FFMS Scrapbook
Created | Updated May 22, 2004
Late afternoon sunbeams dance orange in the crystal, and the oriel is bathed in faerie-light.
The gentle sussuration of his voice washes over me. My World is never so calm, but neither is the World beyond this room.
Morison sets down the sherry decanter in the burning red pool of the charger. He continues in his familiar soft growl, like a contended dog half-asleep at the fireside. He conjures this deceptive tranquility, this oasis of false reason in which he floats, but I forgive him for it. These vestiges of liberty rely on his trust, and he is my friend.
“None of this for you, Mr Dadd” he chides, raising the sparkling glass through the dying rays of crimson sun. He does not notice the sprites and atomies that fly from it. I try to ignore their buzzing, and fix all my attention on the soporific Scots burr.
“Now, the steward informs me that we must discuss this”, Morison continues, nodding towards the canvas. A shower of faeries bursts from the chandelier above it, and they settle about the room, on drapes and antimacassars. Their singing is a distraction, and I know that they would have me remain silent. They and I both understand the importance of this thing.
"You began it for Mr Haydon more than three years ago, I am told. You paint over it again and again. Is this the product of boredom, Mr Dadd, or do you have some other purpose?”
The room is awash with the swell of summer eventide. The scent is of candlewax and leather, womb-warm, suffused by tones of blood. The pervasive chorus is sapping wakefulness. I remember nothing more. ___________________________________________________________________
…reiterated… until the painting’s surface heaves, and until the figures within it seethe and teem, and until the grass-stalks whiplash from its depths like razors. And even now he cannot stop.
Painting as a window.
There is no comfort here. A thousand eyes return your gaze with relentless and sullen malice. The faerie-folk are deadly real, and they are vain and proud, and their contempt for you wrings your soul. Linger at their window and they will seize your dreams.
____________________________________________________________________
Xxxxxxx Dadd, Esq.
12 Nineveh Terrace,
Date
Dear Sir,
I beg your forbearance in a matter of some delicacy. I know your brother, Mr Richard Dadd, in consequence of my employ as Steward at the Bethlehem Hospital.
He has implored me to visit you, so that he might recover his painting materials from your care. Mr Dadd would once again take up his craft, the pursuit of which his doctors deem conducive to the relief of his affliction.
In like vein, your brother also respectfully asks you to return a certain ring purchased by him in the course of his Eastern travels. This ring is set with an agate stone, and he assures me that you will thus recognise it and comprehend its significance.
I would not cause you distress in this transaction, kind Sir, and so await your word of agreement. In the hope of your convenience I stand ready to come to your chambers on Friday the sixth next, thereupon to make a collection of these items.
I am, Sir, your humble and indebted Servant,
Yours &c.
Chas. Haydon
___________________________________________________________________
He is sitting there again, at the foot of the dew-spangled bank. His shoulders are hunched and his knees are clenched anxiously to his chest. Perspiration glistens upon the bald dome of his skull. As ever, his expression is a blend of misery and trepidation.
I pick up a single-haired brush and touch him gently with the tip. For a moment, I feel the anguished stab of his gaze.
“Do you know how to split a hazelnut?” he asks for the hundredth time. I nod carefully, keeping a close watch on this white-bearded little man and on his disdainful companions.
“No, you do not”, he retorts indignantly. “What would happen then, if you struck a hazelnut with an axe?”
He means an axe of like size, of course. I visualise the Feller’s keen blade embedded in the nut after his first stroke. Now, if he hefts his axe once more, he can bring down both nut and cutting edge together, and the nut will be cloven in two.
“Nay!” wails the little man, rocking on his haunches. There is pain etched over his face. “This is Mab’s nut! Her coach must be perfect! You will bruise it and spoil it like that!”
I withdraw the brush, perplexed. I do not know another way.
“Lord Oberon decrees that the axe must be sharp enough to cleave the nut in a single blow!” he screeches. “The Patriarch has seen to it. The Feller’s axe is of a wondrous metal, unknown outside this world. The Smith has forged it and tempered it, and quenched it with his tears. The Feller shall wield it. Mab’s coach will be made!”
And now I notice that the Patriarch has been watching all along, caressing his beard with curling fingers. There are faeries dancing upon his hat-brim. The Smith watches rapt, hands on his knees, and the moth-people look on, scowling. The haughty ballerinas peer and totter on their fat-calved tiptoes, and the trumpeters blare.
Amid the nodding grasses and the leaf-litter and the daisies, the Feller wipes his brow and catches his breath. The gleaming blade describes its upward arc.
The little man squeezes his eyes tight shut, and clasps his knees, and rocks, and rocks.
___________________________________________________________________
For some time now, I have been minded to record my observations on Dadd and his remarkable painting.
At the time of my appointment as XXXXXXXXXXXXX for this Hospital, my predecessor appraised me of Dadd’s handicraft, expressing also his belief that this activity had a placatory benefit on the patient. Dr XXXXX evidently did not see fit, however, to comment on either Dadd’s prowess or his obsessive meticulousness.
I learned of both traits from Haydon. Some three years ago, I chanced to question the steward on his habit of wearing a particular ring. Haydon told me that Dadd had given him the ring in gratitude for the procurement of artist’s materials. Moreover, Dadd had promised to make a gift of a painting to his benefactor. This turns out to be the painting to which Dadd still applies himself daily, and which to this day remains unfinished, at least according to its creator.
The painting is some twenty-five inches in height and fifteen in width, rendered on canvas in oils. In spite of this small size, I estimate that Dadd has worked at it for fully five thousand hours to date, and yet seems in no way ready to call it done.
Haydon reports that the painting was started after only one or two days of preparatory sketches. After painting a solitary figure, Dadd began to compose the likeness of soil and mould, as might be found upon a shady forest floor. He reiterated these features in minute detail for weeks on end, until the surface of the painting took on a powdery and swollen quality, redolent of decay. Then he formed a habit of declaiming before the easel, reciting poetry apparently of his own making, all learned by heart. In time, more figures began to appear, and then soon after came the habit of painting a different scene over the original composition. Very often, he has moved the same figures around the painting, or changed the season, or the light, all as if the scene were alive and time were passing in the world it depicts.
The first figure painted, referred to by Dadd as ‘the Patriarch’, seems to possess divine status in our patient’s pantheon. All the other figures are described as faeries, and the painting itself as ‘The Faerie-Feller’s Master-Stroke’. Haydon has established that it relates to a theme from Shakespeare, the fashioning of a Faerie-Queen’s chariot which is mentioned in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’.
There is nothing particularly unusual about the painting of faeries, as a walk among the ateliers of XXXXXXX will quickly confirm. These faeries, however, are decidedly strange. A study of the image is a disturbing experience, and to watch Dadd at work upon it is more disturbing still. I am much less convinced than was XXXXXX that its influence is therapeutic, for Dadd seems very often to be in thrall to it. My tentative attempts to distance him from it, however, have given rise to such demonstrations of despair and anger that I am now minded to let him stay at it.
Dadd paints in a bare room in daylight. He uses two easels, one bearing the painting and the other a palette. He holds a brush in his right hand and a magnifying-glass in his left, and often the brush has but a single hair. The fineness of the detail he paints is extreme, and sometimes quite imperceptible, to me at any rate. Sometimes he will remain motionless for minutes on end, with the brush-tip against the canvas and the glass in close proximity. As he works, he often chants his verse, or makes hissing sounds in the manner of an animal.
Haydon, for his part, is greatly changed in his opinion of both the painting and its executor. From a former estimation of gratitude and pride, he has progressed through fascination and revulsion to an attitude today that is not so very far removed from fear. Dadd has asked the steward to pose for him, and so to be put into the picture, but Haydon will have no such thing. Asked why he then continues to wear Dadd’s ring, the unhappy steward has been heard to claim that its jewel serves as a charm against evil.
________________________________________________________________________
Did he turn to look at me, from his lion bed of birth and death? I believe that I saw it, the tilt of his carved face, the shifting of the soot that hid him. Did Isis and Nephthys pause in their frozen motions of revival to flick an inscrutable gesture at me with their fingers? I do not know what I saw, I do not trust my eyes, but I am sure that I heard him. In the temple of Opet he spoke to me, he spoke truths too great to hold. That is why I do not remember his words. The ecstasy of his voice and meaning overwhelmed me but the words do not matter. I am his chosen and he suffuses me.
Days have passed; days in which I doubted the truth Osiris has given to me, and thought myself possessed of evil. But the truth of my fate is with me and I cannot doubt it.
Phillips is here with me now. His eyes are tiny and distant and I wonder if he too suspects the things that will be coming after us, but I think not. The air is greasy with the burnt caramel fetor of his pipe. I share his smoke and the world slows. For a moment I am calm and I grin foolishly at Phillips. That is when the burning begins but it is only in my eyes and I think that it is just the smoke. I rub at them and my fingers begin to sting. Phillips says something, he is asking if I am all right, his eyes focus on me through the haze of smoke and I try to say that I am fine. The words leave me, I feel them go, my mouth forms into communicative shapes and they are gone to swirl with the smoke, forming new patterns as they mingle and breed. I cannot hear them. I say 'I cannot hear the words' but those words flutter up with the others. Phillips is speaking again but his works do not hold any meaning, he has invented a new language, it is a trick his words have sound but no meaning, we must be opposites, he and I. It is a sign that he is my opposite. His moustache bristles, isn't that the word? That's what moustaches do, they bristle. Each hair is perfectly clear, I could count them if I wanted but my eyes will not stay still and they burn. The sweet taint of the opium is sitting on my mind, binding my thoughts like a tar. He is moving, Phillips is looming, getting closer. He touches my shoulder and says something in his new not language and that is when the crush of thoughts and the blanket of opium calm over them ignite into pain and I remember nothing more but the screams that tear at my throat.
___________________________________________________________________
Rome - spring 1843
As I recover my senses I can see that I am in another unfamiliar room. There is little view beyond the window, but Rome in the spring is garish and I do not care to look at it anyway. The air is darker then it should be this early in the day, there is a sticky overcast that presages another storm.
A movement near the door draws my ear; it is Phillips. 'I see you are back in the land of the living my boy,' he says. I turn to face him and he smiles so I smile back and he settles in a chair next to my bedside. I ask him what happened, though I remember most of it quite clearly, I need to know what he saw. It is a test.
'You don't remember hey? Well, that's not too surprising. Quite common in these cases I suppose.' He looks up at the ceiling and brushes his moustache absently. His eyes are diffused, remembering.
'I suppose you remember arriving at the piazza?'
I looked around and saw columns circling us - standing stones topped with the idols of saints and worthies, so high and smug, raised above us.
'It wasn't easy to find a good place to stand, with a view of the basilica, there were many people, and noise. It bothered you I think.'
The crowds, babbling their wonder at the false monument. The ignorant and gullible come to praise the profane heart of their faith. It sickened me and I stumbled blindly after Phillips as he worked his way through the crowd looking for a vantage point. When he stopped we were at the base of the obelisk. I could have touched it, if I had wanted to. The swarm of supplicants was too close for me to make out the sun burst sweeping out from the mastsebah but I felt it burn at my feet and at the same time, felt the power of the needle beside me calling my eyes upward. I fought the impulse to look and set my gaze on Phillips instead. He seemed oblivious to the blade of stone towering beside us. He was looking at the basilica, waiting with the rest of the mass. The Holy See had him, I saw it then. I had hoped…for a moment…that he knew…that they were acting through him. But he was oblivious, caught in the great lie, and I hated him for it. There was no comfort in fixing my eyes on him and like a drunkard I spun to look…to see in its glory…I was frozen by it…it took me whole.
'We were waiting to hear his holiness speak. The sun came out. That was when I really noticed that something was wrong.'
The sun hit the peak of the needle at the same moment my eyes scaled the shaft.
'You were terribly pale, looked dreadful. I asked you what was wrong but you just said 'the sun' over and over.
It was a sign…so obvious a message...the sun hitting they symbol of the sun god. It was awful…terrible…to see that. The monument of the sun castrated by the hated sign of their desecration. The sun struck the cross and the reflection of its light blinded me. Where the sun should have absorbed itself in natural worship it was cast back.
'I expect the force of the sun brought on another headache. I should have thought of it, made sure you were completely well. I tried to suggest that we leave, find shade and a cool drink for you but you would not move, didn't seem to hear me. I should have insisted but his holiness arrived and the crowd was too boisterous to make it practical for me to get you out of the piazza just then.'
As the heir of St Peter stepped up to speak revolt moved in waves through the paved symbol of Ishtar and travelled up Baal's column until it throbbed with power. I heard the voices again, drowning out the Latin of the false one, older and more powerful than him…than all of them with their puling cheap religion…could ever hope to be. It spoke to me of the progenitors of decay. Our father who art in heaven, who is a lie and a sacrilege against the old forms…forgive me father for you have sinned.
'You became fevered, delirious. Your speech was disordered and I could not follow it.'
The might of…them, the ones who watch me…who have chosen me…boiled from the obelisk and filed me. They guide me and they guided my actions then.
'I tried to calm you but you pushed me away and started to run through the crowds towards his holiness. Guards stopped you, though it took several of them to contain you. There's not really any more to tell. Once you were restrained I interceded and explained that the heat and exhaustion have affected you quite badly so finally they allowed me to bring you back here.'
Phillips has stopped speaking and is watching me intently. I shake my head, visibly bewildered and say that I do not know what came over me. I remember none of what he described. He is concerned, but he believes me and tells me that we shall travel north, where it is cooler. Perhaps they may yet prove to be working through him, but I know now that he is not to be trusted. I agree to his plans and tell him that I am tired.
Once he is gone I stare about the room again. In the corner of the window a moth is casting itself against the glass. The dust from its wings glitters bronze and gold and begins to form itself into patterns. I watch.
__________________________________________________________________
Paris...
Sometimes I doubt and I know that it is evil, to doubt. I must be sure, I must be certain, and I am. Most of the time, I am certain. But sometimes, what I know is different and I am just as sure, then. Sometimes, I know that the voices are evil, that what they tell me is wrong and I hate myself for the things that I have seen, in my mind.
This morning I killed Phillips. I waited for him in his room. I had his razor. His own razor, still a little sticky with his shaving soap. I stared at the patterns on it as I waited for him. I could see them in the corners of the room. They are always there now, at the corners of my vision, darting before me, dancing, fornicating, twisting over the ceiling, their tiny faces contorted and gleeful, their voices high and constant and through their chatter I hear His voice, deeper and compelling, telling me over and over that Phillips is not to be trusted, that he is evil and that he will deceive me if I let him. I kept my eyes on the smudges of soap because I did not want to see them, did not need to see them. It was not decent that they could be so pleased at what I was there to do. Not decent that I shared their elation when I must be composed. I must be calm to carry out the act.
I was sure, then. I brimmed with certainty, the doubts belonged to someone else, a me who was not me. I turned them over, the thoughts of the not me. The thoughts that tell me that the voices are not true, that Phillips is my friend, that I am scaring him. I smiled as I dismissed those thoughts and exhilaration tingled in my skin.
Phillips came in and frowned to see me in his room. I told him that I knew of his evil and my voice rang with Their power. I told him that I would bring justice upon him. I hit him to the floor and pinned him there. My hand was over his mouth, forcing his head back. His eyes were dreadfully wide; his breath on my hand was hot and quick. I noticed that his collar had been done up too tight and had made his neck red. He hardly struggled at all. He did not have time. I ran the blade over his throat with a firm quick movement and the blood that poured out bubbled a little.
As I watched the focus of his eyes slip away from me, dip into nothingness, he walked in the door. There was nothing in my hands. The razor was gone.
'I killed you. I killed you just now. Must I kill you again?' I heard myself speak and it was my own voice, weak and faltering. The power was gone. I had failed and they had repudiated me for it. I leapt at Phillips, sure that if I killed him again they would come back to me and I would be certain again. I wanted to cut his throat and see him bleed again but the blade was gone, so I clawed at him and tried to throttle him. There was no strength in my hands. My limbs quivered and I fell to the floor when he pushed me and did not get up. I sat and wept like a scorned woman.
For an age Phillips stood where I had attacked him and stared at me as though he did not know me. I crawled away from him and hid my face in the valance at the foot of the bed. When he spoke his voice was unsteady.
'Richard, you must get help. This is not sunstroke.'
I could not answer him and he did not say anything more. When he left he locked the door.
____________________________________________________________________
The gentle sussuration of his voice washes over me. My World is never so calm, but neither is the World beyond this room.
Morison sets down the sherry decanter in the burning red pool of the charger. He continues in his familiar soft growl, like a contended dog half-asleep at the fireside. He conjures this deceptive tranquility, this oasis of false reason in which he floats, but I forgive him for it. These vestiges of liberty rely on his trust, and he is my friend.
“None of this for you, Mr Dadd” he chides, raising the sparkling glass through the dying rays of crimson sun. He does not notice the sprites and atomies that fly from it. I try to ignore their buzzing, and fix all my attention on the soporific Scots burr.
“Now, the steward informs me that we must discuss this”, Morison continues, nodding towards the canvas. A shower of faeries bursts from the chandelier above it, and they settle about the room, on drapes and antimacassars. Their singing is a distraction, and I know that they would have me remain silent. They and I both understand the importance of this thing.
"You began it for Mr Haydon more than three years ago, I am told. You paint over it again and again. Is this the product of boredom, Mr Dadd, or do you have some other purpose?”
The room is awash with the swell of summer eventide. The scent is of candlewax and leather, womb-warm, suffused by tones of blood. The pervasive chorus is sapping wakefulness. I remember nothing more. ___________________________________________________________________
…reiterated… until the painting’s surface heaves, and until the figures within it seethe and teem, and until the grass-stalks whiplash from its depths like razors. And even now he cannot stop.
Painting as a window.
There is no comfort here. A thousand eyes return your gaze with relentless and sullen malice. The faerie-folk are deadly real, and they are vain and proud, and their contempt for you wrings your soul. Linger at their window and they will seize your dreams.
____________________________________________________________________
Xxxxxxx Dadd, Esq.
12 Nineveh Terrace,
Date
Dear Sir,
I beg your forbearance in a matter of some delicacy. I know your brother, Mr Richard Dadd, in consequence of my employ as Steward at the Bethlehem Hospital.
He has implored me to visit you, so that he might recover his painting materials from your care. Mr Dadd would once again take up his craft, the pursuit of which his doctors deem conducive to the relief of his affliction.
In like vein, your brother also respectfully asks you to return a certain ring purchased by him in the course of his Eastern travels. This ring is set with an agate stone, and he assures me that you will thus recognise it and comprehend its significance.
I would not cause you distress in this transaction, kind Sir, and so await your word of agreement. In the hope of your convenience I stand ready to come to your chambers on Friday the sixth next, thereupon to make a collection of these items.
I am, Sir, your humble and indebted Servant,
Yours &c.
Chas. Haydon
___________________________________________________________________
He is sitting there again, at the foot of the dew-spangled bank. His shoulders are hunched and his knees are clenched anxiously to his chest. Perspiration glistens upon the bald dome of his skull. As ever, his expression is a blend of misery and trepidation.
I pick up a single-haired brush and touch him gently with the tip. For a moment, I feel the anguished stab of his gaze.
“Do you know how to split a hazelnut?” he asks for the hundredth time. I nod carefully, keeping a close watch on this white-bearded little man and on his disdainful companions.
“No, you do not”, he retorts indignantly. “What would happen then, if you struck a hazelnut with an axe?”
He means an axe of like size, of course. I visualise the Feller’s keen blade embedded in the nut after his first stroke. Now, if he hefts his axe once more, he can bring down both nut and cutting edge together, and the nut will be cloven in two.
“Nay!” wails the little man, rocking on his haunches. There is pain etched over his face. “This is Mab’s nut! Her coach must be perfect! You will bruise it and spoil it like that!”
I withdraw the brush, perplexed. I do not know another way.
“Lord Oberon decrees that the axe must be sharp enough to cleave the nut in a single blow!” he screeches. “The Patriarch has seen to it. The Feller’s axe is of a wondrous metal, unknown outside this world. The Smith has forged it and tempered it, and quenched it with his tears. The Feller shall wield it. Mab’s coach will be made!”
And now I notice that the Patriarch has been watching all along, caressing his beard with curling fingers. There are faeries dancing upon his hat-brim. The Smith watches rapt, hands on his knees, and the moth-people look on, scowling. The haughty ballerinas peer and totter on their fat-calved tiptoes, and the trumpeters blare.
Amid the nodding grasses and the leaf-litter and the daisies, the Feller wipes his brow and catches his breath. The gleaming blade describes its upward arc.
The little man squeezes his eyes tight shut, and clasps his knees, and rocks, and rocks.
___________________________________________________________________
For some time now, I have been minded to record my observations on Dadd and his remarkable painting.
At the time of my appointment as XXXXXXXXXXXXX for this Hospital, my predecessor appraised me of Dadd’s handicraft, expressing also his belief that this activity had a placatory benefit on the patient. Dr XXXXX evidently did not see fit, however, to comment on either Dadd’s prowess or his obsessive meticulousness.
I learned of both traits from Haydon. Some three years ago, I chanced to question the steward on his habit of wearing a particular ring. Haydon told me that Dadd had given him the ring in gratitude for the procurement of artist’s materials. Moreover, Dadd had promised to make a gift of a painting to his benefactor. This turns out to be the painting to which Dadd still applies himself daily, and which to this day remains unfinished, at least according to its creator.
The painting is some twenty-five inches in height and fifteen in width, rendered on canvas in oils. In spite of this small size, I estimate that Dadd has worked at it for fully five thousand hours to date, and yet seems in no way ready to call it done.
Haydon reports that the painting was started after only one or two days of preparatory sketches. After painting a solitary figure, Dadd began to compose the likeness of soil and mould, as might be found upon a shady forest floor. He reiterated these features in minute detail for weeks on end, until the surface of the painting took on a powdery and swollen quality, redolent of decay. Then he formed a habit of declaiming before the easel, reciting poetry apparently of his own making, all learned by heart. In time, more figures began to appear, and then soon after came the habit of painting a different scene over the original composition. Very often, he has moved the same figures around the painting, or changed the season, or the light, all as if the scene were alive and time were passing in the world it depicts.
The first figure painted, referred to by Dadd as ‘the Patriarch’, seems to possess divine status in our patient’s pantheon. All the other figures are described as faeries, and the painting itself as ‘The Faerie-Feller’s Master-Stroke’. Haydon has established that it relates to a theme from Shakespeare, the fashioning of a Faerie-Queen’s chariot which is mentioned in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’.
There is nothing particularly unusual about the painting of faeries, as a walk among the ateliers of XXXXXXX will quickly confirm. These faeries, however, are decidedly strange. A study of the image is a disturbing experience, and to watch Dadd at work upon it is more disturbing still. I am much less convinced than was XXXXXX that its influence is therapeutic, for Dadd seems very often to be in thrall to it. My tentative attempts to distance him from it, however, have given rise to such demonstrations of despair and anger that I am now minded to let him stay at it.
Dadd paints in a bare room in daylight. He uses two easels, one bearing the painting and the other a palette. He holds a brush in his right hand and a magnifying-glass in his left, and often the brush has but a single hair. The fineness of the detail he paints is extreme, and sometimes quite imperceptible, to me at any rate. Sometimes he will remain motionless for minutes on end, with the brush-tip against the canvas and the glass in close proximity. As he works, he often chants his verse, or makes hissing sounds in the manner of an animal.
Haydon, for his part, is greatly changed in his opinion of both the painting and its executor. From a former estimation of gratitude and pride, he has progressed through fascination and revulsion to an attitude today that is not so very far removed from fear. Dadd has asked the steward to pose for him, and so to be put into the picture, but Haydon will have no such thing. Asked why he then continues to wear Dadd’s ring, the unhappy steward has been heard to claim that its jewel serves as a charm against evil.
________________________________________________________________________
Did he turn to look at me, from his lion bed of birth and death? I believe that I saw it, the tilt of his carved face, the shifting of the soot that hid him. Did Isis and Nephthys pause in their frozen motions of revival to flick an inscrutable gesture at me with their fingers? I do not know what I saw, I do not trust my eyes, but I am sure that I heard him. In the temple of Opet he spoke to me, he spoke truths too great to hold. That is why I do not remember his words. The ecstasy of his voice and meaning overwhelmed me but the words do not matter. I am his chosen and he suffuses me.
Days have passed; days in which I doubted the truth Osiris has given to me, and thought myself possessed of evil. But the truth of my fate is with me and I cannot doubt it.
Phillips is here with me now. His eyes are tiny and distant and I wonder if he too suspects the things that will be coming after us, but I think not. The air is greasy with the burnt caramel fetor of his pipe. I share his smoke and the world slows. For a moment I am calm and I grin foolishly at Phillips. That is when the burning begins but it is only in my eyes and I think that it is just the smoke. I rub at them and my fingers begin to sting. Phillips says something, he is asking if I am all right, his eyes focus on me through the haze of smoke and I try to say that I am fine. The words leave me, I feel them go, my mouth forms into communicative shapes and they are gone to swirl with the smoke, forming new patterns as they mingle and breed. I cannot hear them. I say 'I cannot hear the words' but those words flutter up with the others. Phillips is speaking again but his works do not hold any meaning, he has invented a new language, it is a trick his words have sound but no meaning, we must be opposites, he and I. It is a sign that he is my opposite. His moustache bristles, isn't that the word? That's what moustaches do, they bristle. Each hair is perfectly clear, I could count them if I wanted but my eyes will not stay still and they burn. The sweet taint of the opium is sitting on my mind, binding my thoughts like a tar. He is moving, Phillips is looming, getting closer. He touches my shoulder and says something in his new not language and that is when the crush of thoughts and the blanket of opium calm over them ignite into pain and I remember nothing more but the screams that tear at my throat.
___________________________________________________________________
Rome - spring 1843
As I recover my senses I can see that I am in another unfamiliar room. There is little view beyond the window, but Rome in the spring is garish and I do not care to look at it anyway. The air is darker then it should be this early in the day, there is a sticky overcast that presages another storm.
A movement near the door draws my ear; it is Phillips. 'I see you are back in the land of the living my boy,' he says. I turn to face him and he smiles so I smile back and he settles in a chair next to my bedside. I ask him what happened, though I remember most of it quite clearly, I need to know what he saw. It is a test.
'You don't remember hey? Well, that's not too surprising. Quite common in these cases I suppose.' He looks up at the ceiling and brushes his moustache absently. His eyes are diffused, remembering.
'I suppose you remember arriving at the piazza?'
I looked around and saw columns circling us - standing stones topped with the idols of saints and worthies, so high and smug, raised above us.
'It wasn't easy to find a good place to stand, with a view of the basilica, there were many people, and noise. It bothered you I think.'
The crowds, babbling their wonder at the false monument. The ignorant and gullible come to praise the profane heart of their faith. It sickened me and I stumbled blindly after Phillips as he worked his way through the crowd looking for a vantage point. When he stopped we were at the base of the obelisk. I could have touched it, if I had wanted to. The swarm of supplicants was too close for me to make out the sun burst sweeping out from the mastsebah but I felt it burn at my feet and at the same time, felt the power of the needle beside me calling my eyes upward. I fought the impulse to look and set my gaze on Phillips instead. He seemed oblivious to the blade of stone towering beside us. He was looking at the basilica, waiting with the rest of the mass. The Holy See had him, I saw it then. I had hoped…for a moment…that he knew…that they were acting through him. But he was oblivious, caught in the great lie, and I hated him for it. There was no comfort in fixing my eyes on him and like a drunkard I spun to look…to see in its glory…I was frozen by it…it took me whole.
'We were waiting to hear his holiness speak. The sun came out. That was when I really noticed that something was wrong.'
The sun hit the peak of the needle at the same moment my eyes scaled the shaft.
'You were terribly pale, looked dreadful. I asked you what was wrong but you just said 'the sun' over and over.
It was a sign…so obvious a message...the sun hitting they symbol of the sun god. It was awful…terrible…to see that. The monument of the sun castrated by the hated sign of their desecration. The sun struck the cross and the reflection of its light blinded me. Where the sun should have absorbed itself in natural worship it was cast back.
'I expect the force of the sun brought on another headache. I should have thought of it, made sure you were completely well. I tried to suggest that we leave, find shade and a cool drink for you but you would not move, didn't seem to hear me. I should have insisted but his holiness arrived and the crowd was too boisterous to make it practical for me to get you out of the piazza just then.'
As the heir of St Peter stepped up to speak revolt moved in waves through the paved symbol of Ishtar and travelled up Baal's column until it throbbed with power. I heard the voices again, drowning out the Latin of the false one, older and more powerful than him…than all of them with their puling cheap religion…could ever hope to be. It spoke to me of the progenitors of decay. Our father who art in heaven, who is a lie and a sacrilege against the old forms…forgive me father for you have sinned.
'You became fevered, delirious. Your speech was disordered and I could not follow it.'
The might of…them, the ones who watch me…who have chosen me…boiled from the obelisk and filed me. They guide me and they guided my actions then.
'I tried to calm you but you pushed me away and started to run through the crowds towards his holiness. Guards stopped you, though it took several of them to contain you. There's not really any more to tell. Once you were restrained I interceded and explained that the heat and exhaustion have affected you quite badly so finally they allowed me to bring you back here.'
Phillips has stopped speaking and is watching me intently. I shake my head, visibly bewildered and say that I do not know what came over me. I remember none of what he described. He is concerned, but he believes me and tells me that we shall travel north, where it is cooler. Perhaps they may yet prove to be working through him, but I know now that he is not to be trusted. I agree to his plans and tell him that I am tired.
Once he is gone I stare about the room again. In the corner of the window a moth is casting itself against the glass. The dust from its wings glitters bronze and gold and begins to form itself into patterns. I watch.
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Paris...
Sometimes I doubt and I know that it is evil, to doubt. I must be sure, I must be certain, and I am. Most of the time, I am certain. But sometimes, what I know is different and I am just as sure, then. Sometimes, I know that the voices are evil, that what they tell me is wrong and I hate myself for the things that I have seen, in my mind.
This morning I killed Phillips. I waited for him in his room. I had his razor. His own razor, still a little sticky with his shaving soap. I stared at the patterns on it as I waited for him. I could see them in the corners of the room. They are always there now, at the corners of my vision, darting before me, dancing, fornicating, twisting over the ceiling, their tiny faces contorted and gleeful, their voices high and constant and through their chatter I hear His voice, deeper and compelling, telling me over and over that Phillips is not to be trusted, that he is evil and that he will deceive me if I let him. I kept my eyes on the smudges of soap because I did not want to see them, did not need to see them. It was not decent that they could be so pleased at what I was there to do. Not decent that I shared their elation when I must be composed. I must be calm to carry out the act.
I was sure, then. I brimmed with certainty, the doubts belonged to someone else, a me who was not me. I turned them over, the thoughts of the not me. The thoughts that tell me that the voices are not true, that Phillips is my friend, that I am scaring him. I smiled as I dismissed those thoughts and exhilaration tingled in my skin.
Phillips came in and frowned to see me in his room. I told him that I knew of his evil and my voice rang with Their power. I told him that I would bring justice upon him. I hit him to the floor and pinned him there. My hand was over his mouth, forcing his head back. His eyes were dreadfully wide; his breath on my hand was hot and quick. I noticed that his collar had been done up too tight and had made his neck red. He hardly struggled at all. He did not have time. I ran the blade over his throat with a firm quick movement and the blood that poured out bubbled a little.
As I watched the focus of his eyes slip away from me, dip into nothingness, he walked in the door. There was nothing in my hands. The razor was gone.
'I killed you. I killed you just now. Must I kill you again?' I heard myself speak and it was my own voice, weak and faltering. The power was gone. I had failed and they had repudiated me for it. I leapt at Phillips, sure that if I killed him again they would come back to me and I would be certain again. I wanted to cut his throat and see him bleed again but the blade was gone, so I clawed at him and tried to throttle him. There was no strength in my hands. My limbs quivered and I fell to the floor when he pushed me and did not get up. I sat and wept like a scorned woman.
For an age Phillips stood where I had attacked him and stared at me as though he did not know me. I crawled away from him and hid my face in the valance at the foot of the bed. When he spoke his voice was unsteady.
'Richard, you must get help. This is not sunstroke.'
I could not answer him and he did not say anything more. When he left he locked the door.
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