The Scarlet Fig: Or, Slowly Through a Land of Stone, Book Three of the Vergil Magus Series (29 page)

Yes … but here was neither couch nor map, no document, no Homer and no harpists harping of Priam’s topless Trojan town a-flaming and a-burn, nor of the burning reedy river by the Trojan shore. There were no shouts, no cries, now, but still the murmur of the same, same word:
fire,
it was,
fire
… fire, fire (contentedly now) … fire … Someone brought liquid in a large gourd, someone poured it then, carefully, into a large shallow shell, and someone lifted the fallen runner’s hanging head and someone gave him a sip of what was in the shell. Once more, water and the wind and sand and murmuring voices, voices murmuring low, the soft sea-breeze: and now someone brought thither the jar in which the gourd had dipped, a common jar (how came it here, they made no jars, or potters-work of any kind: someone must have brought it there, or, anyway, left it there); a common jar of glazed earthernware, light grey and brown, such as house-dames use to make pickle of cucumber (and swift as the rushing of the tidal bore, almost like an attack: the smells of garlic and the smells of dill: swift! how he remembered, and remembered much: his aunt, his father, the kitchen-corner where such ferments of loaf-dough and cake-dough, of yeast-dough and of other things were oft going on; he remembered
this
road and
that
road, and Caca in the cave, and Numa dwelling in the Cave of Caca (or … was “the thing” not named Alcinoüs?) … and the stinking faces hanging at the doorside of the cave … he remembered much, yet not enough; yet faintly knowing there was more); and the exhausted runner — someone had placed a garland on his sweaty head — half-sat upright, half was lifted up; as from the jar, call it crock, then, someone reached and took, hand dripping liquid, took a something which … he knew, he knew, he knew must know … it was the Scarlet Fig and it dripped of its own juice and moisture; “Mm,” murmured the runner. And the others repeated the sound, some in one way, some in another: “Ma mma, manna, manya, nya, nyama …” And all these words at the root meant this one thing, the Scarlet Fig; the Greeks had a word for it. and that word was … Lotus …

Attempts were endless to identify the lotus of Lotusland with the known fruits and roots and flowers of the welladay world. Its like had been “discovered” again and again, and in many a tended garden within the Empery there grew plants asserted with great firmness to be the lotus, of Lotusland, the Land of the Lotophages; these plants, these flowers, fruits, roots and rhyzomes, were of many a different provenance: Lybya, Cilicia, Ægypt, the Lands of the Sinæ and the Serices, and of the Embri whose ewes bear, thrice a year, lambs already horned: no two were the same plant and no two had quite the same effect, some had no effect at all save that produced in the minds of their eaters by virtue of their beliefs in the powers of what they were eating, others were of certain and sure effect: never twice from two different plants the same. The eater might forget for a few moments who he was or why he was there, wherever
there
was. Whoso ate the pseudo-lotus might dance about as one all aflame, and declare later that he had sung sweet songs and rare, and
demand
: aghast!
Why
had no one noted their measures, modes, tunes, tones, words, and so on: to those present merely the eater of that particular “lotus” had moaned or cried discordantly or screamed, made strange sound past description, perhaps by the time of dwindling effect, shouted rather raucously. But no songs had been discerned. Other users of these odd plants might merely subside into a strange trance, saying and doing nothing whatsoever; later to arouse and get them up and declare a recollection of a rich, rich dream: as one embroidered with broidery fit for the favorite of a duke, count, or king: but as for specific memory, why, not one theme, not one scene, not one action, notion, motion, word or sound.

Again and again those learned in leech-craft (and the blood-sucking creatures were named after the craft, and not tother way around) would declare that, by all the tests demanded by the Pseudo-Theophrastus (to identify whom would be easier than to identify what song the sirens sang, a question which Averroes had asked his ministers in vain), the presence of
flower, fragrance, and forgetfulness of woe,
the alleged lotus in the garden of this magnate and that margrave, ought to be
the
Lotus … and, indeed, perhaps
had
ought to be; long journeyings and grave dangers risked — risked, and sometimes encountered — Tiberio torn by lionels, Duke Naimon carried off by a dragon, King Oliver lost to captivity: naming only a few notables by name — the endless numbers of the nameless brave, lost, like those lost before Agamemnon in the forgotten fields where even the asphodella does not grow — yet save for one thing nought was certain, and this the one thing certain:
it was not.

The
lotus, the
lotus
, i’seemed, alas, it would not travel: like some “small wine” of distant provenance in the Over-Seas, much esteemed by embassadore, proconsul, viceroy or baill when in its native region, though said official (traveller, trader, captains of ships of burthen or ships of war), however well they poured it through filters into amphorae or kegs, however well-caulked or well-cooped or well-stoppled and well-smoked: what emerged, back home, was invariably a drink flatter than the Plains of Parthia, of less worth, even, than a good common vinegar — so with the rare and strange lotus of Lotusland, where dwell the gentle Lotophages: such wines could not be by any means preserved, and neither could the true and proper lotus.

And as for its other, and second-most common name, the Scarlet Fig, why, every other mage or sage one asked on it, would freely declare that, in truth, it was neither scarlet nor a fig: what, then, was it, and what was it, then? The other moiety of those wise in wisdom would but sigh and shrug, declare,
I do not know.
It was indeed said of the Emperor Marcus, that he himself had made that difficult voyage to the island where lived the gentle Lotophagoi, had eaten of the Scarlet Fig, had drunk of its juices and of the winey sap of its stalk in season; had lingered long enough to have need to eat of its roots or rhyzomes in season when there grew upon the branch no flowers, no fruit, nor flowed from its stalk any dewy sap or juice: the Emperor Marcus constrained (as he had in advance commanded and directed), was eventually obliged by men through gentle force to retire from Lotusland, weeping and sobbing like a small bairn removed from her Mother: what had, then, the very emperor to show to know for his stay there? Moonstones and tourmalines he had to show. Sweet memories of dulcet days and painless, without memories, he had to know, though could not show. Moonstones and tourmalines he had to show. And some slime, some sludge, some nameless slop at the bottoms of vessels — jars, jugs, kegs — he had to show … though actually he had not shown it, having handed them over to his leechcrafters, his apothercaries, and his alchymists, for to make assay and essay, and for to make try and trial of it: the results? … nothing that anyone could ever say was truly worthy of the time and trial: though many were the rumors … and every rumor had its many tongues.

And so and after all of this, did anyone, lord or thrall, enquire: Is there no assoilment for my sorrow? Let then the priest or the philosopher or the wise woman in her secret grove, say several sundry conjectured things: yet at the end of all such, see them all hold up their hands and cast down their eyes: what say they then?
No…. None
… save thou go and eat of the Scarlet Fig that grows in the land of the gentle Lotophages.

Small comfort, then, to hear further such things, as, This was revealed in olden times by Polydamna, the wife of Thon, that if man and woman should eat and drink of it, though they had seen Mother, Father, Sister, Brother, Daughter, Husband, Wife, and Child slain by the pitiless sword, they should not let fall a tear upon their cheeks. Was it true? was true that the Scarlet Fig maketh cease from grief and the many pains that distress both mind and heart, maketh take consolation and be not afraid nor sicken in the soul?

It grew in far-off Lotusland which lay beyond the Columns of Heaven-Upholding Atlas, beyond the Pillars of Mercules, lost in the misty distance of the great grey green Sea of Atlantis; whither ne poor man could, ne no rich man would, adventure there to navigate …

It was not precisely scarlet, a tinge of crimson lay within its color. Rather larger, rather longer, even rather softer than the fig. From a middle distance one might say it was a pomegranate, but coming closer, plain one saw that no pomegranate it was. Its flower was richer than an empery of other flowers, both in color and in olor, more fragrant, richer. Its taste was, though one might call it
holy
, as more so than the holy eiobab which, though ever so holy compared to things profane, was yet (the eiobab) a thing confected: and the lotus
grew,
even as rank and common weed, shunned by the starvling asses of rough, scruff coats and coasts, grow: yet aside from that one single and certainly singular environ, grew it nowhere else; and neither it nor its taste nor fragrance nor its forgetfulness of woe might ever be confected.

That which was eat from the cymbal during the Mysteries of Attic Eleusis might be eat by anyone who had the Greek speech and the price of attending: who had “seen the Sun rise at Midnight” had seen perhaps the greatest sight there lay in not alone the Empery but in the Œconomion to be seen. Yet these Great Mysteries might be availed solely because certain men and women of known name and family had arranged for them to be availed. And besides, Vergil had already been some while ago made free of the Eleusinian bridehood and the groomhood, a mystagogue was he, of that and of other mysteries, perhaps lesser known, if not, who shall say: less worthy He had heard the oracles speaking, squeaking, sighing, soughing, groaning, droning from out the chauldrons high in high Dordona’s oakengroves.

And he had learned, through his stay amongst the Lotophages, that balm perpetual for sorrow there was not. Tempted by scent and taste, and with valor born of ignorance, he had drunk so deeply of the liquor of the Scarlet Fig (not yet knowing it to be just that) that he had not even cared upon observing that he had been cast away. Through repeated draughts of the enchanting liquid he had indeed forgot his native land; almost he had forgotten his own language. And for a while he had certainly forgotten the usages of civil man; of man in the complex and civilized world. True that when among the Lotus Eaters he had suffered neither sorrow nor pain, and he had forgotten not alone his concerns and longings and worries: he had forgotten the very conceptions of sorrow, pain, concern and worry. But something there was within him which would not allow him tarry among the naked gentle Lotophages, forgetful of almost all things. Even the Lotophages did long for the comfort of the fruit and drink of the lotus; even, they desired the comfort of the fire that burned at night — though precisely whence they had recovered fire when their own inexorable lentor allowed their single fire to fade away, of this he had little notion.

Something within him had pressed, pressed gently but pressed … after some while … insistently … and so he had left the gentle company of those who, as
who
had put it? nummed the honey-sweet lotus and drank its fragrant liquor.
Huldah
had said that. He had as it were torn himself away from the gentle company upon the coast, had forced himself to flee into the wilderness where dwelt the far from always gentle satyrs. Wild honey he had found none, but part of his new diet was locust rather than lotus: the pods of the locust tree, called also carob, or acacia. And, slowly, oh so slowly, his mind had cleared. The mists and fogs had slowly been blown away. Once again he was in the midst of the island folk and gazing at a ship far out at sea.

Little though the Romans loved the sea and little though Vergil had been accustomed to judge of such matters, still, he felt to a certainty that this was not the same ship which had marooned him here. But he felt no such certainty that this vessel would of a certainty put in to this haven. Perhaps they knew not the nature of the land. Perhaps they knew very well and for that reason particularly desired to avoid it. Or … merely … perhaps their course lay elsewhere and they simply had no reason to divert or diverge.