A Strange Country Read online

“A prophecy?” he said.

  Petrus felt as thick as his own broom. Lowering his eyes on the book he was holding in his hands, he mustered his courage.

  “A prophecy,” he said.

  He read the three lines out loud, and every word pierced the cool late-afternoon air like a dagger.

  “Where did you find this?” asked the Head of the Council after a moment’s silence.

  “In the Canto of the Alliance,” replied Petrus, handing him the book.

  There was another silence.

  “I don’t know how many times I’ve read the Canto of the Alliance,” said the Head of the Council, “but I have no recollection of these lines.”

  Petrus, respectful, remained silent.

  “Yet I have the memory of an elephant,” said the elf, turning into that hare with the ermine coat that caused crowds to melt with admiration.

  He remained thoughtful for a moment while Petrus said nothing, embarrassed and not knowing which stance to take.

  “How long have you been working here?” asked the hare.

  “Seventy years,” Petrus replied.

  “You’re not from Katsura, are you?”

  “I am from the Deep Woods,” replied Petrus, “I came here because of a rather peculiar set of circumstances.”

  The hare turned into a white horse.

  “Which were?”

  “Well,” said Petrus, “I was sent by the Wild Grasses of Hanase.”

  The horse stared at him as if he’d changed into a slug.

  “And what twist of fate took you into the Wild Grasses?” he asked.

  “The recommendation of the boatman from the South Marches, who asked the hostess to serve us a thousand-year-old tea,” said Petrus.

  The Head of the Council laughed.

  “Is that all,” he said.

  Almost to himself, he murmured the name of the boatman in a trill that ended with a plop in the water.

  “A squirrel from the Deep Woods, sent by the oldest servants of the mists, and a sort of prophecy come out of nowhere,” he continued. “Imagine my surprise to find out only today what’s been going on. Do you have something else up your sleeve, by any chance?”

  Petrus blushed.

  “Just before I arrived in Katsura, I composed a similar little poem about two children.”

  “Are you a poet?” asked the Head of the Council.

  “No, I’m a sweeper.”

  The Head of the Council changed into a man.

  “I’m afraid you are going to have to give up your vocation,” he said. “Come tomorrow morning to the upper chamber. I’m going to convene an extraordinary session and you would do well to prepare yourself for a long day.”

  Finally, he went away, leaving Petrus more dumbfounded and distraught than a broom.

  A dream so lofty

  Neither spring nor summer nor winter

  Know the grace

  Of languid autumn

  Book of Paintings

  SANCTUARIES

  The land of elves has four sanctuaries.

  Nanzen, in the province of Leaves, received, regulated, and brought together the mists by means of all the paths and channels.

  Katsura, the capital of the elves and the jewel of Snows, was in charge of maintaining the foundations of this world.

  Ryoan, at the heart of the Dark Mists, kept the books for the eternity of beauty.

  Hanase, finally, the only city of Ashes, maintained the connection between the living and the dead.

  The sanctuaries are the secret hearts of a world where the answers to the questions in the great Books are being worked out.

  The question of fervor, which Nanzen prayed for every day, that the mist might be saved.

  That of courage in battle, overseen by the upper chamber of Katsura.

  That of beauty, incarnated by Ryoan’s natural paintings.

  That of love, finally, the greatest question of all: the dead of Hanase whisper the canto of love, and this canto travels through space and time, and it rides upon the great winds of the dream, and one day it reaches our distant ears.

  PROPHECY

  The Head of the Council immediately agreed with Petrus’s hunch that the three lines were a prophecy. He knew the difference between human and elfin literature, and he knew it was impossible for the poem to be part of the Canto of the Alliance—and yet, it was or, at least, it had become part of it.

  Elves do not tell stories the way humans do, and they are impervious to stories of invention. They sing of their great exploits, compose odes to birds and to the beauty of the mists, but imagination never adds anything to this elegiac celebration. Who would ask for stories in the Great Whole where every event is merely the reflection of the entire story?

  As there was no trace in either the annals or the memory of elfin ages of two children of November through whom a rebirth of the mists was said to have come, the poem was an unclassifiable text, which they hoped would prove prophetic. The Head of the Council, who already suspected that the splendid, eternal, and static world of his own kind would be forced to change in order to survive, understood that the sweeper Petrus’s epiphany commanded the path to a new alliance.

  BY SACRED VIOLETS

  1870–1871

  It seemed to Petrus from the Deep Woods that he had had two distinct lives: the life before and the life after the moment he read the prophecy. In the first of those lives, there was a broom; in the second, adventure; and he saw his erstwhile voyages and little adventures as leaps of a mouse in a cage.

  As if it were meant to happen, that year of epiphanies for Petrus had also witnessed a series of memorable events, bound together by a noose that subsequently seemed to be pulled ever tighter, until it could only lead to war—but anyone who, in those days, could have understood the fabric and the significance of those events would have been very clever indeed. They were, in no particular order: a man’s murder, which would send the Head of the Council to Rome; the discovery of a singular painting in which the decline of worlds was sealed; the discovery of the existence of a gray notebook which would change the face of the coming war; and the discovery, by Petrus, of human wine.

  Not long after the sweeper Petrus first appeared before the upper chamber and the birth of the idea of an alliance with humans, a conversation took place between the head of the gardeners and his young right-hand man, the piglet from Hanase who was now an adult wild boar. For thirty years, Petrus had been encountering him on the paths of the Council, and their mutual hostility had continued to grow. The initial amiability of the young wild boar had changed to scorn, once he noted the sweeper’s lack of enthusiasm for his champion’s intrigues. The worship he devoted to his leader made him his most eager acolyte, and they were quite a sight, the pair of them, when they took on their human forms and ambled casually through their surroundings—so handsome, and so evil, thought Petrus, who at times was still unsettled by their dazzling smiles; then he would shake his head and the spell dissolved.

  Then one January morning, Petrus overheard this conversation between the two, and he related it to the Head of the Council and the Guardian of the Pavilion. All three of them were standing in the study of the hare elf from Katsura, a tiny little room that opened onto the most marvelous scene. Although he had strolled through many a remarkable garden, Petrus did not know of a single one that offered a concentrated sense of nature the way this one did. That the quintessence of artifice could produce a sensation of such pure nature in a single garden entirely conceived by the mind and hand of an elf, both charmed and stunned him. It was little more than an enclosure of light-colored sand, azaleas, and heavenly bamboo, through which a stream ran, preceded by a hollow stone where birds frolicked. But, however modest it might be, the scene evoked a sensation of the vast world, through a transubstantiation of distances and things, and Petrus had renounced trying to p
lumb its mystery.

  “I tend it myself,” the Head of the Council said to him one day, showing him the tools stored along the outside veranda: shears, a little broom, a bamboo rake, and a basket made of woven bark.

  And Petrus was not averse to the fact that the gardeners didn’t sniff around there. However, the time had come for the report: wandering aimlessly along the corridors in the upper chamber after work, he glimpsed the two cursed souls around the corner of a veranda and, deeming they had a strange manner about them, he followed them, then positioned himself discreetly below the little room they slipped into in order to converse. Apparently, the head of the garden had news from a nephew who, by virtue of the regulations of the mists authorizing families of dignitaries from the headquarters of the Council to travel in both worlds, had recently gone over to the human side, and, in a city called Amsterdam, had found a painting (which did not interest his uncle) and a gray notebook (which interested him greatly), sent them to another city called Rome, then disappeared without a trace. Prior to this he’d come back from Amsterdam a first time without the gray notebook, for he feared the Guardian of the Pavilion might get wind of it, and the head of the garden cursed his own precaution, which now deprived him of the object he seemed to covet. The story, which made no sense at all to Petrus, didn’t seem to surprise the other two.

  “We always keep an eye on elves who go to stay in the human world,” the Guardian told him, “and last night we witnessed the nephew’s murder.”

  “Murder?” echoed Petrus, horrified.

  “Murder,” confirmed the Head of the Council. “It would seem he wanted to earn human money by selling the painting to an art dealer, and the dealer killed him then made off with the canvas and the notebook. The dealer’s name is Roberto Volpe and I’m on my way to Rome to meet him.”

  “Meet a murderer?” asked Petrus, even more horrified.

  “Astonishingly, Roberto Volpe is an amiable, peace-loving individual who, on top of it, just became a father this morning for the first time,” answered the Head of the Council.

  “What an astonishing business,” said the guardian. “We need to take a closer look. Unfortunately, in the commotion over the murder, we failed to determine what Volpe might have done with the mysterious gray notebook. But the head of the garden didn’t send his nephew to Amsterdam just by chance, and I bet he knew what he was looking for. So now we have a double quest to pursue: the two children, and the gray notebook.”

  “Do you think the two are connected?” asked Petrus.

  “We think that everything is always connected,” answered the guardian. “Including a certain sweeper who was sent to the Council library upon the intuition of the Wild Grasses.”

  Petrus was speechless.

  “There are times we may be blind, but we are not morons,” said the Head of the Council. “Apparently you like traveling?”

  His expression was sour.

  “Still, I’m not sure what I’m offering you is exactly a privilege. This first murder of an elf in human territory augurs a sad beginning but, in these dark times, we must show discernment and audacity.”

  He exchanged a glance with the guardian.

  “Your unexpected discovery in the Canto of the Alliance has given us proof that the key of time is to be found in the link between the worlds. I don’t know why you told us this so long after you were singled out by the two highest authorities in our world, the Wild Grasses and the boatman from the South Marches, nor why, in the interval, fate went and stuck a broom in your hands, but it would seem you have been chosen for this adventure.”

  He gave Petrus what seemed to be a rather stern look—or was it solemn?

  “I have decided to appoint you special envoy of the mists to the human world,” he said, “in charge of the dual quest for the gray notebook and the two children of the Canto.”

  He stood up, signaling that it was time to leave.

  “Be here tomorrow at dawn,” said the Guardian of the Pavilion, “and bring what you need for several days’ travel, for every kind of weather and every season.”

  Petrus left the Council headquarters in a state of such confusion that for the first time he went home to the wrong house, then seemed not to recognize his old unicorn elf. Special envoy from the Council of the Mists to the human world! he said to himself, over and over. He didn’t have the slightest idea what he would have to do, and the few instructions he’d received had left him mired in confusion. Elves only wear one outfit, which keeps them closely covered at all times, but they also wear capes when it rains, and warm coats in cold weather with added headgear that more or less resembles that of humans. Petrus spent the night trying to put together a bundle then, at daybreak, he stuffed a few belongings at random in the canvas bag he used for traveling. Finally, realizing to his horror that the sun was already quite high in the sky, he rushed to the upper chamber and, without knowing how he got there, found himself in the private study where he’d been the previous day. Before him stood the Head of the Council, observing him with thoughtful intensity. Next to him was the Guardian of the Pavilion, murmuring something Petrus couldn’t hear, as sounds vanished into a cottony confusion where he felt his intelligence disappearing as well.

  The guardian placed a hand on his shoulder. There was an empty moment while the cotton was endlessly diluted in an icy void. Then they were in Nanzen. The pavilion was silent. Through its windows that had neither trim nor panes, Petrus could see the mist sculpting the trees in the valley. To the rear, at the top of the red bridge, a thick fog was whirling in place.

  “How did we get here?” Petrus asked the guardian.

  “By the bridge,” he answered, handing him a cup of tea.

  “I thought it led only to the land of humans.”

  “The bridge is only visible when it serves to pass between worlds. Inside our own, it does not require any special material form.”

  He went to fetch some clothes that were neatly piled on a bench, along with utensils for making tea, and unfolded them in front of Petrus. There was a sort of two-legged sheath, a large, coarsely cut shirt, and a sort of cape with arms.

  “This outfit will be suitable wherever you go,” said the guardian. “When it comes to shoes, however, it will depend on your destination.”

  “But where am I going?” asked Petrus. “I haven’t a clue.”

  Then, remembering their conversation from the previous day:

  “To Rome, perhaps?”

  The guardian shared images which made him plop in astonishment upon his squirrel rear end.

  “Rome,” said the master of Nanzen.

  But Petrus couldn’t understand what he was seeing.

  “These are stone buildings,” said the guardian. “Collective buildings, in a way, or houses of cult and power.”

  “So tall, and so dead,” murmured Petrus. “I don’t think I’ll go there. To be honest, I really have no idea what I’m supposed to do, and for sure I don’t know where to start.”

  “Trust your heart,” said the guardian.

  For a moment Petrus, uncertain and lost, did not move. Without warning, the face of the old woman with the blue ribbons from his dream at the teahouse came back to him from the depths of his memory, and he saw her coming toward him against a background of little gardens with freshly turned earth. He felt the light presence of the guardian penetrate his spirit and he heard him say, I see her. The vision shifted. Verdant landscapes of meadows and woods went by, and then the vision paused above a village nestled in a valley. His heart pounding, Petrus recognized the stone houses with tawny roof tiles. Snow had covered the orchards, and plumes of winter smoke rose toward the sky.

  “That’s it,” he said, “that’s where it is.”

  The images vanished and the guardian opened his eyes.

  “Burgundy,” he said. “At least there’s no lack of snow there.”

 
An hour later, feeling as much at ease in his human clothes as a squirrel in a tutu, his feet clad in instruments of torture which the guardian had referred to as clogs (stuffed with woolen socks that were unpleasantly scratchy against his calves), Petrus was standing on the red bridge.

  “We will not let you out of our sight. When you’re ready to come back, all you have to do is let us know,” said the guardian.

  Finally, he gave him a little purse which contained the money he might need on the other side.

  Petrus took a step forward and entered the circle of mist. It was extraordinarily thick and he felt a silkiness against his cheek. And now? he thought, deep down feeling somewhat grumpy. This, I think, sums up our hero better than anything, because his stomach, deprived of breakfast, was now ruining the exquisite frisson of adventure that had been running down his spine. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and prepared himself for a long, icy void. A biting blast slapped his brow and he opened his eyes again in surprise.

  He was already on the other side. Mercy me! he thought, on seeing the farm from his dream there before him. It was late afternoon and the light was fading. From the only window whose shutters were still open, to the left of the front door, came a beam of lamplight. Just then, someone opened the window and leaned outside, struggling against the icy wind. In the increasing gloom, Petrus couldn’t make out her features, but even without seeing her he knew and, his heart leaping, his feet unsteady in his clogs, he took a few timid steps closer. Now he could see the craggy old face, the headdress with ribbons the color of forget-me-nots, and the vitality of a gaze that was both similar to and different from that of the woman in his dream—seventy years have gone by, he thought, this is her great-granddaughter.

  “Sweet Jesus!” she exclaimed, on seeing him.

  I understand her language, thought Petrus, stunned. She looked him up and down for a moment then, evidently judging him to be harmless, she swayed her head from left to right and said: