People of the Book

by David Stacton

  They were priced cheap. They moved well. The French had no propaganda to match them. What the French had, unfortunately, was money.

  Other efforts at propaganda had been more prankish, national pride being in no way incompatible with a sense of humor. John George being easily unnerved, it had been Gustavus’ inspiration to deposit at the Electoral Palace in Dresden one Lapp boy, one Lapp girl, no interpreter, and a herd of reindeer. It is somewhat difficult to return a herd of reindeer, and since they were a royal gift, they could not be shot. They were still there.

  What money the Swedes had came from the copper mines of Falun, but now the Dutch were selling Japanese copper cheap at Amsterdam, they had been doing so for over ten years, copper no longer brought so good a price. So Oxenstierna scarcely heard the boy. But one can learn more from the rhythm and inflection of speech than from the words, an insight which, if made use of, would defeat the sycophant at once. This may be observed by talking to dogs. They are masters of tone. They always know whether or not you mean it, which is sometimes more than you know yourself. Either their ears prick up, or they sigh and look bored.

  But mostly he liked Lars because Lars was knobby and lanky; for never trust a short man, he is a sort of beaver with fangs. He is discontented with looking up at you, and if he can’t knife you in the back, he’ll pull you down by the knees. Short men do not like anything larger to survive. Our persistence must be a continual grievance to them, spiritual and physical both. He wanted this boy to survive. At any rate, he wanted something to survive. Therefore, though privately he did not think much of this Uncle Stöss business, he would help him on his way.

  “We have some troops moving toward Blicksberg. They will take you as far as they can. I will give you a safe-conduct”—for what it was worth, but he had not the time to do more. And writing out the order, he handed it to the boy with a wry smile, said, a little regretfully, good night, and forgot about him. If we have the habit of walking in the dark, of course we are apt to see too much. It was better to forget.

  What he had granted him was postliminium. And he did not sleep well. Do what we will we are controlled by the tides. We are tide wrack. We beach. The sea leaves us until the next storms lift us off. Lars had summoned up the wet music of the Baltic, and when shall any of us hear that again?

  III.ix.2. Postliminium therefore, according to its original signification, means the right, accruing to any one in consequence of his return home from captivity. Pomponius defines the right of postliminium to take place the moment any one enters a town or garrison, of which his sovereign is master; but according to Paulus, he must have entered within the territories of his own country before he can be entitled to that right.

  Curious to see the face one has lost in the face of a child.

  47

  Seeing whose signature was on the order, the Swedish commander of five of his own countrymen and 2,000 German irregulars said with more respect than the situation called for, “Very well. You had best travel with the staff. And if you wish, bring the child.” For of Swedish discipline, there was now no remnant left.

  *

  Blicksberg, the rich commercial banking city of the South, is a cure of some 34,588 souls, lying on the left bank of the Lech, somewhat to the north of Munich. It had changed hands several times, but was Protestant, and at the moment had a Swedish garrison, for the pious must be coerced to pay for their piety. On this city the Imperial forces were moving up. In this city Epiphanius Stöss had found his niche.

  “The good man,” the old ladies there said, “has never married. It is proof of vocation, in one so obviously virile. He has a true call.” He was intense, but never troublesome. He spoke of God. And there was about him some mystery, some ambiguity of glamour and romance.

  There were others there, husbands mostly, or young wives happy in their kinder or their houses, who did not agree and who shivered when he went by, not with fear of the holy, but with that fear which arises naturally from distaste, the emotion with which, on a long summer’s evening, we squash between our fingers midges.

  Hosea, VIII.7: For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. Psalms, XVIII.10: Yea he did fly upon the wings of the wind.

  Stöss was a most effective preacher.

  *

  People go to church to ask for something, to be consoled, a few even go to give thanks or to admire; they go in moments of common emotion. Some lodge there out of terror. For if something is contained in nothing, then what is nothing contained in, how can we know nothing without something, and if something is not, nothing is. This conundrum can be resolved but not settled, and it makes the top of one’s head come off. That was why Stöss was there. He had a German soul, but not the rigors of the German mind, which heals itself by bathing in shaved ice until it can feel no more and the skin toughens. He had spent forty years of his life in a permanent state of metaphysical terror, until his hands shook, he scarcely dared either to come in or to go out.

  His main difficulty was the word God. It seemed a vulgar name for a voice from a cloud, which besides he had never heard and could not imagine; it meant nothing to him. He always knew when he was lying. He lied incessantly. It was not the lie that bothered him, but the overwhelming seas of punishment, which at any moment would crash down upon his head. He was always aware in this life of the thin hull between himself and the terrors of the infinite.

  He was not among that Deity’s admirers. He had tried joy; it didn’t work. He shrank from vulgarity almost as much as he shrank from common sense. Either might let the terror in. Jesus was easier. The ethical principles left him puzzled, as though he had overheard only the meaningless bits of a conversation in the next room, but the final escape of a purely imaginary personal torture appealed to him.

  Only the method differed in his case. He lay on the ground, against the dawn wood. The nails were driven in. They felt wonderful. Then the Christus was hoisted and the sun filled the sky. The lettering above him, on its dusty scroll, said not INRI, but SNRI: Stöss Nazarethi Rex Ludorum. See what you have done to me, he said, and wriggled for pleasure. IHS, the S blurred, Iesu hominum Stöss Salvator. Epiphanius, Epiphany. Sometimes the angel shout was deafening. See what you have done to him, said the two thieves, his parents, the good one, the bad one. He could never remember which was which. Every woman who had never understood him was weeping just below his feet, with clasped and anguished hands. As for the legionaries, they could admire his fortitude: he was a soldier too.

  The wonderful thing about it was that he would meet them on the road to Emmaus afterwards, including Doubting Thomas. He was assumed. And since he did not really go through it, it did not hurt, except obscurely somewhere through the bones and ligaments of his wrist, as his hand dangled simian from his bed while he lay sleeping.

  The clouds gathered. The sky grew dark. There was thunder and lightning. It rained; there was a vast hot wind gritty with desert sand, and then, always, Stöss awoke, naked in his bed, sweaty and shivering, and swallowed hard into the darkness. He hated darkness, a thing a wise man could have guessed, but he knew no wise men. He shunned them, for he did not want to be healed. He did not want to be well. To be misunderstood is as constant as a scab to pick at. Sometimes he had pains in his side. He spoke often of Christ.

  Nothing can be done with the serious-minded. They all want the world one way, as blinkered as they are, which, since they know nothing else, is to them an extensive view, straight down the same narrow track. Since they are blinkered, they are not aware of the people smiling as they plod their way. At a gallop, however, they can be dangerous, being oblivious to everything but the one carrot. Beauty, grace, charm, courage, dissent, integrity, and compassion mean nothing to them. And though the only thing they feel is the crack of the whip, not one of them admits to the presence of a driver.

  Like many people given up to the March of Mind, their objectivity is mostly hysteria, catatonic, and derived of shock.

  He was like Grotius in a way. Caug
ht between altar and pulpit, the unknown and the minatory, God and Christ, he preferred the latter, he required precedent: now He is dead, He is worshipful. Whereas God is not worshipful, for God is alive, and therefore dangerous; He imperils the rigidity of the system. He may try to make changes; at any rate, He cannot be controlled by it.

  Meanwhile, Stöss enjoyed his standing among the tea tables. He pretended not to, for we are humble, are we not? The prognosis was complicated by the fact that he really did feel humble. His doctor, listening to the murmur of that heart (his wife always arranged at the altar the first fruits of the autumn harvest, a thing she did well), could only deplore that, though it was unsteady, neither did it fail. Doctors never judge. They are, however, often disappointed.

  Straightening up, Apothecary Grüning (of Britz, it is a suburb), dropped the smallest coin he could decently summon to the plate, where it settled with the disapproval of the entire male community of the parish, ringing amid damp stones, stern women, the echo of heavenly music publicly concerted, and that parsimonious disapproval which comes always during the collection, until the next person over to take the offering dish stilled it with her thumb.

  “Oh my people,” said Pastor Stöss, laying his head softly against his shoulder, and feeling the precious weight of the tender burden. It was his favorite phrase, and could have prised open an oyster, as smartly as ever up popped the cover of a hunter’s watch, to the flip of dirty nail and dirty finger. The deer are tardy this year, at any rate at this crossing. They must be encouraged.

  *

  The lieutenant, handsome, bony, wet-faced, and spanking-new in that blue and white costume which was almost a uniform, tied a band across his left arm, so his own troops should not kill him by mistake during the fighting. Imperial troops were moving up, about five miles from Blicksberg. Having come to take Lars for granted, he handed the boy a pistol and a sword. The Great Chancellor had given him a safe-conduct. Now he must fight for it.

  “Blood is the Swedish drink,” he said wryly, quoting the peasants of Silesia.

  Lars dismounted and told Hannale to stand behind a tree. The first thing he ripped open was the belly of a horse, for the attack was swift, he took what went by him. The guts dropped down instantly, puce color, each organ attached but straggling. The horse collapsed under a conifer. There was a whiff of smoke. A bullet went by him. After all, why not? What difference did it make? It was only an exercise: these people you killed were not men; nor is it unpleasant to kill men. He had Mysendonck’s boots, Mysendonck’s breeches, Mysendonck’s jerkin, and Mysendonck’s memory to help him. Ten Mysendoncks came toward him, their black hair blowing loose in the evening air, and six of them he cut down. If this is the way it must be, then so be it. There was in each of their faces a childish and affectionate surprise.

  Then the fighting had gone some other way. Lars snatched Hannale out from behind the tree and took her through that battlefield, among the dying, toward the soft inconstant lights of Blicksberg, which they reached at midnight and were not let in; the gatekeeper would not allow them in. It was, he said, a siege, and he did not enjoy to be waked up. Anyone who came knocking on his gate was a siege, so far as he was concerned.

  But at dawn the postern was opened, and in they went. Hannale felt cheerful again, for looking up, in the night, as they slept by the wall wrapped in that fine cloak of military serge which was the last thing the lieutenant had had to give to anyone, she had seen above the gate, in the moonlight, two leopards. And they were two leopards. They were really there: they were the escutcheon of the town. She had found them.

  She did not tell Lars this. She had now two things she would never tell Lars.

  48

  It took a while to find him. They had made their way through the silvery, empty, dawn streets, and out of compassion he took her to a just-opened tavern, where they were warmly fed. With his yellow Spanish boots, his blue Swedish cloak, his tow hair, the look in his eyes, he was an object of some interest: a lost boy, perhaps a messenger. They were willing enough to serve him, it was merely that something rough (and new) in his manner put them off, but he seemed a decent lad.

  “Where do we find Pastor Stöss?”

  They were disappointed. They thought he had brought news.

  “He is our uncle.”

  “Ah, Pastor Stöss,” they said, watched compassionately, were curious, and served him all the better. And who was the child?

  “My sister.”

  They set him on his way, and fancy that.

  *

  That house Pastor Stöss was using as a parsonage, a little house built into the buttresses of the church and facing the street, near a cobbler’s shop—you have only to ask the way to St. Anne’s, it is our church of the second importance—had in its front door a judas window. After some knocking, the panel shot aside, and they could see the cropped face of one of the Graeae, to judge by her duster, the cleaning woman who came in in the mornings to do for him. Her red eye did not look hospitable. Though there might be anxiety in the streets, here there was none. Here there was only suspicion.

  All the same, carelessly, wearily, she let them in. She did not care.

  Beyond them was a long, irregular, and narrow passage, damp, built into the walls of the building, whitewashed, held by rough struts, with stairs leading down and a door at the end, stained walnut to judge by its sepulchral look, and leading into the church itself.

  At the far end of the hall a thin irritable figure appeared, unshaven, and in a skimpy robe.

  “Frau Stolz,” he said, “what is it?”

  In his broad military cloak, with its full luxurious but Spartan swing from the shoulders (he could not have chosen worse), Lars advanced down the hall, remembering at the last to snatch off his cap, and drawing himself up and clicking his heels together, bowed.

  “Gnädig Herr, we are Frau Larsen’s children. You are our uncle.” Even while he stood there, bowing, he felt taller than this man. He held Hannale’s hand tight, and drew erect again.

  It was what Stöss had feared might someday happen. It must be dealt with somehow. But … their uncle? He blinked, and would gladly have sent them away, but Frau Stolz was watching beadily, so he had to ask them in, going before them into a long, low, tile-floored room with a beamed ceiling, where a new-laid fire was rising in the grate. It seemed, to judge by the shelves, to be a study.

  Not knowing what to say, he sent Frau Stolz for biscuits and something warm to drink. He felt foolish and realized he had not shaved. When the biscuits came, he still did not know what to say.

  Lars sprawled in a dark wood chair by the fire, not knowing that he loomed enormous in that room as something so wicked as a healthy creature, his cloak around him, his face unrecognizable, his hair blond, his great scuffed boots sticking out. It was an apparition from the outside world, and Stöss had a low and furtive opinion of cavaliers, the sight of whom left him soiled and envious.

  So this is my son, thought Stöss, a word he found meaningless. It was not a concept; he had no use for a son. He did not propose to admit it. There was no need for him to admit it. But who was the girl? Frau Larsen had never mentioned a girl, but since she was only a child, perhaps it did not matter. He found himself discomposed by the sudden presence of this towering, fresh-faced, outrageous animal. It was as though a giant had stepped into the room, who did not know the language spoken here. So here he sat, being meek.

  Is he a dangerous animal?

  Of course he knew the name. “I have named him after my husband,” Frau Larsen had written. For she had taken her revenge in the prompt delivery of information, and, in after years, by those packets marked, For the relief of a poor priest.

  God, she must have hated him.

  49

  Herr Stöss was the second son of the chief baker of Görlitz, a town in Silesia mostly famous for having given rise to the metaphysical ramblings of Jacob Boehme, the heretical Illuminatus, himself the son of a shoemaker. He had been a sickly child, pale and u
nwanted, weedy, shortsighted, and praeternaturally bright.

  Silesia is the wiriest of the Germanies, a sparse upland that is not anywhere, cold in winter, dark, strange, oppressed, not Polish, not German; but old races survive there, so do ancient hates. It is considered rich; it has changed hands often. Its peoples are wild peoples, not in the sense of joy, rather in the sense of daily berserk. They do not laugh. They rattle their chains, and what is worse, would be lost without them. Without them they might have to stand up. Chains are what they want.

  Epiphanius, reserved to the clergy from childhood—there was no other way up for a bright child, and had not his mother’s father (she had married beneath her; respectable women always marry beneath them) been incumbent at Löbau, had he not died so young she would not have had to marry the baker—rather than face it, had run away when he was fourteen.