Read Online Watson, Ian - Novel 08 by The Gardens of Delight (v1.1) - Free Book Online Page A

muscles were responding at
once to the nakedness of male and female, simultaneously desiring and
rejecting. But then Sean realized that this was largely his own reaction: at
once matching himself and bonding with the male, while desiring the female and
so spurning the male competitively. Yet the woman was already appropriated by
the male and wedded to him, who was the same person. The hermaphrodite’s
appearance spoke at once to his own outer sexual identity and to the shadow
feminine in himself, calling, wooing—and rejecting both as incomplete and
alienated from one another. This was a paradox person, whose opposites neither
cancelled out nor flew asunder in contradiction. Instead, they balanced like an
acrobat upon a ball. As the hermaphrodite person balanced
springily upon the balls of his/her feet . . . (And he/she had been regarding
the efforts of the women in the pool to balance the cherry ball upon their
heads with detached amusement . . .)
                 “Have
you seen Knossos lately?” Jeremy hailed the hermaphrodite.
                 The
hermaphrodite’s voice, in response, was almost song-like: a spoken song,
stylized though without undue affectation.
                 “He
passed by, oh, at the prelude to the cavalcade—with his magpie scouting around.
Who are these three? They look like original clay—unresolved. Beautiful—though about to be shaped. What they’ll become is
only an idea in their minds as yet, I’d say.”
                 So
Jeremy introduced the star-travelers, Denise first of all.
                 The
hermaphrodite savored her name. “So. A woman called
Dionysus? May you have your wish to alter! Laroche . . . Ah, the stone. Yes,
that’s certainly how you may alter. Seek the stone, the rock!”
                 “We’re
heading for that rock tower over there,” she nodded. “That’s where Knossos must be heading too. The Greek man—the one
who’s in the know.” (Said by her, mainly to confirm that they
were hunting the right man. Jeremy looked mildly wounded.) Beyond the
next hill crest, visible to them but not to people of the cavalcade, rose the
spire of a pink tower with a bulbous tip resembling one of the onion domes of
the Kremlin, but elongated into the sky and accompanied by a curving, serrated
rose-red antenna like a long agave leaf . . .
                 “Ah,
that is not the stone. Yet it is on
the way there.”
                 “What’s
he talking about?” Denise whispered.
                 “Hush,”
muttered Sean. “I’ve just realized.”
                 “Well, what ?”
                 “You’re
not going to believe me.”
                 “Try
me.”
                 But
Jeremy was already introducing Sean by name.
                 “Athlone,”
mused he-she. That person’s eyes brightened. “Hie opus , hie labor est , ” he-she sang out. “ ‘This is the work, this is the
labor!’ Knossos will be delighted when you catch up with
him. He’ll appreciate a Greek word like that when he hears it, even if you do
mispronounce it, and even if he wasn’t ever really Greek.”
                 “Wasn’t
he?” said Denise.
                 “Maybe, maybe not.”
                 “How
do you mean, mispronounce?” asked Sean.
                 “Your name , man.” Coming from this hermaphrodite, the word ‘man’ seemed more than an
impatient familiarity. It was almost an accusation—of being partial, a
half-person. “Athlon: that’s the way
to say it. Don’t you know what it means? Don’t you know what its meaning must
make you? The Great Work. The Opus.”
                 “It’s
a place in Ireland ,” said Sean uncomfortably.
                 “It’s
the Greek word for The Work!”
                 “What
work?” interrupted Denise.