Voices from the Past Part 124

"Never, never, never, never..."

Henley Street

Stratford

L

innus, whose gypsy father is an acrobat, visits me these days; with his father in jail he has to wait for his release. Dumpy, leather-skinned and wild-eyed, Linnus is fourteen, and has a four-year-old brother, Peter. Their mother is dead.

My old apple tree is Linnus' home, when he is here; I sit outside while he performs tricks he has learned from his father, tricks I have never seen. Peter yawns on the gra.s.s or stands between my legs or pods my lap, thrilled by his brother's arm and leg cleverness...the sun warms the three of us.

His tricks done, glad to rest, Linnus stretches on the ground, to incline me a little of his wanderings, the hunger, always the hunger: it's as if he never had a full meal. They are scourged out of town, thrown into jail, entertained at castles, fed on cakes and ale, left to starve on a farm. Linnus points to Peter, asleep on my lap.

"Why do you like him? He's ugly."

"He's ugly but he may change and grow to be handsome, perhaps become an explorer, like Drake." And I talk to Linnus about Drake and the Armada and as I talk it seems to me I'm talking to Hamnet, or is this Hamnet on my lap?

It doesn't matter.

Linnus and Peter matter, and after a while we rig fis.h.i.+ng gear and go to the river and fish, dawdle all afternoon, Linnus croaking gypsy songs, Peter in and out of the water, das.h.i.+ng after magpies and crows, gabbling berries, every problem forgotten.

Home late, Linnus prepared supper for us (Ann away for a few days): he was quick and clever in the kitchen, reminding me of an actor familiar with his part.

Henley Street

Stratford

December 11, '15

Linnus described a play he saw last summer and I was reminded of the first play I saw, as a boy, performed by gypsies who told a tale of Scottish intrigue and murder that ended with the beautiful heroine's suicidal plunge into a loch. Those swarthy actors seldom left my mind for weeks, waking me, haunting school and play. I can yet see the sheriff torturing the girl accused of stealing: words have gone but not the actions.

That evening, Papa and I walked home together. He would not talk about the play. Mama disliked plays and never attended, d.a.m.ning them as "lucifers." I suppose the gypsy play was a "lucifer."

Henley Street

Stratford

December 12, 1615

One of my bitterest experiences was seeing Pericles killed by a sheep herder. On the outskirts of London, Pericles burst into joyous yappings and began to frolic and nip sheep, an immense herd, stretching for blocks. I saw him tangle with a black ram. The herder, rus.h.i.+ng at Pericles, mistaking his fun, struck him with his crook and beat him to the street; then, before I could shove my way through the herd, flailed him over the head with the b.u.t.t. Yelling, pus.h.i.+ng, I knocked down the man but reached Pericles too late... I wanted to leave the city; I wanted to spit on mankind. I wish I could have my friend to talk to, eat meat from my hand: there's plenty of meat for you now, boy.

Midnight

What is it that has embittered me?

I felt the bitterness long before someone tried to kill Ellen. Did the bitterness come about through attempting the impossible in my acts of creation, losing life in work? A tree is tree now. Once it was wonderful. My spleen stems from the sleepwalker's for I am sleepwalker- without-taper, from Romeo to Shylock, king to clown, hero to villain. I can see distinctly: there's no mirage about cottage, family, friends, and Avon. Stratford is Act 5. I wait my cue! Go to, what are your lines, Yorik?

Caesar's battleground kept me from a sane life.

Drinking stronger than ale I kept company with the b.l.o.o.d.y horde...rape in my heart...thief at hand...deceit as friend...murder as bed...

Someone beats on my door; that's Burbage: "Let's go, Will," he yells. "It's almost one o'clock; you have to be at the Globe in half an hour."

The hour, the play, the scene, the gla.s.s running out, faster, faster, faster!

Henley Street

Stratford

December 20, 1615 Evening late

Most of all I shall miss a beautiful woman, her smile, the eyelids and features faintly powdered, the white of her hands and arms, the sense of longing, her voice's mystery, the carefully rounded b.r.e.a.s.t.s, their softness, her light gait, her voluptuary whispers making slave, the weight of her at night, her softness underneath in the morning...

So I never saw her again...writing was my coition...my fake living...no, I never saw her again; that was fate, or...to never see the wanted is that phenomenal blindness; to never have the beauty is pismire.

Our old friend sits on her throne, above marble steps, wearing blazoned robe, her crown straight-and neck straight, too, the lidded concern apt, antique scepter beside her: her awareness is aware of certainties, watching earl and captain, bawd and bugler.

We are to love her, do collective obeisance, beseech her favors. And she, with her rufescence, shall free us of every plague, down to smallest poverty, and, like Merlin, give us castles for cots, hope for despair, money for thought.

Sleeve lifts pontifical hand and blesses with its kissing ring. Rays of sun, through lozenged windows, fold leaded shadows over troubled brows.

Ah, Queen, your majesty is unparalleled, you are our patron of the arts, generous in every particular, particular to man's freedom, eschewing stock, pillory and scaffold.

As she rises, sequins and braid tremble, every motion capsuled in scarlet, the very velvet of confidence-the robe quite long, ruffs and ruffles fresh, the jewels paying their worth: she walks, our Queen walks: we remember her mother scaffolded for adultery.

Henley Street

Shylock was less persistent than I to own, fief vs.

chattel, clown vs. crown, thoughts vs. dreams: with such a goal, a man stoops, a man batters, a man astonishes himself with crudities that some might call vitality: this is the sighing, buying, signing: and when I began to own more land and houses I owned less and less time: that was my mortgage, paid over and over by less writing.