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I agree with you, dear Mariana, Papa Tvemunding said, about the light up here. It finds something in our souls. As for Hugo’s youthful adventures on the Arctic Circle, I imagine the version I got years ago, as it must seem to you, but only yesterday to me, Hugo has grown up so swiftly, is slightly different from the one you’ve heard. I’m fascinated by what you tell me about little Pascal. A kind of genius, is he? And for Franklin, my charming Franklin, to be bringing him out: that’s a sweet wonder. I have had an entire troop of Scouts suddenly fill the house, when Hugo had the prescience to march them in. Once, even, when Margarita was alive. Tents in the garden, bedrolls on every floor.
FICUS
All three kinds of fig trees are in leaves and growing one like another, save for their height, color, and sweetness of the fruit, having many arms or branches, hollow or pithy in the middle, bearing very large leaves divided sometimes into three but usually into five sections, of a dark green color on the upperside, whitish beneath, yielding a milky juice when it is broken, as the branches also or the figs when they are green: the fruit breaks out from the branches without any blossom, contrary to all other trees of our orchard, being round and long, shaped like a small pear, full of small white grains, of a very sweet taste when it is ripe, very mellow, and so soft that it cannot be carried far without bruising.
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Come up! Buckeye called down to Hugo. You can see the nacelle, the engine. Hugo, naked as Tarzan, had come out early to walk around the woods, as he always did of a morning. The balloon was suddenly above him before he was aware that it was anywhere near. Up he climbed, feeling giddy as the rope ladder swung away, rung by rung, and began to sway wildly before he reached the taffrail. Tumble and Quark were still rolled up in a blanket, arms around each other. I’m on watch, Buckeye explained. Quark woke, grinned, disentangled himself from Tumble and the blanket, impulsively gave Hugo a kiss and hug, and went to the taffrail to pee over the side. Hugo took in the strangeness of the nacelle: the brass-and-walnut levers, the Edisonian phone and telegraph, the neat cabinets, steam gauges from the age of Isambard Kingdom Brunei, and none of this was out of style with the Danish togs draped over ropes, American jeans, French underpants, Finnish sweaters, an Italian coffeepot. Breakfast, Tumble said, his thick hair a wreck, eyes sleepy. Croissants, to be heated in the engine. Espresso. Fig jam, from the country store over the hill. Butter. The four of them sitting, knee against knee, filled the floor of the basket, with room for cups and saucers in the ring of their toes. I can’t stay long, Hugo said. They’re beginning to wonder about it all. Pompeii, Quark said. You asked. We asked. They have the records at HQ. They have everything at HQ, if you know who to ask. It’s awful. There was a day, I forget the coordinates, when the sky was all white, which was dust and smoke, and then it was yellow, slowly turning black. This was the volcano Vesuvius, it had erupted. Ashes in the air, miles high, which sifted down for days on the garden on the Via Nuceria, so deep that it covered the great olive, and Ferox’s doghouse, the flowers, the very roofs. A flower garden one day, an ash heap the next. Fig jam and butter, Tumble said, they tickle the back of the throat. But I knew that, Hugo said. Then, Buckeye said, why did you ask us to find out?
A BLUE SUMMER SKY
Franklin! Mariana! Hr. Tvemunding! Hugo! Pascal said, running from the meadow. Up in the air! There’s an absolutely scrumptious hot-air balloon over the larchwood. It’s all decorated with signs of the zodiac, and circus colors, and fancy patterns. I waved, and whoever’s in it waved back. They were hauling in an anchor, so they must have been tethered over there. Hurry, or you’ll miss it.
About the Author
Guy Davenport (1927–2005) was an American writer, artist, translator, and teacher who was best known for his short stories that combined a modernist style with classical subjects. Originally from South Carolina, Davenport graduated from Duke University and was a Rhodes Scholar at Merton College, Oxford, where he wrote his thesis on James Joyce. After earning a PhD from Harvard, he taught English at Haverford College from 1961 to 1963 before accepting a position at the University of Kentucky, where he remained until his retirement in 1990. In 2012, the university appointed its inaugural Guy Davenport Endowed English Professor. Davenport won a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship for his literary achievements and an O. Henry Award for his short stories. He was also a visual artist whose illustrations were included in several of his books. His works include Da Vinci’s Bicycle, Eclogues, Apples and Pears, and The Jules Verne Steam Balloon.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This collection includes works of fiction, in which names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
“The Owl of Minerva” originally appeared in The Georgia Review; “The Playing Field” in Hotel Amerika; “Ruskin” in Harper’s Magazine; “The Concord Sonata” in A Table of Green Fields (New Directions, 1993); “The Death of Picasso” in The Kenyon Review; “The Hunter Gracchus” in The New Criterion; “Every Force Evolves a Form” in Zyzzyya; “Boys Smell Like Oranges” in The Cardiff Team (New Directions, 1996); “Belinda’s World Tour” in The Santa Monica Review; “The Messengers” in The Cardiff Team (New Directions, 1996); “The Aeroplanes at Brescia” in The Hudson Review; “The Chair” in Apples and Pears (North Point Press, 1984); “Wide as the Waters Be” in Harper’s Magazine; “Gunnar and Nikolai,” “Mr. Churchyard and the Troll,” and “And” in A Table of Green Fields (New Directions, 1993); “Dinner at the Bank of England” in The Paris Review, “Christ Preaching at the Henley Regatta” in The North American Review; “Pergolesi’s Dog” in The New York Times; “Horace and Walt in Camden” in Harper’s Magazine; “We Often Think of Lenin at the Clothespin Factory” in Conjunctions; “The Anthropology of Table Manners” in Antaeus; “Veranda Hung with Wisteria” in The Cardiff Team (New Directions, 1996); “The Jules Verne Steam Balloon” in Facing Texts (Duke University Press, ed. Heidi Ziegler, 1988); “The Bicycle Rider” was first published as a book by Red Ozier Press in a different version; “Wo es war, soll Ich werden” in The Drummer of the Eleventh North Devonshire Fusiliers (North Point Press, 1990); and “The Ringdove Sign” in Parnassus.
Copyright © 2003 by Guy Davenport
Cover design by Mauricio Díaz
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1961-3
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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New York, NY 10014
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GUY DAVENPORT
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