Women in the Wall Read Online Free

had come up with was the fact that they reminded him of a goat’s. Idiotic comparison. A goat’s eyes, for God’s sake—he’d checked—were yellow and not beautiful at all. Whereas Radegunda’s … Still, the comparison had something. It was the transparency perhaps, the diffuseness. Empty of memory. Clotair had left little trace. But then Radegunda was a German and Germans were like that: curiously free of memory’s murk. A German could tell you his grandfather’s name perhaps. Never more. Or didn’t choose to? They had come from Asia not so long ago but could tell nothing of their origins. Nothing of those decades of journeying on wooden waggons across Oriental lands. A peculiar freedom that gave them, he supposed, reflecting that his own racial past tugged at his thoughts like water-weeds at the keel of a boat.
    “Tell me,” he asked, remembering something he had read, “do German women still bring weapons to their husbands as a dowry?”
    “I was brought up”, she reminded him, “a Romanized Frank. I’m grateful to Clotair for that. It was while I was being educated in his villa at Aties on the Somme that I found my reverse-world: Christianity. I had been baptized in Thuringia, of course, but …”
    “He didn’t live at Aties? Clotair?”
    “No. But he was not alone while waiting for me. Clotair in all had seven wives or, to be finical, six and one official concubine. The distinction is subtle. As for unofficial concubines …” The nun threw up her hands, laughing.
    “A man of passion!” The poet stared into the heart of a nasturtium trumpet. “ Abundantia gallica … Gaul abounds in life. The Franks do. The royal sons of Clovis perhaps more than the rest and Clotair was the most immoderate of them , wasn’t he? Anyway, he ’s dead so safer to talk about!” Fortunatus mimed comic alarm. “You know,” he confided, “he—they all—fascinate me, terrify me too, which is excellent for my verse. When I’m at court I walk a tightrope, my head is dizzy, my senses keen as blades, my mouth dry. I am like a rabbit staring at a hound. I adore that hound: he is the anti-me. I would like to write a panegyric to his immoderacy, to his appetites, guts, kidneys and bowels which are all of so much better quality than my own. To his teeth. Instead, what do I do? I write panegyrics to Clotair’s son and very worthy successor , Chilperic, whom Gregory calls ‘the Nero and Herod of our time’ and praise him for what? For his moderation! Why do I do It? It’s a game, a game whose pleasures I only half understand myself. There’s the obvious one of trying it on, seeing just how much flattery the monster will take. Then there’s my penchant for the horrible which I castigate by denying it—Radegunda, you are annoyed! I’ve said the wrong thing! Forgive me. You know how I let words carry me away. They mean nothing.”
    The nun did not pretend to smile. “Forgive me, Fortunatus , if I say that there is something disgusting about innocence. You are pure and impurity fascinates you! You do not know evil and so you make the word ‘evil’ your toy.”
    “Should I be tried in the furnace of reality?”
    “Maybe you should! No, nobody should. You should believe in reality, though. Believe it’s real. Respect it. It is because things are remote from you, filtered through books and hearsay, that you feel you have to dress them up, make metaphors. You are inquisitive, Fortunatus! You have renounced the flesh, but you do not renounce the thought of the flesh and, since you are a man of words, you enjoy it more avidly at second hand.” She looked him in the eye. “You want me to tell you about my married life with Clotair.”
    “I have offended you. I’m sorry. I thought we were friends. I had come to identify with many of your feelings. It’s not all that hard for me. We had several invasions during my time in northern Italy: the Ostrogoths, the Byzantines. They came as allies but invading allies, you