Searchers After Horror

by S. T. Joshi

  I hunker beneath multiple tatty blankets against April drafts and unsoberly challenge the bluestone, “Okay, what have you got for me?” Should I credit the power of alcohol, of suggestion, of an emergent wish to be elsewhere? After negligible gap in my awareness, the drab, fusty room switches to dreamland. I’m up and pacing along, still in the dark, yes, but moon and stars suffuse brothy sea mist around me with a wan glow.

  My legs follow preset course, as I take stock as best the atmosphere allows. Faint in the befogged distance behind me is a monumental stone wall, high as an arena’s, in which a stitchwork of iron plaques optimistically binds a crack together. Ahead of me is a gleaming zigzag boardwalk, less a street than a gulch between houses.

  The houses, whether of quarried blocks or vertical planks, under clay tile or stoutly thatched roofs, bulk large as mansions. Their eaves, riding rugged beams well past gable ends, form dramatic overhangs. Stone piers and timber stilts elevate many of the foundations. The milky damp hides details of any ornament, yet accentuates the glitter of silver leaf on walls and on the boardwalk, which changes to flagstone pavement on a sudden upslope. I neither meet nor hear anybody. Where am I if not in Ys, a metropolis curiously devoid of nightlife? Or is the city deserted?

  Toward the hilltop, houses and pavement peter out, and the incline merges with irregularly spaced stone buttresses against a precipitous white mortared wall. Like the iron plaques, they come across as ad hoc reinforcements against generations of floods or structural fatigue. The mist thickens with increasing altitude, concealing the scale of this edifice, though its eminence hints it’s a citadel.

  No gates or windows compromise the blank mortar corresponding to the first and second floors. Higher up till they’re consumed in fog, a smattering of glassless narrow windows is scattered randomly, like slots in a punchcard. They affirm the city isn’t abandoned because yellow light flickers in them all, and in one at the lowest level, a woman, to my chagrin, peers down at me.

  The mist veils her like gauze, but as she brushes luxurious sable hair aside and leans out with supple confidence, I decide she’s young and gorgeous. I can just distinguish dark crisscross lacing down the center of ample bodice in translucent gown. She stretches a slim, bare arm into the night and beckons me with leisurely forefinger.

  I’m not ready for such direct attention from a vision of loveliness. At the back of my mind hovers the knowledge I’ve been dreaming all along. I grab at that knowledge, to awaken with a jolt under motheaten blankets. The room now smells of stale kelp, instead of stealthy mildew.

  My coastal excursion east to Carnac is theoretically multipurpose, to flush cobwebs and fantasy from my brain, to better acquaint myself with the region, to preview the joys of tourism in which I might soon be immersed. This entire trip is also, by default, my closest approach to a vacation since Mom went into death-bound tailspin. At day’s end, I exit Carnac with both food for thought and culture shock.

  The sprawling Neolithic alignments occupy more village territory than its shops and homes, and are too incredibly much to absorb on one visit. About a dozen standing stones abreast, ranging in size from hassocks to upended Winnebagos, troop by their thousands for more than a mile, through scrubland, lawn, and glades, across a stream, and onward. Those glades allegedly contain the country’s last wild-growing woad, the weed with which naked Celts stained themselves fetid blue before battle.

  I rove the landscape overwhelmed, but only in part by the monuments. This is the off-season, though some Euro equivalent of Spring Break is pointedly underway. There must be three tourists for every menhir, climbing, bunny-hopping, or hammering for mementoes on these pillars of bygone sanctity, of superhuman devotional exercise. In French, German, English, Dutch, they jabber at companions to snap their photos, and collectively the loudmouths are like a polyglot flock of starlings. Do I really want a career catering to entitled Eurotrash?

  By municipal parking lot where the alignments begin, a whitewashed cottage with slate roof and stubby chimneys serves as visitor center. I yearn to complain about the yahoos abusing cultural heritage, but the personnel are too busy selling them postcards, key rings, snow globes, and T-shirts—and anyway, what could they do?

  Similarities of Carnac to other farflung archaic achievements like Stonehenge I dismiss as facile, coincidental. Not necessarily so, argues a flyspecked diorama in a neglected corner. Six millennia back, when megaliths were all the rage, a maritime Atlantic economy was already well-established, circulating goods and ideas between Portugal and the Hebrides. And peninsular Brittany was like a natural fulcrum, situated to tilt the balance of trade for the whole shebang.

  Cruising west to the hotel along shoreline Route D781, I open my windows and endure chill winds to sniff salt water and pine groves. I try to picture this pastoral, sparsely settled geography as the center of a world, and wonder where its urbane elite could have dwelt, and speculate, Why not Ys? If Brittany was the hub of a coastal trading network, Ys, in a sheltering bay close to land’s end, could have functioned as its lynchpin. If Ys existed, that is.

  The name itself suggests profound antiquity, in common with others eroded by epochs of repetition into one brief syllable, like Aix or York or Ur. And why shouldn’t oblivion have swallowed the reality of Ys along with most of its name? Volcanoes erased memories of Pompeii. Tremors drowned the glories of classical Alexandria and Jamaica’s swashbuckling Port Royal. Venice and not Ys might be the esoteric footnote today, had “sea change” and engineering knowhow ordained differently.

  What a fabulous realm I’ve rebuilt from one battered chunk of rock! Still, speaking intellectually, I believe no more in Ys than in any other useless dream. Vis-à-vis my dealings here, it’s as irrelevant as anything under sludge at the bottom of a gulf. I’ve come too far to let Monsieur Kervigo delay negotiations further.

  Tonight’s supper of savory crêpes and mussels demands a level of freshness and skill evidently reserved for special occasions, a beloved saint’s day or someone’s anniversary. I fairly insist my host join me at table, and to offset impression I’m a pushy philistine, I attempt small talk about Carnac, about the stunning amount of prehistory there, and inquire after Neolithic remains in Douarnenez.

  He blinks as if clearing film from his eyes and snaps, “Some things are older than dolmens.” I’m both gratified and taken aback at prickly core beneath passive skin. Without expanding on cryptic remark, he excuses himself to preside at the employees’ table. Any pretext for our celebration dinner goes unannounced.

  I retire on the logy side, thanks to rich and heavy Breton butter cake and cheese platter and chalices of Bordeaux. Upstairs, misgivings that my piece of Ys would have vanished prove unfounded. The pillow’s been fluffed and the blankets tucked in, but of course nobody’s cleaned under the bed.

  From her exquisite hand to my lips, she feeds me orange segments one by one, as if they’re precious, exotic commodities. Yet they’re scrawny and bitter, and despite the seductive touch of her fingertips, I almost say No thanks, I’m too full, as if I’m dreaming with the same midriff bulge I took to bed, as if it’s minutes later in the same continuity. But no, mine is a dream self with appetite intact.

  Roman affectation vies with less obvious provenience. My couch is firm like a futon and most resembles a prop from Satyricon. Silk cushion on shallow-angled headrest supports my neck while the lady lounges on a backless chair with its legs of crisscrossed ivory tusks. Blue glass bowl of oranges, grapes, and pomegranates rests on delicate checkerboard of a table. Terracotta lamp impersonates a gliding crow and hangs at the end of a chain bolted into massive ceiling beam. Between couch and narrow window, a beehive-like censer balances on a three-footed pole.

  Aromatic haze from oil and incense can’t obliterate every whiff of kelp, but obscures much of water-stained, flaking murals, excepting a naked archer with antlers, herons preening on the shoulders of bulls, a girl astride a dolphin. Thanks to the haze, I’ve also
yet to see my affectionate hostess with pinpoint clarity. But she projects a grace, a glamour, a nobility radiant as the pure white of her sleeveless gown. How can she not be a princess?

  Since I’m well aware this is a dream, I don’t bother questioning why royalty would dote on me, or how I gained entry to this sanctum. The slipshod logic of REM state must also account for Dark Age lady’s acceptance of my casual American attire and her impossible understanding of modern French when I look from my muddy loafers to her sky-blue eyes and ask, “Are you a princess? Is your kingdom older than the dolmens?”

  She nods pensively, stacks leftover orange wedges on curly peelings, and slides another checkerboard table from under the platform of my couch. The straw upon marble floor bunches up around spindly table legs. She hunts among the clutter on the checkerboard for a petite soapstone figurine, which she presents as if it certifies eons of venerability.

  Its workmanship is both painstaking and crude, and it’s worn and polished like my bluestone. Quizzical, bald homunculus squats with knees up and wide apart, and arms snake under them to assert gender by tugging open hyperbolic vulva. Porn accessory or fertility fetish? As if they’re mutually exclusive? A token of age immemorial, yes, but of an age sordid and debased. I quickly replace figurine on the table.

  If my revulsion shows, the princess is too refined to acknowledge it. She’s busy pouring blackish wine from a sleek bronze flagon, its spout a swan’s long-necked head, its handle a leaping hound. Our cups are of burnished grey metal, each fashioned into three repoussé faces, side by side, beetle-browed, imperious.

  I sit up as she passes me a cup and raises hers in wordless toast. I reciprocate and, before a trial sip, reflect warily on metallic bouquet that hearkens back to hotel ratatouille, and that I hope comes from cup and not beverage. But the princess smiles beatifically as if she’s tasted nectar, prompting me to forgo caution. I’m instantly sorry. The consistency is syrupy and granular, the flavor at once sour and oversweet, as if honey could remedy spoilage.

  To drink more is unthinkable. As is the prospect of offending my hostess. I plant feet on the floor, nod courteously, mosey past the censer, and pretend to swig again while gazing out the window. Maybe put my cup on the sill and forget about it? No, not yet anyway: she’s already by my side.

  “It’s a wonder of the world, isn’t it?” I gesture toward the city outside. She nestles into me, and full-body contact persists as if she couldn’t share the view otherwise. Her point-blank scent blends sweat and musk. I’m not positive I like it, but it arouses me all the same. Still, even in a dream, to smooch her on raw impulse would be déclassé, so I focus on Ys from royal vantage.

  The mist has condensed to a fine, lucid drizzle, in effect stripping the town’s cosmetic veneer. Starker moonglow demotes the luster of silver leaf into moisture beading up on pitted surfaces or leaching out of cracks or glistening on streaks of luminous fungus. And ominously, a thin skin of water covers the boardwalks fanning out from the foot of citadel hill. Rising tide must seep in through chinks in towering barrier. How bleak to witness an Ys antediluvian in terms of more than showing its age.

  Her probing gaze draws me like a flare in the dark. I haven’t noticed until now she only comes up to my shoulders, as if regal presence made her seem taller. She reads and mirrors my melancholy, her gaze sidelong toward urban decay, and she murmurs, as best I can discern, “Nisudo ardanny groz.” Is that Breton? Gaulish? Something more remote?

  She takes another demure swallow from metal vessel, and her uplifted face may be seeking or dispensing sympathy, I can’t tell which. To perch my unwanted cup on windowsill at this solemn juncture feels apropos, self-serving or not.

  Her smile is bewitching, bidding me forget sorrow, live for the moment. With businesslike ease, she tugs at crisscross lacing to loosen her bodice well past functionality. One expert hand exposes right breast and cradles it, and as it nudges my shirtfront, resignation leavens her irresistible smile, as if she fulfills a sad duty.

  Fierce itching distracts me. A titan among fleas is battening on my forearm. I slap it off and wake sitting up at bedside, in the middle of furiously transcribing noblewoman’s lament, vandalizing the lacquer of wobbly nightstand with ballpoint pen.

  Borderline erotic dreams of mythic city, as foretold by moody fisherman, I can handle in stride. To find a new guest at breakfast, however, strains credibility. He hunches frowning over a brie omelette no greasier than mine, and his head hangs too big for his torso, barrel-chested though he is. A furrow like that on a saddle spans his bald crown and competes for prominence with wicked black monobrow. I can’t quite ID the cartoon character he resembles. Nobody memorable enough to click.

  Newcomer petulantly shoves substandard meal around his plate, then hollers for the sluggish waitress. By the time his breakfast is inedibly cold and mine’s a memory, she’s fetched Kervigo, who leans inert against the nearest table through most of diatribe about abysmal cuisine. Just as well the coffee goes unsampled. Finally the customer, patently more riled the longer Kervigo listens unfazed, raves, “I have friends at the Departmental level who will hear of this!”

  The owner then erupts from lethargy to laugh in the face of outrage. “If you have such important friends, what are you doing in this dump?” Kervigo’s temper, in fact, brings to mind a happy dreamer’s after rude awakening. He slouches off to leave cartoonish adversary sputtering.

  What kind of twerp expects gourmet cuisine at a self-professed dump, anyway? The same kind, I reckon, who’d try enlisting me as sympathetic ear. I keep my head down, pretending to enjoy wretched coffee, and with pen I repeatedly scribble “Nisudo ardanny groz,” as if it meant something, on green paper placemat. Just think, that hotelier with the shitty attitude could soon be me.

  The placemat’s almost out of space before I reconsider. In spite, or actually because, of this customer’s ill-humor, I ought to engage him, as practice for the heroic forbearance I’ll have to cultivate daily in Kervigo’s shoes, an order of magnitude greater than realty sales required. Too late. Not only has the complainant decamped, but Kervigo has returned with a plastic basin to clear the dishes.

  I’m nowise tempted to bring up my business with him. Annoyance still fuels his body language, and he might well spew vitriol at me for aspiring to buy his dump. Meanwhile, why am I loath to admit aloud my waning interest in the place? Then our sightlines lock, dammit, and someone has to say something. To my relief, he intones, “I am sorry to startle you.” He arches an eyebrow. “You were dreaming, perhaps?”

  At mere mention of dreaming I’m even more tongue-tied, for no conscious reason, than at outlook of buying the inn. I have to clutch at any change of topic. “Do you speak Breton?”

  “No, not fluently,” he concedes straightaway, as if I haven’t jumped the conversational track.

  “Nisudo ardanny groz?” Rising inflection conveys wishful thinking this is some of the meager Breton he knows.

  Sallow brow crinkles as he shakes his head. I tear off a strip of placemat with several renditions of the phrase and thrust it at him on the off chance my accent is the problem.

  He curtly glosses my scrawl and remarks, “An acquaintance of mine may be of assistance. You and I will meet later.” He voices no interest in where or how I encountered this text, as one ordinarily might. Has a dream state begun to pervade my waking life here?

  Hiking the couple of miles to Douarnenez proper for lunch might contribute to a new grip on normality, a reality check. Maybe I’ll even hit upon a better hotel for sale. I make it as far as the cliff’s edge where footpath descends to the beach. The tide is out, boats are marooned, and Kervigo is giving my scrap of placemat to the volatile fisherman, reseated on oblique dory.

  I can’t verbalize why I don’t want them to see me. I just don’t, as if they’re in nefarious cahoots. I whip around and retreat to the inn—all the better, I tell myself, to intercept Kervigo with the fisherman’s answer
ASAP.

  Another item for my list of demerits at Auberge des Falaises proves inescapable. Aside from eating, there’s nothing to do here, nary a shuffleboard nor boules court nor library nor even stash of board games. Nothing helps the already quiescent staff while away breaks and downtime. Like a pinball down the drain, I meander into the dining hall, to partake of the same mushroom soup as the early birds among the crew. Nobody else acts bothered by a soupçon of mold, a smell akin to that from crusty heating grates.

  Kervigo slinks in, and I welcome excuse to put spoon aside. He surveys my dubious fare askance. “You should have received bread. I will reprimand those at fault.” He lays my green shred next to red luncheon placemat. “No easy job, but undoubtedly, this translates, ‘We sink beneath the cross.’”

  What? How does prayerful sentiment fit with soft-core scene I experienced? I’m slack-jawed with bewilderment.

  “I am instructed to explain that Christians forbade trade with pagans. And that sea walls crumble without silver to uphold them.” Kervigo as disinterested messenger gives me a second to absorb that. “You have spoken before with the person who provided this information, yes? Therefore, he felt sure you would understand.”

  That made one of us. Blindsided by this glut of revelation, I remember my manners only after a foundering silence. I thank Kervigo and request he thank our mutual acquaintance for me. Kervigo asks if he can be of further service.

  Here’s my golden ticket to a serious discussion about buying him out. Now or never, likely enough. In his blasé eyes I glean, rightly or not, that we’re on the same page. Yet I’m not surprised, and neither is he, when instead I impose on him for a hard cider. He retrieves it and I drink alone, shunning even the company of wandering thoughts, as I fear they’d lead to grief about my mother.

  The bottle’s empty, my mind’s an enduring blank, and I’ve pushed the soup into the position of stone-cold centerpiece when fiftyish waitress with frizzy blondish hair and sagging waxen features lumbers over. She smacks a plastic basket of quartered baguettes in front of me and departs, with the eloquent scowl of someone rousted at 3 A.M. for nothing.