“What’s that?” Hrothgar asked at last, looking up from his breakfast and indicating the Bananagrams bag.
“Bananagrams,” said Aeschere exasperatedly. “For games night?”
“Oh, right.” Hrothgar ate a bit more cereal.
“Which reminds me. I think we need to talk about Grendel,” Aeschere began pointeldy, when he grew tired of waiting for one of the others to say something.
“He is a veritable plague on this hall!” announced Hrothgar, who liked to say his six epic things before breakfast. He even banged his fist on the table for extra drama. Aeschere wondered if he knew that there was a cereal battle-axe and a bit of dragon stuck to his beard.
Hrothulf looked at his lord sourly. “If you’re trying to say that he’s bloody annoying, I couldn’t agree more. Remember the art exhibition?”
They did.
Grendel liked modern art, and he’d made them go to an exhibition, and look at it. For hours. And he had got especially preachy when Unferth pointed out that, if you squinted, the installation in the middle of the room looked a bit like a deranged squirrel, as constructed by toddlers. The sniggers that followed that comment were quickly quelled by the glare Grendel had levelled at them over his programme.
“Whatever,” he’d said, rolling his eyes. “You just don’t get it.” Then he had proceeded to ignore them and argue heatedly about something called ‘Postmodernism’ with an equally pretentious man in a black turtle neck.
It had been a trying afternoon all round.
“And I didn’t even get the cake,” the Lord of the Danes mourned, sounding genuinely distressed at this sad fact.
Hrothgar had had his heart set on the impressive Black Forest gateau in the gallery cafe, which had looked like a considerably-sized mountain range, made of layers of whipped cream, chocolate and cherries.
Grendel, however, had absolutely refused to let them stay in the coffee shop, treating them to a long lecture on overpriced museum cafes and artificial flavourings.
As they were leaving, Grendel had shot a particularly eviscerating look at the growing group of turtle-necked people congregating in the middle of the café, holding glasses of imported wine.
“See you later,” he told them, endeavouring to look especially underwhelmed. “Or never. I don’t really care.”
No one had bothered replying – Aescere had to wonder if that would have been considered as much of a social gaffe as visibly enjoying oneself.
“Just the layers of chocolate alone…” Hrothgar said wistfully, gazing dreamily into the middle distance, before coming-to abruptly. “By Scyld Scefing, this cannot be allowed to go on! So, what do we do?”
They sat in reflective silence.
“We can all stop talking to him – maybe he’ll go away,” offered Unferth hopefully.
“Wealhtheow said we could write him a letter and explain how we feel,” said Hrothgar.
“Sure,” Hrothulf replied snidely. “And then we can all have a group hug and go out for ice cream.”
“I was going to ask Yrsa out for ice cream,” said Unferth wistfully, doodling on the table with his finger. “But then she threw that pot at my head. Do you think she likes me?”
“No,” said Hrothulf.
“But – ”
“Look, we don’t care if she likes you!” Aeschere snapped. “Could we please just get back to Grendel?”
“Why are you so touchy?” Unferth sounded affronted.
“He’s always like this in the mornings,” said Hrothulf dismissively. “Do you want to have a sword fight, later? I can show you –”
Aeschere wondered if it might not be better to just go hide in his room and wait for Grendel to eat the lot of them. “Could we focus for just a second? Unless you want Grendel to get on with his new project to hipsterise Heorot.”
His words were greeted with complete silence.
“To…what?” Hrothgar said at last, voice a bit shaky and cereal forgotten. Hroth was very sensitive about Heorot – it had taken him a very long time to get all that gold together in one place.
“You heard me,” Aeschere said, enjoying the horror on their faces. Serves them right, he thought. “It was just after he promised to show us tricks on his new tall bike. He said last night that he thought the place could do with some thrift-shop furniture, and maybe a herb garden. He said he was so over the gold.”
“Over…the gold?” the Lord of the Danes echoed faintly.
“Oh, yes. Not that he believes in redecorating – but he said he was going to do it ironically. He’s going to replace that sword hanging over your throne with a rainbow-coloured ukulele.”
“The sword of Scyld?!” Hrothgar was slowly turning purple.
Aeschere wondered if he’d overdone it, but on further consideration decided to plunge right on. “That’s the one. And he’s going to paint bits of his poetry on the walls, and maybe a smiley face over the ceiling. He said he’ll feel ‘way inspired’ writing his new novel, sitting ironically under the smiley face. Because the state of the world is nothing to smile about, you see.”
Then Aeschere sat back and watched his friends twitch. He enjoyed it very much. He wondered what they would do next, when a guard interrupted them. There was a hero outside, waiting to speak to King Hrothgar.
His name was supposedly Beowulf, though it came with an entire genealogy attached: this was usually as reliable a mark of quality in a hero as an ancestral sword. The guard didn’t say it, but Aeschere was willing to bet the hero would be brawny, smarmy and none too bright. Stupidity was another hallmark of a good hero.
And how lucky that he should turn up like that!
Aescere looked at the cheery yellow Bananagrams bag and tried not to smile. He could practically smell the palm trees.
“What excellent timing,” said Hrothgar, who was apparently thinking along the same lines. The king narrowed his eyes in a way that was uncharacteristically calculating.
“Beowulf, you say? Do let him in.”
The barely-seen world
Olympia was created out of alchemy and science, by a professor and an eye-glass maker.
For twenty years, they had crafted her out of clever bits of metal and glass, and brought her to life with sigils and ancient formulas which the professor had found in some forgotten tome. Finally satisfied with their creation, they wound up the clockwork within her, and she could move.
Sometimes she could move for a whole day, almost as a human might, though so much more precisely. Each step was a fall of the pendulum. One could set the clock by her every gesture. The professor had praised this as a most perfect kind of movement, but it was too perfect to be human: such perfection could never be mistaken for a living thing. When she sang or played the piano, Olympia was almost a sentient metronome, except that she wasn’t quite alive.
There had been no true magic in her creation and her purpose had been solely to dance, and draw a crowd: the professor had thought that she could make a fine marriage one day and he could profit from the connection and the fortune. For what gentleman could honourably withdraw an offered suit, even if his coveted bride proved to be somewhat less than human?
The eye-glassmaker had wanted her to be exhibited at royal courts around the world as a curiosity: emperors, queens and shahs would surely pay most handsomely for such a fascinating automaton.
Neither the eye-glass maker nor the professor had paused long enough to notice that they had created something just a fraction more alive than they had intended. This, she later decided, was the nature of her particular curse.
It was in Berlin that the professor, who was Italian and went by the name of Spallanzani, received an appointment to teach physics and alchemy. He arrived at the university with much pomp and presented Olympia as his daughter. And it was in Berlin also that she met his student, Nathanael, who would look into her eyes so strangely and who gave her words beyond her own. In those days, all human glances were very much beyond her understanding. Nathanael lived across the str
eet from the professor, and he would sit for hours ignoring his tomes and watch Olympia through the window of her room. But that was before she’d even learnt his name.
When they crafted her, the professor and the eye-glass maker, who was also Italian and went by the name of Coppola, had not thought to give her many words of her own, for what need had she of them? Olympia knew a few songs and a scattering of romantic phrases carefully selected to draw in a man of big fortune and little sense. The eye-glass maker had a harsh, grating voice. When he and the professor bickered over the best way to profit by their genius invention, they never spared a glance for her inanimate form.
Following his appointment to the august faculty, the professor took a fashionable house in town, for he was not a poor man, and had a lady’s maid hired from the village, to take care of Olympia, along with other servants. He even sent Olympia to town to have a set of gowns fitted. The students were wealthy sons, after all, who were often in expectation of titles and inheritance: they would surely have certain expectations of potential brides also. Olympia did not speak to any of the students and she never met with other young ladies.
(The eye-glass maker frequently insisted this was a waste of profit, that they were better off going to Vienna, where there would be a clockwork exhibition.)
Next, the professor had a portrait painted of his so-called daughter, to spread word of her legendary beauty. Berlin society was instantly taken with the mysterious lady, who had so fond a parent that he never let her out of his sight. She would surely be launched into society that very season, and what a splendid party her dear papa would throw her!
Olympia had had no opinions of the portrait then, because she had not yet known about opinions, and ‘dislike’ had been a foreign concept to her. The painting had taken pride of place in the drawing room.
Olympia’s face had been perfectly executed and she’d been dressed in mounds of ribbons and lace. The artist had even managed to paint an expression of startling, lovely melancholy into her glass eyes. Proud of his creation, he told her that his paints had captured the perfect bloom of her youth for all eternity – on canvas, she would never grow old.
He was amazed, he said, though his eyes had been preoccupied with his brushes, by Olympia’s ability to sit still as death for hours on end. Never had he met so calm and patient a lady.
It was around then that she’d first glimpsed the young man. Every evening, the student sat at his window, which was directly opposite hers, looking into her room and murmuring feverishly about pretty eyes. He had a little bronze telescope, which made his gaze soulless as her own. The professor and eye-glass maker both seemed well aware of his presence: they only called her ‘Olympia’ when there were others nearby to hear it.
In Berlin, she was expected to attend tea circles and to be glimpsed shopping in town. Once, the professor even had an elderly matron come to call. She partook of biscuits and polite conversation before remarking on how well put-together and perfectly mannered a girl the professor had brought up. A paragon of gentle, quiet femininity, surely, and all without a mother to guide her into ladylike obedience! The professor had laughed, pleased and just a little mocking.
“Alas, baroness, I could not possibly take credit: why, my dear Olympia sprang as Athena Polias, fully formed from the head of Zeus,” he’d said.
The jest made the eye-glass maker, who had also been invited, twitch and nearly spill his coffee.
It was not long before the professor decided that Olypmia must indeed have a coming out, as all other young ladies of good family, and that he would host a ball for her and a concert featuring the finest musicians in town. Olympia, too, would play.
The maidservants spent a week opening up every window in the old house, letting in air and sunlight, sweeping, and dusting. Pieces of furniture were brought in, and others removed. The professor summoned a famous seamstress to see about upholstery, and a myriad cooks and bakers to see to the dishes.
Invitations were sent out to every young man of an even remotely eligible stature, so that in the end half the university was set to attend and the street filled with lights and carriages as guests began to arrive. The eye-glass maker watched the whole with disapproving eyes.
Gowns, gloves and shoes had been ordered, and a beautiful Viennese piano. Olympia must dance, the professor had decreed. And dance she did, in a gown like the winter sky, with lacing that might have encumbered her had she any need of air, her wrap having fallen off her pale shoulders as she walked the figures with many an eligible partner. If they were suspiciously quiet throughout the sets, she had no way of knowing it.
The eyeglass-maker made it plain that he was not at all pleased with the proceedings and spent the evening in the card room. But the professor watched Olympia like a starved bird of prey, insisting that she play the piano and sing an aria di bravura for the guests before the dancing began. This might have put her to the blush if she were capable of such.
The professor did not believe in modesty when it came to making one’s mark on society and he had hoped that she would eventually snare a duke for her husband. A husband who did not mind her mechanical movements and the iciness of her touch – for you cannot make a mechanical thing warm no matter how good your alchemy. If the gentlemen did not linger around her longer than was strictly polite, this too Olympia did not notice.
The student was there, as she had somehow known he would be, watching her with his strange eyes, calling out her name during her aria and engaging her for two sets, and then scandalously, one more yet, before leading her to a chair and bursting forth with a declaration of passion. His feverish eyes did not seem to see her, but his words were new and strange.
“Oh,” she said in response to his inexplicable declaration , for she did not have any better words, and she did not known quite what he meant. His words were an alien thing, far out of her reach.
His name was Nathanael, he said. Then, he spoke to her of souls: of a most perfect understanding in which her soul mirrored his exactly, like well-matched stars. It made her think of souls and wonder what having one might mean. Surely, it was a prerequisite for being human. The strange thought made Olympia sigh, though she had never sighed before because she did not breathe. For a moment, there was an approximation of warmth in her.
Though, perhaps, it was just imagination and the fervour of his eyes that made her a fraction warmer. Nathanael had such strange, liquid eyes: as if he saw things no one else ever would. He sat with her for hours even after all the other guests had taken their leave.
It was just the two of them, as though they were all there was of the world. There were only a few lights left to illuminate the magnificent ballroom. He peered into her eyes, reading volumes there all of his own imagining. Then, he pressed his trembling lips to hers as though he meant to bring her life or warmth, or perhaps words. Olympia drew Nathanael closer, drinking of his words and hoping that she might gain some understanding, some life from him. He was so very, very human.
Nathanael came back the next day and the next. He asked her for love, but words still would not come to her, though they were closer now, coursing through her. Such strange words they were. He told Olympia that it was only in her than he could find his true self, but it was in his words, which were opaque like riddles, that Olympia found hers. He read to her poems, and tales of knights and damsels and fate, of things she had never known or and things she had never considered.
The professor wore a satisfied smile all that week, though Nathanael was not a duke. Whatever it was that Olympia could not understand of the expression in the student’s eyes seemed to compel him to visit her every day and talk of things he learned and things that preoccupied his thoughts. From him she learnt new words she had not had before: she learnt of bitterness and joy, guilt, vengeance, hate, friendship and affection.
Sometimes she tried to form these new ideas with her lips, but he never noticed her attempts to speak, for he was lost in the tangle of his own fantastical narratives and di
d not see her. He did not seem to mind Olympia’s lack of conversation. Instead, he praised her understanding, the deep earnestness of feeling with which she watched him – had there ever been a more empathetic girl?
She had never thought of empathy and so was surprised to be accused of it.
Nathanael was almost Olympia’s only company. The other students, she heard from her maid, found her dull and stupid – lackadaisical, though passingly pretty. This was surely not a good thing, and it was further proof that she could never understand them. Olympia was quite incapable of flushing in embarrassment or even of knowing when such a thing was appropriate. The maid mistakenly complimented her forbearance, which was another thing Olympia could not quite grasp.
Days stretched on until one day, when the professor and the eye-glass maker were caught up in another argument over her eyes and her clockwork, the whole came to a head. The eye-glass maker had had quite his fill of Berlin, and the whole absurd charade, and he was off to Vienna, before the exhibition closed, to exhibit Olympia and earn his just rewards at court.
They could not settle between them who had claim to what parts, as though she were a derelict house being torn apart for reuse. Then, Nathanael was there, in the room with them. He had appeared wild and pale like a ghost, shouting mad things. There was a struggle, but Olympia’s eyes were gone and the eye-glass maker stole her in the ensuing confusion. The last words she hear were Nathanael, muttering deliriously about clockwork women and the dread Sandman coming to claim his bright human eyes.
Out on the road, the eye-glass maker gave her new eyes to replace the ones that had been lost in the scuffle, because he knew that it was easy to fix a broken doll. He spoke to her of his marvellous plans, not because he thought her an animate thing or capable of understanding, but because he needed to voice his gleeful triumph and it didn’t in the least matter if his audience comprised entirely of a clockwork woman.
He meant, he bragged, to exhibit her with other curios, with clockwork birds and tigers, musicians and dancers. There would be many, many other automatons from all around the world, who drew and sang but who did not think or wonder about warmth and human things.
From Fairies and Creatures of the Night, Guard Me Page 13