Bacchanal Part Two
“Oh don’t be upset, Father, that we hadn’t confided in you,” I laugh softly, “You could have stopped us any at time.” He looks swiftly from Marcus to me, then back.
“Ares, Bacchus, what in God’s name have you two done?” Father drawls irritably. Marcus’s lip curls up into a twisted smile.
“You tell me.”
Father throws his hands up, “I don’t know…you killed someone would be my guess.” He looks then at me, expecting me to laugh and say ‘of course not’. To his utter surprise I lean back in my chair and laugh.
“Good for you,” I say nonchalantly causing Father to frown, “You’re just as smart as I thought you were.” He grimaces; apparently my teasing finds no welcome. The darkness hung about our tiny circle of candlelight as heavy and palpable as a curtain. Her face, motionless, rushes into my mind. In Father’s annoyance, his power sweeps over me in an aggravated caress. I experience for a moment both the claustrophobic feeling that the wells had rushed in towards us and the vertiginous one that they receded infinitely, leaving both of us suspended in some boundless expanse of dark. That is Father’s power.
He swallows, and looks back at Marcus, “Who was it?” He asks gently, almost paternally.
“A minor thing, really. An accident.” Marcus shrugs.
“Not on purpose.” Father swallows some wine.
“Heavens, no” I reply. I’m surprised by how little he cares. We may get away with this, with little or no punishment.
He signs defeated, “What happened?”
“I…almost don’t know where to being.” I pause as servants enter, bringing in some more wine and fruit, meekly placing it on the low table that our futons encircled. None of us look at them, or make mention of gratitude. They are things. I bring the soft give of a peach to my lips, taking a bite and sucking it’s juice, “Do you remember a couple of years ago, when we were studying at Oxford as dukes in the 1890’s-when we studied what Plato calls telestic madness? Bakchei? Dionysiac frenzy?”
“Yes.” He says this rather impatiently, “I recall you loved that course. It was why you chose to become the god you are. Etc. etc. What’s the point?”
“Well, we decided to try to have one.” I state lamely. For a moment he looks as though he didn’t understand me.
“What?” Father’s mouth drops slightly.
“He said we decided to try to have a Bacchanal.” Marcus supplies helpfully.
“Come on.” Father bellows, a doubting grin fleets across his face.
“We did.” I affirm, mouth full.
Father shoots us a sharp look, “You must be joking.”
“No.” We both say cautiously.
“That’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard. Even from you two.” Marcus breathes out a little; relieved our confession wasn’t meet with sweeping anger.
“Why would you want to do something like that?” Father’s fingers drum against the wooden frame of his recliner.
“I was obsessed with the idea. And Ares was curious.”
“Why?”
“Well, as far I knew, it hadn’t been done for two thousand years.” I hesitate, when I see that I hadn’t convinced him, “After all, the appeal to stop being yourself, even for a little while, is very great. That’s why we came back in the first place.”
“True.” He nods in agreement, but still looks apprehensive.
“But it was hard.” My voice was dreamy, amused, “We tried everything. Drink, drugs, prayer, even small doses of poison…”
“On the night of our first attempt” Marcus cuts in, laughing hard, “we simply over drank and passed out in our chitons in the woods near the temple.”
“You wore chitons?” Father chortles, “Oh. You two.”
I laugh with him, and feign offense, “It was all in the interests of science! We made them from bed sheets from Mother’s old bedroom. At any rate. It was becoming rather obvious that drink alone wasn’t going to do the trick. Goodness. I couldn’t even list all the things we then proceeded to try.
“It depresses me to even think of all our failed attempts,” Marcus chimes in, “Vigils. Fasting. Libations. We actually burned hemlock branches and breathed the fumes. I thought since the Pythia chewed laurel leaves…but that didn’t work either. You found those laurel leaves, if you remember on the stove in hearth.” He finishes with a smug smile, and turning shoots me a conspiring and triumphant look. How we pulled the veil over Father’s eyes.
He stares at Marcus, “Why didn’t I know about any of this?”
Marcus reaches into his robe for gold coin and rolls it between his knuckles, “Well really,” he snickers, “I think that’s kind of obvious.”
“What do you mean by that?” He warns through clenching teeth. I cast Marcus a look, don’t cross that fine line.
“Of course,” he burrs, “We weren’t going to tell you, Father. You’d think us foolish children with some new half-baked plan.” He’s quiet; still, for a moment, “We had wanted to impress you when we got what we wanted.”
“And what might that have been?” He directs this question to me.
“Well. You helped us be like gods, to have their power and name-but we wanted to take it a step further. To receive the god within. To become one. Before the Divine, we theorized, take over-we needed to purge ourselves of what was left of our mortal self-the dust of us, the part that decays-and become clean of it.”
“How is that?” He scoffs at our pretense-that we could possibly have discovered such a coveted knowledge without his assistance.
“Symbolic acts. You know, water poured overhead, baths, fasting-which we weren’t so crazy about, but we went through the motions. The more we did it, though, the more meaningless it all began to seem. Until one day we were struck with the notion it all was shit unless you are able to see past the show and into the deeper meaning.” I pause, “Have you ever talked with Mother about Dante’s Divine Comedy?”
“No. I haven’t.” Father says dryly.
“She says,” I done an affluent air, “That it’s incomprehensible to someone who wasn’t Christian. That since the religion ceased to exist, that to read Dante-one must become one if only for a few hours. It was the same with this.”
“He’s right,” Marcus chewed on a suspicious mushroom, probably some drug, a grin sliding across his face, “We didn’t realized that we were fully gods yet. We still thought we were partially human, and not yet capable of creating such a scene single-handedly. And belief was the one condition that was absolutely necessary.”
I continued for him, “And that was that. I am what I say am and all that philosophical bullshit.”
“So?” Father’s heckling. “That’s all dreadfully interesting…but back to the point of this: what happened?”
Marcus laughed. I lean forward, “I don’t know what to say.” I reply.
“What do you mean?” Father snorts.
“I mean it worked.”
“It worked?”
“Absolutely.”
“But how could--?”
“It worked.”
“I don’t think I understand what you mean when you say ‘it worked.’ ”
“I mean it in the most literal sense, Pa.”
“But how?”
“It was heart-shaking. Glorious” His eyes widened as I described the scene to him: Torches, dizziness, singing. Wolves howling around us and our worshippers and a bull bellowing in the dark. The river ran white. It was like a film in fast motion, the moon waxing and waning, clouds rushing across the sky. Vines grew from the ground so fast they twined up the trees like snakes; seasons passing in the wink of an eye, entire years for all I know…. We think of phenomenal change as being the very essence of time, when it’s not at all. Time is something that defies spring and winter, birth and decay, the good and bad, indifferently. Something changeless and joyous and absolutely indestructible. Duality ceases to exist in the Bacchanal; there is no ego, no “I”, and yet it’s not all like those horrid comparisons one sometimes hear in Eastern religions, the self being a mere drop of water swallowed by the ocean of the universe. It’s more as if the universe expands to fill the boundaries of one’s self. One cannot imagine how pallid the restriction of being human seem, after such an ecstasy. There was no going back now, for us-Marcus and I were christened as immortals at last through chants and blood.
“But these are fundamentally sex rituals, as I recall, aren’t they?” Father inquires, glancing from Marcus to myself. It came out not as a question, but as a statement. He doesn’t blink, but sits waiting for one of us to continue.
Marcus leans over to rest his wine glass on the low table by his feet, “Of course.” He says agreeably, cool as a priest in his dark clothes and poised face, “You know that as well as we do.”
The two of them sat there, looking at each other for a moment. Father looks as though he is torn between grinning at the visual of us together, and being disgusted by it. “What exactly did you do?” He asks cautiously.
“Well, really, I think we needn’t go into that now,” Marcus answers smoothly. “There was a certain carnal element to the proceedings but the phenomenon was basically spiritual in nature.” His lip curls.
“So you truly became Dionysus, I suppose?” Father asks me tauntingly, “Wear a goatskin? Tyrsus? You two know nothing. You’re still changing. Your not even really gods yet.”
“How do you know what a god is father? How to define one?” I challenge him ruthlessly, “We are talking about achieving divinity here. Serious business.”
“Fine.” He rubs his temples like an irritated parent, “So what happened at this Bacchanal? You told me you did something wrong, and you’ve managed to go on and on and evade that revelation.”
“Well…” I look to Marcus, suddenly nervous; he nods reassuringly, “Things starting getting weird. There were hundreds of people there, following Ares and I. We were chasing beasts, all of us. All couple hundred, through the woods, for miles it seemed. Actually it was miles. I know that for a fact. Apparently we ran and ran and ran, because when we came to ourselves we had no idea where we were. This is where I come to the rather unfortunate part of my story.
“I have only the vaguest memory of this. I heard something behind me, or someone, and I wheeled around, almost losing my balance, and swung at whatever it was-a large indistinct, yellow thing-with my closed fist. I felt a terrible pain in my knuckles and then, almost instantly, something knocked the breath right out of me. It was dark, you understand; I couldn’t really see. It was Persephone, with her new husband. Why they were there, I don’t know. Did we invite them?” I turn to Marcus.
“I might have.” He replies darkly.
“Well, at any rate, things just got out of control. I heard a crack and I turned around and Ares was standing there, heaving, screaming about something…”
“I was arguing with Persephone” He interrupted bitterly, “The wench dared to show up with her…her man or husband or whatever. To rub it in my face. I was furious naturally. She was my servant after all.”
“That’s understandable, my boy.” Father pats him comfortingly on the shoulder, getting a softened look from the angry god.
“I’m not too clear on what happened after that,” I lie, “Persephone was running away from him, a good deal ahead of us. He chased her. I just sat on the ground, being attended to by some women. The party still pulsing around me. Then the two of them, Ares and Persephone, came crashing through the bushes. Ha! You should have seen them.”
“What?” Marcus gives me a look.
“Well…the two of you looked completely ridiculous, you know. Hair tangled with leaves and mud and clothed in shreds.”
“What were the two of you doing?” Father grinned a little at Marcus.
“Making the bitch wish she wasn’t born” He says through clenched teeth.
“It was crazy, Father, we can’t be held responsible.” I supply.
“For what?”
“For killing her.”
“You killed Persephone? Your Persephone?” He looks at Marcus incredulously.
“Yes.” He spits back.
“That’s silly. She was your favorite servant.” Father cocks his head, bewildered.
“I know.”
“Well that wasn’t very smart.
“Why?”
“Good help doesn’t grow on trees, you know.” He chastises us.
“Sorry.” Marcus looks down.
“Well continue. How’d it happen?” Father looks to me, sighing.
“Marcus was screaming. I’m not sure. I was so angry, he was almost crazed. Like our powers were leaking onto each other, egging each other on. I looked down at my hand and saw it was covered with blood, and worse than blood. Then I stepped forward and knelt at something at my feet, and I bent down, too, and saw it was her. She was dead. We had killed her. Her neck was broken, and--this was so gross--her brains were all over her pretty face.”
Marcus snorts, “There was such a dreadful mess. I was drenched in blood and I was holding a tree branch-which was the weapon, I’m assuming. We left and continued on the festival.”
“We both even had forgotten about it until we stumbled across the body later on the bank of stream. The Maenads had strewn her across the bank shore.”
Father pours himself another glass, and the three of us sit without speaking for a minute or more.
“Good God.” He sighs, “What am I going to do with you two?”
“Ares, Bacchus, what in God’s name have you two done?” Father drawls irritably. Marcus’s lip curls up into a twisted smile.
“You tell me.”
Father throws his hands up, “I don’t know…you killed someone would be my guess.” He looks then at me, expecting me to laugh and say ‘of course not’. To his utter surprise I lean back in my chair and laugh.
“Good for you,” I say nonchalantly causing Father to frown, “You’re just as smart as I thought you were.” He grimaces; apparently my teasing finds no welcome. The darkness hung about our tiny circle of candlelight as heavy and palpable as a curtain. Her face, motionless, rushes into my mind. In Father’s annoyance, his power sweeps over me in an aggravated caress. I experience for a moment both the claustrophobic feeling that the wells had rushed in towards us and the vertiginous one that they receded infinitely, leaving both of us suspended in some boundless expanse of dark. That is Father’s power.
He swallows, and looks back at Marcus, “Who was it?” He asks gently, almost paternally.
“A minor thing, really. An accident.” Marcus shrugs.
“Not on purpose.” Father swallows some wine.
“Heavens, no” I reply. I’m surprised by how little he cares. We may get away with this, with little or no punishment.
He signs defeated, “What happened?”
“I…almost don’t know where to being.” I pause as servants enter, bringing in some more wine and fruit, meekly placing it on the low table that our futons encircled. None of us look at them, or make mention of gratitude. They are things. I bring the soft give of a peach to my lips, taking a bite and sucking it’s juice, “Do you remember a couple of years ago, when we were studying at Oxford as dukes in the 1890’s-when we studied what Plato calls telestic madness? Bakchei? Dionysiac frenzy?”
“Yes.” He says this rather impatiently, “I recall you loved that course. It was why you chose to become the god you are. Etc. etc. What’s the point?”
“Well, we decided to try to have one.” I state lamely. For a moment he looks as though he didn’t understand me.
“What?” Father’s mouth drops slightly.
“He said we decided to try to have a Bacchanal.” Marcus supplies helpfully.
“Come on.” Father bellows, a doubting grin fleets across his face.
“We did.” I affirm, mouth full.
Father shoots us a sharp look, “You must be joking.”
“No.” We both say cautiously.
“That’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard. Even from you two.” Marcus breathes out a little; relieved our confession wasn’t meet with sweeping anger.
“Why would you want to do something like that?” Father’s fingers drum against the wooden frame of his recliner.
“I was obsessed with the idea. And Ares was curious.”
“Why?”
“Well, as far I knew, it hadn’t been done for two thousand years.” I hesitate, when I see that I hadn’t convinced him, “After all, the appeal to stop being yourself, even for a little while, is very great. That’s why we came back in the first place.”
“True.” He nods in agreement, but still looks apprehensive.
“But it was hard.” My voice was dreamy, amused, “We tried everything. Drink, drugs, prayer, even small doses of poison…”
“On the night of our first attempt” Marcus cuts in, laughing hard, “we simply over drank and passed out in our chitons in the woods near the temple.”
“You wore chitons?” Father chortles, “Oh. You two.”
I laugh with him, and feign offense, “It was all in the interests of science! We made them from bed sheets from Mother’s old bedroom. At any rate. It was becoming rather obvious that drink alone wasn’t going to do the trick. Goodness. I couldn’t even list all the things we then proceeded to try.
“It depresses me to even think of all our failed attempts,” Marcus chimes in, “Vigils. Fasting. Libations. We actually burned hemlock branches and breathed the fumes. I thought since the Pythia chewed laurel leaves…but that didn’t work either. You found those laurel leaves, if you remember on the stove in hearth.” He finishes with a smug smile, and turning shoots me a conspiring and triumphant look. How we pulled the veil over Father’s eyes.
He stares at Marcus, “Why didn’t I know about any of this?”
Marcus reaches into his robe for gold coin and rolls it between his knuckles, “Well really,” he snickers, “I think that’s kind of obvious.”
“What do you mean by that?” He warns through clenching teeth. I cast Marcus a look, don’t cross that fine line.
“Of course,” he burrs, “We weren’t going to tell you, Father. You’d think us foolish children with some new half-baked plan.” He’s quiet; still, for a moment, “We had wanted to impress you when we got what we wanted.”
“And what might that have been?” He directs this question to me.
“Well. You helped us be like gods, to have their power and name-but we wanted to take it a step further. To receive the god within. To become one. Before the Divine, we theorized, take over-we needed to purge ourselves of what was left of our mortal self-the dust of us, the part that decays-and become clean of it.”
“How is that?” He scoffs at our pretense-that we could possibly have discovered such a coveted knowledge without his assistance.
“Symbolic acts. You know, water poured overhead, baths, fasting-which we weren’t so crazy about, but we went through the motions. The more we did it, though, the more meaningless it all began to seem. Until one day we were struck with the notion it all was shit unless you are able to see past the show and into the deeper meaning.” I pause, “Have you ever talked with Mother about Dante’s Divine Comedy?”
“No. I haven’t.” Father says dryly.
“She says,” I done an affluent air, “That it’s incomprehensible to someone who wasn’t Christian. That since the religion ceased to exist, that to read Dante-one must become one if only for a few hours. It was the same with this.”
“He’s right,” Marcus chewed on a suspicious mushroom, probably some drug, a grin sliding across his face, “We didn’t realized that we were fully gods yet. We still thought we were partially human, and not yet capable of creating such a scene single-handedly. And belief was the one condition that was absolutely necessary.”
I continued for him, “And that was that. I am what I say am and all that philosophical bullshit.”
“So?” Father’s heckling. “That’s all dreadfully interesting…but back to the point of this: what happened?”
Marcus laughed. I lean forward, “I don’t know what to say.” I reply.
“What do you mean?” Father snorts.
“I mean it worked.”
“It worked?”
“Absolutely.”
“But how could--?”
“It worked.”
“I don’t think I understand what you mean when you say ‘it worked.’ ”
“I mean it in the most literal sense, Pa.”
“But how?”
“It was heart-shaking. Glorious” His eyes widened as I described the scene to him: Torches, dizziness, singing. Wolves howling around us and our worshippers and a bull bellowing in the dark. The river ran white. It was like a film in fast motion, the moon waxing and waning, clouds rushing across the sky. Vines grew from the ground so fast they twined up the trees like snakes; seasons passing in the wink of an eye, entire years for all I know…. We think of phenomenal change as being the very essence of time, when it’s not at all. Time is something that defies spring and winter, birth and decay, the good and bad, indifferently. Something changeless and joyous and absolutely indestructible. Duality ceases to exist in the Bacchanal; there is no ego, no “I”, and yet it’s not all like those horrid comparisons one sometimes hear in Eastern religions, the self being a mere drop of water swallowed by the ocean of the universe. It’s more as if the universe expands to fill the boundaries of one’s self. One cannot imagine how pallid the restriction of being human seem, after such an ecstasy. There was no going back now, for us-Marcus and I were christened as immortals at last through chants and blood.
“But these are fundamentally sex rituals, as I recall, aren’t they?” Father inquires, glancing from Marcus to myself. It came out not as a question, but as a statement. He doesn’t blink, but sits waiting for one of us to continue.
Marcus leans over to rest his wine glass on the low table by his feet, “Of course.” He says agreeably, cool as a priest in his dark clothes and poised face, “You know that as well as we do.”
The two of them sat there, looking at each other for a moment. Father looks as though he is torn between grinning at the visual of us together, and being disgusted by it. “What exactly did you do?” He asks cautiously.
“Well, really, I think we needn’t go into that now,” Marcus answers smoothly. “There was a certain carnal element to the proceedings but the phenomenon was basically spiritual in nature.” His lip curls.
“So you truly became Dionysus, I suppose?” Father asks me tauntingly, “Wear a goatskin? Tyrsus? You two know nothing. You’re still changing. Your not even really gods yet.”
“How do you know what a god is father? How to define one?” I challenge him ruthlessly, “We are talking about achieving divinity here. Serious business.”
“Fine.” He rubs his temples like an irritated parent, “So what happened at this Bacchanal? You told me you did something wrong, and you’ve managed to go on and on and evade that revelation.”
“Well…” I look to Marcus, suddenly nervous; he nods reassuringly, “Things starting getting weird. There were hundreds of people there, following Ares and I. We were chasing beasts, all of us. All couple hundred, through the woods, for miles it seemed. Actually it was miles. I know that for a fact. Apparently we ran and ran and ran, because when we came to ourselves we had no idea where we were. This is where I come to the rather unfortunate part of my story.
“I have only the vaguest memory of this. I heard something behind me, or someone, and I wheeled around, almost losing my balance, and swung at whatever it was-a large indistinct, yellow thing-with my closed fist. I felt a terrible pain in my knuckles and then, almost instantly, something knocked the breath right out of me. It was dark, you understand; I couldn’t really see. It was Persephone, with her new husband. Why they were there, I don’t know. Did we invite them?” I turn to Marcus.
“I might have.” He replies darkly.
“Well, at any rate, things just got out of control. I heard a crack and I turned around and Ares was standing there, heaving, screaming about something…”
“I was arguing with Persephone” He interrupted bitterly, “The wench dared to show up with her…her man or husband or whatever. To rub it in my face. I was furious naturally. She was my servant after all.”
“That’s understandable, my boy.” Father pats him comfortingly on the shoulder, getting a softened look from the angry god.
“I’m not too clear on what happened after that,” I lie, “Persephone was running away from him, a good deal ahead of us. He chased her. I just sat on the ground, being attended to by some women. The party still pulsing around me. Then the two of them, Ares and Persephone, came crashing through the bushes. Ha! You should have seen them.”
“What?” Marcus gives me a look.
“Well…the two of you looked completely ridiculous, you know. Hair tangled with leaves and mud and clothed in shreds.”
“What were the two of you doing?” Father grinned a little at Marcus.
“Making the bitch wish she wasn’t born” He says through clenched teeth.
“It was crazy, Father, we can’t be held responsible.” I supply.
“For what?”
“For killing her.”
“You killed Persephone? Your Persephone?” He looks at Marcus incredulously.
“Yes.” He spits back.
“That’s silly. She was your favorite servant.” Father cocks his head, bewildered.
“I know.”
“Well that wasn’t very smart.
“Why?”
“Good help doesn’t grow on trees, you know.” He chastises us.
“Sorry.” Marcus looks down.
“Well continue. How’d it happen?” Father looks to me, sighing.
“Marcus was screaming. I’m not sure. I was so angry, he was almost crazed. Like our powers were leaking onto each other, egging each other on. I looked down at my hand and saw it was covered with blood, and worse than blood. Then I stepped forward and knelt at something at my feet, and I bent down, too, and saw it was her. She was dead. We had killed her. Her neck was broken, and--this was so gross--her brains were all over her pretty face.”
Marcus snorts, “There was such a dreadful mess. I was drenched in blood and I was holding a tree branch-which was the weapon, I’m assuming. We left and continued on the festival.”
“We both even had forgotten about it until we stumbled across the body later on the bank of stream. The Maenads had strewn her across the bank shore.”
Father pours himself another glass, and the three of us sit without speaking for a minute or more.
“Good God.” He sighs, “What am I going to do with you two?”