The Bestiary
Page 28
“Thank you,” I said, shaking his hand. Like Sampson’s, it was cold and rough.
He made a small bow to Lena, who thanked him, too.
“Good luck,” he said, and descended the steps and disappeared into the forest.
Lena and I went around the church. All the shade in the cemetery was bleached away. Puffs of dust rose, as if the bones below were stirring. We walked down a line of fallen gravestones and entered the forest. I felt the presence of animals in the shadows. Then the wind picked up through the trees, tinged with salt. A sparkling blue band appeared and we stepped from the forest onto a beach, a white crescent flanked by boulders. The horizon shimmered. We put down our knapsacks and removed our shoes.
“I’m going in,” Lena said.
She stripped off her blouse and jeans, then her underwear. Her body glowed in the sun. Her arms and legs were tanned, which made her breasts look even whiter. She waded into the surf and dove cleanly, surfacing fifty feet out, filling her lungs, and continuing on with long steady strokes. I knew she was a strong swimmer. When we were children, she won trophies at the Y. It had been that long since I had seen her in the water. Sweating in the mezzanine above the pool, our eyes smarting from chlorine, Bruno and I had watched her compete. She was a long-distance swimmer. Her best event was the 800 meters. I remembered her red bathing suit and the matching cap her father had given her, initialed FDNY across the front.
As she swam out, a cloud obscured the sun. The sea turned gray. She stopped finally, a dark circle rising and falling. Then the cloud shifted and a shaft of sunlight lit her hair up gold. She beckoned to me. I took off my clothes. The water was cold. I started swimming, every so often raising my head to find Lena among the waves.
Later, poised to snap the last shot in my camera, I was puzzled to find it had already been taken. When the film was developed, there were all the photographs of the mural and then one of Lena and me in the sea, shot from the beach. Everything was as I remembered it: the clear water, the heavy clouds, her shining hair. We remained in the sea the rest of the afternoon, naked, weightless, riding the swell, before swimming in at twilight and returning to the dock where the launch was waiting, the pilot at the wheel, his cap pulled low, his cigarette glowing when he raised it to his lips.
Glossary
A Selection of Fabulous Beasts
from the Caravan Bestiary
Amemait
A beast of the underworld, out of Egypt. With the head of a crocodile, torso of a lion, and hindquarters of a hippopotamus, it is known as “the Devourer” because it consumes the hearts of the wicked after death, to assure the destruction of their souls.
Amphisbaena
A two-headed serpent, one head at either end of its body, each with fangs and eyes of fire.
Bai-ma
A white horse with one eye and eight legs that appears wherever an infant is stillborn and roars like a tiger.
Baku
A threefold beast—with a lion’s head, tiger’s feet, and horse’s body—which, when invoked, will consume one’s bad dreams.
Basilisk (Cockatrice)
A desert serpent with a star set in its forehead, like a coronet. It befouls air and water. As with the gorgon, its glance turns men to stone, but if reflected in a mirror or shield, will destroy the basilisk itself.
Bi-bi
A wingèd fox that lives high in the mountains and honks like a goose.
Bo
A horse from the plains of Central Asia with a white body and black tail, and the teeth and claws of a tiger. No weapon can harm it.
Bonnacon
A horse with the head of a bull and enormous horns that excretes fire and can scorch the land for miles, reducing whole forests to ashes.
Caladrius
A pure white bird known for its powers of divination. Brought to a sickbed, it will turn its back on a patient with a mortal illness, but face the patient who can avoid death, drawing the vapors of the illness into its own body and dispersing them as it flies toward the sun. Its dung is a powerful curative.
Catoblepas
A buffalo with the head of a hog and a poisonous tongue, it wallows in the mud of riverbanks. It always faces downward. Anyone who glimpses its red eyes perishes.
Centaur
Half man, half horse, they were fierce warriors and dedicated orgiasts, unruly and unpredictable. The lone exception was Chiron, a healer and astrologer, who tutored a pantheon of heroes, including Achilles, Theseus, Ajax, and Hercules.
Cerberus
The hound with one hundred (some say fifty, others three) heads that guards the Gates of the Underworld, on the far bank of the River Styx, terrorizing the souls of the dead.
Chimera
Only one chimera ever walked the earth, devastating the countryside in ancient Lycia. Part lion, goat, and serpent, it spewed flames and was killed by Bellerophon upon his wingèd horse, Pegasus.
Crocotta
A speckled hyena that imitates the human voice in order to lure men to secluded places and kill them.
Dipsas
A hooded asp whose bite causes the victim to die of thirst.
Echidna
Half serpent, half woman, with fiery eyes and a hunger for raw flesh. The wife of Typhon, she bore a host of monsters: the Chimera, the Hydra, the Nemean Lion, and the Sphinx; the dogs Cerberus and Orthrus and the dragon Ladon, all multiheaded; and Ethon, the eagle that tormented Prometheus when he was chained to his rock.
Emorroris
An asp, its name derived from the Greek αíμα, “blood,” because, when bitten, its victim hemorrhages to death.
Garuda
Half vulture, half man, with red wings, a white face, and a golden body. His mother, Vinata, was the sister of Kadru, the Goddess of Serpents, and he consumes a serpent daily. Vishnu, one of the three major gods in the Hindu pantheon, rides on his back.
Gorgons
Three female monsters—Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa—with nests of snakes on their heads instead of hair. Medusa is the only mortal gorgon, and the sight of her turns men to stone. Perseus manages to behead her only by looking at her reflection in his shield.
Griffin
The offspring of an eagle and a lion. Guardian of treasures, with gold talons and powerful wings. Able to fly to great heights with incredible weight on its back: men on horseback, oxen, even mountains.
Gullinbursti
A wild boar forged of gold by dwarves who are master smithies. It can travel on land or water and fly high in the sky, its path lit even in dead of night by its glowing bristles. At times, it is harnessed to the chariot of Freya, the Norse goddess of love.
Hippogriff
The offspring of a griffin and a horse. It lives in the icebound regions near the North Pole.
Hydra
A multiheaded offspring of Typhon and Echidna that dwells on the island of Lerna. If one of its heads is cut off, three more grow in its place.
Hypnale
An asp whose bite is a fatal soporific. Cleopatra’s means of suicide. (From the Greek ύπνος, “sleep.”)
Jaculus
A flying serpent that hurls itself onto its prey from trees. (From the Latin for “javelin.”)
Keres
Birdlike creatures with women’s heads, deadly talons, and large wings. They tear apart corpses and are always present on battlefields, drinking the blood of the wounded and directing the fates of whole armies. Spirits of the dead, they are licensed to travel in and out of the underworld.
Kitsune
From Japan. A trickster fox that can metamorphose into any human form it wishes, but always keeps, and must conceal, its bushy tail. Most often, it assumes the body of a beautiful woman and coils its tail beneath the obi sash of her kimono.
Kujata
A huge cosmic bull, with thousands of eyes and ears, that stands upon the behemoth Bahamut, beneath whom are successive seas of water, air, and fire atop a serpent large enough to swallow the universe. On the kujata’s ba
ck is a mountainous ruby on which an angel stands, holding the earth.
Ladon
A hundred-headed dragon that guards the apples of the Hesperides near Mount Atlas, on the African side of the Strait of Gibraltar. Hercules’ eleventh labor was to slay it and bring back three of the apples.
Lamia
Beautiful women from the waist up, serpents from the waist down. They roam the African deserts, and in the way of mermaids, beguile travelers with their musical voices (that resemble whistling winds) in order to feast on them. They possess the ability to vanish at will.
Leucrocotta
From India. The swiftest animal on earth, with a lion’s torso, stag’s hindquarters, and horse’s head.
Long
A benevolent Chinese dragon. Overseer of clouds, seas, lakes, and rivers. Bringer of rain. It is an amalgam of many animals, with a camel’s head, a stag’s horns, a snake’s neck, an eagle’s claws, a fish’s scales, and a bull’s tail.
Makara
An amphibious creature, crocodilian but with a snout that resembles an elephant’s trunk. It originated in India as a composite beast—elephant and snake—that represented the duality of good and evil.
Mandrake
A root with the form of a man, it inhabits the divide between the plant and animal kingdoms. It is said to have originated in the dank soil at the foot of gallows, where hanged men fell. When torn from the ground, it screams like a man, and those who uproot it perish instantly.
Manticore
A lion with a human face, three rows of razor-sharp teeth, and a tail studded with poisonous darts that it can shoot at its prey. In India it is believed that the manticore was the ancestor of all man-eating cats: lions, tigers, and leopards.
Mermecolion
The “Ant-Lion,” attested to by Aelian, Strabo, and Physiologus himself as the improbable offspring of a lion and an ant. It is a lion in its foreparts, an ant in the rear. A beast so fantastical that, by definition, it cannot survive. Half its body will not tolerate meat; the other half cannot digest grain; therefore, it starves to death.
Naga
From India. A large serpent, hooded like a cobra, that has dominion over oceans, rivers, and rain. Guardian of treasures, it lives in sumptuous palaces on the seafloor. It can confer invisibility on men underwater. Female nagas, naginis, are semihuman and beautiful, like mermaids, and often fall in love with mortal men.
Nine-tailed Fox
A fox that lives for a thousand years, at which point it sprouts nine tails and ascends to heaven. A trickster and master of illusion, by moonlight it can transform a hut into a palace and assume any human shape.
Nue
A fourfold beast—badger, monkey, tiger, serpent—that is visible only by moonlight. At death, it dissolves like snow.
Pazuzu
From Assyria. A harbinger of disease, with a human head, bird’s wings, and lion’s paws.
Peryton
A high-flying bird with the head and forelegs of a deer that casts the shadow of a man. It originated on the continent of Atlantis and now nests in caves on the Rock of Gibraltar, subsisting on soil and salt water.
Phoenix
A large bird with iridescent wings, eyes blue as the sea and feathers the color of fire. Sustained by air alone, it neither eats nor drinks. It resides in paradise, nesting in the date palm, and every thousand years dies and is reborn. Its song is so beautiful it was the basis for the first musical scale.
Rukh
A bird with a wingspan of 300 feet that can lift an elephant and fly for a thousand miles without pause. In the Indian Ocean its half-submerged eggs are often mistaken for islets.
Salamander
The smallest dragon in Creation, part animal, part mineral, according to Marco Polo. The mineral is asbestos. Thus it is said to live in fire. The Great Khan sent the Pope a pouch of salamander skin to protect the napkin of Saint Veronica, imprinted with Jesus’ face. The Emperor of India had a suit tailored from a thousand salamander skins.
Serra
A sea monster that can out-race ships by rising out of the water in flight, beating its enormous fins like wings.
Simurgh
The combination of a huge bird and a lion. The Persian incarnation of the phoenix.
Sphinx
A lion with the head of a man, a woman, a ram (criosphinx), or a bird (avasphinx), it is the guardian of temples, treasure houses, and tombs.
Talos
A living giant composed of bronze, with melted lead running in his veins, created by Hephaistos to serve as the guardian of Crete.
Typhon
A hundred-headed, wingèd monster with a serpent’s tail, his eyes spin like fiery wheels and flames shoot from his mouth. He is the husband of Echidna, father to her monstrous brood [see Echidna], and the son of Tartarus, a god who dwells in the deepest chasm of the underworld.
Uroboros
The serpent that encircles the world and devours its own tail. (From the Greek for “tail-devourer.”) It also appears in Norse mythology, with the name Jormungard.
Zaratan
A sea turtle so enormous that sailors often mistake it for an island—far larger than the rukh’s egg. Sometimes it is so large, and has been afloat for so long, that it is covered with valleys and forests, themselves populated with all manner of animals of normal dimension—including the turtle.
About the Author
NICHOLAS CHRISTOPHER is the author of four previous novels, The Soloist, Veronica, A Trip to the Stars, and Franklin Flyer; eight books of poetry, most recently, Crossing the Equator: New and Selected Poems, 1972–2004; and a book about film noir, Somewhere in the Night. He lives in New York City.
Books by Nicholas Christopher
FICTION
The Bestiary (2007)
Franklin Flyer (2002)
A Trip to the Stars (2000)
Veronica (1996)
The Soloist (1986)
POETRY
Crossing the Equator: New and Selected Poems, 1972–2004 (2004)
Atomic Field: Two Poems (2000)
The Creation of the Night Sky (1998)
5° (1995)
In the Year of the Comet (1992)
Desperate Characters: A Novella in Verse (1988)
A Short History of the Island of Butterflies (1986)
On Tour with Rita (1982)
NONFICTION
Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir the American City (1997)
EDITOR
Walk on the Wild Side: Urban American Poetry Since 1975 (1994)
Under 35: The New Generation of American Poets (1989)
*1 THE HYENA
An animal that is male one moment, female the next.
A tomb robber.
Like all hybrids, it was banished from Noah’s ark.
After the Flood, it reemerged—the union of a mad dog and a graveyard cat—to feed on the corpses of the drowned.
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*2 THE CHINESE DRAGON
The pearl under its chin is the source of its power.
It exhales burning clouds that rain fire upon the earth. The first emperors were descended from 3,000-year-old dragons. At death, the emperor ascended to heaven on a dragon’s back.
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*3 SHANG YANG
A one-legged bird that nests along rivers.
Carrying water skyward in its beak, it injects the clouds until they burst.
SHAN HUI
A mountain dog with a human face and a serrated tail. It feasts on nettles and sleeps in cemeteries.
HEMICYNE
A dog-headed man who lives in a cave by the sea.
Formerly a fisherman, he will drown any fisherman he sees.
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*4 The nightingale is called Lucina because she heralds the dawn, like a lantern (lucerna).
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*5 THE GARGOYLE
A dragon that rose from the Seine in the 7th century to ravage Rouen. Saint Romain
killed it with a green sword.
Where the gargoyle fell, a spring of angels’ tears began to flow. One sip can cleanse a man’s soul.
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*6 ECHIDNA
Among her offspring: the Chimera, the Hydra, the Nemean Lion the Sphinx; the dogs Cerberus and Orthrus and the dragon Ladon, all multiheaded; and Ethon, the eagle that tormented Prometheus chained to his rock.
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THE BESTIARY
A Dial Press Book / July 2007
Published by
The Dial Press
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2007 by Nicholas Christopher
The Dial Press is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Christopher, Nicholas.
The bestiary : a novel / Nicholas Christopher.
p. cm.
1. Bestiaries—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3553.H754 B47 2007
813.'54 22 2007008337
www.dialpress.com
eISBN: 978-0-440-33704-1
v3.0