Songs_of_the_Satyrs (2 page)

The
eau-de-vie
hit him like a blow from a big man. He was sure his expression betrayed him, but Pascal pretended not to notice. Instead, he leaned in close and said, “It’s bad, this sickness.”

“The worst.”

“That’s why you come back here?” The sweep of his hand took in the
auberge
, the Camargue, Provence.

“Yes.”

“For the Marys?”

“The town?” Bourne said. “Or the church?”

“The church.”

“Why? Have there been reports of miracles performed there?”

Pascal shrugged.

“No,” Bourne said, “I was never that good a Christian. I used to tell my students I found the Greek gods more to my liking. I fancied I could feel them here, next to the Mediterranean where they had flourished for so long. But now . . . ‘Great Pan is dead,’ eh?”

“What does that mean?” Pascal said.

“Nothing. It’s a line from Plutarch, his piece on the failure of oracles. A sailor whose name escapes me heard a voice from shore instructing him to announce the death of Pan to his destination. I think it was his destination. He did so, and there was great lamentation. Report of the incident reached the Roman emperor’s ears, and he took it seriously enough to establish a commission to investigate it.”

“Bullshit,” Pascal said. His cheeks were flushed.

“I—”

“You know who Pan was? Everything.” Another sweep of the hand. “He was one of the old gods—as old as Zeus, maybe older. You think something like that dies?”

“I never knew you were a pagan.”

“Eh.” Pascal looked down. “My father had many books about these things. He told me about them.”

“He was a scholar?”

“Something like that. He is dead many years.”

Another sip of the liquor brought more words to Bourne’s tongue. “I was going to write a paper about Pan—about his presence in the literature of the last couple of centuries. English literature, I mean. That’s why I read Plutarch, for background. I was going to start with Keats,
Endymion
. There’s a hymn to Pan in it. Keats calls him, ‘Dread opener of the mysterious doors / Leading to universal knowledge.’ It’s the culmination of a series of descriptions of his role in the natural world. I thought I might talk about Forster, too: he has a piece called ‘The Story of a Panic,’ about a group of English tourists who go out for a walk in the Italian countryside and are overcome by a feeling of inexplicable terror. It’s clear they’ve had a brush with the god. Oh, and Lawrence—he refers to Pan in a short novel called
St. Mawr
. A failed artist described him as ‘the God that is hidden in everything;’ he’s ‘what you see when you see in full.’ ”

“Yes,” Pascal said. “Exactly.”

“Something else I’ll never get around to. I remember thinking I needed to look into Swinburne, to see if I could use him as a bridge between Keats and the Moderns. Ah, well.” He finished the last of his drink. “We have discussed it, so it will not vanish from the world, entirely.”

“Nothing does,” Pascal said. He refilled their glasses.

***

When Pascal turned right off the main road, Bourne thought that it was into a driveway, that he had eschewed the hospital in favor of a familiar clinic or doctor. But they continued driving, deeper into the marshland bordering the road. He had the impression that they were traveling a considerable distance; though it was hard to be sure, because they were moving more slowly, and the road they were following bent from left to right and back again, and every time the wheels jolted in and out of a pothole, a white rush of pain filled him.

The road they were on ended in a small clearing. Pascal parked the Kangaroo at the entrance to it. Before he had finished stepping out of the car, its rear doors swung out. The men who had attacked Bourne were standing there. He was too surprised to speak. They grabbed his useless legs and hauled him forward, catching his arms and lifting him out of the car. Led by Pascal, they carried him to the other side of the clearing, where a gap in the wall of marsh reeds admitted them to a footpath. His ruined bones ground together. Pain as immense as the sunlight washing the sky surrounded him.

Mosquitoes whined about his head. Reeds clattered to either side. The men bore him to the foot of a spring the dimensions of a bathtub. Grunting, they turned around, so that he was facing the direction they had brought him, and lowered Bourne to the ground. His head tilted back, and he could look over the water at the stone from which its source poured. Gray, grainy, the rock had been carved into a face whose features had been weathered to the limit of recognition. What might have been horns, or might have been hair, curled above a wide face whose blank eyes seemed to stare into his above the water that poured from its open mouth.

A hand slid under his head, raised it to Pascal crouched beside him. He was holding a dented tin cup which he raised to Bourne’s lips. The springwater was cold, a benediction. He felt as if he could almost speak.

The hand was yanked away, and his head flopped backwards. Pascal pressed a knife to his throat, and cut it.

***

A couple of days after he’d first arrived at the
auberge
, once the worst of the jet lag had passed, Bourne rolled himself down the handicapped ramp at the front door to the dirt lot where the guests parked their cars. The lot was empty. He pushed across it to the thick lawn that reached to the marsh. The chair jounced as he wheeled it over the grass to one of the short trees stationed around the space. Once he was under its branches, he halted. His chest was heaving. His arms and shoulders were searing. Sweat weighted his shirt. He sat gazing at the island of green, where Pascal would hold cookouts if the mosquitoes weren’t too bad. Sometimes, he hung lanterns from the trees. Bourne looked at the tall reeds that marked the lawn’s perimeter. How long ago was it he had ventured into them, felt the ground slant steeply down to the water?

A chorus of insects was buzzing its metallic song. In the distance, a white bird lifted into the air. He did not know the name of the insects, or of the bird.

***

Dying was not as hard as he had feared. There was a burning across his throat, and something leaping out of it that must be his blood venting into the air. His body shuddered, too injured already to do any more. Far overhead, the sky was pale blue, depthless as pottery. Closer, water chuckled as the pool was replenished. Then everything went away.

***

Bourne heard water, and realized that he had never stopped hearing it. He was in water, floating, but when he attempted to stand, his feet found the bottom easily. He rose into darkness—into the night. A crescent moon hung low in the sky.
Artemis’s bow,
he thought. He stepped out of the pool and found his legs strong, the thick hair on them saturated. The joints seemed different, as did his feet, which felt hard, almost numb, but he adjusted to the change without difficulty. His arms, his chest—his cock—were large, bursting with life. Something weighted the sides of his head, but his neck was thick enough to bear it.

In front of him, Pascal and his five accomplices were prostrate on the ground, uttering words in a language he shouldn’t have been able to understand but did. They were welcoming him, imploring his blessing. They were the reason for the shape he had assumed; their belief held him to it. It would be simple enough to shuck it, to assume the form of a horse, or bird, or tree, or reed—of anything, of all.
Pan.

For the moment, this form would do. He caught Pascal by the neck and lifted him one-handed, bringing him face to face with what he’d summoned. Pascal’s eyes bulged. The acid stink of urine filled the air. He supposed he owed him a debt of gratitude. He lowered but did not release Pascal. He opened his mouth. It was full of enormous teeth. They bit through Pascal’s skull with ease. It crunched like a crisp, fresh apple.

The rest of the men were shaking. Their fear clouded the air. He inhaled it, then brought their god to them.

— for Fiona

“Oh, Chris, you must come. Mom and
Dud
are having their meeting tonight. They’re reading the Big Book and I’ll be confined to my bedroom. It’s soooo dull. I mean, really.”

Chris had the picture-perfect image of Maria as she carried on, stretched out on the couch, cord twisted around her finger, putting on airs. Twelve-year-old debutante, with a princess phone to her ear.

As if she had to convince him.

“. . . and we’ll steal snacks. I can already smell something yummy in the oven. Baked goods . . .”

Chris tied his sneakers, grabbed his jacket, and left the house. Though it was shorter through the woods by distance, the trees would only slow him down. He kept to the street, walking along the flat and winding road that skirted the woods until he reached the other side.

Outside Maria’s house, outside her window, a streetlamp flickered on, a yellow glow asserting itself in the slowly fading light. No cars on the street yet. He may not have to meet any guests.

Chris climbed the flagstone steps and pressed the button that had long ago lost its luster. Muffled chimes sounded inside and grew louder as Maria’s mom opened the door.

“Chris. What a wonderful surprise. Now you come in here.” She ushered him into the house, turning on the light in the foyer.

“Thanks, Mrs. W. Maria didn’t say I was coming? I’m sorry . . .”

“Never. That’s quite all right.” She clamped her hands on his shoulders and steered him toward the back of the house. “I think she’s in her room.” Her broad smile looked painful.

Chris politely loosed himself from her clutches and headed down the hall. As he came to her doorway, Maria looked up at him and smiled from her bed. Propped up on a pillow was a walking cast where only hours earlier she had worn a shoe.

“What happened to you?” He joined her on the bed, staring at the fresh white plaster. “Is it broken?”

“No. Only a sprain. Good thing Dud’s an orthopod, otherwise I would’ve spent the entire afternoon in an emergency room.”

“So?”

“I fell out of a tree. You know the one I like. I was sitting on the big branch up there and here came your brother lumbering along. I was all prepared to scare him when I lost my footing and fell. Poor Richie, not only did I scare him, I practically landed on him. He didn’t tell you?”

She grabbed his hand and put it to her head. “Anyway, I’ve got a knob now, too. See?” She laughed and kicked out her injured foot, then handed him a felt-tip pen. “You can be the first to sign my trophy.”

“Thanks.”

“You smell that? Mom should be in soon with a plate for us. She’s been fussing all about me. She thinks missing a practice or two will ruin my skating career.” She rolled her eyes.

“How long do you have to wear that thing?”

“Not long. Not long at all.”

Mr. W. breezed into the room with a tray. “Chris, you mind the time. It’s getting late.” He tilted his head toward the window.

“I will, Mr. W.”

“Looks like there’s one of each for each.” Maria’s dad set the tray on a footstool. Two milks and an assortment of freshly baked cookies, bars, and cakes.

“Thanks, Dud.”

He left the room nodding wearily as if the nickname took a little bit out of him each time she said it.

Maria giggled and Chris joined her. He knew she only called him that to get his goat.

“Sign.” She thrust the pen at Chris.

He put the pen to his lip, visibly working out what to say. Finally, he shrugged and, on the bottom of the cast, wrote:

Dear Maria, your first cast. One heck of a milestone. Maybe
Dud
can make one for me, too. One of each for each. Ha-ha.

He added two dots and a grin and signed it,
“Yours, Chris.”

“What does it say? I can’t read it from here.” She stretched and leaned until she could see it, then smiled and raised her big white boot, giving his shoulder a hard push. As her foot fell back to the pillow her eyes widened, noting the green ink smear left on his shirt by the sole of the cast. She grabbed the tray. “Let’s eat these things.”

He looked out the window. A long, dark car pulled up to the curb. Steam swirled in the headlights just before they blinked out. The windows were shaded and it looked as if no one was in there.

“Is it time yet?” Maria asked.

“It’s getting close.” He would wait until people stopped arriving. He took her hand and held it in both of his. “I really am sorry about your foot, you know.”

“Don’t be. I’m just glad I didn’t land on Richie. We’d both still be lying there, turkey vultures picking our bones clean.”

They each grabbed a cookie and looked to the window. Night was moving in.

***

“Oh, Chris. You weren’t watching.” Mrs. W. swept right in.

“It’s okay. I’m leaving right now.”

“Oh no you’re not. You go call your father. Tell him I’ll send you home first thing in the morning. I won’t have you running through the woods on my watch. You don’t want to get caught there at night.”

“It’s okay, I’ll run real fast!” Chris protested. He jumped up and headed for the door. “I’ll take the road, I swear.”

Mrs. W. followed him out toward the foyer, then gripped the top of his head and turned it like a lid on a one-gallon jar.

“Phone,” she said, using his head to maneuver him in the direction of the kitchen. “And make it fast. I have a meeting to get started.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He took slow heavy steps. Hopefully Richie would answer. He crossed his fingers. On the fourth ring, he heard it pick up and turned his back to the doorway for privacy.

There was a long pause, a sound of fumbling as the person at the other end took time to get the handset from cradle to ear.

Richie.
Chris sighed relief. He looked down at the countertop to conceal his conversation. “Richie,” he whispered as loudly as he could without being heard.