Clowns At Midnight (14 page)

‘You don’t use the maze at night.’

‘Only rarely. There are lights, but mostly it is locked. Are you okay?’

I wasn’t okay. A headache was building, as debilitating as ever when quarter-clown was triggered without warning. First the stone globe on the pedestal, now this.

Carlo saw me put my hand to my temples.

‘David, please. Come into the house. I am so sorry.’

He led me back the way we had come, using several shortcuts so we made quick work of it. Soon we were passing through the main entrance and climbing the four steps to the terrace. When I looked out over the maze again, I thought I could spot at least two spiked constructs, like chess-pieces in hiding, their newel tops peering back at us over the greenery.

‘David, I never expected this to happen,’ Carlo said. ‘Come inside. I have a herbal I can give you. One of Raina’s mixtures. It is very good. Then perhaps something stronger.’

We didn’t go into the dining room. The Etruscan face was there. Rather he led me into the kitchen and sat me at a wooden table in a sunny, comfortable room hung with onions and garlic, with pasta in jars, brightly polished cooking utensils, a large brick oven and clean, well-used counters. I could smell grains, herbs and spices, good smells, reassuring and hospitable.

Carlo took a dark brown bottle from a cupboard, poured a shot of some elixir, and handed it to me.

‘This will taste like demon bait, but it will clear the gloom.’

I hesitated only a moment then downed it in one swallow. The taste was awful; the alcohol in it made me gasp.

Carlo returned the bottle to the cupboard. ‘Now, please, a glass of red. Just one. It will not spoil your day. I can make us lunch.’

I didn’t argue, just nodded and watched Carlo pour two glasses of wine, gladly took one when he handed it to me. I sipped at it while he began laying out plates with antipasto and cheeses, filling a basket with thick bread.

I held up my glass. ‘This is very good.’

‘An Australian red today. The best for this important time of year.’

‘Important time?’

He gave me a puzzled look. ‘It’s nearly midsummer.’

‘Is there a special day for you?’

‘It’s midsummer, David. Surely you’re aware.’

‘Carlo, I don’t even think that way. For me it’s a word Shakespeare used in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
, that’s all. I know it used to be important.’

‘Used to be? David! I thought that with your article—then the significance of Saturday night escaped you too?’

‘Saturday night? What was Saturday night?’

‘January 6
^th
. Twelfth Night.’

‘More Shakespeare as far as I’m concerned. Sorry.’

‘The original date of Christmas. Now it marks Epiphany and the start of Mardi Gras. The
bal masqués
begin. The krewes plan their chosen parade routes.’

‘The krewes?’

‘The traditional carnival societies. Rex, Comus and Proteus. The Atlanteans and Momus. Bacchus and The Twelfth Night Revellers.’

‘You know a lot about it. Any Sardinian connection?’

‘Never ask a Sard that. Remember what I told you the other night. For us Sardinia is a forgotten centre of the world. Admiral Horatio Nelson called it the finest island in the Mediterranean.’ He set plates down for each of us. ‘I have a cousin who worked with the Orpheus krewe in New Orleans. A second cousin had friends who belonged to Momus. A friend helped Proteus with their costuming. Mardi Gras and the Vieux Carré have always had their attractions.’

I couldn’t wait any longer. I was still wired, still resonating with clown-fear. Now was the time. ‘Carlo, I have to ask. Did you put bottle-trees near that tower at the edge of your property?’

‘
Scusi, amico
. You are saying what?
Bottle
-trees?’ He seemed genuinely puzzled.

‘Bottle-trees, yes. Steel posts with bottles wired to them so they sing. Hoot with the wind.’

‘David, no. I do not know what you are speaking of. What is it again?’

And here was the dilemma: I either accepted that he was lying, for whatever reasons, and played along with his game, or granted that he was completely innocent and had no idea what I was talking about. I would sound crazy trying to explain.

‘Carlo, you must excuse me. I’ve been badly shaken. I’ve imagined hearing something at night. A hooting sound like you hear in bottles. It’s probably just the wind. It gets pretty lonely over there. Just forget it please.’

And he accepted it: which, after my naming and describing the things, was something as improbable as his own denial of owning them. ‘But, of course. I was careless. You feel better, eh?’

‘I do, thank you. Raina’s tonic has certainly helped.’

I found myself grinning, unable to prevent it. There were games being played here: he pretends he knows nothing about his tower and his bottle-trees; I accept his acceptance of my dismissing it. He claims his father bought the place because the maze was here; I simply couldn’t believe that.

But what was it the philosopher Alan Tate had said: ‘Civilisation is an agreement to ignore the abyss’? It all came to me in a moment. That was what we were doing sitting around this sunny kitchen table: playing out a game of being civilised and ignoring the darker edges. I could refuse to play, call him on it, accuse him of playing some game or other. He would tell me to leave and never return and I would be out of the loop. No access to the terracotta face, no more evenings like the last one, no more picnics, name-guessing contests and Gemma Ewins. I raised my glass and toasted him. I didn’t want to lose this.

‘Here’s to the Etruscans,’ I said, knowing it would please him.

A big grin lit his face.

‘
Bravo
! To the Etruscans. Do you know, David, they were what I call a holding people, a vector people—a civilisation through which other peoples filtered themselves? I thought of it the other night after we had spoken so briefly about Sardinia. The Etruscans found themselves at a unique point in the making of our modern world, and more of what we are now goes back through them than we can easily prove. I am eternally fascinated by this.’

The wine was having its effect. I was glad to let him talk. ‘I always thought they were shrouded in mystery.’

‘They are, David. We know so little. Little in the way of heroic tales. Very little literature. A few inscriptions. Flourished in Etruria around 800 BC and were absorbed during the rise of Rome four centuries later, completely—the word?—subsumed, yes. They had close ties to the Greeks at least as early as the seventh century, and it’s this Etruscan ‘Greekness’ they passed on to the Romans long before they approached Greek culture directly themselves. You have read up on Sardinia yet?’

‘Not yet. I’m meaning to.’ It wasn’t much of a lie. I’d just made a start.

‘Good. You will learn what the Mediterranean was like. Phoenician traders setting up trade colonies everywhere, other Sea Peoples, their own descendants cross-fertilising themselves. Sardinia was settled from Italy in the east, Africa in the south, the Iberian peninsula to the northwest. Even with the Etruscans eclipsed by the brash new Romans, they passed on their Phoenician Greekness to we Sards. Even the ABC.’

‘The ABC?’

‘Should be ABG after the Greek Alpha, Beta, Gamma. But the Etruscans pronounced the Greek G—Gamma—as C. So we have it today. We filtered so much through the Etruscans, then they closed up shop and went away.’

‘Into the mountains of Sardinia, I suppose.’

Carlo laughed. ‘I wish. Nothing so simple. Nothing so dramatic or noticeable. We had our own thriving cultures, the nuraghic peoples. You should look this up. No, the Etruscans were not like the Mayans or the Anasazi, who abandoned their sites. They were not like the Celts who were shut away in Wales and made a pariah people. It was all through trade and stories, because another culture became dynamic and overshadowed them. So much was lost. So much was forgotten. The word Tuscan became synonymous with ‘whore’. Doesn’t that tell you how effective the obliteration was? You really know you’ve demolished a people when no-one dares use the name any more for fear of social stigma. And to think, the Etruscans founded Rome, called it Rumlua, which gave its name to Romulus. Its supposed founder was just a convenient story. There were Etruscan kings in Rome before the Republic. Tarquinius Priscus, the great Tarquinius Superbus. They
made
Rome. This sort of thing matters, David.’

We were ignoring the abyss together, staving off the dark and all that came with it. Loss of knowledge. We were like two old soldiers sitting at the frontier, sorting memories, trying to remember how it really was.

‘This is important to you.’ I hoped it didn’t sound patronising.

‘What we agree to forget and allow ourselves to forget is always important. You know the Lord of the Dance?’

‘Jesus Christ.’

‘I mean originally.’

‘Originally? Carlo, you keep doing this. I always thought it was Christ.’

‘You see. That’s because the early Church very shrewdly made sure their holy days fell on the dates of pagan festivals. Borrowed their rituals and symbols—like the Easter Egg and vital compromises like the Celtic sun-wheel cross.’

‘The Easter Egg?’ This was too soon after the maze fear; I could barely keep up.

‘Eostre, the Teutonic goddess of the dawn, known by the fertility symbols of the rabbit and the egg, gave her name to Easter. The birthday of Mithras, the Persian god of fertility and light so beloved by the Roman military, was December 25
^th
, the traditional birthday of the unconquerable sun, the
dies natalis solis invicti
, and he gave us
soter
, the word Saviour. The god Helios commemorated by the Colossus of Rhodes had the same birthday, and the sunburst around his head later became the haloes on Christ and the saints. As far back as 1996 BC, January 5
^th
marked an ancient Egyptian festival for the birth of light, and the same date marks Dionysos transforming water into wine. And as late as 691 AD, wine treaders were still wearing satyr masks and crying out the name “Dionysos” while treading the grapes until the Church made them cry “
Kyrie eleison!
” instead.

‘It’s true. So, too, the Dionysian wine became the wine of the Christian Mass. In medieval Germany, the dances in honour of St John and St Vitus were ancient Greek Bacchic choruses. Even today in the Abruzzi village of Cocullo, the snake catchers offer up live snakes to St Dominic, but originally they were offered to Rhea, the Great Mother, or to Dionysos. You think the similarities between Christ, Helios and Apollo are mere chance? Son of God and Sun God; the Christian holy day falling on Sunday? These are not just coincidences, David. The sacred tripod at Delphi—the number three—and the Christian trinity, the three crosses on Calvary? No, my friend, these are all common and careful borrowings. The idea of an afterlife and a mediator between man and God comes from the Orphic mysteries. Orpheus was a mediator for humanity. And the idea of a Dying God who is reborn, too, is such an old one. You know Corpus Christi?’

‘The religious festival? Of course.’

‘Of course,
sì
. You know why Pope Urban IV introduced it in 1264, so that all over Europe, during high summer, great Christian pageants had townspeople acting out stories from the Bible. It was to—how do we say?—obliterate the pagan elements. To redirect them. You know the Commedia. Your hobby-horse, eh? You know how often Satan is portrayed as the comedian, the buffoon. You know how popular he always was.’

‘Carlo, you’re really into it, aren’t you?’ I had to put a stop to this. Ignoring the abyss was one thing, but raging against all that had been swallowed by it was quite another.

‘David, I raise pigs, but also sheep and a few goats. Here, in the beef capital of the state, I do what my Sardinian ancestors have always done—when they weren’t being bandits. I do the traditional Aussie thing of raising sheep. But that is for my family,
capisce
?

‘For myself, I love antiquity, the old civilisations of the Mediterranean. It is my passion. When I learn a fact, say, that the Etruscans got the ram for the prows of their galleys from the Greeks, I think: how interesting. What was the impact of that happening? So I learn that they passed it on to the Carthaginians who, inadvertently, passed it on to the Romans, who used it so effectively to defeat the Carthaginian corsairs plaguing the Mediterranean shipping in the third century. That it led to the rivalry of Rome and Carthage and the elimination of Carthage from the continuing history of the world. More things wiped away. The Greeks had rams on their biremes and pentekonters, the Romans on their triremes. Who remembers the Etruscan part in it? History overshadows history. Facts obliterate facts.

‘Look at the Roman gladiatorial games. Who remembers the Etruscan funeral games that brought them about? I read that the appearance of bull worship on Crete in the tenth century supplanted the worship of the Great Mother, the female principle in the form of the Snake Goddess and Rhea. Men write a different history. Sky God obliterates Earth Mother almost every time in written histories. But in oral traditions—a different matter! Trace the Virgin Mary back to her antecedents sometime. See where her story leads.’

Then Carlo raised both his hands as if to say:
Enough
!, clearly embarrassed at having been carried away. ‘
Scusi
, David.
Scusi
. It is my hobby-horse. I love to ride it. So many important things are lost. It is my hobby. Anamnesis. Lost knowledge, and how things link up and surprise us by becoming new. Soon it is midsummer here. In Europe, in the Mediterranean, Carnival begins, but there it is winter.
Here
it is different. But again,
scusi
! I really enjoyed what you wrote about the Commedia. It’s partly why I’ve gotten carried away.’

‘Oh, how so?’

‘What you wrote about the relocation of old forms, the coming together of things. But, please, you are very kind to put up with this. I will read it again. We shall make a dinner of it,
ne
? You want to see the mask?’