The Black Riviera

Liechtenstein

Liechtenstein For Audrey Rugg Two white whales, the father and the bolster He hugs to his sour guts. Something he ate. High up in the hotel room the roof beams, Carved with bluebirds and red crocuses, Are thatched with shadows. Hammocks Of cobweb luff in the rising heat. His wife Is leafing through a guide. His children finger New purchases, the girl her dirndl skirt, The boy his Swiss watch with its 17 jewels, Already a glinting scratch across the crystal. August, a rainy month in this small country. Window-framed, the castle's topped with mist. Now he is snoring, whom the doctor sighed for Listening to his chronicle that accused Last night's Italian dinner: "Ah,but you're A foreigner." At last now, he's asleep, The bolster, a man-longpillow, in his arms. Out in the little capital, the day Above the mother and her boy and girl Combs out a cloud of rain that hangs and drifts And lapses over the castle's roofs and windows. The children ask her questions about the prince And reason that, because he's just a prince And his castle small, he might accept a visit. But Mother says the way looks wet and steep. They find a Konditorei of covered tables, Sober as snow in a deserted square, Where statuelike two pairs of men are seated At separate tables. All four eat ice cream. Two of them whisper head to head. The others, An old man and his younger version, smile. The mother lets her children say the French For ice cream, and at once the old man speaks. His elephant ears are nests of silver hair, His bald head faintly blue with broken vessels. He compliments the girl's black braids, the boy's White-blondness and their mother's youth and beauty, Nimble with English and with flattery. 31 The pale ice cream tastes sweeter than its color, Like the flesh of pears and apples, and comes heaped In glasses shaped like tulips that, when empty, Reveal a smoky tinge and -weigh no more, It seems, than ash or cobwebs. "Apretty place, Our country," says the old man. And they nod, Despite the weather. He admires the watch, The dirndl skirt now spotted with ice cream, And frowns to learn that Father, at the hotel, Is sick and sleeping. "It is a pretty place," He says again, as rain begins, clear strands That catch the window, then the falling rush. "You would not think it an unhappy place. Yet, like America, it has a past, An older past, of course, and just as sad. Our little country gave up one in ten, Three hundred years ago, three hundred out of Three thousand—one in ten. But you, too, know Of hunting witches in America. Yet a Kleinstaat is like a little town. Its jealousies let loose the wild assumption Salvation could be won for the accused And for the living peace of mind—with fire." The woman and her children stare, enclosed Now by the rain and this familiar voice. "I know a tale of witches for your children." The boy and girl swallow their ice cream slowly And feel it down their throats, a cold paste. The old man's young companion moves to speak, But the woman looks intrigued. She leans and arches Her fine American neck to hear. He sees it— Sap gold as barkless fruitwood—and relaxes. "The Minnesangers have an old love song. My voice has hit its tree line or I'd sing it. It goes that, hunting once for capercaillie (You know them? Game birds, gallinaceous), A hunter pierced a woman in a clearing. When he bent down to her, to break the arrow, 32 He held a mass of feathers that squirted away. He followed blood, like scarlet stitchery, To a black hollow, slimy with dead leaves Under a willow's root. There, he thrust in His hand and found a passage he could walk down Lit by a door ajar at the far end. Through the door's crack he watched the witch, as you Might watch one of your children dress for bed When they are very young. He watched, but she Was not a child and not a hag. The wound Was near the heart. She wound the bandage—so." And for the children, watching witnesses, White O's of ice cream printed...