Water Theatre (57 page)

Already, somewhere across the earth, day was dawning, while elsewhere in the self-same moment midnight struck. And it was all one. The earth was turning even as we stood inside it. Beyond the prodigious variety of life in all its many forms, beyond all the divisions which, year in year out, devastate so many lives, it remained seamlessly itself, all one. I saw it and I felt it so, and because this was an experience, not just an idea, I knew that I was inseparably part of it. I knew too that I would not be able to hold on to this exalted state for ever, but everything would be changed by it, and never again would it be possible to live as though it wasn't so.

Still singing as she reached up to retrieve the last candle, Allegra would soon come across the rocks to join us. But for now the whole cave resonated around us to the rejoicing sound of her song. And it was like listening to darkness singing. It was like listening to light.

The characters of this novel are all fictional, as are the places that feature here. There is a real village called Fontanalba, located not in Umbria but in the Haute Savoie, and I have borrowed its ancient legend of a revenant for purposes of my own. The Umbria to which I have shifted that legend is as imaginary as are, say, the Italian settings of Elizabethan plays, and the Equatoria of this novel will not be found in any atlas. Though none of its politicians are intended as portraits of actual people, living or dead, some of its troubled history was suggested by that of Ghana's First Republic. Calderbridge bears a distinct resemblance to Halifax, my hometown in Yorkshire, and the inscription over the door of the fictional house, High Sugden, was actually carved above the entrance to High Sunderland Hall, which may have been the inspiration for Emily Brontë's Thrushcross Grange. I remember seeing that house in ruins when I was a boy.

A novel gets written in solitude, but many people contribute to its composition. Not for the first time I owe much to my friend Richard Lannoy, who introduced me to the legend of Fontanalba when he was researching the mythopoeic landscape of Le Val des Merveilles. The account which Fra Pietro gives of the life and death of St Maximilian Kolbe was drawn from Diana Dewar's fine biographical study,
Saint of Auschwitz
. And like all novelists, I also stand in debt to Apuleius of Madaura, the ancient African godfather of the novel form.

This book might never have been conceived at all if Kate Noble had not made the generous loan of her cottage in Umbria many years ago. Many other friends have helped and encouraged me
since then, and in particular I need to thank John and Antoinette Moat, Jules Cashford, James Simpson, Sacha Abercorn, Adam Thorpe, Patrick Harpur, Sebastian Barker (who published part of the ‘Clitumnus' chapter in
The London Magazine
), Alexis Lykiard, Andrew Miller, John Latham, Diane Skafte, Professor Liliana Sikorska and the members of my writing workshops in Bath, London and at Cardiff University, as well as friends made in Ty Newydd, Totleigh Barton, Lumb Bank and Clun.

I owe a huge debt of thanks to my resolute agent, Sarah Ballard, who made a number of insightful notes on the manuscript at a crucial stage. Sadly my former agent, Pat Kavanagh, did not live to see the completed version of a book to which she gave characteristically kind encouragement, but I wish to acknowledge my heartfelt gratitude for more than twenty years of her counsel, help and friendship. I am also immensely grateful for the faith placed in this novel by Alessandro Gallenzi and Elisabetta Minervini, my publishers at Alma Books. The book has greatly benefited both from their corrective help on matters Italian, and from the consummate exercise of editorial skill. Once again, however, my principal debt is to the indispensable contribution made to the work by the patient and always truthful readings of my wife, Phoebe Clare.

Lindsay Clarke is the author of the bestselling novel
The Chymical Wedding
which won the Whitbread Fiction Prize in 1989. Since then, Clarke has been writing acclaimed retellings of the Troy stories, as well as being Writer-in-Residence and Associate Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Wales. He and his wife live in Somerset, England.
The Water Theatre
marks his long-overdue return to literary fiction. The Water Theatre was named one of the Best Books of the Year by
The Times
.

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Copyright © 2010 by Lindsay Clarke

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Cover photograph: August Macke, 
Children in the Garden

Cover design: Ian Durovic Stewart

ebook ISBN 978-1-59017-650-4

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