An Acceptable Time

by Madeleine L'engle

  The book on her lap, Polly rocked, thought. There was no evidence that there had ever been Celts or druids on these shores when the early settlers landed. Had they been assimilated into the local tribes, as Karralys and Tav seemed to have been taken into Anaral's people? Gone back to Britain? If there really were druids in New England three thousand years ago, what had happened to them?

  She sighed, opened the second book to the page her grandmother had marked. It was by Alexis de Tocqueville, writing in the troubled period of Andrew Jackson, when the Indians were treated with terrible unfairness, and yet Tocqueville wrote that the settlers in America "had arrived at a state of democracy without having to endure a democratic revolution" and that they were "born free without having to become so."

  Still true? Polly thought of herself as having been born free, and yet in the short span of her life she had witnessed much abuse of freedom. Surely the lusts and guilts and greeds of the Old World had taken root in the New. And despite her affection for the natives of Gaea, for the Quiztano Indians in Venezuela, she was leery of the concept of the "noble savage." People, in her experience, were people, some good, some bad, most a mixture.

  Next in the pile was Lectiones geometricae, published by Isaac Barrow in 1670, and despite Polly's proficiency with languages she could not concentrate on the Old Latin, so she put it aside for when she could focus better. She read a marked chapter in a history of the sixteenth century, learning that Giordano Bruno had been burned at the stake for heresy, including the proposal, horrifying to the Church establishment of those days, that there are as many times as there are planets.

  --And even one planet, Polly thought,--has many time zones, and when we try to cross them too quickly we get jet lag. And even in one zone, time doesn't move at a steady rate.

  She remembered a day of lying in bed with flu and fever, every joint aching, and the day dragged on and on, far longer than an ordinary day. And then there was a New Year's Eve party at Max's beautiful plantation house, Beau Allaire, with Max sparkling as brightly as the crystal chandeliers, and there had been singing and charades and the evening passed in the twinkling of an eye. Poor Giordano Bruno. He was probably right about time. How many people have been burned at the stake for being right?

  Then came a book by an eighteenth-century philosopher, Berkeley. She sat with the book unopened on her lap. Max had talked to her about this philosopher, who was also a bishop (was he anything like Bishop Colubra?), who had had the idea, amazing in his day, that the stairs outside his study were not there unless he was aware of them, that things had to be apprehended to be. "The anthropic principle," Max had called it, and had seen it as both fascinating and repellent.

  If Polly did not believe that she had seen and talked with Anaral, would that keep the other girl in the past where she belonged? Would it close the threshold? But she had seen Anaral, and there was no way she could pretend that she hadn't. The threshold was open.

  Last in the pile was a copy of the New England Journal of Medicine with an article by her grandmother on the effect of the microscopic on the macroscopic universe. What might seem to have been a random assortment of books was beginning to reveal a pattern, and the pattern seemed to Polly to have something to do with Anaral and the Ogam stones, though she did not think that her grandmother had had either Anaral or the Ogam stones in mind when she had chosen the readings, any more than she had had Polly in mind when she redecorated the bedroom.

  Polly studied for a couple of hours, making notes, absorbing, so that she would be able to answer her grandparents' questions. She was fully focused in the present moment, and she did not know what made her look at her watch. It was after eleven. One of her jobs was to drive to the post office for the mail. If something was needed for lunch or dinner, her grandmother would leave a note with the outgoing mail.

  She went downstairs. No one in the living room or kitchen. Her grandmother's lab door was closed, but Polly knocked.

  "What?" came the not very gracious response.

  "It's Polly. Is it all right if I get the mail and go to the store?"

  "Oh, Polly, come in. I didn't mean to snarl. I suppose it's no use wishing Nase had never retired and come to live with Louise." Her grandmother was sitting on her tall lab stool. There was an electron microscope in front of her, but the cover was over it and looked as though it had not been removed in years. She wore a tweed skirt, lisle stockings, a turtleneck, and a cardigan--a downto-earth country woman. And yet Polly knew that her grandmother delved deep into the world of the invisible, the strange sub-microscopic world of quantum mechanics. Her grandfather looked most comfortable in an old plaid flannel shirt, riding his tractor; and yet he had actually gone into space, orbiting the earth beyond the confines of the atmosphere. Her grandparents seemed to live comfortably in their dual worlds, the daily world of garden, kitchen, house, and pool, and the wider world of their scientific experiments. But Bishop Colubra had thrown them completely off course, Bishop Colubra and Polly's own unexpected journey through time.

  "Grand?"

  "I don't know, Polly. I don't know what your parents would say..." Her voice trailed off.

  "Just to the post office and the store, Grand. I didn't want to go without asking you."

  Her grandmother sighed. "Have I been living in a dream world? The only piece of equipment in my lab that gets any real use is the obsolete Bunsen burner, because it's become family tradition. Like your grandfather, I've been doing thought experiments." As Polly looked at her questioningly she continued, "Alex and I have sat in our separate worlds, doing experiments in our minds."

  "And?" Polly prodded.

  "If a thought experiment is capable of laboratory proof, then we're apt to write a paper about it, and then either we or another scientist will put it to the test. But quite a few thought experiments are so wildly speculative that it will be a long time before they can be proven."

  Which was more of a dream? The thought experiments in the minds of her grandparents and other scientists? Or the world of three thousand years ago which was touching on their own time?

  The lab was damp. Polly wondered how her grandmother stood it. The floor was made of great slabs of stone. There was a faded rag rug in front of two shabby easy chairs, and the lamp on the table between them gave at least an illusion of warmth. Only the permeating cold grounded her in present reality. "Grand?"

  "What is it, Polly?"

  "The post office?"

  "I suppose so. We can't keep you wrapped in cotton wool. I'm not even sure what we're afraid of."

  "That I'll get lost three thousand years ago? I don't think that's going to happen."

  "Neither do I. I still haven't given it my willing suspension of disbelief. But just the post office."

  "We're out of milk."

  "All right. The store. But check in with me when you get back."

  "Sure."

  Polly would keep her word and go only to the post office and the store. What she wanted was to talk to Anaral again. Go to the Grandfather Oak and see Karralys and his dog and hope that this time he would stay and talk with her.

  Thursday was All Hallows' Eve and Bishop Colubra took it with great seriousness. Samhain. A festival so old that it predated written history. Polly's skin prickled, not with fear now, but with expectation, though for what she was not sure. All she knew was that she was touching on that long-gone age as it rose out of the past to touch on another age, a present that was perhaps as brutal as any previous age, but was at least familiar.

  Her grandparents' car was elderly, and it took a few tries before the engine turned over and she shifted into reverse and pulled out of the garage. She went to the post office, to the store, speaking to the postmistress and the checkout girl, who were curious and friendly and already knew her by name.

  When she got home, her grandmother had left the lab and was making toasted cheese sandwiches for lunch. They had just finished eating and were putting the dishes away when they heard a car pull up noisily. Bis
hop Colubra.

  "Just a quick visit," he said. "Louise made me promise to come right back. I just wanted to bring Polly my Ogam notebook." He sat down at the table, indicated the chair next to him, and spread out the book between them.

  It was tidily and consistently done, vocabulary, and simple rules of grammar, and a few phrases and idioms. "Druids had a vast amount of information in their memories after long years of training, but Ogam was an oral language rather than a written one. What I have here is in no way pure Ogam. It's what Anaral and Karralys and the People of the Wind speak today--their today, that is."

  In three columns he had listed words used by Anaral's people before Karralys and Tav came; then there were words which were strictly Ogam and which Karralys and Tav had brought to the language; plus a short column of words which were still recognizable today; such as mount, glen, crag, bard, cairn.

  "You can read my writing?" he asked.

  "Yes, it's lots clearer than mine."

  "Fascinating, isn't it, to see how language evolves. I wonder how many of our English/American words will still be around in another thousand years or so." He stood up. "I must go."

  Polly picked up the notebook. "Thanks a lot, Bishop. I'm glad you've written out the pronunciation phonetically." She turned the pages, nodding, while he stood on one leg, scratching his shin with the other foot, looking more like a heron than ever.

  "It's pretty arbitrary of me to call it Ogam, but it seems simplest. The language has evolved fairly easily, a sort of lingua franca."

  "Bishop, you did teach Anaral to speak English?"

  "Shh." He put his foot down and glanced at Mrs. Murry, who was feeding the fire, and at Mr. Murry deep in an article in a scientific journal. He leaned over the chair toward Polly "She's very bright. She learned amazingly quickly."

  "But you've spent a lot of time with her."

  He glanced again at her grandparents, sighed deeply. "This is no time for secrecy, is it? Yes. Whenever the time gate has opened for me, I've gone through. But you--" He shook his head. "I have to go." He ambled toward the pantry door. "You will stay close to your grandparents?"

  She, too, sighed. "Yes, Bishop. I will."

  Chapter Four

  Polly spent several hours with Bishop Colubra's Ogam notebook. In the late afternoon her grandmother went swimming with her. Nothing happened. Anaral did not come. The evening passed quietly.

  On Tuesday the bishop asked her over for tea.

  "Go along," her grandmother said. "I know you're going stir-crazy here, and even though I don't think anything will happen while I'm with you, refusing to believe that three thousand years ago can touch directly on our own time, I'm just as happy to have you away from the pool."

  "You don't need the car?"

  "I'm not going anywhere. Louise's house is no distance as the crow flies. Our land is contiguous with hers. But by car you have to go down to the main road, drive west a couple of miles, and then turn uphill to the right the first chance you get."

  The phone rang. Zachary. Obviously wanting to talk. "Polly, I'm just so glad to be in touch with you again. You're like a bright light in these filthy days."

  "Autumn seems pretty glorious to me."

  "Not in an office that's a small box with no windows. I can't wait to see you."

  "I'm looking forward to it, too."

  "Polly, I don't want to hurt you."

  Her grandmother had left the kitchen and gone out to the lab, leaving Polly alone with the phone. "Why should you hurt me?"

  "Polly, it's my pattern. I hurt every girl I get involved with. I hurt you last summer."

  "Not really," she protested. "I mean, it turned out all right."

  "Because your friends came and rescued us after I'd upset that idiot little canoe. But you're right. That was minor, compared to--"

  He sounded so desperate that she asked, gently, "Compared to what, Zach?"

  "Polly, I'm a self-protective bastard. All I think of is my own good."

  "Well, don't we all, to some extent?"

  "To some extent, yes. But I take it beyond some extent."

  "Hey, are you at work?"

  "Yah, but don't worry, I'm alone in my box and things are slow today. I'm not goofing off. There's nothing for me to do right now. I just want to say that I'm going to try really hard not to hurt you."

  "Well. Okay. That's good."

  "You don't believe me."

  "Sure I believe you, that you're not going to hurt me."

  "No, what I mean is, how self-serving I am. Listen. Once I was with a girl I really liked. Her grandfather was sick, dying, really, and we went to the hospital to get blood for him, and she was upset, of course, really upset. And there was a little kid she knew there, and the little kid was having a seizure--well, Polly, the thing is that I really don't know what happened because I ran out on it."

  "What?" She kept her voice gentle.

  "I ran away. I couldn't take it. I got into my car and drove off. I just left her. That's the kind of putrid stinker I am."

  "Hey, Zach, don't put yourself down. That's in the past. You wouldn't do it again."

  "I don't know what I'd do, that's the point."

  "Listen, Zachary, don't get stuck in the past. Give yourself a chance. We do learn from our mistakes."

  "Do we? Do you really think so?"

  "Sure. I've made plenty. And I've learned from them."

  "Good, then. All I wanted to say is that I think you're terrific, and I want us to have a good time on Thursday, and I don't want to do or say anything to hurt you."

  "We'll have a good time on Thursday," she promised.

  "Okay, then. Till Thursday. I'm glad you're on this earth, Polly. You're good for me. Goodbye."

  She was baffled by his call. What on earth was he afraid he would do that would hurt her? She shrugged, went out to the pantry, and took the red anorak off the hook, knocked on the lab door. "Grand, can I help with anything before I go?"

  "Not a thing. Just be back in plenty of time for dinner. I'm sorry to be having an attack of mother hen-ism, but I can't wipe out your experience of crossing a time threshold just because it's totally out of the context of my own experience."

  "I keep asking myself--did it really happen? But, Grand, I think it did."

  "Go have tea with Nase." Her grandmother's voice was slightly acid. "Perhaps he'll see fit to tell you more than he's told us."

  As Polly drove up the hill to Dr. Louise's yellow house, surrounded by maples and beeches dropping yellow leaves, the bishop came out to meet her, led her in, took the red anorak.

  Dr. Louise's kitchen was smaller than the Murrys', and darker, but large enough for a sizable oak table by the window, and brightened by a surprising bouquet of yellow roses as well as copper pots and pans. The bishop took something lopsided out of the oven.

  "Alex's breadmaking challenged me. This is supposed to be Irish soda bread, but I don't think it's a success."

  "It'll probably taste wonderful," Polly said, "and I'm hungry."

  The bishop put the bread out, with butter, jam, and a pitcher of milk. "Tea, milk, or cocoa?"

  "Cocoa would be lovely. It's cold today."

  "Perfect autumn weather, pushing sixty. Sit down, be comfortable."

  Polly sat, while the bishop puttered about making two steaming mugs of cocoa, slicing the soda bread, which did indeed taste better than it looked, especially with homemade rose-hip jelly.

  "What happens to what's happened?" Polly asked him.

  "It's a big question," the bishop said. "I seem to have found one time gate. There may be countless others."

  "What was going on three thousand years ago?" she continued.

  "Abraham and Sarah left home," the bishop said, "and went out into the wilderness. But there were already Pharaohs in Egypt, and the Sphinx was asking her riddles."

  "What else?"

  "Gilgamesh," the bishop continued. "I think he was around then."

  "But he wasn't from anywhere around here.
"

  "Uruk," the bishop said. "Way on the other side of the world. And there was Sumerian poetry, lamenting the death of Tammuz, the shepherd god." He sliced more bread. "Tammuz's mother was the goddess Innini. Let me see. Back to Egypt. That wasn't anywhere around here, either. The great pyramid was built at Giza. The Cheops pyramid conforms in dimensions and layout to astronomical measurements--like Stonehenge, in astronomy, if not in architecture. The stars have taught us more than we realize." He was rambling on happily. "I wonder what it would be like on a planet where the atmosphere was too dense for the stars to shine through? This bread isn't that bad, after all."

  "Bishop, please." Polly smoothed jam onto her bread. "Maybe you've told my grandparents, but how did you meet Anaral and Karralys? When?"

  "It started last spring." The bishop folded his legs and made himself comfortable, a piece of bread and jelly in his hand. "I'd never before been so unbusy in my life, and I was wandering around looking for odd jobs to do and came across an old root cellar behind the barn where Louise parks her car. At least, it was called a root cellar, and in the days when it was assumed that one could protect oneself from a nuclear attack some of the old root cellars came into reuse as bomb shelters."

  "Fat lot of help they'd be," Polly said.

  "Louise never bothered with hers. She always said that when she retired she'd have a garden and put it back to its original use, a storage place for tubers. But the thing is, some of the old root cellars were not built as root cellars."

  "What, then?"

  "They were dug centuries before the people we know as the first settlers came over from England, and they were dug to be holy places, where the priests or druids or whoever they were could go to commune with the dead, and with the gods of the underworld. They believed that those who had died were still available for advice and help, back for countless generations."