The Oracle

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  Captain Karamanlis had heard the first volley of shots just as he was arriving at the edge of the western platform. He’d heard Vlassos’s voice calling him, but couldn’t make out what he was saying as his feet noisily scrambled over the pebbles.

  He had tried at first to climb up the pyramid, but the loose pebbles slid beneath him and he rolled back down to the base of the monument. He had decided to advance along the southern side of the mound, slipping between the huge slabs that once flanked the processional road.

  He finally reached the side of the eastern landing, hammered by the wind and sleet, from where he could see the dying light of the fire. He crept alongside an open-jawed stone lion guarding the tomb of King Antioch. As it dawned on him that he was looking at Vlassos’s rigid corpse, already covered by a veil of ice, a voice rang out from behind the statue, darker than the night and colder than the wind, deep and vibrant, as if it were coming from a throat of bronze.

  ‘What are you doing here, Captain Karamanlis?’

  And then the flash of eyes as blue as ice on a winter’s morning, the glint of a wolf’s smile. And he suddenly heard the warning of the kallikàntharos echoing in his head: It is he who administers death.

  He jumped out, firing and shouting like a madman: ‘You damned impostor, you’ve dragged me all the way here, but you’ll come to hell with me!’ But the man had disappeared just as quickly as he had appeared, and as he spun around, bewildered, he heard his name raining from above: ‘Karamanlis!’

  He turned and pointed his pistol to the sky and saw Claudio Setti standing on the knees of the headless statue of Zeus Dolichenus, already aiming at him. He felt paralysed and impotent, at the mercy of an implacable enemy. He shouted to save his life: ‘No! Wait! Heleni is alive and I know where she is!’ He had taken the photograph from his pocket and was waving it upwards: ‘Look! Heleni is alive!’ But the wind carried away his words and Claudio didn’t hear him. He raised his gun and fired: one shot hit Karamanlis at the centre of his collarbone, and another flung him, lifeless, between the paws of the stone lion.

  Claudio leapt to the ground and looked at his defeated enemies. He turned towards the stone lion: ‘Vlassos and Karamanlis are dead, Commander!’ he shouted.

  At that moment Michel appeared on the landing: he was soaking wet, his clothes torn, his hands dirty and bloody.

  ‘Your work is not yet over!’ shouted the voice behind him. ‘It is he who betrayed you! Give him his due and strike him down!’

  Pale, Claudio raised his weapon against Michel, who stood absolutely still, his hands at his sides. ‘I was deceived, Claudio. For the love of God, listen to me,’ he shouted. ‘Just listen to me for a moment and then kill me, if you want.’ His face was lined with tears. ‘Claudio, for the love of God, I’m Michel, I’m your friend.’

  ‘His cowardice caused Heleni to be tortured and raped. He deserves to die!’ thundered the voice that seemed to come from the lion’s mouth.

  Claudio raised the pistol again to aim, but just then Norman and Mireille appeared at the edge of the landing. Mireille cried out: ‘No! Claudio, no! You are not serving justice! You are making a human sacrifice! You have been chosen to immolate the bull, the boar and the ram! Look behind you, at the top of the pyramid, look! And spare your friend, Claudio. Spare him, for the love of God!’

  Norman had turned to stone and could neither move nor say a word.

  ‘It is he who betrayed you. He came up here with Karamanlis!’ The voice seemed to come from above, from the very top of the mound. Claudio pressed the trigger, but the hammer just clicked. The magazine was empty. He mechanically pulled the bow off his shoulder, nocked an arrow and aimed at Michel’s chest, while Mireille shouted desperately, her eyes filled with tears: ‘Look behind you, at the top of the hill!’

  Michel came to. ‘You’ve already killed me,’ he said, staring deeply at Claudio. ‘Now nothing matters any more. But I didn’t come up here with your enemies. I’ve been searching for you for all this time to humble myself before you, to ask you to forgive me for my weakness, for not having given my life for Heleni’s.’

  The bow trembled in Claudio’s hands, and he twisted his head back. In the swirling sleet he saw something implanted in the top of the mound: a boat’s oar! He shouted: ‘Commander!’

  The voice was close to him now: ‘I’m here, son.’

  ‘Commander, must I kill an unarmed man asking for my forgiveness?’

  He felt him at his side now: a powerful, dark presence. He turned to his right, and saw two glistening blue eyes veiled with tears: ‘You must do what your heart tells you. There’s no other way for humans . . . Farewell, my son.’

  Claudio listened to his slow footsteps; he felt his strength dissipating into the distance. He dropped the bow; the quiver and arrows rolled away on the stone. ‘Commander!’ he shouted. ‘I’ve always done what you asked of me. But this I couldn’t do. I could not do it!’

  He collapsed to his knees, and the wind died down as dawn rose over the boundless Mesopotamian plain, illuminating the top of the mountain with its pale light. He remained there as his friends hesitantly made their way towards him. They looked silently into each other’s eyes, overwhelmed with emotion, incapable of speaking or making the smallest movement. Drenched by the sleet, they looked like statues of ice. In the end, seeing that Claudio had not reacted nor said a word, they left, one after another, returning to the valley.

  Claudio remained alone on the great landing with the dead bodies of his enemies. He stood, picked up the bow and quiver and started down the western side. As he walked along the processional pathway, he remembered that Karamanlis had been waving something at him, yelling something before he died. He turned back and saw that his hand was still gripping a photograph. There was a date on the back, and the name of a place. Claudio looked at the girl’s beautiful face, her raven hair, her moist red lips, and put the photograph in his inside jacket pocket. He then continued down his road.

  24

  Ephira, 17 November, 10 p.m.

  ARI WAS SITTING at his work table after having cleared his dinner and washed the dishes. He was sorting out the ticket-office receipts for the excavation site and counting up the modest proceeds. He raised his glance to the window every now and then, listening to the sounds on the road and the distant rush of the river.

  The telephone suddenly began ringing. Three times and it fell still. Then it rang again: six times, six times, six times. Then silence.

  The old man was seized by a painful tremor. He curled forward and remained still for a long, long time. He finally got up, dried his eyes, noisily blew his nose and walked resolutely towards the Necromantion. He used a shovel to clear off a stone slab carved with the figure of a serpent, lifted it and descended into the underground chamber which so many years ago had accommodated the faltering step of Professor Harvatis. He switched on a torch and lit up a wooden chest in a corner of the chamber. He opened it and took out a superb mask of the purest gold: the solemn and majestic face of a dozing king. He brought it to the centre of the room and buried it, covering it with fine sand.

  ‘The time has not yet come, Commander, for you to end your long journey,’ he said in a low voice, his eyes moist. ‘There is still no place in this world for a long, serene old age, there are no happy peoples over which you may reign . . . Not yet. Another time, another year . . . Who knows . . .’

  He returned to his apartment in the guest house, and as he walked up the stairs he thought he heard, behind him, the dull thud of a stone door closing. He put his things in order, closed the account books, placed them neatly in a drawer, turned off the light and left.

  Athens, Milos’s Bar, 18 November, 8 p.m.

  ‘I’m telling you that behind those shutters is the proof of everything that I’ve told you. Norman, you just try to give me a logical explanation for what we saw and experienced on that mountain!’ Mireille sprang up from the bar table and turned away from Norman and Michel to hide her disappointment.

&n
bsp; ‘Mireille,’ said Norman, ‘we simply don’t have enough evidence. An investigation would have to be made . . .’

  Mireille pointed at the newspaper page which reported the deaths of Vlassos and Karamanlis. ‘Just look at this. Vlassos was born at Kalendzi, a few miles from Dodona, on March the fifteenth, 1938, so he’s a Pisces; that is the sign of the boar, according to the ancient zodiac, the same sign that distinguishes the oracle of Dodona. Karamanlis was born in Gura near Mount Cillene, identified with the sign of the bull. And his battle name was O Tàvros, the bull. And all of this was explained in Harvatis’s letter written ten years ago. I have the combination of the safe – do I have to be any clearer? I can take you in there, open the safe and show you that it’s all true. Look.’ She took a slip of paper from her wallet and laid it on the table: the numbers of the combination.

  Michel picked it up and looked at it without speaking. Then he took out a notebook and copied down the numbers one after another, drawing symbols next to them.

  ‘Oh my God, look!’ said Mireille suddenly. Norman and Michel joined her at the window: a big moving company truck was parking in front of 17 Dionysìou Street. Two men got out, opened the shutter with a key and went in, closing it behind them.

  ‘I’m not leaving here until I see what happens,’ said Mireille. ‘You two can do as you like.’

  They waited together. Every so often, Michel said, as if talking to himself: ‘Where could Claudio be? Will we ever see him again?’

  ‘Of course we’ll see him,’ Norman finally said. ‘In Italy, in France, maybe even here in Athens. He’s hiding somewhere now, waiting for his wounds to heal. And ours. But he’ll be back . . . I’m sure of it.’

  ‘You know something?’ said Michel. ‘As I was approaching the eastern landing at Nemrut Dagi I thought I heard Karamanlis yelling: ‘Stop! Stop! Heleni isn’t dead, Heleni’s alive!’ How could that be?’

  Norman shook his head. ‘It’s hard for me to believe, but nothing seems impossible any more. One thing is certain, in any case: if Heleni is alive, or if some part of her has survived, Claudio will find her. Wherever she is.’

  An hour later, the shutter at number 17 was opened again and the two men began to load the truck with a number of crates of varying sizes. When it was clear that they were about to close the shutter again and leave, Mireille ran out, followed by Norman and Michel.

  ‘Excuse me, sorry to bother you,’ she said. ‘We’re interested in renting this place. Can you tell us if the current lease is up?’

  ‘I’m sorry, miss,’ said the younger of the two, ‘I know nothing about that at all. We were just told to move this stuff out.’

  ‘Well, the former leaseholder could surely give us some information. Can you tell us where you’re taking his things?’

  ‘To the port of Piraeus, miss. We’re loading it on to a yacht that’s setting sail tonight.’

  ‘Thanks anyway,’ said Mireille.

  The two men got into the truck and started to drive off.

  Michel, who hadn’t said a word until then, suddenly started running after the movers: ‘Wait! Just a minute!’

  The driver saw him running in his rear-view mirror and stopped. ‘What is it, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘Listen, I . . . well, if you see the . . . the owner of these things that you’re taking away, tell him that I . . . I . . .’ He was biting his lower lip, incapable of finding the words. ‘That’s okay, it doesn’t matter,’ he finally said with a trembling voice. ‘It doesn’t matter . . .’

  The truck started up again and soon disappeared at the end of Dionysìou Street. The three friends went back into Milos’s Bar.

  ‘Well,’ said Norman. ‘Now we’ll never be able to find proof, Mireille. The truth is, all we’ll ever know is what we’ve seen: too much on the one hand, too little on the other. A man decides to punish his enemies. To do so, he exploits another man’s desire for revenge, using the rituals of ancient legend and myth to motivate or manipulate him. Ingenious, strange, even unique, but not incomprehensible: there’s no limit to human imagination.’

  ‘But there was no reason for him to want Michel to die,’ protested Mireille. ‘Except for the oracle inscribed on the vase of Tiresias.’

  ‘The truth is that we know nothing about him and we’ll never figure out his true motives,’ concluded Norman.

  ‘That’s not true,’ said Michel. ‘We know his name. It’s written in the combination for the safe.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ asked Norman, as Mireille looked at him disconcerted.

  ‘Look.’ Michel showed them the notebook page where he had written the safe combination. ‘In ancient Greek, numbers were written using the letters of the alphabet: alpha is one, beta is two, and so on. Look.’

  Norman took the notebook from his friend’s hand and looked at the transcription of the numbers in letters:

  ‘Oytis,’ he murmured, shaking his head. ‘Nobody. His name is “nobody”, then. What a strange coincidence.’

  They paid their bill. The waiter was new; the old waiter had quit and didn’t work there any more. They walked off in the rainy night, in silence. It was Mireille who spoke first.

  ‘Michel, I read the notes I found on your desk in your study at Grenoble before I left.’

  ‘You’ve told me that.’

  ‘There’s something that you wrote in the margin of one of the pages that just came to my mind. It said something like: “In the entire Mediterranean, wherever legend conserves the memory of the death of a Homeric hero, even a minor one, a cult has sprung up in his honour.” Why has there never been a cult which honours Odysseus in Ithaca, in his own homeland?’

  Michel seemed not to have heard the question. All at once he stopped, with a strange smile.

  ‘Why? Because Odysseus has never died,’ he replied. And he walked on, in silence.

  AUTHOR’S NOTES

  This story is a mixture – like the others I have written – of historical fact and reality and of imagination. Since, in this case, some of the ‘real’ elements are important parts of the story, both in the present and in the past, there are a few points I’d like to mention specifically.

  The pages regarding the Athens Polytechnic Battle were scrupulously reconstructed on the basis of actual documents, personal experiences and eyewitness reports by people whom I consider trustworthy, but they can under no circumstances be considered a historical account, because emotions played a far larger role than facts. The characters of the story, and the accompanying events, are completely imaginary.

  As far as references to antiquity are concerned, all of the historical sources quoted from are authentic (including the Oracles of the Dead),1 as are the Homeric scholia regarding the mysterious and never identified sites of ‘Kelkea’ and ‘Bouneima’. The identification of the Nemrut Dagi with ‘Bouneima’ is not a scientific certainty. I was merely intrigued by the fact that years ago, as I was doing research on another topic, I learned from local inhabitants that there was a place on the mountain whose name in Turkish meant ‘pasture of the oxen’, much like Bouneima, if we accept the etymological interpretation bous (oxen) plus némo (to put to pasture) as an alternative to (or alongside) the more commonly accepted bounòs (mountain). If we accept this identification as a fictional hypothesis, the mathematical relationship between the segments of the ‘axis of Harvatis’ (inspired by Jean Richer’s studies on astrological archaeology in his 1983 Geographie Sacrée du Monde Grec) is authentic, yet purely coincidental, as is the devil’s number 66.6, which emerged through pure – although quite curious – chance.

  As far as the epilogue to Odysseus’s adventures is concerned, many hypotheses have emerged throughout the ages. According to the Telegonia – a poem written by Eugammon of Cyrene in the sixth century BC – Telegonus, son of Odysseus and the enchantress Circe, sailing in search of his father, actually kills him in a duel, without realizing it is him. Eugammon thus fulfils the prophecy of Tiresias: ‘Death [will come to you] from the sea’, although the poet is m
ost likely unaware of the part which speaks of the hero’s journey inland. Telegonus later marries Penelope, and Telemachus, Circe, on the Isle of the Blessed.

  This version of the story does not seem as old as the Odyssey, but is probably crafted by Eugammon on the basis of Tiresias’s prophecy as expressed in the eleventh book of the Odyssey. Much more ancient – and perhaps directly connected to the Odyssey – was the lost poem called Thesprotis, from which the place names ‘Bouneima’ and ‘Kelkea’ are perhaps the only existing fragments.

  A scholium of Lykophron (Scheer, II, p. 253, l. 21), a Hellenistic poet, reports (perhaps on the basis of Theopompus, frgm. 354 Jacoby) two different hypotheses regarding the death of Odysseus. The first has the hero dying at Gortynia in Etruria and buried at Perge (Pyrgi), while according to the other tradition, Odysseus died in a city of Epirus called Eurytana (of which no trace remains). In reality, the hero’s end is still shrouded in mystery.

  As far as the topography of the places is concerned, it is largely accurate. I’ve taken some liberty in describing the caves of Dirou and their immediate surroundings. Portolagos is nowadays a town like any other; my description refers to the dank atmosphere of an overnight stay of mine under the stars, quite a few years ago, when the place was semi-deserted.

  Icarus is inspired by the Hewlett-Packard program Ibicus, just in the making when this book was first written.

  Dionysìou Street doesn’t exist. Not under that name, anyway.

  Translations of the passages from the Odyssey:

  Robert Fitzgerald, Book Nine, lines 366–7, and Book Eleven, lines 14–20, 23–8, 122–41, Anchor Books, Doubleday & Company Inc., 1963;

  Robert Fagles, Book Eleven, lines 471–3, Penguin Books, 1996.

  VALERIO MASSIMO MANFREDI is professor of classical archaeology at the Luigi Bocconi University in Milan. He has carried out a number of expeditions and excavations in many sites throughout the Mediterranean, and has taught in Italian and international universities. He has published numerous articles and academic books, mainly on military and trade routes and exploration in the ancient world.