A Table of Green Fields, Guy Davenport [ebook reader screen .TXT] 📗

and socks, Samantha said, which I'm now peeling down and off.

A whistle of surprise and compliance from Nikolai.

The only strategy he could think of was to lie on his back with one arm under Samantha's shoulders, the other under Gunnar's. Out of the comers of his eyes he looked in turn at each, for instruction, for a clue. Could they hear his heart thumping? Samantha's breast was cool and warm at once against his ribs. Gunnar's hard freckled shoulder fitted awkwardly under his arm, making it tingle. He kissed Samantha on the cheek, and was kissed back.

—No fair, said Gunnar.

So he kissed Gunnar and was kissed back.

Samantha reached across him to Gunnar, and Gunnar across to Samantha, in some conspiracy of communication, as if words were no longer of any use.

—One big nuzzling rolling hug from each of us, Gunnar said, and we get on with the day. Samantha and Nikolai first, Samantha and me second, Nikolai and me third.

24

 

—Friendly trees, Mikkel said. When Colonel Delgar was turning the dunes and heaths of Jylland back into forests, he found out that if you plant a mountain pine beside a spruce, the two will grow into big healthy trees. Spruce alone wouldn't grow at all. Mycorrhiza in the mountain pine's roots squirt nitrogen and make the spruce happy and tall.

Thick, ribbed, white knee socks, Mikkel's, banded blue and mustard at the top. Shoving them down, his back against Nikolai's shoulder. Flex of pullover hem over pod of his white briefs, hamp of hair tickling the nib of his nose, eyes meeting Nikolai's.

—By 1500 Jylland was a waste heath. Trees are masts. Can you get at the fig newtons? Down in under all the ziplocks they are. —Friendly trees, Nikolai said, squirming around to work off his shorts. The space, lack of it, in this tree house is friendly. Why are you talking about friendly trees, huh?

Mikkel rocking on his back, wiggling out of his briefs. A smart pubic clump the color of marmalade.

—Fig newtons in one hand, Nikolai said, cock in the other. There are too many legs in this tree house.

Mikkel pulling down Nikolai's briefs.

The two small square windows in Mikkel's tree house looked onto roofs and the skylight onto leaves and branches. —Gunnar's not in this world, Nikolai said. Well, he is and he isn't. To be a sculptor he says you have to read poetry and philosophy and know anatomy like a surgeon and listen to music and go off and be by yourself to make peace with yourself in your soul, and he likes both boys and girls, that's for sure, and is trying to make up his mind which. But he's a good person. Good sculptor. His landlady, the Plymouth Brother from the Faeroes, gets a thrill out of imagining he's a devil, but you can see she likes him, and fusses over him. The looks she gives me when I'm posing.

25

 

The dove in Gunnar's dream flew upside down, carrying a sparrow in its claws.

HERAKLEITOS IN THE RIVER

 

Conventional psychology is misled by a primitive gnostic theory to the effect that things ought normally to appear to sense in their full and exact nature. Nothing could be further from the fact, or more incongruous with animal life and sensibility.

27

 

Gunnar drawing Nikolai's hand.

—King Matt. Tell me more about him.

—In good time. There's a play by Korczak in which children sit in judgment on God and history. Their indictment is almost too terrible to hear. His orphans were for the most children abandoned by their parents and at the mercy of Poland, which is like being a sparrow at the mercy of a hawk.

28

 

Splendid stare of blue eyes.

—Mikkel Angelo made a big buncher statues, yuss, and when was he? I'm so fuckering dumb.

—Last quarter of the 1400s, and sixty-four years into the 1500s. Fingers.

—Eighty fuckering nine years old.

—He was an architect, too, and a painter and a poet.

—David the giant killer.

—Moses with horns.

—The ceiling of the Catholic church in Rome, Italy. Horns? —Beams of light from his forehead. You shine when you've talked with God. But they look like horns.

—What do you know about sand?

—Sand?

—We're doing sand in school. Geography. It drifts around like oceans. Sloshes. Sand is rock turned to grit by wind and water. Then it packs down again, over a million or so years, and turns back into rock. Crazy.

29 

 

Samantha in a baggy jersey, Gunnar's, looking at drawings of herself. Arrival of Nikolai, pitching his book satchel into a comer.

—Let me see. Hello, Samantha, hello.

—You wore those pants to school?

—Where's Gunnar? Oh, yes. Truly short pants make your legs look longer, you know.

—Having a pee and putting himself back together. We rather got carried away.

—And with these there's no underwear on under, so your nuts and dink can nest in what there is of a pants leg, though they're apt to look out when you're sit, if you're not careful. Tuck back in easy enough.

—Gunnar! Samantha shouted. Come save me, or Nikolai, whichever you think needs protecting from the other.

Edith looked around the door. Pursed lips.

—Ho! said Gunnar bounding downstairs, zipping up. Flopping wet hair.

—Drawing, drawing! Some days you can, some days you can't. Degas was here, wasn't he? Are you're teasing innocent Nikolai, or is Nikolai trying to see what his charm will get him? A studio's a friendly place.

30

 

A giant land iguana in his silken brown and green network mail, Conoloplius suberistatus Gray, safe in a convoluted viridity of pisonia, fish fuddle, and guava, trained his red eyes on his cousin amblyrhynchus, changing from voluptuous pink to leaden lava, where red rock crabs grow. And with his eyes on the iguana, Caliban, who has also seen, after the thunderstrokes and howling winds of the tempest, drowned sailors, dropped from the moon, when time was. Their strange clothes are wet and black, rilled in the way of vines about their bony legs and arms, their feet buckled in sodden leather.

31

Nikolai danced, a puppet on jerked strings, an eel wiggling, a lunatic hopping, a farmer at Whitsuntide drunk and happy, a Pawnee stomping through the ghost dance, a Christy minstrel balling the jack, a new-hatched devil chasing Lutheran virgins.

Samantha joined him for a Mutt-and-Jeff foxtrot with something Mexican in it.