Eleanor

by RA Williams

  More carnival barker than professor, she juggled ethnological tennis balls for university administrators, students and masters. Her lips tightened at the sight of colleagues already shaking their heads at her. Old dogs, confined by convention and unwilling to risk their precious tenure on unconventional theories, they were quick to lob opprobrium at her. Yet all were vying for a seat to the big show, wanting to know if they should indeed expecto resurrectionem mortuorum.

  She nodded to an upperclassman in a bow tie and a stupid smile as he perched behind a Viewlex slide projector.

  ‘As they appear, so they vanish.’

  Charlie Burkhammer simply stared at her, same old guileless smile on his face.

  ‘As they appear, so they vanish,’ she repeated.

  Nothing.

  ‘Unless you want to vanish too, Charlie, I recommend you make my slides appear.’

  There were a few titters from the seats. Snapping out of his enchantment, he glanced at the maintenance man waiting by the church’s narthex, and the lights dimmed.

  A strategically placed spotlight threw Elle into a dramatic pool of light. It also served to wash out the naysayers rolling their eyes.

  She took a breath before beginning. ‘From the rainforests of Honduras to the mysterious Tor Externsteine in Germany, and as far away as a salt waste in the Persian Empire, there is a myth. Written in ancient languages, in different epochs and without any possibility of interaction, these developed but remote civilisations all have the same myth to tell. Tantalising clues to predation events. Wicked fiends coveting the flesh of man. Hints of blood frenzies of such savagery and on such a scale that entire cultures were consumed by these fiends. These Spring-heeled Jacks. These bogeymen. The anthropophagi – eaters of human flesh.’

  She paused as the audience whispered excitedly. They always did.

  ‘During this last Christmas break, I participated in an archaeological investigation, co-funded by the University of Michigan.’

  The projector clicked as Charlie inserted a slide. A screen in front of the high altar beside Elle came to life, showing a step pyramid obscured by rainforest.

  ‘Copán, in Honduras,’ Elle explained. ‘The capital city of the ancient Maya civilisation. Archaeologists from the University of Michigan discovered a hidden chamber beneath a previously explored pyramid.’

  The screen went momentarily dark as Charlie swapped out slides. An inconspicuous and empty chamber then appeared.

  ‘Something was once here – but later, was taken. My colleagues from U of M believe it was a stela, a sculpted stone, containing Mayan hieroglyphs that explain the exact purpose of the chamber.’

  Another slide. Stepping closer to the screen, she almost became part of the photograph, pointing out rough-hewn marks in the walls and empty altars of the chamber.

  ‘These are chisel marks. The stela, as you can see, were not removed with great care.’

  Stepping away, she nodded towards Charlie.

  ‘I don’t believe this was a temple. I think it was an abattoir,’ Elle said.

  The next slide revealed a stucco frieze and, within it, a winged Mayan god.

  ‘This is in the chamber’s ceiling. You can clearly see Camazotz – an ancient Mayan god associated with night, death and sacrifice. Camazotz is quite common: found in nearly every site throughout the ancient Mayan empire. But there’s something unusual about this particular frieze.’

  With her long, practised fingers, she pointed out a symbol below Camazotz’s face.

  ‘I’m by no means an authority on Mayan semiotics, but this is clearly the symbol for Matan. It is neither unusual nor uncommon. But finding it on a frieze of the god Camazotz? That’s a royal flush.’

  An adolescent voice punctured the darkness. ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘That’s a good question.’ She took a few slow paces away from the screen, enjoying so much the moment in which she had total control. ‘It means “Gift”.’

  Murmuring followed her revelation.

  ‘My colleagues have never seen this symbol together with the Mayan bat god,’ she said, and she paused again, leaving an extra beat for more dramatic effect. ‘But I have.’

  Charlie changed the slides again, and a relief of a black-winged creature appeared.

  ‘Camazotz looks an awful lot like Hel. To a Germanic pagan, Hel was the undead demigod of the underworld. I took this photograph in a chamber high up in one of the Externsteine’s natural sandstone towers in Germany’s Teutoburg Forest. Germanic clans didn’t preserve much evidence of their gifting, but look here,’ she said as she pointed out some apparent gibberish fringing the relief.

  ‘Angebinde. It’s Germanic for the strength of the bond that makes up an exchange. It doesn’t specifically translate to “Gift” but rather the binding of gifts to a person. The drift is pretty clear: the stronger the binding of the Gift, the stronger the bond.’

  The next slide showed the profile of a winged creature with claw-like talons carved into stone.

  ‘Now. This is from a tomb along an old spice route in Iran. This charming fellow is Ahriman, Persian god of pretty much all things that go bump in the night.’

  Her captive audience chuckled nervously.

  Tapping her finger against the screen, she directed the audience’s attention to a cluster of rigid lines below the carving. ‘Atâ.’

  The slide projector fell silent, and the screen went black. The lights in the nave rose.

  ‘In old Persian, Atâ means “Gift”.’

  A gasp filled the nave.

  ‘When I was working towards my doctorate at the University of Michigan back in 1915, I first presented a dissertation titled “Externsteine’s Wilderzeichen”. In it, I theorised that something was taken from all of these civilisations. The same thing.’

  She paused. Her theory had evolved as she herself evolved, from ingénue to a woman of academic authority.

  ‘Since then, however, I have changed my mind,’ she admitted. ‘As I theorise in my recent paper “Mayan Wild Signs”, published in the most recent St Dunstan’s Journal of Science, I am convinced not only was something taken but also something was offered back.’

  This, finally, was her pièce de theoretical résistance. Delivered cold and bold.

  ‘Well?’ a plump master quipped, ‘What then was it?’

  The old dog cut short her hubris.

  ‘I’m not absolutely sure. I speak of clues, historical breadcrumbs on a path long overgrown. Theoretically speaking—’

  ‘So that’s all this is. A mere theory,’ interrupted another member of the Old Boys’ Club.

  ‘Mea culpa.’ Elle smiled through gritted teeth. She hated to agree, but agree she must. ‘Theoretically speaking, the use of the word “Gift” is in itself telling. Gifts are seldom free.’

  A student wearing a letterman sweater and a clever smirk spoke up.

  ‘So if I give my sweetie a gift, say my football letterman pin, you mean to say it’s not free?’

  ‘Gift exchange leads to interdependence between giver and receiver. You expect recompense for your letterman pin,’ she said, and with confident sarcasm she added: ‘And considering St Dunstan’s football season, I would have chosen a better gift.’

  A wave of laughter filled the church.

  ‘What if the gift were not reciprocated?’ someone asked.

  ‘A contradiction would ensue,’ replied Elle. ‘Gift exchange creates deep social ties. Or, in the case of this young gentleman, a slap in the mug from his sweetie in the back seat of Daddy’s Pierce-Arrow.’

  Gales of laughter followed. When they finally ebbed, she continued, enjoying herself immensely now.

  ‘Shall we get back to business?’ she asked.

  With the exception of a few unamused expressions, the audience nodded almost as one.

  ‘I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I don’t know where these Spring-heeled Jacks came from. I don’t have a name for them. Not yet. I do know they appear prior to a devastati
ng predation event – in some cases, causing regional extinction. Then they’re gone.’

  A thought came to her.

  ‘Charlie, would you show us the slide of Camazotz again?’

  The screen lit up.

  ‘The Mayan bat god here is worth a second look.’ She turned to the image and sighed. ‘The Mayan bat god – upside down.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Charlie fumbled clumsily with the slide, turning it round. The Copán frieze reappeared, the right way round this time.

  Turning to the photograph, her eyes were drawn to the corner of the frieze. Moving closer, her nose almost touched the screen as she stared at the chisel marks. Or what she had assumed were chisel marks.

  ‘Charlie, would you please turn the slide the wrong way round again.’

  ‘Dr Annenberg?’

  ‘Just do it, please.’

  The slide was reinserted, upside down again.

  She stared at the screen. At the image. And what she had missed.

  ‘Shit,’ she breathed, as the nave filled with giggles and a few tut-tuts. She touched the screen and could almost feel the grooves in the stone. Right way round, the deep gouges made no sense. Upside down, she recognised them immediately.

  ‘These are runes,’ she said at last, turning to her audience.

  Silence filled the nave; the mere mention of the word was utterly captivating. It took a long moment for her to regain her thoughts.

  ‘Some of you know my emphasis has always been pagan Germania and the Tor Externsteine in Germany’s Teutoburg Forest.’

  She pointed back to the photograph on the screen.

  ‘These are runes. Proto-Germanic runes, to be precise. The very definition of which is something hidden. Here, in plain sight, something was hidden. How could I have missed it?’

  She shook her head, stealing a little smile at her stupidity.

  ‘My fellow archaeologists date the frieze in this photograph to approximately AD 900. Soon after this frieze was completed, the ancient Maya vanished from Copán.’

  ‘This rune, you can translate it?’ a French voice asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘It means “Sekr”.’

  Every face in the audience looked blank.

  All, that is, but one.

  ‘It contains several meanings,’ Elle continued. ‘The most common is “outlaw”, but Sekr can also mean—’

  ‘Crimen,’ blurted the French voice. All eyes fell upon a little man with an unremarkable beard and a remarkable nose. ‘In Latin, of course. Or “Guilty”, in English.’

  He stood, a wily smile appearing.

  ‘Yes,’ said Elle, flummoxed. ‘That would be a more precise translation.’

  He nodded. ‘Introductions, oui?’

  ‘Please,’ she replied.

  ‘I admit to being a quiet man. My work usually speaks on my behalf,’ he said, his manner slow yet erudite. ‘Marcel Mauss.’

  She gave a little laugh as the air left her lungs. Dr Mauss stood before her. And the fiend she’d witnessed on Titanic finally had a name.

  Crimen.

  The world went white, sky and earth merging as the snowfall became a blizzard; soft, fluffy flakes piled one upon another, weighing down the boughs of the oaks along Lone Pine Road. A pony and trap used by the gardening staff slowly plodded up the road, passing parked-up motor cars that looked like sleeping polar bears. A throng of students and administrators toiled along the unploughed sidewalk. The pony came to a halt, struggling masters hoisting themselves up into the trap, sparing them the slog back to main campus.

  Elle was considering whether to forget returning to her office, and instead make the short walk home, when her assistant let the door to the church porch slam behind him.

  ‘Have a nice Easter holiday,’ he said.

  ‘I ought to thank you,’ she replied, raising the collar of her old teddy bear coat, warding off the cold.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Were it not for you dropping that slide in the wrong way round, we might never have discovered that rune.’ She shook her head with a smile, reflecting. ‘A Germanic rune on a Mayan frieze. That’s going to shake the Old Boys’ Club up.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He smiled, his teenage crush unmistakable. Elle tucked away her broad grin, in an attempt to fend him off.

  Fortunately, another voice joined them in the cold air.

  ‘Dr Annenberg?’

  She turned. Marcel Mauss emerged from the church, doffing the pork-pie hat on his head.

  ‘Dr Mauss.’

  ‘I do hope you can forgive me for interrupting the presentation of your paper,’ he said, wrapping his greatcoat around himself more tightly and buttoning it.

  ‘There is nothing to forgive,’ she said. If she hadn’t been so cold, she would have blushed. ‘It’s just, I’m—’ She stumbled to find her words. ‘How are you here?’

  ‘A morning of surprises.’ The twinkle in his steel-grey eyes suggested there were more to come.

  ‘That a sociologist of your acclaim should bother to attend my lecture leaves me at a loss for words,’ Elle said.

  ‘That’s a first,’ Charlie blurted out, a dumb look on his young face.

  ‘Dr Mauss’s theory on the matter of gifting was published in L’Année Sociologique. It influenced me to the point I have come to embrace it, reconsidering my own theory.’

  Charlie looked blank.

  ‘L’Année Sociologique? France’s most respected journal of sociology?’

  ‘“The Gift”!’ Charlie finally realised, turning to Mauss. ‘Dr Annenberg had our French class translate all of it.’

  ‘Honoured, I’m sure,’ Dr Mauss replied with a slight bow.

  ‘Your essay has become the guidepost to all my ethnographic work,’ she gushed – something she almost never did. ‘Charlie, return the expedition slides to my office. And please ask Hattie to put the kettle on.’

  He nodded, excusing himself.

  Stomping her fur-lined boots to prevent her feet going numb, Elle turned back to Dr Mauss.

  ‘It’s freezing out here and it’s a ten-minute walk to my office. I’m afraid that in these times of prohibition, a warming nip of giggle juice is hard to come by. But my secretary will have hot tea waiting.’

  ‘I find the air quite fresh. I will not mind to walk.’

  ‘Are you sure? It’s Baltic.’

  ‘I have lived in the deserts of Arizona for some months. I am accustomed to such cold temperatures at night.’

  Shoving her hands into the deep pockets of her coat, Elle showed him across Lone Pine Road and through a pair of wrought-iron gates. A guard peered out of his gatehouse, waving. She waved back.

  ‘Shortcut,’ she explained. ‘This is the gate to my family’s home.’

  ‘C’est magnifique,’ he complimented as he looked up the winding drive to the manor house peeking through the snow-laden trees. ‘It is something extraordinary you have established here, Dr Annenberg.’

  ‘My father and mother deserve all the credit. They are firm believers in obligation, not privilege. And they, like my friends, call me Elle. And I hope so shall you.’

  ‘As you wish, Elle. Your parents’ patronage is a beautiful example of the American noblesse oblige, I’m sure.’

  ‘Something I wouldn’t expect to hear from the mouth of a socialist,’ said Elle.

  ‘I am socialist, it’s true. However, even I can respect the generosity of the American bourgeoisie,’ said Dr Mauss.

  ‘The motor car business afforded my father the possibility of such philanthropy. But we’re new money,’ Elle replied.

  Turning onto a path through the forest between the manor and the St Dunstan’s campus, she added, ‘Respect is not ours to have.’

  ‘But there is no class system in America, oui?’

  ‘My father once said, “We have a famous name and a Jewish banker”.’

  Mauss tilted his head to the side.

  ‘To a Protestant family, Father committed an unforgivable sin: my mother was
part of the diaspora fleeing Germany. There’s a large Jewish community in Detroit. Her family, bankers.’

  ‘Ah, anti-Semitism. A complicated problem.’

  ‘There are two things the establishment in America despises: taxes and Jews. Marrying outside his faith mattered to everyone but my father. He left Philadelphia before I was born, slamming shut every door his family name opened, to join Mother in Detroit. The infant motor car industry was making millionaires out of mortal men.’

  ‘Capitalism,’ Mauss replied, with spite.

  ‘Please tell me you’ve not come all this way to hear about my pedigree?’ Elle added.

  Producing a well-worn leather cigar holder, he asked if he might smoke. Removing a Dunhill from her silver case, she lit a cigarette in return. Mauss smiled.

  ‘It’s something I adore about Americans. Even a lady of high breeding can behave in a manner not conforming to her position.’

  Exhaling, she smiled. A great big American one. ‘Is it the teddy bear coat?’

  ‘It is neither the coat nor an absent cigarette holder. It is evident in your straight back and your confidence when speaking about your Crimen theory.’

  A pair of masters carrying stacks of books passed on the path, hats peaked with snow.

  They greeted Elle politely, if not curtly. Dr Mauss watched them go before turning to her.

  ‘A theory your colleagues see as piffle, no?’

  She pulled a face. ‘To them, I’m an interloper spouting gobbledy-gook.’

  ‘Elle, you have the very thing they can never possess.’

  ‘Disingenuous and cloying methods of deduction?’

  Mauss chuckled and shook his head, adding, ‘The feminine intuition, of course.’

  She laughed at herself. ‘A friend of mine, back in sixth form, put it another way.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘She called me a bitch.’

  ‘At the Chiltham School for Young Ladies in Hampstead?’

  Elle stopped laughing. ‘I don’t mean to come across as churlish, but how is it – why is it – you know this much about me? I am nobody important.’