Robert Coover - Pricksongs & Descants

Not more than a dozen paces away, a tall lad, dark and fine-boned with flashing brown eyes and bold mouth, curries a thick-chested coal-black bull, his sturdy tanned — but no more of that! for, in short, he looks up, they exchange charged glances, smile, she casts her eyes down. The boy seems paralyzed, he gazes at her in wonderment, at her beautiful auburn hair gleaming in the fiery summer sun, at her gently blushing fair-skinned cheeks, at her soft ripe-breasted body in its starched white blouse and brightly flowered skirt The currycomb drops to the ground. He pushes past the sows and the young calves, struggles toward her, the smile gone from his lips, his eyes wide and astonished, his nostrils distended. His hands are on her breasts, on her face, tearing at her dress, tangled in her hair — nol not — I She wrenches free, but as she does so, she feels a sudden lightening, almost a sense of growth, as the pitcher of fresh milk leans forward, topples, caroms off the boy’s lurching shoulders, and plummets into the dust at his fading feet The white liquid bubbles out of the narrow mouth, seeps futilely into the dry yellow dust of the rutted road at the foot of the small arched bridge.

The maid stoops to right the pitcher, but too late. Gone. The milk, the eggs, the chickens, the fatbellied sows, the cows and the calves, that clumsy stupid beautiful boy: all gone. Tears burst down the maid’s tanned face. Gone, gone! In her anguish, she does not at first notice the two dry cracked hands that are helping her set aright the stoneware jug, but when through her tears she sees them at last, it takes but a brief second more for her to discover the rest: the tattered black hat and uncut hair, the dark bearded face with its bulging bloodshot eye, the sweat-stained shirt open down to the belt She starts back in terror, her right hand pressed against her open mouth. She scrambles to her feet Her left hand comes up as though to ward off some blow. She steps back, seems about to run. The man sets the pitcher in the grass by the foot of the bridge, turns back to her, smiles. She smiles faintly, wipes the tears from her cheeks, takes another rearward step. He looks down at himself, at his torn yellow shirt and muddy shoes, makes an apologetic gesture, bows slightly from the waist. She nods, clutches with both hands her brightly checked apron, smiles again, shakes her head, does not step back. He shrugs his shoulders, gestures at the sun, at the pitcher standing by the bridge, at the bread beside it in the grass. She smiles openly, showing her large, white teeth, shakes her head, also gestures at the high sun and then at the road she has just traveled. He follows her gestures, gazes with real compassion down the long dusty road, then again at the empty pitcher, hesitates, finally reaches into his pocket and withdraws some coins. He shows them to the maid. She steps forward to observe them more closely: they are few, but of gold and silver. They look, to tell the truth, like nothing less than a whole private universe of midsummer suns in the man’s strong dark hand. She smiles, casts her eyes down.

The pitcher, thought at first to be stable in the grass at die foot of the bridge, is actually, as we now can see, on a small spiny ridge: it weaves, leans, then finally rolls over in a gently curving arc, bursting down its rust-colored veins into a thousand tiny fragments, fragments not unlike the broken shells of white eggs. Many of these fragments remain in the grass at the foot of the bridge, while others tumble silently down the hill into the eddying stream below.

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3

The Leper’s Helix

At first, in an instant half-real half-remembered; the leper is at rest; then he begins his approach, urgent across the — no, nol impossible! he has always been beginning, always approaching, it was the glare, just the glare caused the illusion: sun at its zenith and this leper coming on. Solitary flutter advancing like a crippled bird, the leper, staggering out of isolation, staggering toward us as though in amazement, joy, disbelief, here under the boiling desert sun, across die parched and desolate surface, jerking, twisting, his white robe— if it is a robe — stirring starched and binding, illustrating the fault of his motion, me painful shifts of fulcrum through his abdomen, die strange uncertain gait as though he lacks the hang of it, or having had it, lost it, dazzling white this shimmery figure crossing the molten red flats, his outline blurred by the savage glare.

Our own progress, on the other hand, is precise, governed, has been from the start The active principle, we might call it Might mockingly call it We are describing a great circle on the desert surface, die leper’s starting position as our compass point (thus, admittedly, forcing a further reconsideration of the realities of that first idle moment — good god! must we fall foul of such riddles forever?). Since the leper is always approaching, must always approach, we compel him with this studied tour to bend his stupid bungling lope into a spiral, so regulating our own velocity as to schedule his arrival, if only he doesn’t stumble, the fool, and fall (and he does not, will not), at our starting point.

He seems puzzled by our motion — hah! must look to him like flight, recoil, he unable, at such a separation, to envision any shape to our career — but o constancy! he but devotes more strength to the cause, more of his failing strength, feet now pigeon-toed now splayed, arms flung like torn sails grappling for a stay, pelvis now thrust forward now twisted to one side, head swaying precariously on his thin white (is it for art’s sake we prolong this miserable journey? what matter! for art or no, let him know extremity! — how else obtain impact for its counterpart?) neck. His approach in some other circumstances might even serve for comedy, this ungainly, high-legged, limbs-awry dance in the hot sun. It’s his isolation cuts the humor. If anything is a serious thing, it must be he.

Our speed is not constant. No, were it so, we would leave him behind at the end, we would have to inscribe additional circles to catch him from the rear, a dull and pointless strategy. So our velocity diminishes, doubtless at a computable rate. He does not know that He merely dances on, arms and legs outflung, dances on helplessly — yet full of hope, that old disease — scratching his helix across the desert floor, less true perhaps than our perfect circle, yet for that the more beautiful, his steaming white helix on the burnt red plane. His robe seems not so much a robe as a… a winding sheet! Death! we cry inwardly, but beat back the (alarming!) absurdity. It’s the sun, only the sun, the glare, heat — but only for a moment! it is, and to the end will be, a leper in a white tunic. And he, not we, will die.

Down the last arc segment we glide, dosing it now, our task more than two-thirds done, the worst of it over. Our pace letting up, steadily — he is close enough now for us to see his eager smile: strange that smile! for his mouth is split apart at the corners, and even not smiling he would surely seem to. Crusted eyes protruding over shiny white cheekbones, tattered ends of his white flesh confusing themselves with (peculiar, perhaps, this sensuous digression, and just at this moment, but there’s, you see, a kind of pleasure to be had in it, a need being reached) confuse themselves with his fluttering robe, flake off in a scaly dust that blurs his outline, dance lightly around him as he staggers wildly on, closing in on us. The flesh, the flesh reminds of mica: translucent layers of dead scaly material, here and there hardened into shiny nodules, here and there disturbed by deep cavities. In the beds of these cavities: a dark substance, resem bling blood not so much as… as: excrement. Well, simple illusion, blood mixed with pus and baked in the sun, that’s what it is. His bare feet leave a trail of this viscous brown