The God of the Labyrinth

  ‘Forgive me. You cannot expect me to accept this easily.’ He leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. Staring out through Esmond’s eyes, I found myself puzzled at why Nuri had been convinced so quickly. Esmond waited. It was his moment. Nuri sat up, and gestured at Boris. ‘Get out.’ Boris hurried out of the door. Nuri said:

  ‘What do you want me to do? Resign the mastership?’

  Esmond said patiently:

  ‘No. I couldn’t become Master if I wanted to. Mr Sorme has other things to do. But there must be a return to the agreement of 1830.’

  Nuri made for the sideboard, and poured himself another drink without apology. He said:

  ‘I don’t see how that’s possible. It would mean breaking our oath.’

  ‘It’s the only way, believe me.’ He was being patient and reassuring. ‘Listen, Xalide, I don’t blame you. You’ve been an excellent Master. But important things are happening. Even this fool Körner is a portent of the future. New men are developing. The human mind is reaching out for powers that I only glimpsed. In many respects, this Sorme knows far more than I do. You’ve got to be ready to play an important part. You can’t do this as a secret society.’

  Nuri said: ‘The other dominoes would never agree.’

  ‘They won’t have a choice. This man Sorme knows all about us. He will publish everything that he knows. And it will be up to you to protect him.’

  Nuri sat down again. He was beginning to take a grip on himself, but I thought he looked ten years older. Esmond said kindly:

  ‘Listen, Xalide, let me explain. When I joined the Sect, two hundred years ago, it was a society of lechers. Their basic idea was that a small élite should possess complete sexual freedom. It was a good idea as far as it went, and I accepted it. I did what all the others did—rhapsodised about the magic, the poetry, the mystical ecstasy of sticking the prick in a strange cunt. I possessed inner-power, and it developed until no woman could resist me for more than a day or so. You know some of the things I did. I persuaded frightened convent girls to surrender their virginity in the course of an evening. I slept with three queens and eight princesses. I’ve possessed women I’d met only ten minutes before—inhibited women who thought afterwards that they’d been bewitched. By the time I was thirty-five, I’d probably had a more complete sex life than any man who ever lived. And then I began to outgrow it. I got tired of being a mere instrument of a force I didn’t understand. When I felt like a god in the moment of supreme achievement, I asked myself the question: Is this the real Esmond Donelly? Or am I the fashionable rake who uses his intellect and sincerity to seduce clever women? One day in Moscow, I watched a brutal cabman beating his horse, and before I knocked out his teeth, I felt sickened by his gloating sadism. Later the same day, I got the youngest daughter of the Tsar into a summer-house, and persuaded her to let me take her maidenhead. And as my penis forced its way inside her, I had a sudden vision of the cabman’s face, and knew I was doing the same thing—deriving pleasure from imposing my will on some­thing weaker, enjoying the sensation of power. And I realised that I’d been doing this for twenty years, repeating the same stupid act as if to reassure myself that I wasn’t a boring fool like the rest of the young bloods. Suddenly, I felt miserable and ashamed. My revulsion took the form of feeling sorry for the girl, so I even contemplated the folly of asking her to elope with me. Then I saw this would be another cul-de-sac. This is the end of most repentant rakes; they try to make themselves feel moral by treating the girl like a human being instead of a city under siege. In fact, it’s no more moral than dropping a shilling in the poorbox to salve your conscience. The answer was not to substi­tute one form of stupidity for another, but to try to understand the nature of the will-o’-the-wisp I kept pursuing through the undergrowth of petticoats.

  ‘When I got back to Ireland, I saw a girl I had known many years before—a girl I’d seduced when I was fifteen. It brought back the memory of that summer in the barn behind our house. I stood in the barn and remembered everything. And then I saw what had gone wrong. When I first possessed Minou and Delphine, I expected a future of infinite potentiality. I expected life to treat me like a favourite child. And indeed, it did. But I allowed myself to become too passive. I accepted the pleasure, but I failed to make any real effort. The first time I entered Minou, I felt god-like. But a hundred more seductions did nothing to redeem that promise of divinity. On the contrary, they destroyed it, for it became a matter of habit.’

  He stopped. His voice—I can hardly call it mine, for even to me it sounded different—had had a soothing effect on Nuri, as he intended it to. It must also be remembered that Esmond was using my brain, my vocabulary, my memory associations, and that since these could express his thoughts more concisely than his own natural language, the words came tumbling out at a speed that was sometimes hard to follow. The effort of concen­tration had calmed Nuri, restored the self-possession. Esmond said:

  ‘Are you following my train of thought?’

  ‘What you say is not strange to me. I have often been struck by similar thoughts, but I could see no answer.’

  ‘The answer is closer than you think. Mr Sorme has almost found it himself. I had one great natural advantage—I had always thought of myself as a favoured child. That is important—the optimism, the forward-drive. I had the audacity to ask whether the god-like states did not represent the truth of my inner being. When I decided that the answer was yes, only one simple question remained: why does the mind sink back into a state of dullness when the orgasm is over?’

  ‘Surely because we cannot sustain such intensity? A kettle that stays on the fire is soon empty.’

  ‘No. That is muddled thinking. The ecstasy of the orgasm is not the result of the release of energy, but of the vision that accompanies it. You can have the orgasm without the vision, if your mind is tired. Or you can have the vision without the orgasm, if the mind becomes absorbed in poetry or music. Do you get more tired than a blind man because you can see things that are invisible to him? No, the contrary is true, for the blind man is more likely to be bored, and boredom leads to tiredness. The question at issue is vision, and I quickly saw that we lose the vision because we stop trying to see it. We relax, we turn away from it, like a man yawning and closing his eyes.

  ‘I had known holy men, men who had walked over mountains and deserts seeking the same vision, the constant awareness of the world as a mystery. Now I knew why they were obsessed by open spaces. Man has developed the power to concentrate on small things, like a Swiss watchmaker. And, like the watchmaker, he has grown short-sighted until he can no longer stare into the distance. The holy men were trying to correct their myopia by seeking out distances. I now saw why they were wasting their time; they were trying to exchange one faculty for another, and pursuing mountains in the same muddled, repetitive way that I had been pursuing women.

  ‘Do you understand me? As soon as I became fully conscious of the possibility of a broader vision, I recognised that it depended upon the development of new faculties and new powers of will. At first, I did the most obvious thing. As the power of the orgasm flooded my brain, I tried to seize it, to refuse to allow it to recede. I soon found that I was developing a remarkable power of concentration. It is true that I could not cling on to the intensity of the orgasm. But once my mind was turned outward, like a young eagle that stares at the sky and tries to launch itself into the air, I could concentrate on widening my vision. Man’s chief trouble is that he is timid. Every time he loses his sense of purpose, he stands still, and then retreats. Boredom makes him wander in circles, and he wastes most of his life in this state. The pursuit of love gives him a momentary contact with his hidden springs of purpose, and this has been the deepest justification of our Sect. But the real need is plainly to turn these springs into fountains that never dry up. Boredom should be impossible. It is the emotional equivalent of losing your way in a desert. But as soon as the compass was
invented, this ceased to be a problem. I saw that my task was to concentrate until I had developed a compass; a clear knowledge of my purpose. I saw that boredom is the enemy of the god-like, and that all my powers had to be directed to the overthrow of this enemy.’

  Nuri said: ‘And you did it. You succeeded.’

  ‘Yes. And you will succeed too, now you have seen that it can be done. And Sorme will succeed. And when a dozen men have succeeded, the rest of the human race will follow. The springs of purpose are not buried very deeply. Even that little girl who was in here has the power, if she knew how to direct it. It is a mental trick, like jumping on to a galloping horse.’

  The image I put into Esmond’s mind was of a man using a wave to carry his surf-board, but he failed to understand it. Esmond lacked the concepts for explaining himself fully, the notion of the ‘promotion’ from one level of the being to another, the recognition that the human personality is a series of platforms. But I had them.

  Nuri said: ‘May I ask some questions? Where are you now? Is there literally another world beyond this one?’

  Esmond laughed.

  ‘What you call “this world” is what you can see through a crack in a door. It is like calling this room we are sitting in a world. Mr Sorme can explain this to you better than I can. He talks about life-worlds. As to where I am now, I cannot explain this easily. As I developed the power of my will, I began to understand things that ought to be self-evident. When you are tired, the spirit is held close in the embrace of the body. The more you become healthy and alive, the more you have a sense of controlling your body from a distance, as the falconer controls his bird. And at a certain point in the mental cycle, it becomes possible to achieve a degree of control over this body that you cannot even envisage. When this happens, all kinds of strange things can be done—for example, I can project what you call my astral body to great distances.’

  ‘And this is what happened when you appeared at the Berlin meeting of 1830?’

  ‘Quite. But do not overestimate the importance of this power; it is a mere by-product. What matters is the new degree of control over the body. For once this is established, it is almost impossible to die.’

  Nuri said: ‘But you died.’

  ‘As you see.’

  ‘But your body died in 1832. You were buried in the family vault in Ireland.’

  Esmond said nothing; his memory was closed even from me. Then he said:

  ‘Let us not waste time on irrelevancies. Let us say only that Mr Sorme has been an invaluable instrument, and that you should treat him with the same confidence that you would treat me. In return, he will be able to help you a great deal. Like myself, Mr Sorme is not basically interested in sex. He is some­thing of a puritan. But I think he has seen some interesting possibilities in Körner’s group. You can show him far more interesting things. I am relying on you.’

  ‘What about you? Will you go away now?’

  ‘No. But I really cannot keep imposing on Mr Sorme. He has his own work to do.’

  I said aloud—for Nuri’s benefit: ‘You’re welcome to drop in whenever you want to.’

  ‘Thank you. You are most hospitable.’

  Nuri said: ‘What do you want me to do immediately?’

  ‘Nothing. Concentrate on the trick of leaping on the galloping horse. And remember one thing. Pessimism is a leaden weight around the feet. Defeat is always self-chosen. Mr Sorme can explain these things better than I can—he has his own system of philosophy based upon a man called Husserl. And now, my dear Xalide, I shall leave you. I would be grateful if you would also extend your protection to the present Lord Glenney, the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson of my friend Horace. He contains a large number of Horace’s elements, so in a sense you might regard him as a reincarnation. Say nothing of what has taken place to that fool St Leger. He is not to be trusted.’

  Then he was gone, and Nuri and I were alone. Nuri was not sure of this until I said: ‘He’s gone.’

  He stood up. “Well, Mr Sorme, I think we deserve a drink. Whisky?’

  ‘A small one, thanks.’

  As he poured, I said: ‘How did you know that Esmond intended to come back?’

  ‘There is a tradition, Mr Sorme, that he never died, and that the body buried in his family vault was that of an old mendicant. He also said as much in his diaries, which are now at my house on the island of Hendorabi. You and your family would be wel­come guests there if you would like to examine them. They cease after the year 1800, which has always puzzled me. Now I under­stand.’

  ‘There’s one thing I’d like to ask him. Did he give up sex after this insight of his?’

  ‘I think I can answer that. You are aware that he chose the youngest of the Ingestre sisters as a sort of divinity, and she later became a priestess at the headquarters of the Sect in Constan­tinople? You can read about this in the diaries. I believe he chose her because he said she had some secret quality of grace that made her more purely feminine than any woman he had ever known. The Sect treated her as a kind of divinity after Esmond became Master in 1810. After that, her daughter and then her granddaughter took her place. It is generally assumed that Esmond was the father of her daughter.’

  ‘Who wrote the books attributed to Esmond—The Deflowering of Maids and so on?’

  ‘That was written by Glenney himself, at a time when he wanted to discredit Esmond with the Sect. But there were many later forgeries. As Grand Master, Esmond was likely to have works attributed to him as minor Elizabethans foisted their plays on Shakespeare.’

  ‘What did Esmond die of?’

  He said: ‘That is something that puzzles me. The story told by his biographer, Ismat al-Istakri, is that he suffered a brain haemorrhage after a ceremony in which he penetrated fifteen young women. This, of course, is possible; as Grand Master, it was sometimes his task to take part in such ceremonies. Yet I have never been able to accept this story completely. Now I am less sure than ever.’

  ‘Is this biography in English?’

  ‘Unfortunately, it is in Arabic. But I can have it translated for you.’

  Glancing at my watch, I was surprised to see that it was after six. It struck me that Angela would be worrying about me. So I asked if I might make a phone call. I was right; Angela and Alastair were just debating whether they ought to call up the police. St Leger’s dark hints about Glenney’s murder had them worried. While I was still on the phone, the discreet butler sidled up to me. ‘Excuse me, sir, but Mr Nuri suggested that you might like to ask your friends to come here for supper.’ I passed the suggestion on to them, and they accepted immediately.

  When I got back to the library, Nuri was wearing a beautifully brocaded dressing-gown, and four girls in transparent clothes were standing behind his chair. He said:

  ‘Ah, Mr Sorme, I hope your friends have accepted my invita­tion? We have another hour to dinner. Have you ever tried the relaxing properties of an Imrali bath? It was invented by a Turkish Grand Master of the seventeenth century. These young ladies have learned the art to perfection. I suggest we have one now, before dinner, and perhaps you could explain how you came to hear about Esmond Donelly?’

  It was the prelude to one of the most interesting evenings I have ever spent; but this is no place to describe it in detail. The history of the Sect of the Phoenix is a subject of such complexity and richness that it would be unfair to speak of it here. When the editing of the Donelly papers is complete, I shall hope to under­take the writing of it myself. Nuri also told us something of his own history, and ended by demonstrating some of those remark­able powers that led to his appointment as Grand Master. (This had occurred after a spectacular struggle with Ludwig Bindig, the German domino who was also an ex-Nazi. Bindig ran the famous ‘sex camp’, whose existence has been denied by recent German historians.)

  We retired to bed, utterly exhausted, in the early
hours of the morning. When we woke up, Nuri had left for Paris. Later the same day I flew back to Shannon, where Diana met me. When we returned home, we found a telegram from Nuri, asking if we could join him at his home on Hendorabi the following weekend. His private plane collected us at Shannon. In the four months since that date, we have basked in the sun, and I have written this account of my quest for Esmond.

  My researches into Xalide Nuri’s archives—aided by his excellent librarian, Dr Fa’iq Khassa—have answered most of the remaining questions about Esmond, and about the history of the Sect in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. These results will be published in due course. Angela—who is also working here—has already accumulated the basic materials for a biography of Esmond, on which we shall probably colla­borate.

  The chief problem that faced me in writing about my ‘quest’ was how far I could be frank about certain episodes. I have accepted Howard Fleisher’s suggestion that I write everything as it occurred, and leave it to him to decide how much altera­tion is necessary.§ I must also confess that I have not, so far, allowed Diana to read the manuscript; luckily, she is an under­standing girl, and I can lay most of the blame on Esmond.

  § When this book was in the proof stage, I heard that the remains of Colonel Donelly had been found in his burnt-out farmhouse; foul play is not suspected. I have accordingly restored the passage on Colonel Donelly to the form in which I wrote it.

  And what of Esmond? Since that afternoon in Brook Street, I have occasionally sensed his presence; but I cannot be certain that this is not my imagination. I often find myself thinking about a curious incident that took place late that night in Nuri’s home. Boris had been demonstrating his powers of second sight for the benefit of Angela and Alastair. Nuri had put him into a hypnotic trance; and his answers to questions about our private lives were frighteningly accurate. Before he woke him, Nuri asked us if we had any questions we would like to put to the sleeper. Angela said: