A Table of Green Fields (14 page)

—If through color; that be the one way, to butt through yellow into blue, through red to green. T'other way's to back up a little, find a place to get through, and wiggle in. Through the curve, at the tide. Even's one, odd the other.

The troll came closer. Mr. Churchyard could see a spatter of freckles on its cheeks and nose. It cautiously touched his walking stick.

—Ash, it said. I did not know the tree. Always on this side, one moon with another, bayn't ye?

—This side of what? Mr. Churchyard asked quietly.

—Ye've never been inside the mullein, have ye? Never in the 
horehound, the milkweed, the spurge? What be you?

—I am a Dane. What if I were to ask you what you are? You are to my eye a boy, with all the accessories, well fed and healthy. Are you not cold, wearing nothing?

The troll raised a leg, holding its foot in its hand, so that its shin was parallel to the forest floor. It grinned, with or without irony Mr. Churchyard could not say. Its thin eyebrows went up under its hair.

—Let me say, Mr. Churchyard said, that I am certain you are in my imagination, not there at all, though you smell of sage or borage, and that you are a creature for which our science cannot account. When we think, we bind. I have not yet caught you. I don't even know what or who you are. Now where does that get us?

—But I am, the troll said.

—I believe you. I want to believe you. But this is the nineteenth century. We know everything. There is no order of beings to which you could belong. Do you know the god?

The troll thought, a finger to its cheek.

—Be it a riddle? What have ye for me if I answer right?

—How could it be a riddle if I ask you if you know the god? You do, or you don't.

—Be you looking hereabouts for him?

—I am.

—What be his smell? What trees be his kinfolk?

—I've never seen him. No description of him exists.

—How wouldst ye know did you find him?

—I would know him. There would be a feeling.

—Badger, squirrel, fox, weasel, hopfrog, deer, owl, grebe, goose, one of them? Or pine, oak, elderberry, willow, one of them? Elf, kobold, nisse, one of us? Spider, midge, ant, moth?

The troll then arranged itself, as if it had clothes to tidy the fit of, as if it were a child in front of a class about to recite. It sang. Its voice had something of the bee in it, a recurring hum and buzz, like the
Barockfagott
in Monteverdi's
Orfeo, 
and something of the ringdove's hollow treble. The rhythm 
was a country dance's, a jig. But what were the words?

Mr. Churchyard made out
the horse sick of the moon
and
the owl who had numbers.
The refrain sounded Lappish.
One fish, and another, and a basket of grass.

When the song was over, Mr. Churchyard bent forward in an appreciative bow. Where had he heard the melody, at some concert of folk music? At the Roskilde market? And had he not seen the troll itself, astoundingly dirty, in patched clothes and blue cap, on the wharf at Nyhavn?

And then there was no troll, only the forest floor and the damp green smell of the wood, and the ticking of his watch.

That the god existed Socrates held to be true with an honest uncertainty and deep feeling. We, too, believe at the same risk, caught in the same contradiction of an uncertain certainty. But now the uncertainty is different, for it is absurd, and to believe with deep feeling in the absurd is faith. Socrates's knowing that he did not know is high humor when compared to something as serious as the absurd, and Socrates's deep feeling for the existential is cool Greek wit when compared to the will to believe.

In the summer they bring the artillery and fire out to sea. The officers in their red coats arrive the day before on glossy horses. The caissons and powder wagons come through the woods at night. In the morning the cannons sit battery by battery on the beach.

The sergeants give the orders for unlimbering and spreading trails. The gunner opens the breech and seats the shell and charge. A lieutenant gives the quadrant and deflection to a corporal who shouts them to the gunners who run the barrels up and wind them to the side with a crank on a wheel. An order to fire at the top of the corporal's lungs and the gunners pull the lanyards. The cannons crack and jump. A line of splashes far out at sea.

I watched all this from my place in the bushes on the hill above. The old officer pulled his moustache. There was a grand haze into which the cannon smoke ran like ink in water. The thrushes and sparrows ripped from the bushes when the cannons boomed. The gulls fluttered and scattered. I was Robinson Crusoe observing from my covert the army of the emperor that had come to practise its aim on the shores of my island.

Once when an officer came to the door I could see close up his sword and shoulder belt. His eyes were grey with lashes like a girl. The colonel would be obliged for the loan of a lemon had we such an article to spare. Thesmond glided away and returned with a lemon on a salver. It was wrapped in a twist of tissue. Thesmond nodded briefly to the charm of his smile.

Why ever a lemon? Matilda would ask such a question. It was her nature. She gave me one of her looks. Thesmond said 
that it was for the colonel's drink before dinner. To Papa he would have said for the colonel's preprandial impotation. Tie your tongue. So colonels had dinner out there in their tents on the scrub. I had seen the soldiers file past the field kitchens and eat on the rocks out of tin plates. Sometimes they wrestled.

Toward evening they stripped naked and swam in the sea. Some were as white as plaster and some were as brown as an acorn. The officers bathed separately. Orderlies had towels for them when they came panting and knocking water from their ears.

The officer who came to the door on his roan was as hairy as a rug down his front when he undressed for the sea. Thickest just under his throat and across his chest and between his legs. I saw his peter good.

I could still hear the cannon at night along with the dull roar of the sea. Over two hills and a valley. The road to the beach is off our road to the turnpike. The caissons rattle and creak along it back to wherever they come from. Back to Stockholm. Back to Goteborg. In a week the ruts and marks will be smoothed by the wind.

Next day the gypsies go over the place looking and picking up. They come from nowhere like the artillery and go off as suddenly. They will steal me if I let them see me. Matilda can recall the names of boys taken off by the gypsies. Nor must I go near the artillery because of the gunpowder and the talk.

The artillery came this year after Stilt. How could I have escaped Stilt to see them? He comes in the winter and stays for months. He replaced Fröken Gomber who taught me when I was little. Svensk and arithmetic. Geography and history. Stilt teaches me geometry and rhetoric. Latin and compound interest. He himself goes to school when he is not here. He is writing a thesis in divinity which is about matters which he says I could not yet begin to comprehend. Free will and destiny. Election and grace.

Stilt bends and kisses Grandmama's old hand to her mer
riment though her scrunch of fun is all gone when he stands straight again. He comments on the golden weather. She says that it will change. She asks him to witness the instability of the candle flames and the thickness of the squirrels' coats. There is moreover an early red in the larches.

For Stilt I am ordered into jacket and tie. I must have clean fingernails. He cleans his while we read Latin. He smells of peppermint. Vercingetorix. Helvetia. Cisalpine Gauls.

In the summer there is no Stilt.

Papa comes and goes and stays only a little while. He is very busy. He always brings wonderful things. The microscope which Stilt has taught me to use is the most wonderful though I have liked better my model ship.

Grandmama is in her room. She is little and cold all the time. Every morning we kneel around her and say our prayers. We hear Scripture and we hear Swedenborg. And she gets off the subject. She will say in the middle of scripture that titled coaches used to come to the door. Thesmond brings the big bible and opens it on a table that sits over Grandmama's knees. Thessalonians. Galatians. We hear that all of heaven is one angel just as all of mankind is one man except that he fell away from grace.

With Stilt I look at leaves under the microscope. I draw a stoma. An arrangement of cells at the stem and at the edge of the leaf.

Papa looks like Sir Charles Wheatstone in the stereopticon.

In the summer with no Stilt I found it easy to sneak away to the stables to find Tarpy the miller's son. He is not the miller's son but the miller's bastard. The miller flies into a rage if you tease him about whose son he is. I have heard that he is the bastard of the miller's wife got on her by a drummer who sells needles and thread. Old Sollander raised him on our place. He would say tried to raise him.

Sometimes when I find him he has his usual crazy sweetness in his eyes and tears too which he wipes with his rotten 
sleeves. Sollander has crisscrossed welts up his legs. Some on his arms. And one across his forehead beading blood. He is older than I but a baby. The predikant says that we are not to associate with him. He is vile and depraved. I learned that for myself down by the river collecting beetles. He was there smiling as wide as the urchins in the funny German picture books. He was wearing my cast off breeches mended beyond mending more and a jacket that had been Papa's. His hair was cut any which a way and combed with fingers if combed at all. His smile bloomed into huggermugger. He asked to see my peter and showed me his. I felt lucky and liked his friendliness and his interest.

I think I knew that his welts were something to do with his peter and his playing with it lots. I knew that the predikant had given Sollander leave to beat this vileness out of Tarpy. So I balked. And knew that my stubbornness was a false face.

I lied and said that I didn't do such things. All the while there was to my mind a rammy prestige that went with his goatishness. Of a man who butts down doors with his head you can only say that he butts down doors with his head. But he is not a niddering about it and does it with a will. Tarpy had his peter out of his fly. It was bigger and longer than mine.

In times of temptation you must think of the angels. Their wide ears are always before your mouth. They move beside you tread for tread. No man is ever utterly alone. They are in trees. They love a thicket and a still place. Yet Grandmama says they have houses of their own for all their sitting in nooks of ours and cities of their own.

She has seen her grandfather the sea captain against the ceiling of the library as if he were floating upward and could get no farther. She says I must look for the angels in my rambles. She says that with my innocent eyes I should be able to see the most distinguished spirits. Gold or silver they will seem to my eyes. I am to remember that in seeing one angel I am seeing all of heaven.

The angels are clothed in a vesture of light. The best are 
dressed in clinging fire. All is by degree with Swedenborg and the angels inmost to God are naked and are the beautifullest of all. I think I have seen what Grandmama and old Emmanuel mean by angel. You go by signs. The sign of an angel is
influx. 
One of her words. One of his words. There is an influx of angel body into a hedge of wild roses when the light is level at morning and when it is downward at noon and level again toward evening. There are tall angels in the larches. Round angels in sunflowers.

Stirk
everybody said he was. I could not tell luck from pitfall. I followed him down the thistle path to the willows by the river. He went to a sand bank where the bears fish in winter. He pushed his breeches down. I played at chucking rocks and poking around the place as if it were new to me. I gave several interested glances and said I had to be going. He looked hurt and had just been thrashed. That we were not friends did not help my feelings as I walked away. If he was a halfwit I was a liar. Two kinds of shame tussled in me. But I kept climbing the path. Stubbornness is always a kind of treason.

I could not look into the microscope without thinking of him. He was in the stereopticon. He haunted me under the covers. Everywhere. Let the air be as thick with angels as snow I would still be jealous of his doings. Better a halfwit than a prig. I caught glimpses of him along the river or on the knolls. He was always alone.

I made myself a promise. I would not walk away the next time. The promise itself was a pleasure.

The pounce came one afternoon when I saw Tarpy squatting in the river sand drawing with a stick. All I saw from above was the mess of hair. Strudel as it was you could see the verticillus commanding the whorl. I chucked a rock over his head to splash just beyond him. He looked miserable and lonely. He jumped at the splash and I hollered cheerfully to reassure him. His eyes were suspicious. I looked at his drawing. An eddy of lines like water or hair.

He asked me right off if I wanted to see a fox's den. I 
squatted beside him to add closeness to my bravery. Did he feel like playing with his peter? I whispered. He grinned.

I led this time and in a roundabout way that was meant to be casual brought us to our barn from the back where a ladder goes up to the loft. We looked at the tracks of a hare on the way. He said it was a buck in its first year. He showed me deer droppings. An owl's nest.

The loft was dim and cozy. I was sorry to be so clean when he was shoddy and dirty. I shamelessly took my breeches off and made myself comfortable on a heap of feed sacks. My forehead and the back of my neck tingled because I'd not done it with anybody watching. Only in bed or in the copse or back of the stables. Or secretly in my breeches. Tarpy used a slower pull and tigged his chin with his tongue.