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road wending into darkness. I stamped on the road, I whispered, “Hermes!” The road moved backward under my feet, faster, faster. The steady rhythm of it stretched its long dream into the darkness and the whispering of the night. Running, running I said to the night “I have no name but the one you give me, no face but the one you see.”
    ‘I was, I am, an emptiness. I don’t know what anything is: I don’t know what music is, I don’t know the difference between running and stillness, between dancing and death. The world vibrates like a crystal in the mind; there is a frequency at which terror and ecstasy are the same and any road may be taken. There was an olive grove, it was morning. Shadows and whispers in the greenlit shade and the sunlight twittering in the leaves above. Hermes doesn’t show itself as a picture in the eyes, it’s there like a beast that can’t be seen, a strangeness dancing in the greenlit shade, dancing its music in the brightness of the shadows, in the darkness of the light.
    ‘There was an olive grove, I could feel the Hermes of it. There was a tortoise. My hand reached down and picked up the tortoise; with a hiss it drew its head in. I stood there feeling the shape of it and the weight of it in my hand and there was an idea coming to me when I felt eyes on me, felt myself being looked at. There was someone else in the olive grove, there was a man who hadn’t been there a moment ago. He was staring at me with eyes open so wide that I could see white all around the pupils. He had his hands out in front of him as if he was going to say, “Don’t”, but he didn’t say anything. A dark man, not young, but I couldn’t have said how old he was.
    ‘The tortoise was in my left hand and my knife was in my right; my idea was the tortoise-shell empty and two posts and a yoke and some strings for a kind of little harp with the shell as a soundbox. The man’s eyes were still on me, his wide-open eyes; almost I wanted to use the knife on him to make him stop looking at me. He let his hands drop to his sides when I cut the plastron loose and dug the body out of the shell, ugh! what a mess and my hands all slippery with blood and gore. The entrails were mysterious. I think about it now, how those entrails spilled out so easily when I made an emptiness for my music to sound in. Impossible to put those entrails back.
    ‘You know how you’ll hear a sound while you’re asleep andthere comes a whole dream to account for it and in the dream there are things that happen before and after the sound – might it be that the whole universe has no purpose but to explain the killing of the tortoise? Do you see what I mean? Perhaps the universe is a continually fluctuating event that configures itself to whatever is perceived as centre. Do you think that might be how it is?’
    I closed my eyes and saw the long nakedness of Luise twisting in the stardrift of galaxies and nebulae. ‘I hope not,’ I said.
    ‘The dark man watched me as I emptied the tortoise-shell,’ said the head. ‘He cupped his hands in the shape of the shell, then he mimed the plucking of strings. “Music? For making music?” he said.
    ‘“Yes, for making music,” I said. “How did you know?” Because what I was going to do had never been done before, there was no such instrument as the lyre then.
    ‘“I don’t know how I know,” he said. He had come closer; he smelled of honey.
    ‘“Why do you smell of honey?” I said.
    ‘“I keep bees.” he said. “My name is Aristaeus.” He stood there as if listening for something that only he could hear.
    ‘“What are you listening for?” I said.
    ‘“Your name.”
    I didn’t say anything, I didn’t want to tell him my name.
    ‘“You don’t want to tell it,” he said. “You’re afraid.”
    ‘“Afraid of what?” I said.
    ‘“Afraid to hear the sound of your name in this place.”
    ‘“I’m not afraid.”
    “Then tell it.”
    ‘“My name is Orpheus,” I