-eyed, bringing up the rear.
The trio hurried off again. At that moment shouts were heard, heads turned upward, and Gerhardt hurried in from the other side of the cloister, accompanied by Hanno, whose face was dark red with rage. In an instant they were engulfed, but no, no, no, the moment was not come, he was waving them off, making little placatory gestures with his hands. Salvestro turned away and walked back to the beet loft.
Midday came and went. Wanting to know what was so obviously in the air, Bernardo had hauled himself upright and gone to find out. “How would they know?” had been his question when Salvestro had told him that the Abbot was about to die, and his companion had struggled to answer. Pulling the dimwit out of Prato, he had offered the wisdom that he would rather die on the island where he was born than at a wool market turned slaughterhouse. Then Bernardo had asked what difference did it make? He had a genius for such questions. What difference did it make? Dead was dead was dead. An hour passed, and he had given up the notion that today the boat would be returned, when one of the younger monks whose name he did not know poked his head in the door and told him that Brothers Gerhardt, Hanno, and Georg were all waiting for him and he had better hurry himself up.
“Ready?”
“No.”
“Wait…”
“One, two …”
“Ngggh … No.”
“Right?”
“Down.”
“Uhhh.”
“Oooof.”
“Three!”
From the boat, Salvestro watched the three monks’ retreating backs. He watched the mast wave about above him as the boat slowly settled, then reached for the oars and began to pull into open water. Soon he was fifty yards out, the boat more lumpish even than he remembered. The monastery was a scrape of gray cement and stones, the church a black wound in its center. He turned north-west, dabbing ineffectually with a single oar, the prow obstinate in its inertia.
A thin cry reached him across the water. “Where are you going?” It came again, the same shout of distress. Bernardo’s voice. He pulled hard on the oars, one, two, one, two … Gerhardt had clapped him on the back when the four of them had made it down the slope. Hanno and Georg had not looked at him; had avoided his gaze, in fact.
Where! One, two, one, two …
Steadily, gradually, the shouts, the land, both fell away until he was alone in the boat in the sea and, beyond the plash of brine, the dull knocks of the oars in the row-locks, the suck and gasp of his breath, there was silence. The sky was birdless and the air hung in cold columns that parted before him. The smudged coast inched past to his left. Above, a great flat plate of cloud extended almost to the horizon, where a knife edge of light reddened, and pinkened, and then the sun fell through, a deep orange, and the clouds darkened to heavy blues. Soon it would be night. He pulled harder.
Pewter and bread. Excrement pooling in his bed. This is how we die, thought HansJürgen.
Two times Florian had taken the sacrament from the pyx. Twice he had coaxed it down the Abbot’s throat, and twice the Abbot had vomited it out. Two times Florian had eaten the vomited sacrament.
Before dawn, Gerhardt and his men had hammered on the door. They had repelled them by shouting dire warnings and by prayer. Hanno had shouted that they would be back.
Hours later, when the sun rose finally and threw a short-lived ray of light into the cell, the Abbot writhed like a blindworm uncovered in the damp earth beneath its stone. The light seemed to stir the dead air about them. Florian had been in prayer. He himself had been waiting, perhaps for the old man to die, perhaps for this very eruption. Jörg had said nothing for hours when Gerhardt’s men returned.
“State your business here, Brother,” Jörg said mildly, his body blocking the doorway from Gerhardt’s men, Georg, Hanno, others filling the passage outside. For a moment HansJürgen thought they would barge past their Prior, simply knock him aside, and he saw Jörg’s body stiffen as though he had read this thought in Gerhardt’s face. That point was not far away now. Again, it was Hanno who shouted, furiously, madly, barking that they were killing their Abbot before Gerhardt turned on his heel and strode off. The noise and the brothers’ animosity, naked now, sapped him of something. His head fell into his hands. When had he last slept?
The Abbot grew more peaceful with the hours, seeming to sleep for a few minutes at a time, then retching and coming awake, falling back exhausted. Florian tried again to administer the host by crumbling it into the chalice of wine. The Abbot would not take it.
“It is correct enough that he should look upon the sacrament if he cannot swallow,” said Jörg. He seemed unperturbed by Gerhardt’s intrusion. “Count Albert received it through a wound in his side which healed before he died. I read of it once.”
Florian nodded.
“The host is the most precious of our miracles,” Father Jörg continued. “The company of angels, immunity from death. … I believe in these, though the process is more complex.”
HansJürgen looked up wearily, feeling his patience stretch and at last snap. “You must face them,” he said. “You must show yourself, at least. Next time, they will break in. …”
“Saint Giles did not absolve Charlemagne of his incest, it was the host. The host did that. When I was a novice, I believed I saw the infant once. He was newborn and crying, though I could not hear him. He was in the wafer, just before it was broken. Then he disappeared.”
“Do you even hear me, Father? There is no more time. “ HansJürgen took Jörg by the shoulder. “You must act now.”
“Where are our guests?” asked Jörg, looking at him as if the thought had just struck him. The question took him by surprise, Florian, too, turning from the bedside to look up, puzzled, bewildered.
“Guests? The heathens? I do not know. In their quarters, I imagine. But why should—”
“You must find them, Brother, and when you have found them, take them to my cell. Hide them there. Quickly, HansJürgen. I need them safe if…”
“If what?”
“I need them, that is all.”
The cold air outside shocked him after the cloying fug of the cell. Even filtered through a covering of cloud, the light was dazzling. He felt weightless, light-headed. He had barely entered the cloister before the monks’ faces were in his own, huge red faces, yellow teeth, questions, and more questions. In the end he barged through them blindly, stumbling out past the dorter and into a paddock one side of which ran along the cliff edge. There he found Bernardo seated on a large stone.
“Where is your companion?” he demanded. The giant seemed gloomy and perturbed in some way. Without looking up, he pointed out to sea.
“Brüggeman’s boat?” asked HansJürgen.
“He left me on my own,” Bernardo said bitterly. “Again.”
“Come with me,” HansJürgen said, and the giant rose obediently, towering over him. He had not counted on this, on Salvestro choosing this day amongst all others. But he had known, of course. Salvestro himself had told him.
“Come with me,” he said again. They stood there together. Salvestro was important somehow in the game that Gerhardt and Jörg were playing, had some significance that he was unable to see.
“Where are we going?” asked Bernardo after a minute’s silence had passed. Where? echoed HansJürgen to himself, remembering the islanders seen on his walks. Here they come, arms up in greeting, stumbling over the clods. Ott, others. It was Gerhardt, of course, Gerhardt toward whom these swaggering approaches were directed. He was so tired. It was almost sunset. And t
hen the words remembered from the chapter-house: “Our Prior has not been honest with you about them” and “The islanders know more than they would readily tell, about the smaller one. …”
The smaller one was Salvestro; and then, “I have spoken with the islanders. …” Of course he had. HansJürgen imagined him tramping the island through the winter, homestead to homestead, hovel to hovel. For what purpose? “They know what must be done even if we ourselves cannot…” What must be done. He needed food in his stomach, sustenance of some kind, a splash of water. But the islanders did not know “what must be done,” did they? So they had been told. By Gerhardt. It was afoot, happening now, the key to it in Jörg’s “I need them,” which somehow Gerhardt had guessed or deduced. How exactly did they fit together, these fragments? What was the act they formed, the precise nature of the dance so carefully choreographed?
“Wait here,” he told Bernardo, and strode back toward the monastery, a conviction growing, trying to remember Gerhardt’s amongst the whirl of faces pressed against his own. Where was Gerhardt? He gained the cloister. Hanno, yes. Georg, yes. But Gerhardt was nowhere to be seen. He turned away, ignored now by the herd of them. Bernardo again: gloomy, perturbed, anxious, on a stone both broad and flat. Gerhardt and the islanders together, adding them up to produce. … Then he knew: the conviction freezing in his stomach. What must be done. What must be done. …
“What?” Bernardo’s voice broke in on his thoughts. “What must be done?”
Had he been thinking aloud? He was tired, emptied. The giant’s face was tilted up at his, mildly curious.
“They mean to kill him,” he said.
It was odd, the way his old friend drank. Ewald had served them both mugs of small beer, flat and warm, delicious after his exertions. Nearing the beach after two hours or more afloat, he had seen Ewald standing there, waving him ashore. He had strung his boots about his neck, and then the two of them had lugged the monster up the beach, shouting directions to one another as the water foamed about their thighs, finally flopping down in a sweat, thirsty. They had guzzled water from the butt, splashed a bit on their necks, then gone inside for beer. No sign of Mathilde or the children. Their hoses steamed in front of the fire now.
The Pop’s Rhinoceros Page 16