Pamela Dean

by Tam Lin (pdf)

  But Milton and Chaucer were Christians, there was no denying it. And while the early Greeks mercifully were not, they were most certainly not atheists either; even Euripides, deny them how he might, could not keep the gods out of his plays. The whole of theater was religious in its origin—rotten at its core, her father said gloomily, which was why he preferred the Romantic period, when nothing of the slightest interest was done in English drama. But Janet had been reading the medieval and Renaissance poets, and then Milton. It was not their arguments that oppressed her, on the rare occasions when they troubled to make any. It was the sense of that whole intricate, solid philosophy, stretching for centuries in both directions, infusing life like a strong light, taken for granted and used in a hundred ways for symbolism and imagery and situation, as clear and real as Tolkien or Eddison's worlds, that weighed her down with a sense of indefinable doom. Evans had made it clear to anybody who would pay attention that Milton had not been of the Devil's party.

  On a particularly dreary Wednesday afternoon, Janet flung her astronomy text to the floor, dug her journal out of the bottom drawer of her desk, and sloshed over to the library, where she found a deserted padded room at the bottom and resigned herself to her fate.

  This winter shrills its dirge self-satisfied,

  And all is black, or gray, or ragged brown,

  And all the world in rags its bread has cried,

  And begged the gates of that unheeding town

  Men once called heaven.

  That made no literal sense whatsoever, but it had caught in a net of words at least half her feeling about this weather, interior and exterior. She bit vigorously on the cap of her pen, and went on.

  Such a time as this

  Must make our reasoned doubt a certainty:

  We see the universe just as it is,

  Unveiled by miracle of bud or tree.

  She wanted to put "miracle" in quotation marks, or scar it somehow with sarcasm; but if the poem itself didn't do that, she had failed anyway. She read the lines over several times, biting her lip instead of the pen. Oh, the loveliness of the sonnet. Just where she wanted it, the turn came in the very form of the poem. The next word was But.

  But even while I watch the senseless sky

  Cracked hideous in the water at my feet

  Janet sighed heavily. This was where she always ran into trouble. The puddles of the February thaw, reflecting black branches and the usual patched blue and gray of the late winter sky, were among the first things she ever remembered noticing, before the cherry blossoms or the blooming crocus or the startling red of an autumn maple. They had held for her, all her life, the fascination of things seen in a mirror, the intimacy of things seen through a telescope, the curious charm of a dollhouse or of Molly's toy theater. And this year they made her think the sky had fallen and broken on the pavement. That might make another poem, but it certainly could not at this point be crammed into this one. And the poem did not care, anyway, how she felt now or had felt then, unless that served the movement that the poem had gathered before this "But."

  She left the lines alone, and went on.

  Dread rumors crowd me, dark forebodings: I

  Remember, as improbable as spring

  The last line of the poem was breathing down her neck. Janet left a blank line and wrote it alone by itself at the bottom.

  The star, the cup, the cross: that tale's ending.

  Was that what you wanted, she asked the poem. Thanks a lot. How am I supposed to get there? What a rotten rhyme. I wanted a couplet at the end, anyway; what is this? The poem looked at her blandly and kept its own counsel. It was done; she had to patch up the rest as best she might. What a stupid tangle she had got herself into with the rhyme scheme.

  She needed a rhyme for "feet," to end a line that made some sense of the foolish phrase, "as improbable as spring." She scribbled and crossed out and erased and threw her pen around a bit, but in the end there was nothing for it. She had been reading too much Greek literature.

  But even as I watch the senseless sky

  Cracked hideous in the water at my feet,

  Dread rumors crowd me, dark forebodings: I

  Remember, as improbable as spring

  To this abyss where Night and Chaos meet,

  The star, the cup, the cross: that tale's ending.

  There was something there; it was maddeningly far from perfect, but there was something. Janet briefly damned Keats for inventing alternate forms of the sonnet to plague her; scrawled "The Atheist in Doubt" across the top of the page, thought despairingly of what Danny would say about the entire endeavor, and went back to Ericson.

  Molly was lying on her bed completely surrounded by sheets and wads of yellow paper, much scribbled upon. She was writing up her lab report. She glanced up as Janet came in, and then sat bolt upright. "What in the world have you been up to?"

  "I wrote a poem," said Janet, startled. "That's all."

  "Far out. Can I read it?"

  "It's awfully rough, but sure. Here. It's pretty legible; this line finishes up around here and this one actually comes before that one."

  Molly took the notebook and read. "I like the title. You read about Christians in doubt until you want to throttle them all, but you never hear about atheists in doubt."

  "Are you an atheist?"

  "Nope," said Molly, not looking up. "I believe in an order for good in the universe.

  You can't look at a tidepool and not believe that." She grinned suddenly, and raised her head. "Of course," she observed, "people do it every day. I can't, though. But I won't put up with this nonsense of organized religion. I'm a scientist and I will rely on my experience, thank you."

  Janet decided not to argue with her; not when the basis of her own problem was not one whit less woolly. Molly looked back at the paper. "It is like that out there, isn't it?" she said. "But I don't get this part. How can a miracle unveil the atheist's universe; and you haven't got buds and trees in winter anyway."

  Janet looked over her shoulder, scowling; and then laughed. "Oops," she said. "That was dumb. Here. 'Not veiled by miracle.' How's that? It scans the same, and it's what I actually meant."

  "Oh, all right." She read the rest of it through without a word, her face perfectly

  solemn, and then she dropped the notebook on top of her own notes and said, "Brrrr."

  "What?"

  "I never thought religion was scary before. I thought it was either stupid or comforting." She picked up the notebook again. "There's something about this last rhyme."

  "It's awful," said Janet. "But that's the way it wanted to go. I might be able to fix it later."

  "I had no idea you could do this."

  "It really isn't very good, but I'm glad you like it."

  "What a thing to say!" said Molly. "How does that reflect on my taste, I'd like to know? No, I really like it, it made me think differently. So what if it's not perfect?"

  "It's a sonnet," said Janet. "They're supposed to be."

  "Have you been looking at tidepools?"

  "No, it's Chaucer and Milton and Euripides."

  "Oh my," said Molly, absently.

  "Doesn't scan."

  "Say Ferris, then; Euripides is his fault."

  Janet burst out laughing.

  "Well?" said Molly.

  "You might as well say, genetics is Mendel's fault."

  "You might just as well say, I breathe when I sleep is the same thing as I sleep when I breathe."

  "It is the same thing with you!" said Janet, and they collapsed laughing on one another's shoulders.

  "Whew," said Molly, wiping her eyes. "They always said too much study makes women hysterical. Don't tell anybody. Are you and Nick all right? It seems weird to me that Chaucer and Milton make you write poetry but Nick doesn't."

  "It seems weird to me, too," said Janet. "He writes me poetry. But I think he's a lot more used to this than I am."

  "He can't be much more used to it, can he?"

  "He'
s mentioned at least two previous girlfriends," said Janet. "And I see Anne Beauvais looking at him sometimes."

  "That girl certainly gets around," said Molly. "She's always slinking at Thomas; Tina's going to bop her with a spare ski if she doesn't watch out." She drew a breath; then she picked up her notebook and pen and began to write.

  Janet sat on the carpet until Molly let the breath out again, and then got up quietly and retrieved her astronomy book. It was usually a mistake to push Molly, and it was always bad manners to interrupt anybody's studying. Did Molly know something about Robin and Anne, or, like Janet, did she merely wonder?

  In the eighth week of the term, Nick and Robin's production of The Revenger's Tragedy began its five-night run. Janet had not gotten around to reading it. She had gathered from all the discussion that it was Jacobean rather than Elizabethan: complex, bloody, grotesque, with a bitter and maniacal humor. Nick and Robin usually spoke deprecatingly of the verse. She had never gotten them to say why they wanted to produce it; it seemed to have been an idea they had had always.

  She and Molly and Tina, neither of whom had read the play either, or helped with the production, college being what it was, arrived early on the first night, and sat in the front row. Ericson Little Theater was a high, narrow room with twelve rows of four dusty red velvet seats in the center, and varying numbers and sizes of rows tucked into its sides. The stage was tiny, but Robin had pronounced it large enough for a sword fight, though, he said, you would not wish to try to produce something like Henry V on it, or anything whatsoever by Shaw. It had a bit of carved and gilded woodwork adorning its ceiling and door frames, mostly figures abstracted from the convoluted arms of the college and presented in unaccustomed isolation: the lion looked startled, the dove embarrassed, and the snake extremely smug.

  Tina and Molly were arguing about invertebrate biology. Janet rested her chin on the back of her seat and watched people come in. Professor Evans and his wife, looking resigned; Professor Davison and her husband, looking amused; Odile Beauvais and her roommates, looking svelte; a scattering of other English professors and a few from Music and Modern Languages and History. A sprinkling of curious students. Diane Zimmerman, without her sulky brother but with Miss Andrews and Mr. Hecht from English 10 last term.

  Peg and Sharon and Kevin and Nora—and good heavens, that must be Nora's boyfriend, never glimpsed till this minute, a lanky young man with long dark hair. Janet started to nudge Molly, and stopped, gaping.

  Melinda Wolfe, in a long black velvet skirt and a white blouse, had come in, followed by a whole line of pale, stern people variously dressed, and in the midst of them Professor Medeous in a brisk green linen suit with all her mad-colored hair streaming down her back in a most unbusinesslike manner. She was the woman who had worn red and green tatters and ridden a black horse on Hallowe'en. Janet had not recognized her; but that was Medeous, and that was the same woman.

  She and her entourage filled two rows in the middle of the room. Behind them again came a group of eight or nine Classics majors; none of the ones Janet knew well, though, because all of those were in the play. When they had all sat down, the room, from being half-empty, became almost full. And just in time, too; even as Janet caught Melinda Wolfe's eye and boldly grinned at her, the lights went halfway down and the curtain came up.

  They had certainly worked hard on the set. The stage floor was a smooth reflective black—marine paint, Janet remembered, very difficult to get off the hands. The walls were draped with green and red—glowering green, smoldery red, like colors full of gray, or obscured by smoke. Spaced between the hangings were enormous reproductions of woodcuts Janet recognized from the medieval part of English 10: devils stamping naked souls into a boiling caldron; the bony arms and legs and grinning skull of Death showing through a rich robe and a smiling youthful mask; another bony Death, in cap and bells, leading a reluctant Queen away from her palace and out of the clutching arms of her King and her ladies; a brawny fellow in a fig leaf vainly hiding behind a tree from the sun, the all-seeing eye of God; a serpent lurking among the innocent leaves of a stylized strawberry plant; and one of those peculiar medieval lions, like a large dog with a mane, its paw on the neck of a meek but much more realistic boar, while on a branch a bove their heads a shabby

  vulture watched.

  Since the play's beginning seemed to be delayed, she turned around and surveyed the audience again, and was in time to see her parents, harassed, enter with Lily-Milly, rebellious. She had probably nagged them into saying she could come to the play and then decided she didn't want to, and they had—unwisely, in Janet's opinion, but thank God Lily wasn't her kid—determined to keep her to her word. They sat down just behind Medeous and her group of long-limbed, long-haired, long-faced cohorts, and Janet's father waved to her and then leaned forward to speak to Medeous. She listened to him with a cool and remote expression, and then smiled briefly, shaking her head.

  The lights went down the rest of the way, and Janet turned back to the stage. A procession of indistinct figures marched across it by the light of two rather dim torches, from left to right. About halfway across they got a light on the face of the procession's leader. It was Jack Nikopoulos, his dark face made darker by a gray wig and beard. He wore green, inappropriately enough; it was the same vivid summer green as Professor Medeous's suit.

  "Duke," said Thomas's resonant voice from somewhere near the front, stage right, in a friendly tone that made the hairs on Janet's neck stand up, "royal lecher: go, gray haired Adultery And thou his son, as impious-steeped as he." At this point, by accident or design Janet never did determine, they got a light on him, too.

  Janet heard Molly take her breath in. She was staring herself. Thomas was holding a skull; but that was not why. Thomas was beautiful; everybody agreed with that. But he did occasionally, in his usual dress, look a little pale and washed-out, like a bad print of himself. He was wearing black, doublet and hose and cloak and hat with feather, with just a little lace showing at the cuffs and neck. He made every view of him Janet had ever seen seem like a bad print of this one. She hoped none of the more impressionable girls in the audience would swoon or shriek. Really, you would think a voice like that was blessing enough for any one person.

  The voice like that had been going on, serenely, with its speech; it had just addressed the skull when Janet gathered herself to pay attention. "Thou sallow picture," said Thomas, uncannily, "of my poisoned love." I'd hate that if I were Tina, thought Janet. She didn't like it much herself. Even less did she like the lascivious telling-over of the charms of the character's poisoned love: to say that one's beloved could make a moral man sin eight times a day instead of seven, and could make a usurer's son give up all his inheritance for a kiss, and then to rant because the Duke, reacting in exactly the same way, had poisoned the woman for refusing him, seemed to Janet to be a peculiar sort of love and perhaps to miss the point.

  It was a crazy play; that was evident in no time. Thomas abjured the skull to be merry, merry, because murder never did go unavenged. Then Nick came in, wearing green velvet and looking wonderfully rakish, and said, in a resigned tone that raised a chorus of laughter from the audience, "Still sighing o'er Death's vizard?"

  Nick, it appeared, was Thomas's brother (Janet wished for a program book). His news was that the Duke's son had asked him to hire a pandar. If Thomas cared to come disguised to court and apply for the position, he would then be in a position to exact his revenge.

  This determined, Odile and Anne Beauvais came drifting onto the stage, trailing clouds and green gauze and wearing dreamy expressions that just escaped the foolish. The audience made a few titters, uncertainly. Odile and Anne were, respectively, Nick and Thomas's mother and their sister. They asked for news, and were regaled with court gossip, which dealt with the Duke's son being on trial for the rape of one Lord Antonio's wife. It also came out that the whole family felt that the Duke had killed Nick and Thomas's father indirectly, by making him die of "discontent, the nobl
eman's consumption." The audience, being democratic in nature, thought this was fairly funny. They hissed at Thomas, however, when he made the aside, "Wives are but made to go to bed and feed." Janet noted that his character was excessively given to aphorism.

  The next scene was the trial of the Duke's son for rape. The Duchess and the prisoner's two older brothers pleaded for mercy. Another son, apparently a bastard of the Duke's, made a number of highly amusing asides expressing his hope that the rogue would hang as he deserved; he said, in fact, that he wished the entire court would become a corpse. He was played by the southern boy who thought one should make stew of the squirrels. He still had his accent; it worked surprisingly well, perhaps because it marked him apart from the others.

  The youngest brother, whom Janet did not recognize, did not appear to be suffering from remorse, and made a number of jokes that might have been funnier to an audience with fewer feminists in it. Janet did hear Professor Evans's unregenerate laugh, and deduced that Junior Brother was probably going to come to a bad end.

  The judges sounded in a hanging mood. The Duke suddenly broke off the proceedings. The Duchess was angry because her husband had not simply refused to let the law touch his child at all. She decided to seduce the bastard son in revenge; the bastard son was not at all averse to this, saying that since adultery begot him, it was only reasonable that he in his turn should commit it.

  The audience was amused. It was even more so when Nick reappeared, followed by a Thomas now garbed in dull brown and wearing an unreal wig of black hair streaked with red. When Thomas said, "What, brother, am I far enough from myself?" the entire room erupted in laughter, and there was a scattering of applause. When Nick tugged the wig into place and buttoned Thomas's coat for him before answering, again resignedly, "As if another man had been sent whole Into the world and none wist how he came," there was another wave of laughter. Janet was glad they were getting this reaction, but she was not exactly amused herself.

  But Robin came in as the Duke's eldest son, who had not attended the trial. He was dressed in red, and professed himself delighted to employ Thomas. They engaged one another in a series of bawdy puns and remarks that had two meanings if you knew who Thomas was, and Janet did laugh. So did Molly. When it turned out that the virgin whom Robin had his eye on was Thomas's own sister, Janet laughed until she cried.