Ursula K. Le Guin

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  “Estenskar. We met at the Paludeskars’ in August.”

  It was Estenskar all right, the poet, the great poet. Itale stood staring, utterly floored.

  “Sorry to disturb you,” Estenskar said in his high, hard voice.

  “Not at, not at all— Please sit down— Not that chair, the back falls off—”

  Estenskar tested the back of Frenin’s chair, found that it did indeed come off the seat, removed it, laid it aside, and sat down on the seat as on a stool. “I came to make an apology, Mr Sorde.”

  “An apol, an apology—”

  “I had no right to be rude to you, that night.”

  “Every right,” Itale said, waving his hands.

  “I’m sorry about it.”

  “It’s absolutely unnecessary, Mr Est,” Itale’s throat dried up in the middle of the name.

  “No; it was necessary, if I wanted to talk with you again.” And Estenskar smiled, a brief, unjoyful, youthful smile. “There are a lot of stupid people at the Paludeskars’ and I have got into a habit of being rude to them, since they expect it of me. But to be rude to you was a mistake, and I knew it at the time. Are you really trying to found a review, a journal?”

  “Yes. Please, this chair’s all right—”

  “I like this one. How far have you got?”

  “Enough money for a couple of issues, and enough promised for several more. A printer who knows what he’s in for. A letter from Stefan Oragon, in Rákava—”

  “That could be more a liability than an asset.”

  “If the Estates meet it could be a real asset.”

  “What about the Censor?”

  “My friend Brelavay thinks he’s getting somewhere. With the—the man you mentioned. Goyne.”

  Estenskar gave his short, artificial-sounding laugh. “How many of you are there?”

  “Four of us from Solariy. Six or seven from Krasnoy now. Givan Karantay is one of them, perhaps you know him.”

  “Yes. A splendid talent and a good man. Virtuous; Givan Karantay is a virtuous man. You are lucky to have him. Is it to be a literary journal, then?”

  “At first. The Bureau seems more approachable if we keep to literature.”

  “Yes!” Estenskar said harshly but with real amusement. “You can always get around them in the long run, because they don’t really believe words can do anything, they don’t really listen to Metternich. He knows better! If Metternich could have his heart’s desire every poet in the Empire would be locked up in the Spielberg prison for the rest of his life. I admire Metternich, he is an enemy, an equal. He has the wits and the enlightenment to fear the power of ideas, the power of the word. He’s of the breed of ’89—not one of these nouveaux, these Gentzes with their turncoat opportunism and illiterate mysticism, these worthy servants of the Habsburg-Bourbon-Romanov-Cretins, who wouldn’t recognise an idea if it was pointing a gun at their empty heads. Thank God Metternich is off in Vienna and all we have to fight here is nineteenth-century stupidity, not eighteenth-century intelligence!”

  All barriers fell under that onslaught. “We’re calling it Novesma Verba,” Itale said, and they were off, interrupting each other, excited, ardent, gesticulating, pacing, while the red light flared and sank in the room, and the loom rattled next door, and the bells of St Stephen’s, the university chapel, and the cathedral struck six and all the quarters and then seven, and the roofs and chimneypots across the courtyard dimmed in brown autumnal dusk and grew dark and hard against the sky. Itale thought to light a candle at last. As he stood by the table, tinderbox in hand, making sure the wick had caught, he looked up and in the smoky light his eyes and Estenskar’s met.

  “You see why I had to come,” the poet said.

  “I am glad you did,” Itale said in his quiet voice.

  “I recognised you, that night.” Estenskar continued to watch Itale with his peculiar, yellowish, immobile gaze. “I don’t know if you know what I mean by that. One comes to certain places, certain persons, to which one must come. To fail to recognise them, to turn aside from them, is to fail one’s destiny. Do you know what I mean?”

  “I think so.”

  “But one’s destiny isn’t always good, you know—I think you haven’t considered that yet— Are you Catholic?”

  “Yes. As I eat with a knife and fork, and wear a hat instead of feathers.”

  “So was I. I took off the hat.”

  “Forms are unimportant,” Itale said broadly.

  “Not to a poet. But never mind. I’d like—I want to tell you about myself, Sorde.” He spoke with intensity, turning away from the light of the candle; then his voice hardened as he said, “I suppose you know all about it from the Paludeskars.”

  “I’ve never been back there.”

  “You haven’t? Luisa has spoken of you several times; I thought you went there often. But I’m surprised they said nothing that evening. Discretion’s not their virtue. They love gossip, the more sordid the better, the stupider the better—love affairs, they’re called. The old word for it is adultery. If you know me, you’ll know this, I’d rather tell you myself. Two years ago I performed the action known as falling in love; I became a lover. The object of my love is a married woman who is rather stupid, very greedy, very cruel, not particularly beautiful. As soon as I saw her she slipped her hands under my skin and took hold of me on the raw flesh and nerve and I’ve been her puppet ever since, I dance when she raises a finger. I am her possession. If she called for me now I would crawl to her house on all fours. I have stood on the doorstep and begged the footman to let me in, I have gone to her husband and asked him in t-tears— Excuse me, Sorde. I’m going. Not fit.” He had stood up, neat and abrupt in his well-cut coat and fine linen, his voice still clear, and was blundering towards the door. Itale, with no consideration of his act, blocked his way: “You can’t go now!” he said fiercely.

  Estenskar felt for the backless chair, sat down, sat hunched up for a minute, crying. He got out his pocket handkerchief and wiped his eyes and nose. “No good,” he said in a soft, boyish voice, and then, shoving back his red hair and speaking in his usual tone or very near it, “What’s your name?”

  “Itale.”

  “Amadey. What . . . What sort of cheese is that?”

  “Portacheyka.”

  “Did you bring it with you?” It was about a yard across.

  “My aunt sent it. God knows how she bribed the carrier; he brought it to the door here. Are you hungry?”

  They were soon sitting at the table; the huge cheese, looking more prosperous in its blue coat than its owner did in his, sat between them, with a knife, a half-loaf, and a jug of rather stale water. There was one plate. “I don’t do much entertaining,” Itale observed, “I like to keep to the old country ways, you know, nothing ostentatious, no plates, no forks, no manners.”

  “An aunt sent this, you said? What other family have you got up there?”

  “Aunt and uncle, sister, parents. Hardly counts as a family in the Montayna.”

  “More than I have. One brother, never leaves the estate. You’re the heir, then. You left something, to come here.”

  “It seemed the thing to do.”

  “The thing to do. . . .” Estenskar looked at Itale, at the cheese, at the candle-flame. “How easily you say that. And I can guess pretty well at how much you had to give to earn the right to say it. . . . To do the thing one has to do, that’s the way, the right road, of course. And I’ve lost it.”

  “But your writing—”

  “I haven’t written a word for months. Of course that’s my road, but when it leads to a wall? or a hole in the ground? . . . The End. You can’t start a book with ‘The End,’ can you?” He spoke without excitement, and went on munching his bread and cheese contentedly. “This is first-rate cheese,” he said. There was a knocking on the hall-door, the sound of voices in the weaver’s room, a rap on Itale’s door, and in burst Brelavay. He now sported a brocade vest and silk hat, but looked just as he had looked in
college, thin, buoyant, and, ironic. “Victory! Triumph!” he proclaimed, and then noticed the stranger. “Sorry! Am I in the way?”

  “No, of course not— Tomas Brelavay, Amadey Estenskar. What’s up? Do you want some cheese?”

  “Very honored indeed, Mr Estenskar,” said Brelavay, taken aback and so looking ironic to the point of being diabolical. “I— This is a real privilege— No, I don’t want any cheese, for God’s sake, this is no time for cheese!”

  “What is it for?”

  “Go on with your cheese, please don’t let me disturb you. Will this chair hold together if I sit down carefully?”

  “I’ve got the trick one,” Estenskar said, still munching.

  “Did you talk with Goyne?”

  “I did. Late this afternoon. And I don’t want to hear any more talk about old Brelavay, he’s a jolly sort but he never does anything, I know the kind of talk that goes on among these damned seditious radical groups, especially since you haven’t got the manners to wait until my back’s turned. Do you want to hear what I said to Goyne and then what Goyne said to me and then what I said to Goyne with infinite tact and diplomacy und so weiter, und so weiter, or shall I—”

  “Come on, Tomas!”

  “Entire sanction and license for the publication of—”

  “No! By God! you got it!” Itale shouted, jumping up, and Brelavay, only less excited because he was so pleased with himself, said, “Let me tell you about it, will you?” They continued to talk more or less simultaneously for some while. Amadey Estenskar watched them. He was envious of their old friendship, envious of their jubilation, and dubious of it. What did it amount to, this little crack in the immense wall of indifference, this glimmer in the dead endless night of intellect? And yet this was what he had come here for, driven, exactly this, hope; and it caught at him as he watched them, so that exultation began to grow in him and brought him too to his feet. “Come on,” he said, “where do you fellows meet? The Illyrica? This calls for the open air.”

  “Exactly, come on, Itale!”

  “All right, I’m coming, just let me get my hat!” They ran down the black stairs, out of the house into the streets full of early night and a gusty, dry, autumnal wind blowing from the east. “Come on!” Itale urged when the others slowed their pace in the pressure of talk, and he went ahead, full of that same exultation and certainty, letting the dark wind of October blow by him and singing out loud the banned hymn, “Beyond this darkness is the light, O Liberty, of thine eternal day!” so that passing whores and locked-out children turned and laughed or looked at him.

  IV

  The same dry east wind was singing next day in the pines of the mountainsides and lashing up whitecaps on Malafrena, bright and wild in the morning sun. Piera Valtorskar came wandering down the lane that led through the valley from the pass. To her right lay the stubble fields and orchards of Valtorsa, to her left, the orchards and stubble fields of the Sorde estate. All things, trees, apples on the trees, clods, mountains, were distinct in the acute autumn light. Piera’s hair blew loose and her red skirt flashed in gusts of wind. In her left hand she carried an apple with a bite out of it, in her right a bunch of wild grass and flowers.

  Down from a side path along the Sorde apple orchard came a mounted horse with a neat quick gait. Recognising the fat mare and thin rider, Piera waved her wildflowers in the sunshine. Guide raised his hand in salute and came riding up to her. “I thought, whose lass is that in her Sunday dress? But it’s no one but thee in common clothes. . . .” Sometimes he called her by her title, sometimes he still used thou to her as to a child. She called him you and Mr Sorde, but that was the extent of her formality with him. At times she pondered the questions: did she love Mr Sorde as much as she loved her father? ought she to? and why did she? She found no answers, no scales for weighing love, no reasons. She loved him because he loved her. That she knew, better perhaps than he did. Not being responsible for her, he was free to show his feelings to her, as he was not free with his own daughter and son. He could play with Piera long years after he had ceased to tease and praise and play with Laura. He looked down at her now smiling, seeing the flash of her red skirt, her blown hair, her clear, bright eyes, seeing her a frail, wild bit of the bright day of wind; his look was praise.

  “I stole one of your apples, see? Should I put it back?”

  “Eat it, eat it,” said he.

  “It’s got a worm right through it.”

  “That’s the serpent that tempted thee, Eve.”

  She looked up at him and laughed. “May I feed it to Bruna? Are you in a hurry, Mr Sorde?”

  She stood at the mare’s head, offering the apple. Bruna tossed her head and mouthed her bit, and Guide had to slap the bit out so she could eat Piera’s apple. He did not mind humoring the girl and the wilful old mare. The beauty of the morning put him in a patient mood, a mood that fit the season; he liked the autumn above all seasons, because it brought him that quietness.

  “You’re going in to Portacheyka, Mr Sorde?” Piera asked in a ladylike tone. She was always changing that way from country Eve to proper miss, in a breath, for no reason.

  “Aye.” Guide shifted in the saddle and added the explanation: “The Post comes in today.”

  “Oh, of course.” Piera scrubbed her horse-slobbered hand with Bruna’s long mane quite as a child would do, while remarking with womanly tact, “And it’s a lovely morning for a ride.”

  “And for escaping lessons, eh?” he teased her a little heavily.

  “Oh, Miss Elisabeth never gets up till eight. I have hours and hours before lessons.” She was twining the one bright flower of her October nosegay, a last cornflower, into the mare’s mane. When Guide had left her and was riding on towards town his gaze fell on the blue nodding flower, and he felt a curious tenderness, an ache, as he looked at it. They passed on the road, she at sixteen and he at fifty-six, and she left him a blue cornflower twined in his horse’s mane. It was queer, he thought, how you met and passed souls thus, and a few of them left sweetness with you. You passed one another and parted, it might as well be forever, and yet there remained the touch of sweetness, and of pain.

  Piera wandered on towards Valtorsa, murmuring a French irregular verb. As she murmured, her mind, also, wandered. The Post came in today. It would stop, high, dusty, swaying, at the Golden Lion. On it, in one of the two or three mail sacks containing the fortnight’s correspondence to all the people of the Lakes, would be a letter to the Sordes, a square envelope of heavy, cheap paper addressed in black ink, the corners bent and dirty from the long trip. These letters were thoroughly familiar to Piera. Eleonora and Laura read them alone, read them together, read them with Piera, read them to each other, quoted them, misquoted them (especially Eleonora), interpreted them, dreamed about them, and twice a month awaited them with a longing that made the post coach’s delay a disaster, its arrival a festivity. Till now one or both of the women had driven in to meet the Post, and Piera wondered why this time Guide had gone. They were expecting something unusual, perhaps. That afternoon, when her lessons were over for the day, she told Miss Elisabeth that she was going to visit with Laura, and came straight along the lakeside path to the Sordes’ without any wanderings off to the side. By now she was certain that Itale was coming home—in fact he had probably been on the coach.

  Laura was seeing out the old tutor, Mr Kiovay of Portacheyka, who came once a week to read French with her, as he came to Valtorsa to improve Piera’s spoken French. He had improved the French of every young lady in Val Malafrena for forty years; and the French spoken there did not resemble that spoken anywhere else on earth, being, to a considerable extent, Mr Kiovay’s own invention. He had taught Eleonora, now he taught her daughter, whom he liked, because she was quiet; but he dreaded Piera. He quailed as she came up the path beside the mandevilia. “Que je vinsse!” she cried aloud at them. “Que tu vinsses! Qu’il vînt!” She had mastered the Past Subjunctive of Venir.

  “Mais viens donc!” said Laura.


  “Vient-il?” said Piera. Mr Kiovay escaped, while the girls went into the house. “There was a letter, wasn’t there?”

  “Mama has it, I’ll get it. They’re going to have a journal, Itale’s going to be an editor.”

  “But he’s not . . .” Piera did not finish. He was not coming home, of course. Whatever had possessed her to think he was?

  Laura prised the letter away from her mother, promising not to damage it or lose it, and went with Piera down to their favorite haunt on sunny afternoons, the lawn by the boat house, now a sweep of golden green in the mellow light. Sitting there Piera read and Laura reread Itale’s letter. It was, as always, rather stiff, bookish, impersonal. He talked about plans for the journal. He attempted to describe Amadey Estenskar, but on this subject his language became stuffier than ever, probably because he was self-conscious or over-conscious of his readers as he wrote. There was a good deal of detail about the complexities of dealing with the bureaucrats at the Censor’s office, which was hard to follow. But the dry, stiff letter was permeated, penetrated, shot through and through with joy. A great work to do, the friendship of great spirits, the road open before him, the world to be renewed and the strength to renew it.