The Medusa Frequency

by Russell Hoban

  ‘It’s entirely correct that you should name them in that order,’ said Kraken, ‘Eurydice being the whole of which Orpheus is the part.’

  ‘Would you say that she’s the sea in which the blind and voyaging head of Orpheus swims?’ I said.

  Everybody looked at me with a strange look.

  ‘I have said precisely that,’ said Kraken, ‘in that scene in Codename Orpheus in which Eurydice is the sea that Orpheus swims in. Is it possible that you have forgotten that image and the sound of her singing?’

  ‘Actually I haven’t seen the film,’ I said.

  ‘Why not?’ said Kraken.

  ‘I haven’t wanted to know any modern versions of the story,’ I said. ‘I like my ideas to come to me out of ignorance.’

  ‘And what ideas have come to you out of your ignorance so far?’ said Kraken. ‘How do you propose to take hold of our theme?’

  At that moment the waiter appeared with our starters. I’d ordered grapefruit but I found on my plate the sliced-off top of the head of Orpheus. It was inverted like a bowl from which I was about to spoon up the brain.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said to Kraken and the others. I quickly wrapped the half-head of Orpheus in a napkin and made for the stairs.

  ‘Is everything all right, sir?’ said our waiter as I almost knocked him down.

  ‘It’s perfectly lodza nurvurli,’ I said, ‘thank you.’

  ‘I DON’T WANT TO BE HERE!’ shouted the brain of Orpheus.

  ‘Be quiet!’ I said, ‘I’m getting you out as fast as I can.’

  An elderly woman whom I recognized as a dancing girl from an early James Bond film smiled brilliantly at me as I stood aside to let her pass me on the stairs. ‘Talking takeaway?’ she said.

  ‘It’s my fault for ordering something hemispherical,’ I said, and she nodded sympathetically.

  ‘EURYDICE!’ shouted the brain, ‘THAT WAS EURYDICE, SHE SMELLED SO GOOD!’

  ‘That wasn’t Eurydice,’ I said. ‘Please stop embarrassing me.’

  ‘I WANT TO SMELL HER AGAIN!’ shouted the brain.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said as someone opened a door for me and someone else opened another door. ‘It’ll be quiet once I get it outside,’ I said.

  Once in Greek Street and a little distance from L’Escargot I opened the napkin. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘what’ve you done with the rest of you?’

  ‘Maybe you’re losing me,’ said the brain of Orpheus.

  ‘We’ll talk about this when we get home,’ I said, and found that I wasn’t all that keen to get home. I wrapped the brain up again and headed for the Tottenham Court Road tube station. I used the subway on the east side of Charing Cross Road because there are always buskers there and I hadn’t yet seen Gom Yawncher busking.

  Sure enough, there he was, playing some cheap little plastic Pan-pipes badly and shuffling about in what I supposed was his idea of pre-classical Greek dance.

  I dropped 10 p into his cap. ‘I’m not surprised to see you here,’ I said.

  ‘Thank you, guv, I’m not surprised to see you either.’

  ‘Really,’ I said, ‘your eagerness to make an appearance and be noticed however briefly is pathetic. Can it possibly matter that much to you to play these tiny scenes and speak your few little lines?’

  He stopped playing and shuffling. ‘It’s like life, isn’t it. Little music in the tunnel, few coins in the cap, here and gone, pfftt. What’s in the napkin?’

  ‘The brain of Orpheus.’

  ‘Don’t try to be too colourful,’ he said. ‘Don’t come the eccentric quite so strong. Just be natural and let it happen.’

  ‘Let’s get something straight,’ I said. I’m not a bit player in your story, you’re a bit player in mine.’

  ‘Oh yes. Says who?’

  ‘This is intolerable. I’m writing all this down, you know.”

  ‘Writing down what we’re saying?’

  ‘Writing down whatever happens to me.’

  ‘What for?’

  Trying to get my head around it.’

  ‘Now who’s pathetic?’ He went back to his Pan-pipes and his shuffling.

  ‘What’s pathetic about trying to understand what happens to you?’

  ‘It’s cowardly, besides which I don’t believe you. I bet you’re writing it all down trying to make a story out of it, I can tell by the miserable look of you. You’re not really living your life - you’re pulling the legs and the wings off it one by one. Why don’t you take up vagrancy or crime, it’s more manly.’

  ‘More manly! And I suppose busking is more manly too, is it?’

  ‘Not half. Here I am for all to see and hear, doing my pitiful little dance and playing my Pan-pipes badly. Poor sod. Give him a bob or two. I am what I am and being it in plain sight, not hiding behind a book or dressing up in clever words. Any further questions?’

  ‘Not today. Perhaps another time.’

  ‘As you like, guv. And remember, don’t push it, just let it happen.’

  ‘You run your show and I’ll run mine,’ I said.

  When I got home I opened the napkin and there was the brain of Orpheus, it hadn’t changed back to half a grapefruit. ‘All right,’ I said, ’tell me what’s on your half-mind. Where do we go from here?’

  ‘Are you speaking to me?’ said the brain.

  ‘Yes, I’m speaking to you.’

  ‘Are you sure you can spare the time? You seem to be so terribly busy, you have so many things to do.’

  Im not the one who’s playing hard to get,’ I said. ’I haven’t seen you since you were a football.’

  ’I thought you might want a little time for reflection.’

  ‘Reflection is what I haven’t got a lot of time for just now. My Classic Comics meal ticket is gone and I’ve got to do something that’ll bring in some money.’

  ‘Other people’s Orpheus,’ said the brain.

  ‘I don’t want to do that film,’ I said. ’I’ve already said no to Sol Mazzaroth and his four thousand pounds but it’s twice as hard to say no to eight thousand pounds and there’s nothing else on the horizon.’

  ‘Is that the story of you then?’

  ‘I hope not. Tell me what happened with you and Eurydice.’

  ‘We are not a whole story, Eurydice and I; we are only fragments of story, and all around us is unknowing.’

  When the brain said that I remembered a flight to Zurich, seeing from high in the air the black peaks of the Alps rising from a milky ocean of cloud.

  ‘That’s how it is with the story of us,’ said the brain, ’black peaks rising from a white obscurity. There are certain patterns, certain arrangements of energy from which events and probabilities emerge but I know nothing for certain. Do you remember Aristaeus?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘He watched with wide eyes when I killed the tortoise and dug it out of the shell. He asked my name and he insisted that I was a story. I remember how he wrote my name in the air. I think I see him scratching words on potsherds. I wish I hadn’t told him my name. He kept bees, Eurydice kept bees. I think she learned bee-keeping from Aristaeus.’

  ‘Were they lovers before she met you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the brain. ’I’ve told you there isn’t a whole story. I don’t know what’s between them in that space between the making of the lyre and my finding of Eurydice by the river. I think of the buzzingness, the swarmingness, the manyness of bees singing the honey of possibility. I see Eurydice sitting among the skeps under the apple trees listening to her bees. She was afraid that our story would find us but she was always listening for it.’

  ‘How can bees tell a story?’

  ‘The bees don’t tell a story but in the manyness of their singing there sometimes comes a story to the one who listens.’

  ‘The story that Aristaeus was scratching on potsherds?’

  ‘Broken pieces want to come together,’ said the brain, ‘they want to contain something. I see Aristaeus with his broken bits of fi
red clay, each one only big enough for a word or two. ORPHEUS, he has written on one piece, THE TORTOISE on another. As soon as these words are put next to each other there want to be more words: THE ROAD; THE RIVER; EURYDICE. Or perhaps EURYDICE is the first word and in the empty space next to it there appears THE TORTOISE. Or first THE TORTOISE, yes of course, THE TORTOISE first because it is the centre of the universe, because it is the world-child; THE TORTOISE first and then EURYDICE who is again the world-child-tortoise, EURYDICE whose loss is the judgment, whose loss is the reckoning and the punishment.

  ‘The judgment, the reckoning, and the punishment.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the brain. ‘Eurydice is all that one wants to be faithful to and cannot, and the loss of her is the punishment.’

  ‘How did you lose her?’

  ‘I lost her when I stopped perceiving her.’

  ‘I meant how did you lose her physically?’

  ‘She went off to live with Aristaeus.’

  ‘She wasn’t bitten by a snake, she didn’t go to underworld?’

  ‘Not in this telling of the story; she simply left me and moved in with Aristaeus.’

  ‘Nothing more dramatic than that?’

  ‘Real life is all there is,’ said the brain.

  ‘She left you because of your infidelities?’

  ‘I think it was the story that finally did it. When there was love and happiness there was no story, what there was could not be contained by words. With the death of love came the story and the story found words for it.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘You remember that she didn’t want us to speak our names,’ said the brain. ‘We’d made up names for ourselves and those were the names we were known by. Then one night we came to a place and people said to me, “Sing about Orpheus and Eurydice.”

  ‘“Who are Orpheus and Eurydice?” I said.

  ‘“Lovers in a story,” they said. “Eurydice died of a snake bite and Orpheus went to underworld to bring her back but he turned around to look at her too soon and he lost her.”

  ‘“More likely it was someone else he turned around to look at,” said Eurydice, “and the only snake was the one between his legs.”

  ‘“I don’t know that story,” I said. I sang about the kingfisher and the river and blood came out of my nose and mouth and I fell down and had convulsions and when I came back to myself they still wanted me to sing about Eurydice and me. We went away from that place and our names filled our minds, it was impossible not to speak them.

  ‘“Orpheus,” she said to me sadly, “now the story has found us, now we have become story and I must leave you.”

  ‘“Why?” I said. “Why must you leave me?”

  ‘“Because Eurydice is the one who cannot stay,” she said. “Eurydice is the one who is lost to you, the one you will seek for ever and never find again. Eurydice is the one of whom you will say, ‘If only I had known what she was to me!’”

  ‘“If only I had known what you were to me!” I said.

  ‘“You did know,” she said. “Orpheus always knows and he always does what he does and Eurydice becomes lost to him. That’s the story of us and there’s nothing to be done about it.”

  ‘“Eurydice!” I said. “I’ll change and the story will change. I’ll be faithful to you and you’ll stay with me because you are all the world to me.”

  ‘“Underworld as well,” she said, “but I can’t stay.”

  ‘“Eurydice, Eurydice!” I said. “What shall I do without you?”

  ‘“You will sing better than ever,” she said. “Art is a celebration of loss, of beauty passing, passing, not to be held. Now that I’m lost you will perceive me fully and you will find me in your song; now that underworld is closed to you the memory of the good dark will be with you always in your song. Now you are empty like the tortoise-shell, like the world-child betrayed, and your song will be filled with what is lost to you.’”

  ‘And did you sing better?’ I said to the brain of Orpheus.

  ‘Yes,’ said the brain. ‘Day followed night and night followed day and everything was empty, there was no world in the world; the river and the sunlight, the kingfisher and the dragonfly, all were grey. I sat in a little room and the shadows moved on the walls. There was an earring that had fallen on the floor; sometimes it lay in sunlight, sometimes in shadow. In the evenings I went out with my lyre and I sang world and underworld and my songs were deeper and stronger than ever before. No longer did I bleed from the nose and mouth, there were no more convulsions, the songs I sang in my misery were easy and the beauty of them broke the heart.’

  ‘And what then?’

  ‘What do you mean, “And what then?” What more do you want?’

  ‘I want the whole story that I took on me to finish, I want the end of it. Did you just go on singing beautiful songs or what?’

  ‘Little by little the beauty went out of them and fewer people wanted to hear them. I ended up singing for coins in taverns as I had done before I became the Orpheus of the stories.’

  ‘How did you die?’

  ‘In a drunken brawl.’

  ‘What about the Thracian women? Didn’t the Thracian women kill you?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking. But they did it one at a time.’

  ‘And how did your head get separated from your body?’

  ‘People are strange,’ said the brain, ‘they’ll take a head that was useless to its owner and expect it to answer all their questions. Mine enjoyed a brief vogue as an oracle until somebody kicked it into the sea and the next mode of the idea of me. But as far as I’m concerned the personal story of me came to an end when Eurydice moved in with Aristaeus and both of us were swallowed up by the commonplace.’

  ‘But you sang better than ever before.’

  ‘What remained was less than what was lost,’ said the brain.

  ‘What remained became the endlessly voyaging sorrow and astonishment from which I write in those brief moments when I can write,’ I said.

  ‘You must do the best you can with what you’ve got,’ said the brain. ‘Eurydice is lost to you but Medusa trusts you with the idea of her.’

  I went back through my pages to the Johan de Witthuis and the Island Tamaraca:

  Out of the pinky dawn water, naked and shining in the dawn, rose Luise, quivering like a mirage between the beach and the island seen across the water. Quivering, shimmering, her body becoming, becoming, becoming a face loosely grinning, with hissing snakes writhing round it in the shining dawn. Around me ceased the sounds of the day; the stone of me cracked and I came out of myself quite clean, like a snake out of an egg, nothing obscuring my sight or my hearing. The Gorgon’s head, the face of Medusa, shimmered luminous in a silence that crackled with its brilliance. Her mouth was moving.

  What? I said. What are you saying?

  You have found me, she said. I trust you with the idea of me.

  You, I said.

  Yes and yes and yes and yes, she said. Look and know me. Hold the idea of me in you by night and by day, never lose it.

  Yes and yes and yes and yes, I said, I look and I know you. I will hold the idea of you in me by night and by day, I will never lose it.

  I’d said that I’d never lose the idea of Medusa but I wasn’t at all sure that I knew what the idea was. The head had said, ‘Behind Medusa lie wisdom and the dark womb hidden like a secret cave behind a waterfall. Behind Medusa lies Eurydice unlost.’ ‘Let it be,’ I’d said, ‘you’re wording it to death.’ It was a mystery and I hadn’t wanted it explained to me. Now I needed to know where I was with it.

  ‘Will you excuse me for a moment, please?’ I said to the brain.

  Kraken, I typed, can you tell me anything about this mystery?

  THIS MYSTERY, said the Kraken, SHOWS ITS MEDUSA FACE TO COMPEL RECOGNITION, TO WARN THAT UNDERSTANDING STOPS BEFORE IT AND GOES NO FURTHER. THIS IS THE FACE OF MEDUSA WHO CANNOT BE IGNORED, CANNOT BE INTRUDED UPON, CANNOT BE POSSESSED. YOU HAVE NEVER GIVEN YOURSELF TO
THIS ONE WHO WILL NOT GIVE HERSELF TO YOU, YOU HAVE WANTED ONLY THE SWEETNESS OF EURYDICE TO LOVE AND TO BETRAY. THIS IS THE FACE OF WHAT CANNOT BE BETRAYED. LOVE CAN BE LOST AND BEAUTY, BUT NOT THIS FACE OF DARKNESS MADE BRIGHT. THIS IS THE ONE TO WHOM YOU CAN BE FAITHFUL.

  Nobody said anything for a while. I went to the kitchen, made myself a Nescafé, and brought it back to my desk where I found half a grapefruit sitting on a napkin. That happens to me often: I’ll find an old coffee on the bookshelf or a banana on the mantelpiece or myself halfway up the ladder to the attic and not know how the old coffee, the banana, or I arrived at those places. I went back to the kitchen, got a bowl and spoon, put the half-grapefruit in the bowl, and ate it.

  Ring, ring, said the telephone.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘what is it?’

  ‘Herman,’ said Hilary Forthryte, ‘are you all right? We were all wondering why you wrapped your grapefruit in a napkin and rushed out of the restaurant.’

  ‘That grapefruit! Oh my God, I’ve eaten it.’

  ‘You artists. Look, Herman, we’ve got to have a little think session soon to get this Eurydice-Orpheus thing off the ground. How’s next Wednesday for you? Can I pencil you in?’

  ‘GNGG, NDZNX, MMPH,’ I said as what felt like an iron fist pushed heavily against my sternum.

  ‘Friday any better?’

  ‘Can I phone you back later?’ I was already sitting so I thought I’d lie down. There were too many papers, books, cassettes and floppy disks on the couch so I tried the floor and was amazed at the amount of dust, fuzz, and crumbs. There was a coffee about three weeks old under the couch, my favourite mug, I’d wondered where it had got to.

  ‘Try to make it soon,’ she said. ‘Everybody’s busy and I’m stuck with organizing the whole thing.’

  My left arm was very leaden; the iron fist had gone but now I seemed to have swallowed an iron box which was stuck in my chest. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’ll make it soon.’

  The local surgery was close by so I stood up, walked there very slowly, told the receptionist about the leaden arm and the iron box, and took my place in the waiting-room with five people being patient and seven National-Health-looking fish being aerated by a stream of bubbles. That’s how it is, I thought: a little stream of bubbles till the pump shuts down. I picked up a two-year-old copy of Harpers & Queen which fell open to a photo of Gösta Kraken and the headline FROM THE DEEPS: KRAKEN RISING. The corners of the iron box sharpened up a little.