This is a complicated moment in the novel when several threads come together, all for the purpose of resolving Anna’s terrifying possession. Having accepted the maenad’s mask, and now in its spell, Anna throws herself into the bloody revels of the maenads following Bacchus. Two men with separate interests in Anna have been searching for her, one to offer love, the other the gift of redemption. And yet a third waits for her, the Tago — a creature out of Etruscan folklore that represents the spirit of a child. But this is no easy rescue (are they ever?) for the maenads will not surrender their sister without a fight.
In the dimming twilight, Anna stood on the bank of the river and scooped out handfuls of white clay embedded in the dark mud. She threw back the fawn’s skin from her shoulders and smeared the wet clay on her arms, her legs, and her throat. Excitement threaded her veins. The night was fast approaching when they would begin the ritual of the hunt.
The ritual began by drinking wine until it overflowed the rims of their mouths and stained their white, clay-covered throats with crimson. The drowsy torpor that assailed the maenads during the day would be replaced with a fever born of the quickening breath of the wine and the sting of Bacchus s biting kiss. Then the drums would sound their slow ponderous beat, the leader would cry out her high-pitched ululations, and the hunt would begin.
Bacchus was generous to them, his divine hand guiding wild prey into their snares. Last night it had been a panther, his black velvet coat sleek as the shadows. The maenads followed the trail of his musky scent along the fringes of the dead oak forest until Bacchus lured him into the sacred olive grove. There they had quickly circled the beast, chanting and rattling their spears. The panther had raked the mask from the lead hunter with his steel-grey claws and torn deep furrows in her face. The screams of the fallen woman had joined in chorus with the panthers defiant squalls.
Anna stopped spreading the white clay on her arms. A strange mixture of emotions warred within her: elation and pleasure at the ecstasy of the hunt and horror at the memory of the mutilated panther and the dying woman, her true face drowned in blood. Her broken mask lay on the grass like the panther s legs and paws and tail when the maenads had torn it to pieces. Anna could still taste the raw flesh on her tongue, still smell the strong metallic odor of blood. With painful deliberation, she lifted a hand toward her masked face. If she could touch the unfamiliar face that curved so intimately over her own, these fearful images would stop.
Suddenly Bacchus was there. He caught her hand in his and placed it against his heart. His hairless chest was smooth, the skin warm and oiled. Through her fingertips, she could feel his heart rapping out an in¬vitation to the hunt. He grinned at her, his midnight eyes capturing the doubt in her eyes and banishing it. She tilted her head back and he bit her lower lip and sucked it hard, drawing blood. The taste of wine and his saliva trickled into her mouth with each thrust of his tongue. A fire erupted in her belly and spread its flames to her thighs and her breasts. He released her and was gone.
The solemn drums quickened their pace and the reed pipes played shrilly, calling the maenads together. The lead hunter raised high her thrysus and shook its dry rattles over the band. They waited restlessly as Bacchus held the bowl of wine above their heads. He gave it first to the leader of the hunt. Head tilted back, she gulped steadily until the wine dribbled down the sides of her chin. She lowered the bowl at last and, with a reluctant sigh, passed it to the next woman, who drank as deeply. And so the bowl passed from hand to hand, from mouth to mouth, and was never emptied.
Anna took the bowl between her white hands and closed her eyes as she inhaled the fragrant wine. Eagerly she tipped the wine down her throat. Like the god’s kiss it scorched her lips like a mouthful of flames. Her lungs clamored for air, but still she drank, swallowing rapidly until she felt the wine fill the dark hollow of her belly. She gagged as wine bubbled over her tongue and gushed down the sides of her mouth. And only then did she pull the bowl away from her lips and pass it to the next woman.
Anna staggered, her body quaking with the wine’s intoxicating rush. She was flooded with wine, and yet her mouth was hot and dry. She could drink until she drowned in its fiery sweetness and yet there re¬mained a desperate thirst for more.
The leader of the hunt saluted Bacchus. Some of the maenads picked up spears, others carried the small drums and the rattles. A few, like Anna, carried the torches to light the way. The leader shook the pinecones on the thrysus, the frenzied rattles sounding a warning like a swarm of wasps, and the drums beat out a slow, determined rhythm. Small animals scattered through the underbrush and the shrill pipes flushed the birds from the trees into the darkening twilight.
By the time the maenads reached the sacred olive grove, night had cov¬ered most of the sky, leaving only a faint lavender edge on the far hori¬zon. The torches cast bright orange blooms across the twisted trunks of the ancient trees and the small pale leaves flickered like tiny flames. As the maenads entered the sacred grove, the leader caught sight of a young lioness pelting through the trees and whooped loudly. She began to run, her body loping close to the ground. Behind her, the women separated into two strands, circling the grove from opposites sides, closing a ring of hunters around the animal.
They tightened the circle and, with a cry, moved inward to the heart of the olive grove. Anna saw the lioness crouching amid the tangled branches of the tightly packed trees, her round ears flattened against her skull and her lips drawn back in a snarl. Her emerald eyes glowed in the circle of firelight. At her side gleamed a second pair of eyes: a cub hud¬dled against its mothers flank. With a desperate lurch, the lioness twisted away from the trees and the pair began to run, stretched into pale gold streaks against the dark olive trees. Spurred on by the drums and the cries of the other women, Anna ran, following the lioness and her cub. Blood boiled in her veins and she let loose a trilling cry that seemed to explode like a shower of white-hot arrows.
The night had closed quickly around Roberto and Don Gianlucca while they made their way through the dreary forest of dying oaks. There were no stars or moon to light their way, only the faint glimmer of the Tago illuminating the path between the decaying trees. They heard the drums and the first piercing cries of the hunt as they reached the edge of the forest. At the sound, the Tago s incandescent body flared with a blue-white flame.
“Santa Madonna.’ What is that?” Roberto asked in alarm.
“Maledizione!” Don Gianlucca spat. “Tago, tell me, is Anna among them? Has she taken up the mask and become one of his?”
The Tago nodded, a tiny finger pointing to the olive grove. The shining orb drifted closer and stopped where the boundary of oaks gave way to a grassy field.
“What holds you back, Tago? Show us Anna.”
The Tago shook its head, its childish features mournful.
“You can’t leave the forest, can you?” Don Gianlucca said.
It shook its head, staring longingly out at the olive grove.
“What has happened to Anna?” Roberto demanded, unnerved by the clamoring of women’s screams echoing down the grassy hillside.
“We must hurry if we are to save her.'” Don Gianlucca grabbed Roberto by the arm and they ran up the hill toward the olive grove, the long-bladed grass slashing at their ankles. “She has taken up the mask and joined the maenads that follow Bacchus.”
“The god of wine?” Roberto asked.
“Yes, and at the moment she is in danger of losing her soul as well as her life.”
“We must rescue her,” Roberto huffed, winded by the sprint up the grassy hillside.
“Not so easily done,” Don Gianlucca said. “Once under the spell of the hunt, the maenads will murder any man foolish enough to be caught observing their revels. Even Anna will try and kill you Roberto.”
“What’s that?” Roberto halted as the grove erupted with a new sound. A cat screamed, its howls ricocheting through the trees.
“They have found their prey,” Don Gianlucca answered. “And knowing no fear or caution, they will surround it. Then they will kill it with spears or their bare hands.”
“Then we must hurry.”
“Beware!” Don Gianlucca cautioned. “We must remain unseen.”
The two men crouched low in the high grass and slowly crept along the outer fringes of the olive grove, edging around the slender, twisted trunks, trusting the shadows as they approached the tight circle of women. The animal’s fierce snarls were drowned out in the cacophony of drums, pipes, and triumphant shrieks.
Don Gianlucca grabbed Roberto by the sleeve and pulled him flat into the grass.
“There.” He pointed to a woman bent over the mangled corpse of a lion cub. “That’s Anna!” he said.
The woman was twisting the head of the cub, grunting and swearing as she tore at the flesh with bloodied hands.
“It can’t be!” Roberto protested. The woman had raised the limp carcass of the cub to her mouth and was using her teeth to tear at the bloodied fur on its neck. The upper half of her face was obscured by a coy, youthful mask. The wide eyes were blackened hollows and the peach-colored cheeks were splattered with blood.
Roberto turned away. That creature wasn’t Anna. It couldn’t be Anna. It was a monster that hunted and ate raw flesh.
Don Gianlucca gripped Roberto by the shoulder. “Don’t lose your nerve, Roberto! It is Anna! She is the reason you and I are here!”
“But look at what she’s become!” he hissed.
“There are none among us, Roberto, who do not harbor demons. All manner of virtues and vices exist within our imperfect breasts. Faith gives us one mask to wear. Bacchus has given Anna a different mask, and it has shaped the grief of her heart into a flesh-eating demon. You must catch her, Roberto, and tear the mask from her face. The woman you love is cowering beneath it.”
“I am afraid of her,” Roberto said.
“As are we all of the darker side of our natures. Will you abandon her because she has one?”
Roberto watched the masked Anna cracking the cub’s skull. The pink raffled tissue of the brain spilled into one of her palms. The mask looked up and gave a crowing laugh. But Anna’s hand shook violently and wiped away the soft pulpy mess on her soiled skirts. Roberto saw the hand stray toward her face, and then hesitate.
He knew by that tentative gesture that whatever she was now, driven by the demands of the mask, the Anna he loved was still struggling against it. Every actor believed that to touch the mask was to break its spell. The human hand on the mask accentuated the artifice of the second skin, shattered the illusion, and lessened the power of the mask to perform. Anna was trying. But her hand wavered, unable to reach the blood-smeared cheeks.
“What should I do?” Roberto asked in a hoarse whisper.
“Take these,” Don Gianlucca said, handing Roberto the bag of bones. Til cause a diversion so that the maenads will follow me. When they do, you must make a grab for Anna, pull her down, and hold her until the others have passed. As soon as you can, remove her mask. Then take her to where the Tago waits.”
“And what of you?” Roberto asked.
Don Gianlucca shrugged, his hand waving away the question. His face had grown haggard in the maze, its indolent charm replaced by a tough, aesthetic beauty. “You have only one chance to rescue her, Roberto. No matter what happens, don’t hesitate.”
“They’ll catch you,” Roberto said.
Don Gianlucca gave a twisted smile, and something of the sensual youth returned to his somber features. “I’ve outrun my share of angry women in the past and even managed to avoid the pots and daggers that they threw my way. Besides, they have already hunted once tonight. Drink and blood will make them slower the second time. Don’t think of me, only Anna.”
He turned to leave and stopped. “There is one thing more.” “What’s that?”
“Tell Anna that God has long since forgiven her. All that remains is that she forgive herself. Tell her that, Roberto.”
“I will,” Roberto said, and clasped the young priest on the shoulder.
“I go now! Have courage, and may God protect you both.”
Don Gianlucca slipped past Roberto, and his black-robed figure dis¬appeared in the cross-hatching of shadows. Only the soft rustle of leaves and the tired creak of branches marked his passing. Roberto tied the bag around his shoulders and watched Anna with troubled eyes as she gnawed at the skull of the lion cub. He felt sickened by the gruesome sight, but his resolve to love her remained firm. It was as the crippled scenographer had said, blustering amid his mechanical dragons to scare away the false heroes and timid lovers. Roberto must look beneath the mask and embrace all that Anna was—not just her beauty, but the ugliness that had driven her into the maze.
“Demon with a mask of love,” he whispered. And then changed the line to suit the moment. “Love with a demon’s mask—”
“Hey ho!” A voice boomed out of the darkness. “You maggot-eaters! You slavering beasts of hell gnawing on the leftovers!”
The maenads looked up, their bodies crouched over the torn remains of the lioness and her cub. They snarled and hissed, the blackened eyes of the masks searching the shadows. The leader raised her chalk-white face and sniffed the air in all directions. She stood upright and cackled with shrill laughter. “I smell the stink of a coward! A dog accustomed to the stroke of every cudgel and the kick of every boot in the world!”
“It is your own foul stench you smell,” the voice roared back, “Your head’s crammed between your legs, you pestilent cunt!”
“Who are you who dares to witness the revels of the maenads? Show yourself, you worthless sardine!”
“I am the fiercest among the fierce, the bravest among the blood¬thirsty, a killer of nations, brother to Death, and a longtime friend of Satan himself! I visit Hell often, just to kick the devils in their backsides for fun!”
Catcalling and booing, the maenads rose angrily to their feet and snatched up their weapons again. The primitive eyes of the masks stared hungrily out into the grove, searching out the offender’s hiding place. The drum beat a quick tattoo.
What in the hell did that priest think he was playing at? Roberto thought, biting his knuckles. All their lives were in danger and here he was, performing Il Capitano the braggart, boasting to the queen of cannibals. This priest was worse than reckless. He was mad.
Yet when Roberto glanced at Anna, standing unarmed, her body tense with anticipation, he understood the reason for Don Gianlucca’s strange choice of diversions. Il Capitano’s voice was one that might reach behind the mask and speak to Anna. The Commedia dell’Arte was in her heart, in her blood, in the hands that crafted the masks. She knew their voices as a mother knows the wails of her own children. She was standing away from the others. Her masked face leaned forward, her ear turned to catch the sound of the once-familiar voice.
Roberto inched through the long grass on his hands and knees. He laid his hand down on a bumpy shape and heard a muffled protest. Alarmed, he jerked his hand back. There was another bag half-hidden in the grass. Roberto opened it and peeked inside.
“Hist, who’s there?” whispered a voice.
The pale flicker of the maenads’ torchlight showed the face of Pantelone, its goat hair mustache quivering. Surprised, Roberto opened the bag wider and saw a second mask of a pretty face, trimmed with lace.
“Buffo!” The ingenue sighed. “Are you here to rescue me?”
“Who’s that out there using my lines?” growled the mask of Il Capitano, thrusting his huge nose between Pantelone and the ingenue. “He doesn’t even sound like me!”
“Be quiet, all of you,” Roberto warned. He didn’t have time to think about Anna’s masks speaking to him. “I’m trying to rescue Anna!”
“Anna! My dearest sausage.” Arlecchino gulped. “They took her, those other ones. Those cruel masks.”
“And I’m trying to get her back! Now be quiet.” Roberto shut the bag, retied it, and slung it over his shoulder with the bag of bones. Looking up nervously, he saw the maenads moving stealthily through the trees on the far side of the grove. Their leader was shouting insults at the man hidden among the trees. Each time he blasted back an answer, the mae¬nads shifted their position, closing in on him.
Only Anna trailed behind, held back by doubt, or, as Roberto fervently hoped, by love for the voice of an old braggart.
“I shall make you all tremble at my feet, you hyenas! When I’m through with you, you’ll be licking my boots and peeling my grapes!” Il Capitano roared.
“We shall crush you like the rotten fruit you are!” the leader called back. She readied her spear. The drums beat faster and louder, setting the dried leaves of the olive trees aquiver. “I’ll wear your skin and hang your worthless carcass out for the ravens!”
With a grunt, she hurled her spear into the bushes as the pipes sang out a shrill screaming note and the beating of the drums reached a crashing crescendo. The leader raised her hand and the drums stopped, the pipes fell silent. The maenads waited, hushed.
“I’ll have your guts for garters!” came the insult from the shadows.
The leader screamed in rage and the maenads began to tear through the forest.
“Yip, yip, yip,” catcalled a voice from the bag.
“Shut up, you foolish servant,” Pantelone snapped.
“The cats are out chasing a mouse!”
“On the contrary,” puffed the voice of II Dottore, “the Latin term that amply suggests the inner prevarication of such misoginationary extemporare—”
“Stuff the Latin, you old fraud—” growled Pulcinella.
“Anna! Anna come back to us,” sobbed the ingenue.
“We who love you,” sighed the nymph.
“Throw off the counterfeit, you belong to us!” cried Pantelone.
“Cupid, who has become Lucifer!” said Arlecchino.
“Beauty tricked into falsity!”
“Love shackled by hate!”
“Bread without salt!”
“Madonna, shut up all of you,” Roberto whispered fiercely. Anna was hesitating, stalled while the other women were storming the far side of the grove. She turned and glanced behind her. Roberto hunched deeper into the grass to escape the mask’s black eyes. Still clutching a bloodied piece of the cub’s skull, she took a step toward them. Roberto was certain that her ear had caught the pleading voices of her masks. She raised her torch higher to penetrate the shadows. Then the pipes shrilled loudly, and trapped by the piercing command, Anna spun on her heel to follow.
Roberto seized his chance. Leaping up from the grass, he grabbed Anna around the waist, pulled her down, and rolled over on top of her, pinning her to the earth. Her torch fell and spluttered in the grass, tendrils of smoke and weak flame rising from the ground. Anna struggled fiercely, but he wrapped his legs around her thighs and clamped his hand over her mouth. She snarled beneath his palm, trying to bite his fingers, rocking her hips violently, kicking her trapped legs to throw him off. But Roberto clung to her, embraced her, pressed her hard into the soil.
Removing the mask under these circumstances was an impossible task. To move his hand from her waist would be to lose her. And to move his other hand from her mouth would allow her to call the others. They would be discovered in no time.
Voices began to chorus from inside the bag. “Anna! Anna! It’s us! Panelone! Arlecchino, Pulcinella!”
Anna ceased struggling, and in that instant of stunned quiet, Roberto took his hand from her mouth, ripped the mask from her face, and flung it far out into the grass.
Anna’s body went rigid in his arms. She opened her mouth as though to scream, but no sound came. Staring down at her in the flickering torchlight, Roberto knew a moment of terror. Her naked face, shocked with pain, still held the imprint of the mask’s features. He watched the frozen expression crumple, the lines reappear at the corners of her haunted eyes, the curve of her cheek clawed by anguish, the soft mouth stretched into the beginnings of a sob. Gradually, Anna’s features returned, revealing in their mobile imperfections the scars of her misery. She stared blindly up at the dark sky.
“Anna, it’s me, Roberto,” he whispered. “I’ve come for you.”
The haunted eyes jerked and she stared at him with deep pain. “Roberto?”
“Si, bella. I’ve come—”
“Hey, what about us?” spoke a voice from the bag.
“We have come to bring you home, Anna,” Roberto said gently.
“It’s not possible,” she said. “I’ve done things, terrible things—”
“It doesn’t matter. The priest said it was all forgiven.”
“Forgiven?” she asked, and he felt her body shrink into itself “Do you even know what I’ve done, Roberto?”
“No, and it doesn’t matter. Come. We must go. There is someone who waits for you. Someone who will rid you of your sorrow.”
“I can’t,” she said in a tiny voice.
“You must. Let me help you.”
Roberto pulled Anna up from the ground, wrenching the stinking animal skin from her shoulders. He gently wiped the dirt and blood from her chin with the sleeve of his shirt. He tried to get her to release her hold on the cub’s skull, but she pulled it tighter to her breast, her eyes wild with fear. He let her keep it, choosing to hurry away from the grove rather than argue.
As they reached the bottom of the grassy field, near the edge of the forest of dying oaks, Roberto heard behind him the shrill screaming of the maenads, the thunderous roll of the drums, and the screech of pipes. He thought he heard a man cry out. Half of him wanted to return, to rescue the priest if he could. But Anna had caught sight of the Tago and was pressed against him, whimpering. She needed him too, Roberto thought, and Don Gianlucca had said that this might be Anna’s only chance. Roberto crossed himself, sending a quick prayer to the priest, and guided Anna toward the faint glow of the Tago.
“What is it?” she whispered.
“A child’s spirit, known as the Tago.”
Anna flinched, cowering deeper in Roberto’s arms.
“No, not that. I cannot face this spirit. Please, Roberto, take me away. Give me back the mask.”
“No, Anna. Don’t be afraid. The Tago means you no harm.”
The Tago drifted down from the naked branches of the dying trees and hung like a star before Anna’s haggard face. Tiny glowing fingers caressed her cheeks and the blue eyes gazed lovingly into hers. Tears streamed down Anna’s dirty face.
“Anna!” The Tago sighed. “Anna, you are here!”
“I threw you away,” Anna answered, her voice breaking, “Into the canals.”
“I floated here. I tried to come to you in dreams but you refused me.
“I didn’t want you,” she said. “I killed you.”
“It wasn’t you who caused my death.” The Tago sighed.
“But it was me. I let the thorns of hate grow in my womb. I didn’t know when he cursed me that you were there. I didn’t know. And when he left me, I let the thorns grow so that the pain would keep alive my hate for him. And when I knew you were there, the thorns stabbed until you died. You slipped from my thighs too soon, your face hard as a plum pit. I could not look at you. I could not own that you were of my making and my destroying.”
The Tago spread wide its arms, blooming like a lily in the dark.
“I was not meant for the world, Anna. My fate was determined by another, and another’s hand drew back early the breath of life. It was not you who killed me. And it was not hate that you felt for me.”
“What, then, can you call it?” Anna asked. She fell to her knees, her head bowed. “I threw you into the canals to hide my shame. No one was ever to know that you existed. Was that love?”
“You loved me while I lived within you,” the Tago replied gently, “even as you hated another. When I died, in your grief you assumed the blame.”
“No,” Anna wailed, and shook her head. “I am filled with thorns. They stab, they murder. They killed you.”
“No, the thorns came later,” answered the Tago. “Planted by the sin of self-hatred.”
“Why are you here? Why do you come to me now?” Anna asked, her eyes lowered.
The Tago drifted closer to Anna, shedding a warm light over her dis-raught features. It waited until she had raised her eyes to meet its serene gaze.
Because though you cast away my body, your grieving love binds me to the earth. My spirit is not free. You must accept that once you loved me, and then you must let me go. You must give me back my bones and release my spirit so that I may return to the ether from whence I came. You must cut the twisting vine of thorns that binds us both.”
“How do I do such a thing?” Anna asked, her voice quavering.
“Take the bones and put them together in the earth. And bid me farewell.”
“I don’t have your bones.”
“But I do,” Roberto blurted, and quickly unslung the small bag from his back. He thrust it toward Anna, who stared at it uncertainly. “Take them, Anna. Don Gianlucca gathered them for you in the maze. But Tago, there is still a missing fragment.”
“What do you carry in your arms, Anna?” the spirit asked.
Anna opened her arms. Something dry and white tumbled into her lap.
“Look, Anna, and see what is there.”
Roberto heard the sharp intake of Anna’s breath as she took up the thing she’d dropped with trembling fingers. The matted fur head of the cub had been transformed into the front half of a human skull, a small, delicate face composed of fragile, egg-white bones.
“A mask,” said Anna, her bloody fingers tracing the curves of the tiny brow. She held it up for the Tago to see, and taking it, the spirit lowered its own face to fill the void. On the head of the Tago there appeared a child’s face with luminous eyes, a plump soft mouth, rounded cheeks, and a snub nose.
“Not a mask, Anna,” Roberto whispered. “It’s a child’s face. It’s the missing piece.”
“Do you love me, Anna?” the Tago asked.
“Yes.” Anna sighed.
“And do you love yourself and the mysteries that abound within you?” The Tago lowered the mask from its luminous face.
Anna clasped her arms around her middle, her eyes averted from the child-spirit. The Tago reached out its tiny hand and brushed her cheeks with streaks of light. “Am I forgiven?” she asked in a low, sad voice.
“A long time ago,” the Tago answered.
“Can it be true?”
“Yes. You are free of this curse, if you choose to be.”
“Then I choose it,” Anna said with a deep sigh. “Santa Madonna, I choose it,” she repeated. Her hands fell away from her sides and she reached out for Roberto’s hand… “
Photo credit: Didaskalia: Journal for Ancient Theater