Orfeo (27 page)

“It’s no use, Earl!” he shouted. “We’ve got to go on foot.”

Earl stared at him for seconds, his eyes glaring blindly. Then, with no indication that he had considered Papa’s message consciously at all, he threw open the door and jumped outside. Papa followed him more cautiously, watching the mud rising up around his suit trousers with distaste.

A gunshot made him snap his head up. Earl had pulled out his semi-automatic and had let off a bullet in the direction of the two figures who were zigzagging away across the flats. With a silent curse, Papa started to run after his boss, pausing only when one foot sank more deeply into the marsh.

After the second shot, he saw the smaller of the two figures stumble, presumably the girl. Rushing up to Earl he grabbed his arm and spun him around. “You’re going to kill her!” he shouted, but Earl stared at him in fury, trying to pull the hand that held the gun free and take aim once more.

“You stupid fucking nigger!” he hissed. “She’s mine!”

“And you’re going to kill her!” Papa cried out again. Earl’s eyes were murderous, his white face spattered with his own blood, but after struggling against the older man for a few seconds some of the violence began to fade away.

He nodded. “We have to get them. Come on!” Thoughtlessly, he threw the semi-automatic to the ground and began to run at full speed toward the couple who were slowly weaving back and forth in the distance.

Papa followed more slowly behind, carefully testing the ground as he trotted along, grimacing as mud streaked his trousers and splattered his fine leather shoes. Earl was gaining ground ahead of him when suddenly he let out a yell as he stumbled through water and sank to his waist into the ground.

If Papa had been cautious before, he was infinitely more so as he slowly approached his boss. For a few moments Earl had shouted and cursed loudly, forcing himself onwards but instead of reaching firmer ground he had been sucked further into the marshy land, black water now reaching up to his armpits.

“Get here, you dumb, fucking nigger!” he howled as Papa followed a ridge alongside the pool. “Get me out of this fucking shit!”

With a grimace, Papa carefully lowered himself down to his haunches, balancing precariously and staring at the dangerously infirm earth around them. “Not sure I can do that, boss,” he replied, affecting a lighthearted tone. “I don’t really want to make any more mess of my suit.”

Earl stared at him in shock, then his diabolical features twisted into a paroxysm of fury. “You stupid fucking bastard!” he howled. “Get me out of here—now! Before I fucking kill you!” As he flailed around, the mud increased its lethal grip on him, dragging him down a few more inches. At this, a look of panic spread across his face and his gaze implored Papa to help him.

“Like you say, boss,” the older man replied in measured tones. “I’m just a dumb, fucking nigger. I wouldn’t know how to get you out of here even if I wanted to.” He turned his attention to the distance where the two fugitives were steadily making progress beside the dark lagoon.

“What do you mean?” Earl asked incredulously. “If you wanted to?” He flailed his arms more violently and seemed to slip downwards, water splashing against his face and into his mouth, making him choke and cough.

Papa stared at the dead man, his own face impassive. “Life’s best is over,” he said very quietly. “Let it go, Earl.”

Now the panic was rising more quickly in the other man’s face, his mouth barely above the water line. “Help me,” he pleaded. “For God’s sake, Papa. Help me!” As he spoke, more black water sloshed into his mouth and he spluttered and gurgled, his hands rising up, covered in the same thick, tarry mud that was splashed over his white face.

As he sank further down Papa remained squatting. Toward the end Earl began to scream, a mixture of anger and hate that filled the silent air with curses. It occurred to Papa that, had he been so minded, the gun lay not so very far away, that he would have been able to put the dying man out of his misery more quickly. But he was not so minded.

When the water finally covered Earl’s face, only the tips of his arms and hands now visible above the deathly marsh alongside that gloomy, ghastly visage, Papa stood up and gazed into the distance. Orfeo and Ardyce were now little more than specks to the north, picking their way carefully to freedom.

“You fly away, little moth,” he said. “You fly far away, and don’t you come back.”

With that, he looked down at himself, lifting up his feet with an expression of disgust. “Damn!” he mused. “Look what you made me do. These were my favorite shoes!”

Flicking a sod of earth toward the disappearing head of Earl, he turned and began to cautiously walk back in the direction of Xanadu. He did not look back once, even as dark specks of birds rose up into the blue sky and circled away to the north.

The king hadd a quen of priis

That was y-cleped Dame Heurodis

(Anonymous,
Sir Orfeo
)

The story of Orpheus and his descent to the underworld to save Eurydice dates to Virgil’s
Georgics
, written toward the end of the first century BC, although references to Orpheus are at least five centuries older. The myth has long been a popular one and there are probably few who do not know at least a little of the story, how Eurydice, bitten by a snake, is taken down to Dis (as the Romans called their underworld) and followed by the living Orpheus. At the sound of his song, so Virgil writes, “the house of the dead was itself stupefied” and the dread king of the afterlife agrees to allow Orpheus to return with his wife on one condition: that he not look back at his wife. Near the entrance to the underworld a madness seizes him and he does indeed look back whereupon she is taken away from him forever.

The original story, then, is one of tragedy. In the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, however, an anonymous poet took an older, Breton lay and composed the story of
Sir Orfeo
, mingling in Celtic mythology with the original classical story. In this version of events, Orfeo and his queen, Dame Heurodis, are enjoying the merry world of England in May when she is visited by a terrible dream: as she sleeps beneath a tree, the king of the fairies comes to her and tells her that she is his. She wakes in terrible distress and Orfeo promises to protect her with all his men (returning to the very spot where the fairy king visited her—such is the logic of these stories), but all to no avail. She is taken from him and nothing that he or his knights does can save her.

Here, though, the story differs from Virgil’s. Orfeo, wandering for years among the wild beasts, at last comes to the kingdom of fairy and, entering in, bewitches all who hear him there with his song. The fairy king releases her and, after many struggles, Orfeo and Heurodis return to their court among great rejoicing.

It is this medieval poem rather than Virgil’s original that is the more immediate source for this book. Breton lays were French and English poems dealing with themes of love and chivalry, frequently involving supernatural elements. While the anonymous poet shifted Orpheus from Thrace to England, my book has of course transferred Orfeo to New Orleans in 2005, the year of the dreadful events surrounding Hurricane Katrina. Like millions of people that year, I saw the terrible scenes unfolding and they stuck with me for a long time, particularly the accusations that the government of the time had failed to act quickly because so many of those caught in the city were poor and black. This in part lies behind my own decision to transform Orfeo into a man born in Haiti, just as the earlier poet made the ancient Hellene an Englishman.

The supernatural elements of the medieval poem more or less disappear, although the descent into the underworld remains central to the story. In later versions of such lays the king of fairy is sometimes referred to as the Erl king, and so he becomes Earl in
Orfeo
. Eurydice is transformed into Ardyce, a variant of the Celtic name Ardis, meaning “fervent” (though chosen mainly for its sound, if I am honest). Orfeo remains Orfeo.

Other characters, particularly the
loa
, so-called after the voodoo intermediaries between men and the Bondye, come from other sources, as do different elements of the tale which, for all it is set in America in the twenty-first century, remains a fairy tale. The visits of Orfeo to Ardyce at the beginning of the book in part take their source from the myth of Eros and Psyche, told in Apuleis’s somewhat saucy and inventive novel,
The Golden Ass
. Earl’s obsession with Ardyce (and thus much of his character) owes rather a lot to the character of Frank Booth, played by Dennis Hopper, in David Lynch’s film
Blue Velvet
.

In the end, however, it is the anonymous medieval poem that continues to play on my imagination, as it has for many years since I first read it. While my own book may end on a somewhat ambivalent note through the point of view of the enigmatic Papa, it is perhaps fitting that the final word should come from the last lines written by the anonymous poet of
Sir Orfeo
:

Thus com Sir Orfeo out of his care:

God graunt ous alle wele to fare! Amen.

Stella Maris
(Star of the Sea)

Mother of heaven,

star of the sea,

guide to the sailor,

star of the sea,

queen of the floodtide,

star of the sea—

ocean moon’s guardian,

fair star of the sea.

Lady of sorrows,

star of the sea,

merciful mistress,

star of the sea.

Herald of morning,

evensong’s mistress,

good hope in darkness -

bright star of the sea.

Luna

Moon, my moon, O virgin lover

your stealthy beams descend to prick

love’s lock. Wrapped with night’s thick cover

you through the open windows sneak

to steal the treasures in my bed,

the joys that stain your fingers red.

Moon, my moon, recline by my side,

entrance me with your silver eye,

allure me with your season’s tide,

forsake this night your darkened sky.

Your smoky myrrh smolders my womb

and promises warmth, moon, my moon.

A Garland

Ere summer’s end I have sought,

and in seeking, hope to find,

those flowers which for others wrought

a garland of the noblest kind.

Yet those flowers are not my only fruit,

for I have sown a far more subtle seed,

seed that within the heart’s warm earth will feed

when in this song and spell it takes up root.

Cultivated by kisses kind

and with my great affection wrought,

in this garland the words I find

are those which love to show I sought.

Song

Hair burning red, as red as a flame,

and eyes so green, as deep as the sea,

your skin so pale I cannot tame—

I burn and I drown when you come to me.

We lived alone a long, long time -

our hearts were broken a long, long time.

When you kiss me and I feel your heat

then at last our hearts will meet.

Hair burning red, as red as flame,

and eyes so green, as deep as the sea,

your skin so pale I cannot tame -

I burn and I drown when you leave me.

Dionysos

Life’s best is over, is beyond your reach,

and all you can hope for is not to be.

Come, come, come, accept the wisdom I teach:

accept you are dust and find joy in me.

The hounds of madness fly to the mountain

and feed on the flesh of the wild kid goat,

Maenads dance and drink from the fountain

of sacred blood wine, cool fire in the throat.

The frenzy is holy, but only when pure,

for I am most just, omnipotent power:

whirling in heaven’s storm I shall endure

the lightning I bring, the winds that devour.