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Interior spaces have their seasons, too. In winter, the library is
warm, but the windowpanes are cold. On Christmas morning, he sat
for awhile alone, looking out at the bare trees, tapping his fingers
on the small pile of newly-unwrapped books sitting on the dark
oak table.
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[In this space, there is a symbol that reminds you,
naggingly, of something, just outside the boundaries
of memory.]
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Sewn into the binding of an old dog-eared copy of Cattel's "Memoirs of
an Asp," we found a yellowed envelope of fine thin paper. Across the
front of the envelope, a few words in blue ink in a dense, cramped hand,
spread into illegibility by time. The gum having dried and turned to
dust, the brittle flap opened easily. Inside, on dry, split paper, in
the same hand, but barely legible, we finally found some answers to the
questions that have perplexed us, and many others, since that first
rainy April so long ago.
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In the library, we found certain descriptions of herrings and rice.
Inherited objects surrounded us, perhaps intent upon walling us in.
Finally, in an old parchment hastily concealed behind a sofa-cushion,
we found the map. Before we had time to do more than glance at it,
verify the handwriting, recognize the sinuousities of territory, a
loud clanging from the kitchen drew us, clanking and lumbering, down
the stairs (tucking the map inside our shirts for safekeeping).
There in the kitchen, amidst savory smells of meat and spices cooking,
copper-bottomed pans, sauces simmering over the blue-and-yellow fire,
the occasional icy draft sliding out of the single-paned windows and
crossing the floor low to warm itself in the hearth, still holding
the gong-beater in one firm, long-fingered hand, haloed by the fine
floating red-blonde hair that reaches well past her waist, the Vesta
smiled at us, who stood wide-eyed, piled up to a sudden stop in the
kitchen doorway, craning around each other to see in, not speaking
yet in the first instant of surprise.
Outside, the highland winter, not uncommon cold, but the snowiest
in years, blew around the house, grounds, hills, frozen duck-wallows,
bare moonlit trees, in the form of light, dry powder-snow. Our
reconnaisance, circling languidly high up in the chilly air, chuckled
no doubt to itself, probably imagining our surprise at the kitchener's
unheralded appearance, reconnaisance recognizing and allowing to pass
without our knowing this not-inimicable force.
The Vesta's smile, there in the firelit kitchen of the lonely old
house, isolated in the winter highlands, held the same sort of amusement
we have just attributed to our circling reconnaisance. Surprise, we later
thought, back in more familiar quarters, and even there that night, eating
the Vesta's rich wine-and-venison soup, adds savor to hot meals, especially
those taken in old houses in winter.
The next week, after resolving a quite unconnected puzzle, we set
out to follow the map.
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