John Gardner - Freddy's Book

Now Bishop Brask, to the Devil’s disgust, was spouting poetry. He recited in a high, thin goat-voice, rocking a little in rhythm with the words, his shadow rising and falling on the wall behind him. Lars-Goren and his wife stared into the fire, listening or dreaming. The smaller children watched the bishop with their mouths open. It was an old Swedish tale of love and war, funerals and marriages. Soon, though he fought with all his might against it, the Devil was fast asleep.

5.

THEY STAYED THREE WEEKS at the castle of Lars-Goren, sometimes riding out to watch the peasants at work or to pass an evening in one of the village inns, sometimes sitting with Lars-Goren’s family, the dog nearby, under trees or in front of the fireplace. Bishop Brask was increasingly impressed by the native intelligence of his friend — for indeed, he was beginning to think of Lars-Goren as just that, a friend, though their beliefs were far apart. Once, returning from a long ride to watch timber being marked to be cut for the coming winter’s fires, the bishop said, “You have a good life here in Hälsingland, Lars-Goren. I see how your peasants look up to you, how your wife and children love you, and I’m filled with amazement, exactly as a man might be if he visited Eden.”

They had stopped their horses side by side on a high ridge looking down over fields and the castle. The sun was low on the horizon, the sky deep red above the jagged pines. The dog, Lady, looked up inquiringly.

“Yes, it’s good here,” said Lars-Goren. He sat with his hands on the pommel of the saddle, his face solemn, waiting for the qualification he knew must come.

“But unreal,” said the bishop, with a glance at Lars-Goren. Then he looked down into the valley again.”

“Unreal?” Lars-Goren echoed.

“Like Eden,” said the bishop. “It’s a depressing thought, I admit, but inescapable.”

“I don’t follow,” said Lars-Goren.

The bishop nodded at the valley with its long shadows, the castle set on its hill like a ruby full of light. “It’s one of those dreams of innocence, this place. It’s easy enough to live justly here. What’s to prevent it? But who can live in Stockholm as you live here in Hälsingland? Or think of Paris — Vienna — Rome! The future’s with the cities; you know that yourself.” He gave an apologetic little shrug. “Cities are where the wealth is, and the power that makes your little hideaway safe or not safe. And what are the cities but hotbeds of rivalry and cunning, fear and exploitation? It’s the old story — Abraham and Lot: Abraham up there with his sheep in the mountains, Lot struggling to stay honest down in Sodom and Gomorrah. That’s where the Devil keeps house, we like to say: down in the cities where merchants show their wares by uncertain light and pine sells for fruitwood, where sly politicians thread their lies through truths and half-truths till not even they themselves know which is which. Who can help growing greedy and corrupt, in places like that? Cheat or be cheated, that’s the rule — and the rewards of shrewd cheating are visible on every hand: fine togs in every window, fine leather carriages under every lamp, fine stone houses filled with fight. Lords steal in one way, beggars and cutthroats in another, but in the end it’s all the same, rob and be robbed; it’s the norm, down there.” The bishop tipped his head, sadly smiling, his eyes queerly merry.

“Ah yes,” the bishop continued a moment later, as if answering something Lars-Goren had said, “Complexity’s a terrible thing. That’s what our retreats to the country make us see. How monstrously dull it is, every time we go back to Gustav’s court and catch up on the latest plots and counterplots, learn which new schemer has stuck his head up to tempt the axe! How rich life is here in the wilderness where people can be above-board and open with one another! How clear things become, as they were for Achilles, John the Baptist, St. Francis! No wonder your great religions come from inhospitable regions, and no wonder they tend to sicken when the wilderness gives way to the vast golden cities of Solomon. It’s the same with the arts, or so it seems to me. How fine the old Viking carvings are, or the primitive statues of Africa, or the square-cut tomb of King Edward the First of England — I suppose you haven’t seen it. But then great cities rise, artists grow wealthy, their vision grows confused and complex. What a pity! Irony comes in. Paradox. Soon the only powerful emotion artists feel is nihilism. ‘If I can’t have my Eden, I’ll destroy you all’—the same words the man of religion says when the world grows confusing and complex. ‘The axe shall be laid to the root of the tree!’ Ah yes, poor humanity! Poor Sweden!”

“I don’t know,” Lars-Goren said, surprised by the bishop’s sudden shift, “as kingdoms go—”

“Yes, I should have guessed,” the bishop said. “You have great hopes for our dear little Sweden. Why not? Why should we ever lose our innocence, like the French, the Italians, the English? We’re a race of commoners. We always were, but now especially thanks to Kristian’s bloodbath. We’re farmers, peasant villagers, priests in frayed cuffs. We have the miners, of course; an unruly crowd. But even they have a certain love of order, as we see in their meetings, if there’s nothing out there frightening them. Perhaps little Sweden will become a model for all the world, you think. The basis of a universal ethic.”

“You have reason enough to speak ironically,” Lars-Goren said, just a trifle stern. He crossed his hands on the pommel and looked down in the direction of the dog. “Your own life has not turned out exactly as you might have wished, or so I gather, and you’ve witnessed many other failures of vision. King Gustav, perhaps. He was once the kind of innocent you describe, yet now—” He sucked in his lips and mused for a moment, then nodded as if to himself. “No, on second thought, even now a part of him believes in open-heartedness and reason, I think. Why else this rage to see the Devil gotten rid of?”

Bishop Brask laughed, youthful for an instant. “He does even now believe in reason, that’s true! You’ve heard, I take it, that he’s ordered that public debates be held between the Lutherans and the Church? There’s faith in reason for you!”

“You think the dice are loaded?”

“Not at all — at least not by Gustav! The fittest will survive — naturally.” He smiled, wry and indifferent.

“The Lutherans, you think?”

“The Lutherans, yes. And after the Lutherans—” He shrugged. “A man could build a great many huts with the stones and leaded glass of Chartres Cathedral. Now that we have the printing press, and paper, and tawdry bindings, how vast the potential for, so to speak, ‘literature’!”

“Nevertheless,” Lars-Goren said, “if the Devil were out of it, and people could quietly argue things out, apply the Golden Rule with an appropriate measure of self-love, if you follow me—”

“Oh, I follow you all right,” said the bishop, and tipped his head back, looking up at the darkness above them, an empty sky made darker by the blood red glow on the horizon. “Your views are very clear, and even if they weren’t, any sensible child could construct them. It’s easy to see what you think of as good, here in the country, surrounded by your family, your faithful dog, your well-cared-for peasants: openness of heart, the willingness to tell a man frankly what you think. A man could build a whole ethic of that, as indeed the Old Testament Jews did: evil as the closing of the heart, refusal to communicate. What was Adam’s fall but a turning toward secrecy, self-interest?”

“I’ve heard worse definitions of good,” Lars-Goren said.