God Head: A Novel

Part Three—Väinämöinen

P A RT T H R E E Väinämöinen 40 From my aerie working place—putting aside my mallet and chisel from time to time and letting my mind subside on the certainties of the present, like a lark from the clouds returning to his tree—I could look down on all the messuage from end to end; and I could think, all that is mine. There was the Black River creeping through the meadows, that fathomless still water pungent with the taste of iron and scrawled all over with foam into which I would often gaze, my vision straining into the cloudy depths, no doubt the enchanted realm of some hunched and grimacing nibelung of this north country. The red sauna, the bathhouse, stood by the brink. Beyond it a hundred yards was Aino’s cabin with a wisp of smoke curling from the chimney and perhaps Aino herself at door or window, ready to wave a reply should I signal her. On up the river was the shack of elias, behind it barn and byre and granary. A stack of golden straw was there at a curve in the river, lifting its burnished dome behind thepurplefringeofblazingstarweedgrowingalongthebank.Then the fields, a few acres, where elias and Joe would be puttering over a little crop of buckwheat. And then finally the woods, russet and gold they were this end of September, with broad splashes of green where stood the pines and firs: the woods, into which the river plunged and was lost to view, the woods that surrounded all this 138 G O D H E A D domain and were a wall between it and the world, ten leagues of wilderness before one should reach the iron range and the bustle and grubbing of men. . . . That way lay man; but north of me there was no sign of man at all, only the boulder-strewn littoral at my feet and the great lake, slate-blue or white, sweeping out and out and over the sea-rim. . . . I would listen, and now and then I would hear a dim voice, and now and then the lowing of Puolukka nosing that stack of golden straw, and now and then the crowing of a cock. . . . Mine, all mine: cabins and fields, corn and straw, river and trees, cow and people. Mine. . . . Often before I was through with my pounding and hewing and dreaming, there would be a scramble overhead, a small avalanche of pebbles would pour down the cliff, and in a minute Oskar would be at my side, panting from his race through the woods and his climb down to the ledge. Some story or other he would have to tell me: Aino was baking cookies, there was a deer that fled as he came crashing through the woods, the mast had come off his boat, how did I really know there were no more Indians in the forest? Then he would gaze critically at my stone face, but not so critically as with utter bewilderment and the joy of one familiar with miracles and their wreaker. There was nothing to it but I must toil at the granite a few minutes more so that he could watch me. He would clap his hands with delight. “Paul, will it really sing when you have finished it?” he would ask at last, sober with wonderment. “Joe said you told him it will sing all by itself.” “Doesn’t he believe it?” “Yes . . . but I don’t see how you’re going to make the rock sing.” “There are some things none of us understands, Oskarini. when I’m all through . . . maybe I’ll tell you a secret.” Hand in hand we would start home through the autumn woods. Ah, how beautiful they were, that dreamy golden month! Väinämöinen 139 Gradually the leaves turned, the most luxurious pageantry of reds and yellows; and as yet we had had no sharp frosts or rude gusts to strip them from their branches. Underneath swarmed the Michaelmas daisies, those pale lavender asters that linger so wistfullywhenotherflowershavewithered.Throughoutthewoods too hovered that mysterious haunted blue mist, that fireless smoke which seems to brim with dumbly lamenting presences, which seems pathos and reluctance made visible. In all the corridors of the forest it hovered, but now and then one would see burning, burning in it the scarlet torches of sumac or...