The Night of the Lamiae

The bar was loud and everyone seemed to be talking at once. Pieces of conversation mixed with the clanking of glasses and in the background a thin watery music played. Rhoda and I sat at a table talking but my attention kept turning to an odd man who sat at the table next to us. He was hunched over a notebook and he was writing away frantically. His hand was gripped around a pen as if someone were about to rip it away. A big muscle bulged just above his thumb and his whole arm seemed to be clenched from the shoulder down. His eyes were glazed over and every few minutes he lifted them to look around furtively. I swear that he was looking at us and it disturbed me. There was something unpleasant about him. Rhoda thought that perhaps he was writing a song. He would write something down and then his hand would move all the way back up the page. There were lines and arrows and crossed out words everywhere. A weird stain covered half the page.

It wasn't a song. I gave Rhoda one of those glances that said I thought she was an idiot but was too polite to say so. I quietly whispered to her that it was a story. To my shock his head snapped up and he looked right at me. I smiled politely. For a long time all he did was stare at my face. I looked down at the ground. I looked back up. I asked him what he was writing and, good lord, he finally stopped staring at me. But he began to chew his lip and I think this was worse. I apologized. "I didn't mean to pry", I said. Watching him chew his lip was unsettling. I turned to Rhoda and I asked, "How was your date with Johnathan ?" I'd been avoiding this question because Rhoda was a slut and I had a weak stomach. But the stranger wasn't finished. He leaned closer to our table and he touched me on the shoulder. "It's true I'm writing a story. It's set in the Middle East.

I lived in the city of Manama close to the old market and there was a beggar there named Farhad Isfahani. The old market was half in ruins. It was filled with collapsed walls and vacant lots. The beggars gathered there to collect alms. There were cripples. And musicians. And then there were the beggars who performed small wonders. Farhad was this last type. His specialty was the kissing of scorpions. Big black ones. Small red ones. He kissed all kinds of scorpions and they never stung him. I would pass Farhad every day while walking to the market and each time he would lift a scorpion to his mouth and kiss it on the head. And every day I ignored him until a cold windy day when I was walking too slow by his little performance. He knew me and raised his hands as I approached. A fat black scorpion rested in his left hand and I asked him, "How do you do that ?" He kissed the scorpion and then held out an open palm. I gave him a few coins. Farhad smiled and I noticed for the first time that there were scars on his lips. They were deep and weltered. He spoke slowly and with a thick Persian accent. "There are things in the desert that push the wind around and rest like a weight on the soul of a man. The emptiest quarters of the desert are thick with them. But I lived with them for my entire life and I didn't know them for what they were until I left this place and accompanied my father to Greece when I was still a young man.

Long ago Greece was the cradle of learning but before that it was the home of witches. Women gathered in every empty corner to worship the gods of madness and wine. They tore cattle apart with their own teeth and bare hands. They called down the moon and revelled in every type of lunacy. The witches were the dark shadow that preceded the age of reason and they were a plague on this earth. Even centuries after their death, the landscape of Greece is bathed in the power of witchcraft.

My family entered the city of Athens aboard a wagon late on a September night. I remember the way that buildings crowded the dark road. Everything was lit by a half light that escaped from shuttered windows. Athens is a difficult place for a young man. The women eat olives and grow beautiful. My family was looking for an empty corner where our wagon could rest for the night. But my eyes were on the women and I was looking for anything but rest. After my family was settled for the night I walked the streets of Athens. Soon I found myself at a wine shop sitting at a table with a drink in my hand. The wine was different from any I'd had before. It had a dry musty taste. The wine was stale and coarse on my palate. But the woman who served it was beautiful beyond my wildest imaginings. On my second glass I touched her hand and asked her name. She was cold and turned her back on me. I left the wineshop well past midnight and walked back to my family. But I was lost and after only a short time I found myself on an unpleasant street where most of the houses lay vacant. The night was late and I decided to sleep in one of the empty houses. I would have an easier time finding my family in the light of day.

I chose the most overgrown house that I could. The last thing that I wanted was to be noticed and I felt safer with the door and windows covered in thick trailing vines. I crawled in through a hole in the wall and the interior was darker than a cave. I curled up in a corner with my jacket pillowed beneath my head. I had only been asleep a few moments when the cry of an infant woke me up and I opened my eyes. But the room I was in lay empty and perhaps I dreamed. The floor was cold tile and my limbs felt stiff. I stared into the blackness and it seemed to me then that a figure sat hunched in the opposite corner of the room. I sat up instantly certain that I wasn't alone. But the figure didn't move and all I could do was stare spellbound at the corner. Within a few hours the sun rose and the room was clearly empty. I left the house and found my family. But I felt now like there was a shadow at my back after that night. People would look at me and then look again twice as if they had missed something the first time. We quickly left Athens but things only became worse. The shadow that accompanied me became bigger and bigger until I felt dwarfed by it. Being among my fellow men was unpleasant but it was better than passing through desolate areas where the shadow came into its own. In dark forgotten places I felt like it carried me on its back and I was the passenger. Over time I no longer considered myself a man and even scorpions loathed to touch me. But I've passed my story onto you and the worst is behind me now."

And the man smiled devilishly when he said that. He clapped Rhoda on the shoulder and he walked away from the bar at a brisk pace leaving behind his beer, his pen and even his notebook. And I never saw him again.

The Unmanned

Circe was a sorceress and lived by herself but not quite alone on an island that belonged only to her - an island on which men were neither wanted nor particularly welcome. She had an unearthly beauty that could have warmed a man's heart if only she had a heart of her own. Different parts of the soul cluster about their home in the body. Love sprouts up in the middle of the chest. Desire burns at the base of the spine. And there's a kind of wisdom that comes to rest in the gut of a man. But a sorcerer's power springs from their intense hatred and its center in the body is a little region just behind the eyes. Sometimes their hatred is fed by hubris or envy or just by plain bile. But it must always be fed and like a strong lamp the hate shines out from their eyes. So sorcerers often have a way of looking at people indirectly that's given them a reputation for slyness and arrogance. Circe was even more skilled than most. She had an unsettling way of keeping her face to herself and it could drive a man mad just trying to catch a glimpse. But when she finally relented and you did, the chances were good you wouldn't be there to do it twice. Bones littered her island. Time bleached them white and yellowed them with age.

Circe had men she called lovers but they all came to a bad end, an end that arrived long before they died. They wandered about her island in the shape of what they had been but were no longer and that was the art of sorcery for which Circe was most well known. Dimly her former lovers remembered the past with hate and they lived together in a mockery of what might be called human company. They had a way of being together but alone and they reminded me of crows as they flocked from one end of the island to another. A boisterous disorder always accompanied them and they made loud noises to each other in a way that bordered on speech but wasn't. All their time was spent combing the beach and stealing from one another. Shiny bits of flotsam passed through their pockets like a currency. The island was picked clean. And on this rocky speck of land they grew hard and crooked. As time passed they came to resemble Circe herself. The older ones quarrelled themselves to an early death. They lived. They died. Circe was indifferent. They no longer had anything she wanted. For Circe was an avid collector who noticed nothing in this world but her own singular passion: all the parts of the soul that make a man manly. Manhood has a taste like cinnamon or nutmeg. It smells like hot steel and is powerful enough to make your hands shake and tremble. Most women have a passion for it but few could gather it up and bottle it as she could. What was left behind roamed her island unhappily, more than beasts but less than what they had been.

Like the others I arrived on her island through a stroke of misfortune. My ship came to a bad end passing through the reefs just offshore. The wind drove us and when I heard the moaning of our keel I knew it was far too late for heroic actions. I threw myself into the sea on half a prayer and a piece of wood. I remember a storm and the taste of salt on my lips but I woke the next morning on a sandy beach soaked to the bone. Sand seemed to fill every crevice of body and clothes. Timbers of the ship lined the shore. I remember the sun was hot and I longed to slake my thirst. A woman walked the shore and I could hear her singing a sad tune. Circe came and stood above me. She was dressed all in white and her feet were bare. One hand played with her long black hair and the other was hidden behind her body. I tried to stand but she lifted a foot and stepped on my back like a robin securing a worm. She kneeled on the beach and came closer to eye level with me. But between her face and mine was a sea of black curly hair. She lifted a glass of sweet fresh water to my lips and I was in heaven. I only had a single sip before she took it away. I tried to say the word "reefs" because I wanted to explain what had happened. My voice was hoarse and I barely recognized it.

Circe shushed me and from the tone she took I knew she had heard it all before. Yet she had never laid eyes on a ship like mine. I would have time to explain all that later. Circe brushed the sand from my face. With a wet cloth she wiped the caked salt from the corner of my lips as I stared at the ground. She put her arm under mine and lifted me up. Her grip was like a wire and I was amazed by her strength. Then without looking at me she told me to follow her home where I could wash and take a meal. Mumbling thanks I did so.

Circe lived in a decrepit stone house with a sunken earth floor. The door was small and narrow. Herbs hung so thickly from the rafters that I had to stoop over while moving about in her house. Straw was scattered on the floor to cover odd stains and a musty smell lingered in the air. It seemed somehow familiar like the aroma of unwashed sailors too long at sea or the atmosphere of an infirmary where the smells of medicine and sick men come together. But underneath it all was a gamey animal odor that raised goose bumps on my bare skin. At the far end of the house was a massive hearth and two doors stood on each of the neighboring walls. Although the day was a bright one her home had no windows and was dark except for the hearthlight. She showed me to my room.

This whole time Circe had said perhaps ten words to me. Her voice was low and harsh. It had a sharp edge that never seemed directly aimed at the people she spoke to. But it was disarming in its way. She used so few words that at times it seemed miraculous that she could make her meaning so clear. At times it seemed we were communicating in some fashion more pure than ordinary speech. Being spare of words is a common trait among island folk and perhaps she had been here so long that she had gotten uncommonly good at it. I enterred the room she had given me. It was lit by a sliver of light from the hearth and its simple furnishings included a bed, a chest, and a night stand with a wash basin on it. Circe had let me know that the chest held clothes that might fit me. I took a small cloth from the night stand to wash myself. Afterwards I opened the chest. It held all manner of clothes, many quite old. I wondered how many men had washed up on these shores. Some of the clothes were from places familiar to me but others were a puzzle. I took a clean set of underclothes, a linen shirt, and a loosely fitting pair of trousers. Above the night stand was a small mirror. A small attack of vanity made me look there.

Circe was standing in the door behind me and my eyes latched onto that pale alabaster face. My eyes caught her chin and moved up her face in slow motion. Her lips were curved tight and I couldn't tell if she smiled or frowned. Her nose was long and acquiline. Her nostrils flared and then I fell into her eyes. They were unnaturally wide like she was watching something in extreme horror. The white of her eyes was even paler than her skin. Her irises were black but a fire burned there that made them seem violet. Long after I looked away her eyes were burned like an afterimage into every sight that came before me.

The Cemetary on Pine Hill

There's both a winter of the land and a winter of the spirit. In the first the world is blanketed in snow and in the second the motions of the soul are muffled and cold. The sun at the heart of the human spirit moves in tune with the sun of the world and the two seasons often coincide. In the winter not even the strongest plough can till the land. Cold brings the dirt close together. Like a forge the winter hammers the earth to steel. It's a slow season for the cemetary. No seeds are planted and nothing comes to fruit. The wind cuts across the hills like the ringing of a cold bell and the pine trees rub their branches together like old women eagerly rubbing their hands before a fire. These are the high holy days of the dead and they cast a pall on the happiness of man.

But atleast two hundred years have to pass before a graveyard comes into the fullness of its power. The plants that take the longest to bloom are the ones that grow in the harshest of climates. The best graveyards grow chaotically and sit like a labyrinth among the living. There should be as many trees as possible because the full light of the sun has a sanitizing effect on the human imagination. And avoid graveyards built on flat land. There's a tendency to lay the stones out in neat orderly rows like a library of the dead. What a cemetary needs most is a wild air. But the rarest ingrediant to a powerful graveyard, a graveyard that can lay its hands on a man's heart and tap its own beat, is a series of graves curiously designed and with a story to tell.

The cemetary on pine hill had all these things but what I remember most was the final resting place of Horatio Alger. When a man has a sinister reputation his family often atones for his sin by building a public work. In the case of Horatio Alger his family built a tiny one room mausoleum from gray granite. The ground is too hard to dig in the winter so the cemetary was in dire need of a small building where the corpses could be interred until the spring. When Horatio died in the summer of 1805 the Alger family was all too happy to provide the help. There was a simple stain glass window on the north side and shelves for the dead all about. The floor was carved with Horatio's birth date and epitaph. His last remains lay underneath. What intrigued me as a young boy was the regularity with which bodies laid in the mausoleum during the hard winter disappeared come spring.