“So now you remember.” She leaned closer. “But you didn’t until that letter. Have you thought that maybe there’s more?”
With a mischievous and slightly seductive smile, she touched the bridge of my nose. “When you’re falling asleep, or some other day in the necromanteion, you will remember more about that fire near Mr. Irons. Remember it here, in this little place between your eyes.” She touched my chest. “And in your heart. Ask youself, ‘What else happened? What was that hole in space?’ Ask the memory to open. Ask it to unfold, to blossom like a wonderful flower!”
There are insights and suggestions which, though we reject, leave a deep and lasting imprint. Something in me knew she had triggered a process that would be hard to stop. Like a bed of embers, my vision thirty-one years before had been fanned to new life. “Damn it!” I poured myself another vodka. “I didn’t ask for it then, and I don’t know if I want it now.”
She shook her head with an expression that combined disappointment and amusement. Then with a sigh she threw her hands up in a Russian gesture of resignation and relinquishment. “You are big boys,” she said. “You know what you have to do. But saahmthing is chasing you, Mackel. It came through the glass tonight.”
With a sigh, she rose and crossed the kitchen. As she moved pots and pans on the stove, Hannigan and I exchanged questioning glances.
“Nadia?” he asked. “What d’ye mean when ye say ye can’t tell if that thing in the mirror was dead or alive? I don’t understand. Murphy, do you?”
“Boys!” she exclaimed, turning to face us. “Didn’t you see how solid it got to be? Dead people cannot do that, unless they are very, very strong. Unless they are great souls. Great saints. Or angels! But it lasted too long, and was too—how do you say it?—too agile to be the spirit of someone living on earth. It acted like something in between.”
“Nadia,” I said. “Buck tells me that you’re friends with Djuna Davitashvilli. Did he tell you I know her?”
“Djuna!” she exclaimed. “When did you meet?”
“In 1980. Did you learn about the spirits from her?”
“Not from Djuna!” she said, as if the idea were preposterous. “She has energy. What energy! And connections. What connections! But the spirits, no. I learned about them from other friends.” She stood beside a cupboard. “But Mackel—and Baahch—what do you want for supper? Something more than those pickles?” On tiptoe she looked into a shelf, stretching high with exquisite balance. She was about five foot eight, I guessed, and her carriage joined strength with remarkable grace. Watching her move around the kitchen, I thought of her reflection in the necromanteion—her legs stretching with pleasure toward the ceiling, rotating, undulating, asking for caresses. For the first time, I noticed that her pants had a silver zipper. “So Mackel?” she asked. “What do you want to eat?”
I glanced at Hannigan. Did he harbor a subconscious thought that I’d seen them making love? “Anything,” I said. “I’ll be happy with anything.”
“Then soup!” She gave us each a dazzling smile. “My special mushroom soup, gribnaya pokhlyobka, with mushrooms and herbs from Raahsha.”
“What kind of mushrooms?” I asked.
“From Peredelkino. My friend Boris sends them to remind me what I left behind.”
“Not Boris Mikhailkov?” I named a writer I’d met who had a dacha in Peredelkino.
“No.” She wiggled her shoulders seductively. “Beeg Boris. Boris Ryzhkov, the Sufi man. He is my teacher.”
It was amazing how easily she could turn from magus to coquette. Russian women of her generation, I thought, have a larger repertoire of behaviors than anyone else on the planet. “Did you learn about the spirits from Boris?” I asked.
“Yes.” She turned to a pot on the stove. “From him and other friends.”
She seemed reluctant to talk about her esoteric training, but drink had made me bolder. “And what did you learn from Boris?” I asked. “What did he teach you?”
“About laahve.” She rolled her eyes playfully. “About the archetypes of laahve. The way spirits make laahve. You know why angels have harps and wings—and all those little pink bottoms?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Because angel bodies are harps. Erotic harps. With a million meridians of pleasure. And our bodies too. In love, they make music. In love, they can fly!”
“It’s an early version of string theory,” said Hannigan with a deadpan expression. “Wait till you hear her theory of superstrings and spirit music.”
“You know acupuncture, Mackel. Did you know that our bodies are filled with meridians and pressure points? Filled with them! You press the right one, or caress it, or bite it, and wow! Our bodies light up. We go to heaven!”
Paintings of the Russian countryside decorated the wall behind her. A shelf was lined with lacquered boxes. A volume of Pushkin sat on the table near me. Our spirited conversation brought back memories of similar exchanges in small Russian kitchens. “The archetypes of love?” I asked. “What do you mean?”
She finished stirring the soup, and turned to face me. “Why are the positions of love so wanderful? Why do we like them so much? Because they reflect the archetypes of angel-love! Have you read Miltone?”
“John Milton?”
“Yes, John Miltone.” Standing with her legs slightly spread, she placed a hand on each hip as if she were about to draw a gun. “John Mill Tone. Have you read Paradise Lost?”
“Some of it.”
“Then you know he wrote about this, how angels merge when they make love. Merge all of their bodies with great blaahshing!”
“I don’t remember that part.”
Hannigan slapped the table. “What kind of education did you have?” he asked with mock disgust. “Where the fuck did you go to school?”
“In Raahsha, we read Mill Tone. Don’t you Americans?”
“Less and less. But no professor of mine ever talked about Milton’s archetypes like this.”
“Ah, Mackel, that is too bad. More students would read him. But forget Mill Tone. There are other teachers. Did you know that angels make love like cosmonauts, in zero gravity? They can join any way they like. We can’t do what they can. We are not as free, as flexible, as—how to say it?—not as alive!”
My mind was divided now between surprise at these conversational turns and images of her naked legs stretching high in the mirror. “Cosmonauts!” I exclaimed. “Are you telling me they make love in zero gravity?”
“Ah, you would like to know!” she said wickedly. “But I am sworn to be secret. The KGB would keel me if I told. But Mackel, listen.…” She crossed the room and whispered in my ear. “One of the cosmonauts is a friend of Borees. A great laahver, and a Sufi!” Her voice sent a shiver through me. “He made laahve like an angel in zero gravity!”
It was hard to tell if she were teasing. “Does he know?” I nodded toward Hannigan.
“He knows.” She pretended sympathy. “And he’s jealous! Aren’t you, Baahch?”
“Have you seen the ladies the Soviets put up there?” Hannigan said caustically. “You call that love with angels?”
“There are others,” she said proudly. “Women fliers you’ve never seen. Not everything’s in your silly papers.” She crossed the kitchen, turned off the flame beneath the pot, and ladled the soup into bowls. Hannigan watched her in silence, as if transfixed. But it was hard to tell what complex emotions he harbored. What was it like to have made love with this amazing creature? Was their intercourse in the necromanteion meant to summon angels? Perhaps I could find out indirectly.
“You know, Nadia,” I ventured, “Shivas Irons thought that every physical movement reflects an archetype. He said that in golf there’s an archetype for every shot. He was a golfing Platonist.”
“You mean golf has angels?” She was astonished. “Golf!”
“Yes, golf.”
“You mean that leetle game, where you do this?” Bending slightly from the waist, she stuck out her rea
r end and waggled an imaginary golf club. “Mr. Irons thought this reflected angels? This!”
“Not angels. Archetypes. Perfect forms for every shot.”
“Oh! Oh!” She started to laugh. “Oh, that is funny!” It was a lilting but full-bodied laugh. The connection between golf and higher powers seemed hilarious to her. “Golf!” she exclaimed. “Golf and angels? That is wanderful! Unbeeleevable! Baahch, you should play this game.”
“Not angels,” I insisted. “Archetypes.”
Her laughter subsided as she set the table, and for a while we ate in silence. The soup had dill and sour cream in it, as well as herbs I couldn’t identify. An aromatic warmth spread through my chest. My hands began to tingle. Did the ingredients have psychedelic properties?
“You like it?” she asked.
“It’s the best mushroom soup I’ve ever tasted! What’s in it?”
“Herbs,” she said with a knowing look. “Beeg herbs! And beeg mushrooms! I don’t know their English names, except one—the ‘Prince mushroom.’ Agaricus augustus. They touch the soul. They touch the meridians of laahve and pleasure!”
It was true. The soup’s afterglow was spreading from my chest and stomach into my arms and legs. In combination with the vodka, it was calming and lifting me high at once. “Nadia?” I asked. “With food like this, and Boris, and your other teachers, why did you leave the Soviet Union?”
She tasted her soup with a lingering sigh. The poise with which she held her spoon and moved it slowly to her lips seemed the product of aristocratic breeding. Her manners were as sensuous and elegant as the way she made love. Hannigan and I stopped eating, as if we were taking lessons from her.
But she didn’t answer my question. As we ate, a deep silence came into the room. She continued to savor the soup. I took another sip of vodka. Hannigan’s glasses reflected the light. “Why did I leave Raahsha?” she said at last. “I miss it, but love my freedom. Instead of my teachers, I have books and my necromanteion. Instead of Samarkand, I have the west of Ireland.” She looked fondly at Hannigan. “And I have Baahch. So it is good here. But in many ways, it was wanderful there. It is a mystery. A mystery why I came here. Perhaps the spirits led me.” She seemed completely sincere. “And you, Mackel? You know about Raahsha?”
“I’ve been there nine times.”
“Nine times!” She looked surprised. “Baahch didn’t tell me. Why do you go there?”
I told her that an institute I’d started conducted Soviet-American exchanges, that my wife was in Moscow now, and that we’d come to know many Soviets who studied paranormal phenomena and altered states of mind.
“You met Naumov, Nicolayev, Raikov.” She named some of the Soviets we’d met. “The public ones. The ones your journalists write about. Ah, but Mackel, none of those call spirits from the glass, or reach the dead, or know the prayer of the heart.”
“How did you know I met Naumov and Raikov?”
“Moscow is small town. A little place. A village, Mackel. They are the ones that Westerners meet. But you didn’t meet my Boris, or his friends in Moscow and Samarkand. There is another Raahsha. The inner Raahsha. Soviet science and Communism can never kill it.” She looked at me searchingly, sighed, then stood to refill our bowls.
Angels, archetypes, sex in zero gravity. From the start, our conversation had taken unexpected turns. “And there’s another world of golf,” I said with conviction. “The game has an inner world, too. Just like Russia. Western science and capitalism will never kill it.”
“Golf!” She shook her head in exasperation. “Mackel, golf is not Raahsha. Baahch, it was a mistake to go to that haunted house. A beeg mistake. Now Mackel thinks golf is like Raahsha!”
“It can’t be helped,” said Hannigan. “He met Shivas Irons and wrote that book. Now he thinks everyone levitates on golf courses, or sees the wee people.”
Whether from an excess of vodka, or the combination of Russian herbs and drink, or the cumulative effects of our lively meeting, my brain did not faithfully record the rest of our conversation. I can only recall my feelings as we argued about golf in its occult dimensions. I was jealous of Hannigan’s concourse with Nadia. I felt a great attraction to her. And she seemed more and more complex. As she guided me down her steps to the taxi she’d called, I wondered whether she’d ever worked for the KGB, or if she might work for them now.
* Pools of still liquid, polished caldrons and urns, crystals, and other devices were used among the ancient Greeks for mirror gazing, sometimes in darkened chambers constructed for that purpose. By focusing on reflective surfaces of this kind, supplicants could summon souls of the dead and other spirits. In The Odyssey, for example, Odysseus contacts his departed mother after gazing into a pit filled with the blood of sacrificed animals.
CHAPTER SEVEN
AROMATIC TRACES OF mushroom soup lingered in the air around me, the taste of vodka remained in my throat, and a vague sense of guilt mingled with the attraction I felt toward Nadia. But stronger than these was the image of our visitor in the necromanteion. Waking, I realized that it sat in my consciousness like a living thing.
The room’s tall windows were covered with drapes, except for one through which there came a narrow shaft of sunlight. There was just enough light in the high-ceilinged room to see the clock by the fireplace. How long had I slept? It was nine o’clock now, but it was hard to remember when I’d gone to bed, or my conversation with the taxi driver who’d brought me to the hotel. My suspicions of Nadia the night before seemed ludicrous in the morning light. I’d have to examine the paranoia our meeting had triggered.
Turning onto my side, I felt a strange pleasure. Did it arise in part from Nadia’s soup and the afterglow of her erotic presence? Or was it somehow connected to the thing we’d seen in the mirror? Through the partly uncovered window, I could see a stately stone building on the far side of Princes Street. One of its windows was like the glass in Nadia’s necromanteion. The light it reflected reminded me of the illumination in which our visitor had taken shape.
Was something forming in it now? Squinting, I broke it into golden threads that danced above cars and passing pedestrians, between chairs and tables through the room. That photons were coming from the sun to a window across the street then into the cells of my nervous system was a delicious thought. Part of the pleasure I felt came from this river of light. Its shimmering reminded me of superstrings and Nadia’s vision of fleshy harps. In its lingering caress, it was possible to think there were erotic connections between mathematics, angels, and the flesh.…
But the phone by the bed was ringing. “Murphy?” It was Hannigan. “Are ye in heaven, hell, or purgatory?”
“It’s hard to tell.” I let a wave of dizziness pass. “On my back, it was heaven. Sitting up, it’s purgatory.”
“Did ye get home all right?”
“I can’t remember when I got here, what route we took, or how much I paid the driver. How was I doing when I left?”
“Adequately. Nadia says ye drink as well as her countrymen. Says yer liver must’ve adapted, what with all yer trips to Moscow.”
“Was I well behaved?”
“As far as I know. Unless ye did somethin’ behind my back.”
Relieved that he sounded so warm and high-spirited, I asked why he had called.
“Because I want ye to come to my place. Something happened last night after ye left that might be related to Shivas Irons. How long’ll it take ye to get a taxi? Nadia’s brought yer car here.”
“An hour or so. I’ve got to have breakfast. But for Christ’s sake. What happened? Was there another visitation?”
He didn’t respond at once. “Murphy,” he said after a moment’s pause, “did ye have any funny dreams?”
“No.”
“Not a one?”
“Not that I can remember.”
“All right,” he said cheerfully. “I’ll expect ye about ten o’clock.”
Waiting for breakfast in the hotel’s dining room, I wonde
red if Nadia’s mushroom soup countered the damage of excessive drink, for instead of the hangover I might’ve suffered, I felt a growing clarity about the previous night’s activities. Reconstructing my taxi ride to the hotel I started to toy with the objects in front of me, which included three forks, a knife, a tablespoon, two teaspoons, a butter knife, two glasses, a teacup and saucer, a basket of rolls, a dish of butter squares, a small tray of jams and jellies, and a basket of plums, figs, and peaches. Absorbed in reverie, I rearranged this entire setting, placing figs and plums at various places on the table. The waiter, a rugged-looking middle-aged Scots dressed in a formal white shirt and black bow tie, asked what I was doing. “That’s a beautiful arrangement,” he said. “Don’t ye like the way we do it?”
Embarrassed, I started to move the things back. But then I hesitated. The arrangement of utensils, glasses, and cups resembled something that was vaguely familiar. Was it a garden in Burningbush? Or a golf links?
Suddenly I realized what it was. The basket of breakfast rolls was MacDuff’s old house. The knife pointing from it to me was the first fairway of his seven-hole course, and the pieces of fruit I’d spread around the table represented the locations of his abandoned greens.
But there was something even more amazing. I saw that this improbable map revealed ways in which Shivas Irons might have used the place to practice extraordinary golf shots. The dotted lines on the diagram below indicate routes which some of these might have followed. Apologizing to the waiter, I sketched the map on an envelope. This is what it looked like:
A half hour later, Hannigan greeted me at the door to his studio. He was unshaven and disheveled, but brimming with energy. “Ye seem all right.” He looked me up and down, as if searching for marks of disrepair. “Have a seat, and I’ll get ye a cup o’ coffee.”
His desk was covered with sheets from his artist’s pad, each of them covered from top to bottom with equations written in his elegant hand. “You’ve been working,” I said. “Boy, you’ve got stamina.”
The Kingdom of Shivas Irons Page 10
