People of the Book

by David Stacton

  Frau Stolz, nipping off dead stalks from her potted geraniums with an expert fingernail, said, “It’s so hard to keep a white one. They revert. It’s as though they wanted to be pink.” And peering out the windowpane, she added, “It’s beginning to clear.”

  In the afternoon the sun rayed down through purple clouds, as through an engraving. Lars had told Hannale. He had not told Stöss. He decided to climb the tower. The way was from the organ loft. If we would leave, we must force ourselves to leave. Otherwise we miss our proper time. He had forced himself.

  He opened the black oak door, and saw the stairs ascending. It was his third tower, first Frankfort an der Oder, then the Katzburg. He did not want to think about the Katzburg. It would be good to smell high air.

  The roof of the tower was supported on squat columns, with the bells in the hollow of the roof above, their guide ropes threaded down through holes in the platform to the bell ringers’ chamber below.

  Reaching the light, he went first to the river side, and resting his arms upon the parapet and his head against his arms, ran a stubby finger across the stubble on his adolescent chin, looked down at the river, settled his legs happily behind him, and thought about things. A barge was going downstream, with washing hung out. He didn’t see it. What he saw was, my ship.

  He had known he was going back since the night of The Tempest. “Full fathom five thy father lies;/ Of his bones are coral made [he had seen coral]:/ Those are pearls that were his eyes:/ Nothing of him that doth fade,/ But doth suffer a sea-change….” He found it right and beautiful. He had seen his father’s face. He was going home. He would work hard, where he belonged. He would get oakum on his hands. He would buy a boat. He would buy back their house, Captain Larsen’s house. He would send for Hannale. She would keep house for him. He was full of the solemn exultation of a boy’s convinced dreams. He could see it.

  She is trim, my ship. She is square-rigged. Her decks are scrubbed every morning. Her cuddy is paneled in burnished walnut. Her ropes and hawsers are made of Indian hemp. Her running lights have the faint blue tinge of massy glass, with bubbles in it. I know every creak of her, every whistle in her rigging. The spokes of her wheel have been rubbed and polished by many hands. Her bowsprit is smooth as a narwhale’s tusk. Her brasses have been buffed to a fine sheen, and I do not mind the green incrustation in the part the cloth cannot reach: that is part of it. At night a hanging lantern swings in the cabin, and the oil purrs. She has been to Lofoten, and Longyearbyen, she has followed the whalers north to the Barents Sea. In her I have seen Archangel and Novya Zemblya, she has passed the castles of Svalbard and Vardhus and the Fiskar Peninsula, she has made safe harbor off Kola and in the White Sea. She has taken herring and mackerel, and bartered for stone marten pelts. Smoothly, twice a year, her sails slack, she has poured back to the jetty, she has docked at Wollin. In winter we repair the nets. She is the Lars Larsen the Elder, but this the painter does this way, placing a single gold stroke along the bows, Lars Larsen I, and at the stern, Lars Larsen I: Wollin. Her real name is Star of the Sea or St. Nikolaus. Once every two years her bottom has to be scraped. I have a crew of four.

  In a heavy sea she lists badly, and makes poor headway. She is built square. We are hospitable to too much blue-green water, and you can’t see a thing. But she comes through. She has a good bottom. We lost a mast, but a mast can be replaced.

  We have been through a lot, she and I. But she likes it when I come aboard. She is my ship, bearing a cargo out of Norway, and standing to in the peaceful roadsteads of impossible coasts. The mist rises. It is a mountain. We have seen the polar ice.

  We have gotten drunk together. For Father, it means nothing. I have come through unscathed. It does not matter. Take me to sea.

  And Father says, yes, I always wanted you to come to sea. It is what the men in our family have always done. I am glad. You do not do it well yet, but you will do it well. It is where you belong, boy, it is where you belong.

  *

  An evening wind stirred his hair, and he stood there, rubbing his thumb across his chin. I have Mysendonck’s knife. I can always hack my way through. I can go as supercargo, or cabin boy, it doesn’t matter. What matters is, I am going back.

  And in a few years …

  His legs were asleep. To stretch, he decided to take a look to the landward side of this most landlocked town.

  He could only stare. In their best panoply and battle array, in silver armor, with pennants, but silently, with trenches to dig, tents to pitch, outriders to carry constant messages, with cannon, with artillery, with pikes, the Imperial forces had moved up during the storm, to invest the walls.

  He had waited too long. There was now no way out until it was over.

  III.xxi.16: When a free passage is granted, liberty to return is evidently implied, not from the literal force of the expressions themselves, but to avoid the absurdity which would follow the grant of a privilege, that could never be made use of. And by the liberty of coming and going is meant a safe passage till the person arrives in a place of perfect security.

  The investiture was made partially on the Magician’s informations, but he was never to know what he had done. For the man with a load of mischief does not pause to see what he has sown. His burden drives him on. He has not the time. He seeks to lighten it: he cannot.

  57

  Pastor Stöss stretched out his hand for an early peach, green with only a faint flush, like the carapace of an almond, peeled it, divided it, ate it, and found it went down sour.

  I.ii.9: It need not be thought surprising if the Christians of those times were unwilling to appear at trials for life, since, for the most part, the persons to be tried were Christians.

  He was preparing a sermon. “Naturally they will want to hear what I have to say. They will need me.”

  Hannale was not so displeased as she should have been, for the siege meant that Lars was still there. Such was his nature. If there was danger, he could not leave.

  Lips drawn together, and worried about provisions, Frau Stolz served them up a meat pasty, steaming, with elaborate butter-glazed flowers on the coffin, and a pattern of air holes. Afterwards, before writing out his sermon, Pastor Stöss consulted with her about the larder and got short answers; but the sight in the cellars of flitches of bacon, ringed sausages hung from hooks in the ceiling, cheeses, conserves, and meat in crocks reassured him. Eggs would be a problem. So would be milk and greens. Since he was so worried, he demanded a large tea. He was given a large tea. It was eaten in silence. When the great, brave, noble, glorious war for the Protestant Cause comes to our own town, what can we say? Had Stöss at last gotten this far, only to be destroyed by the faith that had raised him up? At the Last Supper there is never enough to eat, and the affection smells of treachery.

  Frau Stolz, to whom disaster was no novelty, administered to his whims with her customary patience, but felt sorry for Lars.

  “You could slip out,” she said afterwards.

  “I can’t leave now.”

  To this there was no answer.

  *

  On Sunday, Pastor Stöss mounted his pulpit and edified his auditors with an explication of Death on a White Horse. Apocalypse or Revelations, it is all one. It is an apocalypse. And they are revelations. There are pulpits in the churches of the northern ports, in Lübeck, in Riga, made like prows, sometimes made of them, which allow us to ride out the storms of faith. But not here. Stöss used a brass eagle as a lectern.

  He spoke of the monster 666. He spoke of the Four Horsemen. He spoke of courage, and had absolutely none. That white-faced shaking was not entirely fervor. His words had an immortal ring (he knew what he was at), but his parishioners were not convinced.

  For once a city is cut off, it isn’t anything. It can’t catch fish. It keeps no cows. It can do nothing for itself; it is a parasite. The assured glory of the world has to go beg for its bread, the peasants would rather eat their bread than sell it, the marketplace is deserted. The Lords
of the World find they have to bribe their way. Unpleasant things happen. Our neighbor would give up his life for us, but not his flour. The social order shifts. I have a ham, you don’t. The hatreds of a lifetime lock their larders, and men of probity starve. There are acts of kindness, but not many. For acts of kindness, just as much as acts of meanness, are the acts of exceptional men. Fräulein Nahl, a poor relation neglected for years, denounces Frau and Herr Hofrat Müller, not in a spirit of revenge, but because hoarding is wicked, it is her duty. She really believes this to be so. The representatives of the Syndics arrive, the food is confiscated and never seen again. A fine must be paid. Why did we not ask her to dinner?

  It is amazing how many men are too weak to man the walls. There was a Swedish garrison for that. It ate barley mash, but there were rumors of wassailing. The city’s defenders were much resented. Some soldiers went posting by, immaculately turned out. Posting is a poodle form of locomotion. One watches the self-satisfied scut go by. Nobody had much use for poodles really.

  The Great Chancellor himself had said they must hold out.

  It was a siege of six months. Hannale got thinner and then her flesh began to fall in rapidly; Frau Stolz used more and more spices to flavor less and less food. Cats are edible; dogs taste better. Rats have the flavor of moor hen.

  But the churches were full, only nobody seemed to listen, as though they had to commune with It. There was often a shuffling of feet during the sermons. Sometimes there was a cough. On the walls, sentries had begun to faint at their posts. The hides of cattle were cut up, soaked, and chewed. The supplies in St. Anne’s cellar began to dwindle.

  “Well!” said Frau Stolz, meditating upon a form of butchery heretofore unknown to her, and trying to compute the cuts by analogy, and even for that, you had to go by night to the back door.

  Pastor Stöss seemed under water, stagnant, still, and lost in his own swamp.

  58

  Something had to be done, and Lars was hungering to do it. It is the body, in any crisis, that says yes or no, not the scruples. For say what we will, we do as we must.

  “I’ve joined the garrison. I’m going on the walls,” said Lars. He couldn’t just wait.

  “You can’t do that. We need you here.”

  “If I don’t, there may not be any here.”

  “But it’s dangerous,” complained Stöss. He would never acknowledge him, but he did not want him shot. If the Imperialists got in, he would be cast out. Lars would then be his only accomplishment. He had no doubt but that they would get in. He had been at Magdeburg. What you don’t want always gets in.

  “They need men.”

  “You’re only a boy.”

  “Am I?” asked Lars. He had forgotten it.

  “No one expects us here in the parsonage …”

  “I don’t want to hide behind that.” Lars meant no more than he said, but Stöss winced. There is also the tradition of the great warriors of the Church. There had been a few, even on the Protestant side (a recent faith, it takes a while for precedent to accumulate). But as usual, Stöss could not make up his mind.

  *

  He was a volunteer.

  Frau Stolz saw him off at dawn, with half a loaf of bread and four slices of Braunschwager, in a warm napkin, a sleepy pear from last autumn’s stock, and a bottle of brandy, her own decocted spirit. His beard was growing and he seldom shaved. He came home to sleep. On his left arm he had tied the band of the defenders. Nobody knew him.

  It was not from conviction he fought. It was because of Hannale. Occasionally, from the Imperialist side, there was a sally. He learned to shoot. The walls of the town were yellow and raw. The jerk of the musket, recoiling against his shoulder, was the same jerk men gave when they fell. He hated it. It felt good. He was always aware of his forefinger around the trip trigger, and his left shoulder was bruised.

  He was also good at it. They jerked. It gave him bad dreams until he was used to it. Then it gave him nightmares. It went too fast. Stöss referred, sneering, to our defender; and yet not quite precisely sneering. He seemed shamefaced.

  The Swedish garrison was down to five hundred men, and each day there were fewer. Not many of the townspeople had offered to mount the walls in their own defense. Not many townspeople ever do. That is one of the many authorities they delegate, in order to lead the better their surrogate lives. Nor did they wish their town defended. It was a matter of which came first, their property or their lives, so they would willingly have paid ransom not to be looted. It had always before been possible to buy off the victors with a donative. So had they done with the Swedes come to liberate them in the name of religion.

  Unfortunately the nature of the war had changed. The troops in this sector were predominantly Spaniards, and the Spaniards, when aroused, are wreckers. Moreover, having no subjects non-Catholic but a few ejectable Jews, they knew for certain what a heathen was, and knew enough and no more than to kill one when they saw one. There were twelve thousand of them, and the length of the siege had made them irascible. If it took that long to starve out thirty thousand, they wanted something for it. They enjoyed spitting people.

  Lars was stationed at the main gate. A city is seldom taken by way of its main gate, if for no reason than that people put their pomp to the front and forget about the rear and sides. Nonetheless, the besieging army, obeying a like vanity, masses its most splendid forces before the main gate. The fighting and the actual blood are to be found on the wings. Great Gustavus stormed the main gate of Frankfort an der Oder, but he was dead now. The Spanish commander was more prudent.

  Lars climbed to his station. With a good deal of grumbling, and it had to be paid for in advance, the citizens had agreed to bring a thin greasy soup to the defenders twice a day. It was delivered in covered iron caldrons, hauled through the streets on wooden sledges, there being no draft animals left, and wagons being too ponderous for weak women to manage. For there seemed to be a noticeable shortage of men. They had not gone to the wars; they had gone to the cellars. Besides, a Syndic cannot pull a supply sled, no more can his wife, and everyone else in the city was trembling neutral.

  Hearing the rattle and shriek of the sleds, like a nail being drawn from a board (there was no longer anything to grease them with), Lars looked back into the city. It was derelict. No animal had been seen in its streets for two months. Its stores were boarded, its houses were shuttered, against looters. If anyone had to go outdoors, he ran rapidly from building to building, as though the cobbles had been hot. Half the population went to church, half stayed away, each for the same reason. Services were held for the absent as for the dead. Unimpeded and uncollected, litter rolled where it would. The spires and towers of the principal churches stuck up gaunt over dead roofs. The chimneys were lifeless; there was no wood left to burn. What trees so far remained in locked-up gardens had now been felled. It was the turn of tables and chairs. No supplies came in from the river. The far bank was patrolled, and the section of it that strolled by the city had been tied off as though surgically. You could not see it from here.

  Through this slipslop desolation, old women dragged the caldrons, once by day, once by darkness. There were no lights. The candles had been eaten, the shutters were up, or people lurked in cellars and back rooms. They had grown thin. They now had wattles where formerly they had had comfortable winter fat. It was as though their arms and legs and faces had melted. They raised dust. The sledges squealed.

  Looking the other way, Lars could see the furbelows and frills of the Spanish tents, pitched an immune fifty meters beyond the farthest reach of spent shot. The enlisted men’s tents and trenches were scattered haphazard. Those of their commanders were orderly and, of course, bigger, made of striped cloth oiled against the weather, and fluttering with pennants. These men still wore ceremonial armor when they gave orders, or directed operations from a distance, with a baton. They had adjutants to tell them what they thought. They had white horses, though that is a king’s animal, and shiny black-chested mili
tary ponies. There was something about them of the Moors. Their voices carried sometimes on the wind. It was a brave display.

  In the penumbra of this neatness sprawled the riffraff of the Spanish camp, moneylenders, priests, Jew merchants, prostitutes and sutlers, wives and children, an army twice the size of an army, brawling, screaming, and digging in the dirt for what it could find, the worst of it in dirty silk, the rest in rags. At night it was a brawling bawdyhouse and dortor for human misery. Die or be killed, mercenaries have no principles, and everything is for sale. Once or twice a week there was a public hanging, which could be watched from the ramparts of the town to be taken, as well as from the camp about to take it. This camp and the town were a model of the world. It was no easy matter to keep the besiegers back, and the same thing is always at our back. It is a degradation. In time of war you see how like we are. Perhaps at no other time, though men of soft mind would tell you otherwise.

  At the parsonage it was not much better. Stöss would do nothing but grumble, not him. He had the look of a man whose God has betrayed him. He seemed to take the siege as a personal affront. If the children had not come, it would never have happened. There were now no more kaffeeklatsches in the town. In the church they seemed not to wish to hear him; they seemed to wish to pray, or whatever it is they did, with their heads down, holding the bridges of their noses between thumb and forefinger, if they were men, and with their eyes shut.

  Moreover, if there is one thing men hate even more than ability, it is that certainty which arises from competence. There should not in the world be such an ease, for we have it not. So naturally therefore we scorn it.