Tom Foran Clark

It was said that Dionysus had died a horrible death among cold monoliths, torn to shreds. Perhaps so, Emery contemplated, had Dennis McLaren also met his demise. The Maenads may have torn McLaren to pieces with their fingernails and teeth, boiling and hanging out to dry what was left of him before tossing his remains into a fire.

September 10, 2001. In the morning, Emery went for a hike in the Samaria Gorge. He walked through breathtaking scenery: ancient forests of pine, cypress, rare plants, and eagles soaring over the stunning White Mountains. In the mountains was greater perspective -- one was ripe to marvel, to feel awe, wonder, reverence, mystery, rapture, euphoria, joy -- one could rise above the dizzying complexity of human events.

Here was a new sort of hangover. Emery felt fried -- utterly bled, torched, gutted, emptied. He wondered if the Maenads would have hangovers. Would they remember their acts or conveniently have -- as was said of the rite's participants in ancient times -- amnesia?

Emery knelt and prayed, his hands folded -- partially opened. Lying comfortably on the ground with his eyes closed, he meditated. He thought on his heart -- feelings and love; then felt his brain right around his eyebrows -- the center of mindfulness and inner vision; then he felt his parched throat -- the voicebox, out of which one speaks one's truth. Humankind was part of Nature. The body was the temple of a great transparent mirror. Humans owed their existence to the mysterious common source of everything. Emerson said the universe was comprised of nature and the soul; nature comprised the Supreme Being; and the soul penetrated the vast masses of nature and recognized itself in nature.

Prometheus had made mankind out of clay. Among the ways Zeus oppressed humans was depriving them of fire. Prometheus, stealing fire from heaven, taught humanity the arts and crafts -- the cultivation of the ground, planting crops, using plants and herbs for their medicinal powers, and so on. Zeus then had Hephaestus, the god of artisans and craftsmanship, fashion (out of clay) the woman to be called Pandora ("all gifts"). Athena now breathed life into her; the other gods endowed her with pan dora, every charm. Hermes taught her flattery and guile.

Pandora was sent not to Prometheus (who foresaw the trouble she would bring) but to his brother Epimetheus, who accepted her at once. She brought with her a box that was not to be opened. But, of course, curiosity overcame her. She opened the box -- all the evils that have since afflicted the humans came out. Only Hope stayed at the bottom of the box -- to assuage the lot of humanity.

To punish Prometheus further for his rebellious conduct, Zeus chained him to a lonely rock in the Caucasus, where an eagle daily fed on his liver (which was restored each night).

To Emery, Frederik seemed now, in many ways, Promethean -- the shadow remnant of a rebellious man. Who knew what all he had endured lately? For long hours, Frederik solemnly studied his maps, drawing arbitrary lines, making his magic triangles. He seemed to be taking stock of his misspent, brutish life so far. He seemed to have acquired a modicum, at long last, of spiritual equilibrium. The “I want. I want!” daemon -- pleasure principle, drive, urge, will, force -- in him had departed, or had at least taken temporary leave of him.

September 11, 2001. The day after Emery and Frida returned to Koutsouras, Emery went out for a walk alone. Nora cleaned the Loutro commune house. She had a little wine, and went forward with a plan she'd been cooking up for some time, apparently. It turned out Nora was more deeply steeped in mythology than anybody knew -- a true believer. She went at it whole hog. Nora murdered Frederik -- and Frida. She stabbed them with Frederik's nicely decorated Boar's head knife.

Apparently Nora had dressed herself up in a luminous, colorful, striped priestess's cloak and a luxurious Minoan head-dress and -- when Frederik and Frida had entered the house, perhaps laughing joyfully, snickering at Nora in her over-much shimmering, pompus garb -- Nora took a big 4" x 4" beam and knocked them both to the ground. She'd then stripped them naked and, with sturdy rope, had bound them together at the neck, waists, and ankles. She'd laid them out on the kitchen table, then had waited patiently for both to return to consciousness. She'd raised Frederik's own knife -- the replica of a knife found in local excavations having a picture of a boar-like animal elegantly engraved its blade -- over their heads. How their eyes must have gone wide! Nora later told police their final words. Frederik's: "Myself, myself." Frida's: "Euhai, euhoi!"

Nora had forced a drug into their mouths that had probably caused instant convulsions, hallucinations, and a speedy death. Even as they'd succumbed, in the throes of their convulsions, Nora had slashed their throats. She'd carefully directed their blood into clay jars just like those that excavators said had been used to collect blood from bull sacrifices. She'd then put their bodies in a wheelbarrow and had carted them over to an olive tree fronting the house, from which she'd hung their pale, bloodless corpses. She'd next phoned the local police. Then she'd paced through the house, restless, finishing her bottle of good red wine.

The police and an ambulance arrived. It was said Nora could not be easily restrained. The police tried to put handcuffs on her. They finally pinned her down. Violent tremors coursed through her. The ambulance crew put a straightjacket on her.

In her statement to police, Nora not only took responsibilty for the murder of Frederik and Frida, but also for Dennis McLaren. Curiously, she insisted his remains were located not on Crete at all, but rather in shallow water somewhere in the elaborate labyrinthical alleyways of the Italian city of Venice.

Be that as it may.

That same day, September 11, 2001, at 8:45 a.m. New York City time, a hijacked passenger jet, American Airlines Flight 11 out of Boston, Massachusetts, crashed into the north tower of New York's World Trade Center, tearing a gaping hole in the building and setting it afire. 9:03 a.m.: A second hijacked airliner, United Airlines Flight 175 from Boston, crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center and exploded. Both buildings were burning. 9:30 a.m.: President Bush, speaking in Sarasota, Florida, said the country had suffered an "apparent terrorist attack." 9:43 a.m.: American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, sending up a huge plume of smoke. Evacuation began immediately. 10:05 a.m.: The south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed, plummeting into the streets below. A massive cloud of dust and debris forms and slowly drifted away from the building. 10:10 a.m.: United Airlines Flight 93, also hijacked, crashed in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, southeast of Pittsburgh. 10:28 a.m.: The World Trade Center's north tower collapsed from the top down, releasing a cloud of debris and smoke. 11:18 a.m.: American Airlines reported it had lost two aircraft. American Flight 11, a Boeing 767 flying from Boston to Los Angeles, had 81 passengers and 11 crew aboard. Flight 77, a Boeing 757 en route from Washington's Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles, had 58 passengers and six crew members aboard. Flight 11 slammed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Flight 77 hit the Pentagon. 11:26 a.m.: United Airlines reported that United Flight 93, en route from Newark, New Jersey, to San Francisco, California, had crashed in Pennsylvania. The airline also said it was "deeply concerned" about United Flight 175. 11:59 a.m.: United Airlines confirmed that Flight 175, from Boston to Los Angeles, had crashed with 56 passengers and nine crew members aboard. It had hit the World Trade Center's south tower.

That morning, 2,819 people died. Talk of human sacrifice. For years after you could read the names of those who'd died, all posted on the Internet -- the World Wide Web. It was devastating, like a Biblical roll call through disappearing generations, lost in one breath: Cain, Enoch, Irad, Mehujael, Methusale, Lamech, Jabal, Jubal, Tubalcain, Seth, Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared, further Enochs, further Methuselahs, further Lamechs, Noah, Shem, Ham, Japheth. Here and gone, just like that.

Emery imagined volcanoes igniting the entire planet like a torch. Melting ice caps sweeping the flaming continents into a global ocean, helped by torrential tsunamis. Who, in the heyday of King Minos, could have predicted the fall of Minoa? The old world had fallen away and a far more terrible world had been revealed -- a far more intricate, unfathomable world -- a larger, more tangled, more startling altered world.

Back at the house -- cleaning up, readying to depart it -- Emery sat at Frederik's table, and studied Frederik's maps. Incessantly and fervently, Frederik had talked of his "magic triangles" -- a triangle being a symbol of fire, a symbol of fertility, and a symbol of love. That Emery's parents lived in Hollywood -- that was of huge significance to Frederik. He'd jumped for joy. Fancying himself a screenwriter, he'd had a notion he would go with him to visit his folks in Hollywood and would get his script done up into a successful movie. He'd pointed out the triangle made by connecting the dots, in western Crete, of Loutro-Diktyna-Chania -- "a Delta triangle, the triangle of a woman's underbelly, the pubic triangle." Frederik had pointed out a second triange -- Chania, Crete-Aarhus, Denmark-Venice, Italy.

Emery now saw these tringles before him on the map. What could it all mean? Here was Emery with the remains of Frederik and Frida in urns. Should he return them to Stockholm and Aarhus? Take them with him to America? He was to be a wanderer on the earth now, that was clear. Where next go?

He looked harder at Frederik's map --a world map. Then he saw it. Again he connected the dots of western Crete -- Loutro-Diktyna-Chania -- then again he connected the dots of Europe -- Chania-Aarhus-Venice. Now he put his pencil tip on Chania and drew a line in the air over the map -- from Chania all the way to Los Angeles. He could see the next point on this Frederikian triangle -- it was... southwest Greenland. The lines met exactly at a place called Paamiut.

Before departing Crete for Greenland, Emery sent e-mail to Walt Lowen at The George Sand Bookshop in the village of Grez-sur-Loing at the edge of the Fontainbleau forest, detailing all that had happened. Then he packed the twin urns and his things and went out for one last walk in the mountains. The last thing on earth he wanted was yet another peculiar incident or accident to deal with.

Now Emery heard the cries of a man who'd apparently fallen into a crevice between two rock piles. Emery ran to him. In a familiar beige fur-trapper's coat with thick wool pushing out at his neck and at his wrists, the fellow had flashing brown eyes and floating brown hair with just light downy hair over his golden face. He was entangled with a mangled dull blue bicycle. A large telescopic lens protruded from a partly shattered camera on his belly. He had a bloody gash on his forehead. He raised his fist and swore at the blue sky, God in heaven, Jesus Christ, the apostles and the saints, the world’s unfairness, injustice in general and, in particular, this indignity. "It's killing me!" the guy was howling.

"Pike?" Emery reached down to him, to lift Pike up to safety. Emery gently touched his leather-like, sun-bronzed face.

"Emery," Pike recognized, frantically reaching for his friend's hand. He pulled Emery down in. "Emery," he said, choking with emotion, "Beware! Beware! She changed her mind -- again. We're off to Thule, she says. Do you remember? Those caves of ice. The ocean...."

Emery said nothing. Right now he only knew they were in this crevice here, him and Pike, like two washed up fish on rocks in blazing sunshine. After everything else -- now this.

Out of the corner of his eye Emery saw, atop a nearby ridge, a familiar woman with an impish pixie haircut standing by a glistening red bike, holding its handlebars with one hand, waving her free hand energetically in the still, serene air. Emery recognized the long, thin neck, the aquiline and noble nose, and the fire in her eyes. In Florence, they'd shared scarlet Campari in the Boboli Gardens at the top of the world.

Irene called to them, "What happened? Is anybody hurt? Why do you men always get into these messes!" she scolded. "Why don't you say something? What's wrong with you? What happened to the bike?"

"It's not about the bike," Emery muttered wearily. Pike had lost consciousness. Calm overcame him.

"Don't give me the faux king silent treatment!" Irene yelled -- she with her cutting vibrant histrionic Irish Van Diemen's Land Tasmanian Australian or whatever way of putting things. "What is going on? Do you need help? Can I help you?"

Emery lay there contemplating Irene's words. "Burn in hell!" he'd almost called back reflexively, but then he caved in. You'd never determine the queenly power of a woman until you knew what her ordinary power was.