The Medusa Frequency

by Russell Hoban

  ‘And then you followed me here.’

  ‘Because I’d been waiting for you.’

  A prayerful-looking man entered the oratory. We left, went out of the church, and stood hand in hand before the big road of blackness and white headlamps.

  ‘You’d been waiting for me,’ I shouted against the rushing of the blackness and the lights.

  She brought her mouth close to my ear. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  We crossed the road, the rushing faded behind us. Great-arched, great-shadowed, high in the lonesome evening the railway bridge loomed before us, the golden windows of the Cheshire Cheese invited. We entered the ascending red, the descending black and found ourselves a table under the canopy of quiet voices.

  ‘What’re you having?’ I said.

  ‘Whatever you’re having.’

  I got us both treble gins with just a little water.

  ‘Gin looks so clear,’ she said, ‘and it’s so full of obscurity. Here’s to All Hallows.’

  ‘All Hallows. It was very strange yesterday evening; all of a sudden there you were.’

  ‘I’d never been here before. Had you?’

  ‘Never. What brought you?’

  ‘I’d been translating Rilke’s ‘Orpheus, Eurydike, Hermes’ and then I looked up Orpheus in the telephone directory.

  When I saw the Orpheus and Tower Bridge Club listing I had to come to Savage Gardens for a look round. Thirsty work.’

  Luise had translated that poem for me, I’d recorded her reading it in German and in English and I still remembered lines here and there:

  Wie eine Frucht von Süβigkeit und Dunkel,

  so war sie voll von ihrem groβen Tode …

  Like a fruit of sweetness and darkness,

  So was she full of her large death …

  ‘Do you do a lot of translation?’ I said.

  ‘No, it just happened that I wanted to get the ideas in the poem as clear in my mind as I could.’

  ‘Do you do any writing?’

  ‘Bits and pieces, nothing I’d show anyone yet.’

  ‘And you and Fallok?’

  ‘Not any more but we have a drink together now and then. What brought you to Savage Gardens?’

  ‘A conversation with the head of Orpheus.’

  ‘How did you and it meet?’

  ‘I hallucinated it in the mud at low tide near Putney Bridge.’

  ‘You and Tycho Fremdorf.’

  ‘Who’s Tycho Fremdorf?’

  ‘Haven’t you seen Codename Orpheus?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Better now?’ said the gom yawncher man as he cleared the table.

  ‘Much better, thanks,’ I said.

  ‘I keep seeing that man in different places,’ I said to Melanie when he’d gone.

  ‘That happens to Tycho Fremdorf too,’ she said.

  ‘What is all this about Tycho Fremdorf?’

  ‘Tycho Fremdorf is the protagonist of Codename Orpheus. He’s a sort of alienated anti-hero film-maker. He’s been wandering around all night with his Arriflex and in the dawn we see him standing in the low-tide mud near the Albert Bridge. Everything still and grey and the boats rocking at their moorings and then he sees the head of Orpheus coming up the river against the tide. It’s quite remarkable, there was a long piece about the film in Sight and Sound. Are you all right?’

  ‘What do you mean? Why shouldn’t I be all right?’

  ‘You look very pale.’

  ‘I always look pale. What did they say about Codename Orpheus, in Sight and Sound?’

  ‘Sylvestre Lyzée wrote the piece; he said that it worked on the deconstructionist level but he had a little trouble with the reality-frame.’

  ‘Wasn’t it directed by what was his name, Gustav Krähe?’

  ‘Gösta Kraken.’

  ‘He’s the one where it’s always very dark and you often see people lying in puddles, isn’t he? Didn’t he do a film called Squelchy Places?’

  ‘Bogs. In this one he goes in for rivers and low-tide mud a lot. The look of it is really terrific, that shot of the head coming up the Thames against the tide stays in the mind like some of Eisenstein’s images. It isn’t like the head of a swimming man, it’s all rotting and bloated and eyeless and it has this awful stillness about it as it moves upriver.’

  I’d brought with me the pages I’d typed so far and at some point I’d put the folder on the table. There it lay in the shadow of Codename Orpheus. I put it back in my shoulder bag.

  ‘You brought a typescript with you and now you’ve put it away,’ she said. ‘Why’d you do that?’

  ‘This night is different from other nights,’ I said. As I said it I had the sensation of rocking in the sea and feeling something rising dark and huge from the black chill, becoming pale and glimmering, becoming Luise rising in her vast and ivory nakedness in the dark, in the night sea. So deep, the sea! So vast and comfortless! I shaded my eyes with my hand and looked down into the transparency of the gin in my glass, smooth brightness in the shining dawn and Luise seen across the water rising naked, huge, gleaming in the shining dawn.

  ‘Are you looking into the past?’ said Melanie.

  ‘It’s looking into me,’ I said, with Luise again at Mr Chow eleven years ago. You’re everything I’ve ever wanted in a woman.

  ‘Istvan’s told me about you and Luise. What is it with you and him and women? Does he break them in for you or what?’

  ‘This is only the second time it’s happened.’

  ‘It hasn’t happened yet.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll get lucky.’

  ‘Here’s to luck,’ she said.

  11 The Big Rain

  Blue-black shiningness, bluish-white shining on the puddles on the football pitch in the rainy night all starred with lamps and windows. Always in November there comes such a night, blue-black and shining and wild with rain and wind and brown leaves blowing. In the morning suddenly the plane trees on the far side of the common are bare winter trees.

  Windowed shapes of light on the ceiling, Melanie Falsepercy asleep beside me, Luise rising in the shining dawn in the wild and rainy night.

  In the dimness and the shadows of the room I breathed the novembery fragrance of Melanie Falsepercy. Uncovering her I ran my hand down the long smoothness of her back to the roundness of her buttocks. High, high over us there thundered aeroplanes into Heathrow, safe arrivals for the moment; rumbling through the rain the District Line trains took their golden windows homeward in the night, unseen faces mortal and alone.

  I went down to the kitchen and opened the fridge. There were three cans of beer, most of a salami, a mouldering of old cheeses, half a tub of margarine, half a jar of marmalade, half a pint of milk and the head of Orpheus.

  ‘Loss!’ it said. ‘That’s what she was to me, you know: she was the loss of her even when she was apparently the finding of her, the having of her. And I was the same to her, I was to her the loss of me. We were the two parts of a complementarity of loss, and that being so the loss was already an actuality in our finding of each other. From the moment that I first tasted the honey of Eurydice I tasted also the honey of the loss of her. What am I if not the quintessential, the brute artist? Is not all art a celebration of loss? From the very first moment that beauty appears to us it is passing, passing, not to be held.’

  ‘Please,’ I said, ‘can’t we talk about beginnings? A beginning is always a new chance.’

  ‘You can jump into a river but that’s not the beginning of the river,’ said the head.

  ‘Last time’, I said, ‘you told me that Eurydice said, “Be the world-child with me.’”

  ‘You say, “Eurydice said”, but I didn’t know her as Eurydice at the time and she didn’t know me as Orpheus. She said, “Be the world-child with me but you mustn’t tell me your name and I won’t tell you mine.”

  ‘“Why not?” I said to her.

  ‘“The stories are always waiting,” she said, “always listening for names; when they hear the
names they’re listening for they swallow the people up.”

  ‘“What stories?” I said to her. “Do you mean oracles and prophecies?”

  ‘“Not oracles or prophecies,” she said, “nothing declaimed by priestesses or seers. I mean the stories no one knows about or warns us of - they’re waiting to happen, they crouch like hungry beasts impatient for their day.”

  ‘“You think there’s a story listening for our names?” I said.

  ‘“Hush,” she said, “don’t let it hear us talking. Be the world-child with me and love me nameless, thou given of the goddess.” Her breath was sweet, I kissed her again. “Why do you taste of honey,” I said.

  ‘“Perhaps I’m the queen of the bees,” she said.

  ‘“And am I the drone that dies in the nuptial flight?” I said.

  ‘“You will be king of the bees,” she said, “and it will be the queen that dies of loving.” And she was like a queen then, strong and eager as she clasped me to her, this world-child woman in whom I entered the mother-darkness and the mystery. I felt myself becoming story and I was afraid.’

  ‘But you were the world-child with Eurydice.’

  ‘The world-child whose innocence holds the world together? Yes, in that first golden afternoon I was.’

  ‘What about the rest of the time you and Eurydice were together?’

  ‘For a while I was, then I wasn’t. Were you?’

  ‘Only for a while.’

  ‘I have in mind a little terracotta figure I have seen,’ said the head, ‘a little terracotta dancer from Taranto – the motion of her and the swing of her draperies in the dance passing, passing into stillness. Let us say that I put into your hands this little terracotta dancer, and the beauty and the tragedy of it become the whole world to you, become all that is precious and to be enshrined in your heart, take on even a magical significance so that you know in your heart that if ever this little dancer is broken then the world is lost. And in you a devil stirs, a devil with a hammer in its hand.’

  ‘And yet,’ I said, ‘people do love each other and live out their lives together.’

  ‘How do they do it?’

  ‘I don’t know, but they do.’

  ‘Have you done it?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Have you tried?’

  ‘More than once.’

  ‘Tell me about the last time.’

  ‘Her name was Luise.’

  ‘Tell me about Luise. What was the idea of her?’

  ‘What an odd question.’

  ‘It came to me’, said the head, ‘that when people fall in love they entrust to each other the idea of themselves.’

  ‘Do you mean their own idea of themselves?’

  ‘I mean the essential idea of them that perhaps they don’t even know themselves. Each holds out to the other this obscure and unknown thing for the other to perceive and keep safe. What was the idea of Luise?’

  ‘You keep saying “was” as if she’s dead.’

  ‘I say “was” because I’m speaking of the time when she loved you. What was the idea of her?’

  ‘Fidelity.’

  ‘Fidelity,’ said the head. ‘Did you know that when she was with you or is it only now that you know it?’

  ‘Only now.’

  ‘How is it that you know it now?’

  ‘Why do you have to ask so many questions? What good can it do either of us?’

  ‘What is fidelity to you?’

  ‘Fidelity is a matter of perception,’ I said. ‘Nobody is unfaithful to the sea or to mountains or to death: once recognized they fill the heart. In love or in terror or in loathing one responds to them with the true self; fidelity is not an act of the will: the soul is compelled by recognitions. Anyone who loves, anyone who perceives the other person fully can only be faithful, can never be unfaithful to the sea and the mountains and the death in that person, so pitiful and heroic is it to be a human being.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s true,’ said the head; ‘I don’t think it has anything to do with perception - I think some people are faithful by nature and others are not. Do you think Luise perceived you fully?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And was she faithful?’

  ‘Yes, she was faithful to herself, faithful to anything she put her hand to, and faithful to me.’

  ‘As far as you know.’

  ‘I think it would have been beneath her dignity to deceive me; she was very dignified.’

  ‘Eurydice was a big perceiver,’ said the head, ‘she was constantly perceiving, her perceptions gave her no rest. My singing terrified her - I don’t mean little ordinary songs like the ones I did before I met her, I mean the kind of singing that I began to do on that golden afternoon. She heard in it the death of the tortoise, the death of the world-child, and the end of our love.’

  ‘How did you do that singing?’

  ‘Something would get me started, maybe a dragonfly or the light on the river or the look of a tree at night. I’d feel the ache in my throat just before the song came and my throat would open in a particular way as if I were an instrument shaped by the song that used me. When I heard the sound of the lyre I was again the tortoise and again there came the pains of death, the colours and the blackness. People said they heard more than one voice when I sang - they heard a strange human voice and they heard a second voice not human, voice of darkness, voice of

  moment under moment, world under

  world, dark under dark …’

  The voice of the head of Orpheus changed, became estranged from itself, descanted above itself as it spoke more and more rapidly, the words blurring together as in an auctioneer’s chant or the muttered praying of a fanatic:

  ‘voice of the olive tree itself and notself, singing sunlight, singing shadow, singing greenlit shade and moon-wind …’

  The two voices became more and more separate, the upper one seeming to speak faster than the lower; it sounded as if the voice of the mind was hurrying above the slow and ancient animal self:

  ‘singing dark, dark, darkness down, down, down …’

  The words faded into silence, then the head said in its normal voice, ‘Of course when I sang there was the music of it.’

  ‘And that was the singing that moved stones and trees and charmed wild beasts?’

  ‘I don’t think it actually moved stones and trees; what it did was put them in a new place for those who heard the singing. Animals were entranced by it. Eurydice hated it, she said that music was never meant to do what my singing did.’

  ‘Did others like it? Did a lot of people come to hear you?’

  ‘Yes, a great many people came, some just because they liked to be in crowds, some for the singing and some for the freak show - many times after the singing I had convulsions and bled from the nose and mouth.’

  ‘Did you want to sing like that?’

  ‘Wanting doesn’t come into it, I am that which responds.’

  ‘I think of you and Eurydice,’ I said, ‘and I wonder what the idea of the two of you is.’

  ‘I think of that constantly,’ said the head. ‘Over and over again I live that golden afternoon by the river when my song brought the strange and many colours of death into her dream.’

  ‘And yet,’ I said, ‘it was as if she’d been waiting for that song, as if the death in it awakened the life in her - she too is that which responds.’

  Just then I heard Melanie’s bare feet on the floor behind me and I closed the fridge as she came into the kitchen. She was wearing my anorak for a dressing-gown and she looked wonderfully naked in it.

  ‘Anything good in there?’ she said.

  ‘Three cans of beer, most of a salami, a mouldering of old cheeses, half a tub of margarine, half a jar of marmalade, half a pint of milk, and the head of Orpheus.’

  ‘Let’s have a look at the head of Orpheus.’

  I opened the fridge.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she said.

  ‘What do you see?’


  ‘It’s all right, it’s only a rather filthy old cabbage but I must be very suggestible because just for a moment I could’ve sworn I saw this dreadful-looking head with no eyes and the flesh all eaten away.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it’s a dreadful-looking thing.’ The head of Orpheus went on being itself but it kept its mouth shut as I carried it into the hall and put it in the larder under the stairs.

  ‘It was the head of Orpheus before it turned into a cabbage, wasn’t it?’ she said. ‘For you, I mean.’

  ‘Yes, it was, and please don’t tell me what Tycho Fremdorf did with his head of Orpheus in the film.’

  ‘He didn’t do anything with it; he simply watched it go by as it swam upriver. Then he said, “Behind the front of the day the head of Orpheus swims unseen.” The subtitle was “NARDIM DEMSTRA VAJ ONDRA TSINTA ORFNANDO ULZVANJO.’”

  ‘Then it never told its story?’

  ‘No, it never spoke, it only uttered a strange unearthly melancholy cry. Istvan did it on the Fairlight; he used the cry of the great northern diver and that sound the rails make in the underground when a train’s coming.’

  ‘Wheats-yew, wheats-yew?’

  ‘That’s it; and then the rumble and clacking of the train.’

  ‘But the head never actually spoke.’

  ‘Not a word.’

  ‘It spoke to me.’

  ‘Well, it isn’t a competition, is it.’

  ‘I don’t know what it is but I’m trying not to lose.’

  ‘What did it say to you?’

  ‘We talked about Orpheus and Eurydice and that sort of thing.’

  ‘You still want Luise back, don’t you?’

  ‘How’d we get from Orpheus and Eurydice to Luise and me?’

  ‘You’ve just answered my question.’

  ‘No, I haven’t. Luise’s part of the past - it’s just that I’ve been finding it difficult to work my way into the present.’

  ‘What about what happened earlier this evening? Was that what you call working your way into the present?’

  ‘That wasn’t work.’

  ‘I hope not. What are you going to do with that cabbage?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe I don’t have to think about it just now.’