Antal Szerb - The Pendragon Legend

Then the gnome and the apparatus both vanished, leaving me with an intensely painful headache.

After some time the gnome and the apparatus appeared again. He was now dressed in black, and immensely solemn.

“Lean closer to me, Benjamin Avravanel. I have a terrible secret to whisper in your ear. The Great Adept has been compelled to turn to Black Magic for the Great Work to proceed. The Highest declined to help, so he has called upon the Deepest. You, oh wise master, are the assistant. You must participate in the ceremony. Rise, and prepare the sacred site. The hour has come, the hour has come.”

An hourglass shimmered before my eyes, its last few grains running out. I rose and followed the gnome.

We were in a pentagonal room, lit from above by a luminous body identical to the one I had seen in the depths of Pendragon.

I was wearing a black, sleeveless robe and immensely heavy shoes, made, I should think, of lead, with astrological symbols embossed on them.

I immediately began preparing the room. There was a wand, the end of which I dipped in some blood-coloured liquid in a bowl and used to draw two large concentric circles on the floor. Inside these I drew a triangle, and inside that three further circles, not concentric.

I placed an incense burner in one of these last, and a black, crescent-shaped candlestick in each of the others. I then nailed a dead bat to a point along the line of the outermost circle, and that was the North; and to another point a skull, and that was the West. To the South went the head of a goat, and to the East the corpse of a black cat.

Meanwhile the smell wafting up from the burner was growing steadily heavier, and I staggered back to my room. The whole building was humming and vibrating like an organ. In my room stood a large, comfortable couch, covered in black, and I lay down on it.

How shall I account for this strange episode? I did not do so at the time: I lived it. It all took place as naturally and self-evidently as furnishing a new flat. Since then I have thought about it constantly, and have come up with two possible explanations.

The first, and simpler, is that I dreamed it. The business of preparing the site, the drawing of circles and the ancillary items are all minutely described in a book by Eliphas Levy, or to give him his proper name, the Abbé Alphonse-Louis Constant, with the addition of the fantastical circumstance that the candles were made of human sweat, the black cat had been fed for five days on human blood, the bat had been drowned in blood, and the goat was one cum quo puella concubuerit , as Levy rather delicately puts it: ‘with whom a maiden had conjoined’. And the skull would have been that of an executed patricide. I had read this particular work of Eliphas Levy a year or two prior to the events in Wales, though I had of course forgotten the details. It may well be that the strange surroundings and fantastic events I had been experiencing had stirred up all these images and made them part of my dream. In dreams we sometimes remember whole poems read decades before and long since forgotten.

The second explanation is that I might have been in a state of hypnotic suggestion. What I identified as a gnome was my own subconscious mind, which, in trance, became detached from my ego and took on a life of its own. Such a divided ego has often been described by psychologists as part of the condition experienced by spirit mediums.

… Beyond the walls of my room the whole house was awake, filled with some hideous, teeming life, like an anthill. Footsteps could be heard, heavy objects being dragged about; something was sizzling, something else was whistling, and every so often the deep voice of a gong made the whole place tremble with its black renunciation.

The wall opened and a woman in a black cloak entered. As soon as she saw me she put her hand to her face and began to scream, “Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?”

I recognised the voice. It was Eileen St Claire. I rushed over to her and seized her.

She screamed again, wrested herself from my grip, and fled to the far corner of the room.

“Don’t be afraid, “I said. “You know me. Look at me. I’m János Bátky, the Hungarian who took your ring to the Earl of Gwynedd.”

She stopped screaming, and for some time gazed at me intently. Her every gesture betrayed a mind unhinged.

“Of course, you’re the little scholar with the manuscript,” she exclaimed, and burst into hysterical laughter.

“How did you get here?” I asked, and repeated the question. “And what are you doing here?”

She darted towards me, clung tightly to me and whispered in a voice of terror:

“Tell me, who is that man? Who is he? Whose house is this? Is it the old man’s?”

“The midni — I don’t know. I’ve no idea.”

“Are you quite sure it … it isn’t the Earl of Gwynedd, fifty years older?”

“Eileen,” I cried, “What has happened to the Earl? You were the last to see him … he went off in your car … what has happened to him?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what happened to him. I brought him here … where everything had been prepared. But then … I’ve no idea what happened to him after that. Are you quite sure that man isn’t the Earl of Gwynedd? … Oh, I’m so cold … Give me your hand. Is your blood warm? Yes, yes, it is. Please, sit beside me here, nice and close, and make me warm. I’m so cold, so very cold … ”

She certainly was shivering, though the room was rather warm.

“When I was a girl, at home in Connaught,” she jabbered, “it was as cold as this once … the rivers were frozen solid … sit closer, please … we had very little money at the time. There were ten of us siblings … what could a poor little girl do?” Her patter had become steadily more mechanical.

“… so I went to Father Considine to confess, and told him why I had needed the money … please, please, don’t pull away … I’m so cold … I didn’t steal the five pounds from the old man just because I wanted the money, but because it was so very cold … I can’t bear the cold … Why are you looking at me like that? Don’t you believe me? All right, I did want the money. Even in those days I was after money. I never knew then how much I’d have one day. I’ve lots of money. Every minute I earn fifty pounds. And yet I’m so cold … Please, sit closer to me. How much do you want? Where’s my cheque book? Holy God, where is my cheque book …?” And she started to sob.

Then she calmed down noticeably.

I think I must have started quizzing her again about what had happened to the Earl. She told me what she knew, and I remember very clearly what she said — her words, her tone of voice. This part could not have been a dream. And yet … I also remember just as clearly what the gnome had said …

This is what she told me.

“As soon as we heard from Cynthia where he had gone, I went to see him. Now he couldn’t just send a message that I wasn’t welcome. He opened the door himself. I knew that once he saw me he would never have the strength to throw me out. It wasn’t difficult to persuade him to go with me. He believed everything I told him. That I’d broken off with Morvin, but I was afraid and needed his protection. He got in the Hispano and came like a lamb to the slaughter. Please, don’t draw back … I’m so cold … this whole night … never again while I live … Tell me, does the Devil really exist?”

I pressed her to continue.

“We came to this house, and imagine … in the very first room, Morvin. Just lying there. He should have been hiding. But he couldn’t. He was dead.”

She started to giggle.

“Why is that so funny?”

“I have to laugh when I think of him. Such an odd sight. His neck was twisted round; he was lying on his stomach and his head was facing upwards. I laughed then too. The Earl just stared at me, shocked by my response. He said I’d better be careful: it was how Maloney had died. But I was glad. I thought, now I’d be free of both of them. Now I’d have a bit more peace in my life. But that man … so much worse … oh, oh … You’re a doctor. Tell me: what makes the body turn cold as ice?”