Stanley Elkin - George Mills

“It’s all right,” Guillalume said, “slake him. Use the bucket.”

Mills obeyed, watering the man as he would a horse.

“He doesn’t know what we want yet. He thinks it’s some mutiny of my own.”

“It is,” Mills said. He turned to the merchant. “It is, ” he said. “I never knew, your honor.”

Guillalume frowned. “Do you know Northumbria?” he demanded suddenly of the merchant. “Could you take us there?”

“Northumbria?”

“Aye.”

The man squinted. “Scept’red isle,” he asked after a few moments, “other Eden, demi-paradise?”

“That’s it,” Guillalume said.

“Fortress built by Nature for herself? Happy breed of men? Precious stone set in the silver sea?”

“Aye. Aye.”

“Earth of majesty, seat of Mars, blessed plot? That the place?”

“Aye! You’ve struck her off!”

“Rains almost daily? Cold scuzzy climate? Bleak economic outlook, nothing worth trading. You boys better off in Wieliczka.”

“Take us to Northumbria!” Guillalume commanded.

(Oh yes, commanded. Certainty in the tone of his voice, according to Greatest Grandfather Mills, like a flourish of syntax. High rage on him like the shakes, the easygoing youngest son suddenly recalled to himself and his heritage as if aristocratic mood were transudate and collateral with entirely personal states of emergency. All leaves were canceled according to Greatest Grandfather Mills, all priorities magically shifted, and authority itself suddenly transubstantiate with the worn, work-tattered, salt-torn rags Guillalume wore for clothing. There was no mistaking Guillalume’s purpose, the determined, dangerous set of his jawline that seemed to grow at the bottom of his face like a beard. Mills had never seen him like this, had never seen anyone like this, and for the first time in his life he envied purpose, lusted for will. Then there were suddenly knives in Guillalume’s hands, hangers, dirks, claymores, a blinding, whirling brace of the sharp. He drew the merchant’s blood at a dozen points, the wounds spectacular but superficial as paper cuts. He buttered them with salt with the flats of his arsenal. The merchant howled. Guillalume howled louder. “ Compass! Card! Binnacle! Plumb bob! Fix thy course for Northumbria!” “But the crops,” the merchant whined, “the harvest—” “ Geography! ” Guillalume hissed. “For Northumbria, Map! ” “But the caravan,” the merchant pleaded, “the camels—” “We don’t need the salt.” “We do. For barter. We do. We’d never get past the tribes, we’d never—” “The tribes?” “The tribes, Your Majesty, the clans. The bands and companies. All affined agnate generation.” “All affined agnate—” “ Men, ” the merchant said, “knots of the kindred between here and there, cousin clusters ’twixt hither and yon. Who guard the passes and bar the borders. Frontiers of men, sir, horizons of flesh. The landscape is toll’d, m’lud. This is no civil world, Master. It’s filled with patriots to place. There are holy hectares, restricted rivers. Even the wilderness is posted. They kill trespassers.” “Maybe there’s some other way of going,” Mills suggested. “ Liar, ” Guillalume boomed, “I’ve seen the maps you show. Firelands, Giantlands, Dragonlands! Continents of monster, terra terror! How do you make your journeys? You bring no salt with you. How do you make your journeys?”)

The merchant watched him, then answered coolly, “I’m impunity,” he said, “vaccinate ’gainst xenophobia. The token interloper I am, the consanguinitic vagrant totem. I come from the far. From distance itself I come.” He shook himself, shedding even the damp salt which clung to his clothes and flesh, showing them the refractive shine of his person, the odd insignia they had seen in the forest almost blinding in the open sunlight and making, as the merchant shook himself, a mysterious preen of jewelry. His pins and pendants made a sensible bell-like music.

“He’s God,” Mills muttered. “He’s God,” Mills told Guillalume.

“He never is,” Guillalume said uncertainly.

“No, no,” the man said, “not God, only a traveler, a man of mileage just, a courier along the vault and arch of landscape is all.” He paused and looked at them. “ ‘Follow me,’ He said.” “But I go further, outdistancing atlas.”

Four days later they left. He needed the extra time to organize his foremen — the caravan expected in two months, bills of lading to be signed, vouchers, arrangements of usance, details worked out about the consignment of the salt — but by now the merchant had seemed to come round to the idea of the journey. “We shall have to travel light,” he told them, “only the odd sack or so. Oh, and put by your weapons. They won’t do any good where we’re going.”

“We take our weapons,” Guillalume said.

The merchant glanced at them. “As you wish,” he said.

“Maybe he knows something,” Mills suggested softly.

“Only what I tell him,” Guillalume said, and then to the merchant: “We’ll follow, but if you lead us into a trap I’ll kill you.”

The man shrugged and mounted.

For a week they rode, traveling along the spines of high mountains, Mills and Guillalume breathless in the thin air, their speech irregular, a low, broken, breathless panting. Then winds came, snow, the two Northumbrian horses first listless, then actually balking, while the merchant’s trotted on as nimbly as before, finally disappearing in the snow-obscured distance.

“Now — now — we’re for it,” Mills complained. “We were better — better off — in — in the farm.” His horse moved in front of Guillalume’s.

“What — what — do you mean? Are you blaming — blaming— me —for this? You wanted to — to — get back home as much — as I did,” Guillalume said, and the horses were abreast of each other again.

“It’s — a—tr— trap. ” Mills’s horse edged forward.

“What— what is?” They were neck and neck.

“Th — this.” He indicated the altitude, the four or five inches of snow through which they plodded. “It’s — it’s a — trap and now — you’ll — you’ll have — to kill him. — Like you, you said.” Mills’s horse took the lead. “Have to — to — to — kill — kill him.” Mills started to laugh. He laughed giddily in the high air, unable to stop. “Only — hee hee — where — where— is —hee hee — he?” He looked around. Guillalume had disappeared behind him in the white heights, in the heavily falling snow.

“Where — air — where — air — are yooo? — Where are you, Mill — Mill— Mills ?”

Mills was helpless to answer. He turned and saw Guillalume’s horse emerge from a cloudbank. It’s the talking, he realized. That’s what engines them, fuels them.

“Damn— damn you, Mills — Wait up. ” (Though Greatest Grandfather said Guillalume had no breath for italics, that it was not class now or affectation which punched up his words so much as the actual explosions of his pressured lungs.)

So they had a horserace. Talking to each other while the horses overheard, seeming actual interested parties, cantering eavesdroppers. And this was when Mills got to say things to his master, and his master to Mills, which otherwise neither would have said to the other.

“The reason,” Guillalume said, his breath easier now, “some men command and others obey, has nothing to do with fitness, nor law, nor even custom. God does not sanction nor Nature compel fatality.” They believed — the snow had stopped falling and the mountains glistened like great bright boulders — that they rode in the sky, that their horses brisked along a ledge of cloud. The broad valleys beneath them seemed domesticate, lulled, standing pat as potted earth, quiescent as houseplant. “Only man needs men. I require a valet because I cannot dress myself, an upstairs maid because I can’t make beds. My doorman knows better than I the ins and outs of my house. You should be flattered, Mills. The drudge, the erk, the groom and porter — the help, Mills. The char and babysitter, the footman, lackey, cook and page. The turnspit and amah, the housecarl and equerry. Seneschals and cellarers. All my menial men, Mills, fixed more by skills than bayonets, talent than circumstance. You brood too much on blood, boy.”