Revolution - Jennifer Donnelly [123]
“Stalagtites,” Constantine says.
“Stalagmites,” Jules says.
“Stalagfrights,” I mutter.
A few yards down, the walls change to limestone again. Only they’re not gray like the ones I saw in the catacombs; they’re full of color. There’s graffiti everywhere. Cartoons. Copies of the old masters. Original paintings. There’s one really intricate painting of a man dancing with a skeleton in a bridal gown.
“Wow, that’s good,” I say, moving closer to it.
The others continue on. Virgil passes me, glances at the painting. “It was done by a necrophile,” he says. “Watch out for those guys. They’re always skulking around down here. Watch out for the drug couriers, too—usually a pair of men, moving fast. They like their privacy.”
I hurry to catch up, trip over something—somebody, probably—and stumble into Virgil. He feels for my hand and steadies me. I can’t see his face. Can’t tell what he’s thinking. I want him to kiss me again. I want the feeling of his arms around me so badly. I’m glad it’s dark. Glad he can’t see it written all over me. Glad Khadija can’t, either.
“You okay?” he says tersely.
“Yes.”
“Good,” he says, and lets go.
The tunnel veers left, then right, then it narrows. I can hear water trickling. The ground gets muddy, then soupy. We’ve come to a stream.
Virgil stops, shines his light on the wall. Rue d’Acheron, someone’s written on it. “Almost there,” he says.
Charon jumps across the stream. He reaches back to help me over. We walk on. The tunnel’s ceiling gets lower, the walls closer. It’s creepy and claustrophobic and kind of cool. I move the beam of my flashlight over the walls as I walk. There are more pictures. One of a lion. A wolf. A leopard. There’s a chalk drawing of a tall, eerie white man, too. His left arm is outstretched. He’s pointing.
“I saw that one before,” I say. “Back by the dancing skeleton.”
“Yeah, he’s been there the whole way. He’s chalked on,” Virgil tells me. “He’s pointing the way to the party.”
“How do you know that? How do you know your way around down here?” I ask him.
“I learned it by studying the maps. The Giraud map, which was made in the forties. And Titan’s map. But I know my way by heart now. I’ve been coming down here for years.”
A few minutes later, we come to a T. Somebody’s scrawled something on the limestone.
“The writing on the wall!” Jules crows. He stops to read it. Virgil walks on, reciting the lines from heart.
“… at times I almost dream
I too have spent a life the sages’ way,
And tread once more familiar paths. Perchance
I perished in an arrogant self-reliance
Ages ago; and in that act, a prayer
For one more chance went up so earnest, so
Instinct with better light let in by death,
That life was blotted out—not so completely
But scattered wrecks enough of it remain,
Dim memories, as now, when once more seems
The goal in sight again.”
“Wow. That’s deep,” Jules says.
“You know who sayed that?” Constantine asks excitedly. “Agent Mulder. X-Files, bruh! Season Four. Episode Five. ‘The Field Where I Died.’ My cousin has DVD.”
Virgil snorts.
“What, smart man? Who sayed it, then?”
“Robert Browning sayed it. He wrote it. It’s from a poem. ‘Paracelsus.’ ”
“You make me so hot when you recite poetry,” Jules says, planting a noisy kiss on Virgil’s cheek. Virgil swats him away.
“Yeah. Me too,” I say. To myself.
I read the poem again and a chill goes through me as I realize that I know some of the lines. The junkie at Clignancourt said them to me. He probably saw them on one of his trips down here to snatch bones and for some reason they were rattling around in his head yesterday when I bought the painting from him. But still, I get a creepy feeling reading them now. I feel like he somehow knew I’d be here, that I’d see them. What does it mean, anyway—’That life was blotted out—not so completely / But scattered wrecks enough of it remain’? I turn to ask Virgil if he knows, and see that I’m standing