Pale, beyond porch and portal,
Crowned with calm leaves, she stands
Who gathers all things mortal
With cold immortal hands;
Her languid lips are sweeter
Than love's who fears to greet her
To men that mix and meet her
From many times and lands. (Swinburne, “The Garden of Proserpine”)
1
Eurydice
On my first evening in the land of the Dead I was sent, lamed and limping, to visit Persephone in her boudoir. I sat by her elbow on a silk cushion. She wore green and silver veils, translucent, fraying at the edges. Her shadowed face was cold yet lambent. She said to me (as she would subsequently say to me; it became her habit): ‘Eurydice, did I ever tell you the story of my youth?’ Of course by now I have heard the story many times, and in almost every conceivable iteration, most of them outrageous fictions. But in those days everything was fresh to me and morbidly interesting. I wanted to hear the story so badly that I dared put my recalcitrant ear upon her armrest. She bent her head towards me, inclining her neck, which was like the neck of a marble faucet. ‘Well, then,’ she said. ‘One spring day
2
‘One spring day as I played with Ocean’s daughters on a flowering hillside, Death came riding by in his gold chariot. In those days he was not called Death but other, lovelier, harsher names. Today, Death is a bare remnant of what he was, scarcely to be touched, as I’m sure you will have noticed; in those days, entirely touchable, complete and muscular, a colossus.
“Hello,” said Death. His voice was low; one must imagine a rich, cello-like resonance, without the human tremor of vibrato. “I should like to take you home with me, to the land of the Dead.”
“Oh,” I said. I had never considered such a future for myself, though as a child I had played in caves that were old and cold and felt like tombs, and when the wind went through them, they were filled with millions of unchained voices. “Won’t it be terribly unpleasant?”
“No, oh, no,” said Death. He may have been smiling; he had many white teeth shining from a face which, like a shadowed corner of a house, seemed always to evade vision, and always to be somewhere else. “You shall experience no pain.”
“But I have heard,” I said, “that there is no sun in the land of the Dead, and no light. Won’t I be horribly cold?”
“You shall be warmer than fire in my home,” said Death, “yet you shall never burn.”
“But oh,” I said. “I have just remembered. Won’t I have to die, to join you in the land of the Dead? Or if living, won’t I feel myself a bit of an outcast?”
“You will rule over the Dead,” said Death, “as their Queen.”
“Ah,” I said. “And you shall be King?”
“Yes.”
“I will have to marry you?”
“Yes.” He held out a hand. It was very pale, nearly blue where the light hit it, seeming almost to emit a borrowed light, as the moon does.
“This is certainly a fascinating proposition,” I said. “Are there flowers in the land of the Dead, and blooming hillsides?”
“I shall make them for you, and more.”
“And will I have a room of my own, with my own door and window?”
“As many as you wish.”
“And will there be a moon in the casement of my window? I can only sleep if I can see the moon.”
“You shall need no sleep,” said Death, “in my home. But there shall be a moon, and you shall see it from your window.”
“No sleep,” I said. Death smiled with all his teeth, and his face turned and turned like an alleyway.
“No sleep, only dreams,” said Death.
3
‘That isn’t how it went, of course,’ said Persephone. ‘I was young then, but I was not naïve. I knew exactly what was happening to me. I knew what he wanted. I knew what I wanted. He wanted a thing to love, or perhaps a thing to digest. I am too tough and gristly to be eaten, however. I on the other hand wanted to be queen, to rule. And I wanted flowers and fields and a moon in my window, the comforts of home. I did not know then that it would be the same moon every night, that it would not wax and wane as ours does. It is a pity. Now I hate to look at it—it is like having a pocket watch with the hands stopped.’
4
Eurydice
There are no dark stairways within the land of the Dead, and I have never seen any leading out of it. If there were, I might have tried to climb up and away, once; then again, I might not. I have forgotten now what the sun is like, but I think it must be a garish, unnecessary thing. And I would not want to be parted from Persephone or from Persephone’s garden, all hung with pulsing red flowers and strewn with gentle veils of darkness. I am engaged to see her again tonight. I’ll endeavor to make her laugh. The sound, oh, you’ve never heard such a sound before. Like a forest of crickets. I’ve grown to consider it the dearest sound in the world. Soon you’ll find it so, too, I’m sure, once you’ve gotten adjusted.
5
‘The adjustment,’ said Persephone, ‘was gradual. For a long time I did not go into my room, did not attempt to sleep, but wandered wakeful in the half-darkness, looked down upon by the stopped watch of the moon. I did not like to go near the newly dead. Whenever they saw me they gibbered like confused children and stretched out long long arms, and then cowered and turned away, as though I were too hot to touch. But I was very cold.
‘For many days I could not eat, either. No food, no drink, no sleep. Only dreams—or rather the single waking dream of the land of the Dead.
‘Every evening Death called me to him as he sat at ease on his throne of thistles.
“You do not like your room,” he said. He sounded rather wistful. He did not smile.
“You have not touched the food I laid out for you,” he said. He was hurt, troubled.
“You have not tried on the dress of white satin upon your bed,” he said. Something in his eyes brightened and then darkened.
“Don’t you like my vast dark gardens?” he said. “Don’t you like the moon always in your window?”
‘I said nothing.
‘One day or night in my wanderings I came upon a pomegranate grove. The fruit hung red and shining among the darkness of the leaves, the sort of red that holds within it a still deeper red, as some jewels do. I laid my hand upon one of them. Shall I eat it? I wondered. Could I put food to my lips?
‘It was in my mouth before I knew I had reached for it. It split, erupting with sweetness and sourness, filling my mouth with small bursting seeds.
‘I turned around. Someone had spoken. A thousand little rustling voices spoke. I turned around and around, searching for the speaker. Only after I had made myself dizzy with spinning did I realize it was the leaves that had spoken, and the fruit within the leaves. They shook their glowing faces at me and said, in small, crinkly voices, “Here, there, nowhere, it makes no difference.” I flew out of the pomegranate grove, chased by voices, but the voices did not cease. I looked up at the stopped watch of the moon and began to hear a great, somnolent voice, loud as a wave pounding surf. It said, again and again, “Now and now and now and now and never.”
‘The dead were no longer silent, either. Whereas before I had heard only a meaningless chittering, now I heard their confused, repeated cries. They said, again and again, stretching out their arms growing longer and longer like shadows, “Who? When? Why? What? Where?” There was no sorrow in their voices, only a lost, falling cadence, as though they did not understand that they had died.
“I have learned the language of the Dead,” I said to Death that evening.
“Oh?” said Death. His teeth beamed out of the valley of his face.
“And now I know why I am here,” I said. “Why I ought to stay.”
“Yes?” said Death eagerly.
“I want to make my own garden for the Dead,” I said. “I want to listen to their stories. I want to heal their wounds.”
“How very ambitious of you,” said Death coldly.’
6
Eurydice
The first time I arrived I did not need to be taught the language of the Dead at all. The moment I took the rusted coin from under my tongue and gave it to the green-cloaked ferryman, all the voices of the Dead flooded my ears. Not only of the Dead, but of the slow purl of water round the boat, of the little bats that flew far up near the iron dome of the sky, of every little insect that ate its way into the long and ancient oar. I understood more than I ever had in life. It was as though I had finally entered the true country of my birth, in which every language was as native to me as my own thoughts.
That chorus of voices in the land of the Dead was more enchanting to me than any of the music That Man had once played. It did not make me want to stand still, nor did it make me want to draw near, as his music had done. It did not, in fact, make any demand upon me at all. It only filled me with a thousand little bursts of joy.
7
‘First,’ said Persephone, drawing her fraying veils closer about her, as the night was growing cold, ‘I arranged the garden. I say arranged, not planted—for nothing new grows here. I found red pulsing flowers that reminded me of home. I found floating bits of the general darkness that wailed and wailed in their loneliness, and stitched them into veils, and strewed them about the flowers.
‘Then one by one the women began to arrive. All were horribly changed.
‘One woman looked like a stone neatly cracked in half by a bolt of lightning. Her face was split in two by the long, glimmering gash.
‘Another could barely walk, for she was made of a strangely mobile sort of marble. When she tried to speak, her pale lips were slow and clacked together.
‘Some women looked scarcely human at all. They could easily be mistaken for trees or spiders or pipes. The pipes came floating into my garden playing a strange plaintive tune. I almost mistook them for the sighing of one of the rivers, or the first tinny whistle of a tea kettle.
‘For days after arriving they often did nothing but stand still, as though frozen, among the flowers. Only gradually would they move and breathe and cry out to be cared for.’
8
Eurydice
Women still come to Persephone’s garden, of course. They find their way here eventually, like you did. Sometimes I like to wander among the newly arrived women, struck by the stillness of their transfigured bodies. They are like ornamental statues among the flowers. Every so often a face twitches. Sometimes a slow tear gathers and falls. When I see a mouth open to speak, I know that the healing has begun.
That Man could make a whole forest stand still, just for him.
9
Eurydice
Interrupting one of her retellings of the story, as she did now and then, Persephone once said: ‘Do you remember the evening I first saw you?’ Her eyes twinkled behind her veils.
I lifted my ear just an inch from her armrest.
I said, very quietly, ‘I had a face, then. My old face.’
‘You shall have one again, by and by,’ said Persephone kindly, and rested her slim-wristed hand upon my hair. ‘But yes, you had not yet been completely changed, then. Your face shone out, so soft, it seemed to me, that the surface of it would break if I were to touch it! You did limp, of course, from the bite of the viper; you favored the leg terribly; but—do you remember?—you refused to have it mended.’
‘I did not want to forget,’ I said. ‘I cherished the pain. I was in love.’
Persephone was silent for a moment. Perhaps she thought of her own strange lover. Then gently, very gently, Persephone said, in her softest cricket voice: ‘And do you remember the second time you came to me?’
‘I cannot remember,’ I said.
‘Tell me again,’ I said.
Persephone folded her hands upon her lap of green silk and tilted her head towards me. Though she looked me in the eye, it was with the attitude of one listening simultaneously to distant music.
‘Your face,’ said Persephone, carefully, ‘was all red.’
‘Red,’ I said.
‘Not red, precisely,’ said Persephone. ‘It was like a long gash. It was like the smudge upon a canvas, a painter’s accident. You could not look me in the eye for you had no eyes. You could not speak for you had no mouth. It was not a face you had but a formless chaos. A lack of a face. A peeling away of the face.’
‘What did you do, then?’ I asked, barely breathing. ‘What did I do?’
‘I wept to see you so,’ said Persephone. ‘I freely admit it. You could not cry for yourself, you had not the capability, then. But I could cry for you.’
‘And then?’
‘And then I took you into my arms,’ said Persephone, ‘and I said, “My child, my sweet darling girl, who has done this to you? Who has snatched away your face?”’
‘And I?’
‘And you said nothing. You had forgotten the language of the Dead, along with everything else. You had even forgotten That Man.’
10
Eurydice
There is a polished bronze mirror hanging in Persephone’s boudoir, lit by pulsing red flowers. Each time I come to her, I check the face within it. I want to see how it is progressing.
Persephone treats my face with the pungent juice of fruits and flowers, with warm and cold scented baths, with long walks in her garden, beneath an iron sky in which there is always a full moon. But especially with stories: stories of myself, stories of herself. The more I remember, the more my face returns to me.
Tonight my face in the bronze plate of the mirror shows signs not only of eyes and mouth and nose, the usual accoutrements, but a hint of the old expression it used to put on. Something of wit and mirth glints now in the shining pupils. But the darkness around the eyes is new. The weight, the heaviness of the skin, the alien wrinkles have no place in my memory. And the mouth refuses to turn up but remains tilted sideways, like one of the moons that hang in the world above, half-eaten.
Each day my face gains new substance: it is penciled and shaded in; it is given color and heat, roundness and texture. Each day it is a face I recognize both more and less. It is my old face; it is a new face.
And so I say to Persephone every night: ‘I cannot remember. Tell me again.’
11
Eurydice
Some nights ago, when I came to Persephone’s boudoir, she was already bent over, packing an old brown suitcase.
‘You are leaving?’ I said.
She lifted her head from the suitcase, into which she was placing neatly folded clothes, pressing flowers between them.
‘Yes,’ she said. She smiled, her cheeks lifting. ‘I leave tomorrow.’
‘Why?’ I said. ‘Why would you leave? Is there anywhere but here?’
‘Here,’ she said, sinking down again into her chair and letting her veils resettle themselves upon her face, ‘time does not pass. But up there, the Sun is burning and going out, again and again, and the winds are blowing and blowing. It is my time to return, for just three months, to the world of Spring—do you know Spring?’ she asked, with a strange light in her face.
I shook my head. I must have known it once.
‘It is the time when new flowers are born, tossed from Chloris’ ruddy skirts,’ she said, ‘and when Zephyrus, the West Wind, comes back and tugs at our hair and our dresses and begs us to dance.’
I did not know the meaning of what she said, precisely, but I heard it in the sound of her voice: a warm, beating light; a rising, floating feeling. If I closed my eyes I thought I could just see the rosy hemline of Spring, the tossed petals at a wedding.
‘My mother is waiting for me there,’ said Persephone quietly. She looked down at her shapely hands. ‘Each time I return I almost expect to be a little girl again. I expect to run and greet Ocean’s daughters roaming on the hillside. But I am always older and Ocean’s daughters are gone.’
She paused. She looked up at me.
‘But for my mother I am always a child. She enfolds me in arms the color of gold wheat. She makes me forget. Then I return, and remember again.’
12
Eurydice
Remembering came in flashes that night.
I saw a long dark path, like a birth canal, rising upward into more darkness. I saw a silver tailcoat flapping just a few feet before me. Shiny shoes tapping the ground. A guitar swinging from an arm. A pocket watch, somewhere beneath the tailcoat, obstinately keeping time.
I saw a strange light up ahead, widening and widening. Each step up the path was so slow, so slow, it barely seemed to move closer.
All at once the silver tailcoat stood half in light, half in shadow. He stilled, as though the line between had cut him. As though he listened for two worlds, for the moaning of the Dead and the laughter of a little lark.
He turned around. He flung out light from his eyes like a net. My face resisted, rippled, then ripped. Tore from me and ran to him.
13
Eurydice
For now, while Persephone is gone, I am the one who waits at the gateway to Persephone’s garden. I usher in the lost girls and women. I weep when they cannot weep; I tell stories when they cannot speak.
The moment I saw your face, my child, I knew something terrible had happened, something to make your face put on another face, or put off a face entirely.
Come, my sweet girl, come to my boudoir and put your weary head on my armrest. I shall tell you my story. We have all the time in the world, until Persephone returns.
Very soon you shall tell your own story.