Homunculus Read online

  ‘What’s so funny?’ he asked, a little snubbed, when he saw Eliza grinning.

  ‘The birthmark, my dear – the birthmark on your penis. Now, just before we get intimate, I was checking that it’s on the right-hand side.’

  ‘What the...’

  ‘You see, there’s a belief among our people that those with a birthmark on the left lean one way, so to speak, and those with it on the right lean another... so I just wanted to check. But now we can make love. My kisses will put a smile back on your face.’

  Her voice went husky, as if there was a fluttering bird in her throat that wanted to escape. ‘Oh my God,’ the man with one wing muttered before getting down to business. And it was much better than in his wildest dreams.

  And so the two of them lived happily for many, many years, until the end of their lives. Especially him. Eliza watched over him until her death. He was eighty when she died, having inherited his mother’s longevity, and his son, the heir to the throne, made sure he lacked nothing. Even his fading memory became a boon, for he felt carefree, as if he lived in a second childhood filled with fantasies and mythical creatures from distant, fairy-tale worlds. In old age, when he became ever more simple-minded, his imagination gained two powerful wings for antics and frivolity.

  Now and again, accompanied by some of his caring servants, he would climb a hill that seemed strangely familiar (where did he know it from?) and sit on a rock there amidst a somehow familiar clearing. Taking the occasional bite of his favourite Turkish delight with coconut, tasty and soft enough for his toothless jaws, he would stare at the sky, where large and small clouds were in flight, changing shape from a horse into an elephant, an elephant into a train, a train into a snake – and so on, and so forth, almost without end.

  This fairy tale is to be told to a little girl who has fallen and grazed her knee

  The Dance of the Coloured Handkerchiefs

  One day, a colourful silk handkerchief got angry with its mother, ran away from home and set off into the wide world in search of a boy or girl with a runny nose. It was very small and didn’t yet know how to wipe someone’s nose; it didn’t even know what a child looked like; but still, it left on the long journey.

  It wandered for a long time until it came to a pretty yellow house with a red chimney and swirls of smoke coming out. The brave little handkerchief thought the house was a boy or girl, and the chimney its nose.

  ‘No, no. I am a house,’ it corrected the little traveller. ‘But come inside and perhaps you will find a child.’

  Without further ado, the handkerchief went in and found itself in a large, well-lit room with a big round lamp in the corner.

  ‘That must be the head of the child, but where is its nose?’ our little hero asked itself when it saw the smooth, attractive lamp.

  ‘No, no. I am a lamp. But just wait a minute and André will come home from school.’

  And, sure enough, a few moments later a tousled little head ran into the room. It had restless locks, a cheerful smile with a row of tiny white stones, and a snotty nose like a little potato that’s been in the pan for too long.

  ‘I’ve found you, I’ve found you,’ the handkerchief piped. ‘Let me wipe your nose!’

  André blew his nose into it, laughed a hearty little laugh, and snatched the handkerchief. ‘You’re just what I need, but for something quite different. You can help me in my new act.’

  Later, in the long evening by the fire, André told his new friend that he was the son of the great magician Petronius and that tomorrow they would start practicing a new act together – The Dance of the Coloured Handkerchiefs.

  So the wayward handkerchief became a great star in the circus tent and beyond. Every evening, for an enthusiastic audience, it vanished into a magic hat and then flew out again as a white dove. Such a life was exciting for the handkerchief, and it enjoyed being pampered: it was washed, ironed, and even doused with exotic perfumes. At night it slept close to André’s heart, in the upper left-hand pocket of his juggler’s costume. In the meantime it made it up with its mother, and she became very, very proud of it. She all but forgot her anger at it having run away from home.

  Still, even in the moments of glamour and shine, when the circus tent was filled with cheers and applause, the colourful silk handkerchief would look up yearningly at André’s nose:

  Oh, if only I could wipe it one more time!

  This fairy tale is not to be told at coffee break

  Human, all too Human

  4.

  Once out of nature I shall never take

  My bodily form from any natural thing,

  But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

  Of hammered gold and gold enamelling

  To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;

  Or set upon a golden bough to sing

  To lords and ladies of Byzantium

  Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

  William Butler Yeats, Sailing to Byzantium

  On the opposite bank, from the depths of the forests steaming after the rain, a flock of birds shot up almost vertically into the sky. Their cries echoed through the mists and died away to the nervous looks of the men and horses on this side of the river, half sinking in the whitish sighs of the mushy soil – they felt like nameless members of a wild horde of centaurs wandering aimlessly before the wrath of the Lord of the Netherworld.

  They had been following the river for two whole days and nights. At first they fooled themselves into thinking that the babbling water would lead them somewhere. Now, the eerie reverberating shrieks of the unreal shadows flitting overhead made the waters seem immobile and ominous, like a dark-green bog.

  ‘These pathless wilds are no place for a Byzantine noble!’ the rider muttered as he gazed into the enchanted emptiness and struggled to calm his nervous animal. In the cramped muscles and cold sweat of his stallion he felt his own madness looming, the intertwining of earthly and devilish roads, when the reins were to be handed over to the Other, the mad one, who is detached from reason. In the year of great darkness, the rider recognized the signs – symbols from no book and beyond the order of letters:

  ‘Here lies the hidden breath of our ancestors,’ the Syrian said as his bony forefinger traced over the symbols. ‘They carved their secret into the philosophers’ stone and then disappeared. Thunder and lightning signalled that it was time to leave. Who were they? For the deities, sunny days are migratory birds. A mere blink and it is autumn already. Silence. But the stone protects their wounds from the oblivion of posterity. Reach out your hand. Can you feel the passion it emanates? Do you think the stone is a bloodless thing that cannot suffer? Do you desire it?’ the Easterner asked, holding the rider’s hand between his own and the amulet and raising his eyes beneath his dangling locks of white hair. ‘You are a nobleman. Your retinue is of proud and warlike men. But I am not afraid of the sword. I left my fear in Beirut, in the ashes of what was once my home. And it was foretold that I am the only one who can hand down the stone with a blessing. I, the descendant of Seth who presaged the hour of Robert Guiscard’s death. It was said that the stone would pass through hundreds of lives. My life and yours are but little eddies of water in its inexhaustible flow.’

  And with that the Syrian grinned, making the youngest, beardless henchman give a dry, nervous cough; he was still terrified by stories about the bloodthirsty gello in the wastes that sucked the blood of children and left them hanging empty, in the way a spider does with its prey. His cough electrified the heavy air and broke the stifling silence:

  ‘Do not deceive yourself into believing it will protect you. At least not in the way fools who adorn themselves with gold chains imagine it will. This world where we sell our princesses to the barbarians for a peace that won’t last for more than two years is a fragile one. No one can pretend to innocence. The hordes from the East are like a hydra with a hundred hea
ds, and the warriors from the North are an icy wind from the endless steppes that ravages the Holy City. Until now, the Empire has been able to play off its ferocious opponents one against another, but for how much longer? The stone will not help you if only your eyes give you satis­faction, if you see nothing other than the dark surface of light. But if the light looks for a refuge inside you, perhaps it will impart to you some of its wisdom. Its portents sometimes stand forth unpredictably like green moss on bare, beaten rock. Let us recall: although he had been warned that the first to set foot on Trojan soil would instantly be killed, the son of Laertes was the first to leap from the ship – he threw his shield ashore before jumping himself. He remained alive and won fame.’

  The rider imagined the intermingling blood of the heroes that flowed from the eyeholes in their bronze helmets and turned the river red, while a new seed sprouted in their slashed eyes; battle-­cries and screams of agony merged and were borne away with the waves – the proud rage of warriors who overcame their hubris; grey-bearded veteran and fiery youngster alike, now slain, were joined in the eternal embrace of Charon’s waters. All of us gathered here have a Patroclus immersed in ultimate loneliness, silently yearning for the sun, beneath which we would toil day and night just so as to feel the touch of its rays once more. The morning after the battle saw a pack of wolves feeding on the bodies of the dead, which were dusted with snow: a truly primeval scene. The rider had the same feeling as when the northern barbarians danced their silent dance with the girls – the young warrior tempting the girl to follow him, putting her through lively steps, ever faster and faster, each spin more demanding than the last. That was a celebration of hip-thrusting vitality, while here death reigned, but in both scenes the light that flooded over the figures and the landscape (like the bright shafts that pierce the gauze screens and fill the womb of the bedroom) was like heavenly grace that altered the seemingly ordered relationship on earth between a figure and its voice, between the object and its movement – the blissful caress of our ethereal Father. Yes, the rider could feel the infinite kindness and immeasurable power that extended both above and below the clouds; he could feel the dancing curls of the enslaved girls, the flash of creation everywhere.

  The derisive, raspy voice of the Syrian brought the rider back to the stark reality of the cold vapours on the river-bank, cutting the serene surface of his idealized vision almost painfully.

  ‘The one who had the stone before me mixed wisdom with madness. He was known by the name of Constantine Anastasis, a learned patrician sent from the capital to administer our province. They say the hot sun stirred the dreams of Eastern rulers – vain fanta­sies of grandeur and power in the new Empire, dreams sustai­ned by gigantic statues of themselves. There he asks for more and takes more, as he reclines on his wide swing, surrounded by exotic plants. So it was that Constantine too, having learnt of the stone, began to be tormented by mad visions of all the things he could do if he possessed it, although he tried to resist its pull. He returned to his books and recited long prayers, but among the pages of writing and between the icons he would always see the stone. He began searching for it, surreptitiously at first, then ever more anxiously; and at the thirtieth sunset, before the tombs in the apse of the martyrium, one of his spies whispered to him that the stone was hidden in the house of the merchant Moshe ben Azzai, in the Jewish quarter. So Constantine ordered that the merchant be brought before him, although, in the spirit of the Emperor’s magnanimous law permitting Jews to work even in the court administration, he decided to welcome him with a smile.’

  The rider pictured the tense body of the administrator poorly concealed in his emerald-green, velvet tunic, with a forced grin on his face; he also imagined the stooping figure of the Jew, who, fearing the worst, had bad farewell to the jokes at the family table and the solemn murmur of the synagogue prayers as he was led from his leather-goods store to the palace. By the time he arrived before the potentate he was almost cleansed of his fear, and he was only hunched because of his inherited arthritis, not due to servility in the face of this despised tormentor. Yes, the rider thought of how the merchant must have mocked his haughty Christian masters who were too busy with their clothes, coiffures and scheming between races at the Hippodrome to think of the common weal.

  Once again, the hoarse voice of the Syrian cut through the living skein of the rider’s imaginings.

  ‘The Jew never used the stone. They say his rabbi advised him against it, citing the words of Rabbi Hillel: “Do not strive to stand out in the community!” and “Do not believe in yourself until the day of your death!” He stressed the example of Simon ben Zoma, known simply as Ben Zoma and famed for his perception and kindness, revered even in the proverb, “Whoever dreams of Ben Zoma is assured of wisdom”, although he later got carried away with his arcane studies, becoming engrossed in Pardes, and took leave of his senses. Despite this advice, Moshe ben Azzai was unable to part with the wondrous stone and kept it in a casket in a secret compartment in the wall known only to he and his wife. Every evening he would lock himself in his room, open the casket and stare at the stone, enchanted. Even when Constantine inflicted the severest torture, Moshe refused to reveal the location of the stone. So Constantine, no stranger to perfidious cunning, ordered his guards to bring Moshe’s wife and children to the underground torture-chamber. Instead of their father, they found a disfigured body, with chains cutting into the mangled, raw flesh; it writhed and whined from what must have once been a face, with one eye gouged out and the other frenzied with unbearable pain. Moshe’s obedient wife Rachel, despite having been brought up on histories of her ancestors’ sufferings, could not long stand the mad despair in her beloved husband’s eye, which no longer recognized her. Constantine Anastasis thus became the owner of the stone.

  ‘He hung it around his neck. When he appeared before his ser­vants the next morning, they say his hair had gone grey and his eyes were wild. They saw him riding through the fields, his purple cloak fluttering behind him. And, spurring his horse into a furious gallop, he disappeared before the eyes of the dismayed soldiers standing along the city walls.’

  The rider saw the tense face of his youngest henchman again and thought how ebullient young men were misjudged: even if given to wanton dissipation and pleasure seeking in the cities, they were actually torn by restlessness and an abortive search for meaning.

  ‘Constantine never returned,’ the Syrian continued. ‘First they found his horse roaming wild, and later, in a forest clearing, they came across his lifeless body. His skull was broken. Rumour spread that the horse’s name was Theophilus, like he who sold his soul to the devil and signed the contract with his own blood.’

  ‘And what of the stone?’ The hiss of his own voice sounded to him like a muffled echo from hell. ‘How did you come by it?’

  The Syrian stared at the rider with goggling, bloodshot eyes: ‘They say the horse was possessed by the soul of the tortured Jew. A dumb animal could not have aimed so accurate a hoof blow right in the middle of its owner’s forehead. Surely it was guided by a human hand.’

  The Syrian’s voice seemed to quaver – he was an old man – or perhaps it faltered to a whisper because of the threatening moment itself, which stunned all those present like a clenched fist:

  ‘When I grabbed the stone and felt its pores against mine, I was a young man in an unstoppable rush: as tall as you are, strong and thirsting for life. And now...’

  His withered, decrepit hand held out the stone. The noble message carved into it, the message from the people of the golden race – those gods in human form who had lived and loved in a world of white unicorns – was destined to be handed down through the greed and impetuousness of their sordid descendants: Moshe ben Azzai, the patrician Constantine, the poor Syrian, the rider himself, and his young henchman enchantedly devouring the stone with covetous eyes – all of them prisoners of their own baseness.

  The rider’s father, once an admir
er of Plato, had whispered to him madly from his deathbed, scratching his hair as if he had lice:

  ‘Look at those figs your mother brought in. They look lovely and juicy, you probably think. But inside? They’re a rich royal purple, but they stink. And how! She’s poisoning me, son. See that thing floating in my soup? Your mother – that bitch said it was fresh fish: nice, wholesome chunks with roe, enough to make your mouth water. But when I cut into the fish and smelt it, it stank.’

  His father was convinced that his most devoted soulmate – she who had suffered with him through the hard years of exile on barren islands, who had encouraged and counselled him, who had borne him two sons and raised them with pride and warmth – was poisoning him. Yes, his own father, that paragon of learning and wisdom, had been unable to escape the mark of the beast. What hope was there then for him, so much commoner than his father? Self-imposed exile, perhaps? But where? His father had had a home, a library and leisurely, warm evenings to read and explain animal fables to him, and still he had succumbed. But what did he have? His parents’ dilapidated house with no one to look after it! Ever since those who called themselves guardians of the faith, with necklaces of wild boar’s teeth hanging from their fat necks, had sacked the Imperial City and sullied its squares, hurling curses and gnawed bones in their endless feasts, he was not sure they would stop at breaking down the gates and pillaging the next time. He had his rank of Pronoiar, but what was it worth to be a minor military commander in troubled times such as these? So far he had managed to evade all the accusations and conspiracies, but he knew he would be sucked into them in the end.