Octavius the 1st

Interlude

57 Gaylord Brewer Interlude Always eat grapes downward—that is eat the best grapes first; in this way there will be none better left on the bunch, and each grape will seem good down to the last. If you eat the other way, you will not have a good grape in the lot. —Samuel Butler Octavius, foggy from repose, jostled the little wooden pyramid as he attempted to place and straighten it upon the sink. Fine ashes spilled from its tiny entrance and the man cursed. Scooping the worst of this gray powder into his palm, he considered the dislodged ashes of the noble dead, the miniature ghosts disturbed in their silky arabesques, the golden scepter, the jeweled tomb. He blew the counter free of the remains, shaman relegating us all to our same senseless fate. Next, with scant deliberation—he knew what he wanted—he eschewed China Rain, “relaxing & calming,” for the simply but firmly stated Musk, “sensual & stimulating.” The man admired the box, its profile etching of a flat-eyed Pharaoh and one subservient queen. He selected an 58 Octavius the 1st umber triangle from its brethren, smelled it, ignited the tip, held it sideways until the flame died, then lifted the top of the pyramid and lowered the offering to a tiny porcelain plate. As he stood back, an aromatic and smoky symbology began to draw itself above the chimney (wc?) of the violated tomb. The man stripped, drew the curtain aside, folded his towel evenly over the shower rug, and stepped into the empty tub. He turned the flow to full volume, adjusted it to medium heat, and knelt down over this gurgling, cascading tributary of the Nile. In one hand, a bottle of nectar, “deeply purifying: hinoki & ginger”; in the other, balanced and aloft, a necessary, to the alchemist’s mind, complement, “balancing & renewing: rose geranium & citrus.” Bold, yes, this divine admixture, but such was his vision and his passion. And such his gentle tilting, as the prophet—this stranger to the land as priest and charlatan paced a reedy shore—offered first one stone crock and then another of essence and extract to the turbulent falls, Pharaoh’s costly tribute to the raven-god Ra turned dark, then transformed, he reflected with a smile, to a beneficent acknowledgment by the One True God he himself humbly represented, a feast of bubbles for His enslaved but beloved people. Octavius, confused by this last bit, as well as some by the first, leaned-slash-dropped-slash-fell backwards into the shallower end, 59 Gaylord Brewer his back adhering to the yet-chilly higher perimeter of the tub. Hot and cold, sweet and sour, yin and yang, yadda yadda yadda. Possibly he was still fuzzy from his nap, frayed from dreams. Three wowzers in a row. Separation anxiety about tomorrow, unconscious anticipation of his possible, nay likely, crippling failure? Hardly. He scooped a handful of suds over his belly, then onto each breast. He was a man, and he did what a man had to do. On the sink, the pyramid puffed away like a sensual and stimulating locomotive. Inside, the ashes of empires collected, only to be blown to heaven by a fickle wind, only to be overturned in a cursèd and sacred urn by the arrogant hand of Man’s insatiable taste for excavation, for discovery of what should not be known—the uncorked genie, the shattered glass, the cracked unholy seal—in service of (and who might pronounce it even silently without a smirk?) “progress.” As his nimble mind leapt to the plight of the Great Barrier Reef, overdeveloped to certain extinction, the poor fishes, the conundrum of “eco-tourism,” of Getting It Up and Getting It Now or Never, he opened his eyes, raised himself like a deep-sea Leviathan thought long extinct, and—because he couldn’t manage it properly with clumsy evolutionary toes—leaned forward to slow the flow of water while keeping, of course, a consistent temperature. He liked the gush and volume of the full throb, but his methodology—and it felt 60 Octavius the 1st right to him, even as its logic remained elusive—was consistent day to day. For the duration of the bath, the water remained on, meaning that it must be progressively, one might almost venture scientifically, modulated until only a hot trickle remained, merely an echo, an insinuation of its former...