—Good morrow, neighbor. How are you holding up in your thatched cottage?
—“Holding up”? What is the meaning of that?
—I mean, how are you faring in this arduous time of the Black Death?
—Oh. That is an interesting way to say it.
—I just invented the expression. Do you like it?
—(Trying it out) “How are you holding up?” Yes, it is harmonious to the ear!
—Should we use it each time we speak during this plague?
—I do not see why not. It is most congenial.
—But what if we tire of the expression, and of answering to it, after a few hundred uses? Should we devise an alternative?
—How about “I hope this salutation finds you well”?
—Very good. Although . . . is anyone truly “well” during a plague?
—You are correct. No one except, perhaps, those who possess a remote castle by the White Cliffs of Dover.
—What if we add “or as well as anyone can be these days”?
—Yes. And if the salutation is rendered on a Friday or a Monday, and some mention of the end of the week that is about to take place or has just occurred is expected, one may add “whatever an ‘end of the week’ is these days.”
—Because the days are so like one another that the end of the week is hardly distinct from the middle of the week.
—It is as if time, that phenomenon we measure so precisely by the shadow of the sun on a dial in the town square, has ceased to mean anything.
—I know. This barley season has felt like four rye seasons.
—When I feel a craving for mead but it is too early in the eve, I say to my wife, in jest, “Well, the shadow is angling downward on a dial somewhere.”
—I make the same jest when I am desirous of ale but I have not yet plowed my field for the required sixteen hours!
—After a discussion of time such as this, a body can ask if the other body has seen any good morality plays lately.
—I certainly have. At times I have feasted on three morality plays in succession. My children have a saying for it: “morality plays and idleness.”
—And I thought I would be using this time to learn to read.
—I, too. Instead, I have attempted the new recipes for gruel that the town crier has shouted. When I prepare a gruel that is especially pleasing to the eye, I ask Garrick the Weaver to capture its essence in a tapestry, which I then unfurl outside my thatched cottage so that others may admire it. I am innocent of the sin of pride, because I am not depicted in the tapestry myself—only the gruel.
—I have seen and liked your gruel tapestries.
—I did not know you liked them. You have never indicated so.
—Have I not? I am sorry. I like them.
—Which ones?
—Just . . . all of them, really.
(A silence.)
—Fie on 1348.
—And we thought 1347 was bad.
—Strange times.
—Rouse me from my slumber when it is the thirteen-fifties.
—I am in disbelief that, of all kings to rule over us during the Black Death, we are cursed with Edward the Third.
—I would take Edward the Second right now.
—All right, who are you, and what have you done with Ælwyn the Plowman?
—Ha! As if what I said does not accord with my character, and therefore, despite all appearances, I must not be Ælwyn the Plowman but instead someone who has disposed of his body and assumed his likeness. A most amusing jest.
—I just invented it.
—Did you hear Edward the Third said that, as leeches may cure the plague when applied to the skin, healers should also put them inside the body?
—He must have a secret investment in leech-gathering. That is the only explanation.
(Another silence.)
—Well, I will let you go back inside your thatched cottage.
—So, next week, same shadow angle on the sundial?
—Uh . . . I am busy next week. But we shall find a shadow angle soon.
—Stay hale out there.
—You, too. Whatever “out there” means these days. ♦
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Small Talk in the Black Death - The New Yorker
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