The Gift of Stones

14

WE BEGGED my father to repeat for us the story that he told that night to his audience of cousins. What happened when the ship reached shore? Were there men on board or what? What was the cargo that they brought? He claimed he was not sure, that stories were like dreams, like dragonflies. They came and went. They only gave one show. His cousins might remember. But he could not. Besides, he’d told a hundred versions since — and no two were quite the same.

We have heard my father talking — and we know the way he worked. We know that when he spoke he shaped the truth, he trimmed, he stretched, he decorated. He was to truth what every stoney was to untouched flint, a fashioner, a god. We know that when he said, ‘I’ll keep it simple too, I won’t tell lies,’ that this was just another arrow from his shaft by which we were transfixed. And so, again, we should beware when father claimed forgetfulness and said ‘Who knows what story I dished up for them that night? Who cares? He knew, for sure. It was a turning-point for him — though, here again, his version was much tidier than truth. His version said that that one tale, told late at night to cousins, had kicked the anthill once again. He’d startled everyone; he’d surprised himself. It was as if the village fool had, unannounced, stood up and juggled perfectly — or the stammerer had sung a faultless song. It was a revelation and a shock that in the village, hidden, uncultivated all these years, there had been this amputee, who now could hold a household silent with the magic of his words.

The truth for what it’s worth is this … and now I’m guessing, so can you see the value of my truth? … my father’s talent for inflating and for telling lies was always there, from birth. But no one guessed its power — until, that is, my father transformed his defect into craft. As the bully becomes soldier, and the meany becomes merchant, so the liar becomes bard. Where is the shock in that? But father had it thus: that one good story from his mouth transformed him in that village, overnight, from the wild plant, not much use, into their raconteur.

His cousins spread the news. Their Little Liar had a tale to tell, they said. He’d chased a boat and caught it too! And then — guess what! — the sailors all were women. And their cargo? Perfume, stored in jars the shape of birds with necks for spouts. And then they’d come ashore, and then and then … And so the story was passed on. Of course, next day, the stoneys and the mongers in the village called out to him, What’s this we hear? And father was obliged to stop and tell his story once again.

He could not, he said, have invented a more workable device for telling tales than the ship upon the sea. Each time it came ashore it could offload a new and untried plot; a different set of characters with untold loves and enmities could disembark. The ship had formed a rough and tidy core from which my father could detach at will his patterned blades of fable, romance, lies.

Come on, they said. What’s this about the women? My father soon became adept at shaping what he said to match the shining eyes of listeners. The groups of men who hung around the market green, far from their wives and children, were keen to hear a tale which flirted and which teased, which offered sex and trade. You know the appetites of men. My father could oblige. For them his ship offloaded girls with one thing on their minds. They were like sirens — and the perfume that they came to trade was like a drug that stupefied all men. He’d hidden in the rocks and watched as merchants and their sons from the villages around came down to the beach. They laid their merchandise among the wracks and urchins, between the salt heath and the sea. They made high claims for the cloth, the charcoal, and the pots which they offered for exchange. The sailors had no need to speak. They dabbed some perfume on their wrists, their necks, their breasts and offered one sniff to the noses of the men. Those men — the youngest and the fittest — who did not faint and drop like overhoneyed bees were offered more than sniffs. The sailors led them to the longer grass beyond the beach…

And then? my father’s audience enquired. What then? Of course he would not say. The power of a tale is in the gaps and pauses. I hear his voice. I know his tricks. And there is a phrase that comes to mind which father often used. ‘We’ll never know,’ he’d say. ‘We can but guess. A young man and a woman in the grass. What could they do but hunt out insects in the soil, or teach each other songs, or sleep? I couldn’t say. I didn’t creep up close enough to see. And anyway they pulled a screen of grass to block my view.’

His audience applauded. He had delighted them. Their minds — so used to earthbound things — had flown, danced, like larks, like gnats, with father’s tale. They knew full well — if there were ships and women sailors armed with odours of that kind — what would have happened in the grass. They knew, imagined, what they’d have done … if only life was like a story, simpler, freer, less ordained.

My father paused for larks and gnats to settle, and then he held a finger up and halved his voice to double their attention. ‘Be warned,’ he said, ‘if ever that ship puts to shore near us.’ His story had not ended with the transactions in the grass. There was more to tell. The old men of his story were unconscious on the beach like washed-up seals — the young and fit were stunned and sated in the grass. What then? The snare. The sailor-women — chuckling at their power over men — gathered up the charcoal, cloth and pots that were on offer there and stowed them in their boat. They took to sea. What had their cargo cost them? What had the merchants and their sons to show for their endeavours? Who had been gulled by whom? My father did not need to say. He had his hearers spellbound with the questions.

Here was a story custom-made for men. But father took a chance and told it to the women, too. They loved it even more. They laughed and held their sides at father’s picture of the slack, defenceless menfolk on the beach and the scheming women out at sea. He had them nodding at his final words that ‘There is a place, between the navel and the knees, where the wisest men are fools’.

For children, gathered in a ring for father to amuse, his ship contained less physical distractions. The women came ashore from a craft whose sail and hogging line were stiff and white with ice. They saw my father hiding in the rocks. They beckoned him. He went. He had no choice. They were honey; he was bee. There is no need to fear, they said. We’ve lost our way. He asked: Where is your destination? The sun, they said. We’re sailing to the sun. He said: You’ll fry. But they displayed no fear of heat. It’s cold we fear, they said, and snow and frost and ice. Already we are cold. Our fingertips are dead. Our toes. Our ears. If we can reach the sun then we’ll be free of fear. Show us where to sail to reach the sun, and we will heap on you rewards that have no name, that are magic, that are as old as time.

And if I cannot? father asked. What then? Then we will turn you into ice, they said. To demonstrate their panic and their power, one of the women sailors lightly touched a tress of oarweed which hung from rock into a pool. One touch and it was ice. A frozen shore-crab toppled free and skated, slid, ten limbs brittle, on the crisp and glinting surface of the rock-hard pool. An anemone which had been red and sinuous became a snout of ice. Its thousand snakes shivered one last time.

‘What could I, should I do?’ my father asked his audience, enacting every shiver. ‘I was too cold with fear at what I’d seen and heard to help them on their journey. Does anybody know? What is the best way to the sun?’ The children did not know. Up, up, they said. The sky. But father shook his head, for ships don’t fly. The routeway must be sea. The children shook their heads as well.

‘Come on,’ my father said. ‘Speak up! The sailors are impatient. They have to reach the sun. Their fingers are stretched and ready for the task of touching me and turning me to ice. Come on. Come on. I’m going to catch a chill!’

He beckoned with his arm and made the children gather close. He whispered the solution. ‘The sun was going down upon the sea,’ he said. ‘My time was running out.’ And then … of course! The sun … Was going down … Upon the sea … And soon the two would meet! The answer was so simple. He told the sailors to be patient. Stand upon the beach, he said. Each night the sun must sleep. It rests inside the sea. The fishes are its dreams, the tide its breaths. You’ll see it fade. And drop. And settle on the water. Sink. You then set sail until you reach the point where you saw the sun go down. You’ll find a gaping hole with steaming water all around. Put down your anchor. Wait. And, when the sun goes down that second night, your journey’s at an end. Your boat is anchored at the spot where once there was a steaming hole. The sun comes down upon your deck. I promise that you’ll never freeze again.

The women watched the sun go down, they watched it bathe and wallow in the sea and throw a cloth across the sky. They thanked my father for his help. We give to you the gift of turning life to ice, they said. And this we give you, too. They tipped a little perfume from a jar into a scallop shell. He smelled it — but the skin upon his nose touched the arc of liquid. It froze. Dissolve it in your mouth, they said, and make a wish. My father sucked. My father wished. He wished he had a healthy arm, four fingers and a thumb. It will come true, the women said.

The children in the ring looked at my father’s elbow stump. They saw no magic there. My father looked at it and them, intently, as if he expected the frowning tucks and scars to burst apart and a new arm to emerge. When nothing happened, my father shrugged. ‘I got it wrong,’ he said. ‘Look here.’ He held his good hand out. ‘You see? I already have one healthy arm, four fingers and a thumb. I should have asked for two!’ The children laughed, but they’d been fooled. They wanted proof that father’s tale was true. ‘I have the proof,’ my father said. ‘I have the gift of ice. Which boy, which girl, will step out here and touch me on the hand? Come on. Be brave. If anyone is turned to ice, we’ll melt them on the fire.’ He made as if to pick a child from amongst the crowd. They backed away. They screamed and giggled. They hid. There wasn’t one who’d take the chance of proving father’s lies were lies.

We do not need to hear my father’s other variations, the bespoke stories that he told to tease and stimulate his aunt, his neighbours, his enemies, the old. He was never lost for words. He had a name for everything — or invented one. He’d out-hoot an owl, they said.

And so it was that father became — not liked exactly, or respected — but useful in the village, and admired by some. He could be seen — the irony is rich — inside the sanctum of Leaf’s yard reworking folktales for the family as the master sat at anvils and his daughter pumped the fire. You’d meet him, too, at any great occasion, celebrating with a tale the naming of a child or marking death and burial with some fitting yarn. And there were hardly any feasts or meetings of the village which did not feature father fantasizing at the higher table in the hall. Imagine, too, the usefulness of such a skill on market days. His uncle was not slow to make the most of that.

The paradox is this — we do love lies. The truth is dull and half asleep. But lies are nimble, spirited, alive. And lying is a craft.

‘Let us be cruel and listen to that craftsman, Leaf,’ my father said if he was ever pressed to justify his elevated standing with some villagers or the applause which marked his wilder tales.

‘Imagine you have spent all day crouched over stone. Your eyes are tired, your back is stiff. You need to take a stroll and the way that you have taken leads you to Leaf’s workshop. You lean upon his perfect wall. How was your day? you ask. You do not care — you simply want to be amused, to hear another voice that isn’t stone on stone.’

But Leaf — and this was father’s point — could only answer in one way. He would knock the splinters of chipped flint from his chin and lips, rearrange the camouflage of long, stretched hairs across his head and simply tell the truth. It would be flat, his tale. It would take his audience through the day, his daughter at the bellows, the master at the stone. If his listeners did not hold their hands aloft and say, Enough, he’d detail every shallow flake that fell upon his anvil, he’d have them witness all the tedium of work, each word of his would be a hammer blow.

‘Imagine, now,’ my father said. ‘A liar intervenes. He picks upon the leaf that always rests upon Leaf’s bench. Leaf is too shy, he says, too modest. Today the master’s dream came true. He found a flint which had the colours of this leaf. It was an oak in stone. He shaped it with the bays and headlands of this leaf. You see the stem and veins? You see the curling stalk? Leaf made them all in stone. He made the flint so light and thin that it began to rustle like a winter leaf disturbed by wind.

‘Should you believe what this deceiver says?’ my father asked. ‘You are not fools — but you have had a trying day and he has made you laugh. Only Leaf is not amused. And that makes you laugh some more. You play the game. You challenge both these masters — the storyteller and the stoney — to produce the flint-leaf for inspection. Leaf himself is silent. What can he say? He’s stuck. These lies have made a fool of him. But the liar is not trapped. He never is. He does not care. He says: Leaf’s leaf was on the table, cooling, lifting at its edges from the breath of those who came to see it. It would make Leaf the richest, greatest knapper in the land. And then what happened? Yes, you’ve guessed. A bird came in and took it for its nest. It was so light, this flint, the bird bit through it with its beak. The pieces floated to the floor like oak ash drifting from a fire.’

Imagine if the liar then invited everyone to look down on the floor, to get down upon their hands and knees, to find the pieces of the leaf-in-flint. Everybody would snigger at his thinness of deception. A leaf-in-flint, indeed! But could anybody swear, my father asked, that their eyes would not momentarily dip, their eyelids flicker, their knees give way, at the prospect of a shattered oak leaf on the floor? Salute the liars — they can make the real world disappear and a fresh world take its place.

‘The secret of the storyteller,’ father said, ‘is Never Smile. A straight mouth and a pair of honest eyes is all it takes to turn a stone to leaf.’ You’ve never seen a face like his when he was telling tales. It was as candid as the moon.