Thucydides Sofie had read since her early twenties. She wrote to Maria years ago how she could lose herself, at night, when her husband and children were asleep, in Thucydides’ magisterial account of the Peloponnesian Wars, how it granted her temporary respite from her circumstances, and how she wept every time she read about the death of Hector in the Iliad. She also wrote that she was reading the Old Testament, and William Blake, and Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath. And once that Maria should inherit her hands after Sofie’s death, so that Maria could play Ezekiel with the bones.
Play Ezekiel with the bones! Of the bones nothing remained, because Sofia was cremated, and in the event Maria didn’t get round to asking Tobie what he had done with the ashes. Perhaps she was too apprehensive.
There are lists of names of people and places, with short notes (probably for use in poems): Herodianus — on the slaughter of the barbarians. Philippolis — occupation and destruction by the Goths. Probus — his policy of settling the northern barbarians within the Roman territory. Singidunum — consequences of the permanent division of the Roman Empire through the north-south line west of Singidunum in A.D. 395. There are pages of notes on the consequences of Constantine’s election of Byzantium as the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. A description of Orpheus, dressed in the attire of the barbarian Thracians, with a Phrygian cap on his head, sitting on a rock playing his lyre, his gaze intent on an inner world. How with his music he tames the lion, the leopard, the wild boar, the tiger, the bear, the tortoise, lizard, snake, rabbit and duck. A whole section is devoted to the plan (‘undeniably Byzantine in conception, a kind of sister church to St Sergius and St Bacchus in Constantinople’) and the construction of San Vitale in Ravenna; Bishop Ecclesius’s embassy to Constantinople; the financing of the enterprise by Julianus Argentarius, a local banker; Bishop Victor’s contribution to the construction. The completion and consecration of the church at the beginning of the episcopate of Maximianus (‘of the tragic eyes’). A comprehensive description of the depictions in the apse and choir: Christ and Bishop Ecclesius, Emperor Justinian (‘heavy of eyebrow and imposing of effulgence’) and Empress Theodora (‘daughter of the beekeeper, empress, who according to the administrator Joannes Lydus surpassed in intelligence all men who had ever lived’). Apparently Theodora fascinated Sofie, because there are further descriptions of her: ‘In this depiction her height is exaggerated. According to Procopius she was pleasing of countenance and also likeable, but short, and inclined to pallor, not entirely without colour, but somewhat sallow. The expression in her eyes, according to him, was chronically bad-tempered and strained. Her inclination to the Monophysite heresy caused a scandal among the orthodox.’
Sofie liked cats, not dogs. Except for greyhounds, on which subject she once sent Maria a postcard after she’d encountered two greyhounds at Bloubergstrand (they rested their sleek-coated skulls for a moment in her hands, she wrote). She was interested in history, especially the classics, but also art history. (When she went overseas for the first time, at the end of her Honours year, on a bursary awarded on the strength of her academic achievement, Sofie wrote to Maria how she had frequently been reduced to tears in front of some of the works of art. Especially Giotto, she said, the humanity of the artist’s vision, like nothing she’d come across anywhere else. I was in the little chapel in the picture yesterday, she wrote on a postcard, and I walked about weeping all the time, it was so ethereally beautiful.) She liked Bach (Die Kunst der Fuge, the partitas for solo violin, Das wohltemperierte Klavier, Ein musikalisches Opfer), and blues (Big Bill Broonzy, B.B. King, Muddy Waters. Once when Maria was visiting they listened to Big Bill Broonzy constantly and ate oatmeal porridge every morning — that Sofie somehow always managed to burn.)
The classical allusions, the references to Byzantium, these Maria does not find odd, nothing surprising about them. But she is impatient. All these things don’t interest her all that much — Thesprotia, the Roman Empire, Byzantium — whatever. She’s looking for something else in the little book: something more personal, something with more direct bearing on herself; some message or affirmation of Sofie. A declaration, too.
What does surprise her is the last part of the book. In this section there are extensive references to God’s energy, to different worlds vibrating at different frequencies — some of these not accessible during normal states of consciousness, but in states of heightened and purified receptivity, or in sleep. There are references to the forbidden domain, to a sacred radiation, to spiritual healing. There is an explication of the so-called four spiritual worlds, of which the material or physical dimension of reality is the lowest.
There is a summary of the so-called Ten Gates — ten consecutive steps on the spiritual journey of the mystic:
GATE 1. A close study of nature. The disciple must start with an intense exploration of the natural world so as to be filled with awe and wonderment.
GATE 2. By the cultivation of an equilibrium, the disciple avoids addiction to the ecstasy of the ascetic on the one hand, and addiction to the allurements of physical and sensual pleasures on the other.
GATE 3. The gate of trust. The disciple learns to entrust herself only to the care of God, and through this develops a profound faith in the divine order.
GATE 4. The gate of acceptance. Through the cultivation of this the heart unfolds, and the disciple experiences the fulfilment and peace that will support her during her trials and tribulations.
GATE 5. In this phase the disciple’s sincerity is tested — she is exposed to the world of doubt, lack of faith, confusion, bewilderment, cynicism and despair.
GATE 6. Here the aspirant achieves true humility. She is no longer dependent on the praise of others, and is no longer hurt by criticism. The self is no longer defined by achievements and tributes. Her heart thaws, unfolds and the attachment to externals is renounced.
GATE 7. The gate of contrition. Humbly and wisely, the disciple confronts her personal failures. She allows feelings of sorrow and remorse to penetrate deeply, and calls out to God for forgiveness.
GATE 8. The disciple examines her soul in this phase. Through meditation she focuses on her inner world. Her soul is purified, her senses are honed, she develops the gift of seeing the invisible, hearing the inaudible.
GATE 9. Now abstention becomes a way of life, moral and spiritual purity being thus assured, even in the most depraved circumstances.
GATE 10. Whatever the disciple’s physical situation and circumstance, she succeeds in leading a tranquil, unpolluted and pure life.
The Ten Gates. Well, thinks Maria, what have we here? Discipleship? Sofie? She thinks: What possessed you, Sister, what took your heart by storm?
How should she recover her sister in this book — surely not in discipleship? Mind you, this preoccupation with the Ten Gates could have been, like so many of Sofie’s obsessions, undertaken in a spirit of ultimate irony.
*
The more Maria reflects on the so-called Ten Gates (and discipleship), the more puzzling she finds it, the less she knows whether Sofie intended it ironically. It is so at odds with the preceding parts dealing almost exclusively with the classical world. The disciple calling out to God for forgiveness — when Sofie had more or less repudiated the existence of God? Or perhaps not even repudiated, rather that she was utterly indifferent to it.