Medusa Frequency by Russell Hoban Read Free Book Online Page B

The day was becoming hard and sunny with a high wind blowing the brown leaves against the wire mesh fence of the football pitch. The District Line trains rumbled past westbound to Parsons Green, Putney Bridge, Wimbledon, east-bound to Upminster, Tower Hill, Dagenham East with passengers, the sea, mountains and death. I looked at the postcard of the Vermeer girl. Afraid but seeking to avert nothing Luise looked back at me in the November daylight. The first time I saw that look on her face was about seven o’clock on a Sunday morning at the house in Kilburn where she had the bedsit. It was a few days after our first evening together, we hadn’t yet made love; I’d kissed her and she smelled of honey, she said it was cough sweets. I’d been thinking about her all the time so I drove up there and rang her bell. She came to the door in pyjamas, no eyebrows, and that look that sought to avert nothing but was questioning, uncertain, and afraid. What was there to be afraid of?
    We went up to her room and she made coffee. On the wall was an old clock she’d brought with her from Germany, it was stopped. It had a round wooden case and a sad white face with delicate black roman numerals. I opened the back and released the escapement; the works unwound with a great whirring; then I wound it up and started it running again. When she came to live with me in Fulham its pale white moonface rose over our lovemaking, over the smooth and shining sea of our pleasure. Then it stopped and wouldn’t go again however much I tinkered with it. There wasn’t a wall in our bedroom that clock was happy on; it hung there staring with its pendulum dead and the little door at the bottom ofthe case dropped open like the jaw of a skeleton.
    My unfinished adaptation of
Dracula
lay on the desk. I opened the folder and looked at where I’d left off:
    DOWN AMONG THE SHADOWY TOMBS PROFESSOR VAN HELSING OPENS THE COFFIN OF ONE OF THE VAMPIRE BRIDES OF DRACULA …
    Van Helsing:
How beautiful she is in her Vampire sleep!
    In her silk-lined coffin Melanie Falsepercy, the Vermeer girl, lay with her eyes open, her red lips slightly parted, her long hair loose about her. Van Helsing’s speech balloon throbbed with the old man’s lust.
    The telephone rang. I picked it up and said hello.
    ‘Herman?’ said the voice of Sol Mazzaroth. His damp and sweaty hand came out of the telephone and touched my arm.
    ‘I should have
Dracula
wound up tonight,’ I said. ‘Van Helsing’s down among the tombs now finishing off the vampire ladies.’
    ‘Not to worry,’ said Mazzaroth. ‘You’ve got time on that. Can you come in tomorrow afternoon around half-past three? I’ve got something really exciting to tell you.’
    ‘OK, I’ll be there.’
    I switched on the radio and got Radio Moscow at 12020 kHz with Alla Pugachova singing
Harlekino.
Is there a story of me? I asked myself. Am I in it? I typed:
SOME DRAMATIS PERSONAE IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE
    The Kraken,
the underhead: by its own account it came into existence when the human mind needed another mind to hold the original terror but it may well be of earlier origin. Eurydice claims to be its mother by a giant squid.
    Eurydice,
mother? of the Kraken; the vast and ivory nakedness of her rising from the deeps. Luise von Himmelbett and Melanie Falsepercy are the Eurydice of this story, the lost one, the gone one, the one who cannot stay.
Dike
or
Dice
is Justice or Natural Law. Eurydice is Wide Justice, justice everywhere, universal natural law. What, the loss of her?
    The Giant Squid,
an aspect of Orpheus, also (in a non-gigantic way) of Orff. Lusting after fishergirls.
    The Vermeer Girl,
an aspect of the Mother Goddess, the female principle that manifests itself as Eurydice or Persephone or Luise or Melanie Falsepercy or Medusa. I have in mind the face of the composite Eurydice loosely grinning, becoming, becoming … ?
    The Olive Tree,
Luise and I called it a Persephone door but mainly it’s the flickering of