Once again his mind turned to the messenger of Death looking, in the jet-black night, for a door to knock on.
COUNTER-CHAPTER 2
IN THE PITCH-DARK NIGHT the messenger of Death knocks at a man’s door. To the challenge of “Who goes there?” comes the traditional reply: “Open up, I am the messenger of Death.” From behind the closed door the man shouts out, “Be on your way, you have no business here!”
The envoy scowls. He supposes that the mortal has not grasped just who he is, that the mortal has mistaken him for the tax collector or for a bailiff. And as the mortal who lives there has paid his taxes and has no quarrel with the law, he reckons the visitor has no business with him. So the envoy must knock again, and speak his words a second time, but to his amazement, from behind the closed door, the same answer comes: “Go back whence thou came, I have nothing to do with thee.”
The messenger stands rooted to the ground, quite bewildered. It’s the first time anything like this has happened. Preparing himself to knock on the door for the third time, he pulls the death warrant out of his satchel, checks the mortal’s name as well as the date and exact time set down for his passage into the other world — in fact, the man should have been gone from life to death for some time already, yet he is still alive and kicking. The messenger is incensed, and knocks a third time.
No answer comes from behind the door. Suddenly the door swings open, and there stands the man on the threshold. What he says is as incomprehensible as it is disturbing: “Go tell your mistress Death that I do not recognize her writ.”
Upon which he flashes some trinket or other… well, nobody has ever discovered exactly what it was, but it must have been something like a secret medallion or cipher, an emblem or credit card number, the seal of some sect or the badge of some club, maybe even a visa that allows you to cross a border unimpeded.
The messenger of Death stands there stock-still, wide-eyed and struck dumb. Perhaps it is the first time he has ever seen that sign or symbol, but he recognizes its power and yields to it. Anyway, he is no more than a messenger, and his mission is only what he has been told to do: gather up souls. He does not even think to ask why the talisman has been entrusted to a mere mortal. All the same, since it is the first time in thousands of years that he has come across an incident of the kind, he feels duty-bound to report it to his superiors.
So he decides to alert his boss. He too is shaken by the incident, takes advice from another colleague — necessarily one more highly placed than he is — and then the two of them pluck up their courage and go to wake up Erebus, the Minister of Death himself.
Erebus can’t believe his ears. “Have you taken leave of your senses?” he screams.
He adds, almost instantly, “That just about does it!” And off he goes to wake the great leader of them all, Hades.
He knows it won’t be easy. He hasn’t done it in the last six thousand years, at least. Especially as Hades has just wedded the sweet Persephone. That all flashes through his mind in an instant. But he does not dither or dally. Using a secret method he alone knows, he wakes the great leader.
What he hears from a distant Hades is much the same as what he had thrown back to his subordinates: “Erebus, are you in possession of all your senses, or have you lost your wits entirely?”
So Erebus has to repeat word for word all that he just said. A long silence follows. Erebus thinks with sadness of his leader’s unseeing eyes. Then the latter says, “Come straight on down to see me.”
When he gets there, Erebus finds the entire Bureau of Death assembled. The mines are darker than they have ever been. The black sockets of Hades’ eyes express the gravity of the circumstances better than any living pupils. His widely separated words are strangely related to those empty holes. He tells himself that what has just taken place is the most serious, the most extraordinary event imaginable. Death has been struck to the very root, for the first time in a million years. If the breach is not closed, Death will never recover. And the whole edifice of the universe will fall apart.
He lends his ear to his various ministers, and their words are just as gloomy, if not more so, than his own. Then he gives the order: Make ready my chariot!
He rides his chariot across the earth and the heavens, flying on to Olympus, to meet Zeus, the god of gods.
No one was ever to know what went on up there between them, neither how Hades awoke from divine slumber he whom none dared disturb, nor what all the others on Olympus said, or shouted, or sighed. No one was ever to know the voices they took on to mask their identities, or even the way they pronounced words backwards so their enemies could not understand them. There were never any leaks.
Lights go on in the gods’ villas and offices. Chariots dash through the night. Various classes of investigators are roused: special intelligence officers, then the spies who investigate special intelligence officers, then those who keep an eye on the spies. And in all the hustle and bustle the whole of the ministry’s staff awakens — professional delators, epileptic whistle-blowers, informers whose words are believed once in a thousand years, lead-swinging supervisors, allegedly blind tipsters, people who claim they would prefer to die rather than cease to be informers, and, in their train, all the cloak-and-dagger men, along with the bisexual scouts, the decoders of posthumous messages, the intuitives, the lunatics, and dealers in every kind of hocus-pocus. Old files are reopened, men and gods put to torture, a great hole dug — who knows why! — in the middle of Mount Olympus, and a column dropped into it straight away. Other incomprehensible acts follow, some for the first time ever, others for the last, and yet others that would have happened anyway, or which appear to be happening right now.
It comes to a point where time, whose flow has been stopped, seems about to burst its banks. Some of the gods go mad, perch on roofs, wait for the disaster. As time has apparently ceased to exist, nobody can say how long the panic went on. Consequently, nobody will ever be able to say whether it was dawn or dusk when the cry went out: “We’ve caught the culprit!”
In chains, with eyes swollen from beatings, the prisoner is dragged right to the top of Olympus. Rubberneckers congregate to get a look, and all around they exclaim, “So it was Tantalus who did this monstrous thing?”
Everybody has their eyes on the Great Prison where, according to the rumor, Zeus in person is to conduct the interrogation of the guilty party. People try to anticipate the questions: How did you manage to steal that? Who helped you? How did you carry the booty back down to earth?
But now darkness descends once more. Nobody will ever know the questions that were actually asked. And our ignorance does not stop there. Nobody will ever know what really happened, how the crime was solved, how things returned to normal thereafter.
When it wakes up again, Olympus seems all sleepy-eyed. After its indeterminate absence, dawn doesn’t quite know how to come upon the world, having lost its old habits. Here and there you can still see a few puddles of night lying around, with garbage collectors trying to shovel it up as if it were night soil. The whole place is buzzing with rumors about immortality. Some people think of it as an infinite number of particles spread around the body; others imagine it as a device that can be redirected toward the impossible; but most people see it as a key to some secret door. But these ramblings do not last long. By noontime, the stories have become utterly muddled…. In the taverns, people say that Tantalus was less greedy for immortality than he was for food and drink. The crimes he committed — which still cannot be named — should be put down to his insatiable appetite. They even say he’s going to be sent down to hell for voracity.