Read Online The Biographer's Tale by A. S. Byatt - Free Book Online

man or woman I could not tell. I think the poet could never have described a
furia
to compare with this one; she might indeed have issued from the infernal Styx. She was tiny, her face smoked black, the brown eyes shining, the brows black, the jet-black hair hanging round her head, on top of which was a flat red cap. The dress was grey, and from her chest, which resembled frogskin, hung long, limp brown dugs; she wore a number of brass bracelets, a belt and boots.
    â€œAt first sight of this being I was afeard. But the Fury took pity on me and cried out, ‘Wretched man! Poor creature, what has brought thee here, where none has ventured before! Hast thou not seen how mean are our dwellings?’ ”
    This Fury insisted that the only way to go was back through the swamps. CL begged for food—she offered him raw fish, putrid and breeding maggots. He asked for smoked reindeer tongue, which he had come to like, but there was none. He went back, that time losing his boat, his axe, his pike, a stuffed heron and a stuffed sea-eagle in the rapids of the river. Nevertheless, having recuperated at UmeÃ¥ he undertook another up-country expedition, and met more Furies, more kindly old women, and magic. He records, in his published Travels, that in Norway he had heard of a curious ruse by which the Lapps could be deceived into surrendering their magic drums—you could sidle up to one, who had refused you his drum, and, without his remarking what you were at, push up his sleeve and open a vein. The wounded Lapp, faint from loss of blood (and apparently unaware of why—CL is vague on this point) can easily be persuaded to hand over the magic object. It is probable that CL’s story is a garbled version of the cruel punishmentsinflicted on the Sami by Christian priests, who tied them down, opened the veins and let the blood run until the unfortunate nomads recanted, were “converted,” and gave up their magic objects and practices. We come now to CL himself, and the strange portrait he had made of himself in his Lapp dress, complete with drum and magic drawings, on his return from the uncharted lands. What did the drum mean to him? What did he learn, out there in the wastes, in the skin huts of the Sami?
    He was a noticing man, a collector of facts, and he describes their daily life with apparent amiable objectivity. He conducts an examination of the reasons for their strength and resilience—they are pure carnivores, they exercise their strong muscles by sitting cross-legged, they wear heelless boots, they eat frugally and do not fill their stomachs. (He goes into an excursus on teeth, and the carnivorous nature of man, “our species,” cf.
Babianos et Simia et Satyros sylvestres.)
    He noted also their sleeping habits, huddled together, quite naked, sixteen at a time, under reindeer skins. Some of their habits disgusted him; they cleaned their bowls and spoons with fingers and spittle, drinking boiled reindeer milk, which was strong-smelling and thick. They did not wash clothes, living in skins, fur inside in the winter, outside in the summer, “rigid sarcophagi” says CL. He was interested also in the strongly scented mushrooms (probably
Boletus suavolens
) which the young Lapp males wore to entice the young females.
    â€œWhen a Lapland youth finds this fungus he preserves it carefully in a little pouch hanging from his waist, so that its grateful scent may make him more acceptable to the girl heis courting. O whimsical Venus! In other parts of the world you must be wooed with coffee and chocolate, preserves and sweets, wines and dainties, jewels and pearls, gold and silver, silks and cosmetics, balls and assemblies, concerts and plays; here you are satisfied with a little withered fungus!”
    There is an analogous case to this borrowed Lapp aphrodisiac in the way in which the male euglossine bee impregnates himself with the musky pheromones of the bucket orchid in order to