Tine Spots a Grånisse or Two in the Mist
Sadly, while there may have been blånissen at work in the village last night, Tine didn't spot them.
"They're elusive creatures," she said to Rubob as they passed the misty Bull Lot on their walk this afternoon.
"But I'm going to find a nisse -- even if it isn't a blånisse," Tine continued. "This is perfect weather to see a grånisse. They're sure to be out. Do you know what a grånisse is?"
"Yes, Tine," Rubob said somewhat disinterestedly -- "the blue elves. I thought they only came out in the blue hour."
"The grånissen," Tine asseverated -- though very small, Tine can asseverate quite forcefully -- "not to be confused with blånissen. The grånissen are gray, not blue."
"Yes, Tine," Rubob replied, sounding a little like Richard speaking to Hyacinth Bucket on "Keeping Up Appearances."
Richard Bucket (Clive Swift)
Tine stopped and regarded the Blue Lot. "You see, they'll definitely be out there in the mist. This is just the sort of thing they like."
"The mist transforms everything," Rubob said. "It seems to smooth out the rough edges of the present. It's timeless, Tine."
"You said that about the snow a couple of weeks ago, Rubob. Did you mean to say the mist or the snow?"
"The mist, Tine," Rubob said. "And then it's like a rejoinder seeing the black pavement. One's instantly carried back into the present."
"There might be grånissen living in that house over there," Tine said, stepping into the road, planting her feet back in the present. "They like everything gray."
"I'm not sure that I like that shade of gray," Rubob said. "Do you?"
"Yes, very much, Rubob," Tine replied, looking at the door as though a grånisse might emerge at any moment.
Tine was quickly distracted by some red berries she saw farther down the street.
"Those are the nicest sort of Christmas decorations of all," she thought.
Watching her from over the fence was someone with an equal fondness for red. Tine stuck her nose through the fence to have a good luck.
Rubob, who doesn't make friends as easily as Tine does, seemed more interested in the mist in the distant field.
"Maybe he's looking for grånissen," Tine thought. But as Rubob stood there gazing into the distance, she thought he was probably just reviewing the day's news in that head of his. He'd been poring over the morning newspapers until well past noon, and his head might have been filled with gray newsprint.
Tine stopped to look at the beads of water in some high grass.
The two passed another gray house, surrounded by trees with more red berries. Tine moved quickly away when Rubob said, "There was someone in the window there, just behind the parted curtains. She's gone now, Tine. It was an almost spectral presence."
"Maybe it was a grånisse," Tine said. "We're being watched by the grånissen."
"It was more like a ghost," Rubob said.
It seemed a perfect day for spectral presences, Tine thought, with the mist covering the ground. They passed through the schoolyard on their way to Mountain Road, and Tine stopped at a signpost that intrigued her.
"Möge Friede auf Erden sein" -- now what language do you suppose that is?" Tine asked.
"It appears to be Norwegian," Rubob said, and he said it so seriously that Tine wondered if he had blånissen and grånissen on the brain.
"Do you really think so?" Tine asked. "Well, isn't that something. The schoolchildren put it there for the grånissen. You don't think it might be German?"
Rubob didn't reply. He was busying himself with the other languages on the post. He seemed especially intrigued with the Chinese and Japanese characters.
Just then, a creature peeped out at Tine from behind a tree. For a moment she thought it might actually be a grånisse -- a genuine gray Norwegian elf.
"A grånisse!" Tine called out to Rubob. "He's come to read the message of peace left to him by the children."
As Tine approached him, the grånisse scurried up the tree trunk to a branch, where he sat watching Tine with suspicion.
"Möge Friede auf Erden sein," Tine said to him, but he seemed not to understand. "It probably isn't Norwegian at all," Tine thought.
The two walked down the pathway behind the school and approached the old Studio building at Miss Porter's School, where Robert Brandegee had taught his drawing, painting and sculpting classes more than a hundred years ago. The stone building seemed softer in the mist, almost insubstantial.
Tine imagined a group of girls trooping out the door with their easels, walking down to the Meadows with old Mr. Brandegee to paint scenes by the river. The girls would be wearing white dresses and saddleshoes, or white skirts and sailorshirts -- "yes, that's it, sailorshirts," Tine thought.
"They're like nissen in a way," she thought, "like white nissen busily painting the landscape."
The church next door was unlocked, and Tine and Rubob nipped in to take a look at the mural Brandegee had painted over the altar.
The figures seemed hazy and insubstantial to Tine -- "wraithlike," she thought. It was all a bit dark and eerie. Rubob must have been thinking the same thing because he didn't comment. Perhaps he was turning over the word "spectral" again in his mind. "Sepulchral" would be just the word, too, Tine thought.
Out again in the fresh air of the world at large, the town remained lost in the mists of history. As the two passed the eighteenth-century Stanley Whitman House, Rubob stopped and regarded it curiously.
"The middle upstairs window is off-center," he said. "Or maybe the door is. In fact, it might even be the chimney."
Tine didn't give these architectural anomalies a second glance. She was rushing ahead to look into a misty ravine where she thought she might finally have a glimpse of -- well, you know what she was looking for.
"The mist loves the ravines -- the low places in the landscape," Rubob said, catching up with Tine.
Not seeing any grånissen in the ravine, Tine rushed across the street to look at a gray house.
"Just the sort of house they might like," she said.
"Who, Tine?"
"The grånissen," Tine replied. "For heaven's sake, the gray elves. But I suppose you're right -- they probably don't even live in houses. They most likely prefer your misty ravines."
"How gauche to say 'about,'" Rubob said, referring to the '1760' sign by the door. "Don't they know about 'circa.'"
It seemed odd to hear Rubob use the word "gauche," but he often commented on these signs on houses. He'd said he might put a sign on their own house saying "Tine and Rubob, ca. 2001." Or perhaps "Capt. Ichabod Rubob, ca. 1620" (28 years before the town was established). Rubob, a gentleman farmer, had tilled the village soil for decades, but he was still regarded as a recent transplant in town.
"'Ebeneezer Rubob' might be appropriate, too, if you don't get going with your Christmas shopping soon, you miserly old thing," Tine thought.
Ebeneezer Rubob, ca. 1843
From the "About 1760" house, the two crosssed the road and walked through the snow up to old Mrs. Riddle's house on the hill -- the place Tine wanted to purchase and convert into a bed and breakfast.
"If we ran it as a B & B, we could put morsels out for the blånissen and the grånissen, Rubob -- any kind of nissen, really. Have you heard of the hvitnissen? I'm sure they'd love this snowy landscape."
"What are the hvitnissen?" Rubob made the mistake of asking.
"Well, those are the white elves," Tine said. "That's why they like the snow. And that's why we can't see them. It's the hvitnissen who paint the landscape white in the winter."
"Isn't it beautiful?" Tine thought. "I'm sure Mrs. Riddle would be eager to sell. After all, the place is probably crawling with those beastly elves."
"Look, Rubob, they've even set a little table on the porch for the elves," Tine said, poking her nose up against the window. "Nissen -- nissen of any color and variety really -- like to have food left out for them -- and maybe even a book of poetry with a cocktail."
Rubob was gazing off in the other direction, toward the hillside in front of the house.
"Of all the views here, that's probably my favorite, with the bush growing over the stone wall and the field in the distance," he said.
"Because of the sheep?" Tine asked.
"I didn't even notice the sheep," Rubob replied. "Isn't the bush growing over the wall beautiful?"
"It's the sheep I like, safely grazing in the mist -- amidst the mist, in fact."
"The mist is thickening," Rubob said. "It's funny, but when you're in the midst of it, you hardly notice it, but when it's off in the distance it's so apparent."
Tine looked down into a ravine, a pocket of mist at the side of the road, in hopes of seeing a nisse of any color, but they were too quick for her.
Outside the entrance to Mrs. Riddle's Bed and Breakfast, they passed a little cottage as they walked down the hill.
"It looks so different depending on which nissen have been busily painting it, doesn't it?" Tine said. "Do you remember it last January when the blånissen had been working on it in the blue hour?"
"The nissen certainly do transform the landscape -- and the houses," she said. "And there's the wreath you liked on Ann Howard's old house. My goodness, will you look at that -- it's not at all like it was last night in the gloaming."
"Beautiful, Tine," Rubob said.
They then passed what Tine insisted was a green "Julenisse," or Yule elf.
Tine walked up to him for a closer look, but Ebeneezer Rubob didn't seem to be all that taken with the lifesize holiday decoration.
"It's a nissen sort of Christmas he likes, with the mist over a snowy field, or a bush over a stone wall -- that sort o' wintry painted scene," Tine thought, "and perhaps I'm inclined to agree."
The two made their way down past the village school to the library.
"Look, Rubob, another grånisse," Tine said, pointing to the espaliered tree on the library wall.
Rubob took a dim view of a tree forced to spend its life growing up against a wall.
"What's it called, Tine -- escalier? It reminds me of a crucifixion somehow, without the redeeming features."
"Espalier, Rubob -- it's espalier," Tine said. "Escalier is a stairway. That'd be even worse. 'Esprit d'escalier' -- you know about that. That's the 'wit of the staircase,' or 'staircase wisdom.' It means something you think of saying too late, just as you're on the stairway leaving someone's house -- a rejoinder or bon mot, the perfect comeback really. I think your old friend Marcel Proust might have mentioned it in The Guermantes Way, though I can't be sure."
Rubob perked up with the mention of Proust. It was a topic he enjoyed discussing on their daily walks.
But Tine launched into a less pleasing topic: "Do you remember when you followed me into that ghastly gift shop years ago around Christmas time?" she asked. (Ebeneezer Rubob hated gift shops, and you could see his expression turning sour with the mention of one.) "The saleswoman at the cash register asked if she could help you find anything. 'Yes, the way out,' you blurted out. That would have been esprit d'escalier if you'd thought of it too late, on your way out. But you thought of it right there on the spot -- when your back was up against the wall, come to think, in that shop filled with what you called 'overpriced junk.' I guess that was 'esprit d'espalier' -- maybe you're right after all, Rubob. Escalier, espalier -- who's to say?"
Tine bustled along, filled with memories of seasons past. "A regular little font of knowledge and memories I am, to be sure," she thought.
As they turned onto the street leading home, Tine was blessed with yet another sighting of an elusive -- but not elusive enough -- grånisse. (It was a Scioattolo grånisse, to be precise, though Tine, for all her knowledge about the varieties of nissen, didn't know the scientifc name.)
"They certainly are out in force today," she said to Rubob. "Will you look at that? They're busy painting the landscape gray."
They soon passed the Timothy Pitkin house, "1788" -- no "circa," no "about," just a straightforward, sensible "1788" on the sign. "Plain and simple, the way Rubob likes things," Tine thought.
"Look, Rubob," Tine said as they continued down the street -- "a blue door. The blånissen, the blue elves, must be out and about, too. They'll be at work on the sky before long."
"It's a pity we didn't take a longer walk," she added. "We could have arrived home just in time for the blue hour."
The two passed the old Bull Lot again, and Tine recalled how Rubob had said a paved road was like a swift rejoinder to the misty fields, carrying one right back into the present.
As Tine reached the walkway to her front door, she saw the most extraordinary thing by the side of the path: a large frying pan.
"Good heavens, Rubob, what is that doing there? You haven't been putting food out for the grånissen and all the other nissen, have you?" She wondered, in fact, whether fried food was good for the nissen.
"No," Rubob said, disappointingly, "it was all bent out of shape and I was trying to hammer it out in the barn."
"Well, I don't believe you. You've been leaving blueberry pancakes out for the grånissen, haven't you? It's a charitable thing for you to do during the holidays. Now the nissen will reward us with many blessings this season -- many views of painted landscapes, just the sort of thing you like."
Tine stood there transfixed by the fixed frying pan. "Well, I'll be, Rubob. I didn't know you had it in you. I didn't even think you believed in the wretched things -- the sweet things, I mean. But you might have saved a pancake for me. I'm told the nissen are quite content with leftovers."
As she approached the door, envisioning a sign by it saying "Caleb Rubob, 1648," she thought to herself, "All in all, a very pleasant walk indeed."
posted by Tine at 8:14 PM
