Grendel by John Gardner

and angry. The laugh died quickly. “I didn’t know how deep the pool was,” he said. “I had a chance. I knew I had no more than that. It’s all a hero asks for.”
    I sighed. The word “hero” was beginning to grate. He was an idiot. I could crush him like a fly, but I held back.
    “Go ahead, scoff,” he said, petulant. “Except in the life of a hero, the whole world’s meaningless. The hero sees values beyond what’s possible. That’s the
nature
of a hero. It kills him, of course, ultimately. But it makes the whole struggle of humanity worthwhile.”
    I nodded in the darkness. “And breaks up the boredom,” I said.
    He raised up on his elbows, and the effort of it made his shoulders shake. “One of us is going to die tonight. Does
that
break up your boredom?”
    “It’s not true,” I said. “A few minutes from now I’m going to carry you back to Hrothgar, safe and sound. So much for poetry.”
    “I’ll kill myself,” he whispered. He shook violently now.
    “Up to you,” I answered reasonably, “but you’ll admit it may seem at least a trifle cowardly to some.”
    His fists closed and his teeth clenched; then he relaxed and lay flat.
    I waited for him to find an answer. Minutes passed. It came to me that he had quit. He had glimpsed a glorious ideal, had struggled toward it and seized it and come to understand it, and was disappointed. One could sympathize.
    He was asleep.
    I picked him up gently and carried him home. I laid him at the door of Hrothgar’s meadhall, still asleep, killed the two guards so I wouldn’t be misunderstood, and left.
    He lives on, bitter, feebly challenging my midnight raids from time to time (three times this summer), crazy with shame that he alone is always spared, and furiously jealous of the dead. I laugh when I see him. He throws himself at me, or he cunningly sneaks up behind, sometimes in disguise—a goat, a dog, a sickly old woman—and I roll on the floor with laughter. So much for heroism. So much for the harvest-virgin. So much, also, for the alternative visions of blind old poets and dragons.

Balance is everything, riding out time like a helmless sheep-boat, keel to hellward, mast upreared to prick out heaven’s eye. He he! (Sigh.) My enemies define themselves (as the dragon said) on me. As for myself, I could finish them off in a single night, pull down the great carved beams and crush them in the meadhall, along with their mice, their tankards and potatoes—yet I hold back. I am hardly blind to the absurdity. Form is function. What will we call the Hrothgar-Wrecker when Hrothgar has been wrecked?
    (Do a little dance, beast. Shrug it off. This looks like a nice place—oooh, my!—flat rock, moonlight, views of distances! Sing!
    Pity poor Hrothgar,

Grendel’s foe!

Pity poor Grendel,

O, O, O!
    Winter soon.
    (whispering, whispering. Grendel, has it occurred to you my dear that you are crazy?)
    (He clasps hands delicately over his head, points the toes of one foot—
aaie!
horrible nails!!—takes a step, does a turn:
    Grendel is crazy,

O, O, O!

Thinks old Hrothgar

Makes it snow!
    Balance is everything, tiding out rhyme …
    Pity poor Grengar,

Hrothdel’s foe!

Down goes the whirlpool:

Eek! No, no!
    It will be winter soon.
    Midway through the twelfth year of my idiotic war.
    Twelve is, I hope, a holy number. Number of escapes from traps.
    [He searches the moonlit world for signs, shading his eyes against the dimness, standing on one shaggy foot, just slightly bloodstained, one toe missing from an old encounter with an ax. Three dead trees on the moor below, burned up alive by lightning, are ominous portents. (Oh man, us portents!) Also trees. On a frostbitten hill in the distance, men on horses. “Over here!” he screams. Waves his arms. They hesitate, feign deafness, ride away north. Shoddy, he observes. The whole chilly universe, shoddy.]
    Enough of that! A night for tearing heads off, bathing in blood! Except, alas, he has killed his quota