Book Six: The Green Ceremony
And my heart was full of wicked songs that they put into it; and I wanted to make faces and twist myself about in the way they did… So I did the charm over again, and touched my eyes and my lips and my hair in a peculiar manner, and said the old words… and I was so glad I could do it quite well, and I danced and danced along, and sang extraordinary songs that came into my head… songs full of words that must not be spoken or written down. Then I made faces like the faces on the rocks, and I twisted myself about like the twisted ones, and I lay down flat on the ground like the dead ones.
Machen, The White People
July Eleventh
The sky above the city is the color of dirty water, the air heavy with humidity. An occasional drizzle smears the windows of the massive grey building near Riverside Park and runs in sooty patterns down the bricks. Inside, the apartment smells of old rugs and furniture, and of an old man who only bathes when he has to.
The Old One doesn't care. As he enters the front hall carrying a brown paper bag of groceries and, on top of them, his day's mail, shakes off his umbrella in the bathroom and leaves it open in the tub to dry, then sits down on the stained lid of the toilet and carefully slips off his galoshes, he pays no attention to the place's shabbiness or smell, or to the pleasures of coining home. Repairing to the kitchen, he stocks the sparsely filled refrigerator with groceries and removes the tape and tissue paper from the bag; the mail he throws away unopened, except for two bills. Tugging out his false teeth, twin strands of saliva stretching from the ends, he deposits them in a water glass in the bathroom. He spends the next half hour at his desk, balancing his checkbook and writing out checks for the rent and electricity, delicately licking the stamps he keeps in a cigar box in the drawer and affixing them with care to the envelopes. These he leaves on the table in the hall for the next time he goes out. Then, idly scratching his nose, he walks to the bookcase in the living room and stoops before a set of drab brown Victorian volumes gathering dust on the second shelf from the bottom.
How amusing, he thinks, as he withdraws one of them – amusing that a key to dark and ancient rites should survive in such innocuous-looking form.
A young fool like Freirs would probably refuse to believe it. Like the rest of his doomed kind, he'd probably expect such lore to be found only in ancient leather-bound tomes with gothic lettering and portentously sinister tides. He'd search for it in mysterious old trunks and private vaults, in the 'restricted' sections of libraries, in intricately carved wood chests with secret compartments.
But there are no real secrets, the Old One knows. Secrets are ultimately too hard to conceal. The keys to the rites that will transform the world are neither hidden nor rare nor expensive. They are available to anyone. You can find them on the paperback racks or in any second-hand bookshop.
You just have to know where to look – and how to put the pieces together.
There are pieces in an out-of-print religious tract by one Nicholas Keize. And in a certain language textbook which, in its appendix, transcribes nursery rhymes in an obsolete Malaysian dialect surprisingly like Celtic. And in a story, supposedly fiction – but not when read at the right time – by an obscure Welsh visionary who barely suspected why he'd written it, and who regretted it in later years and died a fervent churchman. And in the pictures on a cheap pack of novelty cards based on images from unguessed-of antiquity. And in a Tuscan folk dance included in a certain staid old dance book which, along with plies and pirouettes, has the dancer make a pattern called 'the changes.'
The pieces are there, simply waiting to be fitted together into what, from the start, they were meant to be: a set of instructions for the Ceremonies.
Carefully the Old One wraps the book in tissue paper and tapes it closed. He leaves it on the table in the hall. He will send it off tomorrow, in the box he's prepared.
He hopes that Carol likes his little gift. Dancing is supposed to be her specialty.
Bwada's walking better now, seems more affectionate than ever toward the Poroths – even lets Deborah pet her, which is something new – amp; has an amazing appetite, though she seems to have difficulty swallowing. Some minor mouth infection, perhaps; she won't let anybody see. Sarr says her recovery demonstrates how the Lord watches over the innocent; affirms his faith, he says. Quote: 'If I'd taken her to Flemington to see the vet, I'd just have been throwing away good money.'
Later this week he'll have his mother over to take a look at her. She healed Bwada once before, amp; maybe she can do it again.
But even without her, the swelling on Bwada's side is almost gone. Hair growing back over it like mildew growing up my wall, spreading fast.
Mildew. I'm all too familiar with it now. Every day it climbs higher on the walls of this place, like water rising; glad my books are on shelves off the ground. So damp in here that my note paper sags; books go limp, as if they're made of wet cloth. At night my sheets are clammy amp; cold, but each morning I wake up sweating. My envelopes have been ruined – glue's gotten moistened, sealing them all shut. Stamps in my wallet are stuck to the dollar bills. When I wrote a letter to Carol today, I had to use the Poroths' glue to stick the thing together.
Spent a lot of my afternoon in here rereading 'The Turn of the Screw,' which I hadn't looked at since my undergraduate days. Seem to be alone in finding it the single most pretentious amp; overrated ghost tale ever written (though perfect for the ML A crowd); Clayton's film version, which I showed in class this year, is ten times as effective. Searched in vain amid the psychological abstractions for an authentic chill amp; found only one image that moved me: his description of a rural calm as 'that hush in which something gathers or crouches… '
Outside, another drizzly day. Soggy-looking slate-grey skies, gloomy evening, thunder. Hasn't let up since Saturday night, amp; depressing as hell, like something out of Cold Comfort Farm. One huge cloud seems to have settled over the landscape like a bowl. A few pale shapes – seagulls again? – high overhead, but no other birds around, amp; no sign of the sun.
Wandered around the farm late in the afternoon, bored with sitting still. The Poroths were out pulling weeds among the shoots of corn amp; were blessedly silent for once. Was tempted to join them but didn't feel like getting my hands dirty, much less spending an hour or two bent almost double.
Rainy night. After dinner, reluctant to come out here amp; be alone again so soon, hung around the farmhouse with the Poroths, earnestly squinting through Walden in their living room while Sarr whittled amp; Deborah crocheted. Rain sounded better in there, a restful thumping on the roof; out here it's not quite so cozy.
Around nine or ten Sarr went to die kitchen amp; hauled out the radio, amp; we sat around listening to the news, cats purring around us, Sarr with Azariah in his lap, Deborah petting Toby, me allergic amp; sniffing. (My 'total immersion' experiment isn't working.)
Nice to have a radio, though, amp; feel that tenuous contact with the world out there. Even Sarr must recognize the attraction. Remember hearing how, up in Maine, some poor families spend each Sunday sitting in their car parked in their yard, listening to the only radio they own.
Guess I'm just not cut out to be a modern-day Thoreau.
Halfway through some boring farm report I pointed to Bwada, curled up at my feet, amp; said, 'Hey, get her. You'd think she was listening to the news!' Deborah laughed amp; leaned over to scratch Bwada behind the ears. As she did so, Bwada turned to look at me. I wonder what it is about that cat that makes me so uneasy.
Rain letting up slightly. I'm sitting here slouched over the table, trying to decide if I'm sleepy enough to turn in now. Maybe I should try to read some more, or clean this place up a bit. Things soon grow messy out here, even though I don't have much to keep track of: dust on windowsills, spiderwebs perennially in corners, notes amp; clippings amp; dried-up rose petals scattered over this table.
I think that the rain sound is going to put me to sleep after all. It's almost stopped now, but I can still hear the dripping from the trees outside my window, dripping leaf to leaf amp;, in the end, to the dead leaves that line the forest floor. It will probably continue on amp; off all night. Occasionally I think I hear a thrashing in one of the big trees down in the direction of the barn, but then the sound turns into the falling of the rain.
July Twelfth
Carol staggered into the apartment, fanning herself with a creased copy of Spring: 'Start Fresh with Our Three-Part Summer Makeover.' Her Tuesday-evening dance class had been exhausting, and the ride back downtown no better: twenty-five minutes on a crowded bus with inadequate air conditioning.
Here there was no air conditioning at all. As soon as I have the money I'm buying one, she reminded herself. It must be a hundred and ten in here. No sooner had she locked the door behind her than she was unbuttoning her
