Diana Archer
Diana Archer has produced an extraordinary book of short stories with an historical content, which is powerful and entertaining. Not this a book of Self awareness of the usual genre, but instead, it abounds with tales of passion and sexual adventures enacted by those who learn from each other to-day, the secrets of the gods and goddesses of the past.Thrown into this pot of alchemical flames, is the story of Valetta who has to learn the secret to survive when her husband, the Magician, gives her to the Alchemist.She has to learn the lessons which will take her from victim to master of her own universe.
A fascinating set of mystical tales which make for thought provoking reading and fun too, for those who like a sexy but edifying tale. Commended as a good read.
Diana Archer is an artist whose paintings specialize in mediterraean colours, which are inspired by her travels abroad.
She teaches Art in Florence and Mycean Greece, and has been writing since learning to meditate in the 1980's. Through years of personal development in Self awareness, Mandraki Bay if her first book of short stories.
Diana lives in Oxford, England.
Her paintings can be viewed on the following web-sites:
www.geocities.com/diana_archer
www.untitled-gallery.co.uk
I was happy with the magician, the gypsy dancing, the magic wagon and my pet monkey. It was a life of magic and love. But then the alchemist arrived.
I hated his long tragic face, his strange intellectual aura. He wanted to know the magician's secret. What was the key to his power? The alchemist longed to know the secret, for this man possessed what he himself lacked despite all his endeavors to find out the meaning of life.
“Perhaps the secret belongs in your woman. Will you let me have your woman?” he asked.
I was horrified. My life had been one of sunshine, love and magic tricks. I knew nothing else, only the love I shared with my husband and my pet monkey. How could this man, who really frightened me, suggest such an offensive thing?
The magician thought for a while. “ It is true,” he said, “that I have found the riches in life, and that my magic is very powerful. I can command all of life's gifts. My secret does not depend on my woman. To prove this, I will give her to you. For too long her life has been too easy, too comfortable. Here, take her to-day.”
This was the day my husband gave me away to the alchemist, not, I may add, because he didn't love me, but because of his arrogant pride, for he truly believed that his magical powers came from him alone and did not include me. He was ruining both our lives in order to prove what a great magician he was. To prove that his success with magic was his concern only and had nothing to do with me, his female partner of so many years.
I was heart broken. How could he do such a thing? But in order to prove his point and that he meant what he said, he began bringing home loose women, and humiliating me, by pawing them in my presence, and laughing at my stare of disbelief. He did not relent and the humiliation continued, until I had no choice but to leave with the alchemist. There was nowhere else for me to go, for my magician husband had arranged his experiment, by leaving me penniless.
The alchemist was kind to me, but there was no colour in his long white face, nor indeed, in his clothes or surroundings. He was an earnest seeker, made cadaver-like by too much intense seeking of the mysteries of the universe. I was leaving behind a home of vibrant colour, of music, laughter and fun, in exchange for a living corpse, who although kind, frightened me to death.
I was desperately unhappy with this situation and cried continuously. I refused any
idea of a sexual relationship with this man. The very idea made me want to vomit, that is how abhorrent he was to me. My thoughts were always filled with the sun filled happiness and warm embracing atmosphere of the magician's kisses. His lovely face was always in my thoughts. He was all I could think of, for none of his taunts and recent humiliations spoilt my feelings for my partner in magic.
Reluctantly, I agreed to help the alchemist with some of his experiments. I had never seen distilling equipment before and all the paraphernalia of a scientific seeker. It was all out of my experience, and really didn't interest me one little bit. My life had been magical tricks and reading the future with my special cards, so beautifully designed with images and symbols. That was my world not this grey, intellectual room of distillation and conical flasks. I was desperately unhappy. My whole heart was back in my sunny home, and making love by candle light with the magician; warm and mysterious. It was cold in this new place. My heart was frozen here with this man.
Whenever I could, I would slip out and follow at a distance, the man who had stolen my heart and my life. I had no substance of my own, just an empty shell, which had to go where the magician went, he who held my heart and soul captive.
I would peer through the tavern window to see him drinking and laughing with the whores and tavern wenches, and I longed to kiss once more that lovely mouth, to see those white teeth of his smile, his flirtatious smile, for me once more.
Sometimes, he would catch my face spying at him at the window, and he would point at my embarrassed face, and every one would turn and mock me, and point and make fun of me. I didn't know what to do, for this man had my heart and soul, and so I was an empty shell who could only follow wherever he went and look on at a distance.
Well, of course, in time some catastrophe had to happen. The alchemist was getting tired of my complaining and listless way of being. I failed to wash myself properly or comb my hair. There was always a distant look on my face and I could feel my beauty fading, for like him, I was becoming a walking corpse. Neither of us had any life force, and together we were a ragged, pathetic pair. I began to hate him, because some false logic blamed him for the loss of the sun in my life. My life had grown ugly from that day he had knocked on my door, which had been a golden world of fantasy before his fateful knock.
Sometimes he experimented in his room alone and often I would peer through the crack in the door to see if I could discover his secrets. What I saw disgusted me: parts of mutilated bodies from the grave yard, and dead dogs, was the awful truth of things going on behind the locked doors. My fear and loathing of this man intensified
to such a degree that I went to the gendarmerie and exposed this man as the fiend he was. In the middle of the night there came a banging on his door and voices shouting out for his arrest. But he was a man of wisdom even if a living cadaver himself, and he had taken flight before they came.
I never saw him again for such experiments in Paris were illegal and he would have been thrown into the nearest jail if he were to show his face again.
So the episode with the alchemist ended unsatisfactory. I suppose he didn't really mean me any harm, but his need to pursue his alchemical studied left no space for human considerations. He hadn't considered my deep unhappiness at leaving the man I loved. Only his experiments mattered to him and for this I never forgave him.
It is an interesting thing but, although the magician continued to perform and amuse his hordes of adoring public, I noticed that he was getting old. His face seemed more lined to me, and at moments when he wasn't putting on a show for his audience, the mask would slip and there was an emptiness in his eyes. But he never came back for me.
He had wanted to explore life; to see what it had to offer him in all its complexities, in all its forms; good and evil, licentiousness, drunkenness, brave feats of magic. Along side this, the exploration of life's mysteries continued, for he never lost his courage, but now his life of depravity was daily becoming more obviously etched onto his face, for he was the outer mirror of his depraved ways. Now, if he caught my eyes looking at him through the tavern window, he would not laugh and point, but instead catch my eyes, moist with crying, with such a look of sadness. And we both knew the truth.
His success as a magician had indeed been part of our happy partnership. It was too late now, but we both knew the truth. Well, of course I had always known this, but he had been so proud. He had wanted to prove that he didn't need me, but now I knew, he knew that he had made a terrible mistake. But you see, it was all too late. The years had passed by, and I had wasted them following the man who held my soul.
And then I heard that my dear husband was very ill.
When I found out where he was staying, I found the house deserted, run down and filled with rubbish. He was lying on a bed, groaning, disheveled in a dark airless room. Wine bottles lay scattered across the floor. The curtain let in a fragment of light. When he saw me his eyes acknowledged, but he was too ill to speak or to move.
So it had come to this, and I took this abject scene of misery as my own penance. This was my doing. I was to blame. It only I had been stronger and found my own strength and claimed back my soul from him, then I might have prevented this catastrophe. As it was, it
was all too late. Of course I loved him now, as I had always loved him. His degradation repulsed me of course, but he was the candle in my dark world; the light which fed my existence. Revolting as he was, lying there,..... the bottle was still there in his hand,...with such love, I felt that I could breathe life into his broken body, and for a while he did improve on the soup and herbs I administered to him.
But he never thanked me for my administrations, and cursed me often. What a fool I had been, he laughed, with a voice, which jeered and cut me to the heart.
“You wasted your life waiting for me. I despise your weakness. You are a deplorable creature.”
I broke down in tears, for he was right. We both knew each had been the ruin of the other, and I accepted my blame. He never gave me any kind words and died a miserable death.
And yet, even in the rain, as I stood by his graveside, the water washing away the soil in the dreary Parisian cemetery, I knew it wasn't over. My heart and soul were buried there with him. I loved him from the very depths of my being. It had no logic. There was no reason to it. It just was.
I walked away empty and dead inside, for I too was buried there beside him in that Parisian grave. But such a love that I had for my magician husband would never die. We would meet again and I would make myself worthy next time, and prove to him that I am strong, and I can be there for him when he needs my strength. And next time my strength and courage will be his salvation. Then I will have my heart and soul firmly in my own body; intact, whole and where it should have been all along.
