The Stone Carvers by Jane Urquhart

Author:Jane Urquhart
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance, Historical, Contemporary, Azizex666
ISBN: 9781551994277
Publisher: Emblem Editions
Published: 2003-11-25T05:00:00+00:00

The day, much like the days Tilman’s grandfather had experienced half a century before, had been one devoted to wood: hardwood, softwood, cordwood, kindling. At one point Refuto called out to Tilman, “This isn’t beautiful basswood some fool has me chopping for his fire,” and the word “basswood” made something in Tilman’s memory twitch and jump.

His grandfather’s workshop. The distant landscapes he had made on a flat, golden-brown plane by cutting into the wood pictures of the smallest trees and hills and pastures anyone could imagine. He remembered the pleasure of it, the pleasure and the pride. He dropped the handles of the wheelbarrow. “Did you say basswood?”

“No, I did not say basswood. Who wants to know?”

“Let me see it,” said Tilman.

“Jesus, look out for the axe.”

It was basswood all right, Tilman recognized it from his childhood. He remembered his grandfather telling him how the great sculptors of Riemenschneider’s time had been required to apply for its European cousin, limewood, one tree at a time, from the controlled forests surrounding towns such as Nuremburg and Ulm, how sometimes during times of scarcity, they had dropped to their knees in front of the municipal authorities and begged and wept. Limewood. Basswood. His grandfather said they were almost the same, though not quite, basswood being somewhat inferior. Tilman, carrying a full load of this material into the farmer’s shed, recalled that his grandfather could read wood, was able to determine from the grain how a piece might crack or warp as the moisture departed from it, where the flesh of it might glow when it was rounded, glazed, and rubbed, and how it would catch the light when coaxed into a particular shape. The old man had taken the boy outside one winter night and had pointed to a barely discernible cluster of stars in an otherwise vibrant sky. “Caela Sculptoris,” he had said. “Our own constellation—the carver’s tool. Not the brightest but still placed in the sky by God to honour a humble profession.” Tilman had not looked for it since. Tonight, he thought, I’ll look for it tonight.

But in the evening the wind that had all day long thrown the last of the yellow leaves into the lake began to push dark clouds in from the west, and Tilman and Refuto went early to their bunks in a small barn filled with the racket that rain makes on a tin roof. While Refuto muttered to himself about all the plans he didn’t have for tomorrow, Tilman began to carve—with a broken-handled knife—a faraway forest on a flat piece of basswood he had rescued from the shed.

The knife, which he had carried all over Ontario with him in a burlap bag, was much too dull and unsuitable for the job at the best of times, but eventually a recognizable woodlot began to appear as a result of his efforts. When Tilman looked up from his pastime, he could see Refuto’s shadow huge on the opposite wall, cast there by the lantern the farmer had loaned them for the night.

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