by John Gardner
His hope that their arguments would resolve his unwordable question proved vain. They spent the whole time debating the meaning of the Greek word for which Brask supplied the translation “operations.” The younger priest was urging such translations as “movements” or “events,” possibly “changes and inner principles in things.”
The bishop looked older and wearier by the minute. His left cheek trembled, and his mouth made a tight, thin line. “My young friend,” he said, “it’s not our business to write the Bible, just to translate.”
“But it means the same thing,” the young man insisted, smiling falsely, eagerly, as if in hopes of deflecting the bishops wrath. “Operations—changes in things—surely there’s no real difference!”
“If that were true, you wouldn’t be fighting me so heatedly,” said the bishop.
The young man held out his hands, palms up. “It’s a question of making ourselves clear to the people who read,” he said. “Changes in things they’ll understand—spring, summer …”
“You fool yourself,” snapped the bishop, and let his eyes fall shut. “You want to make God say not what in fact he says but what the people will understand. What the people believe—what you believe—you want him to believe. The Greek is more vague than you like it—less, so to speak, sophisticated. You want him to compare the behavior of water in a river to the behavior of mayflies, or husbands and wives—make God some kind of universal alchemy. Perhaps up in heaven, listening to what you say, God is pulling at his beard nodding heartily in agreement. But at the time he, so to speak, spoke with Paul, he was talking about talents and governments, and somehow or another he forgot to say what, listening to you, he may be wishing now that he’d thought to bring to Paul’s attention.”
The young priest was checked in his opinion for only an instant. He drew his plump hand back to his mouth and said tentatively, not meeting the bishop’s eyes, his whole body expressing his refusal to be beaten by the bishops rhetoric, “It all depends what he meant, exactly, by ‘administrations.’ Perhaps he wasn’t thinking exclusively of churches or political systems. Systems of philosophy, as Aquinas tells us, have their necessary logical ‘government.’ Trees, the arrangement of veins in mammals, the habits of badgers, as opposed to those of bees …”
“You know you’re talking nonsense,” the bishop said crossly. “Human pride! Beware of it! What a pleasure it would be”—he smiled slightly, his eyes narrow slits—“to impose one’s opinions on the world through the mouth of God himself!”
“If I’ve correctly followed the arguments of your books, they’re as much your opinions as mine, my lord,” said the priest, but feebly, looking at his knees, as if he knew the ploy would never work.
“True enough, they are my opinions,” said the bishop. “Who knows, if the Lutherans win, they may someday be all men’s opinions and taken for gospel. Give every man a Bible and let him read it as he likes, sooner or later what the Bible says will be what the news-crier says in the street. Truth will be whatever survives generation on generation.” He closed his eyes again, and for a moment it seemed to Lars-Goren that he’d fallen asleep. Then, without opening his eyes, he said, “It may all come to pass. No need to rush it.”
With an effort, the old man raised his eyelids, then set down his glass. “I must sleep,” he said. “Translate it any way you please. Whatever we do is presumably God’s will.” He pressed down on the chair-arms and rose.
The young man looked at him, distressed, his head full of arguments, but in the end, with the other priests gathering around him, he said nothing, but officiously rose to help the bishop to his room.
In the morning none of them referred to the midnight discussion. Perhaps, on reflection, the young priest had decided to take advantage of the old man’s irritable concession and do exactly as Brask had ironically advised—translate any way he pleased. After matins and breakfast, as they were mounting their horses—the bishop stiffly, as if the pain he had still not mentioned were much greater now—the young priest asked, “Will you be passing through Dalarna?”
Glancing at the bishop, who showed nothing, Lars-Goren answered, “No, that’s out of our way. We’ll be heading straight north.”
“Ah,” said the priest, and nodded.
Bishop Brask studied him with drawn lips. His old horse stamped irritably, but the bishop held him in a moment longer. He asked sternly, “Why?”
The priest shrugged. “There are always rumors of trouble in Dalarna,” he said, and gave a laugh.
“What this time?” Lars-Goren asked.
With studied off-handedness, to show that he himself was in no way involved, he told them of the Daljunker—the young gentleman of the Dales—who claimed he was Nils Sture, that young Nils was, after all, not dead but had escaped Gustav’s wrath.
“That’s absurd,” Lars-Goren said, flashing anger. “What wrath? Who ever said Nils Sture was dead?”
“He’s not?” asked the priest.
Bishop Brask, heavy on his horse, flicked his reins slightly, moving without a word of farewell down the path toward the road. Lars-Goren looked after him, then nodded to the priest and started out behind him, trotting to catch up. The road was lightly speckled, like an eel’s back, with light and shadows. “More work of the Devil?” said Lars-Goren.
“Everything’s the work of the Devil,” said the bishop.
“Everything?” Lars-Goren asked, ironic.
“Nothing then; whatever you like,” said the bishop, and said no more.
3.
THEY RODE THAT DAY only as far as Lake Daläven. As on the previous day, the bishop sometimes rode for miles without a word, other times spoke freely. Once Lars-Goren said, riding through a forest as dark as a cave except for a few threads of sunlight—a forest so thick there was no underbrush, only a carpet of pine needles—“It puzzles me, Bishop, that you decided to come north with me. Surely you had friends you could have turned to for protection. It hasn’t escaped me that you ride like a man in some discomfort; back trouble, perhaps, or possibly something worse, though I hope not.
“Yes,” Bishop Brask said, a sullen, disembodied voice in the darkness to Lars-Goren’s right, “I’m old for a trip like this, that’s true.”
Lars-Goren waited, listening to the footfalls of the horses, and when the bishop said no more, he said, “Yet you’ve come. It does seem strange.”
“Strange,” the bishop agreed, and then, with a sigh, as if only to avoid further hounding on the question, “I hardly know myself why I decided to come. Perhaps just exhaustion. No doubt that sounds strange—to take a long, arduous trip out of exhaustion—but when a man reaches my age, or my mental state, call it what you like, it can sometimes seem easier to walk on foot to China than to wrestle over trivial decisions.” He rode awhile in silence, then spoke again. “That was mere rhetoric, I’m sure you noticed. ‘Walk on foot to China.’ I live on rhetoric, like a spider on its threads. Perhaps I imagined I could outride the edge of my rhetoric. More rhetoric, you’ll notice.”
Lars-Goren said nothing.
“I remember when I imagined some connection existed between rhetoric and the world. I remember the feeling. Very pleasant, like the feeling of union between man and a woman when they couple. A curious illusion, when you stop to give it thought. I doubt that would have quite that feeling if one did it with a sheep or, say, a unicorn. But one never stops to think about such things when one’s young. ‘I love thee, Kristina!’ cries Sören; ‘Sören, I love thee!’ cries Kristina—and the world pops open like a flag. Oh yes, ah yes.” He heaved a sigh. “I’ve watched it, de temps à temps. I remember young Gustav. How I envied him there beside Lake Mora, full of faith in himself! Then Norby. Poor gudgeon, he had it too.That’s one of the Devil’s main tricks, of course. Fill a man with faith. What evils, what absolute horrors the noble sword of faith sends pouring into the world!”
“Strange words from a bishop.”
“Yes, I admit it. I’m not at my best, I’m afraid
. I might say this in my defense. … More rhetoric, you’ll notice. ‘I might say this in my defense.’ But never mind, never mind. I might say this, as I was saying: I haven’t made the trip out of ignorant faith, like you, my dear knight. No offense! Merely an observation! You, Lars-Goren: with no place to turn, where do you turn? Back home! Not because your wife or your children can help you, or your peasants and villagers, most of whom have never seen a war. And even if they had, of course, even if every last one of them was a seasoned veteran, what could little Hälsingland do against all Sweden? Can your castle withstand a siege by Gustav? Will he forget you, abandon you to your family? Never! Then why have you come? Because you’ve come, that’s all. Surely you’re aware of it yourself, my friend. Home is, for no reason you can find words for, the seat of your power. If something will turn up, it will turn up—or so you imagine—there. You’re wrong, that’s my opinion, or at any rate my guess. It’s a fool’s faith. And yet you act on it! That’s the beauty of faith. One acts on it.”
“But not you, you claim.”
“Not me. No.”
“You’ve lost me again. Why is it you’ve come?”
Ahead of them, they could see light. We’ll soon be out of the woods, thought Bishop Brask. But only in the literal sense, of course. That was one of the fundamental symptoms of despair, it struck him now—the discovery that the literal world was no adequate metaphor. He could write a book on despair—who could do it better? But of course one couldn’t write in this condition. And what good would it do anyway, a book on despair? Whom would it serve? On the other hand, what difference if anyone was served? On the other hand, why write at all?
Out of the dimness Lars-Goren was asking again: “Why is it you’ve come?”
Strange to say, Bishop Brask thought, framing the words he might say to Lars-Goren but did not have the energy to say, I was once in love. Yes, me! Hans Brask, Bishop! It was an illicit love—to say the least! A young man! and worse yet, eunuchus ex nativitate. Nevertheless it was so. I was in love.
It was not a feeling one could explain to a man like Lars-Goren, but it had been real, and powerful. He remembered how his friend, a young prior, had changed the light and air he walked in. Perhaps there were women who could have, for some, the same effect; but it had seemed to Hans Brask, and seemed to him yet, that nothing in the world could be more beautiful than the gentleness of that man. When he listened to someone arguing a position of some kind—whether Brask or someone else—he had listened with a strange openness of heart, his head slightly forward, encouraging, as if to say “Yes! Yes, good! That’s an interesting point!” He was like the Christ Hans Brask had in those days imagined, divine in the invulnerability of his spirit. If someone attacked or insulted him, the young prior dismissed it instantly as something he himself might have done if he had misunderstood in exactly the way his attacker did, for no one would hate anyone, he was persuaded, if understanding were complete. He was a grinner and a nodder. You spoke, he nodded, pulling out your words as a fisherman pulls a fish. When he disagreed, he said so—but enough, enough!
Yet the thought of the young man would not leave him. He saw in his mind how his young friend had walked, head thrown forward, mouth sombre, as determined and prepared for disaster as a Jew, walking—almost running—as if rushing toward some encounter he feared but would not duck. Once, arguing some idiotic point of theology, Hans Brask had burst into tears and the young man had seized his trembling hands. It was the only time they’d touched, except, perhaps, for a casual pat on the shoulder, a collision—he remembered it distinctly—in the hallway. Yet the whisper of the priests skirts at the door was slaughtering, his scent unearthly—but enough.
They came out into the light of an open field, a little village in the distance. Peasants were cutting hay, the last of the season. The scent of it was dizzying. Grasshoppers and honeybees were everywhere. It came to Bishop Brask that he had ridden for a long time in silence, not answering Lars-Goren’s question. He said, “I’m sorry. You must forgive me. You asked me something—what was it?”
Lars-Goren rode with an easy comfort that made the bishop suddenly conscious again of the pain in his back and upper thighs. Lars-Goren cast back in his mind, trying to remember. Bishop Brask remembered first.
“Ah yes,” he said, “why is it that I’ve come with you? That was your question.” He thought about it, frowning hard. “I don’t know,” he said at last. He knew for an instant what the truth was—it leaped up in him like a shock of excitement, a remembered nightmare—but then his despair was back, and, wearily, he shook his head.
At Gästrikland, all one heard anywhere was excited talk of the Daljunker. From the emotion he roused, he might have been the Messiah come back in glory. Lars-Goren and the bishop, after conferring together, veered toward the west, into Dalarna. It was evening when they arrived in Kopparberg. The city was in a furor. The Daljunker had arrived sometime this morning, they were told, and would speak to the assembly tonight Lars-Goren and the bishop hurried to join the crowd.
Lars-Goren could not say what he’d expected, exactly—certainly a Dalesman, crude but impressive; otherwise why would the Dalesmen have rallied to his cause in such enthusiastic force? But whatever it was that Lars-Goren had expected, the Daljunker, when he appeared, was a surprise.
He was an elegant young man with golden hair and manners he could only have gotten from a life among aristocrats. If he’d been fostered in Denmark, his speech did not show it. Every slightest gesture was Swedish to the core. His attire was magnificent. King Gustav himself had no such fancy clothes, and even if he had, he could never have worn them with such a casual perfection. In face and figure, he was beautiful—authentically so: he was no womanish imitation, no painted doll, no fop. What he said was not true—Lars-Goren and Bishop Brask knew it. Was he simply a magnificent actor then? If so, he was the finest in the world. Was he mad? If so, he showed not the faintest hint of it.
His voice rang, though he did not seem to shout. The torchlight around him did not seem, tonight, like the torchlight of a stage but simply torchlight. Lars-Goren mused on it so deeply that he almost missed the Daljunker’s words. Surely, Lars-Goren thought—and he had never thought more carefully, more critically than tonight—surely the Daljunker would have the same effect in the middle of the day. His confidence in what he was saying was hypnotic.
The Daljunker cried out, as if in authentic agony, that King Gustav, Sweden’s great hope and the hope of the whole northern world, was dead. Listening, Lars-Goren for a moment believed it and was shocked to the bone. He glanced at Bishop Brask, who very slightly, glumly, shook his head. Lars-Goren stared in amazement at the Daljunker. “He was Sten Sture’s kinsman!” the Daljunker cried. “He fought King Kristian and King Fredrik and Sören Norby and the bishops! He made us proud to be Swedes! It is said that he killed Nils Sture, but that is not true! So brilliantly and cunningly that even the international magnates were fooled, he slipped Nils Sture out of prison, so that here and now he can stand before you all and cry, The king is dead—long live the king!’
“Le roi est mort,” Bishop Brask whispered, not turning his head. “He must have studied in France.”
Now the Daljunker spoke of Sten Sture. His voice betrayed him, cracking, though he struggled for control. Lars-Goren found himself mentally backing off in a way that obscurely frightened him. But however Lars-Goren backed off from it, there could be no doubt of the Daljunker’s sincerity. His tears, his voice, were not an actor’s effects. He meant and believed every word he said, his tears were no less honest, Lars-Goren would have sworn, than the tears of Gustav Vasa when the bodies burned on Södermalm hill. Yet the whole thing was a lie—absolutely a lie, though conceivably the handsome young man did not know it. The Daljunker, speaking of Sten Sture, who he claimed was his father, was now weeping openly, no longer struggling against the force of his emotion. The Dalesmen all around Lars-Goren and the bishop wept with him. “Madness!” Lars-Goren thought. But the word was not
enough.
Lars-Goren caught himself up sternly. “Suppose I am mistaken,” he said to himself. “Suppose Gustav Vasa is dead and has been dead for weeks”—so the Daljunker had claimed—“and I am mistaken. Suppose this is truly, this Daljunker, the king of the Swedes.”
That instant Bishop Brask seized his elbow and said, “Enough. Let’s go!” Lars-Goren studied the terrible weariness in the bishops eyes and, almost unaware that he was doing it, hurled up a prayer.
Fool, thought Bishop Brask, stupid moron fool! His rage was beyond words as he forced Lars-Goren toward the back of the crowd, guiding him ferociously by the elbow. He might have laughed, if he could summon up the energy. Nevertheless, when they had escaped the outermost rim of the crowd, he for some reason did not let go of Lars-Goren’s elbow but, instead, hung on as if Lars-Goren were dragging him back out of Dalarna, north toward Hälsingland, toward safety and hope, as in fact he was.
4.
THE DEVIL TOOK THE FORM of a fly and sat on the mantel in the firelit hall. He felt the threat very strongly here, though it seemed to make no sense. “Perhaps,” he said to himself, rubbing his front feet together in frantic agitation, “perhaps it’s the form of the fly that makes me feel this way. A fly’s a very vulnerable creature. Perhaps it’s only that.” As an experiment, he flew up into the darkest corner of the room and transformed himself to a spider. If anything, the feeling of foreboding grew stronger than before. He looked down, baffled, at Lars-Goren, his family, and their guest, sitting close to the fireplace, their outlines blurring against the white, swirling fire.
There was nothing he did not know concerning the mission King Gustav had assigned to Lars-Goren and the bishop; not a detail he did not know about their long trip north. He had been startled to laughter, hearing King Gustav charge them with his removal, and he was no less inclined to laugh now. Yet his sense of danger was as sharp as the smell of woodsmoke all around him.