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  Eclogues

  Eight Stories

  Guy Davenport

  FOR BONNIE JEAN

  Contents

  The Trees at Lystra

  The Death of Picasso

  The Daimon of Sokrates

  Christ Preaching at the Henley Regatta

  Mesoroposthonippidon

  Lo Splendore della Luce a Bologna

  Idyll

  On Some Lines of Virgil

  About the Author

  The Trees at Lystra

  Hermes laid back his jackrabbit ears and looked around at me with his girlish eyes as much as to say that, yes, as long as my playing took us to the patch of nettles and thistles out by the Consular Road I could ride. There, with the evening cool coming on, we could all have a munch, flounce our tails, and bray at the corners of the world. He’d had his sheelings, and wanted a stretch and a hamp of weeds to chew. Those of us with a posthidion no bigger than a puppy’s must do as we would.

  He answered the bounce of my heels with a slew of his butt, and off we went, Hermes happy to be shut of his baskets and muzzle. A spadger on his back was of no matter. We were old friends. He knew that my hair’s not good to eat, as he once imagined, and I knew how to knuckle his noggin and make him laugh.

  Ahead, along our way between two fields of barley higher than our heads, larks and crickets babbling deep in the dark of the green, ran the Consular Road to Isauria. Here you could see barbarian couriers on long and lean Italian horses. With a leather wallet and a horn on a shoulder strap, a short sword, and a tumpline, they go at a gallop and pass like the wind, Roman riders with their faces shaven by a razor.

  A nettle here, a stinkweed there, Hermes has his due, and I egg him on toward the road in between the juicier clumps. Half the road is neatly paved. No one may step here. It is for the Roman administrators alone. On the other half of the road come the caravans and wayfarers on foot. We are in time for the late afternoon rider. You can hear him two stadia away.

  Hermes backs, I wave, the courier gives me a salute, a stiff arm straight out to the right. I pull the air, which in the language of their army means to make haste. Some smile, some give the fig, some glance and ride on with no sign. If one were to stop, I was to skidaddle, Hermes and I, as Pappas says they will make love with you and not even know your name.

  My reputation in those days was for eating prodigious amounts of grape-hull barley cakes, shooting a strict toy, walking on my hands, dancing the Artemis Free Frolic, imitating a partridge so well I could bring them out of the brake, singing the Linden and the Oak, making a Gongyla face that never failed to frighten Grandmama and make her put her apron over her head, doing everything wrong, on purpose, in the opinion of Nossis my sister, worrying the pee out of my brother Philodemos, and riding Hermes when he was not at his work.

  —One is as big a muggins as the other, Pappas says. By the gods, I can scarcely tell them apart. The one with all the ears and the handsome face is the donkey, I do believe. The one with the rusty knees must be our Damis, is that your opinion?

  Whereupon Nossis holds her nose and the hem of her peplon in two fingers. So I make horns at her, she squeals, and Hermes brays.

  We reached our favorite thistle patch just as the trees were going blue and the day’s light lay level and sweet on the world. We heard the rider down the road. The Emperor of Rome, Pappas says, must hear day by day from all the cities he taxes, whatever news there is to tell him. He knows the weather, the fishing, the hunting, the crops, the breaking of his law, and where his ships are on the sea. All this the riders bring him along roads the Romans have paved from countries in the far north where there are bears and wolves and snow the year round, to deserts in the south of nothing but sand and more sand and never a tree.

  But before the rider passed, Romeward bound, Hermes and I saw two men on the unpaved side of the road, merchants as they seemed, coming our way. They walked bravely, with long steps, as if they were walking across the world and meant to make a thorough job of it. I would get a good squinny at them as they trod past, though I hoped they would not ask directions, because if you’re waiting for something, as I for the Roman courier, it is always when you’re seeing what you came to see that a pest arrives and bodgers your pleasure of it.

  In the Underworld, Pappas says, he hopes there is a judgment of Uninvited Guests all interrupting each other interrupting each other for all eternity.

  A shaft of sparrows from a hedge zipped between me and the strangers, bad luck for them, as they bore down on us, and I gave them no heed until the courier passed. His saddlebags were biggish, lots of reports for the Emperor of Rome. I waved. He gave the salute. Hermes popped a rispy fart and hitched his ears forward, twirling his tail for the sheer fun of it.

  —The grace of God be with you! the strangers greeted me, lifting their walking sticks.

  Would this road, they asked, take them to Lystra proper, the market and the inn? It would, I said. No distance at all. They mopped their brows with their sleeves, thanked me, and off they went.

  Hermes and I took the road by the old Temple of the Trees, dark in its grove, the oldest thing in the world except perhaps the dragon houses in the hills, and the sacred trees beside it are older than the temple, the linden and the oak of our rites. Somewhere, nobody knows, is the tree that’s a wife to the god Hermes. I liked to think my donkey knew when he was near his namesake. That, and the quiet of the road, brought us home this way, through crickets loud as a festival and butterflies and shearmice trotting in circles and midges in swarms and early bats.

  Something had happened. There’s a way of walking that means gossip’s to be told, and as I rode home I saw women on the trot along every path, news to tell on their faces, elbows out, eyes searching for ears to fill.

  I was not one to waste gossip on. I was only an overhearer, so that when I called to Philippos’ aunt as she was clearing a stile as nimbly as a girl, all I got was an arm pointed toward town and the word whoopdedoo.

  Farther on I found a bunch of fieldhands leaning on their hoes. It was my two strangers they were talking about, some ruckus they’d caused as soon as they’d got to the market.

  —Walking, I heard, as good as you and me.

  —Born lame, he was. Never took a step ever.

  —Git up, was all the outlander said, and by Zeus up he got. Walks some, dances some, and is out of his mind wondering over it.

  The disturbance, as I pieced it together all the way home, was that the wayfarers were magicians and had healed Polydas the cripple, who was now walking round and round the market for all to see. And I was the first they spoke to. I gave them directions into town. My ears burned, my heart thumped, and Hermes complained because eating weeds had gone clean out of my head.

  Everybody was hither and yonder when Hermes and I got home. And they were there, at our place, the strangers. Grandmama had sent Papa to get them once she’d heard the wonder they’d done.

  —All over again! she said to me. No mistake about the sign. I’ve had the feeling for days, first in my bones, and then a flutter behind my eyes, like somebody in the room when there was nobody at all. Old Thunderer and the Tree Elf! That’s who they are. Who else could they be?

  I could see the strangers in the arbor. They’d had their feet washed and were sipping saucers of wine with Papa and Pappas, the housefolk looking on from behind doors and posts.

  Grandmama hugged me to her, said she was too scared to face the strangers, and said I was not to venture near them unless called.

  She meant th
at the grand old story of Baukis and Philemon and the strangers at their table was happening again, now.

  —It’s them, she said. A sign has come to me and I know it’s them.

  How many times I’d heard the tale. She never told it right off, even when she was in a mind to tell the old tales. There was a whistle wetter beforehand. She told tales while she was shelling peas or stitching or plaiting a basket.

  —The way you catch an owl, she’d say, is this. You go into the woods with a little drum, the kind you tap with your fingers, and a whistle with three stops, the kind the goatherds play.

  I’d settle in to listen: no better tale teller than her.

  —When you come to a likely thicket of tall trees where you think an owl might be, begin the nice little dance children learn for the harvest. Two hops backwards and a curtsey with crossed shins, shuffle to the left and clap your hands. You know the dance, and the tune’s The Partridge Wedding or Hen Cluck, Hen Strut, Peck Your Pick of Corn.

  She’d siffle the music, patting her foot, and I’d do enough of the dance to make her cackle.

  —An owl, now, hearing and seeing all this, will want to join the dance, and step out lively, grave a fowl as he is, all along his limb, keeping time with his wings, and singing in owl, hoo hoo, hoo hoo, whoodle wee hoo. Then all you have to do is nip up and snatch him. Owl stew.

  Then she’d get onto the old temple on the hill, which was to Hermes of the Trees. He mates with saplings and his blood is green. His hair is partly leaves, his knees and elbows are bark. His daimon is the woodpecker, who carries his soul around when he is asleep.

  —Ah yes indeed, she’d say while spinning or resewing the quails and mulberries on the hem of my sark.

  She’d take it right off my nakedness, the sark, and rummage in her basket for lavender wool, or white, or ruddle.

  —This child needs his hair dressed, she would grumble. He looks like a marsh sprite. And the girls had better look out: his puppy tail looks to me like it’s racing with his hair, which can do the more prominent mischief. Have those knees ever been clean?

  And, with a new breath, she’d take on her important voice and begin the grand old story.

  —Once the Lord of the World and his handsome son Harmiss, Ziss and Harmiss she always pronounced them and if corrected would allow that people didn’t know how to say words proper any more these days. Well, Ziss and Harmiss gave themselves a shake and became, to look at, a distinguished landowner and a tall and fetching boy, but not too distinguished, you understand, a trifle somebody but not anybody special. They didn’t want to stand out.

  She liked me to give a nod that I was following and was eager to hear the tale again.

  —They came across Kappadokia, as if on a journey, each with a staff. They were soon as dusty as all travellers, with dirty feet and sweaty around the neck. They stopped at this well and that, expecting a drink, and like as not they had the dogs set on them. Everywhere they met with impudence, with stinginess. Oh yes, people are like that, out in the world. Now round about here, nigh onto Lystra, where the marsh stands beyond the road, the people were uncommon hateful. Outlanders not welcome around here! People should stay where they belong!

  —Now the poorest house in the town was that of two old folk.

  —Baukis and Philemon, I’d say.

  —That was their names. They had only the roof over their heads, and a watch goose, and a bean patch out back, cabbages too.

  They were not stingy or tacky in their manners. When the strangers came there, old Philemon, with his beard down to here, and old Baukis, who was weaving a basket of wicker, they both said, Do sit for a spell.

  —And, I chimed in, invited them to share their dinner.

  —Exactly, Grandmama said. There was cabbage cooked with a ham-bone, and olives, and cherries preserved in wine, and endive and radishes, whey and white honeycomb, and eggs roasted in the shell, and figs and plums and apples. Something even told her that it would be proper to cook the watch goose, but when she went to catch it, she couldn’t, and she had another sign inside her heart, as clear as sunlight on a rock. We do not want you to kill your watch goose. And when she was scouring the table with mint and setting out her best beech goblets coated inside with yellow wax, she began to have her suspicions.

  —They were gods, I said.

  —No sooner had she tipped the gotch to fill their cups than she knew she was eyebitten, rhymed by the glamor of her company. The elder had a kingly eye, like a bull, that found everything familiar, and the younger, so handsome that he took your breath and doubled your heartbeat, had the finest manners in the world and a smile as warm as a summer’s day. And the wine changed as it was poured, from their black, vinegary country wine to a musky rich red wine that a goblin had magicked with a pass of his warty hands.

  —And the strangers were Ziss and Harmiss. They drowned all the rest of the valley, that’s why we have a marsh to this day, and gave old Baukis and Philemon their wish to be together forever, oak and linden side by side. Their little house became a temple sacred to trees and birds and hospitality.

  The magicians had come to our gate after Papa had sent for them. They were dressed in the colors merchants wear over near the sea, reds and purples and pinks, with too many sashes. The shorter, the one with a beard as black as a crow, was bald when he took off his big round hat. They had stopped at our herm all but hidden under honeysuckle this time of year.

  —Are there hounds? The tall one had asked.

  The shorter of the two said his name was Shaul Paulus, from Tarsos over in Kilikia where the school is of philosophers. The other was named Yosef Enlightenment Barnabas, a Kyprian from the sacred island of Aphrodita of the Doves.

  They were Jews, people who won’t eat pork or eels, and follow a book that has their laws and history in it, and cruelly cut off the sleeve of their pizzles. They were so respectful of Zeus Thunder Hurler that they say there are no other gods but him.

  —Be you then Judaeans? Pappas asked after they had washed their feet and shaken the dust from their clothes.

  —Yes and no, they answered.

  —Freemen but not citizens?

  —We are walking around the world, the one named Shaul said, with good news to tell all mankind.

  He had a nubecula, a little cloud in his eye, that smudged his full jolly gaze.

  —What did I tell you? Grandmama said when we listened to their talk, and the Jews explained to Papa and Pappas that the news they had to tell was that their god had taken a man’s form and lived in Judaea until he was grown, and taught his lessons there, and had been understood and followed by many, but not by all. He had been wickedly and falsely accused of sedition against the Romans, was crucified, and had come alive again in his tomb, from which he came out and talked in private to several of his followers, giving them instructions. Then he went away, with a promise to return.

  —To speak in figure, said the man Shaul, Yeshua the Redeemer sought to have us all die, so to say, to our life of human bondage, to be as dead men to our own selfishness, to lust, gluttony, theft, hatred, anger, jealousy, all the passions that make us blind to our brothers and sisters and to the goodness of the god who made the world.

  Grandmama gave me a nudge and a look of glee.

  —They are gods themselves, she whispered, pretending to be messengers.

  —A change of heart, the man Barnabas put in, is what we teach. A metamorphosis. But there is no magic to it, no miracle. The resolution to die to the claims of the flesh will release the full life inside. God must have an empty pitcher to fill. We use the sign of water, though the cleansing is of the heart.

  He was tall and brown, this man Barnabas, brown haired, brown eyed, his face as honest as a dog’s, an easy man. When Paulus talked (we were to call him that, he said, not Shaul, which in any case we could hardly say, and without Kyrie, as if he were a slave) Barnabas listened more carefully than any of us, as if he wanted to remember every word.

  —I am a Roman citizen, ye
s. But I am no man’s overlord. I own no property.

  —Why then, said Pappas, you’re a philosopher.

  —I have studied philosophy. It is all vain.

  —Exactly, Pappas said.

  —I am, however, one of my Redeemer’s faithful, filled with hope, and, God give me grace, a striver after charity.

  —Well, Papa said, that’s being a philosopher, I would say.

  —I was trained to be one, Paulus said, for the law and rhetoric. As with all my people, I also learned a craft, the tailoring of tents. My school of rhetoric goes back in its origins to a Greek named Diogenes, a pagan in the days of Alexander, who had a rough and sturdy virtue I can still admire. Would that I had more of his stalwartness under a shower of rocks, or his indifference to pain. Or his precision in the use of words. He invented the word cosmopolitan to counter Athenian pride. A citizen of the whole world. That’s what Barnabas and I, and others of our witnessing, must learn to be.

  The talk was wonderful. Paul said that the divine hand that made the sun and moon and trees and creatures was worthy of worship. Papa and Pappas agreed. They got into an argument about the souls of animals, but did not fall out over their differences.

  —The good news we bring, Paulus said, is that there is but one god, not many. When he made the world, long ago, he gave man every blessing. But man in his arrogance and greed threw away the blessing and brought death into the world. But this one god loved mankind still, and became one of us, to show us how to live and how to die.

  —You are worshippers of many supposed gods whom you imagine to be pleased by your mysteries and sacrifices of spilt blood and burnt flesh. You worship the created rather than the creator.

  He made us sound like foreigners. How had he known about us? Did he know properly about the spirits in the trees and the mountains? About Grandmama’s elves behind the oven with their mushroom hats? The daimons that are sometimes owls, sometimes a hill lion?

  —But each people, Papa said, have their own gods. I have heard tell that they are indeed the same gods known by different names, tongues being different. Some gods move about everywhere, some stay in particular places. I cannot think our gods here would like the fish and fields and skies of somewhere else.