Episode Five: Behind Closed Doors
Part One: Wait a Minute...
I look up and realize that we have stopped – might have been stopped for some time now – right outside the tavern.
My consciousness.... Our brains serve many functions. They are both like and unlike a computer – just as we, in turn, are like and unlike our gods, our Creators. One way that the grey matter between our ears is like a computer – or, more appropriately, like the phones permanently in our possession – is that our brains are constantly creating for us a model, a map, of our physical reality; and as we move through the world, our brains locate us in that map, not so different from a GPS program or application. Not un-analogous to leaving the Location on within your phone.
This is not the place nor time to discuss the Mind/Body problem. That is, whether our consciusness is a phenomenon of the brain, whether the I which Descartes assumes is is housed within the body or merely pilots it. For my part, I think the author of the Gospel of Thomas has his Jesus speak and question rightly when he says: “If the flesh was produced for the sake of the spirit, it is a miracle. But if the spirit was produced for the sake of the flesh, it is a miracle of miracles. For myself, I marvel at how this great wealth came to dwell in this poverty.”
It is... not easy to say what it was like when I realized that I was not where I thought I was. My consciousness— My reality distorted, warped, like a plucked guitar string or the surface of a pond after a stone has plunged into it. I became dizzy, rocked by vertigo. And then I heard it: The sounds of a city of between 1 and 200,000 people, reveling with Calendimaggio.
I turn in a slow circle, stunned and hardly able to believe what my senses are telling me.
Songs and laughter, men and women dancing, flowers in their hair and what clothing they bothered to wear, ribbons in their hands as they make their way round the Maypole. Satyrnine men chasing naked, nymphile women. Children everywhere. And everywhere the half- (or entirely) mad capering of newly born summer. The Green Man risen once more from death.
These people need Jesus.
The thought pops in my head, and for just a moment, I am filled with a revultion which is not my own.
“Robert! Kid, you comin?”
The tavernmaster's voice cuts through the cacophony, and I jump. Heart racing now, half-panicked, I find him standing in the doorway to his tavern and home.
But not just standing there.
The tavern is the only dark space I have seen since leaving the half-ruined Righi District. Built a few feet below street level, the doorway steps down into the earth – and darkness. Like the mouth of a cave in the center of town. The building is made of apparently-ancient stone. I am reminded of Francis saying that this may be the only building in town to survive from the Roman past.
The past isn't so dead and gone as you think.
What was it the tavernmaster said about my cave in the hills?
I don't remember. In fact, I'm having a hard time remembering anything we said, anything at all since I saw him for the first time this afternoon. Instead, passages from a book you will not believe I had read fill my mind:
Thou seest what Azazel hath done, who hath taught all unrighteousness on earth, and revealed the eternal secrets which were preserved in Heaven.... Bind Azazel hand and foot and cast him into darkness.... And place upon him rough and jagged rocks, and cover him with darkness, and let him abide there forever, and cover his face that he may not see the light.
“Sorcerer?”
I meet the tavernmaster's eyes. Half his face is obscured by darkness.
Flee from here. Go back home. To your wife. Lead a good life. Forsake this darkness in which you dwell.
This voice speaking in my mind sounds like me, but I do not know it. I have never feared the dark. Only fled from anything once. And—
This is not the Scholeio. Not the tomb of the Ennead.
Do you trust him?
Will you?
When I have decided to enter the tavern, its master is gone from sight. I am left alone, with a portal of stone and darkness. A shudder courses through me. It takes a very real effort of will to make my feet move me forward, to stoop under the door and into his tavern.
I want— I wish, desperately so, that something had happened when I entered that tavern. What I wouldn't give, now, telling the story, that I had, in fact, entered Dante's Hell or the Underworld of Tantric Buddhism – regardless of the centuries which separated me from them. Indeed, even the Fae world of my ancestors. The telling would, then, instantly be more... V doesn't want me to say interesting. Engaging.
Alas. I did not so much as feel anything unusual. Neither a tingling of my spine, nor inexplicable vertigo as I descended the three stone stops. Now, reliving this, I am aware of – and am only telling you lest you think I am witholding it – the absence of the eyes which had been crawling along my neck and back. They were, by then, forgotten to me. All I felt was the cool air and a whispering breeze guiding me down and in. All that I saw was darkness, brightened only by the daylight yawning at my back and drifting lazily from a trio of windows to my left. Which I knew without looking opened onto the building next door and the alley between. Dust motes dance in those dim beams like the dreams of the damned.
And I am alone.
I have said before and will again after this, I am sure: It stinks in here. Not, as you might suspect – or, that is, not primarily – of the dank of a stone basement. It reeked of piss and shit and moldering straw. This was not unusual; indeed, it was the norm. The floor of any tavern – and most, especially roadside, inns – were covered in straw. Straw which was rarely if ever changed, and which served both to absorb the piss, shit, vomit, and beer spilled by the patrons – to say nothing of other bodily fluids – as well as their beds once the sun had fled and sleep was upon them. Some things never change.
I stand here a moment as my eyes adjust to the low light. Unsurprisingly, there are no candles lit in the tavern's single room. There are likewise no tables in the traditional sense. Instead, there are sawhorses with boards laid across them. All the better, the Big Bad Wolf might say, for removing them and making space for sleeping. As a side note, if you have ever wondered what the “board” of Room and Board or Board Meeting is, it is these. Taverns would become, in later centuries, as anyone who knows the story of America knows, meeting places for the reputable and dis- alike.
“Holy shit! Rob? Is that you?”
I turn at the exclamation and find the tavernmaster behind his bar. His kitchen behind him alight with the pottage fire. Pottage was.... You'd probably prefer to continue not knowing. He holds a cup in one hand and in the other a dirty rag. By the look of him, he'd been standing there polishing that cup all day.
“Well, I'll be a son of a bitch. Miracles do happen!”
A frown darkens my face. Hadn't we just been talking?
Had we?
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“As grumpy as ever,” he laughs. Then, “You've come out of your hole on a holiday! It's the last day of Calendimaggio! Can't ya smile ever? I ain't seen ya in goin on a week! Figured not to til tomorrow, maybe the next day at the earliest. You can't even pretend to be glad to see me? Damn, kid. Well... you hungry? Thirsty?”
Now my head was spinning. What the Hell was going on? Just... a few hours ago, I guessed, Francis, Giorgio, and Regina had visited me... and now it's the last day of Mayday? I thought—
Something strange is going on.
“Well, ya just gonna stand there? Act like ya been here before!”
He's laughing at me. I walk over to him in a daze. Finding myself in my chair with no recollection of climbing into it.
“So, how's it goin?” he asks.
“Not great,” I hear myself answer. “It's been a weird day.”
“Oh? You wanna talk about it?”
I didn't.
I don't talk about my clients.
He slaps the wooden cup on the bar with a loud thwap!
I stare at the empty cup, wishing it weren't.
“Didn't figure.” He laughs.
He's always laughing at me.
We think you're pretty funny, too.
“Ya never do. Everything all right with Regina?”
I look up at him. His eyes shine in his smiling, beared, toady face.
“No,” I admit. “She....”
“Ah. She finally ask ya to help her divorce that fat prick she's got for a husband?”
“How could you—? I never— ...Ironic, hearing you call someone a fat prick, don't you think?”
“Hah. Well, when you look like me, you get to call fuckers fat pricks. You on the other hand.... And ya didn't have to spill her beans, kid. The whole town talks about their tiffs n rows. Don't take a soothsayer to guess what she wants from ya.”
“No. I guess not. But that wasn't what I was going to say.”
A moment of silence passes between us. Perhaps I was gathering my thoughts; maybe I was deciding to trust him.
“Aye? You wanna clue me in on what's goin on in that mind o yours?”
Not sure we know, either.
Some help you are.
“She's... mean. Hateful.”
“I see. She's puttin ya in the middle, then, eh? What you gonna do? Not like ya can just drop her after all this time. Not if you think you got somethin to teach her.”
Teach her?
Is that what we've got for her?
“Does it make me any better than Francis?”
“Dunno, kiddo. Do you need to be?”
“I.... Yes? No? Maybe. I want to be. I want to walk the right path, but.... I don't know. I feel like the monk standing at the bottom of the mountain.”
“Can't say I know that one, kid. But just wait. You talkin to me, this feels like it calls for a celebration.” Apparently from nowhere, the tavernmaster produces what seems to be a wine skin. “I was hopin to get to see ya again before Calendimaggio's over. The Captain stopped by. Told me a story ya just gotta hear. Dropped off a girlie, too – and phshew! what a pretty one she is. Almost couldn't believe my eyes when I saw her. But he also sold me this.”
He holds out and unstoppers the skin.
He just said The Captain.
I must have heard him wrong.
Instinct's protests are drowned out when the tavernmaster turns over the skin, pouring a liquid the color of molten gold into the cup before me. My eyes are glued to the stream, not least of which because it seems to catch the light in the room, even adding to it in some indescribable way, as with its own luminescense. I'm staring at the golden, glowing liquid filling my cup when motion catches my attention. He is holding a cup of his own, extended in toast. Smiling from ear to ear with his too-big mouth, he cries, louder than is strictly necessary:
“To communion! Eucharistos!”
Baffled by his choice of the Greek for thanks, but unable to consider it, my hand raises my cup and clicks it against his.
“Eucharisto,” I mutter in response, more a correction than agreement, taking the cup to my lips.
What at first was hesitation quickly becomes greedy abandon as the fluid passes between my lips. Whatever it is, it's unlike anything I've ever drunk before. Sweeter than any honey, and as thick as new milk, I suck it down almost recklessly, slapping the cup on the bar.
The tavernmaster laughs. “Good, eh? I know how much you love my beer, but—“
“That is so much better than your piss-ass beer,” I say, my voice filled more with awe than any kind of friendly insult. “Is that mead?” I find myself asking.
I don't know where he would have gotten mead – not from any captain making port in Genoa, of that I was certain. And besides—
That was nothing like the Mead we've had.
Reason was right.
Before I continue, I should explain:
Mead is both a simple beverage and a complicated one. Simply put, it is a honey wine; but honey wines are not all mead. It has existed throughout the history of Europe and Asia. Some will tell you that the Soma of India and the Ambrosia of the Greeks were Mead. And maybe they're right. But whatever Soma and Ambrosia were, they were not a simple alcoholic beverage. No wine has ever made a Man a god – not the wine of Dionysus, nor the wines of the Napa Valley. There was something else going on there. Something the Norse hint at when they tell us that the Mead of Poetry is made with Kvasir's blood and will make you a poet if you drink it. By the by, a poet wasn't – isn't? - just a poet. Of course I know what was going on! I'm (Not) Robert damned Longshore! I'm the Fulcrum of fucking Fate! (laugh) But I didn't know then, and telling you now would ruin the surprise.
I had had Mead, once. With the Master and a trio of Norse Seidkona, and given to me personally by a Volva. If I say any more than this, this will cease to be a narrative and will instead become an episode of Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know. Which – V says that's probably not a show, but would certainly be more rewarding that working with me. He's probably not wrong. Whatever the case, it was nothing like this.
I can feel it. Like a heat that fills first my throat, then my belly. Not like tea or coffee or even alcohol. It is... indescribable. Not like a literal heat— I feel like what it might look like if I'd swallowed a sun. I feel... radiant. And I can feel it radiating through me.
And, more than anything else, I want more.
I down three more cups, just as fast as the tavernmaster can pour them, until, laughing, he says:
“That's all I've got, Sorcerer!”
I feel no disappointment when at last I place my cup, upside down, on the bar; only the contentedest sort of drunken buzz.
“But I have got this.” The tavernmaster's voice is as teasing as a whore's.
Again, from apparently nowhere, he produces a wooden platter piled high with the most succulent of meats, cheeses, fruits, and breads I'd ever seen in one place – and I'd lived and dined in the palaces of Kings, Caliphs, and Emperors. My eyes bug wider with desire than they had when I was left alone with al-Muktafi's harem for the night.
I can't remember the last time I'd eaten, and my belly growls loud enough to let everyone in town know. The tavernmaster's laugh is only slightly less resounding.
“Now, before you go eatin me outta house n home, you was gonna tell me a story – your monk n the mountain.”
I'm nodding and “uh huh, uh huh”ing, but my hands are already shoveling the food into my face as fast as I can chew. There is no way to describe what I am eating besides to say that it approached, if it did not meet Plato's idea of the Ideal. It was perfect. Flavor made real. Like before this I had eaten only sand – only air.
Around mouthfuls, dreadfully impolite, I tell the story:
“A monk is standing at the base of a mountain. He wants to see the top, but is unsure about what way to go, when he sees a traveler walking along the road, from the direction of the mountain. He asks the traveler what he saw, and what way he used to climb and descend the mountain; the traveler tells him, but the monk decides that he will wait for another suggestion. Some time passes by, and he asks another traveler he sees returning from the trek to the top. Again he asks the traveler what he saw and how he climbed. The traveler tells him similar sights, but another way. Again, the monk decides to wait. Eventually, he has waited until he has spoken with 100 travelers, each with a different way up the mountain. After this, he decides that he doesn't need to see what is at the top – he has already been there, he figures, because he has heard about it from so many people. And, besides, finding his own way would be difficult. So he turns and leaves, never to see the top.”
This is the story. And when I have told it, I realize that the tray is gone. I do not know whether I emptied it. For that matter, I don't remember even denting its contents. But my belly bulges – perhaps even visibly – with my consumption. Heat and pleasure, satisfaction and satiation radiate through my very being.
“I see,” the tavernmaster says, solemnly.
When I look up to him, I am amazed. He is no longer the fat, old, bald tavernmaster I have known my two years in Genoa. Instead, he glows with the same golden light that now radiates in my belly. And he's young. Maybe my own age. His face is still his face, but his unruly beard is gone, replaced with the smoothest imaginable chin and cheeks, as though he had seen a barber while I spoke. His nose is still his, but I had never noticed how hooked it is. Nor how bright and beautiful the hazel of his eyes are. He smiles, with his too-big mouth and protuberant lips, but shows no teeth; and his hair! He has hair! Long and straight, rather than the curls I might have anticipated, it falls almost in a veil around his shoulders.
If I had known the continent existed, then, and visited it, I might have thought he looked Mesoamerican rather than Italian.
“You're... beautiful,” I breathe.
He laughs. When he speaks his voice is unchanged. “Ain't nobody called me beautiful in a long time, kid. But – all right. Why do you feel like that monk?”
I look around me, mystified by the brightness of the tavern.
When did it get so bright in here?
“Because,” I finally say, unable to keep the awe and almost-reverence out of my voice, “I spend my life listening to people describe their path, their struggle, and I... I never struggle. I never get to climb that mountain.”
“I see. Do you want to climb the mountain for yourself?”
“I do,” I mutter. “I want to see the top.”
“What does that mean to you – the top?”
“Enlightenment?” I laugh, and I can hear how drunken and silly I sound. “I don't know. That's silly. It's stupid.”
“You're not stupid. Quite the opposite, I would think.”
I sigh. “Nothing lasts forever. No matter how simple, every system is subject to Entropy. In the quest to delay what I've made from falling apart, I will necessarily need to add complexity until the whole thing finally does fall apart. Then it becomes an exercise in sand art. And what sort of immortality is it to spend that way?”
“Sand art?”
“Yeah. ...In the East, there are monks who make complex, colorful images in sand upon the floor of their temples. Days are spent perfecting these pieces. And when they're done... they sweep up the sand, obliteratnig the image and rendering the work and effort and all the emotion which went into the creation wasted.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Attachment. We suffer in this world because we're attached to it. We care about and form wants and opinions because we attach ourselves to their outcomes. We say, 'I'll be happy when' like happiness will ever come. When happiness is in the doing, not the having done. Imagine that the monks are working a spell. Imagine that when they are done, the spell will be complete. Imagine then that the spell was for some thing which, by the end of the crafting you no longer wanted. The spell would be useless, the creation a waste. All the energy focused into it would matter for not: all the desire which put it there and which could set the intention free, is a key which is forever lost. Am I making any sense?”
“You're saying they make the art and destroy it to remind themselves that moments are momentary. As much as we love it, beauty is impermanent too.”
“Basically. Artists, they understand that creation is an impermanent moment, too. They make until the thing is made, then they make again. Always making. I am no artist. Gods, too. They make their people, watch over them. What is a god without his people? What must it be to see your children obliterated, forgotten, from history? Your altars, your statues, you images broken and smashed? What do you do, then, with your immortality? Do you choose another people? Do you birth another child to watch it die before you? No. I am no god. No king. No priest. I am nothing.”
The tavernmaster's face changes when I say this. His perpetually cheery demeanor turns sour, inward. I don't know what it might mean, and I don't ponder it.
“I don't know. I never do anything. I never get anything done. I try to be Good – I want to be Good. But I want to be selfish, too. I want to leave Genoa and start over. But to what end? Just to leave there and start over again? No one wants me around. No one actually needs me.”
“Now, I'm sure that's not true.”
“It is! They just want to use me. They want to take my image and use it for their own ends. Make me a king – make me a pet wizard – have me destroy their husbands for them.... No one wants me.”
We sit there in silence a long time – me, watching the beams of glittering gold shimmer around him, him watching me waver on my stool.
“I don't know about any of that. But I know I like ya a great deal, kid, and I'll be sad to see ya go. If your mountain takes ya out of Genoa, I'll be glad you're gone, though. And glad to see you again if your Path brings you back my way. But let's not talk about that anymore. I have a story to tell ya. Maybe you'll like it. Maybe you'll find purpose in it I can't. Maybe it's the Path you're meant to walk.”
“You think so?” I squint at him, mocking suspicion. “I was told once before someone knew my Path. And that was a lie. Maybe the Prophets were right, and if only they'd acted better— Right? One good man in all of Soddom and Gamorrah. One wise man in one thousand. Or perhaps the gods themselves – and all the beings of their ilk – are the biggest lie of them all. Maybe civilization itself is built upon a foundation of falsehoods, and we're all trapped in place like trying to run underwater. And we all drown sooner or later.”
“Kid.... There are certain things you really outta not say.”
“The Truth shall set you free.”
“It'll also get you killed— Or turn you mad.”
“Who's to say I'm not already? What is madness? What is sanity? If sane is to sanitary as herecy is to making an unpopular choice.... Maybe it's better to be mad. Maybe it's better to be dead.”
“You don't believe that.”
“I don't know that I believe anything. Least of all anything I hear come out of my own mouth.”
“You know what I think? I think that ya say this stuff because ya think it'll hurt my feelings and I'll stop asking ya questions. I hear ya talk about wantin nothin and self denial and givin to the community and savin the world from slaver gods – and yet you are that traveler at the base of the mountain. You've heard all the stories of what the top of that mountain looks like and how to climb there, but you sit at the bottom. You've tried to ascend, made good progress, I'd wager by the way the town took to ya the way they do. They do. Don't interrupt me.
“They do. This town'll miss you when you're gone. Don't look at me like that. It's been on your face for months. Ever since ya stopped wanderin round town talkin to people. Since you stopped coming out of that office except for work. And don't act like this is pleasure for you. I have come to terms with the fact you and I are never gonna be friends. You're never going to trust me, and when you're gone it'll be forever. I known plenty of boys like you over the years. Most of them don't have but shit between their ears; but they have the biggest boners to get out. So they do. They join an army or become mercenaries. Most of them end up bandits. Most of them end up dead.”
I could remember the streets of London. As vividly as though I were still stealing and fighting with the other boys to survive. I say:
“'To know Atum's Being, contemplate him in thought. To see him with your eyes, look at the exquisite order of the Cosmos; the Necessity which governs everything you perceive; the Goodness of all that has been, and that is coming to be. Look at matter filled full with Life, and see Atum pulsating with all he contains. Contemplate the Cosmos as his ancient body, which is ever prime and new. See the planets circling in eternal time. See the spiritual fire of the heavens turned to light by the sun and shed as Goodness upon the world. See the ever-changing moon, which governs birth, growth and decay. See the constellation of the Bear which never rises or sets, but stays ever a fixed point — an axle around which the circle of the Zodiac revolves. See the comets which are called 'Prophet Stars', for when some future fate awaits the world they emerge for a few days, from their invisible home below the circle of the sun. Who is it that maintains such exquisite order?'
“What are you doing? You act like you're trying to get my personal philosophy out of me. …I feel like a Master being questioned by a pupil. Are you writing a book? Fine. Good and Evil are boring. Let's be real. Good and Evil are a matter of perspective. Is the Lion evil to the Gazelle? Is the Gazelle Evil to the Grass?”
“Is burning a city analogous at all to killing a gazelle?”
“No. It's not. But to the man who burns a village, what is evil but guilt? And what is guilt but the opinions of others projecting themselves in his thoughts? Is it not evil to take away a person's thoughts, if it is evil to kill him? What is death but the ultimate theft? We do not say to take a life meaninglessly – a life is more than the breath in your breast. Life is probability, possibility – but life is measured in and made valuable – desirable – by Choice. Our Choices-made pave our destinies. Our Fates are predicted by them.”
“You sound like a Greek. Liberty or death.”
“Not like that. Evil, Good, they are goalposts which are continually moving. But to me, Evil is any choice which takes away another's ability to make them.”
“A slaver to you—“
“Is revolting. But so is a king, a commander of an army—“
“A father?”
I shrug.
“Are you not a landowner? Do you not own the human lives who tend those lands?”
“I am a landowner in name only. I am not a humanowner, and that land is not mine. What it is is my responsibility. If, under my stewardship, its crops fail, then the people who live on it, who would otherwise enjoy its produce, suffer. Because I own that land, I do not owe any king taxes on it. No one deserves the yields from that land but the people on it. So they work with my wife – they make a profit if they can, I get some of the goods, and she manages the money it takes to hope for more next year – to buy tools, to educate and encourage the creative, to import specialists and new techniques. Everyone has work, a home, food for their belly, but most importantly, time for leisure – to enjoy their families, their hobbies. I have a skill none of them do – the ability to organize, to find and position people to hopefully make things better, sustainable. All I ask in return, in payment, is a portion of what they make.”
“A tithe! You are as a god to these distant people.”
“Not a tithe. Not a tax. A gift – to be included in the pride which comes from a product well made. Just because the Church is greedy does not mean the system cannot work. It never has before. All that means is history is full of ways not to provide for a people.”
“Now all you gotta figure out is how to never die. Then you can get your wine n ham n cheese sacrifice forever.”
“Then maybe I am a wizard.”
“Nothing is ever perfect. Even our Creation is imperfect.”
“Maybe not. And, then again, maybe it is made in their image after all, and they are not perfect. Maybe the gods are as venal and mean as their Creation.
“'The two angels arrived at Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of the city. When he saw them, he got up to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground. “My lords,” he said, “please turn aside to your servant’s house. You can wash your feet and spend the night and then go on your way early in the morning.”
“'“No,” they answered, “we will spend the night in the square.”
“'But he insisted so strongly that they did go with him and entered his house. He prepared a meal for them, baking bread without yeast, and they ate. Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.”
“'Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him and said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing. Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”
“'“Get out of our way,” they replied. “This fellow came here as a foreigner, and now he wants to play the judge! We’ll treat you worse than them.” They kept bringing pressure on Lot and moved forward to break down the door.
“'But the men inside reached out and pulled Lot back into the house and shut the door. Then they struck the men who were at the door of the house, young and old, with blindness so that they could not find the door.
“'The two men said to Lot, “Do you have anyone else here—sons-in-law, sons or daughters, or anyone else in the city who belongs to you? Get them out of here, because we are going to destroy this place. The outcry to the Lord against its people is so great that he has sent us to destroy it.”
“'So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were pledged to marry his daughters. He said, “Hurry and get out of this place, because the Lord is about to destroy the city!” But his sons-in-law thought he was joking.
“'With the coming of dawn, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Hurry! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away when the city is punished.”
“'When he hesitated, the men grasped his hand and the hands of his wife and of his two daughters and led them safely out of the city, for the Lord was merciful to them. As soon as they had brought them out, one of them said, “Flee for your lives! Don’t look back, and don’t stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!”
“'But Lot said to them, “No, my lords, please! Your servant has found favor in your eyes, and you have shown great kindness to me in sparing my life. But I can’t flee to the mountains; this disaster will overtake me, and I’ll die.”
“But Lot didn't die, did he?” the tavernmaster asks.
“Not in that story,” I agree. “His wife did.”
“I see. Do you think that you are Lot? Is Genova Soddam?”
“No. Not exactly. The world is Soddam. But... if I've lived right, the way I'm meant to – the way, if you believe those like Plato, I chose to – I'll die without trying to.”
I'm still trying – trying to die – seeking the perfect death, at this point. Maybe the death of an author will do the trick.
“If that's so, who are the Angels? Eh? Who is telling – or told – you to be Good, that you might represent their salvation?”
I look up at him. His beautiful, young-looking face feels so... trustworthy. I feel... suddenly emotional. Old hurts deep in my heart, that I have tried the last seven years to withdraw from, to run from, sweep over me.
“Take your time, kid.”
“I'm not sure I can.”
“Aw. You're safe. You can tell me.”
“It's … a secret.”
“A secret?” he laughs.
“Yeah. When I was a boy... I met a lot of people. They taught me things. Took me to every nook and cranny of the known world to....”
“Yeah?”
“It sounds stupid when I think about it. They wanted me to to absorb all the world's wisdom.”
“To do what with it?”
“I... don't know, actually. I've already said too much.”
“You ain't said nothin at all!”
“Good. Then I'm in compliance with the First Rule.”
“Eh?”
“Secrecy. Above all else.”
“Or what?”
“Or else.”
“And how they gonna know? It's not like they got spies watchin you.”
I wasn't so sure of that.
“The Rules say that if a member is caught by another member of the Order talking about the Order, that member is required by Rule to kill him or her. Women can be members – often their most deadly.”
“All right. But say I broke the Rule. What then? You gonna kill me?”
“Then you and I better hope they aren't watching. You know – You'd imagine the story would cut to one of them emerging, covered in wounds and the blood of his friends to be brought to a new way of life.” I mean, of course, the story of the three boys who snuck into a Scholeio Demiourgoi meeting.
“Sounds like you're workin with some dangerous people.”
“You don't know the half of it.”
“They're why you're here? In Genoa?”
I don't know how to react to this. So I don't.
“How did the detail about the knife get in there? If someone knew enough about their fates to include it in their fairy tale for initiates, who were they? Were they the ones who found them? A guard of their cell?”
“Makes you wonder how the story first got told, doesn't it? Or the practice was common enough that the boys are made up; but the details are accurate, leaving the threat implicit.”
I looked up at him. He's wiping that cup and looking as nondescript as normal. The way he said that sounded like he'd been thinking it for years.”
“Maybe. But that's true of every story we remember.”
“You think they're all made up?”
“I think it doesn't matter whether Lao Tzu or Socrates or Jebir or Thoth-Hermes or Jesus lived or did or said what we think they did, so long as the message is received.”
“That those with the eyes to see may see and the ears to hear may hear. But you do not think those are real people who did as we say?”
“Did Julius Caesar say, 'Vini Vidi Vici'? Did the gods wage war with flaming weapons from flying chariots? Were Grendel and his mother monsters? Was king Minas a cuckold powerful enough to demand the tribute of Greek youths and maidens? I mean, everything he touched did turn to gold.”
“Then you do not believe your teachers?”
“Huh?”
“The wisdom they imparted to you – you dismiss it because you don't believe it is literally true?”
“Of course not. People would say I have the Midas Touch. And in that way, the way the story is meant to be used – as a common language for describing the world – it is effective.”
“Effective, but flawed, Philalitheia?”
“I just wish the metaphor... weren't a metaphor.”
Part Two: Serpent Stories
“You want literal monster girls.”
“I mean, when you put it like that... yes. I guess so.”
“Damn, kid. I can't believe you done fucked so many human girls you're tryna hump girls with animal parts.”
“Fuck you.”
“Well, that's just rude,” he says, grinning. “You ever heard of the Rod of Asclepius?”
I nod, but feel inclined to say nothing more.
“What do you know about serpents?”
“Serpents are the Goddess,” I laugh “Snakes are a... convenient metaphor for the feminine Aspect. It is easy to imagine a woman as a snake during the coital act.”
“The coital act? Fuckin?”
I Shrug. “Especially if she's on top. But it's more effectual than that. Serpents are a dangerous creature. Often inane, even beautiful, charming and mysterious; it can be difficult, especially for the ignorant, to know the difference in a venomous and non-venomous serpent. They can strike in a blink, often with little to no warning. It can be necessary to be vigilant for and wary of them even when they are not around. But more than that, to Experiential spiritual practitioners—“
“Wizards?”
“By many better names, yes. But let's use the Siberian word Shaman. It feels comfortable. They say that when they meet her, the feminine Aspect, the Goddess, she reveals herself first as as serpent.”
“Be honest, kid—“
“No promises.”
“Hah. Have you? Seen her?”
“I've never seen anything like that. I've never seen... anything. Not in that sort of context.” I say this, still marveling at the change to his appearance, the light filling the tavern.
“What do you mean?”
“Visions. Delusions. Prophecy. I have never experienced the Divine in that way. Maybe I've just never experienced the divine.” I chuckle a little, and don't really know why. Then look at him, peering into the golden glow of his face. “You know it when you're dealing with the Other. That's what they say, people who've done it – the stories. But you're just a tavernmaster.” I have to resist the urge to ask, What do you know? “You can be shown them during meditation. There are lots of ways. But the best way is through Soma. Or Ambrosia. I could give it 1000 names, I feel like – a substance, granted by the gods to mortals to make them immortal or gods themselves. The Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. And the Serpent is the ancient priestesses who used to brew and administer the sacrament.”
I'm looking at the tavernmaster when I hear myself giving voice to my thoughts, like reading a message on a teleprompter for the first time.
“But this was hundreds, often thousands of years ago. The Romans, with the advent of Christianity, crushed the Dionysian cult – maybe the last to perform this sacrament? I don't know. So much is lost. So much was diluted by the time the historical record reaches us. What little of it can be said to reach us at all. Lost, deep, in the swamp of history. Stamped out by ordered societies. By the Church and the Roman nobility and every other System in the world. There are people who still remember those ways. Not all of them the same way or with the same substances.... You know – When I was a boy, I went through a Visionary ceremony.”
“How did that go?”
I shrug. I didn't see anything. I puked a lot.”
He laughs.
“So, no. I've never seen The Goddess – not as a serpent – not at all. If I've met any god, I don't know it. And you're supposed to know that kind of thing. … You think the gods ever used to just... hang out among us? Like, they got tired of being a god, so they come down here to live common lives – as farmers or merchants or—“
“Tavernmasters?”
I regard him with a half-grin. “That could explain some things about you.”
Slow blink. “Yeah? Like what?”
I laugh drunkenly. “I don't know. Just trying to be funny.”
“How many tavernmasters have you known, kid?”
“How many? I'm not sure. Dozens?”
“Not how many have you met. Not how many taverns and inns have you spent time in— How many of us, Hospitaliers for lack of better word, have you taken the time to know?”
I meet his eyes. “None.”
“Hm. Well, we don't exactly have a creed, like other societies. But we do have long memories. We would. We're not storykeepers, Shaman, but part of what we do keeps us connected to that oral storytelling tradition you talk so much about.”
Do I talk about the Oral Storytelling Tradition?
“I wonder where you would put someone such as I in your little Triangle theory. With you, I wonder? Or on the outside lookin in?”
Triangle theory?
Had I said aloud my ideas that society is a triange – Rulers, Priest, People? I can't remember.
“We are not the Rulers,” he says. “I am no Priest. But neither am I Common, eh? We live, most of us, outside the borders of society, at the crossplaces between places.”
He falls contemplatively silent.
“Do you believe in magick, Rob?”
I could hear the K in his tone. I could not discern whether I should answer truthfully or not, however.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean magick. Crossroads. Liminal spaces. Do you believe in the power, the natural energies of the world, the Cosmos?”
“Why don't you just tell me what you want to tell me? Whether I already agree with you or not, you feel the need to say this. You can neither change what I think nor form your opinion around mine. Speak what you will or don't. Just, please – don't bore me.” I laugh; but he isn't joking.
“Not sure which I'm more offended about: What ya said, or that ya waited two years to tell me I bore you.”
I shrug
“Hmm. The world is older than we think. A long, long, looooooong time ago, before the stories you think you know (Jus cus you know em doesn't mean you understand em)— There was gods in those days. Beings we would understand to call gods at any rate. Back then, they lived in this world the way we do. But, eventually, they got tired of doing their work for themselves. Imagine – bein immortal, doin the same thing, day in, day out, forever. You can only raise so many children with so many different women before it's time to set your mind to something new.
“So them gods, they got together – now it might've only taken two, or it might've been a village, or it might've been all of em workin together. I don't know. But they birthed the first healthy human baby boy that way. Maybe it was only one of em. I like to imagine they made bunches of em. But the gods didn't make that human baby to love and care for like good parents. No. They had generations of grandbabies they'd already done that with.
“No. Man was made to glorify his gods.
“I don't wanna bore you, kid, and this ain't what I wanted to talk about any way. When the gods was in charge, Man was safe. He had a warm place to sleep, food for eatin, and work to keep his back strong. But that Order was not to remain. Chaos came, as it nearly always does, and it destroyed what we had.
“The gods – most of em – left. Or were killed in the conflict. Man was left on his own. He was scattered across the face of the world. And without his gods to remember the old ways, he forget em and their languages. Men came to see one another not as one being, but as the gods saw one another: by their differences.
“The greatest Darkness was an Age of death, war, famine, disasters... the face of the world was changed. ...That's what my father said. He said that we do this, tavernmasters, innkeepers, restauranteurs – we dedicate our lives to hospitality because it was the first Decree the gods who emerged to lead their people from that Darkness gave us: Help one another.”
“Did your father really tell you all that?”
He looked at me, unflinching. “Yes.”
He didn't seem to be lying. Why didn't I believe him?
“I don't know anything about your father, but he certainly has an interesting opinion of the past. A noble ideal to follow. You do this only to help people?”
He laughs. “What do I get out of it? Do I want to be the richest man in town like the Executioner? And loved about as well? Selflessness is its own goal, its own reward. But no – before you can ask – I'm not always good or selfless. Sometimes—“ He shoots me a glance. “Sometimes I have to answer to a higher power, too.”
That's a weird thing to say. I shrug it off.
“Are you a liar, Tavernmaster?”
“Everyone lies, kid. Now just be quiet a minute and let me tell you this story.
“The Captain – same one who brought the girl, that I bought that food n drink from, he told me a story that had me instantly thinkin o you. You know us tavern masters, we gotta talk to people that come into town, news n the like – where they been, sights they seen, that sorta stuff. But ever since I first met you— You remember the first thing you asked me when you was awake and had eaten? The only thing you asked me?”
I don't, but I nod anyway.
“Have you ever seen or heard of anything strange happenin in town. I said, 'You're the strangest thing I ever seen,' and 'That question's the strangest thing I ever heard.'” He laughs at the memory, and I am beginning to recall. “Turns out, I think you went around askin everyone that same question.”
I nod. “Never got an interesting answer, either.”
“I'm sure not. Ghosts n bumps in the night is what you made your early livin fixin for people, n I'd bet didn't a single spirit or boogedeeboo show itself. But, hey, ya helped people not be afraid o their homes n their beds in the dark. But, anyway, I'm talkin to this captain, n I dno't know why, but I thought o you. So I ask him, I said, 'You ever seen or heard of anything strange in your travels?'
Now, sailors is a different breed o person. Superstitious unlike any other kind o man. So I expect he might wanna fill my ears with tales o sea beasts n mermaids n the like. But he looks at me, n just as serious as can bee, his face gone all pale— N mind ya, he's an Easterner, all right? One o them Saracens, no doubt, though I ain't never known one o them to trade with no Christians. Pirates're pirates, right? Well, he weren't no pirate, no barbarian. Just as civilized as you'n me, n spoke Genoese like he was born to it. N when I say he went pale, boy, you better believe I mean it. He says,
“'You know what? I have heard somethin recently.' And I just knew I done right in askin, so I pour him another beer. Then he goes on to tell me aobut how he was stopping at this little island out there in the Aegean, right? He didn't tell me where, n after hearin the story I can imagine he didn't want nobody chasin the best he heart about.”
“And yet here you are telling me.”
“Weren't you just pissin n moanin about wantin somethin better'n Genoa? A man like you, his heart dies without adventure, without a monster to track down, a dragon to slay, a mystery to solve – a quest to go out questin after! Now, dammit – this ain't the time to turn into a chatterbox. Just let me tell the tale without ya getting bored.
“The Captain, he paints for me a picture o bein on this idyllic island, sittin with the townsfolk in their taverna, enjoyin the afternoon turnin to night with cups o ouzo – n listenin to these men tell the sorts o tall tales men tell when they known each other forever n got cups o good drink in their hands. N that's what he says he think they is at first, when talk turns to snakes – tall tales. These men, farmers n herders, mostly, he figures – they start talkin about a great big snake a bunch of em been seein round the island.”
He pauses dramatically, and I take this as my cue to ask:
“How big was it?”
“Now, see, this si the part ya just ain't gonna believe. He says to me, 'I didn't believe em at first. One of em said he'd seen it and it was ten feet long and big aroud as your leg. Another said it was at least 20, and wider than your waist, and another, the last before all Hell broke loose, said he'd seen it in broad-ass daylight— Now, the others, they'd been guessin, see? Found tracks or maybe glimpsed it out of the corner of their eyes, right? But this man, an old farmer-type, grey hairs for a beard n streamin outta his nose n ears, he said he saw it clear as can be snatch up one o his full-grown cows in its mouth n carry it off just as happy as you please, like a puppy prancin off with a bone for gnawin.' Now, mind you, this is the Captain's words:
“He said it had to be fifty damn feet long. Two grown men could stand comfortably shoulder-to shoulder in that fuckin thing's maw!”
The tavernmaster laughs, and I exclaim:
“That's fuckin impossible!” But I'm laughing right with him.
“I know it,” the tavernmaster chortles. “That's what I said: Ain't no serpent ever got 50 feet long!”
“Aegean snakes don't get over five feet long!” I laugh. “Five feet is huge for an Aegean snake.”
“I know! What a monster that would be! And I never known a farmer not to know a measurment with his eye – definitely not so much as to mistake a five foot snake for a fifty-footer! But that's not even the craziest part of the story.”
For the record, Listener, the Titanoboa, a snake which went extinct some 60 million years ago, was approximately 40 feet long. At its widest point, an adult's shoulders would be a snug fit in its mouth. Today's Anacondas are only some 15 feet – and both were/are in South America – not the Aegean.
I'm shaking my head in frank disbelief, but as amused as I have been in years – maybe as many as seven of them.
“So, anyway, the Captain is having fun listening to all of this when a man suddenly stands up in the taverna. Instantly, he says, you could tell that the man wasn't one of em – a foreigner, right? And that somethin weren't right about him. Said he was too skinny, 'All skin and bones, and his clothes hung on him like a boy wearin his dad's pants n shirt.' His hair was too long n dirty n jutted out this way n that like it was his habit to ball his fists in it n yank, right? But it was his eyes where you could see the madness.
“The Captain said they was sunk in his head, dark as empty sockets, cept the eyelids was puffy n red like he'd been cryin – and there weren't no whites. Just angry bloodshot red all around them cobalt blues.”
I shudder a little, imagining the man.
“'He had the shrillest voice I ever heard from a man's chest,' The Captain said. 'Like he was shriekin from a horror he could never escape from.' You'll just have to imagine it. Not sure either of us wanna hear me attempt it.”
I chuckle, but my heart is in my throat.
“'You have to kill it!' He said he said. 'You don't understand what it is!' The other men start laughin at him. 'Relax, stranger,' one calls out. 'It ain't real. Just a story. And not the worst ol Philetas ever conjured up.' The men all laugh, but the stranger, his eyes jump between the men who had spoken earlier. None of them will meet his eye, either. Finally, he says, so low you can barely hear him: 'It's dangerous. More dangerous than you know. What happens when it comes for your sons – your daughters – for you n your wives? Will you believe me then?' All at once, they drown him out in capering laughter. Many even rise and dance round one another like the coils of a titanic serpent.
“'I've seen it. Up close. It's not just a serpent,' he screeches into the cacophony. 'Sure, it has serpent parts. But the top part is that of a woman. The most beautiful woman you ever saw. Tits like— But hands with razor claws and a mouth filled with fangs to put a lion to shame.'
“And that's it,” the tavernmaster says. “That's the whole story.”
The abrupt ending catches me off guard. But, I decide, That's how stories like this end.
“Wooooow,” I hear, and am astonished by, my astonishment. “A Lamia.”
“A what?”
“What the fuck do you think you're doing?”
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