I held up my glass. ‘This is very good.’
‘An Australian red today. The best for this important time of year.’
‘Important time?’
He gave me a puzzled look. ‘It’s nearly midsummer.’
‘Is there a special day for you?’
‘It’s midsummer, David. Surely you’re aware.’
‘Carlo, I don’t even think that way. For me it’s a word Shakespeare used in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, that’s all. I know it used to be important.’
‘Used to be? David! I thought that with your article—then the significance of Saturday night escaped you too?’
‘Saturday night? What was Saturday night?’
‘January 6th. Twelfth Night.’
‘More Shakespeare as far as I’m concerned. Sorry.’
‘The original date of Christmas. Now it marks Epiphany and the start of Mardi Gras. The bal masqués begin. The krewes plan their chosen parade routes.’
‘The krewes?’
‘The traditional carnival societies. Rex, Comus and Proteus. The Atlanteans and Momus. Bacchus and The Twelfth Night Revellers.’
‘You know a lot about it. Any Sardinian connection?’
‘Never ask a Sard that. Remember what I told you the other night. For us Sardinia is a forgotten centre of the world. Admiral Horatio Nelson called it the finest island in the Mediterranean.’ He set plates down for each of us. ‘I have a cousin who worked with the Orpheus krewe in New Orleans. A second cousin had friends who belonged to Momus. A friend helped Proteus with their costuming. Mardi Gras and the Vieux Carré have always had their attractions.’
I couldn’t wait any longer. I was still wired, still resonating with clown-fear. Now was the time. ‘Carlo, I have to ask. Did you put bottle-trees near that tower at the edge of your property?’
‘Scusi, amico. You are saying what? Bottle-trees?’ He seemed genuinely puzzled.
‘Bottle-trees, yes. Steel posts with bottles wired to them so they sing. Hoot with the wind.’
‘David, no. I do not know what you are speaking of. What is it again?’
And here was the dilemma: I either accepted that he was lying, for whatever reasons, and played along with his game, or granted that he was completely innocent and had no idea what I was talking about. I would sound crazy trying to explain.
‘Carlo, you must excuse me. I’ve been badly shaken. I’ve imagined hearing something at night. A hooting sound like you hear in bottles. It’s probably just the wind. It gets pretty lonely over there. Just forget it please.’
And he accepted it: which, after my naming and describing the things, was something as improbable as his own denial of owning them. ‘But, of course. I was careless. You feel better, eh?’
‘I do, thank you. Raina’s tonic has certainly helped.’
I found myself grinning, unable to prevent it. There were games being played here: he pretends he knows nothing about his tower and his bottle-trees; I accept his acceptance of my dismissing it. He claims his father bought the place because the maze was here; I simply couldn’t believe that.
But what was it the philosopher Alan Tate had said: ‘Civilisation is an agreement to ignore the abyss’? It all came to me in a moment. That was what we were doing sitting around this sunny kitchen table: playing out a game of being civilised and ignoring the darker edges. I could refuse to play, call him on it, accuse him of playing some game or other. He would tell me to leave and never return and I would be out of the loop. No access to the terracotta face, no more evenings like the last one, no more picnics, name-guessing contests and Gemma Ewins. I raised my glass and toasted him. I didn’t want to lose this.
‘Here’s to the Etruscans,’ I said, knowing it would please him.
A big grin lit his face.
‘Bravo! To the Etruscans. Do you know, David, they were what I call a holding people, a vector people—a civilisation through which other peoples filtered themselves? I thought of it the other night after we had spoken so briefly about Sardinia. The Etruscans found themselves at a unique point in the making of our modern world, and more of what we are now goes back through them than we can easily prove. I am eternally fascinated by this.’
The wine was having its effect. I was glad to let him talk. ‘I always thought they were shrouded in mystery.’
‘They are, David. We know so little. Little in the way of heroic tales. Very little literature. A few inscriptions. Flourished in Etruria around 800 BC and were absorbed during the rise of Rome four centuries later, completely—the word?—subsumed, yes. They had close ties to the Greeks at least as early as the seventh century, and it’s this Etruscan ‘Greekness’ they passed on to the Romans long before they approached Greek culture directly themselves. You have read up on Sardinia yet?’
‘Not yet. I’m meaning to.’ It wasn’t much of a lie. I’d just made a start.
‘Good. You will learn what the Mediterranean was like. Phoenician traders setting up trade colonies everywhere, other Sea Peoples, their own descendants cross-fertilising themselves. Sardinia was settled from Italy in the east, Africa in the south, the Iberian peninsula to the northwest. Even with the Etruscans eclipsed by the brash new Romans, they passed on their Phoenician Greekness to we Sards. Even the ABC.’
‘The ABC?’
‘Should be ABG after the Greek Alpha, Beta, Gamma. But the Etruscans pronounced the Greek G—Gamma—as C. So we have it today. We filtered so much through the Etruscans, then they closed up shop and went away.’
‘Into the mountains of Sardinia, I suppose.’
Carlo laughed. ‘I wish. Nothing so simple. Nothing so dramatic or noticeable. We had our own thriving cultures, the nuraghic peoples. You should look this up. No, the Etruscans were not like the Mayans or the Anasazi, who abandoned their sites. They were not like the Celts who were shut away in Wales and made a pariah people. It was all through trade and stories, because another culture became dynamic and overshadowed them. So much was lost. So much was forgotten. The word Tuscan became synonymous with ‘whore’. Doesn’t that tell you how effective the obliteration was? You really know you’ve demolished a people when no-one dares use the name any more for fear of social stigma. And to think, the Etruscans founded Rome, called it Rumlua, which gave its name to Romulus. Its supposed founder was just a convenient story. There were Etruscan kings in Rome before the Republic. Tarquinius Priscus, the great Tarquinius Superbus. They made Rome. This sort of thing matters, David.’
We were ignoring the abyss together, staving off the dark and all that came with it. Loss of knowledge. We were like two old soldiers sitting at the frontier, sorting memories, trying to remember how it really was.
‘This is important to you.’ I hoped it didn’t sound patronising.
‘What we agree to forget and allow ourselves to forget is always important. You know the Lord of the Dance?’
‘Jesus Christ.’
‘I mean originally.’
‘Originally? Carlo, you keep doing this. I always thought it was Christ.’
‘You see. That’s because the early Church very shrewdly made sure their holy days fell on the dates of pagan festivals. Borrowed their rituals and symbols—like the Easter Egg and vital compromises like the Celtic sun-wheel cross.’
‘The Easter Egg?’ This was too soon after the maze fear; I could barely keep up.
‘Eostre, the Teutonic goddess of the dawn, known by the fertility symbols of the rabbit and the egg, gave her name to Easter. The birthday of Mithras, the Persian god of fertility and light so beloved by the Roman military, was December 25th, the traditional birthday of the unconquerable sun, the dies natalis solis invicti, and he gave us soter, the word Saviour. The god Helios commemorated by the Colossus of Rhodes had the same birthday, and the sunburst around his head later became the haloes on Christ and the saints. As far back as 1996 BC, January 5th marked an ancient Egyptian festival for the birth of light, and the same date marks Dionysos transforming water into wine. And as
late as 691 AD, wine treaders were still wearing satyr masks and crying out the name “Dionysos” while treading the grapes until the Church made them cry “Kyrie eleison!” instead.
‘It’s true. So, too, the Dionysian wine became the wine of the Christian Mass. In medieval Germany, the dances in honour of St John and St Vitus were ancient Greek Bacchic choruses. Even today in the Abruzzi village of Cocullo, the snake catchers offer up live snakes to St Dominic, but originally they were offered to Rhea, the Great Mother, or to Dionysos. You think the similarities between Christ, Helios and Apollo are mere chance? Son of God and Sun God; the Christian holy day falling on Sunday? These are not just coincidences, David. The sacred tripod at Delphi—the number three—and the Christian trinity, the three crosses on Calvary? No, my friend, these are all common and careful borrowings. The idea of an afterlife and a mediator between man and God comes from the Orphic mysteries. Orpheus was a mediator for humanity. And the idea of a Dying God who is reborn, too, is such an old one. You know Corpus Christi?’
‘The religious festival? Of course.’
‘Of course, sì. You know why Pope Urban IV introduced it in 1264, so that all over Europe, during high summer, great Christian pageants had townspeople acting out stories from the Bible. It was to—how do we say?—obliterate the pagan elements. To redirect them. You know the Commedia. Your hobby-horse, eh? You know how often Satan is portrayed as the comedian, the buffoon. You know how popular he always was.’
‘Carlo, you’re really into it, aren’t you?’ I had to put a stop to this. Ignoring the abyss was one thing, but raging against all that had been swallowed by it was quite another.
‘David, I raise pigs, but also sheep and a few goats. Here, in the beef capital of the state, I do what my Sardinian ancestors have always done—when they weren’t being bandits. I do the traditional Aussie thing of raising sheep. But that is for my family, capisce?
‘For myself, I love antiquity, the old civilisations of the Mediterranean. It is my passion. When I learn a fact, say, that the Etruscans got the ram for the prows of their galleys from the Greeks, I think: how interesting. What was the impact of that happening? So I learn that they passed it on to the Carthaginians who, inadvertently, passed it on to the Romans, who used it so effectively to defeat the Carthaginian corsairs plaguing the Mediterranean shipping in the third century. That it led to the rivalry of Rome and Carthage and the elimination of Carthage from the continuing history of the world. More things wiped away. The Greeks had rams on their biremes and pentekonters, the Romans on their triremes. Who remembers the Etruscan part in it? History overshadows history. Facts obliterate facts.
‘Look at the Roman gladiatorial games. Who remembers the Etruscan funeral games that brought them about? I read that the appearance of bull worship on Crete in the tenth century supplanted the worship of the Great Mother, the female principle in the form of the Snake Goddess and Rhea. Men write a different history. Sky God obliterates Earth Mother almost every time in written histories. But in oral traditions—a different matter! Trace the Virgin Mary back to her antecedents sometime. See where her story leads.’
Then Carlo raised both his hands as if to say: Enough!, clearly embarrassed at having been carried away. ‘Scusi, David. Scusi. It is my hobby-horse. I love to ride it. So many important things are lost. It is my hobby. Anamnesis. Lost knowledge, and how things link up and surprise us by becoming new. Soon it is midsummer here. In Europe, in the Mediterranean, Carnival begins, but there it is winter. Here it is different. But again, scusi! I really enjoyed what you wrote about the Commedia. It’s partly why I’ve gotten carried away.’
‘Oh, how so?’
‘What you wrote about the relocation of old forms, the coming together of things. But, please, you are very kind to put up with this. I will read it again. We shall make a dinner of it, ne? You want to see the mask?’
‘Please. And photograph it, if I may.’
We went into the living room. The curtains were open, the blinds raised, and the rich summer light made the terracotta glow like honey, like amber or new bread.
‘Not too fierce today?’ Carlo asked.
‘Not too fierce, no. Full of mirth, if anything.’
I took four shots of it with my digital camera, three of them close-ups that would suit my TT needs very well. I managed it without reaching quarter-clown and it brought an end to our time together.
‘Thanks for everything, Carlo,’ I said.
‘Everything?’
‘It’s a wonderful maze. I’d very much like to see it again.’
‘Then you will. But next time slowly, eh?’
‘Carefully, yes.’
He saw me out to the car and shook my hand warmly. ‘Your piece on the Commedia is an important thing, David. A good start. I hope you will show me more.’
‘Of course. But, please, you must comment—as someone who is a student of lost knowledge.’
He inclined his head, smiling. ‘Sì, grazie! I count it a privilege.’
He waved me off, smiling and waving until I was out of sight. As I turned onto Edenville Road, I became more and more convinced that his spiel had been no accidental thing. Nor had it been the result of my comments about the Commedia. It had seemed unstructured, spontaneous enough, but there was also the sense that he had been hinting at things he didn’t want to state directly. I felt both intrigued and exasperated. What had he been trying to tell me? Why had he played it down, dismissed it as the ravings of an enthusiast?
Nor did I believe for a minute that the maze had already been there. I just couldn’t accept that a—what did he call it, a maison de dédale?—had been built amid these hills, not out here in the country, not in Australia in the thirties or forties. True, Norman Lindsay had built his transplanted classical domain in the Blue Mountains outside of Sydney, but he was an accepted artist, a well-known figure, someone in the public eye. The idea of a secret place like Carlo’s seemed so improbable.
But I was a city boy being introduced to the realities of country life. I didn’t have enough knowledge of such things. Perhaps it happened everywhere, and there were quirky features in every other outback town just waiting to be found. An orrery at Orroru, for instance, or a crusader castle at Templers. Perhaps the name Springwood led Norman Lindsay to choose the locale for his own re-creation of Elysia; perhaps Edenville had worked its magic on whoever had preceded the Risis.
But it didn’t feel right. I was certain that Carlo, or Carlo’s father, had built this place, that there was more to it than I’d been given.
At home again, I spent two hours doing chores then phoned my parents, making myself sound easy and at peace, giving reassurances, knowing they would be passed on to my sister and Julia in turn. That done, I felt restless, aimless, probably inevitable with all that had happened.
I decided to lose myself in my writing. Carlo had liked the rough of my article; there was that to be done. And Rollo Jaine was still waiting for me in the library in Trieste where I’d left him. I brewed some coffee, made some bruschetta to have as a snack later, then set up my laptop at the kitchen table, deciding to allow myself the view of the hill as I helped Rollo on his way.
I did well considering, but as the afternoon waned found myself increasingly distracted by the view through the kitchen window.
Down in Sydney, through late spring and early summer days filled with haze and the purple-blue wash of jacaranda blooms, during evenings filled with lingering sunsets and the heady scent of jasmine, wisteria and freshly mown grass, you can always hear the drone of cicadas. Behind the day, behind the twilight, it’s vividly there the moment you listen for it, releasing itself from the white noise of what summer is.
The parks and bushland reserves of Australia’s largest city are filled with variants of Cyclochila australasia, locally known as Green Grocers, Double Drummers, Yellow Mondays, Floury Bakers, Cherry Noses and Black Princes, and, when temperatures climb above 18°C, their song reaches a deafening 120 decibels, very near th
e average human’s pain threshold.
But, to my surprise, here at Starbreak Fell such cicada song existed as a distant and attenuated thing, too often seeming to be on another hill or in another part of the forest from where I was, like something moving away. Certainly there was a rogue or two droning close by during the lazy afternoons, and now and then I came upon their shells clinging to the trunks of trees, abandoned chambers of honey-coloured light. But mostly it was crickets and bees that I heard on walks up into the forest. Mostly it was silence stitched over with the zip or burr of a dragonfly or Christmas beetle, marred by the sudden flurry of squabbling birds, though this, too, was usually a hushed thing and quickly ended.
I don’t know why that silence troubled me. Sitting at the kitchen table, looking out at the trees, I put it down to the heat, to being in a new house and hearing the Yakkos cries, to finding the tower—the nuraghe—and the bottle-trees, the new TT images.
But at another level, it seemed like something those things were distracting me from.
Perhaps it was just the landscape itself. The Australian bush in summer is rarely threatening. There are some venomous snakes and spiders, certainly, but no natural predators for humankind. But it can be unsettling. Without that constant wall of cicada song, without the twittering and burble of birds because of the heat, there is an uncanny quality. Ask anyone who has experienced it. Out on the open flatlands it rarely bothers you: it is part of the vastness of everything. But on a hilltop like this, pulled back from that wide bright expanse into close-fitted corridors of tree shadow, there is a compression. The silence fills something with itself, is no longer the containing vessel but the thing contained.
I smiled at how fixated I had become. Part of my condition was a degree of hyperaesthesia, an acute sensitivity of focus. Now, with nothing better to seize on, I was being oversensitive to whatever there was.
But that wasn’t fair. This wasn’t just because of the tower and the bottle-trees or a flower garland draped over a Scarecrow Cross. This wasn’t something unique to the Australian experience. You found it in the gloom of a Berkshire forest, surely, or looking up at the cliff-line from a beach on the rocky coast of a Greek island like Skyros. You found it in the great gulfs of light enclosing mesas on the Colorado Plateau or by an overgrown pool in the dim green light at the back of an old garden.
Clowns At Midnight Page 13