Soliloquy for Pan

by Beech, Mark

  She went to the catalogue, thumbing through the thick cards for books about Roman art and books about Pompeii.

  The art books were lovely to hold, their pages lustrous, and smooth against her fingers. She examined a newer Pompeii book that contained art suppressed in earlier exhibitions. These pieces had been stored in a ‘secret’ room because they shocked the Victorians so much. But now, in the 1960s, people are all so much more open-minded.

  Here she found paintings and statues of men and women tangled in many combinations. She glanced at these with mild interest and a tinge of confused disgust, which she dismissed because she considered herself an ‘open-minded’ 1960s person. She flipped faster through those pages as she sought an image of a female Pan.

  At last, she found it—a mural from the ‘Villa of Mysteries’. Two Pans, with short hair revealing pointed ears, kind of like Spock in Star Trek. One is playing the pipes, while the other is holding her breast for a sleek little goat to suckle. Next to them a woman is whirling a purple cloak around as if she’s in the middle of an interpretive dance.

  The caption said: “A boy or young Pan plays a pipe while a Panisca offers her breast to a kid.”

  Panisca. So that’s what a female Pan is called. Certainly not Peter.

  The Panisca in this mural had shorter hair than the lady in the yard. Of course, given that these gods turned themselves into animals and what-not, a different haircut would be no big deal.

  But Suzy recognised the expression on the Panisca’s face, rather serious but also loving.

  Another mural showed a winged woman, who also reminded her of the woman in the yard. This one wears a low-slung skirt around her hips and high boots, stern as she wields a stick. Though her form was different, her face also reminded her of the Panisca in the yard. Distant, not ready to forgive a mistake or slight, taking her instrument from her mouth and flicking her red tongue. If the gods change their shape, could this be the Panisca in a different mood? Maybe not the best mood.

  Another woman kneels; she seems to be imploring the winged woman.

  Suzy would certainly be begging to borrow those boots. She’d love a pair like that.

  Suzy didn’t dare take the Pompeii book out of the library. She only looked at it when she visited.

  As time went by, she took more interest in the other pages. These ancient people definitely had more imagination than those hippy-looking people in her parents’ Joy of Sex book, which Suzy found hidden in a drawer.

  She looked carefully at the pictures of men with men, when Bernie from Hackensack told her he might be gay. And all that time she’d been thinking that Bernie could become her boyfriend. She cried for a couple of days, then decided it could be exciting to be friends with someone that everyone at her school would call a fag.

  But some of it... eueew. She turned to a page with a sculpture of Pan himself doing it with a goat. And then found another book, which featured a painting of a Pan and Panisca in a sexual tangle of skin and fur, horns and hooves.

  She looked around to make sure no one was watching. But what would anyone see? Just a girl reading about Roman art.

  Later, her mother said: “I’m glad you’re getting serious about your studies. I knew you could do so much better.”

  Better. She wasn’t sure about that. She might read Bullfinch now, but the teachers still scolded her for not paying attention. What she loved to read and what they learned in school were two different things.

  She began to branch out from mythology in her reading and discovered science fiction. She loved The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin and especially The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. It was the footprint with six toes on the cover that drew her attention. A girl in the book called Sophie is banished as an abomination and a mutant because she has six toes. Right. Six toes, three toes... in either case, you’re fucked.

  Meanwhile, she got in trouble for reading a science fiction book under her desk during morning home-room. It was called England Swings SF.

  This caused more merriment in the classroom. Suzy swings! But she was glad she read that book, which included stories that had nothing to do with spaceships.

  You could even set such a story in the Bronx or New Jersey.

  Perhaps the radio waves dominate Suzy’s night, but books rule her day. And sometimes she is forbidden to read them.

  Worst are the ‘High Holidays’, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, when she must attend synagogue for whole days at a time. It’s especially bad when they take place on a weekend, so there isn’t even the benefit of missing school.

  Last year she brought a book with her, and her mother confiscated it.

  “You’re not meant to be reading, you’re meant to be praying,” said Mom.

  “I don’t believe in God, so why should I pray?”

  Suzy had never put that thought in words before. So she didn’t believe in some bearded guy who pays attention to everyone’s doings and listens to their prayers. And now she wasn’t sure just how a religion differed from myth or fairy tale.

  Yet she did believe that a Panisca, the lady in the yard, had come to her. And she is out there, hovering about her dreams, somewhere in a world that is difficult to enter.

  The Panisca is more than human, but could be fallible and lost as a human can be.

  So Suzy doesn’t believe in God. But there really was a lady in the yard, who might have been seen as a god.

  “Believe or don’t believe, you do what you’re told and you do what is right.”

  This year Suzy takes care to hide her a smaller book deep in the recesses of her suede-fringed bag.

  At the synagogue, the little kids leave the sanctuary and run around the lobby. There’s a corner of the lobby where teenagers congregate and flirt. None of them are her friends.

  There is only one ‘hey it’s Swinging Sue’ as she leaves. Sheryl Weinbaum, the bitch. Suzy ignores it as she heads outside. She has already explored the woods just in back of the parking lot, and knows a rock that’s good to sit on.

  Suzy rolls a joint and chuckles. These aren’t called the ‘High’ Holidays for nothing! Then she takes out her little mythology book. Maybe she’s moved on to science fiction. But it’s nice to read the myths again for old times’ sake.

  “I sing of Pan, Nymphe-leader, darling of the Naiades, adornment of golden choruses, lord of winsome muse when he pours forth the god-inspired siren-song of the melodious syrinx, and stepping nimbly to the melody leaps down from shadowy caves, moving his all-shape body, fine dancer, fine of face, conspicuous with blond beard... All the earth and sea are mixed thanks to you, for you are the bulwark of all, oh Pan, Pan!”

  ‘All-shape’. So Pan can be many shapes, any shape he or she wants. ‘Pan’ can refer to a pasture and it also means all, and all can be anything.

  Since it’s a warm day in September, Suzie takes off her shoes. Through her panty-hose she looks at the three toes on her deficient foot as she wriggles them. If she could change her shape like a Greek god, would she grow those toes back?

  Some scientists predict that humans could evolve to lose their little toes. Of course, in this crap school plenty of people refuse to even think about evolution. Jesus freaks... the school is full of them. Several in her class have taken to greeting each other by raising their index finger to the sky. There is only one way, it means. The way of Jesus, my way.

  And with only a small turn of the hand, the gesture means fuck you. Suzy practises the transformed signal under her desk. She has a feeling it’ll come in handy.

  Miss Golding asks her class to do reports on a book they love. Not just like, but love.

  Damn, thinks Suzy. Will we have to sit through three presentations on the Bible?

  So Suzy volunteers straight away to do hers. Yes, she’ll do The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. She’s read it three times. Miss Golding says she’ll bring in a record player, so people can play any music that goes along with the book.

  Suzy knows what will go with hers.

  Miss Goldin
g is one of the few OK people at school, but she won’t be around next year. Rumour has it her contract won’t be renewed because the vice principal made a pass at her and she said no.

  But Suzy suspects it could also be down to the Jesus creeps getting together and complaining about swear words in Catcher in the Rye.

  At her presentation, Suzy starts with a description of the book’s setting—conservative society living in the shadow of the ‘Tribulation’, a nuclear war.

  She explains that individuals who don’t conform to a strict physical norm are killed or sterilised and banished to the Fringes, an area full of animal and plant mutations. The boy in the book is telepathic, and he has to hide this. Later he makes friends with a girl called Sophie and he discovers that she has six toes.

  A wave of titters starts to gather, led by the Jesus creeps and amplified by the snorting of Sheryl Weinbaum. Obviously, behaving like a bigoted asshole is not an exclusively Christian affair.

  Suzy squares her shoulders and carries on. “So this girl who has six toes gets found out. Her family is persecuted, and they have to move.”

  “So how come she has six toes, then?”

  “It’s a mutation, caused by nuclear fall-out.”

  “Is that why you only have three? Are you a mutant, Sue?”

  “No, that was...” An accident. No, not really. She was just stupid enough to go out and slip on a stepladder near a fence. And that is none of their business.

  “But the book isn’t about me. The guy who wrote it lives in England and he hasn’t met any of us. The book is about letting people be different and it’s an attack on religious intolerance.”

  Suzy doesn’t look at the Jesus faction in the front of the class, but sneaks a glance at her fellow potheads in the back. No tittering comes from there, but there are definitely a few smirks. And no one helps her, or even contributes a furtive smile of support.

  Mutant Sue... Mutant Sue... She knows that name will stick. She’s glad that Miss Golding isn’t intervening. That would only make matters worse. She clears her throat, and carries on.

  “And this book inspired the Jefferson Airplane to write a song called ‘Crown of Creation’. I’ve brought in the record.” Suzy’s voice rises to a shout in order to be heard.

  “Who’s the Jefferson Airplane?”

  “The Airplane’s crap,” says one of the potheads. “Their music’s all hard and jingly-jangly, not mellow like the Dead.”

  “Yeah? Well, I think the Grateful Dead are boring, but it’s all a matter of taste.” Suzy struggles to remain diplomatic about the relative merits of the Airplane and the Dead. “I’ll play the song and everyone can decide. And I made dittos of the lyrics, which I’ll pass out. The band actually got their words straight from the book.”

  Miss Golding, who had ran off those dittos for her, is now looking nervous.

  Suzy passes out the sheets of paper, which are met by immediate catcalls.

  “Are you the crown of creation, Mutant Sue?”

  “You’ve got no place to go... Shoulda stayed in the Bronx!”

  “You are the crown of creation... that’s blasphemy. We can’t have blasphemy in our school.”

  Suzy can’t take this any longer “Blasphemy? I’ll show you some blasphemy. I’ll blast out this song and blow out the shit that passes for your brains.”

  Miss Golding now steps in. “Suzy, there’s no need for that language!”

  Even the liberal Miss Golding has her limits.

  The next day Suzy gets up an hour earlier to give herself time to walk to school. No getting on a bus with those idiots. At least it’s the last week of school.

  She goes back to the pool, this time with a nice big branch so she can get her book back. What had she been afraid of? That plop and agitation in the water could have been a frog, or something falling from a tree. Now the only thing disturbing the water’s surface are swimming bugs.

  She goes to the edge of the water and pokes about with her stick, trying to trawl deep enough to find the book and push it along. She only stirs up scum on the bottom. She keeps poking and poking, but stops because she doesn’t want to disturb the lilies and the frogs.

  She sighs with frustration and curses herself again for what she did. She misses her book. She can get another one out of the library but it won’t be the same.

  She sits on the steps in the pool and rolls a joint. She plays her flute tape. This time she just listens to her tape, hearing it bounce off the walls of the pool. She imagines her thoughts amplified and repeating like the echo, spiralling into the air. Stay in that moment between wakefulness and sleep.

  Then she hears other sounds. At first it’s like the usual buzz of insects. Then she realises it’s singing, a song unformed by a mouth, an emanation of melody like mist. Mindless, but affecting. Shrill, but sweet. It comes from the back fence, the most hidden part of the pool area.

  She goes there and finds out where the sound comes from. It’s the wisteria, singing. Every blossom, calyx open and vibrating.

  She puts her hand on a bunch, feeling the stirring under her fingertips. Against her ear, a multitude of tongues.

  She gives a tense bark of laughter. Perhaps this is what the Panisca laughs about. Ha ha. The wisteria sings.

  She decides it’s time to roll a joint.

  On the last day of school Jane Whitcomb is telling everyone that her father is buying the land near to Suzy’s house. The bungalow colony, the pool and the singing wisteria bower will soon be gone.

  Suzy has to go there and find the Panisca. Of course, the creature once found her in the Bronx, and she can go anywhere. But she must get attached to places, to her grottos. And so does Suzy, even though there’s scum on the water in this grotto, and it’s considered an eyesore by the township planners.

  She decides to visit it at night. Then she will be closer to finding the borderland and its moment between sleep and waking, and night-time in the grotto is the best place to try.

  Suzy gets in bed and turns off the lights, and plays the flute soft as she can, barely breathing into it. The sound that comes out is closer to a moan, with a tune curling its edges.

  The frogs are making a racket, along with the crickets. It drifts into a rhythm, which should have lulled her. But her mind comes awake as her body slows down.

  Thoughts echo and spin. The sound of a flute, many flutes, echoing among hills she’s never seen. She holds her breath, then lets it go.

  It’s the borderland, approaching. The time between wakefulness and sleep is usually too short. Only a line of music, a shift in the room around her, a different light shining through the window.

  Now she’s older, she knows what she’s looking for. Peter Pan was wrong. She can do more now that she’s grown up, or almost that way.

  Now she’s prolonging that moment, elongating it, moving within it. If she keeps her mind in the world between dreams and thought, she hears the music. She hears the wisteria singing, and the morning glories sighing in their sleep.

  She changes into a t-shirt and shorts and laces up her sneakers. With her flute in a backpack, she leaves through the basement door and shuts it with barely a click.

  At the pool the morning glory buds are now rolled up tight. But other living things expand and open. Suzy hears the earth exhaling, and the night-blooming plants breathing in. While the familiar green lilies have clenched their petals, a new crop of water blooms show purple and red in the moonlight.

  Unseen beauty, flowering in muck amid the discards. An impulse to bow to this shabby splendour seizes her, but instead she makes her way into the tangles of the hidden lounge-lawn where she reassembles her flute.

  She plays in rhythm with the frogs and crickets, adding a layer of her own to the rhythmic noise of the dark.

  As the Nightbird put it: Time ceases to exist. There is only space and the sensory...

  Can she be asleep and awake at the same time? As she breathes in the scent of the wisteria and night-blooming water plants, the dist
inction between the two states collapses.

  Then a loud splash and stirring breaks the surface of the pool.

  A slender and sinuous arm reaches above it, dripping with algae and surface residues.

  “Don’t worry. It’s only a water nymph,” a voice assures her.

  There’s a buzz to the voice, a woman’s voice, which makes her think of bees making honey. Suzy takes her time to turn around and see who is talking.

  The woman now wears her hair long in a dark thick braid. She still has that broad face with thick eyebrows, her eyes have that not-human cast. She carries her new-fangled syrinx, with its holes and valves and much more than seven pipes.

  “You speak English...” Suzy begins. “I mean, I thought you’d speak Greek. Or Latin.”

  “I speak the language that is needed. Don’t you remember when I spoke to you in the concrete yard? Your words are like tiles in a mosaic. I like the taste of them and the look of them. They can be another kind of music.” She laughs and displays large white teeth.

  “Are the Greek stories right, after all? We call them myths, but you’re here. Are they true?”

  “Myths are only symbols for things people don’t understand. All stories are right, yet they are often wrong. Your scientists have their stories and symbols, which have truth too.”

  “What are you talking about? You sound like a goddam politician!” Suzy’s heart plummets. All this fuss for a double-talking creature who seems so ordinary, even if her ears are odd. “I thought you’d be...”

  “I can change if you prefer something more exotic. Do you want the goat? They loved that in Arcadia, but I’m flexible. There’s a group of young men in California who are very keen on a mechanical element. Perhaps you’d like the wings again. It’s not a big deal when the physical being is in flux. That’s how it is where I live. That’s how we are different from rocks.”

  “No, no, no... the music is enough. You played for me when I first saw you. Why did you come to me then, anyway? I’m just a girl, no one special.”