Sophie and the Sibyl Page 5

  Max felt the wonderful moment of approaching darkness as the lady’s lips sucked his penis into a priapic arch. The delightful explosion ended in salvage, as the maiden expertly fielded every drop upon her handkerchief. Through his muttered groans Max heard her praising his Tremendous Engine, its magnitude and voracity; flattering practised phrases, which, nevertheless, were pleasing to hear. He kissed her forehead, and bending to undo the ribbons on her bodice, released both breasts into the fetid air. They swayed before him, gigantic and comfortable. Lying back upon the russet shawls he sucked both nipples into pyramids, resisting the temptation to forage further beneath her skirts and incur more substantial expense. He had spent all he could afford for one evening. But he felt neither guilt nor regret. During his unsteady progress in darkness, back along the unfamiliar streets, Max felt well disposed towards all mankind and a little in love with his farmer’s daughter, whom he determined to visit again, as soon as his business with the Sibyl and her dancing whiskered husband should be concluded.

  But on the following morning, when he presented himself on their doorstep, he encountered Mr. and Mrs. Lewes dressed and ready to go out. Mrs. Lewes dipped her head and he found himself bowing to an enormous green bonnet trimmed with a deep red frill. The green shawl draped over her shoulders slipped a little and was immediately rescued and straightened by Lewes, who began gabbling cheerfully.

  ‘Ah Max! We’re on our way to your hotel to winkle you out. D’you know Meyrick? The painter? He’s offered to conduct us round his studio. Wants to paint Polly of course, but we’ll look at what he does first before we agree to anything.’

  Max lifted his hat and stood aside, making polite noises of assent, and offering his arm to the Sibyl as she descended the steps like a recently awakened deity. He caught a glimpse of the slight wolfish smile as she peered cautiously up into his face. And so the little party set off through the still uncrowded streets, the dark-suited gentlemen on either side, the Sibyl cruising gently between them. The chilly air smelt of bonfires and dead leaves. Autumn now freshened the wet pavements and the street vendors seemed slower to animate their baskets and carts. The spa dozed in the early day.

  Lewes chatted energetically, leaning across to Max, breaking off to greet the odd acquaintance, everyone bowed to the couple as if they were passing royalty, who had mysteriously mislaid their carriage. The Sibyl murmured the odd comment in German, but otherwise concentrated on picking her way over the cobbles as they descended into the old town and the narrow, secluded streets.

  ‘You must excuse me, Max,’ she whispered, when they arrived at the painter’s door. ‘I am suffering from an appalling attack of neuralgia, which came upon me in the night. But I am anxious to visit Mr. Meyrick. He has been so warmly recommended to us. Ah, we have found him at last.’

  Am Mühlweg 17 towered above them, an immense wooden house. Pale, late roses mingled with Michaelmas daisies surrounded a veranda covered in dead leaves. A child eating an apple opened the door and pointed to an endless staircase lit from above by a dusty roof-light. Meyrick himself came bounding down two flights to greet them; Max and Lewes adjusted the speed of their climb to allow for the Sibyl’s toothache.

  The painter leaped to and fro like an excited dog, his face encircled with very long ginger curls, but he was freshly shaven and clearly wearing his cleanest shirt. Max recognised him at once as the man working in charcoal before the blank-eyed figures of goddesses and gladiators in the winter halls of the Neues Museum.

  ‘We met in Berlin,’ he said, shaking hands. ‘I am the brother of Mrs. Lewes’s publisher.’

  But Meyrick, clearly desperate to impress the visiting celebrities and secure his commission, merely nodded, bowed and welcomed him into the draughty atelier, then flung himself into captivating the silent Sibyl, whose prophecies and pronouncements remained suspended. The studio smelt of turpentine, mixed paints, linseed oil and burned vegetables. Meyrick clearly lived where he worked. An assortment of cooking pots littered the brick hearth surrounding a small black stove, apparently the only heating in the huge cavernous space. Coals glowed through a round gap in the lid and the hob chuffed gently like a stationary steam engine. Vast northern windows welcomed the autumn light. Unfinished canvases turned their faces to the wall, so that all they could see were the rough sketches and the brown mesh of the reverse sides. Meyrick led them straight to his easel where he had prepared a sofa, covered with a glaring white linen sheet, ready for Mrs. Lewes, who subsided thankfully, her skirts compressing like an expiring bellows.

  ‘I prefer grand historical subjects,’ declared the painter, ‘but created in the spirit of that stern realism so admired by your English artistic brotherhood. Yet I also treasure that affecting tenderness that I fancy best illustrates my own style. Here is the last in a series of four: Berenice Weeping in the Ruins of Jerusalem.’

  The painting revealed a beautiful young woman, her rich clothes ripped and torn, her feet bare, her gaze vacant and empty, the lovely breasts partially exposed. All around her lay a great city destroyed; the temple toppled and the roofs aflame. The eerie atmosphere surrounding the abandoned grieving woman gained in intensity from the fact that the city appeared to be entirely uninhabited. No other figure haunted the picture. Jerusalem, in Meyrick’s vision, resembled ancient Rome, rather than an Eastern walled fortress, which, Max suspected, would have been nearer the mark. But the detail was extraordinary, crisp and sharpened like a photograph, each fallen brick and splintered column painted with a meticulous attention to shadow and weight. The city’s calamitous destruction could have been caused by an earthquake, or any other act of God, as the victors were nowhere visible, nor were the bodies of the slain. Berenice herself appeared to be both agent and victim of the absolute ruin that surrounded her. Max thought he recognised the model, but could not be certain. The maiden in the painting was a dark-eyed beauty, representing the Jewish princess, whose tragic story now ended in catastrophe.

  ‘Did she ever return to Jerusalem according to the legend?’ asked Lewes, peering closely at the woman’s delicately painted breasts.

  ‘She was cast out from Rome,’ murmured the Sibyl, drawing her shawl closer to her massive aching jaw, ‘but no one knows where she died.’

  ‘I like to believe that she returned to her people,’ said Meyrick. Max now convinced himself that he had indeed recognised the magnificent breasts through the shimmering veil of convenient myth. The Rape of the Sabine Women, which Meyrick now displayed, contained naked breasts a-plenty and some extraordinarily convincing Roman thighs, partially covered in metal and leather. The artist’s genius for creating surfaces and tiny, convincing details loomed out at Max: the thonged sandals of the screaming women and the bloody sides of white horses, wounded in battle. That much-praised stern realism now seemed menacing and uncanny. He found himself eyeball to eyeball with the inside of a woman’s mouth as he shouldered the canvas on to the easel, with Meyrick supporting the other end. The entire painting writhed and howled. Even the blood appeared fresh and dripping.

  ‘I completed this last year upon my return from Rome.’ Meyrick began to explain the composition.

  Max inspected the other, smaller canvases that Meyrick had prepared for them to see. Here was Echo fleeing from Narcissus and the Bacchae in thrall to Dionysus, tumbling after their erotic enchanter. The dancing god sported long ginger curls, his golden cup raised in ecstasy. Max half closed his eyes to absorb the energy of the gesture and the naked glory of the figure; he recognised the self-portrait of the artist by the intense stillness of the features. The first follower clung to his arm, and now Max smiled, quite certain that he was gazing at the very lips that had tasted his own body the night before. Here she was, the long blonde hair dishevelled and unfurled, the warm country cheeks, the vast magnificent nipples, and the abstracted glance of the professional prostitute. Meyrick’s model is surely also his mistress. Ah, and here she is again, as Titania, or could it be Queen Mab? I see Queen Mab hath been with thee tonight! We
ll, sir, she has also been with me. Max ogled the naked Fairy Queen, imagined his lips on her breasts, and then bent to study the picture, obscurely embarrassed by the opulence of the woman he shared with the painter.

  ‘My Shakespearian studies are taken mostly from the tragedies.’ Meyrick was anxious to present himself as a serious painter. ‘Othello, Macbeth and Lear. Here is Lear with Cordelia murdered, cradled in his arms. But ah, sir, I see that you have uncovered my Titania.’

  Max raised the painting from the dusty floor to the easel.

  ‘Goodness,’ cried Lewes, snatching up the offered magnifying glass. ‘Polly! Come and look. Never in my life have I seen so many fairies.’

  ‘There’s a good-natured competition among the painters here,’ explained Meyrick, ‘to see how many fairies we can squeeze on to one canvas. Would you believe that there are one hundred and sixty-five fairies in these Athenian woods? All busy about their queen! I won the Fairy Prize for this painting,’ he added with a smug flourish, handing the glass to the Sibyl, who rose unsteadily and approached the picture.

  The visitors sniffed the flamboyant varnished surface, peering at one tiny, grotesque figure after another. The little people belonged to several different species. Some marched in ranks, wearing uniforms with tiny golden buttons, others, bizarrely clothed in savage grass skirts and adorned with garlands of minuscule flowers, whirled in circles, holding hands. Two little elves with pointed ears approached bearing a parade of exotic fruits on silver platters: pineapples, apricots, oranges, dates and pears, the flesh of each delicacy painted with exquisite care. A couple galloped past on miniature donkeys and a wizen-faced crone in a cap of bells danced all alone in a corner. The surface of the painting quivered with activity and movement. Three tiny ladies peered at their faces in even tinier mirrors, others melted disturbingly into half-human, half-animal forms. A little row of blue-skinned goblins played on cithers, lutes and a large tuba. A gaggle of junior fairies, one picking his minute nose, clutched their slates, attentive to their elfin master, whose ferocious bobble eyes bulged out of all proportion to his face and reddening ears. One creature with hooves and hairy legs dived into the ground beside the giant fingers of his sleeping queen.

  ‘My word, Meyrick,’ cried Max, genuinely impressed, ‘only an overdose of laudanum could have produced these delicate and scaly beasts! How did you dream them all up?’

  ‘Oh, there are fashions in fairy painting,’ said Meyrick, unabashed.

  ‘I have seen your Titania before, however,’ said the Sibyl. ‘She is there in your Roman canvas, grappling with the soldiers, and here beside Dionysus, clinging to her chosen god. If I am not mistaken she is also Echo and Pandora.’

  ‘You are very perceptive, Mrs. Lewes.’ Meyrick bowed his assent. Max stared at the discerning Sibyl, suddenly feeling exposed and accused, as if the all-seeing Sibyl had watched him, oiled with lust, sucking Titania’s breasts.

  She smiled slightly, raising her deeply lined face and glowing eyes towards the painter.

  ‘I suffer from toothache, sir, and my hearing is not what it was, but my powers of observation are undimmed. And here is a lady who has not always been an artist’s model. Your stern realism, Mr. Meyrick, betrays her earlier professions. She was either in service, or has worked on the land. Look at her hands. Those are the hands of a woman who works. They are beautiful, but they are also calloused and hard to the touch.’

  The Sibyl sank back once more on to the white shroud, while all three men examined Titania’s roughened hands.

  ‘The Fairy Queen did not, I think, scour her own doorstep,’ continued the Sibyl from her throne, ‘but I love the busyness of this painting. It exudes the energy and bustle of a street scene in Fairyland, the more so because their ruler, even in her gigantic sleep, appears to dream their presence. This work is a miracle of varying scales, like Piranesi’s vaulted staircases, ascending into darkness.’

  Lewes spun round and gazed at her with affectionate concern. ‘Shall I take you home at once, Polly? That toothache has not eased at all. You already look exhausted.’

  The Sibyl raised her gloved hand to his. ‘I fear we are obliged to discuss the question of the portrait on another occasion, Mr. Meyrick.’

  Max offered his arm to support her, while Lewes rearranged her shawl. She looked up at him gratefully, but remained silent.

  ‘Anyone who hates faults, hates mankind.’ This assertion was delivered in sweet, firm tones. Nobody dared to dissent.

  The Sibyl sat in the light by their window, reading aloud to Lewes when Max entered their sitting room. She completed her sentence and looked up, every gesture slow, patient, careful. Max found it impossible to imagine her hurried or alarmed. He bowed and lowered his eyes to avoid the terrifying smile. Lewes sat by the fire with his feet perched on a low stool, balancing a currant bun on a toasting fork. The tea tray stood ready on the table by the lamp. He bounded over to shake Max’s hand, wielding the steaming bun like a Devil’s prod.

  ‘Come in, Max, come in. I hope we can dispense with all the formalities. You find us revisiting Lucian. Rather upon your account, I gather. Polly is gathering her forces to complete the Finale of her Great Work and then we shall celebrate.

  ‘For now the matchless deed’s achieved,

  Determined, dared and done!

  ‘Well, almost done.’

  Max clasped the Sibyl’s mittened paw, with, he hoped, suitably submissive reverence. And then settled down to listen to more of the odious Lucian, whose sinister Fragment now clearly rested in her lap. The Gothic script facing the Latin original announced the existence of a German translation. Max feared the worst. The Sibyl’s voice, low and persuasive, resumed the narrative, left floating through history by the provincial governor of Mysia and Lydia, marooned far from Rome, battling with corrupt officials, insurgent slaves and disturbing news from the frontiers. He spent his days in court and the evenings coaxing his resentful wife to sample the local spices. But he found himself confronting a new religion, which threatened to undermine the state. For the altars were deserted; no one purchased sacrificial doves or votive silver offerings for the Temple of Jupiter. The gods ceased to speak, the augurs fell silent, the entrails lay bloody upon the altar slab of prophecy, uninterpreted, meaningless and blank. Something new had arisen from the gutter, something irrational and inhuman, a heresy slithering out from beneath the wreckage of Jerusalem and the slaughter of the Jews. The thing proved as tenacious as an Asiatic infection, spreading slowly, like lichen on damp stones.

  ‘I was asked to investigate the Christians by the Emperor Trajan, who suggested that we should interrogate the servants of the main households under suspicion. At first we had imagined that the new religion remained confined to the artisan class and located near the docks, but various accusations brought before me suggested that some of the major households in the town had become tainted by the sect. My informants revealed that Christianity originated with the Jews, who await a saviour, or a messiah. The Christians believe that He is come. This is unlikely, as their young Prophet was executed by Pontius Pilate, during the reign of Herod in Judaea. So far as I was able to ascertain, no major insurrection against Rome was ever planned by these disciples. The Christians meet on the first day of the week to say prayers, chant devotional verses, and share a simple meal of bread and wine. But preachers of the hotter sort made themselves known at Ephesus. And a riot is recorded. The struggle appears to have taken place between the Christians gathered in the theatre and the silversmiths, whose business, located in the streets below the temple of many-breasted Diana, consisted of making silver images of the god and offerings to her for healing and protection during childbirth. The Christians proclaim One God, all-powerful, invisible and transcendent, who needs no idols or incessant blood sacrifice. Nor presumably any expensive, delicate, silver shrines. The silversmiths are reported to have got the better of the encounter, racing through the streets shouting, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!” and pillaging shops supposedly o
wned or run by Christians.

  ‘It was upon the Emperor’s wise insistence that this growing flame should be quenched. This, therefore, became my mission, and I began by handling the interrogations personally. I demanded of the accused whether or not they subscribed to the new religion. If they denied the charge and offered prayers to our gods, and gifts of wine and incense to the statue of the Emperor, they were pardoned and set free, whatever the nature of the accusations made against them. If however, after persistent warnings, they refused to deny their faith, I ordered them to be led away to execution. The Emperor himself advised me that an infallible test was to demand that they spit upon the name of Christ, as no genuine Christian would ever do this. I was loath to inflict that test upon the citizens before me, many of whom were mere children, women and slaves. In fact the sheer variousness of the people brought before the courts roused my instincts of alarm. The new faith respected neither sex, nor caste, nor indeed class, for the usual hierarchies in households where the infection had taken root became unstable or were even dissolved. A maid and her mistress went to their deaths together, supporting one another, singing praises to their invisible god. This scene took place in the public arena, and caused much widespread and unfortunate scandal, engendering seditious discussions in the marketplace, for the woman had been a notorious benefactor in the town, contributing substantial sums to a variety of causes. Adepts of the Christ claim to be sinners, guilty of various spiritual crimes that I could not understand, and yet to have been made perfect through the grace of their god. I have not resolved this contradiction.’

  The Sibyl laid down the Fragment and looked up.

  ‘I rather think we have not either, not in our own age. It is the misfortune of Christianity to insist, not on the fallibility of human nature, a quality even Lucian acknowledges in his gentle acceptance of our weaknesses, but on its criminal wickedness. As for the doctrine of original sin, I see no conclusive evidence in its favour. Either in the types of humankind, or in individuals.’