Hamlet (2 page)

Neither boy spoke again until they were at the other side of the main courtyard. Horatio was about to suggest a game of billiards. But Hamlet said, “See you tomorrow,” and went through the door to his own quarters.

Horatio nodded his reply too late: his friend was gone.

Three weeks after this, Horatio and his cousin Bernardo stumbled into Hamlet’s bedroom in the middle of the night. The long climb to the prince’s apartment, up the difficult winding staircase in the cold air, left them both panting. Several times they had been forced to stop and hold the candles away from their bodies so their breath would not put out the brave little lights.

Why does he sleep up here? Bernardo wondered. He could have almost any room in the castle.

Bernardo, a farmer’s son, understood only the practical. The bedroom should be close to the barn. A view was useful if it showed a storm approaching. When a pig had to be slaughtered, you sharpened your knife.

He was already churned up and confused by the night’s events, which were outside the realm of his experience, beyond the limits of his imagination. The rush up the stairs gave him a pain in the stomach.

Horatio did not knock, just pushed open the door. It whined and groaned. They tiptoed into the room.

Hamlet, asleep, was curled up like half of a puzzle. A large black dog took up the other side of the bed. The dog lifted his head, gazed at Horatio for a moment, then lay back down. But his eyes stayed open, and he continued to watch the intruders.

Horatio hesitated. “Do you think we should wake him?” he asked.

“Do you think we should be here at all?” Bernardo asked, trying to stop shaking. But when Horatio didn’t answer, he added, “Go on.”

Bernardo was just inside the door. Horatio was closer to the bed. But Horatio still hesitated. He didn’t know how to do it. He wanted to stroke Hamlet into gentle awareness but thought it would look too much like love. Instead he shook Hamlet’s shoulder roughly, as if he were angry.

Hamlet sat up so suddenly that the other two stepped back in surprise. The dog sat up with him, blinking and shaking its head.
“What?”
Hamlet shouted. His white hair was awry, and his eyes stared at them but saw nothing. Then he focused and became awake. “What the fuck do you want?”

Horatio laughed at the swearword.

“Sorry,” said Bernardo automatically.

“Well, what are you doing in here?” The prince frowned at Bernardo. “Who are you, anyway? Are you Bernardo?”

Both Horatio and Bernardo nodded.

Hamlet brushed back his hair, and in the dim light of the two candles they saw his eyes, normally so pale a blue that they merged into gray, becoming sharper, glistening like a fox’s. “What’s happened? Something’s happened.”

Again words deserted Horatio. “I don’t know how to say it,” he confessed.

“I’ll tell you,” Bernardo said, stepping forward.

Hamlet wouldn’t take his gaze from Horatio. “I want you to tell me,” he said, like a small boy.

“Do you believe in ghosts?”

“Yes.”

The sharpness and quickness of the reply startled Horatio even more. “You . . . you do?”

“If it hurries you, then, yes, I believe in ghosts.”

The dog slipped off the bed and slunk out the door to sit on the landing outside. Horatio sat on the end of the bed. Bernardo sucked in his breath at the daring of it, at the casual relationship that existed between the two. There were rumors about them, but Bernardo was not able to tell the truth from the queer tension that he felt in the room.

Hamlet was watching Horatio closely. The prince wore no top.

This room’s so cold, Bernardo thought. He’s tough all right.

“I didn’t believe in ghosts. Never have,” Horatio said. He paused. “And now I do.”

“So are you saying that you’ve seen a ghost? Tonight, I suppose? Otherwise you wouldn’t have woken me.”

Horatio stared at him. The flickering light of the candles in the dark, drafty room made the prince’s face almost demonic. Through the cloverleaf window in the stone wall, Bernardo saw one distant star. Then it went out.

Hamlet was staring back at Horatio.

At last Horatio said, “We think we saw your father.”

For a moment Hamlet did not move, did not break his gaze. Then he leaped from under the blankets. With incredible athleticism he turned in midair, like a white cat, and landed facing Bernardo, who hastily backed into the corridor. He found himself next to the dog, which was standing now, hairs bristling, as though it understood perfectly.

Hamlet came to the door. Bernardo stared into his terrible eyes. He felt the eyes were talking to him, not the voice. He heard the words, “Did you see him too?” and he nodded.

Outside, the air hung with cold. The three boys scrunched along the terrace, in front of the throne room. Hamlet’s dog loped close behind. The frost on the grass was so thick it could have been mistaken for snow.

“Maybe we’ll see his footprints,” Horatio whispered. His words left his mouth in a balloon of steam and floated away across the lawns.

“Ghosts don’t leave footprints,” Bernardo whispered back.

“How would you know?”

Hamlet had put on a white singlet to match the white britches he slept in. Dressed in nothing more than that, a black cloak, and a pair of long black boots, he led them down the steps and along the path to the fountain of Neptune. Its water was frozen in a silent arc. A melancholy clock in the distance was striking, too many times for Bernardo to count. As he listened, the gongs started to sound out of tune and irregular, warped, vaguely disturbing. He hurried to catch up with the other two.

They were in the vast main courtyard, ten thousand meters square. Looking down on them were the closed and curtained windows of the royal apartments.

“Was it here?” Hamlet asked. It was the first time he had spoken since they had left his bedroom. His voice was croaky. The dog forced its way past the two boys and pressed in against Hamlet’s legs. Horatio nodded.

Bernardo gazed around at the tall, dark, silent buildings. “What’s the dog’s name?” he asked, looking down at the creature, which resembled a short-haired wolf.

The other two stared at him as if he were crazy. Neither of them answered. Bernardo blushed. The night was so still it might have been a painting. Then a large bird flew across the painting, its wings beating like sword blades. From upstairs somewhere came a thud, a door or a window shutter perhaps, but too far away to worry the boys.

“He mightn’t come back tonight,” Horatio whispered, after fifteen minutes had passed. All three of them were turning into ice.

But just as he said “tonight,” Bernardo grabbed his arm. “There he is.”

The boys huddled closer as the figure approached. He wore a full-length cloak, brown, heavy. His head was bare. Long silver hair blew wildly as though there were a strong wind, but the castle flags hung limp, and the leaves on the trees stayed undisturbed.

The man’s facial features were hard to discern. He had two eyes, a nose, a mouth. No beard. His face was thin. As he passed a garden seat, it seemed that he saw them. He stopped between a pair of huge stone lions and stared at them. He was about fifty meters away.

The black dog whined dolorously and sat on Hamlet’s feet.

“Is it him?” Horatio asked Hamlet. “It is him, isn’t it?”

Hamlet didn’t answer, just nodded. A full minute later he said, “I think so.”

Bernardo gazed in rapture. He forgot to be scared. Here was one of the greatest events in the history of Denmark, surely, and he was intimately involved. Despite his confident words to the prince, he had not been sure of what he had seen before. But if it were Hamlet’s father, it was a ghost, and he, young Bernardo, son of a farmer from outside Gavatar, visiting Elsinore to spend a few months with his cousin Horatio, was witnessing what perhaps no one in the world had ever seen.

When the man made a motion with his arm, Bernardo jerked backward as though he had been struck.

“What does he want?” Horatio muttered to Hamlet. They both ignored Bernardo.

“He wants me,” Hamlet said. “Always did.”

The man motioned again.

Hamlet shook Horatio free and started walking toward the two lions.

“Come back,” Horatio hissed. “Come back.” He ran a few urgent steps after his friend. “You don’t know what he’ll do. He could kill you.”

But then he stopped, and the black dog lay down on the path beside him and whimpered.

Hamlet was aware of the sharpness of the night air, the gravel and the dead leaves that crackled like bones under his feet, the lonely cry of a distant curlew. He thought about the fresh grave he had stood coldly above, fewer than five months earlier. He recalled the clod of frozen earth he had tossed onto the coffin. He heard again the echo of the clod as it bounced off the wood, as though the box were hollow.

As Hamlet walked toward him, the man in the distance seemed to grow bigger. Somehow the boy was unafraid. Oh, he trembled, but so did Horatio, so did Bernardo, so would anyone in the midnight cold. Only the man waiting, with the shadow of an alder tree across him, only he was still. And his hair had stopped blowing.

Hamlet got close enough to see him clearly, except for his face, which looked to be all stubble and eyes, white eyes that seemed to have no pupils. He noticed that the brown cloak had a thin red collar. Now Hamlet felt, if not frightened, then disturbed. In the months since the funeral, the boy had forgotten most of his encounters with his father. During that time it was as though his mind concentrated on three images only: his father’s terse smile when he gave him the long-legged chestnut colt, the proud hands he laid on his head when Hamlet won his first fight, and the gentle hands that picked him up one night and carried him to bed, when the boy was felled by influenza and went to the doorway of death, lingering a long time, as if he would pass through. As if he wanted to pass through. Then he had returned.

But this meeting, this strange encounter between the two stone lions, brought back a flood of other memories: battles and beatings, painful lessons in riding, tests of strength, and cold, hungry nights spent alone in his tower room when Hamlet had failed those tests. For the first time the boy faltered. He wanted so much to show the silver in his veins. He wanted to be the size of a king, man enough for anything. But Horatio and Bernardo were far behind, out of hearing, the night was as cold as the tomb, and the man in front of him was rotten with death.

In spite of this, the boy spoke. “What do you want with me?”

His question was enshrouded with mist from his mouth, as though he had forced open a cranny to hell. He tried to make his voice sound strong, but it cracked on the last two words.

The man placed his left hand on the head of the lion. When he replied, Hamlet saw no mist of breath from his mouth. “Pay attention to what I have to tell you.”

“I will.”

“I have come to speak to you one last time.”

“I am listening.”

“I am the spirit of your father.”

Hamlet could not open his mouth, could not take his eyes from the emaciated face, could not even nod for fear his head would fall off.

“By day I am condemned to twist in fire, until the sins of my life are burned away. And by night doomed to walk, for some short time yet.”

“I’m sorry indeed, sir,” Hamlet gasped.

“There is no need to pity me. I have not come here to torture you, to burn your ears with such stories. Indeed, it is forbidden for me to talk about these matters to one who is of the earth. I have returned for another reason.”

“Then tell me.”

“If you ever loved your father . . .”

The man left the words hanging in the air, and this time Hamlet was not able to speak, just nodded dumbly.

“If ever you did love your father, I call upon you now to take revenge.”

“Revenge?”

“I call upon you to avenge my foul and unnatural murder.”