— Some days, Mikkel said, I’m only half horny, you know? As if I were grown up or there’s a hormone short out, but most days I wake up to a prosperous stiff cock that’s going to butt my fly all day, and hums to itself, and plumps my balls up tight. Are you like that?
— Worse, I hope.
— Today’s a hormone overload. Why do ducks come in threes? Two drakes and a hen. Is one her spare? Or is one drake the other’s friend?
They walked, bumping shoulders, up the path behind the regimental chapel to the ramparts.
— Kierkegaard used to walk here, Nikolai said, round and around. Gunnar told me that the other afternoon. He said he only knew me as a kid who turned up on time, posed in the altogether, jabbered polite and awful nonsense, and went away. A walk is how you get to know people, he said, and we came up here. Said he liked the light and the trees and the quiet.
— And Nikolai.
— This is where Niels Bohr’s father explained to him how a tree works, photosynthesis and water through the roots and all, and little Niels said, But, Papa, if it weren’t like that it wouldn’t be a tree. Gunnar likes me? Mna. I look like what he thinks Ariel looked like.
37
— The Korczak group will be bronze. With rock you have to know exactly what you’re shaping, where Nikolai Ariel is inside, which I do, and which I need to get to all at a go.
Gunnar wore sneakers and an American baseball cap only, his naked body powdered over with marble dust.
Industrial yellow-and-blue work gloves, mallet, chisel.
— So your posing is for the finding you in the stone, that’s behind us, and for the finishing and smoothing, which begins tomorrow. By tonight it will be here. I got up this morning with it in my eye, in my hands, all the thousand decisions made.
— Golly.
— Golly exactly.
— You want me around? Can I stay and watch?
— Hand me those goggles over there on the shelf. There’s going to be dust when I bite into this fucker with the power saw. Samantha’s bringing gauze masks, and sandwiches. Edith’s away at her sister’s. Said something about idols as she left. What she was thinking is that when I’m bringing a work up to the finish line I get raving horny.
— O wow.
— Probably make a little Dane as well as an Ariel, all in a day’s work. Get the broom and dustpan and start sacking up the rubble. Into those paper bags it goes, and the bags you put in a neat line in the alley. First, find the wire brush.
Diligence of Nikolai, with stares at Gunnar.
— When did you start, Gunnar? Yesterday the block was my head and shoulders and the outside of my arms and legs, and you were working down the back to my butt. Now about half the rock I was in is on the floor and there’re spaces between my arms and body and between my legs, and I can see how the legs are going to be.
— Six this morning. Shooed Edith away around half eight, quoting Scripture. Samantha turned up around nine, made coffee, and got fucked.
— Want me to make more coffee? I get horny, too, posing.
— We can imagine that Shakespeare writing the play, and rehearsing it, and probably acting in it, was not a Lutheran Swede in his great heart.
— First time I went away with balls as tight as a green apple and my handbrother throbbing.
— Goggles. I hear Samantha at the door. And you jacked off twice, panting and mooing.
— Four times. I’m not a baby. Ho, Samantha.
Samantha with her jacket over her head, wet.
— It’s raining cats, dogs, and Swedes. The streets are rivers. Nikolai! You count, of course. Gunnar’s not in the world when a work fit’s on him. When he went full throttle on the Georg Brandes I had to feed him for two days and remind him to pee. Charming reversal: Nikolai practically unrecognizable in clothes, with Gunnar pretty much the way he was born. Reminds me of a horse I saw the other day in the paddock at Rungsted Kyst. He was the only gentleman among mares, and he’d slid out half a metre of pizzle, and was frolicking back and forth, ready for the party, in case anybody invited him.
Ear-to-ear fun, Nikolai’s face.
— One foot’s here, said Gunnar to himself. The other one’s there. Nikolai’s going to grit his big square teeth and lay out the sandwiches and make coffee while there’s an urgent party upstairs, if some of us take off our knickers.
— Don’t have any on.
A sudden hug for Nikolai, and a kiss on the mouth.
— Don’t get your feelings hurt. Be brave. Understand. We’ll owe you a big favor.
Rain light. The coffee-maker was sort of like the one at home, with cannister and paper filter, reservoir in its back. Should he bolt? He would play it cool. That’s how Mikkel would see it through, pants poked out in front and all.
Bedspring music from upstairs, and grunts. A sweet laugh. Swarm of honey in his testicles. We’re breathing through our mouth, aren’t we, Nikolai, and feeling reckless? We’re pouring sugar all over the table, everywhere but in the sugarbowl. We’re rattling cups and saucers.
He put the bag of sandwiches on the coffee table. He sat, looking as if he had a folded fish in his pants. He stuck his fingers in his ears, instantly taking them out. This was a learning experience. In Gunnar and Samantha he had people even more understanding than his tolerant, sweet, fussily liberal parents.
He listened to the rain. He composed his account of what was happening, for telling in the tree house.
He was just unbuttoning his pants and easing down the zipper when he heard Gunnar padding downstairs.
— There’s beer, he said. I see the coffee making. You’re family, I hope you know. Leastways, you are now. O Lord, I didn’t even take off my sneakers. There’ll be comments made.
— You didn’t take off your sneakers, Samantha said coming in wrapped in Gunnar’s dressing gown. I’ll take over. You’ve done it all for me, though, sweet Nikolai. I hope you grow up to be a billy goat like Gunnar. It’s lots of fun.
— Didn’t know I was so hungry, Gunnar said through a mouthful of sandwich. See how the back of the legs echo the whole figure? Nikolai stands as if he were ready to fight the world anyway, but here it’s Ariel realizing that if he does what Prospero’s ordering, he’s free.
Samantha mussed her hand around in Nikolai’s hair while reaching for Gunnar’s beer to have a sip from.
— Is anybody ever free?
— Only if they want to be. Nikolai’s free. How else could he have posed for Ariel?
— Yes, but children don’t know they’re free, and think of grown-ups as free.
— Am I free? Nikolai asked, munching.
— If you aren’t, lille djævel, nobody is.
— Two glups of coffee, Gunnar said. Goggles, mallet, chisel.
Nikolai cleaned up, and went back to sweeping dust and marble chips into paper bags. Samantha was curled up in the dressing gown on the couch, having a nap.
Gunnar chiselled, whistled, chiselled. Nikolai watched as intently as if he were doing it himself. The stallion ran around his paddock at Rungsted Kyst, half a metre of pizzle dangling and wagging.
— There is no reality to time, at all, you know? None.
Samantha woke with a vague smile.
— I had a wet dream, she said.
— Girls don’t have wet dreams.
— A lot you know. Complete with orgasm, sweet as jam.
— In that case, Gunnar said, I’ll follow you upstairs.
— There’s something maybe I ought to tell you, Nikolai said.
— What?
Sigh, bitten lip, silence.
— Nothing, he said.
THURSDAY
Samantha was on Fyn, visiting her aunt. Gunnar had spent the evening with Hjalmar Johanssen the art critic, who had come to see the finished Ariel. The morning had gone to photographers, the afternoon to Samantha and to seeing her off. And here was Nikolai’s knock on the door.
— I’ve come to spend the night, so you’d better not let me in if
you don’t want me to. Don’t look at me like that.
— Come in, Nikolai. It’s late, you know.
— What’s that supposed to mean?
— That your parents will be worried you’re not home, for one thing.
— Call the Bjergs, if you want to. They’ll tell you that Nikolai is in his jammies and fast asleep. Or reading, or watching tv, or whatever he’s doing.
— How have you rigged that?
— I haven’t. Nikolai has.
— Let me sniff your breath. You’re not drunk. Breath’s as sweet as a cow’s. But obviously I’ve lost my mind.
— I’m Mikkel. We’re best friends, me and Nikolai, tight as ticks. You have only seen Nikolai the one time I brought him around and told you he was Mikkel.
Gunnar sat down and crossed his eyes.
— Go on, he said.
— When Nikolai’s mummy asked him if he’d pose for you, the plan fell into place. Nikolai has a girl who has the run of her house every afternoon, and she and Nikolai had already started fucking their brains out when this posing business dropped out of the sky. So I agreed to be him. As I have been. So every afternoon I’ve been here, he’s been coming like a water pistol in the hands of a four-year-old.
— So, hello, Mikkel.
— Hi.
— Now that you’ve jolted me out of a year’s growth, tell me again why you’re here. Gently.
— Nikolai wants to pose for the Korczak. As my buddy, arms around each other, on the death march. That will even it all out, right? He got jealous when I told him about how close you and I have become, and about Samantha. The Korczak got through to him. He thought the Ariel old hat. He’s the brainy one of us, you know. I’ve had to pass his parents off as mine. I was sure I’d slip up there. Did I?
— No. Not even with Samantha talking to your, that is, to Nikolai Bjerg’s mother fairly often. And I talked with her several times on the phone. Good God! What a talent for the criminal you two little buggers have. You have a career in espionage.
— So here I am.
— And where do your parents think you are?
— I don’t have any. I stay with an uncle, who’s sort of not all there. The clothes I’ve worn here were all Nikolai’s. I have some of my own now, from my pay from you for posing.
Gunnar speechless for an uncomfortably long time. He went to the front door and locked it.
— Could I have something to eat? Mikkel asked. I can fix it myself.
— Let’s fix something together. Ham and eggs, toast and jelly. Tall cold glasses of milk. But come upstairs first. Let’s make you feel at home.
— Gunnar.
— Right here, Mikkel. I’ll have to practise. Mikkel, Mikkel.
— Are we friends?
— Friends.
Big crushing hug.
— Sit on the bed. I’ve watched you undressing so many times, and now I’m going to do it, starting with these knotted laces which surely Nikolai tied, not you. Socks that smell of dough. Stand up. Now we unbutton one shirt with a whiff of vinegar underarm. Scout belt. Slides right through, right? Zipper. And by the God of the Lutheran’s, you’re liking this. Pants and nice briefs down and off. Now you’re in Nikolai’s work clothes, but you’ve changed from Nikolai to Mikkel, with Shakespeare ginning down from heaven, don’t you imagine? So I’m seeing Mikkel stitchless for the first time. But as it’s chilly, let’s, if I can find it, here we go, put this on you.
— Sweat shirt. Royal Academy of Art. Golly.
— Sort of covers your butt halfway to the back of the knees and swallows your hands. Here, let’s add the American baseball cap and have our eats.
— Gunnar.
— Mikkel.
39
The high fields of Olympos. Yellow sedge in a meadow. Sharp blue peaks beyond, seamed with snow. The eagle sank out of the cold sky and set him in the field of yellow sedge.
But there was no eagle when he turned, heart still thumping so hard that he had to breathe through his mouth, only a man.
— So, said the man, in a splendid Greek that was neither of the farm or the city, we are here.
— Where be the eagle, Mister Person? It clutched onto me and grabbed me up away from my sheep, and carried me through the air. Closed my eyes, peed and prayed. Where be we?
— On Olympos, that great place. We walk over that knoll yonder and into the palace that rules the world, save for some infringements by fate and necessity, love and time, which are tyrants over us all. Everything that’s evil comes from the north. But in the south of time I am king.
— Never been so mixed up in all my life. How do I git home from here, Mister Person? ’Cause that’s all I aim to do: git home, and fast.
— You will not age here, and when you go home your sheep will not have noticed you’ve been gone. I can splice time onto time, with a bolt or two of eternity.
— Shit!
— You need not even imagine that you are here, now. Because on Olympos there is neither here nor now. You are so many words written by a polished writer named Loukianos, of Samosata in Kommagene, who will live two millennia from now. Look you, here before the gate, these are friendly trees. The one will not grow without the other.
The curving street inside the gate (it opened of itself) was paved with stones laid down when Ilion was a forest. They walked along narrow paths among trees which the boy Ganymed could not name until they arrived at a building with cyclopean rock fitted together in irregular hexagons.
— It sure is foreign here, Mister.
— A sweet soul, Loukianos. There was a time when he was an Aethiopian named Aisopos, who understood the speech of animals.
— I can talk sheep. Baa baa.
Later, when Zeus had shown Ganymed to some very strange people, a nice lady who only looked at him briefly from her loom, a fat lady who sniffed, a handsome gentleman writing music and couldn’t be bothered to look, an amiable red-faced blacksmith who squeezed his arm, and lots of others. At a long family table with buzzing talk, Zeus lifted him onto his lap and said that after so exciting a day they were going to bed, together.
— Don’t recommend it, said Ganymed. I sleep with Papa at home, and he says that I twist and turn all night, and talk in my sleep, and that my knees and elbows are as sharp as stakes.
— I will not mind.
— Besides, I want to sleep with that fellow down there, name of Eros, your grandson. He’s neat.
Whereupon the fat lady laughed so hard that she had to be helped from the table.
40
Sunlight through sheets. Twenty toes. The phone.
— Accept a call from the Fyn? Oh yes. Hello, hello! Yes, I’m probably awake. Nikolai’s here in the bed with me. Well, he spent the night. Listen carefully. He’s not Nikolai and never has been. He stood in for Nikolai, who was having some kind of torrid affair with a bint, while his adoring trusting parents thought he was being an Ariel for Denmark’s most promising young sculptor. He’s Mikkel, the friend Nikolai talked about so much, I mean of course the Mikkel Mikkel talked about so much. Don’t scream into the phone: it bites my ear. No, I’m not drunk and I haven’t lost my mind. You should see him. Mikkel, that is. We’ve only seen him charmingly nude. Now he’s decidedly naked, and his hair looks like a cassowary. Oh yes, you know what boys are like. Disgraceful, yes, and frowned on by psychologists and the police, but lots of fun. The clergy are of two minds about it, I believe. Actually, he went to sleep while we were talking about how friendly it was sharing a bed. I’m putting him on the thread.
A good cough, first.
— ’lo, Samantha. I’m not as awake as Gunnar. Congrats on being pregnant. Gunnar told me last night. You must show me how to change diapers and dust on baby powder. None of last night happened, you know? Yes, I’m Mikkel.
Listening, head cocked, tongue over lips.
— And I’ll give you a big hug, too, when you get back. Tuesday? OK, here’s Gunnar again.
By way of good manners, Mikke
l rolled out of bed. Downstairs he started coffee and poured orange juice into burgundy glasses, for style. The studio seemed strange, and he looked at the rosy marble of the Ariel as if he’d never seen it before.
The Concord Sonata
AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON
At his small sanded white pine table in his cabin at Walden Pond on which he kept an arrowhead, an oak leaf, and an Iliad in Greek, Henry David Thoreau worked on two books at once. In one, A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers, he wrote: Give me a sentence which no intelligence can understand. In the other, Walden, or Life in the Woods, he wrote three such sentences, a paragraph which no intelligence can understand: I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtledove, and am still on their trail. Many are the travellers whom I have spoken concerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they answered to. I have met one or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves.
JOHN BURROUGHS
Thoreau did not love Nature for her own sake, or the bird and the flower for their own sakes, or with an unmixed and disinterested love, as Gilbert White did, for instance, but for what he could make out of them. He says: The ultimate expression or fruit of any created thing is a fine effluence which only the most ingenuous worshiper perceives at a reverent distance from its surface even. This fine effluence he was always reaching after, and often grasping or inhaling. This is the mythical hound and horse and turtledove which he says in Walden he long ago lost, and has been on their trail ever since. He never abandons the search, and in every woodchuck hole or muskrat den, in retreat of bird, or squirrel, or mouse, or fox that he pries into, in every walk and expedition to the fields or swamps or to distant woods, in every spring note and call that he listens to so patiently, he hopes to get some clew to his lost treasures, to the effluence that so provokingly eludes him.
This search of his for the transcendental, the unfindable, the wild that will not be caught, he has set forth in this beautiful parable in Walden.
GEESE
Well now, that Henry. Thursday one of the Hosmer boys told him he’d heard geese. He wants to know everything anybody can tell him in the way of a bird or skunk or weed or a new turn to the wind. Well, Henry knew damned good and well that it’s no time to be hearing geese. So, always assuming his leg wasn’t being pulled, he sat down and thought about it. And after awhile, didn’t take him long, he got up and walked to the station. He didn’t ask. He told Ned that at half past one on Thursday a train had passed through with a crate of geese in the baggage car. That’s a fact, Ned said, but I don’t recollect anybody being around here at the time.
The Guy Davenport Reader Page 19