I pick up the book. Faust: A Tragedy does not sound like an enjoyable story but, at first, it is, and a very imaginative one. The elderly scholar, Faust, realizing he has wasted his life, makes a bargain with the devil (signed in blood!) to enable him to once again be young and handsome and seduce the lovely maiden, Gretchen, who falls into his evil clutches.
Oh, how I sympathize with Gretchen! Especially in scene fifteen when, alone after her encounter with Faust, Gretchen spins upon her spinning wheel, sighing that she will never find peace without him. As the man’s spinning wheel clacks in the background, so does Gretchen’s spinning wheel clack in my mind. I read her words:
Only to see him do I look out the window.
Only to find him do I leave the house.
I remember those days when I wanted to run away, to find Karl no matter what, for my life was otherwise worthless.
His tall carriage;
His noble figure;
His smile;
The power of his glance.
I stare at the page. Karl’s eyes meet mine through the lines. The spinning wheel clacks and clacks, turning and turning. Did he really love me? Ever? Or was he merely a seducer, sent by the devil to ruin me, as Faust had ruined Gretchen?
His magical voice!
My own voice breaks into a thousand pieces.
The clasp of his hand!
And, oh! His kiss!
The book falls from my hand as I imagine it. Karl’s face, coming toward me. His beautiful face. Was it ever real?
I do not want to know the answer, and as I think upon it, collapsed upon myself, unable to go on, I hear the clacks of the wheel, endless and desperate as the river, exhorting me to its waters just as the clacks of Gretchen’s spinning wheel exhorted her, just like the whirring of Gretchen’s mind as she considered, as she thought, as she knew that Faust would not return.
But the clacks become irregular now. They slow. They stop.
“Is it too dark to read then?” a gentle voice whispers beside me.
I look at him, for it is not too dark, not quite. I can see his face. I had thought it so ugly, but in the dimness, his eyes are gentle and kind. He had thought to spare me embarrassment by pretending my failure was due to outside influences. My failure was my own, only my own.
I draw in a breath, a shaky one, but at least it is not a sob. I let it out, then draw in another before speaking.
“It is . . . a bit dark . . . I suppose . . . and . . .” I stop again.
In the grayness, I see him nod. “You do not like tragedies, I think.” Before I can answer, he says, “Perhaps, then, you can sit beside me and feed straw into the spinning wheel. And since it is too dark to read, you can tell me a story you do like.”
“I do not know very many stories.” A lie. I want him to tell me one, a happier one, for he knows so many more. But I move off my seat and gather a quantity of straw. The scratchy feel of it takes my mind from other things.
“How about that history book? The one you say your beloved sent you?”
The one you say your beloved sent you. There is a tartness in his voice as he says it, and I know he does not think much of Karl. Nor should he.
“Have you read it?” he asks. “If ’tis too dark to read, perhaps we can discuss. What is your favorite part?”
I am still pondering his words, but finally, I say, “I do not have a favorite part.”
I think I hear him sigh in the darkness.
“I mean,” I say, “I read all of it. It was as if I had been starving, and someone placed a feast before me. I devoured it. I like knowing about things, people I’ll never meet, things other people don’t care about, like Queen Elizabeth or Charlemagne, great rulers or terrible ones. They just seem so . . . real, more real than people I actually know.”
As I say the last, he says at the same moment, “Exactly. More real than people you actually know.”
The spinning wheel vibrates beside me. I reach over and, careful not to upset the lantern, lest the entire barn go up in flames, I pick up some more straw. I give it to the wheel.
“I do not know many people,” I say. “Just Father and a few of his friends. Karl was . . .”
“Me either.” His voice is rhythmic with the clacking. “Books and the people in them are the only friends I have. I always wanted someone to discuss them with. That is why . . .” He broke off.
“What?”
“Nothing. You are very lucky to have your Karl to talk with.”
I nod, not feeling very lucky to have Karl, if I have Karl. I wonder where Karl has been all day, who he was with. I can see him if I use Kendra’s mirror. Yet I do not want to know. I fear to know.
He says, “When I read that book, I pictured the War of the Roses taking place in the wheat field near where I once lived.”
I laugh, for I did the same thing. Unable to visualize places I had never seen, I pictured Joan of Arc in our little church and Queen Elizabeth at the mill. Probably, she lived in a palace like this palace, but I had never been inside one before.
“You have read the book I have?” I ask the man.
“Of course. It was at our shop. You saw it there.”
“So did you sell it to Karl then?”