A Little Sacrifice 4

IV

‘Oho,’ the Witcher said, feigning surprise. ‘So you’re here? I thought you wouldn’t be back tonight.’ Dandelion locked the door with the hasp, hung up his lute and his bonnet with the egret’s feather on a peg, took off his jerkin, brushed it down and laid it on some sacks lying in the corner of the small room. Apart from the sacks, a wooden pail and a huge palliasse stuffed with dried bean stalks there was no furniture in the attic room–even the candle stood on the floor in a hardened pool of wax. Drouhard admired Dandelion, but clearly not enough to give him the run of a chamber or even a boxroom.

‘And why,’ asked Dandelion, removing his boots, ‘did you think I wouldn’t be back tonight?’ ‘I thought,’ the Witcher lifted himself up on an elbow, crunching bean straw, ‘you’d go and sing serenades beneath the window of Miss Veverka, at whom your tongue has been hanging out the whole evening like a pointer at the sight of a bitch.’ ‘Ha, ha,’ the bard laughed. ‘But you’re so oafishly stupid. You didn’t understand anything. Veverka? I don’t care about Veverka. I simply wanted to stab Miss Akeretta with jealousy, as I shall make a pass at her tomorrow. Move over.’ Dandelion collapsed on the palliasse and pulled the blanket off Geralt. Geralt, feeling a strange anger, turned his head towards the tiny window, through which, had it not been for some industrious spiders, he would have seen the starry sky.

‘Why so huffy?’ the poet asked. ‘Does it bother you that I make advances to girls? Since when? Perhaps you’ve become a druid and taken a vow of chastity? Or perhaps…’ ‘Don’t go on. I’m tired. Have you not noticed that for the first time in two weeks we have a palliasse and a roof over our heads? Doesn’t it gladden you that the rain won’t be dripping on us in the wee small hours?’ ‘For me,’ Dandelion fantasised, ‘a palliasse without a girl isn’t a palliasse. It’s incomplete happiness, and what is incomplete happiness?’ Geralt groaned softly, as usual when Dandelion was assailed by nocturnal talkativeness.

‘Incomplete happiness,’ the bard continued, engrossed in his own voice, ‘is like… a kiss interrupted… Why are you grinding your teeth, if I may ask?’ ‘You’re incredibly boring, Dandelion. Nothing but palliasses, girls, bums, tits, incomplete happiness and kisses interrupted by dogs set on you by your lovers’ parents. Why, you clearly can’t behave any differently. Clearly only easy lewdness, not to say uncritical promiscuity, allows you musicians to compose ballads, write poems and sing. That is clearly–write it down–the dark side of your talent.’ He had said too much and had not cooled his voiced sufficiently. And Dandelion saw through him effortlessly and unerringly.

‘Aha,’ he said calmly. ‘Essi Daven, also known as Little Eye. The alluring little eye of Little Eye fixed its gaze on the Witcher and caused confusion in the Witcher. The Witcher behaved like a little schoolboy before a queen. And rather than blame himself he is blaming her and searching for her dark side.’ ‘You’re talking rubbish, Dandelion.’

‘No, my dear. Essi made an impression on you, you can’t hide it. I don’t see anything wrong with that, actually. But beware, and don’t make a mistake. She is not what you think. If her talent has its dark sides, they certainly aren’t what you imagine.’ ‘I conjecture,’ said the Witcher, trying to control his voice, ‘that you know her very well.’ ‘Quite well. But not in the way you think. Not like that.’

‘Quite original for you, you’ll admit.’

‘You’re stupid,’ the bard said, stretching and placing both hands under his neck. ‘I’ve known Poppet almost since she was a child. To me she’s like… well… like a younger sister. So I repeat, don’t make any silly mistakes about her. You’d be harming her greatly, because you also made an impression on her. Admit it, you desire her?’ ‘Even if I did, unlike you I’m not accustomed to talking about it,’ Geralt said sharply. ‘Or writing songs about it. I thank you for your words about her, because perhaps you have indeed saved me from a stupid mistake. But let that be an end to it. I regard the subject as exhausted.’ Dandelion lay motionless for a moment, saying nothing, but Geralt knew him too well.

‘I know,’ the poet said at last. ‘Now I know everything.’

‘You know fuck all, Dandelion.’

‘Do you know what your problem is, Geralt? You think you’re different. You flaunt your otherness, what you consider abnormal. You aggressively impose that abnormality on others, not understanding that for people who think clear-headedly you’re the most normal man under the sun, and they all wish that everybody was so normal. What of it that you have quicker reflexes than most and vertical pupils in sunlight? That you can see in the dark like a cat? That you know a few spells? Big deal. I, my dear, once knew an innkeeper who could fart for ten minutes without stopping, playing the tune to the psalm Greet us, greet us, O, Morning Star. Heedless of his–let’s face it–unusual talent, that innkeeper was the most normal among the normal; he had a wife, children and a grandmother afflicted by palsy—’ ‘What does that have to do with Essi Daven? Could you explain?’

‘Of course. You wrongfully thought, Geralt, that Little Eye was interested in you out of morbid, downright perverted curiosity, that she looks at you as though you were a queer fish, a two-headed calf or a salamander in a menagerie. And you immediately became annoyed, gave her a rude, undeserved reprimand at the first opportunity, struck back at a blow she hadn’t dealt. I witnessed it, after all. I didn’t witness the further course of events, of course, but I noticed your flight from the room and saw her glowing cheeks when you returned. Yes, Geralt. I’m alerting you to a mistake, and you have already made it. You wanted to take revenge on her for–in your opinion–her morbid curiosity. You decided to exploit that curiosity.’ ‘You’re talking rubbish.’

‘You tried,’ the bard continued, unmoved, ‘to learn if it was possible to bed her in the hay, if she was curious to find out what it’s like to make love with a misfit, with a witcher. Fortunately, Essi turned out to be smarter than you and generously took pity on your stupidity, having understood its cause. I conclude this from the fact you did not return from the jetty with a fat lip.’ ‘Have you finished?’

‘Yes, I have.’

‘Goodnight, then.’

‘I know why you’re furious and gnashing your teeth.’

‘No doubt. You know everything.’

‘I know who warped you like that, who left you unable to understand a normal woman. Oh, but that Yennefer of yours was a troublemaker; I’m damned if I know what you see in her.’ ‘Drop it, Dandelion.’

‘Do you really not prefer normal girls like Essi? What do sorceresses have that Essi doesn’t? Age, perhaps? Little Eye may not be the youngest, but she’s as old as she looks. And do you know what Yennefer once confessed to me after a few stiff drinks? Ha, ha… she told me that the first time she did it with a man it was exactly a year after the invention of the two-furrow plough.’ ‘You’re lying. Yennefer loathes you like the plague and would never confide in you.’ ‘All right, I was lying, I confess.’

‘You don’t have to. I know you.’

‘You only think you know me. Don’t forget: I’m complicated by nature.’

‘Dandelion,’ the Witcher sighed, now genuinely tired. ‘You’re a cynic, a lecher, a womaniser and a liar. And there’s nothing, believe me, nothing complicated about that. Goodnight.’ ‘Goodnight, Geralt.’