The Testament of Yves Gundron (31 page)

“Hail, my brothers!” I called, uncertain that they could see one another from their low-lying positions.

“Hail,” Nethering called back. Yorik waved, and cried, “Godspeed!”

When we reached my great-grandfather's meandering stone fence, we turned westward and followed it out to the very edge of the land. At the corner which divided me from Yorik on the one side and the deep woods on the other, I unloaded my wet charges and our tools, then paused to look around me. The birds and the crickets were already happily chirping in the woods, and Yorik's Maundering Stream babbled in the distance. The dusky rye stretched uphill and eastward as far as I could see in that direction, and it perfumed the air. It would be a good crop; and by the time it was in, the wheat in the north fields would be ripe. “Shall we, then?” I asked.

Adelaïda spat to the four directions, and sang out:

Then she rubbed her hands together, and took up her scythe. Ruth smoothed down her apron, and said, “What do I do?”

“Watch for a moment, you'll understand.”

She looked skeptical, her eyebrows reaching up toward the top of her head.

I cornered myself into the row that ran closest to the forest, and began to mow. Though I had spent countless hours at this activity throughout my life, it had been a long, eventful year since last I had held the tool. Its weight at first swung unevenly, counter to mine, and the scythe chopped through the plants at various heights. But the body remembers past labor more clearly than does the mind, and within a few minutes the swing was loping and even, balanced right over my center, and the blade began to sing as it sheared the stalks from the ground, leaving only a stubble behind like four days' beard. Adelaïda fell into step a few swings behind me and in the next row, and so auspiciously began the first of many long days' labor.

I looked over my shoulder a short distance up the row to see if Ruth had yet the hang of the work. She stood at the end of her row with her scythe held far out from her body, practicing her swing and driving the blade each second or third time into the dirt. “Be careful with that,” I said. “That's a good tool.”

“I don't get it.”

I continued up my row. “In what way?”

“I don't know. Mine isn't doing what yours is doing.”

“Well, that's hardly a good omen,” said Adelaïda.

“What's not to understand? You swing it,” I called. “Get Mandrik to show you how it works.”

“With pleasure,” said he.

“Who's going to sing to us,” Adelaïda asked, “if he's busy teaching the stranger to mow?”

“For now you're welcome to fill the duty yourself,” he offered, “and she'll learn anon.”

The boys were already following behind us, binding the rye into sheaves, as Jowl whistled something tuneless. In tones I could but barely discern over the whistling and the brisk cut of the scythes, Mandrik instructed her in the use of the implement as he had been instructed long ago, when it had seemed that he, like all his brothers, would work the land. What a different world it was then, when Mandrik, six years old, might have been supposed to lead an ordinary life. When I turned to glance at their progress he was standing behind her,
his arms around her, his hands on hers on the scythe, teaching her to rock it before her without imperiling her body or the ground, teaching her its own forward-driving momentum. She smiled broadly as her arms began to understand. He stayed with her, his arms tight girding her, as she mowed the first of her row. “That's it,” he said.

She watched her blade. “It still doesn't feel right.”

“But it will.” He remained with her until the scythe cut smooth, and then let her go. She was a good ways behind us, but she kept forward at a steady pace; and though her blade did not move quick enough to sing, when later I inspected her rows, she had managed to cut only a few inches farther from the ground than I had myself. Mandrik, keeping pace at a safe distance, gave instructions and encouragement in equal measure, and each time I looked back both sage and pupil were smiling despite the labor and the heavy heat.

When we stopped to lunch in a fragrant clearing under the pines, Jowl and Manfred had tired themselves out binding the rye and standing it up into shocks, and Ruth was sunburned, her hands torn open by labor, her bad leg lagging behind. Mandrik wet his handkerchief and bathed her sores. “Perhaps the body is not yet ready for such work,” he said gently.

“I'm fine. This is fun.” But her eyes looked weary, and the sores were deep and raw.

Mandrik sat beside her and broke her bread that her hands might rest. Adelaïda wore a look of envy as she watched Ruth thus be served. The children were asleep before we could feed them.

“What sermonizing have you brought us, brother?” I asked, lying down among the prickling needles and knowing no finer feeling.

“No sermonizing, but a reflection. I am trying something new.”

“A reflection upon what?”

He took the rolled sheaf out from his belt behind him. “Upon language.”

“Words, you mean?” Adelaïda said, drowsing back to nestle in the crook of my arm.

“None other.”

“That seems a far cry,” said I, “from the matters of life and death, and of first and last things, which have occupied you until now. And has nothing to do with Indo-China.”

“It seems no great difference to me, if all things are one in the eyes of God. Though, if you prefer, tomorrow I can read to you of matters more strictly theological.”

“I express no preference,” said I. “I only remarked the change.”

Ruth said, “Could I have that rag back?”

Mandrik poured clean water over it once again, wrapped it around her two palms, so they were bound together, and leaned her back against a large rock. “You'd do better to sleep than to listen.”

She shook her head. “How could I?”

He placed his papers on the ground and lay down upon his stomach, propped up on his elbows, to read. “For only the second time in our long and peaceable History,” he began, “strangers have come among the people of Mandragora.”

“Hey,” she said, her teeth showing behind her wide grin. “Don't write about me.”

“What makes you think I am?”

“The word ‘strangers.'”

He nodded, though his head was drawn somewhat between his shoulders. “Why should I not write about you, if you write about us?”

She reached her bound hands up to scratch her nose.

I said, “Don't interrupt him, Ruth. Let him read.”

“Sorry.”

“Though their ways seem peculiar,” he continued, “their presence, more than exposing us to Novelty, has startled us awake, and has forced us to turn the bright Beam of our intellectual Attention upon ourselves. I am not certain we have all been pleased to see ourselves and our rusticity so clearly in this uncustomary Brightness.

“Nevertheless, the search for Self-Knowledge, as has elsewhere been proven, is man's highest Aim; and in order to achieve that knowledge, in order to look inward with the full force of his beliefs, he must first direct his attention to the outside world, that he might know it completely. With this aim in mind do I seek now to explore the Language and Speech of our strangers, that through them we may come better to understand our own words, and ultimately the Word of God.”

“Hang on, Mandrik,” Ruth said. “I'm the—”

“You write your treatise and I'll write mine. And, Yves, if I have my way about it, will write one of his own.”

“Mandrik—” I said.

“How's this, Yves?” Adelaïda asked, pulling away that she might roll over to see me.

“Idle fancy, that's how.”

“If you'd rather not have me read, I'd be glad to bore you all to sleep with hymns.”

“No, go on.”

“In beginning this Exploration will I start with that which has struck me most forcefully: certain peculiar Differences between the strangers' speech and our own.

“Though in Mandragora we speak only one Language, we know that in the Great World others are spoken. God's Word has come down to us, along with the words of many of his chief Disciples, in Greek, Hebrew, and Latin; and as I have reported in my account of my journey to the Beyond, the world has proven itself fuller of Languages and Alphabets than one man can master. All three strangers who have recently appeared among us have, by a miracle, spoken our Mother Tongue. Their accents, however, are rough, broad, and somewhat unseemly—”

“Do you mind?”

“—which prevents our understanding their Speech as plainly as we do our own.”

Ruth said, “I'm sure you realize that you sound as strange to me as I do to you?”

Adelaïda said, “Use your sense, lass.”

“The harsh Tone of the strangers' speech is not due merely to the way they shape their Sounds. Rather, the Words and Phrases they employ give also the savor of Uncouthness. Where the beauties of language trickle like a Rill from the tongue of the Mandragoran, words emerge from the mouths of our strangers in sharp bursts, uttered with the profoundest Economy. Where our speech is balmy as the first Days of Harvest, theirs calls to mind Winter's cruelest Chill.

“Therefore do I conclude that the strangers' homeland is more brutal and barren than any Land we have heretofore imagined. Misery and Want must have plagued the people untold Generations for the language of Privation thus to have burrowed so deeply into their heares that they can express themselves no other, more beautiful way.

“Despite, then, that we and the strangers can be said to speak the same language, there are many Points of Divergence which I believe it would benefit to explore. Take, for example, the repeated utterance of the sound ‘Um' in their speech. This should not be confused with ‘Om,' a devotional sound used by the Mystics of the East, and documented elsewhere in this treatise. ‘Om' is the first sound of the Universe, the beginning of the Word, while ‘Um' has no meaning that can be divined. The strangers, however, seem wont to interject it between many—nay, even most—of their utterances. The people of Mandragora do not utter this sound; when the strangers do, it is clear as midday that they wish to avoid any more meaningful or specific utterance. I conclude that the repetition of ‘Um' by our visitors indicates a deep aversion to speaking Truth.”

Ruth said, half laughing, half annoyed, “I don't say ‘um' all the time.”

“Yes, you do.”

She turned to me for assistance, but what could I say? “Your speech is strange, Ruth. I don't always notice in what specific ways.”

She said, “You're kidding me.”

“‘Kidding,'” my brother said. “Another of your habits of speech.”

Adelaïda said, “What treatise are you writing, Yves?” and I wished that she might fall asleep.

“No treatise, love.”

“Aye,” she said drowsily, “one treatise ought more than to suffice for a family.”

“It will be necessary to turn our attention to all of the strangers' myriad peculiarities of dialect, each in its own time, that through each Particle of Knowledge we might acquire more particular knowledge of ourselves. I feel it my duty, however, to warn the gentle Reader and Listener now, that my Understanding of the strangers' speech, after having examined those Aspects to which I have thus far devoted my Attention, bodes ill for our Future. The Strangers have shown us many Wonders and divers Inventions, but they have not shown us any surpassing Insight into the human Spirit. If it is possible for man to learn so deeply in one field of Inquiry, all the while ignoring Another, then I must urge you, my Brethren, to take heed, for the worst of our sorrows is surely yet to come.”

My wife's breath was deepening, but Ruth's pique had given way to solemn attention. “I hope you're wrong,” she said quietly.

“Naturally, my observances are based as much upon the others as upon you. I think you bode better for us, if there's any boding to be done.”

“That was good, though,” Ruth said. “That's good.”

“Thank you. That's hardly the end.”

“Mandrik,” I said, “this is not the same treatise. Where's all the stuff about the end of the world? Where's your journey to Indo-China?”

“It is, I admit, a bit of a digression, but you see I was beginning to tie it in to last things toward the end.”

Ruth said, “Are you going to go through everything we say?”

“It's no longer a we, is it? Only you.” Mandrik again made his small, lying-down shrug. “It depends how much time you'll allow me to study you.”

“I'm not sure I want to be studied.”

“But the very fact of your presence makes it so.”

“Please keep reading.”

“With your kind permission.”

“Please. I'm interested to hear it.”

“Very well, then.”

The talk of language bored me. I left them to their follies and drifted off to sleep, but was pleased to hear the glad tenor of their voices in the sweet, piney air.
³

Harvest had never before seemed such labor, perhaps because in all other years I had worked steadily, whereas so much of this spring and summer had gone to idle fancy. That first night, my hands also hurt from scything, though I dared not admit it. Adelaïda could hardly stay
awake to cook, so we ate our luncheon's bread and butter as Mandrik walked the sleepy boys home. Ruth's hands were worn quite raw, and I feared that though the break in her leg had not killed her, an infection in her hands might well. On the next day, then, we made her stay home and watch the child, that we might work in peace. Mandrik came again to sing to us and to read from his strange new work, but mid-afternoon decided to return to the house to check on Ruth's hands and on Elizaveta, and to gather more fodder for his treatise on language. “I'll make her say words at me and what they mean, until you come home. That'll teach her what it's like, all her questions about bed warmers and eggs.” We let him go; his contribution to the harvest had never been more than to cheer us, and just then it cheered me to be alone with my wife.