Making nought of his host’s thanks, swift he pressed him that he had a favor of his own to ask: see the philosopher startle in surprise. “Can the Master tell me ought of, how shall I call it, hath it yet a name? device and art whereby to depict things a-dwindle in the distance, yet all in proper ratio?”
Fortunatus understood instantly; “Proportion, this we call proportion and perspective, what would see perspectively?”
A bit amazed as, it seemed, being instantly understood. Vergil said, “Whatever you please … a man beyond houses, a house in between trees yet a farther away from them somewhat … a doorway in a building on a pier and beyond it the end of a pier and moored thereto a boat … whatever —”
Before Vergil had finished the words, Fortunatus had quickly taken up a much-used piece of papyrus (a more than-once-palimpsest it seemed), turned it over to its back on which the lineaments of whatever had been there were now but so many — or so few — grey ghosts, slapped it flat on the table and gave it another slap as it were he feared it would flee, else; took up a very small piece of charcoal, drew a single stroke with it, evidently discovered, suddenly, that it was blunt — as any boy too small to be trusted yet in breeches might have told him at a glance — gave it a sudden snap, as a hungry dog might give a morsel; and commenced, swiftly, almost savagely, to draw lines.
“Your ichnography is not enough,” Fortunatus breathed; stroke, stroke; “Your divisional construction is not enough;” stroke, stroke: did the strokes, what was the word? converge —? “Your sudivisional construction is not enough,” stroke, stroke, stroke. “Observe, you Vergil —” (no mention of sage now: You Vergil. Well and good, he might not be “sage,” but he was, was he not? you Vergil. It was somehow a great comfort, much more than mere adjectives of flattery) … stroke … stroke “Observe, observe, observe! What is I say, essential, is your point of convergence; your vanishing point is essential …”
There on the old and soiled apyrus, amidst the strokes and lines, or upon the strokes and lines: suddenly there had appeared a doorway, beyond the doorway a mole or pier, perceptibly a distance, though no large distance, away; at the edge of the dock was, in scarce time at all, ‘a boat and all her apparell’ moored fore and aft, scratch, scratch, stroke, stroke. The wide gates of a harbor …
“It is not a fantasma!” exclaimed Fortunatus. Suddenly Vergil could smell the garlic, could he not smell, also, basil among the small pots of plants? it was some while yet before a seasoned cook would add the basil to the cook-pot — “Not a fantasma, at all, as say those fools, maledictions fall upon them! It is a truth, a philosophic truth, I say: the circle can be squared!” He was panting now, as a man panteth upon a woman. “Gold projected out of dross, indeed! As well project dross out of gold!” One could hear, among the thick and heavy breath of passion, the hard sound of grinding teeth. In a second or a score of seconds, doorway, dock, ship, harbor, horizon were obliterated: and so was all knowledge of the presence of one You Vergil … or of anyone else alone. With an impatient gesture and an abrupt sigh, the old papyrus was swept onto the floor; Fortunatus swilled a half a mouthful of water, spewed it into his palms, rubbed his fingers clean of charcoal, rubbed them dry upon his robe.
Below and all around lay poverty, guarded by riches: Fortunatus cared not at all of either. Now with a bliss-filled sigh he drew an almost perfectly clean sheet of parchment from underneath an almost perfectly clean dust-sheet; and from another place he took up his compass and his protractor and his rule. Now everything in the world fell away from him as though uncreated. He and the pure forms, the Pure Forms, were quite alone, and might love one another to their endlessly full contentment: the Pure Forms: the line, the triangle, the rectangle, the circle and the square. Beauty bare. Beauty bare.
Vergil on tip-toe made his way from the room, paused only for a single backward glance before he turned and made his way down the crannied wall to the ground where the torchbearer awaited, open mouthed and silent and alone.
Silent as well, Vergil gestured to the man, and they set off together through the torch-pierced dark. One thing above all did wonder him, You Vergil, as they went.
He heard, in the otherwise silence, the chafing of the cicadas in the distant trees and fields, and the small but ceaseless lisping of the pitch in the burning torch.
Why, as though intent, did the flamingoe peer over Fortunatus’ shoulder as he drew upon his parchment?
One did not know. One Vergil did not know.
He felt that he must get him to the beach, and seek the comfort of the island-men: faint comfort though it was. On the way thither he saw the gleam of water through the trees; it was not the sea, it was a pool. He thought he might sink into it and refresh his body and be cool and clarify his mind. Trees and shrubs and scented flowers circled round. The man, without much taking thought, sank to his knees and cupped his hands to take up water and to drink. But before thrusting in his close-paired palms upturned, he paused and looked down. As in a dream he gazed and saw a face a-looing up at him.
It was not his face.
Neither was it the face of someone just behind him, for, as he quickly turned, there was no one behind him. As he moved his upper body around and looked again down, he saw that, reflected in the pool was a woman’s face, she seemed somedel troubled and concerned, and he knew that he had seen that face and that look before. And it came to him the word Huldah. He knew he knew it but he knew not how. Huldah meant the genet and the weasel, it also meant the cat, biss, one called it, familiarly. And yet. The Region called Huldah, what did that mean? No answer came, save that in a moment he was on his feet, walking swift away. He had not been swift but a little while ago. He had been as one who walks in a dream. For some reason he thought of the local nymphs, and of the brute impetuous beings who so lusted after them. Not only the satyrs lusted after nymphs; Priapus the son of Aphrodite, he: Protector of Goats, the randy creatures; Priapus “the Ever-Erect,” had lusted after the nymph called Lotis: had she appreciate the honor? no, not she, and when awakened by the braying of an ass (perhaps jealous of his ithyphallic rival), the nymph Lotis changed at once into a lotus-tree: a fact well-known. Whence had she the puissance? some guardian genie, doubtless. Some guardian genie doubtless it was which had substituted another’s face for that of his own, for to dream of seeing one’s own reflection in a dream was the best-known omen of one’s own impending death.
The sea, the sea.
Faintly forming at first; forming, faintly in his mind, the image of a man running quickly, rapidly, ever so swiftly, man running, feet raised high with each step, arm raised high of the man, something in the hand of the arm raised high of the man; it had seemed (and how could this be?) that the man was skimming ever so swiftly over the surface of a languid sea: to one side of the man, a low-lying bank of cloud: quite quite dark, the cloud, and the cloud quite low. This vision was oft repeated, did that mean it was merely some vision oft repeated, or did it mean that what was seen in this vision, this image, this vision of the day, was it of something which he had often seen? Who was he? Who was “Who”? The he himself of whom he now knew more (his mind less clouded), some certainty there (here), of this than before. He was You Vergil now, he was a certain man, hight Vergil, a thaumaturge, a philosophe and necromaunt; that was certainly certain, a certain man, hight Vergil, that was a line from a document, rectangulate in shape, and he would now, right now, putting of it off no longer, turn to that said document and read of it: and then he would know more about You Vergil. He turned, there was no document, there were people round about and hemming him in, they were crowding round about him close, this would not do.
Love is a much-reflective surface, who had said that? why?
He shook his head to dislodge this alien and interruptive thought, this would not do, a crowd and throng were hemming him in. Abrech! he called, this certain man, hight Vergil. Abrech! For he knew that the Abrech meant Clear the way, it meant Make clear the way, but he did not know in what language it meant th
is, certainly not his own, nor how he came to know it.
Out at sea, a cloud.
In his head, a cloud.
They did not clear the way, they were not flouting him, they did not know the word or its usage at all, a way was not made clear for him, they hemmed him in all round about, their light bodies pressing, and all their fingers pointing, pointing to the man at sea, out at sea, that arm of sea between this land and another land (between this island and another island?), man running oh so swiftly coming nearer, nearer, fastly, even desperately running he skimmed along the sea. In the upraised hand of the upraised arm of this man (coming closer, ever closer, this man) was something like a mace, or a, or a — all about him now, this certain man hight You Vergil, as they stood upon the beach, the tawny-sandy beach — Fire! they shouted, they shouted Fire! and though he knew but nothing of it, he found himself shouting Fire! There was no document, rectangulate or any other shape. What had made him believe that there was or even could be a document? This was no place of document, although it may have been mentioned in the Homer and the Homer was a document, was sometimes many documents for sure. King Alexander Magnus, it was well-known, had had such a document of Homer, some said of occamy, some of geography, which was written on the inner skin of a dragon and was three hundred feet long, or so some said: but as to that, if so one said, no one was saying it here, where was here, many other things were missing here. He looked for her, he saw her face all wet with tears; tears (it seemed) ran down her cheeks, but no: it was not tears, even from her wet-sleeked hair the water ran; the tears were his, not hers. Then the … something … o sod and straw and staff! he knew the word, but like the butter in an ill-charmed churn it would not separate, it would not rise … the Something, or the memory of something, did its work once more. No document, no her, no tears; he was standing on a familiar beach and he was shouting Fire! one amongst many shouting and crying the same cry and shout.
From the tip of whatever it was (rhabdon, vergis, bacculum; wand, staff, rod, mace?) held by the swiftly running man, and he ran as though the lionel, the lioness, the pard, were all snarling at his ham-strings (no, twas thicker than any rod, wand, staff … mace? what mace?), from the thing’s tip there came a shimmer and then a line of smoke, came now a gust of flame, was he at the Games of Olympia in hollow, sacred, Elis? nay, he was not. The running man fell upon the tawny beach, the torch — not suffered to reach the ground — swift plucked up and borne away, and the low-lying cloud, clouds, they rolled away over the waters on which the running man had trod, everyone retreating from the low-lain beach to a stand above the mark of highest water; the clouds rolled rolling upon the path o’er which the man had run, racing for his life; rolled with a low thunder and a noise as though in a distance; the sound of an armed camp in the early night. The bearer of the torch had not alone been running to deliver the fire (the fire, one assumed, had at last, or, likelier, once again, through neglect gone out, and it had been needful to go at great hazard to kindle it again … at what hazard! … how unlike these dreamy slothful folk, or any one of them, to make such effort!), he had been running for his very life as well. That path upon the surface of the sea was a spit or causeway so low-lying that even as it lay exposed, a skin of water thin as any membrane covered it over as it lay connecting the lesser island with another island — or else with the main, the muckle land — whatever, and wherever it might lie, might he now not lie upon a couch and unroll a map rectangulate to show him where it lay; a map perhaps drawn from mapless Homer, blind Homer; blind perhaps from looking long and long into the athenor, the alchemist’s furnace, his talk of black ships, what was that but a metaphor for The Work, the projection from base to noble, all blackened in the fires of occymy? Blind, yet also he the true Father of Geography: little gat he for his Fatherhood, for did not
Seven cities claim blind Homer, dead,
Through which blind Homer, living, begged his bread …?
Yes.
Yes … but here was neither couch nor map, no document, no Homer and no harpists harping of Priam’s topless Trojan town a-flaming and a-burn, nor of the burning reedy river by the Trojan shore. There were no shouts, no cries, now, but still the murmur of the same, same word: fire, it was, fire … fire, fire (contentedly now) … fire … Someone brought liquid in a large gourd, someone poured it then, carefully, into a large shallow shell, and someone lifted the fallen runner’s hanging head and someone gave him a sip of what was in the shell. Once more, water and the wind and sand and murmuring voices, voices murmuring low, the soft sea-breeze: and now someone brought thither the jar in which the gourd had dipped, a common jar (how came it here, they made no jars, or potters-work of any kind: someone must have brought it there, or, anyway, left it there); a common jar of glazed earthernware, light grey and brown, such as house-dames use to make pickle of cucumber (and swift as the rushing of the tidal bore, almost like an attack: the smells of garlic and the smells of dill: swift! how he remembered, and remembered much: his aunt, his father, the kitchen-corner where such ferments of loaf-dough and cake-dough, of yeast-dough and of other things were oft going on; he remembered this road and that road, and Caca in the cave, and Numa dwelling in the Cave of Caca (or … was “the thing” not named Alcinoüs?) … and the stinking faces hanging at the doorside of the cave … he remembered much, yet not enough; yet faintly knowing there was more); and the exhausted runner — someone had placed a garland on his sweaty head — half-sat upright, half was lifted up; as from the jar, call it crock, then, someone reached and took, hand dripping liquid, took a something which … he knew, he knew, he knew must know … it was the Scarlet Fig and it dripped of its own juice and moisture; “Mm,” murmured the runner. And the others repeated the sound, some in one way, some in another: “Ma mma, manna, manya, nya, nyama …” And all these words at the root meant this one thing, the Scarlet Fig; the Greeks had a word for it. and that word was … Lotus …
Attempts were endless to identify the lotus of Lotusland with the known fruits and roots and flowers of the welladay world. Its like had been “discovered” again and again, and in many a tended garden within the Empery there grew plants asserted with great firmness to be the lotus, of Lotusland, the Land of the Lotophages; these plants, these flowers, fruits, roots and rhyzomes, were of many a different provenance: Lybya, Cilicia, Ægypt, the Lands of the Sinæ and the Serices, and of the Embri whose ewes bear, thrice a year, lambs already horned: no two were the same plant and no two had quite the same effect, some had no effect at all save that produced in the minds of their eaters by virtue of their beliefs in the powers of what they were eating, others were of certain and sure effect: never twice from two different plants the same. The eater might forget for a few moments who he was or why he was there, wherever there was. Whoso ate the pseudo-lotus might dance about as one all aflame, and declare later that he had sung sweet songs and rare, and demand: aghast! Why had no one noted their measures, modes, tunes, tones, words, and so on: to those present merely the eater of that particular “lotus” had moaned or cried discordantly or screamed, made strange sound past description, perhaps by the time of dwindling effect, shouted rather raucously. But no songs had been discerned. Other users of these odd plants might merely subside into a strange trance, saying and doing nothing whatsoever; later to arouse and get them up and declare a recollection of a rich, rich dream: as one embroidered with broidery fit for the favorite of a duke, count, or king: but as for specific memory, why, not one theme, not one scene, not one action, notion, motion, word or sound.
Again and again those learned in leech-craft (and the blood-sucking creatures were named after the craft, and not tother way around) would declare that, by all the tests demanded by the Pseudo-Theophrastus (to identify whom would be easier than to identify what song the sirens sang, a question which Averroes had asked his ministers in vain), the presence of flower, fragrance, and forgetfulness of woe, the alleged lotus in the garden of this magnate and that margrave, ought to be the Lotus … and, inde
ed, perhaps had ought to be; long journeyings and grave dangers risked — risked, and sometimes encountered — Tiberio torn by lionels, Duke Naimon carried off by a dragon, King Oliver lost to captivity: naming only a few notables by name — the endless numbers of the nameless brave, lost, like those lost before Agamemnon in the forgotten fields where even the asphodella does not grow — yet save for one thing nought was certain, and this the one thing certain: it was not.
The lotus, the lotus, i’seemed, alas, it would not travel: like some “small wine” of distant provenance in the Over-Seas, much esteemed by embassadore, proconsul, viceroy or baill when in its native region, though said official (traveller, trader, captains of ships of burthen or ships of war), however well they poured it through filters into amphorae or kegs, however well-caulked or well-cooped or well-stoppled and well-smoked: what emerged, back home, was invariably a drink flatter than the Plains of Parthia, of less worth, even, than a good common vinegar — so with the rare and strange lotus of Lotusland, where dwell the gentle Lotophages: such wines could not be by any means preserved, and neither could the true and proper lotus.
And as for its other, and second-most common name, the Scarlet Fig, why, every other mage or sage one asked on it, would freely declare that, in truth, it was neither scarlet nor a fig: what, then, was it, and what was it, then? The other moiety of those wise in wisdom would but sigh and shrug, declare, I do not know. It was indeed said of the Emperor Marcus, that he himself had made that difficult voyage to the island where lived the gentle Lotophagoi, had eaten of the Scarlet Fig, had drunk of its juices and of the winey sap of its stalk in season; had lingered long enough to have need to eat of its roots or rhyzomes in season when there grew upon the branch no flowers, no fruit, nor flowed from its stalk any dewy sap or juice: the Emperor Marcus constrained (as he had in advance commanded and directed), was eventually obliged by men through gentle force to retire from Lotusland, weeping and sobbing like a small bairn removed from her Mother: what had, then, the very emperor to show to know for his stay there? Moonstones and tourmalines he had to show. Sweet memories of dulcet days and painless, without memories, he had to know, though could not show. Moonstones and tourmalines he had to show. And some slime, some sludge, some nameless slop at the bottoms of vessels — jars, jugs, kegs — he had to show … though actually he had not shown it, having handed them over to his leechcrafters, his apothercaries, and his alchymists, for to make assay and essay, and for to make try and trial of it: the results? … nothing that anyone could ever say was truly worthy of the time and trial: though many were the rumors … and every rumor had its many tongues.
The Scarlet Fig: Or, Slowly Through a Land of Stone, Book Three of the Vergil Magus Series Page 19