The saskiad, p.12
The Saskiad, page 12
The city is very beautiful. We saw it wandered. Boats like shoes, rocking, rest of day is blur. So prety!! We
The sign over the heads of the people caught Saskia's eye, not because of the names on it, but because it ended with an oar upright. "That's him," she said to Jane, marveling at the calm sound of her voice. A stranger was in the way, so she could only see the beautiful hands held high, gripping the bottom of the oar. She came up to the railing and tried to say "Thomas," but what came out was her patented squeak. The oar came down, and from behind the stranger now you don't see me, now you Thomas was standing there. "Saskia," he said. Perhaps "Saskia" means "scimitar." With that one word he divided the world, like the Gordian Knot. The Post-Thomas Age ended, and the Neo-Thomas Age began. He did not put his hand on her head. What a barnish idea! He dropped the oar and lifted her up, pack and all, right over the railing, and held her, eye to eye. "My Saskia," he said slowly, breathing deep, deluging her brown eyes with his wine-blue ones. She fell into that sea with a soft plop and was swirled, sucked under. Should the embarrassing truth be told? Saskia failed the Captain, who would turn away from a long-lost friend with a manly comment on the weather. But Saskia is a girl, and she drowned in Charybdis. She tried to gulp down air, but water rolled into her mouth. Thomas swirled her tighter and tighter in his arms while she gulped for air and choked on water. He had come to stand above her and speak a word to her. His sinewy hands were on the blanket and he was leaning over to kiss her.
Thomas's voice found her in the depths. "Where is Jane?" Saskia covered her eyes. She heard Thomas say something to Jane. She could feel his voice groaning in his chest. How could she have forgotten how deep it was? He let her slide down until her feet touched linoleum firmum. She turned her eyes away from Jane.
They took a bus into the city. "Are you hungry?" Thomas asked. They said no. "Tired? You want to take a nap?" No. "We'll get rid of the packs first." They changed buses in the city center and rode out again. The Phaiakians were a tall and handsome people. The soft liquid sound of their language flowed over Saskia's head. She watched canals go by, filled with boats. They got off near warehouses. Thomas led them through a chain-link fence, along a train track cushioned in a bed of asphalt. Cranes swung netted loads. They walked along a quay. Each boat was tied to one of those squat bulgy things. Saskia ought to have known the word, but she didn't. "Bollard," Thomas said, stretching his palm out toward it, calling it into existence.
Saskia looked for his boat. There was one shaped like a fat wooden shoe with an upturned toe, a cabin the size of an outhouse and some radio stuff on top. But they walked past it. At the end of the quay was a long building. Through a screen door they could hear babble, glasses chinking. "Starting early," Thomas said. He led them up wooden stairs and down a long hall. Old dark wood and an oily stink: a shadowy, cobwebby place, lit by a bare lightbulb every ten steps. Thomas opened a door on the right. "Home!" Two bunks in a small dark room, a small dark galley beyond. Even the ceilings were made of wood, narrow slats behind chitonous varnish. Thomas slung the packs on the bunks. "We'll be here for three days. I think it will be cozy, don't you?"
"Yeah," Saskia said, and meant it.
"Where's the bathroom?" Jane asked.
"Top of the stairs." He opened a cupboard. "Take some paper."
Since they weren't tired, Thomas took them back into the city, but everything was like a blurred background, moving too fast, with Thomas bright and motionless in the center. When he told her to notice something she turned her head in that direction, but her mind was like the black and white puppy she remembered who, when you pointed, would try waggingly to please by sniffing the end of your finger. Looking at Thomas, she would try to convince herself that he was really there, that if she crossed the space between them she would in fact bump into him.
They had dinner in a veggie cafe on a small street. "Can I smoke in here?" Jane asked, looking around at the ashtrayless tables.
"I'd rather you didn't," Thomas said. "But it's a pleasant evening outside. Saskia might want a smoke, too." He looked at Saskia with questioning eyes.
"No thanks."
"I'll be right back," Jane said, and went out.
"I don't smoke," Saskia assured Thomas.
That wasn't a lie, she didn't smoke cigarettes. They could see Jane through the window, leaning against a wall, a leg up, fingers of a hand wedged in a pants pocket. She looked right and left as she smoked, checking things out.
"Does she smoke a lot?" Thomas asked.
"Hardly ever," Saskia said loyally.
"Smoking shortens your breath. It becomes a problem on a long hike." He looked at Saskia. "I have a prediction," he said in an appealingly firm tone. "Jane will give up smoking on this trip." Jane returned, threading between the small round tables. "How was it?" Thomas asked. "Nice?"
"Just what I needed."
"Glad to hear it."
Saskia could see that Jane was impressed. Thomas did not like smoking, but his tone had been respectful throughout, thoroughly unfolksenlike.
Menus had arrived. "You're still a vegetarian?" he asked Saskia.
"Yes."
"Good." Saskia blushed with pleasure. "I hope you don't mind, Jane," he said politely. "No meat on this trip."
"No problem," Jane said. She had gotten used to it at White-on-the-Water. Thomas passed the girls' orders to the waiter in Phaiakian, but it was clearly not necessary. "Almost everyone speaks English here," Thomas explained. Of course. The Phaiakians were near the gods. They probably understood all the languages of the world.
"And how is Lauren?" Thomas asked.
"OK," Saskia said.
"Still farming?"
"Just the field by the turnaround."
"You still have a cow?"
"Marilyn."
"Dog?"
"Cat."
Thomas grimaced. "How can you have a farm without a dog?"
"That's what I say!"
"Did Lauren ever get a real glass greenhouse up?"
"Yeah."
"Good for her. Somebody helped?"
"No. Well... a guy named Bill helped a little."
"A boyfriend."
"No."
"A husband."
"No!"
"Is he living there?"
"In one of the trailers. He's living with this woman named Jo." Saskia caught Jane's eye, and they understood each other without a word or wink.
"Jo Flynn?"
"You know Jo?"
"Sure. Jo is at Godhead?" Thomas seemed to take a while to digest this. If Saskia had known that Thomas knew Jo, she never would have fibbed about her and Bill living together. Anyone who knew Jo would find it hard to believe she was living with anybody. "That means the three kids are at Godhead, too? What are their names, Melanie, Shannon . . . one other."
"Two others. Austin and Quinny."
"Austin, that's it. And Quinny?" Thomas thought about that for a second. "'Quinny'!" He frowned. "What kind of name is that?"
Saskia blushed again. "His real name is Quentin."
"He's the youngest."
"Yeah."
"What's he like?"
Saskia shrugged. "Fine." She didn't want to get onto Quinny at the moment.
"So is Lauren still doing what the planets tell her to do?" 1 guess.
"And Mars told her not to come? Or Venus, I suppose. Mars is bullish and Venus is bearish and that means reunions are in the shithouse." I
"She can't leave the farm."
"That's only an excuse."
"Um..."
"Never mind." His hand brushed out what he had said. "I'm sorry she didn't come."
"She really wanted to!"
"No." He smiled. "In fact, I'm surprised she let you come."
Saskia didn't answer. The only reply that occurred to her was "So am I," but that seemed rude. Whether it was rude to Lauren or to Thomas, she didn't know.
"She didn't send a letter, either," he mused. "I wonder why not. She was hurt, I would assume. Angry, maybe?"
"Maybe."
"Because I haven't written once a week like a good boy since I left? If she knew what's been going on these years, she would understand." He flipped out his napkin like a matador flashing his cape before the enraged bull and tucked it into his collar. The food had arrived. "Were you hurt, too?" he asked, inspecting his plate. "That I didn't write?"
"You did write."
He laughed charmingly, boyishly. "I should have written more."
That was all Saskia had wanted to hear. If Lauren knew, he had said, she would understand. Folksens were picky, demanding to know, but Saskia could understand and forgive without knowing. And forgiving him, she felt she could be more open. "It's not the fact you didn't write much that made her, you know, hurt, or whatever. I think it was because she couldn't write to you. You never sent an address."
Thomas didn't answer immediately. He furrowed his patch of brown rice, turning it with his fork, sowing it with salt. "Did she happen to mention to you that when I left she told me never to write?"
"No."
"So you've only got half the story, then. She told me she never wanted to see me again. She told me if I came on the property she'd have me arrested."
"Wow!" Jane said. "Why?"
"You'll have to ask her that."
"She never says anything," Saskia said. "It's really annoying."
"Perhaps she's ashamed," Thomas said. "I could have sent addresses regardless, sure. But why put myself through the humiliation? I knew she wouldn't write, and I was right, because she didn't write this time. I had hoped you were old enough by now to write on your own and come on your own, and I was right about that, too." He forked rice and bean curd into his mouth. Saskia nibbled without much interest. "That's the only reason I waited so long. Until you were old enough that she would let you come on your own." He attacked his vegetables.
By the time they were done, he seemed to have forgotten about Lauren. He unscrewed a thermos he had brought along and poured coffee into the cap. "My only vice. Bad habit. Though not as bad as smoking." He looked at Jane with twinkling eyes.
Later, walking back to the wharf, he asked about the girls' lives in Novamundus. He asked good questions, and he actually listened to their answers. "It's been hard for me," he said, "wondering how my Saskia was doing." He had had to go. He had had no choice. Lauren would have had him arrested. Amazing! "From Thomas," she always said, banishing the postcard to Saskia's realm. "You keep it." But then why did she let the girls come?
Now, in the bunk with sleeping Jane, Saskia cannot remember what she said to Thomas. As she talked about herself, she looked at him, drinking him in over and over, but he was like lemonade, only increasing her thirst. The oddest thing is that now she can't remember what he looks like. She sees a man's outline out of which blazes the concept "Thomas," filling the street or these little rooms with utter Thomasness.
She struggles over this, her first journal entry. She is having trouble getting the tone right. When she burned the autobiography she resolved to purge herself of barnishness, of affectation. Her writing seemed to her of a piece with her inability to admit ignorance, her need to show off all the time. Take the case of Odysseus' bow. Circumspect Penelope brought it down from her chamber and announced in the feasting hall that she would marry the suitor who could string the bow and send an arrow through the twelve axes. Odysseus' bow was so strong that none of the arrogant suitors could string it, even after heating the wood and rubbing it with melted fat. Yet Telemachos — yes, young Telemachos, despised by the suitors as a mere boy — could have strung the bow. He stood up for all to see and felt the strength swell within him as he bent the bow to the stringing point, but the disguised Odysseus secretly signaled him to stop, since that wasn't part of the plan. So what did Telemachos do? In front of all the suitors who made merciless fun of him he put aside the bow unstrung and said, "Shame on me. I must be a weakling, or else I am still young."
Saskia longed for that peculiar sort of strength. To be able, when the need arose, to let the foul waters of derision wash over her. She needed to practice it, as she practiced her controlled dreaming, as a Discipline of the Wise. A journal seemed a step in that direction: to put life down as it really was, right when it happened. The nitty-gritty, the brass tacks. That meant whenever Saskia said something really boneheaded it would go right into the journal, unperfumed. She would read it every night as a lesson in humility.
Through the closed door she can hear Thomas moving around in the galley. Pacing, hands clasped behind his back? Jane was fading fast and he insisted they go to bed. Big days ahead. He would sleep in the galley. The girls said they wanted to sleep in the same bunk, anyway, so Thomas could sleep in the other bunk. When he saw them together under the blanket he was moved to speak in Phaiakian. "Hvor hyggeligt!"
Jane laughed. "So that's where it comes from!"
He said good night and turned to go. "Aren't you going to kiss me good night?" Saskia asked tremulously.
He paused. "If you want. I didn't know ..."
"You don't have to," she said, being a martyr.
"I'd love to." He leaned over Saskia, breathing the dark nighttime and morning smell of coffee. He kissed her good night and his cheek was lightly bristly, like the wallpaper in her dreams.
Now he paces the deck while Jane sleeps, and Saskia struggles with her new style. A good thing she is filled with such energy!
She writes "blur" and the world blurs.
But...
Where is his boat?
Where ... is his dog?
So prety!! We
4
The girls spend three days in Thomas's wake, hurrying after him through the lovely city by the harbor. On the crowded sidewalks, Saskia is lost among this skyscraping people as in a primeval forest. But no one sneers at her shortness, perhaps because she is always with Thomas, and Thomas, she realizes as she slowly takes him in more clearly, is not quite as towering as other Phaiakians. A sneer at her would be a sneer at him, and surely no one would want to face Thomas's wrath. One look at his muscled arms, swinging as he strides in his seven-league boots, would convince anyone of that.
The day skies are a trembling blue, the night skies a deeper blue, the wind fresh and thrilling. Saskia admires the Phaiakians' balanced boats, their cunningly shaped and lofty towers. Surely there are alchemists and astronomers still thriving in this city of copper and brick, down in vaulted cellars or up in aeries. Thomas takes the girls to the Adepts' own stronghold, the inner sanctum, which the Phaiakians call the Round Tower. It wears a runic inscription on its brow like a mark of wisdom, a dab of cinnamon book-bark: the words "Doctrinam et" above a sword, then "dirige" and something in Hebrew, then "in" and a heart and a crown, and at the bottom "1642" divided in the middle by a big "C" with the number 4 nestled inside it.
"What does it mean?" Saskia asks, awestruck.
"'Direct truth and justice, O God, into the heart of Christian the Fourth.'"
"He must have been a very wise king."
"Christian the Fourth? Not particularly. He lost half the kingdom conducting ill-advised wars and emptied the treasury by building monuments like this one. But he was popular. Fools like that always are."
Inside the tower they mount a spiral of steps, up which Thomas says the wife of Peter the Great once rode in a coach-and-four, madly lashing on her steeds. Going that fast, she probably missed the exhibition on the top floor, which you get to by ducking through a low door. "Tycho!" Saskia exclaims.
"Bingo!" Jane echoes, laughing. "Tango!"
"No, Tycho Brahe!" He is the Phaiakian astronomer mentioned in Saskia's star book. And here in the Round Tower is a whole exhibit devoted to him, with reproductions of his instruments, a topographical model of the island on which he worked, even a life-size ground plan of part of his castle-observatory, marked out on the floor with black tape. Saskia pores over everything. She steps meditatively from room to room of the castle, drinking in the silence, the somber light. "Let's go," Jane says, walking right through a wall. Saskia steps to a lead-latticed window and peers out across the windy moors of the lonely green isle to the wine-blue sea. 'Twill be a fine night for gazing. If the sextant hasn't been finished, she'll know the reason why.
Jane and Thomas have wandered off somewhere. Saskia heads regretfully for the exit. By the door a Phaiakian is selling books. Most are thin pamphlety things, but Saskia notices one real tome, a hardback, dust-jacketless, dusty, with a crackling binding. It's in English: a biography of Tycho. She asks how much it costs, and the man scratches his head. "I don't even know where this came from," he says, turning the book in his hands. "It's the only copy I have."
If there's one thing Saskia knows, it's that you absolutely do not blow the chance to buy a Mysterious Book That Comes From Who Knows Where. She haggles, speaking the trade language of the area. The man lets her have it for fifty Phaiakian crowns. Thrilled, she tucks the book under her arm and goes out to find Thomas and Jane.
When they stop later at a cafe, to rest their feet and fill up Thomas's thermos, she takes out the tome and reads a little. The typeface is old-fashioned. There is tissue paper between the engraving of Tycho and the title page. The Latin quotes are not translated. Yes, it is that wise a book.
Tycho was a student at the medieval university across the road from the Round Tower. He would have clambered down from his cold garret and hurried across the muddy road to the runic tower with his hand on his mortarboard, a ruff at his neck, his black gown flapping. He was hurrying to avoid the hostile townies with whom he would have to cross swords, if he met any, and for that purpose he carried a rapier on his belt. Home and family were far away across the Sound, in Scania. He was Saskia's age, thirteen. On the tower roof was an observatory. Tycho would map stars and pace undisturbed, lost in thought, even when the road below was pestilential, when the whole city was being sucked under by the plague. He would look out over the head of the drowning town and wait, guarding the flame of wisdom.
