Agatha did what her mother had told her
the moment she stepped from the rescuing train.
She never spoke German,
and she never complained.
She spoke when supposed to;
she always said please,
and slowly she started
to feel more at ease.
She played with children,
she even laughed, and tried
very hard not to think of the past.
Agatha.
She might have become someone,
someone strong.
She would have grown up
knowing right from wrong.
She could have been famous,
loved and adored;
a dancer, a singer,
who’d come from abroad.
Or maybe an intellect
so wise, so sage,
dispensing significant thoughts for our age.
She might have tried politics
and caused quite a stir
working hard to prevent
what had happened to her.
But none of this happened,
and it’s all I can do
to finish the story,
to see it through.
To tell how it was
that vicious day
when fate found Agatha
and took her away.
The bomb that killed her
killed a hundred more
running to a shelter —
just short of the door
when the bomb fell,
smack!
And sent her to Hell.
Obliterated,
annihilated,
and, as if it were planned,
all that was left was that golden band,
there in the dust, a pitiful sight.
Yet perfect, eternal, and somehow right.
It was a last-minute thing
— that giving of the ring.
Agatha looked up at me, pain and a kind of elation on her face at the same time. Something overwhelming. Wish I could have drawn what I saw there, but it’s beyond me now.
I felt myself starting to cry — not from sadness or worry, but more like you do from relief.
Agatha leaned near and said, I think we are really close now, Harry.
I asked her if she meant to Ellis.
And she said calmly, To Ellis. To my parents. We are close to everything, Harry. Everything. We’re nearly there.
Shivers right through me. It sounded so final.
I told her I didn’t understand, and she looked at me and held up the ring and the jewels in the flashlight beam.
My parents are dead, Harry. They died on the way here, or before they even got out of Berlin. It was hard to explain to you before. But now you have brought me very near to them.
Poor girl. Maybe she’s lost her grip on reality too. I gave her a hug, and she told me she was OK and that it was time to go.
But which way in this labyrinth? Just have to guess.
The beginning
to the end
has come so fast.
Every day
took us closer
to this: our last.
On this,
the final day of our existence,
it seems only right to remember
how once we were free.
Once, and not that long ago,
we walked through forests of winding innocence.
Deer darted across sunlit glades and we bathed our feet in streams.
In the high mountains, in summer,
the grasshoppers clicked and snakes cooled themselves under rocks.
Birds whirled through the lifting air;
we watched them with wonder.
We supped on honey from the comb,
drank milk from the goats;
slept by the fire, under the stars,
and knew that we were free.
We were gods, all of us,
man, and woman, and child.
Every day we made our own;
every day was a seed,
easily sown.
On this, the final day of our existence,
it would satisfy me if you would merely look at what we’ve made.
How we cut down those forests, eagerly!
How we shut out the night!
How we made our cities of electric light.
Skyscrapers, roads, and underground trains,
car parks and shopping streets,
cinemas of electric fantasy,
dance halls and theaters,
town halls and office blocks;
and no, I do not object to the libraries,
but they are merely repositories of books that are the ghosts
of the remembrance of what we once were:
gods.
But were there days when men were gods?
Were we free?
Did we wander?
I remember a little of my boyhood days
in the mountains of Thrace.
Winter and wild horses, that’s what I remember now.
Winter and wild white horses;
is it not the case that we were freer then?
Maybe I’m suffering:
a dreaded disease, a sickness with no cure;
known by the name: nostalgia.
A longing for what once was.
But perhaps this is a fantasy of my own;
a memory of how I would like it to be,
but never was.
Have we always and ever just been waiting for today?
The hum is growing louder.
As the centuries have revolved,
attempts have been made to analyze my name.
What does it mean: Orpheus?
Who are you? What can your name tell us about you?
Beautiful of voice, some would have it,
yet there are other ideas,
and this is the one that I know best:
Orpheus, orphne, ορφνη;
the darkness of the night.
For that is where we are heading now: darkness.
Nostalgia? A good Greek word.
(We had a word for everything.)
Nostos, homecoming. The womb.
We wish to return to whence we came,
and whence we came was . . . darkness.
To darkness we shall return.
And here for Harry, and Agatha, darkness is already present:
and all the horrors of the Underworld.
She trembles as she follows Harry down,
hand in hand, step-by-step.
Revulsion and terror lie at the wayside;
shapes half seen by twilight,
hints of everlasting pain,
torture and torment,
figures writhing in the eternal dusk of Hell.
Agatha, you don’t need to be afraid.
That time is gone for you;
and you know, you’re right;
the end is in sight.
Agatha, anima, little girl,
you are much misunderstood.
Meek (what a denigrated word!).
Peaceful, kind, gentle, wise:
there’s a touch of you in all of us,
if only we’d let it be.
If only we’d give it room to live,
space to breathe, a chance to grow.
If only we thought more of you.
Raised you up and worshipped you,
drew a circle of protection about you;
but it seems that you’re not valued anymore;
not as much as money and war.
Agatha,
my tale is very old,
but so, I think, is yours.
Emigrant, exile.
Refugee and railway truck,
or you trudge across the world
a pack on your back;
bent against the weight
of the fear as much as the enemy drawing near.
Agatha,
they tell of the tale of Ajax,
Odysseus and more;
how Paris’s love for Helen
led to epic war.
Achilles slaughtered Hector, dragged his body through the dust.
They sing of deeds so brutal,
give them glory, give them fame,
but where is the song for Agatha?
Where do they sing her name?
No one sings for Agatha,
the refugee of war;
no one sings of misery
or the disregarded poor.
Refugees, in the cold;
at the border,
at the gate,
trapped behind the barbed-wire fence,
abandoned to fate.
O Agatha!
I’ll sing for you!
I’ll defend you to the last.
I’ll sing and sing; I’ll tell your tale.
Your story; my final task.
I’ll paint a portrait,
write a play,
make everybody know someday
your story must be heard.
And though I must tell everyone,
I know that many will not hear;
they do not want to listen to such tales
of unexciting fear.
But trust me, Agatha;
come what may
I’ll sing your story anyway.
I have no doubt,
I do not tire,
my song will be eternal fire,
and,
if just one person understands
why you’re important,
why the past
must teach us something,
then I’ll know
this story had a point at last.
But the hum is getting louder.
A lady sits in the shade, eating seeds from a ripened pomegranate.
She plucks each red jewel,
slips it between her withering lips,
and though only honey is sweeter,
to her, each seed tastes bitter.
A lady sits in the shade.
Her head lifts,
her eyes fix.
Her lips smile,
but only her lips.
She seems to see only Agatha,
and now she stands
and approaches,
her skin as white as my gypsum was.
Once elegant, now decaying,
a hint of her beauty yet remains.
A glimmer of sunshine clings to her,
the sunlight of only half a year.
Behind, on her table:
wilting flowers and rotting fruit.
Behind that, an open door,
from where the hum is louder still.
And where a towering figure
can just be seen,
hunched over a desk that glows with a somehow fearsome light.
He gets up from his chair, steps out of his lair.
Turns a threatening gaze on Harry and the girl.
Then the lady whispers into his ear,
he frowns,
she waves a hand,
they talk,
he turns around
and goes back to his cave,
grunting in satisfaction.
No more talk of him, not yet.
Closer the lady comes,
draped in robes of flowing white,
glowing despite the feeble light.
Her hand is before her; she speaks her name.
I remember this moment all too well;
I see that Harry catches his breath
as he sees
Persephone,
she who causes death.
Agatha seems unafraid.
She lets Harry’s hand slip from hers,
and why?
She has seen something in Persephone,
some story that is like her own:
raped,
and ripped from her earthly home,
dragged against her will to this Underworld,
to rule in darkness; and to aid
Hades, Lord of Shade.
Persephone lights upon the girl,
takes a pallid hand with hers;
and Agatha says, Persephone,
you look a little bit like me.
Harry’s seen it too.
And now he sees something else:
in the dark, at the far end of a tunnel.
Two figures emerge, no more than shapes:
a man and a woman,
standing and watching and waiting.
Persephone lifts a once-fair hand
and turns Agatha’s head. Turns her gaze to the tunnel,
to where the woman is waving.
Mutti!
cries Agatha.
Mother!
Then, Father! Are you there too?
Bist du schon da?
And Agatha runs.
They wait,
then fold her into themselves
and disappear.
On this, the final day of our existence,
it would gratify me if you would do just one thing.
If you would only ask yourself: Why are we here?
Why did we come?
Why did we venture away from the sun?
I only have answers of my own,
which you might not like,
or even want to know.
But this is what we hoped for,
and why we came:
regeneration through downward motion
(it’s darkest just before the dawn),
recognition through remembrance,
and, with luck, the attendant self-transformation.
But Agatha’s death undoes it all.
Agatha, it seemed you’d lost your parents;
they thought they’d lost you too.
You found them again in this Underworld,
mysterious, perhaps. But true.
And now I only ask one thing
as you start your life anew.
Do you think anyone understands
what we lose when we lose you?
I have so many questions. And no way of answering them, it seems.
For starters: Who am I?
Feels like there was a glue that held all the pieces of me together, and now it’s coming unstuck and the pieces are going to fly apart and disappear. Or become someone else? Maybe that doesn’t matter.
Secondly: Where am I?
I remember what Agatha said to me back in the Royal Free. You go right and left and then straight on. And then there is no more direction anymore. Feels like that now — there is no more direction. But still somehow I have to keep going, find Ellis, before those bits of me are scattered.
So tired now, but I need to set down what just happened. Thought this journal would help me create Warriors of the Machine. Now it’s simply a matter of survival. For me, for someone, for no one.
Short-term memory feels like a broken mirror. Just bright bits and pieces.
How I recall it: First, the woman; then, behind her, the tramp, Old Jimmy, sitting in his wing-backed, beaten-up old chair like some kind of beggar king, shotgun casually pointed at us. A thousand-yard stare that seemed to see right through me. The woman standing next to him in the shadows, dark hair and pale face, half a smile, some kind of fruit in her hand. And overhead, dim but constant, constant, constant, the rumble of strikes from V-1s and V-2s raining down on the city. The sound of 1945.
Old Jimmy got slowly to his feet, cleared his throat, eyes sharp in that battered ancient face. Said nothing for a minute or more but just stared at us.
Then, his voice deep, broken: How did you find me?
I told him we were lost, and he laughed. Aren’t we all?
We’re looking for someone, I said. My brother. I think he’s down here somewhere.
He shook his head. No one alive down here but me and my lovely Cora.
The woman behind him smiled and took a bite of some weird fruit. Fruit! Where the hell did she get that, I thought.
And I rule these tunnels, the man added. This is my domain, and I’m keeping it to myself. No one must know I’m down here. I don’t want people telling them up there about me. Can’t let you go.
The woman leaned forward and whispered in his ear then. They seemed to argue, almost without words.
He shook his head, raised the gun, fingers tightening — but the dark-haired woman kept whispering to him, more urgently now. I held A tight, braced.
An enormous impact overhead shook the walls around us, and for a moment I thought he’d fired.
War’s not been bad for me, he growled. I control more than I used to. Don’t want any witnesses to that.
Then a blank.
Next I remember Jimmy laughing. Expression changed utterly.
Cora says if you pay me some tribute, I’m to let you go. She says you’ll know to keep silent. But I need something special. I’ve no need for money or coupons or chocolate. We’ve got fruit, as you see. Give me something I haven’t seen before; give me something bee-yoo-ti-ful. As beautiful as that tune.
Couldn’t understand what he meant, but now I heard Agatha’s voice. Calm, clear. Give him the rest of the eyes, Harry, she said. It’s time.
The man looked interested at that. Eyes? What eyes? he growled.
I reached slowly into my pocket, grabbed all the eyeballs but one, five of them, felt their cool glass, felt reluctant — terribly reluctant — to give them but knew I had to. (Feels somehow like when the eyes are gone, I’ll be gone. But still I have one left.)
Old Jimmy took them, weighed them in his big, scarred palm. And then smiled, a huge beam of a smile.
No one ever gave me eyes before, lad. What a blue. A bloody midsummer morning! Larks singing above you, that kind of thing! Gentle breezes . . .
He put the gun down, leaned it against his knackered old chair.
I know where your brother is.
He waved a hand over his shoulder at the gloom. One of my lads saw someone, down an old sewer. That way. Still alive yesterday. Not a nice crawl though. Dangerous. Not nice for your young lady.
My heart leaped. Where? I shouted. Just show me where.
And now the woman spoke, a quiet voice, just audible over that persistent humming, the impact of bombs overhead.
I’ll look after the girl for you, she said.
And now the fog comes down in my head again. Just bits and pieces. The woman drew nearer and said, or I imagined she said, You have kept your promise. Her parents are close.
And Agatha said, It is all OK, Harry. Danke sehr. I am going now. You kept your promise.
I felt her kiss my cheek.
And then she walked down a corridor to my left. There was smoke or dust sifting down from the new wave of rockets overhead. Light, bright and streaming through it from somewhere. Ground shaking.
I wanted to follow but couldn’t move. As if in a dream, I watched Agatha walking away with that tall, dark woman, thin and pale by her side, fading in the dust.
Voyages in the Underworld of Orpheus Black Page 12
