The Medusa Frequency

by Russell Hoban

  ‘They can cry out to God the same as I do. The airwaves are free, it costs them nothing.’

  ‘Tell me more about your deep distress.’

  ‘With you everything comes out; with me it stays in, it’s deep, it’s nothing to talk about. Also it’s not uncomfortable, it’s like a mountain of stone and on top of it grows a little blue flower. Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘The mountain stays in but the bad air comes out.’

  ‘Inside I’m pure,’ she said.

  ‘Is there something else you wanted to talk about?’ I said to the head. ‘Or is fidelity the only thing on your mind at the moment?’

  ‘Do you want to hear my story?’ said the head.

  ‘Yes, I want to hear your story.’

  ‘I ask you for the second time: do you want to hear my story?’

  ‘Yes, please tell it.’

  ‘I’ll ask you three times: for the third time, do you want to hear my story?’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes. Three times yes. Now tell it.’

  ‘Once begun, the story must be finished.’

  ‘Well of course I want to hear the whole thing.’

  ‘You have to take it on you then, you have to say, “Once begun, the story must be finished; I take it on me.’”

  ‘Once begun, the story must be finished; I take it on me.’

  ‘Now I’ll begin,’ said the head. ‘I’m not very sure of anything; I may be lying or I may even be making it up as I go along. I was a good musician but I’m not reliable in any other way. Sometimes I can’t make the distinction between how things seemed and how they actually were.’

  ‘Who can?’

  The head of Orpheus gave a little cough and seemed to pull itself together. ‘I don’t really want to tell my story,’ it said, ‘but I have to do it if I ask three times and you say yes each time. I’m not even sure what the story is. Have you ever, perhaps while walking, found the world coming towards you in all its detail and then receding behind you and nothing has any more significance than anything else: a stone in the road or the sun in your eyes or the black shape of a bird in the blue sky, you don’t know whether one thing matters more than another?’

  ‘Yes, it’s often like that with me.’

  ‘My mother’s name was Calliope. Sometimes she sang a little song:

  “Hermes the maybe, Hermes the sending –

  in the day a road, in the night a wending.”’

  ‘“Who is Hermes?” I asked her.

  ‘“Hermes is your father.”

  ‘“Where is he?”

  ‘My mother pointed to the road. “Here and gone.”

  ‘“Where’s Hermes?” I said to the shepherds.

  ‘They showed me a heap of stones by the roadside. “There’s Hermes,” they said.

  ‘“How can a heap of stones be Hermes?”

  ‘“Every man who tupped your mother put a stone on that heap in the name of Hermes,” they said.

  ‘I put my ear to the stones, I listened to the dance in them, listened to the music of Hermes-in-the-stone. I looked at the road that was the place of Hermes. Without moving it ran through the valley and over the mountains, at the same time running and standing still, at the same time here and gone.

  ‘That night I went to the road. There was no moon, only the night and the dim road wending into darkness. I stamped on the road, I whispered, “Hermes!” The road moved backward under my feet, faster, faster. The steady rhythm of it stretched its long dream into the darkness and the whispering of the night. Running, running I said to the night “I have no name but the one you give me, no face but the one you see.”

  ‘I was, I am, an emptiness. I don’t know what anything is: I don’t know what music is, I don’t know the difference between running and stillness, between dancing and death. The world vibrates like a crystal in the mind; there is a frequency at which terror and ecstasy are the same and any road may be taken. There was an olive grove, it was morning. Shadows and whispers in the greenlit shade and the sunlight twittering in the leaves above. Hermes doesn’t show itself as a picture in the eyes, it’s there like a beast that can’t be seen, a strangeness dancing in the greenlit shade, dancing its music in the brightness of the shadows, in the darkness of the light.

  ‘There was an olive grove, I could feel the Hermes of it. There was a tortoise. My hand reached down and picked up the tortoise; with a hiss it drew its head in. I stood there feeling the shape of it and the weight of it in my hand and there was an idea coming to me when I felt eyes on me, felt myself being looked at. There was someone else in the olive grove, there was a man who hadn’t been there a moment ago. He was staring at me with eyes open so wide that I could see white all around the pupils. He had his hands out in front of him as if he was going to say, “Don’t”, but he didn’t say anything. A dark man, not young, but I couldn’t have said how old he was.

  ‘The tortoise was in my left hand and my knife was in my right; my idea was the tortoise-shell empty and two posts and a yoke and some strings for a kind of little harp with the shell as a soundbox. The man’s eyes were still on me, his wide-open eyes; almost I wanted to use the knife on him to make him stop looking at me. He let his hands drop to his sides when I cut the plastron loose and dug the body out of the shell, ugh! what a mess and my hands all slippery with blood and gore. The entrails were mysterious. I think about it now, how those entrails spilled out so easily when I made an emptiness for my music to sound in. Impossible to put those entrails back.

  ‘You know how you’ll hear a sound while you’re asleep and there comes a whole dream to account for it and in the dream there are things that happen before and after the sound – might it be that the whole universe has no purpose but to explain the killing of the tortoise? Do you see what I mean? Perhaps the universe is a continually fluctuating event that configures itself to whatever is perceived as centre. Do you think that might be how it is?’

  I closed my eyes and saw the long nakedness of Luise twisting in the stardrift of galaxies and nebulae. ‘I hope not,’ I said.

  ‘The dark man watched me as I emptied the tortoise-shell,’ said the head. ‘He cupped his hands in the shape of the shell, then he mimed the plucking of strings. “Music? For making music?” he said.

  ‘“Yes, for making music,” I said. “How did you know?” Because what I was going to do had never been done before, there was no such instrument as the lyre then.

  ‘“I don’t know how I know,” he said. He had come closer; he smelled of honey.

  ‘“Why do you smell of honey?” I said.

  ‘“I keep bees.” he said. “My name is Aristaeus.” He stood there as if listening for something that only he could hear.

  ‘“What are you listening for?” I said.

  ‘“Your name.”

  I didn’t say anything, I didn’t want to tell him my name.

  ‘“You don’t want to tell it,” he said. “You’re afraid.”

  ‘“Afraid of what?” I said.

  ‘“Afraid to hear the sound of your name in this place.”

  ‘“I’m not afraid.”

  “Then tell it.”

  ‘“My name is Orpheus,” I said. Still he seemed to be listening for something else. “What are you listening for now?” I said.

  ‘“The olive trees whisper,” he said. “I always listen. You are the one who is Orpheus.”

  ‘“I’ve just told you that.”

  ‘“Not just your name,” he said. “You’re going to do it, you’re going to be Orpheus.”

  ‘“What else can I be?”

  ‘“You are the story of yourself,” he said. With his finger he traced figures in the air.

  ‘“What’s that you’re doing?” I said.

  ‘“Your name. You are the story of Orpheus.”

  ‘“How can I be a story? I’m a man, a live person.”

  ‘“You’re a story.”

  ‘“Not a story,” I said. I began to run.

  ‘Behind me, even when I
was far away, I heard him say quietly, “You’re a story,” and I wished I hadn’t told him my name.’ The head fell silent, I held it in my hands and waited.

  ‘What happened next?’ I said after a reasonable interval.

  ‘My story is not a sequence of events like knots on a string,’ said the head; ‘I could have started with the loss of Eurydice and ended with the killing of the tortoise - all of it happens at once and it goes on happening; all of it is happening now and any part of it contains the whole of it, the pictures needn’t be looked at in any particular order.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because the thing is simply what it is. Hold a pomegranate in your hand and tell me where is the beginning of it and where is the end. The name of this pomegranate is Loss: the loss of Eurydice was in me before I ever met her and the loss of me was in her the same.’

  ‘Tell me what happened next.’

  ‘After the making of the lyre there is a long empty space before I became the Orpheus who was said to charm wild beasts and move trees and stones. I assume that I very slowly taught myself to play the instrument, that I made up little songs, nothing special. Probably I sang and begged my way from place to place. When I try to think of myself in that time I think of an emptiness carrying the emptiness that had been the tortoise. There is no story of me for that time - what I had been was gone and what I was to be had not yet come.

  ‘The next thing I know about is a morning, a dawn, the dawn mist rising from the river. I was sleeping off a drunk, I woke up not knowing who I was nor where I was. Something was looking at me from behind the mist, the strangeness that is Hermes, the strangeness that makes everything here and gone at the same time. The light changed and it was afternoon. The flight of the kingfisher opened in the air over the river a blue-green iridescent stillness in which a dragonfly, immense and transparent, repeated itself with every wingstroke. There was a drowsiness, a droning in the golden afternoon, a vibration in my mind or in the air, an ineffably sweet, honeyed sound that was seductive and demanding, a music not of any instrument. It enveloped and overwhelmed me, I felt myself surrendering to it, dying sweetly of it while the strangeness watched me from behind the blue-green stillness, from behind the dragonfly and the gold of the afternoon.

  ‘The air itself seemed honeyed, and it was in that fragrance that I first heard her voice, the voice of the woman who became my story. I heard her weeping in the leafy shade while the dragonflies printed themselves gigantically on the transparent stillness over the river.

  ‘There rose in my throat a terrible ache and in that moment the world became me and I became the world-child who knows nothing and believes whatever it is told; I was the world-child whose innocence binds the world together, whose innocence betrayed will unfasten the world. Oh yes, I thought, and as I listened to the weeping of the unseen woman in that golden, golden afternoon I became the tortoise I had killed. I felt my own cruel knife enter me, felt my life spurting out, felt my still quivering body being dug out of my shell. In an explosion of brilliant colours I suffered the many pains of death as underworld opened to me, underworld and the moment under the moment. I suffered the many pains, the many colours of death and I knew everything. The colours were swallowed up in blackness, there came a stillness and I found myself weeping by the river with the lyre in one hand and the plectrum in the other. The strings were still sounding as a song died on the air and I could feel in my throat that the singing had come from me but I could remember nothing of it. I tasted blood in my mouth and there was blood coming out of my nose. On both sides of the river the trees came down to the water’s edge and swayed their tops against the sky.’

  ‘There opened to you underworld,’ I said, ‘and you knew everything. I remember how it was, I remember her weeping.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the head, ‘in the weeping of Eurydice there opened to me underworld.’

  Here the voice of the head of Orpheus paused; the mottled sunlight and the leafy shade, the dragonflies and the river vanished into greyness. A desolation and a silence filled my mind. The sky was very pale. I wanted to keep the mottled sunlight and the leafy shade, the dragonflies, the honeyed air. I closed my eyes and waited for the voice to continue.

  I heard the distant traffic on Putney Bridge, the rush of cars on the Lower Richmond Road. I opened my eyes. The water was lapping at my feet and the head was well out into the middle of the Thames moving downriver against the tide. I was surprised, I had expected the story to be finished in one telling. As I watched the head out of sight I felt abandoned and forlorn but there was no heart pain so I supposed in some way it was still with me.

  6 We’re not Talking about a Bloke with Winged Sandals

  I came home feeling altogether used up and worn out but I typed up the whole episode while it was still fresh in my mind, put it on disk, and printed it out. On the far side of the common the plane trees swayed their tops against the morning sky. The telephone rang.

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  ‘Are you all right?’ said Istvan Fallok. ‘I tried to get you last night but your line was always engaged.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I be all right?’

  ‘You seemed to be in some kind of a state when you left here; you knocked me down and tore out of here with electrodes all over your head and you left your anorak behind. How are you feeling now?’

  ‘I’ve just been chatting to a rotting head.’

  ‘That isn’t just any rotting head, it’s the head of Orpheus.’

  ‘So it tells me. Have you known each other long, you and it?’

  ‘A year or so, I suppose, but I doubt that we’ll be seeing each other again, it and I.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Did you have a little angina during your chat?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘Did the head sing to you?’

  ‘Yes, it did.’

  ‘Did you hear anything?’

  ‘No. Did you?’

  ‘Yes. It sang in a barely audible sort of wheezing whisper and it did some supernaturally complex variations on a spooky theme for about twenty minutes. I kept thinking, Oh yes, I’ve got it, then the next moment I’d forgotten it. We were outdoors at the time, I’d no recording gear. When it finished it said to me, “There, you see?”

  ‘“Could you sing it again?” I said. “I seem to have missed a lot of it.”

  ‘“Sing what?” it said.

  ‘“What you just sang,” I said.

  ‘“Did I sing something?” it said.

  ‘“Yes,” I said, “just now.”

  ‘“I don’t remember singing anything,” it said. “Maybe if you give me the parts you remember we can put it together.” So that’s what we began to do. Every now and then the head would turn up and if we were at the studio I’d play what I’d done and we’d do a little more or if I was out somewhere I’d have a little keyboard with me. Month after month I worked on that music and I never could get it to come right, it just wouldn’t hold still - I’d have a couple of minutes of it pretty well laid down and I’d think, well, now I’ve got something to work with, something I can develop; and then when I tried to develop it the whole thing fell apart like ropes of sand and I’d have to start all over again. Eventually I found myself in hospital with a myocardial infarction and I finally got some rest. It was wonderful, they let me stop there for a fortnight. Nurses are the nicest people there are; there was a lady who brought cups of tea at six in the morning and another with a book trolley and another with a little shop on wheels. They did ECGs and X-rays, tested my blood and my urine, recommended a low fat, low cholesterol diet, told me to take daily exercise and stop smoking, gave me a little bottle of glyceryl trinitrate tablets, and put me out on the street again.’

  ‘How are you feeling now?’

  ‘Now that I’ve put the head on to you I feel terrific.’

  ‘You’ve never forgiven me for Luise, have you?’

  ‘Did you expect me to?’

  ‘She was leaving you a
nyhow; if it hadn’t been me it would’ve been somebody else.’

  ‘And if it weren’t the head of Orpheus bothering you now it’d be something else.’

  ‘What happened after you got out of hospital? Did you see the head again?’

  ‘I was hoping not to but a kind of madness came on me and I bought a large Edam cheese and when I took it out of the bag there was the head of Orpheus continuing its variations on the same spooky theme. I dropped it off Westminster Bridge at three o’clock in the morning and stuck a flyer through your letterbox.’

  ‘You haven’t told me how you first met the head of Orpheus.’

  ‘It started with the Hermes music. The client said it didn’t sound like foot powder and of course he was right; it wasn’t foot-powder music, it was straight Hermes. Foot powder was what I was honestly trying for but what I got was the thief-god, the god of roadways and night journeys, the god of here-and-gone, the easer through the shadows, the finder in the dark. Hermes is like that, you know: it’ll do as it likes.’

  ‘You say “it” not “he”.’

  ‘Well, we’re not talking about a bloke with winged sandals and a staff with two snakes twined around it, are we.’

  ‘What are we talking about?’

  ‘Obviously it’s nothing you can see: it’s a mode of event, a shift in the relativities of the moment, a new disposition of energies. There’s what you might call a frequency of probability when complementary equivalents offer and anything can be anything.’

  ‘For example?’

  ‘Like all of a sudden you could be Luise’s lover and I could be out.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘That’s one word for it.’

  ‘And you’re saying that’s Hermes?’

  ‘Hermes acting on a certain kind of material.’

  ‘And how did the head of Orpheus come into it?’

  ‘I’d been in the kind of state you’re in now - I’d been trying to get to places in my head I hadn’t been to before. I was fooling around with sonically configured EEG enhancement and I tried the Hermes music with it. When I had a nice alpha rhythm going and some interesting frequencies from some of the electrodes I tried jump-starting my head with capacitor discharges; I upped the voltage in easy stages with a 50-microsecond time constant until it put me where I saw the head of Orpheus. I saw it far away on a calm and shining sea and I was swimming towards it but I never got any closer. Later I went to Berwick Street and there it was on a barrow amongst some melons. I’ve got to ring off now. Don’t forget to pick up your anorak and please bring the electrodes with you.’