Dialogues of the Dead

Seriously, my role as simple instrument has never been clearer than it was today. The chosen one answered his cues like one who had spent long hours conning the part. Never at the Athenian bouphonia did ox approach the sacrificial altar more willingly. All the necessary instruments he provided himself, even putting the guilty weapon into my hands with his own.

And in that moment time stopped. Nothing gradual, no slow slowing down as often before. Time is …time isn’t.

And the burbling of the creek around the moored boat joins with the twarting of a whaup into one long melancholy line of sound stretching up from the dimpled tarn into the vast inane of the sky, like a phone-line to the Gods.

How comforting to think of Them reclining up there, listening with solemn approval to all that goes on here below.

In my hands the oiled steel column trembles and throbs towards its spontaneous climax. And now its seed spurts out, as black and round as sturgeon roe, fanning through the air to plant immortal life in this mortal flesh before me. His mouth gapes wide in the ecstasy of that moment of ultimate penetration, but not as wide as this new red orifice about his throat out of which I see his soul fly like a bird escaping its cage. Off it goes, winging its way across the glimmering tarn, rejoicing in its sudden freedom, while here on the dull earth its empty cage collapses beside the laughing creek.

The guilty weapon I hurl into the cleansing waters.

No arm rises up to take it.

I have work still to do. The head, half-severed from its fleshy stalk by the shotgun blast, must be completely plucked and set in its container. The axe is at hand-where else would it be? Three blows complete the work, no more, no less. For this is a truly trinal day, three in one, the trinity completed as I roll the corpse into the sounding stream.

What of the axe? I heft it in my hand and contemplate the inscrutable waters. But it bears no guilt. It is an instrument of my path not his departure. So let it be.

Bearing it with me I move away, and with each step I feel time’s drag return.

Oh, let me come soon to that safe haven where I shall mark time forever.

And time will lose power to mark me.

37

“The Bouphonia,” said Drew Urquhart, “which can be translated as ‘the murder of the ox,’ was an Athenian rite aimed at bringing an end to a period of drought and its associated deprivations. You’ll likely have read about it in The Golden Bough. …”

He paused and directed a smile at Dalziel, who said, “I don’t do much reading in pubs. Just give us the gist.”