Falkenfels

by Brett Rutherford

 

Adapted from Victor Hugo, l’Année Terrible, “July 1871”

 

V

One sees it in the distance — Falkenfels! —
up there amid the drizzle, the demolished burg
of an old count who lost his fortune, a ruin now.
I wanted to see the town, and better yet,
to set eyes on the man who lords over it.

 

Mounting the hill I find
an unexpected ravine, in which
an old chapel was overrun with beetles,
its only congregants. The crucifix,
tipped over, and the pulpit, broken
and toppled sideways, give proof
that no priest ever comes down here.
The place is near collapse; no one
in this impoverished spot holds out
a coin to help repair it. They dance in rags,
not finery, at harvest fête.

As for the dead, they get no masses
said in their names, no candles lit.

No money anywhere — now that’s

enough to drive a priest away.
Even a saint deserts his niche,
when the last rat has nibbled away
the last crumb of the sacred Host.

There is no gold, just gilding,
and God himself would snort
     at such a miserable threshold.

So this is why the chapel died.

A genuflect is wasted here.

 

From this corpse of a church
I turn my back and flee
with a shiver this shadowy ditch,
to resume my climb to the summit.

I blink. I find myself here again
as though I had never moved,
but the sun is far behind me.

Again, the sinister chapel.

 

What happened was this:
I got to Falkenfels.
Sublime but tawny, in stark,
undecorated hues, the high town stood.

Even in broad daylight the tower loomed
so that its battlements cast
a hulking sense of menace.

Even a window-box flower wilts
when the sun is threatened thus.

In the wall-gap where once a gate
had proudly blocked all visitors,
under a high and tarnished coat-of-arms,
there sat a tall and pensive old peasant —
no, it was the Count himself!

 

He did not rise from his low camp-stool.
At the sound of my slow steps he turned
his head my way but did not rise.

As I had come unannounced, it was
my duty to declare myself and hail him.

If there had ever been retainers,
     guards, and servants, none came
          to block my way to his view.

The only one near him was the child,
     a pink young face beneath a rumpled cap.

Saluting a defeated man is no easy thing.

     I did him the honor of naming him.
I saluted the abolished count as though
     he still retained his honors.

I said to him honestly, “I grieve to see
    you poor now, who once were great.
A traveler and stranger, I come to greet
     you in the most civil manner.”

In a long silence I regarded him,
     the shattered walls, the ugly town,
          the mountain range around us,
               the distance from everything
                    that mattered.

I looked at the boy and blurted out:

“O, let me take this child to the city!

Returning to Nature and becoming wild
     is good for old men like us,
but for the child this is terrible.

Dawn trembles in the choking fog.
Roses die here in perpetual shade,
where the only bird is the owl.

I see on your brow the proud silhouette
of your ancestral towers —
     even if nothing blossoms here now
          but the lowly bramble —

this has a desolate beauty, I know,
but living in one’s own century is better.

Your child would wither here, and die
     without knowing more of the world
          than the far peaks seen in the mist.

 

“This is a time of monsters, and prodigies,
     but the prodigy is sure to conquer.

A dark eagle is such a one — I see at least
     a falcon’s eye gleaming there —
Is this your son? Your son’s son, then?
Dark grandfather, dare now to send him forth.
Let him see Paris as pilgrims once
     went all the way to Rome.

No one will call him ‘Count,’ admittedly,
     but there he can add
     to his noble and beautiful name
          a scroll of brave and worthy deeds.

 

“When you move on, you must let others in.
The eagle sends the eaglet forth, the shrub
must escape the old oak’s shadow.

This is the right progression of things.” —

 

Beneath his sinister and forbidding face
the old man smiled superbly. He saw through me,
and forgave my hasty admonitions.

Although I stood, he, seated still,
     made me inclined to kneel,
as his low voice rumbled out.

 

“Ruin loves isolation” he said.

“If I was once a big man, it suits
me now to keep quiet concerning it.

People are curious about a fallen man.

They come to gawk. You saw me — good for you.
At least you were polite about it.
There’s nothing more to say —
     allies and friends, acquaintances even —
I no longer exist for them. So let us be.” —

 

“But what of the boy?” I argued still.
“A spirit meant to soar needs light.
Old man, there is more than night!

What father would not regret
     a child without a future?”

 

“I who am dead,” the old man replied,
“hear miserable things about the likes of you
and all the others who boast about their lives;
that among you, only the inexorable
get to celebrate a triumph; that man
kills man in endless retaliation;
that the fox is more admired than the lion;

that words called “true” one day
     are suspect in the next;
that Reason limps along with naught
     below her kneecaps;
that bodies of those the Left disposes of
     pile up in heaps, while the Right

mows others down mechanically
     with something they call
          a “machine-gun”;
and that, amid the blood and cries,
     the horror and misery,
it is a crime to open one’s door
    to anyone proscribed,
         to offer them asylum.

 

“Is this true? I fear it is.” —
     I dared not contradict him.
“Is this false? I hope so.” —
     My silence told him all.

“So let me be. I am honest in my den.

My grandson here will drink
     the same pure water as I do.
You offer me your city,
     while I prefer the woods.
Why so? seeing the men you are,
     I find more sympathy in rocks,

and in the animals, less
    of your collective stupidity.”

 

Chastened, I had no arguments.

My downhill journey passed with ease,
as though a wind were pushing me.
Now, looking back up
     at the hulking towers
I feel the contempt of Falkenfels.