In The Image of God

by Simon Raven

  ‘I think, sir, that I should sooner be luxurious and prominent.’

  ‘This is not a holiday, Milo.’

  ‘I suppose not. Who are these “opponents”?’

  ‘Marius’ so-called friends who wish him to be rid of you and me.’ Raisley Conyngham listed the members of Carmilla’s team. ‘They have discovered that since my boyhood I have been interested in the Cathars, and that I have made long and quite frequent excursions to their country, on the edge of which lies a charming little town called St-Bertrand-de-Comminges… and near it the commodious hotel of which I speak. They will issue out of this daily, seeking to hit upon the paths which I once trod and so to discover matter to my grave discredit.’

  ‘Why should your excursions in this area have left evidence of discredit?’ Milo Hedley smiled his mysterious and carefully practised smile in imitation of an Archaic statue of a Greek kouros.

  ‘I know you think that smile suits you, Milo,’ Raisley Conyngham said, ‘but what sits well on a face of pure marble does not sit so well on the pasty and pustular features of a rundown undergraduate. You have been neglecting your health, not taking fresh air and exercise. I shouldn’t wonder if you have been doping. You need the care and influence of a civilized and moderate man. I shall attend to your diet and your physical regimen as well as your spiritual education.’

  ‘You haven’t answered my question, sir: what evidence of discredit could you possibly have left on your earlier progressions through this region?’

  ‘Many of the Cathars, Milo, particularly the later ones, believed that the Devil was not only the enemy of God, but an equal enemy, and was as powerful in the dissemination of Evil (in which we may include certain kinds of Pleasure) as God was in the promotion of Good.’

  ‘So I have heard.’

  ‘Then consider the case of those that worshipped the Devil, on the ground that he was the equal of God and might even, in the end, conquer God. You may imagine that their ceremonies were, to say the least, picturesque, Milo.’

  ‘But in no way discreditable to you, who were only investigating them.’

  ‘A proper investigation often necessitates a recreation, a re-enactment. And if one finds people sympathetic to such enterprises, Milo, the re-enactment may be crowded and vigorous.’

  ‘I see, sir. You’ve thrown a few merry and mucky black masses and left the remains of a sacrifice or two lying about. Now you’re afraid that the opposition may discover these remains, and you want me to help you head them off. But rather than say so directly, sir, you take refuge in all this clap-trap about my spiritual or psychical enlightenment.’

  ‘I find you disappointingly crude, Milo. I always thought Trinity was an unsatisfactory college, despite the presence there of my friend, Dean ffoliott-Hume. What has become of you in the last six months? However, I shall try once more. You will have heard that the Cathars or Albigensians believed in a Demiurge, who created the natural universe in order to spite God. Later Cathars, as I have been explaining, believed that this Demiurge, or Devil, was equal in power or capacity to God. This belief survived into the fourteenth and even into the fifteenth century. Quite a lot of people still know of it and find it – well, amusing.’

  ‘And these helped you to get your witches’ covens together?’

  ‘Milo, Milo. Witchcraft depended on a Devil who was known and acknowledged by his followers to be inferior to God and ultimately doomed. Those that practised witchcraft were the desperate victims of a death and damnation wish. But this faith which I am talking of was a faith in a mighty Demiurge who was the equal and co-eternal enemy of God, a faith in a Devil who had existed on a par with God from the Beginning of Beginnings, Amen. Those that subscribed to such a faith hoped to live and rule forever. They did not assemble in covens. Nor do their descendants assemble in such a squalid fashion now.’

  ‘Their descendants do not assemble at all – or didn’t,’ said Milo, ‘until you got it all going again. Or so you seem to imply.’

  ‘Let’s say that I was able to formulate and then create for others some impression of what the worship of the Cathar Satan, the alternative God, entailed. This was a tremendous, an awesome thing, Milo; not just a gaggle of a few old men and women masturbating over pubescent flesh.’

  ‘Whichever way you look at it, sir, something might have been left behind which you don’t want the opposition to discover.’

  ‘On the contrary, Milo. I want to guide them to it, involve them in it. For whatever is left behind is not just petty and messy, it is deep and serious and numinous matter. By making them privy to it, I shall hoist them with their own petard.’

  Milo skimmed a flat stone across the river and rocketing into the bushes the other side.

  ‘There spake the Master,’ he grinned. ‘Now as ever, sir, I stay or go as your man. But just tell me this: how am I to get leave of absence from Trinity in the middle of term?’

  ‘Just go to Dean ffoliott-Hume and say, “My master hath need of me: prithee, sir, let me go.” A little joke we used to have together in the old days – not that I was ever very closely associated with him. But you will find your reference to our little pleasantry will be quite enough to persuade him to release you until the end of term.’

  In the end, it was decided that Oenone was too young, by English standards if not by French, to join Jo-Jo’s party for Carmilla & Co. in St-Girons. Oenone was easily reconciled to the disappointment when Jeremy volunteered to stay with her in the deconsecrated chancel in which she lived with her parents and Isobel Stern.

  As soon as she was alone with Jeremy, Oenone dropped her childish habit of referring to herself in the third person.

  ‘I have been longing and longing to meet you again,’ Oenone said to Jeremy as they sat over the fire in the chimney into which Jo-Jo’s money (and a little, much grudged, of Isobel’s) had converted the turret over the North East Oratory. ‘I have been longing to meet you again, Jeremy, ever since you carried me in the back of Isobel’s car, that time we went to Venice.’

  ‘But you were only a few weeks old, Oenone. You can’t possibly remember what happened.’1

  ‘I remember because I have often been reminded, Jeremy. Mummy will say to Isobel, “Do you remember how kind Jeremy was to Oenone, that time we drove to Venice, how Jeremy held her in the back, while I watched your legs quiver over the great Lagonda gears in the front.” And then I shall feel as if I am lying in your arms, while the huge Lagonda carries us across Italy to Venice. Let me lie in your arms now, Jeremy.’

  ‘You are a big girl now, Oenone, not a baby.’

  ‘Not too big to lie in your arms, Jeremy. On your lap. If you let me come on to your lap, I shall tell you things about our life in France. I always listen, you see, to what the grown-ups say. And to what others say…to the ghosts round this chancel.’

  ‘Ghosts?’

  ‘Let me lie in your arms and I will tell you.’

  ‘Very well.’

  After a while, Oenone said:

  ‘You have seen the grave-ground round the chancel?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Part of it is very old. There are lots of stone coffins, as there are in the cloister up at the Cathedral. I love that cloister, Jeremy.’

  She nuzzled at his breast, as if he had been her wet nurse, so that her voice was muffled and he heard her with some difficulty.

  ‘My father, Jean-Marie, is always hunting about among the tombs and the coffins, both here and in the cloister. He talks to me as he searches, but sometimes his voice frightens me because it is not only his but many more, the voices of the ghosts of the people who once lay in the coffins. Sometimes I am so frightened that I will not go with him for many days, but always I go again in the end.’

  ‘What do the voices say?’ murmured Jeremy into her soft hair.

  ‘My father says, “This is a black coffin, a black tomb.” He knows because it is marked with a tiny black figure, a tiny little pin-man, inside, on the left hand of the space in which the head onc
e lay.’

  ‘What is the pin-man doing, Oenone?’

  ‘He is kneeling and worshipping with his arms wide and his knees spread. “One of Satan’s own,” my father will say. “A black figure makes a black tomb.” Then other voices come. “We have left our hair and our nails,” the voices say, “that the domus may continue.” What is a “domus”, Jeremy?’

  ‘A domus is a house, a home, a family. Surely your father told you that?’

  ‘It is no longer Jean-Marie’s voice. I trust the wine is to your liking?’

  ‘Oh yes. Are you comfortable?’ Jeremy said.

  ‘Just let me lie here like this. “They take our hair and our nails and sometimes our manly parts from our groins,” the voices say, “that these may remain in the domus and make it fertile and prosperous. The rest of our bodies they place in black tombs. The tombs with the black figures are for those that go with the Satan-God, who made the Universe and all the beauty and pleasure within it. Ours is a black domus. Others, who die in a white domus, die, as we do, without the blessing of the Church and its priests, but these are placed in white tombs and do not lose their nails and their hair and their manhood. These are those who believe themselves perfect, who eat only grass and have renounced the Satan-God and go with the white God of Heaven who knows nothing of the earth. These say, as once, long ago, all of our people said, that the white God is the pure and holy God, the mightier God; but for many years now more and more of our people have gone with the Satan-God. For the Satan-God is the God of joy: he makes our mothers and our sisters and our daughters to worship us according to the rite.”’

  ‘You imagine all this, Oenone. It is your father’s voice, partly talking to you, partly muttering and speculating to himself.’

  ‘I might be your daughter, Jeremy. Let me worship you according to the rite.’

  ‘Has your father told you of this rite?’

  ‘No: other voices. They say that you should worship any person whom you love. No matter whom. All is permitted. I myself have worshipped Marius’ sister Rosie, whom I love more dearly than any person except you.’

  ‘How…how have you worshipped her?’

  ‘I have stroked and kissed her beautiful, long black hair. To worship a person, Jeremy, you choose whatever you love most in them, whatever is most beautiful, to caress and kiss. In you I should choose your smooth, round, white neck. This worship is the joy of those who go into the black coffins. The pure and perfect, who go into the white coffins, have no such joy.’

  There was a step in the aisle of the chancel. Oenone rose, without haste, from Jeremy’s embrace and went to the entrance of the oratory.

  ‘Poppa,’ she called. ‘Oenone and Jeremy have been talking of you…of your search among the coffins and the tombs.’

  Jean-Marie Guiscard lifted his daughter and carried her into the oratory. He looks twice his age, Jeremy thought: his face is wizened: much study is weariness of the flesh.

  ‘They were all boring at that dinner,’ Jean-Marie said to Oenone and Jeremy. ‘Your friend, Carmilla Salinger, does not understand what she is looking for. Nor does the man with one eye and the military title – Major Fielding Gray. The little Italian may understand, but he is now English of the English, and will understand less and less. As for my wife and Isobel Stern, all they do is bicker about politics and money – and about Oenone’s education.’

  ‘Oenone wants to stay here,’ said Oenone, ‘with Jean-Marie, her kind Poppa, and Isobel and Jeremy.’

  ‘Jeremy will not be here very long,’ he said.

  Oenone gave him a poker-faced look and said nothing.

  ‘So you simply came straight home,’ said Jeremy, lifting his eyes from Oenone’s face to Jean-Marie’s just above it.

  ‘By taxi. No one else took the slightest notice. They ignored me.’

  ‘They pretended to ignore you,’ Jeremy said. ‘But Fielding was very conscious of you as a rival writer. Piero Caspar, now that he has become, as you say, “English of the English”, was practising how to despise a foreigner in the English manner. Carmilla, the scholar, is worried lest you are more learned than she is. Isobel and your wife of course excluded you.’

  ‘All rather unkind.’

  ‘You will not find me unkind. Nor Oenone. She will worship you after the black Cathar rite, if you wish. Your ruminations have taught her how.’

  ‘I have said too much in front of her.’

  ‘I do not hear only you, Poppa. There are the other voices.’

  ‘The Cathar rites seem harmless enough,’ said Jeremy, ‘according to what Oenone has just been telling me.’

  ‘Black Cathar rites. The idea is to tempt. A harmless physical contact at first mounts, very slowly, to suggestion, then, even more slowly, to temptation, then to desire, then to hot lust, then to raging comos.’

  ‘With Oenone it would remain innocent. She has worshipped, for example, Rosie Stern’s beautiful long black hair.’

  ‘Even with Oenone it will not remain innocent for long,’ said Jean-Marie. ‘Temptation comes earlier than you think to those who worship.’ He set Oenone down and staggered slightly, as if the effort of carrying her had exhausted him, then passed both his hands through his thin hair. Dandruff floated down like snow. ‘You must not listen,’ he said to his daughter; ‘not to my voice nor to any voice.’

  ‘It is impossible, Poppa, for Oenone not to listen.’

  ‘Oenone has been talking of black tombs or coffins,’ said Jeremy to Jean-Marie: ‘does the phrase “Red Gold from Black Tombs” mean anything to you? I heard it not long ago.’

  ‘It could mean the money,’ said Jean-Marie, ‘that orthodox Catholic informers got for betraying the dead followers of the Satan-God to the Inquisition, so that the Church could curse or violate the graves and trace and arraign the living relatives.’

  ‘Would the White Cathars – the pure and perfect – also betray the tombs of the Black to the Church?’

  ‘Oh no. The Catholic Church hated White Cathars as much as it did the Black – more, perhaps, because of their manifest holiness. There could never be any sort of alliance between them and the Church. You see, though the White Cathars might deplore the Black, they both shared the same basic belief – that the Satan-God had made the physical universe. White Cathars abominated the Satan-God; they thought he was in some sense inferior to the Good God – a fallen angel, perhaps – or that even if he was equal he would in the end lose the struggle between them. So the White Cathars renounced the physical universe and all its pleasures. Black Cathars embraced such pleasures, believing that they were created by a God that was in any case equal and might ultimately prove superior to the Good God.’

  ‘Surely, the White Cathars, the “Perfects”, sometimes converted the others on their death bed.’

  ‘Sometimes. Sometimes not. But in no case whatever did the White Cathars think like Priests of the Catholic Church. White Cathars believed in a Dualism – an horrendous heresy to true Catholics – as firmly as did the Black, though the emphasis was different.’

  ‘So those that sought Red Gold from Black Tombs would always be Roman Catholics in good standing, hoping for the rewards of delation?’

  ‘Yes, though this phrase “Red Gold from Black Tombs” could bear a different, a metaphorical interpretation. It could mean the relics that Black Cathars took from the coffins of their fellows. These were normally cut from the corpses when they were in their coffins but before the coffins were closed. So in a sense the relics came from the tomb.’

  ‘Some people also worshipped the dead bodies before the coffins were closed,’ Oenone said. ‘Or so the voices say. The women worshipped the dead bodies of the men, and the men of the women…to make up for taking the relics. The relics, you see, were to make the domus strong for the future; they would not have done this unless those from whom they were taken were worshipped and loved before they were buried.’

  ‘No more of this,’ said Jean-Marie in a rather desperate voice. ‘Your mother was right. W
e should have sent you back to England to a boarding school.’

  ‘What boarding school?’ Oenone enquired. ‘Isobel said there is only one proper boarding school left, the one Baby Canteloupe went to many years ago, and that will not accept girls as young as me. Jeremy will put Oenone to bed now, in the organ loft. Oenone liked it very much when Jeremy put her to bed while she was still a baby. It will be even nicer now that I am old enough to appreciate him properly…his soft white hands and his kind touch. Poppa must come too; Poppa must not be jealous.’

  Oenone preceded Jean-Marie, who preceded Jeremy, up the winding stair and into the organ loft.

  ‘Jo-Jo often tells me how you cared for the infant Oenone in the back of the Lagonda,’ said Jean-Marie. ‘She and Isobel talk of it so often that Oenone thinks she remembers it.’

  ‘What are these voices?’ Jeremy said. ‘These voices that speak to her?’

  Oenone set about washing herself all over from the basin that had been put in to replace the keyboard of the organ.

  ‘Look at Oenone washing herself,’ she said. ‘She will need kind hands to dry her.’

  ‘Young children do hear such things,’ said Jean-Marie in a false voice to Jeremy. ‘They have fantasies.’

  He is trying to forget his fear, thought Jeremy: to persuade himself that everything is all right after all, despite what he said just now. He wants her to stay here, as she does. Aloud he said:

  ‘Young children do not normally have fantasies about females that “worship” their sons and brothers and fathers.’

  ‘All part of her tender little infantile Eden,’ said Jean-Marie. ‘You yourself said it was innocent.’

  ‘And you yourself said it wasn’t – or would not long remain so,’ said Jeremy. ‘Quite apart from anything else, she already talks of what is done to corpses in their coffins.’

  ‘Dry Oenone with kind hands,’ Oenone said. She gave a warm towel (heated in the case which once contained the bellows) to Jeremy and another to Jean-Marie. ‘That will be lovely. The people who go into the black coffins are the followers of joy.’