The Halloween Tree, once its history lesson begins, becomes a didactic puppet theater. Bradbury's axe-grinding focuses on the social and intellectual backwardness of Europe's Catholic and Protestant churches.
All of which amounts to caricature. In Bradbury's handling the history of millenia is reduced to undifferentiated humanity yoked to backwardness.
The section on Greece is modest and sharply poses what a Marxist would describe as warring ruling class ideas about the world, one competing to superced the other.
....There falls Phoebus Apollo all Grecian light. Sun and flame, boys. Look and blink. Turn that crystal spyglass. Swing it down the Mediterranean Coast a thousand miles. See the Greek Isles?"
"Sure," said plain George Smith, dressed up as fancy pale ghost. "Cities, towns, streets, houses. People jumping out on porches to bring food!"
"Yes." Moundshroud beamed. "Their Festival of the Dead: the Feast of Pots. Trick-or-Treat old style. But tricks from the dead if you don't feed them. So treats are laid out in fine banquets on the sill!"
Far away, in the sweet dusk, smells of cooked meats steamed, dishes were dealt out for spirits that smoked across the land of the living. The women and children of the Grecian homes came and went with multitudinous quantities of spiced and delectable victuals.
Then, all through the Grecian Isles, doors slammed. The vast slamming echoed along the dark wind.
"The temples shutting tight," said Moundshroud. "Every holy place in Greece will be double-locked this night."
"And look!" Ralph-who-was-a-Mummy swung the crystal lens. The light flared over the boys' masks. "Those people, why are they painting black molasses on their front door posts?"
"Pitch," corrected Moundshroud. "Black tar to glue the ghosts, stick them fast, so they can't get inside."
"Why," said Tom, "didn't we think of that!?"
Darkness moved down the Mediterranean shores. From the tombs, like mist, the dead spirits wavered in soot and black plumes along the streets to be caught in the dark tar that smeared the porch sills. The wind mourned, as if telling the anguish of the trapped dead.
"Now, Italy. Rome." Moundshroud turned the lens to see Roman cemeteries where people placed food on graves and hurried off.
The wind whipped Moundshroud's cape. It hollowed his mouth:
"O autumn winds that bake and burn
And all the world to darkness turn,
Now storm and seize and make of me…
A swarm of leaves from Autumn's Tree!"
He kick-jumped straight up in the air. The boys yelled delight, even as his clothes, cape, hair, skin, body, corn-candy bones tore apart before their eyes.
"… leaves … burn …
… change … turn … !"
The wind ribboned him to confetti; a million autumn leaves, gold, brown, red as blood, rust, all wild, rustling, simmering, a clutch of oak and maple leaf, a hickory leaf downfall, a toss of flaking whisper, murmur, rustle to the dark river-creek sky. Not one kite, but ten thousand thousand tiny mummy-flake, kites, Moundshroud exploded apart:
"World turn! Leaves burn!
Grass die! Trees …fly!"
And from a billion other trees in autumn lands, leaves rushed to join with the upflung battalions of dry bits that were Moundshroud dispersed in whirlwinds from which his voice stormed:
"Boys, see the fires along the Mediterranean coast? Fires burning north through Europe? Fires of fear. Flames of celebration. Would you spy, boys? Up, now, fly!"
And the leaves in avalanche fell upon each boy like terrible flapping moths and carried them away. Over Egyptian sands they sang and laughed and giggled. Over the strange sea, rapturous and hysterical, they soared.
"Happy New Year!" a voice cried, far below.
"Happy what?" asked Tom.
"Happy New Year!" Moundshroud, a flock of rusty leaves, rustled his voice. "In old times, the first of November was New Year's Day. The true end of summer, the cold start of winter. Not exactly happy, but, well, Happy New Year!"
Jay
13 October 2020
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