Piranesi(44)

‘Sylvia D’Agostino?’

‘Strange girl. Devoted to Laurence. She was an only child. Very close to her parents, particularly her father. She and her father were both gifted poets. Laurence told her to manufacture a quarrel with her parents and break off all contact with them. And she did. She did it because Laurence instructed her to do it and because Laurence was the great magus, the great seer who was about to guide us all into the next Age of Man. There was absolutely no advantage to him in cutting her off from her family. It didn’t benefit him in the slightest. He did it because he could. He did it to cause anguish for her and her parents. He did it because he was cruel.’

‘Sylvia D’Agostino was one of the people who disappeared,’ I said.

‘I don’t know anything about that,’ said Ketterley.

‘I don’t think you can claim he was intellectually honest. He said he’d been to other worlds. He said other people had been there too. That’s not exactly honest, is it?’There may have been a slight edge of superciliousness in my voice, which I suppose I would have done better to suppress but I have always liked winning arguments.

Ketterley scowled. He seemed to struggle with something. He opened his mouth to say something, changed his mind, and then: ‘I don’t like you very much,’ he said.

I laughed. ‘I can live with that,’ I said.

There was a silence.

‘Why a labyrinth, do you suppose?’ I asked.

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Why do you think he described the other world – the one he said he went to most often – as a labyrinth?’

Ketterley shrugged. ‘A vision of cosmic grandeur, I suppose. A symbol of the mingled glory and horror of existence. No one gets out alive.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘But what I still don’t quite understand was how he convinced you of its existence. The labyrinth-world, I mean.’

‘He had us perform a ritual that was supposed to bring us there. There were aspects of the ritual that were … evocative, I suppose. Suggestive.’

‘A ritual? Really? I thought Arne-Sayles’s position was that rituals were nonsense. Didn’t he say something like that in The Half-Seen Door?’

‘That’s right. He claimed that he personally was able to access the labyrinth-world simply by making an adjustment to his frame of mind, by returning to a child-like state of wonder, a prerational consciousness. He claimed to be able to do this at will. Unsurprisingly, most of us – his students – got absolutely nowhere with this, so he created a ritual that we were to perform in order to access the labyrinth. But he made it clear that this was a concession to our lack of ability.’

‘I see. Most of you?’

‘What?’

‘You said most of you couldn’t enter the labyrinth without the ritual. It seemed to imply that some of you could.’

A slight pause.

‘Sylvia. Sylvia thought she could get there in the same way that Laurence did. With this return to a state of wonder. She was a strange girl, as I’ve said. A poet. She lived very much inside her head. Who knows what she thought she saw.’

‘And did you ever see it? The labyrinth?’

He considered. ‘Mostly I had what you might call intimations, a sense of standing in a huge space – not just wide, but immensely tall too. And – this is quite hard to admit – but yes, I did see it once. I mean I thought I saw it once.’

‘What did it look like?’

‘Very much like Laurence’s description. Like an infinite series of classical buildings knitted together.’

‘And what do you think it meant?’ I asked.

‘Nothing. I don’t think it meant anything at all.’

A short silence. Then he suddenly said, ‘Does anyone know you’re here?’

‘Sorry?’ I said. It seemed an odd question.

‘You said that the Laurence Arne-Sayles connection dogged my career in academia. Yet here you are, an academic, asking questions about it all, dragging it all up again. I just wondered why you weren’t being more careful. Aren’t you afraid it will tarnish your brilliant career?’

‘I don’t think anyone is going to take issue with my approach,’ I said. ‘My book on Arne-Sayles is part of a wider project on transgressive thinking. As I think I’ve already explained.’

‘Oh, I see,’ he said. ‘So you’ve told lots of people that you were coming here today to see me? All your friends.’

I frowned. ‘No, I haven’t told anyone. I don’t usually tell people what I’m doing. But that’s not because …’

‘Interesting,’ he said.

We looked at each other with a sort of mutual dislike. I was about to rise and go, when he suddenly said, ‘Do you really want to understand Laurence and the hold he had over us?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Of course.’

‘Then in that case we should perform the ritual.’

‘The ritual?’ I said.

‘Yes.’

‘The one to …’

‘The one to open the path to the labyrinth. Yes.’

‘What? Now?’ I was a bit startled by the suggestion. (But I wasn’t afraid. What was there to be afraid of?) ‘You still remember it?’ I said.