The Water-Method Man

  'If you want to beat me up,' Trumper said to him, 'go ahead.'

  A week later, the same guy came up to him. 'I want to beat you up now,' he said. Trumper didn't remember him, and he executed a competent side leg-dive, picked up the guy's legs and ran him like a wheelbarrow into the jukebox. The frat boy's friends threw Trumper out of the bar. 'Christ,' Bogus said, bewildered. 'He was a nut! He said he wanted to beat me up!' But there were two dozen other bars in Iowa City, and he didn't drink much anyway.

  He worked on the translation with a dull, enduring sort of energy. He went all the way through it to the ending before he remembered that there were a lot of verses in the middle section that were made up, and others that were not even translated. Then he recalled that even some of his early footnotes were lies, and parts of the glossary of terms too.

  In the back of his mind was a harsh echo he referred to frankly as Tulpen. She had always been one for facts. So he simply started over again and went through the whole translation straight. He looked up every word he didn't know, and conferred with Holster and the girl who knew Flemish about the ones he couldn't find. He wrote an honest footnote for every liberty, and a flat, direct introduction explaining why he had not tried to put the epic in verse but had elected to use simple prose. 'The original verse is awful,' he wrote. 'And my verse is worse.'

  Holster was enormously impressed with him. Their only argument was over Holster's insistence that Trumper make some introductory remarks 'placing' Akthelt and Gunnel in perspective in the broader picture of North Germanic literature.

  'Who cares?' Trumper asked.

  'I care!' Holster yelled.

  So he did it, and he didn't lie, either. He mentioned all the other related works he knew of, then admitted to knowing nothing about the writings in Faroese. 'I don't have the slightest idea as to whether this work has any relation to Faroese literature in this period,' he wrote.

  Holster said, 'Why don't you just say, "I prefer to reserve judgment on the relationship of Akthelt and Gunnel to the Faroese hero-epics, as I have not researched Faroese literature extensively."'

  'Because I haven't researched it at all,' Trumper said.

  Ordinarily Holster might have insisted on his point, or claimed that Trumper should research Faroese writings, but Trumper's demonic work habits had so impressed Holster that the old thesis chairman let it go. In fact, he was rather a nice man. One Sunday dinner, he asked, 'Fred, I would suppose that this work is a kind of therapy for you?'

  'What work isn't?' Trumper said.

  Holster tried to draw him out. He didn't mind Trumper living in his basement like a rarely-seen mole, and occasionally he would call down into the basement and ask Bogus upstairs for a drink. 'If you're having one,' Trumper would say.

  The only thing Bogus wrote that wasn't part of his thesis was an occasional letter to Couth and Biggie, and even more occasional letters to Tulpen. Couth wrote back and sent him pictures of Colm; Biggie sent him a package once a month with things like socks and underwear and Colm's finger paintings in it.

  He didn't hear from Tulpen. What he wrote her was almost purely descriptive of how he was living: Trumper as monk. But at the end of every letter he would add hesitantly, 'I want to see you, really.'

  Finally he did hear from her. She sent a postcard of the Bronx Zoo which said: 'Words, words, words, words ...' as many times as it took to nearly fill the postcard. At the bottom she left just enough room to add, 'If you wanted to see me, you'd do it.'

  But he threw himself into the end of Akthelt and Gunnel instead. Only once - when he heard the girl who knew Flemish crying in her library alcove and didn't go ask her if he could help - did he stop long enough to consider that Akthelt and Gunnel might not be good for him.

  Akthelt and Gunnel ends rather badly. It's all because of the foul temper Akthelt gets into while he's tied to the mainmast, smeared with his father's gore and being flagellated with the shafts of the father-murdering arrows. Moreover, when his fleet arrives back in the kingdom of Thak, Akthelt discovers that Hrothrund has come to Akthelt's castle, attempted to abduct the Lady Gunnel, failed (or changed his mind), and fled.

  Akthelt searches the whole kingdom for the father-murdering, would-be rapist without success. Then he comes home to the castle, wondering why Hrothrund failed to abduct the Lady Gunnel (or changed his mind about it). Did he even try? And if so, how far did he get?

  'I didn't even see him!' Gunnel protests. She'd been in the garden when Hrothrund had come to abduct her. Maybe he simply couldn't find her; it was a big castle, after all. Also, most of the people who had seen Hrothrund weren't yet aware of Thak's murder; therefore his appearance wasn't any big deal until the fleet returned and told the evil tale. Then people went around saying, 'Why, that foul Hrothrund was just here!'

  Akthelt is confused. Was Hrothrund the only one involved in the plot? Someone reminds him that it was just last Saint Odda's Fest when Gunnel was seen to dance with Hrothrund.

  'But I always dance with lots of people on Saint Odda's!' Gunnel protests.

  Akthelt behaves queerly. He demands a full search of the castle's laundry room and unearths one unclaimed pair of leather clogs, one unclaimed stained petticoat, and one unclaimed and boastfully large codpiece. Holding this grubby bundle at arm's length, he confronts Gunnel and attempts to make elaborate sense out of the evidence.

  'What evidence?' she cries.

  Hrothrund is not to be found anywhere in the kingdom of Thak. Reports trickle in from the coast that Hrothrund is at sea, is hiding in the northern fjords, is looting small and defenceless towns along the coast. A worthless pirate! Also, reports imply, Hrothrund is less interested in looting for gold and food than he is in sport. (In Old Low Norse, sport means rape.)

  Akthelt delves dangerously deeper into himself. 'What is that mark there?' he asks Gunnel, fingering an old bruise on the back of her downy thigh.

  'Why, from my horse, I think,' Gunnel says sweetly - at which Akthelt bashes her in the face.

  She cannot go on being wronged this way, so she begs her husband to allow her to try to capture foul Hrothrund by her wiles and prove her innocence before all. But Akthelt fears the trick will be on him, so he denies her request. But she persists. (All this stupid intrigue is the most trying point in the text, actually.)

  Finally, after a lot of dithering for twenty-two stanzas, Gunnel loads a rich boat with wares, her maidservants and herself, intending to sail north up the coast, hoping to lure an attack from Hrothrund. But when Akthelt discovers her design, he believes the lure is really set for him; in a rage, he casts her rich ship, her maidservants and Gunnel herself adrift. With no man to sail them and no weapons to guard them, the defenceless ship full of hysterical, useless females sails north up the fjord toward Hrothrund, and despite the pleading from many in the kingdom of Thak, Akthelt refuses to follow.

  The expected happens, of course; Hrothrund falls upon them. What a self-fulfilling prophecy to haunt Akthelt for all his remaining days! His wife was faithful, but by suspecting her, he casts her into infidelity. What else could Gunnel do when her maidservants are beset by a boatload of hairy archers, and she herself is faced with the ruthless swine Hrothrund?

  Actually, what Gunnel does is pretty fucking shrewd. 'Well met, Hrothrund!' she hails him. 'For months, tales of your brave insolence have reached us. Make me your queen and our lord Akthelt will be undone!'

  Hrothrund fell for it too, but it cost her. For days and nights in his foul ship's cabin hung with animal skins, Gunnel gave up her body to his savage, slimy ways, until at last he fully trusted her. He would take her, unarmed, without his knife or broad-ax by his bedside, and rut like a contented beast, leaving her gasping. He was fool enough to think it was pleasure that made her gasp.

  Then she had him. One day she told him about a safe cove he could sail into for the night; there, friends in favor of Akthelt's overthrow would meet them. So Hrothrund sailed right into the cove where the lookouts of Akthelt's fleet were always stat
ioned. She led Hrothrund right into it. Then, in the long night, Gunnel gave herself to him so untiringly that she finally had him spread out, spent and groggy, beside her. Though barely able to move herself, she had cherished this moment for so long that her will was not to be denied. Groaning her way from his stinking bed, she took up his broad-ax and cut off his smug, ugly head.

  Then, perfumed with the aroma of her sex, Gunnel sweetly asked the cabin guard to fetch her a bucket of fresh eels. 'For his lord,' she said, letting her robe bare her shoulder, and the dolt fetched her the eels quick.

  In the morning, Akthelt's fleet fell upon Hrothrund's boats and massacred everyone above deck, including Gunnel's faithful maidservants, long since defiled and humbled by the filthy archers. Then did the bold, righteous and avenging Akthelt stride to Hrothrund's cabin door and cleave it with his two-edged sword, expecting to find his false lady in the arms of the cowardly father-murderer.

  But Gunnel sat waiting for him in her best gown, and on the night table in front of her was the severed head of Hrothrund, stuffed with live eels. (In the kingdom of Thak, a legend claimed that this recipe would never let a man's brain rest.)

  Akthelt dropped on his knees before her, whimpering his apologies and begging forgiveness for the burden he had forced her to bear. 'I bear another burden,' Gunnel said coldly. 'Hrothrund's spawn is in my belly. You shall have to bear that for me too.'

  By this time Akthelt was ready to accept almost anything from her, so he agreed abjectly.

  'Now,' she said. 'Take your true wife home.'

  Akthelt did so, and bore his burden well enough until the child of Hrothrund was born. But he could not fathom her affection for the child; to him, the spirit of the father-murderer, wife-raper lived within the babe, so he slew it and threw it to the wild boars in the moat. It would have been a girl.

  'I could forgive you much,' Gunnel told him, 'but I will never forgive you this.'

  'You'll learn to,' he said, but he wasn't so sure. He slept badly - and alone - while Gunnel roamed the castle every night like a streetwalker whose price was too high for any passer-by.

  Then, one night, she came to his bed and made violent love to him, saying she at last felt reconciled to him. But in the morning, she asked the chamber girl for a bucket of fresh eels.

  After that, the kingdom of Thak went the way of most kingdoms whose leadership is up for grabs. Gunnel was completely off her rocker, of course. She herself announced Akthelt's death at the morning session of the Council of Elders. She brought Akthelt's head, crammed with eels, to the meeting, placed it on a meat board and set it before the Elders, plunk in the middle of the great table. For years she had been in the habit of serving exotic dishes at these weekly meetings, so many of the Elders were caught off guard.

  'Akthelt is dead,' she announced, putting the dish down.

  One of the Elders was so old that his eyesight was gone. He groped his hand toward the head on the table, which was his customary manner of identifying Gunnel's exotic dishes. 'Live eel!' he exclaimed. The Elders were not sure what to do.

  The obvious successor to the throne was young Axelrulf, Akthelt and Gunnel's only son, who was now in charge of the occupation of Flan. The Council of Elders sent a messenger to him, informing him of his father's murder at his mother's hand and pointing out that the kingdom of Thak was in danger of division without strong leadership. But Axelrulf was having an awfully good time among the Flans. They were a handsome, hedonistic and civilized people, the living was easy, and Axelrulf had never had political ambitions. At least, that was part of his reasoning. 'Tell Mother I'm very sorry,' he told the messenger.

  In the meantime, some of the Elders were conspiring to appoint one of their own to the throne, and to murder Axelrulf should he come back to claim his birthright. That was the larger part of Axelrulf's reasoning for not being interested in the position. He was no fool!

  What happened then was what always happens. When no strong leader emerged, the kingdom of Thak erupted in chaotic and ineffectual rebellion. At the castle, Gunnel became obsessed with a rash of lovers, and there were more buckets of fresh eels. Finally, of course, she took a lover who was not so spent and love-drugged as he looked, and he cut her head off. He didn't bother with the eels, though.

  Finally, when the kingdom of Thak was hardly even a kingdom any more, but a disorganized land with hundreds of tiny, feuding fiefs, what happened then was what always happens too.

  Young Axelrulf rode up from Flan. In fact, he liked the Flans so much that he brought an army of them into the kingdom of Thak and took over the whole mess very easily. He made peace in the kingdom by killing all the feuders who wanted war. So Thak became Flan, sort of, and Axelrulf married a nice Flan girl named Cronigen.

  In the last stanza of Akthelt and Gunnel, the anonymous author implies that the story of Axelrulf and Gronigen is probably not much different from the story of Akthelt and Gunnel. So why stop it here?

  Bogus Trumper was more than willing to agree. When he had finished all four hundred and twenty-one stanzas, it seemed a pretty empty accomplishment. In part this was because he had been so honest a translator that there was nothing of his own in the whole work. So he added something.

  Remember the part where Gunnel cuts off Hrothrund's head? And then Akthelt's head? Well, Trumper added an implication that she cut off more than heads. It fitted, after all. It suited the story, it certainly suited Gunnel, and most of all, it suited Bogus. He really believed that Gunnel would have cut off more than their heads, but that for reasons of etiquette guiding the literature of the time, the author had been obliged to discreetly edit certain details. Anyway, it made Trumper feel better and gave him a small stake of his own in the translation.

  Dr Holster was very pleased with Akthelt and Gunnel. 'Such a rich work!' he exclaimed. 'Such a basic pessimism!' The old man moved his arms like a symphony conductor. 'Such a crude story! Such a violent, barbaric people! Even sex is a blood sport!'

  The notion was no surprise to Trumper. He was a little uneasy, however, that Holster had especially liked the implication he had added, and when the old man suggested a footnote to emphasize the boldness of such an act, Bogus declined by saying he didn't care to draw attention to it.

  'And the part with the eels!' cried Holster. 'Think of it! She cut off their pricks! How perfect - but I just couldn't imagine it!'

  'I could,' said Fred Bogus Trumper, BA, MA, PhD.

  So finally he had finished something. He packed and reread his mail. With nothing to occupy him, he felt as if his pulse had slowed down, as if his blood was reptile-thick.

  There hadn't been any more mail from Tulpen. His mother had written about his father's ulcer. Bogus felt a little guilty and tried to think of a gift. After some thought, he went to a fancy-food store and sent his father a prime boned Amish ham. Too late, he wondered if ham was good for an ulcer, and quickly sent a letter apologizing for the gift.

  He heard again from Couth. Biggie had delivered an eight-pound baby girl, named Anna Bennett. Another Anna. Trying to imagine the baby, Trumper remembered that the ham he'd sent his father also weighed eight pounds. But he felt so happy for Couth and Biggie that he sent them a ham too.

  And he heard from Ralph. Typically, a mysterious letter. It mentioned nothing about Trumper abandoning a film career or leaving Ralph Packer Films, Inc., in the lurch, but said simply that he thought Trumper should at least come see Tulpen. Surprisingly, Ralph spent most of the letter describing the girl he was living with now, someone called Matje, 'like the herring, you know?' The girl was 'not voluptuous, but a brimming person', and Ralph added that 'even Tulpen likes her'.

  Trumper had no picture of what in hell was going on. He understood why Ralph had really written the letter, though; Ralph wanted Bogus's permission to release the film. Fucking Up was done, Trumper knew.

  Bogus left the letter unanswered for a few weeks. Then one night after his thesis was finished and he was feeling especially aimless, he went to see a movie. It wa
s a film about a homosexual airline pilot who is afraid of rain. By some slip-up, he sleeps with a sympathetic stewardess, who cures him of both his nasty homosexuality and his fear of the weather. Evidently he was afraid of rain because he was a homosexual. It was a sloppy and offensive movie in every way, Trumper thought, and afterward he sent a telegram to Ralph. 'You have my permission,' the telegram said, and it was signed, 'Thump-Thump'.

  Two days later Trumper said his goodbyes to Dr Holster. 'Gaf throgs!' Holster hailed him cheerfully. 'Gaf throgs!'

  This was an inside joke from Akthelt and Gunnel. When people in the kingdom of Thak wanted to congratulate one another for a job well done, a war well fought or sex well made, they said, 'Gaf throgs!' ('Give thanks!'). They even had a Thanksgiving Day devoted to such feelings; they called it Throgsgafen Day.

  It was a perfect September football weekend when Trumper lugged his suitcase and his thesis bound copy of Akthelt and Gunnel to the Iowa City bus station. He had his PhD and his memories of selling pennants and buttons and bells. He guessed he was going to look for a job. After all, what was a PhD for? But it was a bad time of year to look for a teaching post: the academic year had just begun. He was too late for this year, and it was too early to find an opening for next year.

  He felt like Maine, seeing the new baby and being with Colm. He knew he'd be welcome there for a while, but he couldn't live there. He felt like New York, too, and seeing Tulpen, but he didn't know how to introduce himself. He had an image of how he'd like to return - as someone triumphant, like a cured cancer patient. But he couldn't decide what disease he'd had when he left, so he hardly knew if he was cured.

  He spent a long time looking at a Greyhound map of the United States before buying a ticket to Boston. He supposed there was much to recommend Boston, in the dim light of teaching jobs; furthermore, he had never seen the birthplace of Merrill Overturf.