People of the Book

by David Stacton

  “I can’t go.”

  “You are my death,” said Mysendonck, helplessly. “You always were.” And he walked rapidly through that postern gate which Hannale used.

  Lars wondered what it meant to be someone’s death. It is a responsibility. It makes one sober. Once in a lifetime perhaps one meets one’s death. It is profoundly moving. But it cannot be understood.

  He kicked that snow which from the blue of slate had turned the blue of visions, but was still white, and for the first time in his life, cursed.

  What he could not doubt, was that it was true.

  *

  “Lars,” said Hannale, “I’m frightened.”

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  “Can’t we go away?”

  No, they couldn’t. Mysendonck had men stationed in the woods. But after all, Mysendonck worked for the Magician. And though Lars trusted the Magician, he did not trust him as much as all that.

  He could have asked for a pass. He would have been given it; or Mysendonck would have got him out. But that would be shirking the inevitable, and he could not bring himself to ask for the favor. He could not leave Mysendonck alone, Hannale or not. They had reached the watershed of the sexes, he and she.

  He told her it was winter, and to be patient for a little while.

  *

  It was winter. Tout le monde restait embossé. Et le monde inconnu de la vaste se precipitait. La neige tombait sans amertume sur les côtes raisonables, autour des toits du Katzburg. C’est une espèce de danse blanche, une fermature hebdomaire des crépuscules. Surtout, de temps en temps, il s’y apparait le visage orgueilleux des fantômes, des dieux d’autrefois, du temps perdu. Et le pyx des transformations nécessaires est elevé en clair au dessus de nos pertes. Et l’innommable brûlait dans les profondeurs de l’esprit humaine, comme une pâle bougie….

  They were, with what effort on Lars’ part, but he wanted to help, once more upon the tower, and things had come to their great close.

  The sadness in which the Magician walked had nothing to do with himself. He had been too often to the well, not to know there was no other water in the world but that sadness. Certain things he had to do. They were beyond morals. But as a man he was benign. That blaze in his eye was nothing but an intelligence so steady it had consumed him. He could taste the ash in his mouth sometimes. Intelligence is the mark of Cain, and all men fear it. Abel died because Abel was a fool. All men know this, and so they shun knowledge, for it might kill them.

  And yet it brings a freedom, it brings selflessness; it has consumed us. We walk with the dead, a shadow among shadows, but of a different substance, for God has more than one sun.

  Over the misty hills comes the tinkle of the leper’s bell, to warn most men indoors. It is the intelligent walking. They rise from their graves. There is nothing wrong with them but what has killed them. They totter with hands outspread through the Böyg, hoping that other fingers will touch theirs, out of the fog. For there are other fingers there. One can hear the bells of the sensitive, the kindly.

  “It is the Böyg,” said the Magician, watching the mists rise. “Boy, give me your hand.”

  Lars did so.

  “I had not thought it possible.”

  “Sir?”

  “Nothing.” He returned the hand with courtesy. “Thank you.”

  The two of them began to walk up and down the platform. The top arches of the abbey had disappeared. It was indeed a thick mist.

  “Do you know what the Böyg is?” he asked after a while.

  Lars felt as though someone warm but shy had entered his mind, and stood there, as at a door.

  “Yes.”

  The Magician resumed his companionable pacing, and glanced toward disappearing heaven.

  “I thought you might. Tell me about it.”

  “There was always late and early mist at home. But it was in a field. It was when I was nine.”

  “The Böyg is the great cloud of unknowing,” said the Magician. “And yet we recognize the shapes of shape. Do what we will, we find our way, even in these our Hyrcanian forests, so much feared, and so little left of them.”

  “I can’t leave him. He was my hero,” said Lars, suddenly set free by what he could least put into words.

  “Heroes,” said the Magician, not lying, for he had never had one, “are people to visit on Saturdays, cap in hand, or, if they are safely dead, on Sundays, with flowers.”

  “It isn’t like that.”

  “But boy, you are a different sort of creature.”

  “I need that kind.”

  The Magician’s life had no metaphysics, and to give him credit, he recognized the lack, though he paid it no mind. Nonetheless, without a metaphysics, there can be no love. He was innocent of any war against the human, or else oblivious to it. The meaning of violence was beyond him. He had never been brushed by that wing. So, too, was that rape of the soul tenderness produces among opposed equals. So this meant nothing to him but a trivial rival, a weak opposition to his own desires.

  There should be no difficulty.

  If they will not come to us, we must offer them a bribe. Old men must often do so, and in this is no more dishonor than in honey spread on bread. But the Magician could not bring himself to say, as had Mysendonck, I need you. By preference he dangled the feathered lures of privilege, which though they are soon enough snapped up by our inferiors, attract our equals in no way. No man can land an equal, unless he be willing to bait the hook with himself, a form of gaunching none but the young, whose flesh heals easily, would dare to undergo.

  Looking down into the great cloud of unknowing, the Magician sensed that this boy he must have so much was one he could never have, on honest terms. What signified now the desperate uses of Christine Natt och Dag? She was a mere woman. Below him the mist formed phrases from every religion but the last one, all calling out for Divine Aid. And there was none.

  Beyond him, into the fog, stretched the last of that forest called the Hyrcanian, from which we all in our different ways went to Rome, which we would prefer, were it not for the long low subdued whistle of our heritage, to call us back. And our heritage is not of Rome. Our heritage is in these woods, in the sands of the Mark, on the shores of the northern sea.

  *

  At dawn into the meadow there appeared a dubious company. It was the English Players.

  “Well, why not?” said the Magician, when told of them. The poor devils knew among whom they had fallen, but if they were to be protected, dared not complain.

  He had last seen a play in state at Copenhagen, forty years ago. It would be like the old days, never so grand as this, even in ruin, but of that no matter. He became, for him, jolly, and when he heard what plays they had, chose one. Like the players’ play in Hamlet, it was to be a lesson. He taught by example, but did not know the play that he had chosen, and did not see himself as one. This was to be as fatal as any other oversight.

  *

  When the night came, he had Selina, Hannale, Mysendonck and Lars about him. Manglana was no part of his plans. For the first time in seventy years, the musicians’ gallery was occupied, so they had music at supper, Gibbons, Dowland, Byrd, and Campion.

  He himself came down last. Below him the checkerboard of the Great Hall was swept of all pieces but a dining table from which they might swivel around in their seats. Both fireplaces had fires in them. From the shadows of the landing, he watched the impromptu which proceeded this, his play. Between Lars’ and Mysendonck’s chairs there was a silence. Selina looked poised, but aware of her fires. Hannale, that child whose gray eyes knew more than she admitted to, squirmed. His own chair was empty and had a tall back. What did they say to each other when he was not present? Apparently not much, but he would have liked to know. He never would know.

  They had been told to eat without him, and were down to the walnuts. I will not have that boy so concerned about that boy. There was a fanfarade from the musicians’ gallery. Mysendonck’s gang was to
be let in, to fill up the audience. They came in, standing awkwardly at the rear of the hall. The players’ fool scurried up the stairs, bearing before him, as had been ordered, a torch. The Magician allowed himself to become visible at the head of the steps.

  This evening he felt himself again, so six hundred years of his family came down the stairs, terrible and taller than any short man’s ghost. He was indeed, as his robe caught at the step behind him, Dr. Faustus: he had thrown away the world for knowledge. I carry within myself those six hundred years, like a bowl of water on the chest of a dead man; there is not so much as a ripple. So he walked more erect than usual, the begging, pleading ghost of they knew not what, insubstantial by the light of a balsam torch, and preceded by a jester. No one seemed glad to see him, until Hannale broke away from the table, ran up the stairs, and took his hand. He descended therefore hand in hand with a child: it was an irony.

  That did not make him clutch her hand any the less in gratitude. He took his chair. The play commenced.

  How foolish we are, not to pride ourselves on such things, but to show that we do. And yet, since I am an old man, I must have my whims this once. Besides, this entertainment, I am told, concerns both myself and them. Therefore, looking down the table toward Selina, under his breath he said, and to Lars too, “Faictes attention.”

  Sure enough, Lars consented to come close, and with Hannale on a footstool, the Magician watched the play, most unwisely forgetting Selina, while at the back of the hall the robbers shifted from foot to foot, and did not like where they were.

  *

  Thunder and lightning came out of a sheet of tin and a lump of magnesium. There were mummers in the hall, though it was not Twelfth Night. And mummers re-enact ancient rites to impersonate whatever it is we may have of divinity.

  The play began to flicker in and out of the torchlight. What you could not see, was what made it real. The actors became taller. The tinsel glittered. The world dissolved, and there is no man alive who could doubt the existence of this island.

  That court masque, The Tempest, is a long adieu to the mists of unknowing. At least so the Magician swiftly found. It is about magic. But then Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, according to Saxo Grammaticus, his history of the Danes, was Amlothi, son of Teut, god of the spring, from whom the Teutons derive, and so of course he must die. It is a ritual.

  The players were not good, their German was worse, but they were mouthing something with greatness in it, full of will-o’-the-wisps, marshfires, and wavering flames. It became vivid.

  The prologue ended. The only person in it Mysendonck had any use for was the Boatswain. He wouldn’t have minded being the Boatswain. The rest were cut-paper kings and queens. They used the black arches of the hall for their exits and entrances. There was no scenery.

  GONZALO: The king and prince at prayers! Let us assist them,

  For our case is as theirs.

  … He’ll be hanged yet.

  … The wills above be done! but I would fain

  Die a dry death.

  At which the robbers had their first laugh. As for our betters, they never laugh. They sometimes smile.

  Stepping forward out of their darkness behind the arches, lit by a torch which cast their shadows before them, entered Prospero and Miranda. The difference in costume between Faustus and Magician turned out to be no more than a change of hats, peaked cone for a ducal tam o’shanter of coal-dust velvet. The exposition began. Selina examined with attention Miranda’s dress. As for Hannale, she had always known grown-ups to be enchanted beings. She was watching life.

  PROSPERO: … I have done nothing but in care of thee,—

  Of thee, my dear one! thee, my daughter!—who

  Art ignorant of what thou art, naught knowing

  Of whence I am….

  I have with such provision in mine art

  So safely order’d, that there is no soul—

  No, not so much perdition as a hair,

  Betid to any creature in the vessel

  Which thou heard’st cry, which thou saw’st sink.

  … What seest thou else

  In the dark backward and abysm of time?

  … Both, both, my girl:

  By foul play, as thou say’st were we heav’d thence;

  But blessedly holp hither.

  … Now I arise:—

  Sit still, and hear the last of our sea-sorrow.

  Here in this island we arriv’d; and here

  Have I, thy schoolmaster, made thee more profit

  Than other princes can….

  Know thus far forth.

  By accident most strange, bountiful Fortune,

  Now my dear lady, hath mine enemies

  Brought to this shore….

  In short, they were castaways. With a glance at Selina and the child, the Magician contemplated with some attention himself, orotund, plebeian grand, and a thaumaturge.

  MIRANDA: The strangeness of your story put

  Heaviness in me.

  PROSPERO: Shake it off. Come on;

  We’ll visit Caliban my slave, who never

  Yields us kind answer.

  MIRANDA: ’Tis a villain, sir,

  I do not love to look on.

  PROSPERO: But, as ’tis,

  We cannot miss him: he does make our fire,

  Fetch in our wood; and serves in offices

  That profit us.

  It was a story about an enchanted princess, two monstrous villains, and a dashing fool, who came on an island where there were two boys, one blond and good and Ariel, the other black. Mysendonck put his chin in his fist, and decided he did not like Caliban much. As for Ferdinand, he was nothing but a big silly and a milksop.

  And why could Caliban not have her?

  Though he tortures and teases him, Ariel likes Caliban well enough. They are each spirits; they are akin. But invisibly, you never know whether he is there or not, Ariel says:

  Thou liest.

  PROSPERO: I pitied thee,

  Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour

  One thing or other: when thou didst not, savage,

  Know thy own meaning, but wouldst gabble like

  A thing most brutish, I endowed thy purposes

  With words that made them known….

  That she had never done. Mysendonck avoided Manglana all the more, now that Lars was avoiding him. There was no one …

  I had peopled else

  This isle with Calibans….

  CALIBAN: You taught me language; and my profit on’t

  Is, I know how to curse: the red plague rid you

  For learning me your language!

  The scene changes, to another part of the forest. Enter that daffydowndilly young man, Ferdinand, a melancholy nothing who knows not what to do. To him Ariel sings invisible, and himself hears the strains of strutting chanticleer.

  FERDINAND (with a foppish gesture): Sitting on a bank,

  Weeping again the king my father’s wrack,

  This music crept by me upon the waters,

  Allaying both their fury, and my passion,

  With its sweet air: thence I have followed it,—

  Or it hath drawn me rather,—but ’tis gone.

  No, it begins again.

  A sackbut cascaded in the gallery. Ariel with the sweet glass voice of a Principle Boy, began to sing:

  Full fathom five thy father lies;

  Of his bones are coral made:

  Those are pearls that were his eyes:

  Nothing of him that doth fade,

  But doth suffer a sea-change

  Into something rich and strange.

  Lars, who had been looking at the floor, went gooseflesh from head to foot and his hair stood on end. The floor dissolved to a gray sea heaving, and a face stared up at him, saying, “Boy, begone. Begone. Come to me.”

  It was to be stripped naked. The floor heaved and rippled and echoed and sank into yellow with sand and blue with ice, just off the stern of a frozen boat.
His hands came away from his lap, red and tingling, numb and stiff. Without knowing it, he raised them.

  Sea-nymphs hourly ring his kneel:

  Ding-dong.

  Hark! Now I hear them,—ding-dong, bell.

  Lars heard them. “This is no mortal business, nor no sound that the earth owes.”

  But Miranda, advancing, is singularly taken with young Ferdinand, and runs her fingers over his lips, and has to have him. Somewhere to Lars’ left, Selina sighed.

  PROSPERO: Delicate Ariel,

  I’ll set thee free for this—[To FERDINAND] A word, good sir;

  I fear you have done yourself some wrong: a word.

  MIRANDA: … This

  Is the third man that e’er I saw; the first

  That e’er I sigh’d for.

  Well, thought Manglana, why not? For those three women she was were not so distinct as she allowed the Magician to suppose, but each in turn came around to mock.

  MIRANDA: O dear father!

  Make not too rash a trial of him, for

  He’s gentle, and not fearful.

  And what will Prospero say to that? wondered the Magician.

  PROSPERO: What!

  An advocate for an impostor? hush!

  Thou think’st there is no more such shapes as he,

  Having seen but him and Caliban.

  But Ferdinand is not an impostor. No, said the Magician, watching Lars, he is not. But the play might perhaps have been better chosen. The Magician himself was getting snarled in it. It was a fancy; it showed one the underside of every lie, a thing reality cannot do.

  Enter now something for the robbers at the back of the hall: Alonso, Sebastian, Antonio, Gonzalo, Adrian, Francisco and others, a band of toughs and cutthroats with one good man among them, old before his time. O rare Gonzalo.

  Mysendonck watched this bit with the professional attention of one who has himself done much evil well, his feet planted on the floor, his hands dangling between them. The robbers enjoyed this much and only of the play, for common men who have been knocked about enjoy to see others knocked about. Their comprehension ends there. For Gonzalo they had no use. But when Caliban comes to tempt the shipwrecked, that has the urgency of Judas in it, come to help the others sell their leader: so much of Christianity depends upon a kiss of death; no other faith comes half so well equipped. It is exciting: it is the devil’s share; it drags the world to bedward; it is our dormitive.