Waking the Moon

i Pavana Lachrymae

WHEN I LEARNED OF Oliver’s death it was as though a door had slammed shut upon me. In the sudden darkness and echoing clang of its closing, I was blinded, deafened. The wonders of the Divine were as lost to me although they had existed only in a book I had once glimpsed, a book taken from me and put into the safekeeping of people wiser and lovelier than myself, people who would never again make the mistake of allowing it to fall into such careless hands. I would never be permitted to return to the sculpted lawns or allées of the Divine. Never again would I glimpse an angel in my room, terrible and fatal; only in dreams. Years afterward I might pass on the street someone I had known as a student, and once on a crowded subway platform glimpse Balthazar Warnick wrapped in his moth-singed chesterfield; but they did not see me, or greet me when I called out to them.

ii Threnody: Storm King

AFTER ANNIE LEFT BABY Joe’s room I went out and bought a liter of vodka and a six-pack of Orange Crush. I didn’t try to follow her, didn’t even wake up Baby Joe. I drank all that day and into the evening, returning at last to Baby Joe’s dorm. There I passed out behind the overgrown box tree hedge. When I woke up I did it all over again. I didn’t try to locate Oliver’s family or find out about funeral arrangements. I stumbled to the front of the dorm in search of Baby Joe, but no one answered when I knocked. Finally I went to the Shrine cafeteria and found a pay phone. I tried to call Annie, but her phone had been cut off.

I stumbled back outside. I looked up and saw pale shining spires and lapis domes rising from the grey autumn mist, the small cloaked figures of scholars and a few brave tourists on the steps of the Shrine. The immense sandstone building seemed more Sphinx-like than ever. I could feel its will bearing down on me, saying, There is nothing for you here. I turned, shivering, and walked away.

I had 107 dollars in my checking account, enough money to buy an Amtrak ticket home. I could only assume that Balthazar or someone else had taken care of the things in my room—thrown them out or burned them or shipped them back to New York. I still hadn’t called my parents. Except for trying to reach Annie, I hadn’t called anyone at all. I wandered across campus, thinking of Oliver, and it was as though I had died too. I saw no one I recognized, no one at all. When I tried to get back into Rossetti Hall my key didn’t work. For what seemed like hours I waited for someone to leave or enter the dorm, so that I could slip in behind them, but no one ever came. When I waited outside Baby Joe’s dorm the same thing happened. I tried calling his room, but he never answered; tried finding Hasel Bright and Annie, but I never did. Finally I returned to the Shrine cafeteria, half-expecting to be turned away from there, too, but I wasn’t.

I stayed there for three days: washing up in the rest room, sleeping in chilly alcoves of the Crypt Church when the cafeteria closed, my head pillowed on my knapsack, warming my hands by the feeble light of votive candles. I left only to buy more vodka and to check my mail at the campus post office. Nothing there but the New Yorker and a formal computer-generated notice of permanent suspension from the Dean’s Office.

And then, on the fourth day after Oliver’s suicide, I received a letter. A heavy cream-colored envelope addressed in an elegant calligraphic hand. My fingers trembled: I was certain it was from Angelica, but when I inspected it more closely I saw that the letters were smaller, the cursives more controlled. And it was written in dark blue ink, and I had never seen Angelica use anything but peacock blue. I fled back to the warmth of the Shrine cafeteria, bought a cup of coffee, and found a corner booth.

“Oh man,” I said beneath my breath. My hands were shaking so much I could hardly open it. “Please, god, please…”

The inside of the envelope was lined with marbled paper, blue and violet and green. The edges of the heavy rag stationery were gilt, as was a tiny monogram stamped at the top of the page.

I drew it to my face, breathing in Pelican ink and the sharp medicinal tang of eucalyptus, and began to read.

Wrapped in a second sheet of the same heavy smooth paper were two airplane tickets.

I went; of course I went. I was afraid not to, but even more afraid of what I might do or what I might become if I stayed at the Divine, drinking and hiding in the Shrine and slowly going insane. It felt strange, to be flying into Westchester without my parents’ knowledge. At the airport I was seized by the absurd terror that they would be there, that somehow they had found out about everything and had come to collect me and bring me in disgrace back home. But there was hardly anyone at the airport at all, besides a few weary wives come to collect their weary husbands, and a young man in a cable-knit sweater and salmon-colored golf pants, holding a sign that said SWEENEY CASSIDY.

“That’s me,” I said. He took my bag and I followed him to the waiting car, a navy blue Oldsmobile with MERCURY SKYLINE LIVERY stenciled on the side. I was a little disappointed but mostly relieved it wasn’t a limousine.

“Do you work for Mr. di Rienzi?” I asked after we had left the parking lot.

“Nope. He just hired me for tonight, and to take you back in the morning. Mind if I listen to the news?”

I shook my head. He clicked on the radio, and that was all the conversation we had. We drove north on the interstate. After an hour we pulled off Route 684 and crossed the Bear Mountain Bridge. Forty-five minutes later we arrived at Storm King.

I was expecting something grand, after the plane tickets and mysterious letter and the liveried car, something along the lines of the Orphic Lodge.

Instead, the di Rienzis’ house was at the end of a cul-de-sac in a small woodsy development, high up on the Palisades overlooking the Hudson. STORM KING ESTATES, said a wrought-iron sign, but there was nothing quite so dramatic as an estate anywhere in sight. The other houses were pleasantly suburban, set amidst plenty of trees now bare and stark against the backdrop of browning lawns and neatly raked piles of leaves. The di Rienzis’ house stood apart from all of these, on a small rise planted with huge old rhododendrons and mountain laurels and a slender, pampered-looking Japanese maple. Behind the trees and shrubs rose a sprawling Queen Anne Victorian, a real dowager dating to the turn of the century, with grey weathered shingles and a wide porch sweeping around it on all sides. It was certainly the oldest house on the street, and it commanded a marvelous view of the river and Storm King Mountain and even the George Washington Bridge, glittering like a string of glass beads in the distance. But it was a surprisingly comforting-looking house, nothing grand or intimidating about it at all, until Angelica’s father appeared at the door.

“You must be Sweeney.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, shaking his hand. It was the first time I had ever called anyone sir in my life. “You are—it was very, very kind of you to send me the tickets to come here.”

He smiled. “Well, I am very, very happy that you came. Please, come inside.”

I was shocked to see how old he was. Older than my parents, older even than my grandparents. Had Angelica ever mentioned that to me? But there was nothing frail about him—he was over six feet tall, big-boned and broad-shouldered, with an exaggerated, almost military, bearing, and his hand, while bony and blue-veined, was so strong my fingers cracked in his grasp. I protested when he bent to take my knapsack, but he ignored me and went inside, waving offhandedly to the Oldsmobile as it drove off.

“Did you have a pleasant flight? I wasn’t certain if you would have time to eat, so I have dinner ready for you.” I followed him down the hallway, too nervous to say anything but Yes sir over and over, like a new recruit. “At any rate airplane food is appalling, isn’t it? Let’s take this upstairs to your room, so that you can wash up if you’d like.”

He had a beautiful sonorous voice, with just the slightest Mediterranean warmth to it, and such extravagantly pronounced diction that he sounded like an exotic bird that has been trained to speak. I followed him upstairs, and then down a long hallway, where a number of photographs of Angelica hung in expensive, heavy frames. Angelica as an infant, innocent and self-contained as an egg; Angelica in a white dress for First Communion; Angelica graduating from elementary school, high school; Angelica at summer camp. Camp! I could as easily imagine her at camp as distributing alms to the poor in Calcutta; but there she was, tanned and squinting into the sun in her khaki shorts and white short-sleeved shirt with WENAHKEE OWLS embroidered on it. Between the photos were doors, all of them shut tight. I tried to guess which hid Angelica’s room.

“This is the guest room, here—you don’t have your own bath but it’s only a few steps down the hall. And there’s plenty of hot water.”

My room was large and cozy, the walls papered with a pattern of ivy squills and the floor covered with bright rag rugs. There was a large canopied spindle bed piled high with a feather comforter in a green duvet, and a small night table, where a vase of chrysanthemums and marigolds dropped petals onto a stack of magazines. On the wall hung a watercolor of gold hills and blue water and feluccas sailing in the distance.

“It’s wonderful,” I said. “This is so kind, Mr. di Rienzi—”

“Not at all, not at all.” He waved me away, setting my knapsack on the floor. “Now you’ll probably want to freshen up. When you’re comfortable, come downstairs. We’ll have dinner on the porch—I think it’s still warm enough for that, don’t you?”

On the porch it was barely warm enough, but Mr. di Rienzi got me one of Angelica’s cable-knit sweaters and draped it over my shoulders. It smelled so strongly of her perfume that I felt dizzy; but it helped keep off the lingering chill.

The veranda overlooked a long wooded hillside that sloped down to the Hudson. Over the white wooden railings I could glimpse the tops of trees, a few still brushed with scarlet and brown, and the river itself, dark and shimmering faintly beneath the stars. On the far shore glowed the lights of Beacon and, a few miles north, Poughkeepsie. Two symmetrical rows of red lights showed where a barge was being towed toward the locks upstate.

“Will you have some wine, Sweeney?”

It was odd to have an adult call me Sweeney rather than Katherine or Kate. But then Mr. di Rienzi only knew of me through his daughter, and Angelica wouldn’t have called me anything else.

“Yes, please.” I had changed into a white cotton shirt and chinos, faded but clean. At first I was afraid this would seem too casual, but now in the friendly darkness, the brisk air softened by the faint smell of Angelica’s perfume rising from her sweater, it all seemed just right. “Thank you very much.”

We drank a bottle of chardonnay, and ate warm crusty bread and fried potatoes drizzled with golden olive oil and fresh rosemary, and chicken and arugula brightened with pimiento. Mr. di Rienzi did not grill me about what had happened at school. When I asked after Angelica, he said that she was visiting her cousins in Florence, at the University there. He would join her for the Christmas holidays, but she would probably remain even after he returned to New York, to begin classes in the spring term.

“It is so beautiful there in the spring, it would be a shame for her to have gone all that way and then miss it. But already I miss her so terribly, it is painful for me to talk of her. I hope you understand.”

He stared at me with huge eyes pale and luminous as Angelica’s own. There was a faint flicker in them, a gentle threat that might almost have been amusement; but I knew better.

“Yes,” I said. “I understand.”

So we spoke of other things. He gently but insistently drew me out to talk about my family, where my father had gone to school, how my parents had met, how many older siblings I had and what their careers were. We finished the bottle of wine, toasting the slow dark coursing of the Hudson with our last glass. For dessert he brought out a little orange-enameled tin of biscòtti wrapped in colored tissue, and showed me how to twist the discarded papers and loose them above a candle flame, so that they danced and spun and finally flared into ash. He would not let me help with the dishes—

“No, leave them. I have my own ways of taking care of them; it gives me some-thing to do in my retirement. Now, I think it is getting too cold out here for you. Let’s go inside to my study. Will you join me for a Sambuca?”

I was very impressed by all of this. In my family we did not eat outside or have wine at meals. We never ate after seven in the evening, and we certainly never had cordials after dinner. It was the first time I had Sambuca, and the sweet licorice taste reminded me of drinking Pernod with Oliver. Mr. di Rienzi served it in a tiny glass, like a lily blown of crystal, igniting it for an instant to send blue flame rippling across the surface.

“Very nice,” he said. “It takes the chill off the liqueur, and dissipates some of the volatile spirits. So you will not have a headache in the morning.” We were in his study, a small book-lined room. He smiled, motioning for me to sit in an enormous chair upholstered in slippery oxblood leather. “Now then—

“I understand that there were some very unfortunate things that happened to you, and to some of my daughter’s other friends at school this semester. Now, I don’t want to hear any more about it—it was quite unpleasant, hearing about it once from Angelica—so you don’t need to tell me or try to explain. I certainly do not blame you for any of it, Sweeney,” he went on in a gentler tone. “It is very, very common for young people to find themselves in—difficult circumstances—especially, perhaps, young people from good families. Coming from a sheltered background, being on your own for the first time, all that sudden freedom! Though I will say, I told Balthazar Warnick I think the University should have been much more circumspect in its dealings with the students, especially as regards that retreat. In my day we had parietals. It just would not have been permitted for young ladies and gentlemen to be unchaperoned for the weekend. But anyway,” he sighed, and went on.

“Anyway, Angelica has spoken very, very highly of you. Of how fond she is of you, and how much fun you had together. I know that young people today do things I don’t approve of, very dangerous things, and I don’t care to know what you may or may not have done with my daughter. But I do feel, in light of what has happened to your young friend Oliver, that you, Sweeney, have experienced quite enough punishment for one school term.

“I can’t do anything about your grades. I’m afraid they will follow you, and I hope serve as a reminder to you of what can happen if you don’t tread the straight and narrow path. But I have spoken to Balthazar Warnick and asked him to adjust the terms of your departure from the Divine.

“He has agreed to remand your suspension, under the condition that you submit a formal request to withdraw from the University and transfer to another school. At my request he has not mailed notice of your dismissal to your parents. It seemed to me that if they have successfully raised all those children, it would be an unnecessary heartbreak for them to deal with the academic failure of their youngest daughter.

“I know from Angelica that you are an exceptionally bright young lady, Sweeney, and have a wonderful future ahead of you. Now, there are several excellent schools in the D.C. area, and I know people at all of them. But the Dean of Students at George Washington University is an old friend of mine. They have a very fine Anthropology Department—slanted toward physical anthropology and archaeology, but very highly regarded. Now, if you would like, I would be very happy to contact Dr. Cohen and speak to him about your case. Your grades are shaky, but I’m sure it’s nothing he hasn’t seen before. Certainly the fact that you were accepted at the Divine will make a difference. And I know, of course, that you will throw yourself into your studies, and someday make us all proud with some marvelous discovery!”

He threw his arms open, laughing, and smiled at me.

What could I say? Of course it was a bribe, an effort to buy my silence; but I had no doubts but that the Benandanti could have ensured my silence as easily as they had arranged for Magda Kurtz’s, and perhaps Oliver’s.

No, it was truly a kind gesture that Mr. di Rienzi was making, and a very generous one: it meant that I was still under Angelica’s protection, though perhaps for only a very little while longer.

“It’s—that would be wonderful,” I said. “Really. I’m overwhelmed—I can never thank you enough.”

Mr. di Rienzi looked pleased. “Well then—a toast to your new life!” He refilled my glass, and said, “Now I know you’re aware that GW doesn’t have the same cachet as the University of the Archangels and Saint John the Divine. But it’s a very good school, and I think that there you’ll have a chance to shine, Sweeney. There are advantages to being a big fish in a little pond, although GW is a challenging place, don’t get me wrong about that. It’s in the heart of downtown, you can walk into Georgetown, I believe, and in a year or so there’ll be a subway stop right there. And of course the wonderful hospital affiliated with their medical school—”

I winced at the word hospital, but he didn’t notice.

“—although there is limited dormitory space, but if you wanted to live on campus, I’m sure arrangements could be made.”

I thanked him again and told him I’d figure something out. All this largesse was starting to make me feel uneasy and a little prickly. Unworthy of such kindness, and perhaps liable to start acting unworthy. I decided I’d better go to bed. I got to my feet, thanking him, and hoped I didn’t sound like I’d had too much to drink.

“It—it was a wonderful dinner, sir. This is all sort of too much—”

He waved his hand, as though dispersing a cloud of unpleasant smoke. “Of course, dear, of course. You don’t need to make a decision right away. I don’t imagine you could really start as a matriculating student anywhere until the spring term; but if you’d like to sit in on classes at GW…”

I told him I’d think about it. He gestured toward the door of his study.

“Angelica still feels very close to you, Sweeney,” he said. His gaze softened and his hand held mine for a long moment. “My daughter has always had wonderful judgment in her choice of friends. Nearly always,” he corrected himself. His eyes took on a keen look; I knew he was thinking of Oliver. “Now, you scamper up there and take a nice long bath, help yourself to any books you see, and tomorrow morning you sleep as late as you please. I get up early but don’t you worry about that. I think your flight is at two in the afternoon? The driver should be here by noon, to make sure you get there in plenty of time. Here, now I’ll see you to the steps—”

He placed his hand on my back and steered me out the door. At the foot of the stairs he smiled down at me.

“It will all work out for the best, Sweeney,” he said softly. “It always does.”

Impulsively I leaned up to kiss his cheek. “Good night, Mr. di Rienzi. And thank you again—”

“Good night, dear. Sweet dreams.”

The guest bathroom was small. A huge claw-footed tub took up most of the space, but after my four days of exile it seemed like a royal bath at Pompeii. A willow basket held seashell soaps from France, and muslin sachets of dried lavender and chamomile, and there were blue-and-white striped cotton towels thick and soft enough that I could have spread them on the floor and slept there. I almost wept at all this homey luxury, but instead I clambered into the steaming tub and stayed there for an hour. When I got out my fingers were puckered and pink as boiled shrimp. I felt thoroughly serene, calmer than I had been in weeks. Everything suddenly seemed manageable again. I had a new life waiting for me, new friends, a new school. Though of course GW wasn’t the Divine, and there would never be anyone like Angelica or Oliver.

I went back to my room, and found the covers turned down, a white plate with two foil-wrapped Perugina chocolates on the night table beside a carafe of water and a glass. To the pile of Vogues and New Yorkers a few books had been added: The Thirty-nine Steps, Anne of Windy Poplars, Margaret Mead’s Blackberry Winter. But I was much too tired to read. I ate the chocolates, drank a glass of water, and fell into dreamless untroubled sleep.

The next morning I slept until nearly nine o’clock. After showering and changing I went downstairs. There was a note on the kitchen table saying that Mr. di Rienzi had unexpected business to attend to and probably would not be back before my departure. He wished me well and told me that someone from George Washington University would be contacting me soon, and left the number for Mercury Skyline Livery, in the unlikely event that my car didn’t show by noon. There was coffee set up in the coffeemaker, cream and milk in the fridge, and a basket of pastries and fresh fruit.

I ate and went back upstairs. I lay on the bed in the guest room, thinking about my dinner the night before, and flipped through the stack of magazines. There was a recent issue of Paris Vogue addressed to Angelica, and the copy of Blackberry Winter had her name in it, written in that familiar swooping hand with peacock blue ink. I looked around the guest room for other signs of her presence but found none. Only that watercolor of a Mediterranean scene, which she must have brought back from some long-ago visit to the Aegean.

At last I gathered my things and went to wait for the car. As I walked slowly down the hallway I stopped in front of a closed door and tested the knob. I was curious to see Angelica’s room, just for one moment. But the door was locked. So was the next one, and the next, and the one after that. All the doors were locked. When I got downstairs I put my knapsack by the front door and walked very quietly down the hall, calling out softly for Mr. di Rienzi. There was no answer. When I reached his study, it was locked. Everything, locked. I returned to the front door, and waited with a mixture of melancholy and resignation and relief for the car that would bear me from Storm King.

I did not hear from Angelica. No letters, no phone calls; nothing save a small package that arrived a few days before Christmas, posted to my parents’ house in Armonk. The box was neatly wrapped in brown paper, and covered with brightly colored airmail stamps and the word FIRENZE stamped in red ink. When I opened it, there was another box inside, and inside that a nest of Italian newspapers and shredded bits of wrapping. I dug my fingers into the nest and withdrew something round and pocked with myriad tiny raised bumps, trailing an electrical cord.

It was a sea urchin. Like the one Angelica had on her desk at the Divine, its swollen sides striated in shades of pale rose and lavender and white. A sea urchin lamp, actually—it had been fitted with a tiny Christmas-tree bulb. It glowed a wonderfully soft, twilit purple, like a globe representing some lost and secret place. There was a little card with it, of marbled paper, and Angelica’s swirling peacock blue handwriting.

iii Lost Bells

FOUR YEARS LATER I graduated from college with a respectable grade point average and a bachelor’s degree in sociocultural anthropology. As if by magic, the week before my graduation I received a letter from Luciano di Rienzi. It was written on the same rich paper and with the same royal blue ink as his earlier missive, and in the same controlled yet flamboyant hand. Inside he congratulated me on my matriculation, and hoped that I would not think it presumptuous that he had contacted an old friend of his at the National Museum of Natural History, Dr. Robert Dvorkin, and informed him of my interest in native studies. Dr. Dvorkin had agreed to set up an interview with me at my earliest convenience. Mr. di Rienzi wished me well in all my endeavors and remained, with warm regards, Luciano di Rienzi. There was no mention of Angelica.

My job at the museum consisted of cataloging all the photographs in the Larkin Archives, a collection of fifty thousand photographic images dating from the late 1800s to the present. Pictures of Native Americans, of every tribe imaginable, recorded in every shade of sepia and ocher and grey and black and white, and every kind of image: old silver nitrate negs, Polaroids, daguerreotypes, official government photos, Brownie snapshots, Kodak slides, Hasselblad 8x11s, even a strip of Imax film taken from one of the space shuttles.

Actually, there were 63,492 photos, but no one knew that until I had finished logging every one. That took three years. I was very lucky to have a job in my discipline, any job. If I’d been an archaeologist, I might have fared better. As it was, I was an armchair anthropologist, as distant from the objects of my study as James Frazer had been from his. Destined (doomed, I secretly believed) to a lifetime career at the museum.

Over the years we acquired other photographic collections, all of which needed to be archived. I had no advanced degree, and no money to go to graduate school, and indeed no burning desire to do so. But Dr. Dvorkin was exceptionally kind to me, almost a surrogate uncle. I was certain that he was a Benandante, but I never dared to ask. If I had, I’m sure he would not have given me an answer.

And then another small bolt of lightning struck, in the form of a grant from the estate of Josepha Larkin, she of the 63,492 photos. There was a very new technology, almost completely untried, which utilized laser-read videodiscs as a means of storing archival information: fifty thousand still-frame images per side of a two-sided disc. Would the museum be interested in developing this technology as a method of storing and sharing its photographic collection?

Since there was no one in the federal jobs system who had the precise requirements for a Videodisc Project Manager, Cultural Anthropology, BA or MA required, the job fell to me. Almost overnight I got a promotion and a raise and my own office and my own telephone and even my own staff, consisting of one part-time employee who worked nights at Popeye’s. It wasn’t the fast track that everyone else was following in those years, but it was security, a paycheck every two weeks and a pension when I retired. And while I was pretty much doing the same job as before, there was that office, with a door that closed when I wanted to put my head on my desk and nap, and my name on the door in neat green letters. And most of the time, that seemed to be enough.

iv Saranbanda de la Muerta Oscura

YEARS WENT BY, MANY years. When I met Oliver I was only eighteen. At that age, privilege and latent schizophrenia can look an awful lot like genius. Now I was more than twice as old, and had made up for missing his funeral by attending many others. The plague years were upon us. I watched people I loved the and with each death something more of beauty drained away not only from the world but from me. I do not mean just that my life was lessened by their dying—though it was—or that I was not fortunate to be alive and grateful for it. I only mean that I had always felt that it was others who made me beautiful, by choosing to love me. This sounds like the sober admission of a dysfunctional woman, I know. But unless you had seen Oliver and Angelica together, laughing, or been as heartsick and lonely as I was when Oliver first greeted me that morning in Professor Warnick’s classroom: unless you had been me, enthralled but willing servitor, knowing I was unworthy of such friends, and so grateful to have been chosen—you could not know how I felt, how beautiful they were, how beautiful I was, on what a sweet bed we lay.

But now it was all to start anew. Finnegan begin again…

It was early morning of the first of May, a clear unseasonably cool morning for the city. I was hurrying from a cab to the sliding glass doors of the Emergency Room of Providence Hospital. A friend had gone into acute pulmonary distress, the last time it was to happen but I did not know that yet. I had not forgotten Oliver’s suicide, of course, but this hospital had long since become the scene of other dramas for me. I walked quickly to the ER doors with my head down, staring at the cracked concrete, the carnival detritus of shivered glass and metal. An ambulance was backing up from the doorway. Just outside the entrance a heavyset raw-faced woman was standing numbly, tears streaming down her cheeks. I did not want to look at her. So I looked down, tightening my grip on my briefcase. On the pavement were shattered crack vials and flattened cans, the ruby lens of a smashed headlight. You might have been able to trace the history of all the unfortunates inside of Providence, if you only knew where to look.

Then something else caught my eye. I hesitated, stopped, and bent to look more closely.

Overhead a metal awning thrust above the entrance to the Emergency Room, so that the rectangle of broken tarmac beneath stood in perpetual shade. There were small filthy pools of scummy water that never dried, and large black beetles with knobbed antennae that crawled across a liquefying red-and-white box from Popeye’s.

And there was something else as well: pushing up through a crack in the concrete, not frail or etiolated as one might have expected but strong, its stem thick around as my forefinger, its curved leaves the deep nitrogen-rich green of leaves that bask in the sun all day.

A flower. A hyacinth.

Not the bulbous heavy-scented bloom known as a hyacinth in this country, but Scilla non-scripta, the wood hyacindi, Homer’s huakinthos. Its blossoms so rich a violet-blue they seemed to have been cut and folded from velvet, their yellow stamens as vivid and startling as eyes glimpsed from between the lappets of a heavy cloak. An amazing thing! I knew they did not grow anywhere outside of the Mediterranean, and even there only in wild lonely places, crags and mountainsides sacred to Artemis and her twin Apollo, and to the memory of the slain lover who gave his name to the flower.

Impossible; but there it was. As I brought my face closer I could just barely discern beneath the scents of car fumes and creosote its fragrance: sweet but very very faint, as though borne to me across mountains and rivers and stony plains, across an entire ocean, across a night country whose steppes I had seen only once but never forgotten. As from a past that was not my own but was somehow laying claim to me from an unthinkable, almost unbearable, distance.