Russell Hoban - Medusa Frequency

‘Go on,’ I said.

‘Go on with what?’

‘With what happened when you found Eurydice weeping in the leafy shade.’

‘We made love.’

‘Didn’t you say anything first? Surely you didn’t just jump on her without a word?’

‘I don’t know what I said at first.’

‘You probably said, “Why are you crying?’”

‘That was it,’ said the head. ‘I said, “Why are you crying?”

‘“I was sleeping,” she said, “and I dreamed that I was the whole world; the whole world had become me and I was a child and I was afraid.” She was still trembling as she clung to me.

‘“Did you hear me singing by the river?” I said.

‘“In my dream there came around me all the strange and many colours of death,” she said. “They took my hands and wanted me to dance with them and I was afraid.’” Here again the head fell silent.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘what did you say to that?’

‘I kissed her,’ said the head. ‘She tasted of honey.’

‘“You taste of blood,” she said.

‘“Something happened in my throat when I sang,” I said. But again she ignored my mention of the singing. I don’t remember what she said after that.’

‘Yes, you do.’

‘It hurts to remember.’

‘Yes, but without remembering we have nothing.’

‘She said, “Be the world-child with me,’” said the head.

At that moment some large schoolboys lurched violently into me, I dropped the head, and one of the boys kicked it into the road. Several cars passed before I could go after it, and by then there was no sign of it anywhere.

I spent the rest of the day typing up everything so far which brought me to this page. Several times the telephone rang and I could hear Lucretia stamping her booted foot inside it but I didn’t answer.

In the evening, the evening after seeing Melanie Falsepercy and Istvan Fallok at the Cheshire Cheese, I went there again. I arrived a little after seven; that was about the time they’d come in. I sat down at the same table I’d sat at before and placed myself so as to have a good view of the door.

In my mind she arrived at a quarter past seven, smiled tentatively and looked at me with her woodland look as I stood up. She came over to the table, I pulled out a chair for her and helped her out of her coat. I was overwhelmed by the actuality of her. Like Luise she was taller than I; she smelled of youth and miracles, of November darkness and hibiscus lamplight.

Hello, she said as she sat down in my mind in the chair that stood empty before me. Here I am. Did you think I’d come?

The gom yawncher man, making his rounds, smiled at me and said, ‘Numsy fy?’

‘It’s too soon to say,’ I said. ‘It’s all in my mind.’ I went out into Crutched Friars, turned right, turned left, followed a sign that pointed to St Olave’s Church, crossed a big road full of blackness and white headlamps, fetched up at All Hallows by the Tower and went inside.

It seemed a working church in good order, and the many models in the Mariners’ Chapel in the south aisle gave it a pleasantly practical air. There was a Communion service going on but a sign in the south aisle indicated that one might pray privately in the Chapel of St Francis in the crypt.

Going down the stairs I came first to the tiny dim Oratory of St Clare in which were two chairs and two prie-dieux facing a small Romanesque window with a grille in front of it. Beyond the window in a lighted alcove was an unlit brass oil lamp of the sort that Aladdin rubbed. This one stood on a rather tall foot and the handle of it was in the form of the chi-rho monogram. I sat down in one of the chairs and mentally rubbed the lamp.

There was a clip-clopping on the staircase and a stirring in the air, winter-sharp and woodlandish.

‘Hello,’ said Melanie Falsepercy as she sat down beside me. ‘Here I am. Did you think I’d come?’

Thank you, I said to the lamp. ‘I wasn’t expecting you at All Hallows,’ I said to her.

‘I followed you here from the Cheshire Cheese,’ she said.

‘I didn’t see you when I was there.’

‘I was outside standing under the bridge, skulking in the shadows.’

‘But why didn’t you come in?’

‘It wasn’t coming-in time, it was skulking-in-the-shadows time.’

‘And then you followed me here.’

‘Because I’d been waiting for you.’

A prayerful-looking man entered the oratory. We left, went out of the church, and stood hand in hand before the big road of blackness and white headlamps.

‘You’d been waiting for me,’ I shouted against the rushing of the blackness and the lights.

She brought her mouth close to my ear. ‘Yes,’ she said.

We crossed the road, the rushing faded behind us. Great-arched, great-shadowed, high in the lonesome evening the railway bridge loomed before us, the golden windows of the Cheshire Cheese invited. We entered the ascending red, the descending black and found ourselves a table under the canopy of quiet voices.

‘What’re you having?’ I said.

‘Whatever you’re having.’

I got us both treble gins with just a little water.

‘Gin looks so clear,’ she said, ‘and it’s so full of obscurity. Here’s to All Hallows.’

‘All Hallows. It was very strange yesterday evening; all of a sudden there you were.’

‘I’d never been here before. Had you?’

‘Never. What brought you?’

‘I’d been translating Rilke’s ‘Orpheus, Eurydike, Hermes’ and then I looked up Orpheus in the telephone directory.

When I saw the Orpheus and Tower Bridge Club listing I had to come to Savage Gardens for a look round. Thirsty work.’

Luise had translated that poem for me, I’d recorded her reading it in German and in English and I still remembered lines here and there:

Wie eine Frucht von Süβigkeit und Dunkel,

so war sie voll von ihrem groβen Tode …

Like a fruit of sweetness and darkness,

So was she full of her large death …

‘Do you do a lot of translation?’ I said.

‘No, it just happened that I wanted to get the ideas in the poem as clear in my mind as I could.’

‘Do you do any writing?’

‘Bits and pieces, nothing I’d show anyone yet.’

‘And you and Fallok?’

‘Not any more but we have a drink together now and then. What brought you to Savage Gardens?’

‘A conversation with the head of Orpheus.’

‘How did you and it meet?’

‘I hallucinated it in the mud at low tide near Putney Bridge.’

‘You and Tycho Fremdorf.’

‘Who’s Tycho Fremdorf?’

‘Haven’t you seen Codename Orpheus?’

‘No. Why?’

‘Better now?’ said the gom yawncher man as he cleared the table.

‘Much better, thanks,’ I said.

‘I keep seeing that man in different places,’ I said to Melanie when he’d gone.

‘That happens to Tycho Fremdorf too,’ she said.

‘What is all this about Tycho Fremdorf?’

‘Tycho Fremdorf is the protagonist of Codename Orpheus. He’s a sort of alienated anti-hero film-maker. He’s been wandering around all night with his Arriflex and in the dawn we see him standing in the low-tide mud near the Albert Bridge. Everything still and grey and the boats rocking at their moorings and then he sees the head of Orpheus coming up the river against the tide. It’s quite remarkable, there was a long piece about the film in Sight and Sound. Are you all right?’

‘What do you mean? Why shouldn’t I be all right?’

‘You look very pale.’

‘I always look pale. What did they say about Codename Orpheus, in Sight and Sound?’