The Rite of Trebizond
- a suite of short stories by British authors Mark Valentine and John
Howard, beginning with a trio featuring an occult detective known only
as the Connoisseur, a seeker after the curious, a gent who makes it his
business to specialize in cases relating to literature, the arts and
aesthetic experience. And since the Connoisseur's interests happen to
coincide with my interests, it's these three tales I will make the focus
of my review.
THE RITE OF TREBIZOND
When reflecting on a "secret Europe" beneath
and beyond convention, John Howard and Mark Valentine have noted: “Many
courageous spirits in all parts of the continent followed their
conscience: and they formed another sort of secret Europe, one which
tried to preserve the values of our common humanity.”
Sharing a similar élan with stories from the authors' Secret Europe and Inner Europe (both published by Tartarus Press),
this Connoisseur tale delves into a hidden realm of Byzantium kept
alive by two bold souls, one old, one young, in a remote region of
English countryside.
Indeed, hiking on foot across rugged terrain
in his official capacity as recorder of boundary lines, the Connoisseur
is suddenly taken aback - "streaming across my mind a wild riot of
colour, as if a great banner of gold, of crimson, of purple, of deep
blue, had suddenly flared and rippled in the air before my eyes."
The
Connoisseur presses deeper in his explorations of this particular
locale and is eventually provided a meal and a bed at an old stone
building resembling a church. That night he feels "holy things revealed
and hidden again, and the holiness was all one, of antiquity and beauty,
and awe. It was all sublime."
You'll have to read for yourself
to better appreciate what's at the heart of this splendid tale. Permit
me to segue to a more general, philosophic reflection regarding the
gentleman known as the Connoisseur. First, take a look at the below
passage from a Robert Sheckley novel:
"'Don Quixote thinks the
windmill is a giant, whereas Panza thinks the giant is a windmill.
Quixotism may be defined as the perception of everyday things as rare
entities. The reverse of that is Panzaism, which is the perception of
rare entities as everyday things.'"
Unfortunately, the majority
of people in our modern world are prone to Panzaism, that is, reducing
the richness and sumptuousness of life down to digestible, bite-sized
bits. Not so for the Connoisseur. Rather, the Connoisseur deals with
people and places, art and artifacts, flora and fauna, with the dignity
and grace they deserve. Thus, the Connoisseur is predisposed to detect
and relate to those elements that might possess qualities we usually
associate with the occult or supernatural.
With all his
refinement and abundant learning, one might think the Connoisseur the
product of privilege and wealth. But this is not the case - the
Connoisseur is a man of modest means; his riches are the inner riches of
strong character, sharp wit and a finely attuned aesthetic sense.
THE SERPENT, UNFALLEN
The
Connoisseur and the narrator listen to a bony-faced, hollow-checked,
grey-haired churchwarden's report of highly unusual recent happenings at
his village church: someone stole a piece of the red elephant (many
beasts are painted on the church walls), the crowned snake (another
painted beast) seems to have taken on a luminous outline, a strong, deep
smell of incense in the building and lastly, on a bleak, grey day when
he was in church, the wind rose suddenly and with enough force to throw
open the church doors, letting in an unusually bright light. The
Churchwarden concludes, "There is something very deeply amiss at
Saltway, if all the implications I can discern are true."
Two
days later the narrator meets with the Connoisseur who instructs him to
travel to Saltway in the role of tourist to find out all he can.
Meanwhile, the Connoisseur will seek out one Ferdinand Muscott,
specialist incense-maker. Events move apace. We're pulled into a tale of
suspense with strange alchemy in the mix. A last tidbit: the young man
who looks after the gatehouse by the church authored a study on the
serpent god in ancient mythology.
THE TEMPLE OF TIME
During
one of his visits to the Connoisseur's second floor lodgings, his
esteemed friend opens an album bound in midnight-blue leather and bids
him study four aged black-and-white postcards depicting a
sharply-defined, four-square building, all of white concrete or stone,
designed in 1930s Art Deco style.
The Connoisseur relates a
curious experience he had sometime back when the building served as a
cinema. He went inside and watched a film entitled Afterlife, a
film revolving around one key question: "What if when we die our first
task is to choose and then recreate the moment when we were the
happiest?"
When the film ended, the Connoisseur had occasion to
exchange words with a young woman. Turns out, she was a volunteer at the
cinema and shared a vivid memory back when she did a "test run" for a
coming preview of Things to Come, the 1936 H.G. Wells film. As
she sat in the theater by herself, she nodded off and in her dream (or
hallucination) she watched a different version of this Wells film. She
tells of the various visions she had, one especially evocative:
"A
white city spread out over the landscape, it was a clean and bright
city. Much of it was underground, leaving the surface green and
pleasant. The resources of the world reborn after the war were used to
create a functional beauty. The world was indeed harvested, but not
attacked. Other crowds gathered in vast squares in front of great public
screens. The face on the screens was venerable and worthy of
veneration."
The Connoisseur tells his friend what he finds
particularly intriguing is the fact this white Art Deco building was
originally built as the headquarters for a theosophical society where
the leader was a sort of Aleister Crowly figure. And one of the main
missions of the society: to influence the future.
So, was the
woman's vision influenced by this charismatic man or his theosophical
society? For the Connoisseur, this thought-provoking question opens out
to larger questions pertaining to our relationship to the future. For
the philosophically inclined, a Valentine/Howard tale to savor.
Mark Valentine 
John Howard
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