People of the Book

by David Stacton

  She was not sorry to be leaving Wollin. That episode was over now. She sat there like a stranger and drove her horse across the ice. The wheels of the wagon had been bound with oxhide, fur side out, but slid back and forth on the slick anyhow. The world is an empty place, and now at last she was free to hide. She might even find a house with a small orchard, such as had been pink in April behind her father’s house. She never told the children about their grandfather, for none is more jealous than the brides of Christ.

  Behind them the landscape closed up, and they were landlocked. They were almost safe.

  7

  Xenophon, in his Ways and Means, an author Grotius might have done better to consult than Cicero, says:

  For my part, I have always held that the constitution of a state reflects the character of the leading politicians. But some of the leading men at Athens have stated that they recognize justice as clearly as other men; “but,” they have said, “owing to the poverty of the masses, we are forced to be somewhat unjust in our treatment of the cities.”

  Wars are fought in the field, which results in dead bodies, and at the council tables, with dead souls. It is necessary to win out over both, otherwise you will win neither. So Gustavus, for Oxenstierna had yet to arrive, did both. The spring of 1631 was partially devoted to promulgating the Leipzig Manifesto, a document in which the mice at last stood up boldly and said they did not greatly care for cats. Then, appalled at what they had done, they scampered for home.

  They did not seem to care much for Gustav Adolf either. This disesteem did not bother him. He had come to liberate them from the Viennese and the Popish yoke, and he could not see that their wishes had much to do with the matter. Their vanity did. Therefore he had resort to diplomacy.

  Humble pie is not the preferred dish of free men, though below-stairs it is always served up as a company treat. Men of accomplishment know what they could have done, had they been able, so what they have done does not unduly impress them. But seen from below what they have done looms large, and pride seems a vice to those who have not any. Do-nothings will always find the thing done vulgar.

  There were too many Germanies, all proud, and most incompetent. For these reasons Gustavus found it wise to count his allies among his enemies, and his enemies among his allies. He was seldom disappointed.

  The manifesto was not a declaration of war. Its purpose was to explain to the Holy Roman Emperor that Saxony, Brandenburg, Anhalt, Baden, Hesse, Brunswick-Luneberg, Württemberg, Mecklenburg, Nuremburg, Lübeck, Strasbourg, Frankfort am Main, and the independent cities of Swabia proposed to resist the Emperor and the King of Sweden, in order to preserve their independence.

  Sending assurances that he meant no harm, Gustavus prudently seized as much as he could hold of Brandenburg. Though the side effects of fighting made him sad, he went on fighting anyway. He never allowed his own emotions to interfere with what he wished to do.

  It was necessary to have a few soldiers shot in order to maintain discipline. He did not enjoy to do this. It was the dull side of the bright mirror, yet without it there would have been no mirror, so it had to be done. A quick-tempered man, he saw nothing wrong in shooting a man out of hand, for that was a personal matter. But since he had an interest in the human animal, he hated to be forced to admit that they were what they were, nothing but rebellious toys, dangerous in number, but otherwise of no more moral character than a vegetable. The trouble was, he knew these toys by name and had played with them for years. A man of Gustavus’ stamp is free from sentimental attitudes. But he will go twenty miles out of his way in order not to catch his gamekeeper poaching, just as the poacher, if he is fond of us, goes out of his way the same distance in order not to be caught by us. Somebody else wouldn’t matter so much.

  The commander who knows his troops finds a little of himself dies somewhere every day. It is necessary. The cells renew themselves. He says nothing. But he does not like it. That is the way the world is. But he grows restless sometimes and as he ages, squints at nothing like an old dog. A judge in a black cap, dealing with that shrieking, bloodless thing, the defendant, has an easier time of it. Having Tom, Dick, or Harry shot is harder. For this reason most commanders avoid acquaintance with their men. The best ones, however, don’t. So it cannot be helped. The men realize that, too; otherwise they would not permit themselves to be knowable. It is an intimate relation that has in it little of the personal.

  It was for such reasons that Gustavus kept a copy of Grotius by him in his tent. That book was wistful as a fairy tale, and as he turned the enchanted pages, he would slightly smile as he read of justice, equity, the law of nations, what Seneca and Cicero had said, and nowhere a word for what Xenophon and Caesar had had to do. Meanwhile, never being one to confuse precedent with experience, he went on revising those sixty pages of Institutions which had given him the best-run army in the world, and the most merciful, for so long as he was there to control it.

  Grotius fell in a sumptuously bound paper splash beside his field cot. Mercy and justice are irreconcilable, the former a pragmatic thing and therefore subversive of order, though, true, without it no order could for long be maintained. Shoot whom? And for the matter of that, how many?

  It is customary to consider great men as being amoral. And so they are, but this does not mean they do not have principles. A great man is a horse with the blinkers off, and nobody likes that, for a horse is there to pull burdens. Shoot whom? These matters are not decided in court, but in chambers. Either you want to have him shot because he has a bad nose and oyster hocks; or else you want to save him for the same reasons.

  Alas, the devil means no harm. It is only the inflexibly godly we need have fear of. For just as a doctor practices a discreet euthanasia, which would not exist were the practice legal, so too do judges work within the law to free good men from it. People look shocked when told you have done something on your own authority. Yet, for free men, there is no other kind. Rules and regulations are essential to the well-being of the scrivener—look at Grotius; but they will never save the society in which he lives—look at Holland and the States General. For that you need an overholder, a Maurice of Orange. If a society is sick, it will choose its destroyer. If it is well, its savior will save it. There is no moral problem here. It is a fact of nature. Athens deserved its Alcibiades, and Rome its Augustus. In time of trouble the dictator arises. He is neither good nor bad. He is merely that epitome of the nation which is strong enough to hand it back its orders. Whether he saves them or destroys them depends on them, not him, for no man ever imposed a will that was not wanted. The state is not a charismatic body. For the golden age, or for the nightmare, one needs always the act of one man.

  But that is in the abstract, and an overholder must judge upon occasions. Shoot whom?

  Count de la Gardie had drawn up a list of possibles. Pink and astute, Gustavus settled down to choose. De la Gardie had named fifty. That was too many. He decided to hover at twenty, and show clemency to five. No, six would be better; no, seven, there are uses to the number thirteen. These men were to be shot to discourage looting, since Gustavus wished to make a good impression on the civil population, and at the same time assure that there would be an ample supply of crops and goods ready for sale to the army at fair prices at all times. A devastated country could not provide these.

  He went down the list, trying to remember faces. But many faces have the same name, and though he never forgot a face, it was sometimes difficult to associate names with faces, though easy enough the other way around. If it had a wart, it was Johannes. If it had a chin it was Johannes. But how could you remember which was which Johannes, without the wart and without the chin? It also seemed to him that it would make a good impression on the men if he had shot—no, you cannot shoot an officer—well then, if he demoted or dismissed one or two officers.

  There was no real problem in selecting the right officer, though de la Gardie, characteristically, had included none on his list. Gustavus added three, an
d then subtracted one: the Scots were sometimes hell to deal with, but they were among his best commanders. He put the name back. He could make a show of demoting him, speak to the man privately later, and shift him to another sector and promote him again. That would do.

  When it came to the common soldiers, however, he was stumped. Finally, for it was a trivial matter, he called de la Gardie and told him to choose, asked a few questions, and went to sleep.

  The men were to be shot next day. Because he did not want to do this too often, Gustavus took the time to make a ceremony of it. There were drumrolls and flourishes. The charge was read, and it was made certain that the men understood the charge. There must be no hint that the men were being executed merely because they had been caught. They were to be shot not because they had stolen, but because they had stolen against orders. The three officers were emphatically disgraced, one with a wink. The seven men chosen to be pardoned were pardoned, as an act of mercy, because of their records. Good soldiers may be forgiven. It is remotely possible. Bad soldiers will never be. It was made as plain as careful organization and the strong, harsh voice of de la Gardie’s aide could make it. Gustavus stayed in his tent. It is a characteristic of God never to appear in person; he sends a deputy.

  It was a windy day. The vegetation of the Mark tends to give way suddenly and show badly worn patches of sand. There were go-devils whirling about the execution ground. The prisoners were allowed hot food, an issue of grog, and a clergyman if they wanted one. Letters home would be posted. The proper sad awe of military regret was adequately seen to. Nobody shouted. Those who kill by profession die with less complaint than those who don’t. The drumroll entered its final flourish. Three of the muskets had damp powder, and would not discharge. Once the work was done, God emerged from his tent, to show his approval, though he did not approve.

  He thought it wise to be seen ordering a decent burial. De la Gardie accompanied him. There was snow on the sand, and blood on the snow. A soldier dead on a battlefield looks as though someone in his impatience had crumpled up and thrown away a body. A condemned man shot looks like dressed meat.

  At the eleventh corpse, a young man who, though unshaven, had a pleasant expression, and who had had the dignity not to writhe, Gustavus stopped. The boy’s almost white thin hair blew back and forth like barley on the rim of a hurst. It was a face he recognized. He had seen it once on the edge of a campfire, and had marked it as promising. It was the face of a leader. Too bad.

  “Why that man?”

  De la Gardie temporized. It appeared he had been uppity.

  “That would be reason to shoot him, but not to have him shot. It is not good discipline to have men shot because you do not like them. You must find some other reason. I could have used him.”

  Still, one error out of thirteen was not bad. De la Gardie knew his business, and these things could not be helped. In minor matters, once is not an offense. Gustavus sighed and went on to other things. During his lifetime no troops of his ever rebelled.

  The next event, which he deplored, but it would be necessary to complete the lesson, was to allow the troops to loot with his permission, once, and as a favor. It must be some town rich in portables. He did not want them to burden themselves down with goods. No doubt the occasion would occur. It always did.

  8

  Neither of the children liked Frankfort an der Oder. It was never far into the fields, but cities are for festival occasions. For every day, the people there seem strange.

  Frau Larsen had taken a tall narrow house built into the town wall, with an orchard behind it, also surrounded by a wall. Against this cotters’ huts were propped, but from the third-floor windows you could look through a narrow window and see the open countryside in the distance. They had been told never to go into the fields alone, it was not safe to do so. At night the town gates were locked and they could not have gone out anyway.

  The houses were high and crowded in like brown hens. They were half-timbered and sagged out over the streets, so that the rooms were always shadowy. In the country people are busy, but they always have time. Here they seemed busy in another way. You couldn’t exactly see what they were doing, but they never had time.

  Frau Larsen seemed younger and prettier, as though she were acting out some role too long rehearsed. She knew exactly what to do, and yet the emotion was gone. She was enjoying herself, though, and if she fumbled sometimes, it was only as the blind man fumbles for something he knows is there, but affliction has made him shy—suppose it isn’t? He remembers colors from the days previous to his infirmity, but all he can see is a lazy warmth, all he can feel is textures. He can never quite be sure. Just as that scary old woman, Baba Witters, had her furniture nailed down, and if you picked up a piece of plate from the sideboard, said, “Yes, you don’t see purple pewter like that any more, put it down,” so Frau Larsen had to know where everything was.

  She sent in to the inn, across the street two doors away, often enough to send the landlord and the servingman crazy. She did not do her own shopping here, as she had done at Wollin. She took a maid along to carry the wicker basket, and seemed pleased to be charged a little more for the privilege of being a lady. She spoke more of her connections than formerly, but never named them. She supervised the cooking, wrote out the receipts, compiled a commonplace book, wore silk in the kitchen for the first time, weighed candied fruits on a scale for a year’s puddings, had her picture restored, though it had not had that small hatchment in its upper right-hand corner before, bought four middling pearls, seriously considered apprenticing Lars to a baker—why a baker?—seemed to like him less than ever, and enrolled Hannale at a dame school.

  “She hates me,” said Hannale to Lars. “She hates me.” And she looked at her brother in disbelief and tugged at her stiff little dresses, the scale models of maturity but somewhat out of date, as though to tear off a hair shirt. She had never heard of Nessus.

  Lars, who knew she hated both of them, said nothing. He did not know when or how he had learned this.

  “You are in town now,” said Frau Larsen. “You must learn how to behave properly,” and set her lips in that gracious grimace which was no smile, and paid a little, but only a very little, more than was needful. She liked to queen it with the tradespeople.

  “She isn’t there,” said Hannale softly, watching their mother from the gallery which overlooked the hall. “Where is she?”

  It was true: Frau Larsen moved in the dusk down there as though one side of the room were open, and the room itself depicted somewhere else. She would turn to the blank wall, make faces, and nod. She was not mad. It was only that pleasure to her was one of the many forms of grief.

  To the back of the house, among the brittle sticks of an orchard choked by city smoke, was an old turf seat, all that was left of a late medieval garden. The moss and tussocks out of which the turf seat was built had gone scraggly. In spring a few degenerate pinks sat about the foot of it, but the children had yet to see a spring here.

  They came to the seat sometimes during the decorum of Sunday afternoons. It was the one refuge they had. And turning her frail face up to the cold sun like a starved tournesol, and staring without blinking at the yellow-dog brick walls of the orchard which shut out the world, Hannale would ask for once upon a time.

  “Lars, tell me about the wharf.”

  “What wharf?”

  “You know what wharf. The wharf there.”

  Neither one of them ever said Wollin. And so he told her about it, and let the words color in the black and white pilgrim prints of memory, until you could see the dapple of the water, you could watch the pebbles turning.

  She had a Russian cap for town, with a matching muff, of gray karakul. He was growing up; he was beginning to realize how gentle and hesitant she was. They both remembered; it brought them together. She was his luck. In the dead of winter he played hide and seek with his luck in the old orchard.

  Looking out the window with wistful sad fury, Frau Larsen l
et the curtains fall. And looking up at her big brother, Hannale smiled, aware of being watched. It was like ice melting in the hand, that smile. It was touching. It turned the knife.

  She put her confiding hands around his neck and said, “Lars, put me in the trees. I want to stand in the trees.” And that made them so happy they forgot the curtains at the window. But even high in the tree, she could not see over the wall. She was a coquette. It was the eyes.

  But when they walked along the riverside, they were both solemn. They were not supposed to do this. The riverside was not respectable. But when they could they did, for rivers run into the sea.

  Frankfort was a rich city. It had a fair. It was a transshipping point. You saw the world there, but never a leopard, except an heraldic one.

  The ships had clumsy sterns and were square-rigged. They were not kept in the spit and polish of oceangoing ships. But their figure-heads were a tacit parade of the real things of the sea, the mermaid, the merman, the mer-bishop, the abraxis, the lovely white lady who cannot speak, the Virgin, the Boy with the Globe, the Duke Pelgus of Livonia, the Christina from Kurland, the Black Rider who gallops the waves from Königsberg to the silted-up harbors of Visby, the Earl Haakon….

  Startled, Lars spelled the gold letters out. Every wavery pane in the stern windows was a blank. There were sea gulls, but you could not smell the sea. The smells here were of river ooze and spilth. But they were boats. He took comfort from the masts. What he could not take pleasure from was any water with a far shore. That left him strangling.

  All the same, the docks were where he was happiest, and sometimes those busy heroes, the sailors, talked to him.