Piranesi(9)

Today I would consider it madness to journey through a Hall I cannot see properly and of which I have no record, but today I do not allow Myself to get as hungry as I was then.

Adjoining Halls usually share some characteristics. The Hall immediately to my rear was approximately 200 metres in length and 120 metres wide and so the chances were good that the Hall before me was the same. It did not seem an impossible distance; I was more concerned about the Statues. From what I could see, these depicted Human or Demi-Human figures, all two or three times my own stature and all in the throes of violent action: Men fighting, Women and Men being carried off by Centaurs or Satyrs, Octopuses tearing People apart. In most Regions of the House the expressions of the Statues are joyful or tranquil or possessed of a distant calm; but here the Faces were distorted in screams of rage or anguish.

I resolved to go carefully. To bash oneself on an outstretched marble limb is painful.

I entered the Cloud and slowly made my way along the Northern Side of the Hall. Statues appeared, one by one, out of the pale Cloud. They covered the Walls so thickly and were twisted into such tortuous forms that it was like walking under the dripping branches of a great forest of Arms and Bodies.

One Statue had toppled from the Wall and was lying shattered on the Floor. This ought to have been a warning to me.

I came to a place where a Statue thrust itself a long way out from the Wall. It depicted a Man, his vast Body flailing backwards, stretched over the Pavement, his Arms thrown over his Head as a Centaur trampled on him. The Palms of his great Hands faced upwards and his Fingers were curled in agony. I took a step away from the Wall to circumvent him and my foot met with …

… nothing.

No Floor! No Stone Pavement beneath me! I was falling! I lunged in terror towards the Wall. Immediately, I was caught! I lay suspended over the Empty Air, too terrified to move, my mind deadened by fear and shock. By some miracle I had fallen into the Trampled Man’s Hands. The Hands were dripping with wet and horribly slippery; any movement on my part threatened to loose his hold on me and send me tumbling into the Void. Whimpering with fear and clinging to the Trampled Man with every atom of my strength, I inched up his Arms to his Head; from his Head to his Chest and so to his Lap where I wedged myself in. The Body of the Attacking Centaur formed a sort of Ceiling two or three centimetres over my head. The Cloud was so dense that I could not see where the Floor began again.

I stayed there all day and all night, hungry, almost dead from cold but deeply grateful to the Trampled Man for saving me. In the morning the Wind came and carried the Cloud westwards. I peered out at the great Gash in the Floor and I saw the dizzying drop – 30 metres or more – to the still Waters of the Drowned Hall beneath.

A conversation

ENTRY FOR THE ELEVENTH DAY OF THE SIXTH MONTH IN THE YEAR THE ALBATROSS CAME TO THE SOUTH-WESTERN HALLS

As well as my regular meetings with the Other and the quiet, consolatory presence of the Dead, there are the birds. Birds are not difficult to understand. Their behaviour tells me what they are thinking. Generally it runs along the lines of: Is this food? Is this? What about this? This might be food. I am almost certain that this is. Or occasionally: It is raining. I do not like it.

While ample for a brief neighbourly exchange, such remarks do not suggest a broad or deep intelligence. Yet it has occurred to me that there may be more wisdom in birds than appears at first sight, a wisdom that reveals itself only obliquely and intermittently.

Once – it was an evening in Autumn – I came to the Doorway of the Twelfth South-Eastern Hall intending to pass through the Seventeenth Vestibule. I found that I was unable to enter it; the Vestibule was full of birds and the birds were all aflight. They circled and spiralled, creating a whirling dance. They filled the Vestibule like a column of smoke, which grew darker and denser in places and the next moment lighter and airier. I have witnessed this dance on several occasions, always in the evening and in the later months of the year.

Another time I entered the Ninth Vestibule and found it full of little birds. They were of different kinds, but mostly sparrows. I had not taken more than a few steps into the Vestibule when a large group of them took to the Air. They flew together in one great swoop up to the Eastern Wall, then in another swoop to the Southern Wall and then they turned and flew around me in a loose spiral.

‘Good morning,’ I said. ‘I hope that you are well?’

Most of the birds scattered to different perches, but a handful – maybe as many as ten – flew to the Statue of a Gardener in the North-West Corner. They remained there for perhaps thirty seconds and then, still together, they ascended to a higher Statue on the Western Wall: the Woman carrying a Beehive. The birds remained on the Statue of the Woman carrying a Beehive for a minute or so and then they flew away.

I wondered why out of the thousand or so Statues in the Vestibule the little birds had chosen these two to perch on. It occurred to me – it was no more than an idle thought – that both these Statues might be said to represent Industriousness. The Gardener is old and bent, and yet he digs faithfully in his garden. The Woman is pursuing her profession of beekeeping and the Beehive that she carries is full of bees who are also patiently carrying out their tasks. Were the birds telling me that I ought to be industrious too? That seemed unlikely. After all I was already industrious! I was at that very moment on my way to the Eighth Vestibule to fish. I carried fishing nets over my shoulder and a lobster trap made from an old bucket.