INVISIBLE CELLS Pt.1

Chapter 3. 'bisecting a breadmaker'

The Lydian treasury was a vast vault gleaming with its contents. The rivers of the country ran with gold and silver and the Mermnad kings fished them to exhaustion. The catch, stored in the Treasury, was visited by Croesus at least once a day and, at night, he loved to visit with the breadmaker, and, so, watch his heaving buttocks reflected in the pile of gold ingots. There was, however, one corner of the Treasury Croesus never visited with pleasure; its contents frightened him too much.

One very black night, back in the reign of Gyges, the fishers of gold, working a particularly rich stream, came across something unprecedented. For a long time no one knew what to make of what the waters had revealed, but, the coincidences were recorded. Every time the two rolls of skin were put together disaster ensued. The priests of Apollo were asked to interpret. They came up with an early, non-mathematical version of Chaos Theory. They concluded the gold miners had uncovered nothing less than the remains of Tiamat's bisected skin. Rolled out, these remains made two large, abstract pieces, one yellow and gold, the other, starkly, black and white. The priests knew how to save the world. The remains should be rolled up and stored in two large, sealed, separate, earthenware containers and, forever, kept apart. It was deemed too dangerous to attempt to destroy them. The Lydian treasury was made custodian of the pieces, and all, who had any knowledge of the affair, were sworn to secrecy, apart, that is, from the gold miners themselves, who were disembowelled for their curiosity, or bad luck.

It was the corner of the Treasury where the earthenware containers stood which caused Croesus to shiver. He would have liked to leave all observances concerning the jars to Hermus, including the inspection of the Lydian guard, who guarded the jars day and night, but Apollo's priests had decided differently. The responsibility for keeping the two halves apart was direct and could not be delegated. It was judged that the price of failure would be the end of civilisation and the return of the serpent. Only a king could be entrusted with so perilous a responsibility.

The next day, following his night of drunkenness and seed swapping with Hermus, Tamnos awaited anxiously Croesus' appearance in the Treasury. He need not have worried; Croesus was always pleased to see Tamnos.

"Tamnos, I had her again last night. I had her in here. Would you like for me to arrange for you to have her?" Without pausing for a reply, "Perhaps! One day! When I am bored with her, but I don't get bored with her. Someday soon I'll make her squeal like a pig. Women are such a corruption of us. Of course you wouldn't have her, you are one of Apollo's boys. I wish I could be content with Apollo's boys."

"Does your majesty ever lie with the queen?" Tamnos searched for a way of introducing the word "dream".

"I can't Tamnos. I know she gave me Atys and he is the flower of youth, but I can't forgive her for the other one. It is true he is a handsome boy but what does it portend for a king to have a son who can neither hear nor speak. Whereas, my little baker is no more than a perversion. There are things I could tell you, but I will not. Did you have a good night, last night?"

"I had a dream, Croesus."

"What, another dream? What was it about this time? Another conquest of the Greek states for me, perhaps?"

"No, this dream was so profound. It was the most profound dream I have ever had."

"And what did it tell us?"

"It told us that when we Lydians circumcise our male offspring, because the cock reminds us of the snake, and send the foreskins to Delphi as a sacrifice to Apollo, we do less than enough."

"But I send more than foreskins. You well know I send great quantities of gold to Delphi." Croesus awaited expectantly, greater revelations.

"It said we have so much gold, we have more gold than sheep and we have more sheep than most. The dream said Croesus must sacrifice more, and then, I saw it."

"What did you see, what did you see? This is interesting."

"I saw Cymes, your bodyguard, sawing the baker girl in two, with a hefty, gap-toothed, timber saw. I saw your goldsmiths go quickly to work, to make casts of the two halves of her body, and, afterwards, I saw them break open the casts, clean them and pour gold into them. But mixed in with the gold was something else, the yellow and gold flag of Tiamat and the black and white flag of Tiamat, one in one half, the other in the other. When it arrived at Delphi, the priests were wildly excited at Croesus' creation. It was the ultimate taboo, and at what personal cost, what a sacrifice!" Tamnos loved the freedom of the dream narrative, and so would often make up dreams he had never dreamt, even when not following Hermus' orders.

"I like it. I do like it. But could I give her up? She deserves it, certainly she deserves it. And no longer to be responsible for the skins, that would be wonderful. However, you are not a statesman Tamnos, you have forgotten we are entrusted with the task of guarding the skins, the trust is not transferable."

"May I remind you, your majesty, it is not I that have forgotten but the dream. I am only the vehicle in which the dream travels. However, the dream did show me Solon, the lawmaker, approaching the gates of Sardis, and when he saw the boxes carrying the idol leaving Sardis for Delphi, went up to them with a hot iron and burned into them his seal of approval."

"That was very prescient of the dream." Croesus rubbed his hands together avariciously, standing as he was, in the midst of his vast horde of gold and silver. "If there is a way around Apollo's ruling, the aged Solon would be the man to find it, and Solon is on his way to Sardis. He is to help me draft the constitution for the eastern Greek states we have annexed. We are bringing order and purpose to the whole world. The rule of law!"

Hermus reasoned, quite correctly, that as Solon sold the law, his influence could be bought. Moreover, at Delphi, the Hyperboreans had gained a dominance. The Hyperboreans although supposed to be an Apollonian sect, loved Pythia, the snake like oracle, more than Apollo. They had a reputation for excess and were a corruption of Apollonian correctness. Hermus and the subversives had infiltrated the Hyperboreans.

Early one morning, the wind bitingly cold, not long after Tamnos had told Croesus of his dream, Hermus and Tamnos joined a small crowd gathered around the sawing box, in the public square. A fourteen year old girl, stripped naked, flanked by the royal guard, was led out by Cymes. Despite the flesh-cutting wind, the crowd staggered at the perfection of her form. She stood only three cubits, or four feet six inches high, but her form existed to carry perfect musculature. Every muscle was smoothed elegantly into every other one. One man in the crowd fainted when he realised she had one breast missing. Croesus, concealed, watched from a window, happily incensed that he was at last to make an impression on her and excited at sharing her nakedness. They strapped her into the sawing box and Cymes began his work. She held her lips tightly together, refusing to make a sound, apart from the involuntary escape of body gas, as the teeth of the saw cut through her intestines.

A soldier called Glaucus, standing in the crowd, averted his eyes and pressed his woollen mitts into his ears. He tried hard to imagine the pattern on a snail's shell, but all he could do was hear the shell cracking as a boot strode out to conquer more of the world.

Strictly speaking the retelling of history or even just the memory of it should not add to its finite sum but endless addition is an historical fact about the consciousness of history. There were bits of Jackie and Jilly's "alternative history" for which they were the only source, but this is not to say these bits were only figments of their imaginations.

Chapter 4. 'a big bang'

The echinoid, the snail, the tortoise are often caught, but, as Zeno of Elea realised, not easily passed. Zeno posited a race between Achilles and a tortoise; a race which Achilles could never win. Zeno argued that a tortoise's obdurate persistence in continuous existence would always equal Achilles' existence with his god-like moments of flashy brilliance and apparent movement.

The sisters' sense of history was coloured or patterned by various fragments of experience. At her first school Jilly had made a study of sea shells and at university Jackie had been particularly interested in the Eleatics. Sometimes their relationship with their "alternative history" was quite simple, they loved it. It gave them a unique identity, like belonging to a secret society, only their identity was not just in the fact of membership but in what they were inclined to call their "blood".

"A smell steals over my senses, the smell of a hard-shelled tortoise,
seethed in bronze with the meat of lambs mingled together."

This was how, according to Herodotus, the Pythia of Delphi described Croesus' cooking. After sending to Delphi the two halves of the golden idol, plus 117 gold ingots each six hands long, three hands wide and one hand thick (the sisters loved this ancient notion of measurement and the way it reflected on the English word "foot", "whose errant foot is imprinted in the rule") and a lion made of refined gold, Croesus sought a test of the Pythia's powers. Would Delphi reject him for having interpreted that the trust was transferable? Solon, on his visit, had argued it was a moot point, but the sacrifice of the breadmaker and the delight of her preserved image, which never could be restored complete, would be thought of very highly at Delphi, especially by the Hyperboreans - self interest is the father of convincing rationalisations -. Croesus requested of the Oracle what was impossible for humans. Would the Pythia, at Delphi, know what Croesus, at Sardis, was doing at a particular time on a particular day? The Pythia had to call this as it happened. Progress makes a nonsense of the supernatural.

On the day, Croesus, with a knife, set about a tortoise and a lamb, cutting them up for a stew. This was what the Oracle saw, Croesus, blood on his hands and tunic, leaning over the cauldron, staring into the smelling flux as though it were a crystal ball. When, by pigeon, the news of Pythia's accuracy reached him, Croesus was emboldened to ask for more. Wandering the bakery, the sweat, the funk of the murderer would reduce him to a hollowness in front the fierce ovens, but dreams of conquest enabled him to keep his head above breakdown. He would ask the Oracle how he would fare in a war with the Persians, and he would send more gold. He felt sure many things were true, that he was still beloved of Apollo, that he would conquer the world, that his deaf and dumb son would both speak and hear, that the skin of Tiamat was irretrievably separated, that his other son, Atys, would not have to go to war but, instead, lead a life of domestic bliss, and that he, Croesus, could have everything and everyone. Croesus, in his appetite for the tortoise and the lamb, pledged himself to sexual abstinence, one more sacrifice for the sake of his will to succeed.

Glaucus never indulged in the luxury of abstinence, but he had known plenty of scarcity in his life, especially on the campaigns Croesus had planned. Not now though, not with the great success of the Lydian state and a lull in the fighting. On the day Croesus was slaughtering the lamb, Glaucus was sprawled out on a hillside, in the sun, enjoying dates and figs, which he drew from an hessian bag. Sprawled out with him, sharing the fruits was Cymes, they were friends. Glaucus had been pressing Cymes for some explanation.

"Nobody understands it Cymes, tell me, what had she done?"

"How many times do I have to tell you, Hermus swore me to secrecy. I can tell you, I would rather have forced this up into her," Cymes pointed to his dick, "than scratched her open the way I did."

"But you said Hermus kept winking at you all the time he was telling you how secret it was."

"He did that. Alright, I am busting a gut to tell someone, if the truth be told. But you keep this to yourself. I'll be in big trouble if it gets out. Hermus reckons that, sooner or later, them at Delphi won't be able to resist putting her together. You see for Croesus she was a sacrifice but for Hermus she is a plot. Do you understand the difference? Apparently, the girl was in on it, not Croesus's sacrifice mind you, but she made her own sacrifice and she was a knowing part of the plot. Hermus told me that something very, very powerful was put into the two halves of her statue, and that if ever the two halves are put together, which as you know is forbidden by Apollo, then everyone will become free; there'll be no rulers anymore. It will be atomic. I suppose he means you and me will be free. He said it will be a new beginning. A big bang. Ho!"

"I haven't got the energy for a new beginning. If people like Croesus and Hermus left us alone we'd never do anything dreadful." Glaucus took another date, and shaded his eyes, peering up at the brightness of the sun. "Pity we can't lie here forever, warmth on the skin, sweetness in the mouth."

"That's what the new beginning's about, or according to Hermus it is. It's for all of us. For my part, I throw my coins into the well, I want to believe it."

Glaucus could no longer stand the sun in his eyes, he switched his gaze to the vast, treeless plain flanking the walls of Sardis and thought he saw pools of blood being swallowed by the dry earth. He caught hold of Cymes' hand and pressed it warmly.

Jackie loved the way her sister personalised the past, for her part Jackie saw the past more abstractly, more a matter of generalities. As Jackie understood it, their father's obsession with history was fed by the desire to merge these perspectives. Uranus and Gaea!

Chapter 5. 'it's all coming down!'

The Pythia told Croesus, if he went to war with the Persians, then he could be sure a kingdom would fall. Later, hermeneutics provided the rationalisation used to save the reputation of the Oracle, a point Jackie and Jilly, unlike most heroines, were well able to understand. Croesus, not unreasonably, expected more directness if a warning was intended, but like Macbeth he was a hostage to the supernatural.

The sisters understanding of these events was coloured by their infancy in the late 1960's. In their formative years Roddy, their father, had passed on to them, along with many other things, the mental imagery of the period's cults.

The Hyperboreans had come to Delphi from a sunny land beyond the North Wind. Both men and women wore their hair very long, in which they tied flowers. They would eat no meat and they said they loved Apollo because he represented peace and harmony, but they had very little discipline and were easily seduced. Their real reason for migrating to Greece was the lure of Greek sculpture, a sculpture unprecedented in the Ancient World. The Hyperboreans were avid masturbators, both men and women, and great voyeurs. At Delphi, they focussed hard on the scenes depicting, so realistically, the rape of the Leucippids, which appeared on the frieze adorning the fast expanding Treasury. For a while, these Hyperboreans littered the sacred places in Greece, but their part in making the Oracle speak with a forked tongue was uncovered. After this, they were chased out, and the place names associated with their country of origin erased from all charts. This is why all that is known of their land is that it was beyond the North Wind, whatever that was, and that it was sunny. Fancifully the sisters sometimes said the Hyperboreans had been reincarnated, migrating to the West Coast of the USA over two thousand years later.

Drunk on strong Lydian wine, which Hermus, for this purpose, had despatched to Delphi along with a shipment of gold, and in a state of frenzy from listening to Corybantic pipe music, provided by a group of priests to whom Hermus had given much Lydian coinage, many of the Hyperboreans fell, one night, into a state of riot. Knives were drawn, throats were slit and a group overpowered treasury guards and broke into the tomb of the bisected icon. In the ancient world it was the night when Jack Flash sat on his candle stick.

The two parts of the icon gleamed as the flames from the torches, carried by the revellers, roared up into the vaulted darkness of the tomb. Nothing gleamed as much again until Seberg in 'A Bout de Souffle', Roddy had said. Their violent mood was arrested by what they saw. Soon they began fondling themselves and each other, but they had to see it all. As their frenzy grew - in length, girth and openness - they could not live without the complete image. Had there ever been anything so desirable? The prohibition hanging over the icon, as heavy as the guillotine, gave greater urgency to their desire. With no one to prevent them, with Delphi at their mercy, they stumbled handling the great weight of bringing the two halves together. The consequent force unleashed was a magnification, as though magnetic attraction and repulsion were occurring in the same field. Soon the musky smell of the tomb was replaced by a reek of fish, as love juices leapt and poured in pursuit of the breadmaker. The secret followers of the serpent were well pleased.

In Sardis, Hermus and Tamnos were convinced they sensed something. The amber necklace hanging about Hermus' throat, his chain of office, became highly charged, sparks flying between the stones. Hermus sent Tamnos to summon the conspirators. Cloaked figures, like bats, flitted to the Treasury. Most of the military were encamped on the great plain in front Sardis, awaiting the call to battle the next morning. The rest manned the walls of the town. Croesus was with his army facing the Persians. The Treasury belonged to Hermus and his revolutionaries.

Hermus believed Tiamat's primordial act of peeing on Marduk needed re-enacting if the spell he was weaving was to work. Smooth gold was rubbed into the cracks of an old whore's hands and she hurried, as best as she was able, to the Treasury. Hermus pointed to the ring of Gyges. The ring belonged to Croesus, as it had to each descendent of the Mermnad line. It was supposed to confer invincibility on its owner. Its central motif was an erect phallus. Croesus said it represented Apollo, but the iconography pointed to something much cruder, much more primordial. Hermus knew what it meant and for this reason he kept his long finger outstretched towards it. The whore had been told what to do. It seemed to her an easy trick. She pulled up her skirt, she wore no underwear, and squatting began a long smelly pee, to be followed by a steaming turd that slid around the intricacies of the ring. Hermus had not demanded so much, it was an embellishment, or because the old whore was feeling comfortable in her work, either way Hermus’ desire for sacrilege was satiated. He had to hold his nose to prevent himself retching.

The spell worked. While Delphi was falling about, gripped by party fever, the Lydians and Persians rushed across the plain at each other, to a final reckoning. The battle raged for two days. For a while it looked as if both empires would be destroyed; an Ancient holocaust. As the carcasses piled up on the battlefield, the golden nakedness remained complete, and, as history records, a plague of snakes broke out in Sardis, insinuating themselves everywhere.

"Tiamat, see what we are doing for you. You do see! Look how your own are returning and multiplying!" Hermus stood on the ramparts, in religious ecstasy. He clasped Tamnos to him. "It's all coming down!"

On the battlefield Croesus stumbled about in disbelief. The fighting had been so hard and where was the victory Pythia promised. Through the smoke and the debris he shuffled back towards the gates of Sardis. He cursed the fallen bodies impeding his way. Why were they lying on the ground, crying out for their wounds, when they could still be on their feet carrying the fight to the Persians. Any Persians still protesting with life Croesus skewered with his dripping sword. In desperation he kicked out at the skull of one of his own soldiers; he heard it crack. The soldier was Glaucus. He had fought one battle too many. He was unknown to Croesus, although if there had been a victory Croesus would have honoured him and his comrades with some enduring, marble memorial. As Croesus approached the gates his deaf and dumb son came running towards him. Suddenly, Croesus realised his son was shouting. For a moment he thought it an omen that all would be well, but then he heard the words. They formed a stream of incoherent obscenities. The world was bereft of reason.