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The Death of Picasso
New & Selected Writing
Guy Davenport
FOR BONNIE JEAN
CONTENTS
The Owl of Minerva
The Playing Field
Ruskin
The Concord Sonata
The Death of Picasso
The Hunter Gracchus
Every Force Evolves a Form
Boys Smell Like Oranges
Belinda’s World Tour
The Messengers
The Aeroplanes at Brescia
The Chair
Wide as the Waters Be
Gunnar and Nikolai
Mr. Churchyard and the Troll
And
Dinner at the Bank of England
Christ Preaching at the Henley Regatta
Pergolesi’s Dog
Horace and Walt in Camden
We Often Think of Lenin at the Clothespin Factory
The Anthropology of Table Manners
Veranda Hung with Wisteria
The Jules Verne Steam Balloon
The Bicycle Rider
Wo es war, soll Ich werden
The Ringdove Sign
About the Author
THE OWL OF MINERVA
I
A meteor from beyond our sun’s family of rounding worlds hit the upper air of Kalaallit Nunaat in the night of 9 September 1997 going 125,000 miles an hour. An Inuit who saw it said that it was as big as the moon and as bright as the sun. With a noise like time splitting away from space it broke into four burning thunderstones high in the air and then into a hail of white-hot coals that rained into the snow that has covered Greenland for a million years.
The first mate on a trawler off the Qeqertarsuatsiaat coast said that night became day. Two instruments followed its track for a few seconds each. One was a camera guarding Kristian Heilmann’s snow scooter at Nuuk. The other was a sensor on a United States satellite that registered an explosion equal to sixty-four tons of TNT in the air over the Frederikshab Isblink.
—And they can’t find it is what I said in my class report, Adam said. And Frøken Jorgenssen’s mouth fell open when I said I knew all about it from my uncle Magnus Rasmussen who’s on the team looking for the pieces.
Adam Rasmussen at twelve was the spit image of his father Mikkel at that age. His brother Henry, walking home from school with their mother, was almost eleven, and was sometimes taken for Adam’s twin.
—Everybody hates me, Henry said, for having an uncle in the Geodesic Survey who’s in Greenland looking for the meteor from outside the solar system.
—And you can’t find it? Adam asked.
—Snow covered the pieces as soon as they fell, Onkel Magnus said.
—A biggy like that offed the dinosaurs. If the Niels Bohr Institute can’t find it, who can? We’ve seen the moon rock there. One right here now would make hash of us.
—That’s for sure, Henry said. No more long-shanked marsh hens. No more Sortemosen.
—The ice fields, Magnus said, are riven by deep crevices as treacherous as hell to move about among. The German geologist Alfred Wegener who figured out continental drift and tectonic plates is at the bottom of one of them.
—We know him, Adam said. Some day they’ll find him and he’ll be like the Ice Age man in the Alps in Italy who was frozen five thousand years ago.
—Pitseolak the old Innuit grandma said in her book that there are people nowadays who cook polar bear, Henry said.
—Kabloona, Adam said.
—Sand and snow make the same kind of desert, Henry said.
Adam’s preponderate green eyes moved from Henry to Onkel Magnus to the door through which Mama would come from the greenhouse to the window where he would see his father Major Mikkel Rasmussen arriving through the snow. At school Adam had explained to his friend Wolf while they were dressing in the locker room that Technical Sergeant Magnus Rasmussen of the Geodesic Survey in Special Forces had raised his father, who was an orphan. It was a lovely joke at home that a major was the adopted son of a sergeant. The joke was funnier in that Onkel Magnus is also a professor of geology at the Niels Bohr Institute and is looking for the stupendous meteor that smashed into Greenland and has written all sorts of books about sand. He’s still only a sergeant as he once was in the army so’s he can be on army pay when he works with Papa, who writes orders saying he’s indispensable.
—I was telling my friend Wolf about you and Daddy, Adam said, that neither of you knows now which of you went crazy when you saw each other. I hear Mama.
Susanna Rasmussen, her hair tied in a ponytail the color of honey, a denim smock over her dress, said she’d seen Mikkel marching through the snow from the bus. Henry and Adam scrambled up from the floor in front of Magnus and followed her to the door.
—Rats! Susanna said, you’re not dressed for going out. You’ll catch your death of cold.
—Marching through the snow? Magnus laughed.
—Head up, shoulders back, Susanna said. For you.
Before Magnus Rasmussen arrived in the middle of the afternoon, Susanna home from her Folk High School and Adam and Henry from their Georg Brandes Mellemskol had scarcely been home a quarter hour when the local vicar Poul Anderson paid a call.
—Oh my! he said. I’ll come another time.
—No, no, Susanna said. You’re new, aren’t you? We can at least get acquainted, though there’s no one here with more religion than a buck hare. I’m Susanna Rasmussen.
To Adam, who’d galloped downstairs and bounced into the living room, she said:
—Go back and find some clothes. You’ll have the vicar blushing.
—We’re inventing things, Adam said from behind his mother. A badger alderman, a dignified hog, a lady tree. For Onkel Magnus when he comes.
—This is Adam, Susanna said. His brother Henry will be along. Adam, this is Vicar Anderson.
—At night, Adam said, when the buses are in the car barn, seals come and sit in them, pretending they’re passengers looking out the windows. Walt Whitman lived in Mikkelgade in New Jersey, the village of Camden.
—What he means, Susanna said, is that his father’s name is Mikkel.
—Major Rasmussen, the vicar said, consulting a list of parish names and addresses. I’d venture to say, Fru Rasmussen, that you’re not Danish by birth.
Susanna laughed.
—I’m Scots, and worse than Scots, Hebridean. My two outlaws are obstreperous because their uncle is coming later today. He’s been in Greenland looking for the meteor that fell there. He’s our only family. Mikkel and I don’t exist when he’s here.
—Major Rasmussen’s brother or yours?
—Neither. The uncle is honorific. I have scattered kin back in Scotland but no brothers. And Mikkel has no kinfolk. He’s an orphan Magnus took in and raised. Professor Rasmussen, I should say, though he’s also attached to Mikkel’s army group. He’s much too young to be Mikkel’s father. More like an elder brother. Jonathan and David. Mikkel says that he and I are remote cousins from the days of the Vikings.
—What’s your name? Adam asked the vicar.
—Poul Anderson. You’re Adam, a reader of Walt Whitman.
—We’re reading Whitman at the Folk High School, Susanna said. Mikkel reads along with me, and the boys take in everything within a mile around them.
—And Magnus will explain everything when he gets here, Adam said. He always does. He was Daddy’s teacher a long time ago. They lived together in a big long room over the
stables, at the Oak Hill school over in Jylland, and did everything together, and had an island off the coast of Sweden one summer and didn’t wear any clothes at all.
—If you can credit it, Susanna laughed, my scalawags imagine themselves deprived by having two parents.
Adam looked puzzled.
—We do?
Henry ventured into the room wearing the most exiguous underpants the vicar had ever seen.
—I heard you hollering at Adam to get dressed, he said. So I’ve put something on. Hello.
—Hello, the vicar said. You’re Henry Rasmussen.
—Yes, Henry said. What’s a vicar?
Vicar Anderson looked to Susanna for guidance.
—I’m an oatmeal-fed Presbyterian, she said. I read these savages stories from the Bible. Mikkel’s a pagan, like Magnus. They like the folk tales: David and Goliath, Jonah and the whale, Balaam’s talking donkey. And the parables that I myself can understand. I’m afraid I edit it all terribly. They’ll read it for themselves when they’re older and curious. I was raised to think that character is what’s important.
—You’re right, of course.
And turning to Henry:
—A vicar tries to help people who are unhappy, in trouble, or in need of someone to talk to. I’m visiting simply to meet your mother, you, and Adam. As far as I can see, I have no business here at all. I hear, Fru Rasmussen, that you have a greenhouse where you grow African violets, that you and the major are keen ornithologists.
—Amateur geologists, too, because of Magnus. You can talk maths with the boys if you’re so minded.
—We’re going to have a sister, Henry said. Adam and I are going to teach her to talk as soon as she’s rested up from being born. And change her nappies and take her for walks. She’s going to be so surprised when she meets us, Mama, Daddy, me and Adam, and Onkel Magnus.
—She’ll be lucky to have a name, Susanna said. Every one we think of gets vetoed by somebody. We want one that’s Danish and English, as with the boys.
And no sooner had the vicar shaken hands and left than Magnus arrived, hugging Susanna, Adam, and Henry all in an armful, and then Susanna to herself, with a kiss, and Henry to himself, lifted into a squealing hug, and Adam, who climbed like a monkey into Magnus’ arms.
—I need coffee, Magnus said. Stay where you are, Susanna. Henry makes an excellent cup of coffee.
—Better still, Susanna said, let’s all go to the kitchen. Adam, now that you’ve had your joke with being naked, go put on underwear and a sweater, and bring a sweater for Henry. Magnus, you look wonderful.
Henry and Adam, both astride Magnus’ lap, the one talking over the other’s shoulder, discussed the Frederikshab Isblink meteor, its provenance from outside our solar system, a wanderer in unimaginably deep space when earth had methane for an atmosphere and the South Pole was in Sydney, Australia, its disintegration into fiery rubble as it fell on the world’s oldest rocks, the Danish helicopters that flew back and forth looking for signs of it, without any success at all, the weather station where the search party bunked, Magnus’ and Daddy’s conversations on the radio-telephone hookup, their skateboards, their sister still inside Mama, her kicking when they spoke to her in her amniotic pod, the dimensions of Magnus’ and Daddy’s long room over the stables at Oak Hill, their friends by the fire with Ovaltine, Daddy’s triumphs in algebra and gymnastics, how they met (all over again) and how Magnus went to Oak Hill because Colonel Rask asked the colonel at Kastellet to send him somebody who could teach biology and geography, how Corporal Redclover looked after Daddy until Magnus sent for him, how Corporal Redclover took Daddy, who still looked like a ragamuffin, to a big department store and bought him school clothes, and dressed him in a Faeroe Islander’s idea of what boys wear at a posh school, how Magnus simply put him in with his other students and added his name to rolls without the administration being any the wiser, how Daddy couldn’t read or write worth a hoot, how he set fire to everybody’s curiosity by suddenly being there in nifty brass-button jeans and English shirt and broad yellow galluses, speaking dockside Copenhagen Danish, how Daddy took the name Rasmussen, how an older boy who had a crush on Magnus put the fear of God into various bullies who tried to pick on Daddy, the film of Anderson Nexø’s Pelle, Mama’s African violets, their violin lessons, Magnus’ new apartment near the Botanisk Have and when they were going to see it, Isak Dinesen’s house at Rungstedkust and her grave under a giant beech in the forest behind it, until Susanna returned to the kitchen and said that from the greenhouse she could see Mikkel getting off the bus and marching home through the snow.
II
Colonel Rask in a deck chair, asleep in his garden with a newspaper over his face, was aware of the bees in the hollyhocks, of the kind warmth of the late summer sun, and of steps along the garden path. Old men nap lightly.
—Sir? said Birgit the maid, there’s a man says he would like to see you. He’s in uniform, an officer I would guess.
Colonel Rask removed Politiken, blinking, rubbing his eyes.
—An army man, Birgit?
—His uniform is dark blue, a beret on his head. Uncommon handsome, and proper spoken. Took off his beret when I answered the door.
—Ask him to come on out. Did he give a name?
—That he didn’t. Would you like tea brought out, sir?
—Tea, yes. And my pill, Birgit.
A tall officer approached from the back door with deference, beret in hand. His hair, a bronze blond, was cropped close, his shoulders broad, his hips narrow. Rask, swinging his legs off the deck chair, using a cane to stand, held out a hand.
—Arthritis in the knees, he said, tottering and balancing with his cane. You’re the youngest major I’ve ever seen in my life! Are they promoting you earlier, or do you have the secret of eternal youth?
—We move up quickly in Special Forces, colonel. Actually, I’m Geodesic Survey, a branch so new they’ve had to staff it with anybody even vaguely qualified.
—You’re being charmingly modest. Birgit’s bringing out tea for us, but perhaps you’d like something livelier? And you haven’t come on military matters, surely, Major? I go back to airplanes with propellers and 75 mm field guns.
—Tea’s fine, sir. I realized how close I was to the school and thought I’d look in. You’re retired, I’m told.
—Oh Lord yes! I’ve stayed on as Headmaster Emeritus, meaning that I have this house. Once in a while, when they remember I’m not long dead, I have to get dressed up and attend a board of directors, where I usually fall asleep. Are you one of our boys?
—I was, yes. Some, let’s see, fifteen years ago.
—I absolutely cannot place you. But then hundreds of boys have been here since then.
—Do you remember a geography and botany teacher who was also a sergeant of engineers, Magnus Rasmussen?
—Rasmussen. Yes, I do, of course. Came as a substitute to fill a post suddenly vacant, up from Kastellet. Very capable young man. But he disappeared, you know. Here for about two years, I think, and then vanished. He bought a car, a kind of station wagon thing, Japanese make. Lived up over the old stables out near the spinney. Very popular with students and an excellent teacher. One morning he simply wasn’t there. Had cleared out his belongings and, without a word to anybody, left. How do you know him?
—Do you also remember, sir, that he lived with a boy who wasn’t really a student here, but attended classes all the same?
Rask, trying to remember, shifted his attention to the folding table Birgit had brought out, helping her snap down its legs.
—Lived with? Do you mean he was out over the old stables, too? A rather charming boy with a proletarian voice, bosom friends with young Marcus Havemand, the industrialist and arts fancier? He gave us our museum, you know, and endowed a chair in the art department for which the school is now so well known. All the Havemands have been generous to us. His oldest son’s coming here year after next, Mikkel Havemand.
—That’s lovely. The n
ame, I mean.
—You know the Havemands? Ah, here’s tea, and sandwiches and biscuits. Thank you Birgit. And, oh yes, my pill.
—The boy who lived with Magnus Rasmussen was from Copenhagen. Who his father was, God knows. His mother was a streetwalker, not to put too fine a point on it. To this day he doesn’t know his age or his birthday. By the greatest luck in the world he met Magnus Rasmussen, whose name he eventually took, and who brought him here to Oak Hill. Mikkel could scarcely read and write, having never been to school. Do you remember that he won the Algebra Prize his second year?
—It’s coming back, yes. Mikkel was the name. He wrote remarkable papers in an art appreciation class.
—And a silver cup for his age group in bodybuilding.
—Yes, yes! The year we were in all the newspapers for having the boys nude at the presentation do.
—That was Magnus’ and Sten Solveg’s idea. We loved it.
—Who’s we? Were you here then, Major?
—Sir, I’m Mikkel Rasmussen.
—My God! You’re Rasmussen’s little rascal?
—Himself.
—And already a major! What a credit to the school! I could burst with pride. Look here, you must stay for dinner. I’ll have the new head and his good wife over, and some other faculty.
—I’m afraid I can’t accept, sir. I’m on duty, not leave. I have to be in Helsingør this evening. And, sir, I was never really a student here. Magnus put my name on various class rolls, and I went to class. I don’t think anyone dared call Magnus’ bluff.
—He had a way, didn’t he? But can you tell me why he left so mysteriously?
—Well, I left with him. One night he said that he and I were the happiest people in the world. We were. That’s a true statement. He then said that happiness has to be spent, that we couldn’t wallow in it. That was his word, wallow. So we packed the station wagon in the middle of the night. I remember crying as we left, as our wonderful big room over the stables was the only home I’d ever had, and I was in love with Marcus Havemand, and with Holt Rasvinger, remember him? But I loved Magnus more than anything in the world. He was my mother and father and best friend. He loved me.
The Death of Picasso Page 1