‘Please,’ I said, ‘can’t we talk about beginnings? A beginning is always a new chance.’
‘You can jump into a river but that’s not the beginning of the river,’ said the head.
‘Last time’, I said, ‘you told me that Eurydice said, “Be the world-child with me.’”
‘You say, “Eurydice said”, but I didn’t know her as Eurydice at the time and she didn’t know me as Orpheus. She said, “Be the world-child with me but you mustn’t tell me your name and I won’t tell you mine.”
‘“Why not?” I said to her.
‘“The stories are always waiting,” she said, “always listening for names; when they hear the names they’re listening for they swallow the people up.”
‘“What stories?” I said to her. “Do you mean oracles and prophecies?”
‘“Not oracles or prophecies,” she said, “nothing declaimed by priestesses or seers. I mean the stories no one knows about or warns us of — they’re waiting to happen, they crouch like hungry beasts impatient for their day.”
‘“You think there’s a story listening for our names?” I said.
‘“Hush,” she said, “don’t let it hear us talking. Be the world-child with me and love me nameless, thou given of the goddess.” Her breath was sweet, I kissed her again. “Why do you taste of honey,” I said.
‘“Perhaps I’m the queen of the bees,” she said.
‘“And am I the drone that dies in the nuptial flight?” I said.
‘“You will be king of the bees,” she said, “and it will be the queen that dies of loving.” And she was like a queen then, strong and eager as she clasped me to her, this world-child woman in whom I entered the mother-darkness and the mystery. I felt myself becoming story and I was afraid.’
‘But you were the world-child with Eurydice.’
‘The world-child whose innocence holds the world together? Yes, in that first golden afternoon I was.’
‘What about the rest of the time you and Eurydice were together?’
‘For a while I was, then I wasn’t. Were you?’
‘Only for a while.’
‘I have in mind a little terracotta figure I have seen,’ said the head, ‘a little terracotta dancer from Taranto — the motion of her and the swing of her draperies in the dance passing, passing into stillness. Let us say that I put into your hands this little terracotta dancer, and the beauty and the tragedy of it become the whole world to you, become all that is precious and to be enshrined in your heart, take on even a magical significance so that you know in your heart that if ever this little dancer is broken then the world is lost. And in you a devil stirs, a devil with a hammer in its hand.’
‘And yet,’ I said, ‘people do love each other and live out their lives together.’
‘How do they do it?’
‘I don’t know, but they do.’
‘Have you done it?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Have you tried?’
‘More than once.’
‘Tell me about the last time.’
‘Her name was Luise.’
‘Tell me about Luise. What was the idea of her?’
‘What an odd question.’
‘It came to me’, said the head, ‘that when people fall in love they entrust to each other the idea of themselves.’
‘Do you mean their own idea of themselves?’
‘I mean the essential idea of them that perhaps they don’t even know themselves. Each holds out to the other this obscure and unknown thing for the other to perceive and keep safe. What was the idea of Luise?’
‘You keep saying “was” as if she’s dead.’
‘I say “was” because I’m speaking of the time when she loved you. What was the idea of her?’
‘Fidelity.’
‘Fidelity,’ said the head. ‘Did you know that when she was with you or is it only now that you know it?’
‘Only now.’
‘How is it that you know it now?’
‘Why do you have to ask so many questions? What good can it do either of us?’
‘What is fidelity to you?’
‘Fidelity is a matter of perception,’ I said. ‘Nobody is unfaithful to the sea or to mountains or to death: once recognized they fill the heart. In love or in terror or in loathing one responds to them with the true self; fidelity is not an act of the wilclass="underline" the soul is compelled by recognitions. Anyone who loves, anyone who perceives the other person fully can only be faithful, can never be unfaithful to the sea and the mountains and the death in that person, so pitiful and heroic is it to be a human being.’
‘I don’t think that’s true,’ said the head; ‘I don’t think it has anything to do with perception — I think some people are faithful by nature and others are not. Do you think Luise perceived you fully?’
‘No.’
‘And was she faithful?’
‘Yes, she was faithful to herself, faithful to anything she put her hand to, and faithful to me.’
‘As far as you know.’
‘I think it would have been beneath her dignity to deceive me; she was very dignified.’
‘Eurydice was a big perceiver,’ said the head, ‘she was constantly perceiving, her perceptions gave her no rest. My singing terrified her — I don’t mean little ordinary songs like the ones I did before I met her, I mean the kind of singing that I began to do on that golden afternoon. She heard in it the death of the tortoise, the death of the world-child, and the end of our love.’
‘How did you do that singing?’
‘Something would get me started, maybe a dragonfly or the light on the river or the look of a tree at night. I’d feel the ache in my throat just before the song came and my throat would open in a particular way as if I were an instrument shaped by the song that used me. When I heard the sound of the lyre I was again the tortoise and again there came the pains of death, the colours and the blackness. People said they heard more than one voice when I sang — they heard a strange human voice and they heard a second voice not human, voice of darkness, voice of
moment under moment, world under
world, dark under dark …’
The voice of the head of Orpheus changed, became estranged from itself, descanted above itself as it spoke more and more rapidly, the words blurring together as in an auctioneer’s chant or the muttered praying of a fanatic:
‘voice of the olive tree itself and notself, singing sunlight, singing shadow, singing greenlit shade and moon-wind …’
The two voices became more and more separate, the upper one seeming to speak faster than the lower; it sounded as if the voice of the mind was hurrying above the slow and ancient animal self:
‘singing dark, dark, darkness down, down, down …’
The words faded into silence, then the head said in its normal voice, ‘Of course when I sang there was the music of it.’
‘And that was the singing that moved stones and trees and charmed wild beasts?’
‘I don’t think it actually moved stones and trees; what it did was put them in a new place for those who heard the singing. Animals were entranced by it. Eurydice hated it, she said that music was never meant to do what my singing did.’
‘Did others like it? Did a lot of people come to hear you?’
‘Yes, a great many people came, some just because they liked to be in crowds, some for the singing and some for the freak show — many times after the singing I had convulsions and bled from the nose and mouth.’
‘Did you want to sing like that?’