A Table of Green Fields

by Guy Davenport

  Golden smile with silver dots for eyes.

  —My friend Birgit and I, Samantha said, used to climb out her bedroom window, in our shimmy tails, into a big tree, I think

  it was a very old apple, and sit on limbs, like owls. We thought it a very important thing to do.

  BOY WITH GEESE

  In the park, with lakes, in Malmo. Life-size Swedish boy in small britches, three geese, by Thomas Qvarsebo, 1977. Gunnar, Samantha, and Nikolai went over on the boat from Nyhavn to look at it. Nikolai liked the geese, Gunnar the candid modelling, Samantha the big-eared, honest-eyed frankness of the boy.

  —And the obviousness, there in the britches, of his being male.

  —Wait till you see my and Nikolai's Ariel.

  —Sweden, Nikolai said, is Denmark's Lutheran uncle.

  —Lutheran aunt, said Samantha.

  BULLETIN BOARD

  Red and brown poultry foraging in the high street, and dogs, grass between rocks once squared stone but there is no squared stone in these late days in antiquity, the autumn of an autumn, when portrait statues of the emperors had drilled pucks for eyes, all exactitude lost in swollen bulk, when discernible value was draining from things into money and into a frightened spirituality that hated the body.

  —L'Orange, Gunnar said when Samantha asked, Fra Principat til Dominat. It happened again in Picasso's sculpture.

  GOLDEN DOVES WITH SILVER DOTS

  In the advanced light of a long afternoon, Samantha reading, Gunnar rolling his shoulders, Nikolai rubbing his knees.

  —When each of us relates to an idea, separately, essentially, and with passion, we are together in the idea, joined by our differences.

  —Kierkegaard, Gunnar said.

  Nikolai butted and pushed his way into Gunnar's Icelandic sweater.

  —In which, Gunnar remarked to the ceiling, he can pet his mouse, and those of us who are unobservant are none the wiser.

  —He's among friends, Samantha said. Each is himself in himself, different. In our separate inwardnesses we keep a chaste bashfulness between person and person that stops a barbarian interference into another's inwardness. Thus individuals never come too close to each other, like animals, precisely because they are united in ideal distance. This unity of differentiation is an accomplished music, as with the instruments in an orchestra.

  Nikolai, whistling, came to sit by Samantha and look at the page. She hugged him closer and wrecked his hair.

  —He wears your sweater because it's yours.

  —Isn't that barbarian, as you've just read us? Not as barbarian as grubbing around down in under the sweater, but then the two would go together, wouldn't they?

  —I hope so, Samantha said.

  —I don't know what anybody's talking about, Nikolai said.

  —Love, I think, Gunnar said. Your namesake Grundtvig wanted everybody to hug and kiss. Kierkegaard, however, saw people in love as two alien worlds circling each other. Grundtvigians went at it along the hedgerow, watched by placid sheep, and in the Lutheran bed, and in the hayloft, but shy Søren was one for guddling down in under a sweater three sizes too large for. him, without, I should think, the shameless grin.

  —Quit twitting Nikolai, who's looking like the most innocent cherub in God's nursery. Kierkegaard looked like a frog with a sorrow.

  —Nikolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig, Nikolai said. Could be I was named for him, do you think?

  —You can say you are. We all live in our imagination, don't we? If we don't make ourselves up, others will make up a self for us, and get us to believe it.

  Sweet puzzlement in Nikolai's eyes.

  —I wonder, Gunnar said, if we don't make everything up? Man, I mean, is a damned strange animal. He lives in his mind. Of course we don't know how animals think, what their opinions are. What does a horse think about all day?

  —Maybe, Nikolai said, they just are. Horses and ducks. But, you know, they have lots to pay attention to.

  —What you're sculpting, you know, Samantha said over L'Equipe, which she had abandoned Kierkegaard for in her nest of cushions by the window, is not really Ariel at all, but Eros, Shakespeare's junior senior giant dwarf Don Cupid.

  19

  —It can't be done, Nikolai said, but Mikkel brought me piggyback on his skateboard.

  —Hello, said Mikkel.

  Blond and pink, with awesome blue eyes, Mikkel was dressed in spatter jeans and a sweater from the Faeroes. Fifteen, at a guess. Dansk fabrikat. Why did Nikolai say thirteen?

  —See, Nikolai said of the stone Ariel, it's me, or will be when it's finished.

  —Hey! You're good! Mikkel said to Gunnar, who was edging chisels at the grindstone. I mean, it's tremendous, you know?

  —I get paid for posing It's like a job. Are you ready, Gunnar boss man? Is it OK if Mikkel watches? He knows he's to stay out of the way.

  20

  On Saturdays at the Children's Republic, after their newspaper had been read and the weekly court had tried and fined those charged with bullying, disrespect, hair pulling, disobedience, fibbing, and other high crimes of their little world, Korczak would give a talk. The subject was chosen by the orphans, from a list on the bulletin board, frequently revised.

  —So we have put one of those lists on our bulletin board,

  Gunnar said, compiled by Samantha from several sources. That's why The Emancipation of Women leads all other topics. —I have not, Samantha said, sticking out her tongue, fiddled with the order.

  21

  Fox bark, gruff. Nikolai monkeyed from the bed to the sill, replying with a cub's whimper. Coupled hand and wrist, Nikolai pulled and Mikkel climbed until he had a kneehold, swinging his other bare brown leg into the room. They sat on the floor, grinning at each other in the dark. They crept like panthers, on fingers and toes, to the bed. Nikolai, naked under the blanket, watched Mikkel tug off his jersey, the tuck of his navel, a dab of shadow on his moonlit front.

  In their shy and democratic privacy under the sheets Nikolai speculated on the interestingly different warm and cool places of the body, flinching from cold fingers and toes, the climate of a bed, the frankness of hands. Mikkel whispered that they should suppress talk, as parents can hear better than dogs, and, as Nikolai understood, words are scary and inadequate, things named being compromised thereby, and changed. In the tree house one took off one's pants if the other did, with no more than the complicity of a grin. The gossip of boys is largely fiction, anyway: they enjoyed each other's lies.

  POLIXENES

  We were as twin lambs that did frisk in the sun

  And bleat the one at the other.

  23

  Nikolai had just returned from the red plains of Mars. He had parked his space cruiser in a meadow in Iceland, and had a leg-stretching walk through wildflowers and sheep. Then he transmitted himself through a hyperspace cavity with a swimming roll like that of the bubble in a spirit level, to Copenhagen, where he changed from his mylar-and-platinum antigravity overall into comfortable jeans and jersey. On Strøget he bought an ice cream and a sack of peapods. As usual, interplanetary travel and ice cream made him amorous, tightened his balls, and made him importantly happy.

  At Gunnar's he entered without knocking, though he shouted in a breaking treble that he was there.

  Silence, but one that had just gone silent.

  —Hey! It's me. Ariel. Nikolai.

  Thicker silence.

  Whispers upstairs.

  —O shit, Nikolai said. Look, I'll go away. When should I come back, huh?

  More whispering.

  —Come on up, Samantha said. You're friends.

  —Better than friends, Gunnar said. You're family.

  —I don't want to butt in, Nikolai said with plaintive honesty, imitating grown-up speech. I can come back.

  —You can also come up. We're dressed like Adam and Eve before they found the apple tree, but then so are you most of the time you're here.

  Nikolai peeked around the bedroom door and lost his voice
.

  —The fun's over, Samantha said. Over twice, to brag on Gunnar. We were fiddling around with afterplay and mumbling in each other's ear.

  Gunnar rolled over onto his back, his hands under his head, the silliest of grins and closed eyes for an expression. Samantha gathered the eiderdown around her shoulders.

  —An American sociologist, she said, would make lots of notes if I were to say that we have to get dressed so that Nikolai can take off his clothes to pose.

  —Figure and ground, said Gunnar. Or is it context? Maybe just manners?

  He sat up with a yawn and stretch, swinging his legs off the bed.

  —A game, he said. I put on my shirt, Nikolai takes his off. I button my top button, you unbutton yours.

  —It won't work, Samantha said. You can't put on a sock, or your underbritches, while he takes his off, as there's a shoe intervening, jeans intervening.

  —OK, then. Off a shoe and I'll put on a sock.

  —Still won't work, Samantha said. Nikolai can't take his jeans off over his shoes.

  —Got to pee, said Gunnar.

  —Undress, quick quick, Samantha said. Get in the bed.

  He untied his shoelaces as if he'd never seen a shoelace before, and his fingers on buttons, belt buckle, and zipper were as strengthless as a baby's. He had just dived under the coverlet Samantha was lifting, in his socks and briefs, heart beating like a chased rabbit's, when Gunnar returned.

  —Oh ho! The American sociologist has now walked into a wall.

  He took off his shirt, raised the eiderdown, and pulled Nikolai into a hug.

  —We still have on our briefs and socks, Samantha said, which I'm now peeling down and off.

  A whistle of surprise and compliance from Nikolai.

  The only strategy he could think of was to lie on his back with one arm under Samantha's shoulders, the other under Gunnar's. Out of the comers of his eyes he looked in turn at each, for instruction, for a clue. Could they hear his heart thumping? Samantha's breast was cool and warm at once against his ribs. Gunnar's hard freckled shoulder fitted awkwardly under his arm, making it tingle. He kissed Samantha on the cheek, and was kissed back.

  —No fair, said Gunnar.

  So he kissed Gunnar and was kissed back.

  Samantha reached across him to Gunnar, and Gunnar across to Samantha, in some conspiracy of communication, as if words were no longer of any use.

  —One big nuzzling rolling hug from each of us, Gunnar said, and we get on with the day. Samantha and Nikolai first, Samantha and me second, Nikolai and me third.

  24

  —Friendly trees, Mikkel said. When Colonel Delgar was turning the dunes and heaths of Jylland back into forests, he found out that if you plant a mountain pine beside a spruce, the two will grow into big healthy trees. Spruce alone wouldn't grow at all. Mycorrhiza in the mountain pine's roots squirt nitrogen and make the spruce happy and tall.

  Thick, ribbed, white knee socks, Mikkel's, banded blue and mustard at the top. Shoving them down, his back against Nikolai's shoulder. Flex of pullover hem over pod of his white briefs, hamp of hair tickling the nib of his nose, eyes meeting Nikolai's.

  —By 1500 Jylland was a waste heath. Trees are masts. Can you get at the fig newtons? Down in under all the ziplocks they are. —Friendly trees, Nikolai said, squirming around to work off his shorts. The space, lack of it, in this tree house is friendly. Why are you talking about friendly trees, huh?

  Mikkel rocking on his back, wiggling out of his briefs. A smart pubic clump the color of marmalade.

  —Fig newtons in one hand, Nikolai said, cock in the other. There are too many legs in this tree house.

  Mikkel pulling down Nikolai's briefs.

  The two small square windows in Mikkel's tree house looked onto roofs and the skylight onto leaves and branches. —Gunnar's not in this world, Nikolai said. Well, he is and he isn't. To be a sculptor he says you have to read poetry and philosophy and know anatomy like a surgeon and listen to music and go off and be by yourself to make peace with yourself in your soul, and he likes both boys and girls, that's for sure, and is trying to make up his mind which. But he's a good person. Good sculptor. His landlady, the Plymouth Brother from the Faeroes, gets a thrill out of imagining he's a devil, but you can see she likes him, and fusses over him. The looks she gives me when I'm posing.

  25

  The dove in Gunnar's dream flew upside down, carrying a sparrow in its claws.

  HERAKLEITOS IN THE RIVER

  Conventional psychology is misled by a primitive gnostic theory to the effect that things ought normally to appear to sense in their full and exact nature. Nothing could be further from the fact, or more incongruous with animal life and sensibility.

  27

  Gunnar drawing Nikolai's hand.

  —King Matt. Tell me more about him.

  —In good time. There's a play by Korczak in which children sit in judgment on God and history. Their indictment is almost too terrible to hear. His orphans were for the most children abandoned by their parents and at the mercy of Poland, which is like being a sparrow at the mercy of a hawk.

  28

  Splendid stare of blue eyes.

  —Mikkel Angelo made a big buncher statues, yuss, and when was he? I'm so fuckering dumb.

  —Last quarter of the 1400s, and sixty-four years into the 1500s. Fingers.

  —Eighty fuckering nine years old.

  —He was an architect, too, and a painter and a poet.

  —David the giant killer.

  —Moses with horns.

  —The ceiling of the Catholic church in Rome, Italy. Horns? —Beams of light from his forehead. You shine when you've talked with God. But they look like horns.

  —What do you know about sand?

  —Sand?

  —We're doing sand in school. Geography. It drifts around like oceans. Sloshes. Sand is rock turned to grit by wind and water. Then it packs down again, over a million or so years, and turns back into rock. Crazy.

  29

  Samantha in a baggy jersey, Gunnar's, looking at drawings of herself. Arrival of Nikolai, pitching his book satchel into a comer.

  —Let me see. Hello, Samantha, hello.

  —You wore those pants to school?

  —Where's Gunnar? Oh, yes. Truly short pants make your legs look longer, you know.

  —Having a pee and putting himself back together. We rather got carried away.

  —And with these there's no underwear on under, so your nuts and dink can nest in what there is of a pants leg, though they're apt to look out when you're sit, if you're not careful. Tuck back in easy enough.

  —Gunnar! Samantha shouted. Come save me, or Nikolai, whichever you think needs protecting from the other.

  Edith looked around the door. Pursed lips.

  —Ho! said Gunnar bounding downstairs, zipping up. Flopping wet hair.

  —Drawing, drawing! Some days you can, some days you can't. Degas was here, wasn't he? Are you're teasing innocent Nikolai, or is Nikolai trying to see what his charm will get him? A studio's a friendly place.

  30

  A giant land iguana in his silken brown and green network mail, Conoloplius suberistatus Gray, safe in a convoluted viridity of pisonia, fish fuddle, and guava, trained his red eyes on his cousin amblyrhynchus, changing from voluptuous pink to leaden lava, where red rock crabs grow. And with his eyes on the iguana, Caliban, who has also seen, after the thunderstrokes and howling winds of the tempest, drowned sailors, dropped from the moon, when time was. Their strange clothes are wet and black, rilled in the way of vines about their bony legs and arms, their feet buckled in sodden leather.

  31

  Nikolai danced, a puppet on jerked strings, an eel wiggling, a lunatic hopping, a farmer at Whitsuntide drunk and happy, a Pawnee stomping through the ghost dance, a Christy minstrel balling the jack, a new-hatched devil chasing Lutheran virgins.

  Samantha joined him for a Mutt-and-Jeff foxtrot with something Mexican in it. The music was o
utside, in Gray Brothers. Gunnar and Edith were spreading a board for supper in the courtyard.

  —The Lord makes allowances for the young, Edith said. It's a blessing he has on clothes.

  32

  Feeling friendly toward the bobble of red dahlias outside the windows, where the afternoon stood as a tall box of solid and perpendicular light, Nikolai began with a dip to undress. It was a remote out-in-the-country farmyard light, between kitchen and barn, with chickens, a well, old bricks with a felt of moss in corners and under trees. Butterflies, bees, midges.

  —Your courtyard is a farm on Fyn, you know? Pushing down his jeans, he mouthed to the empty air I am Batman.

  A new book lay on the coffee table, essays on Wittgenstein edited by Jaakko Hintikka.

  —Who in private life is a reindeer. It's Wittgenstein you've done a bust of, right? Tall neck and gaze. In a leather jacket with zipper.

  Briefs down, he tickled the neb of his penis, a baby's innocence in his smile. The drawing block, colored pencils.

  —Today we're drawing. Pull your briefs up, leave your socks on, shirt off. Your hair's a nice muss today. Light's splendid, as you've said. And for reasons I probably oughtn't to pry into, you're sweetly happy, pleased with yourself.

  —Happy with just being here, Gunnar. Can I say that? There are lots of good places, the Troll Wood, my room at home, Mikkel's room, the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek and whichwhat, but this is my best place.

  33

  —We sculptors have no interest in time, and therefore have no language. What we and the critics say about sculpture is usually pig swill.

  —Potato peels, mash, and buttermilk, Nikolai said. I've seen it. Tasted it. On a dare from my cousin on the farm. Pigs are delicate eaters, you know.