I further objected to Longfaeroe that I was not the youngest son of a shepherd of Bethlehem, was the only son, and bastard at that, of an exiled murderer who had been born in the Black Forest of Germany. Longfaeroe was not discouraged, applied his imagination. He reworked my life, twisting my tale of how I had been fetched by Cleopatra to Grandfather at Stockholm—which, Longfaeroe said, had deferred Grandfather from his despotism—to have been the same as how Saul, King of the Hebrews, fell into melancholy tempers while making war on the Philistines, and that only when David the harpist was ushered into Saul’s tent to sing songs did Saul return to Jehovah’s plan. This is typical of the liberty Longfaeroe was willing to take with truth in order to advance his plan.
I can review this matter more dispassionately than the savior talk, because it began and ended with Longfaeroe, and what trouble it caused I left behind on South Georgia. As I recall it, I see that the reason Longfaeroe’s notion bothers me is that there might have been weight to his fixation on finding me a “wee David.” It had its dark, wrongheaded side in that Longfaeroe pressed on me that David did not worship a God of Love, rather a heartier God, more appropriate to the travail of the Hebrews, a God of Fear and Trembling. Longfaeroe said this was the same I spoke of as a “God of Hate” at Port Stanley. He was wrong about that; I was pagan then, denying God more than refashioning his identity. At the time, I was not fully informed of my pagan self, and was confused by Longfaeroe’s contrivance. Now, I can reject it as an example of the damage overeager visionaries can do to their students. Yet, Longfaeroe’s obsession also introduced a telling thought to me, one that I carried with me afterward and can still be irked by because I take the point. Longfaeroe pressed on me that David’s story was more compelling than any other in the Bible because David was an impaired hero, made many mistakes, was remorseful, guilt-wracked in old age, when he had to watch his sons undo his work with squabbling and treachery. Longfaeroe said that, like me, David rose from humble origins, excelled first in battle against the Philistines’ champion, Goliath, as I had risen from the ranks of the Volunteers to slay Patagonians and beasties. (Perhaps the most unhappy coincidence between me and David—one that Longfaeroe never made because I concealed from him my longing—was that concerning the coveting of another man’s woman: David had his Bathsheba, Grim had his Cleopatra.)
I am not saying that I was Davidic. I am saying that Longfaeroe provided me a story of a king that reveals most of the lessons and ruin of kingship. I have mentioned how I was ignorant of Lazarus’s political science. Longfaeroe gave me a course in politics that I believe unequaled. It is all there, in the two books of Samuel, and as I read the Fiddle Bible I nod in sadness. I was a warlord king, like David, but not of a land of milk and honey, rather one of ice and wretchedness. The differences between us are profound and entire. David was artful, daring, boastful, faithful, sly, arrogant, sharp-minded, weak of flesh and strong of spirit, generous to his people and unmovable before his enemies, a wise statesman and patient judge, a visionary and builder, above all a man who worshiped his God, the true God, with humility and zeal. Grim Fiddle was not any of that. He might have been. He was not. Grim Fiddle lost and fought for vengeance and lost the more. Grim Fiddle betrayed, ran away, succumbed to every temptation, turned from every friend, coveted power, murdered multitudes, stands condemned as the darkest of black princes, a monster.
Then there is a final philosophical consideration, since I have haphazardly and unintentionally permitted this to become a discussion of my identity. It is my notion, was no one else’s, though it was Abigail, Longfaeroe’s daughter and Samson’s heavyhearted widow, who introduced it to me in passing. It does not threaten me, as the savior talk does and the David talk did; indeed, it fetches me.
It was my third summer on South Georgia. It was about the time of the visit of the British man-o’-war—no, that was earlier. It was about the time of the foundered plague ship. It was certainly about the time Abigail and I became lovers. Abigail had been the one who supervised my nursing after I was landed on South Georgia and taken to the Frazer camp. I did not see her again for a year, saw her infrequently when I went down to the Frazer camp on shepherding matters. The first she spoke to me was about a lamb she wanted for a pet for one of her sons. I thought her curt, very sad, aloof, lean like her father and hard like the Frazers. Then, one day in early summer, with the sun breaking through to flash gold on the gray landscape of the high moors, she came up to my hut with her eldest son and three other of the Frazer brood. She said they were on a hike. I gave them the shelter of the hut while I roamed outside, self-conscious of my looks, shy of people other than Longfaeroe and Germanicus. I was afraid I would have one of my spells, start babbling or ranting. She came out to me to ask me why I was looking west, toward one of the stark passes through the surrounding mountains. I had not been aware that I was, and when I thought that looking west had become my routine stance, to where I had abandoned my family, I turned away from her to weep. I was pathetic, a huge, tearful, clumsy shepherd; perhaps that is what attracted her back the next day, alone.
The incident I am thinking of happened later that summer. Abigail was cooking for me at the time, on the hearth fire Germanicus had helped me build in my hut. She was a good cook, a better listener—a tall, limber woman, her hair cut as short as a boy’s, small breasts and tight composure, her thin arms swinging over the pots. I recall mentioning that her father had visited the day before, that he had promised to return that day. I hinted at my difficulty with him and the David talk. I had been cautious not to complain to her about her father, unsure of her opinion, presuming she would not welcome my criticism, would see me as an ingrate. Abigail surprised me then, drew me out on my complaint, then lost her temper, “Not that again, Grim. That’s Dad’s sickness. Him and his holy visions on the cliffs. He killed mum with ’em. She went up to fetch him down and fell.”
I said that it was me having those visions. I saw Grandfather searching for me endlessly. I saw Cleopatra in chains. I saw Peregrine dead.
“Mind me, Dad’s using you to make himself swell up. Dad did that to dear Samson, and he believed him. The lot did. Don’t you tell me the Frazers have their ways. The Frazers’re weak minds, and are already swelled up. Them and their Volunteers. It was a fool’s chance and stripped this island of its boys and left us women for what? I mark them, mark Dad special for it. He knows. I told him when they sailed, that if he didn’t bring my Samson back, he was no father to me. That’s why he don’t come up when he knows me here. Fight him, with your mind. Samson was a good man, kind when he wanted, but Lordie, he was not clever. You be that, good and kind and clever. You have learning, enough, and you have that Israel friend of your dad’s. Keep at it. Never give Dad a handhold. Don’t ever let me see you with a harp. Ah, Grim, it ain’t funny. Stay what you are, sweet and sad. Be more reluctant than Moses. Eat.”
It was just an image to her, “more reluctant than Moses.” She never mentioned Moses again. I have kept it in my heart, with memories of her. Abigail was as full of images as she was of passion, a gentle lover, no, that is not accurate, a ravenous woman. She chewed on me, that lithe body and those sharp teeth, all over me in my hut, in the wind, content with my dogs and melancholy. She said sexual intercourse might be the only softness people like us would ever enjoy, and it was ours to be as hard in calamity as it was to be “terrible hot” in love. I never saw her naked; it was the cold, and her temperament, for she said she wanted me to know there was a needful part of her that was for me alone to touch and smell and remember, but not for the sins of the eyes. That was her Presbyterian soul in conflict with a heated-up nature. She told me she wanted to love me clear of Germanicus and Longfaeroe; she said she did not want to keep me; she said she did not want to lose me. I see the paradox, so did she, and she kept at it. She said a man might not have time for killing himself if his woman kept his face to hers, kept him well fed and busy fixing the house, tending the flock, waiting for her to lift skirts. She believed i
n her father’s Jehovah, not overridingly. There was something private in her that seemed to want to make even God an observer, not judge, not helpmate, to what she could do, her ways. She had her sons, her memories, and what she called “my high dreams.” Yes, I can speculate now how much she came to use me as she claimed Longfaeroe and the Frazers used me, how much what came to be her need for me was part of her fight with the dead husband she faulted herself for not being able to hold, with her love, from self-destruction. This does not mean I am suspect of what she did to me, for me. I liked it much. She was my friend. I did love her. I did want to marry her. She would not let me talk of marriage, though, and so our love was constrained from deepening. Nevertheless, it was a strong love, as mutual and kind and worthy as my love for Cleopatra never was. What blocked it from completeness was her anger at fate and at her father. She would not say it that way, proposed it sadly, that a woman should have only one husband, and that she had had hers. Sadder, given more time, she might have relented.
It is Abigail’s mention of Moses that touches me now (as I think of her touching me, and her bites—she tore flesh). This is the first time I have turned Moses over in my mind. It is entirely my rumination, long afterward, harmless, not meant for selfaggrandizement, more to complete my search here, in this pause in my narrative, for the meaning of what I have done.
There are no historical parallels between what Moses did and what I did. I declare I see none. I am attracted to Moses as a character. Reading the Fiddle Bible, I find several kinds of Moses: the first is reluctant, the others are miraculous, suffering, prophetic. It is the reluctant Moses I appreciate. He was of humble origins. His mother tossed him to his fate in that reed basket. His rise as a young aristocrat in the pharaoh’s court was luck. Then he murdered for pride, also for frustration, because he had a bad temper, felt lost to his destiny. A fugitive, he fled into the wilderness, became a shepherd by chance and took a wife who loved him and taught him her father’s religion, of the God who dwelled on a mountain. It was on that mountain one day that God, called Jehovah, appeared as a burning bush, a fire that scared Moses. Jehovah told Moses what was required of him. Moses resisted, “Why? Who am I? I do not speak well, have no tricks, am no general.”
It was a complaint that Moses repeated severally throughout his ordeal at the new pharaoh’s court—there is always a new pharaoh, how well I know—in the desert, on Mount Sinai, at the rocky waters of Meribah where Moses did worse, spoke rashly to Jehovah. I think Moses’ reluctance was the reason Jehovah did not permit Moses to enter the promised land. Moses remained his own man; Jehovah did not like it. Moses was rash, did talk back to Jehovah, accused Jehovah when things went bad, such as, “Was it me who did this, brought these people out of Egypt where they were miserable and into the desert where they are more miserable and also rebellious?” Moses no more wanted the job of commander of multitudes than I did. At least, this is true before I let the darkness take hold and I grabbed power at Anvers Island. Moses’ attitude was in great contrast to how David schemed for kingship and how Jesus accepted his mantle without marked resistance. Would Moses have serenaded Saul for favors? Would Moses have baited the priests and faced down Satan without complaint? He would not. God commanded and Moses backed away; God saved and Moses felt sorry for himself.
I am not saying that Grim Fiddle was like Moses. God never talked to me; I never turned staffs into snakes, a river into blood, or vouchsafed the vengeance of the Angel of Death. I parted no seas, climbed no mountains. It is true that Lamba Time-Thief clobbered me with a staff, that Grandfather’s League turned Stockholm harbor into a bloody river, that I took revenge at my loss of Grandfather’s Angel of Death, that the ice did part before me because of the volcanos, that I did try to climb a volcano to confer with a delusion; but that is all off-the-point, contrived coincidence, and I mention it here to show that it is folly to pursue such fancy. Yet I realize now that I felt like Moses did in the desert when I struggled with my fate at Anvers Island. I did not think this then; I ponder it now. I did not want what was thrust upon me, what I took when I wore vengeance. In this way I will admit I was like Moses. My errors as warlord king derived from my pride and from my dereliction of duty when success was right before me. I shall show the truth of this later. For now, I am reaching for an apology for myself. That I am condemned as a criminal and monster is justice. I hate it; I do not turn it aside. I ask, however, could not one argue, with some slight changes, that Moses’ reluctance and resistance and rashness and anger brought great suffering to the very people he led out of Egypt? Could not it be argued that Moses might today stand condemned by the sons of Aaron for his interference and cruelty if not that Jehovah tidied up Moses’ excesses and continued to intervene in favor of the Hebrews?
I dispute silence. Perhaps I should not make apology. I did not want excuses from others at my trial, did not want it from Longfaeroe at my hut, should not now turn to speculation and vanity in a work I mean as self-accusation. Moses was not a criminal like me; he did not murder multitudes. That was my conduct, and it would be disingenuousness like Longfaeroe’s to try to cover my shame with eccentric exegesis.
I think now this detour has been worthwhile. I see here something that escaped me before I recounted my reading and understanding of Jesus and David and Moses. Those were three kings to three very different peoples: oppressed Galileans, beleaguered Israelites, enslaved Hebrews. Grim Fiddle was a ruler of people who shared one sure thing with God’s chosen people: they were outcasts, undone, unloved. Grim Fiddle was a bad ruler, and I do not want to obscure that fact by declaring here, in passing, that it might not be possible to take up kingship in any way in this world devoid of refuge, sanctuary, peace, without also taking up the curse of pride that will eventually usher a fall. This formula only seems to be avoidable if one heeds the lesson of Jesus and takes a crown of thorns as a suffering servant rather than a crown of iron as an insufferable master. I did not follow such wisdom. I was a tyrant’s tyrant—capricious, secretive, gory, vain, corrupt. Yet I see now that even in the worst of earthly monarchs, like me, there are elements of Jesus, David, Moses, just as even in the worst of earthly peoples, like my Hielistos and the slaves in the camps, there are elements of the Galileans, Israelites, and Hebrews. This seems a quiet discovery. It may therefore be crucial. Perhaps this helps explain the genesis of all that false talk about my so-called virgin birth, and all Longfaeroe’s bloated talk about my so-called slayings of Goliaths, and my own loose talk about myself as a reluctant shepherd; it springs from a deep yearning in men to prove heavenly and predetermined sponsorship of what men do mundanely and blasphemously. Perhaps this is why I should be more forgiving of the glib apologists at my trial, and of overeager Longfaeroe on South Georgia, and of myself as I reflect. It might be a long-felt need for authority, for certainty of one’s actions in retrospect, for justification of what one is at the same time regretful for. I should be generous. I should not continue to protest the need of the seekers. It was a mark of their hunger for God’s love. I apologize, then, to those odd-tongues at my trial, and to Longfaeroe, for my peevish suspicions. What can their distortions do to me now? I was only a transient and counterfeit discovery in their search for an earthly ruler who is blessed with heavenly authority. It came to silence then, shall continue to be nothing.
Grim Fiddle was also a bewitched Northman. I am Lamba’s son, and she was a witch. It was Longfaeroe who first assembled the clues to argue that Lamba Fiddle was Lamba Time-Thief. I suppose that what drove him to such a cluttered deduction was his competition with Abigail. He could see, by my third summer and the beginning of my love for Abigail, that he was losing my attention, so he grabbed at ever wilder proofs of his vision. He gathered what I told him of Israel’s story of the blond girl in the telephone booth, what I told him of Thord’s story of how Anders Horshead had suspected that the midwife at my delivery, Astra, had been more than she appeared, and what I told him of the bald sibyl and the hag at Sly-Eyes’s party, and fitted
all this together until he had the obvious, and some mystery left over. I did try to conceal the whole of Lamba’s portents from him. He did eventually trick it out of me, everything from Skallagrim Strider’s name spoken in ecstasy at my conception to the legend of Skallagrim Strider, to Lamba’s prophecy of Skallagrim Ice-Waster. Longfaeroe seized upon this as if Lamba’s sibylhood was some sort of prophetic calling. There is great confusion in the Fiddle Bible s books of Samuel as to what constitutes a call to prophecy yet not so much that Longfaeroe did not know then, as I know now, that for one to argue that Lamba had been called to her task was perverse. Still, Longfaeroe sidestepped reason, challenged me, “She bore the bairn! She named him! She watched over him! She meant you to be a king!”
I do not recall any extravagant surprise at Longfaeroe’s revelation that Lamba Time-Thief was my mother. I did think it unhappy that Lamba had been an opportunistic mother, that what had begun so bizarrely could only get worse. Longfaeroe was not sympathetic, said that many had endured peculiar mothers, as he had. He would only concede that I had enjoyed more than most orphans, in that my mother had taken steps, painful ones, to make clear to me what she expected. Longfaeroe strangled sense about all this, used my bewilderment to trick more dangerous material out of me, such as my dreams. I dreamed bizarrely in my shepherd’s hut: massacres, drownings, flying dragons, rams’ heads, fleets of white ships sailing over seas of blackened faces with shriveled tongues. I did not abide any of this as worthy then, fought off Longfaeroe’s crude interpretations. He thought my dreams referred to his South Georgia and the Falklands. I was frightened that they meant my family was dead. Did I believe I heard the ghost of Skallagrim Strider whispering to me in my sleep? Did I believe there was any worth to what Lamba Time-Thief, my mother, had told me of Skallagrim Ice-Waster, King of the South? Did I believe Grandfather lost to me forever? I believed none of it, which I now understand is the same as believing all of it.
The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica Page 22