The morning of the Autumn Bacchanal dawned bright and clear--thanks to
the intervention of the Pantheon. In New York, the leaves were only just
beginning to turn, and the sun was still high enough in the sky to make
the afternoons warm and pleasant. Zeus All-Father had promised good
weather for the festival, and a strong, warm wind from the Gulf of
Mexico was moving out the crisp autumn air before the sun had risen an
hour above the horizon.
The practicing that had gone on in thousands of homes throughout the
city was at an end. The Autumn Bacchanal was here at last, and the
Beginning Service, which had started in the little Temple-on-the-Green
right at dawn, when the sun's rays had first touched the tops of New
York's towers, was approaching its end. The people clustered in the
building, and the incomparably greater number scattered outside it, were
feeling the first itch of restlessness.
Soon the Grand Procession would begin, starting as always from the
Temple-on-the-Green and wending its slow way northward to the upper end
of Central Park at 110th Street. Then the string of worshippers would
turn and head back for the Temple at the lower end of the Park, with
fanfare and pageantry on a scale calculated to do honor to the God of
the festival, to outshine not only every other festival, but every past
year of the Autumn Bacchanal itself.
The Autumn Bacchanal was devoted to the celebration of the harvest, and
more specifically the harvest and processing of the grape. All the
wineries for hundreds of miles around had shipped hogshead after
hogshead and barrel after barrel of fine wine--red, white, rose, still,
or sparkling--as joyous sacrifice to Dionysus/Bacchus, and in thanks
that the fertility rites of the Vernal Bacchanal had brought them good
crops. Wine flowed from everywhere into the city, and now the immense
reserves were stacked away, awaiting the revels. Even the brewers and
distillers had sent along their wares, from the mildest beer to vodka of
120 proof, joining unselfishly in the celebration even though,
technically, they were not under Dionysian protection at all, but were
the wards of Ceres, the Goddess of grain.
Celebrants, liquors, chants, preparations, balloons, confetti, edibles
and all the other appurtenances of the festival spiraled dizzyingly
upward, reaching proportions unheard of throughout history. And, in a
back room at the Temple-on-the-Green, the late William Forrester sat,
trying to forget all about them, and suffering from a continuous case of
nerves.
Diana marched up and down in front of him, smacking her left fist into
her calloused little right palm. "Now listen," she said crisply. "I know
you're all hot and bothered, kid, but there's no reason to be. You're
doing fine. They love you out there."
"Sure I am," Forrester said, unconvinced.
"Well, you are," Diana said. "You just got to have confidence, that's
all. Keep your spirits up. Tried singing?"
"Singing?"
"Singing, kid. Raises the spirits."