The Orpheus Descent (36 page)

‘I’m ready to go.’

Through different eyes, eyes that weren’t still red from tear gas, Spetses was probably a beautiful island. White houses with red roofs clustered around the port; to its right, a Greek-Edwardian hotel that looked like the Brighton Pavilion strutted its dilapidated grandeur on the seafront. Behind the town, forested slopes rose towards a central ridge that gave the island its spine. The low sun shone down behind it, soaking the island with gold and making the mountains in the distance a purple watercolour of peaks and slopes, endlessly repeating into the haze.

Standing on the pier where the hydrofoil had dropped them, Jonah scanned the houses on the hillside. ‘Which is Maroussis’s?’

‘The other side of the island.’

‘When do we go?’

‘When you’ve recovered.’

‘I’m ready.’ His hip still ached each time he moved his leg; he could feel the bruises coming up all over his body. But he could handle it. To get to Lily.

Ren hoisted her beach bag onto her shoulder. Wrapped in her scarf and sunglasses, he had no way of knowing if she believed him.

‘We can’t go until it’s dark.’

They got a room at the big hotel on the waterfront and sprawled out on the bed. Outside the window, the mountains slipped into the haze; an old bell chimed; a loudspeaker on the church broadcast a liturgy, mysterious lines rising and falling in some ancient, eastern mode. Jonah watched the ceiling fan spin away reality.

‘What kind of a name is Ren?’

‘Japanese.’

He examined her face. Her hair was straight and dark, her skin a light brown, but that was about as close as it got. ‘You don’t look Japanese.’

‘No,’ she agreed. Perhaps she’d had this conversation a thousand times before. But she’d led him to Greece, to Eleusis and now to the island, and he still didn’t know the most basic things about her.

‘Where do you come from?’

‘It’s complicated.’

‘Why are you doing this?’

‘What?’

‘Everything.’

‘I told you: I want to help.’

He stared into her dark, almond eyes, trying to force more out of her. She was immune.

‘What were you doing in Sibari?’

‘Following Maroussis.’

‘Why?’

‘I was afraid he would find the tablet.’

‘How did you know it was there?’

But it was all he was going to get. She rolled over and studied her fingernails, as if looking for chips in the polish.

‘Do you believe in reincarnation?’ she asked suddenly.

‘You mean like, if we’re bad in this life, we’ll come back as a cockroach next time?’

‘There doesn’t have to be a moral logic to it.’

Jonah thought about that. ‘Would it make any difference? I mean, if I’ve
already
been reincarnated, I don’t remember it. And if I haven’t, then there’s nothing to remember anyway. So either way, we end up in the same place.’

‘The same place can look very different depending on how you get there. If you thought you might come back as a cockroach, you’d make sure you behaved.’

Jonah watched the fan spin. ‘If I did come back as a cockroach, all I’d know was that I was a cockroach. I wouldn’t know I’d been in a band in a previous life, or that I could have been a dolphin if I’d been nicer. I’d just be a cockroach and want to not get squashed.’

‘That’s quite a limited horizon, don’t you think?’

‘Comes with being a cockroach.’

‘If that’s what you are.’

She swung her legs off the bed and stood. Without warning, she lifted off her T-shirt, unzipped her skirt and stepped out of it. She folded them both neatly and put them in the wardrobe. When she opened the door, the mirror on the inside reflected everything back at Jonah. She wasn’t wearing a bra.

Jonah stared. Her eyes caught his in the mirror and trapped his gaze. And he realised again that he didn’t know a thing about her.

‘I’m not really …’

But was that true? He’d been underwater for weeks and his lungs were bursting. He was desperate to break the surface, to emerge into the sun and feel her soft dry skin against his. He wanted to put his head between her breasts, feel her stroking his hair, calling his name. To feel whole again.

She turned – or perhaps the cupboard door swung a fraction. A bow of light flashed off the mirror, so that for a moment she disappeared.

She’s not real
. Neither was his desire. It was an image in a mirror, an inversion. In that flash of clarity, he understood it was a test, that if he followed her into the looking glass he’d be lost forever.

‘No.’ One short word. It shouldn’t have been that hard.

As if nothing had happened, she reached into her bag and pulled out a pair of black jeans and a black long-sleeved T-shirt. She put them on as carelessly as she’d undressed, then pulled another black shirt from the bag and tossed it to Jonah.

‘Let’s go.’

They went down to the old harbour and found a water taxi. The captain argued furiously when Ren told him where they wanted to go, but a hundred-euro note settled the matter. The engine made conversation impossible: they sat in the back, staring at the black water and the spidery white wake behind them.

They came around the tip of the island and saw the full moon rising in front of them. Jonah thought it was the biggest moon he’d ever seen, a perfect circle, buttery yellow as it hung over the horizon just a few hundred yards away. There were fewer lights on this side of the island: a handful of fishing villages, a couple of big hotels booming music across the water. The captain throttled back and steered closer to the shore, scanning the water ahead.

They passed a point and came into a broad cove. A few metres off shore, the captain idled the engine. Barefoot, Jonah and Ren scrambled over the side and splashed through the shallows onto the beach. Tiny waves raced up around them. When Jonah glanced back, the boat had already reversed and was chugging away into the night.

‘Isn’t he going to take us back?’

Ren didn’t hear him. With the lap of the waves, the scratching of the cicadas and the wind brushing through the pines, you had to listen carefully. Further round the cove, where the dark land tapered to a point, a light glowed among the trees like a wrecker’s lamp.

A steep slope rose towards the trees at that end of the beach. A coil of barbed wire blocked the way, but when Jonah touched it he felt rust flake off in his fingers. Following it, they found a gap where they could squeeze through into the woods.

‘I thought you said this place would be impregnable.’

‘You said that.’

Ren went ahead, still barefoot, silent on the sandy soil. Moonbeams flooded through the branches, feathering the ground with shadows.

There’s no such thing as moonlight
.

Adam had said that, on a moonlit night on the banks of the Cherwell.
The moon’s just a mirror in space. It’s sunlight we’re seeing – not the real thing, but a dimmer and colder reflection.
Did that mean the world was different too? A dimmer, colder reflection of reality? A mirror-world in a looking-glass light? It was the only explanation he could think of.

Did you ever wonder why the world doesn’t look backwards at night, if we’re seeing it all by reflected light?
It was the sort of question Adam often asked back in Oxford.

He remembered Ren in the hotel mirror, and shivered. In a backwards world you couldn’t trust anything.

The light he’d seen from the beach glowed through the trees ahead. Jonah tugged Ren’s T-shirt, but she shook her head and kept going. Jonah hung back. He thought he saw the outlines of a figure behind the light, a tall man standing stock still. Was he holding a gun?

The trees ended and he saw clearly. The light was a sunken floodlight shining out of the ground; the figure a statue in front of a ten-foot wall. Even on his pedestal, he was barely taller than Jonah: a grotesque dwarf with a pug nose, bulbous cheeks, a cheeky grin and an erect penis that almost touched his chin. Two goat horns curled back out of his forehead, and he held a set of reed panpipes.

In daylight, the statue might have been comic – endearing, even. The contrast between the erection, bursting with hope, and the sad ugly body was almost pathetic. But in the flare of the floodlight, the face became cocky and cruel. The phallus wasn’t desire, but a threat. And the dark wall behind him looked impassable.

‘Where now?’

A warm breeze tickled the back of his neck. From somewhere nearby, Jonah thought he heard soft music rising and falling. The wall seemed to ripple. When he put out a hand, he felt branches and leaves yield to his touch. Not a wall, but a hedge.

A few yards along, a more perfect blackness showed a gap.

‘Is this the way in?’

The black mouth smiled at him. Beyond, he could feel the tangled darkness waiting to swallow him – the same way it had swallowed Lily, a black hole from which nothing ever came out. Was it possible to feel
nothing
? To be terrified of
nothing
?

An owl hooted from the trees. He swayed and took a step back; something touched him; he almost screamed aloud. It was only Ren’s hand feeling for his in the darkness. Her slim fingers closed around his.

‘Whatever you see, don’t run off. Don’t let go.’

She pulled him in.

The moon didn’t penetrate the high hedges. They walked in darkness, their world defined by shifting limits they touched but never saw. Deprived of sight, Jonah’s other senses went into overdrive. He heard branches rustling; scratches, whispers and sighs; the thud of his footsteps on the earth like a heartbeat; snatches of the same mournful music he’d heard before. The sticky, private smell of the hedge filled his nose; his fingertips grew so sensitive he could feel every vein in the leaves he brushed. Soon he began to dread the touch. He imagined the foliage coming to life, wrapping itself around him, forcing itself down his throat until it choked him. He’d never suffered claustrophobia, but now he couldn’t escape the thought of the walls slowly pressing in, squeezing him between them.

Suddenly, light flared around them. Another buried floodlight, exploding like a mine when they stepped over it. Rubbing his eyes, he looked around to see if they’d been caught.

The only creature watching was a black stone animal, sitting on its plinth like a cat in the sun.

‘Guard dog?’

‘It’s a sphinx.’ In the floodlight’s glare, they could see they’d come to a fork in the path. One way led left, the other right. In front of them, the sphinx stared dead ahead and offered no clues.

‘Which way do we go?’

‘That’s the riddle.’

‘Do you know the answer?’

She tugged him down the right-hand path. The light faded behind them, leaving him blinder than before.

They stumbled on through the maze. Each time they came to a fork, light flared to reveal a choice and a statue. A goddess draped in diaphanous robes, bending her bow towards them; a terrifying Medusa with snakes writhing out of her hair; a solemn-faced boy with broken stone where his genitals should have been. Each time, Ren chose right.

‘How do you know?’

‘“The Mansions of Night, the right-hand spring”,’ she quoted at him. ‘You always go right. Maroussis knows that.’

It sounded too easy. And at the next fork, his fears came true. When the light came on, there was a black sphinx staring at them.

‘We’ve gone round in a circle.’ Despair flooded through him, washed on by a wave of terror that he’d be trapped in the maze forever. ‘You led us the wrong way.’ He pulled away, but Ren gripped his hand until her nails almost drew blood. Her strength surprised him.

‘It’s not the same statue,’ she said fiercely.

‘Are you sure?’ Jonah examined it, but saw nothing that identified it.

‘If you start to doubt yourself, you’ll never get out.’

‘What about the floodlights?’ Each time, the light hit him like a gunshot. ‘If we keep setting them off, someone’s going to see. They’ll know we’re in the maze.’

She shrugged. ‘They know anyway.’

‘Then why don’t they stop us?’

‘That’s not their job.’

They carried on. Now he could hear a scratching sound, all around, as if they’d wandered into a colony of crickets. The path twisted and turned, ever tighter, until he could hardly tell which way was forward. The noise got louder.

And then they were out. He’d passed the exit before he knew it; the hedges vanished and spacious night opened around them. A wide lawn ran up to a low, square-built house silhouetted in its own light. Sprinklers spun glistening arcs of water across the grass, making the sound he’d thought was crickets.

There was nowhere to hide. A wide stone basin, like a birdbath, cast the only shadow on the lawn.

‘How do we get to the house without being seen?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ Still holding his hand, Ren led him across the open lawn. The wet grass yielded to their feet without a murmur. The sprinklers turned, soaking them with a fine spray. By the time they got to the other side, Jonah’s legs were wet through. He barely noticed.

As they reached the edge of the house, the sprinklers suddenly shut off and sank back into the lawn. The night came alive with the patter and rustle of living things. Below the house, where the promontory fell away to a hidden beach, Jonah could hear waves brushing the shore.

They crouched behind a row of bougainvillea that guarded the top of the slope. Above, Jonah glimpsed the arches of a whitewashed colonnade, and a set of French windows opening onto a balcony. Dim lights glowed inside. His chest tightened. Was Lily there?

A shadow broke the line of the windows. Jonah froze. A man stood on the balcony puffing on a long cigar. At first, Jonah took him for another statue. Lit by the moon, in a grey three-piece suit, with a handkerchief tucked in the pocket and a grey silk tie, he could have been cut out from an Edwardian photograph.

A red ember flared on the end of the cigar. The photograph turned to colour. A cloud of smoke blew out into the night. The man looked down, staring straight at where Jonah and Ren were hiding.

The smell of tobacco mingled with the flowers and damp earth. Raising his voice just enough to carry, the man in the suit called down from the balcony.