John Banville - Nightspawn

‘Do you know this ceremony?’

I shook my head. He went on.

‘In Macedonia they have one very like this, on St Constantine’s day. This particular ritual is unique. It can be traced back to the matriarchal societies of Greece, and the yearly slaying of the king. Are you interested in history at all?’

His lecturing tone irritated me. I lifted my head to shoot some cutting remark at him, but saw that he was smiling. He was aware of my irritation, and was delighted by it.

‘Rituals frighten me,’ I said.

It was something to say. He lifted a bushy black eyebrow.

‘Frighten you, why?’

‘Everything frightens me. The sea, the sky. I suffer from not only claustrophobia but also agoraphobia. I was born in the darkest hour of the darkest night in a black year, and —’

I stopped, glimpsing thieves crucified among the leaves of the trees.

‘Nightspawn,’ Julian murmured, very softly, and smiled a smile I was to see very often. It seemed to be directed at something funny just above my left shoulder. I was being mocked.

‘The English,’ I said evenly, ‘are the wonder of science. No one knows how they can walk upright, lacking vertebrae.’

He gazed at me very solemnly along his nose, and his eyes began to twitch, the corner of his mouth to stir, and suddenly he threw back his head and gave a great roar of laughter. His flesh shook, and his grizzled hair quivered, and he banged the table with his fist. At last the spasm passed, and he sat panting, and wiped his eyes with the back of a plump fist, gazing fondly at me all the while. He was captivated by me, it is the only word.

‘My boy,’ he said. ‘My dear boy, when the English come via Smyrna and points east, then their backbones are of the finest links, indeed yes, ha, dear me.’

He laughed some more. Smyrna. Odessa and Trebizond, Tiflis, the black waters of the Bosphorus. The old names marched through my mind in a magnificent caravan. I watched the man before me snuffling and wheezing, shaking his head, attending to his nose with a florid handkerchief. I liked him.

Two things happened then, small at the time, of shattering significance later. I felt Helena’s knee touch mine under the table. It was not an accidental touch, it was a caress. I did not look at her, but went on watching Julian, and at last I knew what his face, his whole bearing expressed as he sat there at the head of the table. He exuded satisfaction, and pride, the smug complacency of a man who has just become a father. I was his baby. Helena’s eyes were on me, filled with tender concern.

‘Take no notice of my husband, Mr White, his sense of humour is very wicked.’

I looked quickly away from her. The musicians advanced, and took up a position near the fire. The light glanced on their instruments and sent little flashes flying with the sparks into the sky. A hand fell on my shoulder, and a blast of fetid breath whistled past my ear. Erik stood unsteadily above me, peering down with one eye comically closed.

‘So you woke up,’ I said.

‘Agh.’

‘Why don’t you go to sleep again.’

He winked. That left both eyes closed. The sudden cessation of the lamplight baffled him. Then he opened his eyes again. I could almost hear the lids creak as they lifted. A sly hand went into the pocket of his jacket, a sly tongue-tip slipped into the corner of his mouth, and he drew out a flat leather flask. I had seen it somewhere before. I took a sip of the brandy. As it exploded in some tender recess of my gut I discovered that ouzo had been added to it since Andreas (that was it) had given me the healing cup. I put the flask into Erik’s hands, and tried to push him away from me. He swayed a little, but stayed on his feet. Julian watched us with interest.

‘And do you know why they are in the Bouboulinas?’ Erik asked, as though there had been no lapse between his last remark and this one.

‘Oh go away Erik, you’re drunk.’

He made a short speech in German, and awaited my reply.

‘Erik, will you go back to sleep.’

His knees gave way, and he sat down abruptly in the dust beside me, one arm draped amicably across my knees. He belched thoughtfully.

‘Because some one person got drunk, and told a very secret thing to the Colonel,’ he said, and then put his face into his hands and began to weep. Helena peered at him over the edge of the table.

‘Is your friend unwell?’

‘He’s all right.’

I took the flask away from him, and emptied a mouthful of the scalding stuff down my throat. I wanted to be drunk. I was drinking the right poison. Erik’s shoulder shook with sobs. I kicked him, not very hard. He rolled over on his side and went to sleep. Two young men of the village had begun to dance. With their arms outstretched they circled the fire, while the musicians played a mournful melody. The shirts of the dancers were open on their chests, and their feet were bare.

‘The anastenarides,’ Helena whispered.

‘It’s what the world needs,’ I said wildly.

Her knee was against mine again.

‘Pardon?’ Julian asked, leaning forward with a hand cupped around his ear.

‘Ritual and magic,’ I cried, trying not to laugh, for I was sure that somewhere something hilarious was happening. ‘Ritual, rhetoric and magic, the foundations of the ancient world. The Senecan sweet, do you see, a pagan St Sebastian with a soft centre.’

I looked at Julian. His eyes, bright red in the firelight, rested mischievously upon me.

‘Magic?’ he murmured.

‘Magic? Magic is the language of the devil, and very useful to know.’

Erik, on the ground, woke up for long enough to raise a fist and cry,

‘Der Teufel, ach, was könnten Sie über der —’

The music ceased. There was silence. Into the black sky the echoes faded, tinkling like small steel springs uncoiling. Silence. My drunken brain stopped reeling for an instant, and I saw enormous cylinders of polished glass gliding in utter silence through the depths of space. Then, from somewhere close at hand, I heard small sounds, the scuffling of feet in dry dust, and a gasp, another, of laboured breath and, last of all, a grunt. The one-armed cripple from the taverna came limping into the firelight, leading on a piece of string a — what was it? — what? … a little lamb. They halted near the flames, two oddly pathetic creatures, and looked vacantly around them. The lamb licked its lips. Panting and shuffling, the cripple loosed the cord from the animal’s neck, and, grasping its haunches between his knees, he pulled back its head. (Look, it was not I who arranged this particular farce, so do not blame me if the leading players are hams, the script unspeakably banal, the whole shebang played out years ago — personally, I despise such shoddy trappings.) A knife appeared in his hand, the cripple’s hand, yes, he had only one, and with one swift stroke he opened the fleecy throat. The little pipe sent up a shivering cry.

Sweaty pencils poised, panting hunters of the symbol? There is wealth in store.

The animal’s hoofs were still twitching in the dust when the cripple swept it up in his arm and scattered its black blood into the fire. The flames roared a note in harmony with the pipe, and the other instruments broke out into a wild dance. The young men leapt to the whine of drum and strings, whirled and turned, sweeping low to smack their palms on the ground, yelping, groaning, weirdly gasping. I found myself leaning forward on the crate where I sat. One arm hung down, and my fingers tore the roots of grass. Helena lifted her hand to her forehead, and the gesture seemed extraordinarily slow and graceful, a branch lifting in the wind, a flower falling. The cripple now was dancing in his way, leaping and hopping among the dying embers of the fire. I rose unsteadily and wobbled across the plateau, climbed blindly to the summit of the hill, and stood there a moment to survey the night. A hint of the sea came up, and a cool wood wind. I saw towers falling, and for all I know heard voices too, speaking out of exhausted wells. Then, with a sigh, I leaned out toward the welcoming darkness and calmly threw down the side of the hill my day’s remains, salts and acids, blood, wine, and the shadow of murder, all went flying out into the void in a black and burning stew. Then, as they say, I must have fainted.