by Jesse Ball
Pieter was caught for that, but he did not say who had been with him, and Elsbeth had gone unpunished.
They had whipped and whipped him for that. Meyer the cart-driver, whose horse it was, was given way, and he had taken it.
The boy’d been held down by his father while Meyer laid into him. Elsbeth had watched, along with others.
How could they decide, she’d wondered, a penalty for the cutting off of a horse’s hoof? Who is smart enough in this world to know what that crime equals, to know what punishment absolves it? Something so absurd can have no correspondent.
Yet they’d whipped him and let him go, and his father had paid a price for the draft-horse.
They’d forced Pieter to put the horse down, just to show him the weight of what he’d done, but that was a lost act, for he’d killed the horse with care and even sad pleasure, stroking its face and quieting it, then firing a pistol into its head.
Who supposes any fairness is a fool, thought Elsbeth, and when Pieter went, back raw and bleeding, to his hiding place, it was she was there to clean his back and sit with him.
Off the road, then, Elsbeth drew. She pushed the horse further, and turned to look back.
Movement and dust. Along then, the mayor’s party, some twenty strong, riding slowly. Two and two carried a long pole, the mayor at the head, and from the pole hung a body, beaten and broken. On the pole a body hung. It was Pieter, stripped to his waist, slack with his mouth agog, chest blooded.
Falk’s face was triumphant. He was a large man, and he wore his happiness openly now. He did not look to left or right, or he would have felt Elsbeth’s eyes bore into him.
— You’ve killed him.
She dropped the reins and stepped forward.
Then the pole flickered. It flickered, and there was no one there, the horsemen were carrying an empty pole. She blinked and looked back. Pieter was again strung on the pole, slack in death, and then the horsemen were gone out of sight.
What was that? she wondered.
And a strange feeling made her say, I will continue to his house, to see what they have done.
The horse was waiting deeper in when she went to fetch him. He looked at her with his long horse eyes, and she felt that someone was looking through the horse’s eyes, that someone could see her there where she was. She pulled the horse’s head away from her, but it strained and turned and again it was looking at her.
— Come now, she said. Come along.
She rode on, but slower, and after a little while, came to where the road rose to overlook Pieter’s holding. The line of trees wound like bunching thread up and around, holding the hill in a green fist, and there,
there, the house was burned to the ground. Where she had sat yesterday was ashes. She rode closer, and as she rode, the house flickered, flickered and was there.
She urged her horse on. Smoke was coming from the chimney. The door was opening. Pieter was alive. She was sure.
Elsbeth climbed down from the horse and ran up to the steps.
— Pieter, she called. Pieter!
||||
— Elsbeth, said Pieter. Did I not tell you there was no worry here?
— But, I saw you, she said. I saw you on the pole.
— Some other man. Without luck. Perhaps not so clever as I.
— I saw you. It was you.
Pieter looked down at his feet.
— Those who came, said Pieter, felt they put me on the pole, felt they took me with them. They have seen my house burn. They have shown themselves to be that which they hate, that which they want to chase away out of the village. Well, there is a visiting that proceeds, that has proceeded this week in the town. Someone has been visiting, has he not?
Elsbeth was looking at her Pieter and her eyes were shining.
— I am glad, she said, that you are not on that pole. Whatever it means.
— Come and sit, said Pieter, for there was a supper laid out on the table. I will tend to your horse.
And he went out the door and down the steps. Through the window she could see his head laid against the horse’s head, though she could not hear his speaking there.
What is it you have to say to horses at evening? What understanding have you made?
She troubled him again and again with questions. How is it she had seen him on the pole. But he would say nothing about it, and would turn silent and cold, so she left off.
I will know in time all this, she thought.
And then Pieter was again with her, and serving the meat, which was a pale red meat, like venison. He had bread he’d baked, butter, cheese and fresh milk. She ate with a hunger she had never felt, ate and ate. Pieter ate too, and between them, they ate all that had been laid upon the table.
He showed her a silver glove he had made from the thinnest links.
— One wears it in the first hour of dawn, and chance goes a little ways with you on the road.
Scarcely do I believe it, thought Elsbeth, and Pieter smiled.
From a hollow place in the wall he took out a long crook. It was reddish in color, with streaks of white.
— Have you sheep? she asked.
— I have had sheep, he said, though none now.
The door to the outside was open and a cat came in.
Behind it was another cat and another.
— These go everywhere together, said Pieter. For they each know what’s best for one of the others, but never for themselves.
He gave Elsbeth a bowl and she poured milk for the cats and laid it on the ground.
— I will show you a thing now, said Pieter, as he lit the candles in the wall sconces.
He went to the door at the far end of the house and turned the handle, and beneath his hand it turned easily.
Elsbeth followed him in. He lit a candle and another and another, and the room was full of light.
What can be said of that room? There was a bed placed, as the others, in one wall. There was a broad window, widest of the house, looking out over the hill away from the road.
But most stirring, most unforeseen, most impossible of all, at the center of the room was an enormous loom, the best she had ever seen.
It was rooted to the ground upon legs like the legs of a young animal, sure in its strength. Its frame rose up, figured and etched. The wood was ebony, ebony all through.
— It can’t be, said Elsbeth. It’s made from a single piece of wood.
— It was brought here for you, said Pieter, many years ago, by a young man, building a house from his thought and wishes. He considered that perhaps Elsbeth might come one day out along the low road.
Then he brought out a bottle of warm drink, and they drank a glass together, and he left Elsbeth to her room, and left, closing the door.
And the first part of the night she spent running her hands over the loom, and taking up the thread that was at hand and stringing it.
And the next part of the night she slept in the bed that had been made for her, and it was hers then to lie in a deep place.
What can be said of waking in that house? That the dreams of the night before stood in turn to be examined, waiting with a patience unheard of?
Elsbeth remembered first:
A word learned by listening every day for years at a hole in the ground. Years and years passing and finally the word is said.
Then, all the through the town, all through the world one goes and no one can stand against one. The word is said, and houses are laid upon their sides, clouds form into veins that carry sight farther and farther than ever before. Can you see? asked the dream, the true depth of sight when one abandons the direction of one’s life and takes to a single task, takes to listening at a hole in the ground, years and years, and finally a word is said?
That was the first dream.
The second:
A room full of coats. A coat of bird feathers, a coat that is the skin of a man, a coat that is the skin of a bear, the scales of a fish, the skin of a cat, of a mouse, of a snake,
of a mule.
Then out that room and into another, where three suns rise in the farther sky. Men devoid of color sit playing at chess on a hundred tables. The pieces move untouched from square to square, and smoke rises from the ground where feet touch.
— There is no dust here, says the man who stands directly behind and cannot be seen.
— Do you know what that means, for there to be a place without dust?
The third:
A grand theatre, built to hold an audience of all that were ever born and all that will ever die, but the arriving there has taken place far too soon, and no one has come. Then, the wandering up and down aisles, empty aisles, the choosing of a seat from thousands made thousands in the thousandth part. Balconies, boxes, side-seats, hiding places on the roof, stools set on the stage-side, chairs built into the machinery of the lamps and bells and curtains.
Alone there and walking and walking, sitting first in one chair and then another, whistling and singing. Speaking first softly, and afterwards with a loud voice, for it is no matter. No one has come. One is far too early for the proceeding of life, even in one’s own body.
To arrive too early even to live in one’s own body.
And then sleep again.
That was the third dream.
The fourth dream:
As though in morning, with little warning, a yellow-haired man came in through the window.
Pieter Emily rose in his small room. In his house there were but two rooms. He went into the other and lit the stove. The yellow-haired man was already there.
The yellow-haired man was standing at once in all the rooms of the house, standing at once in every field, upon every roof, sitting in the boughs of every tree, prone upon each running stream, each still lake.
You cannot escape me, said the yellow-haired man.
But all at once, there were two countries, then three, then four, then five, and Pieter Emily and his cottage were nowhere to be found, and search as the sun might, its rays were like arms without hands, and could not lift the earth to see what lay beneath.
That was the fourth dream.
Yes, Elsbeth woke and looked about her. The room was there, with the full light pouring through the windows, and the loom at the room’s center, strung like a harp, finer than ever. She sat at it, and felt the shuttle and how it sat upon her hand.
Then a knocking at the door.
— Elsbeth, will you come?
She rose and went to the door. Pieter was there.
— I must speak with you, he said.
Then they walked together the length of the house.
— Elsbeth Grimmer, said Pieter, and he looked at her but said no more.
He wants me to live here, thought Elsbeth.
And she thought of the loom, and how she had never seen a loom so fine. She thought of the feel of the place, like a house in a well to which no one can ever come. She could live here, she thought, and pass her days in weaving just as she would in town.
— Do you like the loom? he asked.
And she felt the truth of it. To leave her sister’s house, to leave her shop, to leave the town. . She could.
Elsbeth opened one of the narrow windows and leaned out so that the land beyond was all about her, the hill and the house and the room behind.
I will live here, she thought to herself.
And Pieter nodded.
— You have had many dreams this night, said Pieter. If you like I will tell you the meaning of one, but only of one.
— This was the dream, said Elsbeth. I had lost my legs in a threshing accident, and instead of legs I wore long stilts buckled to my knees. On these stilts I could make speed through the fields and so I was a carrier of messages like no other. My father was a wealthy farmer, a prince of sorts, and all those merchants who came to him would speak and wonder at the beauty of his broken child fluttering above the wheat on legs of wood. Call to me, I would say, call to me, but none would call. None called, and when my father grew old, the farm was mine, and I wore a leather coat and carried a sling and kept a watch over the fields in the long night.
— What you invent, said Pieter, is as telling as a dream.
— Do you say so? asked Elsbeth.
— The threshing accident was birth, the wooden legs the loom. Your father is the town, the messages the needs perceptible to you in thread. Those visitors are nothing, the mountains beyond. You have no hope of them, and never did. The leather coat, the sling, are a step with the left foot and the right as you come here to me to speak not in defense of myself, but to protect your childhood which seems now so far.
— And yet, said he, it is the good fortune I have awaited, so we shall call it what you like.
The day was early still, and the sun beneath its zenith. Pieter and Elsbeth went to the hill’s edge, where there was a well and a stone wall. The grass on either side of the stone wall was alike. It began and ended with no purpose.
— What is the purpose of this wall? asked Elsbeth.
— I built this wall, said Pieter, twenty years ago when I built the house, thinking of the day when we would walk out from the house and need a place to sit as I told you the necessities of your return.
Elsbeth smiled a smile of not-believing.
Then Pieter sat in a way that said, you need not believe me, but still it is true.
— You’ll go then back to the town to fetch some things. But if you are to come and live here, you must obey these few things.
He looked sharply into Elsbeth’s eyes.
— You must bring back no iron.
— You must say my name to no one, and say nothing of what you have seen.
— You must not sit in a chair or upon the ground when you are again in the town. Neither can you take food or drink.
— You must return here before the sun goes down, and you must bring back no more than you can carry in a single bag. There will be a new life for you here, with as many things as you desire. These things that you will bring will be the last of your old life.
Elsbeth nodded.
— And you must not be cut, or let a drop of blood out of you in the town. There is time still today. Go and return.
Elsbeth stood.
— I will bring no iron, she said. I will sit nowhere. I will say nothing of what I have seen. I will take no drink, no food. I will return before sunset, and I will take but a single bag. No blood will come from me while I am in the town.
Pieter wore a long coat of harsh canvas, buttoned on the side, and he had at his side a long knife.
— What will you do, asked Elsbeth, while I am gone?
— I’ll check on my field, give food to my animals, and set out in the woods.
— You must be here when I return, said Elsbeth.
— Have no fear of that, said Pieter, for I know every way in the wood, and can judge time from the limbs of trees.
Then they were parted, and Elsbeth rode away into the town, and when she looked back from a rise in the road what she saw behind her was a burned-out cottage on a ravaged hill, and she found that her clothes were dirty, as though she had slept the night on a bed of ashes.
|||||
After a short ride, Elsbeth reached the town. She saw it from a distance, its intricacy of wood and walkways, its rising of turrets and workshops. Smoke rose from dozens of chimneys, people leaned out windows. The warmth of the sun was here though it had not been with them on the hillside at the reasonless wall.
— Will I go back? asked Elsbeth. And then she thought of the loom, and her blood stirred.
I can, she thought, always return to the town one day. If I like, I can return after a month, after a week. I need not stay with Pieter forever.
But she saw in his face a hardness and she knew that what was binding to him would be binding to her.
At the stable she left the horse, and went on home.
Moll Ongar stopped her at a crossing.
— Elsbeth, she cried out. Elsbeth have you heard?
