—Could be, Franklin said, we’re horny all the time. Fact is, though, I mean aside from being horny all the time, we know what the other’s thinking. Like what flavor of ice cream. It’s not done to have to ask. We never miss.
—Holger’s only pretending he can’t read our minds. Mariana can.
—I can’t, though, Holger said.
—We can teach you, Franklin said. Look. I’m closing my eyes. Better, Holger’s going to blindfold me with a handkerchief or something. And bang two pans together so I can’t hear footsteps. Pascal’s going into the woods, out of sight, so Holger, even, won’t know where. Then I’ll walk right to him, OK?
—Challenge taken, Holger said. This is going to be good.
—I warn you, Holger, Pascal said. He can do it.
—Of course he can’t do it, Holger said. I’m tired of these irrationalities in students I’m trying to teach science.
Pascal shrugged and trotted off as Holger was tying his handkerchief across Franklin’s face. He tiptoed for a while, doubling back from entering the undergrowth to sneak along the edge of the lake. Here, he took off his shoes and socks and waded some meters out, thigh-deep. Holger the meanwhile clashed two frying pans close to Franklin’s head. At a signal from Pascal, he said:
—Ready. Go find him.
Franklin stood still for a full two minutes.
—Untie my sneakers, he said. You’ll think I’m peeping if I bend over.
Barefoot, he did an about-face and walked toward the lake, off course by ten degrees at first, correcting with confidence as he walked. At the water’s edge he felt around with his foot before striding in.
—Fuck, he said cheerfully.
Approaching at a different angle than Pascal’s, he waded through deeper water, up to his belt.
—Really shitty of you, you know, he said, hugging Pascal.
—OK, Holger called. I’m sending back my diploma to the university. Hey! Watch it!
Franklin with a sturdy shove pushed Pascal under the water, to be himself pulled under by a thrashing Pascal. Muddy and sodden, they walked hands over shoulders to shore, spitting lake water.
—Wring everything out, Holger said. I’ll put up a clothesline while Franklin tells me how he did it.
—I knew where he was, Franklin said.
—But how?
—Knowing is knowing. We’ve got goose bumps.
—Towel, Pascal said, tossing one.
Holger caught the towel in the air, and began drying Franklin with a rough swiftness, the quicker to get to Pascal.
—Work on your hair some more with the other towel, Holger said, and wrap the blanket around you.
—Save room for me, Pascal said.
Holger, having run a spare tent rope through the belt loops of their wet hiking shorts, the arms of their jerseys, and the leg scyes of their briefs, tying the rope between two birch saplings, discussing Franklin’s prescience with, as he said when he looked over his shoulder, the woods, lake, and sky, finished to find Pascal and Franklin rolled tight in their blanket, all but the tops of their blond heads.
—Kissing, Franklin said, except that I can’t see that it gets you anywhere. Crawl in with us, Holger.
81
Over the summer the hallway between Holger’s living room and bedroom had been restructured into a large, square study with two glass walls. This elegantly modern extension was into a small garden surrounded by a brick wall high enough to make the study a private and sunny room. Bookshelves had been built from floor to ceiling on one of the walls that was not all window, and a Rietveld worktable, three by two and a half meters, stood along the other. A glass door opened onto the flagstone terrace. This renovation was Hugo’s idea, and design, agreed to by Eglund, paid for by the Alumni Fund.
—The corridor, Hugo had said, will grow sideways and be a third large room, its darkness becoming a splendid cube of sunshine and airiness, with an inside-outside feel.
—And, Holger said, it is ten times lovelier and sweeter than I could picture it. It is, quite simply, wonderful.
—Well, Hugo said all I had to do was remind Eglund, who’s nobody’s idiot, that your geography book, and the edition of Horrebow, would precipitate offers from universities and other schools. I kept silent about your decision to lead a scholarly and circumspect life at Grundtvig.
—But, Hugo, dear soul, what with your being chosen to be headmaster once Eglund retires, all the money in the world, nor all the prestige, could entice me away.
—Lovelier, sweeter, wonderful, Hugo said. Three non-Icelandic words uncharacteristic of your diction, as was.
—Have I changed so much?
—Yesterday, when you were watching, and helping, Franklin and Pascal change Barnabas, you were as different, advanced is what I mean, from the Holger I first knew, as a tree laden with apples from its sapling. The four of you were of an average age, which would be what, thirteen, Barnabas’s one rather bringing it down. And after all the promiscuous kissing of Barnabas, spout and all, you pleased Mariana tremendously by sitting with your chin on her knee to gaze at Barnabas at the teat.
—Beautiful breasts Mariana has. Barnabas is Eros himself. Those eyes!
—Barnabas thanks you for the compliment, but begs to second his father in noting that if there’s a clone of Eros about, it’s Pascal. Does he glow in the dark? I overheard one of the new kids pointing him out to another. The argot in which they parsed his beauty I’ll spare you, but the rest was that he publishes articles in journals his teachers can’t get published in and gets taken on long trips by the biology and geography master.
82
Cornflowers and red valerian in a marmalade jar. Rye biscuits, cheese, red Dubonnet. Wet autumn leaves stuck to the glass walls of Holger’s studio.
—Pascal’s making a happy idiot of me released all kinds of energies, Holger said. I began a notebook at the beginning of the summer, after discovering Auden’s Letters from Iceland, seeing that there’s a species of writing where any and everything fits in. So that’s what I’ve done, as you’ve seen. I’ve tried, Hugo, to follow your injunction to write exactly what I wanted to. So my work on arctic mosses, the essays on Sereno Watson and Sauer, fossil flowers and insects, are in with Pascal’s toes.
—Nice toes, Mariana said, but not as sexy as Franklin’s.
—Please don’t get us tossed out on such a cozy afternoon, Mariana sweet, Hugo said.
—You can stay, Holger said, as long as Barnabas is so blissfully asleep.
—You hold him better than Hugo, Mariana said. Hugo is likely to look up something in the dictionary, with Barnabas upside-down under one arm. He’s not wet, is he?
—Have we pissed ourselves, Tiger? Not us. We’re dry and aromatic: talcum and hyacinths.
Hugo leafed back and forth through Holger’s manuscript.
—Samuel Johnson in the Hebrides. Lavas, gannets, mosses. Pascal’s knees. Doughty in the Finnmark. If we look to nature, we see nothing human, and if to the human, nothing natural. Baltic islands, their wildflowers and butterflies. Pascal’s eyes. Iberomaurusian harpoons. Jeremy Bentham. Icelandic trolls.
—Trolls in a bramble I had to pass on the way to school, Holger said. I became convinced that there were elves in it who would do me a mischief if I didn’t think kindly of them as I drew near. They are the opposite of Pascal. Over the summer something changed in me that’s so peculiar I don’t know what it is. I was taken apart and reassembled in a new geometry. Suddenly I could talk and write in a new way. I have stopped the car to make notes of ideas, have dictated to Pascal while driving. Better still, I’ve allowed Pascal to do some of the writing. He says he can read my mind, and that there are things which he says I know the trolls in the bramble will get me for writing, which he has written for me, like the paragraph about tongues under foreskins, just after John Burroughs on winter sunshine and squirrels. And before Goya and the humanity of children.
—That’s Franklin with the freckles, Mariana said, and warty kn
uckles and round-eyed gaze at his dink when he’s galloping it, and who believes that if he doesn’t jack off at least thrice a day he’ll go into a decline and waste away, and that six times a day keeps him sound and happy.
—Pascal is my daimon. Franklin, Pascal’s.
—Who’s Franklin’s? Hugo asked.
—You, Mariana said. And you have more daimons than can be counted. Your father, handsome Jos, your scouts.
—No, sweetheart, Hugo said. You. You and Barnabas, now that he’s here.
—Hello, Barnabas, Holger said. Decided to open your big blue eyes, did you?
—In which that wondering look, Mariana said, means that he’s having a serious pee. Aren’t you, Lamb?
—I’ll change him, Holger said. I’m not as good at it, yet, as Franklin and Pascal, but Barnabas doesn’t seem to mind.
—He likes Bedstefader Augustus most of his admirers. He has a Faroese magic charm he chants to mesmerize Barnabas into cooperation. Misses having his dink kissed and trifled with by Pascal and Franklin, though.
—Do I change in the manner of Pastor Tvemunding or of F. and P.?
—Go for Pascal’s style, Mariana said. It’s our big afternoon out with Holger and cheese and crackers and potent Dubonnet. And if I read Hugo’s mind accurately, he’s planning to leave Barnabas here for the next hour or so, to provide him with a little sister, or brother, or both.
—Besides, Hugo said, I see a long brown leg coming over the wall, and a blond head and able arm, Pascal as ever was.
—They do that, Holger said. Means there’s another. Handsome leg over first is achieved by Jos’s or Franklin’s back. Otherwise you see hands first, then head, a knee, and you have a boy in your garden.
—It’s Jos, Mariana said, wearing Pascal’s cap. What a leap!
—Thus the use of gymnastics, Hugo said, to fly gracefully over a wall into your housemaster’s garden.
They mimed idiotic delight, peering in through the glass wall, wiggling fingers at their ears, cross-eyed, tongues stuck out.
—Hruff! Pascal said, rotating through the door, we’ve lucked onto Mariana with the giggles in her eyes, lucked onto Hugo full of cheese, crackers, and Dubonnet rouge, lucked onto Barnabas with his dick on the snoot. Are all babies’ balls so fat?
—Come on, Hugo, Mariana said. Barnabas can tell us the rest of this when he learns to talk.
—Gym, Jos said. Pascal did a triple set of fifty presses without a gasp. Whack his tummy and break your hand. Feel the definition of his pectorals.
—Me, too, Mariana said. Why, Pascal, are you in Jos’s hopeless sweatshirt that’s parting at the seams on the shoulders and that a billy goat would think was his father?
—Because he let me. Also his jockstrap with the mesh pouch, see, and his ratty socks. Not for the finicky.
—Holger, Mariana said, darting a teasing glance at Pascal’s happiest of grins, if Barnabas stages a tearing snit, send him over by whoever’s coming our way. Quick, Hugo, before Pascal takes everything off.
—I see what you mean, Hugo said.
—Barnabas couldn’t care less. He thinks he’s joined the navy.
—I’ll walk you over, Holger said.
—We’re not walking, Hugo said. We’re running.
—Fine and dandy, Jos said. Off to place an order with the stork. Would you look, friend Barnabas: as soon as your mummy and daddy are out the door, here’s Pascal, bosom friend of Uncle Franklin and all of whose clothes seem to have fallen off, butting the crotch of Holger’s jeans, and getting a subarctic glare for it.
—The huldufolk, Pascal said, are in the bramble, looking out with elvish eyes.
—And, Holger said, gathering Pascal into a comprehensive hug, the owl is in her olive.
—Holger, Jos said to Barnabas, was born and raised in Iceland, where neither the sheep nor the Lutherans approve of sex, and make rather a long face when it intrudes into their decent daily round.
—Crazy horny, Pascal said. Jos’s sweatshirt is magic. It belonged to his brothers before he got it. Smells of all three of them. Has Jos sperm all over it.
—How do you put a baby to sleep? Jos asked. Don’t you bounce it on your shoulder, or something, while humming Brahms?
—Let me show you, Pascal said. You put his head like this and jiggle him gently, gently, and recite Vergil or the yellow pages, he doesn’t care which. He’ll either drift off to sleep or stick his fingers in your eyes. Sometimes he pukes into your collar.
—Sweet little buggers, babies. It looked for a while this summer that I’d made one on Suzanne, and one on Fresca. If Rutger could get pregnant, I’d have had to sweat him out, too. False alarms. God is kind to idiots.
—Rutger, Pascal said.
—We did two weeks of backpacking in Germany, Black Forest and around. Youth hostels. Wildflowers. Swedes with big blue innocent eyes fucking all night, squish squish. Awesome silences at noon. There was this girl who.
—I’ve heard all that, Pascal said, and I believe some of it. Tell about Rutger.
—Not with Barnabas listening. Look, if you two want to fall on each other, ease Barnabas into my arms and we’ll have a nap here in the sun on the floor, or take him down to my room. Rutger has probably never seen a baby. Sebastian will like him. Would Barnabas enjoy being jacked off?
—Are you certain, Jos, Holger asked, that you know how to hold a baby?
—No, but I can learn real fast.
—Your shoulder’s his pillow, Pascal said, and your arms and chest his cradle. Cradles rock. So rock him sweetly, like this. Hum A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, and he’ll think you’re Pastor Tvemunding.
—Crazy. Will he piss me?
—That’ll mean he loves you. I hear Holger turning down the bed and zipping down his jeans. Jos?
—Hello, Barnabas. Like me, huh? Yes, Tiger?
—Shall I?
—I’ll hold my breath.
Pascal, padding down the hall, stopped, spun on his heel, returned to kiss Barnabas on the cheek and Jos on the mouth.
—Local custom, he said, trotting off.
—Lucky bastard, Jos said to Barnabas, having Mariana for your mummy. And handsome me for your babysitter. And Holger the Icelandic Lutheran and the wizard Pascal, though those two are this very minute licking each other in susceptible places, and being wonderfully friendly and tender. And now the rousing stanzas of A Mighty Fortress Is Out God, as sung by Jos Sommerfeld, Eagle Scout.
Arise O captives of starvation!
Arise O wretches of the earth!
For justice thunders condemnation.
A better world’s in birth.
It is the final conflict,
Let each stand in his place,.
The International Party
Shall be the human race!
—Jos! Holger said, looking around the door, with Pascal behind him.
Arise O workers of the world!
Throw off the foul disgrace!
And the International Party
Shall be the human race!
—Isn’t it a grand tune! Comrade Barnabas says I’m the only babysitter he’ll be a good boy for, here on out.
—Jos.
—Huh!
—Jos, Holger said, come on back, with us. Give me Barnabas.
Pascal, fiddling with the drawstring knot of Jos’s sweatpants, said:
—Where do you learn such knots? From sailors?
—Knackers never been tighter, Jos said. Pat Pascal on the rump after gym, get butted in the tummy by his sweet lovely head, grope him and get groped before climbing the garden wall, and you find yourself in Holger’s bedroom, and bed, I hope.
—Tilt the lampshade, Holger said, so the light’s not in Barnabas’s eyes.
83
Holger, spent, recited genera and species of Norwegian forests, asking between Betula pendula and Fraxinus excelsa if there were any cold bubble water a handsome boy might bring him.
—In a sec.
—I’ll get it. You�
�re busy.
—Hooked. That Italian town that was so green and open in its piazza, buildings so mellow and sunny, where we arrived one noon. If you’re finding bubble water, I need a sip. You went to find us a room with matrimonial bed, as they say, the Italians, and I checked out the magazine kiosk and had a pee in the shady corner of a wall, observed by an appreciative old gentleman around the side of his newspaper. Well, there you were across the square, and it hit me, one of those sudden flip-flops of the mind, that this was the longest distance we’d been from each other in maybe a month, you know, and that you were Holger Sigurjonsson, from Iceland, geography and botany master at NFS Grundtvig, needing a haircut, wearing khaki shorts and sneakers without socks, and a tank top with the Dansk Ungdoms Fællesråd insignia on it, and you were smiling, blissfully happy. And, this is the spooky part, you were a bit unfamiliar, a stranger for a second or so, someone I couldn’t place right off, and so was I, seeing my reflection in a shop window, a sprout of a boy whose feet seemed too big, legs too long, also needing a haircut, probably going crazy from hyperejection of sperm, blue smudges under my eyes, but more likely becoming a moron from being too happy. And there you were, walking across the square, drenched in Italian sunlight, somebody I knew but couldn’t quite place. You ever have such moments?
—All the time. Heart skips a beat every time I see you. I’ll do odd things on the tennis court, and Hugo sighs and smiles. Shall we resume our game, he doesn’t need to say, when Pascal is out of sight?
—Awful.
—There was a blind folksinger in Iceland when I was your age. He lived on a farm with his sister and brother-in-law. An uncle who knew him used to take me out for a day in the country from time to time. He would ask me to describe meadow flowers, colors and shapes and distribution over the pastures. He could remember them from before losing his sight. I would pick them for him to feel and smell.
The Death of Picasso Page 45