The pool of dark blood, the expiring ram, the man, at a crouch, ready to thrust and stab if need be, the pale souls hard to distinguish from cadavers: why does the scene haunt her? What, coming from the invisible, does it say? She believes, most unquestionably, in the ram, the ram dragged by its master down to this terrible place. The ram is not just an idea, the ram is alive though right now it is dying. If she believes in the ram, then does she believe in its blood too, this sacred liquid, sticky, dark, almost black, pumped out in gouts on to soil where nothing will grow? The favourite ram of the king of Ithaca, so runs the story, yet treated in the end as a mere bag of blood, to be cut open and poured from. She could do the same, here and now: turn herself into a bag, cut her veins and let herself pour on to the pavement, into the gutter. For that, finally, is all it means to be alive: to be able to die. Is this vision the sum of her faith: the vision of the ram and what happens to the ram? Will it be a good enough story for them, her hungry judges?
Someone sits down opposite her. Preoccupied, she does not look up.
'Are you working on your confession?'
It is the woman from the dormitory, the one with the Polish accent, the one she thinks of as the Kapo. This morning she is wearing a cotton dress, flowery, lemon-green, somewhat old-fashioned, with a white belt. It suits her, suits her strong blonde hair and sunburnt skin and broad frame. She looks like a peasant at harvest time, sturdy, capable.
'No, not a confession, a statement of belief. That is what I have been asked for.'
'We call them confessions here.'
'Really. I would not call it that. Not in English. Perhaps in Latin, perhaps in Italian.'
Not for the first time, she wonders how it is that everyone she meets speaks English. Or is she mistaken? Are these folk in fact speaking other languages, languages unfamiliar to her – Polish, Magyar, Wendish – and are their utterances being translated into English, instantaneously and by miraculous means, for her benefit? Or on the other hand is it a condition of existence in this place that all speak a common tongue, Esperanto for example, and are the sounds that issue from her own lips not, as she deludedly believes, English words but Esperanto words, just as the words the Kapo woman speaks are Esperanto, though the woman may believe they are Polish? She herself, Elizabeth Costello, has no recollection of ever having studied Esperanto, but she could be mistaken, as she has been mistaken about so many things. But why then are the waiters Italian? Or is what she thinks of as their Italian simply Esperanto with an Italian accent and Italian hand gestures?
The couple sitting at the next table have their little fingers hooked together. Laughingly they tug at each other; they bump foreheads, whisper. They do not seem to have confessions to write. But perhaps they are not actors, full actors like this Polish woman or this woman playing a Polish woman; perhaps they are just extras, instructed to do what they do every day of their lives in order to fill out the bustle of the square, to give it verisimilitude, the reality effect. It must be a nice life, the life of an extra. Yet after a certain age anxiety must begin to creep in. After a certain age, the life of an extra must begin to seem like a waste of precious time.
'What are you saying in your confession?'
'What I said before: that I cannot afford to believe. That in my line of work one has to suspend belief. That belief is an indulgence, a luxury. That it gets in the way.'
'Really. Some of us would say the luxury we cannot afford is unbelief.'
She waits for more.
'Unbelief- entertaining all possibilities, floating between oppo-sites – is the mark of a leisurely existence, a leisured existence,' the woman goes on. 'Most of us have to choose. Only the light soul hangs in the air.' She leans closer. 'For the light soul, let me offer a word of advice. They may say they demand belief, but in practice they will be satisfied with passion. Show them passion and they will let you through.'
'Passion?' she replies. 'Passion the dark horse? I would have thought that passion leads one away from the light, not towards it. Yet in this place, you say, passion is good enough. Thank you for informing me.'
Her tone is mocking, but her companion is not rebuffed. On the contrary, she settles more comfortably into her chair and gives a little nod, a little smile, as if inviting the question that has now to come.
'Tell me, how many of us get through, pass the test, pass through the gate?'
The woman laughs, a low laugh, strangely attractive. Where has she seen her before? Why is it such an effort to remember, like feeling one's way through a fog? 'Through which gate?' says the woman. 'You believe there is only one gate?' A new laugh passes through her, a long, luxurious shudder of the body that makes her heavy breasts quake. 'Do you smoke?' she says. 'No? Do you mind?'
