8 Winderby's Last Case - Duncan McGibbon (read book txt) 📗

few weeks later about
a woman who had emerged
out of the waves on a small
island in the distant view
of the bay.
I left behind all excuses and
made for the island,
walking the submarine valley
impelled by a strange desire
to save the madwoman.
Winter currents from the Adriatic
ending the dry period,
were causing the gravels
to shift in the submarine valley.
I was swimming through flint,
agate, quartz, gneiss and granite,
sensing the stress of that
old continent, falling beneath me
and the young rock pushing
from the east.
I followed her into a deep chasm
and emerged in a huge cavern.
In the murky heights.
I could make out a triangle
in the centre of the dome.
Small fine stars streamed out.
Three cupolas held up
Baccho, Orpheo and Apollo Silentio,
seated on thrones.
The cupolas were held up
by three naked female figures.
I saw the Chastel sisters La Marquise
and la Baronne.
The person of Euphrosyne was turned
to gaze in ecstasy at Aglaia
who in a gesture of shock
looked to Thalia’s calm eyes
of pleasure. This rhythm transmitted
itself to three groups of three figures
each turned to each other.
A figure I recognised as Iphigenia
with the symbols of Calliope,
the muse of epic, was turned
to support the right foot of Mirth
with both hands, opposite her,
Alcestis with the symbols of Erato,
the muse of lyric poetry,
held Mirth’s left foot in the same way .
Both figures were turned to Antiope,
who held up both arms linking
with the hands of the others
and supporting the outstretched feet
of Mirth with both hands.
Mirth held up Bacchus.
Similarly the figure of Aglaia,
was supported by Penthesilea,
with the symbols of Euterpe,
the muse of music
who stood opposite Jephtha’s daughter,
with the symbols of Polyhymnia,
the muse of sacred song.
In the centre, stood Procris
with the symbols of tragedy,
holding up Aglaia, the grace of beauty,
who supported Orpheus.
The group closest to us
contained Callisto, as Terpsichore,
the muse of dance and Eurydice, as Thalia,
the muse of comedy in the middle.
Instead of the figure of Polyxena
an unhewn block of stone
supported Thalia’s left foot.
The two figures of Thalia
had the first finger of their right hands
raised to their lips, reducing Apollo’s support.
The groups were arranged as a triangle,
so that the three Silentii gazed at each other.
On the four walls, I could see frescos.
On the back wall,
a summer landscape of a valley,
presided over by Angerona,
with the River Tigris, was burning with sunlight.
The trees were bent away from the South wind,
while fire consumed a raging Semele
in a field of bronze wheat.
The blessed were pouring
out of their graves led by the man of Ezekiel,
the angel Gabriel, the horseman of war
and the figure of Sarah.
On the East wall a darkened
fresco depicted evening.
The coastal landscape was autumnal,
presided over by Tacita with the River Oxus,
the earth was full of fallen leaves,
under a glowing sunset.
The East wind was blowing and
a melancholy Danae was soaked in golden rain.
The land was full of the penitents of Purgatory,
led by Raphael and Rebecca ,
the horseman of famine
and the eagle of the tetramorph.
On the west wall a spring landscape
of a plain was invigorated by the Zephyr.
The land was presided over by Silentium
with the river Euphrates .
The water was flooding, in an early dawn.
A phlegmatic Leda was wrestling
with a swan on silver water.
The plain was full of the children and pagans
of Limbo, led by Rachel, Michael ,
the horse man of plague
and the Lion of the Tetramorph.
Behind them on the Northern wall,
a winter landscape of mountains
and snow was darkened in night.
The wind was blowing the bare trees
towards them. A bull was carrying sanguine
Europa away.
The scene was judged by Harpocrates .
The mists were descending on the river Indus .
The damned were being led into Hell by Azrael ,
Leah, the horseman of capital death
and the bull of the tetramorph
through the door we had come through.
Suddenly I was distracted by a wonderful music .
The statues were singing in fourths
and in common time. It was a
spellbinding incantation.
I saw the dancing feet of Callisto
and remembered the play on the train.
As I heard the laughter of Eurydice
in the garden and the strength of Penthesilea.
The Harding sisters were smiling
at each other and they led me
to the awful visage of Silentio,
his drunkeness took me by force.
I saw the stars and the universe
flowing with the four categories of the stoics,
the four causes of Aristotle,
the efficient , the material,
the teleological and the formal,
with subcategories dancing on the feet
of the muses on the floor.
I saw the Zoas prove themselves.
I saw the categories of Kant creating the world.
I saw the dimension of time exploding
and the height, breadth and length
of the cave expand until I could see
infinity with a mortal eye
and I could see it beaming into
gravity, electromagnetism,
dense nuclear force
and binding nuclear force,
then a fear gripped me. I could hear
the sound of substances being counted
like the echo of a million wings.
Every event and all matter
and all life was being counted,
and once a number was assigned it ceased
to exist except as an abstract object.
A date had been assigned
to the beginning of time
and the past was closing down
as each unit of time was counted out.
Every sigh, every thought, every heart beat
was being calculated and dusted away into
more and more exact equations.
I was thrilled by the power and economy
of my vision which contained me
and explained me and I felt every
part of my body being dispersed into
this vast beauty, become an ecstasy
that glowed with the slow certainty of happiness.
I was falling in love with sleep.
Then I grasped, I was falling asleep with love.
Her hand was still in mine, but I was gripping stone.
Only the girl’s finger tip still throbbed.
I began to stroke the marble edge
of her knuckles, staring into her fixed eyes
until I sensed a wrestling with cold and
a pitched conflict with some being.
The girl was coming towards me,
in terror of drowning in stone.
I could hear her voice begin
to emerge from the crush of marble.
Water began to course
down the side of the cavern.
She was becoming less in our eyes.
Each clammy, unappealing touch
wearing down in attrition,
for her the business of a micro –second
For me an eternity of burning touch,
for her, trite seconds
that interrupt the smooth
contemplation of her
eternal, ripeness,
her absolute hide:
To love is to hear the waterfall through
the single drop of the loved one
and yet to hear the drop through the waterfall
and to see the waterfall as the drop
and to see the drop as the waterfall.
The tremor that had
revealed the cave returned.
Suddenly the statues had
become skeletons, like an anatomy
class before falling into a huge rift
in the side of the cave.
We ran through the cave with thunder behind us.
until we reached the beach. The boat was just about to depart .
we both swam out, I clutched the rudder and helped
Polyxena on board. Her legs were ice-cold
and grey but as the winter sun came out
they began to warm. I massaged them with a towel.
By holding on to Polyxena I had reversed the terrible
determinism of number and had sent their
infernal machine into an ever
reducing infinite contraction.
And yet I knew Attwater would want
to rescue some evidence for his fame.
He must know now I am free
of excommunication.

45 .What Norman Did in Greece.

A letter to Anyone who Can Help..
I explained to Trace
how it wasn’t right,
her going off like that
with the French firm.
Her American friend
had vanished.
If anything, she seemed
pleased to see me.
Their office was empty,
but we wanted to get
to the bottom of this.
We set out from the town
and learned from a local
that the ‘evil place’
was on an island
off the North West shore.
We walked for about half a day
through trees Tracy said were
myrtle, cypress, lemon
and olive to Kapsali.
It took time to haggle,
with a fisherman,
but soon we were sailing
over the cobalt blue sea
under a sky that was indigo.
Only the white trehandiri boat
and its sail divided the pure air,
as the tiny island came into view
we saw the entrance to a small cave.
The man refused to land
and we had to go into it on foot
to be picked up that evening.
We came into a passage open to the sky.
I could smell the acrid odour
of the clay, of pine and the sea air,
and looked for a crevice through the
white, purple and pink
of flowers Tracy called
Campanella and others,
the smalt blue of Delphiniums.
We heard tremors below.
Tracy was already
growing bronze from the sun.
She had nothing but a full smile
on her face as she busied herself
with the pick axe and shovel.
I dug through gravel.
The island
is subject to earthquakes.
Suddenly, a landfall brought
the entrance into view .
We broke through
the lead seals on the door.
The bronze doors fell open.
There was a grim darkness
and silence was acute.
We found ourselves
looking at an immense dome.

As I turned I saw a slab of stone
was beginning to glow
with a blood red hue .
Before my eyes I saw Trace
turn the same colour
and she was bursting from her clothes,
black shorts and a white shirt
tied at the front.
she cried out to me and
I grasped her scorching hand
the stone was pouring into
the shape of my wife.
There was another tremor
and I saw the American woman.
She had been trapped in a cave
Some ghost seemed to lead her away.
I’ve never seen a ghost before
but the woman was real.
I ran out as quickly as I could,
grabbing Tracy.
Later we heard the island itself
fell into the sea during
a violent earthquake.
We flew back to Heathrow.
I picked up the car and