B007P4V3G4 EBOK (32 page)

When he woke up, it turned out to be blowing a little more.
The thread was continually bending far beyond the bars. It had not
fumed any colder. The thread still glistened, but no longer as
freshly as that morning. If anything, it had gained something
mysterious. The thread was his property more than ever, was
Baldur's opinion, now it looked somewhat less physical and rather
more like something manufactured, a thing made by Baldur, and
his forever.

Baldur climbed up and he instantly felt the difference now it was
blowing. It'd be bitter if it broke, he thought, for he would not
gladly see any possession lost. But when he had progressed
halfway to the top edge and had to hold on tight in the wind, the
thread, in his own eyes too, became rather everything
really turned all fine and dandy, making Baldur highly active. He
would like to dash off in all directions to make repairs in the places
under threat; he ought to be in charge of overseeing a whole
network of threads encompassing a gigantic space. Animals would
swarm towards it from all sides and be left dangling in those
threads, caught by their silly spiky bits and hairs.

'Ahoy,' shrieked Baldur on just his single little thread, as he
already felt that network tense and tremble around him, and now
he shouted passionately: 'Shulk the flyzum - snuff the hum;
calcium marrow, hook the buzzers!' What a wild triumph this is,
Baldur thought, such a poisonous dash towards the threats. How
I'll block this blowing, he thought, allowing himself to go with the
wind, sitting on the tautly drawn bow his thread had become
because of the force of the wind.

'Come on,' he shouted. 'Silent flyers. Let's be having you
augurs!' That's how Baldur D. Quorg sat on his first thread and he
understood so well that it might snap in a hard wind, that he
didn't dare laugh. But he had to do something to give his joy an
outlet and that's why he chuckled, most mindful to do this
moderately and cuttingly, grinding his jaws together in the process.
Ah well, he had just one little thread, and he looked along it from
the bottom to the top and from top to bottom, and it wasn't much,
that single little thread! He had to have very many of them, and not all loose ones, but ones arranged in such a way that they
contained and balanced each other. Then Baldur climbed up rapidly,
for he suddenly felt that the wind was not a force to play with on
a single, wobbly and windy, loose thread. 'You shouldn't make
things up, Baldur,' said Baldur when he was sitting on the edge,
'and you mustn't shout. In fact, you, gotta be very quiet!' he
cheekily cried immediately afterwards, on purpose, and this he
repeated once more: 'In fact, you gotta be very quiet!'

He was sitting by the lump of paint again and looked at the
way his thread was fixed to the hair from the paint brush.
Disapproving, he shook his head and then walked over to the
fence post. He looked down and then back again, at his thread,
then upwards, suspiciously, and then he prepared himself to walk
down along the post. But before doing so, he muttered something
which made him look rigidly ahead of himself for the full length of
the descent along the post.

'I'm a calculator, dammit!' he muttered.

Once he had landed on the ground, he continued to sit there for
a while, quite motionless. What nonsense, to set to, on a fence like
that. You ought to set to work in the shade and make an entire net
at a stroke. What a job that would be. Such a tremendous job.
Nobody else could do that. Such a grand thing one does in silence
and awaits the results just as silently. He who touches shall wither,
thought Baldur. Space is the lust to play, the net is will!

3 q r = 2 lr g, it suddenly occurred to Baldur D. Quorg -
how7 - the mind, too, rewards with fruit. Nervously, he began to
rub his front legs together, during which he screwed his eyes half
shut and his mouth contorted grimly.

'Right,' he softly said, inwardly, 'right.' And then he looked
around him to see if anybody was listening and said, half out loud:
'And thus the cadavers abided in ropes', and because of this a
meagre thing turned into something solemn after all.

Without minding his thread any further, he ran away, along the
top edge of the fence and then down, back to the ground again
and a good way across the ground too. Cantering along like this,
he cried out a few more times: 'Right' or'Quite so' and then he
came to a halt in front of a wall which he ran up instantly until he
reached a beam. That beam formed part of the roof. He went the
length of that beam, too, to where the gloom cast by the roof
became very deep, and then he reached a little door in the coping
of a farm barn of which the wall made up the bottom most part. He now climbed up to the upper rim of that little door until he had
reached the middle and there he halted and began to concentrate.

Having sat there a while, an older spider appeared at some
distance away from him. It was quite a big one, and he was called
Simon P. Quellyn. He had been at work on a web for a while
already and rather felt the need for a chat. Creakingly, he rubbed
himself with his legs down his hindquarters and then he said, all of
a sudden: 'I'm just lumbered with it!' Baldur nodded, and it pleased
him that his youth was apparently now behind him for Simon P.
Quellyn spoke to him as though to an adult. Baldur adjusted
to this, therefore, and said something old too: 'Just so.'

'There's me having to yank that lot from my arse,' Simon said,
troubled. 'And nobody's grateful to you for it,' Baldur replied
instantly, with a bitterness that turned out particularly well.

'Spot on!' cried Simon P. He regarded Baldur for some time,
appreciating him.

'Are you going to start here too?' he then asked.

'As long as it's getting time for it,' cried Baldur.

'Spot on!' Simon said one more time, but he said nothing further
and, unexpectedly, he dropped away again on a fresh thread.

Baldur watched him go and saw that the other spider had made
considerable progress already with a large and extremely sturdy
web. That spider's skill was evident. His threads were nicely taut and
the joins looked unassailable. Simon P. Quellyn saw perfectly well
that Baldur was watching him, and though he didn't make an issue
out of it and continued to work just as calmly as before, it still gave
him pleasure. He had learned that one must always keep calm and
that excitement leads to mistakes, but on the other hand he knew
that the danger of excitement is ever present when one is busy with
a construction in the certainty that it is unsurpassably good. 'It's
always wait-and-see what makes a beeline for it,' he used to say to
himself occasionally in the past. He never did that now any more, for
the slightest allusion to fate's favour can itself be of unfavourable
influence. The emotion of satisfaction, too, can be so. One ought not
to undergo such an emotion therefore, if one truly wishes to draw
the favour of fate towards oneself! Thus, Simon P. Quellyn ignored
from then on any possible appreciation from Baldur D. Quorg.

The latter, having watched for a while, let himself drop too.
With a pounding heart! This was undeniable for, even though he
had been talking bitterly and like some one of experience, as had
been demanded of him, this was to be his first web!

When he had let himself drop some way, he halted with a jolt.

Now the thing was to begin to rock back and forth until he was
able to grab the side of the door with his front legs. For, if he
didn't do that, he would have to drop down altogether and then
climb up that side with a good length of thread behind him, there
to make his first join, having first drawn in a long and useless
length of the thread, to be his first construction thread running
from half way down the upper edge to half way the side.

And what use's that palaver to me7 thought Baldur, so he began
to rock back and forth. Swinging about like that, he did think it a
pity after all that Simon P. Quellyn was busy in the same door
opening, for the fun of this adventure was being marred a bit by
the necessity of having to act experienced. The conversation with
Simon marked the end of his youth, and now he had to calculate
and keep his mind on things; but had all of this not been the case,
the swinging would have rather amused him.

Swinging, Baldur looked at Simon but, sitting on a cross-thread,
he was just at that moment busy on a join and he needed all his
attention and didn't look round. Then, despite himself and therefore
with an angrily contorted mouth and very much under his breath,
in case Simon should start to look after all, Baldur sang:

What a rotten ditty, thought Baldur, for he hadn't kept an eye on
the door and had swung into it with his back without having been
able to grab hold of it. The following swings he executed in
silence, doggedly, and then he was able to grasp the side. He fixed
his thread well indeed and then he had the foundation for a web.

'Not bad for a beginning,' observers might have muttered and
would have certainly had they had known that this was indeed the
very first time; in the main, spiders use trees or bushes with a good
number of side branches offering a generous hold. But Baldur
didn't miss the fact that there were no observers cheering him on.
Now he'd fixed the first thread, he no longer had a need for
Simons proximity either, what with his chatter. Now Baldur was
looking at that lovely foundation thread, he felt that he wasn't one for company at all, really. He climbed, making thread, up into the
comer of the door. Having landed there, he suddenly spotted he
had made a mistake. During this last part of the climb he shouldn't
have made any thread but should only have started in the corner
from where he ought then to have walked over to the beginning
of his thread, half way along the top edge, then to have stepped
on to his construction thread in order to make a join half way
along that thread with the first cross thread running from the
comer. But now he was in that comer already, with a huge strand
of thread flying from his body, and Baldur became dark with rage.
There's me having to yank it from my arse, he now thought too,
quite like Simon just now, and he let the piece of thread go, which
now hung, pointless and disfiguring, down the side of the door.
He quickly began a new one which, with exaggerated care, he
fastened in the comer and then, spinning like one possessed, he
walked along the top edge of the door to the start of his diagonal
construction thread, quickly nipped along it to half way and then,
quietly and thoroughly, he made his first thread join.

There now! But who could take pleasure in a first result like this
while, rumpled and pointless, that unused length of thread hung
down along the side of the door, like a mistake and a stomach
churning waste? Baldur didn't rest, therefore, and worked on at
once. He didn't want to make any more mistakes. Not ever again.
He spun threads, first three from the comer to other points on the
first construction thread and then, in corners other than that one,
threads from these to the top and side of the door. Once he was
done with this, he climbed back up again and oversaw the whole
thing. It was hard to speak of a 'whole thing', for that matter, but
when Baldur pondered this further, he had a terrible shock for he
noticed that he had made a far bigger mistake than that first,
wasted thread: were he to expand his web on the other side of his
construction thread, then he would inevitably touch Simon P.
Quellyn's web. But that wasn't all. He also saw that, in the time
Baldur had needed to climb up to the top edge of the door, Simon
had made a join with a thread from his web, quick as a flash, on to
Baldur's construction thread.

It made Baldur go rigid. What was it again he had cried in his
first thread, in the fence, about 'silent flyers and augurs'? 'What a
stench the world is,' he now cried out. He didn't really cry as much
as shriek: 'What a stench the world is, what a whining stench of
unwillingness.' He decided upon the following: in due course, Simon P. Quellyn would have to come up along thread c6 of his
web for a new connection to join r3 to the wood. Baldur would go
and sit there, but tucked away slightly, so that the climbing Simon
would not be able to see him before sticking out his head above
the edge. Then Baldur would strike.

He only thought of the word 'strike', not of killing, murdering,
destroying or of pinching off the head. To strike is sufficient and
all other concepts are needless.

Thus he waited.

Simon P. Quellyn would have to come soon. He still had to go
past v6 and then half way along to c7, parallel to c6, make the join
there and then back and up on the wood along c6. Simon had been
going about for a while, thinking what to say to Baldur this time,
once he had reached the top, and he had decided on an amiable
remark. He would say: 'Loads of catches here,' for he had used one
of Baldur's threads and perhaps he would then be at peace with the
fact that Simon had taken advantage of his work, for a plentiful
catch could be expected anyway.