On the Razor's Edge
Flowing water-murmur of the tumbling river
Fills the cloudless overarching sky with whisper
Most comforting: continuo to contrapuntal
Insect-twitter. Sweet music for the foul refrain
As through the rancid womb of night
Dread slaughter creeps to penetrate
The long-sought cavities of Secret City.
Reveals then the overgazing moon
A score of darkened ghosts for gore engarbed.
Throats already destined for the knife do at
This very toll now guzzle sweet sure wine,
Laugh, or sing lewd songs to lusty flesh.
And many – those that hold the rods of rule –
Their eyes now clogged in wrested slumber
Will not open come the morn.
The dawn will herald red; so much is sure.
All else is hazard “on the razor's edge.”
Clocks keep muted hours, luring morning near.
And some, their senses heightened by the two-moon sky,
In terror'd sleep do fitful turn, and know not why.
Fills the cloudless overarching sky with whisper
Most comforting: continuo to contrapuntal
Insect-twitter. Sweet music for the foul refrain
As through the rancid womb of night
Dread slaughter creeps to penetrate
The long-sought cavities of Secret City.
Reveals then the overgazing moon
A score of darkened ghosts for gore engarbed.
Throats already destined for the knife do at
This very toll now guzzle sweet sure wine,
Laugh, or sing lewd songs to lusty flesh.
And many – those that hold the rods of rule –
Their eyes now clogged in wrested slumber
Will not open come the morn.
The dawn will herald red; so much is sure.
All else is hazard “on the razor's edge.”
Clocks keep muted hours, luring morning near.
And some, their senses heightened by the two-moon sky,
In terror'd sleep do fitful turn, and know not why.
#############
(c)2013 Michael F. Flynn
Frank, definitively. One may infer that from his general uneasiness in the new situation. Coming probably from a working or ower-middle class he's almost certainly sure to be used to communal socializing, such as calling one by the diminutive, no matter how strange or exotic the name is. He may also feel a little inferior to his colleagues with more of an academic background.
ReplyDeleteHe's probably also a withdrawn and cautious, but honest and most of all human bloke, reserved in his actions because of the social conventions of his time. It would be quite interesting to follow him through the process of honesty and righteousness (in the old Christian sense of the word) taking the upper hand through a series of mystery-centred events.
Oh, and as an ex-j.d. he's probaly still quite fit, which may serve a purpose in the story.
Serves well?
I will wait and see how others respond. If any.
DeleteIf this was set in 1980 or 2010, I'd be entirely in agreement with Tomasz that it'd be "Frank", a street-smart name, and not "Francis", an effete bow-time name.
ReplyDelete...but in 1965? And from Fishtown, an ethnic Catholic enclave? I've known one or two blue-collar, Catholic-school raised, third child of six types who've gone by Francis or Francis Xavier or such. The Catholic culture of that era gives "Francis" a flavor that it didn't have at other places and times.
I'm betting on "Francis".
A curious sort of ex-gangster, this. He doesn't have the convert's zeal Flaco has; it's as though he just carried a switchblade because that's the kind of place Fishtown was, and went for the doctorate because that's how he was raised. Not the kind of person to buck a prevailing trend, I think. I reckon him a kind man and a thoughtful man, but not really a man of action if he can help it. He wouldn't rip me off on a car, but I think haggling would make him uncomfortable.
ReplyDeleteFrom his attitude to the elderly Negro, and to Bull Connor, and his distaste at being served, he seems to be a decent fellow. We'll have to wait to find out more about him, and he probably isn't all of a piece, but that's a start.
ReplyDeleteWow! The whole office is just teeming with stereotypes, which is just as well - I still remember how you played the archetypal librarian and the dissolving uni post-doc couple to develop into something quite unexpected in "Eifelheim". To the point, though.
ReplyDeleteI do not know much about Ivy League graduates, but Nelson strongly resembles British Oxbridge grads. Good-humouredly superior, well-educated, aware of it and quite eager to show it off at the slightest hint, whether by a side crack of wit or a display of learning. Quite curiously, he has got the potential to develop either into a strong-set positive character (the Britishness of his wit would make him a wonderful background hero) or into a cold fish, unable to step out of his prejudices, whereupon all of his positive traits would seem all the more superficial and revolting. That's for Nelson.
Now, Mrs. Szczepanski. Curioser and curioser - she hasn't changed her name to something more palatable for the English tongue, probably facing a lifetime of being called Mrs. Consonant. If she's from Polish background (I mean if that is not her husband's surname), that means she's proud of it and probably still very much attached to the Polish traditions. Probably a Catholic, if married - the mother of at least two kids. As far as work goes, she might seem a practical, down-to-earth person, even a little dry or curt at times. Still, she's probably an expert in personal relations and could work as a "mover" in the entanglement between Bitsy and Frank which will probably ensue at some point in the story. Characters like Frank more often than not need a good knock in the ribs to do the right thing.
Bitsy - well, if she's not German, she's probably from Pennsylvania or Phil. You make her into the boyish, defiant time, seeking to underscore her position in the men's world of higher education. Not quite used to being adored or wooed, more keen on seeking to prove herself to have what it takes.
Whoa! Rein in! I've almost made it a school essay on character development ;). Well, to cut it short - a likeably conceited Ivy League grad, a dry office stump of a woman who changes into a fairy godmother afterhours, and a boyish girl-urchin, not mentioning the pots-grad ex-gangster. A WASP, a Pole, a German, and the Irish-Savoyard Frank (are Longobards bound to come into the story?) all squeezed nicely into one room. The place is really what America is supposed to be - a melting pot of nations. Will it provide clues to the story itself? Does background play any role here, particularly so as European traditions are not so very different after all?
Eager to hear more of Frank.
Tom
Frank is pretty fluent in the social graces. I also revise my statement about the haggling. "Not the sort to buck a prevailing trend", I still stand by - if he's going to have to wait for the Prof to get back to explain the whole mortal peril thing, then, well, he can kill time until that happens.
ReplyDeleteMortal peril aside, everything is kept pretty open-door and informal. I guess the mortal peril lies in Europe. But that's not to say their policy won't come back to bite them.
He just got there. He doesn't know that the rude wench is either studious or busy. He sees a girl absorbed in her scribbling.
ReplyDeleteIs this going to turn out to be a retelling of the 'Taming of the Screw' or the 'Lives of Helen Trent'?
I really don't think so. I hope it's much darker nad much more terrible than that, as the so-called Dark Ages were a really interesting time ... Well, maybe the prof will explain something? Is Frank maybe going to learn that his job is to make another concordance in order to find out if there are any correlations of stories and legends among the epochs of the Middle Ages? (You know, the span between the conquest of Rome and the fall of Constantinople is twice as great as that between the discovery of America and the present). Is he going to discover a rift in time, or a pattern of spots where alternative realities merge? What about the deadly peril? Is it getting lost in time or done in by secret service men trying to hush the discoveries down?
ReplyDeleteMike, you're keeping me on my toes.
As part of my vengeance, let me say taht I've found a great book on Europe in the Dark Ages: Bruno Domezil "Les racines chretiennes de l'Europe". Might as well like to read it :)
Mwahaha.
DeleteAlso, he has to bring the LBJ administration into it somehow. You don't just put dramatic political portent on the first page of the first chapter and ignore it for the rest of the book. I bet Frank's historical excursion brings on some kind of Cryptonomicon-style revelation. I want to see that. Flynn's soapbox is best soapbox.
DeleteI sense that you want me to talk from a romantic standpoint. So - he's into her, in the gentlemanly way he seems to appreciate women in general. She obviously regards him as the usual run of misogynist clod, not without justification. Usually, this would be the setup for Francis falling for her in earnest and melting her cold, cold heart. If so, then this will be accomplished when Francis gets a proper respect for her and shows it spectacularly. But I know you and your romantic subplots, the way they vary from one another as much as humans themselves. I know better than to try and predict how it'll go.
ReplyDeleteBut I will defer to Tomasz. Evidently, he is some kind of psychic.
Hoping we get to find out why Francis should have life insurance before you publish!
Personally, I wouldn't bet on Wilma. Bitsy, the research pixie seems so much more likeable :)
ReplyDeleteAt length, I've decided the most interesting (and Flynn-y) option is that they got off on the wrong foot and remain out of step for much of the novel, throwing off the general choreography in the process.
ReplyDeleteMrs. Szczepanski will probably be called Mrs. S for the same reason Dr. Zablotsky and Dr. Zdunskowski were called Dr. Z.
ReplyDeleteWith Sister Mary, TOF is back on stride. I may now be hooked.
You infernal tease. :)
ReplyDeleteSo I don't think we're supposed to tell TOF what sort of person Carole is, because that's all pretty explicit. Except, perhaps, the particulars of what drove her to the nunnery, but I get the feeling that, while TOF knows the particulars, we don't have to.
The real question, I guess, is whether she intersects with the main plot because she's found her vocation, or because she's found a job? I incline toward the latter - she seems like she'll take a while to unbecalm herself - but I really couldn't say for sure.
As about why she joined the Order ... I don't know. We might learn that some time later. I do have a hunch that Carol and Frank have a lot in common, being outsiders in their new surroundings. More, maybe her Catholic background will really serve when dealing with the mysterious time shipwrecks .... ?
ReplyDeleteAll right. There are two notions I'd been entertaining that are now confirmed - the abusive father, and the fact that Carole is highly ungrounded from ordinary realities. The latter meaning, while it was much easier to snag a job in 1965, I highly doubt she's getting her job at Frank's office. I wish I had saved a copy of the second excerpt, so I could evaluate who shares the building as a job prospect for Carole - I mean, if they're going to physically endanger themselves chasing a European manuscript, the plot lines are probably going to link up early on - but as is, all I can give you is a half-informed guess that that's how it'll happen.
ReplyDeleteI like how the story is developing. (Except I can now remember only vague pieces of the earlier updates.)
ReplyDeleteNow we have Carole, formerly Sister Mary Barbera. A stranger to her family; no longer a sister at the Convent, and a (cultural) foreigner in her new home.
Her situation is sad. I hope it resolves to something more pleasant before the tale concludes.
I haven't heard the euphemism "ralphing" for years - that's a nice period touch.
ReplyDeleteThe hardest part of writing in the past is remembering what was when. In 1965 there was no Miranda warning and Bobby Kennedy supported the war in Vietnam. No 4-function hand calculators (Tex Instr had just invented one) and computers occupied entire rooms - with air conditioning and servants in white coats. They did not even have lava lamps yet! Black nationalists like the Deacons and the Black Panthers were four-square for the Second Amendment and the NRA favored gun controls on mail-order weaponry.
DeleteNot to mention keeping the songs straight and remembering that TV was 3 networks, one or two local stations, and they signed off in the early morning for test patterns. And Holy boob-tube! Batman debuted.
Yeah, I guess the hardest part is remembering the past one has actually lived through. Too many fuzzy details :) But as for the story - curioser and curioser. As I'm probably more familiar with the Franks and the Longobards now than with the 60's America, I'm hanging on to find out when they come in :)
ReplyDeleteMhm, ... Lost books. You mean, like the Book of the Wars of the Lord? Something that we can never put our hands on, existing only in tantalizing hints in other sources? And do such titles, given appropriate time and someone observative enough, form a pattern of things that had better not see the light, erased by some secret entity for mankind's own good?
ReplyDeleteCan't wait another installment.
Hum, hum, bara-rum-ba-ra-rum ... or "Oh, you ....". I just lie the armed-and-dangerous-mother-of-two librarian character. Laughed my head off :). Seriously though, you really got me hooked. I can't wait to see if at least some of my predictions were right.
ReplyDeleteUhm, I just love, of course. That's what comes out of searching suspicious sites after midnight :)
DeleteThe reference to Wilma catching Carole doing something is pretty tantalizing, I must say.
ReplyDeleteSo anyway, we're going Lovecraftian, are we? I admit I don't like that style - if it's that hopeless, why should I care? - but you're nothing if not an advocate of human agency, so I'm interested in seeing what you do with it. And I'm itching to know what the farces have to do with it, and how the Prof knows they're all part of the same body in the first place, and why Nelson seems better-informed than Wilma on the matter, and above all our presumed driving story question regarding the Peruzzi Manuscript... yeah, there's a lot to grab me here.
Last note: my, but Wilma is as bitter as she came off in chapter one. If not moreso. Is this "slow burn" an impending burn-out? I wouldn't be surprised.
Lost books! Yeah, I've got a whole book on that! The Lost Literature of Medieval England, by R.M. Wilson, 1969 (orig. pub. 1952). It's pretty much Old English and Middle English lit, and I only remember the Old English part. (Because it talks about Wayland Smith and Wade.) I'll read to see if there's anything useful for you.
ReplyDeleteMy copy I got in Toledo, in some books that people were getting rid of, and that copy originally came from Stanford. Old academic books get around.
P.S. The "tugging" is what would make me nervous. Anyone who can't be gentle with a book is Up To No Good.
An armed librarian.
ReplyDeleteNot quite what I expected, but there's a story behind it. One that makes sense.
(Interesting historical detail: keeping a pistol in a University library may or may not have been legal; transporting it to the location might have been illegal under State law.
I've been told that Police at the time tended to enforce weapons law in a discriminatory way. People from the wrong side of the tracks, or of the wrong ethnicity, would be subject to harsh treatment if they were discovered with a weapon. And Police would be more likely to do a stop-and-search, or at least stop-and-warn, on Suspicious People loitering in areas with lots of Nice People. But Nice People wouldn't be stopped by Police often. If stopped, they might get a wink and a nod...especially if the cops knew that they belonged to an organized Sportsman's Club or Sharpshooters Club.)
I forget which pope was the librarian in Venice, and brought a pistol to work to protect his library assistants during unrest.
ReplyDelete*******************BREAK**************************
ReplyDelete(Wilma confronts Henkle below this point)
Cool. So that's what happens with Carole. I was warm. And yes, indeed, Frank is going to Europe. Hey, I take my good guesses as they come, however obvious they are.
ReplyDeleteI think I'm finally getting a good sense of how Wilma ticks. She's very proud of her independence and expects her bullish, no-nonsense attitude to get her where the women who put up with the established order - "little receptionists" - could never set foot. So now that the go-along-to-get-along attitude is surpassing her, that's her whole life's mission statement tipped unpleasantly. And, come to think of it, she'd been pretty dissatisfied with her career progress before now; this is just bringing it to a head. If Carole gets some sort of break over her head, things would get very, very ugly. But I think she might actively work to get it first now.
I'll be honest - Frank and Wilma's roommates kind of ran together when first I read about them. Now they're clearly distinct, but I've forgotten who Phil and Leo are. (In fact, the only one I actually remember is Papa.)
Well, well, well ... So, our young Frankie is coming from Over the Big Water to find out that there actually are books that had better not be seen by human eyes and they are jealously guarded by an all-embracing conspiracy of the Empyrean Librarians of Rome. That's some news, really :) Seriously, I'm not sure about Wilma (she continues to annoy me just a wee bit , to be honest, as the sort of "ambitious female professional" who refuses to acknowledge the fact that sometimes people just ARE lucky and that you begin to be liked by simply liking people). Nonetheless, I still do have a feeling that her research and Frank's mission will click together yet, somehow.
ReplyDeleteMike, be so kind, and keep writing - I can't wait to get on to the end of the story. I'm also sure that Wojtek Sedeńko is going to love it.
*****************BREAK*************
ReplyDelete5. The Jingled Bells of Carole Harris below this point.
Well, I like it so far, and it's believable for an ex-nun to be a little adrift. I mean, after you discern your way out or your order discerns it for you, what next? How do you go back to being a civvie looking for love? And a lot of ex-nuns in the Seventies did every stupid thing possible, from my vague childhood memories, so I'm sure the same thing applied in the mid-Sixties.
ReplyDeleteI bet Wilma checks her savings and decides to go to Europe all by her own self. There must have been some kind of airfare deals, for all those kids to up and go to Europe on backpacking trips. Maybe Carole does the same?
Ugh, it IS going to get romantic then, isn't it? I mean, judging by the way you focus on the female characters, Frank will be increasingly attracted to Carole, while at the same time Wilma will discover that she's actually jealous about him? Just a wild guess, though.
ReplyDeleteI'm really more keen on how you are going to get the Franks, the Lombards and Holger the Dane into the more genre-centred part of the story.
I wondered if you could do a novel set in the 60s without mentioning that famous troupe of musicians from England.
ReplyDeleteYou may have set it right. They're known, but they haven't become an institution in the popular culture yet.
Academic envy is probably worse than romantic love! And worse still if you honestly seek honest truth, because that can make you desperate and wicked.
ReplyDelete*** break ? Frank goes to Europe***
ReplyDeleteFrank gets a ride to the airport.
How times change...no metal detectors or security checks; non-passengers walk up to the gate to see their friends off; people are smoking inside the airport.
Most shockingly, a traveler wearing a sports jacket is dressing casual.
Is the strange history of the missing book a piece of superstition? Or is it a reflection on some underlying danger that is poorly understood?
Yes.
DeleteSeems like you're about to make a turning point in the story - for one thing, the Prof seems really concerned about sending Frank to Europe, while Frank on his part looks pretty reserved about the "dangerous part". Looks like he's about to find out that the Old World may not actually be so old and strange, and that his youth experiences may prove quite useful there.
ReplyDeleteI only hope you're not going to go too far out on the Umberto-ECo-like limb. That would spoil the adventure part.
On #6 The Faint Smile of Gustav Sorgensson, I'm sorry to see its the last excerpt. Is this because:
ReplyDelete(a) You want to add a work of your own to the Lost Books,
(b) The book will ultimately be published, so you can't put too much on the web,
(c) The book has been abandoned, so this is all there will ever be?
(b) if God be willing and the Creeks don't rise.
DeleteI'm quite sorry to hear I won't be hearing of Frank or some time now. Well, bye Delacorte and see you soon, I hope :)
ReplyDeleteNow, I'll to my books - if I'm to get this into Polish I had better start with Gregory of Tours and Deacon Paul, hadn't I?
I don't know what's useful to say, except that it sounds like Frank better watch out. And possibly for Sorgensson coming up behind him.
ReplyDeleteYou probably know about:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ses.dk/en/SlotteOgHaver/Slotte/Kronborg/HolgerDanske.aspx
Coffee cups here:
http://www.cafepress.com/holgerdanske