Pomegranates, page 6
“Then be her mother. Protect her.”
“Will you give her sanctuary if she ever needs it? Will you promise me that? And she mustn’t know what she is. That’ll be her best protection. I want her to live as herself.”
He took her from me. She was so small in his arms. He rocked her and she quietened.
“I can only intercede in the affairs of my own realm.” A muscle twitched in his cheek, pulling up the corner of his mouth. “But I’ll find a way.”
He handed her back to me.
“You could both come with me, you know.”
“We both grew up in the dark,” our father’s belly, “I want to live in the light, Hades. My purpose is here.”
He kissed my forehead, then Persephone’s. Hades, as cold and distant as the moon. Never with me, though. Hades, the most maligned and the best of us.
*
Demeter is on one of the Institute’s many patios.
“I’m glad you decided to get out here.” Dr Protheroe means it. It’s good to see her so occupied.
“Hand me that.”
He passes her a tray of begonias.
She’s kneeling on a gardening pad. She transfers compost from the bag into the plant pot with her bare hands rather than a trowel.
“May I join you?”
“You’ll spoil your suit.”
He hangs his jacket over a bench and rolls up his sleeves. He pulls a plant from the plastic tray.
“Where do you want this?”
“In that pot.”
“That’s not too many? Won’t it look overcrowded?”
“No, it’ll look rich and abundant when everything’s in full flower. People tend to be too stingy with their planting.”
He follows her cue and plunges his hand into the pot, digging a hole. The earth feels warm and crumbly. Full of promise. It gets beneath his wedding band.
“Deeper,” she says. “It’s true what you said about your wife being the gardener.”
The way she laughs makes him join in. It’s the first time there’s been real warmth between them. It’s a fine line, knowing how much is too much. When the doctor becomes the drug.
“Does your wife teach your daughter about the garden?”
“Poppy likes being out there with her. My wife’s planting a lot of food at the moment, as a way of getting her to eat more veggies. Did you garden with Persephone?”
“No. She understood the earth innately. It’s inside her. It’s the very fabric of who she is.”
He notes that she mixes up the tenses when she talks about Persephone, but he doesn’t ask her about it while she’s so talkative.
“I liked to teach her other things. We learnt about the world together. We travelled. Saw different art and culture.”
*
The last place Demeter and I went together was Florence, city of piazzas and churches. We strolled across the Ponte Vecchia and ate gelato. We visited the Duomo. Then we went to the Uffizi Gallery, built by the Medicis, who were rich enough to indulge their love of beauty.
There were long corridors of Madonna after Madonna, whey-faced saviours balanced on their knees. Little Usurper and his Mother of the Immaculate Conception. We had that in common at least.
Persephone and I stood in front of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. She was too perfect and ethereal. That didn’t fool me because I knew soft-eyed Aphrodite. Those looks hid a core of granite in the pursuit of her desires.
Persephone was neither child nor woman. She had a coltish energy about her. Her limbs had lengthened, and she’d shed her baby weight to reveal her cheek bones and the line of her jaw. She rested her head on my shoulder as we contemplated Aphrodite, the pearl on her oyster shell as she emerged from the sea. Yes, there was always grit at the centre of her being.
“Demeter?”
I turned around.
“It is you.”
I froze. It had been so long since I’d seen Zeus and now he crept up on me when I thought that part of my life was behind me.
“Zeus.” The muscles in my throat failed me. I hated how weak my voice sounded.
He held my shoulder and kissed me on one cheek, then the other. His stubble scraped my skin. He wore too much aftershave and when he let go of me the smell of woodsmoke and cedar clung to me. I wanted to vomit. His hair was longer and greyer than I remembered. He wore crumpled pale linen trousers and a white shirt. There were leather braids wrapped around his left wrist.
“How have you been?”
“Fine.”
Exchanging pleasantries was absurd. It took all my will not to urinate down my leg.
“Only fine. I often think of you. How is Hades?”
“I’ve not seen him for some time.”
“That surprises me. You two were always thick as thieves.” He was watching me very closely. “We should go for lunch and catch up properly.”
“We can’t. We have a tour booked.”
“Ah, well never mind. And who is this?”
Zeus said it like he’d only just seen Persephone. I’d held her behind me with one hand.
“This is Persephone.”
He’d already reached out to shake her hand. She took it. How predators abuse politeness.
He was evaluating her rising bloom. The gangly legs. Her collar-bones above her Joan of Arc t-shirt. Peony pink lips. Still a little too young for his taste.
She pulled her hand back.
“Persephone,” I said sharply, “go down to the café and get us some drinks. I’ll be straight down.”
“Mum—”
“Do it.”
She looked over her shoulder as she went. Zeus had a strange smile on his face.
“I think we should put the past behind us. I want you to come back to Olympus”
Just like that. Put the past behind us.
“This rift must be healed. I’ll give you a year to put your house in order and return to us.”
I knew what was coming.
“It’s not a request. And bring your daughter.”
*
Dr Protheroe runs along the corridor. The nurse on duty is waiting outside Demeter’s room.
“James.” She grips his forearm. “She was asleep when I came on shift. I checked in on her.”
“I believe you, Celeste.” He puts his hands on hers. “We’ll find her.”
“But it’s so cold out there.” Her voice rises with panic. “And I think she’s gone out in just her pyjamas. Her shoes are still here. She must be barefoot.”
“Then she can’t have gone far. Have you called security?”
“Yes. They’re searching the grounds.”
“Good.”
He checks Demeter’s room. The unmade bed is cold. She arrived with nothing personal and all that’s here are the clothes and toiletries they’ve provided for her.
The window is wide open. The security lock is on the floor. He picks it up and turns it over. It looks like it’s been smashed open but he can’t see by what. Or that she’d have the strength required. Snow has settled on the windowsill.
They’d talked only yesterday.
“Things are changing. I can feel it.”
“When I could see Persephone, even at a distance, even for part of the year, it was enough.”
“Why at a distance?”
“I was scared I wouldn’t be able to protect her. That distancing myself from her would keep her safe. I made her believe I didn’t love her so as to make it easier for both of us. And now that things have changed, I won’t ever see her again. He’s gone. Really gone.”
“Who?”
“Hades.” She wraps her arms around herself. “It’s going to get a lot colder.”
“It’s May. It’s seventeen degrees outside.”
“You should go home to your family. Stop on the way and pick up as much canned food as you can carry. Bottled water. Batteries. Toilet paper. You don’t want to get stuck here.”
“Stuck?”
“Snowed in.”
Dr Protheroe climbs out of the window, not caring that he’ll ruin his expensive shoes. The snow is deep enough to soak the hem of his trousers. He looks for Demeter’s footprints in the snow but he can’t see any.
The wind picks up, carrying in sleet.
Chorus
Voice One:
This is how you prepare a pomegranate. You’ll need a large bowl of water and a sharp knife.
Voice Two:
Run your knife around the fruit’s crown as if you’re going to scalp it. Don’t cut too deeply or dark red-purple juice will fill the incision, looking like venous blood. Lift this off and discard.
Voice One:
Cut into the hard pericarp as to segment it. Again, not so deep that you damage the seeds. Plunge the pomegranate into the water. This way you’ll minimise splatter.
Voice Two:
Prise the segments apart to release the seeds. Bits of soft white pith and membrane will rise to the surface. The seeds will sink. Skim the bowl and drain it.
Voice One:
There you have them. A pile of pomegranate seeds.
Persephone
“Come Bear, sit.”
You perch on the edge of my bed. You’ve gained weight. Your colour’s returned. You look younger.
“She’s not here, is she?”
“There’s nowhere left to look.” I’d taken you everywhere. The Elysium Fields, the Asphodel Meadows, the Fields of Mourning. Even Tartarus, against my advice. “Your mother must’ve been reborn. Or she’s among the stars.”
You’re turning the idea over in your head, so before you realise that she might’ve been reborn to a frozen existence, I ask “May I tell you about my mother?”
You nod, albeit absently
I was always at my mother’s side. The world was ours. She showed me every part of it. We treated the smallest beetle in its dowdy carapace with the same reverence as the mountain peaks that guarded time. She took me to see domes built to gratify defunct Gods. To the workshop where women worked on silk tapestries to the glory of kings, their stitches so tiny that it caused failing eyesight and arthritic fingers.
After Florence everything changed.
My mother sat on her bed when we returned home, staring at the wall. She didn’t speak. She wouldn’t look at me. She’d never ignored me before and I sat at her knees, weeping.
“What did that man say? Was it about me?”
“He wasn’t just a man, you foolish girl. You don’t know anything.”
“I only know what you’ve taught me.”
She looked at me then, Bear, like she’d gone through fury and into disdain.
“Yes, I’ve spoon fed you for too long. That man was Zeus, God of Gods, ruler of Olympus.” She sighed, as if bored. “He reminded me of a truth I’ve worked hard to forget. I want you to listen. It’s vital that you do. You’re not my daughter.”
“Why are you saying that?”
She held up a hand to silence me.
“I didn’t give birth to you. I’m tired of you. You cling to me like a baby.”
The room darkened. I shivered. Flowers wilted in the vases around the room.
“Go to the servants’ quarters, where you belong.”
I was never particularly obedient, overindulged as I was. I went, my legs shaking.
The handmaidens were sheepish in my company, I’d known them my entire life. They were like clucking, doting aunts to me and now none of them would meet my gaze. When my mother found one of them weeping in a corner her rage was incandescent.
I spent most of that year working in the kitchen and laundry. My hands grew coarse from grinding corn and beating washing. I didn’t care. I worked harder than the other women, thinking that if I proved my worth then my mother would agree to see me again. She’d tell me that it was all a joke, a cruel joke, and she was sorry. That she regretted everything.
I was scrubbing the floors, working in circles that made my arms ache.
“Demeter requires your presence. You need to change your clothes. We’ll gather flowers today.” My mother’s handmaiden curtsied but then looked flustered when she remembered she’d been ordered to treat me as the lowest servant, not a Goddess.
I could see my mother at the head of the procession. She didn’t look at me as she walked by. The Oceanids, her most beloved nymphs, followed her out. Then the servants. I trailed after them.
Still, it was good to be outside under the wide sky. I took off my shoes so I could feel the grass beneath my bare feet. My mother wore a red gown that flowed out behind her as she walked. Her hair was loose. Seeing her like that I could pretend things were as they used to be, when she would glance back to check where I was. That she’d see me and smile. Her face used to warm me like the sun.
The meadow flowers opened around us, all at once, without regard for their proper season. It was a riot of colour with all their scented heads revealed under the heavens.
There were irises named for the Goddess of rainbows. Their regal purple petals were touched with a yellow heart. Crocuses came in waves, mauve cups bearing stigmata of saffron. Hyacinths, their flowers of green scent, a complex smell that was neither dusk nor dawn. They were a shock of blue on green spikes.
Wild roses and peonies, and my favourite, sweet narcissi. They nodded their heads at me, the darker yellow, trumpet-shaped corona a herald. I knelt among them. I could feel the rumbling before I heard anything. A cleft opened in the earth. A team of horses sprang from it, leading a golden chariot.
“Mother!”
The black stallions reared up. All I could think was I’m going to die here, trampled beneath huge hooves. I couldn’t move. Hades reined them in.
I didn’t know him then, the dark-eyed God, his complexion sallow. His hair was pulled back to reveal where it peaked on his forehead.
“Mother!”
My mother didn’t look back.
“You need to come with me, Persephone.”
He sounded kind as he said it, and he reached down and grasped me around the waist and lifted me up beside him.
My mother kept on walking. We crashed back down into the Underworld.
*
I lie back on the furs. You lie next to me at arm’s length, leaning up on your elbow. I’ve not been able to talk like this to anyone. Not in a long time.
There was a semblance of night in the Underworld. Darkness had been trapped under the dome. The oculus was a black, starless circle.
“You asked me if I miss the sun.” Apollo’s totem. “The truth is that I hardly remember. Tell me about the sun, Bear.”
“I have a question for you first.”
“Granted.”
“Did the Gods make the Universe?”
I was expecting something more playful. Flirtatious.
“It came out of chaos.”
“Was it fully formed?”
“No, everything just—” I struggled, “—it just developed.”
Your smile suggests you have a better grasp of how things work than I do.
“Life designs itself over and over again. And the sun is essential to that. It’s a yellow dwarf star.”
I laugh.
“Don’t be fooled by the name. It’s 864,000 miles in diameter. Its core is the engine for all life on our planet. It converts four million tonnes of matter to energy every second. Its surface seethes with life.”
I’ve never seen you this excited. “You’re a scientist and a poet.”
“Only an observer.”
“You do yourself a disservice.”
You shake your head. I’ve not noticed the shape of your mouth before.
“The world will be lost if you don’t go outside. Do you remember the mayflower? It has wings like lace. A strange thing for something mudborn. When they erupt from the riverbed they only have twenty-four hours to take flight and mate before they die. When you see a cloud of them it’s a riot for survival.”
Human life is no different. Just a flicker and then it’s gone. I don’t say it aloud. You seem so happy, talking about the world this way.
You inch closer to me. Close enough to see all the shades of brown that surround the black depths of your pupils.
“The barn owl has a face that shouldn’t exist on a bird. It looks like it shouldn’t fly because it’s so front-heavy in flight but when it does, it looks like a ghost on the wing. Then there’s the humming-bird. We name them for their vibrant colours: green violetear, golden tailed sapphire, velvet sabrewing and green-breasted mango. But my favourite is the smallest, the bee hummingbird. It’s only two inches long and weighs two grams. Its wings beat eighty times a second. And listen to this, its eggs are as small as a coffee bean.”
“We have an instrument called the electron microscope. It’s the opposite of a telescope. You can see everything in unimaginable detail. Do you know that the skin of a shark is rough, not smooth? Magnified, it looks like teeth, hooked together like plates of armour. It reduces their friction in the water for speed.”
“The same instrument reveals that the architecture of the hive looks like the matrix of bone. Certain seeds look like human red blood cells. The tongue, viewed under the electron microscope, is covered in pink filiform papillae which look like tiny tongues themselves. A human hair looks like a tree trunk pushing from the ground.” Your words come thick and fast, one falling over another to get out. “Did the Gods make us?”
“Yes, from the fabric of the Universe, using its designs.”
“Don’t you care what becomes of us? We’re dying.”
“Why should I care for the human race when you deny our existence and neglect the gifts we’ve given you?”
“Sometimes I think that we deserve to die. Every single one of us. We don’t care for our fellow man. We commit atrocities. We abuse the planet. We’re negligent caretakers. But listen, Persephone, you talk as if you’re owed a duty. Is that what a child owes a parent? Blind belief and adoration? The Gods that you tell me about are as fickle and careless as we are. Why make us in your own image, with all your imperfections? We don’t have an eternity to get things right. We have a set span and don’t see the farthest-reaching consequences of what we do. I’m not excusing it. But what’s your excuse?”
*
I wake with a start. The fire has burnt down while we’ve both dozed. I ease myself up. You roll over and look at me.
