Voyages in the Underworld of Orpheus Black Read online

  What did my big brother make of that?

  Ellis shrugged. Collective tinnitus. Hysteria. Morale’s worse now than in ’41; people will believe anything.

  So it’s not a supersonic ray, then?

  Engine testing. Nothing more, trust me.

  I’ll sleep easier in my bed, then, I said, changing tack — and told him about the fire at Heurtebise’s, the burning mannequins, the eyeballs, the fiddler. I saw his attention sharpen at that, creative senses sniffing out something valuable like they always used to. Once a poet always a poet, the “bees of the invisible” just like Rilke said and which Ellis quoted at the start of the collection he was working on. Can’t deny what you are, brother! I thought.

  But then his face changed. Your mannequins make me think of that ghastly waxwork display in town about Nazi atrocities, he said. Pandering to base instincts. Grubby voyeurism.

  You’re right about that, I agreed. And then told him I was trying to do something better, that I’ve started working again, making drawings and notes for a book, an illustrated book, a book about war and machines. I think it could be important, I said, getting carried away as usual. Maybe you could do the words, and we could see if anyone was interested in publishing it and —

  No time for that stuff now, he snapped, giving me the big brother look.

  But people will listen to you, I argued. You’ve had poems published in magazines; you won that competition, for God’s sake.

  He shook his head. There’s no damn paper for one thing! And I’ve got nothing to say right now.

  Then he softened again, just a bit.

  Who knows, though? He sighed. One day, maybe. When all this is done and we’re older . . . I thought you’d given up on being a war artist.

  Too young apparently, I said. Too inexperienced, and they’ve got enough big names on their lists, Moore and people like that. I’d still do it, and happily, best way I could help, but those men at the War Office didn’t want a student.

  Help? Ellis said then. How does it help to draw things? I mean, in these days?

  I looked at him and paraphrased that line from The Great Dictator, said that right now we think too much and feel too little. Art helps us feel and make sense of things . . .

  My voice trailed off. We neither of us said anything for a while, sipped our drinks while the pub grew louder around us. A pretty young girl in a Wren uniform was giving him the eye from the next table. He looked at her, then back at me.

  Tell me about it anyhow, he said, quietly.

  So I told him, told him that I want to make something that counts, something from deep inside, and went on about the fake eyes and the fiddler again. And I must have got the enthusiasm to him, because for a moment it was like it always was and he listened, properly listened, ears pinned back, as I told him about the dummies burning, the building sending up fire angels into the darkening sky. I built it up and then told him about the eyeballs in detail, and suddenly, like a magician, I pulled one out, at just the right moment, and set it on the table, where it spun like a small blue moon, taking in the saloon bar, the ragged women, the soldiers on leave. He stared at it, biting his lip thoughtfully. I knew I’d got to him, the lovely bastard. At least in that moment.

  Ellis smiled and rolled it back across the table to me.

  Do you remember a song that goes like this? I said, encouraged. And did my best to sing that slow lilting tune the fiddler played.

  He scrunched up his face. No. I don’t think so. Maybe. Are you getting it right?

  I’m not sure. It just seems so familiar, but I don’t know what it is.

  He listened a few bars more and then shook his head. Drained his pint and lit a cigarette.

  What did you really want to talk about, Harry?

  About us, I said, grasping the nettle. I want things better between us. In case . . .

  Father says you’ve let the whole family down, he said impatiently. And I have to say I agree with him. You’ve been high-handed, high-minded. This is the real bloody world, Harry, and we’ve got to fight for it. A real enemy, this is about as black-and-white as it gets.

  Tapping the table with his index finger for emphasis, that hard look back in his eyes.

  I am, I said. In my own way.

  Running around playing fireman with a lot of other shirkers!

  I mean painting, I said. And those shirkers are saving lives, by the way, and it seemed like the best choice on the list for objectors —

  His words flung back: For God’s sake, Harry! Do you know what’s going on across the Channel? Do you know how many people are dying because we didn’t do enough to fight when this could have been nipped in the bud? If you saw that waxwork’s display, then you know about the camps. The gas chambers.

  I don’t want to argue about that, I said. I want to talk about us —

  Father is cutting you out of his will. You know that, don’t you? You’re waving goodbye to an inheritance, Harry. A lifetime of security.

  Father can go hang, I snapped.

  He grimaced, then said, Fine talk for a pacifist.

  Well, the last thing I want is his money, I said; it’s got blood all over it and he can shove it. You’re both welcome to it!

  Way too hard — Ellis was already on his feet.

  It’s not that you’re a coward I mind, he said. It’s that you’re so bloody smug about it.

  I don’t mean to be, I said. Maybe I was just born that way.

  You could still do the right thing. Father’s not the monster you paint him to be.

  But I’m making a new start, Ellis, I said. And I wanted you to know that. And that you matter to me. More than ever really, but I don’t want you lecturing me. I’m doing what my conscience tells me to do. Can’t you respect that, if nothing else?

  His shoulders sagged at that, and he stood there for a long while, then nodded slowly and sat back down again. Raised his glass silently. Someone started to plunk away at the piano, a ragged version of “Lili Marlene.” Or at least that’s how it started, and then it seemed to slip into something else, a meandering tune that reminded me of that damn fiddler again.

  I wanted to hear something back, or add that I loved him — part of the whole resolution of vowing to live FULLY and honestly — but couldn’t say it, of course. And I’d risked enough and sparked a little connection there. Rescued the conversation from it being just another step towards us drifting so far apart that we can never be together again.

  And maybe he felt that too, and things eased as we charted the way back to easier ground. Even chatted a bit about Christmases long ago in the Shropshire snow, sledging down Foxes Hill as the light faded and the trees turned black around us. We both loved that I know, our half-German mother singing her beloved carols “O Tannenbaum” and “Süsser die Glocken,” and the sparklers fizzing in the tall fir tree. Her face reflecting them as the match caught, glowing, so full of life. Shadows of the last war, her fears of another and what was happening across the North Sea in her homeland brushed away by that dancing light.

  I think I wrote my first god-awful poem about that, Ellis said with a half-smile. It had some bloody terrible rhymes! Probably even holly and jolly! And then his face turned to something more somber. Poor old Mutti. She wouldn’t have wanted to see all this, though, would she: what’s happened to Germany. The thousand bomber raids on the Ruhr and Cologne. Maybe it’s almost better this way.

  I nodded, raised my glass to her memory. She’d have wanted us not to be at war with each other, I said. You and me, I mean.

  Mmm, he said. She’d have not wanted you to have said those things to Father either. She’d have been appalled.

  I thought about arguing again but didn’t want to do that over Mutti’s memory, so I raised my glass again and drained it and wished him good night.

  He nodded. I liked those eyes, he said. I’ll give you that!

  And then I left him and the pretty Wren, who had nestled at his elbow now and was giving him the once-over. Bringing out
all the charm and ease and wiping away the war and the rest of it for at least an hour or two.

  Outside, I took one of the eyeballs and, climbing up on the window ledge, tucked it in a nook on top of the White Horse sign, where it sat, surveying the darkened street, the board swaying in a sudden cold breeze. As if the air was only moving down at the pub, not along the street, a great swoosh of wind making the fog dance and whirl about. In a blackened-out shell of a building across the road, shredded net curtains billowed from the empty windows like pale wings. And then everything went still again. Very still. The pollarded plane tree on the corner seemed a silent watcher, its knobbly, stunted fingers reaching out over me.

  I tried to listen for that mysterious hum, but could hear nothing but voices and laughter spilling from the pub, the distant poom-poom-poom of an antiaircraft battery beating time with my heart. Piano plugging away inside. Dog bark. The steady growl of a doodlebug came dragging across the sky overhead, and I waited and waited, listened for the cut out of its engine, getting ready to dive for cover, but it just went on trundling its way northwest. My number not up yet!

  Does this idiot driver know what he’s doing? We’re going round in circles. Surely we’re at the top of Kilburn High Road again. Maybe I should just go back and have another drink with E. No, don’t want to interrupt him.

  A few dark shadows pass on the street. Timeless. Towering ruins of bricks that were once river clay deep underground and are heading there again. In blacked-out wintertime London, it’s as if you’re underground more than half the time. Are the silent passersby alive? Do they know they are alive? Maybe they just think they are. Maybe we all just think we are! Maybe I shou —

  Holland.

  Houtland.

  Die Hout.

  The woods.

  Here lies the Haagse Bos;

  all that remains of the ancient wood from which the country gets its name.

  A vast rectangular park — surrounded by city;

  still it provides miles of forest in which to hide.

  That is: in which to hide things.

  The tall old trees have lived longer than anyone alive; they’ve seen some sights, and dark deeds have happened down the years under the branches of the Haagse Bos: robbings, hangings, knives in the back. But nothing as dark as this.

  Look! Under the trees; there are long cylindrical shapes lying.

  Rockets. One hundred and two rockets.

  Rocket bombs for London, just two hundred miles west. Two hundred miles, or to the bombs: five minutes’ flying.

  The woods are forbidden lands now,

  only the men in their asbestos suits

  pass beyond the soldiers at the edge of the trees

  to bend to their work around this theme of death.

  Curious, a horse with no more owner wanders by.

  A pale, muddy horse.

  It stops and watches the men,

  looks up at the sky,

  lowers its head, walks on again.

  Here, on the crossroads of well-worn riding trails, sits a Meillerwagen, a mighty six-wheeled beast, from which the weapon can be raised to point at the sky. Forty-six feet of technology, towering to the treetops, hidden from view of all but the few antlike creatures who make final arrangements from the radio car.

  From the city comes a cable, two miles long, along which runs that watery fire known as electricity. Snaking into the park, under the trees, across the dead leaves from the previous autumn, supplying power to the wagons, so the bomb can be brought to life.

  Then, after hours of preparation, a finger, that has been hovering above a button, does not hesitate.

  Ignition:

  Liquid oxygen.

  Hydrogen peroxide.

  Sodium permanganate.

  Eight tons of alcohol and water.

  Electricity.

  The rocket pushes out of the forest,

  blasting the ground for ten yards round.

  Rising slowly from the trees,

  scorching the leaves,

  it leaves behind a billowing cloud

  of dark gray smoke

  and is gone.

  At a hundred feet up

  a jet of flame erupts from the rear,

  and it turns towards its target,

  trailing vapor in its wake,

  a spiral trail of vapor.

  A smear.

  The fuel disappears.

  Itdevelops speed.

  Just sixty seconds later, the engine cuts out

  and the rocket is fifty miles high skimming the black edge of space,

  from where it begins its descent in parabolic free fall.

  Gaining more speed, and more, till at three thousand miles an hour it arrives at the White Horse, where those wailing women have just departed, leaving Ellis and the Wren and forty-two other souls who know nothing of its coming. It moves faster than its own sound, so that it is in a moment of silence, as if all noise has been pushed away, that the rocket reaches London.

  Detonation:

  Ammonium nitrate.

  Tri-nitro-toluene.

  Electricity.

  Instantaneously, the White Horse no longer exists.

  The sound of the explosion, joined now by the rocket’s roar that has caught up at last, is like the heart being torn out of the earth.

  Those bricks that are not instantly pulverized into clay dust are hurled outward from the blast along with other items:

  shards of glass,

  timbers of wood,

  fragments of metal,

  and things that were people.

  The air folds in on itself,

  vibrating as if the gut string of a giant lyre

  has been plucked.

  The White Horse no longer exists,

  and those who were in the saloon bar have gone.

  I’m sorry.

  I am Orpheus, the singer. I wanted to sing this to you, but I cannot sing of such things. The music dies on my lips, never gets started. I just want to close my eyes, hold the palm of my hand towards you, and let the music flow, like a loving energy.

  But it won’t.

  Do you know where those bombs began?

  Not in a forest in Holland.

  They began underground,

  in a tunnel in a Teutonic mountain, two miles deep.

  There — in tunnels storing poison gas and kerosene — was where the bombs were built. Slaves, living in the dark, in dusty tunnels. Forced to build the weapons that would be used against their allies.

  Now, the bombs have returned to the Underworld, and there is no song for that.

  I watch. I watch the roiling dust and the tumbling obliteration, and my fiddle feels cold in my hands. I want to sing, but I cannot.

  I, who can charm the rocks, cause water to change its course with my song, I, who once charmed Death himself, am powerless. I should have sung the rocket from the sky and sent it soft to the sea, but I could not.

  There is no song that can tame these monsters.

  The Machines.

  I am Orpheus, and I am old, yet even I am not old enough to know how we began. Did we climb down from the trees, or did we slime our way out of the seas? Or did we emerge from a cave or from under the ground?

  Who were we? What were we like? And when did we begin to speak?

  What a moment! That was when I was ready to be born, when words were ready to be sung!

  But how quickly did singing come? Was it soon, or did it take an age? Did we have music before we had words? Did we have music before we had tools? And what were those tools?

  A stick, perhaps, or half of a shell. A broken flint.

  Or maybe the jawbone of an ass.

  Yes? And what was it used for? I don’t know, I don’t know, but I can guess. (And I further deduce that it was the male who showed the way on that front. Of the female, I will say more later.)

  From there, where are we now? Nineteen hundred and forty-four, as Harry would know it. No jawbones anymore. No need for such primit
ive tools. We had spears and swords when I was a boy in Thrace; now they have guns.

  And gas.

  And doodlebugs, rocket bombs.

  Planes that make the cities burn,

  ack-ack guns to bring them down.

  Radar that sees what no man could;

  machines that go where no man should:

  submarine warships that slide in the deep;

  deadly torpedoes that glide in the dark.

  And pistols and rifles and mortars and mines,

  and tanks to pulverize enemy lines.

  Oh, see that I am starting to sing.

  But is it right to sing of such things?

  Is it wrong?

  And from here, where will we end?

  What machinery will we create?

  Already the Earth hums from far underground,

  some thrumming sound

  that will have penetrated into the deep

  and woken things it were better let sleep.

  All of London trembles on this terrible vibration.

  Some hear it. Others choose not to:

  those for whom fear is too much to bear,

  and it’s easy to pretend you just didn’t hear.

  Into my mind spring visions of barbarous mechanisms.

  I don’t yet understand what each of them is; I see bombs much smaller than these V-2 rockets, yet each with the power to obliterate a city, and I ask myself, How can that be?

  I see missiles that can cruise halfway round the world, but how can that be?

  I see planes that can fly faster than sound, demolish a village and return to an airfield that floats on the sea. How can all these things be?

  My imagination does not stop:

  Here’s a plane, just a few feet wide, far too small for a man inside. Its pilot is sitting in a comfortable chair, thousands of miles from enemy shores. She navigates by signals beamed from tiny moons encircling our Earth. She flies using science and then, with the stroke of a key, a town far away ceases to be.

  She tidies her desk and gets in her car, drives home to her children, her husband. They laugh and they chat, then fall into bed where she sleeps without dreaming.

  How can that be?

  More visions are coming, but I push them away. Enough for now, enough. My song is broken and weak.