The Athenian Murders

by Jose Carlos Somoza

  'Did my father get you, too, to try to make me reconsider?'

  In the young man's gentle words Diagoras noted that respect (like a frightened, cornered animal abandoning its usual obedience and charging violently at its owners) was turning to annoyance. 'Good Antisus, don't be angry ,' he stammered, casting a withering glance at Heracles. 'My friend sometimes goes too far ... You mustn't worry, my boy, you've come of age, so your decisions, even if misguided, always deserve the greatest consideration.' He then whispered to Heracles: 'Would you come with me, please?'

  They hastily bade Antisus farewell. The argument began even before they were out of the building.

  'It's my money!' said Diagoras irritably. 'Or have you forgotten?'

  'But it's my job, Diagoras. Don't forget that either.'

  'I don't care! Can you explain your highly inappropriate remarks?' Diagoras was growing more and more angry. His bald head had turned quite red. He lowered his forehead, as if about to charge at Heracles. 'You offended Antisus!'

  'I fired an arrow in the dark and hit the bull's eye,' said the Decipherer calmly.

  Diagoras stopped him, pulling violently at his cloak. 'Let me tell you something. I don't care if you think people are merely papyri that you can read and solve like riddles. I'm not paying you to offend - and in my name! - one of my best students, an ephebe whose every lovely feature bears the word 'Virtue'... I disapprove of your methods, Heracles Pontor!'

  'I fear I disapprove of yours, too, Diagoras of Mardontes. Instead of questioning those two boys, you seemed to be composing a dithyramb in their honour. And all because you find them so beautiful. I think you confuse Beauty with Truth ...'

  'Beauty is part of Truth!'

  'Oh,' said Heracles, waving a hand dismissively, indicating that he didn't want to start a philosophical discussion.

  But again Diagoras tugged at his cloak. 'Listen to me! You're nothing but a miserable Decipherer of Enigmas. You simply observe material things, judge them and conclude that something happened this way or that, for this or that reason. But you don't arrive at the Truth itself, and you never will. You've never beheld it, nor had your fill of its vision of the absolute. Your skill consists merely in discovering shadows of the Truth. Antisus and Euneos are not perfect creatures, and neither was Tramachus, but I have seen into their souls, and I can assure you that a great deal of the Idea of Virtue shines within them . . . and it shines in their eyes, their beautiful faces, their harmonious bodies. Nothing on earth, Heracles, could be as resplendent as they are without possessing at least a little of the golden riches that come only from Virtue itself.' He stopped, as if ashamed at his impassioned speech. He blinked several times, his face quite red, adding more calmly: 'Don't insult the Truth with your intelligence, Heracles Pontor.'

  Somewhere in the emptiness of the devastated, rubble-strewn palaestra,25 someone cleared his throat: it was Eumarchus.

  Diagoras turned and headed impetuously towards the door. 'I'll wait outside,' he said.

  'By thundering Zeus, I've only ever heard two people argue like that when they were man and wife,' said Eumarchus, once the philosopher had gone. Inside his black sickle of a smile, a single obstinate tooth, curved like a small horn, persisted.

  25 The eidesis in this chapter is so powerful that it has a devastating effect on the location of the scene: the palaestra is 'strewn with rubble', destroyed by the passing of the literary 'beast'. The huge crowd seems to have disappeared. In all my years as a translator I've never seen an eidetic catastrophe of this kind. The anonymous author obviously wants the hidden images to be uppermost in his readers' minds and isn't remotely worried about the realism of the plot being jeopardised. (T.'s N.)

  'Don't be surprised, Eumarchus, if my friend and I end up getting married,' said Heracles, amused. 'We're so different that I think the only thing that binds us is love.' They laughed good-humouredly. 'Now, Eumarchus, if you don't mind, let's take a little walk and I'll tell you why I asked you to wait...'

  They strolled around the gymnasium, which was strewn with rubble after the recent onslaught. Violent charges had cracked the walls in places; javelins and discuses lay among shattered furniture; colossal footprints were visible in the sand; the floor tiles were covered with the skin that had fallen away from the walls - huge limestone flowers the colour of lilies. The fragments of a vessel lay buried beneath the wreckage. On one, the hands of a young girl, her arms raised, palms facing upwards, appeared to be signalling for help or warning of imminent danger. A dust-cloud swirled in the air.26

  'Ah, Eumarchus,' said Heracles as they finished their conversation, 'how can I pay you for this favour?'

  'By paying me,' answered the old man. They laughed again.

  'One thing more, good Eumarchus. I noticed that there was a small, caged bird on the shelf of your pupil's friend Euneos. A sparrow, a gift typically sent by a lover to his beloved. Do you know who Euneos' lover is?'

  'By Phoebus Apollo, I don't know about Euneos, Heracles, but Antisus has received an identical gift, and I can tell you it was from Menaechmus, the sculptor poet. He's besotted!' Eumarchus tugged at Heracles' cloak and lowered his voice. 'Antisus told me about it some time ago, but he made me swear by all the gods that I would tell no one.'

  Heracles thought for a moment. 'Menaechmus . . . Yes, the last time I saw that eccentric artist was at Tramachus' funeral, and I remember being surprised that he was there. So Menaechmus gave Antisus a little sparrow ...'

  'Are you surprised?' shouted the old man in his rough voice. 'By Athena's azure eyes, I'd give that beautiful Alcibiades with the golden hair an entire nest! Though being a slave and at my age, I doubt the gift would get me anywhere!'

  'Right, Eumarchus,' said Heracles, looking suddenly cheerful, 'I have to leave. But do as I told you ...'

  'Continue paying me as you have, Heracles Pontor, and your order is as good as saying to the sun, "Rise every day.'"

  26 The author certainly likes to play with his readers. Here we have proof that I'm right, disguised yet perfectly identifiable: the 'girl with the lily', another, extremely important eidetic image in this novel! I don't know what it means, but here she is (her presence is unmistakable: note the proximity of the word 'lilies' to the detailed description of the hands of the 'girl' painted on a buried pot fragment). The discovery moved me to tears, I have to admit. I stopped work and went over to Elio's house. I asked whether it would be possible to see the original manuscript of The Athenian Murders. He said I should talk to Hector, our publisher. He must have seen something in my eyes, because he asked me what was the mattter. 'There's a girl in the text calling for help,' I told him. 'And you're going to save her?' came the mocking rejoinder. (T.'s N.)

  They made a detour to avoid the Agora, which would be packed at that time of the evening because of the Lenaea. Even so, their progress was hindered by an accumulation of public games, obstacles caused by improvised farces, a labyrinth of entertainments and the slow, violent crowd charging at them. They walked in silence, both deep in thought. At last, as they came to the district of Escambonidai where Heracles lived, he said: 'Please accept my hospitality for the night, Diagoras. My slave Ponsica is not too bad a cook, and a leisurely meal at the end of the day is the best way of gathering strength for the next.'

  The philosopher accepted his invitation. As they entered Heracles' dark garden, Diagoras said: 'I would like to apologise. I should have expressed my disagreement more discreetly at the gymnasium. I apologise for wounding you with unnecessary insults.'

  'You're my client and you're paying me, Diagoras,' said Heracles, as calmly as always. 'Any problems I have with you, I consider part of the job. As for your apology, I accept it as a gesture of friendship. But it, too, is unnecessary.'

  As they crossed the garden, Diagoras thought: What a cold man. Nothing seems to touch his soul. How can someone who cares nothing for Beauty and who is never, not even occasionally, carried away by Passion, arrive at the Truth?

  As they crossed the ga
rden, Heracles thought: I have yet to determine whether this man is simply an idealist or an idiot as well. In any case, how can he boast of having discovered the Truth, if he sees nothing of what goes on around him?27

  Suddenly, the front door of the house opened violently and Ponsica's dark form appeared. Her featureless mask was as blank as ever, but she began gesticulating to her master with unusual energy.

  'What's the matter? A visitor...' deciphered Heracles. 'Calm yourself, you know I can't read you when you're agitated. Start again.' An unpleasant snort came from inside the dark house, followed immediately by extremely high-pitched barking. 'What's that?' Ponsica gestured frantically. 'The visitor? My visitor is a dog? Oh, a man with a dog . . . But why did you let him in while I was out?'

  27 I've really enjoyed translating this passage, as I think I have something of both protagonists in me. I wonder, can someone like me, to whom Beauty matters, who is carried away from time to time by Passion, and yet makes sure that nothing of what goes on around him goes unnoticed, discover the Truth? (T.'s N.)

  'Don't blame your slavewoman,' bellowed a powerful voice with a strange accent from inside the house. 'But if you think she should be punished, tell me and I'll leave.'

  'That voice . . .' muttered Heracles. 'By Zeus and aegis-bearing Athena!'

  The man, who was huge, emerged energetically from the doorway. His beard was so thick it was impossible to tell if he was smiling. A small, frightening dog with a deformed head appeared, barking, at his feet. 'You may not recognise my face, Heracles,' said the man, 'but I'm sure you remember my right hand.' He held out his hand, palm upwards: the skin at the wrist was violently twisted into a knot of scars, like the flank of an old animal.

  'Oh, by the gods .. .' whispered Heracles.

  The two men greeted each other warmly. Afterwards, the Decipherer turned to an open-mouthed Diagoras: 'This is my friend Crantor, of the deme of Pontor,' he said. 'I told you about him. It was he who placed his right hand in the fire.'

  The dog was called Cerberus. At least, that's what the man called it. It had a huge forehead, creased into folds, like an old bull, and it bared an unpleasant set of teeth inside a pink mouth that contrasted with the sickly whiteness of its face. It had the cunning, bestial little eyes of a Persian viceroy. Its body was a small slave dragging itself after its cephalic master.

  The man's head, too, was very large, but his tall, sturdy body was a column worthy of such a capital. Everything about him was exaggerated, from his manner to his size. He had a high forehead and large nostrils, and his big face was almost entirely covered by a beard; thick veins ran over his immense tanned hands; torso and belly were similarly huge; his feet were solid, almost square, and his toes all appeared to be exactly the same length. He wore an enormous, patched grey cloak, evidently a faithful companion during his travels, as it moulded itself stiffly to his body.

  In a way, man and dog resembled each other. There was, in both, a gleam of violence in their eyes; when they moved, it took one by surprise and it was difficult to predict where their movements would take them, for it seemed that they were unaware of it themselves. And both had a voracious, and complementary, appetite, as anything that one rejected was furiously devoured by the other, or sometimes the man picked up a bone from the floor that the dog hadn't finished gnawing and completed the task in a few quick bites.

  And both man and dog smelt the same.

  Reclining on one of the couches in the cenacle and holding a bunch of black grapes captive in his huge hands, the man was talking. His voice was thick, deep, with a strong foreign accent.

  'What can I tell you, Heracles? What can I recount of the wonders that I've seen, the marvels that my Athenian eyes have witnessed and that my Athenian reasoning would never have accepted? You ask many questions, but I have no answers. I'm not a book, though I'm full of strange tales. I've travelled across India and Persia, Egypt and the kingdoms of the south, beyond the Nile. I've been to caves where lion-men dwell, and I've learned the violent language of serpents that think. I've walked barefoot over the sands of oceans that opened before me and closed behind me, like doors. I've watched black scorpions scratch their secret symbols in the dust. And I've seen magic bring death, and the many forms daemons take to manifest themselves to sorcerers, and I've heard the spirits of the dead speak through their loved ones. I swear, Heracles, there is a world outside Athens. And it is infinite.'

  The man seemed to create silence with his words, like a spider weaves a web with thread from its belly. When he stopped talking, nobody spoke immediately. A moment later, the spell broke and the lips and eyelids of his listeners sprang to life.

  'I'm delighted to see, Crantor,' said Heracles, 'that you have managed to fulfil your original aim. When I embraced you in Piraeus all those years ago, not knowing when I would see you again, I asked for the umpteenth time why you were choosing to go into exile. And I remember that you answered, also for the umpteenth time: "I want to be surprised every day." It would seem that you have succeeded.' Crantor grunted, no doubt signifying agreement. Heracles turned to Diagoras, who had remained silent and obedient on his couch, finishing his wine. 'Crantor and I are from the same deme and have known each other since childhood. We were educated together, and although I became an ephebe before him, we took part in identical missions during the war. Later, when I married, Crantor, who was extremely jealous, decided to travel the world. We bade each other farewell and so . . . until today. In those days we were separated only by our desires.' He paused and his eyes glinted with happiness. 'Do you know, Diagoras? In my youth, I wanted to be a philosopher, like you.'

  Diagoras expressed sincere surprise.

  'And I, a poet,' said Crantor in his powerful voice, also addressing Diagoras.

  'But he ended up becoming a philosopher—' 'And he a Decipherer of Enigmas!'

  They laughed. Crantor's was a dirty, awkward laugh. Diagoras thought it sounded like a collection of other people's laughs, acquired on his travels. He himself simply smiled politely, while Ponsica, shrouded in silence, removed the empty platters from the table and poured more wine. It was now dark inside the cenacle, save for the light of the oil lamps picking out the faces of the three men, creating the illusion that they were floating in the darkness of a cave. Cerberus crunched ceaselessly and, occasionally, the violent cries of the crowds running through the streets shot, like lightning, through the windows.

  Crantor refused Heracles' offer of a bed for the night. He explained that he was only passing through the City on his life of constant travel; he was heading north, beyond Thrace, to the barbarian kingdoms, in search of the Hyperboreans, and didn't intend to remain in Athens more than a few days; he wished to amuse himself at the Lenaea and go to the theatre -'To the only good theatre in Athens: the comedies.' He said he had found a boarding house that would tolerate Cerberus. The dog barked hideously upon hearing its name. Heracles, who had no doubt drunk too much, pointed to the dog and said: 'You've ended up married, Crantor. You, who always criticised me for taking a wife. Where did you meet your lovely partner?'

  Diagoras almost choked on his wine. But Crantor's amiable reaction confirmed his suspicion that the impetuous current of a close childhood friendship, mysterious to the eyes of others, flowed between Crantor and the Decipherer, and that their years of distance and the strange experiences that separated them had not quite succeeded in stemming it. Not quite, because Diagoras also sensed - he couldn't have said how, but he often had such impressions - that neither was entirely at ease with the other: they had to return to the children they once were in order to understand, and even bear, the adults they now were.

  'Cerberus has lived with me longer than you can imagine,' said Crantor. His voice was different, lacking its usual violence, as if he were lulling a newborn baby to sleep. 'I found him on a quay. He was alone like me, so we decided to join destinies.' He glanced over at the dark corner where the dog was chewing violently, adding, to Heracles' amusement: 'He's been a good wife, I ass
ure you. He shouts a lot, but only at strangers.' And he stretched out an arm and patted the small white patch affectionately. The animal barked shrilly in protest.

  After a pause, Crantor went on: 'About Hagesikora, your wife . ..'

  'She died. The Moirai decreed that she should have a long illness.'

  There was silence. At last, Diagoras said he must leave.

  'Don't do so on my account.' Crantor raised his huge, burnt hand. 'Cerberus and I will soon be off.' And almost without transition, he asked: 'Are you a friend of Heracles?'