Russell Hoban - Medusa Frequency

‘Yes, it’s often like that with me.’

‘My mother’s name was Calliope. Sometimes she sang a little song:

“Hermes the maybe, Hermes the sending –

in the day a road, in the night a wending.”’

‘“Who is Hermes?” I asked her.

‘“Hermes is your father.”

‘“Where is he?”

‘My mother pointed to the road. “Here and gone.”

‘“Where’s Hermes?” I said to the shepherds.

‘They showed me a heap of stones by the roadside. “There’s Hermes,” they said.

‘“How can a heap of stones be Hermes?”

‘“Every man who tupped your mother put a stone on that heap in the name of Hermes,” they said.

‘I put my ear to the stones, I listened to the dance in them, listened to the music of Hermes-in-the-stone. I looked at the road that was the place of Hermes. Without moving it ran through the valley and over the mountains, at the same time running and standing still, at the same time here and gone.

‘That night I went to the road. There was no moon, only the night and the dim road wending into darkness. I stamped on the road, I whispered, “Hermes!” The road moved backward under my feet, faster, faster. The steady rhythm of it stretched its long dream into the darkness and the whispering of the night. Running, running I said to the night “I have no name but the one you give me, no face but the one you see.”

‘I was, I am, an emptiness. I don’t know what anything is: I don’t know what music is, I don’t know the difference between running and stillness, between dancing and death. The world vibrates like a crystal in the mind; there is a frequency at which terror and ecstasy are the same and any road may be taken. There was an olive grove, it was morning. Shadows and whispers in the greenlit shade and the sunlight twittering in the leaves above. Hermes doesn’t show itself as a picture in the eyes, it’s there like a beast that can’t be seen, a strangeness dancing in the greenlit shade, dancing its music in the brightness of the shadows, in the darkness of the light.

‘There was an olive grove, I could feel the Hermes of it. There was a tortoise. My hand reached down and picked up the tortoise; with a hiss it drew its head in. I stood there feeling the shape of it and the weight of it in my hand and there was an idea coming to me when I felt eyes on me, felt myself being looked at. There was someone else in the olive grove, there was a man who hadn’t been there a moment ago. He was staring at me with eyes open so wide that I could see white all around the pupils. He had his hands out in front of him as if he was going to say, “Don’t”, but he didn’t say anything. A dark man, not young, but I couldn’t have said how old he was.

‘The tortoise was in my left hand and my knife was in my right; my idea was the tortoise-shell empty and two posts and a yoke and some strings for a kind of little harp with the shell as a soundbox. The man’s eyes were still on me, his wide-open eyes; almost I wanted to use the knife on him to make him stop looking at me. He let his hands drop to his sides when I cut the plastron loose and dug the body out of the shell, ugh! what a mess and my hands all slippery with blood and gore. The entrails were mysterious. I think about it now, how those entrails spilled out so easily when I made an emptiness for my music to sound in. Impossible to put those entrails back.

‘You know how you’ll hear a sound while you’re asleep and there comes a whole dream to account for it and in the dream there are things that happen before and after the sound — might it be that the whole universe has no purpose but to explain the killing of the tortoise? Do you see what I mean? Perhaps the universe is a continually fluctuating event that configures itself to whatever is perceived as centre. Do you think that might be how it is?’

I closed my eyes and saw the long nakedness of Luise twisting in the stardrift of galaxies and nebulae. ‘I hope not,’ I said.

‘The dark man watched me as I emptied the tortoise-shell,’ said the head. ‘He cupped his hands in the shape of the shell, then he mimed the plucking of strings. “Music? For making music?” he said.

‘“Yes, for making music,” I said. “How did you know?” Because what I was going to do had never been done before, there was no such instrument as the lyre then.

‘“I don’t know how I know,” he said. He had come closer; he smelled of honey.

‘“Why do you smell of honey?” I said.

‘“I keep bees.” he said. “My name is Aristaeus.” He stood there as if listening for something that only he could hear.

‘“What are you listening for?” I said.

‘“Your name.”

I didn’t say anything, I didn’t want to tell him my name.

‘“You don’t want to tell it,” he said. “You’re afraid.”

‘“Afraid of what?” I said.

‘“Afraid to hear the sound of your name in this place.”

‘“I’m not afraid.”

“Then tell it.”

‘“My name is Orpheus,” I said. Still he seemed to be listening for something else. “What are you listening for now?” I said.

‘“The olive trees whisper,” he said. “I always listen. You are the one who is Orpheus.”

‘“I’ve just told you that.”

‘“Not just your name,” he said. “You’re going to do it, you’re going to be Orpheus.”

‘“What else can I be?”

‘“You are the story of yourself,” he said. With his finger he traced figures in the air.

‘“What’s that you’re doing?” I said.

‘“Your name. You are the story of Orpheus.”

‘“How can I be a story? I’m a man, a live person.”

‘“You’re a story.”

‘“Not a story,” I said. I began to run.

‘Behind me, even when I was far away, I heard him say quietly, “You’re a story,” and I wished I hadn’t told him my name.’ The head fell silent, I held it in my hands and waited.

‘What happened next?’ I said after a reasonable interval.

‘My story is not a sequence of events like knots on a string,’ said the head; ‘I could have started with the loss of Eurydice and ended with the killing of the tortoise — all of it happens at once and it goes on happening; all of it is happening now and any part of it contains the whole of it, the pictures needn’t be looked at in any particular order.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because the thing is simply what it is. Hold a pomegranate in your hand and tell me where is the beginning of it and where is the end. The name of this pomegranate is Loss: the loss of Eurydice was in me before I ever met her and the loss of me was in her the same.’

‘Tell me what happened next.’

‘After the making of the lyre there is a long empty space before I became the Orpheus who was said to charm wild beasts and move trees and stones. I assume that I very slowly taught myself to play the instrument, that I made up little songs, nothing special. Probably I sang and begged my way from place to place. When I try to think of myself in that time I think of an emptiness carrying the emptiness that had been the tortoise. There is no story of me for that time — what I had been was gone and what I was to be had not yet come.

‘The next thing I know about is a morning, a dawn, the dawn mist rising from the river. I was sleeping off a drunk, I woke up not knowing who I was nor where I was. Something was looking at me from behind the mist, the strangeness that is Hermes, the strangeness that makes everything here and gone at the same time. The light changed and it was afternoon. The flight of the kingfisher opened in the air over the river a blue-green iridescent stillness in which a dragonfly, immense and transparent, repeated itself with every wingstroke. There was a drowsiness, a droning in the golden afternoon, a vibration in my mind or in the air, an ineffably sweet, honeyed sound that was seductive and demanding, a music not of any instrument. It enveloped and overwhelmed me, I felt myself surrendering to it, dying sweetly of it while the strangeness watched me from behind the blue-green stillness, from behind the dragonfly and the gold of the afternoon.