“Quick, Gurduloo, down to the port we go and embark for Morocco.”
All this part I am now scoring with wavy lines is the sea, or rather the ocean. Now I draw the ship on which Agilulf makes his journey, and further on I draw an enormous whale, with an ornamental scroll and the words “Ocean Sea.” This arrow indicates the ship's route. I do another arrow showing the whale's course: there, they met So at this point of the ocean will take place an encounter between whale and ship, and as I’ve drawn the whale in bigger, the ship will get the worst of it Now I’m drawing in a crisscross of arrows to show that at this point there was a savage battle between whale and ship. Agilulf fights peerlessly and plunges his lance into the creature’s side. Over him squirts a nauseating jet of whale oil, which I show by these divergent lines. Gurduloo leaps onto the whale and forgets all about the ship, which at a whisk from the whale’s tail overturns. Agilulf with his iron armor of course sinks like a stone. Before the waves entirely submerge him he cries to his squire, “We’ll meet in Morocco! I’m walking there!”
In fact, after dropping mile after mile into the depths, Agilulf lands on his feet on the sand at the bottom of the sea and begins walking briskly. Often he meets marine monsters and defends himself against them with his sword. The only bother about armor at the bottom of the sea is rust But having been squirted from head to foot in whale oil, the white armor has a layer of grease which keeps it intact.
On the ocean I now draw a turtle. Gurduloo has gulped down a pint of salty water before realising that the sea is not supposed to be inside him but he inside the sea. Eventually he seizes the shell of a big sea turtle. Partly letting himself be drawn along, partly guiding it by pinches and prods, he and the turtle near the coast of Africa. Here they become entangled in the nets of some Moorish fishermen.
When the nets are drawn on board the fishermen see amid a wriggling school of mullet a man in soaking wet clothes covered with seaweed. “The merman! The merman!” they cry.
“Merman? Nonsense! It’s Gudi-Ussuf,” cries the head fisherman. “It’s Gudi-Ussuf, I know him!”
Gudi-Ussuf was in fact one of the names by which Gurduloo was known in the Moslem field kitchens, when unsuspectingly he crossed the lines and found himself in the Sultan’s camp. The head fisherman had been a trooper in the Moorish army in Spain, so knowing Gurduloo to have a strong body and docile mind, he took him on as an oyster fisher.
One evening the fishermen, and Gurduloo among them, were sitting on the rocky Moroccan shore opening the oysters they’d fished one by one, when from the water appeared a helmet, a breastplate, and then a complete suit of armor walking step by step up the beach. “A lobster man! A lobster man!” cried the fishermen—running away in terror to hide among the rocks.
“A lobster man! Nonsense!” said Gurduloo. “It's my master! You must be exhausted, sir, after walking all that way!”
“I’m not the least tired," replied Agilulf. “And you? What are you doing here?”
“Finding pearls for the Sultan,” intervened the ex-soldier, “as he has to give a new pearl to a different wife every night.”
Having three hundred and sixty-five wives, the Sultan visited one a night, so every wife was only visited once a year. To the one visited it was his custom to give a pearl, so that every day merchants had to supply him with a fresh new pearl. As that day the merchants had exhausted their supplies, they had recourse to the fishermen to procure a pearl at all costs.
“You who’ve managed to walk so well on the sea bottom,” the ex-soldier said to Agilulf, “why don’t you join our enterprise?”
“Knights do not join enterprises with lucre as their aim, particularly if conducted by enemies of his religion. I thank you, O Pagan, for having saved and fed this squire of mine, but I don’t care a jot if your Sultan cannot present a pearl to this three hundred and sixty-fifth wife tonight”
“We care a lot, though, as we shall all be whipped,” exclaimed the fisherman. “Tonight is no ordinary wife’s night It’s the turn of a new one, whom the Sultan is visiting for the first time. She was bought almost a year ago from certain pirates, and has awaited her turn till now. Tis improper that the Sultan should present himself to her with empty hands, particularly as she is a coreligionist of yours, Sophronia of Scotland, of royal blood, brought to Morocco- as a slave and immediately destined for our sovereign’s harem.”
Agilulf did not betray his emotion. “I will show you how to get out of your difficulty,” said he. “Let the merchants suggest that the Sultan bring his new wife not the usual pearl but a present to soothe her homesickness: the complete armor of a Christian warrior.”
“Where can we find such armor?”
“Mine!” said Agilulf.
Sophronia was awaiting nightfall in her quarters of the palace harem. From the grating of the cusped window she looked out over garden palms, fountains, alleys. The sun was setting, the muezzin launching his cry, and in the garden the scented flowers of dusk were opening.
A knock. 'Tis time! No, the usual eunuchs. They are bearing a present from the Sultan. A suit of armor. Of white armor. What can it mean? Sophronia, alone again, remains at the window. She has been there for almost a year. When bought as a wife she had been assigned the place of a wife recently repudiated, a place which would fall due again more than eleven months later. Living in the harem doing nothing, one day after the other, was even more boring than life in the convent had been.
“Do not fear, noble Sophronia,” said a voice behind her. She turned. It was the armor talking. “I am Agilulf of the Guildivern who saved your immaculate virtue once before.”
“Help!” screamed the Sultan’s wife. Then, recomposing herself, “Ah yes, I thought I knew that white armor. It was you who arrived just in time, years ago, to prevent me from being abused by a brigand...”
“Now I arrive just in time to save you from the horror of pagan nuptials.”
“Oh yes ... Always you ... you are...”
“Now, protected by this sword, I will accompany you forth from the Sultan’s domains.”
“Yes ... indeed ... of course.”
When the eunuchs came to announce the Sultan’s arrival they were put to the sword one by one. Wrapped in a cloak, Sophronia ran through the gardens by the knight’s side. The dragomen gave the alarm. But their heavy scimitars could do little against the agile sword of the warrior in white armor. And his shield sustained well the assault of a whole picket’s lances. Gurduloo was waiting behind a cactus tree with horses. In the port a felucca was ready to leave for Christian lands. From the prow Sophronia watched the palms of the beach drawing further away.
Now I am drawing the felucca here in the sea. I’m doing a rather bigger one than the ship before, so that if it does meet a whale there'll be no disaster. With this curved line I mark the passage of the felucca which I want to reach the port of St. Malo. The trouble is that here in the Bay of Biscay there’s such a mess of crisscrossing lines already that it’s better to let the felucca pass a little further out, over here, yes, over there; then what should it go and do but hit the Breton rocks! It’s wrecked, sinks, and Agilulf and Gurduloo just manage to bear Sophronia in safety to the shore.
Sophronia is weary. Agilulf decides to put her for refuge in a cave and then together with his squire go to Charlemagne’s camp and announce her virginity to be still intact and so also the legitimacy of his name. Now I’m marking the cave with a small cross at this point of the Breton coast so as to be able to find it again later. I can’t think what this line is doing passing the same place; by now my paper is such a mess of lines going in all directions. Ah yes, here’s a line corresponding to Torrismund’s journey. So the thought-laden youth is passing right here, while Sophronia lies in the cave. He too approaches the cave, enters, sees her.
10
HOW had Torrismund got there? While Agilulf was moving from France to England, England to Africa, and Africa to Brittany, the putative cadet of the House of Cornwall had wandered far and wide
over forests of Christian lands in search of the secret camp of the Knights of the Holy Grail. As the Holy Order has a habit of changing its headquarters from year to year, and never makes a show of its presence to the profane, Torrismund could find no indications to follow in his journey. He wandered about at random, chasing a remote sensation which was the same for him as the name of the Grail. But was it the order of the pious Knights he was searching for, or the memory of his childhood on Scottish heaths? Sometimes the sudden opening of a valley black with larches, or a cleft of grey rocks at the end of which boomed a torrent white with spray, filled him with an inexplicable emotion which he took for a warning. "Perhaps they’re here, nearby.” And if from nearby rose the faint and distant sound of a hunting horn then Torrismund lost all doubts, and began searching every crevice yard by yard for trace of them. But at most he would run into some lost huntsman or shepherd with his flock.
On reaching the remote land of Koowalden, he stopped in a village and asked the local rustics to be so good as to give him some goat’s cheese and black bread.
“Willingly would we give you some, sir,” said a goatherd, “but see how I, my wife and children are reduced to skeletons! We have to make so many offerings to the knights! This wood is crawling with colleagues of yours, though differently dressed. There’s a whole troop of ’em, and for supplies, you know, they all come down on us!”
“Knights living in the wood? How are they dressed?”
“In white cloaks and golden helmets with two white swans’ wings on the sides.”
“Are they very holy?”
“Oh, yes they’re holy enough. And they certainly never soil their hands with money, as they haven’t a cent. But they expect a lot and we have to obey. Now we’re stripped clean, and there’s a famine. What shall we give them when they come next time?”
But the young man was already hurrying towards the wood.
Amid the fields, on the calm waters of a brook, slowly passed a flock of swans. Torrismund followed them along the bank. From among the bushes resounded an arpeggio, “Flin, flin, flin!” The youth walked on and the sound seemed at times to be following him and at others preceding him, “Flin, flin, flin!” Where the bushes thinned out appeared a human figure. It was a warrior in a helmet decorated with white wings, carrying both a lance and a small harp on which now and again he struck that chord, "Flin, flin, flin!” He said nothing. His eyes did not avoid Torrismund but passed over him as if not perceiving him, although they seemed to be following him. When tree trunks and branches separated them, the warrior led Torrismund onto the right track by calling with one of his arpeggios, “Flin, flin, flin!” Torrismund longed to talk to him, ask him questions, but instead followed, silent and intimidated.
They came into a clearing. On every side were warriors armed with lances, in golden cuirasses, wrapped in long white cloaks, motionless, each turned in a different direction with his eyes staring into a void. One was feeding a swan with grains of com, his eyes turned elsewhere. At a new arpeggio from the player, a warrior on horseback answered by raising his horn and sending out a long call. When he was silent all the warriors moved; each made a few steps in his direction and stopped again.
"Knights...” Torrismund plucked up courage to say, “excuse me, I may be mistaken, but are you not the Knights of the Grai—”
"Never pronounce the name!” interrupted a voice behind him. A knight with white hair had halted near him. “Is it not enough for you to come disturbing our holy recollection?”
"Oh do forgive me.” The youth turned to him. “I’m so happy to be among you! If you knew how long I’ve looked for you!”
“Why?”
“Why...?” and his longing to proclaim his secret was stronger than his fear of committing sacrilege. “Because I’m your son!”
The old knight remained impassive. “Here neither fathers nor sons are acknowledged,” said he after a moment of silence. “Whoever enters the Sacred Order leaves behind him all earthly relationships.”
Torrismund felt more disappointed than repudiated. He would have preferred an angry reply from his chaste fathers, which he could have contradicted or argued with by giving proofs and invoking their common blood, but this calm reply, which did not deny the possibility of the facts but excluded all discussion on a matter of principle, was discouraging.
“My sole other aspiration is to be recognized as a son of the Sacred Order,” he tried to insist, “for which I bear a limitless admiration.”
“If you admire our Order so much,” said the old man, “you should have one sole aspiration, to be admitted as part of it”
“Would that be possible, d’you think?” exclaimed Torrismund, immediately attracted by the new pospect.
“When you have made yourself worthy.”
“What must one do?”
“Purify oneself gradually from every passion and let oneself be possessed by love of the Grail.”
“Oh, you do pronounce that name then?”
“We knights can; you profane, no.”
“But tell me, why are all here silent and you the only one to talk?”
“I am charged with the duty of relations with the profane. Words being often impure, the Knights prefer to abstain from them, and also to let the Grail speak through their lips.”
“Tell me what must I do to begin?”
“D’you see that maple leaf? A drop of dew has formed on it. Try and stand quite still and stare at the drop on that leaf, identify yourself with it, forget all the world in that drop, until you feel you have lost yourself and are pervaded by the infinite strength of the Grail.”
And he left him. Torrismund stared fixedly at the drop, stared and stared, began thinking of his own affairs, saw a frog jumping on the leaf, stared and stared at the frog, and then at the drop again, moved a foot which had gone numb, and then suddenly felt bored. In the woods knights appeared and disappeared, moving very slowly, their mouths open and eyes staring, accompanied by swans whose soft plumage they caressed every now and again. One suddenly threw wide his arms and with a hoarse cry broke into a little run.
“That one over there,” Torrismund could not prevent himself from asking the old man, who had reappeared nearby, “what’s up with him?”
“Ecstasy!” said the old man. “That is something you will never know, who are so distracted and curious. Those brothers have finally reached complete communion with the all.”
“And what about those?” asked the youth. Some knights were swaying about as if taken by slight shivers, and yawning.
“They’re still at an intermediate stage. Before feeling one with the sun and stars the novice feels as if he has the nearest objects within himself, very intensely. This has an effect, particularly on the youngest. Those brothers of ours whom you see are feeling a pleasant gentle tickle from the running brook, the rustling leaves, the mushrooms growing underground.”
“And don’t they tire of it in the long run?”
“Gradually they reach the higher states in which the nearest vibrations no longer occupy them but the great sweep of the skies, and very slowly they detach themselves from the senses.”
“Does that happen to all?”
“To few. And completely, only to one of us, the Elect, the King of the Grail.”
They had reached a glade where a large number of knights were exercising their arms before a canopied tribunal. Under that canopy was sitting or rather crouching, motionless, someone who seemed to be more mummy than man, dressed too in the uniform of the Grail, but more sumptuously. His eyes were open, indeed staring, in a face dried up as a chestnut.
“Is he alive?” asked the youth.
“He’s alive, but now he’s so rapt by love of the Grail that he no longer needs to eat or move or do his daily needs, or scarcely to breathe. He neither feels nor sees. No one knows his thoughts; they certainly reflect the movements of distant planets.”
“But why do they make him preside over military parades, if he doesn’t see?”
“’Tis a rite of the Grail.”
The knights were fencing among themselves. They were moving their swords in jerks, looking into the void, and taking sharp sudden steps as if they could never foresee what they would do a second later. And yet they never missed a blow.
“How can they fight with that air of being half asleep?”
“ ’Tis the Grail in us moving our swords. Love of the universe can take the form of great frenzy and urge us lovingly to pierce our enemies. Our Order is invincible in war just because we fight without making any effort or choice but letting the sacred frenzy flow through our bodies.”
“And does it always turn out all right?”
“‘Yes, with whoever has lost all residues of human will and only lets the Grail direct his slightest gesture.”
“Slightest gesture? Even now when you’re walking?”
The old man was walking like a somnambulist. “Certainly. It’s not I who am moving my feet. I am letting them be moved. Try. ’Tis the start of all.”
Torrismund tried, but first he just could not succeed, and secondly he did not enjoy it There were the woods, green and leafy, all fluttering and achirp, where he longed to run and let himself go and put up game, to pit himself, his strength, his effort, his courage against that shadow, that mystery, that extraneous nature. Instead of which he had to stand there swaying like a paralytic.
“Let yourself be possessed,” the old man was warning him, “let yourself be possessed entirely.”
“But really, you know,” burst out Torrismund, “what I long for is to possess, not be possessed.” The old man crossed his elbows over his face so as to stop up eyes and ears. “You still have a long way to go, my boy.”
Torrismund remained in the encampment of the Grail. He tried hard to leam and imitate his fathers or brothers (he didn’t know which to call them), tried to suffocate every motion of the mind which seemed too individual, to fuse himself in communion with the infinite love of the Grail, attentive for any indication of those ineffable sensations which sent the knights into ecstasies. But days passed and his purification made no progress. Everything they most liked bored him utterly: those voices, that music, their constant aptness to vibrate. And above all the continual proximity of the brethren, dressed like that, half naked, with golden breastplates and helmets, and very white flesh, some old, others fussy, touchy youths, all became more and more antipathetic to him. With their story about the Grail always moving them, they indulged in all sorts of loose habits while pretending to be ever pure.
The Nonexistent Knight Page 9