As Above, So Below Read online

  “I can see it, Peter. I love the way the leaves of the trees are shimmering.” Besides the sweet pair of magpies, there were some merry little dancers, a bagpiper, a village, a castle, a water mill with pigs, a river winding out through cattle pastures to a city by the sea, boats on the river, and a heron in the sky—all these details conjured up by little flicks of Peter’s brush. And in the front corner of the picture crouched a bare-assed man taking a shit.

  “I shit on death,” said Peter. But that night, the last day of February, he vomited up a whole basin of blood.

  Peter never got well again. The vitality ran out steadily from the hidden wound inside his belly. As spring turned into summer, Peter grew too weak to go up and down the stairs. He spent most of his time in their bed. Mayken began wondering how many more tears she had left. Not that Peter was one to ask for her pity.

  In the afternoons, he would prop himself up on a pillow and draw a little. But by the end of the summer he was too listless to even draw. He grew uneasy about his scabrous drawings of the Spanish soldiers and had Mayken burn them in the fireplace.

  In the month of August he did little more than lie in bed, a hollow-eyed stick figure, watching the day’s light moving across the wall. Early in September, a priest came to take confession and administer Extreme Unction. It was Father Ghislain, the same man who’d married them and baptized the boys.

  “Deep down I never really thought I’d be dead,” Peter told Mayken that afternoon. “I wonder what it’ll be like.”

  “You’ll be in Heaven,” said Mayken softly. They’d long since dropped any pretence that Peter might recover.

  “I never painted Heaven,” said Peter. “I hope there’s crows and trees. And that someday you’ll join me. But not soon, no, no, no, not soon.”

  Mayken stroked his hand, his strong wise fingers. How could he leave her? It was hard to imagine raising her two sons on her own.

  “I didn’t dare confess about helping Williblad kill Carlos,” said Peter after a while. “I don’t feel I can trust even Father Ghislain.”

  “Tell God yourself,” said Mayken. “He’ll forgive you.”

  “Yes,” said Peter. “I see Him all the time. He shines through everything. I can see my whole life too, Mayken. I can move back and forth through it. You’re the best part of it.”

  “Dear Peter.” She leaned over to kiss him, her tears falling on his cheek.

  Mayken was wakened before dawn by a shaking of the bed. She sat up, filled with terror. Peter’s breath was making a harsh, crackling sound.

  “Peter?”

  There was an answer, but she couldn’t make it out. Mayken lit a candle. Peter was trembling all over and his fingers were plucking at the sheet.

  “Peter!”

  His eyes fluttered open and he looked at her, seeing her as no other man could see. “I’m ready,” he said in a soft voice. And then he died.

  That afternoon, Mayken and Little Peter went upstairs to Peter’s studio, Mayken carrying baby Jan. Peter’s own brushes and palette sat undisturbed where he’d last left them. His spot: a chair, a table with his paints and brushes, and a fresh, unmarked panel on the easel.

  The Magpie on the Gallows hung on the wall. How strange it was to see Peter’s paintings, thought Mayken, and him no longer here. They were like pools you could dive into, like wells, like Peter’s eyes.

  After a bit, Little Peter walked across the room and picked up his father’s brush.

  Books by Rudy Rucker

  NOVELS

  AS ABOVE, SO BELOW: A NOVEL OF PETER BRUEGEL (FROM TOR)

  SPACELAND (FROM TOR)

  REALWARE

  FREEWARE

  THE HACKER AND THE ANTS

  THE HOLLOW EARTH

  WETWARE

  THE SECRET OF LIFE

  MASTER OF SPACE AND TIME

  THE SEX SPHERE

  SOFTWARE

  WHITE LIGHT

  SPACETIME DONUTS

  NONFICTION

  SAUCER WISDOM (FROM TOR)

  ALL THE VISIONS

  MIND TOOLS

  THE FOURTH DIMENSION

  INFINITY AND THE MIND

  GEOMETRY, RELATIVITY AND THE FOURTH DIMENSION

  COLLECTIONS

  GNARL!

  SEEK!

  TRANSREAL!

  THE FIFTY-SEVENTH FRANZ KAFKA

  Acknowledgments

  In writing As Above, So Below, I’ve tried to stick as closely as possible to the known facts of Bruegel’s life and times. The historical documentation of Bruegel’s life is sketchy. We have Carel van Mander’s two-page “Life of Bruegel,” written thirty years after his death, and a mere half dozen primary documents. But, of course, we have the artworks as well, and, if As Above, So Below is an accurate measure, a picture is worth some ten thousand words.

  Among the most useful of the art-historical books on Bruegel that I studied were Bob Claessens and Jeanne Rousseau, Bruegel (Alpine Fine Arts, 1981; originally published in 1969) and Roger H. Marijnissen and Max Seidel, Bruegel (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1971).

  I’d like to acknowledge my debt to two earlier novels that tell the story of Bruegel’s life. These are Felix Timmermans, Peter Bruegel, or Droll Peter (Coward-McCann, 1930) and Claude-Henri Rocquet, Bruegel: The Workshop of Dreams (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). Though perhaps more a meditation than a novel, Rocquet’s work is a gem.

  Two final acknowledgments. Gert Hofmann’s Parable of the Blind (Fromm International, 1989; originally published in 1985) is a tale in the style of Samuel Beckett, told from the point of view of one of the blind men who posed for Bruegel’s painting; the tale served as an inspiration for my description of the St. Luke’s group’s Landjuweel performance. Michael Frayne’s highly entertaining contemporary novel Headlong (New York: Henry Holt, 1999) envisions the title The Merrymakers for the lost painting in Bruegel’s cycle of Seasons paintings.

  Further acknowledgments and a complete account of my alchemical novelistic processes can found in the “Notes for As Above, So Below” document posted on the book’s Web site, www.rudyrucker.com/bruegel.

  My publishers and I wish to thank the following museums and collections for making available copies of the works listed below and for granting permission to reproduce them.

  Where a painting bears no date, an estimated date is placed in brackets. The sizes of the pictures are given in centimeters, rounded off to the nearest whole number.

  Chapter 1. Mountain Landscape with Cloister, 1552, 29 × 33 cm, pen and brown ink on paper with washes added by an unknown later hand, Berlin, Staatliche Museen der Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (bpk), Kupferstichkabinett. “Photograph Copyright © bpk, Berlin 2002.”

  Chapter 2. The Tower of Babel, 1563, 114 × 155 cm, oil on oak panel, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (KHM, Wien).

  Chapter 3. The Battle of Carnival and Lent, [1559], 118 × 165 cm, oil on oak panel, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (KHM, Wien).

  Chapter 4. The Fall of Icarus, [1556], 74 × 112 cm, distemper on canvas apparently touched up with oil, Brussels, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique.

  Chapter 5. Luxuria, 1557, 23 × 30 cm, drawn in pen and brown ink by Bruegel and made an engraving by Jerome Cock, Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, Cabinet des Estampes.

  Chapter 6. The Peasant Wedding, [1568], 114 × 163 cm, oil on oak panel, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (KHM, Wien).

  Chapter 7. The Parable of the Blind, 1568, 86 × 154 cm, distemper on canvas, Naples, Capodimonte Museum.

  Chapter 8. Dulle Griet (or, Mad Meg), 1564, 117 × 162 cm, oil on oak panel, Antwerp, Museum Mayer van den Bergh. “Photograph Copyright © IRPAKIK, Brussels.”

  Chapter 9. The Sermon of John the Baptist, 1565, 95 × 161 cm, oil on oak panel, Budapest, Szépmüvészetu Múzeum (National Museum of Fine Arts).

  Chapter 10. The Peasant and the Birdsnester, 1568, 59 × 68 cm, oil on oak panel, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (KHM, Wien).

  Chapter 11.
The Adoration of the Kings, 1564, 108 × 84 cm, oil on oak panel, London, National Gallery. “Photograph Copyright © The National Gallery, London.”

  Chapter 12. The Hunters in the Snow, 1565, 117 × 162 cm, oil on oak panel, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (KHM, Wien).

  Chapter 13. The Beggars, 1568, 18 × 21 cm, oil on panel, Paris, Musée du Louvre. “Photograph Copyright © Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, NY.”

  Chapter 14. Lazy Lusciousland (or, Luilekkerland, or, The Land of Cocaigne), 1567, 52 × 78 cm, oil on panel, Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek München.

  Chapter 15. The Beekeepers, [1568], 20 × 31 cm, pen and brown ink on paper, Berlin, Staatliche Museen der Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (bpk), Kupferstichkabinett. “Photograph Copyright © bpk, Berlin 2002.”

  Chapter 16. The Magpie on the Gallows, 1568, 116 × 160 cm, oil on panel, Darmstadt, Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  AS ABOVE, SO BELOW: A NOVEL OF PETER BRUEGEL

  Copyright © 2002 by Rudy Rucker

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book,

  or portions thereof, in any form.

  Interior art by Peter Bruegel

  A Forge Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  ISBN: 978-0-7653-0403-2