Ursula Le Guin - Lavinia

But according to Maruna’s mother the matter of the dead was not that simple.

Maybe it was she who had opened my mind so that when I slept at Albunea that night, that night in April when I was eighteen, on that ground that is so thin a roof above the underworld, the poet could come to me, and I could see and speak to him.

Maruna turned off on the path to the woodcutter’s hut, and I went on into the forest alone. When I walked there I always remembered the dream I had the first time I went to Albunea, the blood in the river, the city on a hill, the quiet radiance that filled the darkness under the trees.

No one was at the sacred place, but there had been recent sacrifices; fresh fleeces lay on the ground, and a stack of unburned wood by the altar. I scattered salted meal on the altar and all about the enclosure, and wished I could light a little fire, but I had brought none. So I went to the springs while the sun was still up, and sitting on a rocky outcrop above the cave mouth I watched the light grow reddish across the misty pools, and listened to the troubled voice of the water. After a while I moved farther up the hill, where I could hear birds singing near and far in the silence of the trees. The presence of the trees was very strong. For the first time I wondered if I might hear the voice that my father heard speak from among them in the dark. The big oaks stood so many, so massive in their other life, in their deep, rooted silence: the awe of them came on me, the religion. I went back to the sacred enclosure praying, very humbly beseeching these great powers to have pity on my weakness. I was glad I had lit no fire. I made a heap of the fleeces, rolled up in my red-edged toga, for the air was cool, and lay down in the late dusk to sleep.

I became aware that a figure was standing within the enclosure, on the other side of the altar: a tall shadow. For a moment I thought it was a tree. Then I saw it was a man.

I sat up and said, “Be welcome here.”

I was not afraid, but the awe was still in me, the religion bound me.

He spoke: “What is this place?” His voice was very low.

“The altar place of Albunea.”

“Albunea!” he said. I could see that he was looking around, though it was quite dark, a thin high mist dimming the starlight. After a minute he said again, wondering, almost with a laugh in his voice, “So it is!—And you are?”

“Lavinia daughter of Latinus.”

Again he repeated the name: “Lavinia…” Then he did laugh, a brief ha! of amazement and amusement. He said at last, “May I stay a while, Lavinia daughter of King Latinus?”

“The altar place is open to all men.” And I added, “There are fleeces here to sit on, or sleep on. I have more than I need.”

“I need nothing, king’s daughter,” he said. He came a few steps closer so that the altar was not between us, and sat down on the ground. “I am a wraith,” he said. “I am not here in my body. My body is lying on the deck of a ship sailing from Greece to Italy, but I don’t think I’ll get to Brundisium even if the ship does. I am sick, I am dying, I am on my way to… to Acheron… Or else I am a false dream. But they come from under there, don’t they, the false dreams? They nest like bats in the great tree at the gates of the kingdom of the shadows… So maybe I am a bat that has flown here from Hades. A dream that has flown into a dream. Into my poem. To Albunea, the sacred grove, where King Latinus heard his grandfather Faunus prophesy, telling him not to marry his daughter to a man of Latium…” His voice was low and musical, like the voice of one talking to the spirits, praying; and that almost laugh came and went in it.

But I said quite sharply, “Did he?” I couldn’t help it. Surely my father would have told me if he had received such a warning. Why would he keep it from me?

The man, the shadow, paused; he thought; and he said, “Perhaps not yet.”

He knew that he had surprised, disturbed me, and wanted to reassure me. I felt then for the first time his kindness, his searching kindness, sensitive to every suffering.

He went on, hesitant, “I think it has not happened yet. Faunus has not spoken to Latinus. Perhaps it never did—never will happen. You should not be concerned about it. I made it up. I imagined it. A dream within a dream… within the dream that has been my life…”

“I am not a dream, and I don’t think I’m dreaming,” I said after a while. I spoke mildly. For he was sad, very sad. He had said he was dying. He was adrift, bereft, poor soul. I wanted to give him comfort, better comfort than can be found in dreams.

He looked at me as if he could see me, as if light filled the glade, light not of sun or moon or star or fire. He studied me. I did not mind it. There was no insolence in him. I could not possibly fear him.

“I believe you,” he said. “How old are you, Lavinia?”

“Eighteen last January.”

“‘Ripe now for a man, of full age now for marriage,’” he said gently, and I knew it was a line of a song, though I did not know the song.

“Oh yes,” I said, very drily. I felt no shyness, no falseness, with him.

My response surprised the brief laugh from him again.

“Perhaps I did not do you justice, Lavinia,” he said. It seemed he too could say anything to me, whether I understood it or not. That was all right.

“What should I call you?”

He said his name, and I said, “You’re Etruscan?”

“I’m a Mantuan. I had Etruscan grandfathers. How did you know?”

“Maru, Maro—it’s an Etruscan name.”

“So it is. Ah, but how long ago—how long ago you lived, Lavinia! Centuries, centuries! Is there any Mantua, now—yet? Do you know that name?”

“No.”

He said, after a pause, and with a kind of wondering, passionate urgency, “Rome. Do you know that name?”

“No. But the Etruscans call—” I stopped. The secret name of the river is not to be spoken to all. Did he know it? But why keep secrets from a wraith, from a dying man? “One of Tiber’s sacred names is Rumon.”

“She came to Albunea by herself,” he said, speaking into the darkness, “and knew the sacred names of the river, and had no wish to be married. And I knew nothing of all that! I never looked at her. I had to tell what the men were doing… Perhaps I can—” But he broke off, and presently said, “No. No chance of that.” He looked around again, and sighed, and said, “I keep thinking I’ll wake up and see the damned deck of the ship, and the gulls overhead, and the sun that goes across the sky so slowly, and the damned Greek doctor…”

I have said we understood each other, that we spoke the same language. I did understand him, though he used words I did not know.

We sat in silence for a while. An owl called to the left, an owl answered from the right.

“Tell me,” he said, “have they come yet, the Trojans?”

A word I did not know. “Tell me who they are.”

“You’ll know who they are when they come, Latinus’ daughter. I am—” He hesitated—"I am searching for my duty here. How much is it right for me to tell you? Do you want to know your future, Lavinia?”

“No,” I said at once. Then I sought in my own mind for my duty, or my will, and finally said, “I want to know what’s right to do, but I don’t want to know what’s to come of it.”

“It’s enough to know what ought to come of it,” he said, gravely agreeing. I felt his smile though I could not see it.

The left-hand owl called again, the right-hand owl replied.

“Oh,” he said, “the air is so cool, the night is so dark, and the owls call, and the earth, the dirt—this is Italy, I’m home!…I wish I could die here. Here, not on that wooden deck on the sea in the sun. Here, on this dirt. But this isn’t my body, this is only my delirium.”