Fool School (25 page)

"Not if it were given freely," I say. "A gift from
God's house in Scotland--"

"Is this a story about Scotland or a story about
Arthur?" asks Stan.

"Both," I say.

"Et could be a--what's the word, not a reunion, nor a
reparation, ach, I've forgotten et," says Malcolm.

"How about a repatriation?" says Nuncle quietly.

"You mean the knight's returning home? He's the one
Pict in the Round Table?" I ask.

Nuncle faces Malcolm and allows a small smile. "For
any audience with a Pict in it, it would be quite popular. Don't
you think, Maelcolum?"

My Malcolm blinks and then nods. "Aye. But there
wasn't a Scot at the Round Table, was there, then?"

Nuncle steeples his fingers, leaning against the
wall. "No story is a true story," he murmurs in his undertones, a
tone where he has something wily he means to say. "Thus, every
story can be a true story, if you allow your audience to believe in
it."

"So here's kind of what I've got," says Stan, and he
closes his eyes and taps a hand against the air as he speaks.
"There's a boy from Scotland. He comes down to join King Arthur at
the Round Table. He has a vision of the Key to Heaven, at the
highest peak of--what was it called? Durness?"

"Aye," says Malcolm.

"Yeah. So he takes a trio of warring Blackfriars and
rides up to Scotland--"

"Past the Wall," adds Hero.

"Yeah, past the Wall to Durness. And there's the
castle on a floating island, and the rain stairs--"

"Make them legendary," adds Nuncle. "The Raining
Stair."

"Right. And the blue knight--why is he blue? What's
blue mean?"

"Rain," says Hero, who is quite immersed.

"Or
egalité
," says Perille. "What is this word
in English? Eggmuffin? Eglentine?"

"Equality," I say.

"That's good, that is," says Malcolm. "The equality
of England and Scotland. Have et be that."

Stan and Nuncle share a look. "Don't make it
explicit," says Nuncle. "And don't make it political. It's enough
that there should be symbolism meant, let the audience draw their
deductions themselves. Each symbolism can be replaced by any other
symbolism, if you allow the audience their own minds on the
matter."

"So they joust, and the blue knight turns into mist.
Then what?" says Stan.

"Ef--no, hear me out. I've--shut up, let me wairk
this out. Ef the blue stands for equality between England and
Scotland, then the joust es a war between the two--"

"But they're both Scottish," points out Hero.

"He esn't Scottish either, then," Malcolm says, "he's
bearing the banner of Arthur, that's England. He's bringing the
English court upstairs, so to say. Jousting under the mantle of
England. And he can't defeat the Scottish knight, can't even find
the bugger. The futility of war? Maybe--maybe there's a color
change en the knight's livery when he realizes he'll not defeat
Scotland through arms? Red and gold, as he reclaims his
heritage?"

"But the disembodied voice says they have to joust if
they're going to get the Key to Heaven," says Hero. "When does he
get the key?"

"What's missing," says Nuncle, "is an element of the
godly."

We all ponder this.

"And what about the friars?" I say. "That part didn't
make sense even to me."

"Mountain," says Malcolm, flopping back in his seat
in consternation. "The mountain es Scotland. The floating
island--the Viking Shetlands? Es et to do with the Norsemen
somehow?"

"Let's leave it for today," says Nuncle. "Think on
it, and perhaps we'll advance the story tomorrow. Luncheon."

Which is letters, for me.

The intellectual distraction is wonderful, I can
focus on my letters and allow the story to stew in the back depths
of my mind, I've completely forgotten Wolf and her intrusive rules.
Give me a good challenge any day, I won't rise to meet it, but my
failure will distract me from all else.

The story is a shifting labyrinth of walls, I can
feel the drift of the chess pieces, and in no time letters is over.
I didn't tear through the paper once, Hamlin praises me, and it's
now tambrel time, I feel over-alert from my hunger, which is
starting to whistle, I've not had luncheon one day in four since
I've got here, my belly cups my ribs, gurgling intermittently. I
feel confident that Hamlin will declare me literate in no more than
a week or two. Perhaps.

"But the blue knight--" says Hero as we return to the
music room.

"No," Nuncle tells him firmly. "Now it's tambrel. No
talking, only drums." Nuncle lifts a tambrel and mallet slowly to
eyelevel, shakes them at Hero, as if he were a toddler, and tumps
once on the drumhead. "Drum."

Bliss, actually, to retreat from my mind for another
hour. I conceive a race of men who live their lives this way, they
have invented drums that play when their shoulders are shook, they
plough while shaking their shoulders, they reap while drumming,
they eat and drink to the sound of tambrels, they walk in a
distinctive way, they bounce their shoulders with each step, and as
I play the tambrel beats I see these men, they have dark foreign
skin, darker than Perille's, the color of wet woodpulp, they are
walking in a line, their shoulders go boinggg, and I bust up
laughing in the middle of class, everyone looks at me, but I will
not share this vision, I've spoken out of turn too much today
already, I'm humiliating myself, but it's so funny, these dancing
men.

Stan insists we practice shawm, too, even though it's
the long miserable sleepy part of day. This is less pleasurable,
we're all worn, and it's more of a swamp of a class than a flit
through clouds. When shawm class finally ends, we're all spent, but
there's still Classics.

The top room. Hamlin asks why I didn't come up after
music, I explain, he nods in understanding and then nods to
sleep.

Weatherford. He is dramatic in his black cloak, a
raven with a marten's face. I have yet to find his class tedious,
but at the same time it's impossible to drift away. I almost want
to ask whether we could have tambrel lessons at the end of each
day, so that I'd have a vacancy in my mind when it's time to sleep.
Nuncle won't change the order of classes, though. So I must try to
re-light the fire in my brain long enough to listen to--

"The headmaster has requested I give a lesson on
symbolism in the telling of stories. We will begin with a discourse
on
synecdoche
--"

Light the brain-fire . . . like striking sparks onto
wet woodpulp--wet woodpulp--and I drift immediately to my dancing
men, I have to breathe very deeply to keep from laughing--

"Which is the practice of representing the whole via
a small piece of the whole. For example, when we speak of the
crown, the golden hat is not meant. 'The crown' signifies the king.
Likewise, the Round Table is not merely a piece of furniture, it
comprises a hundred great knights, does it not? I was told you were
discussing Scotland, where the Drum is not merely a hill, but the
seat of the 'lairds.' And yet it is often sufficient to speak of
the Drum."

Oh God, drums, and their shoulders bouncing, tumpty,
tumpty, as they eat--perhaps they all have crowns--I must stop,
I'll upset Weatherford--

"This is synecdoche--"

Malcolm sneezes, and Weatherford closes his eyes,
wearing the threateningly mild smile of the sincerely put out. His
pens have left large pools of ink where they rest against twin
pages, all the words will be blotted out. Narrow, womanly shoulders
heave up and down, the professor has some sort of hiccups, he
speaks and tells Malcolm through his hiccups that whenever a sneeze
is coming--which, well, there's dust, it's not unheard of in a
library, but here it's expected that the spoken word "sneeze" will
precede the event, but I am transfixed, his shoulders, they're
bouncing, each hiccup causes his shoulders to hop, I imagine a
system by which butter is churned, you attach the handles to his
shoulders and then sneeze, oh God you could invent endless
conveniences to attach to those hiccupping shoulders, and they
don't stop, he's still hiccupping, you could attach a set of wheels
to a clever pulley system and he could wheel himself around like a
big boy, you could invent a self-propelling carriage, a man in
front with sniffles and powdered paprika to snuff up his nose, and
Weatherford on the other end, nudging a lever with his shoulders,
and I imagine adding a drum, tumpty, tumpty as the auto-carriage
wheels people around the town, I see the carriage riding off
irrepressibly into the sunset, a pinch of spice and tumpty, tumpty,
tumpty, I've ruined myself and my smile quivers and I collapse into
my desk and I can't think straight enough to cover my mouth and
Weatherford turns to me and I suppress my mirth as hard as I can
and it doesn't work, it bursts and I laugh helplessly at his
convulsing face, it all comes out of me, it's so funny, I can't
repress the giggles, and it all comes out, the boundless laughter,
tumpty drum shoulder boiiing scoot scoot scoot aachooo, it bursts
through my face as snickering that escalates to hooting, and at
last, at longest last, it all comes out of Weatherford as well. To
the detriment of all.

A wet, slippery fart. It continues, it doesn't end,
as ropes of shit eject from under Weatherford's black robes. An
indescribable smell, not at all like regular midden-deposits, fills
the library, and from behind me I heard Hamlin's cluck and "oh,
Tom," he's perfectly disappointed in me.

Weatherford's face. A clenched red mask of despair.
The delicate, almost elfin features curl into improbable sadness,
his eyes are shut tight, his teeth are displayed and tears are held
back ineffectively by dainty eyelashes. From the back of the room
we hear, quite plainly, "Class dismissed. Return to your rooms with
the door shut for the rest of the evening."

On the stairs down, Perille taps me on the shoulder,
I don't know what his intentions are. I feel . . . well, I'm not
sure how to feel.

"Hardly the first time," Perille tells me, and I nod.
"But you'll be in for it, dere's a reason the rest of us never
crack up till he's out of the room."

"What will happen?" I ask, and as we descend I feel
dread like iron stones filling my body.

"He's a mean one," says Perille, and returns directly
to his room. At the door he turns and says, "Don't leave until
tomorrow. Piss in your hat if you need to." The door shuts.

I will hold my pee.

Malcolm and I sit in the darkness with our backs to
the door. I have my face pressed against my hands, I have yet again
ruined my education. The silence is thick and filthy.

At last the shuffling of feet passes in the hall
outside. It's what we've been listening for. Hamlin's voice
whispers amelioratively, soothingly, "there, there," like a wet-hen
nurse. My body cavity is filled with emotion, but I have no name
for this emotion, it's the emotion of disaster. A vibration
resonates through me, I imagine that this is some sort of sin alarm
that the body has. I'm not certain what my sin here is, exactly. I
had no control over my body or mind; exhaustion had made me crazy,
I lost control.

That starts me thinking of Stan's story about the
wife-murderer. Do we all lose control from time to time? Is this
not what sleep is, what laughter is? Is every man capable of
murder, if enough control is ceded to . . . what?

What is it, deep inside men's souls, that takes over
when we lose control? The devil? Do we have a second self, a
goblin-man living in the shadows of our minds, that rises up at
times and drives us to act beyond our sense? Should each of us be
hanged whenever we show a loss of control, or are, perhaps, some
men's inner goblins more volatile than others? Was the
wife-murderer in Stan's story hanged for having the worst inner
goblins on Earth? Were his goblins worse than mine, just as one
king is better or worse at ruling than another?

Time passes.

A knuckle on the door. Malcolm turns the handle,
enough to pop the door open--the Romans produced good
door-latches--and Nuncle's sour face is backlit dimly by the
candles.

"There will be no Classics tomorrow," he says. "Our
professor desires to punish you, Tom. I have no strong desire to
lose Weatherford, who is one of the great scholars of story, and
thus I permit him his petty retributions. Please indulge him. In
the end, having his favor will provide you with a much better
education than you would otherwise receive."

I murmur assent, and Nuncle drifts to the other
students' rooms.

As I shut the door I tell Malcolm that we've been
given the worst luck in the history of humanity.

"Tom. I've been thenking about that, actually. You
remember that jinxed horse I bought us, don't you?"

The one with the intestines spilling out like a
squeezed meat pie? Yes, I remember it. I say so.

"And the gairl in the pit. The goat child. The wolf
man. Jost--everything. There esn't any way in the world for our
luck to be no more than luck. Et's got to be Divine."

"D'you think?" I say. "Divine?"

"Et's got to be, I can feel et. There's a lesson en
et, something we're meant to learn. There's a shape of things, the
mistakes we've made are the lessons of another school we're in, a
Divine school. We're shown these lessons we're meant to learn from,
but I can't seen through it yet. Can you?"

I stare into the dark space and permit God's word
fill me, but permitting it doesn't make it so. Nothing fills me, I
merely desire the knowledge of God's intentions for us so I can
tell Malcolm the answers.

Nothing. No visions. Just a dark room. I say so.

"Aye. How about the story of the blue knight?"

But whatever vision I had earlier is overcast today,
the skies of my mind are fog and dust.

"I'm nae in the mood to test the devil gairl's will.
It's me for bed."