Babel Tower

by A. S. Byatt

  “ ‘It is always set alight an hour before midnight on the Longest Night,’ said the old woman. ‘In good years, we cook a feast of roots and baked scones and roast ptarmigan in its embers at dawn. If it burns very bright, it is a sign that there will be Spring. We do not have Spring every year here, you must understand. Some of the young things cannot remember Spring. But in good years Spring comes and the sun is hot and golden for a day, or a few days, or even a few weeks, and all sorts of herbs and flowers and bushes spring out of the ice, which runs away in little rushing rivers full of cresses—and the sky is the colour of a thrush’s egg, not the iron colour it is now.’

  “ ‘It will be hard for the fire to burn at all this year,’ says Dol Throstle. ‘Out there there is nothing but sleet, icy rain, cold and running and freezing when it gets darker.’

  “ ‘They cover the Wood with skins,’ says Throgga. ‘But the damp gets in, and a wet wind can prevent the fire from taking hold.’ ”

  There are steps on the stairs. A head comes round the door, blond, smiling a little. It is John Ottokar.

  “I knocked,” he says. “No one answered.”

  “We are listening to this story,” says Leo, reproving.

  John Ottokar takes off his duffel coat. He is wearing his brilliant patchwork sweater. He takes a step into the circle.

  “Can I stay and listen?” he says. “Don’t mind me. I’ll just sit here. Is that all right?”

  He is courteous, he looks tentatively at Agatha, he sits down on the carpet beside Frederica’s armchair. Her dangling hand brushes the thick pale hair. Agatha is mildly put out. She flushes. I don’t know, she says. Go on, say Saskia, Leo and Clement. Agatha shrugs and goes on. Throgga tells how the young men must leap the burning fire. The higher it is when they leap it, the brighter the coming year will be. The weather deteriorates.

  “Never had the travellers seen such rain, a rain of ice, of hailstones, of sheets of frozen slush, which turned the walls of the snow-huts to dripping glaciers in the brief daytime and to casques of ice at night, which burned any unwary finger that came near their surfaces. The villagers began to look unpleasantly at the Company: they began to say they had brought ill luck and that the Fire would never light whilst they were there. Throgga told Dol Throstle there was secret talk of driving them away, back into the Grüner Waste. Or worse, Throgga said, but would not say what ‘worse’ was.”

  John Ottokar sighs, an exhausted sigh, and leans his head back against the arm of Frederica’s chair. The story moves on: the villagers mutter, and when the day for the Bale Fire comes, their tinder is wet and the brands they try to take from the huts to the high ledge with the fire on it, sputter and die in the wet wind. The Crow tells Artegall that Dracosilex can light the Bale Fire, and Artegall replies testily that no doubt he could, if he were in his reptile form, but he is a stone and nothing but a stone, and there is no art to revive him.

  “ ‘There is a way,’ said the Crow. ‘You must take him to the geyser and bathe him in its warm waters, and wash him, and turn him, and he will become flesh again. For he is a salamander and salamanders are at home in the hot depths of geysers: they become lively, there.’

  “So the two boys carried the heavy stone down to the geyser lake and plunged their arms into its warm, bubbling depths, holding the stone being very carefully, and lapping the water round him. And their fingers felt the cold stone quicken, and become rough skin, and twitch, and they felt a heartbeat, and the thrum of blood, and the stone toad put out thrusting little legs, and a stubby tail, which had never previously manifested itself, and it twisted out of their clutching hands and pushed off purposefully into the depths.

  “There was a long silence, broken only by the bubbling of the geyser in the pool.

  “ ‘He likes it down there,’ Mark said. ‘It makes him lively. I expect he’ll stay for ever and eat shrimps.’

  “Artegall hung over the pool, staring down through steam and troubled water and saw two bright golden eyes staring up at him.

  “ ‘Dracosilex, Dracosilex, come up and help us light the fire.’

  “And slowly the beast returned to them, lithe now and shining, fiery-crested and gleaming olive-gold. Artegall received him in his arms and wrapped him in his own coat, and hurried across the icy scrub and up the mountain, steaming from exertion and because of the heat of the wet creature in his wet coat in his arms.

  “The villagers were gathered in the driving sleet, staring at the great beacon of wood, which was well built, but soaked through in its upper layers. One of the men said that never, even in the worst year in human memory, had the fire refused to light at all. One said that there should be seven different kinds of wood in the fire, and only six were certainly there, with a doubtful twig or two that might or might not be the seventh, horn-wood, a wood of a forest tree rarely found and susceptible to frosts. Artegall came forward and said that if it was permitted for him to intervene, he had a way to light the Bale Fire. One old man said it could only ever be lit by a brand from the ashes of the fire which had been lit last year from the ashes of last year’s Bale Fire. One old woman asked Artegall, what was his way, and he opened his jacket, which smelled slightly scorched, and there was the lively creature, glowing red and gold like coals under his craggy grey-green skin. And the old woman said the dragon was a Sending, a magic gift that should be accepted, and the old man said it was dangerous magic which would threaten their traditional ways. But the people were cold and despondent in the rain and snow, and perhaps for that reason the old woman’s enthusiasm prevailed over the natural sluggishness of the villagers. So Artegall was permitted to put Dracosilex on the stone ledge near the fire, and he set him down, and asked him to do what he could, to help if he might, and stepped back. And Dracosilex squatted there, glowing on the iron earth, and swayed a little, and opened his mouth, and sighed a great sigh. And out of his mouth, like the tongue of a chameleon, came a sinuous noose of what seemed to be liquid flame, which wrapped itself round the Bale Fire, and again, and again, three times, in a coil. And Dracosilex closed his mouth again, but the liquid thread of flame hung there on the wet wood, and there was a spitting and hissing and a steaming and a sizzling, and the wood began to sprout buds and shoots of flames, which crackled and caught. And soon the whole fire was roaring and blazing so that no force on earth could have stopped it.

  “Never was seen such a fire! The villagers roasted meats and made lardy cakes of fat and flour in its outreaches, and from its summit great blades of flame, red and yellow shot with emerald and bright blue, painted the dark sky and flickered bravely in the diminishing sleet, and wrinkled and waved in the wind. All night they danced, and when it was still quite high, towards dawn, the young men began to leap the flames, dropping pebbles, some black, some white, into the embers as they leaped. And some of the women and girls leaped, too—they all wore trousers, in that country, for the cold made nonsense of skirts—and the watching crowd began a growling, rolling kind of song, to a small drum and a bone pipe, as the leaping grew faster and more furious, and a kind of stamping dance took up the new rhythm. And one hot girl took Mark’s hand, and made him jump with her; he was afraid, high above the heat, with the tongues of flame reaching up for him from the cauldron of coals, and he came through with singed eyebrows, and smoky lashes, and tears in his eyes. And Artegall took a little run, and leaped, just high enough, and landed in ash, spraying himself with sparking cinders. And two great men lifted Dol Throstle high in the air as though she was an inflated skin bottle, and she closed her eyes, and felt the heat, and opened them, and saw the cold black night glistening against the firelight. And then two of the young men appeared, when everyone had jumped, half-leading, half-dragging, half-carrying the fragile fawn body of Fraxinius. Dol Throstle stepped forward then, and said that it wasn’t right to make the creature jump; he wasn’t well, as could be seen, and was dry as tinder, and not part of the community. But they said he must jump, he was the last, he must go over. He stood there, drowsed or da
zed it seemed, with his knotty locks hanging on his shoulders, and his thin arms dangling at his side. And then he said, in his strange whistling voice, ‘I am agreeable.’

  “ ‘We’ll drag you out, if you fall,’ said the village lads, not too pleasantly, for everyone had in their mind a vision of the conflagration that would follow if this desiccated being were to tumble on hot coals. And Dol Throstle said again, ‘He’s so dry, he’ll attract the fire, the flames’ll go for him.’

  “And the old woman said, ‘The flames only go for whom they choose. They will let him pass, unless they choose him.’

  “ ‘I am agreeable,’ said the thin creature again, and he shook off the hands of those who held him, and set off in an ungainly shamble towards the Bale Fire.

  “And when he came to it, he took a leap, and rose high, high, like a dry leaf in the current of an updraught, and seemed to float and sail against the night sky, which was now paler, deep blue, not black. He hung above the burning logs like a great bat or owl, and they all cried out, at his lightness, at his ease, at his weightlessness. And then he came eddying down, not on the other side, but on to the coals, into the very heart of the fire. And the fire took hold of him greedily, and took energy from him. He blazed—hair, hands, arms—and a wild smoke enveloped his blazing form. Dol Throstle began to weep, and Mark set forward to rescue him, calling for help. But Fraxinius stood there and blazed, and as he blazed, he changed beneath their eyes, drawing energy and form from the flames, which drew energy and form from him. In the red light he became green; his muddy hair became a curtain of new tendrils and new leaves; his outstretched twiggy arms put out shoots of green and his legs became thick, green, living trunks, upholding a body pliable and liquid, emerald and mossy, above which was a smiling green-gold mask from the eyes and mouth of which sprouted young green shoots, and above which twined a crown of shining leaves. And when he was fully grown, he strode out of the fire, with long, sure steps, a tall shimmering green figure with a mane of emerald hair, who wore a cloak of flames which enveloped him and floated after him in the air. And he strode away from the company and away from the folk of the Last Village, and came to the impassable rock face, and put his hand against it. And where he put his hand there was a rushing of green flaming water and melted ice, and thaw of molten rock, which ran away like lava. And the rock face dissolved, or split, into a high, narrow passage, inside which granite steps led into a tunnel apparently walled with thick pillars and, as it were, twisted hanks or root masses all made of green, green ice that gave off light in sparkings as he came near it, and reflected the movement of his flaming leaves as he passed. And he went into the roots of the mountain, and they saw his bright conflagration wink and diminish as he went on into the depths, shining and striding.

  “And when he had gone, the fire was dimmed, and the sky was fiery with the dawn, and the crack in the mountain was dark and dangerous, but it was not closed.”

  Agatha invites everyone to Sunday brunch. John Ottokar says he would love to stay; he and Agatha smile at each other. Frederica is partly pleased—she would like John Ottokar to know Leo in a quiet and uncomplicated and uncompromised way. She is grateful to Agatha. She sees that John Ottokar sees that Agatha is beautiful. She gets up to help Agatha to make the impromptu meal. She herself could not provide one: she has eggs, a little cheese, fruit, two pieces of chicken. Agatha makes a large salad, with fish, and beans, and eggs, and green things and tomatoes. Clement and Thano say they have to go home. They have to go to church, they say vaguely. They are Catholics, but not Catholics who abjure Guy Fawkes Day. Agatha says she will make pancakes to follow the salad. Frederica beats the batter. Agatha says: “He seems to be a nice young man.”

  “He comes and goes.”

  “That’s OK, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know when he will come or go.”

  “Do you want to?”

  “I don’t want to want to. I don’t want him to matter that much, too much. I can’t afford …” She doesn’t finish that sentence. She starts another. “But it isn’t very convenient, not knowing from one day to the next, whether someone will come or not.”

  “Can’t you ask?”

  “I don’t think so.” She thinks. “I don’t know that any answer I’d get would mean anything.”

  “Things you don’t know,” says Agatha, “take up energy, they rankle in the mind. Best not to let them. A counsel of perfection, I do know.”

  “He’s nice, though.”

  “He’s certainly beautiful. And seems nice enough, yes.”

  Frederica thinks that Agatha never has any men visiting, young or old. You would think, she thinks, that Saskia had been produced by parthenogenesis. But that can’t be. There is, or was, someone, somewhere. Will she ever be told? Frederica is beginning to doubt it.

  In Agatha’s sitting-room, John Ottokar is teaching Leo and Saskia a game. Scissors, paper, stone. “You put out your hands together,” he says. “Simultaneously,” Leo says. “Simultaneously,” John Ottokar agrees. His smooth gold hair falls forwards over his brow. He shows them. A flat hand, paper. Forked ringers, scissors. A clenched fist, stone. Scissors cut paper, stone blunts scissors, paper wraps stone. The children are entranced. They play quite differently. Leo changes his shape at each game: he is stone scissors stone paper scissors paper stone paper. Saskia holds on to one form patiently: paper paper paper paper, then suddenly scissors, then stone stone stone stone stone, scissors. John Ottokar laughs and keeps the score. “I played this when I was your age,” he tells them. “With my brother.”

  “Who won?” says Leo.

  “No one,” says John Ottokar. “We always put out the same thing. Identical. Two scissors, two stones, two papers.”

  “Boring,” says Leo.

  “Not exactly. Frustrating, though. Not exactly playing.”

  “Like when Leo and me make the same noise on the recorder ’cause we only know C and B,” says Saskia.

  “A bit like that,” says John Ottokar. “We used to play the recorder, too.”

  He stays and plays, quietly, all afternoon. He cuts out newspaper trees with scissors, he glues cut-out dinosaurs in a book, he talks easily to Agatha and Frederica. He stays to supper and helps put Leo to bed, sitting in the corner of Leo’s bedroom, out of the light, and listening whilst Frederica reads about Moldy Warp and Fuzzypeg and the old Roman coin. When Leo is tucked in bed, he follows Frederica into her own room, draws the blind, and touches her on the shoulder. Frederica, preoccupied, turns to face him. He puts a hand on her neck, sure, and a hand on her buttocks, sure, and his mouth on hers, gathering her body into his. His skin warms hers and sets it alight. Shafts of lightning run up her spine. She leans back releasing her mouth, to say thickly, “It isn’t fair.”

  “What is? What isn’t, what’s worrying you, nothing must, nothing must.”

  He is doing what he can to make their clothed bodies one.

  “We can’t. Leo. Leo. I can’t. You can’t just.”

  “OK. Just sit down and keep still with me then. Keep still.”

  They subside on to the couch. Unsatisfied desire has its own frisson, its own bliss. They enjoy it. They do not undress, they do not make love. So that when Leo wanders vaguely in, saying he cannot sleep, there is nothing untoward, no whiff of salt, no exposed organs he should not see, but a large man smiling in a jester’s sweater, and a thin red-headed woman in a chocolate-brown shirt over lilac velvet pants.

  They do not talk, much. They sit, next to each other. At midnight, John Ottokar leaves. At the foot of the area steps Frederica says, “Leo will be away next weekend. You could come here …”

  “I can’t.” At first it seems that he is going to leave it at that. Then he says, “I’ve got to go on a kind of religious retreat. There’s a group. Some of them Quakers, some of them from Ceylon, and some doctors. Some doctors. It’s a new thing. I—I go sometimes. I’m expected. Next weekend, I’m expected.”

  “Where?” says Frederica, who dares not say �
��Why?”

  “Does it matter? There’s a kind of Retreat House called Tangle-wood, in a Quaker village in Bucks, called Four Pence. I know it sounds dreadfully twee. Names don’t matter, words don’t matter, if they do, you can change them. I’d tell you about it, but I rather suspect you won’t like it, you won’t want to know. Religion isn’t your thing.”

  “I’m not hostile to religion.”

  “Aren’t you? Think about it, and tell me next time, what you think about religion. I’m hostile to it myself, half the time. But it’s there, you can’t deny it’s there.”

  “I don’t try to.”

  He looks at her as though she is the world’s greatest nay-sayer. He says, “I know I ought not to tell you. I’m under instructions not to—”

  “John!”

  “You see. You don’t like it.”

  “How do I know what I—? When you don’t?”

  “We shouldn’t have started this conversation. My fault. Come here. Hold on to me. Don’t talk. That’s better. Now, this is real, whatever that is. This is real.”

  Her alarmed body does not tingle as it did. He strokes her spine and the flame lies low, flickers sullenly. He puts his warm, mute hand suddenly, swiftly, between her legs, holds her gently, waits for the shift in her pulse, the very slight relaxation of her tense muscles, and says, “This is real. Remember. Now I’m going.”

  He goes.

  Frederica is on the whole pleased that John Ottokar has met Leo in this public, uncompromised way. This is more because she does not enjoy the fact that her relations with John Ottokar have a clandestine and furtive aspect than because she wants to establish, any particular rapport between son and lover. She does not want to include John Ottokar in any tentative trio, man, woman, child. Nobody wants that. She wants things to be easy and friendly. So she is pleased when John returns once or twice more when Leo and Saskia and Agatha are there. They go once, even, to the Natural History Museum, two women, John Ottokar, the boy, the dark little girl. She feels something discreet and stable and mature is being set up. One evening, over supper, she says to Leo, “Shall we ask John Ottokar to the bonfire?”