Love in the Last Days Read online

  ALSO BY D. NURKSE

  A Night in Brooklyn

  The Border Kingdom

  Burnt Island

  The Fall

  The Rules of Paradise

  Leaving Xaia

  Voices over Water

  Staggered Lights

  Shadow Wars

  Isolation in Action

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Copyright © 2017 by D. Nurkse

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

  www.aaknopf.com

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Nurkse, D., 1949– author

  Title: Love in the last days : after Tristan and Iseult / by D. Nurkse.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016058422 (print) | LCCN 2017006210 (ebook) | ISBN 9780451494801 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780451494818 (ebook)

  Subjects: | BISAC: POETRY / American / General.

  Classification: LCC PS3564.U76 A6 2017 (print) | LCC PS3564.U76 (ebook) | DDC 811/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2016058422

  Ebook ISBN 9780451494818

  Cover image by Johann Friedrich Hennings. Interfoto/A. Koch/Mary Evans

  Cover design by Kelly Blair

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by D. Nurkse

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author's Note

  Prelude

  The Sea

  The Philtre

  The Hold

  Logres

  The Defense

  The Servant

  Assignations

  The Grail

  The King’s Chamber

  Escape

  The Leper

  Rescue

  The Horse

  Everyone in This Story Speaks Except Me

  Morois

  The Play of Light and Shadow

  Morois

  The Fire

  The Living Spring

  Moss Court

  Her Mirror

  Ceol Sidhe

  The Self

  The Mandrake Root

  Morte

  Her Decision

  The Other World

  The King’s Sword

  The Dog

  Hunting Over the Border in Brocéliande

  Avalon

  Folie Tristan

  Black Winter Stars

  An Opening

  The Grail

  The Grail

  The Adventure of Tristan and Iseult

  Armorica

  Red Sail

  Queen of the Land of No Sleep

  The Land of the Living

  The King’s Prison

  Coda

  Acknowledgments

  A Note About the Author

  For Beth, with love

  The story of the lovers Tristan and Iseult reverberates throughout the Middle Ages.

  Set in Ireland, England, and Brittany—or their mythic counterparts—the legend keeps resurfacing, each time with a new twist: a fireside Celtic epic about a bold soldier, a French troubadour song, a self-aware courtly romance.

  With gratitude and deep respect for the original texts of Gottfried von Strassburg, Thomas of Britain, and Béroul, and the scholarship of Joseph Bédier, this is my own version. It takes place in an imaginary past known as The Last Days.

  Prelude

  1

  My father was a harper. So was his.

  I memorized the notes to forget them.

  On the ball of each finger, mark of a string:

  the Old One, the Servant, Master of Melody.

  But this story is strange to me

  like wine tasted in a lover’s mouth.

  2

  Tristan won Iseult by killing a snake

  and took her to be his King’s bride.

  Or: for the sake of ruling Logres

  and freeing Ireland, she sailed with him.

  In a few measures she’ll touch his wrist.

  3

  Let the words turn to music.

  The modes advance of their own accord:

  Ionian to Lydian, Locrian to Phrygian,

  Aeolian to Dorian, a dominant cadence,

  and back to tonic: Tristan will fetch her

  to wed King Mark, then rescue her

  to the forest, they’ll know each other,

  separate, grow old in bitter marriages,

  and die of plague or a misunderstanding.

  Theme, melody, recapitulation, coda.

  This world is cruel, even to itself.

  The white lilies prey on the blue.

  Next comes Avalon, Land of the Living,

  where the eye may keep what it sees.

  4

  Iseult steps to the rail, staring back at Ireland.

  She doesn’t fear death, only exile

  and the wildness of the minor chords.

  Tristan clears his throat.

  The Sea

  The Philtre

  Tristan

  Ireland turned to smoke in the West.

  The beacons of Ui Cumain lined up and glinted

  with the scary weakness of fire in sunlight.

  We were becalmed. No doubt Echeneis,

  the delay-fish, had latched on to our keel

  with lantern jaws, dragging us backwards.

  Under an awning rigged on the stern deck

  I prepared to serenade Iseult. She rolled her eyes.

  My larynx hardened in her gray stare.

  My vocal cords tangled. I couldn’t find la,

  hidden in the past or future. I sang.

  It seemed a distant instrument was accompanying me,

  mocking at first, then creepy-tender.

  When I stopped it fell silent. Perhaps

  a scrim of spray had sharped my pitch.

  I hated her for paying rapt attention to each false note

  while the song of lovers at Avalon bored her.

  That breakdown in technique—lapsed notulii

  and spastic moduli—baffled me

  like a fart in the presence of a Queen.

  She giggled, saying, You sing like a girl.

  I offered to teach her a few scales.

  She hummed the grace notes.

  I challenged her at chess, determined

  to let her win, but she won anyway.

  To annoy her, I moved like lead,

  waved the rook in midair, touched pawns

  and my dog’s nose, hummed to myself.

  But she countered without thought,

  eyes on the horizon. She castled long.

  It struck me we were both a little leery

  of the queen’s power, the king’s strange weakness,

  bishops glaring down incompatible diagonals.

  Once the ship pitched and a black pawn

  slid all the way down the knight’s file

  and she caught it in the palm of her hand.

  You are a Queen too now, she said.

  When we looked over the bulwark

  we saw each other clearly, staring back

  from deep water, young and trembling.

  That blue-green gaze held a determination

  foreign to our lives. In reflection, we joined hands

  gravely and without pressure. Yet at the rail
br />   she kept a table-width between us.

  She had the right. I killed the Irish monster

  and won her to marry a king she never saw.

  It made sense to me but not to her. Checkmate.

  I put the pieces back in their gilt box.

  I could not help running a finger

  over their green baize pads.

  I praised the court’s elegance,

  the chamber with its own hardwood fire,

  the bed veiled for sleepless dreams.

  She scoffed. Better the cold quiet

  of my father’s cottage in Morne

  than fucking a toothless majesty.

  I tried to reassure her. At Logres

  we also had chipped chamber pots,

  arras mildewing in dank corridors.

  She waved off my comfort like a gnat.

  I told her the status of my wound,

  how it hurt always, like another soul,

  and reminded her how I acquired it,

  freeing her people from the rule of fangs.

  She breathed lightly through pursed lips.

  I expounded obliquely

  on the art of dragon hunting,

  the doctrines of Piraeus and Salmagor.

  She scratched for lice

  with an infuriating involuntary delicacy.

  The crew hoisted rampart sails.

  But the calm deepened. The prow

  inched forward like a presentiment.

  Two green bubbles trailed in our wake and popped.

  We lay stranded on that breathless mirror

  between her father’s scrub oak

  that she would never see again

  and Logres, falsified in the Aeolian mode.

  She stared ahead with narrow eyes.

  I reasoned: at best you could have married a marguillier

  and grown old in a tamped-clod hall,

  flattered by a harp with catgut strings.

  She answered: Better a bed of forest twigs.

  The Logrian king adores me for a lock of hair

  when I don’t know who I am.

  Her high cheekbones made me slightly seasick.

  I concentrated on her faults, as Ovid advises.

  A mole on her cheek. But that was what fascinated me.

  I sent for venison and brushed away the maggots

  but she made a face. Her servant Brangien brought wine.

  Iseult wiped the rim with her wimple

  and sipped and gagged.

  That liquor tasted of honey and bile.

  A voice yelled: Wind. The deck bucked.

  The chalice slipped and shattered. My dog

  licked the shards and moaned at the air between us.

  The Hold

  Tristan

  She stared as I struggled with her kirtle,

  vissoir and mandemain. Then we were naked.

  Except for her eyes.

  I was scared. I’d been naked in combat,

  never in love. It seemed a bad omen.

  Her cheek was too sheer. The keel shook

  below us. We were gathering speed.

  We took turns on top

  as on a calm and dubious ocean

  and found no fathom line, no strait home.

  We lay under each other and found no shelter.

  We rolled together, stunned

  to have found an act so hard and easy,

  or rested watching our transport

  in detachment. We both knew how it ends.

  Joy leads to sadness, sadness to bitter joy.

  At twilight I gagged and ducked out

  and shucked back apologizing.

  Terror of her beauty made me queasy,

  not the swerving hold.

  I begged a clove. She had tinctures.

  She gave me cardamom. But it tasted of her.

  Her mossy armpits, like my nurse’s long ago,

  smelled faintly sour, of windfall apples.

  A torch poked in and retreated.

  She shielded me with her matted hair.

  In that sudden flare, I remembered

  we were damned in two worlds.

  She bit me and giggled and made a snake noise.

  She ran her little finger over my wound,

  three puncture marks at my hip.

  She whispered my name, but backwards,

  since we were not made for each other,

  but to be the other’s obstacle,

  cherished and loathed like the self.

  A stain glittered between us, a map

  of a country in which we could not live—

  any kingdom in this world.

  A hoarse thrilled cry rose high above us—

  a king’s name or just the word: land?

  Tantris, she said, and that’s who I am.

  Logres

  The Defense

  Tristan

  While Iseult lay in the King’s arms

  I played chess against myself.

  How powerfully I opened with the king’s pawn,

  two squares, how cunningly I countered

  with the king’s pawn, one square.

  I strove to exploit my weakness,

  the pawn that the king alone defends.

  I took advantage of my premature attack—

  the infantry was locked in phalanxes,

  fianchettoed bishops stared at each other,

  rooks piled on closed corridors—

  when I heard her hoarse cry. Was it my name?

  It could not have been. I would be dead.

  I was in zugzwang, there was no move.

  Each strategy predicted itself.

  I had created a world the opposite of action

  while Iseult moved as recklessly as God.

  She made Brangien sleep with the King

  and ordered her death, to silence the act.

  Who was this Queen? The night wind?

  Still I understood: she was protecting me.

  If she wasn’t a virgin on her wedding night

  I would be summoned and interrogated.

  The King’s prison will change you more than death.

  Why didn’t she consult me? Or send news?

  I refused to surrender and knocked the pieces

  so the kings rolled in concentric circles,

  tiny crosses pointing inwards—now to wait

  for midnight, the hour of secret messages

  written in my mouth by a lithe silent tongue.

  The Servant

  Brangien

  1

  All my life I pour, and one slip:

  I gave the wrong wine to a clumsy knight.

  Iseult sent me to service the King.

  She coiffed herself as a scullery maid

  and painted and undressed me

  in white-lipped silence. When a candlewick

  snuffed the dripping tapers, I entered

  that darkness like the pupil of the eye,

  sensed stale air, and found the massive oak bed.

  I knew the King by his wine breath. He rolled on top.

  I thought of home, my croft in Ireland.

  I saw it from a distance, smoke from the peat hearth

  like the string to a child’s toy.

  I pried the creaky door open and sat down

  with my father and mother and broke black bread.

  Far away the King labored in the heavy seas

  of his one-person wedding.

  I touched him a little in pity. I kissed him once

  lightly on the earlobe. He came in a clamor

  of groans and mumbles, then in a broken voice

  began giving me the great gifts: gerfalcon, ocelot,

  the palfrey Beau Joueur, the pear orchard.

  A stain oozed between us. I touched my blood to his lips.

  He licked his fingers, curled in a ball, and slept.

  I dressed in darkness. The shift I put on was darkness.

  I groped for the door. There was the Queen br />
  waiting on tiptoe. She didn’t thank me.

  I felt the wind of her hands, avid for the headboard

  as she entered the night of her marriage.

  All my life I polish a mirror

  that was too bright to start with.

  2

  Iseult ordered me to the forest to be killed.

  Because I knew she cheated? I bedded her King?

  Because my mistake bound her to Tristan—

  good singer, reasonable swordsman, sentimental in bed?

  She sent me with a shepherd to gather chanterelles.

  He took me—so quickly—to the shadow of Morois

  and watched as I fumbled with boletes

  that broke too easily, like flesh.

  He tested his knife and I begged him no.

  I have power too: am I not the victim?

  Gottfried of Strassburg says Christ

  is like an old shirt

  that takes any shape you choose.

  When we emerged into twilight

  the Queen was waiting, wringing her hands—

  always waiting, that dark Queen!

  She embraced me. Since she was royalty,

  ordained by God, she had no power to repent,

  but I felt her tears on my own cheek,

  a little too salty—she had been making love—

  and that night the shepherd disappeared.

  3

  All my life I sweep

  and the rim of the pan

  leaves an ever-finer line of dust.

  Assignations

  Tristan

  1

  I trembled before each meeting, and trembled after.

  Hidden outside her tower, I charmed Iseult with birdsong.

  Thrush ecstatic but with a questioning hiccup,