John Banville - Nightspawn

What did I say? It was a lie. I was not happy. There was no peace. Lust was the least of my terrors. The land was waste, nothing flourished. Time trammelled me in all my days, the light blinded me, broke my sight, and I saw nothing, nothing.

Autumn is approaching, and the ships are bellowing out on the sea. The fog comes to my window, nuzzles at my window like some friendly blind animal. I can feel the roots of the year withering. The sap retreats. My little feathered foes are growing restless for the golden south. See the seasons trundle off again on their tiresome course. Time passes, nothing endures. Only here, in these sinister pages, can time be vanquished. These little keys on which I dance transfix eternity with every tap. O city city. Tremulous music begins to drop like liquid through the wings. The lights grow dim, and from out of the dimness the lighted stage advances. There I stand, in the sober darkness of my robes, my hands uplifted. I am about to conjure up another world. Watch me closely. Abraca—

I walked across the Plaka, from under the violet shade of the rock into the sunlight. The blazing markets rang with sound and light. On stalls that lined the narrow streets ripe fruit was piled, slow explosions of crimson and yellow, breathtaking purples, the copper acned flesh of oranges. Children scampered, beggars lurched, the vendors roared their wares. A woman laid her hands upon a barrel of tomatoes, and smiled at me with her teeth as white as seashells, her fingers pressing the passionate fruits. Lavender shadows lay between her lips. I carried away the image of glittering sapphire flies drawing a frame about her face. High above, behind me, the pillars of the Parthenon glowed in the sun, gold supports set between heaven and the massive rock. Dust flew in the air like yellow pollen, and a delicate blue heat-haze bloomed on the houses and the little shops, on hand and face and hair, on the ancient stones. In Monasteraki, the mood of the day was calm, matched to the sombre glow of copper and bronze in the bazaars. There I stopped, in an alleyway, to watch an old blind man weaving a basket, while above his head, in its ornate cage, a blinded canary whistled a song of unendurable tenderness, telling me that I would live forever, at the very least. Another spring.

The house was built on the side of one of those hills behind the palace. A high white wall with an imposing wooden gate set into it was all that I could see at first. I hesitated over the bell, then pressed it firmly. From beyond the wall came a tinkle, and again, faintly, tink, the far little chimes ringing strangely, secretively, amid the hum which came up from the streets below. An old woman with a stick passed by on the road. There were pines about, perfectly motionless, their outlines diffused in the sunshine. I watched the old woman until she had hobbled around the bend. Above, beyond the pines, there was the road again, repeating itself, and another wall, another turning, and presently another crone bravely scaling the heights. She struggled slowly upward, toward yet another, higher repetition, fading, as she went, into the furious blue light. Across the road, in the pines, an animal crouched and looked at me with its teeth bared silently. Behind it, half hidden by the trees, a figure stood. It was Yacinth. He laid his hand on the dog’s head. The animal licked its chops and wagged its tail, then came across the road and sniffed at my ankle. Good doggie. Why is it always the ankle that they consider, why not the knee, a much more tender region, with better tooth-holds? It was an enormous black beast with the head of a wolf. Yacinth looked up the road, and down the road, and at his feet, everywhere but at me.

‘How are you?’ I asked.

With a flick of his head he threw the curls away from his brow, and lifted his sullen eyes to mine at last.

‘All right,’ he said.

‘Do you remember me?’

I smiled winningly. He did not bother to reply. I stopped smiling. As talkative as ever, the lovely child. I looked wistfully at the back of his neck, unprotected but for a gleaming whorl of black hair. A swift rabbit punch, and then … and then he asked,

‘Do you want me to come in?’

He glanced sidelong at my left ear.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ve come to see your fa— to see Julian.’

Never could get the hang of these relationships. He pushed open a small trapdoor in the gate and we stepped through. The dog growled deep in its throat. The wall enclosed the garden on four sides, and in the centre of the garden stood the house, white, massive, its front face traced with a complex of balconies and outside staircases, hung with flowering creepers. There was an archway, wide enough for the passage of a car, cut right through the centre of the ground floor, and through a short tunnel a courtyard could be seen, with a fountain and a piece of sculpture, and figures sitting at a table. Two long cars were parked on the drive, nose to tail, a situation in which I thought the dog might take some interest, but he did not, and we walked on through the tunnel, into the courtyard. Julian sat by the table, the generous melons of his backside swamping a small cane chair, with, before him, one whom for the first few moments I did not recognize. Yacinth made a careless gesture toward me, and disappeared through the french window beyond the fountain. Julian, without rising, took my hand. The dog went to him and wagged its tail against his leg, thump thump thump.

‘Mr White, Benjamin, my friend. How are you?’

‘Hello Julian.’

‘This is Colonel Sesosteris. Benjamin White.’

‘We’ve met,’ I murmured.

Aristotle exuded a profound gloom. He had changed, looked older and sicker. His eyes moved restlessly about the courtyard, seeming to suffer at the hands of everything they saw. He gave me a distant, faintly irritated glance, and looked at his watch. I could not say if he remembered me or not. I did not very much care. Julian offered me a chair, and I sat down between them. The piece of sculpture atop the pedestal of the fountain represented a peculiar-looking hen, or a cock or something, with one claw uplifted and feathers bristling. Julian patted his belly with an open palm and squinted at the sky, yawning delicately behind three fingertips.

‘How are you getting on with that old crook Rabin?’ he asked.

I squirmed to the edge of the chair, and folded my hands in my lap.

‘Fine,’ I murmured. ‘Fine.’

‘Coincidence, meeting like that, eh?’

‘Yes.’

There was a silence. Aristotle sighed, and looked at his watch again. He scowled at it suspiciously, as though he thought it unlikely that the little hands could be trusted to stagger unaided from one minute to the next. Julian’s glass clicked as he set it down on the marble top of the table. I made an effort.

‘Your house is …’

But my effort was in vain, for already Julian had turned to Aristotle to say,

‘Benjamin is a friend of a friend of yours, Colonel.’

‘Oh yes?’

Aristotle’s voice was weary with indifference. His eyes rested on me for a moment; a flicker of recognition stirred in their lustreless depths, then died again, and he looked away. The waters rose and fell in the fountain, rose and fell. A cricket began to sing somewhere. Julian touched my arm.

‘Many of us in this city live under the protection of the Colonel here,’ he said. ‘Perhaps even yourself, without realizing it.’

I looked at him, but the merry eyes and smile were nothing but themselves. The back of Aristotle’s neck turned slowly crimson. Julian went on blithely,

‘As a visitor, Benjamin, what do you think of the situation here, I mean the political situation?’