WRIT IN WATER, or, The Gingerbread Man
The spirit of the wood, the spirit of the water, and the spirit of the wheat-plant: they three be sib.
� old Slovatchko saying
The former Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Empire rode side by side with Madama D�Attila in her trim little chaise through Klejn Tinkeldorff, one of the less-fashionable suburbs of Bella. Bella was the capital of the Triune Monarchy of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania. Who was the former Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Empire and who was Madama D�Attila? Madama D�Attila had at various times been the favorite of two European kings, one Turkish sultan, and three Latin American dictators; alas, the Sultan and one of the kings had gone ga-ga, the other king had been ignominiously deposed, and all three of the dictators had met ends too dreadful to be told in detail. Madama D�Attila presently lived very quietly under the aegis of the Triune Monarchy, now and then receiving the calling cards of the oldest (and youngest) members of the nobility. Once a day, bravely wearing a modest assortment of her best paste jewels, she bravely drove her one-horse chaise through the streets of her little suburb. His Royal and Imperial Majesty did not choose that she should come any closer.
�One never knows, you know,� said His Royal and Imperial Majesty.
The former Chief Eunuch, a martyr to the gout, had experienced increasing difficulty in the performance of his official duties; and, having taken a (platonic) fondness to Madama, had also (very quietly) taken his departure along with her own � and the privy purse of the
A gentleman riding by on his horse just then raised his riding-crop in a polite salute. �Who is
�That is the famous Doctoor-Effendim,� said the ex-C.E. �His name is Eszter Ghazi.�
They stopped at Shueffer�s shop and bought marzipan. Then they drove home and really do not appear in this account again. Perhaps this is too bad. One might grow fond of them. But, as King-Emperor Ignats Louis observed, �One never knows.�
Dr. Eszterhazy did not stop at Shueffer�s shop and he did not buy marzipan.
Engelbert Eszterhazy, having already attained to three of the six learned degrees which he was eventually to have, was then engaged in preparing for the doctorate in music; he had spent a part of that morning in playing a series ofMozarabic masses (of his own arrangement) on the virginals (of his own design), to the great pleasure of the Papal Legate, one of the Examiners for that degree. Now he had come for a lesson with De Metz, in Composition. The great De Metz kept, in addition to his studio in Bella, a cottage in the suburb, regarding said cottage in the suburb as others might regard a chalet in the Alps or a villa on the Riviera. The lesson having been concluded, De Metz was observing as
And while this mmmmm still sounded in the air, De Metz, still regarding his pupil with the same bird-bright gaze, in the same tone of voice asked, �Are you interested, Dr. Engelbert, in investment possibility?�
Engelbert could not have been much more surprised if the Emperor had asked him that.
�There is a man down the street who has invented an engine,� De Metz said, �and I thought it might have investment possibility. They say that engines do have. I myself, you know, well, it is not my field. But you, Dr. Engelbert ��
�Yes?� asked Engelbert, prepared to hear himself described as a sort of one-man Baring Brothers.
you have so many fields. . . .�
The street was lined with trees and shrubbery and gardens. It was not yet what the Indians call the cow-dust hour, but Dr. Eszterhazy knew that when it was, quite a number of many-colored kine would troop back from the common pasturage and, suburb or no suburb, each cow would turn aside and tread the almost invisible path between the street and her owner�s cowhouse.
to present Dr. Eszterhazy.� Engineer Brozz was very tall. And very thin. And Eszterhazy had the fleeting impression that he had seen him before.
His appearance might not have led Eszterhazy to have thought, immediately, in terms of one who had invented an engine with investment possibility. Such a type did not precisely flourish in the Triune Monarchy (�fourth-largest empire in Europe�) ... as distinct from, say, the Nev- england Province of America, where, one understood, every Yankee kept next to his fireplace a device intended to provide either perpetual motion or a supply of wooden nutmegs. . . . Still, some years back, there
Unmoved by the simple splendor of his vision � a mere four hundred years after its time � they had charged him, not with Theft, but with Sacrilege, it having after all been the
Crime almost vanished from the Scythian Highlands.
Brozz began, perhaps inevitably, by saying that
����� and he spoke about the three kinds of well-known wheels and the vertical turbine and the hydraulic ram and something called �the Pelton wheel� which was anyway still in the planning stage �
����� and Eszterhazy felt himself sitting on a bench in the Great Lecture Hall and listening again to the famous old Professor Kugelius delivering his famous old lecture series
Was Engineer Brozz more or less dotty than Gumm? His voice was monotonous, but his voice was clear. His gestures may have been a bit jerky, but they were moderate gestures, and his words were those of someone speaking sanely on a sane subject � even if not quite persuasively. And the gestures directed attention to this feature and that of a model machine, small but functioning, which ... when all was said and done and span and spun ... wound a string which pulled a weight. And let it down. And pulled it up. And � After Brozz had said his say he was a moment silent. A flow of water was heard purling, somewhere very near. �Partly,� Brozz began again, �the machinery which you see is on such a small scale because the supply of running water is on such a small scale. Partly, it is because I lack capital to do anything on a larger scale.� De Metz again turned his bird-bright gaze upon Eszterhazy.
� �Tuned harmonic turbine!� � exclaimed De Metz. �Music! Mathematic! Marvelous!�
�
Engineer Brozz looked at him as though he had asked if he had a piece of the moon. Next he said, No he had not. And then, as an obvious afterthought, he said, But he had a letter-press copy of his Statement. Letterpress ink was liberally laced with sugar to keep it from drying rapidly, the paper thus written was covered with another sheet, of different paper, and the press .. . well...
�Engineer Brozz has shown me some of the figures involved,� De Metz said now. �Some of the physical calculations. I am sure they might form the basis of an extraordinary composition . . . though not one, of course, likely to be familiar to those of purely conventional musical taste. Harmony!
Tune! Turbine!�
Somewhere the town-clock sounded. Even in Klejn TinkeldorfF, Time did not stand still. And as Dr. Eszterhazy did not care to dismiss the matter by saying something along the lines of,
At once the musician�s mask broke into a thousand lines of laughter. �Ah yes!� he cried. �Ah yes! I forget just when it happened. It happened around here, in this picturesque little hamlet. A certain family had a Gypsy working for it and he had his chores and one of them was to skim cream from the milk-pans in the spring-house and ladle it into the crock. You understand. And of course he was most very strictly forbidden to drink any of the cream himself. So. So one day he comes into the spring-house and what does he discover, he discovers that a mouse has gotten into the milk-pan! And drowned! What does he do?� Eszterhazy, smiling, lightly shook his head to indicate his inability to guess what does the Gypsy do; De Metz began to show what, by gesture and by mime. First the Gypsy showed puzzlement. Then surprise. Then � something must after all be done � resolution. De Metz, in the character of
�Oh ho ho! Ah ha ha!
Eszterhazy chuckled. Engineer Brozz observed, �These Gypsies, they are all such children of nature.� A faint, very faint smile, creased his thin and rather weary-looking features. What [it asked], what are Gypsies, mice, and cream to one who lacked capital to prove the larger capacities of the tuned harmonic turbine and compressed-air pump, so potentially efficient in getting energy out of small mountain streams with very high heads of water?
One more call to make. Some of the houses were painted white, some chocolate-brown, some blue, pink, green. And in one of the white ones, with blue trim around the carved window-frames, dwelt the doctor�s grandmother�s first cousin, Christina Augusta, Tanta Tina. God knows what she might do, were he to ride past her house and
Well, that is not entirely correct. She knew three.
First she embraced him, then she blessed him, then she fondly stroked his beard. �My dearest little cousin-child,� she said, at length, �I shall bring you a cup of
The coffee, in a sense, was already made. But not the
�Ha, Tanta Tina, I am reminded of a capital story which I just heard today,� and he told it to her, complete with gesture and mime. The old woman laughed heartily; then she said, Ah the poor creature. And when he asked,
�It�s good, isn�t it, Little Engli?�
�But this is extraordinarily good! Is it some new recipe?� Even as he asked, he thought how unlikely it would be if this old woman were to try a new recipe.
She thought it unlikely, too.
Name at which the World grew pale� would find the item tasting exactly the same as it had tasted a century and a half before. The Swedish Lion had defeated Danes, Russians, Poles, Turks, sweeping almost insanely across the European continent �
�You can�t catch me, said the gingerbread-man,� Eszterhazy exclaimed, the line coming suddenly into his mind. But a sniper�s ball had caught the Lion, at last, in Norway, �on a mean Strand.�
�What is that you say, my child?�
He laughed, shortly. �Oh, just something from a children�s tale. I learned it long ago, from my English aunt ��
Ah, his English aunt.
She blinked, laughed lightly, brushed the matter away with her withered hand. �So my old nurse used to say. I don�t know what she meant. You say you like it, but you do not finish? So. A late lunch? An early dinner? Never mind. Let me wrap it up for you to take. The good Lord and Our Lady alone know what they give you to eat in Bella; is it quite wholesome? Yes? Not just foreign kickshaws, I hope?�
Almost back home, the odor of fresh-baked bread brought the matter to his mind again. Where was the � Ah. There. He dismounted, entered the corner bread-shop. Had they gingerbread? They had; he took it. Then he forgot it, until, later on, back home at 33 Turkling Street, the slightly unfamiliar weight in each of his pockets reminded him. Really, he mused, looking down, there was not much comparison. The gingerbread man from the antique Avar Bakery, broken though it was, was a sort of modest masterpiece. The outline was as crude as a child�s drawing. There was a currant for each eye, two for nostrils to indicate a nose, and a short row of them for teeth. The one from the neighborhood was elaborately confected with brightly-colored sugar icing in several hues. But it was soggy. And its taste was nothing. Let one of the servants remove it and give it to a child. Absent- mindedly he finished nibbling the broken bits from the Avar Bakery. It was good, it was good, it was very, very good. And as the taste filled his mouth, his mind filled with some vague thoughts not unconnected with it.
In came his servant with a small tray; on the tray an aperitif. �Ah, good. Ah. I shan�t want this piece of pastry.�
Would his Romanou valet lick the cream off a dead mouse before throwing it away? Possibly he might lick the cream off it even if someone else had thrown it away, unlicked.
Or even half-licked.
Ah, well.
Another day. Eszterhazy afoot. A woman called out, not especially to him, automatically, �
Half-automatically this one now held a
Tut-tut.
Eszterhazy gave the front page a glance which was reflexive rather than reflective and had half-folded it again; half he would throw it away, half he would tuck it under his arm for later; he took a half-step forward. He stopped. What. Why. Ah. There
The answer seemed to be, he was obliged finally to admit, that there were
The
Eszterhazy swore very silently. Every practitioner in stock trickery, every promoter of fake companies and worthless schemes, would be sure to get involved in this fine-tuned harmonic hobby-horse, mare�s nest, wild-goose chase, what-one-might-call-it. True � and fortunately � there were not many such in Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania. But that might leave a clearer field for those there were. At that moment the waiter, saying, �Two kopperkas, sir boss,� set something on the unclothed table. And Eszterhazy in a flash realized just how the
But surely Engineer Brozz�s new model engine, for all its high-toned harmonic title, was now merely at the toy stage, doing nothing more than winding a cord which lifted and then lowered a very small weight. Would it have its century? If the idea got into the hands of scoundrel speculators might not the idea be driven from sight and thought, to lie buried in the Urn for its own several centuries? Well, perhaps that might be what it needed. Meanwhile there were after all and always many other new inventions.
What the waiter had set down was borsht. Cabbage-borsht.
Wasn�t bad.
But. . .
The Scotch had not conquered the English nor had the English con�quered the Scotch in order for one sovereign to become King of England and King of Scotland and � eventually � King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain. What had brought it about was, firstly, the Scottish marriage of King Henry�s sister, and, secondly, the not-marriage of King Henry�s daughter:
Prince of one and Duke of another ... in the Scythian Line of Descent. . . Grand Hetman here and Chief Boyar there ... in the Pannonian Line of Descent... and so on ... and so on. What to do about them, these not-quite- nations already becoming obsolete in an age where every political entity was felt to require a prime minister, a general staff, a set of postage stamps, a � What was done was perhaps cleverer than students of political science realized, for all these �Hegemonies,� as they were called, from Ritchli to Little Great Dombrovia to Hyperborea, and including Vlox-Majore and Vlox- Minore, were not absorbed by either Scythia or Pannonia, but were autonomously united to form
The result, rather to the surprise of the gathering which assembled to form the (as it was popularly called forever) �the Big Union,� the result was an Empire . . .
And now the cheese of Poposhki, the smoked sturgeon of the Romanou, the brined-pork and the brawn of the Slovatchko Alps, appeared . . .
Something light as a feather brushed Eszterhazy�s mind. He knew that, usually, he had only to wait a bit, emptying his mind of other things and that fairly soonly whatever the new thought was would silently enter and fill the space. He was mildly surprised that what came, soon enough, to fill the space, was the thought,
The so-called
Another reason which justified Justinian�s waging war upon the Goths was their savage rites and customs, totally against religion and morality. For example, in the mountains of Eastern Scythia in a sacred grove by a sacred well or spring, the barbaric Goths are wont to select certain prisoners by lot and to let them loose and to pursue after them. The wretches unfortunate enough to be captured are not alone immolated
merely made effigies of meal and honey and it is these which they consume. Shame upon the so-called Christians who presume to speak well of the enemies of God and the Empire, they are probably Monophysites or Pelagians, may they be accursed and may they all be burnt alive.
Eszterhazy gave a snort of rueful amusement. The
What then? about the Sacred Grove? Of
Eszterhazy had been there, once, briefly. Though the oaks were indeed massy and ancient, of course they could hardly have been
This grove was indeed standing in a vale; it was deeply sunken into the vale. The spring was still there. The river was not the Little River, it was one of its tributaries. A Christian shrine, itself of great antiquity, was there; but the attempt to take the pagan quality away had hardly succeeded. Had not, certainly, entirely succeeded. On every bush and low tree round about, and on whatever low-enough branches of the higher trees, was tied a profusion, a multitude of bright-colored rags, strips of cloth. The people came and the people said their prayers by the proper shrine. And then the people went and made their wishes, and as they did this they tied a strip of bright cloth to a branch. It was a custom so old that it had passed out of anyone�s power to rationalize.
So no one tried.
The air was certainly one of more than merely immemorial antiquity. In the shade of the huge trees one felt intimations of things to which the rosary, the Pater Noster and Ave Maria, hardly seemed to apply. Of course the pilgrims, if so they might be called, hardly could have thought so. From time to time relics of the Bronze Age had been found there. Relics of the Stone Age had been found there, and Eszterhazy wondered if these flint knives, mostly now in fragments, had immolated any of the victims in the ancient and horrid rites which had certainly antedated the Goths, to say nothing of the Avars, who had later come to conquer . . . and had stayed . . . and still came and still stayed ... to pray. One did after all feel something there which one did after all not feel somewhere else. If there were not actually dryads in the oaks, not really naiads in the spring or pool or river, well, then of course, one could not really feel them. But for thousands of years, people had come and had emotional experiences there and had believed that there
Because, to be sure, one felt something.
And as for the incident mentioned in the cutting from the
� furthermore, it was, the entire area and for a league, say rather
But there is perhaps scarcely any rule which someone will not try to break, if it is to someone�s interest to break it. Oaken timber had a price, and it was inevitable that from time to time someone would try to earn that price. It was not clear from the paragraph in the
Well, well, he would try to follow it up; meanwhile he carefully scissored the rough edges of the knife-cut newspaper items, neatly pasted them in their proper places in the scrapbooks, neatly made his cross-references. So much of this was in his head anyway that it wasn�t something it would do to
depend on a secretary for; and besides: he had no secretary. Though perhaps some day. Meanwhile, and quite apart from the intrinsic value of what he was doing, the storing-up of knowledge as a part of his life-plan, Dr. Eszterhazy found now (as always) that there was a simple and a rather restorative pleasure in doing such simple tasks as using the scissors and applying the paste. If this was � and it was � rather childlike, what of it? There was, after all, a child in everyone; better to minister to it in such harmless and helpful ways.
Just as he was closing the scrapbook there caught his eye the headline, VERY IMPORTANT new INVENTION. And, as before, he chuckled.
Fairly soon, however: there it was again.
Arriving for his regular session in Composition, Eszterhazy was met as usual by the housekeeper; and, as usual, she curtsied to him. Then, not as usual, she said, �Master has left word, sir, will you be pleased to go over and meet him at Engineer Brozz�s place, behind, in th� old cow-house and spring-house as they�ve had the builders throw together and they calls it the lavatory.�
They were both there in the laboratory. Something had been added, Eszterhazy felt certain, but he was not yet aware what it was. As before, Brozz looked rather weary; as before, De Metz had his head cocked to one side. Greetings exchanged, De Metz, evidently acting as spokesman, said, �It was felt that perhaps the new invention did not sufficiently demonstrate the,� and here he paused a second,
Brozz said, rather as one who speaks as it were weary of having spoken the same thing again and again, almost dreamily said, �It is so clean ... so clean ... no fire, no smoke, no ash � Ah. Yes. Instructor De Metz has been kind enough to make some practical suggestions, of the most helpful sort.� Sunlight diffused from the whitewashed walls, emphasizing here a ridge and there a whorl in the plaster covering the brick and stone. As though making some sort of effort, Brozz cleared his throat, lifting his head; muscles worked in his lean throat. �Instructor De Metz has assisted me to devise a small device which will ��
�But show him,
There was a flurry of apologetic sounds. Brozz moved levers. He turned wheels. The sound of water purling became the sound of water gurgling. Rushing. Brozz made one final movement and pulled a bar. By this time Eszterhazy had noticed the box, of wood and metal, which had not been there before:
(Quite another name had originally followed
As the last notes � those which would accompany the words,
At once De Metz asked, �And to whom else shall we show this?� He did not add,
Eszterhazy rubbed the end of his slightly-pointed nose. �Hm. Let me think. Ah. Have you considered Nuszboum�s Arcade?�
They had not considered Nuszboum�s Arcade. They considered it now. De Metz gave an entire sequence of his birdy-nods. Brozz said, �I have often enjoyed watching some of the machines and automata in the Arcade. I have no doubt that the principles of the tuned, harmonic, water-powered, turbine and compressed-air pump might be successfully applied to them, at any rate to some of them, and of course on a much larger scale.� It was clear that they liked the idea.
It was clear, very soon, that Nuszboum liked it, too. Nuszboum made an arrangement with the inventor, Nuszboum provided space for the invention next to his Test-the-Electricity Machine and just after his Slightly Naughty Magic Zooscope Lantern Peep (fat women in corsets). And in front of the Arcade, Nuszboum posted two masterpieces of posters appearing to be immense enlargements of the small item on the front page of the
�And how is our friend Engineer Brozz?� � one day.
�Quite well. He has gone away to set up his full-scale water engine.�
Eszterhazy was astonished. �He
�Oh yes. Someone is interested in investment possibility.� Eszterhazy asked just enough questions as to reassure himself that Someone was not a cheapjack or mounteback or floater of bogus shares; Someone was
This time Eszterhazy took the Limited Express to Numbitszl, in the Avar Alps, from Numbitszl the mule-drawn diligence went to Gro, and at Gro he was met by a smart mountain wagon; its brightly-painted signs showed a figure with a halo who was mounted on something like a short-legged horse with a ruff of hair around its neck: this was Saint Mammas.
The road went around and around and up and up and up, the air was clean and clear, not alone different from the thicker air of the city of Bella but certainly far different from the air in the train. In theory the train-carriage�s windows were sealed, but the black soot seeped in anyway, and the air grew hot and stale, and if one opened the windows then the smoke from the engine rushed in, and in addition to grime on one�s face there was the inevitable cinder in one�s eye. Cinders. Eyes. But here all was clean. By the side of the narrow, winding road grew yellow wood-sorrel and the blue blossoms of the cornflower and the blue blue blooms of the chicory.
From the balcony of his two-and-one-half-room suite Eszterhazy could see a broken silver line: the Little River and its several falls, and � past that � the unbroken silver line of the broad ox-bow in its lower course. Eszterhazy�s Romanou valet had been given the fortnight off; and he himself was now being tended to by the inn�s servants, and tended to well enough; very well, he had to shave himself or submit to the unsophisticated ministrations of the village barber? Tut.
He rode the small rough horses of the mountains, he rode their rough large ponies, once or twice he rode their rusty-colored mules. And he walked. He walked and walked, sometimes botanizing, sometimes birdwatching, sometimes photographing. His face grew red, then brown; his nerves, calmer ... he had hardly realized that they had been otherwise. And then one night he said, more as a vocal expression of good spirits than an actual question, �Well, landlord, and what shall I do tomorrow?�
Barrel-bodied, immaculately-aproned, vastly-bearded and broadly- moustached, Karrolo the innkeeper answered, �Why, sir doctor sir, a party of the gentry be going cross the frontier a-morrow, and I do wonder if you be not wanting to go with�um.�
The answer checked his lazy stretch. �Why, sir doctor sir, to the Sacred Grove.�
How could this be? The Sacred Grove was far away. It was. Was it not? A moment�s reflection showed him that, really, it was not.
Idly, he picked up the Avar-Ister newspaper, and turned to the classified notices. He made a mark in a margin.
The picnic went well enough. Karrolo would have felt his house disgraced if there had not been the usual seven sorts of sausages, seven kinds of cheese, and seven of pickled things and seven of pastry. In order to minister to the possibly more finicking tastes of the gentry, Hanni, his wife, who had worked a while in Avar-Ister (sometimes called �the Paris of the Balkans� by people who had spent more time in the Balkans than in Paris ... a lot more), had prepared
�Such a lot of gingerbread,� said one of the ladies.
�It is traditional,� explained one of the men.
The air grew rather hot, but there in the shady grove it stayed cool. Now and then a breeze brought wafts of resin from the pines round about. �Look what I�ve got on my shoe,� a young girl whimpered. Her mother made an exclamation of disgust, said that there must be a dog around. One of the guests laughed.
�Not at all,� he said. �It is merely some old gingerbread. And the rain and dew have made it soggy. People come here all the time. And every time, they bring gingerbread.�
Eszterhazy said, �I don�t wonder, it is such good gingerbread. I only wonder that so much of it seems to be lying around, instead of having been all eaten up. Why is that?�
The same man said, �It is traditional.� And then, with a gesture, he said, �Look!�
Some distance away the employees of the Inn were also eating. While they watched, the blackbearded coachman took up his piece of gingerbread, broke off a piece, placed it on the ground, straightened up, began to eat the rest. �Why?� asked a lady. And, �Yes, why? Ask him why, do,� said the other ladies.
The same man raised his voice, called out, �Hoy, Coachie!� in his citified Avar. �Why do you put a piece of such good gingerbread on the ground to get mucked about? Are you feeding the stoats and the fieldmice?�
It took a while for �Coachie� to understand. Then, with an obvious intention to be respectful, he made an obvious attempt to answer. But he felt awkward; the words stuck in his throat; he made gestures; finally, in a voice too low to carry, he said a word or two in the rustic dialect to the woman serving as waitress. She nodded, walked back to the picnickers, curtseyed. �If it do please Your Honors, Ferri he say it be the custom.�
This would not do. Not altogether. A woman asked,
�My legs are stiff from riding and then sitting,� said Eszterhazy, getting up awkwardly enough to lend credence to his remark. �A brisk walk is what they need; will you come along for a walk with me, my dear sir? � and point out things to me?�
The man scrambled to his feet, brushed his legs. �Love to,� he muttered, avoiding eyes. �Love, love to . . . love to. . . .�
When they were off by themselves, hot sun breathing down, the odor of grass replacing that of leaves and resin and sap, Eszterhazy said, �Well, now, you have aroused my curiosity �� He paused.
�Hanszlo Horvath. I know yours. Lord Professor Doctor Eszterhazy.�
�I am pleased to meet you, sir. And, oh, simply �Dr. Eszterhazy� I have never been �Lord,� my grandfather, yes; not I. And, really, never �Professor,� either, though I have taught a class or two. Well, now, but what is it that the peasant man does when he comes in from his work?�
Horvath guffawed. �Well, then the woman pulls off his boots. And he breaks wind. And she says, �Be glad for good health.� Ho ho ho!�
�Ha ha ha!�
�Huh huh huh! Well! So you see, sir. One could hardly tell that story in mixed company among the gentry.�
�No, no. Certainly not.� Among the gentry, no. And among the aristocracy? Certainly. Well, never mind. �What is that large building there? � down over
�Sure enough. Well. Horvath, shall we go and have a look?�
�Might�s well,� said Horvath. � �Be glad for good health!� ha ha!�
The tuned harmonic etc. water-power plant was now established, and a factory with ample space had now been established, too. Ample . . . and empty, too. What was to be done with it? What use to be made of it? Brozz was with difficulty brought to bring his mind to bear upon this problem, and, indeed, could not easily recognize it as a problem at all. He would have been immensely content simply to watch his engines enginating all the day long, without other consideration. But it had all, after all, been brought into being by a Syndicate largely commercial in nature, and the commercial members of the Syndicate (or Association) had other ideas. They had after all raised what would in other parts of the world have been a lot of money; to the Triune Monarchy � where wealth still tended to be counted in terms of acres and arpents and horses and horned cattle � it was an immense amount of money. The resources of the European industrial world had been summoned to supply the machinery; and if most of it had come from England and Scotland (most of it
Brozz nodded civilly as Eszterhazy, accompanied by Horvath, appeared. The engineer was supervising the installation of some item and had just called, �A full meter clearance on all sides� to the work-crew. Now he said, as calmly (and as abstractedly) as though they were again (or still) in the suburbs of Bella, �You see very clean it all is.�
�I do see. Yes.�
�No fire. No smoke. No cinders. No ash.�
�None. True.� He didn�t add, And no reason why your absurd engine should
A very faint cloud came over the face of Engineer Brozz. �Sometimes there is sludge,� he said. Eszterhazy was about to ask about this when two gentlemen, investors, board members, appeared, and � seeing new faces � bore them away to the board room, produced cold beer, produced a neatly printed prospectus and an application for the purchase of shares. As he had left the engine-room Eszterhazy had heard Brozz say, yet again, �A full meter clearance on all sides.� And then he had heard Brozz catch his breath and he saw Brozz kick something. Heard Brozz say, �I won�t have this.� The doors closed. Rather odd.
But perhaps not.
There was nothing in the least odd about the way the investment possibility was urged, but something else was odd .. . definitely so . . . Eszterhazy could not at first have said why. Walls were rising for the new mill-pond, which should produce a very high head of water indeed. Eventually. It was Summer, the water was down, it was more easily diverted to allow the work to go on. What was odd, then? Something certainly was. He sought out Brozz, after they had left the board room. What was the projected height of the new wall?... of the new mill-pond? Ah,
�Excuse me, Engineer. But, ah... ah ... it seems to me that the new lake or pond or � that it would, if my hasty mental calculations are correct � that it would drown the Sacred Grove. Eh?�
Brozz gave him an abstracted look, turned away, called, �A full meter clearance on all sides;� turned back. �Excuse me, one must repeat things very often, else they may not be done. What did you ask? Flood the ... the what?�
�The Sacred Grove.�
The engineer�s eyes looked into his own. �What is the Sacred Grove?� Brozz asked.
Perhaps it was not so surprising that the man
There was certainly a deal of merit in what he said. Eszterhazy had seen the Black Country of England and its continental equivalents; to compare it to Hell was a simile in a state of fatigue, but what other comparison was there? Pillars of cloud, black cloud, by day, and pillars of fire, red fire, by night. Soot falling down like snow, the earth riven open for coal. If indeed it were possible for the inevitable degree of industrialization which the country must experience to be based on water and air, well, so much the better. It would be too bad about the sacred grove or Sacred Grove; one could not have everything, of course. The changes along the Little River and its tributaries would be considerable.
Would, eventually, inevitably, be immense.
And not there alone.
Eszterhazy realized this, and with something less than an absence of total discontent. But he reassured himself, as most would, that change was inevitable � and, in this instance, that change was at least to be minimized. The earth need not be wounded to yield coal, the forests need not be ravished to supply firewood. Only that the water, flowing anyway, would flow through channels. And, if no man ever bathed twice in the same river, the river having meanwhile flowed on; well, the same river would never turn any wheel twice. And, so, what of that?
Nothing.
Back at the Inn of St. Mammas, there on his desk was the Avar-Ister newspaper, folded, as he had left it, to the classified notices. And there, in the right hand margin, next to the pencil-mark he had made, was
Dr. Szilk will receive into his own home a very few gentlemen as
residential private patients. Secure care. Full board. Excellent attention. The Rose-colored House, 102 Great St. Gabriel Street near Pannonian Gate.
Why had he marked
Among the particular ideas of Dr. Rothenbueler�s in Bella was that tight clothes were too unhealthy, dark clothes too depressing, bright clothes too exciting. And there, on a visit a few years ago ... a tall, thin man . . . loose light-grey jacket and loose tan trousers ... a mere glance. But now proving enough to identify. So. Engineer Brozz had once been treated for a crisis of nerves, eh? This might account for much. And it might account for ... currently . . . nothing. Nothing at all.
Nothing.
Eszterhazy was now a candidate for the degree of Doctor of Literature; at times he felt rather as Petrarch must have felt when, having gone all the way to � was it Ghent? � in order to copy a rare text of � was it Cicero? � he discovered that he could get no ink in Ghent. How could they have managed without ink in Ghent? Well, perhaps they had not needed ink just then: one did not copy texts of Cicero every day. Agreed. But � Ghent was a commercial center of no mean size; how had they kept their records? The answer might have been that they used tally-sticks. And not ledgers. It was certainly more easy to make tally-sticks than to make ink; however, one could not copy a rare text with a tally-stick.
Still. Was there not somewhere in Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania where the tally-stick was still in use? What had this to do with a degree of Doctor of Literature? Eszterhazy decided to adopt for his little motto,
The work on the dam was proceeding, but it could not be said that the work on the dam was proceeding in all respects smoothly. An official, or at any rate a semi-official, protest had come from the priest of the chapel in the grove � officially the Chapel of Sts. Ulfilas and Methodius.
Or, to employ another terminology, resistance went underground.
Dr. Eszterhazy listened. He asked, �And so the people �?�
�They won�t work on that dam. Goths, Avars, Slovatchkoes, none of them people will work on it. Brought up a team of navvies from The City,�
Eszterhazy�s face showed his surprise. �What? Oh, but surely the Hyperboreans are just as prone to superstition as ��
�Oh,
� �Offered,� yes. But, well, the Stockholding folk, they�ve got the Rural Constabulary on guard. And then Prince Preez, he�s got his own men on guard, too. Mind you, no, they won�t do a lick of work themselves on this
dam. But they keep the others, the locals, from interfering. Prince Preez, he can�t call out the corvee no more, but ...�
Prince Preez. As far as living in the country, in his own country, was concerned, Prince Preez could hardly need spend a kopperka from one year to another. Food, wine, wood, even woolen and linen cloth, all were supplied by his own tenantry as part of rent. But Prince Preez did not care to spend all his time on his estates, in his house in Avar-Ister, his house in Bella. More and more often of recent years Prince Preez, glossy-red-faced Prince Preez, liked to travel to Vienna, to Florence, to Paris. To tarry on the Riviera. To turn a hand of cards. Throw a cup of dice. . . .
To
All this was increasingly costly (Prince Preez did not always
Until then? Until then, nothing.
Hence the huntsmen of Prince Preez and the herdsmen of Prince Preez and the housemen of Prince Preez, lots and lots of them, in their linen and leather livery of red and brown, with their boar-spears and their muskets and their shotguns and their whips and their dirks and their axes and their cudgels: and all on guard. Night and day. Day and night.
But scarcely had Eszterhazy assimilated this, gotten the picture of it formed in his mind, when � �And then there�s them gingerbread men, sir.�
� �And then� �
So it was that Engelbert Kristoffr Klaudius Eszterhazy, with his baccalaureate, his licentiate, and his (by now) four doctorates, learned of the peculiar � and, rather, pitiful � form of protest to which the people of the mountain had been reduced. Grekkor thought perhaps they had used their children (their very small children) to smuggle these mute protests past the piquets and patrols . . . could there be a milder or a more moderate protest than these edible dolls which it was customary to enjoy in the Sacred Grove? � leaving, of course, a piece behind, uneaten, perhaps by way of quit-rent for the privilege � a more humble reminder? Hardly ... though ... even so . . . how even small children managed to get past the lines of guards, with their fires and their torches and their lamps and their lanterns, was a wonder. It was a great wonder.
Later on.
There had been an outbreak of the ailment commonly called �coals of fire,� or, in a fancier word, anthrax; and Eszterhazy, both as a qualified physician and as a member of the Higher Consultancy of the Royal and Imperial Hospital (commonly called �The Big Sickhouse�), had been discussing the outbreak with Doctor Umglotz, the Assistant Supervisor. Umglotz declared himself to be a �regular old-fashioned physician,� given to the traditional and the tried and true. None of your fads for Umglotz.
�Bleeding, blistering, cupping, purging,� he said. �If they don�t work, well, then nothing works.�
Eszterhazy nodded. �I see. Well, which have you tried for anthrax?� �Tried all of them.�
�I see. Well, which one works?�
�None of them works,� said Umglotz, with immense calm.
And he was quite right. None of them
�They are? Yes, yes. I see. They are. Well. No surprise. Where folk are working in that line � where you find wool and hair, you know, well, there you find anthrax. Dirty work. The beasts of the field, my good Eszterhazy, they do not employ the
His good Eszterhazy knew better than to suggest that even a glass of it be sent instead to one of the dying. �Willingly,� he said. Then his head jerked. �A sudden thought, Assistant Supervisor. When wool-working was what the English term �a cottage industry,� when a single family raised sheep, sheared, carded, spun, wove, and all ��
Umglotz rang his bell, begged his good Eszterhazy�s pardon. �Yes, yes, quite. Go on, please.� Eszterhazy went on to say that in such a situation, if a family had the misfortune to encounter a tainted fleece, the outbreak of anthrax might be at least contained within that cottage and family. Whereas, when a tainted fleece was worked upon by an entire factory-full of people � �Yes, yes. Quite. I quite see your point. Well, what would you? People don�t want to stay in their cottage. They want to come to our beautiful,
exciting Big Bella. And who can blame them; not I. Ah, here it is! Let me fill your glass. Sercial is nice, Bual is nice, but as the Emperor is benevolent enough to send us Rainwater, I am loyal enough to maintain that Rainwater is the nicest madeira of all; drink up, my good Eszterhazy. Drink up!�
Having drunk up, and having declined a second glass, and acknowledging that being sent on one�s way with a glass of good wine was better than being kicked down a flight of stairs, Eszterhazy nevertheless left The Big Sick- house with a rather disturbing trend of thought still trending its way through his mind. Not even the beautiful, reflective Ister, of the sight of which anywhere on its course he never tired, was able to distract him. Excellent as Engineer Brozz�s intentions were to provide his native nation with a new (and clean) system of power and manufacture there seemed always some objection, and always some further objection, to arise. And it was of this, in general, and of this latest potential objection in particular, of which he thought and was thinking as he made his way over the beautiful Swedish Bridge, towards his home.
He was
Yet something of this so-called Law seemed to be at work; for, on Eszterhazy�s having barely attained his chamber, there entered Kresht, the day porter, with a card on the flat palm of his hand. (Kresht, later succeeded by Lemkotch, had been provided with a tray for this purpose, but had persisted in using the tray as a way-stop for his glass of coffee, his glass of borsht, and his glass of tea with sliced citron and cherry preserve; until he had finally been excused the use of the tray for holding cards at all.) And the card, engraved in a crisp script, read
�Bring the gentleman up, Kresht.�
�Yurp, Lord Doctor.� And, having brought the gentleman up, Kresht brought himself down again, there to devote himself to his glass of rye- bread-beer, his glass of raspberry juice and hot water, and his glass of whatever else was his by kindness of the upper-kitchen woman with whom he had formed an entangling alliance. Kresht was later (not much later) succeeded by Lemkotch, who never drank anything at all. . . except whatever was in the flat black bottle which reposed in the pocket of his overcoat hanging Winter and Summer in the lower front hall closet: and for this Lemkotch required neither glass nor tray.
But as for Brozz �
Brozz did not look well.
�How are the tuned harmonic turbine, the vacuum-pump, and the compressed-air engine, Engineer?�
Engineer made a gesture. �I have not come to consult you about that. At least . . . not exactly. I have come to consult you as a doctor of medicine.� Again . . . was it that absurd �Law�?
�I am such, it is true, certainly. But it is certainly true that I became such chiefly to mark a milestone on the march to knowledge, not to practice and have patients. Have you consulted, for instance,� naming a well-known and �modern� physician, �Dr. Slawk?�
�I have.�
�And what did he say?�
�That my liver was out of order. And he offered me a black pill.� Brozz gazed at the beautifully-articulated skeleton in its cabinet, but its beautiful articulations did not seem to soothe him.
�Hmm. Well, but - Dr. Hrach?�
�Dr. Hrach, too.�
�And he -?�
�Said that my bowels were sluggish. And offered me a blue pill.�
There was one more suggestion to make, and Eszterhazy made it. �The Scottish surgeon is ��
�Dr. Maclllivery. Oh yes. Him, too. He said that the acid in green tea, when over-indulged in, affected the connective fibre of the nervous tissue. Have I over-indulged in the use of green tea? Sir, I have never indulged in green tea at all. And as for the witch ��
It followed. �Yes. �As for the witch�?�
Engineer Brozz took a slip of paper from a small leather pocket-case. �I wrote it down.� He read aloud. � �
� �Say anything else�? Yes. �Cross my palm with silver, handsome Christian gentleman.� �
Eszterhazy sighed. �Well, well. Be kind enough to loosen your cuffs and collar, and to open your coat, waistcoat, and shirt. Yes. Just so. Say nothing until I tell you to.� The pulse was taken, the stethoscopic horn applied. At length Dr. Eszterhazy said, �There are some occasional, very minor, irregularities, but nothing very divergent from the norm. Pulse, heart, are both strong. Respiration normal. Do you sleep well? Can you eat? Does your vision waver? Any problem in hearing? � you never feel that others are mumbling? Your lungs seem sound.� He withdrew the thermometer from the armpit. �Normal. Your eyes are only slightly bloodshot.
Brozz looked away from the skeleton, looked at the two immense terrestrial and celestial globes. Brozz muttered something very low. He let out his breath in a sudden gust. Jerked his head abruptly from side to side, twice. Then threw out his right hand in a bewildered gesture. �Listen, Doctor, I don�t know if you remember, or if you ever saw, perhaps you never saw, years ago there was a mountebank, sometimes he used to stand at the corner of the alley between the Big Wood Market and the Old Stillery, a
Eszterhazy�s frown of concentration melted away. �Yes! A
And patiently waited.
�You see,� Brozz said, by and by, �first I attended the old Bella Pantechni- cal School in Upper Hunyadi Street. Then I went to Scotland and worked with Watt and Grant, the great engineering firm in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and next my work was with British Looms Ltd. in Manchester and in Sheffield at Stanley Steel; and I may say: what there was to be learned about machinery, I learned it. I studied in London and in Brussels and Berlin. It was during those years I began to think about the tuned harmonic turbine and the vacuum-pump and the compressed-air engine. When they first began the advanced technical studies here at the Collegium, I returned and obtained the engineer degree.. ..
�My entire adult life, my professional and personal and philosophical
�As perfectly sane.� Brozz may not have been as pragmatic as he thought; but he was certainly sane. Or seemed so. So far. Still...
�So when I say that I am �� He did not precisely pause or hesitate; only, his voice stopped.
Eszterhazy produced and profferred the (possibly) missing word, haunted ��
Brozz did not react other than to resume speaking. �I am haunted,� he said, in a dull, dead voice. His face was thinner than ever.
�You are haunted by paper puppets?�
The man�s face showed, fleetingly, first surprise; then, though quickly sur- pressed, annoyance. �No! What? �Paper puppets�? No, sir, what makes you think � Oh. I see, I understand. No,
�At first, merely I saw them by one or two. Just lying around. I thought the workmen had been slipshod, careless. Then these things came more often, and more and more often. Soon one began to realize they were getting into the water supply, dissolving into a sludge, clogging . . . sometimes . . . clogging the machines. And also clogging them with stones, pebbles, fragments of splints. And then next I began to see them out of the corners of my eyes, moving ... moving... walking... and when I would, often, at night, lose my selfcontrol and chase after them....� His words ended in a soft sound half-sigh, half-groan.
Even softer: �Yes?�
�... they would run away ... and never ... I could never catch them . ..� His voice had sunk, now it rose. �Who will believe me? Who will ever respect me? They ��
�What are they?�
The engineer�s somewhat bloodshot eyes looked at him in a mixture of defiance and shame. �They? What are �? They are the gingerbread men.�
Everyone called it �the Old Avar Bakery.� But the place itself did not call itself so, the weathered sign had to be read at a certain time of day with the sun at a certain angle, and the sign read the famous OLD gingerbread bakery AT WHOLESALE AND RETAIL. It read so in Gothic and it read so in Avar. Everyone knew of it; and everyone knew of the Hospice for the Innocents, the orphanage run by the uncloistered nuns. Eszterhazy had brought a large box of the confections for, as he let it be known, to give to the Hospice, and paid cash: all matters disposing the shopman to answer questions. How did they make their excellent gingerbread men? In old cherry-wood molds. Where did the ingredients come from? �Well, sir, the eyes and mouths we make from them tiny raisins that grows in them Turkish islands where the Greeks do live, currants we call �em, sir.� Yes. The isles of Greece and the cities thereof. Corinth. Currant. Yes. And the other ingredients? �Well, sir, the ginger and the m�lasses they comes from India, from the Indies, sir � Virginia and Jamaica and them-like other Indian places. And � and the what, sir? Ah, the flour? Well � no, not from the Bella Steam Mill, that grinding, well, we doesn�t care for it a-tall. �Twon�t taste the same, you see. We use old fashioned style flour. Water-ground meal, we uses. Where it comes from? From the old mills way up the Little River. Sir. And mostly the honey, too.�
Rain had washed the soot off the carriage windows, but rain allowed very little to be seen as the train made its way, and that little was so wavering as to convey not much. As Eszterhazy pulled a window up and before he pulled it down again he looked upon a sodden landscape. Not far off the trains on the narrow-gauge branch-line seemed to move along like a procession of gondolas crossing the Venetian lagoon. It was after all his own private car and if he cared to keep the window open no one might gainsay him. He did not care: he had a boxful of things to read, and he did not want them rained upon. He would see the scenery later. Another time. When it stopped raining. If it ever did.
Rain in Scythia, rain in Pannonia, rain in Transbalkania � rain in Cisbalka- nia, for that matter. The rain was falling on the Acropolis and on the black mountain of Montenegro. All the Italian alliances in the world could not keep it from raining on Illyria, nor off the Hungarian shepherds in their shaggy capes. In the soggy delta of the Ister the Romanou gathered in their mucky huts, close around their smoky fires, ate smoked eels and thoughtfully wiped their fingers in their arm-pits. Here and there and everywhere the Tsiganes headed for drier ground and kept their keen black eyes open for drowned pigs; they had some very good recipes for drowned pig. In Klejn Tinkeldorff, Eszterhazy�s Tanta Tina clicked her tongue, and helped the housekeeper hang the washing in the kitchen. And, a few blocks away, Music Master De Metz sat composing motets. He did not know it was raining.
At the last train stop the diligence-driver helped the porter with Eszterhazy�s baggage. �I don�t know for sure will we be able to get Your Honor to the last stage, this here rain here be so heavy. They say as God be punishing this here district for that bloody new dam as will drown out the Sacred Grove, what a blasphemous thing to do.� He shook his head, scattering more rain, as he tight-hauled the rope on the tarpaulin cover for the baggage.
�Why, man,� said Eszterhazy, �this rain is falling not just here and not just on our country but all over Eastern Europe; they say it is the heaviest rain in many years.�
The driver looked at him doubtfully. �Not just here? Not just on � How does Your Honor know?�
Eszterhazy was not disposed to stand chatting while his clothes grew soaked. �Telegraphic reports,� he said. And got inside.
The driver, who had not a hope of keeping dry, looked at him through the window. �Ah. Telegraph.
The driver proved right, as such drivers generally do: they had
He could scarcely see; he could hardly hear. It was no mere rainstorm which made the overwhelming sound now beating incessantly upon his ears, and which bothered him more than the wet. When he reached the new factory he would be out of the wet, into dry clothes; but would he be away from the noise? Soon enough he had an answer of sorts, though not the one he would
have hoped for. The road crested at the top of one of the hills, the road was going down, was turning to keep to the river, and �
Lines from an old Scottish poem, again courtesy of his aunt Lady Emma, supplied themselves:
How could the new dam stand up against all this? Could it? Well, probably. If they, there at the new factory below, so to speak, and alongside the dam, if they opened the sluices and allowed water to escape from the sides as well as over the top. /fthey opened the sluices? By now and in fact long before now, they of course must have.
He had heard much of all the men on guard roundabout this area by night and day, but he saw no one. He saw nothing, neither man nor beast. Animals looking to find refuge on higher ground by now would already have found it. .. found it, or been drowned. The water-birds?, where were they? Somewhere. Somewhere else. Not on the surface of the new-formed lake. He could not soon or easily become used to this new-formed lake. It was too unfamiliar, it was entirely unfamiliar, there was nothing he could recognize �
Stop.
Of course there was.
He recognized the vasty oak trees rising from amidst the waters and knew that he was looking at the Sacred Grove.
How long would and could the Grove�s trees survive, half-sunk beneath the waters as they were? He did not know. Bit by bit and very cautiously he advanced, but it was not easy; the road had become in part a stream-bed, and where not that, a mud-slick. And yet (he saw) he had been rather wrong, for there were living beings moving about; what were they? Children, very small children? No. Marmots, perhaps? Perhaps marmots, moving en masse in search of safety? Were there marmots here? Ground-squirrels, perhaps? And yet why did he keep thinking that they might be children, when plainly they could not and �
He saw them coming and increasing. He saw them coming on. He saw them coming, like an army of tiny brown pygmies, waving their stumpy ginger-red-brown arms. Their tiny black-marked mouths opening, wordlessly for all he could hear above the pouring rains and rushing waters. Had they something, each, in their small and fingerless hands? Were those mere meaningless motions, movements, gestures? Were they, seemingly, threatening? Stabbing? Against whom? Against what?
And as he watched, body wet and cold and numb, repeatedly dashing the rain from his forehead, again and again mopping his smarting eyes with his sodden sleeves, he saw the ranks ... Deucalion�s Flood? who had thrown the stones from which this race had sprung? or sown the dragon�s teeth? . . . saw the ranks waver, saw them tremble. Saw them melt, melting away. Ebb. Fade. Vanish. Gone.
Had he seen it? How could he have seen it? He could not have seen it, therefore he had not seen it.
But how close it had seemed to come to him ... as close as ... as that tree. His eyes sank from the rain-soaked bark and bole of the ancient oak (surely of course not one of those there during the ancient days: but how far removed? perhaps grown of an acorn of an oak of an acorn from one of the pagan oaks: only three removes; what said Solomon?
Then he turned around again. Turned again, saw again, screamed again, fled again.
slip. The river. The lake.
(
Once again the crude Them sank sodden and collapsed. Once more he waited, while the river and (he must suppose) the spillway of the dam roared and thundered. And once more he saw the Figures rise and take form out of the earth, wavering, become firm. Their faces no longer toy-like, doll-like, their faces giant-like. But they were now ruinous and eroded faces; their forms?
Male, female, sexless, androgynous, furious, faceless (now), huge and vast: and the rains came down and the water roared � the Figures leaped forward into the rain and mirk and were lost to sight. And then the almost allembracing noise for one horrible moment became utterly all-embracing indeed, something like a cataract in reverse heaved up in torrent, the fountains of the deep were truly broken, the saturated earth trembled and quaked; he sank upon his knees.
When he had recovered and was able to stand, though the rains had dwindled to drizzles, though still the waters rushed and foamed, they had ceased to roar and now they only loudly groaned and droned. Thick mud such as might have greeted the eyes of Noah lay all about the Sacred Grove, where ... long and long ago . . . the ancient Avars and Slovatchkoes and Goths, sometimes together and sometimes apart, had come to perform their heathen rituals, to honor God in the plural before ever they had ever learned to honor God in the singular . . . and, before, even, then, whatever ancient-most kiths and races had dwelt here then: proto-Pelasgians, perhaps, or ur-Hyperboreans and paleo-pagans whose very names were lost... but only mud lay round about the giant oak-trees now. The lake was gone. The pond below was gone. The millrace was gone. Save for a shattered stone groin, the dam was gone. The factory was entirely gone. Stripped of limbs and branches, trunks of trees lay here and there in heaps like giant jackstraws. It was far later and far downstream that, the sun shining as though there had never been rain, Eszterhazy encountered a broken (broken?
Aloud he repeated the words, once, long
He looked at the flints. Some of the fracture-lines were new, others as clearly
Was that what had happened? What
Another reason which justified Justinian�s waging war upon the Goths was their savage rites and customs, totally against religion and morality. For example, in the mountains of Eastern Scythia in a sacred grove by a sacred well or spring, the barbaric Goths are wont to select certain prisoners by lot and to let them loose and to pursue after them. The wretches unfortunate enough to be captured are not alone immolated to the demons who dwelt in the place sacred to them, but portions of their flesh are cooked and eaten. Others say, eaten raw. It is true that some so- called Christians who should know better maintain that though such a cruel rite once pertained there, it had been abolished after the Gothic incursion, and that the Goths themselves merely made effigies of meal and honey and it is these which they consume.
What had lain slumbering in the groves and woods and waters for centuries, perhaps millennia? Had anything? Had not... something? Had it or had they been created out of a sort of spiritual effluvium? as the result of immemorial worship, and the rites thereof? or had worship (and its rites) resulted because Something was already there? Chamibog, for instance, the so-called Dark God of the ancient Slovatchkoes? or Byellibog, their so-called Bright one? But this was infinitely simplistic, and, perhaps, after all, nothing was there.
But something else answered, as though out of the mist and rain and sunshine and spray: You can�t catch me, said the �
�There is a spirit in this man,� Tanta Tina�s old nurse had said.
It was very suddenly that he saw Engineer Brozz. The man was floating in a new-made backwater, floating on his back, so it seemed; but in fact only partly floating. In pan something held him up, held him fast; and this gave a slight illusion to the scene: if one had known nothing else one might have wondered why the man had chosen to float, fully clothed, slightly moving his arms and legs.
Much mud and earth and gravel and sand must indeed have flowed upon and lodged upon him, one saw it lying in deposits all around. But, caught as the back of his belt was by the broken point of a limb of a half-sunken tree, suspended from the muck and mirk at the bottom, all debris and detritus had been washed away by the flowing waters, and only some specks of mica glittered and glistened on him here and there. Eszterhazy remembered and spontaneously cried aloud the man�s own words:
�So clean! So clean! And all so clean!�
Though the flood was over, there was still an immense quantity of water which lay impounded by banks and shores and tangled masses of trees and other debris � �jams� or �rafts� this was termed in Northamerica; it had not been common enough in this country to take a name � and not far off this water formed a mere. Birds, attracted from far away, rested in flocks on the surface of the mere and flew off now and then, but always returned. Lines from a late Roman Latin poet,
The waters reflected the sky and the sky was an incredible blue, bluer than cornflowers or the blossoms of the chicory (why were all images of it suddenly botanical?), and all nature lay spent, as though after some episode of great passion.
�The late deceased learned Engineer was of the Reformed, that is to say, the Calvinist, faith?�
�Yes, Minister.�
�Was there not perhaps some line or lines of Holy Scripture to which he was particularly attached? which I might mention in my brief address?�
No one had any reply; then an elderly man in old-fashioned clothing half- livery and half-uniform cleared his throat. �As an Under-sheriff, it�s my duty, your reverence, to examine the contents of the clothing of the late deceased. And I find this in his little leather budget as he have in his pocket, wrappit in a piece of oiled cloth. This piece paper, I mean. Ben�t it Scripture?�
The minister � he was young and had yet to learn he might not dawdle whilst the impetuous dead were waiting � took the slip of paper and solemnly read it aloud. � �
But when he saw how many graves had been dug, and how many were waiting to get into them, he was very brief indeed.