The Village on Horseback: Prose and Verse, 2003-2008

by Jesse Ball

  3. Proceed to kidnap the children, running away at a hasty, but not overwhelming pace. You therefore force the man to choose from between his children which is to be saved. When he takes up chase the one pursued will lead him upon a merry run for a short stint providing time for the other to escape. When that aim has been accomplished (and presumably then the father will be close) the child will be set down neatly and escape will be easily effected for the father will then stop to take care of his stolen child. And meanwhile, the other captor is well away and safe, having succeeded in the theft.

  NOW

  4. The stolen child in step 4 will be kept away for a period not longer than one calendar day. Following that period of separation, he will be returned safe and sound to the bosom of his family.

  5. It is crucial to understand here that while the child is held in illegal custody it will be supported in high style, given various treats and placated in countless inventive and surprising ways. Then the child will be taught about the event that has transpired. It will be made most carefully to understand that in an even contest, its father’s affections were led to choose its brother rather than itself. How sad the child will be then. Perhaps it will be shown footage of the crucial incident such that it can see for itself how its father abandoned it to a cruel and uncertain fate. Then, as we say, the child is returned secure in the knowledge that its father chose not to save it.

  6. The plan now proceeds to stage six. Immovable bronze statues depicting each boy, the father and the kidnappers will be placed in the park in correct relative position complete with dedication and name-plates. At the induction ceremony the family will be invited and the entire matter explained to the press.

  7. However uncomfortable things are in the happy home, they will be made still more, for a sum will be laid on the stolen unchosen (by his father) boy and provided annually and overlooked such that he is capable of a standard of life of which his brother and family could never hope to attain.

  THEN the chosen child will wish himself Unchosen and all will be quite grand for of a Sunday in the park as they grow older and age into death they will now and again come upon these statues and remember deeply and indefatigably their father’s true choice.

  29

  Meanwhile in the forest the door to the very largest tree had been left open and all manner of creatures whether desired or not could come and go through all and any rooms of the great and complicated house that he had made both at once in passing in a childhood conversation and later with his own two hands from a place of hiding. Who then to come once and for all and set matters straight?

  30

  I was nevertheless famous in many circles, my name known, for instance, to those who dwelt alone, to those who drew water in silence at midnight from the well at the world’s heart.

  31

  A character who enters the scene, always by balloon.

  32

  An Egyptian painter whose lettering and figure work was so precise it far surpasses the precision and accuracy possible today through the use of machines.

  33

  I should like very much to have a shop in the downstairs section of some boarding house or general store that I own. The employee would sit behind a desk dressed well, and would make boldfaced lies to whoever comes in. These lies would in some sense be regimented, for instance, no promises of any kind would be made.

  34

  A man came to Inilvick out of a great storm repeating over and over the seventeen characters and fourteen formulations that make up the long lost language of the countryside. For once in Inilvick man had the faculty of speaking with animals and such as he liked. For that reason, though the old arts are long lost, all the best animal trainers of the fourteenth century were born in Inilvick.

  35

  Some began the meeting with loud angry or dissatisfied talk while others shrank together at first out of fear but sometimes verging into inappropriate groping. I admonished a handsome woman who sat beside me in a dress having no fewer than 93 buttons: WHY MUST YOU WEAR SO MANY BUTTONS? to which she opened wide her pretty mouth to show 3 rows of sharpened teeth.

  36

  Cleverly we accord no respect to wily makers of intricate toys or to the writers of wire-thin stories that confound even the kind attentions of dressmakers crouched resolutely in a sultan’s hourglass with precise, indeed all-comprehending instructions.

  37

  OH the long winters! Yes, we in Lundil do survive from year to year, or so we are told, but the tactics we must employ, though perhaps obvious, are lamentable and leave us powerless to know how things were in the previous year, or even who we were. What of my associations? What of my medals, my friendships? What of our great tradition of letter-writing, second only to the town of V. far down the river? Well, each year we of the town congregate and are assigned notes as in some staged production. It is then, in the aftermath of four months’ hibernation, in which dreams have emptied our minds of all true import, that we can slip with impossible ease, into our new roles, like the scissored rain clouds of some failed attempt to render the ever-present sky.

  38

  Goodbye, again, and all of them going off down to the shore, and out to sea. Well, we shan’t see each other again I say, not in this life, and then I too am off into the waters, swimming at my resolute, far-grasping pace. We shall not see each other again, I say, but how long life is, and how foolish all predictions. Throw me ashore on some desert coast sweep me up on some eastern river: All that I plan is replaced with that which I dread in a manner so very predictable I find I often see the world makers’ hand. Yet what then? Knowing you are being tricked is no help if you can find no one to tell you why.

  39

  Though it is often said that Noah escaped the flood due to a warning from God, we find it much more likely that he happened anyway to be building a boat and happened anyway to be amassing a living record of the world, that he happened anyway to be at sail on that particular day when the skies opened. In short it was a mixture of diligence and chance that saved him from that which claimed all other lives. Yet he is not alone in this. For plague is as voluminous as water, as all-seeing, as dark-minded. I shall speak of those who have built arks with which to weather that deft and thriftless horror, the bubonic plague.

  40

  I leap down from the still-moving train and cry out to you— after so long, I have arrived at last.

  — Have you then, arrived at last, you say doubtfully, and this dream too is confined to a place of disrepute and forfeit.

  41

  No! No!

  And with that the curtains break from the ceiling and fall, crushing the almost imperceptibly tiny figures below in immense and incarcerating folds.

  42

  And with the light of a sudden fields appear and houses, hills topped with green and gray outcroppings of stone.

  43

  Those there are walking alone with a stick in black night that come now at once with me to day. In the wood where the reddest bird draws on its beak and ascends to its body, there I will wait and consider what first I will say.

  44

  Pastimes are arranged so precisely in this collapsible season to prepare for the arrival at any moment of a still greater conception. This is to say the youngest and prettiest girls put on their best clothes but do not go out or even rise to answer the door.

  45

  Recording the moment of his death in the twelfth century, Abbot Corgris had himself dipped in ink and placed on a thirty-foot-square piece of drawn cloth. Has the record since been lost? I have not seen it in my travels to England’s abbeys and convents, but of course, someone could be treasuring it, keeping it in a sacred place and looking glowingly upon it from time to time. It is said his sprawling death moved him first towards the top of the canvas and then away down and left.

  46

  A large animal attacked a child between four and five crowds that had been on the avenue. Neither the fourth nor the fifth was there. One had
left, one was to come.

  The child was alone. Then, a rustling in the bushes. A large animal; yes, a large animal. Presumably it tore the child limb from limb or bit at it over and over while pinning it beneath a hideous forepaw. I really can’t say exactly what happened having not been there and indeed never having heard of the incident until now.

  47

  I dug a hole with an antique trench shovel that my great grandfather brought back from the wars. It fits in the hand so nicely, it makes you wish there were more reasons to use a trench shovel. And how it folds up so deliciously and fits so precisely into its tarpaulin carrying sack! I decided then and there I would hate Mrs. Eddling whose place is next over. So, I began by pelting her with stones. When she responded badly to this, the line was drawn. I dug a trench clear across the yard. Eventually I will dig another and another until I reach the house. Then I will push her into a hole and use my antique shovel to throw dirt in until there’s too much for her to bear and then I will rest and after a while finish the job, but oh my it is nice to have this spade and I really don’t mind at all inventing reasons to use it. Don’t you feel the same way?

  48

  I saw a man with the wind in a bag go about in a finely tailored suit here and there showing off his finely trimmed hooves and saying, dear sir, dear madamoiselle, are you aware that the show is about to begin?

  49 — Method of Secret Committee

  Six to nine men or women are to be gathered, masked, and cleansed of recognizable detail. There each puts forward some task he or she needs solved. Then unbeknownst to the others, each takes on one of the other’s tasks and performs it secretly.

  50

  Opening the vent, I am engaged, yes, desperately engaged, in moving the air from the outside in. It is this way with me that when I become furious and reach a red wall in my thoughts, I do not speak or make any outer countenancing, but go straightaway to this place and open the vent. Thereafter shall follow, thereafter follows, events in which I can take no pride.

  51

  And shall we predict the passage of a certain young lady down the street? Yes, a certain young lady, a certain girl, wearing a rather stiff rubber suit. It is a punishment enacted by her father, a veterinarian. He is pleased to drive very thin pins into the back of her neck which swell at his command.

  52

  What if you were told of this behavior of his? What if you were witness to it in his house, brought there as a guest? Do you have within you the strength to stand up to him? He seems sometimes to be at least a hundred feet tall, with a face as deep as an avenue.

  53

  At the edge of these reflections, there is a little closet into which one can sometimes cram oneself. Then to sit there until everyone has gone, and the house is empty! I wonder, have the hallways of my youth extricated themselves from all our foolish pranks?

  54

  The knife strikes here and there, thin as a bird beak, and wanting as much to satisfy some undisclosed covenant of shape that stands as a rebuke to our present geometry.

  55

  Do I desire to have the dresses from the backs of all the loveliest workers in this cruel factory? Is it in the name of an inspection that this will be done? Then what smooth well-formed limbs, what lithe shoulders, what slender waists. . are not the women of our collective beautiful? Indeed it is sometimes said that in the factory they are not forced to work at all but only to bathe and groom and shape themselves in long cool tiled rooms while discussing philosophy. Is it true? Is such a hideous rumor true? Well, I confess, our truest natures are to be found in lunacy, and it is over such a realm that I preside, even now. Out with the lamp!

  56

  How disappointing it is to find that so many of the doors one comes upon in the hills and between the streets, yes in the town where you were born, beside the towering hospital, lead nowhere and do not give onto that great and stretching second world for which you hope and hope.

  57

  Defeating the world’s strongest man in a fight does not make you the world’s strongest man, just as killing Jesse James does not make you Jesse James.

  58

  The King is the first: all must obey him, at least when in his presence. That is why the King keeps a court — in order to enlarge his presence.

  59

  I went out without my coat. The day was too cold, and I suffered there in the street, going about my business.

  Small women and men called to me with their paltry voices. A dog was attaching itself to a very beautiful girl where a green spread of grass met the street. She was using both hands to keep her skirt down, and the weather was bad.

  Won’t you help me? she cried.

  But I love another and she is gone into a far country from where I cannot retrieve her.

  60

  Pheasants and scatterguns, alphabets, charms, phrases, curses, naysayers, nickel machines, mistaken identities. It was all too much for little Alphonse, who cluttered his brain with anything anyone happened to say to him. He went about in a little blue suit rather worn at the knees and a little paper satchel stitched with his initials.—

  Hello, he would often say, whether anyone was there or not. — Hello, I am with the name Alphonse and I am so lucky I can’t tell you. Would you believe more than one woman fell for this trick and got right into bed with him? Well, yes, it is true. They properly waited no more than five or ten minutes upon making his acquaintance to take him across the doorstep, etc. But did this please our Alphonse? We shall say rather that he delighted in meat pastries and thought foremost of this gluttony above and beyond all others. He was, it is said, a fixture at the shop of Baker Morton, who despised him and beat him relentlessly whenever the poor boy came into reach.

  61

  Has not the geometry of comparison, the superimposition of another land on this present land, become a bit wearisome to you who travel in our good company? One cannot go on using it in place of the eyes.

  pieter emily — 2006

  Do Not Take the Low Road

  The world is old, and wherever there is room for a body to sleep, there something has died.

  |

  — Pieter Emily, said they one to another in the furrows and fields.

  — Pieter Emily, whispered they the children beneath the wooden boards of the raised village.

  — Pieter Emily, said Elsbeth Grinner, beneath her breath.

  And she left her loom and went out into the street.

  It was a clear day and dry. Marla Kranth was standing speaking to the mayor’s wife. Both wore long dresses and heavy shawls made from the cloth that was the village’s trade.

  — Marla, said Elsbeth, is it true?

  — True and more, said Marla. He’s breathing the same air as you or me.

  The mayor’s wife interrupted. Her face was narrow like a shrew, and it was said by some that she bit the mayor in his sleep to weaken his brain.

  — Jasper spoke to him, face to face. Pieter Emily. Out on the low road, and Jasper looking for a sheep that had strayed. Pieter was there, behind a tree, just watching him.

  — Pieter? On the low road?

  Both women nodded in a dark, disapproving way.

  — What did he say? asked Elsbeth.

  — Pieter reminded him of the green book. He said it was late in the year for anyone to be out on the low road.

  Marla whistled a long whistle.

  — But what did he look like?

  — Like a boy in a wooden-coat, said Marla. Just like he always looked. Jasper said he hasn’t aged a day.

  A week passed and a week. On the fourteenth day, Elsbeth closed up her shop early and sent the other weavers home. She was, it was generally agreed, the best of Forsk’s weavers, and that meant she was one of the best in the world. For there is nothing like Forsk-cloth, and there never has been.

  She was born with a feel for the thread. The day she touched a loom she knew it was a beast akin to her and that if only she would speak it would give her whatever she desi
red. So slowly and quickly, slowly and quickly she learned to speak to the loom, and when she was fourteen, she was given a shop, and given the charge of many weavers below her, and people who came to the town would sit on chairs in the corner of the room and watch her as she worked.

  Since then, her skill had only grown. She could do in an hour the work of days, and in days, work that no one could do in any quantity of time. At the age of fortythree, she was thin like a reed, with a wicker strength. She wore only the simplest clothing, made from her own cloth and sewed in the closeness of her rooms.