The Elder Man Read online

  Jean-Pierre would be a far more agreeable man once he got that singularly unlovable jealous streak out of the way, if ever that happened. Van heaved a long-suffering sigh, and then, out of nothing, a smile dawned on his lips.

  Armin, he thought, and smiled wider as a picture of the young man crossed his mind, at that moment when he had almost lashed out at Monica. He had stopped him from talking, lest a row break out and the night be spoiled for everyone. Armin had had a gleam of fury in his eyes that amused Van and also tickled him.

  Armin. He had arrived in such a subdued and dead-beat state, and was, in general, so quiet and withdrawn, but that momentary glow of honest anger had lit up his features with a stern fierceness that transfigured him.

  Van turned on his belly and sank his face into the pillow again.

  Shit, this is so damn embarrassing at a workshop, he thought, while bending a knee under him to accommodate the beginning of a most inconvenient erection.

  Chapter Six

  Thursday

  Armin

  The next day the weather turned sultry and unbearably hot. Before midday they were all wilting and drooping, dragging their feet. After lunch they were even worse.

  “Good thing you two showed up this morning for once,” said Mark, stifling a yawn, to the two elder Danish girls who had indeed gotten up early enough to join the company at breakfast. It seemed that Van’s mild reproach had had some effect. “I am not sure that we can work much longer in the afternoon sun.”

  They were all taking a pause in the shade of the trees, and Armin was idly perusing a number of things that hung from branches, tied with strings and bits of wire. Pierced stones and pieces of twisted wood, dream catchers and gently clattering wind chimes. In a hollow in a tree trunk, he spotted a set of panpipes. He reached for it, brushed off some bits of moss, bark, and cobwebs from them and turned back to the company.

  “What’s with the panpipes, anyway? There’s panpipes everywhere,” he said, turning the obviously handmade instrument in his hand. It was true. He had noticed many such instruments hanging from the walls in the house or lying about, half forgotten, in various outbuildings.

  “Oh, good thing you reminded me,” said Van, taking the instrument. “Music and mud have always been a good mix. In the fest-noz and bal folk of Brittany, they still dance the dañs plinn, a round dance that was done on fresh cob floors to stomp them down hard and flat. Music always makes hard work easier. It’s hot, and we are all a bit slow. Let’s have a tune and a last good bout, and then we’ll call it a day.”

  “Panpipes music?” asked Armin doubtfully, pouring clay and water onto a tarp and stepping into it. The cool mud was actually pleasant in the absurdly hot afternoon.

  “A sambuca actually. It might have been the original panpipe, mind. Pan’s pipe, you know? Modern panpipes are usually made from bamboo. Hardly a traditional European material. These are elder branches. If the great god Pan was making his own pipes, it was likely from reeds or elder. Naturally hollow. It practically begs to be made into a flute, or a blowpipe for that matter, or a smoking tube, even a primitive bellows. Anyway. They used to say elder pipe music was the most haunting.”

  “Please, no. No Peruvian music,” moaned Josefine.

  “Yes, please, no folk music. Just don’t,” said Monica.

  “You are absolutely obsessed with elder trees,” said Sofia, who was interested in plants and was always questioning Van about weeds and herbs. She joined Armin on the tarp, and they both began feeling their way carefully into the lumpy clay, searching for stones.

  Van nodded. “As well I should. It is such a common tree in every sense of the word that most people consider it little more than a weed.” He played a couple of notes on the pipes and then searched about on the ground for a pine needle. He carefully dug a spider out of one of the tubes. “In all of Northern Europe,” he said musingly as he cleaned out the pipes, “the elder was associated with all manner of supernatural lore. The Hyldemoer, or the Hellhorn Lady, who must be appeased with an offering if you want to pick a part of the tree. The recommended offering was the promise that your own body would be returned to the earth in exchange for a part of the plant. And the elder was the seat of the Marsh King, who was the ruler of the Underworld, or perhaps it was a door into the King’s world, or perhaps the tree was the Marsh King. When the Christians came to Northern Europe, the elder became somewhat reviled, like many pagan symbols, and was said to be the tree from which Judas hanged himself. Which is of course absolutely laughable. It’s much too springy for such a use. Whatever you do, never hang yourself from an elder tree. Much better to use an ash, like Odin did.”

  Sofia giggled.

  “Be that as it may, it was considered unsafe to fall asleep under an elder tree.”

  “Why?” asked Edith, who was also preparing her own tarp nearby.

  “I suppose that in a dream state, it was easier to slip through the gate and become a captive of the Marsh King.” Van winked. “The point is that the elder was a symbol or even a means of passage, a tree associated with shamanic journeys to the Underworld, or Otherworld, from which journeys one might return with gifts of wisdom from the magical realm, but also one could be forever lost, stuck on the other side, as likely as not.”

  “What a frightful lot of superstitious hogwash,” said Monica, whose abrasive temper was obviously not improved by the sultry heat. “Most like your shamanic journey was more of a trip. Who knows what they were smoking out there.”

  “Oh, as for that,” said Van, “I could name at least twenty herbs and fungi just off the top of my head.”

  “Oh, really?” inquired Josefine, with a gleam in her eyes.

  “Ahem,” said Frederic sternly.

  “Van!” gasped Allie. Van didn’t hear her.

  “A fascinating topic, psychoactive fungi.”

  “Van!” said Allie warningly.

  Van still didn’t hear. In fact, Armin had the distinct impression that he put some effort of will into not hearing Allie’s shocked outbursts at times. He grinned at the older man. Van appeared quite lost in thought and busy with cleaning his panpipes, but Armin was becoming adept at detecting a quiver in his moustache, just at the corner of his mouth, the beginning of his dazzling smile.

  “For example, did you know that pantherine, the psychoactive compound of the common fly agaric, is excreted intact in the user’s urine so that it can be, shall we say, recycled?”

  “Recycled how?” said Josefine, confused.

  “Well, er, you know…” said Van.

  “Ew!” said Sofia, who was quicker on the uptake than her sister. Armin was bent double with laughter.

  “Van,” shouted Allie at the top of her voice. “Just play the damn pipes, won’t you?”

  “Well, okay, okay, if you insist…” He grimaced apologetically to Josefine and Armin and Monica and waved the pipes meaningfully. “You see how it is. I am under orders…” And with that, he began playing a tune on the sambuca.

  It was simple and rhythmic, and slow, as they threaded their way into the clumpy clay, feeling for stones and sharp bits. But as they started adding straw to the mix, Van began playing faster and faster, a hammering rhythm that was ridiculously simple and yet compelling. Armin found himself stepping quickly, slowly, and then even more quickly, in time with music.

  He was not a dancer. Not unless he was severely drunk. Too self-conscious. Sofia, who shared his tarp, was moving faster and faster too, and when she slipped, either on a slick patch of the tarp or unbalanced by a small stone, she threw her arms around Armin, who held her more or less upright as they stomped on.

  It was really strange, but while normally he would have scorned anything even remotely resembling a dance, this did work well with the job in hand. He found that he was threading clay with relish, with a new energy that came from somewhere else, turning in a neat circle, placing his feet in steps that left beautiful patterns in the mud. He had noticed before how it took a sort of graceful coordination to
work efficiently. Music made that easier.

  Is this how people began to dance?

  He was awfully aware of Sofia’s body pressed much closer to his than he wished, but he was also conscious of how their feet had fallen into step almost spontaneously so that his footprints and hers contributed to the same circular, mandala-like figures in the clay.

  The pipes played on, faster, then slower so everyone could turn their tarps, then faster, again. Everyone was laughing and panting, and then Edith threw her hands in the air.

  “Mercy, mercy, I can’t dance any faster. It’ll be the death of me.”

  Armin, who was also out of breath but fascinated, felt a pang of regret when the pipes went quiet. Van was grinning.

  “You, sir,” said Mark, completely winded but smiling, “are a wicked piper. Come, give me that thing. Let’s see if I can make you dance.”

  Van smiled and passed the pipes over. It was actually a minute or two before the tall, lanky American had regained enough breath to play music. When he did, he played one or two little experimental things and then struck into a complex, spirited, articulate tune, which might have been Irish or Scottish. It certainly had a Celtic ring to it.

  Van was game. He took over Edith’s tarp, stepping up with more grace than any of them had done, even when Mark played faster and faster.

  He had incredible balance, and even on the sticky, treacherous clay, he never missed a step, or if he did, he turned it into the next move of the pattern, so elegantly and naturally that it all blended together. He treaded the mud ever quicker, but always quite poised and composed, managing in some way to weave dance steps into the needs of the clay, where it wanted treading harder or lighter, where a twist might break a lump of hard clay or a bunch of straw.

  It was hypnotic to watch.

  “Ooh, Riverdance,” said Meintje, clapping.

  “Woo-hoo,” honked Monica, “teacher’s got some moves!”

  Armin frowned. It was true, so he could not have said why the loud remark annoyed him, but it did. When the woman jumped right into Van’s arms, slipped—artfully slipped, it seemed to Armin—and hung from his neck to save herself from a fall and join in the dance, Armin’s heart gave a sort of dangerous gulping wobble inside his ribcage.

  Hussy, he thought morosely.

  The afternoon became so oppressively hot that they had to quit cobbing long before dinnertime, lest some of the workshop participants drop down dead in the heat. Armin was not sure that he might not be one of them.

  “Come, cobbers,” said Van, and Armin was amused by how proud they all looked, himself included, at being addressed this way. “Let’s call it a day and have a little walkabout in the valley. I’ll show you some things.”

  They sheepishly agreed, although they all looked ready to drop into their beds in the cool grass-roofed cottages or down onto the rough grass under the trees at the edge of the garden. But they all gave themselves a wash under the hose and filed dutifully out after Van. Jade the hound appeared out of nowhere and bounded about in front, tail wagging in the air. He always appreciated a chance of being on the move.

  “Under the garden, and all along the western side of the valley, I have coarse, sandy orange clay,” said Van as they walked under huge oak trees, which looked heavy and dusty in the heat. They nodded sagely. “It is my strongest clay. It’s got lime and flint in its bones and iron in its blood. There is nothing like it for walls, arches, and sculptures and making good thick, sticky earth plasters. You can make load-bearing walls as thin as this with that clay and long-stalked straw.” He showed his palms held maybe twelve or fifteen centimeters apart. “And it’s very close to what cobbers call ready-mix. It’s coarse enough that you don’t need to add sand to it. But for fine work… well. For fine work, you need this.”

  They were emerging from the outer edge of the woods into a rough pasture. They climbed over a low fence, some more agilely than others. Van helped Rebekka then Meintje. Armin offered to lift Michel, and the child gave him a disgusted look and climbed over like a monkey.

  It was sweltering hot in the sun.

  The pasture contained two acres of rough grass and scrub, a few solitary trees scattered about, and, in the shade of one of these, two dusty black horses, their ears drooping with sleep while their tails flicked flies away lazily.

  “This what?” asked Monica, rather acerbically, wiping sweat from her forehead.

  “Come, cobbers. Look down.” He pointed to a small pile of dirt among the grass. “Moles are your best friends,” said Van, crouching down and taking a handful of dirt.

  There was some grumbling in the assembly. “They do mess up the lawn something cruel,” said Mark, but he crouched beside Van and poked at the little hill of upturned earth.

  “Well, maybe, if you insist on having something as ecologically pointless as a lawn,” said Van. “But unless you go around drilling holes wherever you go, molehills are a good hint of what’s underfoot. So are certain plants and water. And road cuts, of course. Found the most incredible coral red clay in a road cut just outside Saint-Cirq-Lapopie three years ago. Never seen earth that color before. Do you remember, Allie?”

  “Oh, I remember. Me, in my best town clothes, and you dragged me halfway up the hill to shovel red clay into a rubbish bag.” She shook her head, but she was smiling fondly.

  “Eh. Hazards of driving around with a cobber,” he said.

  “This is really different from the ground back at our dig,” said Sophia, who was a keen observer of plants and, obviously, soil. Armin kneeled beside her and picked up some of the earth. It was a pale straw yellow and so fine and loose that it seemed to melt in his hands. It glinted softly in the sun.

  “Finest sand in the valley,” said Van, nodding. “Excellent for fine plasters and very smooth floors. But you need clay or lime to hold it together, and fine fiber.”

  “And of course, here’s the best fine fiber you’ll ever want,” he said, pointing to a mound of horse manure that lay drying in the sun. “And my worthy fine-fiber providers,” he added, pointing to the two black horses, who gave them insolent looks and refused to come out of the shade to greet them.

  “Fine beasts,” said Ella. “I used to ride.”

  “Mérens,” said Van. “An old breed from the mountains of the Ariège.”

  “Can we ride them?” asked Maja eagerly.

  “Nope. They used to be working horses. But now they are enjoying their retirement in peace,” said Van as they approached the two horses, who finally bestirred themselves to come and sniff at them, obviously expecting treats.

  “So all they have to do is eat and er… produce fine fiber?” asked Mark.

  “Pretty much, yes,” said Van, smiling.

  “Would that we were all so lucky in our old age,” said Edith, cautiously caressing one of the horses.

  “They also keep the pastures open, although not as clean as goats would.”

  Van talked on about grasslands ecology, loss of natural pastures, rare butterflies, and native orchids, and Armin just looked at him. The variety and intensity of his expressions was simply magnetic.

  Van had a smudge of brown dirt on his forehead, where he had wiped sweat from his brow with a dusty hand. The hollow between his collarbones was shiny with pooling sweat, which dripped down his chest into a darkening stain on the front of his faded gray t-shirt. Armin watched him, and as the other man talked, he caught the quick movement of Van’s Adam’s apple under the short stubble on his throat, which was still dark, though his beard was graying and actually almost silvery white around his jaws.

  Armin’s partners had always been clean-shaven, impeccably groomed, spotlessly laundered city twinks, and he was both bewildered and intensely embarrassed when he realized that the sight of Van’s skin, sweaty and dirty and ruggedly unshaven, had completely distracted him from what he was saying and also made something stir in his nether regions.

  My God, he thought, shifting uneasily. I really have been alone for too long.


  When Van strode off again, still talking about pollinators, natural habitats, and the expanding range of southern wild flora, they followed gratefully in the shade of another stretch of woods and then up the opposite side of the valley.

  “Is this still your land, Van?” asked Mark, puffing up the climb, which was steep in parts.

  “It is. The whole valley. And a couple hectares of pasture on the other side of the road to Tursac, where my neighbor keeps some cows.”

  “It is quite a splendid property,” said Frederic as they walked along a narrow track barely discernible in the undergrowth. “How did you come to have it? If I may ask?”

  “Oh,” said Van a little vaguely. “It has been in the family for generations. There used to be a few hectares of vineyards and a few more pastures, which have gone back to woodland. Some of the forest at the bottom of the valley is very old though and has always been there. It was never managed, although pigs were always fattened there for slaughter, on acorns, nuts, beech mast, medlars, haws. Whatever they can get. I still do that. It was all pretty much abandoned since the last war. And I was away for a long time, oh, you know, a bit here, a bit there, before coming back and settling down, stupendously poor but somewhat wiser in the ways of the world.”

  “Here and there?” asked Edith.

  “Oh, you know, unattached young man and all…”

  “Well, no, I don’t know, sir, that’s why I’m asking. You made me curious, now.” She giggled a little.

  Van laughed. “Ah, the tale of my wild young years. It’d take a week to tell, and you would not believe the half of it. Maybe another time.”

  “Ooh, do tell,” said Monica, grabbing his arm and plastering herself to his side in the most shameless fashion. “Or is it too robust for our innocent ears?”

  Van just grinned and shook his head, refusing to rise to the bait.

  He stopped eventually under a canopy of tall gray trees, in a patch of forest almost clean of any undergrowth.

  “Notice anything different?” he asked.