CHAPTER 8
Suddenly, as the moon set and morning dawned, the whole forest fell silent as if all its living creatures were obeying a signal; the frogs in the mud ceased croaking, and in the distance the ancient lament of the owls died away on a lingering note. Marcus was only half awake, his head cupped in the palm of his hand, when a diaphanous figure with enormous scarlet wings, fiery eyes and coils of hair twisting like a thousand serpents, emerged from that unreal silence as if it had descended from the starlight and the moon’s rays, as ephemeral as the morning mist over the lake. It wove its way silently through the trees until it reached the cave and Marcus. Marcus raised his head and could not believe his eyes when he saw the ghostly shape. When he spoke his voice came out feeble and hesitant, like an echo from far away:
“Stay away from me, you incubus! Out, malign spirit, you can’t be real, I must be dreaming. You cannot be a creature from this world, but… are you alive? Do you breathe? Can you speak? Are you a secret messenger from some divinity? Are you a god? An angel? A magician? Why do I feel cold and my blood freeze when I look at you? Speak, tell me what you seek, but if you are a damned soul get you back to the underworld. Don’t you know that the grave and the tomb cannot return their dead? So if you know the origin of all things, the human race, the beasts, lightning, rain and if you know the meaning of pain then you know that the dead belong to the dead, just as the rivers must run down to the seas, so leave the living to abide their allotted span. Have you abandoned your tomb solely to terrorise me? Perhaps you want me to lift that veil of mist that hides your face with my sword? You are silent, do you truly want to frighten me? As you wish, fear – swell my breast, and you, heart – burst if you can.”
The winged being remained silent, while the old monk’s parchment, that Marcus had dropped on the ground in surprise, suddenly burst into flames and burnt like a torch as if by magic. Marcus jumped up and shouting as he brandished his scythe traced three circles around the dying flames to ward off evil, his cries are echoed by the mournful call of an owl close by. The familiar screech seemed to calm Marcus who went on in a raucous voice:
“Tell me your name, strange creature from another world. Are you a celestial body? If you are I would fane dance with you on my snow-covered tomb, would fane have encountered you on a boat on the eternal lake, would fane be ferried by you to the shores of the infinite. But here in this obscure wilderness, where all is harsh all I can do is hold my breath to capture the sound of your beating scarlet wings. So tell me what you want of me? Speak illusion, tell me who you are, what, silent still? Perhaps you have not the power of speech?”
Finally, with a voice that seemed to issue from the underworld, the creature spoke and his words dropped like stones into the pool of silence.
“The spirit created life and life like water runs ever on, from the springs of its birth to the black sea of its death, the spirit of the secret room created man elevating him from nebulous dreams, and man is unsteady and fragile, glued to the earth like a reed that needs water to grow, and for man days and years were born.”
“Who are you? You who rise from nothing in this desert of silence to fill me with horror and when you speak it is but to terrify my soul. Come closer so that I can touch you.”
The shade came closer and Marcus tried to catch hold of it without success.
“I can see you but I cannot touch your body, you are the opposite of the wind, we feel the air on our bodies but nobody can see it. So what manner of creature are you, then?”
“Every creature is like a seed, an apple contains a whole invisible orchard, but the seed will only grow tall and strong if it falls on fertile ground.”
“A seed? And if that seed falls on a stone where even the thorn birds cannot peck it up, what will become of it?”
“It is always a fragment of you. I have been thrown into the furrow of your dreams by a forgotten race, the ancient child that sings inside you, you yourself give me life and breath.“
“The ancient child of a forgotten race?”
“The same race that wove the soul of man from air and fire with a strand of eternal light which had lain hidden for thousands of years in the centre of the earth where water and mist were born. That is the race I come from and I am nourished by the mist.”
“Who are you? Are you death? No, you cannot be death. I have seen death in an old picture, he is a skeleton armed with a long scythe, and he has the face of woman.. perhaps to deceive us better. So if you aren’t death, who are you? I want to cry your name to the night.”
“Everything that lives and breaths comes under my wing sooner or later because I am Azelen, the Herald of Death! I accompany souls on their last dark journey.”
“Take me then, I am not afraid. Come, Azelen, you evil angel, embrace me, kiss me with your frozen lips, deliver my being to the air, until I can hear nothing but the hymn of eternity. Why do you wait? Are you hoping to frighten me? If you know me as well as you claim, you will know that I have faced the enemy alone in battle. I, alone, when my soldiers fled like rats from a sinking ship at the first roll of the drums of war, battled my way through the gates of the enemy’s stronghold and wherever my sword fell it bit deep, rivers of blood swirled around my feet. From the helmet on my head to the soles of my sandals I was completely encrusted in blood... and none of it mine. That feat earned me a crown of oak leaves and the palm of victory. So, Azelen even were you a monster with a thousand heads I still wouldn’t be afraid. Come, Evil Angel and bear me off with you into deepest hell.”
“Your time has not yet come, but remember that death walks forward laughing night and day with her big, black wings spread wide. And without knowing it each living being walks behind her, when she looks over her shoulder many souls fall like ripe fruit at her feet into a sleep from which there is no awakening. But this only happens when their time has come, otherwise all those souls go on walking in that fatal procession behind death, who implacably continues her march towards eternity without a pause, because she is never tired, never hungry, never thirsty. Remember when you see me again that I will be with her and I will push your soul into the abyss. If you want to prevent this from happening before your allotted time, then leave these mountains. Go! Go as quickly as you can and never come back again.”
“If you are not here to take my soul, why are you here?”
“To remind you that only a fool, a madman, would attempt to challenge with impunity the divine design.”
The angel glided off, beating the air with its long scarlet wings, but suddenly it stopped and turned back to look at Marcus and whispered its last terrible words softly to the breeze:
“Only the humble in life will live forever in eternity!”
With this it disappeared. Marcus was bathed in sweat, great drops of it rolled down his forehead and into his eyes and mouth, shaking with terror he blinked several times and looked around, then he yelled for his slave.
Janu arrived with his cloak flung upside down over his shoulders and a lit torch in his hand.
“Do you want me to sing again, Master?”
“No! Tell me about those concoctions you make. Yesterday I saw you collecting belladonna, I know it imprisons the mind and sends men on imaginary journeys. You didn’t dare mix any into my drink, did you?”
“Why should I, my lord? The concoction you mention helps to lower fevers. Have you got a fever, Master?”
“No! It’s not fever that bothers me tonight, my friend. But… if I’m not drugged or drunk then why am I sweating like this? Am I supposed to believe that that vision was real and it wasn’t you shouting out in your sleep? You are an explorer of silence, I’ve often heard you shouting out during the night and when the morning came you would explain that you had heard faraway voices from your beloved native land, voices that hadn’t been created yet. Tell me, have you ever heard of a black angel called Azelen, the Herald of Death, who issues forth from the horrors of hell?”
“No, My Lord. But… yes, it is true that I often used to shout
in my sleep. In the dark of the night men often call to their fellows for help because the spectre of death lives in each of us. So a son calls on his mother and a mother calls on her son, but I, I, My Lord, no longer keep a vigil in the silence of the night waiting for a saviour to rescue me from my slavery. Who can people like us call on for aid, My Lord? This is why I no longer cry out, although my sorrow for my homeland is as deep as ever, but I no longer dream of it and I no longer dream of my ship coming into port with the beloved faces of the men of my homeland at the prow.”
“So… it must have been real, and in my dreams, even if I could swear that I was awake, I was about to kneel down before that shade from the spirit world. It was a moment snatched from eternity, I was the murderer kneeling in front of his victim. Do you think that eternity has wings to flee with? But… if you are sure that you didn’t see or hear anything then what else can I say? Perhaps fear freezes time and I didn’t see that ice-cloaked monster in the guise of an angel last night, even if everything seemed so real. It was a truly strange being, almost a prince of darkness, beautiful and terrible, it talked about death walking ahead of us, even if we..... pretend not to see her. It spoke about the spirit who conceived us, who transforms heat into cold and about a light that has been lying buried in the centre of the earth for thousands of years.”
“A light, My Lord?”
“Yes! And then all of a sudden it just dissolved into the mist like a pool of boiling water leaving a wisp of smoke behind.”
“Smoke, My Lord?”
“Wake up, by all the gods! And stop echoing everything I say. Can’t you see that I’m so desperate I could tear my eyes out for not having been able to see what was before them? Yes, it just suddenly vanished, evaporated and left a little pile of ashes on the ground. Please, please, say that you saw it too. You saw it, didn’t you? You know how to read the seeds of time and know which ones will sprout and which ones won’t, tell me that it was just …. . Ah, well, if you really didn’t see or hear anything then go back to sleep, I don’t want to rob you of any more, leave me to this endless, comfortless night. No! No, please wait here with me a while, I don’t want it to come back again. Tell me, do you believe what they all think back in Rome that these strange apparitions, women giving birth in the water, spectres of death, virgins as savage and beautiful as sirens, who all appear and disappear out of nowhere, do you think they’re the work of the devil? Do you think that this enchanted forest where even the trees sob in the darkness can drive you really mad?”
“Mad, My Lord? Well, it’s a fact that it’s difficult going here. It’s no breeze getting through this wilderness, you don’t come across industrious charcoal workers or wood-cutters with their axes slung over their shoulders, but thinking that it can drive you mad, My Lord, just because you’ve seen a woman happily giving birth in a stream, or that creature, that siren that you said was beautiful enough to put the stars to shame, well that seems a bit much to me.
I don’t know any absolute truths, but I do know that even the loveliest garden can be devastated by the north wind when it comes racing down and strips trees and flowerbeds bare, and it’s that same wind that blows gales with waves so high that they devour men and ships, but what of it? Are we all supposed to go mad? Our last hope lies in our tacit knowledge of what exists apart from ourselves. Just like seeds trembling under the snow before they sprout into new plants, we only tremble from the fear of fear. When I served a Phrygian seer I learnt that earth dogs sometimes come out of those limbos where matter ends and appear to human beings in all sorts of shapes and guises. My master called those dogs devils.”
“You’re right, my faithful, wise Janu! I’ve often dreamt of angels and demons during the dark hours before dawn when life is at a low ebb, but they were only dreams. I remember a fire once that was particularly lively and leapt all over the place, it managed to take on an almost human shape ... , but the fire couldn’t speak.”
“My master said that there is a magic moment in the folds of time when everything is possible. In a tiny fragment of that strange hour when the tide turns at the end of the day and night begins, there is a hidden moment that belongs to neither the earth nor the heavens. It conceals a thousand doors with a hundred thousand chinks which open and close to reveal strange figures anchored on strands of spiders’ webs. In that fragment man’s thoughts can reach the stars and finally meet his god. Each creature can walk on the moon’s rays if he wishes, because morning never dawns until she has explored all the secret paths of the night and the shadows. The angel you saw, my lord, existed only in your mind, born of a fragment of a memory thousands and thousands of years old, the memory of another life, a witness from long ago, that perhaps lived many millennia ago, before the wind gifted man with words. Be sure that it will live on in you until the end of time and if you really want, but only if you really want to, you can conjure it again and again.”
“Do you mean that the angel of death is always with me, Janu?”
“Exactly! My old master claimed that every man lives thousands of life in a sole life. When night falls and an exhausted man goes to sleep and dies, the next day he is reborn to another life. So do not fret any more, fear attacks us and penetrates our very bones, but it must be tamed and not killed, if we want to overcome our basest instincts.”
“I saw it clearly. My eyes were wide open when it suddenly transformed itself into air and disappeared. How can you be so calm? Answer me. Have you gone back to sleep? My poor friend, you’re right not to listen to me anymore, this mission is wearing us out in more ways than one, here am I still wearying you with my ghosts in the middle of the night when you look as if you’re wool-gathering.”
“Pardon, master, I woke in the middle of a dream, and in my dream…”
“You were dreaming of her, weren’t you?”
“You know how my disobedient mind has been wandering lately, master, almost as if I was under a spell.”
“A spell? So you’re still in the coils of love’s mad spell, are you. Are you still hankering for that pretty girl with her water jar on her hip? The girl with skin like honey who skimmed past you on the path to the spring, your lovely desert rose. What’s her name?”
“Orphea, my lord.”
“So, lovely Orphea has coloured your heart and moulded it to her pleasure, if she now inhabits your lonely dreams. Without needing any spell she has well and truly captured you, from the way you lose your head at the mere mention of her name. I was watching you back there at the spring when her dress brushed against your hands, or was it your soul? You looked as if a spirit had soared off with you to the highest peaks, and now she’s gone you look as if you’ve had all your feathers plucked. Am I right in thinking you’re longing to fly to her lily-like lips and settle there forever more?”
“It was she who taught me to fly, when I saw her coming towards me as light as a feather, with her water jar on her hip, as splendid as a comet behind the mountains, I shuddered and thought I was going to die. She, a star, and me, a poor thirsty wayfarer, and when she looked at me it was as if a petal had descended from heaven and caressed my soul. I knew I’d die if I didn’t talk to her.”
“And when she gave you a drink of her water…”
“I couldn’t quench my thirst, it still rages…for her, like a lark awaiting the new day to drink the dewdrops, I await her to fly to heaven, without her all the stars have paled, I can’t forget her for a single moment, just as the earth doesn’t forget the seeds it harbours in its womb and a mother doesn’t forget the pains of childbirth. She has taught me that a tiny dewdrop can become a river, master.”
“Really? Even if you haven’t picked a single rose from her garden yet or tasted the meanest of her sweet fruits…”
“Even if I only got as far as her garden gate, gazing at her like a hungry beggar, I saw the faces of my unborn children in her ardent eyes. She holds them like a hidden desire in her heart and moulds them like clay for me day after day. If magic managed to reveal all this
treasure in the light of her eyes then that same magic will give me the strength to cross deserts, scale mountains and navigate the seas, I’d fearlessly tear suckling wolf cubs from their mother for love of her. For her I’d burn like incense and then fly to the ends of infinity in that thick fog that wraps the soul in sweet pain and my happy cry would wake the stars themselves.”
“What ardour, by all the gods of Olympus! But if my memory serves me well, before meeting this girl with skin like honey, every time we used to talk about love you never had a word to say and now here you are chattering about your children as if they were already here by your side helping you to cut your way through this wilderness.”
“Indeed they are, every day they’re here helping me, ever since I’ve learnt to love this sweet poison burning like a flame in my breast, I feel them here with me, from the first morning light when the tousled dawn peeks out from the sun’s skylights, to when a yawning night leans out of sunset’s windows. I constantly think of them and their mother, her beauty will not fade in the autumn of her days and as I sleep, I dream of lying under an arbor bedecked with bunches of stars and I watch her dance in the waving wheat with a snowflower in her hair, while our unborn children play the double reed flute for us, laughing.”
“How I envy you! You understand love so well. Whereas I lost my faith in it long ago, and now consider it a fairy tale. When I was a young dreamer I experienced a love so painful that it became the bane of my life, and to free myself from the memory I started to go joyfully into battle without any fear of death, this is what my reputation for cruelty springs from.”
“Truly, master? You’ve never mentioned it before. Tell me, what was her name? Do I know her?”
“I seem to remember her name, but I can’t be sure, I do know that I never want to hear it again. I don’t want to tell you who she was, I swore that her wretched name would never pass my lips again, I wouldn’t even scribble it on these tablets, because her memory is a thorn in my side, it still stings.”
“Tell me the story without mentioning her name then, the memories are churning in your brain now anyway.”
“You’re right, I can’t pretend otherwise, The wound may heal if it is aired.
Her father died when she was just a child and one day her mother disappeared too. She was left an orphan with no one to look after her, so she lived alone under the protection of goodness knows what god between heaven and earth at the foot of the Palatine, a stranger in her own land. Her hut stood on a slip of land between a wheat field and a spring where the women went to fill their water jars at sunset and travellers stopped to rest and quench their thirst. The first time I saw her she was just a heedless, barefoot goatherd in a ragged shift racing after someone else’s stray goat. I helped her capture her runaway goat and when we had put it back with the rest of the herd she was so happy that she danced round me singing like an enamoured butterfly, in no time at all I had completely lost my head over her. I was overcome by emotions I had never experienced before, strange thoughts crowded my mind, I felt as if I had discovered a new land.
I couldn’t wait for her to grow up so that I could take her home with me, I wanted to rescue her from her hard life. Although she was so used to hard work that she didn’t even seem to notice it anymore. She laboured constantly for long hours without ever complaining, stopping only to consume a hunk of bread before resuming whatever task occupied her that day. She never took holidays or a day off but did the work of the seasons, labouring in the vineyards or herding the goats. At sunset she sat by the fire spinning and weaving ropes. Before dawn she was always up kneading the dough for the day’s bread, she was truly an angel. She was used to her solitary life but all she had to do was stamp her foot and I would run to her side with a rose between my teeth and a sheepskin ready to warm her feet.
The mere sight of her slender hips and white, undeveloped breast drove me mad. Her hair, her eyes, her child-like smile … when she smiled she used to part her lips very slightly, like a butterfly intent on sucking nectar from a flower, and I felt lost as I saw my reflection in her eyes. I knew that she was mine for the asking; sometimes as she lay on her bed crying and trembling like a tree tossed by the wind she would cling to me, offering all the sweet fruits of her love, but I never laid a finger on her because for me she was a sacred trust. She was just a child in the springtime of her existence, a virgin with a soul as pure and unsullied as an unploughed field.
I had known her for some time when I finally decided to give her a white silk dress with a white bodice embroidered in gold thread and a crown of jasmine for her hair. It was my wedding gift. As an orphan the most she could have hoped for was marriage to a humble pig man, so when she saw my precious gifts she jumped for joy, let her long locks down and insisted on trying everything on there and then. She was as splendid as a goddess and as sweet and tender as a lamb. I left her hut impatiently counting the days until she would be mine forever.
That same evening a fine knight came riding down the slopes of the Palatine on a horse as sleek and well-bred as its master. They said he had noble blood in his veins, certainly he was sumptuously dressed in silk and had ardent eyes and long black plaits bound up around his head. He came up to the hut, glanced inside and smiled as his gaze slid over her bare feet, her sweet, innocent countenance, budding breasts, slender hips and long hair hanging loose.... .
His horse was exhausted, its flanks heaving with sweat and needed forage. The handsome knight dismounted and swung his costly cloak off his shoulders .... much later, someone only half awake remembered hearing the door of the hut bang and the shrill neigh of a galloping horse ringing out in the night over the fluttering of bats’ wings.
Next morning when the women went down to the spring with their water jars they looked everywhere for her in vain. They called out her name again and again but their only answer was the soughing of the wind. So with their heads bowed they made their way back to her hut; the door was open and inside no one stirred, the embers of the fire were dying, the lantern was unlit, the bed unmade and the water jar lying empty on the ground. These were the only traces of her. Where was she? Where had she gone? Nobody wanted to say it but everyone had heard the thunder of hooves on the rocks and everyone knew that she and the handsome stranger had fled clasped in each others’ arms on the fleet white horse that could gallop like the wind.
That day the birds didn’t sing and the bees made no honey. The young girls sat in a row next to the spring and cried their grief out loud, burying their faces in their hands and lamenting as if she were dead. The old women cried and beat their breasts, supplicating the gods of Olympus with loud laments and prayers. One old crone intoned the same prayer for hours, imploring the gods to grant the young flower, the silver bud, bloom of the mountains and valleys, the nightingale, the swan, a fresh spring with warm bread and a shelter wherever fate took her, over mountains and plains. At the break of day nameless messengers whispered to the breeze that they had been seen sailing away alone, bound for unknown lands.”
“Master, didn’t anyone pursue them? Try to find them? Didn’t anyone think that a rich, strong knight with a swift horse could have easily taken advantage of the poor girl all on her own, perhaps she was not willing, perhaps he had snatched her from her hut and bundled her on his horse ... ”
“Just like the miserable little baggage she was? Trembling with pride and shame just like any other bashful virgin? No, the girl who had promised me her heart, swearing eternal love, went with him willingly .... like a bird who suddenly finds the cage door open she sang her happiness as she fled. It was she who clung to his horse’s tail until he pulled her up pillion behind him. She was even seen unplaiting his long braids and feeding him water from her own lips before she put on her silken dress she wore to elope in. If she had run away naked like the bitch in heat she was or with her everyday rough shift I could have forgiven her, but to flee like a virgin with a garland of jasmine, symbol of purity, in her hair...
No! Was I then supp
osed to go looking for her? No, I didn’t go after her because if I had caught them I would have ripped her eyes out in my wrath. I would have happily blinded her with a burning iron poker or a silver pin. Neither of them would have survived my fury in that bitter hour, I wouldn’t have spared a single leaf, a bird, or a forest shadow in my rage. I stood outside her hut cursing anything she had touched, savouring the bitter fruits of her orchard which slowly imbued my flesh with their poison, the thorns of the undergrowth were piercing my skull, lacerating my skin with festering sores and my dreams were burning in the wind. I had one of my servants tie me to a tree by my hair for the whole of that day, from dawn to dusk, to stop myself from running after them. When I remember I can still feel my scalp tear.
Luckily I never saw her again, nor do I desire it. This is why I don’t believe in fairy tales anymore, my confused memory of my only love is a besmirched horror. Love came to me like an all-consuming flame that turns all it touches to ashes and is only quenched when there is nothing left to burn. It still torments me to think that I will die without ever having my revenge. Women: poisonous serpents, desert scorpions, tomb vipers. I don’t hate women as such, I hate the evil they incarnate, their falsity, their hypocrisy, their treachery, their complete inability to love, the venom they ooze from every pore, their creeping egoism and all the false stories they invent to prop up their usual pack of lies.
If she suddenly appeared in front of me here and now I’d still strangle her with my bare hands without batting an eyelid, sure that I wouldn’t be dammed because I would only be ridding the world of a rotten seed, harbinger of decay. After that, I wouldn’t mind at all being thrown to the executioner, in fact I’d stroll to the block with him arm in arm, finally free of the memory of a wholy perfidious creature.
This is as much as I can tell you without speaking her name. If I had gone on living my usual life in Rome, obsessed by thoughts of her, I would have gone mad. The Samnite war saved me. Marching off with the army meant travelling, seeing faraway places, so I answered the call to arms content, ready to butcher the first enemy I saw, and above all deliriously happy with the thought that I might never come back. In those far lands I spent a long, cold, icy winter which froze the heart, with no other company but my anger. To vent my bitter rage I would gallop my horse through ice and mud chasing ghosts in the mist as if I was chasing those two.
There I discovered that no cold is as intense as the chill in our hearts, a frozen soul that no fire, no fur, no cloak suffices to warm. Although it was the first time that I came into close contact with the brutality of death, lurking in each reed bed we passed, I discovered that I wasn’t afraid of death, only of that biting cold, that went on and on and is with me still…. But enough of me and all the troubles she caused me, dwelling on it is like drinking kraters of drugged wine until you go out of your mind, talking about it wastes moments of precious eternity, remembering a dirty bitch. What about you, you’ve been lucky enough to find true love. You are a poet, can you describe it to me? What do you feel exactly?”
“True love lasts forever, master. It soars in the air like a thousand glass birds. It is a basket of knowledge, it never breaks and never wears, it outlives a thousand generations of man, it lives in these mountains and beyond them, beyond the forests of giant ferns, beyond envy and harmful gossip, beyond ... everything. Its delirious, feverish, happily melancholic. Listen to these verses and perhaps you will understand.
With my back against the wall,
I ride my horse without a carriage,
backwards.
Melancholy burns within me like yellow fever.
A dog barks outside.
The leaves on the devil’s tree with its ripe strawberries ripple.
Yellow melancholy.
The sun is sinking,
Its last ray kisses the owl I painted yesterday,
The owl seeks love.
The blacksmith seeks love too,
But hasn’t found his mate,
And she hasn’t found the blacksmith,
The blacksmith’s hair is long and white.
My hair is long too, and I ride,
With my back against the wall,
I ride my horse without a carriage,
Backwards.
This, and many other things, is love, master. If you haven’t found the right person in the past it doesn’t mean that you cannot love again, because love jumps up from its straw pallet without warning and runs around happily in the fresh green grass, among the bushes and rocks, with a flower in its hair as it shouts out your name. Love can work miracles, master, it’s the memory of a kiss like soft rain that lingers on your wet lips, love is biting the same apple, a lake where the stars admire their reflection, like the wind stripping the blossom from the apple and almond trees, like the perfume of dried wheat at the height of the summer.
Love is like a silver thread that drops from the heavens like a rare pearl, it is the torch that lights dark paths, a dewdrop on a butterfly’s wings. Love is the painter’s inspiration, the poet’s muse, it is sitting on the cliffs and looking at the stars as you listen to Creation breathing. This, and a thousand other things, is love: the love that the wood-elves hide in the wrinkles of time because they are jealous of those who find it.”
“Heavens, after your hymn to love what instrument will ever be able to play me the song? So if young Cupid with his blindfold happens to pull a poisoned arrow out of his quiver and hits his mark, your life’s ruined forever .... how true that love and pain are two sides of the same coin. It’s a pity that I’m no good at these idle games anymore, after my sad experience I’ve turned as rough and tongue-tied with young girls as some poor peasant offering his basket of figs at the gods’ altar.”
“You can always learn again, master.”
“Learn again, now? What, to recite poetry perhaps? I don’t think so, I can’t be bothered to stutter my way through sweet nothings, I like to be straightforward, I don’t want to murmur the usual lies that girls enjoy so much. I’m a Roman soldier and can butcher more than a hundred enemies in battle in one day without turning a hair, but when it comes to courtship I don’t want to have to fumble my way, find myself tied up in silken bonds; as soon as I can I run like a hare. Do you really want to know the truth, my friend? Ever since then no flame has burnt in my breast, my love has been reduced to a few weak groans and my heart no longer sings nor seeks new lands and new skies. When I want to, I can jump on a she-wolf in heat until kingdom come, I can even pretend to swoon amidst the marvels and mysteries of her blowsy lilies, but I’m completely unmoved by the floods of tears and sighs of some frivolous nymph with plump, tender lips and breasts as round and hard as unripe apples, there I stand like marble, with never a moment’s regret for her or for me.”
“And what, master, if one day just like any other day of your life, love caressed you once more with her delicate fingers, waking you from your long sleep? Then what would you do? Would you spurn her just because one day many moons ago you had met the malicious nymph you were telling me about? Not all girls are treacherous, not all of them produce tears at will or display that false candour that upsets you so much.”
“All the ones that I’ve ever met were able to produce floods worse than Jupiter’s best efforts, and then through their tears, sobbed onto your chest, they talk of eternity, of clinging to each other forever, and in truth some girls have got eternity printed on their eyeballs, on their lips, and on their breasts and you think that I shouldn’t make off as fast as my legs can carry me?”
“But once we’ve got to the bottom of this mission and it’s over and done with, you’ll want to spend some time with a pleasing companion rather than gazing at the pale moon all on your own?”
“You’re right, after this mission I deserve a rest, so I’ll need someone to enliven my days and warm my nights. Now what could I get up to if I had a little lovebird to hand: on summer days I could doze outside in her arms on a haystack, and then as summer draws to an end I cou
ld fecundate her with burning kisses and then die between her flaming thighs. In the autumn I would hug her close under a shady pergola covered in vines hung with bunches of plump black grapes, and then poison myself drinking a river of sweet juice from her ardent lips, and in winter, amidst the white snow, to the sweet sound of the lute, I could....
No! No! Enough my friend, for heaven’s sake, these are all just idle wanderings, I don’t want to keep you up any more, please forgive me, go back to dreaming of your nymph with the skin like honey, you lucky fellow, and don’t bother about an old bear like me. Think that when we get back from this journey your love will be strong enough to uproot whole trees and towers.”
“Goodnight then, master. Always at your service.”
Janu went back to sleep at the back of the cave. In the deep silence sleep held the whole forest in its grip and the young poet was soon fast asleep and dreaming again.
At dawn when the whole world was still asleep, a strong wind tossed the trees against the sky and first one hawk then another drifted by. Janu, from his hiding place in a reed bed near the lake, watched them swoop as he waited for some game. He was just driving a deer into a net when he realised that all the animals in the woods were strangely silent.
Not even a croak or a honk from the frogs and the geese, nor the usual distant neighs in the fog from the wild horses racing each other across the meadows. The only thing running and making a noise that day in the forest was him. A cold wind was cutting its way through the thickets of bramble bushes like a rusty old knife, tearing at the tangled sprigs of hawthorn. Janu was still thinking about the events of the previous night and wondering about the angel with the scarlet wings his master claimed to have seen, when suddenly he heard the dry reeds behind him stir and then almost groan like a soul in purgatory. He turned round and saw a whole swathe of reeds had been flattened by the wind’s fury and were now dangling broken like so many useless swords at the end of a terrible battle.
As he studied the outcome of the war he became aware of a pair of fiery eyes staring at him from some bushes half-hidden in the fog. Taken by surprise he abandoned his prey for a moment and the deer fled with its horns to the wind, while Janu decided that he had to solve the mystery at all costs.
On his hands and knees he groped his way into the dense undergrowth, long thorns scratched his face, he couldn’t work his way free of the intricate tangle of brambles that surrounded the lake. He felt as if he were suffocating in their clinging embrace and up to his knees in water he dragged himself over the thick roots underfoot. The thick fog prevented him from seeing anything clearly. A dull noise came from a clump of strawberry trees and without hesitation Janu rushed up the bank and plunged recklessly into the grove.
In his haste he didn’t even notice his hands, face and neck getting scratched, but obstinately went on looking until he spotted something moving in the ferns under the oak trees in the Iacona valley. He flung himself into the ferns and ran after the shadow until he reached the hot spring and from the spring he ran on until he came to the Femmina Morta cliff. On the edge of the cliff the mist from the lake suddenly cleared and he saw his daemon just as the black profile of the ravine came into view.
It was a giant asp, a monstrous snake with eyes as red as fire, a scaly head larger than a man’s and long wiry tangled hairs dangling off its whole body. Its long body had a yellowish belly and a bronze-coloured back. This monster had always infested the Cimina Mountains and was more poisonous than the vipers who hid in tombs. It was particularly feared because of its ability to spit venom mixed with saliva from a distance.
The snake had stopped under the last tree before the cliff as if it were waiting for him, curled up on the tree trunk with its huge head leaning on the bark and its red tongue hanging out, it stared at the man as if it were challenging him. Janu, hypnotised by its magnetic gaze, didn’t manage to stop in time and went tumbling over the cliff’s edge down to the bottom of the ravine…
Not far way Marcus Fabius heard nothing. Ever since he had woken he had been anxiously observing strange clouds of black smoke that were rising helter-skelter into the sky like a herd of maddened goats not far away. He was still staring at the mysterious phenomenon when he heard a huge explosion. Hundreds of startled birds rocketed out of the surrounding woods over his head and the frogs in the ditches seemed to have gone mad. Marcus realised immediately what the smoke and the explosion meant; the fire god who slumbered in Mount Venus in the middle of Vicus Lake had awoken and issued forth from his den. His bellows shook the earth’s surface and a fountain of boiling lava spurted towards the livid skies to a towering height, pouring its effluvia in a deadly stream. In only a second, or perhaps a fraction of a second, the whole area was smothered in black smoke and while rabbits and wolves cowered in their dens, a giant with arms of fire rolled huge boulders and launched them on the world.
A river of blazing magma gushed down the mountain scything hundreds of oak trees that burst into flames and then collapsed in blackened heaps, but the magma maintained its inexorable flow until it swirled into the lake while the volcano spewed forth a steady hail of stones which spun through the air carving up trees and rocks like a flock of mad sculptors. Marcus, caught in the midst of this blind, devastating war which had seized him by his throat with steel claws like pitiless death itself, sought refuge, but as he tried desperately to flee he fell and hit his head.