Realms of Gold Page 11

  Nina screams. He moans. Blood stains Nina’s pale green dress. A dark hand snuffs out the candles one by one.

  Her heart jack-hammering away, Bianca sits bolt upright, sickened by the relentless image of Nina in the coffin. Was this vision beyond the realm of the real world, or was it the by-product of her own imagination?. She flicks on the lamp. Only three o’clock. She thinks about taking a sleeping pill, but they might make her feel worse--besides Giovanni might be cross with her if she oversleeps. Instead, she pulls the bedspread up to her chin and tries drawing the black velvet curtain across the screen in her head. But it won’t budge. Finally she jumps out of bed and takes two aspirins. This is one vision she can’t and won’t record in her computer journal. She doesn’t fall asleep until almost dawn.

  In the morning, Anselmo packs their luggage into an old Lancia Giovanni exchanged for his Range Rover and they are off by eight o’clock. When she shakes Anselmo’s hand and thanks him, she senses his relief at their departure. She thinks to herself it’s perhaps a burden for him to get the house ready, dinner prepared, without any help.

  Traffic is light. She’s still groggy and, after the vivid, frightening dream about Nina being raped by The Writer, she doesn’t feel the least bit talkative.

  As they pass field after field of white longhorn cattle, Giovanni begins his daily lesson. “There’s some argument about whether or not they’re the descendants of the ancient cattle of Sybaris. I like to think so.” He laughs. “I must confess that I’ve been thinking about stopping for mozzarella, so fresh it drips warm milk. But I don’t want to appear to be yet another a food obsessed Italian.”

  She barely acknowledges his remark. Food is the farthest thing from her mind: Zatoria is the closest.

  Lokri Epizefiri, Apulia, Magna Graecia

  In the culture of Ancient Greece and Magna Graecia, a pinax-plural— pinakes a “ board” denotes a votive tablet of painted wood, terracotta, marble or bronze that served as a votive object deposited in a sanctuary.

  They were offerings to Demeter and Persephone and Aphrodite.

  We had not many days in Sinope. When the winter winds calmed, we set sail for Lokri, not such a long journey and land is never out of sight as our boat hugs the shore. The blue sails billow in the spring breeze and we arrive at Lokri Epizefiri in only seven moons. As the boat meets its moorings in the harbor, the vast sea is as flat as a pool of melted silver. On the docks grain is everywhere, sacks spilling wheat, bound for cities I have never heard of. Women wrap straw around clay pots, the kraters, kitharos and kylixes the Hellenes use for drinking and feastings and as offerings in the graves of the dead for their use in the afterlife. The Lokrians worship at two temples renowned across the seas, the temple of the Kore, Persephone, daughter of Demeter, the Hellenes' harvest goddess. Beyond the city, on the edge of the sea, stands the temple of the Cyprian Aphrodite. These temples are of such beauty they say they rival those in Olbia or Athens.

  At the great temple of Persephone, the women leave clay pomegranates and pinakes as offerings to Mother and Daughter. The Lokrian women have rights they do not have in Athens. They have taken it upon themselves to return to the rule of women. Unfaithful wives found with lovers, or hierodule, women who had lost favor with citizens, abandoned Athens to found this polis, Lokri of the Sweet Breezes. Here, a child bears the name of the mother’s family, not the father’s.

  This is the year few children were born to the Lokrian women. Many men succumbed to high fever and some who survived could no longer sire a child. The young men had gone off to wage war with the Persians, while Lokrian merchants plied the seas trading coral, wine, and oil for the tin and amber of the Hyperboreans and for wheat from the people who live along the shores of the Euxinus.

  The women of Lokri took matters into their own hands. They knew they had to dedicate themselves to Aphrodite if the Lokrians were to continue to increase in number. A woman who wanted a child would offer herself to the goddess. On a night of her choosing, she would come to the temple to loop a garland of myrtle across Aphrodite’s stone image and sing hymns to her beauty. Then she would go forth with any passing stranger who might please her.

  The temple to Aphrodite, the Cyprian born of foam, Saviour of men, sits on a neck of land that juts out into the bright sea. They say it pleases the violet-crowned goddess to look out over the loud-moaning sea, and, with her sweet moist breath, calm the waves to make the voyage safe and swift for sailors. There, young boys, beginning to feel their manhood, offer up their seed against the stone folds of her gown.

  Ships from many ports moor close by and love-starved men come to shore seeking the pleasures of the Lokrian women. Childless women come upon tall, golden-haired giants from the Hellenes’ Massilia, or the pale- faced, blue-eyed Hyperboreans, or dark-skinned sea traders who entice them with coffers of fragrant spices, ambrosial balsams, and flasks of cedar oil to burn, making the air thick and sweet around the temple.

  Night has fallen and the Lokrian lighthouse torch burns its flames around the temple of Aphrodite. The sea trembles looking toward her image. Tonight the goddess is draped with a garment of byssus, gold-embroidered. The fair Ortygia left this offering, having made a large fortune from the beauty of her own body.

  In the portico of her vast temple, doves nest everywhere, leaving droppings in the eaves and gables. Other doves with clipped wings, fat with grain, waddle, pecking at the offerings to the goddess. They say that the cooing of doves is like the sound of a woman moaning with pleasure in the arms of her lover.

  In the most sacred space, women prepare themselves for the ceremony they call the hieros gamos. Pyxides filled with perfumed red unguent for the lips and breast tips, fine brushes with soot- black powder to line the eyes, and golden powders to dust on face and body. With her peplos loosened, a woman is ready to dedicate herself to the goddess of beauty and love. For the poets sing that on these nights nothing is sweeter for these women than desire and their mouths spit honey.

  Book IV

  And the Lady Blanchefleur loved Sir Percival every day with a greater and greater passion, but Sir Percival showed no passion of love for her in return, and then Lady Blanchefleur was greatly troubled.

  — Chrétien de Troyes, Le Conte du Graal

  Giovanni

  December 16, 2007

  On their way to Foggia, Giovanni suddenly stops to get something from the trunk. She opens the window and watches him scanning the horizon with binoculars. Finally he jumps into his seat and they drive off.

  “You never told me you were a bird watcher.”

  He shakes his head and laughs. Bianca, Bianca you're blessedly naïve! If there are any tombaroli out there, I can usually spot them with these powerful glasses. December and January are the best months for tomb looters and this is one of their favorite areas for probing and plundering. The ground is wet from autumn rains, so it’s easier for them to screw their long metal rods into the softened earth to probe the soil. And they also wear masks so they can’t be identified with a telephoto lens. Sometimes they even pay the farmers to plow the earth or use farm equipment to carve furrows seemingly for seed planting. Now they’ve even begun to use dredges and deep plowing to make it look as if there’s legitimate agricultural work going on.”

  He reaches for the map from the door’s side pocket and hands it to her.

  “Where are we now?” she asks.

  “Not far from Canosa, once the stronghold of the ancient Daunians.”

  “Who were they?”

  “People of Celto-Illyrian stock. from around the Danube, a horse-riding elite warrior aristocracy. They made their way across Europe to the Adriatic to settle the East coast of the Italian peninsula around the ninth century B.C.—before the Greeks arrived on the scene. We’d know more about the Daunians if only their tombs had not been so unmercifully violated and evidence destroyed forever--there are still some tombaroli around here who smash less salable but still valuable artifacts.

  “In 1980 an untouched tom
b was found—the Tomb of the Willow Branches. What they discovered in the tomb were tightly braided willow branches, most likely used in rituals, in the Orphic Mysteries. Orphism was strong here in the south—due to the influence of Pythagoras and the belief in the afterlife, a new concept for the Greeks.”

  Bianca

  December 16, 2007

  After stopping for a panini at an Autogrill, they arrive at the marina of Sybaris and the Hotel Oleandro. Giovanni seems worn-out and goes straight to his room for a siesta. Bianca is shown to a tiny room with a view facing a basin of luxury pleasure craft and moored sailboats with battened-up sails. The silver sky has darkened to pewter gray with a light mist falling, fog creeping in.

  She unpacks her fancy never-yet-worn nightgown. Even though her mother once let it slip that she thought her daughter would never marry, Bianca knows hope still springs eternal in Mom’s breast--probably more hope in hers than in her own. When she checks the gown for washing instructions, she’s relieved when she reads the tag—100% polyester. Her mother knows better than to have bought silk. Real silk needs to be ironed. Bianca is determined finally to wear the nightgown on this trip and promises herself to rinse it out ever every other night and let it drip dry.

  Get rid of your fantasies about him, she keeps urging herself. A romance will never develop between us. He’s already made that very clear. But then she rationalizes—maybe he’s just as lonely as I am. Did you ever think of that, Bianca? She keeps re-mending herself, keeps correcting and improving the text she writes in her head.

  She slips into her nightgown and crawls between the crisp sheets smelling as fresh and salty as if they’d been washed at sea and flapped dry on a mast. She closes her eyes, relieved that the black curtain is still drawn tight against the visions. She nods off thinking about the ancient Greeks in Italy, wondering when they’d first sailed to these shores. The last thing she hears is the deep, muted sound of a distant foghorn. She falls asleep envisioning Nina’s gold earring gleaming in the mud at the bottom of the Grand Canal.

  *

  When she wakes up, words echo in her head. “Sila, Sila, Sila, Sila.” She turns on her computer and writes “Sila,” the last word she “heard” as she entered consciousness. Then she records what she’s “seen” in her dream.

  She looks at her watch. It’s almost five. She throws on her clothes and walks downstairs.

  Giovanni is in the lounge playing his guitar. She recognizes the Adagio from Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No 2. He looks up, then abruptly stops.

  “Don’t stop—please go on. I love that melody. I listen to the Adagio all the time—especially when I write.”

  “A few years back Eric Carmen added lyrics.”

  “Can you sing them for me?”

  He hesitates as if he’s just about to say no. “I can sing them all right —but I’ve sung them far too much these past few years.”

  “Are you sick of them?”

  He shakes his head, then slapping his hand hard against the guitar, he begins to pluck its strings. He looks right at her. This time she knows the words will be for her, Bianca Evans Caldwell. Not for Bianca Fiore.

  No use pretending things can still be right

  There’s really nothing more to say

  I’ll get along without your kiss good night

  Just close the door and walk away

  Never gonna fall in love again

  I don’t wanna start with someone new

  ‘Cause I couldn’t bear to see it end

  Just like me and you

  No I never wanna feel the pain

  Of remembering how it used to be

  Never gonna fall in love again….

  Her hopes are dashed. His heart is definitely tugging in a different direction from hers. Now she understands why he didn’t want her to hear the lyrics—on second thought, he may have decided to use them as defensive armor. So she’d get the point--know exactly where she stands. Maybe it’s easier for him to do it this way, in a song.

  Hurt by his rebuff, she thinks that for his sake and hers, she’d better change the subject. “I just had the strangest dream. I don’t always remember afternoon dreams, but this one is so vivid I wrote it in my computer journal.”

  “Tell me about it.” He pauses. “If you want to.”

  She isn’t really sure that she should share it. But, then, from the disappointed look on his face, she relents.

  “My dream was about a woman whose husband wants to abandon his girl-baby in the forest because she isn’t perfect.” She smiles and shakes her head. “A puzzling dream because my own father never expected perfection from me or my work. To the contrary, it was my father who always encouraged me to use my imagination. My mother never understood it. I think it scared her.”

  “I’d like to read what you’ve written. It has the ring of a mythic tale.”

  “Sure…perhaps later on this evening you can come to my room.”

  “Better yet, why don’t you bring your laptop to the lounge while we’re having a drink before dinner?”

  He’s put her in her place. She bites her lower lip, hoping that maybe he’ll forget about the dream and what he obviously thought was a blatant invitation to read it in the too close comfort of her room.

  At eight o’clock he calls. “I’ll be in the bar. Don’t forget your computer.”

  She changes into a mid-calf black skirt, white cotton shirt and black cardigan and pins up her hair loosely. She unfolds the Versace scarf. She never once wore it in New York, but tonight she will. Spreading the scarf out on the bed, she stops to admire the silken image of the beautiful Medusa. This is not the ugly, frightening Gorgon whose glance turns men to stone. She loops and ties the scarf around her neck and looks in the mirror. Yes, Southern Italy is different, she's beginning to feel. Maybe Sergio is right. Maybe it is a race apart. Stranger yet, she’s beginning to feel that she’s a part of this race apart.

  Giovanni

  He’s pleased that Bianca is wearing his gift. With her hair off her face and her subtle makeup, she looks quite attractive. He orders vodka on the rocks and sits by her side, watching intently as she boots up the laptop and scrolls through to her journal. She turns the screen toward him so he can read the entry.

  Sila, the word Sila, repeats itself in my head.

  I descend step after step to a basement apartment, not the one I’m living in now, but another I recognize from having lived there a long, long time ago. I knock on the door. A woman opens it.

  I enter a room where I see a young woman, her stomach swollen as though she’s about to give birth. The woman stumbles and falls. “Are you all right?” her husband asks. “Where does it hurt?” The young woman answers, “In my womb.” Her husband shakes his head. He does not want to raise an imperfect child.

  [Cut to another scene] I follow the woman who explains that she has given birth to a red-haired daughter. The woman is fearful for her child. Her husband exposes the baby girl in the forest but a she-bear finds her and suckles her.

  Now the daughter is grown. Her hair is long and red, thick and wavy. Men surround her. They are building a ship, making plans for a voyage. The young woman is excited because she will be sailing with a group called the Forty-Nine Men. She will be the only woman on board. The red haired woman seems happy with the prospects of this sea journey.

  *

  He reads Bianca’s dream three times before he finally speaks, “Bianca, do you know what you’ve written here? Do you have any idea at all?” From the look on her face he can tell she’s puzzled.

  She shrugs. “I tried not to read too much into it.” Laughing self -consciously and blushing, she says “A dream about a woman with forty-nine men? Freud would say this dream was obviously sexual wish-fulfillment for a frustrated old maid.” Her face flushes even deeper.

  He shakes his head in disbelief. “Surely you’ve read the tales of Jason and the Argonaut and the Golden Fleece.”

  “Of course I know about Jason’s quest. When I was in
college I read Medea—the tragedy —about a sorceress so angry when Jason deserts her that she avenges herself by killing their children—and destroying his new lover. Never a story I liked or identified with.”

  “Did you not know in the legend there was one woman who sailed with Jason? And forty-nine men? Fifty people sailed on the Argonaut. Forty-nine men and one woman.”

  “The woman’s name?”

  “Atalanta.”

  “The mythic huntress who raced? As in the ‘swiftness of Atalanta’?”

  “When Atalanta was born, her father abandoned her in the forest but she somehow survived.”

  She shakes her head in disbelief.

  “Did you not know that Sybaris and Kroton were founded by Achaeans and Troezenians? And that the Troezenians were from Argos? Jason and his men were probably the first Greeks to settle these shores. One of the first Greek temples was built in Krotona, a temple to the goddess Hera Lacinia. We are near the Sila Mountains. What were you thinking about before you fell asleep?”

  “I only remember asking myself who were the first Greeks to settle in Southern Italy. I can’t remember anything after that.”

  “In your dream you were given the answer. Incredible! What an ability you’ve been given! Now you can probably understand why you should be my guide. Have you read The Iliad?”

  “Yes—in bits and pieces—but never all at once, nonstop from start to finish. I’ve always felt lacking in the Classics, although I read a lot on my own for my magazine assignments. Sergio keeps me so busy with my stories and covering the auctions, I hardly have time for anything else. I think he’s afraid that I’ll run out of visions for the vignettes.”

  “Why do you stay on?”

  “It’s a job, fairly well paid. Besides, he believes in me.”