The Reasonable Ogre

by Mike Barnes

  And then, one night in bed, his wife sleeping beside him, he caught himself calculating how vast the distances were, how many long and twisting roads lay between their bedroom and the wrestling king’s castle. It was an episode long ago, in a far country.

  And then he thought, he remembered, that there is no road—no distance—not abolished by a huntsman willing to hobble down it forever.

  Their child was born. A girl. She grew and was healthy. And the house was happy—not perfectly so, for what house is?—but too happy to be much marred by the father’s nervous habit of going about rooms peering out of windows; or of visiting several times a day his old black horse, grown white in the muzzle—standing patting it while they faced the road together, in the manner of two old campaigners having a conference.

  He didn’t tell his wife his secret. Half the time it was a joke too ludicrous to admit; the other half, a horror too monstrous to burden her with. There was no in-between.

  Joy and dread were two sides of the same instant. Joy was watching his daughter pick one of the flowers she loved to find in the yard; watching his wife’s face as she brought it to them. Dread, which came hard after, was a goose with its neck stretched in the sun.

  He left when his daughter was ten. Which, he thought, looking at his wife’s and daughter’s faces on their last morning together, was—even at the slowest rate of hobbling—at least nine years too late. Nine years of risk too long.

  (Curiously, in all this time, during which he himself was getting old, not once did it occur to him that the huntsman might die. Something deathless was in the flash of his steel. And he only very seldom nursed the hope that his steps might slow further and his skills decline. What is the difference between steel flashing at lightning or at half-lightning speed?)

  He took nothing with him but the clothes on his back. His wife and child had need of the rest of the gold. And he would not need money for what he meant to do. And, too, he had always had a lurking suspicion, a fantasy perhaps, that the king’s revenge would end if he no longer enjoyed the money he had taken from him.

  For the same reason he did not visit the black horse to say goodbye.

  Let’s turn and git ’em. It had been the motto of a foolish, much-loved friend the soldier had served with long ago. Brave in any forward action, he could not endure the helplessness of retreat. Always, when they were on the run, he had to turn and find the ones pursuing them in the darkness. He had lived longer than anyone expected, finally dying in one of his hopeless charges shortly before the soldier found his way to the wrestler king’s court. And the soldier thought of him now because he had finally reached the same limit of nerves: he would rather run into the arms of certain death than spend a single minute more evading it.

  There is one way to evade him . . . .

  And one way not to, thought the soldier. And that is the way for me.

  It seemed illogical to go to meet a tracker, whose job it is to be always behind you, tracing your signs and footsteps. But it was the absoluteness of the king’s confidence in his man—He is relentless . . . He is an expert tracker—that assured the soldier that his plan would work. That plus his absolute fatigue at living on the run: nothing exhausts so thoroughly as fear, and nothing breeds faith in success like exhaustion, which has no energy left to fail with.

  Thus the soldier started retracing the paths of his life that led back towards the castle. Walking back along the many criss-crossing strands he had laid across the world, undoing his journey, certain that if he did so long enough and carefully enough, he would meet the one limping to find him.

  It took years. He got sick often, sometimes for months at a time, as a result of his beggar’s diet and constant walking—and, by this time, of his age. Once, he had to hole up for over a year with a woman and her children, depending in his helplessness on their charity. It was like a second married life, one in a dream. The woman wept when he left, and so did he. He no longer thought of such stationary times as dangerous, only wasteful. They seemed like lives athwart his life, set outside and at a slant to it.

  Whenever he got underway again, he marvelled anew at the devious branching labyrinth he had constructed for the huntsman. It wasn’t a maze that he would have any trouble negotiating—but, certainly, it would take time. Time for anybody. It was always a question of time . . . only of that, he muttered to himself, mumbling aloud in the way that all solitaries eventually acquire.

  He met the huntsman on a stretch of unremarkable road, mid-morning. The event had no drama. Events too long prepared for never do.

  He walked towards him, not quickly and not slowly. Just as he had promised himself to do. (Though also, with age and illness, his former soldier’s stride had decayed and taken on aspects of the huntsman’s limping shuffle.)

  The approaching figure looked as he remembered: bent, thin, gray-clad. Face lowered to watch the ground—for signs? or just for footing?

  He had never had more than a quick general impression of the huntsman, a few solid facts bundled together with reams of fantasy and supposition.

  They were not far apart now. Why did the huntsman not raise his face at footsteps he must hear approaching? Because he was too intent on his quarry to be distracted? Or because, already aware of that quarry with a huntsman’s infallible instincts, he was preparing the steel beneath his sleeve?

  Neck stretched like a goose, the soldier reminded himself, eyes open like a man.

  Ten paces . . . then five . . . then two separated them.

  One.

  The huntsman looked up: clear gray eyes in a deeply lined face.

  The huntsman glanced at him and passed by.

  In that instant the soldier’s world slid out from under him. It spun and tipped on its side, the way it had once in a battle when an unexpected blow had sent him to the ground and for strange instants screaming men had become reeling wisps of cloud.

  All he needs is one look at your back . . . .

  The look at one who will be forever fleeing. The one sight he will never need to learn is the sight of your face, coming to meet him.

  Of course.

  The soldier turned and saw that the shuffling huntsman was gone. The road was long and level; he had not disappeared along it. He was gone.

  He stood for a while in the empty road, wanting to laugh, feeling that was called for, but able only to manage deep, aching breaths, the ribcage loosening its iron hoops after years of tension. These breaths felt like laughter, and for a time he gave himself fully to them, bent over in the road like a runner after a race, before starting on the way back to find what might remain of his family.

  The Spigot

  Apainter broken by bad luck and bad habits sat in an alley with his back to a brick wall. In another the posture might have betokened despair, but with this painter it was closer to the opposite: a prayer for hope—a hope for hope—in the sort of place that had always cheered him most.

  His most successful exhibition, many years before, had been a showing of paintings of derelict places and things entitled “Waste Spaces.” A friend of his, a writer, had composed a poem for the catalogue catching the painter’s predilections: Waste spaces, alleys, vacant lots . . . .

  The show had been a modest success by his standards. A dozen people had come to the opening, sampling the cheese platters and wine. Two small views of glass shards on asphalt had sold. Over the three week run, signatures, some with appreciative comments, had filled four pages of the gallery’s Guest Book.

  There had even been a published review, his first. But when the review spoke of “ironic commentary,” the painter was dismayed. He felt as if he were seeing himself in a funhouse mirror. How could anyone find irony in the sheer joy he took in his subjects, in all the luscious hues and textures of neglect? Or find commentary in the exuberance with which he tried to render that joy on canvas?

  The show was only a minor event some twenty years before, but the painter dated the start of his decline from it.

  Now,
after losing family, friends and the roof over his head, he had lost the one thing he had managed to keep through all that tumult: his art.

  What can I do? he murmured in the alley. Who will tell me?

  I’m all ears, said a voice to his side. It seemed to come from the vicinity of a rusty iron spigot protruding from the old bricks of the wall.

  Who are you?

  An oracle.

  The painter winced. An oracle? Then why aren’t people lined up around the block to consult you?

  I think you can answer that one for yourself.

  The painter looked at the spigot in the brick wall. The voice was of indeterminate gender—it could be a low woman’s voice, or a high man’s voice. Such uncertainty fit with oracles, he seemed to recall. The voice also seemed to be quirky, casual, a bit smart-ass. Did that fit with the oracle picture, too? He couldn’t remember.

  How can I trust what you say? he asked.

  I don’t know. It sounded like I don’t care. Try me on some questions and see how I do.

  All right, then. What will I do tonight?

  Something you should have done yesterday, and something that should wait until tomorrow.

  The painter asked, after a hesitation, When will I die?

  When news of the event catches up to you.

  What am I thinking at this moment?

  Wondering if I can be blamed on drugs or madness, in which case you could ignore me.

  The painter put his face in his hands, but did not weep. Nor did he feel like weeping, a fact that surprised him a little. Mainly, he felt thirsty.

  No one has bothered to shut me off.

  He turned the vaguely star-shaped knob above the spigot. Creaks and gurgles came from far away, behind the brick. The painter cupped his palms and put them below the spigot. Finally, a few rust flakes fell out, carried by a trickle of dusty, taffy-coloured water. The water with its orange-black grains and flakes of rust drifted and swayed in a slow swirl above the pale flesh of his palms with their black and white paint stains.

  It all formed a striking composition, a deep and depthless beauty in his hands.

  Acknowledgements

  Mike Barnes thanks the Ontario Arts Council for Writers’ Reserve grants which furthered The Reasonable Ogre.

  Segbingway would like to thank Dan Wells for taking on an unusual and complicated project, and Dennis Priebe for his taste and clarity in helping to shape the book. Segbingway is also grateful to family and friends for their support over the years. In particular to Thomas and Quentin, for their limitless imaginations.

  About the Author

  Mike Barnes is the author of seven previous books: the novels Catalogue Raisonné and The Syllabus, the short-fiction collections Aquarium (winner of the 1999 Danuta Gleed Award) and Contrary Angel, the poetry collections Calm jazz Sea and A Thaw Foretold, and The Lily Pond: A Memoir of Madness, Memory, Myth, and Metamorphosis. Born in Minnesota, a joint U.S.-Canadian citizen, Mike lives and writes in Toronto.

  About the Illustrator

  Segbingway is an artist who lives in Toronto