The Orpheus Trail

by Maureen Duffy

  ‘Look,’ Hilary said pointing behind us. A perfectly round white moon hung in that still blue region of sky looking towards the sunrise. And then, as if to a triumphal chorus, the sun itself lifted a bright rim over the horizon making a path of light across the sea towards the installation. As it reached the structure silhouetted against it, the curtains were drawn back on both sides to reveal a huge transparent egg through which the light streamed, picking out a dark core at its centre.

  There was a gasp from the crowd and then what seemed a commotion breaking out at the front where the dignitaries were. ‘Can you see what it is? I’m not tall enough,’ Hilary said.

  ‘It seems to have a human shape at the centre.’

  A young man beside me said. ‘There’s something wrong. That isn’t how it’s meant to be.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I’m one of Reg North’s students. I helped him with the installation. There’s meant to be another egg in the middle that’s opalescent, and then another darker inside that. Like Russian dolls.’

  ‘Come on,’ I pulled at Hilary’s arm. ‘I’m going down there. Hang on to me.’

  I pushed through the crowd that was now noisy with reaction and speculation.

  ‘It’s not a real child; it can’t be,’ I heard a woman saying.

  ‘They get up to anything these days. Bloody obscene I call it, and we’re paying for it.’

  The word ‘child’ seemed to run through the crowd in a chilled whisper like a breaking wave.

  We reached the front at the foot of the plinth. The mayor and my chairman seemed struck dumb. I looked up at the huge egg with what looked like the body of a child floating in the middle, lit now by the full disc of a blazing winter sun. The boy was naked except for some kind of necklace that caught the light as if on fire, his arms outstretched in welcome, the childish penis contracted into a scarfed acorn of flesh. Someone, I thought must be the artist, was shouting.

  ‘Cover it up. Pull the bloody curtain.’

  ‘We can’t. It opens automatically. It’s light sensitive to the sunrise.’

  ‘Christ! Then get rid of the bloody people.’

  A man I recognised as one of our local police inspectors stepped forward. ‘I’ve sent for reinforcements to deal with the crowd. Now, sir, what’s your explanation?’

  ‘How the fuck do I know? It was alright when I left it yesterday.’

  ‘So you’re saying it’s been tampered with? How was it supposed to be? After all we’ve seen this sort of thing before. With animals for instance; a cow and a shark wasn’t it? It looks to me like a dead child in there, in which case we’re dealing with murder. Wasn’t there a case of human foetuses being used in some way for so-called art?’

  ‘Look. That isn’t the kind of thing I do. I’m out to make something beautiful not just to shock.’

  ‘I’ll have to ask you to come to the station to make a statement of course. Meanwhile we need to remove the body. How do we get in there, sir?’

  ‘The same way whoever tampered with it got in.’

  ‘And what would that be, sir?’

  ‘How should I know? I suppose they must have melted the weld that holds the two halves together. With a blowtorch. There must have been more than one of them. The two halves are quite heavy. I had the help of several students when I put it up. Anyway we don’t know that what’s in there isn’t just a model, a dummy.’

  ‘I’m afraid that won’t do, sir. It’s quite clear to me what we’re dealing with here. Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to get back at you in this way?’

  ‘Everyone’s got enemies but I can’t think of anyone who would do this. You need to know what you’re doing for a start. I think it’s more likely to be some kind of sick joke by someone who hates installation art.’

  Suddenly the inspector made up his mind. ‘There’s nothing to be done here. Constable, call up the traffic department. They can send one of their car-removal transporters.’

  I looked up again at the floating child, suspended now with a halo of sun around his head and thought of Apollo and Ra. He seemed to be almost smiling. At least his face was composed, tranquil.

  The artist had disappeared round the side of the plinth. When he came back he was clearly excited. ‘It’s not mine. I thought it was and somebody had got at it. But it isn’t. It’s a substitute.’

  ‘How do you know, sir? You seemed pretty certain before.’

  ‘I was upset. And I didn’t imagine that anyone could have put something in its place but looking at it more calmly I can see that no one could have altered mine without smashing the whole thing. It was all of a piece, like an old-fashioned marble with a barley sugar design running through it. This is just a glass shell with something floating in it. Like a glass coffin.’

  ‘Nevertheless, sir, I must insist you come with me to make a statement. Help us with our enquiries. After all you’re the only one who knows how and where such an object can be made. And we can try to trace your own piece of work.’

  This seemed to further calm Reg North. ‘Can I leave you for a moment?’ I said to Hilary. ‘I’ll just have a word with my chairman and then we’ll go and get breakfast. I imagine the champagne reception is off.’

  I walked over to where the mayor and the chairman were standing together. The transporter had arrived quickly and a team was dismantling the piece under the supervision of the artist who now seemed keen to help.

  ‘I’m sorry about this, Mr Tarrant. Very disappointing,’ I said.

  ‘And a bloody waste of money. Why us? Why this town? Nothing’s gone right since we found that grave. That king or whatever seems to haunt us like some malign influence. First the robbery, then the fire on the pier, now this.’

  ‘If there’s anything I can do to help,’ I heard myself offering.

  ‘At least they’re taking the bloody thing away. But I can see the enquiry dragging on for weeks. Unless the police can get some sort of a lead. That artist North isn’t off my list of suspects, I can tell you. Could be some sort of getting back at authority. What do you think, Kish? Is it a real child in there?’ The chairman used surnames as if we were at some long defunct public school.

  ‘We can only hope not.’

  ‘You can deal with the police, Kish. You’ve got more experience and more patience than I have. I’d only lose my temper. Keep me up to speed on it. Meanwhile we go on as normally as possible.’

  ‘I doubt if the press will let us do that,’ the mayor spoke for the first time. ‘I need a drink. Let’s see if they haven’t taken all the champagne away yet.’

  Hilary and I drove slowly back into town, following the transporter where the egg shape now lay on its flatbed shrouded by blue plastic sheeting.

  ‘There’s a little café I know on the front where they do a really hearty breakfast. That should warm us up.’ The cold seemed to have lodged somewhere in my gut and was radiating icicles through my bones. ‘You must be frozen. I’m sorry I got you into this.’

  ‘You weren’t to know. And anyway I wouldn’t have missed it. It’s a pretty routine existence in conservation, no matter what people may think. Weeks of work for often a rather unspectacular result. Whereas who knows where this might be going?’

  As I pushed open the café door I was surprised to see Jean and Harry Bates waving from a table. I waved back.

  ‘Some of our local amateurs: they’re the ones who found the grave. Fortunately their table’s full so we can be on our own without giving offence. You pick a spot and I’ll just go over and have a polite word.’

  There were two others at the Bates’s table, a man and a woman in late middle age that I thought I’d seen at some of our lectures. The four of them had an air of intense but suppressed excitement like children with a secret.

  ‘Hallo, Alex,’ Jean said. ‘We’re glad you’ve come in. Harry’s got something to show you. Go on, Harry.’

  ‘You’ll have to come round here,’ Harry said, ‘and look over my shoulder.’r />
  Obediently I moved to stand behind him. He was holding a state-of-the-art digital camera, at least four millimetre mega pixels. He pressed a button. The egg sprang onto the little screen. ‘Look at this,’ he said, focusing on a close-up of the floating boy. The image loomed larger, the screen homing in finally on the thing gleaming at the boy’s throat. A small bright square of golden light. ‘Now look at this.’ Another golden square filled the frame, etched with precise markings. ‘Now look at this again.’

  The first bright object took its place but now I could see it was covered with similar marks.

  ‘Tell me what I’m looking at,’ I said.

  ‘This one,’ Harry flicked on the second picture, ‘is the square amulet you found in the buckle from the grave, and this,’ he brought up the first one again, ‘is the pendant round the boy’s neck. They’re the same. Except that I think the boy is wearing only a part, not the whole thing.’

  ‘One leaf?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  I felt a shiver run through me as if someone had poured icy water down my spine. In his clumsy way the chairman had been right. We were being haunted. The mayor had been right too. The press the next morning had a field day with child sacrifice and pictures of the ‘floating boy’. I waited for Jack Linden’s call.

  Putative Restoration of a Missing Part of the Derveni Papyrus, discovered in a charred condition on a Thracian funeral pyre by workmen digging a road from Thessalonika to Kavala, January 15th, 16th 1962. The pyre also contained male human remains, weapons and horse accoutrements and was clearly that of a noble warrior. The extant scroll however begins with Zeus, having seized power, swallowing the severed genitals of his grandfather Uranus in order to recreate the entire universe from within his own belly. An attempt has therefore been made to reconstruct what must have been the beginning, describing creation according to the Orphic theogony with the help of the late Professor Guthrie, Fellow of Peterhouse and his groundbreaking Orpheus and Greek Religion.

  ‘First was Enduring Time whom the Greeks call Chronos. Out of Chronos are born Aither or Air and Chaos and Erebos, the yawning gulf and darkness over all. In Aither Chronos fashioned the Cosmic Egg, which split in two to form the heavens and earth, and as it split there sprang from it the winged Phanes in a blaze of light, the beautiful one, creator of the sun and moon and of the men of the Golden Age. And of himself he bore a daughter, Night or wisdom, whom he took to himself. And the Greeks know him as Dionysus or Eros.’

  If this is accepted as at least plausible then it will be immediately clear that the Orphic seems to owe much to the earlier Iranian theogony, a conclusion which gains considerable strength when we consider the occupation of Thrace by the Persians and that Hesiod himself, through his father, came from Lydia (another satrap of the Persian Empire), and whose own creation myth has many similar elements.

  Paper delivered to the Symposium on The Influence of Middle Eastern and Classical Beliefs on Later Monotheisms

  Universidad de Huelva, June 2003

  But it was the chairman who rang me first. The press had continued their feeding frenzy. Normally we don’t take all the national papers at the museum. There’s no need. Today I sent Phoebe out to pick up the lot as soon as I opened my own daily rag.

  ‘Have you seen the papers, Kish?’ The chairman believed in going straight to the point. ‘I’ve had local councillors on to me already, suggesting it’s our fault for wasting residents’ money on dodgy modern art.’

  As he spoke I was running through successive headlines from the pile in front of me. As usual those in red were the most hysterical in their prurient, self-righteous voyeurism. I saw where our local broadcasters had picked up their ideas. It was a chance that wasn’t to be missed to make political capital out of a grisly event and knock the council’s cultural budget at the same time. ‘It’s the effect on the town,’ he went on, ‘that has to be my concern. No one will want to come here.’

  ‘I think you might find just the opposite.’

  ‘A lot of ghouls. No, we want this cleared up as soon as possible We’ve got just over three months before the start of the season. Have you spoken to the police yet? What do they think?’

  ‘I was just about to ring them,’ I lied, ‘but you got me first.’

  ‘I’ll get off the line then. Keep me up to speed, Alex.’

  Who should I ring? I looked up our usual liaison officer and dialled the number. ‘Inspector Hobbs? It’s Alex Kish from the museum. I thought I should make contact, or rather the chairman thinks so. I hope that isn’t a nuisance.’ I knew the notion of local political interest would do the trick.

  ‘We’d like you to come in, sir, and discuss it with us. There seem to be some factors that might be more in your field than ours. Incidentally we’ve called in the Met. Had to. We think this goes much farther than our patch. Certainly the victims weren’t from round here. That much we know.’

  ‘Of course. I’ll come whenever you say. Our chairman is worried about the town’s image. He’s anxious the thing should be out of the public mind by Easter.’

  I heard the inspector give a short satirical laugh. ‘He’ll be lucky. So will we.’

  The next call was Jack. ‘What took you so long?’ I said, determined to seize the initiative.

  ‘You’ve been engaged for hours.’

  ‘I know: the chairman, the police. You’re lucky to have got in now. So what’s your theory, Jack?’

  ‘Hang on. What about: “Sorry, Jack, you were right”?’

  ‘Sorry, Jack, you were right. So? I have to go and talk to the police. The locals have called in the Met, probably Interpol, or whatever it’s called these days, by now. Anything you can suggest I can feed through if…’

  ‘If you don’t think it’s too nutty?’

  ‘We don’t want to lose their confidence. So what can you tell me?’

  ‘I’ve seen a reference to a Persian lord who was suspended in a crystal coffin so that the sun’s rays would light him up.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s leave that out for the moment. This is something even the police don’t know yet.’ I quickly filled him in about the gold leaf, seeming to be from our amulet, round the boy’s neck. ‘From what you told me before that could be inscribed with instructions on how to behave after death.’

  ‘That’s what I could read. But that was only one facet because of the way the sheet was folded in four. The others may have, will have, different bits of text.

  ‘If I emailed you a photograph of this leaf could you tell if it’s what you saw before?’

  ‘I can try. Depends on the definition in the photograph.’

  ‘I think it’s a different bit but as you know I don’t read Greek.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can come up with.’

  It would be good to go to the police with something they didn’t know, something I could contribute as an expert, even if only at second hand.

  Jack’s answer came quickly. ‘It’s Greek, alright. But there’s something weird. I thought I’d seen it before and then I remembered. It’s in a book on the Derveni papyrus.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s something the Greeks found when they were building a road.’

  ‘Which Greeks? When are we talking about?’

  ‘In the sixties, as far as I recall. Anyway the whole text was published in 2005. There’d been a gap because the academic who’d ended up with it didn’t want to let go. Then a samizdat version began to circulate and finally the whole thing went public.

  ‘How does this fit in with our text round the boy’s neck?’

  ‘It’s part of it and, as I said at first, it’s an Orphic text.’

  ‘Instructions for the dead?’

  ‘Not this one. This bit is all about creation. Zeus swallowing “the glorious firstborn of the egg”. It isn’t exactly the same but it’s close enough for me to recognise where it comes from. There’s a later, fuller version of the creation story according to Orpheus in something called Th
e Rhapsodies in English.’

  ‘Where do we go from there?’

  ‘That I don’t know. I’ll have to dig around some more. But what’s clear is that someone is mixed up in this who knows the whole field, maybe even better than I do. Didn’t I say that if there was more to this than just a game being played with the toys of Dionysus, that something else would happen to confirm it? Well this is it.’

  ‘What do I say to the police?’

  ‘You’ll have to play it by ear, tell them what you can without them thinking we’ve all completely lost it. Crazy professors: that sort of thing.’

  As I made my way to the police station that afternoon I felt less and less sure. All I had to offer was some mad conspiracy theory, maybe involving ancient cults. I was shown into an interview room, and left kicking my heels for ten minutes by the clock on the wall, time enough to begin to feel that I was the criminal. I became convinced that I was being observed and tried to sit looking relaxed and dignified, resisting the impulse to keep shifting on the hard chair or crossing or uncrossing my legs. Finally the door opened and Inspector Hobbs came in, followed by a uniformed policeman, and a man I judged to be in his forties, with short black curly hair and very blue eyes.