The Oracle

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  Karamanlis sat down in the driver’s seat of his car, leaving the door open. He stretched his hand into the glove compartment and took out an unopened pack of cigarettes that had been there for months. He took one out and lit it. ‘To hell with it. They can’t be any more dangerous than the trap I’m about to walk into.’ He relished a long drag.

  ‘One thing, Karamanlis. You’ll have realized that I could have torn you to pieces at any time. I’ve played with you like a cat with a rat, just so that you know who sets the rules here. And now be good and do as I say.’ He turned around and began walking towards Stadiou Street. Karamanlis leaned out of the car.

  ‘Just one moment . . . Commander.’ The man stopped. ‘Were you ever on Mount Peristeri? I mean, did we ever meet somewhere around there?’

  He turned suddenly towards Karamanlis and his teeth gleamed, in the dark, in a wolf’s leer. ‘There were times,’ he said, ‘during the civil war, but I don’t remember if you were there with your battalion.’

  ‘No. I wasn’t,’ said Karamanlis. He closed the door and watched the man as he walked off with his long, even stride, his jacket collar turned up and his hat down over his eyes. He was painfully reminded of the words of the kallikàntharos on the wind-beaten peak of Mount Peristeri: ‘It is he who administers death’.

  Fine, so the only thing left to do was keep this appointment. What the devil. O Tàvros had always knocked off all the toughest and craftiest of his enemies. Gored them at the last minute, when they distractedly thought they had the situation in hand. And after all . . . Setti had never got close enough to know what the old bull was capable of.

  He switched on the radio and called headquarters: ‘Karamanlis here. Tell Sergeant Vlassos to get ready to leave with me. Tomorrow morning at six.’

  ‘With you, sir? Where to?’

  ‘It’s my own fucking business where to. You just tell him what I said.’ When he lifted his head the commander, or whoever the hell he was, had disappeared around the corner. He started up the car and headed home.

  The ‘commander’. He had heard plenty of talk about him during the resistance. A strange figure, no one knew exactly whose side he was on; he had been known to destroy entire police battalions, but he’d also harshly punished any excess on the part of the partisans. The people considered him a hero, a legend, although no one knew who he really was. He certainly knew about the operations that he, Karamanlis, had carried out in the area of Kastritza and other regions of the north at the head of his police division. Back when he was known as O Tàvros. So now the game was drawing to a close, and in one way or another a number of things would come to light.

  He parked in the usual place, walked slowly up the stairs and opened the door to his apartment. He took off his shoes and didn’t turn on the light, but his wife heard him anyway and scurried in slippers down the hall: ‘Is that you? Oh Holy Mother, do you know what time it is? And this smell? What is this smell?’

  MIREILLE REACHED OUT to the hatch and pushed it up gently. It was counterweighted and opened easily, and there she was: in the printer’s shop on 17 Dionysìou Street. Everything was in perfect order, as if work had just come to a stop for the night: the floor was clean and packs of paper were neatly stacked on the shelves. The press was in the corner. So this was where Periklis Harvatis’s article had been printed.

  She felt tired, exhausted by tension and lack of sleep. Her throat was dry and her heartbeat was irregular, making her feel as if she would suffocate.

  She got to her feet. Where was Michel right now? She had the panicky sensation that there was a threat hovering over him, like a hail cloud over a field of wheat. She walked around the little room and scanned the shelves; there were all kinds of things: documents, certificates, papers, electronic components, books, records, an old bouzouki.

  The room at the back of the shop was much bigger than the printing room itself and held the strangest assembly of objects that Mireille had ever seen. An old Lee-Enfield gun and an American revolver, an eighteenth-century manifesto of the Klephts against the Turks, the combat flag of a Byzantine dromond from the fourteenth century, a banner of the sacred battalion of Ypsilandis, old photographs, objets d’art of every type, antique weapons, paintings, prints, the oars and rudder of a boat, a fishing net, models of antique ships, a classical Attic red-figured cup, a late Mycenaean damascened blade, a game table . . .

  In the corner, a stack of articles; hundreds of copies, rather, of the same article. It was what she was looking for, the work of Harvatis: ‘Hypothesis on the necromantic rite in the Odyssey, Book XI’.

  Alongside was a folder with a typescript by the same author entitled: ‘Hypothesis on the position of the site called “Kelkea”, or, in other works, “Bounima” or “Bouneima”.’

  Those were the same names she’d seen in Michel’s notes in his apartment! She urged herself to remember the context: something about the final sacrifice of Odysseus.

  Mireille was completely worn out, but sensed that she had to sit down and squeeze all the meaning she could out of those pages, even from the most unimportant-looking expressions. She didn’t feel that she could take anything out of that room, which emanated a spirit of silent and intense sacredness; she wanted to leave no trace of her passage, and certainly didn’t want the inhabitant of that unique refuge – so jealous of his own solitude – to have any clue of where to come looking for her.

  She plunged into the manuscript, nervous and jittery, after having switched off the light in the printing shop. She looked at her watch: perhaps the waiter at the bar across the street was cleaning up and had noticed the light switching on and off for the second time that night and was wondering who to call. Wondering why the girl who had given him the thousand drachmas wasn’t answering the phone in her hotel.

  The article by Harvatis was obviously unfinished; actually, rather than a scholarly article, it was more of a collection of notes and observations:

  Comments of the classic sources which mention this problem:

  Aristarchus (Scholium H) mentions the name of the internal region of Epirus through which Odysseus must make his way: éis Bouniman è éis Kelkean (towards Bounima or towards Kelkea).

  Eustatius: the ancients (that is, Aristarchus and his school) refer to the ‘dark, barbarian sounds’ of the names of the sites – Bounima or Kelkea – where Odysseus was supposed to stop and render honour to Poseidon.

  Pausanias (I, 12) interprets the passage from Homer as if the men ‘who lived with meat unsalted’ were Epirotes in general, although those who lived on the coast must have been familiar with navigation. Scholia B and Q refer that in even the interior of Epirus, hales oryktoi (that is, rock-salt) did exist, but it is clear that the prophecy of Tiresias meant simply to refer to populations who lived so far from the sea that they had never been exposed to salt.

  Hence, the localization of the place in which Odysseus was to have offered sacrifice to Poseidon – in order to rid himself of the curse and deliver himself from the hostility of the gods – may be identifiable with Epirus, at least according to some scholars (Aristarchus and Pausanias). I believe this is questionable, for a number of reasons.

  First of all, in the ancient sources there seems to be some confusion between ‘Epirus’ (the region) and ‘épeiron’ (meaning continent), seeing that it was commonly held that Odysseus had to go deep into a continental area. Furthermore, according to Tiresias’s prophecy, the oar which Odysseus would carry on his back would be mistaken by a wayfarer for a winnowing fan, which was used to separate the wheat from the chaff. Yet where could wheat possibly have been grown among the bare mountains of Epirus?

  Moreover, there were certainly lakes in Epirus which were navigable, and thus boats and oars were perfectly familiar objects. And Epirus was the realm of the maternal grandfather of Odysseus, Autolicos, and thus quite familiar to him: why then would the theatre of the hero’s last gestures be veiled with such mystery in the oracle of Tiresias?

  The term Kelkea, which Pausanias
relates to the cult of Artemis Brauronia, suggests an Asian location, perhaps in Phrygia. In any case, inland Asia. And the other term as well – Bouneima, which seems to mean ‘pasture of the oxen’ – could refer to the high plains of Anatolia. But the word may also derive from ‘Bounòs’, or ‘mountain’ and simply indicate a mountain.

  What’s more, the ‘dark, barbarian sounds’ which Eustatius mentions would more likely refer to the inarticulate noises of some incomprehensible foreign language than to a recognizable Hellenic dialect like Epirote.

  Mireille’s head was spinning with all this puzzling information. She was convinced that it must mean something, something important, something connected to Michel. But what? She delved on. The pages which followed were covered with difficult-to-interpret sketches, isolated phrases, verses. And then again:

  I am practically certain that the necromantic rite of the Odyssey, Book XI can be localized in Ephira, where we find the source of the Acheron, the Stygian swamp and the Cimmerian promontory: it is there that the solution to the problem must be sought. And perhaps even the clues needed to reconstruct the final journey of Odysseus.

  Notes from his excavation journal followed with sketches, sections, stratigraphies and drawings of the objects found. Dense notes written in a neat, minute hand. She thought of the vase, the golden vase that Karamanlis had described to her. It had come from Ephira; Harvatis had almost certainly unearthed it himself. Why was there no mention of it?

  Mireille looked at her watch: it was three-thirty in the morning. She certainly didn’t want the owner of the place to surprise her there at this hour. She knew she couldn’t hold up under the intensity of that gaze. Mireille listened carefully, but there was not a sound to be heard: the place seemed completely isolated or soundproofed, and it was quite warm inside.

  She got to the end of the article without finding anything else that particularly attracted her attention. But right between the last page and the back cover was an envelope addressed in Harvatis’s hand, although the writing was very different: wavering, weak, scribbled:

  Kyrios Stàvros Kouras

  Odòs Dionysìou 17

  Athinai

  The envelope had been opened hurriedly and the paper was torn. Mireille took out the sheet of paper it contained and began to read:

  Ephira, 16 November 1973

  My dear friend,

  I fear that these are the last words I shall be allowed to say to you. For you I have defied the gate of the underworld. It is open now, and awaits the conclusion of this long, terrible story. Unfortunately, the gelid breath of those recesses has numbed me and snuffed out what little vitality was left in my veins. But at the same moment in which Erebus rose to snatch me away, as I clutched between my hands the vase of gold engraved with the images of the last adventure, something illuminated me for a brief instant. Perhaps the clairvoyance of he who knows he is abandoning life. The figures engraved on the vase spoke to me.

  The place at which it must all take place – the place called ‘Kelkea’ by some and ‘Bouneima’ by others – has its base where the black doves of Egyptian Thebes alighted on land to give origin to the most ancient oracles of the earth: Dodona and Siwa. The former is under the sign of the wild boar that today astrologers call the sign of Pisces. The latter is under the sign of the ram, Aries. Two of the victims who are to be sacrificed must come from these two places.

  Between those two points are two entrances to the other world: at Ephira, the place from which I write, and at Cape Tenaros. The distance which separates Ephira from Tenaros and the distance which separates Tenaros from Siwa are related in a magical, set numerical ratio. This ratio, which I represent here with the last strength that remains to me, expressed in a mathematical formula and in a graph, will take you to the place where the story must be ended:

  The Bull is the third victim and he was born on the slopes of Mount Cillene, the fulcrum on the earth of the astrological sign of Taurus. At the foot of the mountain, in the Stinphalis swamp, exists another entrance to Hades. All three of the victims must cross the waters of the Acheron before they are sacrificed.

  Certainly, a divinity who loves you left this message in the bowels of the earth, carved in gold, and willed me to find it. This is my viaticum, and may fortune provide for the rest. Farewell, Commander, chaire! To you, to whom with immense admiration I have dedicated my whole life,

  Periklis Harvatis

  She didn’t understand, but her eyes filled up with tears. She sensed the great, limitless devotion behind those words. A man’s life given for a friend, without any reward. She could feel the extreme, defenceless solitude of a fragile human being finding himself face to face with the gaping mouth of the icy, dismal mystery of death.

  She hurriedly recopied the graph which incorporated the axis of Harvatis – the same she had seen on Michel’s desk – into her notebook, along with the formulae which accompanied it. A sudden suspicion gave her a chill: Siwa! If her father had been telling the truth, Michel was born in Siwa and he was an Aries. No, what did that have to do with anything . . . There was no connection. The late hour, her emotional state and the suffocating atmosphere of that strange place were giving her hallucinations. She had to get out as soon as possible. How to deal with the dog, that was her next problem. Could she face that big black beast crouching in the garden, waiting to rip her throat out?

  Her heart suddenly stopped short as she heard the sound of steps, muffled and far away, but definitely footsteps. She switched off the lights in both rooms and flattened herself behind some of the shelves. The steps were drawing nearer and nearer, she could hear them coming from under the floor. Then they stopped and she heard the creaking of the hinge that opened the trapdoor into the print shop. Someone had turned on the light and was walking around in the next room. Steps, papers being shuffled, the handle turning . . . and there he was, his figure standing out darkly in the open doorway.

  He raised his hand to the light switch to turn on the bulb swinging from the ceiling, closing the door behind him. Mireille flattened herself even further against the wall, but realized that if he came just four, five more steps forward, he couldn’t help but see her. The light suddenly quivered and went out: the light bulb must have blown. The man walked back to the door and let the light from the other room flood in. He then went over to the left wall and moved a pack of paper from a shelf, revealing a little safe.

  He pressed out the combination on a little electronic keypad – Mireille could see the numbers out of the corner of her eye as they appeared on the display: 15 . . . 20 . . . 19 . . . 9 . . . 18. The safe opened and he put his hand inside, extracting a long black case with a couple of zippered closures, like a case for a musical instrument or a weapon. He turned off the light in the printer’s shop, then walked through the second room again in the dark, passing just a few steps away from Mireille, who stood holding her breath. He took an item off one of the shelves, as confidently as if he could see perfectly, and disappeared behind the door. Mireille hadn’t been able to see what he had taken.

  She listened to the sound of his footsteps as they faded away, then returned to the safe and tried the combination again: 15, 20, 19, 9, 18. The safe swung open and Mireille lit up the inside with the little torch she kept on her key ring. There was a booklet with a strange charcoal drawing on its cover: the heads of a boar, a bull and a ram. As she started turning the pages, her features contracted and her eyes darkened until she got to the last page. An expression of pure terror transformed her face, and she burst out crying.

  ‘No!’ she cried out, throwing the little booklet back into the safe as if she had touched a red-hot iron. She slammed it shut and ran crying towards the rear door. Still in the dark, she stumbled down a little stair and found herself in a sort of basement. Her torch beam lead her to an old coal chute which led outside. She climbed through it and out, under the drowsy eyes of a stray dog who was rummaging in a nearby garbage can. She found herself on Odòs Pallenes and began running, her heart poun
ding madly, towards Omonia Square. She stopped at the first telephone booth she could find, and called Michel’s hotel in Ephira. Norman answered.

  ‘Mireille? What’s wrong?’

  ‘Norman, pass me Michel, please. Even if he’s sleeping.’ A brief silence followed. ‘Norman, answer me! I have to talk to Michel.’

  ‘Michel’s not here, Mireille. He left this afternoon and I’ve been waiting for him since then. He went looking for Ari, but Ari’s not here any more, and he never came back. I’ve told the police and they’re looking for him. It seems that his car was seen heading towards Metsovon.’

  ‘Metsovon? Oh my God, no . . .’

  21

  Cape Sounion, 11 November, 6.30 a.m.

  ARI DROVE PAST the great temple of Cape Sounion as a milky glow was just beginning to colour the horizon. How many sailors for how many thousands of years had seen its grey bulk disappearing in the distance along with the homeland they longed for as they were swiftly snatched off by the north wind?

  He turned north, leaving the white spectres of the Doric columns behind him, and headed towards Marathon, until he found the little road that climbed up towards an isolated house at the edge of an oak forest.

  He got out of the car with a bundle in his hands, then rang the doorbell and waited for someone to answer. There was no wind, and the sky was still and grey.

  A few minutes later the door opened, and a man with long grey hair wearing a dark cotton robe came to the door.

  ‘The commander has sent me,’ said Ari.

  ‘I know,’ said the man. ‘Come in.’ And he led him past the small entryway, down a hall to the large unadorned room where he usually worked.