Clowns At Midnight (21 page)

‘Gemma, it matters. I’ll accept what you can give. I’d like the chance.’

‘It’s not how I wanted it to be,’ she said.

What? What? The rules? The playing out of the game? Being involved?

‘So advise me about Carlo, if you can.’ I added the words to the silence, trying to tip the balance my way in whatever restrictions prevailed.

‘Don’t say I’ve told you. Don’t say we’ve spoken.’

‘Just let it unfold?’

Play or have nothing
.

‘Yes.’

Who is Zoe? Tell me about Zoe
.

‘What about dinner?’

Be with me
.

‘Maybe tomorrow night. After you’ve seen Carlo again.’ Carlo, not Raina. One moment Carlo, the next Raina. ‘I’ll be working, but I’ll be home around ten.’

‘Right. That’ll be great.’

Not tonight
.
We’re not far enough along yet
.

More needed to be done, some Carlo and Raina thing.

‘Tomorrow night then, David. Thanks for coming down.’

‘Thanks for giving me this. I really want to see you.’

‘Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight.’

I got out of the car and watched her drive off, heading down Edenville Road towards the Catleys’ and McDonald’s Bridge Road. The sound of her car dwindled, vanished. The dust cloud settled; the soft night was there, picked out in cricket song, fragrances and early stars.

I turned back to the gate and my own car, drove up and over the hill, ignoring the darkness of the forest to the left.

There was something far more troubling.

What if it had been Zoe? What if
this
Gemma had been the twin? And as for not saying we’d spoken, the Risis expected me to make contact with her. Raina had given me the address. It meant that Carlo would have to bring up the hieroglyph in his own good time, as the excited, fascinated amateur. Unless Gemma—
this
Gemma—had been lying.

All the bold strokes were denied me.
So, Carlo, I hear you’ve done time as an archaeologist
.
I hear you know what the sign means
. One moment Raina and Carlo, the next Gemma—
a
Gemma—were playing me between them.

It was insufferable. No choice but to go ahead or step away completely. It was no choice at all.

The house was quiet when I got there, only dramatising the anticlimax of everything. Making dinner, watering the indoor plants, answering emails were just more busy things to fill the evening. I couldn’t rest. It was that sort of day.

For once I welcomed Julia phoning to ask if I’d be interested in coming down for Chase and Kylie’s wedding in February. If I thought I could manage it, they’d send an invitation right away; they really wanted me there. I told her I’d think about it; we chatted about Mark’s promotion and some travel plans they had. We were both pleased with how we were able to keep it light and friendly. The caring was real, and I managed to keep out of the what-heals-harms cycle for once.

The second phonecall was from Mick asking for any new lyrics I might have because the melody for
Single Look
still wasn’t working. Best to put it aside for a while, he said. I told him I’d send what I had.

The third phonecall was from Len Catley.

‘Hi, mate. It’s Len. Dunno quite how to tell ya this, Dave, but that clothes dummy of Beth’s you brought over—you didn’t come and fetch it while we was out, did ya?’

I’d gone to ice when he’d begun speaking, knowing what he was going to say.

‘No, Len. I’d never do that without telling you. What’s happened?’

Though I knew. I knew.

‘The craziest thing. We put it in that back room we use to store things, and now it’s gone. May’s turned the place upside down. It’s weird. We keep figurin’ it’s right in front of us and we just can’t see it, you know?’

‘I sure do. It’s not your boys? They wouldn’t have borrowed it for a lark. Playing a prank on someone.’

‘They say they didn’t touch it. I believe ’em, Dave.’

‘I do too, Len. I don’t know what to say.’ What could I say: don’t worry yourself. It’s on its way back here. It’ll turn up.

‘Why would someone steal a dummy though? Beats the hell out of me. But, look, May and I’ll take care of it when Beth gets back, so don’t worry yourself.’

‘Len, I’m just sorry it happened. You mustn’t worry. She’s got castors. She’ll turn up.’ Such an inane comment, but what else could I say?

Oh yes, Len, she will definitely turn up. I can guarantee it!

Len chuckled on the line. ‘Right. She’s probably gone into the Exchange for a quickie, eh?’

‘Well, it sure can’t go to her head,’ I said.

Len loved that. He guffawed, sounded much happier. ‘Come to think of it, she’s already off her face.’

I made myself laugh along: damage control for asking about his sons. ‘Well, we both know she doesn’t have a leg to stand on, eh?’

We really laughed it up at that one, and I made myself continue before he did. ‘Hey, listen, thanks for letting me know, Len. Just don’t worry yourself about it, okay? It’s no big deal.’

‘Yeah, well, it’s just that it sure is weird. I mean, who could’ve done it?’

‘Don’t let it bother you, Len. Tell May not to fret herself. We’ll take care of it when Beth gets back.’

‘Righto, mate. Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight.’

I put down the receiver and moved away from the kitchen table. What to do? How does one defend himself against a sewing dummy?

One thing was certain. Someone was doing this. It couldn’t be anything supernatural. Couldn’t be. I made sure the doors were locked, checked the windows, even brought the spare key in from under its rock at the end of the terrace. Friends of the Rankins might know about it.

Then I sat at the computer in the study, trying to push aside the slow dread that was building. This had to be a triumph of reason. I was determined.

As if to test my resolve, I took out Disk 4 and brought up the TT range.

Thirty-
two
images! Seven by four and
four
in the fifth row!

Two
extra! The black page and one other! But how? I’d labelled it, signed it.

My hand hesitated on the mouse.

Don’t look
.
Don’t play
.
Destroy the lot
.

But I had to know. This made it more than a strategy from Jack, unless he’d had someone use the hidden key to let themselves in and create subtle mischief, substituting disks and changing who knew what else?

I clicked on Image 25.

The black page opened before me with the same light-devouring quality as the burnt trunks in the forest, and again with—did I imagine it?—the barest hints of lines and flecks, the sense of the cubed mosaic of some old fire-wracked tree.

The new image still remained, whatever it might be.

I felt a prickling at my temples, the telling shortness of breath, but I made myself act. I’d run through the sequence backwards, risk them all, do it while I still could.

I clicked on Image 31, and there was Barbara Steele’s incredible eyes staring out from the grille of the iron maiden, caught in that moment of utter terror and hopelessness as she realised she was being buried alive. Image 30 gave me George Tooker’s equally terrified figure, and 29 the
Arkham Asylum
Joker.

My hand was shaking badly as I clicked the image away. The timing was wrong. These were harming, maiming, savaging the mind. Just one more; I’d endure one more. I readied for Ingpen’s El Dorado at 28, but found the intruder instead.

A fish-eye lens shot of skull-white Nascone from the Commedia, hideous snout angled to the side, one eye peering in close, filling the screen. No, not a fish-eye lens, a security peephole! Something we’d all experienced at one time or another: friends peering in when they’d come visiting. Nascone was up close to a front door, looking in at the person looking out to see who was calling—the sort of thing guaranteed to stop you looking through security peepholes ever again.

I clicked the image away, then removed the disk and snapped it into two, then four pieces. I broke the rest of the disks the same way and put the remains in a kitchen garbage bag which I tucked away in my bedside drawer.

That done, I readied for bed and, though I felt silly doing it, not only locked the bedroom door but dragged a small chest of drawers in front of it. If Madame Sew returned, she could roll about to her hollow heart’s content.

CHAPTER 15

Sunday broke hot and hazy with a blistering westerly howling through the trees and scouring the land. I woke to the windows shuddering and the banging of sheets of tin and fibre-glass along the side of the garage. After breakfast and a shower, I spent most of the morning working in John Rankin’s study with the main air conditioner and the portable fan on full, as much to drown out the sound of the wind as to counter the heat. Windless summer days were the worst at Starbreak Fell, I’d discovered, but this wind brought a fretful, restless edge and made writing difficult. Initially, poor Rollo suffered once again, but something from the desperation of the night before and in the edginess now brought a raw force I was able to put into Rollo’s mood. Together we bullied our way through the first part of the day.

At noon I went out to check the bonsai, making sure that fallen branches hadn’t damaged them on their shelves and stands. There were twigs and leaves to clear away, but they were managing. The wind roared across the fields, beating down the grass, lashing the treetops along the Richmond River. The ranges had a glazed, unfocused look. Bushfire weather. Tonight there’d be a bushfire sunset, coppery and dire, and a swollen bushfire moon, but then again anything could happen. The wind could turn. A storm could come in. The world could end.

Was ending now, if you judged by the signs. But I stood in the blast, pleased with myself in spite of everything. I’d managed. I’d bullied through.

The single point of dread remained. Someone had been coming
into
the house, replacing a TT disk and more, going to the effort of taking one and scanning the signed label for a replacement copy so I wouldn’t notice the substitution at a casual glance. Who knew what else had been done?

But now I had the spare key from under the rock. There might be others; they could have borrowed the spare and cut their own. I would replace the locks if necessary.

I barely heard the phone ring through the heat and the bluster, but the special yard bell brought it to me and I hurried inside.

It was Carlo.

‘David, can you come over?’

‘Is anything wrong?’

‘
Niente
! But I’ve discovered what the petroglyph means.’

Of course he had. This was today’s lesson, and in such a dramatic setting.

‘Give me half an hour. I’ll need to lock up. This wind.’

‘Spare a thought for the maze,’ he said. ‘I’ll make us lunch. See you at one.’

I did think of the maze then, thought of the walls heaving in the gusts, imagined the newel posts thrumming and howling at their crossroads.

Devil wind
.
Devil wind
.
Devil wind
.

I found myself smiling as I locked the house, disconnected the power fence, drove through and re-connected it after me, made my usual stop at the front gate. Everything was going to plan.

The short drive along to the Risis’ was unsettling. Paradoxically, the car seemed the only still point in a greyish, beaten land under the yellowed haze of a sky. Windmills spun madly; the cows were dark lumps wedged in under trees; the fence wires sang.

Carlo was on the veranda again when I reached the turning circle. He waved and, despite the wind, came to meet me at the car, his hair blowing wild and making him seem like a mad Latin Beethoven.

‘This is so exciting!’ he said as I got out. ‘Raina is over in Lismore with Fabiana, shopping again—can you imagine it? On a day like this!—but I will tell her later. Can you stand the mask today?’

‘I think so. I believe so.’

‘
Bene
.’ He put his arm round my shoulder and guided me inside, led me down the hallway to the table before the grinning face. There were plates of antipasto set out, with prosciutto and melon, a basket of bread. ‘Please sit,’ he said. I did so, while he crossed to a sideboard and poured us each a glass of wine.

I barely noticed him doing so. I was held by the mask’s relentless gaze, fascinated, repelled,
wanting
this latest ‘meeting’ too yet resisting it, feeling the pressures, the familiar yes-no, run-stay. But being here was how Carlo wanted it to be, and Gemma could be at the end of it. I made myself endure, told myself it was getting easier.

Carlo brought the glasses back to the table, then sat with his back to the mask so its grin rose to the right of his own like some riotous moon. Outside, the wind moaned about the house, set things banging and slamming.

‘Carlo, what did you find?’

‘David, first. To our health!’

‘To our good health!’ I said. We touched glasses and drank.

Then Carlo loaded a plate with food and passed it to me. ‘I did some searches,’ he said, satisfying himself that I was eating. ‘It’s the blending of
two
hieroglyphs; that’s what threw me. I should have recognised the parts. Like when you mentioned John Barleycorn on Friday. That too. I was very slow. The table with the pointed legs and things hanging from it means the sky. Normally a sceptre would be suspended or a star for night, the thing with the spokes, but the symbol for sun has been superimposed on it—a circle with a tiny circle in the middle, like the boss of a shield. The bigger circle meets the rays of the star and forms the rim of a wheel. The tiny circle is lost in the hub. I did not see that the wheel was a circle
and
a sun.’

‘So, a sun at night.’

‘That’s it. The Night Sun.’

Now was as good a time as any. ‘Carlo, you know so much. Have you ever thought of taking this up professionally? Becoming an archaeologist? Working in comparative religions? You love it so.’

‘
Mi
? David, you are good to say it. But I am a farmer. All that publish or perish business, the professional bickering, it would crush my spirit. My place is here.’

‘You’ve never thought to dig, to put your interests to work?’

‘They are at work, David. Here. Talking with you.’ He gestured expansively to include the house, the farm, the hills, the raw hot wind that determined the very form of the day.

My grin was genuine. There was no trapping him. Or perhaps it had been Gemma lying. Or Zoe twisting the truth. There was nothing else but to move it along again, perhaps trigger something that would make the night’s meeting with Gemma possible.

‘Carlo, what you said Thursday. When we were in the kitchen after you gave me the tour of the maze. We were talking about forgotten knowledge and this being an important time of year. Midsummer’s eve. It’s more than just the appearance of a mamuthone. You wanted me to know something.’ I tried not to make it sound like an accusation.

He looked at me with no readable expression, as if deciding whether to play confused pig farmer or neighbourhood sage again. He’d know I’d spoken with Gemma. It was what Raina had intended.

‘I had to work up to it, David, to get your true reaction,
capisce
? So many people humour me. That rough of your article—you are sensitive to these matters. You have come very close.’

‘Close to what, Carlo?’

He smiled. ‘I have to ride the hobby-horse again.’

Here it was. ‘Of course. Please.’

‘It all starts to make sense. The tower. The carving. Back in the old country, Carnival was a winter thing,
ne
? It began in January and went through to Shrove Tuesday. Here in the southern hemisphere, it is high summer then. The ancients didn’t know this, didn’t know any better, you understand? All the social and philosophical systems that made our modern consciousness—the religious systems—were for the
northern
hemisphere:
northern
calendars,
northern
seasons. Delphi was the omphalos, the navel,
the
centre of the world for them. Their world was the
Mediterranean
Sea. The Middle of the Earth Sea –’

‘The Mercator projection and the pocket compass still have a lot to answer for,’ I said, sipping the mild red, my gaze shifting from his eyes to the leering jovial second pair beyond. The wind howled beyond the curtained windows.

‘They do. They truly do. It has to be important: this northern bias, this assumption that it was the defining context for everyone, all there was.’ He struck the table with the flat of his hand. ‘But it wasn’t complete! They missed it! Universal truths have to apply universally, but the ancients never knew of hemispheres, not really, never meaningfully conceived of such opposites, reversed and equal, that completed the equation for their mysteries. They granted so many important opposites, but not that one. How could they? A way of seeing was locked in place. They only had part of it.’

It was hard not to smile at his eloquence, the articulate expressions of the sage constrained by those of Carlo the ‘peasant’ pig farmer, the two Carlos struggling together. In my novels, no-one would accept it. Carlo had to know that.

‘Things work differently here,’ I said.

‘Are
completed
here, David.’ He struck the table again with his palm. Our glasses shuddered; light shivered in the wine. ‘Brought together and made whole. It’s the rest of it. At last it is synchronised. It makes a lovely sense, eh?’

This time I did smile. ‘The way you put it, yes. More so if you believe in the old gods.’ The eyes beyond his agreed.
Yes, David. Yes
.

‘Or grasp the mindset. The forces behind it. I don’t pretend to understand it all. You smile but it’s true. But it’s something very important. Something I almost understand. This is fascinating for me. My hobby-horse, remember?’

‘Forgotten knowledge.’

‘
È vero
! And suppressed knowledge. The bits cut out or hidden. You know aporesis?’

Today’s lesson. ‘Aporesis? I don’t think so.’

Carlo leant forward, spoiling the moon-at-the-shoulder effect. ‘Of course you do. It’s the condition when answers lead to further questions. This Night Sun motif. It’s what I tried to say when we spoke before. I was brought up in the Church, David, a good Catholic boy, yes? But I have always tried to see religion as part of a social machine, a way of dealing with the world and ordering our thinking about it. This mamuthone, this Shepherds’ Carnival you learn about, brings it all back, brings new questions. Again I ask myself: why did Dionysos first appear? What was his arrival in response to? He wasn’t in the heroic pantheon of the Homeric texts, yet his name crops up in Mycenaean inscriptions from that time. Later he replaces Hestia among the twelve main gods on Olympus. Replaces her! It’s odd. We don’t even know for certain where he came from. Some say Thrace, around Thebes, born of Semele out of Zeus’s thigh—a twice born god; others claim origins in Asia Minor, in Lydia or Phrygia, even India. Others say from a special cave on Crete. His many names show it. He’s a new god and a dying god, seasonal like your John Barleycorn, reborn, a latecomer who doesn’t quite belong but fits everywhere, a deity added on, fitted in, just as the Christian Church would later have to fit him in somehow, trimming him down to size to do it, giving bits to Christ, the rest to Satan. By Pericles’ time in the fourth century BC his name and likeness are represented probably more than any other god in the Hellenic and Italian world. Can you believe it?’

‘I had no idea.’ It was the right thing to say, the only possible response for today’s lesson. Like being in the car on my way here, this was another still point. There was only the wind out there, unrelenting chaos, and Carlo’s words. The lesson.

‘Something important happened to bring this about, David. Something big. He is the deity honoured by two great annual festivals of drama in Athens. Not Athena, not Apollo or Zeus, the ones you’d expect—but this newcomer who paradoxically seems to have always been there. And that’s drama as the Greeks knew it, not as we see it now,
capisce
? Something far more important, more central to looking at the world. I got carried away the other night, but your question about the Shepherds’ Carnival –’

‘I was glad of what you said. All of it. I’m trying to understand this.’

‘
Sì
.
Sì
. So look at these things! Such facts! The Great Dionysia and the Lenaia were crucial events in Athenian life. Everyone attended. Slaves were released from their duties, prisoners freed for the day. It was something for
all
people; it reinforced a crucial paradigm for dealing with the world. It
rendered
the world. Try to think of an equivalent now; it’s nearly impossible. Perhaps humans landing on the Moon—that was very religious—or the Soviet Union dismantling itself and the Berlin Wall coming down. Something of that scale.’

‘The Internet. Celebrating New Year and Thanksgiving. Even top-rating novels and movies can do it. Capture a shared idea. Stand for a shared idea.’

‘
Veramente
! Those too. Those do it too. You know that the classic Greek gods were a brawling, feuding lot, full of human foibles and appetites, most of them entities to appease rather than love and honour. It’s understandable that the popular image we get of Dionysos is—the word?—brought down—degraded, yes—reduced to just a wild, licentious god of wine, full of lust and rampant nature. Little wonder the Romans ended up with Bacchus, more like a carousing Falstaff than the more elegant original.’

One moment the self-effacing pig farmer, the next, someone tossing in terms like aporesis, paradigm and Falstaff, for heaven’s sake!

‘And he is the Night Sun?’ I asked. Outside the wind blustered. The mask grinned at his shoulder.
Good, David
.
Keep him to it
. It was quite a dialogue I was having in my mind.

Carlo hadn’t told me where to sit when we first came in. He’d been pouring us wine, had waited till I was seated. But he could have assumed I’d sit
facing
the mask, having a Brave Day, and so planned this moon-over-over-the-shoulder effect, planned it all. Though it wasn’t a moon, was it? It was the Night Sun.

‘
Sì
. Like I told you when I showed you the maze, we’re only beginning to know his original role in the life of the ancient Mediterranean. Do you know Robert Fludd, the late sixteenth, early seventeenth-century mystic?’