McCann, Maria - As Meat Loves Salt

by Balefanio

  It was hopeless.

  'Here.' I laid my hands on the table, palms up, and jerked my head at them, 'put yours on top.'

  Ferris did not move.

  'Please,’ I said.

  He laid his cold hands on mine and I curled my fingers, folding his within them.

  'Now,' I said, 'I've neither accepted nor refused. Speak it out plain­ly, tell me and I'll do it.'

  He cried, 'Don't put it onto me! Choose for yourself

  "This is choosing. Tell Aunt I will do whatever you'll have me do, and that's my answer.’ I kept hold of his fingers. We stayed there silent and motionless for some time, while the candles burnt down.

  At last he said quietly, 'It is a lot to give up.'

  'Well. My history is bad enough without bigamy,' I replied, at which he smiled but made no reply. The candles were half burnt. I took one and rose.

  'Goodnight, Ferris.'

  'Goodnight, Jacob.'

  As I climbed the stairs I could hear him behind me blowing out the rest.

  The Devil had again struck at me, not through the flesh this time, but through that love of money which is the root of all evil, and for once I had bested him. I would be neither bigamist, nor husband to a girl I did not love; instead, I would master my laziness and love of ease and I would help build the colony. I had vowed it before, but vows are but a paper study for a monument in stone, to be carved out with much sweat, perhaps not without injury, before the thing stands to be admired. To the colony I should go, and give of my best for it, and live kindly with my companions so that Ferris should see my worth.

  On entering my chamber I put down the candle and fetched the map from the shelf, being now of a mind to do anything, provided I did not like it, in order to lay up riches in Heaven. Though the print­ing was too fine to search by candlelight, I was ready to blind my­self to find Abbot's Gardens and so redeem my meanness concerning Samuels and his potatoes. As I unscrolled it, something dropped out, bounced off my shoe and skittered along the floorboards. There was a paper, too, rolled up in the map. I pulled it out, and pressed it against the wall behind the candle flame, to read the following:

  You avert your eyes from me. What should I think? For some time I believed I had understood you, and even now am not sure, but begin to fear I am fallen into a horrible error, and blush to think of that whore's trick of leaving the door unlatched. What is become of me? Do not believe I forget my spouse, neither. My nights are cruel: I lie unfitted to sleep. Now I find myself solicited to plead the cause of a rival, and to help put her into your bed. Have you the heart to stand by and see it done?

  Or will you come to me?

  Were this to be printed, I could not keep back those words. I swear this is the last time I shall ever break the business with you. I cannot talk of it face to face; try as I will, I find each time that my tongue is nailed down. What is wrapped in this paper, let it plead

  for me, as once it pleaded for you, saying, Deal with me kindly. I have had no rest since a certain dream that you know of. Waking, I thought (pardon me the resemblance!) that the scales dropped from my eyes: had I died then, I had died happy. Speak to me, Jacob, do not play the tyrant. Speak to me.

  The air was become as water. A sea pressed me down, my ears roaring, lungs choking on salt heaviness. I stood motionless, only my eyes going over and over the message like those of an unlettered man who feigns to read. He had struggled long in these same waters, un­til his strength had given out. My breathing was hoarse against the silence. Wrapped in this paper. Taking the candle, I knelt on the floor and found what I had known would be there, the sharp-edged glass diamond marked Loyaute. It needled the palm of my hand.

  His letter was dated some fortnight earlier, about the time he was become so insistent that I look in the map. I remembered the paper I had seen him scribbling at, and which he had snatched from my sight, the day I paid out Rowly. Here, then, was the root of those bitter and mysterious words about vowing and being spared nothing.

  I was out of the room before I knew it, and opened his door with­out knocking. Ferris was still up, fully dressed; he started as I burst in.

  'Yes?'

  I waved the paper at him and he frowned. 'Well, what is it?' In my foolishness I had thought he would know the letter at once. I showed him the red glass in my other hand.

  He winced. 'For shame, how can—'

  'I have but now found it! I didn't look in the map! I lied, Ferris, I didn't look—'

  He touched a finger to his lips and I realised I was shouting. There was anguish in his face; he was telling me something but the roar in my ears blocked it.

  'It says, will you come to me,' I went on, throat very dry. 'So—' I threw the letter and the glass onto his bed, the sea swell pulling me off balance. He came closer and from his eyes I thought he was about to embrace me, but instead he went to the door and bolted it. As he turned back into the room, I caught him round the waist.

  That was how I first went to him.

  NINETEEN

  Possession

  I woke in my own bed, dazzled in my senses, invisible prints and tracks on my flesh. After such thirst, to have him lie on me and drip kisses into my mouth; later, to feel his sweat and trembling, and to remember all this now, with his scent still on me: delight, delight. Certain embraces, certain cries and pleadings in the dark coming to mind, I turned over and cooled my burning face in the bolster.

  Aunt was to receive her answer today: Ferris had perhaps told her already; I was quite unable to give it thought. A star revolving in my own sphere, I was remote from earthly troubles. Everything courted me; the very sheets caressed me. I dressed slowly, waiting for my soul to seat itself back in my body.

  As I was leaving his bed in the darkness, he had pulled me down to him, and whispered that we had so far only tasted our banquet. At that I almost got back in, but he laughed and said I must wait until the next night. Now I looked on the day ahead as an Eternity to be struggled through, full of business and meals and manners, before I could again enjoy him and he me.

  The first person I saw on coming down was Becs, smiling at me as she put bread on the table. I smiled back and she asked, 'Have you slept well?'

  I said, excellent well. At that moment Ferris came up from the lower stairs.

  'Thought I heard you,' he said, nodding to Becs on her way out.

  'Were you working on the press?' I asked him.

  ‘Mmm.'

  'On a new pamphlet?'

  'I'll show you.'

  Throughout this babble I was trying to catch his eye. He was flushed, and kept glancing down. At last I said softly, 'Won't you look at me?' and received a full gaze that made me hot all over. Without thinking, I rose, but he shook his head.

  'Not here.'

  The bread which I found myself chewing had no taste in it. Ferris took nothing, but watched me eat. 'My aunt is at the market. I haven't spoken to her yet.'

  'When will you?'

  'Perhaps tonight. Or do you wish to tell her yourself?'

  I threw down the bread. 'I'm not hungry. Let's see your pamphlet.' Getting down from table, I knocked the chair over backwards. We left the room without picking it up.

  Once behind the printroom door, I pushed him against the wall and put my hands in his clothes. Becs was just along the way in the kitchen, and Aunt might return any minute. Almost as soon as he laid hand on me it was over, and he held out no longer than myself. Hear­ing his moan, like astonishment, I knew that embrace for the madness it was, and moved away, terrified by the risk we had just run.

  We straightened our dress, regained our everyday selves; he spoke unsteadily of the work before us and I steeled my mind to printing. The new pamphlet was for the benefit of the second group of colo­nists, and set out some questions to be considered. There were also new copies of the previous one to be printed off, setting forth his basic principles, notably that of no force which I had so notoriously violated on an earlier occasion. It was fortunate that Ferris could not re
ad my mind, for I smiled to recall the thrashing I had given Rowly. Let him come back now and try dividing myself and Ferris; I enjoyed privileges he would never—

  'What's happened to your justification?' asked my friend mildly. I frowned at the case I was setting; the characters seemed crowding away from the left-hand side.

  'Something's distracting you,' he said, and we burst together into crazy laughter. ‘Aren't you happy in your work, prentice?'

  'A fool's question.'

  Feeling strong enough to choke a bear, I worked away, setting three pages of type before I began to grow weary, and making sure that everything was justified. Ferris whistled, seeing how far I was got. He took up a case and searched it for errors, but could find none; I was triumphant. The smell of salt beef drifted into the room and I realised I was passionately hungry.

  "They'll call us in a minute,' he said, taking off a print to dry.

  I determined to finish the last line before wiping my hands.

  'Jacob?'

  'Mmm?'

  'You're not worried—?' His voice was gentle, as if I were ill.

  'About what?' I wanted to hear the words in his mouth, a confes­sion; I hoped he would blush like a girl.

  About the Devil,' he answered.

  I almost dropped the case. 'What!'

  'You think much on him. Don't you?'

  'No more than others do.'

  'Is it him you talk to in your sleep?'

  'I slept in my own—'

  'In the army. We heard you.'

  Bad Angel. Now I understood it. 'Well! Something has made you forward,' I returned, not sure that I liked this care of my soul. ‘Are you saying we've let in the Devil?'

  'I don't believe in the Devil.'

  'That's terrible!' I cried out before I could stop myself. 'If you don't fear the Devil - well, it means you're—'

  'Look at me, Jacob. Am I one of the damned?'

  I did look at him. He was gentle as always, and I remembered all his kindnesses to his fellow men. I shook my head, but went on, 'We see good striving with evil all around us. How can there be God without Satan?'

  'I'm not persuaded there, neither. That there's a God.' He faced me calmly, waiting to see what I would do.

  'You're building the New Jerusalem, and you don't believe in God?'

  'That is but a name, a name people can understand. The place will be made of sweat. So are all dwellings, and everything.'

  I saw that he was out-and-out Godless, and had only said 'I'm not persuaded' to spare me. 'Have you always thought this?'

  'No. It took time. Basing-House finished God and me.'

  'But you pray — you give thanks at meals.'

  'I do it for Aunt. If there be no God, what does it matter?'

  I gaped at him.

  'But to the purpose,' he continued. 'I feared you would be miser­able this morning, and I see you happy. Long may it continue! That's all my meaning.'

  'Perhaps I am hardened! Sin is our condition,' I said.

  'Say rather love is our rightful condition.'

  'You talk like - you are a good man! But how can you be good without God?'

  He grinned. 'Not so good, neither. But what virtue I do have is in me and of me. Men deny the good that comes from themselves, call­ing it God. So they do with their own evil, calling it the Devil.'

  I tried to see how this might be.

  'There is no Hell, Jacob.'

  'And the Bible?'

  'Was written by men like ourselves.'

  He was frightening. At the idea of there being no Hell I had felt a breath of something like freedom, but it was illusion. I marvelled at his foolhardiness, feared it, and loved it.

  'Ferris, why tell me this now?'

  He mocked, 'Perhaps you may have remarked some changes be­tween us since yesterday?'

  A scuffle followed, and I again pushed him up against the wall.

  'Here,' he panted, 'bend your head down.' On my doing so, he licked my mouth and said, 'If you like that, don't give it up for a ser­mon.'

  Despite my fear, I was amused at the idea of being able to give up, when only the nearness of Becs stopped me from rolling him on the ground. He saw this, and teased, 'Or be like Augustine, who prayed, "Lord make me chaste, but not yet"!'

  'Aren't you afraid of dying, Ferris?'

  'I'm afraid of not living.'

  There was a clang from the kitchen: Becs was about to take up the food. Ferris clapped his hands together, as if to say, an end to all this. 'You like salt beef, don't you? Let us eat.'

  I followed him up the stairs. I was a fornicator, of unnatural appe­tite, in thrall to an Atheist. I repeated the words in my head and tried to feel the shock of them, but they remained strange and cruel, far removed from Ferris and me. It was simpler to say I was in love.

  'Perhaps he's with child!' cried Aunt. 'What do you think, Christo­pher?'

  'Stranger things have happened,' he agreed. 'He took nothing at breakfast: that might have been the sickness.'

  Beef. One mouthful and I could have cleared the whole dish by myself. I had never suffered such a craving since the night of our ar­rival, when after months of rations I had fallen on the cold mutton. Ferris and Aunt watched, my friend looking amused, as I worked my way through two large plates of salt meat.

  'It'll give you a thirst,' Aunt warned. 'Don't blame me when you can't stop drinking.'

  Ferris said slyly, 'He'll be up all night,' but I held back the laugh he wanted.

  'You're both of you strange today,' Aunt said, her voice grown thoughtful. Ferris had not yet made report of how I had received her proposition, and to her anxious eyes our foolishness might sig­nify that I was to marry, and Ferris stay, or that we had joined forces against it. I drank freely to wash down the beef, and felt the wine lift my spirits. Not that they needed it — I was hilarious as a lunatic. My friend looked on, happiness lighting his face like sunlight thrown up from water.

  'Will you be in the house tonight?' Aunt asked. We gave assurance that we would, and she went on, 'I should like to talk with you when Becs is not there.'

  So that was to be the time. We nodded our assent, and I think she

  knew then that disappointment would follow, for she seemed to grow older and more tired, so that for a moment I felt pity.

  But I could not think on her long. Down in the printroom I felt the impossibility of working with him all afternoon, and begged that as a good prentice I might have a half-day holiday. He said that in that case the master must have one too.

  'Let us go out,' I implored.

  The weather was hard and windy. Warmed by wine, we wrapped our­selves in cloaks and set out in a cold bright sunlight. He led me north, and it was not long before we came to the edge of the city. Looking about me to know if we were alone, I saw tiny green knots on the bushes. Birds hopped about with straws and scraps of wool, carrying them home, and I thought of the fields around Beaurepair in summer. The clouds were fine and white like old men's hair. We wandered, as full of foolery as boys, pushing and jostling one another (a game at which Ferris was beaten every time) and he consented to sing. This performance had me in tears of laughter, for he sang out of tune with­out knowing it.

  'My aunt has always praised me for a sweet voice,' said he indig­nantly.

  'Does deafness run in the family?' I mocked.

  'You sing better, then!'

  I gave him Barbary Ellen, and he found all manner of fault with my voice, but I sang on, happier I think than ever before, my legs ach­ing from the unaccustomed exercise. Breaking off after a while to bend and rub my calves, I said, 'I am grown soft since we left the army.'

  'Digging will cure that.'

  Joy lapped me in sparkling waves and I cared nothing for digging. We leapt small ditches and hunched over ponds looking for fish; I saw a toad stumble away from us and wondered if it truly had a precious stone in its head.

  'We had better turn back,' he said at last, tilting his face up to the sky. In place of the whit
e wisps I saw black chains of cloud coming in from the east, and there was a chill dampness in the wind. I wondered what o'clock it was.

  We set out in earnest and were just arrived within the outskirts of the city when the rain began clapping on the house walls. Shutters were heard slamming above. We made good progress by clinging to the shelter of the dwellings on one side, and mostly kept our cloaks dry. A woman dressed in brave pink silk stood in a doorway unwill­ing to move, confounded I guess by her own vanity, or else duped by the shortlived sunlight into coming out to be soaked. Some children herded past, splashing my shoes and hose.

  At the corner of Cheapside I bought a slice of plumcake from a sutler. It tasted sour, and on turning it over I found a green fur growing on the underneath. We went back, but the man was gone. Ferris grinned at my vexation.

  'Here,' I said, 'don't waste it!’ We tussled back and forth as I tried to push the horrible stuff into his mouth. Choking with laughter, he spat it out, but I kept a mouldy handful at the ready, and threatened him with it all the way home.

  Happiness makes the heartless man, someone told me when I was a child. We arrived home happy and heartless. Becs opened to us and by evil chance she caught from me an amorous look. It meant only that I was returning home with Ferris, counting the hours until bed, but when she took the cloaks from us I could tell from the way she held mine that she expected, very shortly, to hear something to her advantage.

  It was too dark for setting more type but we went into the print-room to clean off the equipment before the evening meal.

  'We were slack,' said Ferris cheerfully. 'We should have finished up before going out.'He ranged the little boxes of letters and looked over the dry pages. 'You can do the inkballs.'

  I took the things out to piss on them while he wiped over the press. The sky was patched, black and stringy grey, with a bright blue piece, the size of a loaf, above the chimneys. I was careless and at first pissed on my hand, which made me jump, but soon the leather was shiny and clean.

  The printroom when I took them back in was grown darker, and there were no candles. I found my friend rubbing the hinge of the platen with the greasy cloth.

  'We can get it all done tomorrow,' he said as I approached. 'Then comes our meeting.'