Disturbances in the Field (12 page)

Don looks dubious. What vengeful people, he may be thinking. How un-Christian indeed. He is too polite to say it, of course. Perhaps it is simply all the spilling and banging and scratching that distresses him. His own well-bred children, Roger and Cynthia, whose ancestors were never slaves, are having a fine time, joining the horseplay with the rest. Gabrielle, at peace with herself at last, looks on benignly. Nina and George look nostalgic, he for his youth, she for the youth she did not have. Maybe they will go back to her apartment afterwards and make love. They had a brief summer affair towards the end of college, and from time to time they revive it, pointlessly, Nina tells me. But it does cheer them up. I can’t imagine how it feels, what is called casual sex. Nina says it’s not really so casual, with her and George. They are very fond of each other. “Maybe you should get married,” I once quipped. “Married! We can’t take each other that seriously.”

We sing “Dayenu,” enumerating God’s miracles, among which are blood, vermin, boils, locusts, and so on. Had he merely delivered us—enough! But he delivered us and castigated them. The deliverance, the manna, the Sabbath—all that would have been enough. But he gave us the commandments, the temple, the land of Israel. Enough! Enough! The table is full and rowdy. Is this also a song of fullness of heart? Darkness? Hail? Slaying of the firstborn? Forty years in the desert? Thank you so much for the deliverance. But enough. A little too much, maybe.

“Next year in Jerusalem,” Victor concludes, having skipped the boring, holier parts.

“Next year a senior,” cries Althea. “Thank God.”

“Next year in Paris,” murmurs Gabrielle.

“Next year the ski trip,” says Vivian. “I’ll be in fifth grade.”

“Still the ski trip? It’s ten months away. That’s a long time, Vivie.”

“That’s why I said
next
year the ski trip.”

She will not rest content until the school’s chartered bus whisks her off at dawn with the other fifth and sixth-graders, to somewhere north, three hours out of the city. The ski trip is a hallowed tradition; the children come back at night exhausted and windburned, their noses running. Some stay home and cough for a few days. Then they talk about it for a month. This February was Alan’s first time. He spared Vivie no detail of the day’s joys—the bumpy, tortuous, singing bus ride, the chair lifts, the hot chocolate, the ever-more-difficult hills. He tortured her with details, in the name of brotherly love. Vivie regained her good spirits after a week or so, but her ardor for the ski trip, marinating in envy, lies simmering beneath. Next year. I only hope she does not break a leg.

Althea and Evelyn and I bring on the feast, and some time after the last macaroon has been consumed, after the kids have found the hidden matzo and been rewarded, after Elijah has been and gone and the sated company, sprawled on pillows on the floor, begins to think of rising and heading home, Alan announces that at camp to end a celebration they would join hands and do a simple dance while they sang “Simple Gifts.”

“Dance?” says Don. “I don’t think I can move.”

But Gabrielle charms away his inertia and Alan prevails. The dance is so simple, hardly more than a stately, circular parade breaking every few bars into revolving couples, that even Phil agrees to do it. Alan plays the song for us and those who know the words sing. It happens that Nina knows the words from her childhood spent in Sunday school. George knows the words from singing in an amateur group of political activists and pacifists. Roger knows the words from the Amherst chorus. Gabrielle knows the words from having written a college paper on Martha Graham’s choreography for
Appalachian Spring.
It astonishes me that so many people have known for a long time what I only lately learned. Dancing in a stately parade around the disorderly, wine-sprinkled table, we repeat the verses till by the end everyone knows the words.

’Tis a gift to be simple

’Tis a gift to be free

’Tis a gift to come round

Where we want to be.

And when we find ourselves

In the place that is right

We will be in the valley

Of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gained

To bow and to bend

We shall not be ashamed.

To turn and to turn

Will be our delight

Till by turning, turning

We come round right.

“I don’t know if I like all this talk about bowing and bending,” says Don. George tells him genially, “Ah, shut up and keep singing.” He looks a bit startled but obeys. And so they all go home. Our Seder may not have been faithful to the letter; we even had dry wine instead of sweet. Nonetheless Elijah came and drank.

“I’m going to become a Quaker when I’m older,” says Alan, clearing the table.

Victor, aproned at the sink, looks over his shoulder at me. We telegraph: That would be odd, wouldn’t it, but we don’t need to think about it now, do we? Plenty of time.

“That’s nice, dear.”

“Yuk, how could you sit through all those silent meetings?” says Vivie. “They are so boring.”

“How would you know? You hardly ever came.”

“Well, what’s it your business?”

“Kids, please, it’s late,” says Victor. “We’re all tired.”

“But it’s true. She hardly ever came. The counselors used to go looking for her.”

“I can be silent alone,” says Vivie.

“Yeah, it’s not hard when you’re sleeping in your bunk.”

“Oh, don’t bicker. We had such a nice time. Quakers are peaceful, Alan.”

“I might decide to have a bar mitzvah anyway,” he adds.

Evelyn and Althea giggle. Even Phil grins.

“That’s nice, dear.” Plenty of time for that one too. Obviously what he likes is ceremony. Having things. The Seder was his idea.

“Good night,” I say to Vivie, tucking her in. “Sweet dreams, sweet Vivian.”

“I’m going to dream about the ski trip.” And pulls the covers over her head. How can she breathe that way?

G
ABRIELLE WANTED US TO
take a course in Chaucer with her. She had decided to major in English—in case the dancing did not work out, she could always be a writer. Chaucer? Nina frowned. Aristotle didn’t say whether friendship went that far. We were juniors now, supposed to be serious and focused. Nina had not gone home over the summer but worked in a laboratory in the city. The nervous smile was growing extinct, and in its place was a new species, wry and enigmatic. Chaucer. She smiled doubtfully. “Just three hours a week,” said Gaby.

“No one would take Organic Chemistry or Logic with me. No one cares about the beauties of the basic syllogism. Sixty-four permutations!”

“They’re too hard for us,” Gaby said craftily. “Chaucer is entertainment.
Divertissement.
”

The professor’s head was large, heavy with the weight of his scholarship, and his body was fleshy, but he moved with a sprightliness befitting his subject. Just as Professor Boles had seemed close kin to the pre-Socratics, Professor Mansfield appeared to live and move and have his being in the days when that plucky band wended on their pilgrymage to Caunterbury with ful devout corage, and to regard us—our strange garb, our unadorned accents—as curiosities. Like the Host of the
Canterbury Tales,
he was bold of his speche, and wys, and wel ytaught; like the Host he praised us for being so merry a company, and offered to guide us on our journey, on which no translations were permitted; we had to learn Middle English. My text was soon dense with scribbled definitions, the pages richly ornamented like a medieval manuscript. We were required to memorize twelve lines from every tale, and each day, to open the class, Professor Mansfield would choose someone to perform. At the back of the room sat a cluster of males who had crossed the street into our domain. I knew two of them slightly from the Gilbert and Sullivan Society, George Silver and Ray Fielding; one of the pleasures of the course was hearing Ray deliver his Middle English lines with the brilliance of a born actor.

Diverting, as Gabrielle had promised, until “The Clerk’s Tale” of Patient Griselda, a parable teaching how to submit to the reversals of fortune, to take whatever adversity God sends with “virtuous sufferance.” Griselda was a gauntlet tossed down from the fourteenth century; she roused in us something deeper than even the philosophers had done.

The story opens with the young marquis Walter being chastised by his subjects for not taking a wife to ensure his lineage. The idea of marriage does not thrill him. “To that I nevere erst thoughte streyne me. I me rejoysed of my liberte.” But he bows to the greater good. The wedding day is set, the feast prepared, and still Walter’s choice is kept secret: the lowliest maiden in the kingdom, Griselda, lowly in station but not in virtue. In the home of her father (widowed? no mother is in evidence, and cleverly so), Griselda tends the sheep, picks herbs, and keeps house, never idle, never sheltering a mean thought from dawn to dusk; in the breast of her virginity, says Chaucer, was enclosed “rype and sad corage,” which does not mean ripe and sad courage, as well it might, given the circumstances, but a mature and sober heart. In one of her frequent surges of humility, she hopes to steal a moment from her chores to watch the wedding procession pass by. But lo, the marquis stops at her very doorstep! With some distaste, attendants strip Griselda of her poor garments and outfit her as a fine lady. She makes an excellent and unpretentious marquise, appeasing all discord and rancor with her mature and sober heart. Soon she bears a daughter; well, at least she is not barren, and everyone hopes for a better issue the next time around.

Now, Walter is possessed of a strange urge (a “merveillous desir,” Chaucer calls it) to test his wife’s sworn obedience. He tells her, falsely, that his people resent her and her daughter for their lowly birth. He sends a sinister man to carry the baby off. Griselda agrees with no complaint. She and the baby, she tells her husband, are “Youre owene thyng; werketh after youre wille.” She asks only to kiss the child, and begs the sinister man to bury the body rather than leave it to be shredded by wild beasts. Four years later she bears a son. Again Walter feels the “merveillous desir” for a test, and the son is snatched away. “Whan I first cam to yow, right so,” says Griselda to her husband, “Lefte I my wyl and al my libertee.” Walter’s third test involves forging a papal bull that permits him to put aside his wife and take another, of more fitting birth and rank. Patient Griselda wishes him luck. But she utters a sentiment of regret:

O goode God! How gentil and how kynde Ye semed by youre speche and youre visage The day that maked was oure mariage!

She has one request. Walter has said she may take with her the dowry that she brought him. But all she brought, she reminds him, was her body, and surely he would not wish her to leave the palace naked. In a career of passivity it is her single brilliant moment. What she says, in modern English, is, “You could not do so shameful a thing as to have that very womb where your children lay be displayed all bare, as I walk before the people.” Such moments confounded our indignation. How could it be—a great poet with an offensive theme! In any case, Walter allows Griselda a “smok” in fair exchange for the virginity she brought him but cannot take home with her. Strictly speaking, he was generous—the smock is much bigger than that membrane he punctured. We brooded over the smock at length in the dorm. I thought it must be a kind of nightie, but Esther said it would look more like a slip. Nina saw it as something sack-like to cover the naked body; the defining garments of femininity, bodice, corset, and so forth, would go on top.

The highborn young bride and her little brother are on their way. Walter needs some woman to straighten up the palace and arrange the bedrooms exactly to his tastes. Who knows his tastes better than Griselda? She comes willingly, glad to be of service. During the wedding feast he calls her away from her sweeping to present his bride: “Griselda ... How liketh thee my wyf and hire beautee?” Griselda likes her right well. She has a word of counsel, though: that he not “prikke” this young maiden with “tormentynge” as he has done to others. Others! At last, however faintly, the unmistakable note of wifely acrimony. Because, suggests Griselda, a tenderly bred maiden could not endure adversity so well as a creature of lowly birth. A creature!

And lo again, Walter’s strange urge, his “merveillous desir,” is satisfied! Perhaps it is satisfied because she diluted her saintliness with that note of wifely acrimony. He embraces Griselda and reveals that the young bride and her little brother (twelve and seven years old) are their children, not shredded by wild beasts after all but raised by Walter’s sister, a countess in Bologna. When she recovers from her faint, Griselda is dressed once more in garments befitting a fine lady. It does not say what becomes of the “smok.” They all live happily ever after. It cannot be without irony that Chaucer opens his Envoi: “Griselda is dead, and her patience with her, And both buried together in Italy.”

Esther’s wrath was not focused: Chaucer, Walter, God, Griselda, and Professor Mansfield all came in for a share.

Professor Mansfield tried to placate her. “Didn’t you read the Envoi, Miss Brickman? Chaucer clearly dissociates himself from the story. ‘Don’t let humility nail your tongues,’ he tells all noble wives. ‘Don’t give anyone cause to write this kind of story about you.’” He smiled in a conciliatory way. “Now isn’t that enough?”

“Too late, too late,” she grumbled. “By that point the damage is done. And the poetry’s better in the main part anyhow, isn’t it?”

“Miss Brickman, the entire tale illustrates a moral thesis. These are not real people. You must try to read with the sensibility of Chaucer’s age and suspend your modern judgment.”

Esther said fiercely, “I will never suspend my judgment!”

In the privacy of her room she vowed revenge. In the privacy of her room we all vented our disgust. Walter was unspeakable, but it was Griselda who mortified us. I still had the quote from Spinoza tucked in my mirror: “The effort by which each thing endeavors to persevere in its own being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing itself,” and I blamed Griselda for neglecting to persevere in her own being. I was wrong, however. The essence of Griselda was what Chaucer calls Patience and we call self-abnegation. She persevered. Not that it makes her any more appealing.