Stanley Elkin - George Mills

“I lug your bathwater,” Mills called after him. “It’s my finger scalds to test the temperature. There’s no talent there, only patience and torpor. You got the guns. Your lot does. Where you got them or who gave them I don’t know. The devil, I think, because only the devil wouldn’t know better or wouldn’t care than to trust somebody with a gun who can’t make a bed.”

Guillalume’s long list had put him in the lead but Mills’s shouting had narrowed the gap and they were almost abreast of each other again, Mills a length or so behind. They had been descending and were now in the valley they had seen from the sky. The trail had ended, beaching them in abrupt wilderness. Mills looked round from where his mount had just nosed out Guillalume’s and recognized with some surprise that it was fall. It was the first time he’d been conscious of season since coming to Wieliczka. The mines had been landlocked in time, and his shift, from just before daybreak till the sun had gone down, and his exhaustion, had kept him thoughtless of the calendar. Neither of them had any idea where they were. They were lost and did not even know in what country they were lost, or even if it were a country, if it was still the planet, still earth. All they could see were, behind them, the mountains, and everywhere else, save the small apron of clearing on which they stood, the high, blond grasses of a giant, endless steppe.

“Where’d he go?” Mills said.

“He gave us the slip,” said Guillalume.

“We couldn’t have passed him.”

“In the snowstorm. We might have missed him in the snowstorm.”

“That trail was too narrow.”

“He isn’t out there.”

“He give us the slip.”

Then they heard a noise coming toward them through the tall, brittle grass. The next moment the merchant materialized before them as the grasses parted and a hundred wild horsemen followed after.

(“These were the Cossacks,” Greatest Grandfather Mills would explain afterward, “and all they wanted was the Word. It was all any of them wanted.”)

“The word?” Mills said.

“Messages,” the merchant said, having taken the two of them aside. “What the entrails said, what the Tablets. Afflatus, avatar, vatic talebearing, godgossip, gospel.”

“They’re infidels,” Mills said, eyeing their weapons, their pikes ready to their hands as their reins, the whips which lay like embroidered quoit over their saddlehoms.

“No one is infidel,” the merchant said. “Show them death and they whistle hymns. Speak to them.”

“Me?”

“They watched you come down the mountain. They saw you bring up the rear, they watched you pass.”

“I don’t—”

“They saw your sacking, Guillalume’s linen.”

“I don’t—”

“They know their textiles. ‘The last shall be first.’ Strangers rare here. No concept of travel. Someone just passing through beyond them. They think you come to tell them things.”

“Me?”

“You speak now.”

“What will I say?”

“Make it good.”

“I don’t even talk their language.”

“I translate.” The merchant yanked his horse about, turned away from him. “Make it good,” he warned again, his back to him. He joined the warriors.

The merchant said something to them and the wild men looked at Mills as if through a single pair of eyes. Guillalume separated himself from Mills and went toward the merchant while the warriors waited for Mills to begin. “Make it good,” he mouthed before riding off.

“I have come,” Mills said, “I have come—” The merchant translated and the warriors watched Mills closely. Mills cleared his throat. “I have come,” he began again. They watched him impatiently and one drew a pike from where it rested in its sheath. “I’ve come, I say,” said Mills and looked helplessly at the merchant. The merchant translated. One of the warriors clutched his whip. The man drew his arm back slowly. “No, wait,” Mills shouted, clambering down from his horse. The merchant translated. “I’ve come to tell you,” Mills said nervously, “that — that—” The Cossack with the whip gently rolled the hard, thin, braided leather within inches of Mills’s feet. Mills looked down gloomily at the dangerous plaited rawhide. “ Not, ” he exclaimed forcefully, “to hit. Not to hit. I have come to tell you not to hit!”

“He’s come to tell you not to hit,” the merchant translated. The wild Cossacks looked at Mills questioningly.

“Right,” Mills said. “Hitting’s bad,” he said hopelessly as the merchant translated. “God hates hitters,” he said. “He thinks they stink.” Tentatively the Cossack withdrew his whip. “Oh yes,” the encouraged Mills went on, warming to his subject, “hitting isn’t good. Yes, Lord. Thank you, Jesus. He told me to tell you you mustn’t hit. If you have to hit you mustn’t hit hard. And killing. Killing isn’t nice. Neither shouldst thou maim. Maiming’s a sin. It’s bad to hurt. It’s wicked to make bleed. God can’t stand the sight of blood. It makes Him sick to His stomach. Thank you, oh thank you, Jesus!” Mills said. He had spoken these last few sentences with his eyes shut tight and now, cautiously, he opened first one eye, then the other. The pike was back in its sheathing, the whip wound tightly round the saddlehorn. The warriors were gazing at him transfixed, wilder somehow in their concentrate attention than they had been in their hostility just moments before. They seemed to have broken or at least relaxed their formal formation, listening now as a crowd might rather than a trained phalanx. “This lot’s easy,” Mills remarked offhandedly to the merchant. “I needn’t tell you not to translate.” He advanced toward them, wanting to work them closer up, but they pulled back on their reins and opened up additional space between themselves and the speaker.

“Oh yes,” Mills continued, feeling his immense power and beginning to enjoy himself. “Here’s more stuff God told me. He wants you to lay down your pikestaffs.” Mills stepped back out of range as first one wild man then another lobbed his weapon into the clearing. “Throw them down, throw them down,” he said, and was astonished to see a rain of wood gentle as pop flies come floating down with an impotent clatter not two dozen feet from where they sat on their horses. “Now the bullwhips. Yes, Lord. Thank you, Jesus.” The merchant translated and the bullwhips made a harmless leather pile next to the staffs, intricately interlocked now as collapsed fence.

“It’s how they make war,” the merchant whispered.

“Ain’t gonna study war no more,” Mills said.

“They need their weapons to hunt,” the merchant said.

Mills shrugged. “God wants them to eat berries,” he said. “Tell them.” The merchant looked at Mills with interest. “Go on,” Mills said, “tell them.” The merchant translated. “That’s right,” Mills said. “He wants you to eat nuts and boil your grasses for soup. Soup is holy. Fruit and nuts are a blessing to the Lord, praise His Holy Name.”

He stared at his auditors but they looked away from him, fearfully avoiding his gaze. So this is what it was like to be Guillalume, Mills thought, or no, Guillalume’s eldest brother, even Guillalume’s father himself. He sized them up, their rough, thick clothing, their sharp teeth and solid bodies, their tough skin the color of hide, the sinister vision which slanted from their peculiar eyes. A rough bunch. He could do some real good here. “God wants you,” he told them earnestly, “to take the stableboys who shovel your horseshit for you and make them princes. Just after not hitting that’s what He wants most.”

“Oh, Mills,” the merchant said.