The Magic Circle by Katherine Neville (top 10 books of all time txt) 📕

und Schlag.” I saw a different Vienna—one steeped in many traditions, drenched in the flavors and aromas of so many diverse cultures that I could never think of Vienna without being flooded, as now, with that sense of its magical history.

Since its beginnings, Vienna has been the cultural gateway that at once unites and separates east, west, north, and south: a point of fusion and fission. The land we today call Austria—Österreich, or the eastern kingdom—in ancient times was named Ostmark: the eastern mark, the boundary where the fresh new Western world ended and the mysterious East began. But the word Mark also means “marshes”—in this case, those misty marshlands along the Danube River.

Running seventeen hundred miles from the Black Forest to the Black Sea, the Danube is the most important watercourse connecting western and eastern Europe. Its Roman name Ister, or the womb, is still used to describe the alluvial delta separating Romania from the USSR. But whatever the river’s name in many tongues over many centuries—Donau, Don, Danuvius, Dunarea, Dunaj, Danube—the more ancient Celtic name from which they all derived was Danu: “the gift.”

The gift of water recognized no boundary, freely bringing its gift of life to all peoples. And there was another gift that had been harvested for millennia along the banks of the Danube—a treasure of dark gold upon whose riches Vienna itself was built, and for which the city had been named: Vindobona, good wine.

Even today, on the hilltops overlooking Vienna, I could see row after row of grapevines grown from gnarled old stock, interpatched with yellow corn sheaves from last autumn’s harvest—gift of the goddess Ceres. But wine was the gift of another deity, Dionysus. His gift eased pain, brought dreams, and sometimes drove people mad; he invented dance, and his most conspicuous followers were frenziedly dancing women. So to me it seemed, if any city belonged to this particular god, it was Vienna, land of “wine, women, and song.”

I myself, at an early age, had a run-in with this same divinity right here in Vienna, when Jersey sang a matinee at the Wiener Staatsoper of the Richard Strauss opera Ariadne auf Naxos.

Abandoned on the isle of Naxos by her great love Theseus, Ariadne contemplates suicide—until Dionysus arrives on the scene to rescue her. The lyric Jersey, as Ariadne, was singing that afternoon, “You are the captain of a sable ship that sails the dark course …” Ariadne believes the figure suddenly before her is the god of death, who’s come to take her to Hades. She doesn’t realize it’s Dionysus himself, that he’s in love with her and wants to marry her, to carry her to heaven and toss her wedding tiara among the stars as a bright constellation.

But I was so young, I didn’t understand the situation any better than Ariadne. I guess that’s why I threw the first and only public performance of my life—one that, within my family at least, I’ve never managed to live down. I really believed this awful Prince of Darkness (the tenor) was about to carry off my mother to an eternal torture of hellfire and brimstone, so I ran up onstage and tried to rescue her! It literally brought down the house. With unforgettable indignity, I was forcibly removed by stagehands. Thank heavens Uncle Laf was there to rescue me.

Afterwards we left Jersey signing autographs in her flower-filled dressing room and, no doubt as soon as we’d gone, apologizing to her astonished public for her child’s unrehearsed behavior. Laf took me off to cheer me up with Sachertorte mit Schlagobers, followed by a stroll on the Ring encircling Vienna. When we came to a fountain, Laf took a seat on the rim of the basin and, pulling me to him, regarded me with a wry half smile.

“Gavroche, my darling,” he said, “I offer a little advice: You should never sink your pretty teeth into the leg of someone like Bacchus, as you did back there today. I mention it not only for the reason that this particular tenor may not wish to appear onstage ever again with your mother. But also because Bacchus—or, by his other name, Dionysus—is a great god. Although,” my uncle reassured me, “that singer was only pretending to be him.”

“I’m sorry that I bit that man who sang to Mama,” I admitted. But I was intrigued. “You said he was only pretending to be the god, so does that mean there’s a real … Dy-oh-ny-soos?” I tried to sound it out. When Laf smiled and nodded, I was full of questions: “Have you ever seen him? What’s he like?”

“Not everyone believes he exists, Gavroche,” Laf told me earnestly. “They think he is only part of a fairy tale. But to your grandmother Pandora, he was very special. I’ll tell you what she believed: the god comes only to those who ask for his help. But you must truly need his help before you ask. He rides on an animal which is his closest companion—a wild black panther with emerald green eyes.”

I was very excited. The image of the tenor whose calf I’d bitten only an hour ago had completely melted away. I could hardly wait for this living god to come, padding up the Karntner Strasse astride his steaming jungle beast, into the very heart of Vienna.

“If I really need his help, and if he comes to rescue me, Uncle Laf, do you think he’ll take me away, like Ariadne?”

“Gavroche, I’m quite sure of it, if that’s what you wish. But first there is something I must tell you. The god Dionysus loved Ariadne, and because she was a mortal he came to earth for her. But you see, when a great god comes to earth, it can cause all kinds of trouble. So you must be sure never to ask for his help unless you really, truly need it—not like the little boy who cried wolf. Do you see?”

“Okay,” I agreed. “I’ll try—but what kind of trouble? What if I