The Forest - Canto VI
1.
The Dane who found the shipwrecked Celia on the shore
deserted naked in the wreck of what had been a lifeboat
was a humble man of gentle disposition with the name of Isak.
As she gradually recovered, he learnt all about her story –
that she had forgotten it completely and had none to tell,
except that there was something she had lost that had to be recovered.
Isak was intrigued by her mysterious case and, just like Joseph,
would do anything to help her. She felt not at home in Denmark,
Scandinavia was too cold and slow in mind for her,
so she believed she had to search the continent for what she needed.
Thus their strange odyssey started, that would take them
through a number of exotic and romantic countries.
2.
They wandered through all Germany down to the Boden Sea
where for some time they lingered in the beautiful surroundings
until she was certain there was nothing for her there to find.
They walked on eastwards and finally arrived in Vienna.
There she found herself in spirit slightly liberated by the fact
that Vienna was a capital of music,
talented composers being active everywhere,
especially a small man wearing spectacles
who was distressed and driven to despair
by some dilettante orchestra that could not get his music right,
no matter how much he rehearsed and tried again,
as if the music was too beautiful to be made justice,
It was something of a ballet opera called "Rosamunde".
3.
There was also a most jovial composer
with a most impressing beard with pea soup in it
playing hard at cards with an eccentric colleague
with a most unpractical moustachio,
if he was to drink whatever or eat soup.
It was, as it was said, the waltz king and the king of symphony.
But Vienna was not theirs for anything to find
in spite of all the splendid music,
so they just moved on, passed Graz and into Italy.
4.
In Venice they were asked to pose as models
for a picture by an aged master, who found something
very striking in the homeless searching pair.
He boasted he was almost ninety-nine years old
and active as a painter still, although his eyesight
gave him problems and he used his hands instead of brushes.
There was also an American, a bearded melancholy fellow
from Key West who seemed quite sentimental;
but in Venice, as in Vienna, they found nothing.
So they just continued south as far as Sicily,
returned from there to take a ship to Greece,
which Celia loved and felt at home in,
but still nothing was recovered.
They continued into Turkey, Syria and Israel
but there decided to return to Europe.
5.
David found their trace in Danish Esbjerg,
and from there he tracked them down through Germany
and Austria to Italy and Greece,
but there he lost their trail.
6.
He still keeps searching for them
somewhere on the European continent
and mainly around the Mediterranean,
and he is quite certain that he ultimately
once will bring them back again.
The sad thing is, that they have never found their way,
in spite of all their wanderings, back home to England
and not even into France, but keep on wandering
and searching constantly but in the wrong direction.
If my mother, when she woke up in the ditch,
had just sought shelter in the nearest forest,
I am sure she would have instantly been saved;
but she instead went searching constantly astray,
as if the merest effort of her search was a blind alley.
7.
David now and then came back,
but each time after an extended search
and longer journey, so the periods he was gone
grew longer every time. Now he has not been back
for seven years, and when the fourth year came,
my last friend Manuel here set out to help him.
8.
Daniel is lost forever, there is no hope of his reappearance
after sixteen years by now, and who knows where my father is.
And finally there was a stranger coming here, and it was you,
a lovable and humble monk with, I regret to say,
the worst news possible of Manuel's death.
I'm sure he aimed at coming back here with some news,
but what that news was we shall never know.
And out there somewhere, David, my good father, keeps on searching
for his love, my mother Celia, who with Isak
keeps on wandering all over Europe, maybe also Asia,
for the search of what she never can recover.
I have given up all hope now after sixteen years
and am content with just remaining here
as something of a hermit and preserving all their memories,
the memory of her and what she lost,
and keeping up their homes in case of their return,
maybe after another ten or fifteen years.
9.
The last thing David told me just before he left last time
was something strange about my mother.
When she last was seen in Israel ten years ago
she was still young and fresh without a trace of age,
as if her tragedy had fixed her in unchanging youth,
still blonde with very long and golden hair
and with no wrinkle and not even crow's feet
in the corners of her eyes; and Isak also has remained
as young as he was when he found her.
Her mysterious age has halted up, it sems,
and according to a sage and rabbi in Jerusalem,
they will continue staying young unchanged
as long as they continue on their search –
another case of Ahasverus but of opposite characteristics."
(To be concluded.)
Poetry by Christian Lanciai
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Written on 2008-09-19 at 10:46
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