The Witcher

A LITTLE DEDICATION IV

“Aha!” The witcher feigned astonishment. “You're already home? I thought that you wouldn't come back tonight.”

Dandelion secured the hasp of the door, hung up his lute and feather-plumed hat on a nail, then took off his jacket, dusted it, and left it on some bags lying in a corner of the small room. Aside from those bags, a mattress and an enormous bale of hay, the room contained no furniture: even the candle dripped a pool of wax on the floor. Drouhard admired Dandelion, but obviously not to the point of offering him a real bedroom or alcove.

“Why did you think I wouldn't be back tonight?” Dandelion asked, removing his shoes. 

The witcher got up on his elbows, making the straw creak. “I thought that you would be delivering a serenade outside the window of Miss Veverka, the girl you've been feasting your eyes on all evening like a dog fixated on his bitch.”

“Hey, hey!” the bard replied, laughing. “You can be so stupid and primitive! Don't you understand? I never had any fondness for Veverka. I simply wanted to make Miss Akeretta jealous before I make my move tomorrow. Move over a little.”

Dandelion collapsed on the mattress and tugged the thick rug that covered Geralt toward himself. Feeling a strange anger rising within him, the witcher turned his head toward the window through which, despite the presence of numerous cobwebs, he could see the stars.

“What's the matter with you?” asked the poet. “Does it bother you that I chase after girls? Since when? Would you have me take an oath of purity like a druid? Or maybe...”

“Quit posturing. I'm tired. Haven't you noticed that we have a mattress and roof over our heads for the first time in two weeks? The idea that you won't be roughly shaken awake tomorrow doesn't make you crazy with joy?”

“For me,” mused Dandelion, “a mattress without a young woman isn't a mattress at all. It is incomplete happiness... and what good is incomplete happiness?”

Geralt groaned softly. Enjoying the sound of his own voice, Dandelion continued his late-night chatter:

“Incomplete happiness, it's... like an interrupted kiss... Why are you grinding your teeth, may I ask?” 

“You are terribly boring, Dandelion: you have no subjects of conversation except for beds, girls, asses, breasts, incomplete happiness and kisses interrupted by the dogs set upon you by the parents of giddy brides. Apparently, you can't stop yourself. Only the frivolity, or the debauchery, enables you to compose ballads, write poems and sing. It is, you see, the dark side of your talent.”

The witcher had spoken with emotion.

Dandelion had no trouble reading his sentiments:

“Aha!” the bard replied serenely. “This must be because of Essi Daven, our Little-Eye. She cast her pretty little eye over the witcher and started sowing disorder. He went off violently in front of the princess. And instead of blaming himself, he reproaches me for I don't know what hidden agenda.”

“You talk a lot of s**t, Dandelion.”

“No, my friend. Essi made a big impression on you. Don't deny it. I don't see anything wrong with it, but be careful not to put a foot wrong. She is not as you imagine her. If her talent has many dark sides, they aren't the ones you think.”

“I see,” the witcher said. “You know her very well.”

“Quite well. But not in the way you think, no.”

“It's amazing to hear you admit it.”

“You really are stupid.” The bard stretched, placing his hands at his neck. “I've known Little-Eye almost since she was a child. For me... she's like a little sister. I repeat: don't make any stupid moves with her. You would do a lot of damage, because she's fallen for your charms, too. Admit that you want her.”

“Even if I did, I don't usually talk about these things, unlike you,” Geralt said impassively. “I don't compose songs on the subject. Thank you for what you told me about her. It actually saved me from making a stupid mistake. Now drop it. As far as I'm concerned the matter is closed.”

Dandelion lay in silence for a moment. Geralt nonetheless knew his companion well:

“I know,” the poet said finally. “I understand everything.”

“You don't understand anything, Dandelion.”

“Do you know what your problem is? You appear to be something that you're not. You flaunt your otherness, what you consider to be your abnormality. You impose this upon yourself, never understanding that for most ordinary people, you yourself are one of the most normal people who ever lived. What difference does it make that your reflexes are faster, that your pupils become vertical slits in the sun, that you can see in the dark like a cat and that you can cast whatever spells you know? What do I care? I once knew an innkeeper who could fart for ten minutes without interruption and in this way managed to interpret the melody of the psalm Welcome, welcome the morning star. Aside from what one might call his talent, he was a perfectly normal innkeeper with a wife, children, and a paralytic grandmother.”

“Can you explain what this has do with Essi Daven?”

“Of course. You wrongly assumed that Little-Eye was interested in you for dubious, even perverse reasons, that she looked at you with the fascination reserved for a unicorn, a two-headed calf or a salamander in a bestiary. You provoked her animosity at the first opportunity in the form of an unkind and unjustified reprimand; you returned a blow that she didn't deal. I saw it with my own eyes! I didn't witness the events that followed, but I noticed that you left the room and her cheeks were red when you returned. Yes, Geralt. I'll inform you of a mistake you made. You wanted to get revenge for the, in your opinion, prurient interest that she displayed. You then decided to take advantage of her fondness for you.”

“I say again: you're talking crap.”

“You tried,” the bard continued without budging from the mattress, “to get her into bed by showing her what it's like to go to bed with a monster, a mutant, a witcher.

Fortunately, Essi showed herself to be smarter than you are and tremendously sympathetic to your stupidity, whose causes she understands. I infer this from the fact that you did not return from the terrace with a black eye.”

“Have you finished?”

“I'm finished.”

“Fine, good night.”

“I know why you fidget and grind your teeth.”

“Of course, you know everything.”

“I know that you've been tortured to the point where you aren't capable of understanding a normal woman. But you're under Yennefer's thumb: the devil knows what you see in her.”

“Drop it, Dandelion.”

“Really, you wouldn't prefer a normal girl like Essi? But what can those sorceresses have that Essi doesn't? Age? Perhaps Little-Eye is early in her youth, but she is at least as old as she looks. Do you know what Yennefer told me one day after some drinks? Hah... She told me she did it with a man for the first time in the year that the plow was invented from two plowshares!”

“You're lying. Yennefer likes you as much as a malevolent pestilence. She would never have admitted anything like that to you.”

“You're right. I lied. I admit it.”

“You don't have to: I know you well.”

“It seems to you that you know me. Never forget that human nature can be complex.”

“Dandelion,” sighed the witcher, falling halfway asleep already, “you're nothing but a cynic, a disgusting womanizer and a liar. Nothing about that, believe me, is truly complex. Good night.”

“Good night, Geralt.”