Читать книгу Back in No Time - Brion Gysin - Страница 9
ОглавлениеFrom a Lost Novel
“Recollections of a Lost Seascape” and “Time and Brother Griphen” (1942) were published in Town and Country, in July and November 1947, respectively. These stories became part of a novel that was subsequently lost, “Memoirs of a Mythomaniac,” which Gysin later described as a détourné autobiography; another chapter was published as the story “Ariadne of Naxos”—in the volume of early fiction, Stories (1984)—based on travels in Greece in the late 1930s, which he recycled long after in a section of his novel The Last Museum (1986), as seen later in this anthology. “Recollections of a Lost Seascape” draws upon his vacation at the elaborate home of an aristocratic friend from school, on the island of Guernsey; “Time and Brother Griphen” reflects the setting of the English public school he attended in the early 1930s, Downside.
Recollections of a Lost Seascape
The island of Herm lies like an enormous, half-submerged whale in the tides and currents of the English Channel. This island was bought by my grandfather toward the beginning of the century, and he lived there in self-imposed exile, a widower with five daughters. Herm does not belong to England but is considered by a curious legal anomaly to be a fief of the Duke of Normandy, who is only incidentally the King of England. The owner of the island is, therefore, a feudatory of the duke and owes him at least nominal allegiance. On Herm itself the owner is the highest legal authority, the dispenser of justice, and a despot who may strike coins or mint stamps if he wishes.
Grandfather had no subjects other than the members of his own family and the servants. He would have ruled them with a rod of iron even if he had not been granted plenipotentiary powers by feudal right. He rarely had any contact with foreigners except for the few fishermen to whom he granted fishing rights in his waters. Actually, Grandfather was in a sense a foreigner himself: that is, he was not English, though the Duke of Normandy, his liege lord, had no more loyal feudal retainer.
When the first great war of our time surprised people who, like the lord of Herm, were living in the past, there were those who whispered that Grandfather should no longer be allowed to retain his island. The gossip about him was common in Guernsey and in Jersey, but he was the last to hear the malicious tales which were invented. These people said that he was entertaining officers from the U-boats which were known to be in the Channel. In truth, my grandfather had more fear of the submarines than anyone.
He was continually on the lookout for them and he thought of little else. He was not afraid for his life or for his property, but for something which he considered to be infinitely more precious. He had five daughters who were all nubile to what he considered an awkward degree. He knew the dangers of that frangible state from certain observations of his own—made much earlier in life, of course—and the jealousy with which he guarded them from contact with the world was, indeed, the principal reason for living on Herm.
The girls were quite content with the life they led, for they knew no other. Their pleasures were simple and healthy. For exercise they took walks to collect flowers, and they were allowed to bathe in the sea. They splashed and shrieked in the water from eleven to twelve on sunny mornings, while Grandfather thought grimly of the submarines which might easily emerge in full view of the beach.
Each morning he scanned the sea from the top of a nearby cliff, and like a nervous passenger on a ship feeling its way through wartime waters, he imagined every stick and every floating bottle to be a periscope. He saw younger men than he pressing around the sighting apparatus, with wild desire shining in their eyes, as they saw the graceful images of his sea-nymph daughters in their blue serge bathing dresses trimmed with white braid and piping, their pretty flowing yellow hair hidden in caps like immense yellow water lilies and their pretty pink toes encased in black cotton stockings and rubber shoes with little rose pompons on the toes.
Grandfather accompanied them in an old green rubberized military stormcoat, worn over a bathing suit with short sleeves and pants which half-hid his cavalry legs, and a black bowler hat which he never took off—even when he entered the water. Neither did he remove his yellow wash gloves until he had finished his dip, for he felt that it was not fitting that a man in his position should come in contact with any fish other than a cooked one, with its knowing eye removed and the socket sprouting a green sprig from the herb garden.
His bowler was a matter of tender and respectful amusement among the young ladies, until finally one day my mother, who was by far the boldest, being the prettiest and therefore her father’s favorite, snatched it from his head and from the top of the cliff flung it out to sea. It caught the breeze and sailed many yards before it plunged down and hit the water, soon bobbing out of sight on the ebb tide. The girls pealed with laughter like a disagreeable set of chimes, and were confined to their rooms. The next day my grandfather again went to the seashore in his bowler. He had retrieved it from the rising tide, and he continued to wear it as long as he believed in sea bathing.
Though there were no other inhabitants on the island, and the menservants were my grandfather’s age, the thought of prying, lustful eyes continued to haunt the old man’s heart. The more he thought of the desires of young men confined in submarines, the more determined he became to stop the daily excursions to the shore, though he did not wish to deprive the girls of their pleasure. At that time it had become almost impossible to leave Herm, and even the short sea trip to Guernsey was dangerous. They were living off the produce of the garden and such fish as could be caught from a small boat a short distance offshore. He hesitated to deprive his naiads of their dip in the ocean, and yet the possibility that a U-boat might appear, a U-boat such as the one undoubtedly in the neighborhood which had recently sunk a fisherboat, made him tremble with rage. His military experience as a youth had acquainted him with the behavior of licentious soldiers in garrison towns and of libidinous seamen in port, and he was certain that these new undersea sailors would be the worst of the lot. He forbade his daughters the shore.
For a while they moped, and then the eyes of five young ladies, deprived of all outlet for their animal energy, confined to croquet on the lawn and the few Graustarkian novels around the house, grew dreamy as they trailed around in vaporous silences, and started abruptly when spoken to in a loud voice for the second time. My grandfather guessed that the young ladies in confinement were allowing their thoughts to dwell too closely on their own nubility, and that the swelling buds of late spring were shaping their thoughts in a romantic way.
He gave orders, and soon there was a great bustling around the house and the home farm, where the wheels of old carts were gathered together and timbers cut and nailed. When the young ladies learned that their father was going to build bathing machines on wheels their joy knew no bounds and they went every day to see how the work progressed. At last the bathing huts were ready. There were six bathing machines in all, one for each girl and one for their governess. Grandfather told them that they might dip in the sea when the huts were drawn down to the beach, but that they must not swim even a few strokes into deeper water. This changed their schedule, for even my grandfather could not order full tide at the appointed time, and his daughters were allowed to swim only when the tide was incoming, for then there was less danger of being swept out to sea.
One day my mother was retiring into her machine after frolicking in the waves, when she noticed how the sun warmed the boards of her little cabin on wheels, which was almost afloat. The door opened seaward and she had been told, as indeed her sisters had been also, to close it carefully before removing as much as one black stocking, for Grandfather still feared the inquisitive periscopes. What nonsense, she thought, leaving the door open. No one can see me, not even Mademoiselle, and she removed her cap and let her hair fall to her waist. She became excited by the warm touch of the sun as she stepped out of her suit and stood at the open door, looking out at the waves. The black stockings suddenly appeared hateful to her, and she stripped them off too. She stretched luxuriously in the sun, for it seemed hotter on the boards when she lay down close to the tide that slapped the wood within an inch of her, and lapped at the top step of her cabin. Then, perhaps, she fell asleep.
When her father attached the little donkey which drew the bathing machines up to the beach, he left hers until the last, for she always took the longest time to dress. Her sisters, Mademoiselle the governess, and dear papa, were all waiting on the beach, and they found her naked as Andromeda chained to her rock, lying with her eyes half-closed on the damp floor of the little house on wheels. Mademoiselle shrieked and said that she had undoubtedly fainted from the sun, but she smiled as she lay there and continued to smile as they helped her toward the house.
They took her home to put her to bed, but she never got there that afternoon, for my grandfather ordered them all locked up in the old nursery, and they fluttered up the dark staircase in their white dresses, Mademoiselle chasing close behind, followed by the eyes of five young British officers who had come to take over the island.
Apparently, treacherous Mademoiselle had written to the authorities in London, saying that Grandfather thought of nothing but submarines. The authorities had drawn their own conclusions, and had decided to send a garrison to the island to dispossess him. Grandfather’s worst fears were thus realized. Young men, young officers. Here they were, quartered in the house, in close contact with his daughters. It was unthinkable.
The young ladies were greatly excited, and spent the rest of the afternoon making spit curls, for they knew that they could not be locked up forever. But my mother sat in the window with that same little smile playing about her lips, and the window looked out to sea.
Of course they all went down to dinner, and of course they flirted with the young officers, and of course they married them. My mother married the one who had blue eyes and red hair, but it was not much of a romance, for he was soon recalled and sent to France where he was killed before he ever could see the small, quiet son she bore him.
When my grandfather bought the island of Herm he wished to turn it into an earthly paradise, and decided to import a number of exotic plants, birds, and animals. He felt that Herm would be capable of sustaining flamingos as well as sparrows or starlings, and the soft, damp climate encouraged him in the idea. He planted several acres of palms and cacti, camelia bushes which throve, hibiscus and mangoes which did not, fig trees and pines, cedar of Lebanon, an avenue of eucalyptus leading to the house, and a kraal of thorn bushes which he announced was to be for the lions.
Several weeks later a half-dozen mangy lords of the jungle were delivered. They had been bought from a German menagerie and they staggered onto dry land looking more than a little seasick, overcome as much by the smell of the terrified fishermen and their smacks, as from the journey up the cliffside by means of tackles.
These beasts were followed by an assortment of wildlife which Grandfather thought suitable. There were zebras, several ostriches, a family of kangaroos, various sorts of horned and hoofed things considered decorative and not dangerous. There was also an assortment of beautiful birds which were obtained at great expense. These last were no sooner set free at Grandfather’s orders, than they left for some hopeless, unplanned migratory journey and were seen no more. It was decided that the lions would be happier if they were allowed to roam at large on the island of Jethou, which is little more than an immense rock lying across a narrow channel from Herm. From time to time they were thrown quartered lambs from a boat while Grandfather “studied” them through his glasses from the opposite shore. They continued to live there in a state of nature until the island was occupied by Australian troops during the war.
Grandfather was a stern man who allowed no one to question his authority. If things turned out badly he was always certain that it was the fault of those who had not carried out his orders properly. Nevertheless, in a far corner of the island, a mile or two from his house, there stood the evidence of one tragedy for which he did feel responsible. Grandfather went to his grave feeling that he had the blood of three Japanese on his hands, and this is how it happened.
Grandfather’s good friend, Lord de Haviland, who lived in Guernsey, had spent much of his youth traveling in the Orient, collecting things which had to be numbered, knocked down, and crated to be carried off home. In the course of his travels, his fancy had been struck by a small Chinese temple which he had bought on the spot. He had ordered it dismantled and brought to Guernsey, where it ornamented a corner of his garden which was sufficiently damp to grow a thicket of bamboo. Grandfather had seen it there and admired it extremely. He not only admired the object itself, but he had an intense admiration for his old friend’s manner of doing things. He wanted the temple for his island of Herm, and was even preparing to send workmen to take it in Lord de Haviland’s absence but gave up the idea when the latter, having got wind of the plot, suggested an alternative.
He told Grandfather that his son, who was at that time an undersecretary in the British legation in Tokyo, might find a suitable temple there which could be sent back to Herm. After an exchange of letters, the younger De Haviland answered that he could not find a temple, but that he knew of a beautiful small house belonging to a noble Japanese family which was for sale. Grandfather had become most impatient, and he decided at once to send his secretary to Japan with the most explicit instructions that the house was to be brought to Herm exactly as it stood when he first saw it. He particularly stressed the fact that he wanted everything inside the house to be brought along, for he was anxious that his Japanese house should be more complete than the De Haviland temple in Guernsey. The secretary was a German, and from his long training with Grandfather, who meant exactly what he said, was accustomed to unquestioning obedience.
Some six months later the house arrived in several hundred numbered crates. Three Japanese came with it: a woman and two men. Grandfather at first surmised that the men had come to supervise the reconstruction, but thought it a little strange that a woman should have come, too, until it occurred to him that she was there to arrange the interior. He was most pleased at the unexpected foresight of his agent, and was preparing to compliment him when he appeared to give his account.
The secretary stated simply that he did not know who these people were, but that they had been in the house at the time he first saw it, and he had brought them along in an attempt to fulfill his orders to the letter. The Japanese had been slightly dazed at the rapidity with which their home had been dismantled, but as their books, clothes, cooking utensils, and bed covers were all rapidly put in crates, they had followed him blindly to the boat. “No discretion,” muttered Grandfather, and called the Japanese in order to question them. They could not be questioned. They spoke no European language and no one on the island of Herm spoke a word of Japanese. Grandfather sent for an interpreter, but before one could be brought the house had been reassembled and it was too late. The two gentlemen had killed themselves in what grandfather reported to have been a most untidy way, and the lady had jumped off a cliff into the channel, very probably because there was no volcano handy.
The reason for their behavior was never very accurately determined. The most logical explanation seemed to be that the secretary had entered the house at a moment of great domestic tension. Perhaps one of the men was the lady’s husband, and had come in at a moment when she was making flower arrangements with the stranger, or was immersed in the etiquette of the tea ceremony. The act of violence which would have followed this discovery had been arrested by the entrance of Grandfather’s agent. The participants in this drama had undoubtedly been so horrified by the abrupt manner in which he took over their house and their fate, that the crime of passion which should have followed immediately was postponed, and existed in a state of suspension during their journey halfway across the world. Once the house was reassembled the charm was broken and the action completed. Grandfather felt somehow responsible.
On fine days he used to walk to the Japanese house and tap the oiled paper walls reflectively, or blow the dust off the pretty books which he could not read. Sometimes he stroked the curious little lacquer rosettes which decorated the furniture. He had been told that these were the strange coat of arms of the former owner, and this made him sad and respectful, for he felt that such things should not happen to “his sort of people.” For Grandfather, “his sort of people” constituted the one truly international class, and he would have felt more at home with a Hottentot if that Hottentot were a chief than he would with just any Frenchman or German.
In the late autumn of 1915, when the island of Herm was taken away from him, the British government stationed Australian troops on the island. During several weeks they amused themselves by killing all the remaining birds with slingshots and running the ostriches to death. One day Grandfather decided to walk to the Japanese house, for he felt that he would be more at home there than in the company of these strange people who had been quartered on him. When he came within sight of the pretty little oriental garden with which he had surrounded the house, he stopped frozen with horror. Everything had been devastated; everything destroyed.
He turned back, filled with rage, intending to lodge a protest with the commanding officer. From some distance away he heard one of the old gardeners shouting to him. “Highness, the soldiers have taken the little boat and gone to Jethou with their guns,” he cried. Grandfather hurried to his own room where he kept an old rifle. Carrying it under his arm he rushed toward the cliff from which he had always “studied” his lions. On that cold, damp day he could see the soldiers’ Girl-Guide hats showing over the tops of some large boulders. They were stumbling and falling over the rocks as they stalked the lions; his lions. Grandfather let loose a volley.
The following day he left for Guernsey in spite of all the submarines in the Channel, and he never saw Herm again.
Time and Brother Griphen
The school I went to as a child had an air of the romantic period of Neo-Gothic architecture, which flourished at a time when it was fashionable to build false ruins. The dormitories, halls, classrooms, refectories, chapel, and recreation hall formed a straggling block of ivy-covered buildings attached to an abbey and a monastery by a series of long corridors and vaulted, echoing halls. I still think that it must have been more than a mile from the War Memorial past Great Hall and Little Hall, past the refectory with its raftered and emblazoned roof, forty feet or more above our heads, through a low, vaulted cloister with green stained-glass windows, up to the flight of broad steps which led into the abbey church. From within the church itself you could enter what I suppose must have been very similar cloisters leading to the monastery and the cells of the monks, but I never passed more than a few yards beyond those great doors into those strangely repulsive, smelly halls. At that point you were almost overcome by the odor of stale incense in the folds of black serge robes.
We saw the monks of the monastery enter into the church almost every day, but while they were close to us they were also completely apart. We knew only those few who taught in the school, and even they seemed almost unrecognizable as they sang from under their hoods, sitting back in the shadowed choir stalls. On Sundays certain young boys of the school, dressed in red and white, stood in front of these same stalls and lifted their soprano voices high into the nave of the church. That sound soared and fell back against carved stone and carved wood into the wave of bass voices which seemed to echo from under the dark hoods of the monks. The school was famous for its Gregorian chant, that indescribable music of male voices. The organist was a handsome, stalwart young Russian who had left the concert halls to enter the monastery. The monk named Dom Thomas, who trained and led the choir, looked so much a small neutered cat that you wondered where the music could be hidden in him. These two antitypes forged music which I have never been able to forget.
The great windows, which hung above the part of the church to which we schoolboys were confined, were filled with a greenish glass that cast an almost submarine gloom over the assembled congregation even on the brightest of days. The windows of the transept struck great shafts of light through the haze, and from time to time picked out some boy in the choir who seemed to be the only singer, as his voice blended with the others in a vibrating column of sound which shook the ribs of the whole church. The bass voices flowed out in oily waves and the male soprano echoed back and forth, searching through the columns of stone. In the green sea-light we seemed to be crouched on the hard-beaten, sandy bottom of the sea, filled with an unreasoning despair and sadness, until the organ burst forth with its triumphant toccata and suddenly an army with banners seemed to charge above our heads and meet another army in full flight. The shock of their collision almost brought down the vaulting.
The monks who entered the monastery were chosen, I think, as much for their compatibility as for their religious vocation. There were a number of qualifications. Many of the novices who petitioned the abbot for entrance were the younger sons of rich families, and although they were obliged to take a vow of poverty, they were also obliged to bring a considerable dowry with them when they came. If the monks therefore were at least theoretically poor, the monastery itself was extremely rich and took good care of its investments. The monks were well provided for and their poverty was really only nominal. Their religious duties were numerous and undoubtedly monotonous, but they also had a great deal of time before eternity began in which to occupy themselves with works. If a monk wished to engage in a craft or a hobby he was provided with the very best tools and implements, which were paid for out of the common fund. Their interests ranged from things like beekeeping or carpentry to the arts and the sciences.
The beekeeping monk persuaded his bees to produce a delicate, thin honey the color of pale jade which had the fragrance of spiced pinks and apple blossoms. This honey he sold to the schoolboys at a price so exorbitant that we were led to doubt the nonprofit basis of his little enterprise.
I did not like any of the monks whom I knew with the exception of the art master, who was also a sculptor. Before entering the monastery he had studied in Paris and he was often in trouble with the abbot, who did not appreciate modern art. Dom Hubert was a backslider, I fear, and there is some evidence to show that he read movie magazines. He loved his stoneyard, for it took him away from the rather limited company of his fellow monks, and gave him physical exercise. He would attack a huge block of the local limestone with such furious energy that he often finished with a miniature Madonna and misshapen Child, where, with the same material and a little more care, he might have produced a colossus. I have often wondered since what attacks of temperament he was trying to overcome by turning stone into dust.
One day he was called upon to make a bas-relief, and he started in grimly upon a large piece of stone. He would have liked to make something else, I knew, but the abbot had imposed the condition that he confine himself to religious subjects. As the relief grew under the blows of his chisel, the Madonna’s high cheekbones, large eye sockets, long bob, and awkward gesture toward the child grew more and more familiar. Her mouth was wide and generous and her jawline firm and square. Dom Hubert smiled as he cut a Latin inscription into the stone. STELLA SACRAE SILVAE. When the abbot first saw this work of art he was pleased with it, but even he may possibly have seen the resemblance to Garbo before he translated the inscription into STAR OF HOLLYWOOD. It was too much, I am afraid. Dom Hubert lost his workshop, and I worked on there alone.
It was about this same time that the observatory in the monastery garden burned to the ground. It had originally been built for a monk who had obtained permission to study astronomy, and the abbot had taken a sort of medieval pride in his work when it was first begun. A monastery should, by tradition, be a center of learning, and it was felt that an accomplished astronomer would be an asset to the place. This monk, let us call him Dom Griphen, was provided with a large telescope and other necessary equipment, and he was given to understand that epoch-making discoveries were expected of him as soon as possible.
Some years passed and no new planet swam into the field of his telescope, but he explained that he was engaged in lengthy calculations which needed some considerable passage of time for their corroboration, and he was allowed to continue undisturbed. Each day, as soon as religious duties were fulfilled, he disappeared up the long walks and alleys of the monastery garden to lock himself into the summer house which had been turned into an observatory. He appeared only in church and at the necessary meals where no conversation is allowed, and thus escaped close questioning from the other monks as to the manner in which his experiments were progressing. Several years passed, during which no one but the abbot had exchanged a word with him. One day he was asked to appear at a convocation to announce to the assembled monks the results of his years of observation and calculation.
In a short time the grapevine which connected the school and the monastery brought the great news to us. It appeared that Dom Griphen had discovered for certain that the day did not consist of a period of twenty-four hours. For years, for centuries, or perhaps even longer, the world had been laboring under the delusion that the solar day could be divided exactly into twenty-four hours, 1,440 minutes, or 86,400 seconds. This was a colossal error, and Brother Griphen had the proof of it.
The grapevine had brought no exact information as to the margin of error. Some impressionable and slack-tongued brothers went so far as to claim that there was a considerable divergence between the result of his calculations and the conventional, accepted solar day. Some claimed that it accounted for the long days in summer, and the short days in winter, but as the monks were all obliged to get up in the middle of the night and troop into the church to sing, it could hardly make much difference to them. It was decided by the abbot that the great discovery should not be made known to the world until it had been referred to Rome, for it might conflict with some point of doctrine. It may be, also, that the abbot was a little skeptical.
Dom Griphen was told that the College of Cardinals must study the matter, and he was warned that this body might take years to decide on it. He was a little discouraged, for he remembered questions that had not been settled in a lifetime or two, and he was afraid that they might not decide upon the matter until after his own death. Dom Griphen had realized while very young that the world was in moral error, and for that reason he had left it. Now he was persuaded that the very physical world was continually presenting the brethren with an error in time itself. The hours were striking at every breath they drew, and striking false. He proposed to the abbot that the error should be rectified at least in the world of school and monastery over which he had jurisdiction.
Father Abbot hastily explained that such a thing was impossible until they had received word from Rome. The Church Temporal should deal with Time. The abbot suggested further that Dom Griphen might have made some slight error in his calculations and sent him away advising him to recheck his figures for a few months. Dom Griphen came back later and said that he had made no mistake. He attempted to reassure the abbot, explaining that one could continue to divide the day into twenty-four hours, but that it was the day itself which was at fault and that threw the hours, minutes, and seconds out. A simple adjustment in the minutes, a fraction of a second here and there, would correct this age-old error. The abbot remained adamant. He could do nothing until Rome had spoken. Dom Griphen almost dared suspect that the abbot was trifling with him. He pleaded that the daily correction itself would not be too large; a trial ought to be given it.
The abbot, however, considered the matter closed, and called one of the younger monks to him, ordering him to pursue his mathematical studies, and prepare himself to become an astronomer. He gave him his blessing and intimated that he hoped it would be possible to put the observatory into his hands before the equipment had become completely obsolete.
It was some time before the monastery noticed any change in the habits of Dom Griphen. He considered the daily error to be a small one, but one in which he at least could not remain. He asked another monk, whose hobby was watchmaking, to make him a clock according to his specifications. The hands were to make two revolutions of the dial each day, but they were to move more quickly and clip a fraction off each hour. The clock would then tell the correct time: his correct time. When the clock was finished, he proceeded to live according to the time which it indicated. At first the difference was so minute that he appeared at meals or at devotions at the same time as his companions. Yet slowly and inexorably he parted from his fellows, drawn further and further away by time itself.
At first he came a little early for some of the ceremonies, and then he began to come later and later for others. He came so late that he seemed to be coming early for still another duty, until there was no way in which one could check just which duty he was fulfilling. Soon the whisper went around, snatches of surmise gabbled from behind breviaries, harsh words said from the corners of pious mouths. Nevertheless, primitive people respect madness and pamper madmen, saying that they are blessed, and so it was within the monastery walls. Brother Griphen continued to live by his time. It played occasional tricks on him—but does it not play tricks on us all?
As the brethren hurried along the cloisters to sing in the new day which begins after each midnight, they often met Dom Griphen with a candle going off to his lunch or breakfast. He sang vespers when they sang matins. His lauds and his antiphonies were indistinguishable. As the years rolled on, his time would nevertheless draw him, like some returning comet, back into their orbit, and for a while his actions would coincide with the pattern of their lives, until one day they would notice that he was moving off again to his midnight meals and sunlit sleep. He sometimes went and sang alone in the church as his clock bade him, and otherwise fulfilled his duties most scrupulously.
He made great looping circles through the seemingly straight line of life in the monastery. He was an awesome creature, like a man from another planet, and I remember him well as in old age he shuffled around the drafty corridors or moved slowly over the gravel paths to his observatory.
In spite of his double unworldliness, he was well aware of the younger monk, who was by now verging on middle age, to whom the abbot had given the mission of preparing himself to take over the observatory. He knew very well that this younger man was filled with only theoretical knowledge of the stars and filled too with a longing to get his hands on the telescope which Dom Griphen had never allowed him to touch. This idea filled his last years with rage and bitterness.
One summer morning, three hours after sunrise, Dom Griphen walked through the monastery gardens with death holding his elbow. But even death could hold him upright no longer when he collapsed just inside the abbey church, where the monks were droning out their Latin hymns. He fell to the stone floor and died. The rival astronomer assisted those who carried him to his cell. This last charitable act, undertaken mainly because he had hoped to find the key to the observatory under the robes of the dead monk, was a mistake. As he looked toward the garden he saw a pillar of smoke rising straight up into the summer air, and by the time he reached the observatory, it was a furnace dripping hot metal. Dom Griphen had reversed the telescope, arranging the great magnifying glasses in such a way that by the time he had reached the church the first pale rays of the sun had converged on his papers and caused them to burst into flames. He had forestalled his rival.
