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.