“Your ichnography is not enough,” Fortunatus breathed; stroke, stroke; “Your divisional construction is not enough;” stroke, stroke: did the strokes, what was the word? converge —? “Your sudivisional construction is not enough,” stroke, stroke, stroke. “Observe, you Vergil —” (no mention of sage now: You Vergil. Well and good, he might not be “sage,” but he was, was he not? you Vergil. It was somehow a great comfort, much more than mere adjectives of flattery) … stroke … stroke “Observe, observe, observe! What is I say, essential, is your point of convergence; your vanishing point is essential …”
There on the old and soiled apyrus, amidst the strokes and lines, or upon the strokes and lines: suddenly there had appeared a doorway, beyond the doorway a mole or pier, perceptibly a distance, though no large distance, away; at the edge of the dock was, in scarce time at all, ‘a boat and all her apparell’ moored fore and aft, scratch, scratch, stroke, stroke. The wide gates of a harbor …
“It is not a fantasma!” exclaimed Fortunatus. Suddenly Vergil could smell the garlic, could he not smell, also, basil among the small pots of plants? it was some while yet before a seasoned cook would add the basil to the cook-pot — “Not a fantasma, at all, as say those fools, maledictions fall upon them! It is a truth, a philosophic truth, I say: the circle can be squared!” He was panting now, as a man panteth upon a woman. “Gold projected out of dross, indeed! As well project dross out of gold!” One could hear, among the thick and heavy breath of passion, the hard sound of grinding teeth. In a second or a score of seconds, doorway, dock, ship, harbor, horizon were obliterated: and so was all knowledge of the presence of one You Vergil … or of anyone else alone. With an impatient gesture and an abrupt sigh, the old papyrus was swept onto the floor; Fortunatus swilled a half a mouthful of water, spewed it into his palms, rubbed his fingers clean of charcoal, rubbed them dry upon his robe.
Below and all around lay poverty, guarded by riches: Fortunatus cared not at all of either. Now with a bliss-filled sigh he drew an almost perfectly clean sheet of parchment from underneath an almost perfectly clean dust-sheet; and from another place he took up his compass and his protractor and his rule. Now everything in the world fell away from him as though uncreated. He and the pure forms, the Pure Forms, were quite alone, and might love one another to their endlessly full contentment: the Pure Forms: the line, the triangle, the rectangle, the circle and the square. Beauty bare. Beauty bare.
Vergil on tip-toe made his way from the room, paused only for a single backward glance before he turned and made his way down the crannied wall to the ground where the torchbearer awaited, open mouthed and silent and alone.
Silent as well, Vergil gestured to the man, and they set off together through the torch-pierced dark. One thing above all did wonder him, You Vergil, as they went.
He heard, in the otherwise silence, the chafing of the cicadas in the distant trees and fields, and the small but ceaseless lisping of the pitch in the burning torch.
Why, as though intent, did the flamingoe peer over Fortunatus’ shoulder as he drew upon his parchment?
One did not know. One Vergil did not know.
He felt that he must get him to the beach, and seek the comfort of the island-men: faint comfort though it was. On the way thither he saw the gleam of water through the trees; it was not the sea, it was a pool. He thought he might sink into it and refresh his body and be cool and clarify his mind. Trees and shrubs and scented flowers circled round. The man, without much taking thought, sank to his knees and cupped his hands to take up water and to drink. But before thrusting in his close-paired palms upturned, he paused and looked down. As in a dream he gazed and saw a face a-looing up at him.
It was not his face.
Neither was it the face of someone just behind him, for, as he quickly turned, there was no one behind him. As he moved his upper body around and looked again down, he saw that, reflected in the pool was a woman’s face, she seemed somedel troubled and concerned, and he knew that he had seen that face and that look before. And it came to him the word Huldah. He knew he knew it but he knew not how. Huldah meant the genet and the weasel, it also meant the cat, biss, one called it, familiarly. And yet. The Region called Huldah, what did that mean? No answer came, save that in a moment he was on his feet, walking swift away. He had not been swift but a little while ago. He had been as one who walks in a dream. For some reason he thought of the local nymphs, and of the brute impetuous beings who so lusted after them. Not only the satyrs lusted after nymphs; Priapus the son of Aphrodite, he: Protector of Goats, the randy creatures; Priapus “the Ever-Erect,” had lusted after the nymph called Lotis: had she appreciate the honor? no, not she, and when awakened by the braying of an ass (perhaps jealous of his ithyphallic rival), the nymph Lotis changed at once into a lotus-tree: a fact well-known. Whence had she the puissance? some guardian genie, doubtless. Some guardian genie doubtless it was which had substituted another’s face for that of his own, for to dream of seeing one’s own reflection in a dream was the best-known omen of one’s own impending death.
The sea, the sea.
Faintly forming at first; forming, faintly in his mind, the image of a man running quickly, rapidly, ever so swiftly, man running, feet raised high with each step, arm raised high of the man, something in the hand of the arm raised high of the man; it had seemed (and how could this be?) that the man was skimming ever so swiftly over the surface of a languid sea: to one side of the man, a low-lying bank of cloud: quite quite dark, the cloud, and the cloud quite low. This vision was oft repeated, did that mean it was merely some vision oft repeated, or did it mean that what was seen in this vision, this image, this vision of the day, was it of something which he had often seen? Who was he? Who was “Who”? The he himself of whom he now knew more (his mind less clouded), some certainty there (here), of this than before. He was You Vergil now, he was a certain man, hight Vergil, a thaumaturge, a philosophe and necromaunt; that was certainly certain, a certain man, hight Vergil, that was a line from a document, rectangulate in shape, and he would now, right now, putting of it off no longer, turn to that said document and read of it: and then he would know more about You Vergil. He turned, there was no document, there were people round about and hemming him in, they were crowding round about him close, this would not do.
Love is a much-reflective surface, who had said that? why?
He shook his head to dislodge this alien and interruptive thought, this would not do, a crowd and throng were hemming him in. Abrech! he called, this certain man, hight Vergil. Abrech! For he knew that the Abrech meant Clear the way, it meant Make clear the way, but he did not know in what language it meant this, certainly not his own, nor how he came to know it.