Free Westlake, Donald E - Novel 42 by A Likely Story (v1.1)

of
our dim half-forgotten Teutonic past. Just as the northern gods gave us
Wednesday (Wodin-his-day; that’s why it’s spelled funny) and Thursday (Thor, of
course) and Eriday (either Frey or her sister Freya; don’t blame me), Easter is derived from a dawn goddess named Eostre or Eostur or Eastre or
Ostara or some damn thing, the difference being that maybe she never existed. A double nonreality, that; a mythical goddess without a myth.
                The problem is, the only reference
to her is in the Venerable Bede’s (672-735) Ecclesiastical History , and
Bede has taken some knocks recently from people who say he made her up by
working back from the Anglo-Saxon name of April, which was Eostur-monath .
                Maybe so, but I’m with Bede. I mean,
otherwise he’s pretty reliable, and the name sounds right. Anyway, if
there ever was an Eostur, in the old days, and I mean the old days, her feast day was the vernal equinox, when bonfires would be lit in her
honor, which makes sense. Also, the sun would start that day with three leaps
up from the horizon in a dance of joy, and maidens clothed all in white would
appear on mountains and in the clefts of rocks. What these maidens did if you
went over and said, “Hi, you come here often?” I do not know, but spring
festivals used to be pretty sexy before they reformed and got mixed up with the
Christians. The original emphasis on fertility and fecundity is still palely
visible in our Easter eggs and Easter rabbits, but the pizzazz is pretty well
gone now, and it has merely become the only time of year when you can sell an
otherwise sensible woman a lavender coat.
                A former Easter custom I wish was
still with us was the Risus Paschalis , which started in Bavaria in the fifteenth century. The idea was, the
priest would tell jokes and funny stories during Easter Mass, in order to make
the parishioners laugh, the laughter supposed to be a good gift for the risen
Christ. However, the jokes got to be a little sacrilegious sometimes, so in the
eighteenth century the practice was banned by Pope Maximilian III.
                Whenever they hear anybody laughing,
boy, they sure put a stop to it.
                 
                 

          Wednesday, April 6th
     
                YESTERDAY I took the boys—my boy
Bryan and Gingers boy Joshua—to the Met’s opener out at Shea. We arrived by
subway just before one, the boys as excited as if they were going to heaven
instead of Shea Stadium, and we found ourselves in the midst of a large and young
and happy crowd. Some people wore large orange buttons that said, in blocky
black lettering, NOW THE FUN STARTS! The idea that there hadn’t been any fun up
till now worked very well into my general mood, but 1 did my best to fight down
my skepticism that things were about to change.
                It was perfect opening day weather,
sunny and breezy and nippy, which had brought out the Mets’ largest opening day
crowd since 1968. We had press level seats, out beyond third base, high enough
to get a sense of the stadium but low enough to be involved with the game,
which the boys certainly were. This was Tom Seaver’s return to the Mets after
years of exile in Cincinnati , so the occasion began with a standing ovation for Seaver as he walked
the length of the right-field foul line to the Mets’ dugout.
                Much learned discussion took place
all around us as to whether the thirty-eight-year-old Seaver still “had it,”
and how many innings he was likely to pitch; the consensus seemed to be that if
he survived four or five, he could be considered to still have it.
                The Philadelphia Phillies were the
opposition, and their pitcher was Steve Carlton, another thirty-eight-year-old
veteran, and from almost the first instant it was clear we were going to be
treated to a pitchers’ duel. In the first