The Secret History - Donna Tartt [270]
I have not laid eyes on Julian since that last afternoon with Henry, in his office. Francis—with extraordinary difficulty—managed to get in touch with him a couple of days before Henry’s funeral. He said that Julian greeted him cordially; listened politely to the news of Henry’s demise; then said: “I appreciate it, Francis. But I’m afraid there’s really nothing more that I can do.”
About a year ago Francis repeated to me a rumor—which we subsequently found was complete romance—that Julian had been appointed royal tutor to the little crown prince of Suaoriland, somewhere in East Africa. But this story, though false, took on a curious life in my imagination. What better fate for Julian than someday being the power behind the Suaori throne, than transforming his pupil into a philosopher-king? (The prince in the fiction was only eight. I wonder what I should be now if Julian had got hold of me when I was only eight years old.) I like to think that maybe he—as Aristotle did—would bring up a man who would conquer the world.
But then, as Francis said, maybe not.
I don’t know what happened to Agent Davenport—I expect he’s still living in Nashua, New Hampshire—but Detective Sciola is dead. He died of lung cancer maybe three years ago. I discovered this from a public service announcement that I saw late one night on television. It shows Sciola standing, gaunt and Dantesque, against a black backdrop. “By the time you see this announcement,” he says, “I will be dead.” He goes on to say that it wasn’t a career in law enforcement that killed him but two packs of cigarettes a day. I saw this about at three o’clock in the morning, alone in my apartment, on a black-and-white set with lots of interference. White noise and snow. He seemed to be speaking directly at me, right out of the television set. For a moment I was disoriented, seized by panic; could a ghost embody itself through wavelengths, electronic dots, a picture tube? What are the dead, anyway, but waves and energy? Light shining from a dead star?
That, by the way, is a phrase of Julian’s. I remember it from a lecture of his on the Iliad, when Patroklos appears to Achilles in a dream. There is a very moving passage where Achilles–overjoyed at the sight of the apparition—tries to throw his arms around the ghost of his old friend, and it vanishes. The dead appear to us in dreams, said Julian, because that’s the only way they can make us see them; what we see is only a projection, beamed from a great distance, light shining at us from a dead star …
Which reminds me, by the way, of a dream I had a couple of weeks ago.
I found myself in a strange deserted city—an old city, like London—underpopulated by war or disease. It was night; the streets were dark, bombed-out, abandoned. For a long time, I wandered aimlessly—past ruined parks, blasted statuary, vacant lots overgrown with weeds and collapsed apartment houses with rusted girders poking out of their sides like ribs. But here and there, interspersed among the desolate shells of the heavy old public buildings, I began to see new buildings, too, which were connected by futuristic walkways lit from beneath. Long, cool perspectives of modern architecture, rising phosphorescent and eerie from the rubble.
I went inside one of these new buildings. It was like a laboratory, maybe, or a museum. My footsteps echoed on the tile floors. There was a cluster of men, all smoking pipes, gathered around an exhibit in a glass case that gleamed in the dim light and lit their faces ghoulishly from below.
I drew nearer. In the case was a machine revolving slowly on a turntable, a machine with metal parts that slid in and out and collapsed in upon themselves to form new images. An Inca temple … click click click … the