Ursula K. Le Guin

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  “Pier Sorentay took a rowboat down once on a dare. Broke up on a rock just past the village.”

  “Hoy! Hoy there!”

  “There’s papa dancing about.”

  “Shall we turn?”

  “No,” said Piera.

  They went on. The hails from Mazeppa ceased.

  “I don’t suppose they’re sinking,” Piera said doubtfully, looking back.

  “No. Envious,” said Itale, whose heart was growing lighter as they sailed on through the wind and sun. But their wind was beginning to fail them, and the lake lay glassy.

  “Are we going to have to row?”

  “Probably when we come under the lee of the Hunter.”

  “It’s so still; it’s like sailing in air. . . .”

  Their wind lasted until they entered the gulf of Evalde in the shadow of the overhanging mountain. There the air was hot and still in the fire of noon, the clear brown water utterly motionless. Itale rowed. Before them loomed the dark cliffs and basalt columns of the shore; they heard but could not see the cascade, hidden from them by the cleft it had cut itself in the jutting cliffs.

  “Like rowing in oil,” he said, whispering, in the strange hush of the gulf that had no sound in it but the dull vibration of the river plunging to the lake.

  They came to the landing place, a gravel beach a few yards long, to the right of the Hermit’s Rock. Itale raised the oars and got his breath a minute before landing the boat. “Winded,” he said, with reference to the general direction of Piera.

  She did not say anything, but took the little dipper from under the stern seat, dipped it up full of the transparent lake water, and offered it to him. He took it from her and drank.

  He ran the boat up on the beach with one great push of the oars and a flying leap, when it touched gravel, to pull it up so that Piera could step out dryshod: his timing was perfect, elegant, and he was smiling with pleasure as he handed Piera out of the boat.

  Mazeppa was just at the entrance of the gulf, a black blot on the bright water.

  “Are they rowing yet?”

  Farsighted like Guide, he looked and said, “Yes.”

  “No lunch for a while, then.”

  The cascade thundered across the water, muted, tremendous.

  “Let’s go up to the top of the falls.”

  A path of sorts wound up past the Hermit’s Rock to the top of the cliffs. Piera set off at once, very quick in her dark red skirt, unhesitating even when the way was nothing but a jump from one boulder to another, or when the black broken rock of the cliffside slid and rattled underfoot. Long after her, Itale came out at the top of the climb, in open sunlight, at the head of the falls where the river escaped from the cavern to plunge down its vertical cleft to the lake. They watched it till they were dizzy and deafened, and still went on watching it; at last they went to sit on the stone-broken grass under a low wall-like cliff, the outer wall of the caverns. The dark rock was full of a vibration like distant thunder: the roar of the imprisoned river.

  “Will they know we’re up here?”

  “Laura will bring them. We always came up here.”

  Piera got up again, trying to see the other boat through the pines below the clearing. The sunlit air was warm about them. Restless, nervous, she wandered down the wild slope among the rocks, near the edge of the falls.

  “Piera.”

  “Yes?”

  “What is this?”

  She came over slowly, listening for the voices of their people through the dull roar of the river. Itale held out to her a spray of small rock plant. She took it, and sat down with a small sigh.

  “I don’t know. It’s pretty; like a fern with flowers.”

  “It only grows here.”

  Piera sat twirling the flowered spray, gazing at the contorted rocks, the pines that grew tall among them, the bright lake out beyond the gulf. The sun, straight overhead in the dark blue sky, poured down heat and light till the clearing brimmed like a cup.

  “Piera, I need to ask you. . . . Is Laura in love?”

  “Of course,” she said without turning.

  “Francesco spoke to me last night. He said if I decided he should not, he won’t speak to father. I don’t know what I should do.”

  She was watching him now; not with the reproach or irony he had feared.

  “Of course it’s up to Laura. But it will upset father badly. Not without reason. Francesco is a homeless man, dependent on his sister’s sending him enough to live on. Austria will hound him all his life, I suppose. He could go to France or England, but what would Laura do there? She never wanted to leave Malafrena. . . . I brought him here. It is my responsibility. I don’t know what to say.”

  “Why shouldn’t she leave Malafrena? It was me that wanted to stay. She has always wanted to go, to see things. Where he is would be her home.”

  Itale was silent for a bit. “He can’t leave now. They’ll arrest him at the border.”

  “Perhaps not with a wife and a false name,” Piera suggested, mildly, but startling Itale.

  “You and Laura have talked about this?”

  “Not about that. . . . We haven’t really ever said much at all. About that. I know she loves him. Why can’t they stay here? As long as they want to, I mean. Nobody’s using the old Dowerhouse. I thought of having it fitted up. He certainly is a very useful man on a farm.”

  “Yes, he is,” Itale said, bemused.

  “You could take him into partnership.”

  “Into partnership.”

  “Then if one of you wanted to go back down there, there would be one of you running the estate.”

  “Yes.”

  “And since no one is using the Dowerhouse, they could live there. I’d like to have it looked after.”

  “Wait a minute,” he said. Then presently, “It all seems practicable. You must—you must have thought about this a good deal?”

  “Of course I have.”

  Her voice trembled as she spoke. He looked at her again intently, wonderingly; his face was grave and still.

  “There was something I wanted to say to you, too,” she said; her voice, over-controlled, sounded thin. He nodded, acceptant; she paused for a long time.

  “There are so many reasons. Habit. And the land adjoining at so many places. And so on. And I suppose they talked about it when we were children, people always do. I’m sorry I was unpleasant to you, that night, last winter. That was stupid. I was just trying to say what I want to say now. That people will think we will—we are likely to get married, but they’re mistaken; and that keeps us from being friends.” The small, strained voice trembled continually, like the trembling of water, but remained clear. “I should like to be your friend.”

  “You are,” he said almost inaudibly; but his heart said, you are my house, my home; the journey and the journey’s end; my care, and sleep after care.

  “All right,” she said, this time with a great sigh; and they were silent for a while, there on the grass in the great heat and light of noon.

  “You will go back, down there, some day, won’t you?”

  “When I can.”

  “Good,” she said, and smiled suddenly. “I wasn’t sure. . . .”

  “Then will you keep the Vita Nova?”

  “I said I was sorry,” she said angrily.

  “Up this way, Count Orlant!” called Laura’s voice down among the pines.

  “You have to keep it,” he said with intensity. “I didn’t know why I left till I came back—I have to come back to find that I have to go again. I haven’t even begun the new life yet. I am always beginning it. I will die beginning it. Will you keep it for me, Piera?”

  “There they are!” Sangiusto proclaimed from the top of the path.

  Piera looked at Itale directly for one instant, then scrambled to her feet and went to greet the others. “Well, well, well,” said Count Orlant surmounting the last steps of the way heavily, “what a pull. Hello, daughter.”

  “Did you have to r
ow? You took so long.”

  “Indeed we did. Laura and I pulled two strokes to Mr Sangiusto’s one, and still we went in circles.”

  “I thought you two would be keeping cool in the caverns,” said Laura. “It’s as hot as summer here!”

  “Have an apple, your face is purple,” said Sangiusto, proffering the hamper.

  “What a lovely thing of you to say! Yes, I will. Do we want lunch now?”

  “Yes,” Itale said. “All of it.”

  “No, I want to see the caverns,” Sangiusto announced, stretching his strong arms and looking about him blissfully.

  “Then give me an apple, fratello mio.”

  “Stay him with flagons,” Count Orlant said, “comfort him with apples. Are you all going, then?”

  “Won’t you come, count?”

  “No, I want to sit down right here. Caverns and torrents and all that are for the young. Leave me with the lunch. Go on! You don’t think I’ll eat it all?”

  “All right, we’ll be back in half an hour.”

  “Wear your hat if you’re sitting out in the sun, papa.”

  “Leave us some bones and peelings, count!”

  “Go on, go on.”

  SONGS

  Folk Song from the Montayna Province

  The circles widen and widen

  Of light from the white sun.

  O neither wife nor maiden,

  Why do you go alone?

  Farther the hawk and farther

  Over the hills in the sun.

  I go, neither maid nor mother,

  Alone, alone, alone.

  Red Berries (Montayna Province)

  Rosce pevenne su para atonay

  dor amore dor tu amor

  Kurule canta na foskaye silvay

  dor amore a matine

  Grige a scender atonay umor

  dor amore dor tu amor

  Kor miye kassate a kasser ankor

  dor amore a matine

  The Walls of Rákava

  (Polana Province)

  Na Rákava sui altiy muriy

  amor miye lassava.

  Voliya tornare na Rákava

  ove no ten klava.

  O muriy Rákavay,

  uvi tuya klava?

  STORIES

  ORSINIAN TALES

  The Fountains

  THEY KNEW, having given him cause, that Dr Kereth might attempt to seek political asylum in Paris. Therefore, on the plane flying west, in the hotel, on the streets, at the meetings, even while he read his paper to the Cytology section, he was distantly accompanied at all times by obscure figures who might be explained as graduate students or Croatian microbiologists, but who had no names, or faces. Since his presence lent not only distinction to his country’s delegation but also a certain luster to his government—See, we let even him come—they had wanted him there; but they kept him in sight. He was used to being in sight. In his small country a man could get out of sight only by not moving at all, by keeping voice, body, brain all quiet. He had always been a restless, visible man. Thus when all at once on the sixth day in the middle of a guided tour in broad daylight he found himself gone, he was confused for a time. Only by walking down a path could one achieve one’s absence?

  It was in a very strange place that he did so. A great, desolate, terrible house stood behind him yellow in the yellow sunlight of afternoon. Thousands of many-colored dwarfs milled on terraces, beyond which a pale blue canal ran straight away into the unreal distance of September. The lawns ended in groves of chestnut trees a hundred feet high, noble, somber, shot through with gold. Under the trees they had walked in shadow on the riding-paths of dead kings, but the guide led them out again to sunlight on lawns and marble pavements. And ahead, straight ahead, towering and shining up into the air, fountains ran.

  They sprang and sang high above their marble basins in the light. The petty, pretty rooms of the palace as big as a city where no one lived, the indifference of the noble trees that were the only fit inhabitants of a garden too large for men, the dominance of autumn and the past, all this was brought into proportion by the running of water. The phonograph voices of the guides fell silent, the camera eyes of the guided saw. The fountains leapt up, crashed down exulting, and washed death away.

  They ran for forty minutes. Then they ceased. Only kings could afford to run the Great Fountains of Versailles and live forever. Republics must keep their own proportion. So the high white jets shrank, stuttering. The breasts of nymphs ran dry, the mouths of river-gods gaped black. The tremendous voice of uprushing and downfalling water became a rattling, coughing sigh. It was all through, and everyone stood for a moment alone. Adam Kereth turned, and seeing a path before him went down it away from the marble terraces, under the trees. Nobody followed him; and it was at this moment, though he was unaware of it, that he defected.

  Late-afternoon light lay warm across the path between shadows, and through the light and shadows a young man and a young woman walked hand in hand. A long way behind them Adam Kereth walked by himself, tears running down his cheeks.

  Presently the shadows fell away from him and he looked up to see no path, no lovers, only a vast tender light and, below him, many little round trees in tubs. He had come to the terrace above the Orangerie. Southward from this high place one saw only forest, France a broad forest in the autumn evening. Horns blew no longer, rousing wolf or wild boar for the king’s hunt; there was no great game left. The only tracks in that forest would be the footprints of young lovers who had come out from Paris on the bus, and walked among the trees, and vanished.

  With no intent, unconscious still of his defection, Kereth roamed back along wide walks towards the palace, which stood now in the sinking light no longer yellow but colorless, like a sea-cliff over a beach when the last bathers are leaving. From beyond it came a dim roar like surf, engines of tourist busses starting back to Paris. Kereth stood still. A few small figures hurried on the terraces between silent fountains. A woman’s voice far off called to a child, plaintive as a gull’s cry. Kereth turned around and without looking back, intent now, conscious, erect as one who has just stolen something—a pine­apple, a purse, a loaf—from a counter and has got it hidden under his coat, he strode back into the dusk among the trees.

  “This is mine,” he said aloud to the high chestnuts and the oaks, like a thief among policemen. “This is mine!” The oaks and chestnuts, French, planted for aristocrats, did not answer his fierce republican claim made in a foreign language. But all the same their darkness, the taciturn, complicit darkness of all forests where fugitives have hidden, gathered around him.

  He was not long in the groves, an hour or less; there were gates to be locked and he did not want to be locked in. That was not what he was here for. So before nightfall he came up the terraces, still walking erect and calm as any king or kleptomaniac, and went around the huge, pale, many-windowed sea-cliff and across its cobbled beach. One bus still chuffed there, a blue bus, not the grey one he dreaded. His bus was gone. Gone, washed out to sea, with the guide, the colleagues, the fellow countrymen, the microbiologists, the spies. Gone and left him in possession of Versailles. Above him Louis XIV, foreshortened on a prodigious horse, asserted the existence of absolute privilege. Kereth looked up at the bronze face, the big bronze Bourbon nose, as a child looks up at his older brother, loving and derisive. He went on through the gates, and in a café across the Paris road his sister served him vermouth at a dusty green table under sycamores. The wind of night and autumn blew from the south, from the forests, and like the vermouth its scent was a little bitter, an odor of dry leaves.

  A free man, he took his own way in his own time to the suburban station, bought his own ticket, returned to Paris by himself. Where he came up out of the Metro nobody knows, perhaps not himself, nor where he wandered in the city while defecting. At eleven o’clock at night he was standing at the parapet of the Solferino Bridge, a short man of forty-seven in a shoddy suit, a free man. He watched the lights of the bridge and of far
ther bridges tremble on the black river running quietly. Up and down the river on either bank stood the asylums: the Government of France, the Embassies of America and England. He had walked past them all. Perhaps it was too late at night to enter them. Standing on the bridge there in the middle, between the Left Bank and the Right Bank, he thought: There are no hiding places left. There are no thrones; no wolves, no boars; even the lions of Africa are dying out. The only safe place is the zoo.

  But he had never cared much about being safe, and now thought that he did not care much about hiding either, having found something better: his family, his inheritance. Here he had at last walked in the garden larger than life, on paths where his older brothers had gone before him, crowned. After that he really could not take refuge in the zoo. He went on across the bridge and under the dark arches of the Louvre, returning to his hotel. Knowing now that he was both a king and a thief and so was at home anywhere, what turned him to his own land was mere fidelity. For what else should move a man, these days? Kingly he strode past the secret-police agent in the hotel lobby, hiding under his coat the stolen, inexhaustible fountains.

  1960

  The Barrow

  NIGHT CAME DOWN along the snowy road from the mountains. Darkness ate the village, the stone tower of Vermare Keep, the barrow by the road. Darkness stood in the corners of the rooms of the Keep, sat under the great table and on every rafter, waited behind the shoulders of each man at the hearth.

  The guest sat in the best place, a corner seat projecting from one side of the twelve-foot fireplace. The host, Freyga, Lord of the Keep, Count of the Montayna, sat with everybody else on the hearthstones, though nearer the fire than some. Cross-legged, his big hands on his knees, he watched the fire steadily. He was thinking of the worst hour he had known in his twenty-three years, a hunting trip, three autumns ago, to the mountain lake Malafrena. He thought of how the thin barbarian arrow had stuck up straight from his father’s throat; he remembered how the cold mud had oozed against his knees as he knelt by his father’s body in the reeds, in the circle of the dark mountains. His father’s hair had stirred a little in the lake-water. And there had been a strange taste in his own mouth, the taste of death, like licking bronze. He tasted bronze now. He listened for the women’s voices in the room overhead.