Terminal Island

Chapter Twenty-Three

ACT ONE:

THE WHITE BULL



Henry awakens on the balcony of a darkened theater. He recognizes the spangled ceiling of the Casino. There is the soothing sound of an orchestra tuning its instruments, the soft murmur of a crowd.

His head feels like it weighs a thousand pounds—with great effort he sluggishly turns it and receives a shock. Surrounding him are hideous, animal-headed people: dogs and goats and wild boars in evening dress. Though he knows it can’t be so, he could swear that they are not masks; they seem alive, chatting together. He tries to focus, to dispel the illusion. It sticks.

As if noticing Henry’s alarm, a frightening goat-face leans into his and whispers, “Welcome to the Temple of Eleusis, last stop along the Sacred Way.” Henry wrenches his eyes forward.

A disturbing pig-man in a tuxedo takes center stage and fiddles with the microphone, saying, “Is that it? Got it.” His voice is mellow and silky, not much above a whisper. “Good evening, everyone. We have reached the final stage of our Pilgrimage. Welcome to the Hall of Initiation, and the seventy-third annual Festival of Resurrection, being held here in the City of Avalon on the beautiful Island of Santa Catalina. Before we get started, can we all please stand up and sing the national anthem? I’d like to dedicate tonight’s ceremony to all our brave men and women serving overseas.”

They sing. Henry neither stands nor sings along, feeling oddly abashed—he has always disliked people who refuse to participate in patriotic ceremonies like this.

When it is over, the pig-man says, “Gee, that was lovely. With every initiation we are greater, our message spreading like the tributaries of a mighty river—an invisible river that deposits its gold on our shores, delivers its power unto our hands. Welcome, my friends, to the Greater Mysteries of Eleusis, our most hallowed rite, our passion play; its secret liturgy a gift to us from long before the age of Peisistratus! Let it begin—now!”

The spotlight winks out.



For a moment there is only silence, then the velvet curtain draws open, revealing a barefoot girl standing on a floor of brilliant autumn leaves. The girl is in profile, unlit, her graceful-necked figure silhouetted against the pale blue background, prim in a plain gray dress and bonnet. The bluster of wind can be heard. It’s all vaguely yet deliberately ominous.

An accordion drones slow and sad, and with a silvery voice the girl sings:



“Youth is a flower that blooms in Spring,

“Just when the sun turns warm and bright,

“And in that hour of quickening

“We pray no favor, fear no spite.

“But always at the end the heavens wait

“To surprise us with their chosen fate.”



The music fades away.

From above, a deep, amplified man’s voice intones, “Darling Core. You are so beautiful. So innocent and pure.”

A beam of golden light shines down on the girl. She looks up, startled. “Father?” she says.

“Yes. I have been watching you, my favorite daughter. You make the forest bloom in autumn. You make the blood rise in me as when the world was first created. Come to me. Be one with me.”

Shaking her head, the girl slowly backs up. “No, please. Please, Father, you can’t. Mother will know.” Both of their voices are measured, robotic, the girl’s movements exaggerated as in a silent film.

“I can do what I wish, or what good is it being ruler of Heaven?”

“The greatest good of all is mercy.”

“Mercy has no place in this universe—it is the exercise of force that turns the wheels of the world.” There is faint, echoing thunder.

“No…”

“Yes. Now be a loving daughter and show yourself to me, that I may rejoice in the perfect whiteness of your youth, and feel young again myself.”

The girl hesitates for long seconds, then bows her head and slowly unties her bonnet. With ritual slowness she removes it and lays it on the ground, unfastening and shaking out her long sleek hair. Henry tips his head upright, becoming slightly more alert as the girl slips out of her dress and stands naked and bone-white in the leaves, beautiful and remote as a plaster statue.

The direct light on her imperceptibly fades to darkness, leaving her nude body in sharp relief. Her small, pointed breasts rise and fall with her breathing.

Suddenly there is a dim rumble of stage thunder, getting louder. The drums of the band come in and add to it, imitating heavy approaching footsteps, percussion swelling the sound to a shocking volume. All at once there are screams at one end of the theater: a burly white figure has appeared through the fire door. It is a painted man, naked but for a huge bobbing codpiece and a snow-white bull’s head on his shoulders. Sparks and smoke trail from his flaming gold horns.

The man runs up on stage, buttocks bouncing, and the girl flees at the sight of him. She tries to run offstage, but black-clad figures can be seen in the wings, barring her escape. Before she can do anything else, the bull-man claps his hands around her hips and throws her down into the leaves.

“No,” she shrieks, fighting and kicking. Her struggle doesn’t seem to be an act. “No!” she cries, “naaugh—no!”

The bull-man slaps her down and flings her legs apart, then falls on top of her, his great smoking head rearing back as if with pleasure while his hips thrust against her. Deafening screams of brass accompany each thrust. It seems to go on forever, the color of the backdrop shifting from pale blue to deep red. There is a final shocking pyrotechnic BAM! and a shower of sparks, then the lights and music die out together. The curtain draws shut.

In the following lull, Henry sits blinking in the dark, his head throbbing.



ACT TWO:

NATIVITY



The curtain opens again. The scene has changed. The backdrop screen is now lit with the pastel hues of sunrise: pink and yellow clouds, leafy greenery. There is a fullness of morning sounds: birds, frogs, trickling water, the hum of insects. The air is misty. In the darkened foreground, taking up most of the stage, is a grassy mound atop which stands the same girl as before, now wearing a filmy white dress, her nude profile altered by the addition of an impressively pregnant belly. She has a crown of flowers on her head, making her look faerie-like, pagan.

Lights fade in and for a few minutes all is peaceful. Dappled sunlight plays on the girl as she pensively strokes her belly and takes a few dainty steps in the grass. In her attitude is a sadness, but also a sense of maternal possessiveness and even pride—she has come to love the child inside her.

She sings:

“Innocently we assume

“The gods defend us—but from whom?

“Offspring they beget by force

“Give praises to the holy source

“Who watch unsympathetically…”

There is a hitch. She abruptly stops short as if from a sudden pain, doubt playing across her face.

“…all our human agony…”

The light goes overcast and the eerie hissing of cymbals rises and fades. No, it’s all right—she clutches her belly with both hands as if to reassure herself that nothing…nothing…

BWAAA!—a jagged whoop of horns and the girl crumples to the grass. There are flashes of lightning, and now the drums again, booming out the seconds like the approach of a colossus.

As she writhes in pain, moaning and clawing at the ground, water suddenly comes pouring from between her legs, a great clear sheet of it washing over the grass and into a depression at the base of the mound. To Henry’s mind it makes a whoosh like someone emptying a kiddy pool. At the same time rain starts to fall, the girl screaming and convulsing in the sudden downpour. Dry ice smoke swirls up from the grass and spills off the stage into the audience.

BWAAA!—the fogged earth splits open and muddy roots shoot like serpents from the knoll and pin the girl’s limbs, stretching her out so that she lies spread-eagled on the hilltop.

BWAAA!—now blood appears between her legs. At first just a red trickle staining the muddy rainwater, it quickly becomes a gout, then a grisly flood that creates a crimson moat, foaming dirty brown around the base of the hill.

As the girl twists and heaves in the foreground, the white figure of the bull-man appears out of the mist, passively watching as if from a platform, high and dry. Another masked character emerges beside him: a scowling silver horse-woman with a huge braided mane, watching with the same regal aloofness.

BWAAA!—a blood-slicked head appears between the girl’s legs, too big to be a newborn baby. It has budding horns. Her screams become shattering, guttural, so frenzied she actually vomits blood—or at least Henry can’t see how it could have been faked. Around him in the audience he can hear people shrieking, “Zagreus! Zagreus!”

The bloody shoulders pop through one at a time, then the arms and chest, then the rest of it comes limply slithering out in a torrent of red and brown muck. The sound is terrible.

At the sight of the birth, the roots melt back into the earth. The drumming stops, and then the rain. A lone bird calls, others pick up the thread. Artificial sunlight beats down on that hideous scene of gore.

Her limbs freed, the girl first retracts into a fetal position and lies still. Somehow her belly has returned to normal. After a moment she starts to squirm, then painfully crawls through the mud to the naked, bloody thing lying motionless at her feet. It is a pathetic little horned boy. She turns it over and sits beside it, lifting its head against her breast and pressing her cheek to it, rocking. Rocking and tunelessly humming.

The two godlike observers fade back out of sight—the bull-man with some reluctance. He waits a little longer, conflicted. The mare-headed woman takes his hand and pulls him away, but at the last moment he turns and dips his head.

There is a rumble of thunder. The newborn thing coughs and begins to move, to whimper. The girl wipes its mouth and nose clean with her wet hair, then bares her breast and raises the boy’s face to it. He begins to suckle.

The lights go down. The curtain closes.