The Plato Papers Read online

  In fact the echo of his music had preceded his arrival, and it is said that the shadowy inhabitants of this place had suspended their labours in order to listen to the strange sweetness of the sounds. So he was greeted with soft sighs before being taken to the palace of Thanatos himself. He was escorted through various rooms hung with dismal tapestries until he reached a dark and secluded chamber, where the ruler reclined on a couch of black marble. Orpheus knelt before him and, having announced his mission, again played upon his lute. Thanatos was ravished by the music and, wiping away his ruby tears, graciously agreed that Orpheus might reclaim Eurydice and lead her upwards.

  Before this reunion, however, he decided that his guest must see the wonders of the city. He showed him a wheel of fire, always turning, and a great stone that rolled backwards and forwards along the same course. There was also a river of salt water, encircling the region, that forever turned upon itself. These were of course the old emblems of time. Thanatos imposed one condition upon the release of Eurydice: Orpheus was not to look upon her until they had left Hades and reached the outer air. The reasons for his decision are unclear and no state papers have yet been recovered, but it is likely that the sudden immersion within the realm of time had somehow disfigured or even transformed her.

  So Orpheus turned his back and, staying true to his oath, began walking ahead of Eurydice towards the light; he stayed upon the straight path, between vast walls of dark rock and played upon his lute in order to encourage her faltering steps. But there came a moment when he could not resist the comfort of her face and, without thought, he turned his head and gazed upon her. It was already too late. She cried aloud, and fell back in a faint. Orpheus ran towards her, but she had faded away before he could reach her outstretched arms. He heard only the faintest echo of ‘Farewell’ before he found himself alone upon the stony path. Alone he reached the territory of light.

  It has been said that Eurydice did not wish to leave the world of time and deliberately called out to him so that he would look at her; she had grown old, perhaps, and did not believe that he would love her in her altered state. The truth has yet to be discovered. Orpheus himself wandered among the fields and meadows of his native land, always lamenting, until the gods took pity on him. He was lifted into the heavens, where his lute was changed into a constellation; from that period onward, the people of the earth could hear the music of the spheres.

  It is in many respects a poignant story, but there is no reason to doubt its general truth. Although certain details have yet to be authenticated the existence of Hades and Mount Olympus, as well as the star cluster of Lyra, has already been proved. In the sad fate of Orpheus, then, we have a central and genuine event of ancient history. You may now enter the observation chamber, where the three-headed dog has been reconstructed, before I begin a brief exequy on the second age of the earth.

  17

  The Age of the Apostles was an age of suffering and lamentation, when the earth itself was considered to be evil and all those upon it were condemned as sinners. The gods had departed and it was believed that the natural world had betrayed its spiritual inheritance. The apostles propagated a doctrine that the human race had committed some terrible offence, of unknown origin, which could only be expiated by prayer and penance; it was not long, in fact, before pain was valued for its own sake. They also insisted that the various gods had become one deity, which hid itself in a cloud or, on occasions, in a bright light. This god, according to the testimony of the apostles, had already consigned some of its creatures to everlasting torment in a region known as hell; its location has not yet been found, but we believe it to lie in a territory adjacent to Hades. We are certain, however, that the religion of the apostles was indeed one of blood and sorrow. That is why, in this ancient period, the angels rarely visited the earth; if they alighted here they stayed only for a moment since, as Gabriel himself has told us, there was no chance of intelligent conversation.

  The reasons for the eventual collapse of the religion are unknown, although it is likely that certain internal contradictions rendered it unstable. It affirmed the values of compassion and sympathy, for example, while persecuting those who refused to accept its authority; it worshipped an omnipotent deity, while insisting upon the individual’s free choice of salvation or damnation. These paradoxes were maintained for many centuries but in the end the faith collapsed and gave way to the apparently more plausible explanations of Mouldwarp.

  18

  Plato: I was so delighted that I could speak without faltering.

  Soul: As I was saying before you interrupted me, you had found your voice.

  Plato: And the citizens have been pleased by it. It is almost as if I am protecting them at the same time as I am protecting myself. As long as I study and interpret the past, they are able to ignore it. I give them certainty and that is enough.

  Soul: But they listen very intently.

  Plato: And they laugh.

  Soul: No. You misunderstand them. They are simply admiring your skills as an orator. Do you recall your description of the last days of Mouldwarp? That was a grand performance.

  19

  The last centuries of Mouldwarp furnish perhaps the most solemn and awful scenes in the entire history of the earth. Who can properly depict, for example, the despair engendered by the cult of webs and nets which spread among the people in these final years? They seem to have worn these dismal garments as a form of enslavement as well as worship, as if their own darkness might thereby be covered and concealed. They had inherited the superstition of progress from their credulous ancestors but in their extremity they had no notion of what, if anything, they were progressing towards. Nothing could have prepared them, however, for the horror of the end.

  The priests of this age had lost their visionary powers and had become technicians; so restricted was the range of their knowledge that their principal activity lay in the computation of figures and numbers within the material world. One group of this priestly caste had been trained to observe the heavens (according to the ancient texts they were known as astronomads or, perhaps, astronumberers) in order to confirm the regularity and predictability of its movements. We believe this to have been known as science. Yet there came a moment when one observer noticed that certain faint sources of light had somehow disappeared. An observer in a different region confirmed that other remote areas of brightness had also vanished. In their anxiety and alarm the astronumberers consulted together, only to realise that these stars and nebulae had disappeared simply because no one had been looking at them. With increasing desperation the technicians consulted their maps and their models in order to compile a list of celestial objects that had not been under continuous observation. Of course these objects had also gone. The leaders of Mouldwarp were suddenly confronted by the knowledge that the components of their universe ceased to exist when they were not actively sought or studied. Within a generation there emerged a common belief that the night sky, and all of its properties, had been created by human perception.

  Every galaxy and every constellation then became the object of continual attention, as if it were still possible to keep this universe together by an act of concerted will. But it was already too late. They had begun to doubt. Then all the stars, quadrant by quadrant, were gradually extinguished. Once the process had begun, it could not be halted; the onset of decay in one section of the heavens spread across the entire night sky. Since the astronomads now believed that they were responsible for what they observed, they could no longer define their objectives with any confidence or certainty. And so the darkness spread.

  The populace had not been informed of these events and had not noticed the disappearance of a few distant stars. But when the most prominent patterns of the night sky were slowly eroded, there emerged a great and consuming fear. It was suggested that they should pray. Pray? To what? Long ago they had forsaken any idea of divinity within, or beyond, themselves. Who can imagine the scenes of fury and despair when the work of Mould
warp began to unravel after eight hundred years? The anger of the people was first directed against the priests who had apparently deceived and manipulated them; they turned upon those who had created reason and abstraction and the encroaching darkness. But the practitioners of science were themselves horrified and bewildered by the events unfolding above them. They had never understood that they were engaged in acts of magic, and that their universe was an emanation of the human mind. Then the sun went out.

  The ensuing period of anger and fear has often been chronicled. The people of Mouldwarp did not, or could not, recognise the light within themselves; so they raged against the dark and the false reality that had been constructed around them. Some wondered how they still lived and breathed, but most of the inhabitants of this lost civilisation were provoked into bouts of violence and destruction. They turned first against the engines of their masters and, according to our historians, began the burning of the machines. In the general conflagration they set alight the nets and webs which had been the garments of their superstitious cult, and broke apart all the screens and signs by which it had been organised. Once they had lost control of their universe, they lost faith in the civilisation that had created it. Their computational tools, their forms of communication, their modes of transport, all seemed irrelevant and inconsequential in the night that now enshrouded their world. So they finished with them. They destroyed them. They burned them to the ground. Only then, in the exhaustion and silent despair which marked the demise of Mouldwarp, did the light of humankind begin its ministry.

  Soon after the general conflagration, when the fires subsided, a subdued and dusky light seemed to emerge from the earth itself and grew in strength as it enveloped the people. Eventually there was broad day, without that night sky which had for so long deluded and controlled them; they rejoiced, but then became afraid when they realised that the light also came from within themselves. This was the moment when we can, with some certainty, date the opening of Witspell.

  20

  Plato: I offered the citizens such certainty that they had no need to enquire for themselves. I, too, was so certain. Was I right?

  Soul: I cannot say.

  Plato: What if the past is all invention or legend?

  Soul: It is unlikely.

  Plato: Let me put it differently, then. What if my interpretation of the books is false or misguided?

  Soul: Who would ever know?

  Plato: You would.

  Soul: I know what you know.

  Plato: For an immortal being, you are very modest. You understand the past, after all, and you can see into the future.

  Soul: Perhaps they are the same thing.

  Plato: In the Age of Witspell the people were informed that future events affected every aspect of their present.

  Soul: So you believe.

  Plato: So I believed. Did I mention it in my oration?

  21

  The Age of Witspell emerged when human light began to appear upon the earth. The darkness of Mouldwarp was dispersed and the citizens recognised one another without fear or dissembling. But if this early time was filled with exhilaration and awakening, it was also marked by unhappiness and difficulty for those who were afraid of their own freedom. There were some who believed that this new world existed only within their own minds, for example, and they fled from each other, howling. Others closed their eyes upon it and slept for ever.

  But the age of anxiety passed, together with the illusions of abstract law and uniform dimensions. The first evidence of change came when it was reported that a centaur had been seen galloping across the meadows of Greece. This was followed by the news that a phoenix had been observed rising from its ashes somewhere in northern France; it was approximately the size of an eagle, with feathers of purple and gold. When sirens were heard off the coast of Asia Minor, as well as banshee keening outside Dublin, it became clear that the manifold spirits of the earth had crept from their confinement of almost a thousand years. There were stories of elves and kraken, sylphs and valkyries, unicorns and salamanders; the fabric of the old reality had dissolved or, rather, it had become interwoven with so many others that it could only rarely be glimpsed.

  How otherwise can we understand the legends of early Witspell? We read of great golden ships sailing from El Dorado with cargoes of golden fruit and monkeys with gold-flecked fur, and of envoys from Utopia who had been wandering for many centuries before finding harbour in London. This was the period when Atlantis, otherwise known as Avalon or Cockaigne or the Isle of the Blessed, emerged from the ocean; it had always lain beneath the surface of Mouldwarp vision, but now it rose in glory. There were less consoling prospects, however, when the pit of Maleborge was discovered in Sumatra and a Slough of Despond located on the border of Wales.

  But nothing could affect the enthusiasm of our ancestors when they discovered the history of their own city. From the writings of that great scholar and historian Geoffrey of Monmouth they learned that London had been founded by Brutus of Troy at the time when ‘the Ark of the Covenant was taken by the Philistines’. Other writers of record have been discovered—the names of Macaulay and Trevelyan are among them—but they are of a later date and therefore less reliable. From Monmouth the citizens of Witspell discovered that, after the fall of Troy, Brutus was greeted in vision by the goddess Diana; she commanded him to sail to an island beyond the setting of his sun, and establish a city which would become the wonder of the world. This island was known as Albion and after Brutus had landed upon its white shore he encountered a race of giants whom eventually he overcame in battle. We have found evidence for those giants, of course, in the great hills that still surround us; the remains of their burial chambers can be seen in the museum of silence. After his victory Brutus established the city of New Troy, later known as Lud’s Town or London, and bequeathed to it a code of spiritual law which continued through the reigns of Lear, Cordelia and Lud himself. No other monarchs are known to us, although Macaulay and Trevelyan have created fanciful dynasties which can safely be consigned to the dark world of Mouldwarp theory from which they came.

  A great figure has been raised from the fields of Finsbury, where it had lain unknown for many centuries; the quality of its stonework places it in the middle period of Witspell, and there is evidence of a ritual avenue or cursus encircling it. Samples of the ground have been examined, from which we conclude that this statue was surrounded by monumental candles that rose into the upper air; they were set afire, perhaps, with lightning created by some unknown agency. The arms of the figure are raised, as if in greeting or celebration, while between her breasts are inscribed the letters LO; a more remarkable device is to be found on her stomach, however, where a large circle has been carved. Within this circle are patterns of intricate lines, which on closer inspection reveal themselves to be the avenues and dwellings of London; one gentle curve imitates that of the Thames. The significance of LO then became obvious to us. This exalted, even sublime, figure was a sacred representation of the city itself! We suggest, therefore, that the citizens venerated London as a living god. It is possible that they also offered sacrifices to it, but of this we cannot be certain.

  The worship of London would, in turn, account for certain other suggestive aspects of Witspell. The ancient tribal trackways around the city were restored or, as our ancestors put it, ‘reawakened’. We read that buildings became flowers, and flowers buildings, but the meaning is unclear. The burial rites are also significant, since the citizens were interred in precisely the same attitude as the monumental statue—arms held aloft, with the letters LO and the image of London painted upon the bodies. Could it be that in death they had become part of the divine city, or did London itself manifest the general spiritual will and being of its inhabitants? The odour of sweet herbs and incense was always noticeable when the tombs were opened, and each body had a golden band around its forehead. Those who had survived the catastrophe of Mouldwarp, and had first created human light, knew that they were blessed. S
o, as a historian of the period has remarked, when the people of Witspell buried one of their number they believed that they were burying a god.

  22

  Sparkler: The children are always eager to listen to him. Do you see the way they flock towards him when he appears?

  Madrigal: Only because he is as small as they are. Yet soon enough they will reach the age when they must paint their features upon the Wall. Do you recall when you and I and Plato took our sticks of coloured light and traced our outlines upon the stones?

  Sparkler: Did Sidonia paint herself holding a lamp?

  Madrigal: I cannot remember. But I do recall that she erased some of her face. Yet, even so, everyone could tell by her features from what parish she came.

  Sparkler: And then Plato depicted himself wearing the cap of feathers—

  Madrigal: The cap of the city fool.

  Sparkler: And holding out a script of glass.

  Madrigal: He might have been anticipating his own fate.

  Sparkler: Or, as he would say, his fate had happened already.

  Madrigal: That is precisely the kind of thing he tells the children. Oh, there is the daughter of Ornatus. Look. She is laughing. No doubt Plato is talking once more about Mouldwarp.

  Sparkler: But where is the humour in these ancient practices? Truly, they make me shudder.