Embowered in cypresses and cossetted by breezes, Elysian Fields overlooks the sea from a plateau on the city’s highest hill.
Marble mausoleums house the remains of the ‘greats’ – generals, politicians, aristocrats, clergy and tycoons.
The real ‘greats’ – our artists, writers, philosophers, humanists, doctors, scientists, explorers and philanthropists – are interred in humbler tombs in a separate sector. That’s where the people have gathered for Amador’s wake.
As usual, Pinkies abound. Since shadowing every gathering is standard Scythes duty, armed units stand by the monumental vaults. Hoplites guarding silver-spooned skeletons – what can be kitschier?
What’s surprising is that Numen hasn’t ordered the Scythes to rout the wake. Those with ears to the ground attribute this volte-face to Numen’s fears of blanket condemnation from Western democracies. Rosalind, Amador’s wife, launches the wake. ‘Athena, the goddess of wisdom, is also the goddess of the arts. Though her pleas to her fellow gods to protect artists from tyrants have fallen on deaf ears, she still passionately supports those who give life to Life with their works.
‘During Numen’s war against freedom of expression, she stood by Amador whenever they dragged him into torture chambers. Wearing Osip Mandelstam’s Gulag rags, she took Amador to her bosom to soothe his agonies. Recently, distraught by his shrivelled state, she borrowed the Sun’s chariot to whisk him away. Amador, wanting to finish the last poem he was composing, begged her for another snippet of time. Athena granted him that snippet. When Amador delivered the poem, she winged him to Eternity, that realm where artists live in the hearts of generations.
‘Right now, he is imbibing nectar with the Immortals.
‘So, by way of replenishing their chalices, we – his family – will read that last poem.’
‘It’s called Tomorrow:
Yesterday, the poet, al-Ma’ari, told us
there were two kinds of leaders:
those with brains and no religion;
and those with religion and no brains.
Yet many people somehow survived
there were still
the skies
the sun
the sea
mountains and forests
love of life and wisdom to create
and myths and prophecies
that promised clement times …’
I freeze. I realise it’s the poem Amador wanted to read in Recusants Corner.
Sonya, Amador’s daughter, takes over.
‘Today, unquiet souls warn us,
leaders have congealed into one kind:
those with no religion and no brains.
Yet the people strive to survive
and
the skies
the sun
the sea
mountains and forests
love of life and wisdom to create
are still here
defiant,
and myths and prophecies of clement times are still remembered …’
Rudolph, Amador’s son, concludes:
‘Tomorrow, the unborn will say:
there are
no skies
no sun
no sea
no mountains and forests
no love of life and no wisdom to create
and myths and prophecies
of clement times
have been effaced
because
there are no people left.’
I am not surprised that the poem expressed Hrant’s views on Saviours. As he once quoted Freud: wherever we go, we find a poet has been there before us.
Rosalind suggests an intermission for people who wish to commune privately with Amador’s spirit.
I should go and commiserate with Rosalind. Tell her and the children that I was with Amador when he passed away. But how would that help so soon after Belkis’s murder and Nestville’s eight killed, twenty-three injured and eleven disappeared?
I withdraw to the parapet and gaze at the city.
Many travel books claim that the most majestic panorama is the view of its seven hills lined up as sentinels. True, but it’s a truth that’s eroding fast. Corporation skyscrapers compete for height like trees chasing the sun. Villas creak with the weight of wealth. Apartments silent with tongueless bourgeois. Colourful tenements with castrated plebs. And defoliated warrens of those who have lost everything.
The promenades braiding the sea with acacias are full of people. So are the boardwalks by the river’s banks. A family rummages the dustbins. Some men sit on the grass and stare into emptiness searching for the future Numen keeps promising.
Here and there people entrust bottled messages to the estuary in the ancient belief that rivers are the quickest conduits to deities. If asked what gives them faith that the messages will reach their destination, they laugh and say mysteries are mysteries.
I believe that.