Violin

Chapter 5

It was that sea again, that ocean clear and blue and frothing wild into the flopping prancing ghosts with every wave that hit the beach. It had the spell of the lucid dream. It said, Yes, you couldn't be dreaming, you are not, you're here! That's what the lucid dream always says. You turn around and around it and you can't wake up. It says, You cannot have imagined this.

But we had to leave now from the soothing breeze off the sea. The window was closed. The time has come.

I saw roses strewn across a gray carpet, roses with long stems and each tipped with a sealed vial of water to keep it fresh, roses with petals darkened and soft, and voices spoke in a foreign tongue, a tongue I ought to know but didn't know, a language made up, it seemed, just for this dream. For surely I was dreaming. I had to be. But I was here, imprisoned in this, as if transported body and soul into it, and something in me sang, Don't let it be a dream.

"That's right!" said the beautiful dark-skinned Mariana. She had short hair, and a white blouse that didn't cover her shoulders, a swan's neck, a purring voice.

She opened the doors of a vast place. I could not believe my eyes. I could not believe that solid things could be as lovely as the sea and sky, and this-this was a temple of polychrome marble.

It's not a dream, I thought. You couldn't dream this! You haven't the visions in you to ma ke such a dream. You're here, Triana!

Look at the walls inlaid with a creamy deep-veined Carrara marble, panels framed in gold and the skirting of darker brown stone, no less polished, no less variegated, no less wondrous. Look at the square pilasters with their golden scrolled capitals.

And now as we come to the front of the building, this marble moves to green, in long bands along the floor, the floor itself an ever changing and intricate mosaic. Look. I see the ancient Greek key design. I see the patterns dear to Rome and Greece for which I don't remember names, but I know them.

And now, turning, we stood before a staircase such as I have never seen anywhere.

It is not merely the scale and the loftiness, but again, the color: behold, 0 Lord, the radiance of the rose Carrara marble.

But attend first these figures, these bronze faces standing at attention, bodies of deeply carefully carved wood, curving into lion's legs and paws on their plinths of onyx.

Who built this place? For what purpose?

I'm caught suddenly by the glass doors opposite, there is so very much to see, I'm overcome, look, three great Classical Revival doors of beveled glass and semicircular fanlights, mullions black and spoked above, such portals for light, though the day or the night, whichever it is, is locked out beyond them.

The stairs await. Mariana says, Come. Lucrece is so kind. The balustrade is green marble, green as jade, and streaked like the sea, with balusters of a lighter shade, and every wall paneled in rose or cream marble that is framed in gold.

Look up to these smooth, rounded columns of pink marble, with their gilded capitals of double rich acanthus leaf, and high high above, see the broken arches of the cove, and between each a painted figure; see the paneled frame around the high stained-glass window.

Yes, it is day. This is the light of day streaming through the stained glass! It shines on the artfully painted nymphs in panels high above, dancing for us, dancing too in the glass itself. I close my eyes. I open them. I touch the marble. Real, real.

You are here. You can't be awakened or taken from this place; it's true, you see it!

We climb these stairs, we move up and up amid this palace of Italian stone and stand on a mezzanine floor and face three giant stained-glass windows, each with its own goddess or queen, in diaphanous robes, beneath an architrave, with cherubs in attendance and flowers drawn in every border, festooned, garlanded, held in outstretched hands.

What symbols are these? I hear the words, but I see; that is what makes me tremble.

And at each end of this long dreamy space there is an oval chamber. Come look.

Look at these murals here, look at these paintings that reach so high. Yes, richly narrative, and once again the bold classical figures dance, heads are wreathed in laurel, contours full and lush. It has the magic of the pre-Raphaelites.

Is there no end to combination here, to beauty woven into beauty? No end to cornices and friezes, moldings of tongue and dart, of proud entablatures, to walls of boiserie? I must dream.

They spoke in the angel language, Mariana and the other, Lucrece, they spoke that soft singing tongue. And there, I pointed: the gleaming golden masks of those I loved.

Medallions set high upon the wall: Mozart, Beethoven; others . . . ,but what is this, a palace to every song you've ever heard and been unable to endure without tears? The marble shines in the sun. Such richness as this can't be made by human hands. This is the temple of Heaven.

Come down the stairs, down, down, and now I know, with heart sinking, that this must be a dream.

Though this dream can't be measured by the depths of my imagi nation, it is improbable to the point of impossible.

For we have left the temple of marble and music for a great Persian room of glazed blue tile, replete with Eastern ornament that rivals the beauty above in its sumptuousness.

Oh, don't let me wake. If this can come from my mind, then let it come.

That this Babylonian splendor should follow on that bold Baroque glory cannot be, but I so love it.

Atop these columns are the sacrificial ancient bulls with their angry faces, and look, the fountain, in the fountain Darius slays the leaping Lion. Yet this is no shrine, no dead memorial to things lost.

Behold, the walls are lined in shining etageres that hold the most elegant glassware.

A cafe' has been made within these decorative reliefs. Once again I see a floor of incomparable mosaic. Small graceful gilded chairs surround a multitude of little tables.

People talk here, move, walk, breathe, as if this magnificence were something they have taken utterly for granted.

What place is this, what country, what land, where style and color could so audaciously come together? Where convention has been overrun by masters of all crafts.

Even the chandeliers are Persian in desigu, great silver metal sheets with intricate patterns cut out of them.

Dream or real! I turn and strike the column with my fist. Goddamn it, if I'm not here, let me wake! And then comes the assurance. You are here, most definitely. You are here body and soul in this place, in the Babylonian room beneath the marble temple.

"Come, come." Her hand is on my arm. Is it Mariana or the other lovely one-with the round face and large generous eyes-Lucrece? They commiserate, the two in a singing Latinish tongue.

Our darkest secret.

Things shift. I'm here all right, because this I'd never dream.

I don't know how to dream it. I live for music, live for light, live for colors, yes, true, but what is this, this rank, soiled white-tiled passage, the water on the black floors, so filthy that they are not even black, and look, the engines, the boilers, the giant cylinders with screwed-on caps and seals, so ominous, covered in peeling paint, amid a din of noise that's almost silence.

Why, this is like the engine room of an old ship, the kind you wandered aboard when you were a child and New Orleans was still a living harbor. But no, we are not on board a ship. The proportions of this corridor are too massive.

I want to go back. I don't want to dream this part. But by now, I know it's no dream. I've been brought here somehow! This is some punishment I deserve, some awful reckoning. I want to see the marble again, the pretty rich fuchsia marble against the side panels of the stairs; I want to memorize the goddesses in the glass.

But we walk in this damp, rank, echoing passage. Why? Foul smells rise everywhere. Old metal lockers stand here, as if left behind by soldiers in some abandoned camp, battered, stuck with cutout magazine girls from years before, and once again we view this vast Hell of machines, churning, grinding, boiling with noise as we walk along the steel railing.

"But where are we going?"

My companions smile. They think it a funny secret, this, this place to which they are taking me.

Gates! Great iron gates lock us out, but lock us out of what? A dungeon?

"A secret passage," confesses Mariana with undisguised delight. "It goes all the way under the street! A secret underground passage...

I strain to see through the gates. We can't go in. The gates are chained shut. But look, back there, where the water shimmers, look.

"But someone's there, don't you see? Good God, there's a man lying there. He's bleeding. He's dying. His wrists are slashed and yet his hands are laid together. He's dying?"

Where are Mariana and Lucrece? Flown up again into the domed ceilings of the marble temple where the Grecian dancers make their easy graceful circles in the murals?

I am unguarded.

The stench is unbearable. The man's dead! Oh, God! I know he is. No, he moves, he lifts one of his hands, his wrist dripping blood. Good God, help him!

Mariana laughs the softest Sweetest laugh and her hands stroke the air as she speaks.

"Don't you see him dead, good God, he's lying in filthy water...”

“…secret passage that used to go from here to the palace and . .”

"No, listen to me, ladies, he's there. He needs us." I grabbed the gates. "We have to get to that man there!" The gates that bar our way are like everything here-immense.

They're heavy iron, fitted from floor to ceiling, hung with chains and locks.

"Wake up! I will not have it!"

A torrent of music crashed to silence!

I sat up in my own bed.

"How dare you!"