The Hermeporta Beyond the Gates of Hermes

by Hogarth Brown

  ‘It’s the zodiac’ said Winston, deadpan, his height giving him a better view. Iona’s mouth fell open to let out a torrent of surprise mixed with expletives,

  ‘Of course, it is, I see it now’ she said, once recovered, and shook her head in disbelief, ‘this could be Zoroastrian? But the carving looks Greek, not Persian - some joint effort perhaps? Oh, my God, this is huge, HUGE’ she emphasised, fidgeting, shaking her head and clutching at her mouth as the enormity of their discovery dawned on her, ‘this rewrites history’ she said, ‘I think this object - sculpture - is unknown.'

  ‘I see the basin is filled with something too’ said Winston, looking on mesmerised as if speaking in a dream, ‘look’ he said, lifting Iona up so she could see the vast breadth of the bowl. More exclamations followed as Iona wriggled in his grasp,

  ‘Mercury’ she said her voice trembling, ‘it’s filled to the brim with liquid mercury.' She gazed at the dish, caked in places with accumulated bat droppings, but the lustrous shine of Quicksilver lay unmistakable. Winston put her down. Iona almost ran around the object, got half way, and gasped again. ‘The serpents have been carved with open jaws’ she said, ‘look they have bronze teeth.'

  Winston drifted to her side as if in a daze, as she pointed at the teeth that had turned a green-brown with time.

  ‘I think they must have held something in their grasp’

  he said, ‘a tooth is missing.'

  ‘You’re right’ said Iona, with a cocked brow, and at that moment began to cast the torchlight around the floor. Something glinted. ‘What’s that?’ she said thinking aloud and flew down from the plinth, like a Robin, and rushed to the object that reflected the light, ignoring the mangled bodies that littered her path. ‘It’s pure quartz crystal’ she shouted back, ‘but it's cleaved in half’ she added in wonder, ‘the tooth’s stuck on this edge.' She then probed the shadows with light in search of another reflection, something else flashed, ‘and there’s the other PIECE’ she exclaimed, scrambling in the dark, and united the two circular halves of the broken crystal above her head, before brandishing the gem like a trophy.

  Winston felt a pulse of energy pass through him, upon the joining of the halves, and he thought he saw the carvings twitch, but he found it hard to tell as the torch light jerked around on Iona's wrist, which caused distorting shadows. Iona jumped about with the flashlight dropping down her arm, unable to contain the excitement that built within her like a tidal wave. Winston stood still as if made of lead.

  ‘My father mentioned this: and I didn’t believe him’ he said under his breath, but his lips were out of sync with his words as his mind flew beyond the cave to reach into the past. Iona almost skipped back to the plinth and climbed the steps with pace to reach his side. Her eyes had gained a wild expression; her pupils dilated, her cheeks flushed.

  ‘Look, look, look’ she said, like a little girl, as she held the thick quartz in her hands, and tried to give Winston one-half. But she could no longer separate the crystal, ‘oh?’ she said with cocked brows and a grin that seemed wider than her face, ‘it’s stuck back together.'

  Winston shivered but stood, rigid, and he heard Iona’s breath become a pant as he felt her warm breath drift up to his neck. Iona’s iris’ became gaping holes of black banded with a thin strip of colour. Winston bit his lip as he looked at her. ‘Let’s see if it still fits?’ said Iona with shrill glee. Winston stood magnetised to the spot, only able to move his eyes at that point and glanced at the heads of the snakes. He noticed that their carved eyes had opened to reveal large garnets of blood red that gave off a glow. Fear bolted through him. Iona, seeing his hesitation, then barged past him, where his feet stood as if rooted, and began to reach the crystal up to the jaws of the snakes that seemed to widen to receive it.

  ‘STOP’ screeched Winston at the top of his voice, and it took all his strength and reach, his movements like treacle, to swipe at the crystal in Iona’s outstretched hands. It slipped from her grasp, and she clutched several times at the air as it fell, but it split again upon the plinth corner, and the halves came to rest upon the ground. At that moment, Winston felt freed, and Iona’s mania ended. They both stood still.

  ‘What… was… that?’ said Iona, confused and shocked at herself.

  ‘I don’t think we can tell anyone about this’ said Winston, who had broken into a sweat upon his brow, and a patch grew on his chest, ‘not even Douglas’ He shivered. Winston noticed the carved serpent’s eyes had closed once more. Iona shook her hair and blinked as if she had received a blow to the head.

  ‘But this, this is a find of a lifetime’ she said, ‘this discovery could rewrite, let alone add new chapters to history’ she said incredulous, ‘I want the world to know about this. Winston, this could become my PhD.'

  ‘You can’t write about this’ Winston said, striking his finger through the air, ‘do you remember what happened just now?’ Iona shook her head before she replied,

  ‘Something odd I think, I remember running over there, but I’m not sure how I got back here.'

  ‘Did you see anything else?’ said Winston,

  ‘Not that I remember, why are you acting weird?’

  ‘Look around you’ said Winston, and Iona gazed about, ‘there are bodies everywhere. Look how withered they are: they look like they’ve been chewed up and spat out. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?’ Iona’s face scrunched like a ball of paper,

  ‘Don’t lecture me; this is not your area. You don’t have the expertise.'

  ‘Don’t be blinded, Iona, this is bigger than you or me.'

  ‘And you don’t think I know that?’ She said peering at Winston as if he were an imbecile, ‘I see exactly what’s going on here: you don’t want me to progress. You don’t want me to tell Douglas because you’re jealous, and you don’t want me to tell the world because you don’t wish me to become better than yourself.'

  ‘That’s not true’ he said,

  ‘Yes, it is. It’s written on your face’ she declared swiping her hands downward, before thrusting them in Winston’s direction.

  ‘Listen to me’ he said, ‘my father mentioned something like this, but I didn’t believe him.' Iona shook her head and guffawed.

  ‘Your father…’ she pointed but then hesitated to rephrase her tone and gestures. ‘Your father - with all due respect - was an exceptional scholar, and, I admit, I enjoyed his lectures at Harvard. No one would dispute a great deal of his knowledge, but we both know, near the end, a lot of what he said was discredited…’ Iona’s voice trailed off, her face still vexed as she glared at Winston. Some of the bats stirred high overhead as they sensed the reducing hours till sunset.

  ‘I think this thing, and what happened just now, proves some of what my father talked about before he died.'

  ‘That’s impossible’ said Iona, with a flap, ‘what he talked about was ludicrous, ludicrous: he got laughed out of Cambridge’ she scoffed, unable to contain her frustration.

  ‘I know: and he drank himself to death over it’ said Winston, his eyes trembling. Iona chewed at her lip and sighed as her shoulders slumped.

  ‘This is not fair, Winston. You can’t do this. This find could make my career, and you can’t keep mentioning your father just to end an argument.'

  ‘I don’t want to stop anything’ he urged, ‘I think we should work on this together, just the two of us. Write your PhD about this area, but if this is what I think it is’ said Winston with a threatening gesture to the unusual object, ‘then we both know that we can’t tell anyone about it.'

  Iona’s lip trembled, and she rubbed her hands over her forehead before her eyes welled up. Iona then chewed on her fingernails.

  ‘I don’t want to do this’ she said, shaking her head again ‘I don’t want to listen to this.' But Winston reached forward to grip her arm and pull her into his embrace. He held her fast and squeezed her to him.

  ‘You read all my father’s published work, and saw the rest that didn’t make it’ said Win
ston rocking Iona in his arms.

  She wriggled, but he gripped her neck, and Iona tried to twist away somewhat before he kissed her, thrusting is tongue between her teeth, and massaged her body to try and make her yield. Iona tried to push him off, but he held her face in his hands and looked deep into her, ‘let go of me’ she said gritting her teeth. But Winston did not listen.

  ‘I don’t think now, standing here, that my father was crazy’ he said, his voice unsteady, his face gripped with revelation. A tear rolled from Iona’s eye, as Winston held her in place, and stood like a man having a spiritual vision, ‘what if his theories were valid Iona?’ he declared with almost evangelical conviction, his hands encircling her neck, ‘what if my father was right? What if everything he said was true?’

  Chapter 3

  The Sacrifice

  The Island of Maui, Hawaii April 2004

  Illawara smiled to herself with satisfaction, her transformation complete, and fussed here and there at her seventeenth-century ball gown of midnight blue damask. She turned herself in front of her mirror, this way and that, to be sure the split at the front of her dress revealed her blue-gold embellished Petty coats, which ballooned forward over her wide French farthingale - an item which had taken her so long to find, on-line, and then improve. The nineteen-year-old ruffled and clinked as she moved forward: every inch of her dressed from head to toe like a late Renaissance woman of the highest standing.

  Illawara then walked over to her Hi-fi stereo as a small hummingbird darted about, here and there overhead, and reflected the fading afternoon light off feathers that flashed like emeralds. Illawara then plugged her headphone jack into her iPod, selected an album, and burst into a movement as a song boomed out from the speakers, and filled the expansive living space with the brassy exuberant sounds of the year’s smash hit. Illawara spun with glee, a passionate dancer since a small girl, and flung herself about the room with abandon.

  ‘I love Beyonce’ Illawara exclaimed, as she jangled like a jewel box, with faux pearls strung about her neck and through her dark hair, as she combined her best ballet moves with the bump and grind of an MTV dancer. As the music rang out, the bird tried to communicate over the trumpeting beat, but she carried on dancing. Lost in joy, Illawara raised her arms, encased in slashed puffed sleeves peeping with gold silk, into an arched port de bras above her head and high-wired ruff. Holding the pose, she leant back, as if blown by the wind, before she beat her arms like swan’s wings. Giggling Illawara spun forward - her arms a wheel - and then leapt into the air, kicking her legs into splits, and tossing her head back mid-flight as if expecting to be caught by Rudolf Nureyev.

  She landed with ease, and grace, upon her platform chopines: the pale blue fabric of the shoes embellished with glass gems and her embroidery. Illawara then shook her shoulders to the beat. The bird tried to communicate again, over the clamour, and called out:

  ‘Illy, Illy, what will we take for Galileo?’ But the young woman ignored his calls, and then imitated her favourite recording artist, as if it were she in her music videos, and sashayed forward throwing her hips from side to side like a supermodel upon a catwalk. Illawara stomped ahead, deaf to the bird’s calling, with each step striking upon the beat while she imagined flashing cameras blazing at her sides. Illawara arrived at the other end of the room and threw up her hand to pose before she stopped to lick her thumb and graze it down into her corseted bust with as much sass as she could muster. As if facing a gallery of paparazzi Illawara, with her free hand, then clutched her trim waist above her hips and threw a smouldering look over her shoulder as if she were a megastar herself. Illawara's faux pearls jangled about before coming to rest, holding her pose with a pouted expression, before she erupted into laughter, her smile just as pearly as her necklaces, and giggled at herself for her abandon. She strutted forward to her Hi-fi and turned the music down.

  ‘Yes, Hermes’ she said, with a waft of her hand, to the hummingbird that still buzzed around.

  ‘You weren’t listening to me’ the bird complained, ‘you always lose yourself in music, and stop listening when I’m trying to talk to you’ he added.

  ‘I can’t help it’ she said, ‘when I hear a good tune I just have to dance.'

  The emerald coloured bird flew down, from where he hovered, to his perch - one of several dotted about the place - and came to rest on a table strewn with framed photographs. Many were of a younger Illawara, among others, standing next to a tall and distinguished man.

  ‘They won’t be playing this sort of music in 1611’ chirped Hermes, rolling his little eyes,

  ‘I know that’ Illawara huffed, ‘I’m not an idiot - but they’ll have drums or tambourines: there will still be a beat…' The hummingbird stuck his long beak into the air as if to give her the brush off,

  ‘I prefer Bowie anyway’ said Hermes, and started to inspect his feathers. Illawara walked over to the table where the bird perched, Hermes ignored her while grooming, and she picked up a silver-framed picture of her younger self, gazing up at the well-dressed man standing next to her. She caressed the handsome features of the man through the glass,

  ‘I miss him’ she said before she kissed the image and put the frame down with care.

  ‘Do you think he’ll be there?’ said Hermes, done with his grooming,

  ‘Of course, he will’ came the tart reply, which could not quite mask the doubt in her voice.

  Illawara looked at pictures of herself with her father in Italy, an adventure for her twelfth birthday, the Leaning Tower of Pisa behind them, before she looked at more of the pair in Rome, Padua, and Florence. Illawara observed herself, the girl - her smile ecstatic and eyes filled with pride - as if she were a stranger that had lived some other life. She then sighed before she took up another photograph: one showing the same man upon a Maui beach embracing a woman with sandy blond hair. He does not smile, but his grey eyes burn with passion, the woman smiles enough for them both, but her eyes express an effort to pose and do not match her stilted grin.

  ‘I miss her too. I still wonder what she’s doing now?’ said Illawara, stroking the hair of the woman’s image,

  ‘Forget her’ said Hermes, ‘you know she’ll never get back to you.'

  ‘Yes, but…’ Illawara slumped somewhat and hesitated before she put the picture down and then turned away from all the other photographs of Iona and Winston: the successful Professor of Physics and Astronomy. Some pictures showed Winston surrounded by colleagues, or winning prizes: usually with Iona, in the background, or off to the side, smiling with empty eyes. Illawara had not seen her or the Professor for seven years. Illawara walked about in her costume, like an actress upon the wrong set before the start of filming: so at odds she stood with her environment of white leather furniture, shelves stuffed with books on philosophy, physics, and the classics.

  Rothko and Van Gogh paintings adorned the high walls and shared space with framed drawings by Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, and medieval maps of Europe with the land and sea populated with serpents and monsters writhing from their water coloured depths. Hubble space maps of nebula and constellations of stars also covered the walls, and large photos of the ongoing construction of CERN’s Hadron Collider - her father present among the engineers - hung next to those of telescopes atop barren hills, and pictures of students at the Maui University. The most recent photo, a Polaroid, of her father stood amongst his research colleagues at the Haleakala Observatory: a moment, captured on impulse, which had become an image of significance in Illawara's life. It was the last picture she had of him before he left.

  Illawara navigated the Professor’s inherited collection of Greek and Roman busts upon plinths - a bronze mask or sculpture placed here and there across the expanse. Illawara's skirts rustled as she walked among exotic potted plants of ripening pineapples, aloe Vera, rare herbs, and an array of orchids that Hermes could sip from at his leisure. Illawara, in haste, inspected some Petri dishes, rested upon a shelf, which contained unusual growths. S
he squinted at the samples and curled her lip before she added some liquid to them from a syringe nearby. Illawara then adjusted the temperature control on the wall: her secluded home an odd combination of a greenhouse, laboratory, living room, study, and art gallery.

  As the evening approached, some of the orchids began to release their heady perfume into the living room, which never failed to make Illawara feel nostalgic. She sighed, whimsical, breathing in the orchid scents that weighed upon the air, as the setting sun coloured the white walls to coral pink via the massive skylight that lay above in the vaulted ceilings.

  ‘Dad always loved the smell of these flowers’ said Illawara with her arm swept towards the potted orchids dotted about, ‘do you think he still remembers them?’ Illawara paused. ‘Do you think he still remembers me?’ Illawara turned to glance at the bird, but Hermes said nothing. Illawara stood still for a while, glaring at Hermes before she realised she was clenching her teeth.

  ‘You said we need to hurry’ said the bird glancing back. She muttered under her breath in reply, flicking her hand through the air, before turning away from her friend to retrieve a large, but simple, brown leather bag that closed with a drawstring. Illawara used the strap on the bag to sling it across her shoulders. The bag contrasted with Illawara’s grand appearance but would not look out of place in earlier times. She then glided over to a large television, attached to the wall, which bore a frozen image of a doll-like woman standing in a field in Italy. The woman wore Edwardian clothing.

  Illawara spun a miniature orrery that sat upon the coffee table and glanced down at how all the planets raced through their orbits above Ovid’s Metamorphoses - the book that changed her life. The book lay open, for years, at the story of Jason and Medea. Illawara brushed fluff off the pages and traced her finger over Ovid’s words. The chapter lay still wedged with a piece of paper, ragged and handled, that bore the code breaker that unlocked all her father’s research secrets - years ago.