People of the Book

by David Stacton

  Why yes, he said, the Coal Sack, and had suddenly the vision of a dependent empire, stretching down from the Baltic like the stinging tendrils of a blue jellyfish. How often had he seen them blown by some storm in toward shore, and the back of a lashed swimmer, white, red, scarified, ugly. They infested the North Holland beaches and the coasts of Frisia.

  “What do you do about them?” he had asked de Paul, who liked a sea dip. The Dutch Ambassador was a Dutch rogue. “We just bat them aside,” he said, made an abrupt motion with his hand, and let loose a guffaw.

  The Coal Sack is an unknown force. Well, why not? Why not a new blond empire? A confederation like the Milky Way, in a clear sky, without clouds? There was a hollow echo under his heels.

  “What?” said Gustavus, the vision vanished, and he stamped his heels. The rowels whirled. The shot rattled. Back the echo came.

  On the next stride there was not one.

  His body servant, glancing out the windows, was astonished to see his master leaping about like an enlarged morris dancer, clatter, stomp, and jangle, in smaller and smaller patterns, snapping his fingers, and shouting, “Ha.” He then strode into the building, drank a glass of aquavit neat, went triumphantly to sleep, and when he woke, gave orders and called for his barber.

  Half an hour after dawn, he marched out onto the parterre, in a cloud of officers, and explained what the pulleys, hoists, workmen, and crowbars were doing there.

  “We propose,” he said, in his best manner, “to unbury the dead,” a form of the pronoun he used only when in a tearing good humor, and so in a mood to poke fun at himself.

  It did not take long. Under the center of the terrace was an abandoned vault. The cranes were moved into position.

  “Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,” he crowed as the cannon swung up, some of them captured from the Palatinate twelve years before, to judge by the arms. Last of all came Simon called Peter. He had given his usual demonstration of sagacity.

  Simon called Peter was actually that large piece known as the Sow, stuffed not with cannonballs but with 15,000 ducats, Hungarian. Maximilian had also hidden regimentals down there.

  “Alas, he had not the men to fit them,” said Gustavus, and distributed clothing left and right. The Bavarian colors are white and pale blue. With the addition of a yellow scarf, these were the Swedish colors, too.

  The war was going well. Too well. Gustavus had a half memory of a magician, walking deeper through snow, into a pinecone wood. Now why should that disturb him? It had something to do, somehow, with the Coal Sack.

  18

  There were rumors everywhere; there always were, like a swarm of midges at dusk around a memorial chapel. They do nothing. It is necessary only to walk through them and to keep them out of one’s eyes. But they are a nuisance. Oxenstierna was worried, for there are rats so eager to leave the ship they will prise out the bungs with their sharp little claws and gnaw the timbers loose, even though by those means they themselves drown. It is for this reason we put large wooden disks halfway up the hawsers, when the ship is in port. They get in anyway, and then escape with a soft, brown plop. It was a matter of controlling one’s allies.

  Wallenstein, who preferred to use his armies for blackmail, had been forced to put them in the field. He was intriguing against Maximilian, who was intriguing against him. Gustavus had been forced to make use of German troops, whose depredations were losing him his popularity among the civilians. But you cannot discipline Germans; you can only punish them. “God be my witness, you yourselves are the destroyers, wasters, and spoilers of your Fatherland,” he shouted. “The sight of you sickens me.” But it did no good. The German princelings had been preying upon each other for so long that it was impossible to make them understand that cows exist not to be stolen, but to be milked.

  For the moment, he was cooped up at Nuremberg, and allies began to disappear. Just as one more wave would beach us, the tide turns flaccid and ebbs away. He had lost three-fourths of his horse.

  *

  Lars had had a birthday, and was now a scraggly twelve, overgrown and much too knobby. Frau Larsen was parsimonious, and besides, joyless food is not so nourishing as food served happily. This was not held against her. She was understood to be rich, and in time of trouble everybody hoards, and sees for himself a pat of butter is a luxury, sweet or salt. It was generous of her to serve it at all.

  It was also understood, from the local parson, that she sent small packets of cash to Magdeburg “for the relief of a poor clergyman.” She had done so for years.

  Stöss, to whom they were directed, was enraged by them. He was not a poor clergyman.

  “A woman’s writing,” said his superior, handing over the first packet of the sort to pass through his hands, and out fell silver.

  Stöss, who recognized the handwriting, though it had been eleven years, began to sweat.

  “I suppose you cast your bread upon the waters.”

  “What?”

  “Did somebody a good turn,” said his superior, who did not like him.

  Stöss could not rightly say. The packages continued to arrive, even after he had fled to Blicksburg, for there are not many places a clergyman can hide; God may not know where he is, but his immediate superiors do. They were forwarded to him. In the winter of ’32–’33 they stopped.

  But it was not winter yet.

  In the autumn, when the leaves began to pile up underfoot like green gold, and the evergreens to show themselves as always there as ever, when water flowed slack in the river and spiced apples had just been put up, Lars went for solitary walks. Children believe they live in the pale blue center of eternity, but he was almost up to the days when day begins to succeed treacherously day, and we can hardly wait to grow up and so make our escape. Maturity is in the garden, beyond the final double doors of a series of rooms arranged en suite. If we can get there first we shall have childhood back again, and freedom too. But just as we think of this, there comes an enormous banging through the empty rooms. It is the sound of adults, slamming the doors and barring them against us. They wish to keep us out of the garden for so long as possible.

  It is only later, when it is then too late, that we learn they only wanted to save us from finding out that the garden is empty, too. The statue is cracked. The pool is dry. The flowers only last a season, and wither at the touch.

  Lars was not only born stubborn, he was born thoughtful. But anyone who has heard the sea hears music when he sleeps. They are sad tunes, but beautiful as the swift suck of the sand, when the tide turns and tries to take us with it. As it does for a step or two, but then the foam rills over our toes, we are stuck in sable. Emotion is like a wave. One has to ride it on the instant, otherwise it knocks one over. Someone had brought to town a stuffed sea leopard, a very strange and pretty beast. He had taken Hannale to see it. Why had she cried?

  She did not know. It was something she could only half remember. It was not the creature; it was the name. The curator spoke Italian. It is close enough to Spanish. “Leopardo della mare,” he said.

  “No,” she told him. “On land, on land.” She began to cry. Lars had to get her out of there.

  Children forget quickly the past cause of their future unhappiness, particularly girls, but they never forget the response. Then, unexpectedly, like a new moon, the coquettishness would spread its smile again. It was true: she was a moonlight child.

  A small rivulet emptied into the Oder, invisible below sedges, marshy and booby-trapped with cow pies, not far from their flung-down orchard walls. Here Lars had established an imaginary beach. He and Hannale had found it together. Before it dropped into the river, the stream made a swirl, under a still pool, after which it eased itself between some rocks down to the Oder. There was sand here, and some pebbles, a sea shingle in miniature. Here was the jetty, and Hannale placed a twig and there was the pier. A church was available. “And that’s our house.” There were boats, too. Any old leaf made a boat. But the little miniature sea shingle did not turn w
ith the tide. The clear water ran out, shallow over stones, there were a few minnows, it was not salt. It had no waves; at most in a small wind passing over it, it could shudder, or when a water scooter went its way. Hannale by putting her hands smoothly into the icy stuff made her own storms, but there was no foam; you cannot engulf a dead leaf, it is the world’s closest to a two-dimensional being.

  At the bottom of the stream bed, a mile or two (a foot and a half) out, Lars could see a black length of branch, yellow and raw where broken off, brought down by a spring freshet and wedged in the stones. It was a sunk boat, encrusted with barnacles (in actuality, air bubbles, with the sparkle to them of Cumberland Tears), seventy fathoms down. He drew his legs up, put his crossed arms on his knees, and rested his head on them, in that gesture of exile as old as the world’s first campfire, and though it was daylight, felt the flicker of flames against his eyes and reflected on the water. But there was no face down there, no matter how far out you went. He was too old now for these microscopic games, but the world is a microcosm: he could still feel them. He got up and walked toward the town and the wharves. In our teens it is another kind of dreaming that gets done; each age has its own. Even the nightmares vary. His were now of stifling.

  It was that quiet time of day when the world has eaten and must rest. The streets were emptied, but coming down to the quays, where the cobbles were always wet, he saw someone ahead of him, crestfallen and dashing, with a bent feather in its hat, and a gaudy jacket. It had just been turned away from the gangplank of a fishing smack.

  Lars’ heart gave an adolescent thump and he felt eager in the knees. We recognize people in the distance, not by feature but by the sum total, and after some time, of what they are, which is their posture, the reason we are fond of them or hate their guts. Besides, he recognized both that carriage and those boots.

  “Mysendonck!”

  Mysendonck seemed scared, then pleased despite himself, and scowled. He also was growing up; his chin was blue. But though he had not lost his swagger, it now seemed defiant in another way. He had mud on his sleeve.

  Lars felt happy. It was to meet someone from home. It was someone from home.

  Mysendonck asked no questions and gave no answers. If one has lived, there is not much to say.

  His swagger now was that of an actor picking up a familiar part as soon as the audience appears. Between engagements he has grown a little careless. It is not for nothing that even the best performance is called a repetition. But people are loyal to themselves. It is their code. Give them their audience, and they straighten up at once.

  Lars took him to an inn. Frau Larsen did not encourage any but accredited strangers to her house, and few of those. She was hospitable not by nature but by show, a spoon counter from infancy.

  Mysendonck was strut and nothing more. Take away his posture, and nothing was left. But then, it was quite a strut, and built in, and if you come right down to it, animal elegance is superior, every time, to the simpering kind. Twenty minutes ago Mysendonck had been running for his life. Now he had his audience back again, and decided (he was quick physically only) it was safe to smile.

  They went to a scuttlebutt tavern on the wharves. Lars had not been in such places before, but there was no place else to go. It is forgotten that the dregs of humanity are so because the world has drunk them up, and it was not a full bottle to begin with. Second-and third-rate people are so because they are second-and third-rate. Yet between those who succeed and those who fail there is an understanding: they both tried. The others didn’t.

  In a low-ceilinged room like this, bitter with turf smoke, Mysendonck had only to enter to be the tallest man there. Take a good man and another, and at once you have a better. To find out who is best, you need only add a third. But enlarge the group and something unexpected happens. All but the best and worst lose identity; the rest are merely mediocrities.

  And men at their worst are not men. They have not that grace.

  Mysendonck, flushed on sour grapes, had had a year to learn that if you wish to be a leader, there is no point in expecting the leaders to make you one. In the Imperialist forces, no one rose from the ranks. In the Swedish (he had already deserted twice) you were promoted, but only on merit. But in this low room choked with night birds, there was a natural pecking order, and here was the rooster come in. To be a leader, you must gather your own gang. It cannot be done by joining.

  Men do as they have always done, by rote. It is the basis of the law. But if you cast this apparatus off, the whole world comes out like the sky on a frosty night and glitters with possibility. All you need is an admirer. He had forgotten Lars, about whom something made him furious; he did not like purity to exist, it was too much like seeing a candle in a neighbor’s window on a cold night. We were once asked to leave. So we want to smash the glass and let the wind blow in.

  Mysendonck set himself to dazzle Lars. It was not hard to give a soldier’s life a shimmer. One had merely to leave the horror and the boredom out.

  If Lars noticed this, he pretended not to. He had the capacity to admire, and preferred to use it. He found that nothing else in his life filled him up quite so well, or made him feel half so complete. Mysendonck was from Wollin, and had quicksilver in him.

  That awe small boys have for what their elders hate most, a little dash, a little color, a little spirit, was as strong as ever it had been. Little boys want to be what they will most strive to put down, once they are older, unless they be themselves men of parts.

  Mysendonck began to pick fastidiously at a hickey that had been bothering him, and stamped with his yellow boots on the floor for service. He felt better. They did not discuss the war. The war was just something that was happening. On the subject of Wollin he seemed shy. He would not borrow money. He did not mention that he had been a fugitive, begging for passage on a boat. He had changed his mind.

  “Going?” he asked.

  Lars had to go.

  “You’ve helped me,” said Mysendonck. “One day I will help you.” It was a bargain. Bargains meant more to him (so he thought) than gratitude. His moral system was visible and simple. Not even he had ever seen its better side.

  “Where will you go?”

  “South. And thanks for the advice.” He was once more Earl Haakon.

  “What advice?”

  “That would be telling,” he shouted. He left the town that night, closed gates or no.

  I.ii.3: Even in the brute creation, who have no idea of right, we make a distinction between attack and defense. For when Ulpian had said that an animal without knowledge, that is without the use of reason, could not possibly do wrong, he immediately adds, that when two animals fight, if one kills the other, the distinction of Quintius Mutius must be admitted, that if the aggressor were killed no damage could be recovered; but if the other, which was attacked, an action might be maintained.

  19

  No man believes in his own extinction, least of all the man who longs to die. Were this not so, there would still be war, but there would be far fewer troops. Nor are we struck dumb by a neighbor’s sorrow. This lack of empathy allows much. But sometimes it is not we who hold the mirror up to the nostrils of the dead, but the dying who hold it up derisively to us, with rattling fingers slimed with that sweat which is like none other, unless it be the sweat on a crypt wall. Terrified, we listen for our heart and hold our breath, for fear that it might not cloud the glass. But it is only for a moment. The mood soon passes.

  In the month of October, 1632, the Elector of Saxony, who had temporized himself into impotence, found his lands invaded by three armies at once, one of them Wallenstein’s, and from his capital at Dresden could see at night the flames of his own villages, burning. He wrote to the Snow King for help. Gustavus was already on his way north.

  Though John George had called for help, as usual, he showed no signs of offering any. Gustavus hesitated.

  He had never laid eyes on Wallenstein. You cannot tell much about a man until you have
seen him. But you can sometimes tell something from his houses, as at Sagan, or from his camp, if he be on campaign. Wallenstein had left an abandoned camp not far from Nuremberg. Gustavus turned aside to see it.

  He came upon it on one of those evenings when the sunset is a series of horizontal pewter bars, with the dying world seen through the chinks. It was winter again. In the Germanies winter comes prompt, perhaps because the spring and summer seem so short. It is evergreen country; it has no autumn. Some pines stood along a ridge like an immovable army; they had witnessed the interment of the chieftains of Arminius. And Nuremberg is a witch city. A good many have been burned alive in these woods; that rich black loam of outer Bavaria is full of fear, fear that does the work of earthworms. There are mists. Farther north is more dangerous, but farther north we do not have this fear. Farther north the evergreens are tall and blue; here they are shorter, darker, dusty, sullen green.

  The camp itself was in disrepair. The canvas had ripped rotten to the winds. Wallenstein seldom repaired anything. What he did was planned to wear out or go obsolete. Gustavus, who could raise but one, had a splendid army; he knew his men, could name them, and took care of them. But Wallenstein could raise an army any time, therefore he could throw it away when he wished, and had no love of it. The larger the group, the smaller the love is. We deny those beneath us, for we cannot have too many of them, and once we admit they have faces, we admit their right to rise. Better to fear rats in a cellar than to let even one of them upstairs.

  Wallenstein had abandoned the wounded, the starving, and the maimed. He always did. For his was a business sense of war; he had no use for windfalls and culls. He never buried the dead for free, unless it was a matter of sanitation, and how could it be?—he was no longer there.