Vital Signs
Page 37
He had tried to give them a sense of the past, to connect them with it. He’d pointed out tumuli in the fields and medieval strips and baulks still visible under the turf. He had taken them through an iron-age hill fort. He’d marched them along the Ridgeway from the White Horse at Uffington to the megalithic long barrow called Wayland’s Smithy, rhapsodizing the while that their feet were treading the same ground that tribes and armies had marched on since prehistory.
On their return to Canada, Chris had confided in Sheila that the place he’d liked most, the very best place they’d visited, was Fortnum and Mason. The high point of the expedition for Tony, apparently, had been the purchase of an extra-large T-shirt on the Charing Cross Road, a T-shirt bought without consultation, on which was printed, front and back: Too Drunk To Fuck.
It was in the bookstore where he’d seen, in the window, the omnilius edition of the Jalna novels by Mazo de la Roche, that he happened upon the perfect gift for Sheila. The book was a facsimile edition, in superb colour, of a famous medieval Jewish book in the collection of the National Museum in Sarajevo. The book was in a slipcase, which also contained a pamphlet in English detailing the book’s history.
It was known now as the Sarajevo Haggadah. One hundred and forty-two vellum pages. The text was illuminated lavishly, initial words in gold and a blue so intense it might have been made with powdered lapis lazuli. Hebrew characters became flowers; heraldic and fanciful beasts stalked the intricate foliage. Just as beautiful was the chaste, unadorned calligraphy of the prayers. The stories of the Exodus were illustrated with nearly a hundred miniature paintings.
The Sarajevo Haggadah was thought to have been written and painted most probably in Barcelona shortly after 1350. When the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, the book had started its journey eastward. There was a record of it in Italy in 1609. It was carried into the Balkans, most probably to Split, or Dubrovnik, by a family called Kohen. The book was sold to the National Museum in Sarajevo in 1894.
He was touched that reproduced on some pages were the spots and blotches from wine and food spilled on the book during Seders over the centuries. And it pleased him to think that next Passover, when they went to Toronto for the Seder, Sheila would be able to read along in something more sumptuous than the prayer books her father handed out and that her father would be able to pontificate on the historical prohibition against art in sacred texts in the Jewish tradition and when he discovered the book was Sephardic he would launch into rambling assaults on Ladino as a language and the eccentricity, if not impurity, of Sephardic rites and Sheila’s mother would either contradict him or introduce a new topic of conversation she’d derived from TV talk shows, such as the spontaneous combustion of human beings, and within minutes everyone would be shouting and on it would go, on and on it would go. . . .
At six thirty he was waiting in the lobby with his carry-on bag, his briefcase, and his furled umbrella. The night had passed restfully and without incident. He had not bothered with breakfast as it would be served on the plane and he’d be able to get coffee at the airport.
He was brooding about his carry-on bag. Because he was up early, the collar and cuffs of his shirt were still slightly damp and clammy. He had worn the same shirt every day, except for the day before, when migraine or whatever it had been had prevented his washing it. But it was obvious that, normal circumstances prevailing, one shirt would suffice. If he were to cut out seconds on socks and underpants as well, it might be possible to get essentials into a briefcase alone. He stood looking out of the plate-glass window. It was slightly foggy again. Not enough to delay take-off, he hoped. Checked his watch. He thought it would be something of a triumph if he could dispense with a carry-on bag, if he could get into his briefcase alone any necessary papers and the essentials—toothbrush, toothpaste, hairbrush, Hart’s Rules, razor, cellophane twists of Tide, aspirins. Light glowed on the fog. The taxi turned into the plaza and drew up under the porte-cochère.
The driver greeted him warmly, and they shook hands. As they cleared Ljubljana itself, the fog seemed to be thinning. They’d been driving along for about fifteen minutes when the car slowed and the driver signalled a left turn. Forde listened to the click-click-click of the indicator. The driver turned off the main road and into a narrow side road.
“Is this the way to the airport?’ said Forde.
The driver raised his forefinger and nodded, a gesture obviously meaning: Just be patient. Wait for a minute. At the bottom of the hill, the driver pulled up onto the grass verge. Forde felt slightly apprehensive. He hoped he wasn’t being set up. He looked at his watch. They got out and Forde followed the driver along the road until they came to a stone bridge. The driver put his finger to his lips and then gestured for Forde to stoop. They approached the centre of the bridge, bent almost double, and then rose slowly to peer over the side.
The river was quite wide and mist hung over it. In the middle of the river was a long, narrow island. Standing at the near end of the island were two cranes and some little distance behind them a nest, a great platform of gathered sedge and reeds.
The cranes were bowing to each other, their heads coming down close to the ground. One of the birds fanned out its bustle of tail plumes and started to strut circles around the other, every now and then leaning in towards it sideways, as if to gather or impart intimacies. Then the crane with the raised plumes walked over to the messy nest and began to parade around it, pausing from time to time to bow deeply towards it.
The other bird raised its great wings over its back and jumped into the air. The other responded by launching itself sideways, a collapsing, hopping jump. The jumps looked like the hopeless efforts of a flightless bird to take wing. They started jumping together. There was something comic in the spectacle. It was as if these huge and stately birds were being deliberately juvenile and ungainly. The way they trailed their legs suggested the way dancers in musicals jump and click their heels together in the air. Their antics were oddly incongruous. The birds were so regal, so dignified, that to see them flap and hop and topple was as if two portly prelates in gaiters suddenly started to caper and prance.
One of them stretched its long, heron-like neck straight up into the air and gave forth a great trumpet blast of noise, harsh and unbelievably loud.
Krraaa-krro.
The other bird straightened the S of its neck and replied.
Krraaa-krro.
And then the two birds paced towards each other until their breasts were touching and began to rub each other’s necks with their heads, long swooping-and-rising caresses, their beaks nuzzling at the height of the embrace.
The driver took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one. Forde realized that his fingers were clenched over the edge of the stone block. The smell of tobacco hung on the air.
The driver grinned at Forde.
Forde smiled back.
The cranes trumpeted at the sky, first one then the fierce reply, reverberating blasts of noise bouncing off the stonework of the bridge, filling the air with the clamour of jubilation.
Forde felt . . .
Forde exulted with them.
John Metcalf was Senior Editor at the Porcupine’s Quill until 2005, and is now Fiction Editor at Biblioasis. A scintillating writer and magisterial editor and anthologist, he is the author of more than a dozen works of fiction and non-fiction, including Standing Stones: Selected Stories, Adult Entertainment, Going Down Slow, and Kicking Against the Pricks. He lives in Ottawa with his wife, Myrna. His new collection, The Museum at the End of the World, is forthcoming in Fall 2016.
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