The Bestiary (34 page)

Rumen rejoined us.

“I promise you I won’t reveal the location of this place,” I said to him, slipping off my knapsack. “This is as close as I’ll get to the book I’ve been searching for, and I’ll only share that information with a few friends.”

Rumen was unperturbed. “You don’t have to promise anything. If you tell others, what happens will happen. I’m a caretaker, not a policeman.”

“I don’t want to tell anyone.”

He shrugged. “Whatever you say, mister.”

I rummaged in my knapsack and took out my camera. “And I don’t plan to return myself. But I would like to take some photos—for myself, and my friends.”

“Go ahead,” he said.

I used three rolls of high-speed film. Sixty-nine shots of the mural from every angle I could manage without a stepladder, tripod, or floodlights. I took a set of overlapping shots from left to right; after the film was developed, I would enlarge and juxtapose them in order to piece together the entire mural. I got close-ups of the animals on the second ark, of the phoenix, of both Noah and his shadowy twin, and of the grim second pilot.

When I was down to my last three shots, I asked Rumen if I could photograph him.

He shook his head. “No,” he said, without explanation.

So I snapped one of Lena at the foot of the mural, and she snapped one of me, and I saved the last shot.

Lena and I lingered in that chamber for hours. We walked back and forth beneath the mural, identifying animals, studying the finer touches, comparing notes. One of many details that caught my eye: that there were nine mermaids with bright shining manes, eight of them dark-haired, one a blonde. Another was Sarkas’s illustration of the animals whose threefold incarnations—on land, sea, and in the air—are celebrated in the
Caravan Bestiary.
He had chosen the horse, painting (in close proximity) a grazing stallion, a seahorse riding the surf, and a wingèd horse like Pegasus rearing in the sky. Nearby was the phoenix, the only animal that freely inhabits the four elements, including fire. Rumen waited patiently on a stool in the corner, flipping his worry beads. Finally we, too, sat down on the floor against the opposite wall and gazed at the mural. The more I drank in Sarkas’s creation, the more I was in awe of him. However low his personal morality, it did not diminish my admiration for his painting, and I would always be grateful that he had preserved the bestiary in this form. I was astonished at the enormous energy he invested, working anonymously, literally underground, knowing few people would enjoy the results, and in the end realizing he himself would not live long enough to do so. Maybe he preferred that the mural remain as unknown as its artist—at least for a time. I hated to think what would happen if the floodgates were opened to museum curators, art historians, religious fanatics, tourists—to the Church, worst of all, which still owned that building and its contents.

Finally Rumen pocketed his beads. “You must go now,” he said.

I kept my eyes on the mural while he extinguished the lanterns: the sea, the arks, the animals gradually swallowed up by the darkness. He took his candle and I switched on my flashlight and Lena and I followed him up the stairs. He locked the door and pushed the cabinet over it. We followed him back to the altar, down the aisle, and out of the church. Rumen shut the doors and clicked the padlock in place.

“Thank you,” I said, shaking his hand. Like Sampson’s, it was cold and rough.

He made a small bow to Lena, who thanked him, too.

“Good luck,” he said, and descended the steps and disappeared into the forest.

Lena and I went around the church. All the shade in the cemetery was bleached away. Puffs of dust rose, as if the bones below were stirring. We walked down a line of fallen gravestones and entered the forest. I felt the presence of animals in the shadows. Then the wind picked up through the trees, tinged with salt. A sparkling blue band appeared and we stepped from the forest onto a beach, a white crescent flanked by boulders. The horizon shimmered. We put down our knapsacks and removed our shoes.

“I’m going in,” Lena said.

She stripped off her blouse and jeans, then her underwear. Her body glowed in the sun. Her arms and legs were tanned, which made her breasts look even whiter. She waded into the surf and dove cleanly, surfacing fifty feet out, filling her lungs, and continuing on with long steady strokes. I knew she was a strong swimmer. When we were children, she won trophies at the Y. It had been that long since I had seen her in the water. Sweating in the mezzanine above the pool, our eyes smarting from chlorine, Bruno and I had watched her compete. She was a long-distance swimmer. Her best event was the 800 meters. I remembered her red bathing suit and the matching cap her father had given her, initialed
FDNY
across the front.

As she swam out, a cloud obscured the sun. The sea turned gray. She stopped finally, a dark circle rising and falling. Then the cloud shifted and a shaft of sunlight lit her hair up gold. She beckoned to me. I took off my clothes. The water was cold. I started swimming, every so often raising my head to find Lena among the waves.

Later, poised to snap the last shot in my camera, I was puzzled to find it had already been taken. When the film was developed, there were all the photographs of the mural and then one of Lena and me in the sea, shot from the beach. Everything was as I remembered it: the clear water, the heavy clouds, her shining hair. We remained in the sea the rest of the afternoon, naked, weightless, riding the swell, before swimming in at twilight and returning to the dock where the launch was waiting, the pilot at the wheel, his cap pulled low, his cigarette glowing when he raised it to his lips.

Glossary

A Selection of Fabulous Beasts
from the
Caravan Bestiary

Amemait

A beast of the underworld, out of Egypt. With the head of a crocodile, torso of a lion, and hindquarters of a hippopotamus, it is known as “the Devourer” because it consumes the hearts of the wicked after death, to assure the destruction of their souls.

Amphisbaena

A two-headed serpent, one head at either end of its body, each with fangs and eyes of fire.

Bai-ma

A white horse with one eye and eight legs that appears wherever an infant is stillborn and roars like a tiger.

Baku

A threefold beast—with a lion’s head, tiger’s feet, and horse’s body—which, when invoked, will consume one’s bad dreams.

Basilisk (Cockatrice)

A desert serpent with a star set in its forehead, like a coronet. It befouls air and water. As with the gorgon, its glance turns men to stone, but if reflected in a mirror or shield, will destroy the basilisk itself.

Bi-bi

A wingèd fox that lives high in the mountains and honks like a goose.

Bo

A horse from the plains of Central Asia with a white body and black tail, and the teeth and claws of a tiger. No weapon can harm it.

Bonnacon

A horse with the head of a bull and enormous horns that excretes fire and can scorch the land for miles, reducing whole forests to ashes.

Caladrius

A pure white bird known for its powers of divination. Brought to a sickbed, it will turn its back on a patient with a mortal illness, but face the patient who can avoid death, drawing the vapors of the illness into its own body and dispersing them as it flies toward the sun. Its dung is a powerful curative.

Catoblepas

A buffalo with the head of a hog and a poisonous tongue, it wallows in the mud of riverbanks. It always faces downward. Anyone who glimpses its red eyes perishes.

Centaur

Half man, half horse, they were fierce warriors and dedicated orgiasts, unruly and unpredictable. The lone exception was Chiron, a healer and astrologer, who tutored a pantheon of heroes, including Achilles, Theseus, Ajax, and Hercules.

Cerberus

The hound with one hundred (some say fifty, others three) heads that guards the Gates of the Underworld, on the far bank of the River Styx, terrorizing the souls of the dead.

Chimera

Only one chimera ever walked the earth, devastating the countryside in ancient Lycia. Part lion, goat, and serpent, it spewed flames and was killed by Bellerophon upon his wingèd horse, Pegasus.

Crocotta

A speckled hyena that imitates the human voice in order to lure men to secluded places and kill them.

Dipsas

A hooded asp whose bite causes the victim to die of thirst.

Echidna

Half serpent, half woman, with fiery eyes and a hunger for raw flesh. The wife of Typhon, she bore a host of monsters: the Chimera, the Hydra, the Nemean Lion, and the Sphinx; the dogs Cerberus and Orthrus and the dragon Ladon, all multiheaded; and Ethon, the eagle that tormented Prometheus when he was chained to his rock.

Emorroris

An asp, its name derived from the Greek
αíμα
, “blood,” because, when bitten, its victim hemorrhages to death.

Garuda

Half vulture, half man, with red wings, a white face, and a golden body. His mother, Vinata, was the sister of Kadru, the Goddess of Serpents, and he consumes a serpent daily. Vishnu, one of the three major gods in the Hindu pantheon, rides on his back.

Gorgons

Three female monsters—Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa—with nests of snakes on their heads instead of hair. Medusa is the only mortal gorgon, and the sight of her turns men to stone. Perseus manages to behead her only by looking at her reflection in his shield.

Griffin

The offspring of an eagle and a lion. Guardian of treasures, with gold talons and powerful wings. Able to fly to great heights with incredible weight on its back: men on horseback, oxen, even mountains.

Gullinbursti

A wild boar forged of gold by dwarves who are master smithies. It can travel on land or water and fly high in the sky, its path lit even in dead of night by its glowing bristles. At times, it is harnessed to the chariot of Freya, the Norse goddess of love.

Hippogriff

The offspring of a griffin and a horse. It lives in the icebound regions near the North Pole.

Hydra

A multiheaded offspring of Typhon and Echidna that dwells on the island of Lerna. If one of its heads is cut off, three more grow in its place.

Hypnale

An asp whose bite is a fatal soporific. Cleopatra’s means of suicide. (From the Greek
ύπνος
, “sleep.”)

Jaculus

A flying serpent that hurls itself onto its prey from trees. (From the Latin for “javelin.”)

Keres

Birdlike creatures with women’s heads, deadly talons, and large wings. They tear apart corpses and are always present on battlefields, drinking the blood of the wounded and directing the fates of whole armies. Spirits of the dead, they are licensed to travel in and out of the underworld.

Kitsune

From Japan. A trickster fox that can metamorphose into any human form it wishes, but always keeps, and must conceal, its bushy tail. Most often, it assumes the body of a beautiful woman and coils its tail beneath the obi sash of her kimono.

Kujata

A huge cosmic bull, with thousands of eyes and ears, that stands upon the behemoth Bahamut, beneath whom are successive seas of water, air, and fire atop a serpent large enough to swallow the universe. On the kujata’s back is a mountainous ruby on which an angel stands, holding the earth.

Ladon

A hundred-headed dragon that guards the apples of the Hesperides near Mount Atlas, on the African side of the Strait of Gibraltar. Hercules’ eleventh labor was to slay it and bring back three of the apples.

Lamia

Beautiful women from the waist up, serpents from the waist down. They roam the African deserts, and in the way of mermaids, beguile travelers with their musical voices (that resemble whistling winds) in order to feast on them. They possess the ability to vanish at will.

Leucrocotta

From India. The swiftest animal on earth, with a lion’s torso, stag’s hindquarters, and horse’s head.

Long

A benevolent Chinese dragon. Overseer of clouds, seas, lakes, and rivers. Bringer of rain. It is an amalgam of many animals, with a camel’s head, a stag’s horns, a snake’s neck, an eagle’s claws, a fish’s scales, and a bull’s tail.

Makara

An amphibious creature, crocodilian but with a snout that resembles an elephant’s trunk. It originated in India as a composite beast—elephant and snake—that represented the duality of good and evil.

Mandrake

A root with the form of a man, it inhabits the divide between the plant and animal kingdoms. It is said to have originated in the dank soil at the foot of gallows, where hanged men fell. When torn from the ground, it screams like a man, and those who uproot it perish instantly.

Manticore

A lion with a human face, three rows of razor-sharp teeth, and a tail studded with poisonous darts that it can shoot at its prey. In India it is believed that the manticore was the ancestor of all man-eating cats: lions, tigers, and leopards.

Mermecolion

The “Ant-Lion,” attested to by Aelian, Strabo, and Physiologus himself as the improbable offspring of a lion and an ant. It is a lion in its foreparts, an ant in the rear. A beast so fantastical that, by definition, it cannot survive. Half its body will not tolerate meat; the other half cannot digest grain; therefore, it starves to death.

Naga

From India. A large serpent, hooded like a cobra, that has dominion over oceans, rivers, and rain. Guardian of treasures, it lives in sumptuous palaces on the seafloor. It can confer invisibility on men underwater. Female nagas, naginis, are semihuman and beautiful, like mermaids, and often fall in love with mortal men.

Nine-tailed Fox

A fox that lives for a thousand years, at which point it sprouts nine tails and ascends to heaven. A trickster and master of illusion, by moonlight it can transform a hut into a palace and assume any human shape.

Nue

A fourfold beast—badger, monkey, tiger, serpent—that is visible only by moonlight. At death, it dissolves like snow.

Pazuzu

From Assyria. A harbinger of disease, with a human head, bird’s wings, and lion’s paws.

Peryton

A high-flying bird with the head and forelegs of a deer that casts the shadow of a man. It originated on the continent of Atlantis and now nests in caves on the Rock of Gibraltar, subsisting on soil and salt water.

Phoenix

A large bird with iridescent wings, eyes blue as the sea and feathers the color of fire. Sustained by air alone, it neither eats nor drinks. It resides in paradise, nesting in the date palm, and every thousand years dies and is reborn. Its song is so beautiful it was the basis for the first musical scale.