As Above, So Below

by Rudy Rucker

  A sweet little tune was coming towards her down the street. A bagpiper, a flutist, and three performers were on a cart being pulled by a pair of horses. A man stood in the cart, dressed in green and with his face painted yellow. There were flaps of blue cloth around his face and green streamers hanging from his arms. He was a flower. He swayed back and forth to the tune, looking foolish and gentle. At his side, a sweet-faced woman wearing a lady’s fancy hat was pretending to pour water on him. The third actor wore a monk’s robe, but with his waist stuffed with so many pillows that he was round as an apple. “Come,” he called to Anja in a Brussels accent. “Come to the Landjuweel, little lady. See the Cornflower Chamber of Rhetoric perform the tale of Father Strontkop.”

  Anja stopped rushing and waved at the actors. Her basically sanguine temperament reasserted itself. It was going to be a fine day. She’d handle the business with Peter one way or the other and then begin the fun. She’d told Helena to meet her at the Blue Boat inn at noon. She covered the last two blocks to the Four Winds at a leisurely pace, catching her breath and letting her slick face dry. She felt more and more confident that she could bring Peter around.

  There was a Closed for the Landjuweel sign on the front door of the Four Winds. Anja went in through the side door to the kitchen, which was silent and empty. Had everyone left for the festival? Beyond the kitchen lay the Four Winds gallery. As always, the sight of these walls filled Anja with pride. Peter’s engravings took up nearly one-third of the space: his landscapes, his Seven Sins, his Seven Virtues, and his one-of-a-kind images like Big Fish Eat Little Fish and The Ass at School.

  The engravings provided Cock with a steady income. These days there was no question of Peter having to pay rent for either of his two rooms, and they ate from Cock’s kitchen, which was preferable to Anja’s having to buy food and cook. Peter grumbled that he’d be in poverty forever with Cock not actually paying him any cash, but Anja pointed out that if Peter wanted money, he should find some commissions instead of frittering away his time on illegal lampoons. In any case, with free food, a place to sleep, and the occasional coins she got from her other gentlemen friends, Anja felt they had more than enough.

  A floorboard squeaked by the printing presses. Jerome Cock was moving slowly about back there, seemingly not wanting to be noticed. He was greasy and disheveled, as if he’d been up all night and, come to think of it, the shop smelled of fresh ink. Of course. Jerome had been busy printing copies of Peter’s new lampoon so that the Four Winds crowd could spread the seditious sheets through the full streets of this Landjuweel day.

  “Where’s my man?” Anja asked him easily.

  “Already gone to the great square,” Jerome said, grimacing and shaking a kink out of one of his long legs. “With Franckert and Waf. He’s finishing up the backdrop for the Violets’ performance. I wish we had a good script to match. But the plan is to make up the lines as we go along, and not to have anything written down. One never knows—a too-bold written script can end up as one’s death warrant in a heresy trial. That’s what happened to Peter Schuddemate after the Landjuweel a few years back, you know. Before your time as an Antwerper. Now excuse me, Anja, I have to finish tidying up so Katharina and I can join the rest of the Violets.”

  “Did Peter say anything about me?” asked Anja, her confidence ebbing away.

  “If you want some coffee, you’ll find a pot of it on the hearth,” said Cock, pretending not to have heard her. He edged behind his printing presses.

  Anja went around the counter and seized Jerome by the arm.

  “Tell me now! Is it over?”

  “He broke the stick,” said Jerome, pointing to the farthest rear corner of the room, and, yes, lying there was the notched stick that had seemed so comical only a few months ago. The whittled markings covered the whole stick and it had been roughly snapped in two. Like Anja’s heart. “He threw all your things out the window,” Jerome was saying. “Katharina and Franckert picked them up for you.”

  Anja began sobbing. Her wails echoed in the big empty gallery. And now Jerome Cock was pulling a little sheet-wrapped bundle out from under the counter: her possessions, everything she owned, all she had in this uncaring city. It made a ball no larger than a pumpkin.

  “I’m going right back up to my room,” said Anja defiantly.

  “You can’t,” said Cock firmly. “Peter doesn’t want you here anymore. You have to move. I’m sorry, Anja. Stay with one of your friends. Or get the Fuggers to give you a room. They have plenty of maids’ quarters in that great house of theirs.”

  “You’ll pay for this,” shouted Anja, looking around for something to throw. By now she knew she was defeated, but she didn’t want to let Peter and this bossy stork Cock get off too easily.

  “Don’t, Anja. Just take your bundle and go. And here’s some money Peter wanted me to give you.”

  It was a larger sum than Anja might have expected; the heft of the gold coins calmed her down. Cock gently but firmly ushered her out into the street.

  The sun was blazing in a milky blue sky. It was starting to get hot and the streets were filling up. Anja decided to go to the Blue Boat early and have a drink. Thanks to Peter she had cash for once. This was a nice sum he’d given her. Maybe it meant he still wanted her. Maybe she could get him back.

  As it happened, Ortelius’s maid, Helena, had come early to the Blue Boat as well. The two friends sat together on a bench with a good view of the square. Helena hugged Anja and cried with her a little when Anja told her the sad news. After the cry, Helena shook her curls and dabbed at her great eyes. She was unworldly, sympathetic, and fascinated by the game of Love. She’d taken great pleasure in being Williblad and Anja’s go-between. She imagined their affair to be the very stuff of legends. And now that Bruegel had cast Anja loose, Helena was certain that Williblad would make an honest wife of her.

  Encouraged by her friend, Anja went inside the crowded Blue Boat and bought cheese, bread, and beer. Helena remained outside, guarding Anja’s bundle and saving them a nice shady spot on a bench so they could watch the doings in the great square.

  Present for the Landjuweel were more than a dozen amateur theatrical groups—the so-called Chambers of Rhetoric. Each group had its own colored tent upon the square. Right in front of the Our Lady Cathedral was a high wooden platform for a stage. The first performance was to start soon. Mingling with the crowds were jugglers, hawkers, groups of musicians, and scores of actors in their costumes. It looked as if everyone within three day’s travel had come to Antwerp.

  After the food, Anja began to feel a little better. “I bet I can move in for good at the Fuggers,” she said. “Maybe you’re right. And Williblad will marry me.”

  “My master talks about Williblad all the time.” Helena giggled. “He’s hopelessly in love with him. Like a schoolgirl. He’ll do anything Williblad says. Williblad has only to hint that he wants to see Anja, and Master Ortelius sends me after you right away.”

  “Ortelius isn’t interested in women at all, is he?” asked Anja. “I noticed that about him right away. Back when he and Peter were friends. Your Master’s quite unnatural.”

  “I wonder what he’d do with Williblad if he had his wish?” wondered the innocent Helena.

  “Pfui,” said Anja. “Williblad’s mine. I slept with him again last night, you know.”

  “What does the priest say when you confess?” asked Helena, curiously. She was still a virgin.

  “He asks for details and then I have to promise not to do it again, and then he assigns me a lot of Hail Marys and Our Fathers to say,” said Anja. “And I give him some alms, eh? The alms are the important thing. I never get around to saying all the prayers.” What kind of God would really keep track of a little woman’s slippery twitches, or of the mumbles that some panting old priest said the twitches were worth? In any case, Anja didn’t fully believe in an afterlife, nor was it clear to her why Heaven would be more interesting than Hell. But she knew better than to say things like th
is.

  Some actors draped a cloth backdrop upon the framework behind the stage, and now the first play began. The two women sat on their bench, happily watching. The Rose Chamber of Bruges was performing a play called Elckerlyc, or Everyman. The main character was named Elck, which was the same as the name of that cruel, mocking engraving that Peter had made of Ortelius.

  “I’ve seen this play before,” said Helena. “The Rose Chamber always does Everyman. They’re a cautious bunch of stick-in-the-muds. Typical of Bruges. They’re nothing like the Cornflower group from Brussels. The Cornflowers always make fun of the clergy. Two years ago they put on a play called The Barefoot Brothers and Granvelle himself ordered an investigation. Look, here comes Death to get Elck.”

  Elck was being played by a strong-voiced actor with carroty red hair. “O Death,” he bellowed. “Thou comest when I had thee least in mind!” Death was a lean-shanked fellow with his face painted white and black like a skull. He capered about, prodding at Elck like a cook testing a roast chicken. It was wonderful to see.

  Now Elck was trying to get someone to accompany him on his journey to the grave. Actors representing his Fellow, Kindred, and Cousin begged off, and next he tried asking his Goods. Goods was played by a little woman padded and wrapped like a giant sack of money. She bounced from one side of the stage to the other, shrieking out her lines, and not missing the chance to give Elck a few pats on the codpiece. Perched on the bench next to Helena, Anja laughed so hard that tears came to her eyes.

  But once the tears started it was hard to make them stop. She was an outcast and nobody loved her. Her parents was dead, and her stingy brother, Dirk, had inherited everything, and Dirk didn’t want her back in Grote Brueghel because one of the village gossips had seen Anja sucking off the priest, who’d caught her taking a coin from the poor box to buy herself a ribbon from a peddler, and anyway the priest had been a young one, kind of cute. She was done with that Brueghel, and this Bruegel here wouldn’t let her live over the Four Winds with him anymore. And as for Williblad—deep down Anja knew the half-American was too wild and sour to take her in. And so the tears came.

  Helena put her comforting arms around Anja, but kept her wide round eyes turned towards the stage.

  Goods went on her way, and a faint voice came from below the stage. Elck leaned over to pull someone up through a trapdoor. It was his Good Deeds, a boy wrapped all around in chains. Knowledge and Confession stepped forward to help Elck revive Good Deeds. The comedy was over, and now the play grew didactic.

  “This part is a little slow,” said Helena. “Are you better now?”

  “Yes.” Anja sighed, leaning down to dry her eyes on a fold of her dress. “Let’s get up and wander around.” There were a lot of men here. Time to get back to the hunt.

  It was too crowded to get much closer to the stage, so they circled around the edges of the square, watching the jugglers and peeking into the tents of the different Chambers of Rhetoric. One actor had a great green dragon mounted on a pair of wheels like a wheelbarrow. It was an impressive beast, with red paper flames coming out of his mouth. Seeing Anja’s interest, the man charged at her, waggling the dragon back and forth. Anja laughed and moved on. Soon they came to the tent of the Antwerp Violets, a blue-and-yellow striped affair nearly as big as a house.

  The Violet Rhetoric Chamber was practically the same group as the Saint Luke’s Guild of artists, though Williblad Cheroo had become a member as well. Fortunately he wasn’t here just now. The tent was filled with familiar faces: slim Hennie van Mander, fat Hans Franckert, prim Christopher Plantin, cheerful Peter Huys, Jerome Cock, and his Katharina, pretty as a tulip. And there in the corner was Waf, and next to Waf was Peter with a pot of paint, daubing at a backdrop cloth that lay upon the ground, the plump Huys working with him.

  “Well, well,” said Anja, walking over to Bruegel. Though her voice was hard, she felt all quavery inside. “Aren’t you going to put Granvelle in?”

  Peter gave her a mean look, but didn’t say anything. Waf rubbed against her leg, as friendly as ever.

  “I talked to Jerome,” said Anja, holding up her bundle. “You’re a coward not to have told me yourself.”

  “You saw the broken stick?” said Peter finally. “Yes? Then you know why. It’s impossible for me to live with you, Anja. Jerome gave you the money, no? I hope we won’t be enemies. There’s nothing more to say.” He turned away from her, pretending to stare down at his painting.

  But Anja knew full well that Peter couldn’t work when he was upset. Indeed, though she didn’t like to admit it to herself, she was probably the main reason he’d accomplished so little in the last year. She felt a sudden rush of pity for him, and started to step towards him, only now her toe caught the side of one of his paint pots, and a puddle of green spilled out onto his backdrop. Oh dear, thought Anja hopelessly, everything I do turns out wrong. Waf sniffed at the wet paint to see if it might be food.

  “Stront,” said Peter, meaning “shit.” He sighed, picked up a thick brush, and began pushing the paint around, trying to work it into his picture. He wore the tired, sour expression he got when his stomach was aching. Anja hunkered down so that he’d have to look at her face, and now she could see that he was crying.

  “I’m sorry. Peter,” she said.

  “Leave me, Anja. Please leave me alone.”

  “Greetings, fellow thespians!” Williblad Cheroo had just stepped into the tent, festively attired in an orange-yellow silk shirt topped by a pale blue jacket with slits in its puffy, silk-lined sleeves. “Did I miss anything?”

  “Enter the whoremaster,” said Bruegel, getting to his feet and drying his eyes with a quick rub of his sleeve. “She’s all yours, Williblad.”

  Cheroo cocked his head quizzically. “Pardon me?”

  “Anja’s no longer living with me,” said Bruegel, stepping forward, the dripping paintbrush still in his hand. “Thanks in good measure to your lechery and deceit. Aided by the message-bearing of Ortelius’s nasty little Helena, and yes, I see you over there watching me, you chit.” Helena scooted out of the tent, leaving Anja alone with the angry men.

  “Why be jealous of me?” said Cheroo sarcastically. “You, Peter, you’re supposed to be the great artist.”

  Though this seemed an odd thing to say, Anja knew why Williblad said it. In his heart of hearts, he really did wish he could be an artist. It was a secret side of Williblad that Peter couldn’t understand.

  “Bested by a pet monkey,” said Peter cruelly. “By an intriguer and a fop.”

  This hit home. Like so many flashy men, Williblad had little self-confidence. His face grew flushed.

  “Blind pig,” he snapped, stepping closer to Bruegel. “If you’d paid more attention to your woman, she would have stayed at your side.” Well said, thought Anja.

  “Lackey,” said Bruegel and made a quick motion with his brush, daubing a great green squiggle across Cheroo’s fine raiment. The assembled artists burst into laughter at Williblad’s shocked expression. Most of them were on Bruegel’s side anyway, and they found it heartening to see one of their fellows do literal battle with his brush.

  Anja clapped her hands in delight. It was thrilling to see two men fighting over her.

  Williblad’s pride was sorely wounded. His eyes blazed up in such a way that Anja feared deadly violence. He had a short sword at his belt, and she knew that he practiced fencing in Fugger’s courtyard every day. Better act now before it was too late.

  Anja pushed past the laughing onlookers to position herself between the two men. “Leave Peter alone, dear Williblad,” she said. “He’s not himself today. Come outside and I’ll help you clean up.” She took Williblad’s hand and kissed it, hoping to salvage some of his shattered pride.

  Though Williblad let himself be led outside by Anja, he had little to say. He was quite unmanned by the humiliation of being laughed at by the gathered company of the artists’ Guild. And Anja’s kisses and whispers did nothing to lighten his mood. Perhaps
he didn’t really care about her at all. Perhaps the greater part of his attraction for her had stemmed from the fact that she was paired with Bruegel. Offering but the surliest of farewells, he went hurrying back towards Fugger’s house to hide his face and to change his precious clothes. It was all Anja could do to keep from joining the others yelling insults and mockery at his back.

  Exalted by the rich storm of emotions, Anja and Helena soon repaired to the Blue Boat for another beer. Martin de Vos and Frans Floris appeared and attached themselves to the two women. De Vos was wearing leather pants with a plump codpiece, a green tunic with enormous sleeves, and a pointed little green cap with a pennant in it, the pennant bearing a picture of the Crucifixion. Floris wore shiny high-heeled shoes, white silk stockings, red-and-white striped breeches, a white silk jacket covered with silver brocade, and a huge floppy gold hat like a pancake.

  At a fair like this, gossip rode horseback. The two men already knew about Anja and Peter’s breakup and about the scene with Williblad Cheroo. They seemed bent on linking up with the unattached girls. Anja fobbed off de Vos on Helena and focused on Floris. The famous painter was gouty, married, and over forty, but he was still a man of some possibilities. Before they’d been talking five minutes, he’d asked Anja to model for him. After the beers were gone, they all drank some clove gin from Floris’s silver flask, and then the foursome pushed their way closer to the stage.

  The official theme of the plays for this Landjuweel was supposed to be “Wat den mensch aldermeest tot conste verwect?” meaning “What awakes a person the most to art?” The Rose theater group had simply ignored the theme and trotted out their Everyman, but the other groups had new plays more or less related to the topic. The Cornflowers of Brussels were on next.

  The Cornflowers fully lived up to their reputation for irreverence. Their play was about a young man named Strontkop who wants to be an artist but whose father makes him become a priest. Nevertheless Strontkop keeps on drawing. His bishop tells him that his art is permissible only if he will paint religious scenes that the church can sell to pilgrims. But Strontkop wants to paint naked women. Unable to think of a way to find models, he hits upon the expedient of getting sinful women to undress for him inside the confession booth.