This was likely the blood of something routinely slaughtered, I told myself, a sheep or cow, probably not something torn apart with predatory violence. Arterial blood, fresh-looking enough, possibly treated with an anti-coagulant, but not all that much everything considered. The edges of the bells glowed with it, a rich sticky red on dull, sun-burnished gold; the bell openings themselves were like gaping mouths, the long slim clappers so many tongues lolling in blackened throats. I saw the breeze stir the fleece ends, saw flies on the rough sticky rims and long clapper tongues, moving eagerly on the dark matted wool. (Fear of insects: insectophobia, acarophobia, entomophobia.)
It was all I could bear. I flung myself away, fell doing so, scrambled to my feet and ran, stumbled down through the forest. I didn’t look back, never once gave in to the terrible sense of pursuit or stopped to get my breath. I knew I might never have the strength to begin again. I kept thinking of the smooth glossy mask on its pole, brooding and evil, yet desperately trapped and pathetic too, as if betrayed into its villainy. I thought of the hunchback of gumnut bells, imagined the myriad black hungry banksia maws at my back. An old Hollywood movie line brought a ridiculous caw of laughter amid the terror: Feed me! Feed me!
Almost before I knew it I was at the car, then starting the engine and driving down the hill to the house. I was hardly aware of opening the back door and locking it after me. It was a blur of fright and flight, and it ended with me collapsing on my bed, resolving to take some Diazepam when I’d calmed down, some sort of medication, before phoning Jack or Mick or even Julia. That’s how lost and frantic I was. Julia.
CHAPTER 11
I woke with a start, driven from sleep by a nightmare that was immediately forgotten when faced with the bright morning of a world that contained a bloody, bell-covered fleece and a black demon mask.
I leapt from bed and half-stumbled onto the veranda, needing to lock in that other, more orthodox world as soon as I could.
Again, it was a surprisingly beautiful day, warm rather than hot, cloudless, with a steady northwesterly roaring in the trees behind the house. The only sounds were the rush of that wind blowing across the distances, the soughing of the grass in the fields, and the occasional warbling of magpies.
I savoured each part of that constancy: the wind, the sky, the blowing grass, the crisp, purple-blue ranges, but found myself already trembling with what I knew I had to do. The previous Sunday it had been checking on the wrecked bottle-trees—what was it, already six days ago? Now I had to climb the hill to see the cross in front of the tower. And not driving, walking. I just had to.
The fleece and the mask would be gone, of course. The bells and the blood. And this time, instead of dropping small shards of glass into one of John Rankin’s work gloves, it would be trying to find a leaf, a blade of grass, some part of the cross, anything with a trace of that blood. Though most people say they prefer their horrors not to be in the real world, I remain definitely one of those who prove the opposite is ultimately true. I can accept horrors provided they are in the real world. The alternative bodes ill indeed.
I’d visit the cross and see what I could keep real.
The day made it easier too, so fresh and golden, so aglow with the pure light of high summer. I dressed, packed my big leather writing bag with leftover barbequed chicken, corn chips and a bottle of mineral water for a makeshift breakfast, packed work gloves and camera, then set off towards the forest, meaning to take a line from where my visitor had stood the previous afternoon.
I locked the back door, then continued up through the bonsai garden to the single white strand of the electric fence, slipped under it and reached the point at the edge of the forest where I was sure my intruder had turned into the bush.
These were the bushes he had pushed aside when he’d finally disappeared, the ones that had confirmed his reality in this world. I went through them as he had, was soon stepping over the fallen strands of the boundary fence and heading up the incline, taking what seemed the shortest route to where the tower would be.
Yesterday, both approaching and leaving the tower, I had resolutely avoided looking about me. Confirming the tower had been everything. Today I carefully checked my surroundings as I went, peering off into the sun-dappled glades, trying to find the crushed bracken and scuffed footprints of someone labouring under a heavy burden, searching for any traces of black ram’s wool caught in the branches and prickles. I was making myself take charge of the landscape again.
Mostly I was successful. Now and then a bushfire-ravaged tree showed its burnt-out heart, and I straightaway imagined my dead-black visitor crouching in the cleft. Once I yelped from such a scare, but pressed on, resolutely striding out, determined to reach my destination.
Jack-mantras were with me all the way. Be a close observer. Turn fear into facts.
I did pretty well considering and soon became an impromptu expert on burnt-out trees. I saw how most of the fire-ravaged interiors had the smooth, light-devouring black of old mines, burial chambers, velvet linings and neutron stars. Others looked black from a distance but, on closer inspection, often showed cubed mosaic patterns, like diced fruit still on the skin, a glossy textured black sometimes picked out with grey or ghost-white edges. Yes, just like the hints of lines I’d begun to see in the image on Disk 4.
Such facts helped: the diced-fruit mosaics, my visitor sweating under his costume, possibly swearing at the discomfort. I was managing.
Finally I was at the summit. I pushed through the last of the trees and had my first glimpse of the tower.
The cross was empty.
I hurried over to it, even managed to run my hands along the stout horizontal and vertical poles, making myself do so, not thinking about it too much, just needing it to be real.
There was no trace of blood as far as I could tell, none of the distinctive blackened spotting on the leaves and grass near the foot of the cross.
Now the Jack-talk worked against me. Was I delusional, a victim of derealisation? What were Jack’s words: was what I was seeing as alloplastic, some external altering of the environment, wholly autoplastic after all, the results of alterations in me? I was terrified of being mad, of slipping away into some accelerating syndrome. Not just the lyssophobia, the fear of being insane, rather that I might not know. That worried me more than anything.
I stood looking at the bare cross and made myself recall what I’d seen: the heavy dark fleece, the forbidding, coarse-featured mask, the copper bells with clappers like finger bones poking out, but without joints, just narrow tubes of bone, probably the smaller leg bones of goats or sheep. But in those red-smeared copper throats, finger bones is what they’d seemed.
And the flies. They had been real—or was that some visual equivalent of formication, crawling on the wool instead of my skin?
I took a deep breath and stepped back. Enough. Again, enough.
Apart from the wind, the glade was quiet. I felt I was being watched, of course; it was inevitable, but I made myself keep searching another five minutes. Then, after checking that the door to the tower was still locked, I went out onto the sunny hillside and found a spot close to where the bottle-trees had stood to have my breakfast.
It was so peaceful there. I savoured the view, the scale and sheer expanse. After all that had just happened, it was liberating to have this as the constant: not some job, not work deadlines, not habits and routines, not even relationships. This pried me away from those things, probably would have even without yesterday’s bizarre visitor and the things on the cross.
No cars moved on the few roads I could see. No planes crossed the sky. The trees stirred in the wind. Clouds endlessly remade themselves on their way towards the untroubled ranges. Grass bent and sighed all around.
I lost track of time, and found an hour had passed when I finally did check my watch again.
The spell was broken. A car plunged along Edenville Road, trailing its cloud of dust. A hawk swept across the fields in front of me, seeking prey. O
ver near Len Catley’s place, an old red pick-up appeared, herding cattle towards a paddock on the opposite side of the road. The workaday world went on.
Just as well. I repacked my bag, walked down to the driveway and returned to the house.
Everything was an anticlimax then. How could it be otherwise? One moment you had a demon figure at the edge of the forest, with its striking costume left draped on the cross at the tower, the next it was a new day with everything back to normal: just sunny, empty views through the windows, the soft ticking of the kitchen clock, and nothing enough.
I went into the study. No sitting at the kitchen table today. No glancing out the windows to see if more dark figures were watching from the edge of the forest. Let them watch. Let them stand there all day, playing their games. I wouldn’t play. There were things to do.
But instead of writing, I went on the Net, that unexpected, endlessly diverting wonder of the late twentieth century. Today I wanted messages, queries from Mick or Jeremy, a note from my parents via Sam, even something from Julia. But there was nothing. That solace was denied.
Instead of logging off, I did a search for Mamoiada, the village Carlo said his family had come from all those years ago. Once again, there was a generous string of listings for the name, many in Italian, but with enough sites in English to give what I needed. Yet again I readied myself for the inevitable masks and costumed figures. Today I felt I could manage it.
Mamoiada was located in the central Barbagia region as Carlo had said, 644 metres above sea-level, below the high rocky plains and oak forests that lay at the foot of the great mountainous massif filling the middle of the island. There was ample information about it.
Too much information. Within moments I was in full-clown again, reeling from the most astonishing facts and photographs.
On a page headed The Shepherds’ Carnival was image after image of the figure I’d seen in the forest yesterday: wearing the same black fleece and heavy wooden mask that had been left on the cross.
I could hardly believe it, could barely bring myself to look. But I had to. Fighting back the dread, ignoring the symptoms as best I could, I persevered, made myself keep at it. This gave the answer. This explained it all.
The figure at the forest’s edge had been a mamuthone: one of the best-known of the Sardinian carnival figures, though a tragic rather than festive one. As far as I could gather, twelve such masked ‘clowns’ paraded down the streets of Mamoiada on Shrove Tuesday and the Sunday before it, also at the very beginning of Carnival on January 16th and 17th when the town celebrated the feast of Sant’Antonio Abate. For centuries now, the village shepherds traditionally came down from the mountains, took the bells off their sheep and fixed them in tight clusters to dark ram skins, the largest bells—the binzichino—at the top, ranging down to the smallest, twenty-five kilos or more of them, most facing outwards like gumnuts or banksia mouths, just as I had seen.
Wearing homespun shirts, dark corduroy pants, sometimes leggings, and heavy black shoes, these mamuthones would fit these black or brown sheepskins over their shoulders and down their backs. Then they would don the grim black wooden masks they had carved for themselves out of fig or chestnut wood while tending their flocks, and set their caps on their heads with their dark scarves tied over them and knotted beneath their chins to complete the transformation into sad but powerful demonic forms. Twelve of them—one for each month of the year—would then do an eerie, shuffling dance along the streets of the town, shaking their bells as they went, acting out an ancient atavistic ritual very much at odds with the usual joyfulness of Carnival.
A mamuthone had paid me a visit!
It was both an incredible relief and utter agony to see the images on the screen, but this was what I had seen. This explained it.
There was another shock too, buried in the first: one that plunged me straight into the ever-compelling hell of the Commedia. From all accounts, the parade through the streets of Mamoiada represented the expulsion of the Moors from Sardinia in 732 I’d read about on my previous search. It explained the glossy black masks they wore, and why twelve mamuthones doing what was called ‘their distinctive, sway-shuffle-and-jump, synchronised dance’ were always accompanied—supposedly driven—by six red-coated issohadores brandishing lassoes. These soldier figures in their red tops, white masks and breeches, sashes, dark boots or leggings and wide black hats dated from the seventeenth century, and had been added to the procession to reinforce the popular, officially sanctioned idea of the expulsion of the Moors.
For me, their blank white masks were as chilling as the grim black masks of the mamuthones, though supposedly the faces of the victors who had triumphed over the invaders being herded along. The beaten, downcast mamuthones were meant to be imbrovati—tied like animals—and the lassoes, now used to catch female spectators in the crowd, leading to kisses in return for freedom, were a symbol of this ancient Sardinian triumph.
Yes, it was the stark white masks of the issohadores that stunned me most. They were the Neutra Sarda masks of the Commedia dell’Arte, the most basic mask there was.
How could I have missed it? Neutra Sarda. Years of tolerance testing and I hadn’t made the connection. I’d read the words hundreds of times: Neutra Sarda and Neutra Sarda Half, had seen them in books and in the online and hard-copy catalogues, just as I’d seen Bauta Venezia and Pulcinella Venezia, but simply as identifying labels under masks, nothing more. I’d downloaded images, stored them in disk files, stuck them in scrapbooks when I could bear to—having one of my Brave Days—but it just hadn’t registered. I could hardly believe it. Someone who knew that ‘sardonic’ came from a Sardinian plant that was supposed to make you die laughing, that ‘sardine’ was named for the fish from the waters around the island, had missed this. Sarda.
The Neutra Sarda was, comparatively, an easy one too, had been a control in so many of my earliest TT progressions, almost like an old friend. I hadn’t even included it in recent TT line-ups. It was the mask without expression, marble white, porcelain smooth, devoid of emotion, the one used to teach acting because posture and gesture became everything.
And here it was: worn by the smartly dressed issohadores who led and chivvied their lines of harrowed mamuthones.
Another time I might have logged off, left it for another day, another Brave Day. But the figure had been in the forest. This figure, a mamuthone, was here, unchecked and real, intruding in my world. I had to do it while I could.
In a frenzy of cold sweats and manic calm I made myself continue. I snatched image after image, saving them to a USB stick. It was like imprisoning them, bringing them within borders I had built. I was on the David Leeton flight deck, fully in control, herding these creatures too.
I learned that the popular Expulsion of the Moors interpretation concealed a darker, pre-Christian origin. The mamuthones were also meant to represent a pagan combination of man, god and animal all in one, a figure closely related to the ancient worship of Dionysos. The public parade, like the Greek tragedies of old, was originally an act of profound reverence, an allegory of the shepherds’ lives, celebrating both their struggle on the land and their days lived in the rich constancy of nature.
I thought of Carlo. He had mentioned Dionysos. He must have brought this figure to my hillside! I’d have to ask him, demand to know what he was playing at.
I kept reading. The ancient origin of the name mamuthone was possibly from maimone, the name not only for a scarecrow but a puppet and Bacchic idol as well, even a demon. Back when Mars was still a nature god, not yet the god of war, Roman citizens had driven a goatskin-clad figure, old Mars or old Mamurino, from the city gates as a scapegoat, driving out bad luck with him. But, whatever the variations, the link with the tragoudia—the goat songs in honour of Dionysos—was always there.
Too much. Too much.
I’d ask Carlo, use it all as an excuse to see Carlo again.
I logged off and went out to the kitchen. It was noon. I grabbed the phone and
called the Risi number. Carlo or Raina, it didn’t matter. But I needed to speak to Carlo.
Six rings and he was there. ‘Hello? This is Carlo.’
‘Carlo, I looked up Sardinia on the Net.’
‘David. Good, good!’
‘I know about the nuraghic towers.’ It all came gushing out.
‘The nuraghi, ah, good. You’re learning all about us. Bene!’
‘Carlo, I looked up Mamoiada. I know about the Shepherds’ Carnival. The mamuthones.’
There was the barest hesitation before he answered. ‘Yes? Interesting, eh? Unforgettable.’
It wasn’t what I’d expected. A hesitation, yes, but no attempts to dissemble or evade. Just easy bonhomie, the familiar Risi affability, though with that telling hesitation.
‘Were any of your family mamuthones?’
‘Of course,’ he answered immediately. ‘But years ago, capisce? It is a great honour. It takes great stamina, great dedication. The bells are so heavy. The dance has to be perfect.’
I still hadn’t brought it out into the open, and I could only wonder why. I needed to externalise this, otherwise it remained locked away in my solitary experience of it. An autoplastic hell. My madness.
But speaking it would sound just as crazy, and would probably change my relationship with Carlo, take it to some new level. I wasn’t sure I wanted that. I liked him. I wanted him to like me.
I skirted the edges again. ‘Are mamuthones ever seen outside of Sardinia?’
Does anyone dress as one around here?
‘Not that I know of. It’s a nice idea. But, you know, there just aren’t enough of us. It was never kept up. We miss that.’
Did I imagine it or was there an odd, nervy edge to his tone?
‘Your father never tried to keep the old ways?’ Skirting. Probing.
‘Papa? No, David. You must understand. Leaving Mamoiada took determination and renunciation. Sacrifice, even betrayal. He made the decision and stuck by it. The clean break. So much had to be let go. So many of the old ways.’
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