by John Fowles
61
I rewound my watch; and in precisely twenty minutes the same two men as before came back into the cell. The black clothes made them look more aggressive, more fascist, than they were; there was nothing particularly brutal about their faces. The blond Adam stood in front of me; in his hand he carried an incongruous small grip.
‘Please … not fight.’
He set the grip on the table and fished inside it; came up with two pairs of handcuffs. I held out my wrists contemptuously and allowed myself to be linked to the other two beside me. Now he produced a curious black rubber mouth-mask; concave, with a thick projection that one had to bite.
‘Please … I put this on. No hurt.’
We both hesitated a moment. I had determined that I wouldn’t fight, that it would be better to keep cool and wait until a time when I could hurt someone I really wanted to hurt. He cautiously held out the rubber gag, and I shrugged. I took its black tongue between my teeth; a taste of disinfectant. Adam expertly fastened the straps behind. Then he went back to the case for some wide black adhesive, and taped the edges of the gag against my skin. I began to wish I had shaved.
The next move took me by surprise. Adam knelt and pushed my right trouser-leg up to above the knee, and fastened it there with an elastic garter. Then I was made to stand again. With a warning gesture that I was not to be alarmed, he pulled my sweater back over my head and forced it down till it hung from my wrists behind me. Then he unbuttoned my shirt to the bottom and forced the left side back until the shoulder was bare. Next he produced two inch-wide white ribbons, each with a blood-red rosette attached, from the grip. He tied one round the top of my right calf, another under my armpit and over the bare shoulder. Next, a black circle, some two inches in diameter and cut in adhesive tape, was fixed like a huge patch on the middle of my forehead. Finally with one last domesticating gesture he put a loose-fitting black bag over my head. I was more and more inclined to struggle; but I had missed my chance. We moved off. I had a hand on each arm.
They stopped me at the end of the corridor and Adam said, ‘Slow, we go upstairs.’ I wondered if ‘upstairs’ meant ‘into the house’; or was just bad English.
I toed forward and we climbed into the sun. I could feel it on my bare skin, though the bag occluded all but the thinnest glints of light. We must have walked some two or three hundred yards. I thought I could smell the sea, I wasn’t sure. I half expected to feel a wall against my back, to find myself facing a firing squad. But then once again they halted me and a voice said, ‘Downstairs now.’ They gave me plenty of time to manoeuvre the steps; more than those leading to my cell, and the air grew cool. We went round a corner and down yet more steps and then I could hear by the resonance of the sounds we made that we had entered a large room. There was also a mysterious, ominous smell of burning wood and acrid tar. I was stopped, someone pulled the bag from my head.
I had expected to see people. But I and my two guards were alone. We were at one end of a huge underground room, the kind of enormous cistern, the size of a small church, that is found under some of the old Venetian-Turkish castles that are crumbling away in the Peloponnesus. I remembered having seen one very like it that winter at Pylos. I looked up and saw two telltale chimney-like openings; they would be the blocked—off necks at ground level.
At the far end there was a small dais and on the dais a throne. Facing the throne was a table, or rather three long tables put end to end in a flat crescent and draped in black cloth. Behind the table were twelve black chairs and an empty thirteenth place in the middle.
The walls had been whitewashed up to a height of fifteen feet or so, and over the throne was painted an eight-spoked wheel. Between table and throne, against the wall to the right, was a small tiered bank of benches, like a jury box.
There was one completely incongruous thing in this strange courtroom. The light I saw it by came from a series of brands that were burning along the side walls. But in each of the corners behind the throne was a battery of projectors trained on the crescent-shaped table. They were not on; but their cables and serried lenses added a vaguely sinister air of the interrogation room to the already alarming Ku Klux Klan ambience. It did not look like a court of justice; but a court of injustice; a Star Chamber, an inquisitorial committee.
I was made to go forward. We marched down one side of the room, past the crescent table and up towards the throne. I suddenly realized that I was to sit there. They paused for me to step up on to the dais. There were four or five steps leading to a little platform at the top, on which stood the throne. Like the roughly carpentered dais, it was not a real throne, simply a bit of stage property, painted black, with armrests, a pointed back and columns on either side. In the middle of the solid black panel was a white eye, like those that Mediterranean fishermen paint on the bows of their boats to ward off evil. A flat crimson cushion; I was made to sit.
As soon as I had done so, my guards’ ends of the handcuffs were unlocked, then immediately snapped on to the armrests. I looked down. The throne was secured to the dais by strong brackets. I mumbled through the gag, but Adam shook his head. I was to watch, not to speak. The other two guards took up positions behind the throne, on the lowest step of the dais, against the wall. Adam, like some mad valet, checked the handcuffs, pulled away the shirt I had tried to shrug back on to my left shoulder, then went down the steps to the ground. There he turned, as if to the altar in a church, and made a slight bow; after which he went round the table and out through the door at the end. I was left sitting with the silent pair behind me and the faint crackle of the burning torches.
I looked round the room; forced myself to observe it dispassionately. There were other cabbalistic emblems. On the wall to my right a black cross – not the Christian cross, because the top of the upright was swollen, an inverted pearshape; to the left, facing the cross, was a deep-red rose, the only patch of colour in the black-and-white room. At the far end, over the one large door, was painted in black a huge left hand cut off at the wrist, with the forefinger and little finger pointing up and the two middle fingers holding down the thumb. The room stank of ritual; and I have always loathed rituals of any kind. I kept repeating the same phrase to myself: keep dignity, keep dignity, keep dignity. I knew I must look ridiculous with the black cyclops eye on my forehead and the white ribbons and the rosettes. But I somehow had to contrive not to be ridiculous.
Then my heart jolted.
A terrifying figure.
Suddenly and silently in the doorway at the far end, Herne the Hunter. A neolithic god; a spirit of darkness, of northern forest, of a time before kings, as black and chilling as the touch of iron.
A man with the head of a stag that filled the arched door; who stood silhouetted, giant, unforgettable image, against the dimly lit whitewashed wall of the corridor behind. The antlers were enormous, as black as almond branches, many-tined. And the man was in black from head to foot, with only the eyes and the nostril-ends marked in white. He imposed his presence on me, then came slowly down the room to the table; stood centrally and regally behind it for another long moment, then moved to the extreme left end. By that time I had noted the black gloves, the black shoes beneath the narrow soutane-like smock he wore; that he had to move slowly because the mask was slightly precarious, being so large.
The fear I felt was the same old fear; not of the appearance, but of the reason behind the appearance. It was not the mask I was afraid of, because in our century we are too inured by science fiction and too sure of science reality ever to be terrified of the supernatural again; but of what lay behind the mask. The eternal source of all fear, all horror, all real evil, man himself.
Another figure appeared, and paused, as they were all to do, in the archway.
This time it was a woman. She was dressed in traditional English witch costume; a brimmed black-peaked hat, long white hair, red apron, black cloak, and a malevolent mask; a beaked nose. She hobbled, bent backed, to the right end of the table and set the
cat she was carrying on it. It was dead, stuffed in a sitting position. The cat’s glass eyes were on me. Her black-and-white eyes. And the stag-man’s.
Another startling figure: a man in a crocodile head-a bizarre maned mask that projected forwards, more negroid than anything else, with ferocious white teeth and bulging eyes. He hardly paused, but came swiftly to his place beside the stag, as if the wearer was uncomfortable in costume; unused to such scenes.
A shorter male figure came next: an abnormally large head in which white cube-teeth reached in a savage grin from ear to ear. His eyes seemed buried in deep black sockets. Round the top of his head there rose a great iguana frill. This man was dressed in a black poncho, and looked Mexican; Aztec. He moved to his place beside the witch.
Another female figure appeared. I felt sure it was Lily. She was the winged vampire, an eared bat-head in black fur, two long white fangs; below her waist she wore a black skirt, black stockings, black shoes. Slim legs. She quickly went to her place beside the crocodile, the clawed wings held rigidly out, bellying a little in the air, uncanny in the torchlight; a great flickering shadow that darkened the cross and the rose.
The next figure was African, a folk-horror, a corn-doll bundle of black strips of rag that hung down to the ground in a series of skirted flounces. Even the head mask was made of these rags; with a topknot of three white feathers and two huge saucer eyes. It appeared armless and legless, and indeed sexless, some ultimate childish nightmare. It shuffled forward to its place beside the vampire; added to the chorus of outrageous stares.
Then came a squat succubus with a Bosch-like snout.
The following man was by contrast mainly white, a macabre pierrot-skeleton; echo of the figure on the wall of my cell. His mask was a skull. The outline of the pelvis had been cleverly exaggerated; and the wearer had a stiff, bony walk.
Then an even more bizarre personage. It was a woman, and I began to doubt whether, after all, the vampire was Lily. The front of her stiffened skirt had the form of a stylized fishtail, which swelled up into a heavy pregnant belly; and then that in turn, above the breasts, became an up-pointed bird’s head. This figure walked forward slowly, left hand supporting the swollen eight-month’s belly, right hand between the breasts. The beaked white head with its almond-shaped eyes seemed to stare up towards the ceiling. It was beautiful, this fish-woman-bird, strangely tender after the morbidity and threat of the other figures. In its upstretched throat I could see two small holes, apertures for the eyes of the real person beneath.
Four more places remained.
The next figure was almost an old friend. Anubis the jackal-head, alert and vicious. He strode lithely to his place, a Negro walk.
A man in a black cloak on which were various astrological and alchemical symbols in white. On his head he wore a hat with a peak a yard high and a wide nefarious brim; a kind of black neck-covering hung from behind it. Black gloves, and a long white staff surmounted by a circle, a snake with its tail in its mouth. Over the face there was no more than a deep mask in black. I knew who it was. I could see the gleaming eyes and the implacable mouth.
Two more places at the centre. There was a pause. The rank of figures behind the table stared up at me, unmoving, in total silence. I looked round at my guards, who stared ahead, like soldiers; and I shrugged. I wished I could have yawned, to put them all in their place; and to help me in mine.
Four men appeared in the white corridor. They were carrying a black sedan chair, so narrow that it looked almost like an upright coffin. I could see closed curtains at its sides, and in front. On the front panel was painted in white the same emblem as the one above my throne – an eight-spoked wheel. On the roof of the sedan was a kind of black tiara, each of whose teeth ended in a white meniscus, a ring of new moons.
The four porters were black-smocked. On their heads they had grotesque masks – witch-doctor faces in white and black and then rising from the crown of each head enormous vertical crosses a yard or more high. Instead of breaking off cleanly, the ends of the arms and the upright of these crosses burst out in black mops of rag or raffia, so that they seemed to be burning with black flame.
They did not come directly to the centre of the table, but as if it was some host, some purifying relic, carried their coffin-sedan round the room, up the left side, round in front of my throne, between me and the table, so that I could see the white crescent-moons, the symbols of Artemis-Diana, on the side panels, then on down the right side to the door again and then finally back to the table. The poles were slipped out of the brackets, and the box was lifted forward to the central empty place. Throughout, the other figures remained staring at me. The black porters went and stood by the brands, three of which were almost extinguished. The light was getting dim.
Then the thirteenth figure appeared.
In contrast to the others he was in a long white smock or alb that reached to the ground; whose only decoration consisted of two black bands round the end of the loose sleeves. He carried a black staff in red-gloved hands. The head was that of a pure black goat; a real goat’s head, worn as a kind of cap, so that it stood high off the shoulders of the person beneath, whose real face must have lain behind the shaggy black beard. Huge backswept horns, left their natural colour; amber glass eyes; the only ornament, a fat blood-red candle that had been fixed between the horns and lit. I wished I could speak, for I badly needed to shout something debunking, something adolescent and healthy and English; a ‘Doctor Crowley, I presume.’ But all I could do was to cross my knees and look what I was not – unimpressed.
The goat-figure, his satanic majesty, came forward with an archi—diabolical dignity and I braced myself for the next development: a black Mass seemed likely. Perhaps the table was to be the altar. I realized that he was lampooning the traditional Christ-figure; the staff was the pastoral crook, the black beard Christ’s brown one, the blood-red candle some sort of blasphemous parody of the halo. He came to his place, the long line of black-carnival puppets stared at me from the floor. I stared down the line: the stag-devil, the crocodile-devil, the vampire, the succubus, the bird-woman, the magician, the coffin-sedan, the goat-devil, the jackal-devil, the pierrot-skeleton, the corn-doll, the Aztec, the witch. I found myself swallowing, looking round again at my inscrutable guards. The gag was beginning to hurt. In the end I found it more comfortable to stare down at the foot of the dais.
Perhaps a minute passed like that. Another of the brands stopped naming. The goat-figure raised his staff, held it up a moment, then made to lay it on the table in front of him; but he must have got it caught in something because there was a comforting little hitch in the stage business. As soon as he had managed it, he raised both hands sacerdotally, but fingers devil-horned, and pointed at the corners behind me. My two guards went to the projectors. Suddenly the room was flooded with light; and, after a moment of total stillness, flooded with movement.
Like actors suddenly off-stage, the row of figures in front of me began removing their masks and cloaks. The cross-headed men by the brands turned and took the torches and filed out towards the door. But they had to wait there, because a group of twenty or so young people appeared. They came in loosely, in ordinary clothes, without any attempt at order. Some of them had files and books. They were silent, and quickly took their places on the tiered side-benches to my right. The men with the torches disappeared. I looked at the newcomers – German or Scandinavian, intelligent faces, students’ faces, one or two older people among them, and three girls, but with an average age in the early twenties. Two of the men I recognized from the incident of the ridge.
All this time the row of figures behind the table were disrobing. Adam and my two guards moved about helping them. Adam laid cardboard folders with white labels in each place. The stuffed cat was removed, and the staffs, all the paraphernalia. It was done swiftly, well rehearsed. I kept flashing looks down the line, as one person after another was revealed.
The last arrival, the goat-head, was an old man with a cli
pped white beard, dark grey-blue eyes; a resemblance to Smuts. Like all the others he studiously avoided looking at me, but I saw him smile at Conchis, the astrologer-magician beside him. Next to Conchis appeared, from behind the bird—head and pregnant belly, a slim middle-aged woman. She was wearing a dark-grey suit; a headmistress or a business woman. The jackal-head, Joe, was dressed in a dark-blue suit. Anton came, surprisingly, from behind the pierrot-skeleton costume. The succubus from Bosch revealed another elderly man with a mild face and pince-nez. The corn-doll was Maria. The Aztec head was the German colonel, the pseudo-Wimmel of the ridge incident. The vampire was not Lily, but her sister; a scarless wrist. A white blouse, and the black skirt. The crocodile was a man in his late twenties. He had a thin artistic-looking beard; a Greek or an Italian. He too was wearing a suit. The stag-head was another man I did not know; a very tall Jewish-looking intellectual of about forty, deeply tanned and slightly balding.
That left the witch on the extreme right of the table. It was Lily, in a long-sleeved high-necked white woollen dress. I watched her pat her severely chignoned hair and then put on a pair of spectacles. She bent to hear something that the ‘colonel’ next to her whispered in her ear. She nodded, then opened the file in front of her.
Only one person was not revealed: whoever was in the coffin-sedan.
I sat facing a long table of perfectly normal-looking people, who were all sitting and consulting their files and beginning to look at me. Their faces showed interest, but no sympathy. I stared at June-Rose, but she stared back without expression, as if I were a waxwork. I waited above all for Lily to look at me, but when she did there was nothing in her eyes. She behaved like, and her position at the end of the table suggested, a minor member of a team, of a selection board.
At last the old man with the clipped white beard rose to his feet and a faint murmuring that had begun among the audience stopped. The other members of the ‘board’ looked towards him. I saw some, but not many, of the ‘students’ with open notebooks on their laps, ready to write. The old man with the white beard gazed up at me through his gold-rimmed glasses, smiled, and bowed.