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Authors: John Updike
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curious chairs are Venetian.” He picked one up and snapped it shut like a pair of shears, and then open again. “They fold, the slats interleaving, a bit like the threads of a loom. There is all sorts of cleverness abroad, and less and less trusting to God. We Danes are a backward lot; the cold keeps us fresh but stupid.”
He set the open chair, shaped like an X, near the sluggishly burgeoning fire, and placed a cushion of green velvet on the conjured seat, for her. She settled herself, and he pulled the other of the pair of Venetian chairs near enough so he need not raise his voice above the clatter of the servants bringing out the plates and bowls, the knives and spoons, the loaded platters of their noontime repast. “His goodness oppressed me,” Feng went on, extending the conversation on horseback. “It was like a pillow he was pressing against my face. He was all answer, with no question.”
“I once called him unsubtle,” Gerutha confided in turn, “and greatly angered my father.”
“Subtlety is not yet fashionable in Denmark,” Feng said, “but in Europe it is the coming thing. For a thousand years we have all been God’s peasants, delving and tilling in the sweat of our brow, under the lowest possible clouds. In Rome, whose busy little bishop claims to be the shepherd of even the dull sheep of barren Jutland, I saw a marble hand, marvellous in its fidelity to the actual, emerge from the earth, where men were stealing dressed stones for their hovels. In Paris, the learned monks have fallen in love with the thoughts of an ancient magus called Aristotle. One of these scholastics assured me that God and His Heavenly mysteries need no longer be taken on faith, they can all be proven as rigorously as the laws of a triangle.”
Somehow nervous, he was talking too rapidly, and looking at her but glancingly. “I fear,” Gerutha dared say, with deliberation, “that would leave our poor humanity off to one side. God should have sent not His Son but a theorem.”
This near-blasphemy did draw Feng’s eyes, widened, to her. They were deliriously darker than Horwendil’s, the brown of crushed earth with grass in it, the residue of a creation, like Eve’s, which came second. “Tell me, Gerutha, what do you believe? I think your father was no profounder a convert than mine. They lived and killed with the innocence of animals.”
“They lived as their survival and pleasure dictated, amid each day’s necessities. I believe,” she answered, “what the men stationed above me tell me to believe. Outside their credo, society offers women no safety. And you, my brother, believe what?”
But he was not her brother. He was so swift to reply she blinked. “I believe men can be damned,” he said. “I am less sure they can be saved. After we eat, gentle Gerutha, there is something I must show you—a beauty that puts our thoughts of good and evil at the mercy of the real.”
The food was plain but the better tasting for that, the smoked meats salty and the autumnal fruits crisp. First the party, to warm it after the two-hour ride, was brought wooden bowls of pottage whose strongest flavors were those of cabbage and coney; it was kept simmering, day and night, in an iron kettle outweighing a man. Then came cold cuts of ham injected with brine, morsels of goose preserved in honey, salt herring and cod cut in strips for dainty handling, and those little dry spicy sausages for which the peasants have an obscene name. Asparagus cooked and then dried, with cardoons and plantains soaked in wine to make them palatable, recalled the summer’s harvest of vegetables. For dessert and climax, a platter of dates and shelled almonds was passed—exotic delicacies in keeping with Feng’s foreign tastes. The human company and strengthening fire dispelled the chill in the low hall, so the air became close beneath the blackened planks of the ceiling.
The Queen ate with the other women of the party at the lower end of the long
He set the open chair, shaped like an X, near the sluggishly burgeoning fire, and placed a cushion of green velvet on the conjured seat, for her. She settled herself, and he pulled the other of the pair of Venetian chairs near enough so he need not raise his voice above the clatter of the servants bringing out the plates and bowls, the knives and spoons, the loaded platters of their noontime repast. “His goodness oppressed me,” Feng went on, extending the conversation on horseback. “It was like a pillow he was pressing against my face. He was all answer, with no question.”
“I once called him unsubtle,” Gerutha confided in turn, “and greatly angered my father.”
“Subtlety is not yet fashionable in Denmark,” Feng said, “but in Europe it is the coming thing. For a thousand years we have all been God’s peasants, delving and tilling in the sweat of our brow, under the lowest possible clouds. In Rome, whose busy little bishop claims to be the shepherd of even the dull sheep of barren Jutland, I saw a marble hand, marvellous in its fidelity to the actual, emerge from the earth, where men were stealing dressed stones for their hovels. In Paris, the learned monks have fallen in love with the thoughts of an ancient magus called Aristotle. One of these scholastics assured me that God and His Heavenly mysteries need no longer be taken on faith, they can all be proven as rigorously as the laws of a triangle.”
Somehow nervous, he was talking too rapidly, and looking at her but glancingly. “I fear,” Gerutha dared say, with deliberation, “that would leave our poor humanity off to one side. God should have sent not His Son but a theorem.”
This near-blasphemy did draw Feng’s eyes, widened, to her. They were deliriously darker than Horwendil’s, the brown of crushed earth with grass in it, the residue of a creation, like Eve’s, which came second. “Tell me, Gerutha, what do you believe? I think your father was no profounder a convert than mine. They lived and killed with the innocence of animals.”
“They lived as their survival and pleasure dictated, amid each day’s necessities. I believe,” she answered, “what the men stationed above me tell me to believe. Outside their credo, society offers women no safety. And you, my brother, believe what?”
But he was not her brother. He was so swift to reply she blinked. “I believe men can be damned,” he said. “I am less sure they can be saved. After we eat, gentle Gerutha, there is something I must show you—a beauty that puts our thoughts of good and evil at the mercy of the real.”
The food was plain but the better tasting for that, the smoked meats salty and the autumnal fruits crisp. First the party, to warm it after the two-hour ride, was brought wooden bowls of pottage whose strongest flavors were those of cabbage and coney; it was kept simmering, day and night, in an iron kettle outweighing a man. Then came cold cuts of ham injected with brine, morsels of goose preserved in honey, salt herring and cod cut in strips for dainty handling, and those little dry spicy sausages for which the peasants have an obscene name. Asparagus cooked and then dried, with cardoons and plantains soaked in wine to make them palatable, recalled the summer’s harvest of vegetables. For dessert and climax, a platter of dates and shelled almonds was passed—exotic delicacies in keeping with Feng’s foreign tastes. The human company and strengthening fire dispelled the chill in the low hall, so the air became close beneath the blackened planks of the ceiling.
The Queen ate with the other women of the party at the lower end of the long
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