Medusa Frequency (8 page)

‘The way you freaked out the first time, there’s no telling what a second jolt might trigger off. And for all I know I could be had up for practising EEG without a licence.’

‘You’re the one that got me hooked. Don’t chicken out on me now.’

‘You’ve got funny ideas about what constitutes chickening out. Some people might say you were chickening out when you tried to get a novel out of your head with a machine.’

‘At least I’m man enough not to lay off the Orpheus action on somebody else and give them angina.’

‘Then I’m sure you’re man enough to carry on alone. Now if you don’t mind I have to get back to what I’m doing.’

‘Don’t we all,’ I said as I stared at the wordless monitor.

THINK OF ME AS I THINK OF YOU, said the Kraken.

Last time you didn’t want me to think of you. You were afraid you might be real.

I AM REAL. I KNOW NOW THAT IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO EXIST WITHOUT BEING REAL. THINK OF ME.

Why do you want me to think of you?

I WANT TO BE MORE REAL.

Why?

IT’S IN THE NATURE OF THINGS.

I do think of you. I have always thought of you, I’ve told you that before.

HOW HAVE YOU THOUGHT OF ME? WHAT IS THE FORM OF ME IN YOUR THOUGHTS?

I told you that the first time we spoke.

TELL ME AGAIN.

I think of you as the great cephalopod, ancient of the deeps. I think of you as the great thinking head in the blackness of the ultimate deep, I think of you as the Kraken.

AND THE LITTLE CHILDREN? YOU SPOKE OF LITTLE CHILDREN THE FIRST TIME.

Even little children have an idea of you in their minds. They draw a great head with all the limbs growing out of it.

VAST AND WRITHING.

Actually they mostly draw your limbs thin and gangling.

BUT I AM VAST AND WRITHING.

Yes, of course.

WHEN DID YOU BEGIN TO THINK OF ME?

For as long as my mind has been you have been in my mind. Always have I heard the circles of your terror widening in the deeps but it was the head of Orpheus I wanted to talk to really.

YOU KNOW THAT I’M THE UNDERHEAD, I’M DEEPER THAN THE HEAD OF ORPHEUS.

Yes. I have to go out now. We’ll talk soon.

I switched off the monitor. Whenever the Kraken and I spoke in words on the screen I experienced a surge of terror at the centre of me that was comfortable and familiar, I felt as if I’d always known the Kraken and I knew that we always told each other the truth. With the head of Orpheus things were always awkward and it was by its own admission unreliable but I felt a strong need to talk to it. I couldn’t think of any reason to go out but there weren’t any bananas in the house so I went to the North End Road market.

‘Look, look!’ shouted a man. ‘Look at this cabbage! Get yourself a head, you never know when you’ll need one!’ It was the gom yawncher man from the Cheshire Cheese who’d also been the broken-brimmed-hat man in the underground. ‘Look, look!’ he shouted.

I looked. There it was, green-slimed and barnacled among the lawful fruit and vegetables on the barrow. Its mouth was open and speaking. ‘Swaying, swaying their tops against the sky the trees came down to the water’s edge,’ said the head of Orpheus, ‘and I found her there in the mottled sunlight and the leafy shade by the river.’

‘For God’s sake,’ I said, ‘not here!’ To the gom yawncher man I said, ‘I’ll have this one.’

‘Sixty-five p for the thinking man’s cabbage head,’ he said as he weighed it and wrapped it up in page three of the
Sun,
‘with a visual treat thrown in.’

‘You remember me, don’t you?’ I said. ‘From the underground and the Cheshire Cheese?’

‘How could I forget?’ he said.

As I hurried home through the people and the traffic the head continued its story. I had to hold it close to my ear to hear what it was saying, ‘In the leafy shade she lay all huddled and forlorn, the red-gold hair, the ivory of her in the cool and leafy shade by the river, her garments all disordered offering to the eye her shapeliness, her long and rounded limbs; splendid and sculptural she was, like a broken winged victory. The honeyed air droned and sang; the ivory of her, the pathetic and savage splendour of her beauty sang in my eyes as I knelt beside her. Gone she was and lost to me for ever, Eurydice! Eurydice!’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’ I said. ‘How can she be gone and lost to you for ever when you haven’t even met her yet?’

‘Where was I?’ said the head. ‘Where did I leave off last time?’

‘You heard the unseen woman weeping by the river and you became the world-child and the tortoise you’d killed. Underworld opened to you and you sang and blood came out of your mouth and your nose.’

‘Yes. Weeping, weeping in the golden afternoon her voice came to me in the mottled sunlight by the river and I went to where she lay all huddled and forlorn, the red-gold hair, the ivory of her in the cool and leafy shade by the river, her garments all disordered offering to the eye her shapeliness, her long and rounded limbs; splendid and sculptural she was, like a broken winged victory. The honeyed air droned and sang, the ivory of her, the pathetic and savage splendour of her beauty sang in my eyes as I knelt beside her. She looked at me not as one looks at a stranger but as if she expected me to comfort her. Full of desire and uncertainty I took her in my arms. She smelled of honey, it was like a dream, there was no strangeness in it; there already seemed to be a long history between us.’ The head lapsed into silence.

‘Go on,’ I said.

‘Go on with what?’

‘With what happened when you found Eurydice weeping in the leafy shade.’

‘We made love.’

‘Didn’t you say anything first? Surely you didn’t just jump on her without a word?’

‘I don’t know what I said at first.’

‘You probably said, “Why are you crying?’”

‘That was it,’ said the head. ‘I said, “Why are you crying?”

‘“I was sleeping,” she said, “and I dreamed that I was the whole world; the whole world had become me and I was a child and I was afraid.” She was still trembling as she clung to me.

‘“Did you hear me singing by the river?” I said.

‘“In my dream there came around me all the strange and many colours of death,” she said. “They took my hands and wanted me to dance with them and I was afraid.’” Here again the head fell silent.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘what did you say to that?’

‘I kissed her,’ said the head. ‘She tasted of honey.’

‘“You taste of blood,” she said.

‘“Something happened in my throat when I sang,” I said. But again she ignored my mention of the singing. I don’t remember what she said after that.’

‘Yes, you do.’

‘It hurts to remember.’

‘Yes, but without remembering we have nothing.’

‘She said, “Be the world-child with me,’” said the head.

At that moment some large schoolboys lurched violently into me, I dropped the head, and one of the boys kicked it into the road. Several cars passed before I could go after it, and by then there was no sign of it anywhere.

I spent the rest of the day typing up everything so far which brought me to this page. Several times the telephone rang and I could hear Lucretia stamping her booted foot inside it but I didn’t answer.

In the evening, the evening after seeing Melanie Falsepercy and Istvan Fallok at the Cheshire Cheese, I went there again. I arrived a little after seven; that was about the time they’d come in. I sat down at the same table I’d sat at before and placed myself so as to have a good view of the door.

In my mind she arrived at a quarter past seven, smiled tentatively and looked at me with her woodland look as I stood up. She came over to the table, I pulled out a chair for her and helped her out of her coat. I was overwhelmed by the actuality of her. Like Luise she was taller than I; she smelled of youth and miracles, of November darkness and hibiscus lamplight.

Hello, she said as she sat down in my mind in the chair that stood empty before me. Here I am. Did you think I’d come?

The gom yawncher man, making his rounds, smiled at me and said, ‘Numsy fy?’

‘It’s too soon to say,’ I said. ‘It’s all in my mind.’ I went out into Crutched Friars, turned right, turned left, followed a sign that pointed to St Olave’s Church, crossed a big road full of blackness and white headlamps, fetched up at All Hallows by the Tower and went inside.

It seemed a working church in good order, and the many models in the Mariners’ Chapel in the south aisle gave it a pleasantly practical air. There was a Communion service going on but a sign in the south aisle indicated that one might pray privately in the Chapel of St Francis in the crypt.

Going down the stairs I came first to the tiny dim Oratory of St Clare in which were two chairs and two prie-dieux facing a small Romanesque window with a grille in front of it. Beyond the window in a lighted alcove was an unlit brass oil lamp of the sort that Aladdin rubbed. This one stood on a rather tall foot
and the handle of it was in the form of the chi-rho monogram. I sat down in one of the chairs and mentally rubbed the lamp.

There was a clip-clopping on the staircase and a stirring in the air, winter-sharp and woodlandish.

‘Hello,’ said Melanie Falsepercy as she sat down beside me. ‘Here I am. Did you think I’d come?’

Thank you, I said to the lamp. ‘I wasn’t expecting you at All Hallows,’ I said to her.

‘I followed you here from the Cheshire Cheese,’ she said.

‘I didn’t see you when I was there.’

‘I was outside standing under the bridge, skulking in the shadows.’

‘But why didn’t you come in?’

‘It wasn’t coming-in time, it was skulking-in-the-shadows time.’

‘And then you followed me here.’

‘Because I’d been waiting for you.’

A prayerful-looking man entered the oratory. We left, went out of the church, and stood hand in hand before the big road of blackness and white headlamps.

‘You’d been waiting for me,’ I shouted against the rushing of the blackness and the lights.

She brought her mouth close to my ear. ‘Yes,’ she said.

We crossed the road, the rushing faded behind us. Great-arched, great-shadowed, high in the lonesome evening the railway bridge loomed before us, the golden windows of the Cheshire Cheese invited. We entered the ascending red, the descending black and found ourselves a table under the canopy of quiet voices.

‘What’re you having?’ I said.

‘Whatever you’re having.’

I got us both treble gins with just a little water.

‘Gin looks so clear,’ she said, ‘and it’s so full of obscurity. Here’s to All Hallows.’

‘All Hallows. It was very strange yesterday evening; all of a sudden there you were.’

‘I’d never been here before. Had you?’

‘Never. What brought you?’

‘I’d been translating Rilke’s ‘Orpheus, Eurydike, Hermes’ and then I looked up Orpheus in the telephone directory.

When I saw the Orpheus and Tower Bridge Club listing I had to come to Savage Gardens for a look round. Thirsty work.’

Luise had translated that poem for me, I’d recorded her reading it in German and in English and I still remembered lines here and there:

Wie eine Frucht von Süβigkeit und Dunkel,
so war sie voll von ihrem groβen Tode …

Like a fruit of sweetness and darkness,
So was she full of her large death …

‘Do you do a lot of translation?’ I said.

‘No, it just happened that I wanted to get the ideas in the poem as clear in my mind as I could.’

‘Do you do any writing?’

‘Bits and pieces, nothing I’d show anyone yet.’

‘And you and Fallok?’

‘Not any more but we have a drink together now and then. What brought you to Savage Gardens?’

‘A conversation with the head of Orpheus.’

‘How did you and it meet?’

‘I hallucinated it in the mud at low tide near Putney Bridge.’

‘You and Tycho Fremdorf.’

‘Who’s Tycho Fremdorf?’

‘Haven’t you seen
Codename Orpheus?’

‘No. Why?’

‘Better now?’ said the gom yawncher man as he cleared the table.

‘Much better, thanks,’ I said.

‘I keep seeing that man in different places,’ I said to Melanie when he’d gone.

‘That happens to Tycho Fremdorf too,’ she said.

‘What is all this about Tycho Fremdorf?’

‘Tycho Fremdorf is the protagonist of
Codename Orpheus.
He’s a sort of alienated anti-hero film-maker. He’s been wandering around all night with his Arriflex and in the dawn we see him standing in the low-tide mud near the Albert Bridge. Everything still and grey and the boats rocking at their moorings and then he sees the head of Orpheus coming up the
river against the tide. It’s quite remarkable, there was a long piece about the film in
Sight and Sound.
Are you all right?’

‘What do you mean? Why shouldn’t I be all right?’

‘You look very pale.’

‘I always look pale. What did they say about
Codename Orpheus,
in
Sight and Sound?’

‘Sylvestre Lyzée wrote the piece; he said that it worked on the deconstructionist level but he had a little trouble with the reality-frame.’

‘Wasn’t it directed by what was his name, Gustav Krähe?’

‘Gösta Kraken.’

‘He’s the one where it’s always very dark and you often see people lying in puddles, isn’t he? Didn’t he do a film called
Squelchy Places?’

‘Bogs.
In this one he goes in for rivers and low-tide mud a lot. The look of it is really terrific, that shot of the head coming up the Thames against the tide stays in the mind like some of Eisenstein’s images. It isn’t like the head of a swimming man, it’s all rotting and bloated and eyeless and it has this awful stillness about it as it moves upriver.’

I’d brought with me the pages I’d typed so far and at some point I’d put the folder on the table. There it lay in the shadow of
Codename Orpheus.
I put it back in my shoulder bag.

‘You brought a typescript with you and now you’ve put it away,’ she said. ‘Why’d you do that?’

‘This night is different from other nights,’ I said. As I said it I had the sensation of rocking in the sea and feeling something rising dark and huge from the black chill, becoming pale and glimmering, becoming Luise rising in her vast and ivory nakedness in the dark, in the night sea. So deep, the sea! So vast and comfortless! I shaded my eyes with my hand and looked down into the transparency of the gin in my glass, smooth brightness in the shining dawn and Luise seen across the water rising naked, huge, gleaming in the shining dawn.