The Athenian Murders

by Jose Carlos Somoza

  The thought that my father might have plagiarised a poem by Philotextus is still tormenting me! Montalo says: ‘Translate!’ (T’sN)

  'I'm going to tell you ... a secret,' said Crantor. 'Nobody ... knows ... Only a few ... brothers ... Kyon is ... nothing but... water, honey and ...' he paused and licked his lips.'... a little aromatic wine.'

  His smile widened. Blood ran from the wound to his left cheek caused by the nail. He added: 'So what do you think, Heracles? The kyon is ... nothing ...'

  Heracles leaned against the wall. He said nothing, listening to Crantor's breathless whispers. 'They all believe that... it's a drug ... so when they drink it, they're transformed . . . they become enraged . . . they lose their minds . . . and do . . . what we expect them to ... as if they really had taken a drug ... All, except for you ... Why?'

  Because I only believe in what I can see, thought Heracles. But, too weak to speak, he didn't reply. 'Kill me,' said Crantor. 'No.'

  'Cerberus, then . . . Please ... I don't want him to suffer.' 'No,' said Heracles again.

  He dragged himself to the other wall, where Diagoras lay. The philosopher's face was covered in bruises and he had a deep gash on his forehead, but he was alive. And his eyes were open and alert.

  'Come on,' said Heracles.

  Diagoras didn't seem to recognise him, but he allowed himself to be guided by him. They stumbled out of the cave into the night, and the sound of Crantor's dog barking in pain was buried at last.

  The moon was hanging, round and golden, in the black sky, when the patrol found them. A little earlier, leaning on Heracles for support, Diagoras had begun talking.

  'They forced me to drink their concoction ... I don't remember much after that, but it was as they predicted. It was ... How can I describe it? I lost all control, Heracles ... I felt a monster writhe inside me - a huge, raging serpent . . .'He went on, panting, with reddened eyes, recalling his madness: 'I started shouting and laughing. I cursed the gods. I think I even insulted Master Plato!'

  'What did you say?'

  After a pause, Diagoras replied with obvious effort: '"Get away from me, satyr.'" He turned to Heracles, deeply unhappy. 'Why did I call him a satyr? How awful!'

  The Decipherer said comfortingly that he should blame it all on the potion. Diagoras agreed, adding: 'After that, I started dashing my head against the wall, until I lost consciousness.'

  Heracles thought of what Crantor had said about the kyon. Had he been lying? It was quite likely. But, then, why had it had no effect on him? On the other hand, if the kyon really was no more than water, honey and a little wine, why did it provoke such startling bouts of madness? Why had it made Eumarchus kill himself? Why had it affected Diagoras? And something else was troubling him: should he tell the philosopher what Crantor had revealed?

  He decided to remain silent.

  They ran into the soldiers on the Sacred Way. Heracles saw the torches and called out. The captain knew of the situation thanks to the scroll that Heracles had had delivered to the archon. He asked if they knew where the cult members might be, for their only known meeting place - the house of the widow Itys - had been vacated by its occupants with suspicious speed. Heracles did not squander words, for at that moment, with exhaustion hanging from his body like a hoplite's armour, they seemed like gold. He requested that some of the soldiers escort Diagoras back to the City where he could be seen by a doctor, and offered to lead the captain and the rest of his men to the cave. Confused and exhausted, Diagoras protested weakly, but then agreed. In the torchlight, the Decipherer soon found the path back to the cave.

  Near the cave, which was in a forest near Lycabettus, one of the soldiers discovered a group of horses tethered to trees and a large cart full of cloaks and provisions. The cult members could not be far away, so the captain ordered his men to unsheathe their swords and approach the cave entrance with caution. Heracles had explained what had happened and told them what to expect, so it came as no surprise when they found Crantor's body, lying mute and motionless in a pool of blood, just as the Decipherer had described. Cerberus was a shrivelled creature whimpering quietly by his master's feet.

  Heracles didn't wish to know whether Crantor was still alive, so he stayed back while the others approached the body. The dog growled at them menacingly. The soldiers burst out laughing, relieved at the unexpected greeting, for the combination of rumours about the sect and their own imaginings had terrified them. The ridiculous presence of the deformed little animal eased the tension. They taunted the dog for a while, feigning to strike it, until the captain drily ordered them to stop. So they slit its throat without more ado, just as they had done to Crantor. Crantor's death had given rise to an amusing anecdote, which was to be repeated often among the regiment: while his companions were busy with the dog, one of the soldiers went to Crantor and held his sword to his thick neck. Another soldier asked: 'Is he alive?'

  And, as he slit Crantor's throat, the first soldier replied: 'No.'

  The others followed the captain into the depths of the cave. Heracles went with them. The corridor opened out into a large chamber. The Decipherer had to admit that, with its narrow entrance, it was an ideal place for forbidden worship. And it had obviously been used recently: clay masks and black cloaks were strewn about, together with weapons and a large supply of torches. Strangely, there were neither statues of gods, nor mounds of stones, nor religious symbols of any kind. This didn't attract his attention at the time, for something else drew all gazes. It was found by a soldier in the vanguard who alerted the captain with a shout. The patrol came to a halt.

  They looked like lumps of meat hanging in the Agora,intended for the banquet of an insatiable Croesus. In the torchlight they appeared bathed in gold. There were at least a dozen naked men and women hanging by their ankles on hooks in the rock walls. Their bellies were slit open and their entrails hung out like mocking tongues or tangles of dead snakes. Beneath each body there was a lumpy heap of clothing, and blood, and a short sword.139

  'They've had their entrails torn out!' a young soldier exclaimed, and the echo repeated his words with increasing horror.

  139 The macabre sight of the cult members' bodies mirrors, eidetically, the tree of the 'Apples of the Hesperides', hanging 'bathed in gold', as a final image. (T.'s N.)

  "They did it to themselves,' somebody behind him said, in measured tones. 'The wounds run from side to side, not top to bottom, which would indicate that they cut open their bellies while hanging upside down.'

  Wondering who had spoken, the soldier turned and, in the wavering torchlight, saw the fat, weary figure of the man who had led them there. (Who was he exactly? A philosopher perhaps?) As if attaching little importance to his own reasoning, the man now walked over to the mutilated bodies.

  'How could they ...' murmured another soldier.

  'A bunch of madmen,' said the captain, settling the matter.

  The fat man (a philosopher?) spoke again. Though he whispered, they all heard him clearly: 'Why?'

  He stood beside one of the corpses - a woman, of mature years but still handsome, her intestines spilling over her chest like the folds of a peplos. The man, whose head was level with hers (he could have kissed her on the lips, had such an aberrant thought crossed his mind), appeared deeply distressed, so nobody wished to disturb him. While they began the unpleasant task of taking down the bodies, several of the soldiers heard him muttering in increasing desperation, still beside the corpse: 'Why? Why? Why?'

  Then, the Translator said: 140

  140 'The text is incomplete!'

  'Why do you think that?' asks Montalo.

  'Because it ends with the sentence: 'Then, the Translator said'.' 'No,' says Montalo. He looks at me strangely. 'The text is complete.'

  'Do you mean there are pages hidden somewhere?'

  'Yes.'

  'Where?'

  'Here,' he answers, with a shrug.

  My bewilderment seems to amuse him. He asks abruptly: 'Have you found the key?' />
  I think a moment and stammer: ‘Is it the poem?' 'And what does the poem mean?'

  After a pause, I reply: 'That the truth can't be rationalised ... Or that the truth is hard to find . . .'

  Montalo looks disappointed. 'We already know it's difficult to find the truth,' he says. 'That conclusion can't be the Truth ... because, in that case, the Truth would be nothing.. And there has to be something, doesn't there? Tell me, what's the final idea, the key to the text?'

  'I don't know!' I shout.

  He smiles, bitterly. 'Could your own anger be the key?' he says. 'Maybe the rage that you feel towards me ... or the pleasure you experienced as you imagined yourself lying with the hetaera ... or the hunger you endured when I was late with your food ... or the sluggishness of your bowels . . . Maybe they were the only keys. Why look for them in the text? They're in our own bodies!'

  'Stop playing with me!' I shout back. 'I want to know what the link is between this novel and my father's poem!'

  Montalo's face becomes serious and he says wearily, as if reading from a text: 'As I told you, the poem is by Philotextus of Chersonnese, a Thracian writer who lived in Athens in his later years and who visited Plato's Academy. Using his own poem as a basis, Philotextus created the eidetic images of The Athenian Murders. Both works were inspired by real events that took place in Athens at that time, in particular the collective suicide of the members of a cult very similar to the one described here. It had a profound effect on him. He considered such things proof that Plato was wrong - we don't choose the bad out of ignorance but on impulse, because of something unknown that lies within all of us and which cannot be reasoned away or explained in words.'

  'But history has proved Plato right!' I cry. 'Men in our time are idealists, devoting themselves to thinking and reading and deciphering texts. Many of us are philosophers or translators... We firmly believe in the existence of Ideas that we can't perceive with our senses... The best of us govern cities ... Men and women are equals. The world is at peace. Violence has been completely eradicated and—'

  The look on Montalo's face is making me nervous. I interrupt my emotional speech and ask: 'What's the matter?'

  Sighing deeply, with moist, reddened eyes, he replies: 'That's one of the things Philotextus set out to prove with his novel - the world you describe, the world in which we live, our world, doesn't exist. And will probably never exist.' And he adds gloomily: 'The only world that exists is the world of the novel you've translated: Athens after the war, a city full of madness, ecstasy and irrational monsters. That is the real world, not ours. That's why I said The Athenian Murders influenced the existence of the universe.'

  I stare at him. He seems to mean it, though he's smiling. 'Now I really do think you're completely insane!' I say.

  'No, son. Try to remember.'

  And he smiles kindly now, as if we share the same misfortune. He says: 'Do you remember, in Chapter Seven, the bet between Philotextus and Plato?'

  'Yes. Plato claims that a book containing the five elements of knowledge can never be written. But Philotextus isn't so sure ...'

  That's right. Well, The Athenian Murders is the result of the bet. Philotextus thought the task a difficult one - how to create a work that included the five Platonic elements of knowledge? The first two would be easy: the "name" is simply the name of things, and the "definition", the sentences relating to those things. Any normal text contains both these elements. But the third, the "image", was more of a problem - how to create "images" that would be more than mere "definitions", forms of beings and things beyond written words? So Philotextus invented "eidesis" . . .'

  'What do you mean' invented'?' I interrupt incredulously.

  Montalo nods gravely. 'Philotextus invented "eidesis". It was a way of making his images fluent, independent.. . not linked to the text but to the reader's imagination. One chapter, for instance, might contain the figure of a lion, or a girl with a lily!'

  This is all so preposterous that I have to smile. 'You know as well as I do,' I say, 'that eidesis is a literary device used by a number of Greek writers—'

  'No!' interrupts Montalo impatiently. 'It's an invention and it appears nowhere but in this novel! Let me go on and you'll understand. The third element, then, was dealt with . . . But the trickiest ones remained. How to achieve the fourth, "intelligence or knowledge of the thing"? Obviously, a voice outside the text was needed, a voice that would "discuss" the text as it progressed ... a character watching the plot develop from a distance . . . But this character couldn't be alone, since a "dialogue" was required. So it was essential to have at least two characters outside the work. But who could they be, and how could they be introduced to the reader?'

  Montalo pauses and raises his eyebrows, amused. He continues: 'Philotextus found the solution in his own poem, in the stanza about the translator "locked up by a madman". Adding several fictitious translators was the best way of providing that fourth element . . . One of them would "translate" the novel, commenting on it in footnotes, and the others would have some sort of relationship with him. This trick enabled our writer to introduce the fourth element. But there remained the fifth and most difficult: the "Idea itself"!'

  Montalo pauses briefly and gives a little laugh. He goes on: 'The "Idea itself" is the key we've been looking for from the start. Philotextus doesn't believe it exists, so that's why we haven't found it. It is there, though - in our search, our desire to find it...' His smile widens and he concludes: 'So Philotextus has won the bet.'

  When Montalo finishes, I mutter in disbelief: 'You're quite insane...'

  Montalo's inexpressive face is turning increasingly pale. 'I am indeed,' he agrees. 'But I now know why I played with you and then kidnapped you and locked you up in here. In fact I realised it when you told me the poem the novel is based on was by your father . . . Because I'm sure, too, that my father wrote it - he was a writer, like yours.'

  I don't know what to say. Montalo goes on, increasingly anxious: 'We're part of the images of the novel, don't you see? I'm the madman who's locked you up, as it says in the poem, and you're the translator. And our father, the man who engendered both you and me, and all the characters in The Athenian Murders, is called Philotextus of Chersonnese.'

  A shiver runs down my spine. I look round at the dark cell, the table covered in scrolls, the lamp, and Montalo's pale face. I murmur: 'It's a lie ... I - I have a life of my own. I have friends! I know a woman called Helena. I'm not a character in a novel. I'm alive!'

  Suddenly his face becomes distorted by rage. 'Fool! You still don't understand, do you? Helena . .. Elio ... you . .. me! We all make up the FOURTH ELEMENT.'

  Stunned, furious, I pounce on Montalo. I try to strike him and escape, but all I manage to do is tear off his face. His face is another mask. But behind it, there's nothing, darkness. His clothes fall, limp, to the floor. The table at which I've been working disappears. So does the bed and the chair. The walls of the cell vanish. I'm plunged into darkness.

  'Why? Why? Why?' I ask.

  The space allocated to my words shrinks. I become as marginal as my footnotes.

  The author decides to end me here.

  EPILOGUE

  Trembling, I raise my quill from the papyrus, having written the final words of my novel. I can't imagine what Plato - waiting for me to finish as eagerly as I - will think. Perhaps, as he reads, his radiant countenance will relax at times into a fine smile. At others, I am certain, he will frown. He might say (and I can hear his measured voice): 'A strange work, Philotextus, particularly the dual theme - on the one hand, Heracles' and Diagoras' investigation; and on the other, this odd character, the Translator (whom you never name), who lives in an imaginary future, recording his thoughts in footnotes, conversing with other characters and who is, at the end, kidnapped by the madman Montalo . . . His is a sad fate, for he is unaware that he himself is as much of a fiction as the work he is translating!'

  'But you have put many words in the mouth of your teacher
Socrates,' I will say, adding: 'Who has a worse destiny? My Translator, who only exists in the novel, or your Socrates, who, though he might really have lived, has become as fictional a creature as my character? I think it preferable to condemn an imaginary being to reality than a real one to fiction.'

  Knowing him as I do, I suspect there will be more frowns than smiles.

  But I fear not for him - he is not a man to be disconcerted. Enraptured, he looks out at the intangible world of beauty and tranquillity, harmony and the written word that is the land of Ideas, and offers it to his disciples. At the Academy, they no longer live in the real world, but in Plato's head. Teachers and students alike are 'translators' locked in their respective 'caves', devoting themselves to the quest for the 'Idea itself. I simply wished to tease them a little (forgive me, my intentions were good), to move them, but also to raise my voice (as a poet, not a philosopher) and cry: 'Stop looking for hidden ideas, final keys and ultimate meanings! Stop reading and live Come out of the text! What do you see? Nothing but darkness? Stop searching!' I don't believe they will listen. They'll continue scurrying about, as tiny as letters of the alphabet, obsessed with finding the Truth through words and dialogue. Zeus knows how many texts, how many theories written with quill and ink will rule the lives of men in future and foolishly change the course of events! But I'll abide by Xenophon's final words in his recent history: 'As for me, my work ends here. Let another deal with what comes next.'