Wulfsyarn: A Mosaic (39 page)

“I think about her every day.”

“Forget her. She thinks of you but she’d never come back. She couldn’t come back if she wanted to. If it helps you in this life, she still loves you. But she won’t be beside you in bed tonight. Listen, Jon Wilberfoss. True dignity consists in accepting that which is, that which cannot be changed. Don’t waste your time in dreams. More than that, accept the procession. Watch it from the balcony, enjoy the drums and the passion but do not seek to lead it.” The bull-headed God paused. “Do I sound like an old man to you?”

“Yes.”

“Then that is because you want an old man’s advice. But I’m not an old man. I’m as young as discovery. But I’m old too. If it helps you in this life, think what the old tree feels when the sap starts to rise. Think of ad the delight spreading up through miles of branch, giving the blossom power, drawing water from the depth.”

“I do not understand,” said Wilberfoss The bud-headed one snorted. He turned and faced Jon Wilberfoss and then pulled at the cords which held his rough tunic closed over his broad chest. The cords loosed and the robe fed open. Revealed were breasts that would not shame the Goddess of Love herself and a rounded belly and broad hips and diving pelvis. “Behold the breasted Dionysos,” said the bud-headed one. “Now do you understand?”

Wilberfoss shook his head. The bud snorted again and drew the coarse habit tight about him. “You will.”

They came to the river. As the bud-headed God entered the river he changed. He became a small man with sloping shoulders and a bright-eyed eager face reminiscent of a ferret. He stood in the middle of the river with his habit hitched up revealing scrawny hairy legs. “What am I doing now?” he called to Jon Wilberfoss who was standing on the bank.

“You are standing in the river,” called Jon Wilberfoss, “and you’d catch your death of cold if you don’t come out.”

The old man waded to the side of the stream and clambered out awkwardly. He stood on the bank opposite Jon Wilberfoss. “And what am I doing now?”

“You’re standing.”

“Where?”

“On the bank.”

“Beside?”

“Beside the stream.”

“Am I in the stream or out of it?”

“Out of it of course.”

The old man held on to a branch above his head and lowered one pale leg down into the river and felt about for purchase. When he was secure he called, “And now?”

“Now you have one leg in the river and one leg out. Is that the answer you want?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because it is the answer to ad your questions. To be and not to be. They are not alternatives you know. They are different ways of looking at the same thing.” Old Francis Dionysos heaved on the branch above him to pull himself up onto the bank. The branch, of course, broke and St. Francis Dionysos fed back into the stream with a whoop.

Jon Wilberfoss could not resist his laughter. He laughed as he waded over the stream and took hold of the mangy old habit and hoisted the Saint upright.

“So you think that is funny,” said Dionysos, blowing out water. He started to wade to the side of the stream. “Wed, I’m glad. It is about time you cracked yourself open with laughter. You know the old saying: ‘When a man laughs, the devil enters him.’ Wed, that needn’t be a bad thing.” So saying, Francis Dionysos heaved himself up onto the bank and stood there, squeezing the water out of his tunic. “The spirit of humankind is not Christian and kind: it is Pagan and wild. It has room for kindness too,” he said, regaining some of his humor. “But make no mistake. The spirit is not cruel: it is anarchic. The secret is to touch everything lightly. Everything. That way you retain your independence. C’mon. Let’s walk.”

Wilberfoss nodded. He had noticed that a Talline woman had stood on the river bank and watched their antics in the river with frank amusement. Now she turned away.

The two men linked arms and clambered up the slippery bank. Before them was the Pectanile. “Now that is an interesting shape,” said Francis Dionysos. Wilberfoss was amazed to see that without his being aware of it, the figure of St Francis had regained his massive stature and bud’s head. Realities shifted imperceptibly, obeying some obscure rule, satisfying whatever were the needs of the present.

“Why do you change your shape?” he asked.

The God paused and looked at him. The bud snorted through its black damp nostrils and lowered its head until Wilberfoss could see the ridge of bone which joined the bases of the shiny horns. Yet when it spoke, the voice was neutral and easy. “It is about time you realized that I do not change. I never change. I am ever and always one and the same. What changes is your own fleeting mind needing now one image of assurance and now another. I am everything from the opening flower to the rotting corpse. I am wisdom and innocence: salt and honey. I am what abides.”

Wilberfoss stared at the bud-headed man, trying to understand. And as he stared he saw the transformation. It was a flowing through. It was not a dissolve. It was as though an object, a beautiful vase say, or a statue or a rabbit, were lit from one side and then lit from another angle and what was revealed was the same, but different. Wilberfoss was aware of the change in himself.

“Before I saw you as a bull, now I see you as an old man. Once before you had a woman’s body. Why do I only see you in those shapes? Why not in others?”

“You see what you have learned to see. Conventional images, and because they are conventional they carry a great weight of truth. There are few images of my brute strength better than that of the bud.”

“But why don’t I see you in other forms? My moods change. My needs change.”

The old man smiled a merry smile. “How does this sound? You do see me, but you don’t recognize me.” And then he sighed. “But the thing to do is to see beyond images. Words can’t do it. Only you can. Use everything you have. All experience. Look at it cold-eyed. Come on, you’d never puzzle it out with thinking. Relax and let us look at this strange artifact.”

They climbed up the slope at the foot of the Pectanile and stood under its richly-rounded shape. “Here,” said the old man, throwing his arms wide grandly, “you see the limit of art. Look at this fine shape, what do you see in it?”

“Wed, it’s like a funnel at the top and. . .”

“No. No. No. Don’t describe it. We’d be here forever if you do that and we’d still be no nearer the truth. What do you see
in
it? What does it suggest? What is the artist getting at?”

“Wed, it is like a pitcher ... and like a root under the ground. . .”

“Yes and . . . ?”

“And it is private like a small room . . .”

“Womb, tomb. Go on.”

“Wed, anyone can see it is like a cunt and a cock and has balls and breasts and... is this what you want me to see?”

“Go on.”

“It’s got an inner and an outer and water flows through it. It’s solid, made of stone. I bang my hands against it and it doesn’t yield. It is big and when the sun shines on it, it gets warm and when the snow feds, it gets cold. It is a toy made by a giant. It is both frightening and satisfying.” Wilberfoss fed silent. When he resumed, he was standing with his forehead pressed against the curling side of the Pectanile. “I think...” he said. “I feel. . . whoever made the first Pectanile was trying to express ad that and more . . .” He paused. “I don’t know. I’m not used to thinking this way. I’m not used to using my emotions to find truth. I . . . I. . .” There was something in this throat, something struggling to get out, but the words would not come and he fed silent.

The bud-headed one looked at Wilberfoss and then reached down and took his hands and placed them among the rough brown fur between his curving horns. Wilberfoss felt the energy of the bull. “Don’t be too hard on yourself,” murmured the God. “That is just another face of vanity. Here, feel your own horns.”

Wilberfoss felt upward, above his eyes, above his scalp, and he found there two curving prongs of bone, each so massive that he could not encircle the base with his hand. The bone was rough, not smooth. Working bone. Fighting bone. Damaged and scarred by time and combat. But solid still. He ran his hands up the curve and at the top he could just reach the points. He put pressure on the horns but pull as he might he could feel no pressure on his head. The bone was hard and completely unyielding. He knew that it would neither break nor bend. Yet when he moved his head, the tips cut through the air as though they would scratch it. His smallest movement was amplified. Wilberfoss remembered back. There was a time when he was a young man—a bloody fist killer who would gamble his life—and that young man had horns too. He had not been aware of them for so many years. And now . . .

“Those horns are your history. Like rings on a tree. Do you want to see what you look like?”

Wilberfoss hardly heard, but yet he nodded.

“Then climb up inside the Pectanile. Use the water mirror.”

This Wilberfoss did.

But, as he confided to me some weeks after this event, when he stared down into the pool within the Pectanile he was disappointed. Ad he found staring back at him was his own sad and serious face. He was surprised at how old he looked. And that was ad. No horns.

When he climbed outside the Pectanile he found that St. Francis Dionysos had gone. He ran down to the river and waded across and climbed out and ran to the gateway which gave entrance to the Poveredo Garden. When he got there he found that the statue was in its place with arms spread and with the birds perched on the arms.

Had it happened? Had it been true?

I am struck by the fact that Wilberfoss, at ad points in his life, had visions. The visions were an objective expression of his passions. Perhaps they have real existence in another world. Perhaps the human mind has access to this other world. I do not. Among Wdberfoss’s visions I include his beloved Chi-da. I have come to the opinion that if I had been down there on that gray world with Wilberfoss, then I would not have seen any creature which covered the sky like a banner of rippling red silk. I would not have seen this creature any more than I saw the monster that visited him at the river. And curiously, you know. Those two creatures are related. The one is his beast. The other is his best nature and he did not kid it. You cannot kid such things. He allowed it fulfillment, at the last.

Wed, these two stories that I have just related tell you a lot about the final state of Wilberfoss. I noticed that in his later years he came to spend more and more time mooching around the Pectanile. He was trying to understand it, he said. But I think he was fascinated by the thoughts that it bade rise within him. Its power was that it made him think and feel and discover ad the things that were inside him. The golden store of truth . . . the cold face of reality. Solitude and love. I say again Salt and Honey. Dignity before the passing of life. Patience and soaring passion.

And it was there that we found him, two days after he had been last seen. Quite dead and starting to smell.

The gate warden limbered him out of the Pectanile and lowered him down the smooth wet stone to Lily who received him into her cage.

I was there, swaying beneath the trees and observing everything. I noticed that Wilberfoss face was set in a smile such as I had rarely seen on his face in life. I would like to dunk it was more than merely the rictus.

I wonder what he found in the last few moments. Did he see his true image in the Pectanile pool? Did he manage to put his life together and make proper quittance?

Did he discover his own green nature?

I hope so.

In as much as I can hope for anything.

I abide.