The Night Villa (26 page)

Clearly that’s what I’m supposed to do. Why else would Ely send me those dates? He wants me to remember the history of
us
—from beginning to end.

I fumble through the dark, down to the lower courtyard, passing the pool, which I dismiss as not cold enough to slake the fire in my skin. I find the stairs down to the grotto. When I come out onto the outer steps, the sun is just emerging above the Sorrentine peninsula to the east. But still, there’s barely enough light to make my way down the stone stairs to the sea. I don’t stop to think how foolish a trip it is. I could fall and break my neck. No one would look for me here for hours. I could drown in the grotto and no one would even know what had happened to me until my body washed ashore somewhere. None of this bothers me. I make my way down to the grotto and slip through the cleft in the rock, leaving my robe just outside. I hesitate when I see that it’s completely dark inside, but then a faint glimmer of light makes its way through the jagged opening to the sea—a forked beam like a lightning rod that magically ignites the water, turning it an electric blue. It’s enough for me. I dive into the fire-blue water, like a phoenix that needs the fire in order to be born again.

The water isn’t a bit like fire, though; it’s shockingly cold. I surface—the gasp I take for air echoing off the domed ceiling like the dying cry of a drowning woman. I tread water until I can catch my breath, but it’s too cold to stay still, so I dive under again and make my way to the opening out to the sea where, hopefully, the sun has reached the rocks and I’ll be able to find someplace to warm myself. Only when I pull myself up on the rock and stretch out in the first rays of the sun do I let myself think again about the message Ely has sent me. Our three anniversaries. I have no need to think about the first two because I’ve relived them in my head often enough. It’s the last, painful one I always try to keep at bay. But now, on this rock surrounded by water, there’s nothing else to think about.

A
fter Ely and I came back from visiting his parents, we made a deal. He wouldn’t go live at the Tetraktys community in New Mexico, but he’d continue attending the meetings in Austin and I would come along. I would keep an open mind and give the Tetraktys a chance. I would see, Ely assured me, that it wasn’t an evil cult, but an enlightened philosophy.

The meetings in the bungalow on Speedway consisted of some chanting and a lot of silent meditation—not so different from the yoga classes I sometimes went to with M’Lou. The study groups I attended in the members’ houses were, I thought, surprisingly scholarly. Most members read, or were at least learning, Latin and Ancient Greek. They’d all read the major sources on Pythagoras, as well as Plato, Aristotle, and a sprinkling of the Neoplatonists—often in the original. The main thing that distinguished these sessions from the seminars I was taking at UT was that here the theories and precepts we read were followed religiously. Because Pythagoras believed that the souls of men could transmigrate into the bodies of animals, the Tetraktyans were vegetarians. This wouldn’t have seemed so odd a dietary restriction except that because Pythagoras had also once told a bull not to eat beans, we weren’t supposed to eat beans, either.

“That doesn’t make a lick of sense,” M’Lou told me over dinner at El Azteca, the East Side Mexican restaurant where we’d been eating since I was a kid. “How can you be a vegetarian and not eat beans? What do you do for protein?”

“Cheese,” I told her, holding up my cheese quesadilla, “and eggs. But mostly they all seem to subsist on wheatgrass and carrot juice.”

“It sounds to me like they’re starving you into a suggestible state so they can brainwash you. You make sure you keep up your strength.” She slipped me a bean burrito and half of her carne guisada, which I ate with guilty pleasure. “I don’t want you kidnapped by any cults and ending up like that gal there.” She pointed at the painting above our booth—one of the many paintings-on-velvet that, along with photographs of Pancho Villa and tapestry portraits of John F. Kennedy, adorned the walls of El Azteca. This one depicted a curvaceous Aztec maiden being sacrificed at the foot of a pyramid.

“She doesn’t look like she’s been starving on any juice diet,” I said, laughing. And then, because I felt guilty for laughing, I added, “It’s not really fair to call it a cult, you know. I mean, you could say the same for Judaism or Christianity when they started—at least the Romans thought of them as cults and made fun of their dietary laws. Professor Lawrence says the thing about the Jews that really puzzled the Romans was their refusal to eat pork. The Romans loved a good suckling pig.”

“Well, I’m with them there,” M’Lou had said, and then she’d let the subject drop. I think she was relieved to see that I didn’t seem to be taking the Tetraktyans too seriously, and that I’d finished the rest of her carne guisada.

She was glad, too, that I was taking the ancient religions class with Elgin Lawrence because she thought it would give me some perspective on what I was hearing in the Tetraktys meetings, which is why I was taking it in the first place. Dr. Lawrence had a reputation as a keen skeptic who disabused his students of any lingering romanticism about the early Christians, the pagan Romans…or, really, just about anyone or anything. It was there that I was introduced to Phineas Aulus, the Roman writer who had traveled the Mediterranean collecting the secrets of mystery rites like so many exotic souvenirs. At first Ely was glad that I was taking the class, too. He was proud of the bits and pieces I could bring up at meetings, until I started also carrying home my professor’s attitudes.

In addition to Phineas Aulus, Dr. Lawrence was fond of quoting Juvenal, who railed against the eastern cults that had flooded his Rome, and of drawing analogies between the proliferation of oriental religions in ancient Rome and the popularity of Eastern religions in modern-day America. In addition to classical authors, he brought in newspaper horoscopes, videos of the 1993 standoff between the FBI and David Koresh’s Branch Davidians in Waco, and clippings from the
National Enquirer
and
The Star
on modern-day cults. One of the articles he brought in, published in the
National Enquirer
soon after the Waco siege, was called “The Ten Most Dangerous Cults in America.” I was more than a little startled to see that the Tetraktys was listed as number seven.

After that class, I went to his office to ask if I could have a copy of the article. When he asked me why I wanted it I admitted my boyfriend belonged to the Tetraktys and then burst into tears. Dr. Lawrence (as I still thought of him then) closed his office door and sat on the edge of his desk handing me tissues until I was done crying. When I started to apologize for my outburst, he cut me off.

“It’s okay,” he said. “My sister Patricia belonged to the Branch Davidians. My folks went bankrupt paying deprogrammers to get her back. When my mother was dying of cancer in ninety I managed to get a message to her. I got a telegram back pretty much blaming the cancer on our mother’s lack of belief. The only good thing about my mother’s death from the cancer in ninety-two is that she never knew all that stuff that came out about Koresh—about how he was sleeping with the women and children in the group—or that Patricia was killed when his followers set the compound on fire.” I murmured condolences, but he waved them away and kept talking. I could tell he was talking a lot to give me a chance to gain control over myself, for which I was grateful. “I’m afraid I haven’t had much patience with cults since then. I suppose the bias shows up in how I teach this class, but I figure, what the hell, maybe it’ll save some kid from joining a crackpot group. Show this to your boyfriend,” he said, handing me the article. “Maybe he’ll see reason.”

Of course, showing the article to Ely made things much worse. He tore it apart, first figuratively, discrediting point by point the article’s allegations against the Tetraktys, then literally, scattering the newsprint confetti across our bed. From then on not only was any information I carried back from the class suspect, but Ely said he could tell when I was carrying
bad energy
to the meetings. Other members noticed it, too, he told me. At one meeting, when I asked why the initiates at the New Mexico compound weren’t allowed contact with their families, a wan red-haired girl stood up and asked if I could please not come anymore because I was polluting the atmosphere.

So instead of attending Tetraktys meetings and study groups I joined the little circle of students who accompanied Elgin Lawrence to Schultz’s Beer Garden over on San Jacinto. Elgin (as I then began to call him) held forth about philosophy under the live oaks like Plato on the steps of the Academy—only with a bottle of Shiner Bock instead of wine.

I found during that fall, which like most Austin autumns held the summer heat far into October, that I liked nothing better than to sit under a live oak at Schultz’s and tip an ice-cold bottle of Shiner Bock down my throat. I grew more and more reluctant on those afternoons to make the long trek back to the shuttle bus, so I started taking lifts from Elgin.

He’d just bought the yellow Porsche with money he said he earned consulting on a Hollywood gladiator movie. It seemed a shame not to take the car farther than the couple of blocks up to Hyde Park when the house was empty and when the roads climbing into the hill country west of town beckoned. Driving with the top down, the sun setting over the mesquite-covered hills, the air smelled like mimosa and smoke. We drove out to The Oasis on Lake Travis, where we’d have frozen margaritas and steak fajitas. (So what if this cow had once been a man, I’d think. If you really believed in transmigration then the butcher had only freed the cow’s soul to move on to a better host.) Heading back into town, we’d end up at Elgin’s house in West Lake Hills for a nightcap and a swim in his pool. We drank so much and drove over so many dark twisting roads it was a miracle we didn’t get killed. I half expected it to end that way. If there was order in the universe (as Ely believed) and what I was doing was wrong, we’d end up wrapped around a pole on 2222—a road that had claimed three of my high school classmates before graduation.

We didn’t die. We didn’t even get caught. The later I stayed out, lingering at Elgin’s practically until dawn, the later Ely stayed at the meetings. In the back of my mind I thought I’d stop when it got cold. It just never did. That year the heat tenaciously held on all the way to Halloween, the time when usually the cold fronts would move in and break the heat. This year there were only a smattering of rainstorms and then more warm weather.

It wasn’t until the last week in November, when Elgin went to a conference in Los Angeles, that I started coming home earlier in the afternoons—and so did Ely. We had Thanksgiving at M’Lou’s: Ely filling up on sweet potatoes and corn bread, but saying he wanted to save the pecan pie M’Lou had baked for later. When we got home that night he made me wait in the living room while he went into the kitchen. Then he reappeared, holding the pie aloft with a candle burning in its center to celebrate our “anniversary.” Blowing it out, I promised myself that I would end the affair.

When I knew Elgin was back, I left him my final paper on Phineas Aulus with a note asking if I could have the rest of the term off to study for my orals. I also gave him a poem I’d been working on all term about the archaeologist Wilhelmina Jashemski. I’d finally thought of the last three lines.

Vesuvius has nothing new to say,

haze-shrouded, calm. This all goes by so fast.

There’s more than one kind of catastrophe.

He sent me a note that read,
“Ita vero.”
Latin for yes, but also, literally, “So it’s true.” Code, I surmised, for “So it really is over.”

I told myself I was relieved that he hadn’t made a fuss.

On the last day of the fall term, though, I found a note in my box from Elgin asking me to come meet him at Les Amis. I took the fact that he’d chosen a coffee place instead of a bar as a sign that he’d accepted the change in our relationship, but I’d forgotten that Les Amis served wine and beer as well as coffee—and I’d underestimated Elgin’s vanity. If a relationship was going to end, he’d be the one to end it.

“So how are things with your true believer?” he asked when I sat down. His hands were folded across a manila folder and a bottle of red wine stood on the table between us. There was an empty glass at my place that he filled before I could say no. He’d picked up a tan in Los Angeles—and a new suit. Compared to the bedraggled students and professors around us Elgin positively gleamed. I took a sip of wine and told him that Ely seemed to be spending less time with the Tetraktys.

“But he still belongs?” Elgin asked.

I admitted he did.

“Then I think you ought to see this.” He slid the file folder across the table. I opened it, expecting another newspaper article. Instead, I found a copy of a report headed “Investigation into the Tetraktyan Community.” Above the title was a round symbol: a shield wreathed by laurel, surrounded by stars and then encircled by sun rays. The symbol itself seemed vaguely cultish, but when I looked closer I saw it was a government seal.

“This is an FBI report,” I said, looking up. “How…?”

Elgin held a finger up in front of his lips. He looked so much like a stern librarian that I started to laugh, but then I saw how serious his expression was.

“Are you…?”

Then he laughed. He’d been trying not to, which is why he’d looked so serious. “I’ve got a friend in the Bureau,” he said. “Never mind how I got it, just read it. You’re not going to like it, but I think it’s best you know.”

I started to put the folder in my bag, but he shook his head. “Read it here. I’ve got a conference with another student I’m meeting here, but I’ll be back in half an hour.”

He got up and went to the front of the restaurant where a young girl in jeans and pink navel-baring T-shirt stood. Sure, I thought,
a conference.
I suspected he wanted me to know that it wouldn’t take long to replace me. I also suspected that he’d dug up this official-looking report as a parting salvo to Ely, who he must see as his competition. Who knew if the report was even genuine? It was a Xeroxed copy so the seal could have been faked. It occurred to me that I should close the folder and walk out, but what if it were real? I read the first line: “The Tetraktyan Community, although outwardly benign in appearance, bears striking similarities to the Branch Davidian Community founded by David Koresh. It could well be another Waco in the making.” Then I read the whole thing.

The report described the community in New Mexico as a walled compound with underground bunkers well supplied with water and nonperishable foods. The compound also had its own generator and water tower. The report went on to describe the eerie silence of the site: “Initiates are sworn to a five-year vow of silence that is strictly enforced. This includes written contact with the outside. There is only one telephone in the main office and calls out are taped in order to prevent initiates from trying to make contact with their families. By cutting them off from family and friends, new members are vulnerable to brainwashing. They are also kept on severely limited diets of grain and vegetables, leaving them physically weak and impressionable.”