Realms of Gold

by Terry Stanfill

“He may, but he obviously sees you as a circulation booster. He uses you.”

  “Is that so very different from what you’re doing?”

  He feels his face warming. “Bianca, would you answer a question for me?”

  “What is it?”

  “When did all this begin? When did you learn about your extraordinary gift?”

  “I’m not ready to tell you. Not yet. And you're not ready to tell me about your discovery—so we're even.”

  “Well, let’s order some dinner then,” he says curtly and beckons the waiter.

  He wonders why he is making the same mistake all over again, falling for another woman who has visions and dreams fraught with curious details and meanings. They say the same mistake happens again—and maybe even again. He is the prime example. No, he’s going to keep this woman at arm's length. He could be her best friend, but he will never be her lover.

  Bianca

  They finish their dinner in silence. Giovanni shifts about in his chair, gloomily taciturn as if she is boring the living daylights out of him. In self-defense, she allows her mind to wander, letting it descend as far as it will go without her mask.

  I ponder which door to open. I see door handles. One is silver, the other bronze gleaming like dull brass with strange markings. I choose the latter. I wonder, is it Scythian or Thracian? In a clearing of the woods, a shaman holds aloft a long pole cut from a sapling pine topped by a golden cone. The leader of the tribe holds it high for all to see. Then, with the pine cone’s tip, he marks the a man in the center of the circle where they are to gather. The man is wound like a human spool with ox-hide strips sewn together, each no wider than a finger/ The strips are slowly unwound to mark the shaman’s circle.

  A woman is watching the ceremony. She is someone I’ve seen before, still wearing her long coat of animal skin, like golden sable. The garment is edged with shearling or fur—I can’t make it out. Now I see it. It’s red fox. She turns her head, and the glow from the blazing fire throws light on her face. I see the tattoo on her cheek. It’s clearer now. It’s a tiny melusine.

  A man leaps up. He wears wings of rawhide, thin as parchment, stretched on a frame and fastened to his back. He dances around the glowing coals. Shamans with antlers on their heads sit around a fire under a large cauldron. Men in goatskin capes stand around a wide circle formed by thongs of ox-hide.

  The tall woman places her baby in the center of the circle. Young men, brandishing spears and clanging metal shields, dance around the child, their shouts fending off evil spirits. A figure in a white eagle mask pushes his way toward the center just as someone in a raven mask attempts to reach the child as though he wants to kill it. But the raven is frightened away by the white eagle and clashing cymbals and drumbeats.

  The woman clutches moss in her hand— green moss she has ripped from logs that lie in the forest. She tosses the moss into the cauldron. She throws in some sacred muscaria. With her other hand she grasps the long pole topped with a golden pinecone.

  A shaman with antlers takes a sip of bull’s blood from a two-handled cup and passes it to the other men in the circle.

  The shaman comes toward the woman and raises the kylix. She takes it in her hand and puts it to her lips. The cup is painted with a design of Amazons fighting foot soldiers.

  A few moments must have passed before she feels a tap on her shoulder. Giovanni is leaning forward against the table. “You seem light-years away.” His touch slams the door on her mind’s distant place. “Maybe I am,” she tells him, rising from her chair. Then reflecting for an instant, she says cryptically, “Whatever it was you discovered on the wall, I’ve been wondering if it’s still there.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “What do you mean? Whatever makes you think it won’t be? I hope you’re not allowing your intuition to work overtime.”

  She isn’t prepared for his sarcastic tone.

  “Your comment about the wall, whether or not it’s still there, hit a nerve. I admit I’ve been worrying that the locals might have heard about my discovery. If the tombaroli get wind of it they could easily offer Concetta’s son a small fortune for what’s on that wall. Then it would be offered again to top dealers in Zurich where it would wind up selling for millions. It happens again and again in these villages.”

  Doubts begin to surface. “Are you sure you’re not with the police?”

  “I can assure you I’m not, Bianca, but neither am I in the business of tomb-robbing.”

  “So you’re only a neutral bystander?” she responds almost mockingly. She can see by the set of his jaw that she’s beginning to provoke him. Maybe he’s just plain sick and tired of her company. And sorry he’s asked for her help.

  Scribbling his signature on the bill, he grasps her arm so tight it hurts and says, “Come on; let’s get the hell out of here.”

  *

  They leave the hotel and drive into the darkness. Even though the full moon hides behind the clouds and a heavy mist falls, Giovanni keeps glancing in his rearview mirror to make sure no cars are following. After a few miles on the main highway, past the local roadhouse, he turns down an unpaved, bumpy country lane winding up gradually around a hill. Intuitively Bianca begins to gauge the distance. By the time they come to a halt, they must have driven through at least two miles of ancient olive groves. Tall umbrella pines stand on the top of the hillock, sharply silhouetted against a star strewn sky now cleared by winds blowing in from across the Adriatic.

  A Vietato l’ingresso sign is posted on the wood gate. A large van and a covered pick-up truck are parked on the side of the driveway, some distance from the masseria. No lights shine through its shuttered windows. The rambling limestone block structure is surrounded by high stone walls for protection. “The masseria is part of an ancient fortification for a farmers’ collective. Considering its age it’s in fairly good shape.”

  The dwelling is much larger than she envisioned.

  “Concetta closes everything up tight, so it’s always dark. Watch your step.”

  “He grasps her hand as they trudge up the path to an open iron gate leading to the house. As they draw closer, she hears the bleating of goats and smells their distinctive scent. She pinches her nose. “Eew! Goats smell like old socks, don’t they?”

  “They stink when the male’s in heat. This excites the female and activates her estrogen. My mother used to keep a herd at Sicchia, so I grew up with goats.”

  She’s glad it’s dark so he can’t see her face. As they reach the dwelling she hears fiddles, the jingle of tambourines and singing, at first men’s voices, and then, in a voice higher and more strangely pitched than the others, a woman’s voice.

  “Probably one of those R.A.I variety shows.” He reaches for the massive iron knocker and lets it strike hard against the oak. The music blares on. He tries again until finally he bangs impatiently with foot and fist. When the door finally opens, the eyes peering at them are dark, their whites yellowish. The old woman’s face has the waxy, lusterless skin of someone who might have suffered from malaria. She thrusts her arm across the door in an unwelcome gesture and, when she greets Giovanni, speaks in a guttural, harsh-sounding dialect Bianca can’t understand. Her gray streaked black hair is drawn back. She is dressed in black with a buttoned-up collar.

  The music grows louder. More shouts, foot tapping, stampings. “Signora Lombardella tells me there’s a tarantismo purification going on in there. Supposedly one of the farmhand’s unmarried sisters was bitten by a spider this past summer. They believe the poison’s still in her system.” He raises a skeptical eyebrow. “It seems that La Pizzicata, the ‘bitten one,’ has been dancing for the past two hours. What you’re hearing is a tarantella.”

  “It doesn’t sound like the ones I’ve heard at Italian weddings in the States,” she says “a hokey dance with tipsy old folks hopping around to La lun’ e mezz’ u mare. Certainly not the same music they played at the wedding in Venice.”

  “I can assure you this is something else. We ca
n leave, if you want to, or I’ll try talking Concetta into letting us watch. I haven’t seen a tarantismo ritual since I was kid—and even then my mother usually dragged me off before the evening got too heated. Did you know the tarantella is supposedly a remnant of ancient culture here in Magna Graecia ?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Historians claim that it’s one of the few remaining parts of the orgiastic rites of the Thracian Dionysos.”

  Shivers travel along her spine as her recent visions loom large in her mind. I ponder which door to open. I see door handles. One is silver, the other, bronze. Is it Scythian or Thracian? A woman stands in the darkness, watching the ceremony…..

  Concetta shushes them with a scowl and a shake of her finger, her hostile eyes sweeping Bianca from head to toe. Then, putting her finger to her lips, she beckons them to follow her into a room smelling of burning tallow and body sweat. Pulsing drum beats and the strangely pitched chants of old women reverberate to the ancient rafters. They stand in a far corner where they have a good view of the dancers. Bianca looks over the men and women, some young, some old, some standing, some seated on a long wood bench pushed against the wall. Over and over, a woman dips her fingers in a bowl of neroli-scented water, dispersing it in the air to dispel the smell of sweat and sex. In the center of the room, a woman is dancing, hands on hips, shoulders back, spine rigid. Ribbons, red, purple, bright green, saffron yellow, make a circle around her, marking her path as she dances in a trance, her glazed eyes fixed on a swathe of scarlet silk placed before her feet. Bianca guesses the dancer’s age to be about the same as her own.

  The woman is wearing a black skirt and a white scoop-necked blouse. Lustrous, wavy dark hair falls halfway down her back. A black band tied around her forehead keeps the sweat from trickling into her vacant eyes. Her waist is wrapped with a red satin sash, coral beads encircle her neck, and a gold cornicello, a talisman to ward off the evil eye, dangles from a chain. Her feet, in shiny slippers, mark heel and toe, toe and heel, to the haunting, rhythmic beats of the tammore, the drums tapped and slapped by two men. An elderly mandolin player plinks out a melody to the sounds of a flute, while two women in a corner shake tambourines as they sing, “Pizzicata,Pizzicata,” the only words Bianca can make out.

  Giovanni leans forward, his face now so close to hers she can feel his heat.

  “The dance is supposed to cure the mythic ‘bite’ of the tarantula. She’s trying to exorcise herself from the venomous demons the spider supposedly unleashes. When women worked in the fields, they claimed they’d been bitten by the wolf spider, but now psychologists tell us that it’s more likely that they danced as a result of hysteria, sexual depression, or erotic desire. This part of the South, though once matriarchal and dedicated in ancient times to Aphrodite, has developed over the centuries into a stifling, patriarchal society.”

  “How long will she keep on dancing?”

  “Until the demons leave her body. Or until she falls to the floor from exhaustion.”

  One of the older men leaps from his chair and thrusts a tambourine toward the dancer. Without missing a beat she grasps it, always swooping, spinning, shaking, tapping.

  “She reminds me of a twirling maenad with a tambourine like the ones on your Apulian vases.”

  He nods. Yes--like the frenzied maenads dancing the rites of Dionysos."

  Suddenly a handsome young farmer jumps up and begins dancing by La Pizzicata's side. He’s dressed in black trousers and a white t-shirt. With his back rigid, arms by his side, he dances with only his feet in motion, his gaze fixed in a vacant, trance-like stare, Soon he's beaded with sweat, his shirt soaked. At last, spent, he falls onto the bench. But La Pizzicata, the bitten one, dances on, oblivious to everyone and everything—except the music. “Pizzicata, pizzicata, hai, hai, hai!, “ the women chant over and over, never letting the dancer forget the spider’s bite. Her eyes half closed, Bianca listens to the beat, the insistent rhythm of the tammora and the jangle of tambourines. Pulling off her scarf she tosses it on Giovanni's lap. Suddenly she springs from the chair and comes forward to step over the ribbons into the circle. Her chin drops to her chest and she begins to roll her neck, round and around, feeling the weight of her head, her shoulders rotating. Her pelvis pulsates, fanning into flames a fever inside her. She yields to the motion, waves of rhythm wash over her body, her feet trapped in the succession of beats, dancing, dancing in her darkness. Now all longings, yearnings, cravings escape from the confines of her being.

  Dance, Bianca, dance, musicians play faster and faster. Her hair comes loose, whipping around her face as she spins in her frenzy--endless shouts, thrumming drums, more and more insistent, stampings, turnings. She lunges forward. Giovanni leaps up to grasp her, but she falls to the floor as if she's been hit by a lightning bolt.

  Bianca is free of the venom even against herself.

  Giovanni helps the exhausted, unsteady Bianca to a sofa in the salone and Concetta covers her with a blanket. Bianca's dance, her raw, pagan emotions, and his response to them frighten him; at the same time, he feels wildly attracted to her, something he vowed he’d never let happen. He tells himself to take this night out of his mind. He’d better get her back to the hotel as soon as possible.

  Bianca

  When she opens her eyes, it's quiet; there’s no music and everyone is gone. Only Giovanni and the old woman sit at a table drinking clear liquid from tiny glasses. Giovanni goes to her side and takes her hand in his. Then after gently kissing her forehead, he puts his glass to her lips for a sip of the potent grappa. She takes a sip and then another. Reaching for her scarf from his jacket pocket, she shakes it out, then presses her warm, damp face against the cool silk.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Strange—revived, almost released, as if I came from some distant place.”

  “I should take you back to the hotel. We should be leaving. I don’t want us to wear out our welcome with Concetta.”

  “Leaving?” she says, jumping up from the sofa. “Why would be leaving? What about your discovery—isn’t that why we came here? I can’t leave without seeing it! Please, Giovanni, you promised me! “

  He turns to Concetta and mutters something in a dialect Bianca doesn’t understand.

  The old woman frowns, makes gestures with her hands before reaching for a key that hangs from a chain on her neck.

  “Let’s go, but you must be very quiet. Let her lead us.”

  They follow Concetta to the padlocked door. When it’s pushed open, Bianca smells the aroma of antiquity, the same dank, musty odor of fungus and dust, that sweet-sourness she remembers from other ancient places, the Pyramids, the Catacombs, the Basilica San Marco on a wet day. He holds her hand as they step to the lower level of the magazzino. He aims his high-powered pocket torch on the far wall. “What can you see?” he asks, hoping that she’ll be as surprised as he was the time he’d had his first look.

  What’s on the wall almost takes her breath away. “It’s looks like a fresco—a painting of a man standing by a fire. He seems to be holding a hammer or anvil. A boy stands by with bellows in his hands.”

  “Hephaestus at his forge,” he explains. “From the Archaic period—It amazes me that it’s still so fresh as well as being so stylistically perfect for the period. Now come on over to this corner. This one isn’t in nearly as good a condition but try to make it out.” She moves closer to study the drawing of what appears to be a sketch of large vessel. “It looks like a mathematical sketch, with all those radial lines and angles, but I can’t make out much more than that.”

  “It’s Pythagorean, in concept. Pure mathematics. Although he was born on the island of Samos, Pythagoras lived and worked in nearby Kroton. I told you that Sybaris and Kroton were enemies. When I first saw this image, I was reminded of an object I knew, one that actually exists. The foundry couldn’t have been far from this place; in fact it might have been right here—and here’s one more thing I want to show you that should make everythi
ng clear.”

  She gasps, feeling the quiver of recognition, her heart thumping so hard that it seems as though it might beat its way out of her chest. For a moment she is frozen in place. She finds herself struggling for words.

  “Before you show me any more, shall I tell you what I think?”

  “Make it fast.”

  “It can’t be possible that this sketch is the design for the bronze krater—the one in the museum at Châtillon-sur-Seine, le Cratère de Vix. But if it is what I think it is, you can’t imagine what this means to me.”

  “How in the world do you know about the Vix Krater?” he asks, almost suspiciously.

  Her heart is pounding away and she can hardly get the words out of her mouth.. "Remember when I mentioned once that I’d been going to Burgundy on a project? I didn’t want to tell you what it was about—and it was the same with you—not wanting to tell me about your discovery! If we hadn’t made this trip together, I might never be standing here, stunned by what I've just seen.”

  “Bianca, Bianca, you never cease to amaze me. This synchronicity between us is incredible. Now tell me, do you remember the design of the handles?”

  “It’s etched in my memory.”

  “Then come and look at the fresco in the left corner.”

  He aims the torch at the other wall. “What do you make of this”

  “It’s the snake-tailed gorgon –the Medusa-mixoparthenos on the Vix Krater!”

  “Yes, a preliminary design for the handle. Take a mental snapshot and commit it to memory. Hurry up— Concetta is nervous and wants us to leave.” He grabs her hand. “Let’s go—and don’t say another word until we get in the car. You never can tell who might be lurking out there.”

  *

  Until they're well on the road, Bianca is silent, still overcome by the shock of what she has seen.

  Finally she says. “Think about it, Giovanni, neither of us wanted to go to that wedding. Yet we went anyway, mostly because of a feeling of obligation to do the right thing. You keep talking about synchronicity. How is it that we've been so affected by it?” “Synchronicity can be about the relationship of minds, the relationship of ideas,” he says. “When my last relationship ended, I decided to go into Jungian therapy. Not only did I leave restoration to go back to digging, I also began to dig down into my own psyche. As I progressed, I found that I was experiencing frequent coincidences. Before long I realized that that these were not at all coincidental occurrences.. Jung also called it “selective perception.” Once you become aware of something, you begin to notice it all around you. And with your dreams and your writing you obviously go deep into your mind for your work. "