— Can I persuade you to stay?
— Enough words for today, Doctor. Time for me to return to the heath and the blessedly wordless birds.
7
20 Maresfield Gardens, 30 September 1938
— I hope you’ve not taken cold with the doors open, Doctor. The wind was blowing harsh on the heath. I’d forgotten how mortally cold wind can make you.
— Come in quickly, please, and shut the door. Autumn is upon us and to prove it, like an old woman, I have on my shawl. My daughter insists. For all its creature comforts this house is diabolically draughty. Will you take the couch?
— I prefer not.
— At least if I continue to lie here I’ll be able to look my daughter in the eye when I am put through the inquisition about my rest. Tell me, what has been in your mind since we met?
— My feet almost begin to know the way here: up and over the rise, then a choice between an avenue of trees, or over the bridge and up to the ponds then down. Today as I walked I was puzzling over my own part in this story. I need to tease out how far I was to blame. You’ll understand that, Dr Freud. Guilt. Does anyone escape it? Is guilt the reason we make up stories?
— In reparation? I should say so. Excuse me while I go through the absurd pantomime with my cigar. My mouth is an abominable rat trap today. It would be a kindness if you would allow me just to lie here and smoke while you continue your story.
— If it won’t tire you.
— My dear man. Your visits are the most diverting events in my poor life at present. I wouldn’t miss them for the world.
— I should tell you how I first met one of the chief players in this story. I don’t know if you are aware that the shrine at Delphi was shared with a very different god, Dionysos, Apollo’s brother who died and returned to life again, our deity of blood and wine? For four months of the year Dionysos ruled at Delphi, while Apollo wintered abroad. I became priest for both these contrary gods, but I was pledged to Apollo first, and during the last of his months away I’d been visiting Thebes to see my grandmother, who was dying.
I was making my way back to Delphi for the start of the Apolline year and I was recalling my grandma as the tough old bird who whipped me good and hard, long before the priests ever beat me. And now, swaddled in her shabby woollen shawl…
— Like me!
— Unlike you, Doctor, she was afraid. She, who had beaten the daylight out of me as a boy, clutched my hand with her tiny pathetic shrivelled paw and begged me to tell her what was going to happen to her.
— Afraid to die?
— Scared stiff.
— The abiding terror and longing of our own extinction. Well, we shall see.
— I’d reached the point in my journey where the road divides and the going gets tough, and I was standing, as I had stood as a boy with my uncle, at the fork of the junction. As I listened to the birds’ spring mating calls, musing on how frail we are and how we see this most in those who have appeared most powerful, I heard a rumble of wheels. Glancing back, I saw a wagon being driven hard, so that I had to step aside smartly to avoid being knocked down.
I cried out, “Hey! Mind how you go!” or some such protest and a man thrust his head down from his seat, a red-bearded man with a big broken nose, who waved his stick and yelled curses after me for being in the way. Crossroads are uncanny places.
— Das unheimlich! I’ve had a thing or two to say about the uncanny. Tell me, why crossroads?
— They mark the routes to the underworld.
— Ah, so they are presages of death, our ultimate home.
— Country people set honey at crossroads for the sly nymphs who run wild on Parnassus and reared our Lord Apollo as a boy. In the noonday heat they can appear as bees, and lacking sweet sustenance they will steal away a man’s reason. Whether or not it was they or some other power at work I don’t know, but when the wagon and its uncouth passenger had passed, I fell by the roadside in a dead faint; and when I came to I was deathly cold and weeping.
— An understandable abreaction caused by your visit home and the repressed memories of loss.
— Whatever it was, I lay helpless at that crossroads unable to move. I made my way back to Delphi by the stars and by the time I got there I was too worn out to eat. But I limped over to the dining area and sat by myself, and probably chewed some bread and drank a little water and wine.
I remember waking the following morning in an unsettled frame of mind. As you say, the leave-taking of my grandmother and all it had recalled – my father’s crime against my mother, my loss of home and family, and the brutal encounter on my way back to Delphi – had perturbed me. The routine at Delphi was tough, but there was stability. I knew my place and my talents were accepted, and my visit to my old home had rattled me. I felt, or I believe now that I must have felt, somewhat unhinged.
I must have entered the temple as usual by the side door and descended to the area forbidden to all but sanctuary officials. The fire of bay and myrrh would already have been damped to a smoulder, giving off those heady fumes alleged to prompt the Priestess’s trance – though given your scepticism, Doctor, you might be amused to hear that the Pythia and I agreed that its chief purpose was to inculcate an atmosphere of fitting mystery for the pilgrims.
Descending to the place of consultation with the list of the day’s questions in my hand, it seems to me now that I had a sense of foreboding.
You recall I said that there was a curtain across the holy of holies. There was a concealed parting, constructed so that one could observe, unseen, the petitioners’ faces. The priests who had taken bribes were able to fine-tune their answers according to the expressions of the questioners. It had a use for me too, since it allowed me to pick up any resonance between the supplicant’s mind and my own, and then I could phrase the question to the god more accurately. No doubt you read your petitioners’ faces.
— Certainly the physiognomy will often reflect the patient’s inner position.
— Looking through, I received a jolt. As a rule, the first petitioner of the day was a Delphian, especially at the start of the new year. But Thebes had lately donated funds to the sanctuary to build a handsome treasury. And, as I read that day, a pair of finely worked bronze tripods and a solid silver statue of Apollo with a golden lyre and a crown of gold laurel into the bargain. Money talked!
— When has it not?
— By fair means or foul a Theban had contrived to reach the head of the queue and, to my dismay, the face I observed through the gap in the curtain was that of the red-bearded man with the broken nose who had threatened to flatten me at the crossroads.
I looked down and saw: First Petition: Laios, King of Thebes: tripods bronze, two; statue Apollo, silver with gold finish. As I read the question before my eyes, I had an instinct that the man was mouthing the words under his breath: “If I should have a child what will the outcome be?”
And then, clear as day, I saw it: a lone foot traveller facing a wagon, and its passenger, the self same man who stood before me, at a place where three roads meet.
— Another vision?
— Dr Freud, you should be more respectful of visions. They are close cousins of dreams. Those lucid dreams, with an authority of…what? Let’s say another dimension.
— And what transpired in this “other dimension”?
— What happened next? It was as if two dramas were playing simultaneously in the theatre of my mind. In one, the foot traveller stepped on to the Daulian road, out of the wagon’s way, and the train passed on unchallenged; in the other, the traveller stood his ground, the man in the wagon attacked him, viciously lashing him about the head with his ugly pronged goad. At which the other, younger man wrestled the weapon from his assailant’s hand and with his own staff toppled the old man from his perch in the wagon to the ground.
Now, you may pour scorn on this but I was as sure as the stars which guided me back to Delphi that the victim turned vanquisher I saw in my mind’s eye was conn
ected to the petitioner. And the notion came crashing through me that it would be better not to be born than be born to such a father. And as this feeling-thought ran like fire through my head, these words came unchecked from my lips: “Father a son, King Laios, and he will surely kill you”.
— Ah!
— Let me finish, Doctor. Jumbo is stirring, so the high priestess of the tea is on her way.
Of course by rights I should have put the King of Thebes’ question straight to the Pythia. But she said nothing. She sat behind us, still as Parnassus, holding the branch of laurel, which was shaking violently in her fist. From my place behind the curtain I continued to scrutinise the petitioner. He was a low-sized, barrel-chested man. I must have topped him by a head but judging by the build of him he would have bested me in any fight. A bruiser, in looks and character both. As I stared, I observed two distinct emotions race across his broken-nosed face: naked rage and, at the same time, an almost palpable relief. Then he turned and walked from the chamber. And I took a cup of the holy spring water and the Pythia, without a sign between us, took on her trance. Business was resumed as normal and I was not alone again with my thoughts till much later.
— And the thoughts, before you go…?
— Dr Freud, those two encounters with King Laios of Thebes laid a mark on me that will be with me till the end of time.
8
20 Maresfield Gardens, 3 October 1938
— Good afternoon, my friend. How very agreeable to see you. How was your walk today?
— There were chaffinches “pinking” on the heath. Walking to you, Doctor, memories fly to my mind like returning swallows. This afternoon I was recalling a day in Delphi, in the pinewood, and a host of goldfinches descending all about me. You know the little finches with the scarlet polls and gold-barred wings?
— I’m afraid even in German I’m not conversant with the names of birds.
— Eight of them. A charm.
— What hocus-pocus are you proposing to confound me with now?
— Calm down, my dear Dr Freud. A “charm” is the term for a number of goldfinches. I thought we might speak English today.
— There’s nothing to match the nuance and ambiguity of the English language. For all my homesickness, I am thankful I shall end my days here in the tongue of Shakespeare, Dickens, Kipling.
— I was blessed by the visitation of finches close on the encounter I described to you last time.
— With Laios? My dear man, I have been on tenterhooks to hear more. Please continue.
— Are you familiar with how we celebrated the Lord Apollo’s taking of the shrine? I don’t want to teach my granddad to suck eggs.
— I recollect something, but from what you say it may be hogwash.
— When Python, the old serpent of the shrine, was put down for good, Phoebus Apollo went into exile for eight years, upholding the law that he himself decreed: blood guilt must be expiated. And therefore, every eight years, to mark shining Apollo’s triumphant return to Delphi, his victory was reenacted as a prelude to a grand music festival. Because of my height and fair complexion, I was chosen to play the god in the ritual that heralded the festival.
Great store was set by this octennial event and truth to tell, Doctor, it was a fit of nerves which had taken me off to the wood. The youth chosen for “Apollo” was required to spend seven nights before the festival confined in a house on the edge of the sanctuary of Athena, which lay a little below ours.
— My kindly Athena?
— Believe me, Doctor, she is not always so kind. On the night before the ceremony, I knew I would be taken to the sacred building where it was rumoured that the sacred snakes of the goddess were once housed. There I would pass the night, to be visited by who knows what? Some said by Athena herself, or one of the other immortals, in a dream. On the day of the ceremony, I would be led, at first light, to the Castalian Spring, where the Pythia bathed naked and where supplicants came to wash their heads. Here my own body would be washed before being ceremonially dressed, decked with bay and green oak, and led up the Sacred Way to re-enact the battle with the old serpent. From there I would be sent into ritual banishment – to replicate the god’s – to a place known only to the high priest.
Rumours were rife about what would happen then: I would be maimed in the genitals; I would be bound naked and beaten with flails of knotted pine; a tincture would be put in my eyes to render me temporarily blind. To make matters worse, the last youth chosen to play Apollo had died shortly after the ceremony; the one before had left and gone to the shrine at Delos, the birthplace of the god. Only Menoetheus, a man with a face racked in a permanent frown – hard to envisage as a beautiful youth – remained of those who had played Apollo before me.
But the charm of goldfinches settling so companionably round me in the pinewoods was heartening. I made up my mind to approach Menoetheus and when I found him alone, I enquired, “Do I need fear anything from the ceremony?”
He brushed me off with a brusque, “What’s to fear, young Theban?” He was Delphian born and bred. Few of us from elsewhere served at the shrine and the natives were wary of us. But I thought I detected a flicker of sympathy in his eyes.
That hint of pity was in my mind the night before the ceremony. Time spent in solitude had sharpened my apprehension. For the past seven days I had eaten sparely and slept poorly, visited nightly by nerve-racking dreams. But that night a dreamless dark fell. No god approached, nor even a nightmare. I saw nothing and heard nothing all night long but the thin squeaking bats and the mournful kiu-kiu of Athena’s Little Owl. By the green-grey hours before dawn I was so agitated I felt if I didn’t stir my limbs I would go out of my mind.
I couldn’t see my hand before my face as I made my way to the Castalian spring. Don’t ask me why I went there.
— I imagine a compulsion to anticipate the scene you were soon to enact?
— Whatever the reasons, Doctor, I found myself running, blindly barefoot, up the road through impenetrable darkness – and then up the rocky path to the spring. I made for a flat rock and sat there, nursing my knees and ruing my situation. But I must have drifted into sleep, for all my anxiety.
— Sleep is a common defence mechanism.
— The next thing I saw was a rim of faint light framing the black shape of Mount Kirphis opposite. The rock on which I’d settled stood above the steps where the pilgrims descended to the pool to purify themselves in preparation for their transaction with the god. Or the servants of the god, I should say, for rarely does a god speak directly. It’s a dangerous thing to fall into conversation with a living god.
As I was recalling where I was, a wheatear flew down from the niche above the pool where an ivory statue of Apollo stood.
I had a special fondness for that slender white figure whose slight smile was oddly reminiscent of my old friend the herdsman’s. And I’d a fondness for wheatears too. I’d formed a fancy that these little warblers, which were always about the temple, were the sanctuary’s true custodians: Apollo’s winged guardians.
I could just make out, in the low light, the wheatear’s blue-grey body and cream throat as it dipped its bill into the fern-fringed pool. The bird drinking so naturally from the pool was calming.
The wheatear finished drinking and flew off; and I walked to the pool meaning to dip my face in it. Apollo’s rays had begun to unshadow the deep gorge and as I bent I saw there was a snake swimming peaceably in the holy water. I stood, watching its lithe squirls and its neat brown and gold-flecked back, and as I watched it was joined by another snake. The two swam together making delicate arabesques in the light, which by now was filtering down the red rock face. As the snakes wreathed and writhed about each other, the water began to spangle silver and the scales on their backs began to glint, and in the deliquescent basin of light into which the pool had been transformed I saw they had begun to couple.
— Forgive my interrupting, but I spent some time in Trieste as a young neurologist researchin
g this subject. How eels copulate. Or attempting to, I should say. Anguilla anguilla proved a frustrating research subject. I did rather better with human intercourse!
— I watched the snakes in fascination. I was virgin with women: what male and female did together was still mostly fantasy, though as a young boy I’d observed the brown rams on Cithaeron tupping the ewes and it had seemed a perfunctory sort of affair.
But there was a joyous freedom about the snakes’ sinuous brown and gold dance, one atop the other in the shining pool, and a sense came over me that I was spying. A strange respect for the snakes’ privacy. It was enough to send me back down the path, and as I came to the edge of Athena’s sanctuary I had an urge to piss.
— You sought relief in urination from your anxiety and the excitement of the copulating snakes.
— Who knows? All I know is that I stopped at the upper edge of the temenos by a small pool made by a low outflow of the Castalian spring. A clump of flowering rush grew there and as I was relieving myself I caught a glimpse through the reeds of a woman bathing. A woman with a long narrow back. I still don’t know if I spoke this aloud, but the word that surged into my beating mind was, “Mama!”
Glimpses of the woman’s drenched body gleamed through the rushes. I stood transfixed, still urinating, unable to stop the flow, overwhelmed by – I don’t know.
— Desire? Grief?
— It seemed in that moment, Doctor, that all the pain and all the pity, all the wonder, the strangeness and the longing and the glory and the dread of the world had been constellated in my burning heart: the golden snakes coupling in the silver water of the pool and the smell of urine on the wet thyme beneath my bare feet and the new light on the green rushes and the woman’s white body – and my piteous childhood loss. My eyes filled, hot tears spilled down my face and the woman turned and looked at me.
It was not my mother, for all she had the same grey eyes. But these were not tender maternal eyes. They levelled at me a dense dark gaze. A gaze which plunged deeper than anything had ever penetrated, piercing my vision, obscuring everything, till I saw nothing and felt nothing but those twin beams of …dear gods, how can I say? – of something very ancient, something that lies on the other side of light, before light was born, nailing me with its awful darkness, a darkness which annihilated all that I had been…
Where Three Roads Meet Page 4
