PAN'S DOMINION
...an island, an entity....
...an island, an entity....
There is no beginning, there is no end; there is only the infinite passion of life.
Federico Fellini, commenting on his film interpretation of the
ancient picaresque tale Satyricon, by Petronius.
ancient picaresque tale Satyricon, by Petronius.
Art is a lie that tells the truth.
Jean Cocteau, in a 1922 issue of Vanity Fair magazine.
Je est un autre. ["I" is someone else.]
Arthur Rimbaud, in a letter to his mentor.
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end,
And all is always now.
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end,
And all is always now.
T.S. Eliot, from Four Quartets, Burnt Norton.
We don't see things as they are; we see them as we are.
Anaïs Nin.
Who am I?
Ramana Maharshi.
ONE:
ENDINGS
ENDINGS
The Isle of Capri, Italy, 24 July
Bay of Naples, Late Afternoon, 30 July
Ineluctably, the night was bereft of even a sliver of moon.
Only a wan shudder of heat lightning silhouetted the distant horizon, glowering beyond the phosphorescent city far across the wide water.
The island lay darkly enthralled in its vast deep indigo embrace, dreaming of another dawning day of high summer: Pampered Capri people indulging the timeless Italian art of opulent oblivion.
Dolce farniente...
Yet, just as night was giving way to the first ray of ruddy tincture, not all Capresi were so quiescent. Muffled scuffling urgency kicked up a haze of dust at the very apex of the isle, verging its sheerest cliff.
A slack male form spiraled out, fleetingly eclipsed the burning cusp of the rising sun, flung disjointedly out, arcing and plunging headlong towards the cove, hundreds of feet down.
Below, on board a cluster of pleasure-craft anchored there for the night, no one noticed the silent drop. At that hour, they lay still rapt in sun-baked slumber, even if a few drowsy dreamers, stirring on one of the larger yachts, might have sensed the scraping thump as a flailing limb grazed its railing. Some might also have dimly registered the final splash, only to turn aside and go on drifting in languorous semi-consciousness, imagining it to be most likely just some rubble, dislodged from the immense limestone crag looming over the huddle of tiny vessels suspended in crystalline turquoise.
It wasn't until afterward, following a lazy pranzo, that a leisurely check revealed dried bloody streaks, and only then did they grasp that something made of flesh had caused the trifling commotion.
In late afternoon, squinting molten glare refracting obliquely off choppy waters, when the port police hoisted the pallid figure up from the purple floor of the sea, a murmuring crowd of the curious had gathered. The first macabre revelation set everyone buzzing: A heavy iron object trussed round his loins with maroon silk. The second sight wrenched shocked gasps from some, nauseous retches from others: The livid proof of the most savage and perverse mutilation...
The grotesque horror of the young man's fate ricocheted jaggedly around the isle in ensuing days, escalating to wild rumor among the alarmed islanders and the terrorized visitors: "Who was he?" "Who had seen him?" And most chillingly, "Who had been with him?"
Only a wan shudder of heat lightning silhouetted the distant horizon, glowering beyond the phosphorescent city far across the wide water.
The island lay darkly enthralled in its vast deep indigo embrace, dreaming of another dawning day of high summer: Pampered Capri people indulging the timeless Italian art of opulent oblivion.
Dolce farniente...
Yet, just as night was giving way to the first ray of ruddy tincture, not all Capresi were so quiescent. Muffled scuffling urgency kicked up a haze of dust at the very apex of the isle, verging its sheerest cliff.
A slack male form spiraled out, fleetingly eclipsed the burning cusp of the rising sun, flung disjointedly out, arcing and plunging headlong towards the cove, hundreds of feet down.
Below, on board a cluster of pleasure-craft anchored there for the night, no one noticed the silent drop. At that hour, they lay still rapt in sun-baked slumber, even if a few drowsy dreamers, stirring on one of the larger yachts, might have sensed the scraping thump as a flailing limb grazed its railing. Some might also have dimly registered the final splash, only to turn aside and go on drifting in languorous semi-consciousness, imagining it to be most likely just some rubble, dislodged from the immense limestone crag looming over the huddle of tiny vessels suspended in crystalline turquoise.
It wasn't until afterward, following a lazy pranzo, that a leisurely check revealed dried bloody streaks, and only then did they grasp that something made of flesh had caused the trifling commotion.
In late afternoon, squinting molten glare refracting obliquely off choppy waters, when the port police hoisted the pallid figure up from the purple floor of the sea, a murmuring crowd of the curious had gathered. The first macabre revelation set everyone buzzing: A heavy iron object trussed round his loins with maroon silk. The second sight wrenched shocked gasps from some, nauseous retches from others: The livid proof of the most savage and perverse mutilation...
The grotesque horror of the young man's fate ricocheted jaggedly around the isle in ensuing days, escalating to wild rumor among the alarmed islanders and the terrorized visitors: "Who was he?" "Who had seen him?" And most chillingly, "Who had been with him?"
Bay of Naples, Late Afternoon, 30 July
Less than a week had passed.
A vaporous shroud pervaded the glassy-flat Bay of Naples as a hydrofoil glided along the surface like a monstrous water-skimming beetle, its metallic carapace glinting, toward Capri.
One of its passengers, an American named Webb Knecht, strained to make out the unique contour of the storied isle, which now shimmered dreamlike into focus.
To the left, there emerged the vertical profile of the promontory where the Roman Emperor Tiberius had sited his magnificent and infamous Villa Iovis, the House of Jove, largest of a dozen palaces he had placed around the island.
To the right, Webb could just make out the more imposing peak of Monte Solaro. It was from there, according to the sketchy and horrific reports Webb had received, that his brother Derek's naked, disfigured body had evidently been thrown, once his killers had finished with him.
A vaporous shroud pervaded the glassy-flat Bay of Naples as a hydrofoil glided along the surface like a monstrous water-skimming beetle, its metallic carapace glinting, toward Capri.
One of its passengers, an American named Webb Knecht, strained to make out the unique contour of the storied isle, which now shimmered dreamlike into focus.
To the left, there emerged the vertical profile of the promontory where the Roman Emperor Tiberius had sited his magnificent and infamous Villa Iovis, the House of Jove, largest of a dozen palaces he had placed around the island.
To the right, Webb could just make out the more imposing peak of Monte Solaro. It was from there, according to the sketchy and horrific reports Webb had received, that his brother Derek's naked, disfigured body had evidently been thrown, once his killers had finished with him.
...though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come.
Such a searing, graphic confrontation with the enormity of his brother's death suddenly felt beyond agonizing, encasing Webb's every perception in stabbing pain - in stark, febrile contrast to the sheer effulgent gorgeousness of his surroundings.
The sleek aliscafo was now bearing rapidly for the lower, middle portion of the roughly saddle-shaped mass of white rocky outcropping that formed the island. It would soon dock at Marina Grande and he would take a taxi up the winding road to the Villa del Ponente, the Villa of the West Wind. It was reputedly a historic mock-Moorish mansion, a white-stucco and red-tile palace, ideally situated to afford unforgettable panoramas all around the points of the compass. Inexplicably, a Neapolitan nobleman, whom he had yet to meet, Baron Gaetano Alfanic, had offered him the use of the villa's tower apartment. Webb so far understood only one thing: The Baron had learned of his brother's appalling death and had immediately contacted him in San Francisco. Alfanic had not revealed how he had discovered Derek's identity - or, for that matter, how he had found Webb's phone number - but had simply said that he wanted to do whatever he could to help, and to uncover the truth about what had happened.
Derek, dead now at twenty-five, had been Webb's older brother by three years, and they had been as close as twins. Like many twins, they had developed their own coded language in childhood and had shared a powerful telepathic connection, as well - a deep and dynamic bond Webb now missed terribly, as if there were a cold wind howling in desolate despair through the very core of his being.
The sleek aliscafo was now bearing rapidly for the lower, middle portion of the roughly saddle-shaped mass of white rocky outcropping that formed the island. It would soon dock at Marina Grande and he would take a taxi up the winding road to the Villa del Ponente, the Villa of the West Wind. It was reputedly a historic mock-Moorish mansion, a white-stucco and red-tile palace, ideally situated to afford unforgettable panoramas all around the points of the compass. Inexplicably, a Neapolitan nobleman, whom he had yet to meet, Baron Gaetano Alfanic, had offered him the use of the villa's tower apartment. Webb so far understood only one thing: The Baron had learned of his brother's appalling death and had immediately contacted him in San Francisco. Alfanic had not revealed how he had discovered Derek's identity - or, for that matter, how he had found Webb's phone number - but had simply said that he wanted to do whatever he could to help, and to uncover the truth about what had happened.
Derek, dead now at twenty-five, had been Webb's older brother by three years, and they had been as close as twins. Like many twins, they had developed their own coded language in childhood and had shared a powerful telepathic connection, as well - a deep and dynamic bond Webb now missed terribly, as if there were a cold wind howling in desolate despair through the very core of his being.
