Sylvia

by Bryce Courtenay

  It was as good as saying she did not possess the time. Master Israel seldom travelled beyond Cologne these days and besides, Frau Sarah was ever the busy one, whether he was present or not, and of late it was she who travelled quite often to Bonn. I hadn’t ever told Reinhardt about Ruth’s Truth as I knew he would not be able to resist the temptation to partake of the mushroom and would almost certainly use the knowledge unwisely. But now with him gone, I decided to ask Nicholas if he would tarry with me.

  ‘Aye, Sylvia,’ he agreed, then naturally asked, ‘This mushroom, what does it do?’

  ‘There is little I may tell you other than what I have myself been told,’ I replied. ‘I will go into a trance that may last an hour or half a day and then experience visions inwardly.’

  ‘Like Father Hermann and the Virgin?’

  ‘Nay, this is not come about from piety. At least I think not.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘I know not, some substance contained in the mushroom.’

  ‘Will it harm you?’

  ‘Not if it is taken in the correct dose and manner.’

  ‘But, if it should last half a day, where will we do this? In the church after morning mass?’

  ‘Nay, the woods. It is summer and we can leave early and hope to find the mushroom and then tarry in some safe place. I know a small cave beside a great beech tree where no soul will disturb us. I will bring food and drink, bread and perhaps a smoked trout and a jug so that we can get fresh water from a stream. I have been cautioned not to partake of wine.’

  And so, two days later Nicholas and I set off at dawn for the woods. Daylight came as we climbed the hill and we were well searching for the mushroom when we heard the Angelus ring. Although we found various kinds, even some we could eat, we found not a single one of Ruth’s Truth. We would do this three times and with the meeting with my two priests drawing closer I was becoming most anxious. Then on the fourth morning we finally found what we were looking for and repaired to the small cave I had discovered while exploring in the woods.

  ‘Nicholas, there is a special way to prepare this and I regret I cannot show you how it is done.’

  Like all boys he asked, ‘Why?’

  ‘I have sworn to keep this as women’s knowledge, it is a secret ancient and profound.’ Then I asked him to return in about half an hour and to call out as he approached. I handed him the black earthenware jug and pointed deeper into the woods. ‘Will you fill this from the spring we passed and bring it back with you? If I am already in a trance, place it beside the food to my front so that I may use it should I become thirsty,’ I instructed.

  But Nicholas, accepting the jug, was not yet ready to depart. ‘What mean you by women’s knowledge, Sylvia? Cooking is women’s knowledge, but it is not secret and a man may know it if he wishes.’

  ‘Ah, but sometimes the herbs used in flavouring, they may be a woman’s secret. Or other herbs used to heal, their nature and uses only women know about. This mushroom and its preparation has been known only to women healers for hundreds of years and they have sworn not to reveal its secret except to women who they consider appropriate to the knowledge.’ I knew that if I told him this was knowledge possessed by Jewish women herbalists he would think I was partaking of the devil’s work. In fact, I was not altogether certain of this myself. In Christian terms, that is, to the Christian peasant, this mushroom was named Satan’s Shadow. I was placing my faith in Frau Sarah and not in the folklore of my own people.

  ‘Aye, healing is a woman’s work. That I well understand. I have seen you use unguents and medicine of your own making on all of us. But this is not some cut or bruise, festering ulcer or stomach ache. It is not the same and inward visions do not heal.’

  I had learned a great deal about herbal mixtures from Frau Sarah and now used them to help the people of the street. Nicholas’s question was a good one. All I could think to say was, ‘Ah, but what of the spirit? It may heal the spirit. Take prayer, is it not healing? Is it not inward vision? We are not all, like Father Hermann, blessed with holy visions we can clearly see, but we know they exist and feel them naturally as they heal our spirit while we pray. This, you may say, is just as natural, for a mushroom is also God’s work. If He has caused it to induce visions that are safe and heal the spirit and instruct the mind, are they not to be tried?’

  Nicholas looked doubtful and I knew my logic faulty. ‘Sylvia, I ask only because I don’t want anything to harm you,’ he said, somewhat tremulously, and I saw, to my surprise, that he loved me.

  ‘Nicholas, I have chosen you above any to be my guardian. Will you do it for me? Please?’

  ‘Aye, I have said I would.’ He hesitated, then stammered, ‘But if it should not turn out well I will call Father Hermann, he knows much of visions.’

  ‘Aye, if you must.’ I could not tell him to call Frau Sarah, for the reasons I have already stated, and thinking I would not come to any harm I agreed that he could call the priest.

  ‘Then one more thing,’ Nicholas asked. ‘If all goes well with you, will you let me take the mushroom?’

  I nodded. ‘If all goes well, yes. But you may tell none. Not even Father Hermann, unless you have cause to call him. It must be our secret. Do you understand?’

  ‘Aye,’ he said.

  ‘Nay! Nay! Nicholas! You must swear it on your life!’

  He placed his hand to his heart. ‘I swear it on my life,’ he said.

  ‘Before Almighty God.’

  Nicholas looked hurt. ‘You know you can trust me, Sylvia.’

  ‘Before Almighty God!’ I repeated. ‘Swear it, Nicholas!’

  ‘Before Almighty God,’ he proclaimed loudly, smiling the while at my insistence.

  ‘In four hours you must give me food and water if I do not ask for sustenance myself,’ I instructed. ‘If the vision persists beyond daylight, then you must lead me home by the hand. Only call Father Hermann if I do not prove compliant.’

  ‘But you said only half a day?’

  ‘Aye, perhaps not even that. But just in case, eh?’

  He nodded. ‘Now be off and return as I asked. Don’t forget the water,’ I said, smiling. As he walked away I cried, ‘Nicholas, I care greatly that you are my friend!’ I felt that he would have wished me to say that I loved him. But there was about him much of the zealot and once said he might dwell on it in a mawkish manner, and I would lose him as a friend as he sought to occupy a greater place in my heart than I could bring myself to feel. Nicholas did not turn about but threw both his hands above his head, the black jug in one of them glinting in the sunlight, whether pleased or upset I couldn’t say.

  I began to prepare the mushroom as Frau Sarah had instructed. The method I may not reveal here as it does not deny my original promise to tell the whole truth about my life. A secret held a thousand years or more by women of one religious persuasion is not to be summarily revealed by women of another. There is an instinctive trust among good women that men may never understand.

  Nicholas returned soon after I had consumed a portion of the prepared mushroom and placed the jug next to the food in front of me and then went to sit on an adjacent rock. I did not speak with him as already I began to feel light-headed. I tried to focus on a root from the beech tree that had grown across the surface of the rock he sat upon and then entered the ground on the other side, as if it was a rope binding the rock to the ground. Nicholas had chosen the spot well as he could observe me seated cross-legged at the entrance to the small cave without disturbing me. I had sat in this position a thousand times in the woods at home when I had practised imitating the bird calls, and found it most comfortable and conducive to concentration, more so even than when one kneels in prayer. Although I don’t suppose kneeling before God is supposed to be comfortable.

  For some time nothing seemed to happen and then to my surprise, for I did not see it occurring, the trees about me had turned a brilliant purple and their trunks bright yellow. The cave sat at the edge of a small clearing so
that the sun shone brightly onto the part of the grass the shade from the tree failed to reach. The grass had now turned light blue, the shaded parts a deeper hue, and the patch of sky showing above me had taken on a pale green colour, like the green of a daffodil shoot. In my mind all seemed perfectly natural and I wasn’t in the least disturbed by the recolouration of the world around me, except that Nicholas had disappeared, although the rock upon which he sat was still there but now appeared transparent as if made of glass. Embedded within it I saw a silver object and I rose, or in my vision I rose (in fact, throughout the trance I remained seated), and with my stave in hand approached the object set in the rock.

  As I drew closer I saw that it was a large fish, perhaps half the length of my arm. I recall thinking that with all else recoloured why did the fish remain silver as any fish might be? But there was one feature to it I had not seen before. The fish possessed a brilliant blue eye that seemed to be watching me. I touched the rock with my stave and at once it shattered into a million particles that fell around the fish to form a pillow on which it now rested. The pillow, light as a dandelion, rose before my eyes until it sat in the air above me like a small cloud, though growing all the while bigger, with the fish also increasing in size. The cloud containing the fish continued to rise into the green sky directly above the clearing. I watched, standing on the blue grass, as the cloud rose to the height of the steeple of St Mary’s on the Kapitol, and was now grown sufficiently for the fish upon it to be the size of a horse, its great blue eye never for one moment leaving me.

  Two dark shadows, which I then saw were great hands with their fingers spread, appeared above the cloud. Moments later the fish opened its mouth and from it issued in pairs, male and female, every bird of the air from the blue tit and the robin to the eagle and the albatross, each pair calling out until the air was filled with such a cacophony that I must perforce drop my stave and place my hands to my ears or be driven mad by the pitch and screeching.

  The dark hands disappeared and birds now circled the cloud and began to peck at the fish until they had devoured it, leaving only the head and the tail, then the birds commenced to peck at the cloud until finally only a wisp remained. Then this too was gone and the fish skeleton hung but a moment longer, then plunged to the earth, and even in the plunging the eye watched me steadfastly. It fell at my feet now no larger than when I had first seen it within the rock and bouncing landed back again, balanced on its tail. In an instant wings grew from its gills and its fishy skeletal bones, still intact, began to turn to flesh and then skin black as ink. Its tail divided to form two legs with dreadful claws for feet and then arms appeared. Suddenly there stood a winged imp, bold as brass, with its arms bent and hands held to its waist, its dark and wicked wings flapping with evil intent.

  The creature stood no higher than my knees, black with no hair to its shiny burnished skull and a tail that stretched to a fleshy arrowhead many times as long as the creature itself. Only the blue eyes of the fish remained within its wicked-looking face that possessed no nose, but for two pumping holes and a bony fish’s mouth of tiny needle-sharp bloodstained teeth. And all the while the screeching of the birds continued and the air around me vibrated with the fluttering of their wings.

  The creature’s long tail began to thrash like a whip upon the blue grass, raising small puffs of bright pink dust, its mouth opening and closing as if it would talk with me, but with the bird cries I could not hear its voice. Then, fast as lightning, the tail came round and wound tight about my ankles several times and the tiny hands of the devilkin grabbed at its own extended tailpiece and jerked me off my feet. I lay hard against the ground, though strangely I felt no impact as I fell. I looked up and saw the tiny devil standing over me and from his front protruded a monstrous blue-veined hardened penis I knew at once to be my father’s vile protruberant. Then the devil, his long tail unwinding about my ankles, his dark wings spread wide, lowered himself upon me and I knew he would surely enter me. I reached for where my stave had fallen to retrieve the dagger from its top but grasped instead its end that turned into a serpent that I now held by the tail. Afraid to release it, I aimed it to strike in the manner of a whip at the creature. The great snake rose high into the air and arched, then struck deeply into the flesh of the imp and as it did the creature turned back into the fish that now lay harmless between my legs, its fishy eye gone cold and dead.

  ‘Sylvia! Sylvia!’ I heard calling in the distance, then closer and closer as my name was called again and again and slowly I began to feel someone tugging at me. Then, quite suddenly, I was out of the trance and staring into Nicholas’s frightened face. He knelt in front of me with his eyes grown wide and his hands upon my shoulders shaking me. I still sat cross-legged as before but now I held my stave poised in one hand above my head. I was also aware that my clothes were soaked with sweat and my face wet from weeping. I felt something upon my lap and saw that the smoked trout I had brought for our sustenance now lay head and tail alone connected with its bones stripped bare of flesh. In front of me the loaf of bread was missing from where I had placed it upon a small rock with only a few crusts and crumbs on the ground next to the black water jug that now lay smashed into several pieces.

  I had experienced my first mushroom trance and now Nicholas explained what he had seen me do during the course of it. ‘Sylvia, all went well at first and you smiled and laughed and clapped your hands and it seemed you were having a right merry time. Then you reached for your stave and commenced to strike the end into the loaf of bread until it broke into several pieces. It was then that I was myself distracted for the birds in the woods were screeching and I glanced to the sky to see two falcons looking for prey. When I looked back you held your hands to your ears and the expression on your face was as if the anxiety of the birds and their urgent screeching hurt your ears. Then you uttered the cry of the falcon and the two circling above immediately flew away and you commenced to call all the birds unto you as if you wished to calm them. They soon surrounded you as I have previously seen them do and now commenced to eat the broken loaf and pick with their beaks at the trout, feasting on the bread and the fish as you watched. Then when they had eaten the bread and removed the flesh from the fish, a large black crow came flying in and scattered them and then attempted to lift the remains of the fish from the ground. But as you well know the sudden arrival of a crow means bad luck and I thought it time to wake you. Then the crow holding in its beak the fish with head and tail and bones observed my approach and flapping its wings it lifted the carcass into the air above your head. But the fish proved too weighty and fell back onto your lap. Whereupon I saw you reach for your stave and strike at the water jug and smash it asunder. You were crying out in terror, gasping and weeping, and so I thought to wake you if I could.’

  When I had recovered sufficiently to be about my wits, I found myself bitterly disappointed. I had received no insights into my mind, no vision of eternal truth and no guidance. To my dismay the explanation for everything seemed simple enough.

  The mushrooms had caused me to hallucinate so that one thing became another and it did not take me long to work out how each of the objects had caused the vision to come about. The rock that became translucent was either the small rock on which I had placed the bread and beside it the trout to keep them from the dirt or, alternatively, it was the rock upon which Nicholas sat, although I think the former for in the vision he did not appear seated upon it. This explained my striking the bread that then turned into a pillow on which the trout lay and this then became a rising cloud with the fish upon it. The two falcons, which I had seen as two great dark hands above the cloud and the screeching of the birds alarmed at the presence of the birds of prey, became the birds fleeing from out of the fish’s mouth.

  Then, according to Nicholas, I had caused the falcons to fly away and the birds to calm by calling them to me. They had landed all about me, hence the fluttering of the wings and, naturally enough, they had devoured the bread and the fish, in o
ther words the cloud and the fish upon it, squabbling all the while to continue the cacophony I had first heard.

  The crow arriving to stand in front of me became the imp, or perhaps part of it, its wings and feet, the black earthenware jar with its two handles on either side making his arms and the fish its visage. Together they gave the tiny demon wings, arms, legs, a fish’s nostrils and mouth with sharp teeth and the eyes of either the crow or the fish. My stave became a serpent and I had struck the black jar, thinking it the devilkin. The wetness I had supposed was sweat was in fact the water from the jar that had splashed over me when I had broken it.

  It all fitted neatly except the tail the tiny devil carried. This too I solved soon enough. It was the beech-tree root that crossed the rock upon which Nicholas sat. The only thing I couldn’t solve was the huge blue-veined and bone-white appendage between the cacodemon’s legs that I knew to belong to my father. But when I cogitated I could see that it was the fish possibly held by the tail in the beak of the crow as it attempted to escape, its head and skeleton making my father’s appendage. His wanton actions and the birthmark on my back had possessed my spirit since childhood and were ever-present in my mind. These two things had been the cause of everything that had happened to me, and so I was forced to conclude they had naturally emerged as the most apprehensive components in my hallucinatory state.

  I told Nicholas the sequence of events throughout the trance that had, I discovered to my surprise, occurred over a period of four hours, although I did not mention the final aspect concerning my father. He listened wide-eyed and amazed, then said, ‘And all this happened in your mind! Just think, you are now a receiver of visions, Sylvia.’