The Testament of Yves Gundron (6 page)

¹
In editing this manuscript for the general readership, I have regularized Yves Gundron's spelling and punctuation—for example, by setting off reported speech in double quotation marks. In rare instances in which Gundron appeared to have misused a word, I have made the necessary corrections. All chapter and section divisions and footnotes are mine. (Ed.)

²
Aficionados will recognize the structural similarity between some of Adelaïda's and Mandrik's songs and the blues, which otherwise do not exist in Mandragora. Many of the songs Mandrik and Adelaïda compose extemporaneously are simple ballads, as one might expect in such a community; but the blues aesthetic which marks some of the songs seems to have been brought to the village by Mandrik and Yves's grandmother (who was also Adelaïda's grandaunt), Iulia Gansevöort Gundron, the only stranger ever recorded as having visited the village before me, and widely believed to have been a silkie, or half-human spirit of the sea. All other music in Mandragora consists of devotional chants in the diatonic scale.

³
A primitive compass Yves called a south-pointer.

⁴
Urbis of Nnms.

⁵
The aforementioned Iulia.

⁶
Mandrik reported to his countrymen that during a three-year absence he traveled to Indo-China via India and the great Silk Road.

⁷
None of these alleged recipes has survived.

⁸
Man tell a woman lies
,

'Spect her kiss his feet
.

Yes, a man tell a woman lies
,

'Sped her kiss his feet
.

But when Judgment Day acomin', man
,

You be sorry you's so indiscreet
.

CHAPTER TWO

THE ARRIVAL

ur ancestors crossed the great body of water that lies between Scotland
¹
and ourselves in paper boats sealed with pine sap and loaded nearly to sinking with “figs” and “pomegranates.” They had not got these fruits in Scotland, but in the Great Land across the water they had left generations before. Lack of these fruits was one of our ancestors' greatest fears for this then-uncharted land, and with good reason: as their ballads record, our soil is too rocky and our winters too cold for anything so soft and sweet to grow here. I have seen drawings of their cherished fruits and of their boats. My brother, the only man among us who has braved the bare horizon and felt the salt lapping of the waves, made such a boat for his wanderings, and reports that he found it comfortable. Countless generations ago we crossed the cold water in order to escape persecution at the hands of
infidel prelates who denied the tripartite unity of God, and who murdered all who attested it. Our grandfathers' grandfathers found this country welcoming enough after the hardships they had suffered—neither too green nor too barren, excellent for the cultivation of grains and sheep, and secluded from the prying eyes of strangers. Here they settled into their old ways, and we have never found reason to wander hence. We know our mountains to the east, our mountains to the west, our mountains to the north, and our mountains to the south, and none of us, save Mandrik, has sought what lies beyond. Indeed, before he set off on his wanderings, the only contact anyone knew of with the world beyond Nnms was my grandmother's arrival from the depths of the far-distant sea.

Then, two years to the day after the advent of my wonderful invention, the stranger came up out of the east.

My harness had changed Mandragora, the appearance of our environs, and the lives of the people, so much for the better that Father Stanislaus (who seemed well-nigh young enough to tag after his mother on a string) had declared it a holiday, Di Hammadi, which we celebrated in the grove adjoining Desvres's meadow, from which we could see the distant towers of Nnms.

On that second Di Hammadi, the village children danced about a Maypole decorated with the binding straps of worn harnesses. We adults danced with abandon around the children, for we were intoxicated with the fermented fruits of our orchards and fields, and had been eating the foods beloved of our horses: sugar, carrots, and oats. In addition, of course, we had roasted two pigs and a dozen hens, and brought forth the last of the previous summer's pickled vegetables. Mandrik shared with the company his first fruits, hard green plums and peaches just begun to ripen, on which the children feasted. We were all dressed in our best clothes, the women with ribbons in their hair. We sang songs of great praise and of great ribaldry. (Dirk von Iggislau, too young yet to know his way with the hops, grabbed red-haired Prugne Martin's arm and burst into an impassioned rendition of “I'll Harness you, baby, if you'll pull my Plow.” Her ripe breast heaved with laughter.) It was the first warm day of April. The crocuses had thrust their blue and yellow heads through the black earth, and the trees in the tepid sunshine were ablush with blossoms and new leaves. I had just finished shearing my sheep and sowing my rye and summer
wheat, and was sufficiently spent with the labor to enjoy the festival air completely. My vision grew slow with young beer, but kept circling dazedly around the fair, plump figure of my wife. She was arrayed in her best dress of pale blue linen, which reflected both the heavens and her eyes, and wore the necklace of milky green jades Mandrik had brought back from the Orient and given to my first wife, God rest her soul. Each time Adelaïda smiled I fixed on the fetching gap between her front teeth, and my tongue desired to probe the space therebehind. After perhaps an hour of coveting her thus, I steered my woozy gait toward her and pulled her by the hand out of the dance. What matter if our neighbors saw us wander off? I had made them a holiday, and they, too, had imbibed the hops' succor. Furthermore, it had been three years since we'd had Elizaveta, and but one bairn had been born to the parish since Advent—a boy child, Tansy Gansevöort's—so none could fault us for our endeavor.

I led my wife out into the East Meadow, whose long grass lay parched and flattened under the clear, glistening remains of the snow. As we left the grove, we passed Wido Jungfrau lazily watering Desvres's field with his back to the crowd. “Hail, Yves,” he called out, and I called back, laughing, “Hail.” Just as we came clear of the villagers' view, we saw, clad all in black and stomping among the puddles, the strangest woman I had ever beheld.

“Oh, excuse me. Wow. Hello,” she said, looking up and down my wife and myself. “Am I glad to see you.” She was tall—a hand taller than I—with short black hair curling wanton and loose only to her shoulders. Her eyes also were black, and her pale skin ruddy from sun and wind. Her smile was broad and immodest, revealing a shock of teeth as white and regular as the pearls on the cover of Father Stanislaus's Missal. She wore a woolly black shirt unlike any I had ever seen, and some manner of men's black trousers so slender that I could see each curve of her hips, thighs, and calves, and promptly looked away from all three. Most peculiar of all was the tumor that grew from her back, all reds and purples like raucous spring flowers, and sprouting everywhere shiny protuberances and black tendrils. I tried also to avert my eyes from this abomination, but it drew them thither with its terrible countenance. Now I knew what the people of my grandfather's generation must have thought when my tall, curl-bedecked grandmother appeared among them. “You have no idea—I've been
wandering, literally, for days now. I've been looking for a certain, for a village, but I lost my compass. I thought it would be the end of me.” Though she spoke English, her accent was broad and flat, and cut through the air like the ploughshare through the sod.

I could think of nothing to say, and noticed that Adelaïda had pulled herself ever so slightly behind me.

“Thank you so much for finding me. Where are we?”

I realized that my grandmother might have excited similar disgust—and that the tones of her voice might have rankled so—and tried to keep down my temper and fear. “The Great East Meadow past Gerald Desvres's field. Everyone's in the grove for a celebration.”

She looked about slowly. “And what town are we in?”

“This is the village of Mandragora.”

She stopped still. “Mandragora?”

“That is this hamlet's name. Yes.” I felt my wife disappear entirely behind me.

Her sharp eyes grew somewhat red. “And what's Mandragora near?”

“Only these mountains, and the city of Nnms.”

“Neem?”

“Nnms,” I repeated, exaggerating the friction between tongue and teeth.

The stranger turned in a patient, meditative circle, then cast her eye less greedily upon us. “I can't believe it.”

“What?”

“I'm here. I found you.”

Perhaps in her wandering she had fallen prey to sun madness, which would explain her wild countenance. “Where did you come from?”

“From Boston. I'm Ruth Blum, by the way.” She extended her white, bony hand toward me.

Such intimacy had only ever been afforded me by my wife, and the sight of the hand approaching brought blood to my face. Still, the customs of her country were, as evidenced by her attire, quite different from ours, and her gesture of friendship, despite my native mistrust of strangers come out of the hills, struck my heart. “I'm Yves Gundron, of the third farm past the village.” I could imagine what I looked like to this creature—a solid farmer, a hand shorter than she and bruised by
decades of wind and rain, my brown locks in need of a trimming and my shy, buxom wife half hidden behind.

“A great inventor,” Adelaïda, still behind me, stammered.

“And my wife, Adelaïda.”

“What kinds of things do you invent, Mr. Gundron?”

My wife said, “Wonders, absolute miracles, all.”

“1 have improved upon our farm implements. You may call me Yves. Where is it you say you're from?”

Adelaïda whispered, “The sea, sure. Look how she resembles the paintings of your grandmother.”

I held a finger up to her. Ruth's face was singularly elastic, and quickly recomposed itself into a half grin that, at its wavering edges, conveyed sadness or confusion. “Boston. I imagine you've never heard of it.”

“My brother, Mandrik le Chouchou, is the only man among us who has left the village. He has traveled the world, and never mentioned such a place.”

Her dread tumor creaked and shifted, despite which she let out a sweet, musical laugh. “People say it's not much of a city, anyway.”

I asked, “What is it like there?” Because surely it wasn't like here, if she went about dressed that way.

She looked Heavenward for an answer, as if Boston were spread like the stars across the great sky. “I'm not sure what to tell you, or where to begin. I'm not sure what's the right thing to say.”

“Tell us how things are, and don't fret about the consequences.”

She nodded, never taking her eyes from us as she thought. “I'll see if I can explain. It's not like it is here. It's a large city, equipped with all the modern conveniences, and with a number of universities, which is how my family ended up there. There are lots of young people, though it's conservative in some ways, too.” She stopped to regard us, and quieted her tone. “None of which means anything to you, does it?”

“Not a word,” I solemnly agreed.

“I'm sorry. I'll try to think of a better way to explain.”

Adelaïda, still from behind, whispered, “Does she speak English?”

“I think so, though I cannot follow all her meaning.”

“I'm sorry,” she said. “Will you stop me, when I'm not clear? I want to be clear.”

“There's no need to be sorry. You are welcome here, even if we don't understand you.” I fervently hoped that the emotion thus expressed would follow its expression. “The village is on holiday today, in celebration of one of my inventions. Will you come with us for sustenance and barley ale?”