September Castle by Simon Raven

Author:Simon Raven
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Stratus

Dante, as M. le Directeur had informed him; somewhere in the Purgatorio (the Director thought) and meaning:

So the air nearby puts itself

into that form which the soul

that is there fixed, impresses

upon it by its virtue…

After a painful search through the Purgatorio in his lodgings the previous evening, Jean-Marie had found that the passage was lines 94 to 96 of Canto XXV, and came in the middle of a tedious discourse, by the soul of the Roman poet, Statius, on the Aristotelian doctrine of generation and embryology, supplemented by an exposition of the Christian notion that Soul is breathed into the animal form by God. Since none of this seemed to have even the most tenuous connection with or application to the story of the Despoina Xanthippe (or any other aspect of the Castle), Jean-Marie had concluded that the lines must be taken clean out of Dante’s context and considered solely for what they stated in and by themselves, which was that ‘the air in the neighbourhood takes a shape impressed on it by virtue of the soul…che ristette…which is confined there’. So: apply this statement to the map, or rather to the area of it marked by the crimson Δ, and one deduced that there was some kind of soul fixed, confined or imprisoned in that spot, and that this soul had somehow shaped, formed or affected the air or atmosphere of the neighbourhood.

If, as Jean-Marie had calculated, the area was that in which the Despoina’s shrine had once stood, it was tempting to suppose that the statement referred to the soul of Xanthippe. Tempting but appalling. Why and how, thought Jean-Marie, should her soul be confined there? What did she feel about its detention? And what effect did it have on the air about it? Visible, audible or sniffable? Agreeable or disagreeable? Since the effect was apparently produced ‘by virtue’ of the soul, one assumed the former. Yet one never knew: ‘by virtue of ’ was an ambiguous phrase, and virtue itself could take the most hideous shapes, e.g. the Furies.

But however all that might be, as far as he could make out after a whole morning of promenade there was no effect whatever. Perhaps it only manifested itself at night or at certain seasons? Well, one thing was certain: he hadn’t the time to hang about until it did. In any case, on what authority was the cartographer making the statement? Local knowledge (or superstition), or his own experience? And was he talking about the soul of Xanthippe (knowing from calculations similar to those of JeanMarie himself, perhaps, that her tomb could have been in that area), or was he talking about a soul, any soul, the effect of which upon ‘the neighbouring air’ had been reported to him or observed by him?

The answers to some of these questions might have been available if only anything had been known of the cartographer himself, who he was or whence. But the map was unsigned. It was the work, so

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