Lost Among the Stars

by Paul Di Filippo

  Daeira, he realized, carried no purse, nor any possessions in her pocketless dress. How did she live?

  He wanted to hurl accusations, to shake her and demand that she tell whatever she knew. But he restrained himself to the extent of simply sitting rigidly in bed, lips clamped tight. Daeira’s small smile combined a wealth of rueful sadness with a trace of wry amusement at the way of the world.

  “You will know everything in time, Rupert. Until such a moment, do not think too unkindly of me. I am counting on your friendship and aid.”

  Her light footfalls on the inner staircase and across the front room and out the door resembled more the pattering of Taormina than of a substantial woman, one whose glorious weight had just been recumbent atop him.

  The next day—later the same horrible day, actually—Rupert seemed to emerge from a fog. After twisting feverishly on the edge of sleep until noon, up and dressed and fed and with the cuccu in his pocket, he suddenly saw Daeira’s speech in a new light. An independent woman of mystery, she had uncommon sources of information not open to him. Somehow she had become interested enough in him and his past to delve deeper. Maybe she had found some objective truths behind Jessica’s death from sources she was not free to name. Wasn’t her affection for him obvious, and vigorously manifested? How could he have doubted her? Why hadn’t he accepted what she wanted to give, then patiently waited for more?

  With a burning desire to apologize and explain himself, Rupert began searching the Sassi for Daeira, starting at La Gatta Buia.

  But if his earlier quest for the woman had been frustrating and barren of results, until she had chosen to be found, this second search met even more stony walls and dead ends. Anyone who seemed even to recognize the woman he described also seemed disappointed in Rupert, if not hostile to him. One old shawl-clad woman who sold fish in the open-air market gave a typical response, fixing him with a knowing if rheumy gaze.

  “You must prove yourself now. Your search will demand much from you.”

  So distraught and guilty was Rupert that he felt unable to continue seeing Flavia any longer. He broke up with her over dinner one night. She took the ending of their relationship with a sniffling sadness that only made her sweet face more attractive, but also with surprising acceptance.

  “I have noticed for weeks now. Another woman has your heart in her hand. And I cannot compete. She is too much for me. This is beyond the simple affection we had for each other, Rupert. Go to her, if you can. Although something tells me she does not cook as wonderfully as me or my mother.”

  Indeed, Rupert speculated, Daeira was probably not one to don an apron. Remembering all the fabulous big-spirited meals the De Luca clan had provided, Rupert felt keenly the loss of the domestic comforts Flavia embodied, comforts he was willingly throwing over—for what, exactly?

  About nine days after Daeira had left him, Rupert was wandering the Piazza Vittorio Veneto with no goal when he realized that he had never visited one of the square’s main attractions, the Palombaro Lungo. Perhaps he could divert his thoughts for a moment. After buying a ticket, he was led down, down, down with other tourists into a cavernous network of gigantic cisterns, some five stories from bottom to arching top. A grated catwalk carried the hushed visitors above the shallow amount of water allowed to accumulate in these days of the system’s retirement. The guide pointed out the blocked ingress for the aquifer.

  Outside Rupert was somewhat dazzled by the sunlight, and he stumbled over something in his path near the exit.

  The obstacle proved to be the outstretched legs of Manchester, bohemian beggar, his little dog sitting loyally beside him on a blanket. Manchester’s begging cup held only a few euro coins, so Rupert contributed a ten-euro note. He noted that the hippie’s leg wound remained, neither festering nor healing.

  “Grazie, dude. How’re you and your lady friend getting on? Heard she gave you the air.”

  “Flavia? No, I quit her.”

  “Not talking about no waitress, bro. Talking about the Queen of Sassi.”

  “Who—”

  “La Bruna. The old Lightbringer herself.”

  “What do you know about her? Tell me, please!”

  “Man, it’s awfully hot out. Haven’t had a nice cold beer yet today. And can’t really enjoy my beer without pizza.”

  “Come with me.”

  Manchester levered himself up from the ground limberly. He collected his small possessions. The little dog trotted faithfully along, exhibiting infinite dignity.

  A bakery at the side of the piazza where the Via del Corso began offered cold pizza and beer, as well as sweets. Rupert and Manchester occupied a small tall table and high stools, despite a sniff of disapproval from the woman behind the counter at the hippie’s disreputable shabbiness. Rupert set Manchester up with plenty of food and drink. He himself could stomach nothing but a water, so anxious was he to learn more of Daeira from this unlikeliest of sources.

  After Manchester had sated himself, burped loudly, and wiped his whiskers with his sleeve, he said, apropos of no apparent thread of conversation, “Matera means mother, you know. Same root as maternal. Hera was a mother.”

  Rupert made no reply, deeming it wisest to let Manchester ramble down his own conversational paths.

  “Been here a long time,” said Manchester, referring to himself or the city or both. “Seems like centuries. Seen a lot, listened more than talked. Weird place, the Sassi. Lots of legends, lots of history, lots of dreams and fantasies. Maybe the strangest is about the Queen of Sassi.”

  “Daeira Bruno?”

  “That’s one of her names. In this time period. But she’s had thousands of monikers. She’s immortal, eternal, the incarnate spirit of the land. The rocks, the water, she embodies them all. Queen of the Stones, Queen of the Flows. You can hear her voice whispering in the Gravina, or at the back of a cave. She’s been worshiped and adored, hated and persecuted. She has crazy-ass followers and hardnosed enemies and rivals as well. You know the main bad guy real good.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “The cucibocca. He hates everything the Queen stands for. Freedom, liberty, the strength of the land. But at the same time, he wants to possess her. He’s incredibly jealous of any of her lovers. Tries to kill them all.”

  “But this cucibocca, whoever or whatever he is—he tried to get me before I ever met Daeira!”

  “Not from his point of view, or hers.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Manchester swigged more beer. “I said the Queen was eternal, and she is. But not in a simple linear way. That might be good enough for some, but not her. Instead, she floats from era to era as she wills it. Her now is always shifting, but she’s jumped back and forth so many times that she’s effectively omnipresent, contiguous with all Sassi spacetime. You like those five-euro words? Audited a few physics classes back in the day. Where was I? Oh, yeah. So she skips and hops across eras like a stone skimmed across a pond. One minute she’s here. The next minute, ten thousand years gone. Her now is anywhen. Her consciousness is a glowing point tracing patterns across the centuries. Same with the cucibocca. Up and down the millennia they race. To them, you’ve always been her lover, and always a threat.”

  Rupert held his head. “You’re crazy, and you’re driving me crazy too!”

  Manchester got down off his stool. “What’re you doing this afternoon?”

  “Nothing except trying to retain my sanity.”

  “Get your car and let’s go for a drive.”

  In Rupert’s Fiat, Manchester’s pungent aroma soon overcame the air-conditioning, and Rupert had to drive with the windows open. This allowed the little dog a happy chance to ride with its head out in the jet stream.

  “First stop, Church of the Original Sin.”

  Rupert knew of this cave chapel, but had never yet visited.

  Not far out from Matera, in the seeming middle of nowhere, he parked the car in a gravel lot overlooking another ravine, parallel to the Gravina’s trench, but
less impressive. From the ravine wafted a coolness that overlaid the hot summer day in a manner akin to Daeira’s paradoxical flesh. Overhead, in a crystalline sky, one of the local Egyptian vultures dived at a fleeing blue rock thrush which arrowed fast away for its life.

  A set of stairs precariously hewn into the cliffside led down from the parking area. Rupert envied Manchester his walking stick, but doubted he would be allowed to bring it inside. Nor was it likely the capering dog would gain entrance.

  Rupert and Manchester entered the ante-cave, where Rupert purchased two tickets. Much to his surprise, the attendant made no objection to stick or dog, but instead deferred to Manchester, who nodded back graciously. Then they had to wait for the start of the next lecture.

  Down an interior flight of rough stone steps they descended to the true church, product of monkish devotion in the ninth century AD. The partly carved, partly natural bubble in the rock seemed at once both walnut-shell small, yet big as a cathedral. Here, in the low-ceilinged, unevenly-floored space, a series of startling beautiful and deft frescoes, bright with the colors of lapis and alabaster, revealed each in turn by carefully placed spotlights, shed their numinous secrets as a knowledgeable guide disclosed the history of the ancient subterranean church and its Eden-themed paintings that had earned the crypt its name.

  When the lecture had ended, and the visitors were free to look closer on their own, Manchester took Rupert to the left corner of the back wall.

  “There she is! Your gal. Creating the universe. How many times you ever seen a woman cast in that role? At least in Christian terms.”

  Rupert studied the commanding female figure, gowned with wide-sleeved arms upthrust as if to part the primeval land from the nighted water. Her expression and mien did resemble Daeira’s.

  Back in the car, Rupert began to warm to this crazy magical mystery tour.

  “Where next?”

  “Metaponto,” said Manchester.

  The seaside resort town was some seventy kilometers away by a fine highway, and it took the Fiat only a little over half an hour to make the distance. Under the influence of his several beers, Manchester fell asleep for the drive, snoring loudly.

  The resort was packed with happy tourists and noisy local families, and Rupert could at first see no connection with his quest for Daeira. A refreshed Manchester took him to a pavilion that overlooked the beach and sea. The little dog chased shorebirds.

  “Magna Graecia,” said the hippie. “Metapontum. The Greeks brought their own myths here, but lots of older stuff too. Minoan and such. This is where Pythagoras lived. You dig Pythagoras, right? Scientist and magician. Taught by Hermes. Show me what’s on that thong around your neck.”

  Rupert lifted out the medallion Jessica had crafted for him, and whose duplicate he imagined he had seen in the Ridola museum.

  Manchester fingered the geometric symbols. “Yeah, I thought so. That’s the full Pythagorean set. Come with me.”

  Back in the car, under Manchester’s guidance, they drove a short way out of town, and soon strode on foot across a scruffy pasture toward a big set of ruins, the Temple of Hera: two parallel rows of fluted columns, all that was left of the ancient place of worship. No guards patrolled, leaving the two men temporarily alone.

  “Hera,” said Manchester. “Not one of La Bruna’s avatars exactly, except motherwise, but allied.” The old hippie began to poke around with his stick at various spots on the foundation, disturbing fast little lizards in their niches. Finally he began to dig furiously with the staff. He dropped to his knees and used his hands, the little dog helping. Rupert bent to look.

  “You see it?”

  Incised crudely into one of the buried foundation stones was the same set of Pythagorean symbols found on Rupert’s medallion.

  Manchester jumped up without deigning to explain any further. “Let’s go.”

  Back in the car, Manchester gave orders to head for Montescaglioso. That hilltop town not far from Matera boasted a more conventional configuration than that of the Sassi, freestanding buildings clustered dominatingly on the crest of their eminence. The Fiat climbed a set of switchbacks to reach the city’s busy congenial commercial streets. They parked, and Manchester asked, “What do you know about the Eleusinian Mysteries?”

  “Just the name, really.”

  “Huh! Very crucial stuff, man. Underground goddesses, immortality, flight and capture and rescue. All tied in, all tied in … I’d bone up on it, if I were you. Especially if the cucibocca was on my ass. And the major mysteries were celebrated just about now, you dig, at summer’s end.”

  Under Manchester’s guidance, the pair had entered the precincts of a large ancient complex: the Benedictine Abbey of San Michele Arcangelo. Upon their ticket purchase, they were allowed deeper into the formidable old pile, which still harbored in its elegant cloisters and courtyards some ineffable sense of a quiet contemplative life.

  Manchester led the way to the second floor. “This was their library.”

  Rupert was stunned by the wealth of exotic murals running in a tier above head-height on all four walls of the otherwise bare room. His eye was first drawn to the image of a fork-bearded man in a blue cap urging silence with finger to lips.

  “That’s Hermes, man. Or Harpocrates, god of silence. Or both. He’s telling people not to reveal what’s depicted here. What do you see?”

  Rupert studied the dense iconography of cherubs and priests, castles and scales, winged knights and snakes, birds and goddesses, saints and cities. In his brain some kind of wordless narrative seemed to insinuate itself, a self-assembling knowledge of primeval truths.

  Manchester appeared to sense Rupert’s growing awareness. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “You got it, man. The black opera, the red opera, the white opera. The four elements at work. Overcoming the Fall of Man through evolutionary resurrection. The attainment of epopteìa by the initiates. And the counterforce of those who seek to prevent it.”

  A wave of dizziness swept over Rupert, and his heart began to race. The heat, the strange knowledge, all too much—He staggered, and Manchester had to help him outside. Sitting on the steps of the admission office, Rupert consumed nearly a liter of water while he slowly recovered his sensibilities.

  When Manchester judged him able, he directed Rupert inside the Abbey’s gift shop.

  “One last thing to see here.”

  A flatscreen TV was running a continuous short feature, “La Notte dei Cucibocca.”

  The villagers of Montescaglioso prepared to celebrate the night of the demon on Epiphany. Several men garbed themselves for the role. They donned black cloaks and waist-length fake hair and beards of hemp. Goggles made of fruit rinds further obscured their faces. Atop their heads they perched inverted wicker scuttles, like drunken grape pickers. A length of chain affixed to one ankle on each demon dragged along the street. Each cucibocca carried a walking stick and lantern. But also a wicked looking bone needle trailing some rough twine or wire.

  “The silence thing again,” said Manchester. “To sew up the mouths of squealers, or to stop invocations to the goddess.”

  Onscreen the transfigured men marched through the dark streets of the village to the caterwauling of bagpipes that sounded, as all bagpipes do, like the lamentations of damned souls. Rupert shivered, feeling he was watching some ancient sacrificial ritual.

  When the video began to repeat, Rupert and Manchester left.

  Back in the car, heading toward Matera again, Manchester said, “You slept with her, right?”

  “Yes, yes I did. Just once.”

  “Once is enough. That was the hieros gamos, the carnal link. You’re her champion now. You have to follow her when the Cucibocca comes after her. Chase the Queen of Sassi, chase and protect.”

  “And when will that happen?”

  “You got me, pal. What, you think I know everything?”

  * * *

  The multi-jetted pulsing fountain in the middle of the Piazza Vittorio Veneto sprang up d
irectly from the pavement, unobstructed by anything other than a low railing. No one could approach Matera’s omphalos without being seen from some distance away.

  Rupert waited by the fountain in response to a summons that had come some days after his excursion with Manchester. The summons had reached him in the oddest fashion, as a slip of blue parchment-like paper lying on the floor of his studio. Rupert could conceive of no way the paper could have been delivered past his locked doors. But then he glanced down at a feature of the studio he barely noticed any longer: a locked grating over the entrance to the cistern where he had once followed the Monaciello Brothers all the way to Rome.

  Whatever its route into his home, the paper said, in ink dark as iron filings: Meet me tomorrow by the PVV fountain at noon.

  Rupert had never seen Daeira Bruno’s handwriting, but knew intuitively this note represented her traces.

  Many ordinary people oblivious to any odd doings came and went with easy good humor as Rupert hovered nervously by the fountain, scanning all directions.

  “I knew you would come, Rupert.”

  Daeira Bruno, disseminating her subtle scent, stood impossibly by his side. A hazy nimbus seemed to envelop her. Her attire today harked back to the timeless outfit she had worn when first they met. She used the back of one slim hand to wipe away moisture from her cheeks, then combed her damp hair with her fingers. She took his hand.

  “Let us walk together.”

  By twisting busy stairs they reached the head of the Via Fiorentini without speaking. Still without talking they passed the Locanda San Martino where Rupert had first stayed and where he had met Flavia, during an era that seemed forever ago. Before much longer they attained the Via Madonna delle Virtù, the road that clung to the rim of the living, respiring ravine. There they paused.

  “I hope you are no longer angry with me, Rupert.”

  “No, no, not any longer. Now that I know more about you …”

  Daeira’s smile dazzled. “You know something. Maybe not all. But anyway, I am so happy. Perhaps you still wish to help me. If you can be my knight when the Cucibocca comes, there will be much danger and travail. But perhaps some reward and some answers to your questions at the end—if we both remain.”