Arsenal 2, Tottenham 2, Kristen Lavransdatter 3

 Arsenal 2, Tottenham 2, Kristen Lavransdatter 3 

Sunday morning I went to pick up Uncle Albert for the Arsenal Tottenham match. He’s a long-time Arsenal supporter.

    Had he been to church? I asked. “No,” he said. “How would I get there now if you’re not taking me?”

    “But I am taking you,” I said, “when you let me know you need a ride.

    “I thought Maggie Something was taking you, not the woman in your house but Roz’s friend - that Maggie.” (See here.)

    "She comes when I call,” Uncle Albert says, “but I don’t like calling her.”

    “Why not?”

    He shrugged.

    “Well, call me then,” I said though I didn’t want to. I wanted him to call Maggie.

Uncle Albert with Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang

Tottenham jumped out in front against the run of play, which was all Arsenal until Christian Eriksen tipped in a pass from Lamela from Son on a break.

    Through the flat screen, Stanford Bridge glows green as Ireland, but there are no Irishmen on the field. Damn few British. Arsenal starts one German, three Frenchmen, a Brazilian, a Greek, an Albanian from Switzerland, a Bosnian, Uruguayan, an Ivorian, and only one from the UK, Ainsley Maitland-Niles. Tottenham does have three British starters, Harrys Kane and Winks and Danny Rose; otherwise, there is the Frenchman in goal and one more in midfield, two Dutchmen, a Columbian, an Argentinian, a Korean, and a Dane.

    (The Korean) Son and (the Dane) Eriksen, Tottenham’s two best players in Uncle Albert’s and my opinions, were both on their games. Arsenal’s keeper, the usually mediocre Bernd Leno, robbed Son in the 17th minute and Eriksen in the 37th. By now, Tottenham was flying, and Son (again) managed to pick up a foul in the box on Granit Xhaka. Harry Kane put the penalty kick into the side netting. And Arlo White went apeshit. White, otherwise a good announcer, is a tremendous Harry Kane fan. Besotted.

    Arsenal got back into it just before the half. After Tottenham’s keeper, the sometimes brilliant, sometimes dull Hugo Lloris, made a good save on Pepe, Lacazette, playing in the middle of the front line between Pepe and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, pushed one by on a pass from the former. In the 46th minute, so that Arsenal went in at half-time only one down.

    The Gunners started the second half much as they had the first, dominating play. Lloris made another nice save on Guendouzi ten minutes in. Three minutes later Kane hit the inside of the post on a Tottenham counter. How could he miss? Arlo White couldn’t get over it. The post must have moved.

    Lloris made two more good saves on Danny Ceballos, who had replaced Lucas Torreira in the midfield, and on Guendouzi, who shortly slipped Aubameyang through for the tying score.

    And that was it though Arsenal continued to dominate. They scored a third goal, but it was called back because Kolasinac was offside.

    That was it. The game ended in a draw. Arsenal is in 5th place and Tottenham in (God forbid! - but thank him nonetheless) 9th.

* * * * *

At the half, I’d asked Uncle Albert if he’d really met Sigrid Undset. Of course, he hadn’t he said. “I’m not that old,” he said. “A fig-newton of your friend Ball’s imagination,” he said. (See here.)

     The teams were coming out from their locker rooms. “I’ll tell you all the Sigrid Undset, I know after it’s over, Uncle Albert said, from The Cross. That’s the last volume of the three that make up Kristin Lavransdatter.

Uncle Albert has this phenomenal memory for quotations, from the Bible, from French poetry and drama, from American lit from Hawthorne through Twain, from the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, from pretty damn anywhere. Now he was quoting Kristen. It’s the way she is, Kristen, he was saying. This is toward the end but before she leaves on her pilgrimage, he thinks. (I haven’t gotten there. “What pilgrimage?” I say. “Sorry,” he says.) Then: “Kristen is about to turn truly religious, but she’ll never be able to, no matter how much the author needs it for her plot.” Then, he quoted:

Kristin praying on the cover
of her third book.

     “‘Surely she had never asked God for anything except that he should let her have her will. And for the most part, she got it. Now here she was sitting with a contrite heart - not because she had sinned against God but because she was unhappy that she had not been allowed to follow her will all the way to the end.’ Something like that,” Uncle Albert said.

Yesterday, I finally came to the quote. Uncle Albert may be right about the plot, but he was wrong about the quote. It lacked the second negative. Here’s how it reads in my book, Tina Nunally’s translation: “Surely she [Kristin] had never asked God for anything except that he should let her have her will. And every time she had been granted what she asked for - for the most part. Now here she sat with a contrite heart - not because she had sinned against God but because she was unhappy that she had been allowed to follow her [own] will to the road’s end.”

     So, he’s almost dead wrong about the quote, but he might be righter about Kristin than Undset is. I think he’s right about most of us: Surely she/he/you/I have never asked anything except that God would let us have our will. And now as we’re getting a little older, closer to the end, we’re unhappy that God may intervene, we might not get to follow our own way to the end.

     I don't have to belabor the point, gentle reader, launch into a long explanation. You are perceptive. You understand. You know: Damned if we won’t keep trying, in every prayer pointing out to God what he ought to be doing. Pay attention, dammit!

09.04.19