excerpt from beginning of Chapter 1 ©

 

"What you can’t speak about truthfully, you must pass over in silence.”

 

“What are you saying? If we can’t tell the truth, we should be quiet?”

 

“I didn’t say we.”

 

“No one speaks the truth. Ever. Get that straight, you horny bastard. Men are liars, so your advice is we should all shut up. If you had it your way, we’d be silent. We’d all be mutes. All men are liars.”

 

“Are you certain? Is that what you believe? Do you understand what you’re saying? You don’t understand, do you? You will.”

 

“I did. I understood before you muddled on about truth and silence and confused me. For someone who says we shouldn’t talk if we can’t tell the truth, you go on like a bad dream. Follow your own rules. Shut up.”

 

“I didn’t say we. I did say to pass over in silence what couldn’t be said truthfully. I did not say to silence truth. Silence your falsehood and lies.”

 

“Follow your own rule, dammit.”

 

“Rule?”

 

“What is it, then? What does 'What you can’t speak about truthfully you must pass over in silence' mean? Is it just a moral suggestion?”

 

“Can morality be anything else? You just don’t understand.”

 

“You’re a quietist. That’s it. If truth is silent, why do you talk so much?”

 

“You can’t understand because you hear what you want to hear. Your understanding is limited to confusion.”

 

The Minotaur looked up into the blue. Out of it, he drew a thought. He continued. “Very limited. This will be difficult and take time. What you can’t speak about truthfully, you will learn, you have no choice but to pass over in silence. Your lessons will be neither easy nor pleasant. You’re too educated for that. When you do understand what I’m saying, it will not mean what you believe it means now.”

 

“More talk, more confusion,” I said. “Why am I a prisoner here?”

 

“You believe you are the author of all things. Vain mortal, it is not you who discovered the Minotaur. It is the Minotaur who discovered you. Here, at least, I am the author of all things. This is the Labyrinth.”

 

“Is this a contest? Are we fighting over who’ll control the story? What makes you think you’ll win?”

 

“It’s not a contest or fight. It’s a dance. Besides, I have experience in the Labyrinth. For me, its deceptions are routine.”

 

“You’re still here, not out there.”

 

“I was put here at birth. No choice given. Confusion is a comfortable home. I live in it. The Labyrinth is my home. Free choice is yours to bring about your own disaster, not mine. My world has no freedom. Every act, every word, every thought is set down and cannot be altered. You entered here of your own free, confused choice and it is here that I discovered you. You are part of my story.”

 

“I don’t accept that, Asterion. I won’t accept your explanation that this all started and continues in my confusion.”

 

“When you look like you’re listening, you’re really dumbfounded, aren’t you? You don’t know what to make of this all, do you? You have no idea about what this all means. You believe you are protected by your face because you appear intelligent. I said appear. People have always assumed you understood them because of your appearance. It’s easy to hide ignorance in appearance. At times, your confusion looks like contemplation to others. Nature gave you a contemplative look so that you could survive in a world of genuinely ravenous intellectuals—a ruse to protect you from intellectual predators. Nature painted enormous eyes on the wings of fragile butterflies to protect them. Predators see the painted eyes as windows into a dangerous, ravenous soul. Looking in, they fancy they see a large, hungry animal and they retreat. The predators are half right. There is no large animal behind those painted eyes, of course, but the little butterfly is as ravenous as the great predator. The butterfly’s body is small, but he peers through small eyes that contain a ferocious appetite.”

 

“I’m a deceptive butterfly?”

 

“You’re not a butterfly. Let’s begin again where we started. Right here,” Asterion said. He pointed at the floor. “Pay attention. Though it is difficult for you to understand, what I am telling you is obvious. Be alert. Let me tell you again about the dance floor Daedalus made here and why it was made.”

 

“I do understand you. You’re telling me that this is a dance floor, for chrissake. The Palace of Knossos is the Labyrinth and this central atrium is a dance hall. You’ve said this all before a million times. This is a dance floor. That’s the point, isn’t it? I understand, you see. I get it. I just don’t believe it.”

 

“Truth known through belief or understanding is identical. The prey discovered by the predator is the same frightened dinner whether smelled or tasted. Separating belief and understanding is your first problem. You won’t go anywhere until you get over that sort of hairsplitting.”

 

“This is a dance floor?”

 

“That’s right. Always was. Was built to be.”

 

“A place of joy and self-expression? A place of relaxation and—”

 

“Yes.”

 

“You’re telling me that the Labyrinth is a dance hall? That’s not easy to believe or understand.”

 

“It will not come easy for you. You have too much education. Before you know the truth, you will find unlearning unpleasant.”

 

“But the Labyrinth is an awful place. What kind of joyous dance could happen here?”

 

“The dance macabre.”

 

“Bullshit.”

 

“Watch your words, mortal.”

 

“I didn’t mean anything.”

 

“Say what you mean, mean what you say. That’s truth. If you cannot speak the truth, remain silent. When you know this, you will be silent. When you are silent, you will be free.”

 

“You’re telling me that this is a dance floor and that the dance of death is joyous. This gloomy atrium looks like a crypt. You say it was built for lively dances. The elegantly painted entrances around us tell a different story. They are as narrow as coffins. Coffins that lead into endless hallways. A graveyard of hallways. You are a very strange fucker.”

 

“Gloomy?”

 

“Get to the point. You’re trying to convince me my eyes and ears and nose are liars. This place smells like a stable. It’s morbid. Ugly echoes are swallowed by ridiculous hallways that go on forever. With the exception of this opening you call a dance floor, the whole damn place is nothing but hallways. And this, you say, is a place of joy? I can see it as a place of death, sure, even the dance of death, if you insist, but joyous?"

 

“For everyone who enters here except me, the visit ends in joy. For everyone who leaves, and all eventually leave, it is a joyous place—for all except me.”

 

“The Labyrinth is a damn dance hall?”