Possession

by A. S. Byatt

  But she is wise and partly Breton.

  “I could a tale unfold,” she said to me in English, when I asked if she would tell (I know that is Hamlet, it is the speech of the revenant and much à propos).

  Gode always joins us and tells of the year’s trafficking between this world and that, the other side of the threshold, which at Toussaint may be crossed in both directions, by live men walking into that world, and by spies, or outposts, or messengers sent from There to our brief daylight.

  TOUSSAINT, LATE AT NIGHT

  My father told the tale of Merlin and Vivien. The two characters are never the same in successive years. Merlin is always old and wise, and clearsighted about his doom. Vivien is always beautiful, and various and dangerous. The end is always the same. So is the essence of the tale—the coming of the magician to the old Fairy Fountain, the invocation of the fay, their love beneath the hawthorns, the charming of the old man into telling her the spell which can erect round him a solid tower visible and tangible only to himself. But my father, within this framework, has many stories. Sometimes the fairy and the magician are true lovers, whose reality is only this dreamed chamber, which she, with his complicity, makes eternal stone of air. Sometimes he is old and tired and ready to lay down his burden and she is a tormenting daemon. Sometimes it is a battle of wits, in which she is all passionate emulation, a daemonic will to overcome him, and he wise beyond belief, and impotent with it. Tonight he was not so decrepit, nor yet so clever—he was ruefully courteous, knowing that her time had come, and ready to take pleasure in his eternal swoon, or dream or contemplation. The description of the Fairy Fountain, with its cold dark boiling rings, was masterly. So were the flowers which strewed the lovers’ bed—my father was lavish with imagined primroses and bluebells; he made birds sing in dark hollies and yews, so that I remembered my childhood life which was lived in tales, so that I saw flowers and fountains and hidden paths and figures of power and despised—no, diminished in my mind—the life of real things, the house, the orchard, Gode.

  When he had finished she said in a very small sharp voice, “You are an enchanter yourself, Cousin Raoul, you make lights and perfumes in the dark, and spent passions.”

  He said, “I spread my skills, as the old magician did for the young fairy.”

  She said, “You are not old.” She said, “I remember my father told that tale.”

  “It is everyone’s tale.”

  “And its meaning?”

  Then I was angry with her, for we do not talk of meanings in this pedantic nineteenth-century way, on the Black Nights, we simply tell and hear and believe. I thought he would not answer her, but he said, thoughtfully and courteously enough, “It is one of many tales that speak of fear of Woman, I believe. Of a male terror of the subjection of passion, maybe—of the sleep of reason under the rule of—what shall I call it—desire, intuition, imagination. But it is older than that—in its reconciling aspect, it is homage to the old female deities of the earth, who were displaced by the coming of Christianity. Just as Dahut was the Good Sorceress before she became a destroyer, so Vivien was one of the local divinities of streams and fountains—whom we still acknowledge, with our little shrines to who knows what Lady—”

  “I have always read it differently.”

  “How, Cousin Christabel?”

  “As a tale of female emulation of male power—she wanted not him but his magic—until she found that magic served only to enslave him—and then, where was she, with all her skills?”

  “That is a perverse reading.”

  “I have a painting—” she said, “which portrays the moment of triumph—so—perhaps it is perverse.”

  I said, “Too much meaning is bad at Toussaint.”

  “Reason must sleep,” said Christabel.

  “The stories come before the meanings,” I said.

  “As I said, reason must sleep,” she said again.

  I do not believe all these explanations. They diminish. The idea of Woman is less than brilliant Vivien, and the idea of Merlin will not allegorise into male wisdom. He is Merlin.

  NOVEMBER 2ND

  Today Gode told tales of the Baie des Trépassés. I have promised Christabel that in the good weather we may make a day’s excursion there. The name, she says, moves her. It is not so much the Bay of the Dead as the bay of those who have crossed the barrier which divides this world from that. My father says that the name may not derive from any such otherworldly connection, but simply be the name given to this apparently wide and smiling beach where the shattered pieces of ships and men are tossed up after breaking against the terrible reefs of the Pointe du Raz and the Pointe du Van. But he says also that the Bay was always thought of as one of those places on the earth—as with Virgil’s grove of the Golden Bough, or Tam Lin’s journey under the Hill—where two worlds cross. From here the dead, in ancient Celtic times, would be sent out on their last journey to the Ile de Sein, where the Druid priestesses would receive them (no man was allowed to set foot on their island). And there, according to some legends, they found a way to the Earthly Paradise, the land of golden apples in the midst of winds and storms and dark blades of water.

  I can’t write down Gode’s way of telling things. My father has from time to time encouraged her to tell him tales which he has tried to take down verbatim, keeping the rhythms of her speech, adding nothing and taking nothing away. But the life goes out of her words on the page, no matter how faithful he is. He said once to me, after such an experiment, that he saw now why the ancient Druids believed that the spoken word was the breath of life and that writing was a form of death. I thought of this journal, at first, to see how I might best follow Christabel’s advice and record accurately what I heard, but my very intention in some strange way took life from my listening and from Gode’s telling, so I desisted, from courtesy and something more. (Yet the interest has its life, there must be a way of writing.) So now. I have something to tell which is not to do with Gode’s tale, though it was then that. Start again. Write it like a story, write it to write it—how wise I was to keep this journal for my eyes only. For now I can write to find out what I saw.

  And turn a kind of pain to a kind of interest, a kind of curiosity, which is to be my salvation.

  Gode’s stories, even more than my father’s, depend on the outer dark and the closeness, indoors, of tellers and listeners. Our great hall is bleak and bare enough in the daylight, it does not make for intimacy. But at night in the Black Month it is different. We have the logs burning in the great chimney—flaring and fitful in the beginning of the evening, with black spaces where the fire has not caught—but in the later part, glowing with scarlet and golden cinders in a thick warm blanket of grey ash under the burning wood. And the great leather backs of the chairs make a kind of wall against the cold other end of the room, and the light of the fire gilds all our faces and reddens white cuffs and collars. We have no oil-lamps during these evenings—we work by the light of the fire, such work as can be done in such moving shadows, knitting, snipping, plaiting. Gode will even bring a cake she is stirring, or a bowl of roasted chestnuts to be peeled. But when she tells, she will raise her hands, or throw back her head, or shake her shawl, and long tattered shadows race across the ceiling into the dark of the unseen half of the room, or huge faces with gaping mouths and monstrous noses and chins—our own, transfigured by the flames into witches and spectres. And Gode’s telling is a play with all these things, with the firelight and the gesturing shadows and the streamers of light and dark—she brings all their movements together as I imagine the leader of an orchestra may. (I have never heard an orchestra. I have heard one or two ladylike harps and the fifes and drums at the Kermesse, but all these sublime sounds I read of, I have to imagine at best through the church organ.)

  My father sat in his high chair at the side of the fire, with ruddy lights in his beard, which is not all grey, and Christabel sat close beside him, lower, into the dark, her hands busy with knitting. And Gode and I were on
the other side of the circle.

  Gode said: “There was once a young sailor who had nothing but his courage and his bright eyes—but those were very bright—and the strength the gods gave him, which was sufficient.

  “He was not a good match for any girl in the village, for he was thought to be rash as well as poor, but the young girls liked to see him go by, you can believe, and they liked most particularly to see him dance, with his long, long legs and his clever feet and his laughing mouth.

  “And most of all one girl liked to see him, who was the miller’s daughter, beautiful and stately and proud, with three deep velvet ribbons to her skirt, who would by no means let him see that she liked to see him, but looked sideways with glimpy eyes, when he was not watching. And so did many another. It is always so. Some are looked at, and some may whistle for an admiring glance till the devil pounces on them, for so the Holy Spirit makes, crooked or straight, and naught to be done about it.

  “He came and went, the young man, for it was the long voyages he was drawn to, he went with the whales over the edge of the world and down to where the sea boils and the great fish move under it like drowned islands and the mermaids sing with their mirrors and their green scales and their winding hair, if tales are to be believed. He was first up the mast and sharpest with the harpoon but he made no money, for the profit was all the master’s, and so he came and went.

  “And when he came he sat in the square and told of what he had seen, and they all listened. And the miller’s daughter came, all clean and proud and proper, and he saw her listening at the edge and said he would bring her a silk ribbon from the East, if she liked. And she would not say if she liked, yes or no, but he saw that she would.

  “And he went again, and had the ribbon from a silk-merchant’s daughter in one of those countries where the women are golden with hair like black silk, but they like to see a man dance with long, long legs, and clever feet and a laughing mouth. And he told the silk-merchant’s daughter he would come again and brought back the ribbon, all laid up in a perfumed paper, and at the next village dance he gave it to the miller’s daughter and said, ‘Here is your ribbon.’

  “And her heart banged in her side, you may believe, but she mastered it, and asked coolly how much she was to pay him for it. It was a lovely ribbon, a rainbow-coloured silk ribbon, such as had never been seen in these parts.

  “And he was very angry at this insult to his gift, and said she must pay what it had cost her from whom he had it. And she said,

  “ ‘What was that?’

  “And he said, ‘Sleepless nights till I come again.’

  “And she said, ‘The price is too high.’

  “And he said, ‘The price is set, you must pay.’

  “And she paid, you may believe, for he saw how it was with her, and a man hurt in his pride will take what he may, and he took, for she had seen him dance, and she was all twisted and turned in her mind and herself by his pride and his dancing.

  “And he said, if he went away again, and found some future in any part of the world, would she wait till he came again and asked her father for her.

  “And she said, ‘Long must I wait, and you with a woman waiting in every port, and a ribbon fluttering in every breeze on every quay, if I wait for you.’

  “And he said, ‘You will wait.’

  “And she would not say yes or no, she would wait or not wait.

  “And he said, ‘You are a woman with a cursed temper, but I will come again and you will see.’

  “And after a time, the people saw that her beauty dimmed, and her step grew creeping, and she did not lift her head, and she grew heavy all over. And she took to waiting in the harbour, to see the ships come in, and though she asked after none, everyone knew well enough why she was there, and who it was she waited for. But she said nothing to anyone. Only she was seen up on the point, where the Lady Chapel is, praying, it must be thought, though none heard her prayers.

  “And after more time, when many ships had come and gone, and others had been wrecked, and their men swallowed, but his had not been seen or heard of, the miller thought he heard an owl cry, or a cat miawl in his barn, but when he came there was no one and nothing, only blood on the straw. So he called his daughter and she came, deathly-white, rubbing her eyes as if in sleep, and he said, ‘Here is blood on the straw,’ and she said, ‘I would thank you not to wake me from my good sleep to tell me the dog has killed a rat, or the cat eaten a mouse here in the barn.’

  “And they all saw she was white, but she stood upright, holding her candle, and they all went in again.

  “And then the ship came home, over the line of sea and into the harbour, and the young man leaped to the shore to see if she was waiting, and she was not. Now he had seen her in his mind’s eye, all round the globe, as clear as clear, waiting there, with her proud pretty face, and the coloured ribbon in the breeze, and his heart hardened, you will understand, that she had not come. But he did not ask after her, only kissed the girls and smiled and ran up the hill to his house.

  “And by and by he saw a pale thin thing creeping along in the shadow of a wall, all slow and halting. And he did not know her at first. And she thought to creep past him like that, because she was so altered.

  “He said, ‘You did not come.’

  “And she said, ‘I could not.’

  “And he said, ‘You are here in the street all the same.’

  “And she said, ‘I am not what I was.’

  “And he said, ‘What is that to me? But you did not come.’

  “And she said, ‘If it is nothing to you, it is much to me. Time has passed. What is past is past. I must go.’

  “And she did go.

  “And that night he danced with Jeanne, the smith’s daughter, who had fine white teeth and little plump hands like fat rosebuds.

  “And the next day he went to seek the miller’s daughter and found her in the chapel on the hill.

  “He said, ‘Come down with me.’

  “And she said, ‘Do you hear little feet, little bare feet, dancing?’

  “And he said, ‘No, I hear the sea on the shore, and the air running over the dry grass, and the weathercock grinding round the wind.’

  “And she said, ‘All night they danced in my head, round this way and back that, so that I did not sleep.’

  “And he, ‘Come down with me.’

  “And she, ‘But can you not hear the dancer?’

  “And so it went on for a week or a month, or two months, he dancing with Jeanne, and going up to the chapel and getting only the one answer from the miller’s daughter, and in the end he wearied, as rash and handsome men will, and said, ‘I have waited as you would not, come now, or I shall wait no more.’

  “And she, ‘How can I come if you cannot hear the little thing dancing?’

  “And he said, ‘Stay with your little thing then, if you love it better than me.’

  “And she said not a word, but listened to the sea and the air and the weathercock, and he left her.

  “And he married Jeanne the smith’s daughter, and there was much dancing at the wedding, and the piper played, you may believe, and the drums hopped and rolled, and he skipped high with his long long legs and his clever feet and his laughing mouth and Jeanne was quite red with whirling and twirling, and outside the wind got up and the clouds swallowed the stars. But they went to bed in good spirits enough, full of good cider, and closed their bed-doors against the weather and were snug and tumbled in feathers.

  “And the miller’s daughter came out in the street in her shift and bare feet, running this way and that, holding out her hands like a woman running after a strayed hen, calling ‘Wait a little, wait a little.’ And some claimed to have seen a tiny naked child dancing and prancing in front of her, round this way, back widdershins, signing with little pointy fingers and with its hair like a little mop of yellow fire. And some said there was nothing but a bit of blown dust whirling in the road, with a hair or two and a twig caught in it. A
nd the miller’s apprentice said he had heard little naked feet patting and slip-slapping in the loft for weeks before. And the old wives and the bright young men who know no better, said he had heard mice. But he said he had heard enough mice in his lifetime to know what was and was not mice, and he was generally credited with good sense.

  “So the miller’s daughter ran after the dancing thing, on through the streets and the square and up the hill to the chapel, tearing her shins on the brambles and always holding out her hands and calling out ‘Wait, oh wait.’ But the thing danced on and on, it was full of life, you may believe, it glittered and twisted and turned and stamped its tiny feet on the pebbles and the turf, and she struggled with the wind in her skirts and the dark in her face. And over the cliff went she, calling ‘Wait, wait,’ and so fell to her death on the needle-rocks below and they got her back at low tide, all bruised and broken, no beautiful sight at all, as you may understand.

  “But when he came out into the street and saw it, he took her hand and said, ‘This is because I had no faith and would not believe in your little dancing thing. But now I hear it, plain as plain.’

  “And poor Jeanne had no joy of him from that day.

  “And when Toussaint came he woke in his bed with a start and heard little hands that tapped, and little feet that stamped, all round the four sides of his bed, and shrill little voices calling in tongues he knew not, though he had travelled the globe.

  “So he threw off the covers, and looked out, and there was the little thing, naked, and blue with cold yet rosy with heat so it seemed to him, like a sea fish and a summer flower, and it tossed its fiery head and danced away and he came after. And he came after and he came after, as far as the Baie des Trépassés and the night was clear but there was a veil of mist over the bay.

  “And the long lines of the waves came in from the Ocean, one after another after another, and always another, and he could see the Dead, riding the crests of them, coming in from another world, thin and grey and holding out helpless arms, and tossing and calling in their high voices. And the dancing thing stamped and tossed on and on, and he came to a boat with its prow to the sea, and when he came into the boat he felt it was full of moving forms pressed closely together, brimming over but unseen.