by Peter Straub
“He dropped to his hands, then, somewhat as an ape does; he turned and fled, and the tuft of his tail flashed once, like a hare’s. At the end of the glen he turned—I could just see him at the edge of the trees—and looked at me. And that was all.
“I sat in the dust there, sweating in the night air. I remember thinking the striking thing about it was how unpoetical it had been. It was like no story about a meeting between a man and a god—or a godlet—that I had ever heard. No gift was given me, no promise made me. It was like freeing an otter from a fish trap. And that, most strangely, was what gave me joy in it. The difference, child, between the true gods and the imaginary ones is this: that the true gods are not less real than yourself.”
It was deep midnight now in the villa; the tide was out, and rain had begun again to fall, spattering on the roof tiles, hissing in the fire.
It wasn’t true, what he had told the boy: that he had been given no gift, made no promise. For it was only after Greece that he came to possess the quality for which, besides his knack for verse, he was chiefly famous: his gift (not always an easy one to live with) for attracting love from many different kinds and conditions of people. He had accepted the love that he attracted, and sought more, and had that too. Satyr he had been called, often enough. He thought, when he gave it any thought, that it had come to him through the grip of the horned one: a part of that being’s own power of un-refusable ravishment.
Well, if that were so, then he had the gift no more: had used it up, spent it, worn it out. He was thirty-six, and looked and felt far older: sick and lame, his puffy features gray and haggard, his mustache white—foolish to think he could have been the object of Loukas’s affection.
But without love, without its wild possibility, he could no longer defend himself against the void: against his black certainty that life mattered not a whit, was a brief compendium of folly and suffering, not worth the stakes. He would not take life on those terms; no, he would trade it for something more valuable…for Greece. Freedom. He would like to have given his life heroically, but even the ignoble death he seemed likely now to suffer here, in this mephitic swamp, even that was worth something: was owed, anyway, to the clime that made him a poet: to the blessing he had had.
“I have heard of no reports of such a creature in those mountains since that time,” he said. “You know, I think the little gods are the oldest gods, older than the Olympians, older far than Jehovah. Pan forbid he should be dead, if he be the last of his kind…”
The firing of Suliote guns outside the villa woke him. He lifted his head painfully from the sweat-damp pillow. He put out his hand and thought for a moment his Newfoundland dog Lion lay at his feet. It was the boy Loukas: asleep.
He raised himself to his elbows. What had he dreamed? What story had he told?
NOTE: Lord Byron died at Missolonghi, in Greece, April 19, 1824. He was thirty-six years old.
Insect Dreams
Rosalind Palermo Stevenson
I
…and then the sounds begin to reach her, the violent beating of wings, a breeze rising up, a bird gliding on wing…a vision of mouths, footsteps on the gravel on the walkway, the kicking up of stones, the shifting weight from left to right, vibrating deep into the earth, and moving past…a vision of something sweet, of something sugary, or of a soft secretion, she is folded in upon herself, like a leaf which has fallen and curled…a vision of the garden’s weedy waters, of its ghostly portico, its statues, the Dutch moat, a sunflower, roses, and other flowers…a vision, a vision, the cry of a bird again, on wing nearer now, furious spasms in her abdomen, the bird on wing higher, higher, then out of view…a vision of longing, a burning up, a flap of skin to which she must affix herself, to which she must hold fast, hold fast, there is a high wind coming, there is the danger she will be blown away…
Sometime in the night a sound wakes her: a thud as of a heavy object falling, and then someone moaning. Maria Sibylla Merian sits up, but can hear nothing more. The night is long, too long, and the air is stultifying. Down in the hold of the ship the insect moth, Phalaena tau, is dreaming, day or night, it makes no difference, though now it is night. The moth is in chrysalis with the other specimens that Maria Sibylla has brought with her on the journey.
Awake she finds she cannot breathe, her cabin is airless, and the odor is foul even here at the stern so close to the captain’s quarters. She comes up to the deck to breathe the air, in the dead of night, alone, a forbidden female figure, solitary, silent, and all the while the ocean reticent, the waves just barely lapping.
Imagine. Imagined. The fragmentary themes that drive her night. The ocean. The Atlantic. The crossing to Surinam. It is an allegorical crossing like the crossings of Moors. The dark faces of the men. The ship, The Peace, just barely rocking.
She recalls the ritual dances of certain insects. The way the female becomes bloated and huge. And gives off an odor that is strong and pungent, but at the same time sweet, and the males pick up the scent and approach, half-flying, half-crawling to the female.
Now she stands on the deck of the ship. Induced by her God. Under the ceiling of Heaven. Beneath the planets and the stars. The constellations—Lepus, Monoceros, Eridanus. Love of knowledge. Travel and changes. Danger of accidents (especially at sea). And a danger of drowning.
Heavenly God, it is Your will that guides me. It is Your will that guides the entire universe, that binds all forms together. Heavenly God, take me into that self-same will and guide me to Your perfection.
Does she know Plato’s Sea of Tartarus? Where all the waters pierce the earth to the Sea of Tartarus? The sailors believe that if they come too close to the equator they will turn black like the natives who live there. Or that if they sail too far to the north their blood will congeal and turn to ice in their veins. But tonight there is nothing but the black of black waters, the sea of darkness, the stars in the heavens.
Pale woman. Defined by your sex. By your birth. By your birthright. When did the door first open? It was her father’s influence, no doubt, the artist Matthaus Merian the Elder. She was a child when he died and her memory of him is imperfect. Papa. Papa Matthaus. The safe, the clean, the eminently sane smell of him.
She holds the cast of the head of Laocoon.
Observe the way she holds the giant head.
Sirs, I will hold this head, the head of poor Laocoon, who warned against the Trojan horse.
She is exceptional, her father tells the men.
Stand over here, Maria Sibylla, over here, stand and hold the head.
It is a plaster cast and heavy for a small child; it weighs at least seven or eight pounds, but she holds it.
She holds it as though it is not heavy, as though it does not weigh seven or eight pounds.
and the canals below the windows
the dead level of the waters
the canals that one can see in all directions
It is the light reflecting on her cup of liquid. A small plate next to it with crumbs. It is one of the mornings in the Netherlands before she makes her ocean crossing. A child brings her insects from the Kerkstraat Gardens. It is a ritual they perform: the child arrives at the door and calls out to the woman, “Mistress.”
Ja, what have you brought?
I brought a moth pupa.
Did you pluck it yourself?
Yes, Mistress.
Where did you find it?
I found it in the Kerkstraat Gardens.
Here, come, let me see.
The child, a girl, holds out the inert brown shell of the pupa.
Ja, I see, rolling it delicately over on the palm of her hand.
The child’s eye is becoming sharp, a love for precision is developing, a satisfaction in identification of the insects. She is just one of the children who lives around the Kerkstraat Gardens, but Maria Sibylla has taken an interest in her.
Maria. Maria Sibylla.
Sibylla is the woman’s middle name, the name passed down to her from her mother.
And the Sibyl closed her eyes and saw events unfold before them, in the darkness a horse falling, its rider going down in battle, and then many horses falling, and many riders going down in battle, and rains, and plagues to cleanse the earth.
Make way, make way.
In Amsterdam it was all excitement and exotica. That was how the fire took hold inside her; it was from what she saw in Amsterdam, brought back by the science travelers. But they were hobbyists compared to her, compared to her deadly seriousness. The fire took hold from what she saw in Amsterdam in the interiors of the museum rooms. The creatures floating as in dreams. The creatures in their cases floating.
There are creatures that no one has seen. Creatures that have not been classified, counted, entered in the journals and the record books of science, whose shapes defy the patterns of logical construction, whose colors are as if from other worlds, self-regenerating, pure, infinite variety and complexity, sketched by God, painted by angels, life miraculously breathed into them, life, alive, free, that no one has seen, that she, she must see.
The air is cold on her face, cold through to her bones.
The night is bearing down on her and she thinks that it will crush her. The way the night bears down on her.
The night bears down and makes her think of dying oceans, of vast bodies of water slowly releasing and losing breath, and of all the life contained down in the oceans’ depths, down in those fathomless deeps, and of all the life carrying on with the business of living, and with the business of feeding and mating and dying.
The air is cold on her face. Cold through to her bones. She is out from her cabin. Out on the deck. Wrapped in her folds of black twill.
The ship has slowed down almost to a standstill. There is no wind, light or moderate, no fresh and strong wind, no scant wind, no aft, no large, no quartering wind.
She is steady on the deck, steady on her feet, she has her sea legs, she can walk on them, she keeps her back straight.
The sailors will not look at her. They believe it will bring bad luck to look at her. They believe she is a witch—die Hexe, bezaubernde Frau.
She is a woman traveling alone under the protection of the captain, in her sight line the insects of Surinam.
There will be land soon. She can smell it. It is a sweet smell in the air, mingled with the smell of salt. Anticipation of arrival. The first rays of the sun. Thin and tentative. The slow lifting of the darkness.
Surinam. Soor i nam. State of the kingdom of the Netherlands on the northeast coast of South America. 55,144 square miles. Capital, Paramaribo.
Paramaribo. Delicious word. Sweet as the sugar cane that grows there, sweet and savage.
Birds tear towards the sun. Their wings on fire like the wings of the Holy Spirit. Tongues aflame for all the earth to see.
She wakes gasping for air, her body bathed in perspiration; her hair is pasted to her head by the perspiration. She pulls the bedsheets off her body, lifts into the mesh netting that envelops her bed, it is the mosquito netting, she lifts her face into it and it feels like a spider’s web. She thrusts her hands out in front of her, remembers where she is, what this is, reaches into the blackness to find the seam and lifts away the netting. She locates the candle on her bedside table and lights it. Is guided by its sallow light to the window where she stands looking out, again the night, the moon a harsh orange sliver in the sky.
She is in the bedroom in her suite of rooms at Surimombo—Surimombo is the plantation lodging house owned by the spinster, Esther Gabay. At the time of her stay, there are these three others: Francina Ivenes, the widow, a permanent lodger at Surimombo since the death of her husband some years ago; the physician, Doctor Peter Kolb, who has his practice in the township; and Mathew van der Lee, the young settler, who has come to profit in the sugar trade.
Surimombo. It is a chorus from the slaves. The race to the end. Surimombo. Surimombo. Monsoon rain, water washing down the Parima, the fabled river that ran through Paradise. It is the place that was Eden when God expelled Adam. And Eve had no choice but to follow. And now the Parima with its current, the way Maria Sibylla looks in the canoe, she looks large in the canoe, with her back straight, a giantess carrying her insects.
And from the river a disturbance, from deep down under the green-blue bowl of agitation and foment,
Surinam is all rivers: the Nickerie; the Saramacca; the Coppename and the Suriname; the Commewijne and the Marowijne; the Para; the Cottica; the Maroni; the Tapanahoni,
and all around the rolling fields of sugar cane, the way the stalk breaks so that the sweet pulpy insides come dripping out, inviting you to bite, to suck,
it is impossible not to bite, to suck, the rich sweetness.
The sun throws glints of light that catch from time to time the defensive pose of a pupa; still, still, breathless, nothing that moves, nothing that will give rise to movement. It looks like the dropping of a macaw, or like a piece of wood, a bit of broken twig, the pupa waiting to unfold.
It is at the end of the dry season and many times throughout the day, she must wait before she can move on. She must take shelter and wait for the rain to stop.
The jungle forest is open to her, and she keeps step with its pace, with its drifting and continuous movement.
What looks like a centipede, or a snake curled on a branch, is nothing more than the branch itself, its curve, a thickness in the growth of its bark, a guest shrub growing in an enclave of its formation. Meanwhile the creature that she seeks is there, no more than an arm’s length in front of her, its eyes focused in her direction.
She is with Marta, her Amerindian slave, who is hardly a slave at all, though one of a dozen slaves included in her lodging fees at Surimombo. Marta knows the names of the trees, the leaves and branches, the larvae feeding on them, the moths they will transform into. She knows the frogs, the spiders, the snakes, the birds, hummingbirds drinking the nectar of flowers, the buds, the fruits, macaws screaming in the trees, winged and magnificent, their colors streaming like the colors in flags, the flags of the homelands, the welcoming flags of homecomings.
Back in Amsterdam she has a friend, a woman who has grown a giant pineapple. From all around people have come to see it, and Mr. Caspar Commelin has written an article about it for inclusion in his science journal. Maria Sibylla writes to Caspar Commelin, and to the other Amsterdam naturalists, the men who are part of the scientific exchange.
Sirs, I have had the satisfaction this day, the 21st of January, 1700, to witness the transformation of a caterpillar, gold and black striped, which I found soon after my arrival here; to witness it become these months later, a butterfly.
She works in watercolors on vellum.
Her vellum is the finest there is, made from the skin of lambs, the lambs unborn, taken early, violently.
Suppers at Surimombo are served each evening at six o’clock. Esther Gabay takes her place at the head of the table. On the side to Esther Gabay’s right are seated Doctor Peter Kolb and Mathew van der Lee. Maria Sibylla is seated opposite them, next to the Widow Ivenes. The food is always plentiful and rich: large bowls of mutton and fricassees, platters of Guinea fowl and vegetables, mullets and snapper, fruits and tarts, alligator pears, guava, and shaddock. Nut meats and oranges are brought to the table last, along with pastries dripping with sugar. The meal is served from left to right. The conversation is animated and jovial.
“How exotic your insects are,” says the Widow Ivenes to Maria Sibylla. “Do they ever crawl upon your hand or your wrist? What does it feel like when that happens, the sensation of your insects crawling on your flesh?”
Sirs, the quickening. Life appearing in the egg and nourished there. And then ferocious biting through. The pede, the stage at which I plucked it, plucking too the leaves on which it fed until its transformation into pupa. Profoundest rest. A rest that angels yearn for—and for that time asleep and dreaming. Then beckoned by the dream it starts to stir, the slightest stirring, and then a parting of the cotton that
protects the shell, and a splitting and a chipping of the shell itself, until the transformation is complete from pede to winged creature; emerging, blasting, to fly dazed and free and glorious.
Out of a sky filled with sun, out of air that is still and filled with the scent of flamboyant and sugar cane, storms rise up without warning and blacken the Surinam sky. A breeze begins to blow in the darkened light, a moist breeze that takes hold and the sweet smells are carried stronger, and the moisture in the air bathes the face; but then the breeze gathers strength and becomes a wind, and the wind a raging gale, and the gale gains hurricane force. There are signs if one takes notice. Everything becomes quiet. There is a cessation of the sounds of the birds and the insects.
Maria Sibylla is out behind the Surimombo plantation house when her first storm forms in the stillness. She is studying a species of potter wasp which has built its nest upon the ground. She is intent upon recording her observations, and writing the notes that will accompany her drawings, so that she does not take notice of the darkening light. It is Mathew van der Lee who comes running to fetch her—frantic his running—shouting something she cannot hear, stopping just short of knocking into her, he grabs her sketching papers and her charcoals, and, though now quite on top of her, he continues his shouting. They are not back inside the house five minutes when the walls begin to rattle, and the whistling of the wind becomes deep and throaty like a lion’s roar, and she huddles low with Esther Gabay, and with the Widow Ivenes and Doctor Peter Kolb, and with Mathew van der Lee, she huddles low.
