“I don’t know a thing about being a valet,” he added gloomily. “I only hope we get some hunting in the highlands. If I were home I could hunt in the Kelevain with my other uncles. . . . But it’s my own fault. It’s always a mistake to leave one’s home.”
Recalling my own situation, he stammered: “I mean for me, for people like me, uneducated, suited for nothing but idleness. . . .”
I laughed and told him he was right. “I ought to have stayed home myself,” I said. At the end of the sentence sorrow clenched my throat.
After a moment I managed: “But you’re with your uncle the priest, at any rate. You must admire him.”
Miros stared at me, half laughing and half aghast. He glanced about him, then bent to my ear and said in a heightened, roguish whisper like that of a stage villain: “Admire him! I hate him like the cramp.”
“Evmeni is Evmeni, Kestenya is Kestenya: but the Valley is Olondria.” Thus wrote Firdred of Bain, of the Fayaleith, or “Valley”; and his words seemed to breathe in the air that rushed to meet us at the whitewashed steps of the town. My skin tingled at its touch; my spirits rose. It was too great an effort to be unhappy that transparent morning, thrust from the Gray Houses into Ethendria, a town poised between the Valley and the sea, devoted to the manufacture of sweets, where the very plaster gives off a fragrance of almond paste. Miros dashed off to hire a carriage, leaving me under a tamarind tree with the priest, who sat silent on his traveling trunk with his hood pulled down to his lips; apparently unmoved by the glorious morning, he got into the carriage as soon as Miros returned, and closed the door with a bang.
“Is he all right?” I whispered to Miros.
“What? Him? Perfectly. Look at these beauties!”
Miros was in ecstasies over the elegant, milk-blue horses. He begged me to sit with him on the coachman’s box, and I agreed gladly enough. Once he had stowed his uncle’s trunk, we climbed onto the box and set off.
A small boy led his goats under chestnut trees by the canal. A merchant, framed by a window, frowned over his newspaper. A girl with a cart of wilted begonias for sale yawned ferociously and scratched herself underneath her slender arm. And then, suddenly, we were among the markets, the overpowering scent of mushrooms and the wild-looking peasants, the huvyalhi in robes and crude tin earrings, who rushed at the carriage, shouting and gesticulating, holding up lettuces, sausages, baskets of nettles, and wheels of salty cheese. Miros begged two droi from the priest and bought a cone of newspaper filled with tobacco. “Look!” he said, jabbing my ribs with an elbow. And there, gazing at us serenely and with a hint of mockery from among the onions, sat a beautiful peasant girl. . . . In the country both men and women of the huvyalhi wear long straight robes, dark or faded to various shades of blue, belted with rope or leather, and the effect of this strangely provocative dress when worn by lovely women has been for centuries the subject of poetry. The soft cotton, when it is old, reveals the outlines of the body. “Little Leaf-Hands,” runs an old country song, “go to draw water again in your old robe, the one your sister wore before you, the one that follows your breasts like rain.” Miros raised a hand to the girl and she laughed behind her wrist. The carriage jolted forward, pulling through the crowd, the piled radishes, wild irises, hairy goatskins taut with new-pressed wine, and edible fungi like yellow lace. Then we passed the horse graveyard with its blue equine statues and the mausoleum where the dukes’ beloved chargers sleep; and then, cresting a little hill, we came upon the bosom of Olondria, undulant and dazed with light.
We were moving away from the sea. On our left hung high limestone cliffs, topped with turf and a few wind-blasted trees; on our right the country spilled like a bolt of silk unrolled in a market, like perfumed oil poured out in a flagrant gesture. The Ethendria Road, wide and well-kept, curved down into the Valley, into the shadow of cliffs and the redolence of wet herbs. The grape harvest was ended, and the country was filled with tumbled vines, rust-colored, mellowed with age, birdsong, and repose. . . . Everything shone in that sumptuous light which is called “the breath of angels”: the hills flecked with the gold of the autumn crocus, the windy, bronze-limbed chestnut trees and the radhui, the peasant houses, sprawling structures topped with blackened chimneys. The trees and roofs stood out precisely against the purity of the sky whose vibrant blue was a unique gift of the autumn. The dust sparkled over the road, and its odor mixed with the wilder scents of smoke and grasses in the deep places of the fields.
In that lucent countryside, far from any inn, we stopped at a radhu. The priest, entombed in the carriage, seemed to feel no need for refreshment, but Miros and I were famished, having sustained ourselves since morning on white pears and figs bought along the road. “We’re sure to get something to eat here,” Miros said, guiding the horses along the grassy ruts made by a country cart. “Even if it’s only bais and cabbage. You’ve never had bais? It’s what people live on out here: bread made of chestnut flour.”
We approached the great, confused shape of the radhu among its luxuriant lemon trees, passing a garden of onions and cabbages, a number of broken wheelbarrows, a sullen donkey munching grass in the shade. Excited children tumbled out to greet us. “Watch the horses!” Miros bawled at the little boy and girl and the naked infant dawdling behind them. Their piercing cries accompanied us into a sort of open court, devoid of foliage, sun-baked, thick with dust.
We descended from the coach to the sound of rushing and slamming of doors within the lopsided stone structure facing us. In a moment a boy appeared with a clay pitcher of water, which he poured slowly over our grimy hands. This ceremony took place above the lip of a stone trough near the house, which spirited the water away to the garden. The boy worked with great concentration, breathing hard through his nose. He wore tarnished silver earrings shaped like little cows. Drops from our wet hands sprinkled the earth in that homely little court where blue cloth soaked in a scarred wooden basin, where chickens pecked at the roasted maize forgotten by the children in the shadow of the ivy-covered eaves. The tumbled front of the radhu offered a bewildering choice of entrances, arched doorways set at angles to one another: it looked as though a number of architects had disagreed on the plan of the house, each plunging into the work without consulting the others. Indeed, this was not far from the truth, for the radhu is a family project, expanding through the generations like a species of fungus. A stocky, bow-legged man appeared at the largest of the doorways and bowed, pressing the back of his right hand to his brow.
“Welcome, welcome!” he said, stepping out and holding his cracked hands over the trough to be washed by the silent boy. “Welcome, telmaron! You come from Huluethu, I think? From the young princes? It is an honor. . . .”
“No, from Ethendria,” Miros said.
At this the old man’s face fell. He wiped his hands on the sides of his robe. “You are not wine merchants?”
“No, by the Rose!” Miros answered, shouting with laughter. “We serve a priest of Avalei. He’s resting in the carriage. He’ll come out when he’s ready. But we, I don’t mind telling you, are half starved.”
“Ah!” the old man said. His face lit up with a smile again, and he even chuckled as he explained: “I thought you were merchants for a moment—these wine sellers, they squeeze us to death—but Avalei!” He inclined his head and touched his brow. “Greatly is she to be praised. We love her in the Valley, telmaron. My own daughter wished to be one of her women, but the temple takes fewer novices these days. . . .” He jerked his head over his shoulder and cleaned his ear with a thick finger. Then he welcomed us under the arch and into a huge old room, clearly the original room of the radhu, dominated by a blackened fireplace.
That great, smoke-stained room, its walls unrelieved by decoration, would have been gloomy and oppressive had it not been for a trapdoor in the flat roof, lying open to admit a wide flood of the limpid daylight. Beneath the trapdoor was a generous alcove or sleeping loft; several girls peered down from its edge with bright, laughing faces
. The room below was furnished with two iron beds, a few straw chairs, and a wooden cabinet adorned with painted cherries.
The old man’s name was Kovyan. He spoke of the grape harvest, spitting into a tin spittoon with such force that the vessel spun in place. A young woman appeared in a dark doorway near the fireplace and called briefly to the girls in the loft. Two of them descended the ladder and skittered away through the doorway, whispering and giving us glances from their immense dark eyes. In a moment they returned with a round mat, laid it on the floor in the middle of the room, and set a stool on top of it. A delicious smell penetrated the air, sweet and hinting at pork fat, and I was embarrassed by the rumbling of my stomach—but Kovyan was overjoyed at this evidence of our hunger and slapped my knee with a gnarled hand as solid as a hammer.
The girls dragged in a wineskin, and Kovyan offered us cups of a powerful, spicy vintage called “The Wine of the White Bees.” As we drank, there came a sound of hurried commotion out in the court, and four young men rushed in with an anxious, expectant air. These were Kovyan’s sons and the sons of his sister: evidently a child had been dispatched to fetch them from the fields. They had washed hastily in the court, and their beards and long hair dripped with water that ran down to darken the shoulders of their robes. With the knives at their belts and the tin jewelry which reminded me of galley slaves, they presented a rough and even feral appearance; but all of their vigor went into making us welcome. Bows were exchanged and more chairs fetched from the recesses of the radhu. The “boys,” as Kovyan called them, made themselves comfortable on the squeaking iron beds, drinking straight from the wineskin because there were no more cups. Into this active, convivial atmosphere walked a pair of proud adolescents bearing a colossal bowl on their shoulders.
Miros, enlivened by wine, cheered and tapped his cup with his ring. He winked at me and whispered: “I told you they’d give us something!” The bearers of the bowl, a boy and girl, trembled under its weight as they lowered it to the stool in the middle of the room. Inside it steamed a splendid stew of pork, mulberries, and chestnuts. Eager children materialized from the darkness of the walls. Last of all came Kovyan’s sister, the matriarch of the household: a heavy woman with mocking eyes in a sun-weathered face.
Conversation flared in every corner of the large room, all the men, women, and children talking at once, but only Kovyan made no attempt to lower his excited voice, and so his talk rang out above that of the others. He urged us to visit Huluethu, the country estate to the north of the road, where the “young princes” enjoyed music and hunting. Huluethu was a hunter’s palace: venison smoked there every day, and the young men practiced swordplay on the flat roof. “Near the White River,” he said, and I asked him if it was the same White River mentioned in the Romance of the Valley.
“Is it in the Romance?” he asked, wide-eyed, and the family gathered around me as I took out my book and read:
“‘A river is there, which is paved with stars. Its surface is covered with almond blossom; it runs through the fields of my dream like a river of snow. The White River, it is called. It is upon the redness of poppy fields, upon the blueness of fields of lavender. Its water is sweet, and the nymphs who dwell in it are the friends of men. All day they sit on its banks, carding wool. . . .” When I looked up, Kovyan tapped his cup in approval. His sister smiled over her coffee, licking her teeth to clean away the grounds.
The light grew etiolated, worn to threads. Kovyan stood and put a match to the little oil lamp on the cabinet. Only when it was dark and stars shone faintly through the skylight did the High Priest of Avalei walk into the room. He strode in without question, without deference, pushing back his hood, his eyes shining, and the huvyalhi went to him and kissed his hands, and the life that had begun to enter my veins died out like sap in a fallen tree, and I recalled the presence of death.
The priest sat, refusing wine and stew, taking only a glass of water, a piece of cheese. His terrible, loving gaze beamed about Kovyan’s house. “Why not a tale?” he said. “We have a stranger with us, an islander. Let us give him a Valley entertainment.”
“Grandmother, Grandmother,” the children cried.
Kovyan’s sister folded her hands, her eyes amused in the light of the oil lamp. “Very well,” she said. “Since our guest admires the Romance of the Valley, I will give him a tale from it.”
She shifted, her chair creaking. She cleared her throat. A child whimpered somewhere at the back of the room and was hushed back into silence. Then the woman told her tale in a voice both throaty and smooth, like new tussore, while a cat wailed at intervals from behind the wall.
People of the House, People of the House! This tale cannot turn anyone’s blood to water.
It is told of Finya the Sorcerer that, sick with illicit love, he journeyed into Evmeni to battle the pirates of the Sea-King; for the people of the archipelago were strong in those days, and proud in their strength, and harassed our people as far as the plains of Madh. So Finya rode to the Salt Coast, where the sea is as white as milk, and the land as poor as ash, and the winds enervate the body. There he destroyed many evil men by the power of sword and magic, and won renown. And this adventure befell him during those days.
It happened that he encamped in an abandoned part of the coast; and with him were Draud, and Rovholon, and Maldar, and Keth of the Spring. When they had passed the night, Finya was the first to see the dawn, and he saw also a white dolphin which had washed up onto the sand. Beautiful was this dolphin as a pearl and well-shaped as a lily, and as it yet lived the youth went down to the shore to rescue it. But as he approached it, the sun, rising over the Duoronwei, struck the dolphin, and it disappeared as if it had been sea foam.
Now Finya was saddened by the fading of such a noble beast, and he hid what he had seen from his companions. Nevertheless, when they wished to press on he expressed the desire to camp in that place a second night: for he said that his wound pained him. At dawn he awoke, and saw the dolphin who seemed at the point of death, and rushed down the stinging sands littered with shells; and a second time the sun rose as he reached the dolphin’s side, and the creature, fixing its eye on him, dissolved into the sea.
Then Finya was saddened more than before and would not leave that place, though his companions all were eager to move on. And Draud said, “Surely the wound of the sorcerer is healed; can it be cowardice that holds him back?” Then Rovholon and Maldar and Keth feared that their fellowship would be split, and that Finya would challenge Draud for the insult; but Finya said only: “The payment shall be deferred, Son of the Horse.” And they camped a third night in that place, in great unease.
But Finya had resolved not to sleep, and he went down to the empty shore and knelt in the place where he had seen the dolphin. All night he watched, and as the sky grew pale the beast washed up on the shore, and Finya grasped hold of it in mighty joy. Then the dolphin spoke to him, saying: “What have I done to you, Child of Woman, that you repay me with such a grave insult?” And Finya asked: “Pray, where is the insult? I saw your noble beauty and wished to save you from perishing with the light.” “Is it no insult then,” said the dolphin, “to seize a king’s daughter?” “Forgive me,” said Finya, “I acted in ignorance.” “Nevertheless,” said the dolphin, “you shall repay me.” “Willingly,” said the youth. “Since you have touched,” said the dolphin, “do not let go.”
Then the dolphin dove into the waves and swam toward the west, and Finya clung to it about the neck. It swam until they reached a beautiful city on a rock, which the sorcerer had never seen nor heard of. Glorious was that city; it covered all of that island of rock, and it was full of good wells, palaces, and gardens, but it was silent: not a soul came out from among its walls, and the chains of the abandoned wells moaned sadly in the wind. “Go up,” said the dolphin, “and pass into the central palace. There you shall find a great hall of stone, in the floor of which there is a small hole plugged with a stopper of vine leaves. Pull out this stopper and see what you s
hall find.”
“Willingly,” said the youth and clambered from the dolphin’s back onto the white steps which led up toward the city. And she stayed in the water, balancing on her tail, and watched him. So many a hero has gone forth into grief.
As he went up the sorcerer marveled greatly at that city, which was vaster and more graceful than any he had seen on his travels. Compared with it the fortress of Beal, which haunted him in his dreams, was as rude as a stable and seemed fit only for dumb beasts to dwell in. Bright were the roofs of the strange city, its pillars wondrous high, its dwellings stately and spacious with goodly foundations and flowered archways; its streets, curved or straight, were well-proportioned, and its silent squares in the shadow of lofty palaces filled him with awe. Very small was the sorcerer in that city immured in oblivion. He climbed the dusty steps of the central palace, the most magnificent of them all, where stone lions gaped at him, but of living things he saw not even a dog. In the center of this palace, as the dolphin had foretold, he found an enormous hall of ancient stone, and the tiny hole stopped with vine leaves. As he was a forthright man, he did not hesitate but bent and pulled out the stopper at once.
The hall shook so that Finya was thrown forward onto his face, and he feared that the palace would topple down upon him. The walls held firm, but more terrible than the earthquake was the voice he heard, the voice of a woman whose resonance turned his bones to water: “Insolent mortal,” she said. “Thinkst thou that I do not remember thee? Bitterly wilt thou regret the crime which has stained thy hand this day. This people are set beneath my curse for their pride and the depth of their wizardry, which surpassed that which it is good for mortals to know. Thou hast broken my holy curse; believe that it shall avail thee none. Thus speaks thy destiny from among the stars.” “Alas!” cried Finya; for he had offended the goddess Sarma once before and was hated by her. And he heard the ringing of bells.
A Stranger in Olondria: A Novel Page 17