Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • Grendel Chapters 1-6

    Uploaded by

    Maggie Dorgan
    5K views45 pages
    x

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    PDF or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    Report this Document
    x

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    5K views45 pages

    Grendel Chapters 1-6

    Uploaded by

    Maggie Dorgan
    x

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    of 45
    JOHN GARDNER GRENDEL Mintrated by Emil Antonseci Vinge Books A Divison of Random Howse, In ‘New York “The old ram stands looking down over triumphant. I blink I stare in horror back to your cave, go Back to your cowshed—whatees” He cocks his head like an elderly, slowavited king, com sides the angles, decides to ignore me, 1 xamp. 1 hammer the ground with my fst hurl a skullsize tone at him. He will not budge. I shake my wo hairy fits atthe sky and I let outa howl so unspeakable that che water at my eet turns sudden ice and even T myself am left uneasy. But the ram says; the seaon is upon us. And so begins the twelfth year of my idiotic wa. “The pain of it! The stupidity! 5 "Ab, well I sigh, and shrug, edge back to the ees Do not think my brine are squeezed shut, like the ram's by the roots of horns, Flake atremble, eyes like stones, he stares at as much ofthe world ashe can see and feel i surging in him, fling his chess at the meling snow fills Aried-out creekbeds, tickling his gros, lopsided balls and charging his brane with the same unrest that made him suffer Ins year a this time, and the year before, and the year before that. (He's forgoten them all.) His hindparts shiver with the usual joyful, mindless ache to mount what ver happens near—the storm piling up black rowers to ‘he west, sme rotting, docile stump, some spraddelegged ‘ewe. cannot bear to look. "Why can’ these creatures dis. cover alte dignity?” Ia the sky, The sy says nothing, predictably. I make a face uplift a defiant middle finger, and give an obscene litle kick The sky ignores me, for- ‘ver nimpressed. Him too I ate, the same a I hate these brainless budding wees, these brating birds [Not of cous, that I fool myself with thoughts that I'm ‘more noble. Pointless, ridiculous monster crouched in the. shadows, sinking of dead men, murdered children, mar tyred cows. (I am nether proud nor ashamed, understand. (One more dull vieim, leering at seasons that never were meant to be observed.) “Ab, sad one, poor old freak!” 1 ery, and hug myself, and laugh, leting out slt tears he ‘el il fall down gasping and sobbing (ts moet fake.) ‘ “The sun spins mindlessly ovechea, the shadows lengthen and shorten a if by plan. Small bird, with a high-pitched yelp lay eggs. The tender grasses peck up, innocent yellow, through the ground: the children of the dead. (It was just here, this shocking green, that once when the moon was tombed in clouds, I tore of ely old Athelgae’s head. Here, ‘where the startling tiny jaws of crocuses snap atthe Int- winter sun like the heads of baby watersnakes, hee I killed the old woman with the irongray hit. She tate of urine and spleen, which made me spit. Sweet mulch for yellow blooms, Such are the tiresome memories of a shadow- shooter, carhimroamer, walker of the world’s weird wall) “Waaah!” ery, with another quick, nasty face at the sky, mournfully obeerving the way itis, bitterly remem bering the way it was, and idiotally casting tomorrow's recs. “Aarghl Yaw! I red, smash tees. Disigured son, of lunatics, The bigholed cake gaze down at me yellow with morning, Beneath complexity. "No offense," say, with a trible,sycophantsh eile, and tip an imaginary hat twas not always like this, of course. On occasion is been wore. [No mater, no matter. “The doe in the clearing goes sf at sight of my horrid- es, then remember her legs and is gone. It males me ros “Blind prejudice!” I bawl atthe splintered sunlight Where half a second ago she stood, I wring my finger, pt on a lng face. “Ab, the unfaimess of everythin say, and shake my head. Its a mater of fact that I have never killed a deer in all my life and never will. Cows have more meat and, lacked pin pens, ae easier to catch It's tue, perhaps, chat I feel some tring disike of dee, but no more diaike than I fel for other natural things— scounting men. But deer, ike rabbits and bears and ven men, can make, concerning my race, no delicate dit tinctions. That i their happines: they see all life without observing it. They're buried in ie ike eabs in mud Except ‘mea, ofcourse, ata notin a mood, jut yet, o tlk of men. So it goes with me day by day and age by age, I tell my- sell. Locked in the deadly progresion of moon and star. I shake my head, muttering darkly on shaded pat, hold- ing converttion with the only fend and comfort this ‘world affords, my shadow. Wid pigs later away through brush. A baby bird falls fetup in my path, «quesking ‘With crabby laugh I lt him li, kind heaven’s merciful bounty to some sick fox. So it goes with me, age by age. (Talking, talking, Spinning a web of words, pale walls of dreams, between myself and all se.) “The frst grea sirings of springime come (as I knew they must, having seen the rama), and even under the aground where I live, where no light breaks but the red of my fires and nothing srs but the flickering shadows on 8 my wet sock walls, or scampering rats 0a my piles of bones, ‘or my mothers at, foul bulk rolling over, restless agait— molested by nightmares, old memoriee—I am aware in my chest of eubersicrngs in the Dlacksweet dull of the forest. overhead. I feel my anger coming back, building up Lke invisible fie, and at last, when my soul can no longer re sist Igo wpa mechanical as anything els-—Fists clenched against my lack of wil, my belly growling, mindless as wind, for bleed. I swim up through the firesnakes, 2¢ ark whalecocs prowling the luminous green ofthe mete, and I surface with + gulp among churning waves snd smoke, [crawl up onto the bank and catch my breath fs good at first tobe out in the night, naked eo the od sechanice of the stars. Space hurls outward, falconswit, ‘mounting like an irevesibe injustice final disease. The cold night ai is reality at last indifferent to me as a stone face carved on a high cliff wall to show that the world is abandoned. So childhood too feels good at Fst, before one happens to notice the terrible sameness, age after age [ie there resting in the seaming gras, the old lake hising and gurgling behind me, whispering 2at- teens of words my sanity resist, At lst, heavy as an ice ‘capped mountain, I rise and work my way to che inner wall, beginning of wolllpes, the edge of my realm. I stand in the high wind balanced, blackening the aight with my stench, gazing down to cls that fall away to 4 lif, and once agsin I am aware of my potential: 1 oul die I eacle with rage and suck in breath “Dark chase I rream from the elif-edge, “seize me! Size me to your foul black bowels and crush my bones! 1am terrified atthe sound of my own huge wee in the darkoes. I stand there shaking from head to foe, moved to the deepsea depths of my being, ikea creature thrown, ino audience with thunder, At the same time, 1am secretly unfooled. The uproar is only my own shrck, and chasms ar, lke all things vas, inanimate, They will not match me in a thousand year, unless in lunatic fit of religion, jump. I sigh, depresed, and grind my teth I toy with shout- ing some abit more—somme terrifying, unthinkable threat, some blacky fuliginous cidling hex—but my hear’s not init “Mized mel” L say with a coy litle jerk and ales, 0 ‘keep my sprite up. Then, with a sigh, a kind of moun, 1 stare very carefully down the elif chat lead to the fens and ‘moors and Hrothgar’s hal, Owls eros my path as sendy as riding ships and atthe sound of my foot, lean wolves ris, glance at me awkwardly, and, neat of step as lizards, socal away. I uted to take some pride in thatthe cation of owls when my shape loams in, che alarm I si in these giant northern wolves. I was younger then. Sill playing catand mouse with the universe | move down through the darkness, burning with mur- 1 erous lust, my brains raging atthe sickness Tean observe in myself a objectively ae might a mind ten centuries aay. Stars spattered out through lifeless night from end to end, Tike jewels seatered in a dead king's grave, cease, torment ‘my wits coward meaningful paterns that do not exis T can see for miles from these rock walls: thick forest suddenly sill at my coming—cowering sags, wolves, hedgehogs, boars, submerged in thee sting, unmem- ‘rable fear} mute birds, pulang, thoughtless clay in Ibuthed old tes, thick limb interlocked to sal drab sc 1 sgh, sink into the lence, and cross it like wind. Be- hind my bac, atthe world’s end, my pale slightly glowing fat mother sleeps on, od, sick at heat in our dingy under- {ground room, Lifebloated, baled, long-suffering hag. Guily, she imagines, of some unrememberel, peshaps ancestral crime. (She must have some human in het.) Not that she thinks. No that she dissects and ponders the dusty mechanical bits of her miserable life's curse, She clues at me in her sleep ati to crush me. I break away. "Why are we here?" I used to ask her. “Why do we sand this putrid, inking hole?” She trembles at my words. Her fat lips shake, "Don't ask!” her wiggling claws implore (She never speaks) “Don't asl” Ie must be some teeible secret, used to think 1 give her a crafty squint. Shell tell me, in time, T thought. But she tid me nothing. 1 n waited on, That was before the old dragon, alm as winter, ‘unyiled the truth. He was nota friend, ‘And so I come through trece and towns to the lights of Hirothga’s meadhall, Iam no sanger here. A respected gest. Eleven yeats now and going on twelve I have come up this eleansmown central hil, dark shadow out of the ‘woods below, and have knocked politely on the high oak oor, bursting its hinges and sending the shock of my greeting inward like scold blast out ofa cave. “Grendel!” they squeak, and T smile like exploding spring, The old ‘Shape, a man I cannot help but admize, goes out the back. ‘window with his harp ata single Bound, though blind as ‘bat. The drunkest of Hrothga’sthanes come recing and clanking down from their wall-hung beds, all shouting their meady, outrageous boast, thei heavy swords aswiel, like eagles wings, “Woe, woe, woe!” cries Hrodhgar, hoary with winters, pecking in, wideeyed, frm his bed- room in back His wife, ooking in behind him, makes a scene, The thanes in the meadhall blow out the lights and cover the wide sone fireplace with shields I laugh, crumple over; I can’t help myself. Inthe darkness, 1 alone sce clear as day. While they squeal and screech and bump ino eachother, I siletly sack up my dead and withdraw to the woods. I eat and laugh and eat until I can barely walk, my cheschair matted with dribbled blood, and then the rowers on the hill erow, and dawn comes over the In roofs of the houses, and alla once I at filled with gloom again “This i some poishmen sen us” I her them bawling feom the bill My head acer Mocning ails my eye "Some god is angry." hear 2 woman keen, “The people of Seyld and Hecogar and Heoehger are mired in sn!” My belly rumbles, sick on thir sour meat. 1 caw through bloodsained leaves tothe eaves ofthe forest and there peak out The dogs alent atthe edge of my spel, and where the kings hall surmount the town, the blind ‘ld Shaper, arp cluched tight to bis fale che, stares fully down, straight me. Otherwise nothing, Pigs root Aly athe pous of wooden fence. A rumplehorned ox le chewing in dew and shade. A few men, lean, wearing animal skins, ook up tthe gules of the kings hal, or atthe vultures cling ally beyond, Hrohgar ays neh ing, hoaroubearded, his features cracked and eszed, Inside, 1 hear the people praying-—whimpering, whining, ‘mumbling, pleaing—to thee sumerous scks and stones. He does go ine The king has lat theories of his own “Theorie,” I whisper wo the blodstined ground. So the dragon once spoke. ("They'd map ot rads trough Hell with chee rackpttheore I rec his laugh.) Then the groaning and paying op, and on the side ofthe il the drgelow shoveling begins. They throw up 3 ‘mound forthe funeral pyre for whatever arms or legs or heads my haste has left behind. Meanviile, up in the shattered hall, the builders are hammering, replacing the door for (it must be) the fiftieth or sisteth time, in- dutious and witless ¢ worker ante—excep that chey make ‘sunall foolish changes adding a few more iron pegs, more leon bands, with ties dogmatism. Now fie. A fow litde lizard tongues, then healthy flames reaching up through the tangled nex of sticks, (A Fecbleminded crow could have fashioned a neater net) ‘A screred leg swells up and burss, then an arm, then nother, and the red fre turns on the blackening Besh and makes it siazle, and it reaches higher, up and up into ‘greasy smoke, turning, ening like falcons at warplay, rushing like circling wolves up into the swallowing, in- iferene sky. And naw, by some lunatic tery, they chow fon golden rings, old swords, and braided helmets. They wal the whole crowd, women and men, a kind of song, like a single quavering voice. The song rings up like the greasy stoke and their faces shine with sweat and some- {hing that looks like joy. The song swells pushes through wood and sky, and they're singing now as if by some lunatic theory they had won, I shake with sage. The red sun blinds me, churns up my belly to nausea, and the heat thrown out ofthe bone-fie burns my skin. I cringe, clawing my Bes and efor home. “ ‘Talking, talking spinning a spel, pale skin of words that loses me in lke a cofin, Noc in a language that anyone any longer understands. Rushing, degenerate mutter of noises T send out before me wherever I creep, like 2 dragon burning his way through vines and fo. used to play games when I was young—it might aswell be a thousand years ago. Explored our farung under- ‘ground world in an endless wargame of lps onto noth ing, ingenious ewiss into freedom or new perplexity, quick whispered plottings with invisible fiends, wild ‘ckles when vengeance was mine. I nosed out, in my childish games, every lst shark-tothed chamber and ball, 1s very black entce of my mother's av, and 1 cme a Tan, avenue by aGteture, tothe pol of Sciakes. 1 sare mouth oping, They wece gay ad ats face Je eyes Thy spread the surface ofthe water with pre een fae, knew seemed to have kaowa al slong— tha the snakes were thre to guard something. Inerbly, ate T4 sod there awhile, cling my eps back along the dak hllay, my ear cocked for my mothers wp, Tazewed my nerve up and dove, The Breaker tered aif my fh were charmed. And 10 I dicovered he sunken doy, and oI ame up, for he Bi ie, 0 00- light T went fare, that fist ight. Br Tame ou psn, ineiably played my way farther out ito the wel, vas exvern aboveground, catosly daring fom eet tree challenging the eile forces of night on tiptoe. At dawn ed back Tlived those year, as Go all young things in spe Like puppy nipping, pally growling prepaig fr batle with woes. At cme the pell wuld be broken sual om shelves on allway of my mote’ cave Tg ld shapes with smouleing ees at watching me ‘A continoous gramble came oot of their mouths tee tacks were humped, Then itl by lite t dawned on me thatthe ees that seme to bere ito my body ween ct gating through it, weary indferent to my slight ob le serio of the darknes. OF al the eats 1 ke in those days, only my mother relly looked at me—Sarcd sat me as if w consume me, lke a tll. She loved me, in some mysteries sense I understood without her speaking i T washer eration. We were one thing, lke the wall and the rock growing out fom it—Or so T ardently desperately afirmed. When her strange eyes burned inte mg it didnot seem quite sure. I ws intensely aware of whee Isa the ylume of darkness dpacd, the shiny- smooth span of packed dre beeween us and the shocking separateness from me in my mama's eyes T woud fe, alla once, alone and uly, amos if dite my self-obscene. The cavern river cumbled far below us Being young, unable w face thé things 1 would baw ad hurl myelé at my moher and she would reich out her cws and seize me, though I could se T slarmed ter (I bad teeth lke sew), ad she would smash me to her fap breast a if to make me a part of her Beth again. Alter that, confor I would gradually eae ack out into my games. Cralyeyed, wicked as an elderly wolf, {woul sheme with or sale my imaginary frends, rojeing the self T meant to become into every dark corner ofthe cave and the woods sbove. Then al at once there they be agin, the indiferent burning eyes ofthe seangers. Or my mothers eyes. Again ry world would be suddenly transformed, fixed like a 4 rose with a nail thecugh it space hurling coldly out fom se inl dzetons But I didnt understand, ‘One morning I caught my foot in the erack where wo ld tretruks join. “Ow!” I yelled. "Mama! Waa!” 1 was out much later than Td meant to be. As a rule T was buck in the cave by dawn, bur that day Td been lured out farther than usual by the heavenly sent of newborn calf al, sweeter than Rowers a sweet as my mama's milk 1 oked atthe foot in anger and disbelief. Ie was waged deep, at ifthe te oak toes were eating it Black saw. dust —squireldast—was spatered up the leg almost tothe thigh. Tm not sure now how the acident happened. 1 rust have pushed the two boles apart as T stepped up igo the place where they joined, and then when I stupidly Jet go again they closed on my foot like a trap. Blood gushed from my arkle and shin, and pain few up through se like fie up the five of 2 mountain, I lst my head. 1 bellowed for help 9 loudly it made the ground shake. “Mama! Waa! Wesal” I bellowed to the sky, the forest the elif until T wat so weak from loss of blood T could barely wave miy arms, “I'm going to die” I wailed. "Poor Grendel! Poot old Mamal” I wept and sobbed. “Poor Grendel will hang here and save to death,” I tld my- self, “and no one will ever even miss hima!" The thought cnraged me, I hocted. I thought of my mother’s foreign yes staring at me from across the room: I thought ofthe 1g cool indifferent eyes of the others I shricked in fears sil ‘The sun was up now, and even filtered as it was through the lacy young leaves, it made my bead ut. I twisted around 2s fr a I could hung willy for her shape on the cliffs, bor there was nothing, or, rather, there was cverything but my mother. Thi after thing tied, cynical and crue, to fois itself off a¢ ny mama's shape—a black rock balanced at the edge ofthe elif, a dead tree cating a long-armed shadow, 2 running stag, a cave entrance— ach thing trying to detach inelé, lit itself out of the general meaningless scramble o! objects, but falling back, ‘melting tothe blank, infuriating cluter of noteny-mother. ‘My heart began to rac. Isecmed to vee the whole universe, ‘ven the sun and sky, leaping forward, then sinking away again, decomposing. Everything was wreckage, putreac tion IF she were thee, the cif the brightening sky, the twee, the stag, the waterfall would suddenly snap into patton around her, sane agnn, well orgonized; but she was not, and che morning was crazy. Is green brilliance jabbed a me, ive needles “Please, Mama!” I sobbed as £ heartbroken, ‘Then, some thirty fect away there was a bull. He stood looking at me with his head lowered, and the world ssapped into postion around tit, at if in league with him. T must have been closer to the ealf chan I had 4 geese, since he'd arrived to protect it, Bulls do such ‘things, though they don't even know thatthe calves they defend are theirs He shook his horns at me, as if somnful [ tzembled. Oa the ground, on two good fet, I would have ‘ben more than a match forthe bull o if not, I could ave ‘outrun him, But I was four or five feet up inthe ae, tapped and weak. He could slam me right out of the wee with one blow of chat boned, square head, maybe tearing the foot of, and then he could gore me to death at his Ieisure in the grat. He pawed the ground, looking at me vypfromaunder, murderous. “Go away!” I said. “Hise!” Te had no effect bellowed at him. He jerked his head aif the sound were a boulder Té thrown at him, but then he merely ood considering, and, after 2 minute the pawed the ground again. Again I bellowed. This time the hardly noticed it, He snorted through his nose and jawed more deeply, spattering grass and black earth at his sharp reat hooves, As if dime had lowed down as it does for the dying, I watched him loll his weight forward, sliding into an eaty ope, head ted, coming toward me in a casual arc. He picked up sped, throwing his weight ‘onto his huge front shoulders, crooked til lifted behind him lke a fag, When I screamed, he didn't even fick an ear but came on, driving like an avalanche now, thun- er booming from his hooves across the elif. The same instant he struck my we he jerked his head and fame 20 shot up my leg. The tip of one hoca had ton me to the kee. ‘But that was all The we shuddered as he banged it with his skal, and he pivoted around it, stumbling. He av his ad jer, a clearing his brain then earned and lped back to where he'd charged me frm before. 8 suck too low, and even in ay terror I understood that he would alway strike to lw he fought by nin, ind mechani age old, He'd have fought the sme way agin an earthquake or an eagle: I bad noting to feat from his wrath but chat ewiing horn. The next dine he charged 1 kepe my eye on it, watched that hoen with as such concentration a5 Td have watched the sims of crevaue 1 was leaping, and at jut the right instant 1 inched, Nothing touched ime but the brecee atthe horn Aipped pa T laughed. My ankle was numb now; my leg was on fre w the hip. Twisted to search the clifalls agin but sill my mober wast there, and ny laughter grew Bere Al at once, as if by sudden vision, T undertoad the cnpies in the eyes of those humpbacked shapes back in the cave. (Were they my brothers, my unc, thot cea tures shufling brimsone

    You might also like