Read Online Women in the Wall by Julia O'Faolain - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Julia O'Faolain
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saved from lions, save me! Hilary and Martin make haste to succour me. May the Cherubim, Seraphim, Thrones … No, no it’s all right. I’m awake! Intact. I think? Yes. Thank God, Hilary, etcetera.
I wasn’t sure. For moments there it seemed so real! Someone was shoving me into a pit of adders. I could feel the pain and when I woke up there was a hiss! It’s the damp wood smouldering in my fire! Cold! God, and I’ve got an ague! It’s these Gaulish winters. It was cold in my dream and it still is! The window of course. Pitted panes are so impractical in this climate. I’ll shove a cloth over it.
Dreams are omens. One should take notice. Who was shoving me into that pit? A patron? Yes, some patronly figure: impressive, faceless, long-haired. A king then? Or a woman? Who? Oh, rubbish. It was just a hodgepodge of memories turned turtle. After all, when I first came to Gaul I was often cold. I was so poor I had, as the saying goes, to put one hand in front and one behind to hide my shame. A draughty costume! Patrons clothed me then. The mind is like the water-mill the monks at St. Mary’s Outside the Walls have set up to grind their corn. It churns things about. I was probably thinking of patronage before I dropped off. Why not? I live on it—and that bread has choked many. To look no further, think of poor Boethius executed on his patron’s whim! I, born six years later in the same province, was brought up on the tale. Our grandchildren will be. It gives off a shock. If that could happen to a man of consular rank, what security is there for the rest of us? Hmm? Maybe there is an omen there after all? My patrons are less civilized than King Theodoric and wit’s a tricky commodity when patrons are barbarians. Fear the Franks, Fortunatus, even when they bear gifts. Oh, I do. I do. Ours is the age of suspicion which is probably no bad thing. Our ancestors, we are told, did not fear enough. Pleasure they lived for: sweet juice clotting on the burst plum. They even took a sick pleasure in their own end. What can all that have been like? I can’t enjoy pleasure at first hand at all. Only through books. Except for food of course—but that’s an elementary pleasure: the ABC of the flesh. A major assault on flesh’s citadel frightens me. I don’t think I’m unique. Fear nowadays lodges in the seat of pagan immortality: between the legs. I mean it does in men like myself, men with a sense of the past. Not in Franks who couple like aurochs, mindlessly. Do I envy them? “The rose”, says Ausonius, “lives on in the ages of her seed.” A sad, cyclic sort of immortality. As you spill your seed you spill some of yourself. You embrace death, burying yourself. “The roses at their birth consent.” To die. A freezing thought. But what Frank thinks like that or thinks at all? He just spills, tanks up, respills—and the future will indeed belong to his seed. To the seed of the worst Franks too since the best go into monasteries. God I wish I could sleep at night. There’s another animal function denied to me. Magpie mind, be quiet. It won’t. I did make love once and wish I hadn’t. Do I feel remorse or just regret? Hard to tell. I was punished so fast. God sent me a sign that this was not the path he had picked for me. Fortunatus was not meant to go gathering rosebuds while the flower and his youth were fresh. Ausonius again. He’s a bad influence. Hardly a Christian at all. If I could locate the poison he has injected into my mind, I would have it sucked out by leeches. I would have a Syrian surgeon remove it. If thine eye offend thee cut it out. Mine inner eye offends me. I am half a pagan. It comes from education which is insidious as St. Jerome knew. He loved the old books and feared them.
Sooner or later I suppose I shall take orders and be safe. Is compromise so very despicable?
I almost took them when I was twenty. Because of the girl, I didn’t. I suppose it was because of her? Or was it? I’ll have to face
I wasn’t sure. For moments there it seemed so real! Someone was shoving me into a pit of adders. I could feel the pain and when I woke up there was a hiss! It’s the damp wood smouldering in my fire! Cold! God, and I’ve got an ague! It’s these Gaulish winters. It was cold in my dream and it still is! The window of course. Pitted panes are so impractical in this climate. I’ll shove a cloth over it.
Dreams are omens. One should take notice. Who was shoving me into that pit? A patron? Yes, some patronly figure: impressive, faceless, long-haired. A king then? Or a woman? Who? Oh, rubbish. It was just a hodgepodge of memories turned turtle. After all, when I first came to Gaul I was often cold. I was so poor I had, as the saying goes, to put one hand in front and one behind to hide my shame. A draughty costume! Patrons clothed me then. The mind is like the water-mill the monks at St. Mary’s Outside the Walls have set up to grind their corn. It churns things about. I was probably thinking of patronage before I dropped off. Why not? I live on it—and that bread has choked many. To look no further, think of poor Boethius executed on his patron’s whim! I, born six years later in the same province, was brought up on the tale. Our grandchildren will be. It gives off a shock. If that could happen to a man of consular rank, what security is there for the rest of us? Hmm? Maybe there is an omen there after all? My patrons are less civilized than King Theodoric and wit’s a tricky commodity when patrons are barbarians. Fear the Franks, Fortunatus, even when they bear gifts. Oh, I do. I do. Ours is the age of suspicion which is probably no bad thing. Our ancestors, we are told, did not fear enough. Pleasure they lived for: sweet juice clotting on the burst plum. They even took a sick pleasure in their own end. What can all that have been like? I can’t enjoy pleasure at first hand at all. Only through books. Except for food of course—but that’s an elementary pleasure: the ABC of the flesh. A major assault on flesh’s citadel frightens me. I don’t think I’m unique. Fear nowadays lodges in the seat of pagan immortality: between the legs. I mean it does in men like myself, men with a sense of the past. Not in Franks who couple like aurochs, mindlessly. Do I envy them? “The rose”, says Ausonius, “lives on in the ages of her seed.” A sad, cyclic sort of immortality. As you spill your seed you spill some of yourself. You embrace death, burying yourself. “The roses at their birth consent.” To die. A freezing thought. But what Frank thinks like that or thinks at all? He just spills, tanks up, respills—and the future will indeed belong to his seed. To the seed of the worst Franks too since the best go into monasteries. God I wish I could sleep at night. There’s another animal function denied to me. Magpie mind, be quiet. It won’t. I did make love once and wish I hadn’t. Do I feel remorse or just regret? Hard to tell. I was punished so fast. God sent me a sign that this was not the path he had picked for me. Fortunatus was not meant to go gathering rosebuds while the flower and his youth were fresh. Ausonius again. He’s a bad influence. Hardly a Christian at all. If I could locate the poison he has injected into my mind, I would have it sucked out by leeches. I would have a Syrian surgeon remove it. If thine eye offend thee cut it out. Mine inner eye offends me. I am half a pagan. It comes from education which is insidious as St. Jerome knew. He loved the old books and feared them.
Sooner or later I suppose I shall take orders and be safe. Is compromise so very despicable?
I almost took them when I was twenty. Because of the girl, I didn’t. I suppose it was because of her? Or was it? I’ll have to face
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