The Double Tongue by William Golding Page B

deep enough for a woman but not all that deep. Ionides began to pass on the questions one at a time. I forget what the first one was, but I found myself waiting for the god or gods and then talking to them. It seemed trivial enough. Here I am, I said, ready and willing. Do your will. Are you there? Both there, Dionysus, winter god for the three winter months, Apollo, you who mastered me yesterday, are you to do your will again? I am your Pythia.
    There was no answer. Nothing. I thought to myself, long ago when they all turned their backs on me, I came to the void. Am I talking to it again? Apollo? Are you there? Or are you away hunting up on Parnassus? Or chasing a laurel tree? Apollo, I believe in you. They want to know. Each one of them has brought you a gift. Will you answer?
    Perhaps he put it in my mind, I don’t know, but for the first time I thought of the dried leaves in the hollow flanges of the bowl. I took a pinch, noting as I did so that the flange had been refilled with a neat mound of the dusty stuff. I held it over the red moon of charcoal and let it sift and drift down from my fingers so that tiny sparks winked back at me and here and there a larger grain spurted with flame and smoke. It was pleasant enough, like throwing stones in water or playing at cup and ball. I did it again and seemed to do it again and again and again.
    And again and again. But my hands were folded at my waist and on the coverlet of my bed.
    ‘Apollo?’
    There was no reply. I heard someone stir and thought it might be Dionysus. But Ionides answered.
    ‘It is I. Good girl. Go back to sleep.’
    But later that day I was, as Ionides had said ‘on again’. I began to understand that he was passionately fond of dramatic representations, an art which has its own language, not just that spoken on the stage before an audience but spoken by actors when they are by themselves or accompanied by the technicians of presentation. I began to be concerned that in our dealing with the god or gods we were using a form of speech more appropriate to the modern kind of drama which, I am told, lacked dignity and religious feeling and had interest only in the mundane affairs of men. I began to understand by way of the language which Ionides used how the surroundings of the oracle had altered. I saw by the cramped nature of the building and the lack of provision for spectators that in times long past Delphi had been a far simpler place, perhaps no more than a village oracle. But Apollo had chosen it out of all the others, had slain the monster which guarded it and set up – however long ago – the circumstances which enabled the god’s truth to be spoken here. Little by little its fame had spread and the authenticity of its words more and more credited as one after the other the words were seen always to enshrine truth. And we? We moderns? We had made a play of it, with scenery and a cast, with triviality, so that it became much as its new surrounds were. All that glitters was gold, except the words. I had spoken words and not known I had spoken them. They were the god’s words.
    Except those spoken by Ionides. It was with a sudden pang that I remembered. He had answered the two Romans out of his own head – and mine. The god had nothing to do with it. He should keep to his pigeons. He came back to fetch me.
    ‘Ionides. We have blasphemed.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘You take it too calmly.’
    ‘Almost anything we do concerned with gods is blasphemy if you must use that word. One god’s truth is another god’s blasphemy.’
    ‘Don’t be clever.’
    ‘Good heavens, why not?’
    ‘I was wanting to be reassured, that’s all. I see you can’t give it or won’t.’
    ‘But I’ve reassured you! Didn’t you listen? I tell you what, First Lady, have a look at the take.’
    ‘The what?’
    ‘The take. The – remuneration. Those two Romans – oh my goodness! You should see the purse they left the Foundation and a necklace for you. Athens, dear,