The Sheila Variations

The Books: "The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye" - 'Gode's Story' (A.S. Byatt)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

Next book on the shelf is yet another short story collection by AS Byatt (my favorite - obviously!) - this one is called The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye - This excerpt is from "Gode's Story" - this is another "story within the story" from Possession. Sophie de Kercoz kept a journal in possession - she lives in the wildness of Brittany - and records some of the myths and legends of her place. This is one of them - which takes on ominous significance in the larger story of Possession - but which also works, and beautifully, as a fairy tales all on its own.

I'll just excerpt the beginning, without saying anything more about it.

Actually, no, I'll just say this. Having read all of Byatt's published books - fiction and non-fiction - it continuously amazes me how WELL she can morph into another voice. She does it in all of her books - she'll excerpt ficitonal scholary papers, or private journals, or letters ... she becomes a ventriloquist, in a way ... I find her to be utterly convincing in all of her various guises. I am lost in admiration.

Here she is a storyteller. Plain and simple. Please notice that she starts almost every paragraph with the word "And". And then recall The Arabian Nights. That breathy feeling of desperation - of a real voice - propelling the stories along - for her own desperate urgent reasons ... "And ... And ... And ..."

Excerpt from The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye - "Gode's Story"

There was once a young sailor who had nothing but his courage and his bright eyes - but those were very bright - and the strength the gods gave him, which was sufficient.

He was not a good match for any girl in the village, for he was thought to be rash as well as poor, but the young girls liked to see him go by, you can believe, and they liked most particularly to see him dance, with his long, long legs and his clever feet and his laughing mouth.

And most of all one girl liked to see him, who was the miller's daughter, beautiful and stately and proud, with three deep velvet ribbons to her skirt, who would by no means let him see that she liked to see him, but looked sideways with glimpy eyes, when he was not watching. And so did many another. It is always so. Some are looked at, and some may whistle for an admiring glance till the devil pounces on them, for so the Holy Spirit makes, crooked or straight, and naught to be done about it.

He came and went, the young man, for it was the long voyages he was drawn to, he went with the whales over the edge of the world and down to where the sea boils and the great fish move under it like drowned islands and the mermaids sing with their mirrors and their green scales and their winding hair, if tales are to be believed. He was first up the mast and sharpest with the harpoon but he made no money, for the profit was all the master's, and so he came and went.

And when he came he sat in the square and told of what he had seen, and they all listened. And the miller's daughter came, all clean and proud and proper, and he saw her listening at the edge and said he would bring her a silk ribbon from the East, if she liked. And she would not say if she liked, yes or not, but he saw that she would.

And he went again, and had the ribbon from a silk-merchant's daughter in one of those countries where the women are golden with hair like black silk, but they like to see a man dance with long, long legs, and clever feet and a laughing mouth. And he told the silk-merchant's daughter he would come again and brought back the ribbon, all laid up in a perfumed paper, and at the next village dance he gave it to the miller's daughter and said, "Here is your ribbon."

And her heart banged in her side, you may believe, but she mastered it, and asked coolly how much she was to pay him for it. It was a lovely ribbon, a rainbow-coloured silk ribbon, such as had never een seen in these parts.

And he was very angry at this insult to his gift, and said she must pay what it had cost her from whom he had it. And she said,

"What was that?"

And he said, "Sleepless nights till I come again."

And she said, "The price is too high."

And he said, "The price is set, you must pay."

And she paid, you may believe, for he saw how it was with her, and a man hurt in his pride will take what he may, and he took, for she had seen him dance, and she was all twisted and turned in her mind and herself by his pride and his dancing.

And he said, if he went away again, and found some future in any part of the world, would she wait till he came again and asked her father for her.

And she said, "Long must I wait, and you with a woman waiting in every port, and a ribbon fluttering in every breeze on every quay, if I wait for you."

And he said, "You will wait."

And she would not say yes or no, she would wait or not wait.

And he said, "You are a woman with a cursed temper, but I will come again and you will see."

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