Then, having snapped his fingers at that foolish signboard, Jurgen
would have turned easterly, toward Bellegarde: but his horse
resisted. The pawnbroker decided to accept this as an omen.
"Forward, then!" he said, "in the name of Koshchei." And thereafter
Jurgen permitted the horse to choose its own way.
Thus Jurgen came through a forest, wherein he saw many things not
salutary to notice, to a great stone house like a prison, and he
sought shelter there. But he could find nobody about the place,
until he came to a large hall, newly swept. This was a depressing
apartment, in its chill neat emptiness, for it was unfurnished save
for a bare deal table, upon which lay a yardstick and a pair of
scales. Above this table hung a wicker cage, containing a blue bird,
and another wicker cage containing three white pigeons. And in this
hall a woman, no longer young, dressed all in blue, and wearing a
white towel by way of head-dress was assorting curiously colored
cloths.
She had very bright eyes, with wrinkled lids; and now as she looked
up at Jurgen her shrunk jaws quivered.
"Ah," says she, "I have a visitor. Good day to you, in your
glittering shirt. It is a garment I seem to recognize."
"Good day, grandmother! I am looking for my wife, whom I suspect to
have been carried off by a devil, poor fellow! Now, having lost my
way, I have come to pass the night under your roof."
"Very good: but few come seeking Mother Sereda of their own accord."
Then Jurgen knew with whom he talked: and inwardly he was perturbed,
for all the Léshy are unreliable in their dealings.
So when he spoke it was very civilly. "And what do you do here,
grandmother?"
"I bleach. In time I shall bleach that garment you are wearing. For
I take the color out of all things. Thus you see these stuffs here,
as they are now. Clotho spun the glowing threads, and Lachesis wove
them, as you observe, in curious patterns, very marvelous to see:
but when I am done with these stuffs there will be no more color or
beauty or strangeness anywhere apparent than in so many dishclouts."
"Now I perceive," says Jurgen, "that your power and dominion is more
great than any other power which is in the world."
He made a song of this, in praise of the Léshy and their Days, but
more especially in praise of the might of Mother Sereda and of the
ruins that have fallen on Wednesday. To Chetverg and Utornik and
Subbota he gave their due. Pyatinka and Nedelka also did Jurgen
commend for such demolishments as have enregistered their names in
the calendar of saints, no less. Ah, but there was none like Mother
Sereda: hers was the centre of that power which is the Léshy's. The
others did but nibble at temporal things, like furtive mice: she
devastated, like a sandstorm, so that there were many dustheaps
where Mother Sereda had passed, but nothing else.
And so on, and so on. The song was no masterpiece, and would not be
bettered by repetition. But it was all untrammeled eulogy, and the
old woman beat time to it with her lean hands: and her shrunk jaws
quivered, and she nodded her white-wrapped head this way and that
way, with a rolling motion, and on her thin lips was a very proud
and foolish smile.
"That is a good song," says she; "oh, yes, an excellent song! But
you report nothing of my sister Pandelis who controls the day of the
Moon."
"Monday!" says Jurgen: "yes, I neglected Monday, perhaps because she
is the oldest of you, but in part because of the exigencies of my
rhyme scheme. We must let Pandelis go unhymned. How can I remember
everything when I consider the might of Sereda?"
"Why, but," says Mother Sereda, "Pandelis may not like it, and she
may take holiday from her washing some day to have a word with you.
However, I repeat, that is an excellent song. And in return for your
praise of me, I will tell you that, if your wife has been carried
off by a devil, your affair is one which Koshchei alone can remedy.
Assuredly, I think it is to him you must go for justice."
"But how may I come to him, grandmother?"
"Oh, as to that, it does not matter at all which road you follow.
All highways, as the saying is, lead roundabout to Koshchei. The one
thing needful is not to stand still. This much I will tell you also
for your song's sake, because that was an excellent song, and nobody
ever made a song in praise of me before to-day."
Now Jurgen wondered to see what a simple old creature was this
Mother Sereda, who sat before him shaking and grinning and frail as
a dead leaf, with her head wrapped in a common kitchen-towel, and
whose power was so enormous.
"To think of it," Jurgen reflected, "that the world I inhabit is
ordered by beings who are not one-tenth so clever as I am! I have
often suspected as much, and it is decidedly unfair. Now let me see
if I cannot make something out of being such a monstrous clever
fellow."
Jurgen said aloud: "I do not wonder that no practising poet ever
presumed to make a song of you. You are too majestical. You frighten
these rhymesters, who feel themselves to be unworthy of so great a
theme. So it remained for you to be appreciated by a pawnbroker,
since it is we who handle and observe the treasures of this world
after you have handled them."
"Do you think so?" says she, more pleased than ever. "Now, may be
that was the way of it. But I wonder that you who are so fine a poet
should ever have become a pawnbroker."
"Well, and indeed, Mother Sereda, your wonder seems to me another
wonder: for I can think of no profession better suited to a retired
poet. Why, there is the variety of company! for high and low and
even the genteel are pressed sometimes for money: then the plowman
slouches into my shop, and the duke sends for me privately. So the
people I know, and the bits of their lives I pop into, give me a
deal to romance about."
"Ah, yes, indeed," says Mother Sereda, wisely, "that well may be the
case. But I do not hold with romance, myself."
"Moreover, sitting in my shop, I wait there quiet-like while tribute
comes to me from the ends of earth: everything which men and women
have valued anywhere comes sooner or later to me: and jewels and
fine knickknacks that were the pride of queens they bring me, and
wedding rings, and the baby's cradle with his little tooth marks on
the rim of it, and silver coffin-handles, or it may be an old
frying-pan, they bring me, but all comes to Jurgen. So that just to
sit there in my dark shop quiet-like, and wonder about the history
of my belongings and how they were made mine, is poetry, and is the
deep and high and ancient thinking of a god who is dozing among what
time has left of a dead world, if you understand me, Mother Sereda."
"I understand: oho, I understand that which pertains to gods, for a
sufficient reason."
"And then another thing, you do not need any turn for business:
people are glad to get whatever you choose to offer, for they would
not come otherwise. So you get the shining and rough-edged coins
that you can feel the proud king's head on, with his laurel-wreath
like millet seed under your fingers; and you get the flat and
greenish coins that are smeared with the titles and the chins and
hooked noses of emperors whom nobody remembers or cares about any
longer: all just by waiting there quiet-like, and making a favor of
it to let customers give you their belongings for a third of what
they are worth. And that is easy labor, even for a poet."
"I understand: I understand all labor."
"And people treat you a deal more civilly than any real need is,
because they are ashamed of trafficking with you at all: I dispute
if a poet could get such civility shown him in any other profession.
And finally, there is the long idleness between business interviews,
with nothing to do save sit there quiet-like and think about the
queerness of things in general: and that is always rare employment
for a poet, even without the tatters of so many lives and homes
heaped up about him like spillikins. So that I would say in all,
Mother Sereda, there is certainly no profession better suited to an
old poet than the profession of pawnbroking."
"Certainly, there may be something in what you tell me," observes
Mother Sereda. "I know what the Little Gods are, and I know what
work is, but I do not think about these other matters, nor about
anything else. I bleach."
"Ah, and a great deal more I could be saying, too, godmother, but
for the fear of wearying you. Nor would I have run on at all about
my private affairs were it not that we two are so close related. And
kith makes kind, as people say."
"But how can you and I be kin?"
"Why, heyday, and was I not born upon a Wednesday? That makes you my
godmother, does it not?"
"I do not know, dearie, I am sure. Nobody ever cared to claim kin
with Mother Sereda before this," says she, pathetically.
"There can be no doubt, though, on the point, no possible doubt.
Sabellius states it plainly. Artemidorus Minor, I grant you, holds
the question debatable, but his reasons for doing so are tolerably
notorious. Besides, what does all his flimsy sophistry avail against
Nicanor's fine chapter on this very subject? Crushing, I consider
it. His logic is final and irrefutable. What can anyone say against
Sævius Nicanor?--ah, what indeed?" demanded Jurgen.
And he wondered if there might not have been perchance some such
persons somewhere, after all. Their names, in any event, sounded
very plausible to Jurgen.
"Ah, dearie, I was never one for learning. It may be as you say."
"You say 'it may be', godmother. That embarrasses me, rather,
because I was about to ask for my christening gift, which in the
press of other matters you overlooked some forty years back. You
will readily conceive that your negligence, however unintentional,
might possibly give rise to unkindly criticism: and so I felt I
ought to mention it, in common fairness to you."
"As for that, dearie, ask what you will within the limits of my
power. For mine are all the sapphires and turquoises and whatever
else in this dusty world is blue; and mine likewise are all the
Wednesdays that have ever been or ever will be: and any one of these
will I freely give you in return for your fine speeches and your
tender heart."
"Ah, but, godmother, would it be quite just for you to accord me so
much more than is granted to other persons?"
"Why, no: but what have I to do with justice? I bleach. Come now,
then, do you make a choice! for I can assure you that my sapphires
are of the first water, and that many of my oncoming Wednesdays will
be well worth seeing."
"No, godmother, I never greatly cared for jewelry: and the future is
but dressing and undressing, and shaving, and eating, and computing
percentage, and so on; the future does not interest me now. So I
shall modestly content myself with a second-hand Wednesday, with one
that you have used and have no further need of: and it will be a
Wednesday in the August of such and such a year."
Mother Sereda agreed to this. "But there are certain rules to be
observed," says she, "for one must have system."
As she spoke, she undid the towel about her head, and she took a
blue comb from her white hair: and she showed Jurgen what was
engraved on the comb. It frightened Jurgen, a little: but he nodded
assent.
"First, though," says Mother Sereda, "here is the blue bird. Would
you not rather have that, dearie, than your Wednesday? Most people
would."
"Ah, but, godmother," he replied, "I am Jurgen. No, it is not the
blue bird I desire."
So Mother Sereda took from the wall the wicker cage containing the
three white pigeons: and going before him, with small hunched shoulders,
and shuffling her feet along the flagstones, she led the way into a
courtyard, where, sure enough, they found a tethered he-goat. Of a
dark blue color this beast was, and his eyes were wiser than the eyes
of a beast.
Then Jurgen set about that which Mother Sereda said was necessary.
7.