Grendel (16 page)

It’s a trick! His eyes are open, were open all the time, cold-bloodedly watching to see how I work. The eyes nail me now as his hand nails down my arm. I jump back without thinking (whispering wildly:
jump back without thinking
). Now he’s out of his bed, his hand still closed like a dragon’s jaws on mine. Nowhere on middle-earth, I realize, have I encountered a grip like his. My whole arm’s on fire, incredible, searing pain—it’s as if his crushing fingers are charged like fangs with poison. I scream, facing him, grotesquely shaking hands
—dear long-lost brother, kinsman-thane—and the timbered hall screams back at me. I feel the bones go, ground from their sockets, and I scream again. I am suddenly awake. The long pale dream, my history, falls away. The meadhall is alive, great cavernous belly, gold-adorned, bloodstained, howling back at me, lit by the flickering fire in the stranger’s eyes. He has wings. Is it possible? And yet it’s true: out of his shoulders come terrible fiery wings. I jerk my head, trying to drive out illusion. The world is what it is and always was. That’s our hope, our chance. Yet even in times of catastrophe we people it with tricks. Grendel, Grendel, hold fast to what is true!

Suddenly, darkness. My sanity has won. He’s only a man; I can escape him. I plan. I feel the plan moving inside me like thaw-time waters rising between cliffs. When I’m ready, I give a ferocious kick—but something’s wrong: I am spinning—
Wa!
—falling through bottomless space—
Wa!
—snatching at the huge twisted roots of an oak … a blinding flash of fire … no, darkness. I concentrate. I have fallen! Slipped on blood. He viciously twists my arm behind my back. By accident, it comes to me, I have given him a greater advantage. I could laugh.
Woe, woe!

And now something worse. He’s whispering—spilling words like showers of sleet, his mouth three inches from
my ear. I will not listen. I continue whispering. As long as I whisper myself I need not hear. His syllables lick at me, chilly fire. His syllables lick at me, chilly fire. His syllables lick at me, chilly fire. His syllables lick …

A meaningless swirl in the stream of time, a temporary gathering of bits, a few random specks, a cloud … Complexities: green dust, purple dust, gold. Additional refinements: sensitive dust, copulating dust…

The world is my bone-cave, I shall not want…
(He laughs as he whispers. I roll my eyes back. Flames slip out at the corners of his mouth.)
As you see it it is, while the seeing lasts, dark nightmare-history, time-as-coffin; but where the water was rigid there will be fish, and men will survive on their flesh till spring. It’s coming, my brother. Believe it or not. Though you murder the world, turn plains to stone, transmogrify life into I and it, strong searching roots will crack your cave and rain will cleanse it: The world will burn green, sperm build again. My promise. Time is the mind, the hand that makes (fingers on harpstrings, hero-swords, the acts, the eyes of queens). By that I kill you.

I do not listen. I am sick at heart. I have been betrayed before by talk like that. “Mama!” I bawl. Shapes vague as lurking seaweed surround us. My vision clears. The stranger’s companions encircle us, useless swords. I could laugh if it weren’t for the pain that makes me howl. And yet I address him, whispering, whimpering, whining.

“If you win, it’s by mindless chance. Make no mistake. First you tricked me, and then I slipped. Accident.”

He answers with a twist that hurls me forward screaming. The thanes make way. I fall against a table and smash it, and wall timbers crack. And still he whispers.

Grendel, Grendel! You make the world by whispers, second by second. Are you blind to that? Whether you make it a grave or a garden of roses is not the point. Feel the wall: is it not hard?
He smashes me against it, breaks open my forehead.
Hard, yes! Observe the hardness, write it down in careful runes. Now sing of walls! Sing!

I howl.

Sing!

“I’m singing!”

Sing words! Sing raving hymns!

“You’re crazy. Ow!”

Sing!

“I sing of walls,” I howl. “Hooray for the hardness of walls!”

Terrible,
he whispers.
Terrible.
He laughs and lets out fire.

“You’re crazy,” I say. “If you think I created that wall that cracked my head, you’re a fucking lunatic.”

Sing walls,
he hisses.

I have no choice.

Better,
he whispers.
That’s better.
He laughs again, and the nasty laugh admits I’m slyer than he guessed.

He’s crazy. I understand him all right, make no mistake. Understand his lunatic theory of matter and mind, the chilly intellect, the hot imagination, blocks and builder, reality as stress. Nevertheless, it was by accident that he got my arm behind me. He penetrated no mysteries. He was lucky. If I’d known he was awake, if I’d known there was blood on the floor when I gave him that kick …

The room goes suddenly white, as if struck by lightning. I stare down, amazed. He has torn off my arm at the shoulder! Blood pours down where the limb was. I cry, I bawl like a baby. He stretches his blinding white wings and breathes out fire. I run for the door and through it. I move like wind. I stumble and fall, get up again. I’ll die! I howl. The night is aflame with winged men.
No, no! Think!
I come suddenly awake once more from the nightmare. Darkness. I really will die! Every rock, every tree, every crystal of snow cries out cold-blooded objectness. Cold, sharp outlines, everything around me: distinct, detached as dead men. I understand. “Mama!” I bellow.
“Mama, Mama! I’m dying!” But her love is history. His whispering follows me into the woods, though I’ve outrun him. “It was an accident,” I bellow back. I will cling to what is true. “Blind, mindless, mechanical. Mere logic of chance.” I am weak from loss of blood. No one follows me now. I stumble again and with my one weak arm I cling to the huge twisted roots of an oak. I look down past stars to a terrifying darkness. I seem to recognize the place, but it’s impossible. “Accident,” I whisper. I will fall. I seem to desire the fall, and though I fight it with all my will I know in advance that I can’t win. Standing baffled, quaking with fear, three feet from the edge of a nightmare cliff, I find myself, incredibly, moving toward it. I look down, down, into bottomless blackness, feeling the dark power moving in me like an ocean current, some monster inside me, deep sea wonder, dread night monarch astir in his cave, moving me slowly to my voluntary tumble into death.

Again sight clears. I am slick with blood. I discover I no longer feel pain. Animals gather around me, enemies of old, to watch me die. I give them what I hope will appear a sheepish smile. My heart booms terror. Will the last of my life slide out if I let out breath? They watch with mindless, indifferent eyes, as calm and midnight black as the chasm below me.

Is it joy I feel?

They watch on, evil, incredibly stupid, enjoying my destruction.

“Poor Grendel’s had an accident,” I whisper.
“So may you all.”

John Gardner received wide acclaim for his novels, his collections of short stories and his critical works. He was born in Batavia, New York, in 1933 and taught English, Anglo-Saxon and creative writing at Oberlin, Chico State College, San Francisco State, Southern Illinois, Bennington, and SUNY-Binghamton. His books include
The Art of Fiction, The Art of Living, Grendel, Jason and Medeia, The Life and Times of Chaucer, Mickelsson’s Ghosts, Nickel Mountain, October Light, The Resurrection, The Sunlight Dialogues, Stillness and Shadows,
and various books for children. He died in a motorcycle accident in 1982.