Old Green World (3 page)

“That’s right, the one time, and the man was crazy and you had to run away.” Albert had heard the story many times and very much wanted to preempt hearing it again.

“You’ll never understand until you see it,” Arto said. “All these things that have been part of your life since you were a baby. ‘Book.’ When I was a boy, I didn’t know ‘book.’ There was no such thing. What is ‘book’? What is ‘read’? I never read anything, and I never will. Your mother, sewing with needles now? There was no ‘needle’ in Viru. There was no ‘market,’ no ‘farm.’ When we got here, Mal Planck and the Adepts taught us what farming was, and why we should care. Before then, all our lives, it was nothing but hunt and fight and eat and die. You couldn’t even understand.” He trailed off. There was a long silence.

“So,” Arto then said, picking up and biting a radish, “you are going to keep reading. No more protest. Once you have a book, then you can read it and then trade it for more books. That’s what Harriet said. And then, when you become a gentleman, and you live in your big house, probably without Thomas, but maybe with Thomas—when you live there, you can remember that we bought you a book, and you can invite us to live with you in your big house.”

Albert put his hand on Arto’s. “I don’t know if it will work out like that. But thank you, Papa.”

“We should head into town,” Arto said.

They started down the road from their farm to the market square. The road was relatively smooth and marked with their wagon wheels. They shared the road with the Plancks, who had the farm just one over. Arto always sang a song while they rode: once, when he was little, Albert had asked Arto about it. “It’s a folk song from Viru, wishing good travel. It’s lucky,” Arto said. “It doesn’t sound lucky. It sounds scary,” Albert said, and Arto laughed.
 

Now Albert sang along, although he barely understood the song. All the words were familiar, common words they used in the house, but together they became gibberish, or a code. He sang along all the louder for that, full of hope that someday the veil would drop, that he would be granted a sudden understanding of something real and deep about his father.

There were thick woods for a while between their farms and the town, but when they came out from the woods the town and the Castle stretched before them like another world. The breeze kept Albert alert but not too cold.

When they approached the market, just at the foot of the Castle, it started to get crowded with throngs of people and carts. “If you please,” Arto smiled to another farmer as he pulled ahead of him into their spot. The Todorovs had a good spot, near the front of the market.

There were carts with piles of kale greens, beetroot, and mushrooms, carts with big sea fish ready to be split open, fileted, and salted. One cart only sold cut firewood. It did quite well. There were distractions and luxuries: books, spices, wool scarves, and iron jewelry, hot barley and pine teas and boar meat pies. It smelled of food and butchery and harvest. The market was loud with greetings and with the hashing out of bargains and with gossip. Arto and Albert put out their flag.

Mister Ewan was their first customer, as usual. “What do you have today?” Mister Ewan asked. Arto said, “I brought the salted fish you asked for, and the cheese. I have apples and beetroot and greens, lots of greens. And I have your beer. And I have these morels, these mushrooms, take a look at these mushrooms, tell me that you don’t want those, Lady Newton could eat like the noble she is just on these mushrooms. And this, you should try it.” He handed Mister Ewan a small earthen crock. “This is good, it’s salt and peppercorns and bits of the pig’s head.”

“Do you have stockings? Both the Lady and Thomas have holes in their stockings.”

“I do. New ones! Lini just finished these.” He pulled them out. They were a vivid red. Mister Ewan laughed and said, “Yes. These are lovely.”

“Thank you, Mister Ewan,” Arto said as he took some coin from him. The Adepts had recently introduced money to the White Island. “Do you know why we immigrant Todorovs do well at market?” Arto said. “We do well because you always come to us first and trade with us. You trade for the Newtons. And you always have, since the very beginning.”

“It’s selfish. You have the best cart,” Mister Ewan said. He looked at Albert. “I remember when you were a baby. Your father had just started to bring the cart. You would roam around all day talking to everyone. Charming everyone.”

“He loved the butcher,” Arto said. “One time he disappeared for hours, have I told you this story? I was terrified. His mothers would kill me if I lost him. And so I run around the market in a panic, and turn over every rug and every cart, and then when I get back to ours he is just sitting there, covered in blood and offal, and smiling and saying, ‘I was helping the butcher.’”

Mary Hawking drifted over to them from her cart. She sold spices. Arto was talking, but she interrupted him. “The Baixans are sneaking in, did you know that? On their boats. All quiet-like. If they knew what was good for them, they’d turn around and jump back into the sea.” She punched Albert’s arm. “Before we send you at them.”

Samuel Bohm had joined in by now. He built furniture. “I heard they’re down south, somewhere with nothing but rocks and beasts. I heard they’re going to settle in and make a town. Then, when they have a town, they’ll attack us and say the Island is theirs.”

Geoffrey Pauli sat in the cart next to Arto’s, selling his pottery. His son Harald sat next to him and ate a small rhubarb cake that Albert had given him. Geoffrey wiped some cake off of Harald and then made a face at Samuel. “How do you know all this about the Baixans, if there’s nothing where they are?”

“Mal Planck heard it from one of the Adepts,” Samuel said.

“So the Adepts know this. The
Adepts
,” Geoffrey said. “And, knowing this, they are just letting the Baixans do it.”

“I don’t know, maybe the Adepts have something up their sleeve. Maybe they’re just waiting for Albert to finish school in a few weeks, so he can send them all crashing back into the sea.” Samuel gave Albert a gentle punch on the arm as well. Albert had gotten a lot of gentle punches recently.

“I’ll believe it when I see a Baixan,” Geoffrey said. Samuel started to say something, but Geoffrey was already walking to the other side of the cart.

They sold out of most of their supply in a blur of a morning. By lunch, everyone had gotten their shopping and their gossip out of the way. They sat quietly while Arto counted the money. Most of the White Islanders still found money bizarre and frightening, but Arto had taken to it. “It stands in for things you trade. We had something like this in Viru. I understand some things,” he had said to Albert.

Albert went to get pies for his father and himself from a cart down the way. On the way there, he went to the book cart. The volumes were large, sewn with hide on the front. “The sisters put the words on them at school,” he said to Harriet, the book vendor.

“We just have ones with words on them already. Because I’m not an Adept.” Harriet smiled. “I have plenty of books, though, and I know them all. So you can come and talk to me. And I can talk to Sister Clare if you want something I don’t have.”

“Do you have any physics?” Albert asked.

Harriet picked up a volume. “This is called the Feynman Lectures. I tried to read it once. It’s difficult. I didn’t understand it!” She laughed. “Do you study physics at school?”

“Thomas does. Physics is mostly for Administrators, I guess.” Albert said. “Do you have any sutras?” She had a book with sutras and stories of bodhisattvas. He paged through it. It had pictures: images of the Buddha and mandalas.

The traffic at the cart picked up a bit right after lunch, but then dropped off again. Arto was relieved; he was running low in stock and hated to turn people away. They sat in the cart, and Albert told Arto about the books: which ones he wanted to read first, what a sutra was, and what little he knew from school about the people who wrote sutras, people who were ancient at the time of the ancients. After that, they just sat and watched people go by. The afternoon sun settled into the horizon.

Thomas stopped by the cart. He had his bow. “Hello, Farmer Arto! How was business?”

“Good, better than we deserve, Master Thomas. Thank you. You look very official today,” Arto said. When they were in school, both the boys wore uniforms, but when they weren’t in school Thomas wore Administration clothes: the fine gray wool, the red embroidery. He looked like an adult to Albert. He looked like someone to be proud of.

Thomas and Arto made small talk. When it started to taper off, Thomas stood around and picked at loose splinters at the edge of the cart.

“It’s a nice day still,” he said to Albert. “I thought I might go out and hunt.”

“What a lovely idea you’ve had, Master Thomas,” Arto said. “Albert, we’re closing up. You should go with Thomas. Master Thomas, I’ve been putting money into your bank!” He showed Thomas the money.

“Yes, Albert said! Thank you. More people are starting to do it. Sister Alice is very excited. She says the bank is very important for civilization.”

“Sure, I suppose that makes sense,” Arto said.

“Does it?” Thomas asked. “I’m glad. I wish someone would explain it to me.” He smiled.

“We’ll head up to the north forest, Papa,” Albert said. “We’ll be careful.”

Arto kissed his son on both cheeks. “Have fun,” he said. He began tying down cargo and packing up as Albert and Thomas started walking north.

They approached the edge of the forest, where the atmosphere started to change. The murmuring of town activity fell away. The woods swallowed the sounds of the world. Albert closed his eyes for a moment to take the silence in, but then Thomas broke it, saying, “I don’t want to go to Over-town. I don’t want to get married.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Albert said. “Let’s talk about it later if we’re going to hunt. You’ll scare everything away.”

Thomas hit a tree with his bow. “I only said that for your father. I don’t want to hunt. I wanted to talk to you, damn it.”

Albert usually let the tantrums pass, but he didn’t today. “Stop it. Someone worked hard for a long time to make that bow. Stop disrespecting it.”

“Stop talking like my mother.”

“Your mother’s usually right. Stop acting like a baby.”

He thought Thomas would either tackle him or run away. Thomas didn’t do either, though. “Fine,” he said. Then they walked some more.

“I have to do things, too,” Albert said. “I have to go fight the Baixans.”

“We don’t know for sure that we’ll fight the Baixans,” Thomas said.

“Seems like we’re going to fight eventually.”

“That’s different, though. You like fighting.”

“I like practicing. It feels different now that it’s really going to happen.”

“But you get to go fight, and then you’ll come home . . .”

“If I live.”

“Well, I’m assuming you’ll live. Then, when you get home, you won’t have to fight any more, and you won’t be married either. You’ll be free to choose.” Thomas was still hitting things, but he had grabbed a loose limb to replace the bow. “I guess I thought I could just be an Administrator by myself, and not get married.”

“I kind of always thought we would get married,” Albert said.

Thomas got very quiet at that. Albert was terrified. He had been sure that Thomas felt the same way, but the feeling changed when it became words. It turned into something clear and real and dangerous. He couldn’t undo it. He wanted to say that he had just been joking, but he hadn’t been. So he let the terrifying moment be. They walked a little farther.

“Do you want to stop here for a bit?” Thomas said. “It’s a good clearing.” They were near a glade where deer would bed. At the edge of the clearing they found a fallen trunk to sit on. Albert picked up comforting smells of moss and rotting leaves. Some low trees framed the clearing, and it was dim and still with the shade and the aging afternoon sun. Albert would have picked somewhere with clearer lines of sight. He still was thinking of hunting, a little.

They sat for a while in silence, with just the rustle of wind in leaves and the calls of faraway birds echoing across the canopy of trees. Thomas, in small increments, crept across the tree trunk, closer and closer to Albert. Soon, their knees touched, and Thomas began to barely brush the back of his hand against Albert’s leg, in a way that at first could be passed off as distracted movement, but became more deliberate and intense when Albert avoided protesting.

Touching each other wasn’t new to them; they had played and hugged and grabbed at each other constantly for years. This was different, though. It wasn’t affection in and of itself, but something with a goal. Albert’s unsaid thing appeared to be Thomas’s as well. Albert looked at him and said, “I—,” but Thomas interrupted the thought by clamping his mouth over Albert’s. There wasn’t much point in talking after that.

They crashed against each other, feverish, sweaty, and swept out of reason. Thomas tore the collar of Albert’s shirt, then pulled his own shirt off. They pawed off one another’s remaining clothes, sprawled on the forest floor, and wallowed in a shared, wild, virginal amazement: that they could actually be naked together like this, that they could put their hands and mouths all over each other, that this was possible outside their minds and in reality. The overwhelming truth of that alone drove them like a wave through their first and second times; by the third, they finally began to come back to themselves, to be intimate with it, to talk through it and tickle each other and laugh and finally rest in each other’s arms.

Albert nodded off for a short time against Thomas’s chest, but heard a
psst, psst
and came to. He rose up and followed Thomas’s eyes across the glade. A large stag stood within range.

“What do we do?” Thomas whispered.

“Shh,” Albert cautioned. His bow was near, and he grabbed it and an arrow silently. Standing was a different matter, and he had to spend a few seconds planning it out. He thought about pulling on his pants, but after consideration just stood naked with his bow.

He looked down at Thomas and whispered, “I have forest all over my ass,” and it was Thomas’s turn to caution. “Shh.”