Water Theatre (27 page)

When my face was bloated with foam, he swept the blade across my cheek before wiping the razor clean and lowering its edge again. For many precarious minutes, the blade twitched and slid across my face and neck. A pimple bled and was cauterized. His left hand pushed and pulled with surgical authority, lifting my earlobes, distorting my nose, and tightening my throat until he was content that the skin was frictionless. Then he towelled me dry and applied a lotion of such venomous astringency that I thought for an instant I might faint. Giorgio smiled, smacked his hands together and anointed my chin and cheeks with a fragrant cream before proceeding to pinch and pummel my skin. Lastly, having dusted me with talcum powder, he whipped the towel and sheet from my shoulders and, in a single continuous gesture, stepped back, smartly clapped his palms, and opened his arms in an expansive gesture.

“Ecco,” Gabriella cried, “now you are beautiful again! Now you are ready to meet the god.”

She brought me first to the odd little temple that stands butted against the hillside below the level of the road, a few hundred yards up the lane from the springs. We walked round to the front of the building and stood before a low arched portal at ground level, gazing up at six carved columns. They supported an entablature and pediment that might have been pagan Greek, but it was carved with a Christian inscription.

“Of course, your rude remarks were correct in part,” Gabriella conceded. “Things are changed since Plinio was
here. This tempietto is a pretty monster put together out of pieces from an ancient shrine that was destroyed. As you can see, even the water is now moved away. But once it was the source of power in this place. Look at the columns! See, these two are carved like fish's skin. And these two at either side of them – the lines in the stone – they are…” – she spun her index finger in the air – “ondulate?”

“They swirl?” I suggested.

“Yes, swirl. They swirl like water, no?” She huffed at my hesitation. “Andiamo.” She led me to the side of the building and up a flight of stone steps into the cool atrium. The area around the altar was recessed like a shallow apse. Frescoes had been fading for centuries round its curves, and a small empty niche was let into the wall above the altar, which seemed an improvised affair: no more than a slab with an inset piece of rosy agate, perched on a fluted length of pillar.

“It's such a hotchpotch,” I said. “It feels more like a folly than a church.”

She liked the term. “A hotchpotch, yes! The tempietto is a hotchpotch consecrated to San Salvatore da Spoleto. But I think we are inside what was once a sacred machine.” I puzzled over the word, but she pressed on. “Now is time to use your imagination.” Gabriella flapped a dismissive hand above the altar. “Take away this affair. Replace it with a noble statue of the deity.”

“The god of the springs?”

“Clitumnus, yes, the oracular god of the springs.”

“Wouldn't you rather have a goddess there?” I smiled.

“Listen to the name.” She had not answered my smile.

“Clitumnus?”

“Well? Can you not hear it speak of something which is at the same time both male and female? A secret thing?”

“Are you saying what I think you are?”

She nodded. I saw she was quite serious. “The name is latinized from the Greek. The root is kleit, as in kleitoris, yes. I like to think also that the end comes
from the Greek hymnos, which means in Italian inno, a sacred song.”

“A hymn, yes.”

“So – to the Romans – Clitumnus. The name of the god is the voice of the spring singing her sacred song. As you will discover, this is a place of oracles.”

“But you said ‘her' – of the spring, I mean. Why not a goddess then?”

“The ancients used to say that oracles are like seeds,” she smiled. “What they have to say is not made plain at once. Rather it is planted in the imagination to grow in the fullness of time. So you must not come to the oracle as to the railway office looking for informations or a ticket. Or if you do, you must not be surprised if you come away with a poem or a dream. Nor must you complain.” Abruptly, she turned away to tap the back of the niche with her fist. “What is behind here?” And when I shrugged, she said, “I will tell you. It is the hill.”

“So?”

“So.” She raised her arms to the niche, crossed her wrists there and opened her hands into a splay of fingers. Then she brought them down towards the altar in silent imitation of a cascade. The descending hands parted at her hips. Her palms turned outward, and came to a halt with each outstretched index finger pointing to the floor. Looking down, I saw what I had not observed before: on either side of the altar two square cavities had been cut into the wall down at floor level. Both were now blocked off.

“Come, we shall pass below again,” Gabriella said, and took me back into the lower storey, where I saw how the waterfall would have been channelled down into this chamber and out through the arched portal to flow as the shining stream that once sprang here. The quirky little temple had suddenly become a vestibule between the dark world hidden under the hill and the world of light outside. And the god – manifest as water – was at home in both.

When I looked back at Gabriella, her lips were pursed, her brows raised. “A machine,” she said, “powered by water. A sacred machine.”

“For what purpose?”

“For what I have invited you to imagine – the invocation of the god.”

In the hills outside Assisi there is a little hermitage once frequented by St Francis. As you approach its gate through scented woodland, a sign warns that you are entering a ZONA SACRA – a sacred zone. It occurred to me afterwards that such a sign should have been placed at the entrance to Clitumnus Springs that day. Instead, we found a coach party leaving as we arrived – bored men in sunglasses with slouched bellies walking ahead of their chattering mothers and wives. At the gate an official was about to close the Springs for lunch, so Gabriella asked me to wait while she spoke to someone in the Tourist Office.

After a few moments she rejoined me. “It is as I hoped. We shall have the shrine entirely to ourselves.”

I thought she must be referring to some other relic of the pagan world left standing, bereft and enigmatic, amid the degradations of our century, but there was no such building. We passed through the gate, the keeper locked it behind us, and we walked in silence round the edges of the lake. There was no one angling at the trout tanks. Almost no sound of traffic filtered through from the motorway. The poplars stood unruffled in the noon heat. A rowing boat idled at its mooring by the wickerwork embankment. Only the wake of swans rippled across its reflection. As Gabriella had said, we had the shrine to ourselves.

She chose a willow-shaded place far from the entrance, and we sat down together there. The sun was high, the day hot. Distantly, among the glossy panes of shadow shafting across the brownish underwater plants, were stretches that glittered with a vivid turquoise sheen. I
slipped my sandals off, dangled my feet in the pool and gasped to find the water achingly cold.

Gabriella asked if I was hungry. I said yes, having had no breakfast before we came away, and not having bothered to cook the night before. In fact I hadn't eaten properly for days, and – now she mentioned it – I was very hungry.

I suppose I had some vague hope that she had brought things for a picnic and left them in the car. But all she said was, “It is good you have fasted. It would have been better with intention, and for some days more, but this must do. Your senses, they are quite sharp, I think?”

“I can smell sulphur on the air.”

“It rises with the water,” she said, “from the Inferno.”

“But the water's cold!”

“It will cool your brain. Now I shall tell you our procedure. First is the ablution.” She contemplated me with pursed lips. Did she seriously think I was about to skinny-dip in these chilly springs? “This you have already endured,” she said. “You are well showered this morning, and Giorgio has made you smell more sweet. I approve of your white shirt and trousers, and you have not eaten, which is good.”

“So I pass muster? Am I presentable? Acceptable?”

“Ah! Presentable, yes. Acceptable? We shall see.”

“So what comes next?”

“After ablution comes confession.”

“Confession?”

“Soon I shall ask you to look down into the water with great concentration. When you are ready, you will begin to speak. You will tell the story of your troubles these past years, omitting nothing important, however discomposing or painful it may be to you, however hard it comes to say the words. You will tell all that is to be told. However there is one rule you must respect: it is forbidden that you speak of any other persons with blame. Not your mother, not your father, not your sister. Not your enemies, not your friends. Not your lovers, not your wife. Nessuno, no one, no one at all. But about
yourself you must have no mercy. You will assume complete responsibility for all that is wrong in your life. If you speak of others, speak only of your own failures to deal wisely with them. This way you will collect all your troubles here and make them your own again. You will know you are guilty and there is nothing left but to confess. Do you understand this?”

“Of course. It's very clear.” She was about to say more when I added, “But I don't see why the hell I should do it.”

“You will see. I promise.”

“I can't see how.”

She smiled. “You have smelt that the water has also passed through the Inferno to come to this place. Maybe it will show you how!”

The water had me by the ankles in its cold grip. I withdrew them, stood up and looked down where Gabriella sat with outstretched legs, as relaxed as a sunbather who had asked nothing more difficult than passing her the suntan lotion. Her eyes were shaded by smoky black sunglasses, and she wore a silvery-blue headscarf knotted under her chin. Her face seemed quite impenetrable. The grass prickled the soles of my feet.

“Meanwhile,” she continued, “I shall listen and say nothing until you forget the rule. In that case I will say ‘no' or ‘please'. Nothing more – unless you persist, of course. In that case, I shall reprimand you. Perhaps if something important is not being said I may also ask you questions. Maybe if it is too much I will say basta! – and we shall have failed. Otherwise, you will have only my silence. Silenzio e massima discrezione, naturalmente. It goes without saying.”

I stood over her, saying nothing. Out on the water, a swan lifted its wings and smacked its way to shade across the startled lake. I watched as, moments later, the glassy span slid back into shape again.

“You are thinking it will be difficult,” she said. “You are right. But, for a man of imagination, not impossible.”

“And if I don't feel like subjecting myself to this?”

“You are free to go. We shall have passed a pleasant morning together. But I shall have lost interest in you.”

“And I shan't see you again?”

“Perhaps you will. But there would be no meaning.”

“Isn't that a touch extreme?”

“You prefer the ordinary, the trivial? Why come to me?”

“It wasn't me who came looking for you this morning.”

“No, that happened some time ago. Today I am honouring your quest and advancing it a little. Perhaps you lack the courage to do the same?”

After a time I said, “Why should I trust you?”

“It is not me you must trust.”

Unconsciously I put a hand to my face, and was surprised to find how smooth the skin was. It was like touching something unshelled and delicate. Giorgio's razor had planed the stubble more sheerly than any blade had done before. Touching my face felt like lifting my hand to the sun.

“Me,” I said. “I have to trust myself.”

“Ah! Now you begin to understand how it is difficult.”

“And if I try and succeed?”

“Then we shall proceed to the next rite.”

“Which is?”

“Oblation.”

“What kind of oblation?”

“Let us take one thing at a time,”

“So – ablution, confession, oblation. And that's it?”

“Already that is a great deal.”

“But not the end?” I guessed.

“Perhaps not. Though if you get so far – make no mistake – something quite tremendous will have begun to happen. Qualcosa di irrevocabile. Do you understand this?”

“Something irrevocable, yes.”

“Then shall we see?”

After a time I swallowed and said, “All right, let's see.”

For a moment longer she studied me in silence as though testing the quality of my resolve, before she nodded and said, “This will take time. I think first you must drink.”

I had already seen where a rill of fresh water poured through a narrow cleft in the pinkish rocks above the pool. The present source of the spring? Surely that was the place to drink. So I walked the few yards along the bank to where it cascaded in bright sunlight. The sound of falling water pacified the heat. As I leant closer, its fresh smell lifted on the air. Reflections marbled the stones. The cleft was mossy and wet. I dipped my fingers into the little torrent, let the water sleeve my wrists, and then cupped my hands to drink. When my thirst was slaked, I walked back again and sat down beside the pool.

Pure living water. Water issuing from its own dark sources deep beneath the hill, yet shining so clearly that it might have been a condensation of the light. For a long time I stared at the pool in silence, waiting, and found it hard enough just to gaze down into its shallows without glancing away from the sceptical ghost of my own reflection, out across the glassy surface to the companionable trees and sky. My mind was restless, its attention caught by the prismatic glitter of light and the surface clip of damselflies. And some moments later by the sleek approach of a trout that sensed my shadow and twisted away into greener depths. So there were still wild trout swimming here! I presumed they must be the source of the bubbles rising through clumps of weed towards the light. Then I was looking down into the eyes of the spring.