Black Light (36 page)

“Sure.” What I really wanted was another drink, but it seemed unlikely that Kirsten would be that accommodating.

“Good. Kirsten, if you please—”

“I had intended to have the
inkokt lax
for my lunch,” said the housekeeper. There was no doubt as to who she thought was more deserving of it. “But I will see what I can do.”

She turned and left. Balthazar watched her go, then gave me a sheepish look. “Kirsten is a devout Lutheran,” he explained. “Here, let’s sit, I’m sure it will take her a few minutes to pry the
inkokt lax
from the refrigerator…”

He walked over to the woodstove and thrust two small logs into its belly. I sat back down at the table, feeling light-headed, almost disembodied by the atmosphere of this sorcerer’s den, with its Latinate inscriptions and stained-glass windows, the faint scent of woodsmoke and pine needles and the promise of food brought up by a glowering factotum.

And yet there was also something that was weirdly familiar, almost comforting, about it. I began flipping through one of the books in front of me, a musty-smelling folio containing tinted photographs of Greek vases and statuary. It was not until there was a knock at the door and Kirsten entered with a large silver tray, that I realized what it all reminded me of—my childhood visits to Bolerium, with Axel Kern’s housekeeper bringing in platters of inedible delicacies while my parents and Kern sipped their way through Bolerium’s legendary wine cellar.

“Here is your
inkokt lax
,” Kirsten announced coldly. She nudged aside a stack of papers and set down the tray, which held not only dilled salmon but several porcelain dishes holding capers, cucumbers and sour cream, a knot of cloverleaf rolls and jam, as well as a small silver pot surrounded by wisps of steam and the blessed scent of coffee.

“Thank you, Kirsten,” said Balthazar. When I opened my mouth to say the same, the housekeeper fixed me with such an icy stare that I hastily turned my attention back to the book.

“I will be in the laundry room, Professor Warnick. Goodbye.”

Only after the door closed did I dare look up. Balthazar regarded me, amused, then opened his hand to indicate the heaping tray between us.

“Kirsten will have starved in vain if you don’t eat something,” he said. “Please.”

I ate. Not very much, but enough to satisfy Professor Warnick. He dabbed strawberry jam on a roll and nibbled at it, finally set it aside and poured coffee into two cups.

“Here,” he said. He handed one to me and pushed the tray to the other side of the table. “Do you feel better?”

I nodded. For several minutes we sat without talking. Balthazar stared broodingly at the bay window. I drank my coffee gratefully, pouring myself a second cup. When Balthazar remained silent I turned my attention back to the folio. At first its sepia-toned images seemed to share the same detached, rather prim gravity that all old photographs possess, each picture carefully numbered and named, dated and referenced—

Symposium scene, red-figure cup by the Nikosthenes Painter. Late 6th century
B.C.
, Museum of Fine Arts

Fragment from a bowl of Central Gaulish ware, figure-type of the god Dionysos, 2nd century
A.D.
, British Museum

But as I perused the volume, photographic plates like moths pinned to the oversized pages, the images began to take on a stranger, even malevolent, cast.

Maenads in pursuit of the god Dionysos, one holding an olisbos, black-figure cup by Epiktetos…

Red-figure cup by the Brygos Painter, religious orgy scene featuring woman beaten with a slipper before reclining figure of the god…

Dionysos…

I moved the folio so that its contents were not visible to Balthazar, lowering my face until it was scant inches above the page. The first picture showed three young women carrying branches, hair hanging around angular faces as they followed a distinctively unperturbed-looking man whom I guessed must be Dionysos. The man had lean features and slanted, blank eyes, and carried a long staff topped with a pinecone.

I turned the page. The next one showed an orgy, the women slim, unclothed save for fillets of ivy pinning elaborately dressed hair. The single male figure was naked, too, and had the same lean features, the same oblique eyes and dark locks framing an unlined brow. In this picture, the god appeared to sit in midair, one hand grasping an immense and swollen penis. His expression was neither lascivious nor even sensual. He looked thoughtful, even sorrowful; and more than anything else that unnerved me. I turned the page again.

This time I could not help drawing in my breath sharply. Unlike the others, this plate was in color, tinted in rich, dark tones like the embellishments of a medieval text. It showed a painting of a room, its walls daubed a lurid red and crowned by the repeating pattern of a labyrinth, all crossed squares and intricately linked shapes like swastikas. There were figures in the chamber, but also figures painted on the wall, so that the whole thing was a skillful trompe l’oeil of a room within a room, and the figures on the wall appeared to be watching those in the chamber.

There was a lot to watch. A naked man, bound, was kneeling on the floor. His head was crowned with ivy and what looked like pinecones, or acorns; his expression, unlike that of the Greek god, was anguished. Three women were grouped around him, also naked, but these had none of the detached calm of the Greek figures. Their bodies were rounded, where the Greek maenads had been slender and boyish, and their faces looked sly and gleeful and aroused, by turns. One stood with arm raised above the kneeling man. In her hand she held a wooden stake with a leather thong attached to it, like a flail.

Flagellation rites involving initiates and the God of the Vine, from a religious series, 1st century
B.C.
, Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii

“Ah,” said Balthazar, his voice tinged with distaste. “I see you have discovered the heart of the labyrinth.
Villa dei Mysteri,
where the initiates take their first steps into the underworld. Their experiences set them apart to such a degree that they had their own cemetery, the
bebaccheumeoi.
A remarkable likeness, isn’t it?”

I said nothing, just nodded as he continued. “What is most amazing is not that the god himself should be so utterly recognizable to us, two thousand years later, but that these images survived at all.”

Balthazar moved his chair beside mine. “Because it really
is
a miracle, isn’t it?” I could feel the warmth of his body, the wispy touch of his hair where it grazed against my cheek as he leaned over the page. “More of a miracle, in its way, than the death and rebirth of a god…”

“How could
anything
be weirder than that?” I said, my voice cracking. I tried to keep my eyes from the picture of the kneeling suppliant who was not really a suppliant but a god, not a god but a man I had eaten with, spoken with that evening. The same finely drawn mouth, its faint cruelty made exquisite by suffering; the same beautifully muscled arms, filigreed with ivy as though tattooed.

But what was most terrible was the young woman who stood above him, her ice-pale eyes wide open and staring calmly, almost dreamily, from the page, her auburn hair threading to her bare shoulders. With a cry I shoved the book and sent it flying onto the floor.

“How could
anything
be weirder than
that
?” I shouted.

Balthazar reached to comfort me and I yanked away. “Don’t touch me!
Don’t you fucking touch me
!”

Despair flickered in his eyes. “We didn’t paint those frescoes, Lit—”

“I know you didn’t fucking paint it! Who did?” I leaned down to grab the book, stabbed at the first page from the
Villa dei Mysteri
and turned to the next one. It showed the same red-haired girl, now lying on a settee and embracing the god while men and women watched, all with the same eerily calm expressions. “Tell me—
who did
?”

Balthazar stared at me, then down at the book. “A Malandante, an artist commissioned by the man who owned the Villa two millennia ago. The work is very similar stylistically to that of the House of the Stags, at Herculaneum, and also to the images in the Villa of Ariadne at Pompeii. The girl—”

He inclined his head toward the page. “The redhaired girl is Ariadne, beloved of Dionysos. Or his victim, depending on which account you read. In the version that Plutarch gave us, Ariadne rescued Theseus when he came to Crete—Theseus and a number of Athenian boys and girls had been given as sacrificial tribute to Ariadne’s father, King Minos. It was Minos, of course, who kept the Minotaur, the monster who was half-man and half-beast, imprisoned in the labyrinth; and it was to the Minotaur that the youths of Athens were given to be slain and devoured.”

“But that’s not true,” I said, fighting to keep my voice steady. “That’s just a myth.”

“A myth? More likely a memory—we know that there was bull-worship at Crete and the Cycladic Islands, brought there from Anatolia, where all sorts of animals were worshipped. Be that as it may, Ariadne fell in love with Theseus, and helped him escape from the labyrinth. In so doing, of course, she betrayed not just her father but her people.

“And her god as well. It is fairly evident that the story of the Minotaur is a remnant of a far more ancient religion, one that reaches us only as fragments—myths, stories, vase paintings and bits of statuary, rituals like the Crane Dance, which is still performed on Crete.

“Whatever happened there, Ariadne ran away with Theseus, but no sooner had they escaped but he betrayed her. He abandoned her on the island of Dia, near—”

“No!” I broke in. “It had another name—I just heard it,
where
did I hear it—Naxos! It was the name of the opera that Axel was going to do…”

My voice trailed off. I looked at Balthazar in despair. “But—it all fits together.
Why
?”

“Naxos is one name,” he said. Gently he closed the folio. “Homer said that she was abandoned on Dia, at the command of the god Dionysos, who killed her there. Others said that she killed herself, and still others say that it was Dionysos who saved her, coming to the island and taking her as his consort. That is the version that made it into Axel’s opera. Very likely Plutarch’s version is the true one, since Plutarch was himself a Dionysiac
mystes
—and so, of course, one of the Malandanti.”

I couldn’t even begin to argue with this craziness. Balthazar just gazed at the scattered books and papers on the table, as though they formed a map, an archipelago of scrolls and faded tomes. Finally I asked, “Why did Theseus abandon her? I mean, if she saved him—”

“The Athenians worshipped Apollo, and Theseus was the son of the Athenian king, Aegeus. Theseus himself was a follower of Apollo Delphinos, and as such, Ariadne would have been tainted to him. On Crete, she would have been involved in the rites of both the Goddess and the Master of Animals—the god who over tens of thousands of years was known as Dionysos, or Shiva, or Cernunnos, or Orpheus; the master of song and the theater, of chaos and intoxication and death. The oldest god, save only for the Goddess, who was his consort—

“—and mother, and daughter.” Now it was Balthazar’s voice that sounded unsteady. “The most ancient rift in the world is the one which looms between order and chaos; between those who serve Apollo and his agnates, and those who serve our enemies. Ariadne was abandoned because she would not forsake her god. Even if she had recanted, Theseus would not have given her refuge. The first thing he did after leaving her was to sail to Delos, where he made a great sacrifice to Apollo. And then went on to become the greatest hero of Athens.”

“That’s a horrible story,” I said at last.

“It is the oldest story I know,” replied Balthazar.

“But it
can’t
be true. I mean, you talk about all this as though it really
happened
—”

“But it
did
happen, Lit. It still does. Again, and again! In a way, it is the only thing on earth that really
does
happen: gods living and dying, their avatars struggling to be born and reborn.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not. And you know I’m not, Lit—you’ve seen too much, you
are
too much—you could never begin to explain all this, any more than you could begin to understand it.”

I shot him a furious look, but Balthazar did not notice, only went on, his tone patient and somewhat weary, as though addressing a favored child who was behaving badly.

“What has happened is that we have lost the ability to see these things. We no longer perceive the sacred in our world—but it exists, Lit, oh, it does exist! It is as real as this room, as real as this—” He took a handful of papers and shook them at me, tossed them in the air so that they came down around us like so many birds settling for the night. “—
More
real. We just don’t see it, that’s all. Not because it’s not there, but because we have lost the senses that would enable us to perceive what is all around us. You are familiar with the work of Claude Levi-Strauss?”

“No.”

“A very great man. Not, as many people think, an anthropologist. More of a mapmaker,” said Balthazar, giving me one of his maddeningly secretive smiles; “a cartographer, and a very great aid to us in our work. In his
Mythologiques,
he wrote of certain sailors, the Bororo of Central Brazil and the Caribs of Guiana, and how they were able to navigate using the stars, just as sailors have for centuries. But the Bororo could see the stars in
daylight.
When Levi-Strauss asked astronomers about this, they scoffed at him—but of course the stars are
there,
and the Bororo, among others, really did use them to steer by in daylight. It is we who have lost the acuity that would allow us to see them.

“Look,” he said more gently, and took me by the hand. He led me across the room to the bay window. “Look there, above that mountain—”

He pointed to a distant peak, crowned by gold-leaved trees. “What do you see?”

“Nothing.”