Clowns At Midnight (30 page)

Red
wine.

I emptied it into a serving bowl, smelling it as I poured, smelling wine not blood, began washing, fiercely scrubbing, seeing evil swirls of white come away. Soluble make-up at least. Some mercy.

Then it was back to the fridge for soda water and orange juice at the back of lower shelves, more fierce scrubbing.

Finally I dared the mirror again, saw my own face, smeared and coloured in places, yes, but free.

The wall clock showed 8:41. Where could they be?

The bedrooms. I had to check the bedrooms!

I’d barely turned to do so when there was a knock at the front door.

I rushed to it, expecting Carlo and Raina, realising as I reached for the latch how unlikely that would be. They wouldn’t knock.

Unless—yes!—they’d been called away by an emergency, some trouble at a neighbour’s. Or
forced
away!

The needles had been real. The thread! My painted face!

Zoe again.

So obvious, so cunning and deadly. Such elaborate planning.

More knocking came, firm and insistent.

I checked the knob before opening the door. No more needles. No more sharps.

Two police officers stood there, big men in open-necked shirts and wide-brimmed hats. Hats at night, making it official.
But ten hours late!

Their eyes immediately widened when they saw me, then narrowed. I must have looked wild, my face streaked with colour, hair unkempt, clothes torn.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ one said, ‘would Carlo and Raina Risi be here, please?’

‘That’s who
I’m
looking for!’ I knew how it sounded, how it seemed, but there was no other way this could go. ‘I’ve been unconscious. Drugged. Left out in the maze—in the yard! I’ve just regained consciousness.’ Where were Carlo and Raina?

‘Right. Would you mind stepping out onto the veranda, please, sir?’

‘My name’s David Leeton. I’m the neighbour who phoned it in. I’m minding the Rankin place next door. Somebody drugged me.’

‘Right. But would you just step out here please, Mr Leeton, while we take a look around?’

There was no choice, no alternative, though at least something was being done. I didn’t mention Zoe.

‘I know how this looks, but I need to find them. I’m worried. Whoever drugged me –’

‘We’ll deal with it, sir. Please do as we ask.’

The other officer had moved to one side and was using his radio.

‘You’ll understand that this is just a precaution, Mr Leeton, but would you mind turning round and putting your arms behind you?’

‘Look, I’m cooperating. I’m a victim here! Please just help me find Carlo and Raina!’

‘We’ll do that, sir. But there are steps we’re required to take in unusual circumstances. I’m sure you understand. Please bear with us.’

I did as he said, let him cuff me while the one with the radio went in to search the house.

‘This shouldn’t take long, sir. Mike will just take a look round. You said the Rankin place. What’s the address and phone number there please, sir? It’ll help us clear this up.’

I told him, watched as he wrote in his notebook, as insects swarmed around the porch light, as grass along the parking circle stirred in the breeze.

‘Look, I’ve been drugged in the garden out back. I’m worried about my friends! Someone phoned this morning, threatening them –’

‘I’m sure it’ll all be cleared up in a minute, sir.’

The other policeman returned. ‘They’re in there, Jeff. Main bedroom. You’d better get Bert and Harve out here. Kristy too if she hasn’t signed out.’

‘What’s happened?’ I cried, and tried to rush into the house. The one named Mike grabbed me by the arms. Jeff was making the call this time.

‘We’re going to need you to come with us, Mr Leeton,’ Mike said.

‘What’s happened!’ I shrieked the words. ‘Are they hurt?’

‘Certainly looks like they were,’ he said, his tone cold, unyielding. ‘Please step to the car, sir.’

I was in shock, numbed, barely able to grasp any of it. It had never occurred to me: Zoe going this far. Gemma in collusion. Had to be. I needed to see the bodies, have proof, make it real, that more than anything.

I tried wrenching away, but Mike was expecting it. He swung me round, slammed me hard against the car.

‘They’re my
friends
! You have to let me see!’

‘Right now it’s best you do as we ask, Mr Leeton. Just get in the car, please.’

I was helped into the back seat. There was no other choice.

Then Mike was behind the wheel and we were heading for the gate.

‘You’re not going to leave them!’ I said.

‘Jeff’s there,’ he replied. ‘We’ve got people coming.’

‘At least check my story! Take me to the Rankins’! Let me show you!’

‘Exactly what we’re doing, Mr Leeton.’

We fell silent, turning onto Edenville Road, making the short drive to the Rankins’ front gate. All the way my mind was racing. I just couldn’t believe Carlo and Raina had been harmed. It was a trick, a hoax, some terrible joke.

We pulled in at the gate. The big policeman got out and opened it, then took us through. We started up the hill, but instead of continuing over to the house, Mike turned off the drive and headed towards the forest line.

‘Why are we coming up here?’

‘There’s an old building. I just want to check it.’

It didn’t make sense. There was no way he could see the tower, no reason to check it. He was in on it too!

He had been told to bring me.
Take him to the tower
.

Carlo and Raina weren’t dead! It had been a ruse.

I felt fear.
I’m going to be a sacrifice
. But curiosity too. I needed to know what was happening.

Mike stopped at the edge of the forest and helped me out of the back.

‘What’s going on, Mike?’

‘This way please, Mr Leeton.’

He guided me by the arm through the screen of trees. I could have tried pulling free—there was a good chance I could manage it and hide in the darkened scrub—but Mike anticipated me. His grip on my arm tightened.

‘Not far now.’

I did feel like some lamb being led to the slaughter. I had no reason to trust this man, even accept for a moment that he was truly a police officer. There had been so much deception, so many lies.

I wrenched with all my might, but Mike had me, swung me round so I slammed against a small tree. I was left winded and bleeding from a cut on my cheek.

‘You won’t be hurt, David.’

David
.

His change of tone was everything, stopped me saying: So what do you call that?

We pushed through the trees into the glade. The tower rose to our right, picked out with moonlight and starlight. It was after nine. The moon would be lifting above the ranges, coppery and full. Visibility would only get better. Absurdly, I recalled a line from a Jane Austen novel about a well-to-do woman’s social calendar being full because there was ‘much moonlight’, this being at a time when carriages had only lanterns to light their way.
Our
calendar was full.

The glade seemed deserted. Mike led me to a tree on the far side, took out a length of chain and a small padlock, then looped the chain through my cuffed hands and chained me to the trunk.

‘What if I need to piss?’ I asked.

‘Do it in your jeans,’ Mike said. He turned to leave.

‘Thanks.’

‘You’re welcome.’ He was crossing the glade again.

‘How long do I have to wait?’ I called.

‘Not long.’

And that was it. I heard Mike leaving, heard his car pulling away, then silence again: the night silence of cricket song and treetops shifting in the breeze.

It wouldn’t be long. Couldn’t be. This was preparation, resolution. I was sure of it.

Maybe I
would
need to piss. I thought of Gemma spread out on her bed, eyes wide with fury, probably more angry at that than being tied there, at her plans going awry. Such an elemental shame: wetting yourself. Such an old thing.

I’d have no qualms. It was part of the world. Basic again.

Ten minutes might have gone by. Then I heard the snap of a twig, possibly a footfall.

‘Hello? Mike?’

Nothing. Then it came again, the sound of twigs breaking. A definite step. Someone moving about. I couldn’t help but think of black clowns, of fierce Zoe from the caravan and the Rankins’ attic, of needles on the doorknob. I readied myself for clown shock, new surprises. It will be Zoe, I told myself. It will be someone painted and playing a part.

‘David?’

It was Carlo.

CHAPTER 21

His familiar figure crossed the glade. From what I could make out he seemed to be dressed in his everyday clothes. There was no mask, no paint. No blood. After all that had happened, I sagged in relief against the tree. Not drained of blood or torn apart by maenads. Not murdered by a crazed Zoe. The Carlo I knew.

‘Carlo, thank God!’ I said, anger building. ‘What’s going on?’

He echoed the question. ‘What’s going on? Secret people’s business, I’d say.’

‘Oh, terrific! Care to speak clearly for a change?’ After all that had happened, I was in no mood for more mysteries.

‘You will see. It needed to be done.’

‘Using appropriate fear, yes? The things at the house. The maze.’

Carlo seemed distracted. What I said took a few seconds to register.

‘The things at the house? Which house?’

‘
Which
house? The Rankins’ house! The things at the Rankins’!’

‘There was nothing at the house. Just the maze tonight. It was necessary.’

Nothing at the house!

‘Do you have the key for these?’ I rattled my chain.

‘Soon, David. Not long now.’

‘Carlo, for heaven’s sake –’

‘David, you’ve come so far. It’s nearly over. Please wait.’

As if I had any choice. But I did as he said, stood quietly, neither of us bothering with small-talk now. Something was about to happen, that much was certain.

When it did, it was sudden, simple and dramatic.

A spotlight switched on. A cone of light appeared by the tower, lit the cross—the stulos—and the robed figure standing beside it, arms raised in an hieratic gesture as old as human worship.

It was Raina. There was no mistaking the fine figure, the straight back, the distinctive cheekbones and jawline. Behind her I made out parts of the arm and chassis of the cherry-picker used to mount the overhead spot. No sound of a generator for it—too noisy, too intrusive—so battery powered, though I also imagined metres of extension cord running down the hillside to—where else?—most likely the power point in my own laundry.

A bell sounded at the far end of the glade, from the direction of the hillside opposite the tower, from where we’d had the picnic.

Then I heard the unmistakable sound.

The mamuthones came, heard before seen, their distinctive
shink-shink shink-shink
dance no doubt determining the pace of the procession. They emerged from the forest on that far side of the clearing, illuminated by other figures carrying torches and lanterns. Lamplight glinted off the bells, lit the dolorous black masks, gave them power, turned the jumping, crusted forms into spiders, demons, spider demons, dancing charontes.

No white-masked issohadores with them this time, not here. Apart from the lantern carriers, these were unaccompanied, undriven, free. They kept their traditional shuffle-jump dance, but as a devotion now, its real form all along, its ancient form, leading—I could see them more clearly now—double lines of one, two dozen others, all masked, all wearing light robes, holding sealed lanterns aloft: no naked flames in bushfire season. These were practical people.

Near us, the door to the tower opened, and others came forth to greet them—all women: unmasked, wearing robes and garlands, carrying the distinctive thyrssos wands that marked them as maenads, handmaidens of Dionysos. Gemma and Zoe among them surely. Angelina and Lucia, Katerina and Isabella, Pat Kesby and Connie Lambert the librarian, the Risi daughters, who knew who else, but twenty or more filing out of the dead tower. The living tower. They gathered around Raina at the bare cross of the stulos, dramatically lit in the cone of soft focused light from the half-hidden cherry-picker.

The mamuthones continued their approach, crossing the glade, followed by the robed, masked figures I’d taken for men and women but now knew only to be males in feminine robes. This was a women’s mystery, had been from the beginning. Men had to change to enter it. Work at change. Be completed by it, become more than the phallus for it to be something shared, had to be the vessel as well.

I’d worn my pink chenille at the caravan. I’d been initiated, admitted, honoured, and never knew till now.

The lines of male figures—Dionysian clowns—stopped halfway across the glade. The women around the stulos began decorating it: first draping a full white robe over the arms, then setting what looked like a fine wooden mask on the upright—fig-wood, I knew it would be—adding a vine-leaf garland to its brow. All through it I felt an ebbing, flowing sense of dread. This was my cross, my Scarecrow after all, and here it was being transformed before my eyes.

Lines from an old Christmas carol went through my mind: ‘A sunnë shineth through the glass, So Jesus in his mother was… Now God has come to worship us’! Startling, heretical, wonderful words, unbidden but somehow relevant now.

The god—its
imago
—was there at last, lit by the spot from the cherry-picker, attended by maenads, facing his satyr hunter clowns and sileni, men and women together, not as a Bacchantic riot, some Dionysian frenzy, not yet. These weren’t rutting bestial forms, debased figures of cliché and parody. This was the completion, the restoration of something.

‘Euphemeite!’ one of the women cried, a call to readiness, and there was silence among those gathered in the glade. The women clustered about the imago began pouring libations onto the mask. The shrouded figures waited.

‘Kresios!’ someone cried, man or woman I couldn’t tell.

‘Hail the Cretan!’ came the reply from the rest, everyone in unison, so striking to hear.

‘Zagreus!’ someone else called.

The chorus responded again. ‘Brave hunter! Who captures alive!’

‘Melanaigis!’ A different voice, definitely female this time.

‘Who walks with the dead! Dark One!’

‘Orthos!’ Another voice still.

‘Who stands upright!’ The words rang in the warm night.

‘Mainomenos!’

‘Fierce mad one!’

‘Meilichios!’ They were taking turns, calling the names of the god.

‘Of the fig wood mask!’ came the reply. ‘Seducer in the cave! Great snake!’

‘Bakcheus!’

‘Of the vine wood mask! Lord of the dance!’

‘Bougenes!’

‘Worthy bull!’

‘Pelekys!’

‘Double axe!’ The calls echoed through the glade, rang off the stones of the tower, name after name.

‘Kadmeios!’

‘Face of the messenger!’

‘Kissos!’

‘Ivy that binds!’

It was unreal, hypnotic, the rush of names, and all the more strange and wonderful because these were local folk saying them, and this was Australia early in the new millennium.

‘Chthonios!’the call came.

The response was immediate and strong. ‘Of the underworld! The underworld!’

‘Sabazios!’

‘Self-being.’

‘Iakchos!’

‘Bright Sirius! Light of high summer!’

‘Eleuthereus! Dithyrambos!’

‘The free! Triumphant light! Sweet
zoë
!’

Silence then. A stunned silence for me. I couldn’t believe I had heard the final word.

‘Zoe!’ I said to Carlo, astonished. ‘They said Zoe! They’re honouring her?’

‘No, David. The Night Sun.’

‘They said Zoe!’

It was as if the crowd of celebrants could hear what I said and were waiting for the answer. But if they were, they were watching the stulos all the while, watching the mask atop the pole, its cheeks glossy with scented oil, its white robe stirring, the breeze bringing it alive.

Carlo’s voice was almost a whisper. ‘David, we spoke of how Dionysos was closer to Apollo than many realise, Day Sun and Night Sun?’

‘Yes.’

‘I said how Dionysos stood for indestructible life, not
bios
, the individual life that dies, but the archetypal, continuous life that inhabits it for a time.’

‘I remember.’

‘The Greeks called that greater life
zoë
. Dionysos stood for
zoë
, nothing less.’

‘But Gemma’s sister! The caravan! Earlier tonight! Raina said to ask her about Zoe!’

‘And led to this. Told Gemma that the time was right. That it could go ahead. That you could do.’

‘
Could
do?’

I was still grasping it. Raina had known I was misunderstanding all along but had let it happen.

‘And did, David. The wounded man. You managed splendidly. We could begin. She could –’

‘Be the maenad! Fierce! Taking!’

There
was
no sister.

‘Indeed. In the old way. She was the maenad. We have to allow at least one.’

‘Allow? But Carlo, she –’

‘I know. It is hard to hold all of life. It had to be real, and you had to give too. Are you offended?’

I needed to think. Disappointed? Yes. Hurt and betrayed? Yes. Offended? Yes. But no. I tracked it, grasped it. Everything. The women working together. The real reason for the Rankins going away. Beth leaving house keys with Raina, just happening to leave, of all things, Mary Renault’s
The Mask of Apollo
. Raina and the others staging things, picnics, tricks, leaving clues, staging the thing in the attic. The scale of it. The intent.

But offended?

I thought of Gemma hurrying home from the caravan, dressing in white, being tied to the bed, pissing herself at an appropriate early hour. Going so far. All planned. So
this
could happen.

‘I thought she liked me.’

‘She may. Who can say? She liked you enough.’

To do it
, he didn’t have to say.

I tried to grasp it all. ‘As Zoe.’

‘That at least.’

It explained everything. ‘I won’t see her again—Gemma—will I?’

‘It’s hard to know. She’s out there.’ He gestured at the waiting crowd. ‘Choosing and re-choosing, like any of us. It was for this time. But, then, look at Raina.’

‘Raina!’

‘She chose me.’

‘
She
was a maenad?’

‘
Is
, David. You’re surprised. Just as you’re surprised that this remembering of the eternal spirit behind a strong male god is a
female
mystery, kept by women. Still, if you want to see the worth of any religion, watch what its women do, how its women behave, how they are treated. Mary Magdalen was closer to Christ’s mystery than silly, conniving St Paul ever was. This too is a pure thing in an impure vessel.’

I watched the assembled figures, began to understand what Carlo was giving up to stay with me. ‘You should be with them.’ It was a realisation rather than an exhortation, spoken more for me than for him.

‘You had to be safe. There are clowns. That came first.’

‘Carlo, you have to be part of it.’

‘I am, David. We are.’

‘You know what I mean. They’ve made the—god. As much of the pure thing as they can. You have to be out there.’

‘David, this truly is just as important. The god—to call it that—is here too.’

‘You have to be!’

He watched me, eyes glittering in the lamplight. ‘You permit it?’ he asked, gently and kindly.

‘Me? Go! Go!’

‘You’ll be safe?’

‘Undo the cuffs. If you go, I’ll stay. I promise. I won’t leave yet.’

Carlo went behind me, unlocked the chain and the cuffs, freed my arms from the tree, then crossed to the waiting men, merged with them.

A voice rang out, his voice. ‘Nyktelios!’

And the chorus answered. ‘Night sun! Traveller in night!’

Now the men moved again, advanced on the tower, the mamuthones leading with their shuffle-jump dance:
shink-shink shink-shink
. They
had
been waiting, waiting to see what I would say or do, what I would allow.

You permit it?

The two groups joined, merged. Many figures embraced, not as wild and frenzied Bacchantes, but as friends, neighbours, greeting each other, laughing and talking, glad that it had happened.
It went ahead
.
It’s now
. Flagons and bottles were brought from the tower, drinks poured, black mamuthone masks lifted. Trestle tables were set up, platters of food laid out. Everyone stood about sharing their meal, sharing the night, the time.

I waited by my tree. Soon I would go over there, or I would leave. The wounded man. Wounded pride, vanity, injured self-esteem were moving me, shaping choice. Old ways, old habits.

Someone was coming, lit from behind by the light in the glade.

‘David, here. Drink big.’

Not Gemma. Raina. She wore jeans and shirt. Her robe had been set aside.

I took the glass, sipped the sweet fierce wine. ‘Here’s to the maenads!’

‘And the satyrs!’ she said, smiling.

‘The satyrs!’ I drained my glass.

‘
Bravo
! You stayed. Despite everything.’

‘Yes. For my reasons.’

‘Of course. Don’t blame Jack. He had nothing to do with this. He truly does look out for you.’

‘But he has a part. You know him.’

‘Through Prias. Prias Constantiou.’

‘Is he here? Jack, I mean. Or Prias for that matter. I’d like to meet him.’

‘Jack is in Sydney. He knows nothing about tonight –’

‘Other than it could happen.’ I was so certain.

‘– and Prias is on Crete.’

‘An archaeologist like Carlo.’

‘An old colleague. Different days then.’

‘Not too different, I suspect. The more things change…’

‘The fondest illusion, David. That things stay the same. Everything changes.’

‘And doesn’t. I know about
zoë
.’

I couldn’t mistake the richness of her smile. ‘Ah, which comes to little faced with entropy and the heat death of the universe.’

‘It’s everything,’ I said. ‘We’re made to grasp it as everything. Why would we evolve any other way?’

‘Healthy self-regard? I’m being devil’s advocate tonight.’

‘Glad to see it. At least
you
know what’s going on.’

‘And you don’t?’ She looked across at the others. ‘It’s so obvious, so long as you grant that we understand more than we know and know more than we understand.’

‘Oh, very profound. I’m not sure that’ll do it.’