Once only Vergil spoke, saying, “It is kind of you to show me the way.” And the young fellow made sole answer in a level sound which was either yea or nay, or neither nay nor yea. Forward they went, the two of them, making their tread upon the uneven paving stones with here and there a spur of grass atween them, and neither spoke more word.
Presently they came to a door in a wall, rather larger than most such, and (Vergil thought) a cooper would need a larger door or gateway than might be required by someone making articles smaller or at any rate narrower than the largest vat or barrel; in they went. A pleasant smell of fresh-cut seasoned wood there was in the yard directly open to the gate, where a man somedel beyond the middle-years of life sat shaving a splint. “Uncle Bodmi, this gentleman wanted you,” the boy said, and, even as the cooper answered with a “Good for you, Rustus,” directly Rustus took his leave. As, plainly, no thanks were desired from Vergil, he offered none.
Bodmi the cooper had, clearly, been shaving splints for many years, one did not take up such a craft in middle life, and his hands continued working on, on, as he gave Vergil a look of polite enquiry. “Master Bodmi, the man Benninaly,” the cooper nodded fairly rapidly, it was clear that no explanation about “the man Benninaly,” introduced by Caniacus, was at all needed; “sent me to see you about getting ‘a couple pair barrels’ for —”
“— for a caravan, yes, me ser: they would be like those setting over there in yan corner, as I’ve yet to repair, with one side concave somewhat so as to set more conveniently again the side of a caravan-beast; but them as I indicate are for the asses to carry the wine-must from the pressing-vat to the vintner’s cellar; and you would be wanting them some size larger, of course.” Vergil nodded his agreement, and for a while they discussed the size somewhat larger, and the kind of wood, and the price to be paid, and when it was to be paid; and … and then they became silent. In such a moment, in one’s boyhood, the custom was to say Zeus Prime, and so, not having said it in years, one said it now. Bodmi repeated the words under his breathy looked at his work with the splint (stave, some called it), seemed satisfied, set it down on a pile, took up another and began to shave it. Without looking up at Vergil, he said, “That lad is one of my brother’s boys, Rustus you see, me ser …”
Vergil nodded, and some comment seeming indicated, said, “An obliging and a comely lad.”
The cooper gave a sound between a gasp and a sigh, and a spasm seemed to take his face for a moment. “That’s the dreaded part of it all,” said he. Almost at once he added, “It is a terrible thing, me ser, to be the Father of man-twins!” His ser said nothing, he knew not what to say; so after a few seconds wait, said he, in a murmur, “Tell me …”
“Ah, ser! what is there to tell? By your way of speech I observe you to be a man of much schooling, and therefore you must know, that such is the doing of immortal Jove … ‘Zeus’ you may call him, Ser … and all of it comes about a cause of that lass Leda … ”
Light, after a fashion, came to Vergil. “Castor and Pollux!” he exclaimed.
“ ‘Castor and Pollux’, just so, Ser. Different ways is the story told by unlearned people, but we here in this long land and wide, we have the right telling of it. Leda, she was taken by Jove in the form of a swan, for the gods and goddesses may semble what forms they will. Aye, and out of one egg came Elen, twice a princess and twice a queen —” There were most certainly more than merely several forms of the story, but Vergil forebore to mention that: for one he did not desire particularly that Bodmi should think him unlearned, and for another he did not wish to distract the man in his telling of his own story — and one which Vergil had never heard before — “— twice a queen,” Bodmi went on; “and from out the other egg came the Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, twin brothers they were born, clasping one another in their arms; such was their affection from the moment of birth, a rare sort of birth it was: and the shells, I means the broken-open halves of them one shell, they lies a treasure somewhere in the adyt of a temple, I believes. But I doesn’t of right know where.”
Vergil believed that the man believed, and Vergil was willing enough to know (or, at any rate, to believe) that halves of some huge eggs indeed were lying as treasures in the inner shrine of a temple somewhere, it might be anywhere, one could not be sure: but one could for sure be sure that the huge eggs had never come from within the body of any human woman: many names had that great island where lived the great bird whence issued such great egg, greater by far than any mere estridge egg: one had to make a navigation far down “the bluffs and courses of Azania,” fragrant with frankincense, past solitary stinking Zelya-Zayla, past the courting-places of the oliphaunt, and the Region called Agysimbia where the monoceroses assemble for their balloting; and farther down and farther south than that, almost an inhuman distance for an ordinary vessel to make its way — and perhaps no ordinary vessel indeed ever had made it — Hanno’s, yes … Huldah’s, yes — several names that great red island had, such as Camaracada, Phebolia, Cernea, Meruthias and Maddergaunt, Menuthia, Ophir, and the Great Red Island of the Moon: perhaps others yet to him unknow: and Marius the Tyrian had claimed it was no mere island but a continent, and a note to the Aristotle reported that it roamed with huge wild dogs striped like the Horses of the Sun … which all added together might make testimony that the place existed: testimony … certainly it was not proof … great names aside: perhaps it was not even evidence …
While he had been yet thinking of this aspect of the matter, and allowing his mind a bit to wander, as one gathering off of thorn-bushes the wool of wild muttons not beherded for the fleecing; the cooper, Bodmi, had been speaking again; and so Vergil, off gathering his wool at the ends of the world, had missed something of what had been said, so was brought up short, and quite in much confusion, by what the man Bodmi was saying now: “ … and so one of the twain must go and be a leper … ” What! What!
Bodmi, as much, perhaps, surprised by his customer’s surprise, broke off what he had been saying, almost droning; sate slightly leaning forward on his banc, one end of the splint he was holding atween his feet, and yet his hands went on with their work, went on, went on, the thin shavings falling upon his shoes: man must do his work though the heavens gin falclass="underline" perhaps after all the heavens will not continue falling, but man must continue working, all the same.
“Bodmi,” Vergil began.
“Bodmi: You must have patience with me, now, you won’t forget that I am a foreigner for all that we are both under the rule of Rome: I come from a far-off land …” — Bodmi nodded — “… and though you are kind enough to call me learned, still no man can have learned everything.” — Bodmi nodded — “Tell me then, though I don’t wish to cause you pain: why is it that ‘one of the twins must go and be a leper,’ why, Bodmi, why?”
And so the man began again, though this time, the current of his mind and thoughts having been interrupted, and it being necessary to accept that Vergil did not know everything about the matter, he went on without his previous fluency: broken, halting, slowly, as one who endeavors to explain to a child something which the grown man has known so long he has been without the habit of having to explain it.