Forbidden Fruits by Joscelyn Godwin

Author:Joscelyn Godwin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Occult/Fiction
Publisher: Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
Published: 2020-10-14T00:00:00+00:00

19

Monica was woken by Eusebio, who brought a silver salver with a bottle of mineral water and a glass. She drank thirstily, one glass and then another, and saw that Rafael was already up. “What time is it? How long have I slept?”

“Many, many hours, my dear, beloved Monica, and I have been watching to see how beautifully you sleep.” He held her tightly to himself for a full minute. “And now, when you’re ready, we will go on our crossing.”

Eusebio poured out two glasses of water, added a measure of red wine and some lemon juice to each, and then stirred in the kykeon. The atmosphere was hushed and reverent. All three felt the tremendous import of what they were about to do. Each had a different appreciation of the dangers: Rafael, with his memories of addiction and withdrawal, hated the necessity of giving himself, ever again, to a mind-altering substance. Monica feared the sacrifice of her rationality to unknown forces, but more than that, she admitted to herself, she feared the unknown. Eusebio, as the oldest present, felt a heavy responsibility for these young voyagers whom he was helping to send into terra incognita. All three dreaded the knock on the door and the uncertain future of the hunted.

After Monica and Rafael had drunk, Eusebio turned the lights out and left them, though they knew he would not go far away. They relaxed on the sofa with their feet up. Rafael held Monica’s hand for a while, then they disengaged as each seemed to be entering his or her own encapsulated fantasy.

Monica had never liked marijuana, for as a lifetime nonsmoker it was an agony to her throat and lungs. She had enjoyed a few hashish brownies in her student days, but the more powerful drugs were a closed book to her. For a long time, nothing seemed to be happening, except a gradual calming of her fears.

Her thoughts wandered here and there: to her research, her success at the American Academy, her plans for when she returned to the States. Every now and again she recalled her present situation, acknowledging it almost without interest, then moved back into the chain of associations.

She noticed that the links in the chain were becoming more and more vivid. The golden pomegranate, for instance: she could almost see it, with a clarity denied to the normal imagination. With a last comment from her observing self—“This is incredible!”—the pomegranate cracked open along its five seams. Inside, instead of black dirt, was a brilliant, crimson, faceted pattern, like a three-dimensional lattice made from rubies, only the rubies were the pomegranate seeds, each one with a core of lambent gold. Monica was awestruck by the beauty of it, as it shifted like a kaleidoscope from one fivefold symmetry to another.

Then, although she did not realize it, the physical hallucinations began.

She was no longer just a spectator, but an actor in the antics of the pomegranate seeds, feeling them as a ballet dancer feels her gestures.

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