The element -inth in Greek

by Alison Fell

  Yiannis stepped away from the door of the ambulance and, lighting a cigarette, inhaled with relief. After the first brunt of the recall he was struck by the anomaly: why had Dora featured, rather than Karen? It was almost as if the dream, in its mercy, had superimposed a protective layer, like a scab across a wound. He thought of Nicole, his so-called ‘grief counsellor’, whose terminal optimism had so enraged him. ‘Closure’ had been her watchword, even when Karen was hardly cold in the ground. Nicole would have pounced on the dream, shaken it like a happy terrier. ‘Do you think.’ she’d have said – disingenuously, when ‘I think’ was what she actually meant – ‘Do you think it’s trying to tell you that you’re on the way to healing?’

  The driver had already got into the cab and started up the engine, and the other paramedic, a square-bodied man in his fifties whose stomach strained against his tabard, came over to stand beside Yiannis. Hands on hips, he squinted up at the top floor balcony.

  ‘Is the kid coming, or what?’

  Yiannis crushed the cigarette out under his foot. ‘Sure, just give him a second.’ For the first time he felt a stab of sympathy for the angry boy who couldn’t be a man. ‘Will she lose it?’ he asked, with no particular expectation of an answer. The medic looked at him dourly. A razor rash stretched from his Adam’s apple to the outer angle of his jaw.

  ‘Maybe, maybe not.’

  When Darren reappeared he was carrying a bulging plastic Minimarket bag. His eyes appealed to Yiannis. ‘I didn’t know if she’d need her toilet things and stuff?’

  ‘Good man,’ Yiannis said approvingly.

  He stood back while the medic shut the boy in and locked the doors. The lights of the ambulance flashed feebly in the strengthening sun. He watched it creep slowly down the cobbled street until it reached the corner, where the siren started up again.

  40

  ‘Hallo? Are you there?’

  Ingrid gets up from the computer and goes out on to the balcony. Zoe is leaning over the half-metre gap; she’s wearing an outsize Greenpeace T shirt and sequined ballerina pumps, and she looks relieved to see her.

  ‘Dad saw the ambulance, earlier, and we were worried that …?’

  ‘It was for upstairs,’ she says quickly, ‘looks like she had a miscarriage.’

  ‘Oh grim! That’s awful. Is she going to be okay?’

  ‘I expect so,’ Ingrid says, wondering with a twinge of guilt if Zoe feels the same as she does about the Wilson-Wilsons. ‘Some holiday for them, though.’

  ‘Yeah. They must be gutted.’ Zoe frowns absently, the sunlight gracing her gleaming hair. ‘Was that our nice sergeant?’ she adds, in a neutral tone, and Ingrid realises her French windows had been wide open all night, as indeed had the Shapcotts.

  Zoe’s underclothes hang, flagrant, on the drying-rack: bikini briefs, flimsy balconette bras, thongs. Ingrid thinks suddenly of the washing-line in the back yard, stretched between two iron poles: her father’s vests and long-johns pegged out indiscriminately among her school knickers and her mother’s brassieres and slips. She’d slink past with eyes averted, trying to ignore the careless, promiscuous mingling. She watches Zoe collect a couple of items from the rack and finger others which are still damp, evidently, for she leaves them there. ‘We went for something to eat,’ she says, deciding that it would be stupid to deny it. She adds mendaciously, ‘He wanted some help with a manuscript.’

  Zoe nods, accepting the retreat into the formal, the impersonal, but she seems pent-up and distracted, as if there’s something on her mind.

  ‘Cool,’ she says, removing a beach towel from the railing and rolling it up. ‘He’s quite attractive, though, isn’t he?’ She sighs, and frowns sadly at the sea. ‘Sometimes I really wish Dad would get himself a girlfriend. You know, like Internet dating or something?’

  Dating isn’t a word that sits easily with Shapcott père, any more than it does with Ingrid.

  ‘I guess that’s how it’s done these days,’ she agrees, with a pang of sympathy on his behalf, but also on behalf of his putative partners, who’ll find themselves competing with his stunning daughter.

  ‘Whatever,’ Zoe says, her face clearing. ‘I’ve actually managed to persuade him to go to the Museum this afternoon, if you need a lift or anything.’

  ‘Actually that could work. I’ve got things to do in town.’ She decides not to mention the Police Station.

  ‘In about an hour? He’s a bit of an old slowcoach in the morning.’ Zoe arches her back, thrusting her breasts forward, and now her ams flow out and up, her hands coiling and uncoiling in the air, like smoke or serpents. She grins resolutely at Ingrid. ‘Can’t wait to see these snake ladies!’

  Ingrid fills the sink with cold water, washes the silk skirt, and takes a shower. Conscious of dressing the part, she puts on a cap-sleeved white blouse and black linen trousers: urban armour, cool but businesslike. She transfers pen, notebook and reading glasses from her tote bag to her briefcase, adds a bottle of water, and goes out on to the balcony to wait for the Shapcotts.

  She remembers how Yiannis drank his coffee standing up at the sink; how she’d wanted to touch him somewhere, but couldn’t shift the authoritative barrier of air between them. Although he was in civilian clothes she’d almost said the stupid words aloud.

  Every girl loves a man in uniform.

  It would be just like her to strike a wrong note. She’s never learnt the knack of graceful, grown-up partings.

  *

  The Police HQ in Heraklion is tall, Venetian, built of honey-coloured limestone, with a sentry-box outside the main entrance. Inside the foyer the floor is laid with patterned ceramic tiles, and plastic flowers adorn high arched niches which might once have housed ikons. There are basketwork chairs, and shelves filled with technicolour tourist brochures; were it not for the uniforms, she could be in the foyer of a 3 star hotel.

  In the foyer she waits, briefcase in hand, while the receptionist rings through for Yiannis. Already she feels as though she’d stepped into one of those police procedurals that the networks trot out on weekday evenings. Stock characters, formulaic plots. The female profiler wheeled in by the scriptwriters to inject glamour into the grubby, sandwich-scoffing milieu of the copshop. If you’re ill or depressed there’s something to be said for the anaesthetic effects of pure plot stripped of messy emotions, but its hardly her favourite genre.

  When Yiannis appears he acknowledges her with a slight inclination of the head, and signs for her as if she were a parcel. Behind the reception desk a flight of stone steps leads down to the basement. The treads are worn and concave, their edges blurred by centuries of feet. At the bottom he stops with his hand on the handle of a heavy oak door.

  ‘They’re keeping Kylie in overnight. I’m afraid they couldn’t save the baby.’

  ‘You went to the hospital?’

  ‘I rang an hour ago. She’s okay. Resting, as they say.’ He shows her into a low, barrel-vaulted room which smells reassuringly of cigarette smoke. In the centre four tables have been pushed together to make a conference table; around the walls are stacks of newspapers, computer paper, and a jumble of keyboards and monitors waiting to be assembled. ‘It’s not great,’ he says, ‘But at least we won’t be disturbed down here.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ she says, although in fact it isn’t. The makeshift look of the place makes her uneasy, in case it reflects the state of the investigation. She’d like to think of the police as a competent bunch, dissecting the forensic evidence, communing with Interpol, relentlessly chasing down the bad guys. Scotland Yard, the Criminal Justice System – all the things her father, with his chauvinist certainities, insisted the Brits did, not only first, but best. No one to touch us, Ingrid.

  There are two ring-binders on the table, next to several cardboard boxes. On top of one of the boxes lies a pair of white gloves.What she hadn’t realised is that the material hasn’t been xeroxed. It will have to be read in situ, here in the room with sealed windows and trapped oppressive air.
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  It isn’t as if she hasn’t got enough on her plate already. So why is she sweating in a basement when she could be lying on the beach, taking a little time to adjust? Out of professional curiosity? – melipnois and kerinthophagia had certainly appealed to the sleuth in her – or simply because she was so flattered to be asked for help?

  Yiannis collects used styrofoam cups from the table and crushes them into a brimming wasetbasket.

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right with this? I’m trying to get you a fee, but …’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she says quickly. She’s already decided to keep the thing on an informal footing, at least till she’s sure she can handle it.

  He’s been home to shower and change; in her mind’s eye she sees him take his uniform down from its hanger, lace up his shiny black shoes. Men can just walk away, of course. Egos topped up by the night’s elixirs, a brief kiss goodbye and then back to business. Maybe she should have warned Zoe about mornings like these, when there you were, toughing it out, while underneath you felt, well, gutted would do, gutted was the perfect word for it.

  Stiff-armed, they stare at one another. Yiannis produces an awkward smile. ‘Not exactly what I had in mind – ‘‘A professional relationship.’’ ’

  ‘What did you have in mind, exactly?’

  ‘I should have thought that was obvious by now.’

  When he encloses her in his arms she tenses, smelling aftershave and smoke.

  ‘Don’t worry, there’s no CCTV in here!’ His voice is conspiratorial in her ear, a pillow-voice, breathing the night back into her. As his hand slithers up the nape of her neck she pulls away from him. Rage mounts up in her skull, like a pressure that can’t be released. Until it clicks back into the compartment she usually keeps it in, she doesn’t trust her skin with anyone.

  ‘So,’ she says brightly, ‘Is there coffee, by any chance?’

  He steps back and looks at her, perplexed. ‘Sorry. I can get some, of course.’

  Left alone, she sits down at the table and folds her hands in her lap, anxious not to do anything that could be construed as tampering with the evidence. The faint smell of incense that comes from the cardboard boxes is redolent of the funeral parlour. The white gloves are made of latex, not cotton, as they would be in the Ashmolean. They look alien, surgical. She eyes them squeamishly, thinking of the dusty box-files in the Myres archive. Alice’s letters, written or typed on paper frail as insects’ wings.

  60 years is a long time, almost three generations. Death at a safe distance, rather than death in close-up.

  Yiannis has told her that the body has been identified. Ivo Kruja, born Albania 1986: a boy young enough to be her son. How much time has to elapse, she wonders, before a corpse can decently be disjoined from the personal, the familial, and become public property? Surely she ought to know by now, where exactly Archaeology draws the line.

  When Yiannis comes back with the coffee she asks if she has to wear the gloves but he says no, everything’s been dusted for prints already.

  ‘So what am I actually looking for?’

  He sets one of the styrofoam cups in front of her and cautiously opens his own.

  ‘At this stage, I guess, anything that strikes you. What kind of guy Kruja was? Any signs that he was a suicidal type, for instance?’

  She points out that she’s no pyschologist, to which Yiannis replies that he’s no archaeologist, either. As he bends over her to open the first ring-binder she feels his breath warm against her cheek.

  ‘Even if you just ran your eye over the chapters on Crete, it would help a lot.’

  His cellphone rings abruptly, and he turns away to answer it. Although the conversation is in Greek she makes out her own name, pronounced importantly as Kyria Lo-ri. Wrinkling his brow, he covers the mouthpiece with his hand.

  ‘Okay if I leave you alone for a while? I have to run over to Chania.’

  Clearly it’s a rhetorical question: already he’s delving in his pocket for car keys. Ingrid nods; if anything, she feels relieved. Without Yiannis hanging over her, she might even be able to concentrate.

  ‘If you need anything, just ask at Reception. I should be back by six.’

  Halfway to the door he turns and eyes her with such intent that for a second she imagines he’s going to lock her in with the evidence.

  ‘I was hoping we could have dinner later, at my place.’ He hesitates, squinting in a shaft of sunshine; although he’s smiling tentatively the strain shows through, hollowing his cheeks and deepening the shadows under his eyes.

  ‘In town?’ she says, as her stomach performs a furtive somersault. She realises she has no idea where he lives.

  ‘In Katomeli. If you’d like that?’

  Before she can tell him whether she likes it or not, he surprises her by bursting out laughing. It’s a youthful, artless laugh, one that simply doesn’t countenance the possibility of being disappointed.

  ‘I hope you realise,’ he says, ‘Before we go any further, I have to introduce you to my cat!’

  She opens the first binder gingerly, but it smells of nothing. The first thing she notices is the small label stuck inside the front cover: a logo block-printed from a wood- or lino-cut, like something a child might produce in primary school. The two signs that make up the logo look remarkably like Linear B.

  She takes her notebook out and checks her Mycenaean glossary, just to be sure. The first sign turns out to be pe. There are only half a dozen words on the list that begin with pe, so the second is easy to establish as ma.

  Pleased with herself, she makes a note:

  Linear B: Pema.

  Greek restoration: sperma.

  English translation: seed.

  She puts on her glasses, lights a cigarette, and studies the Table of Contents.

  Chapter 1: The Anatolian Hinterland

  Hunter-gatherers to Neolithic settlers – maternal practices contrasted. Contraceptive effects of breast-feeding on demand (to 5 years) versus early weaning (1-2 years) in settled agricultural communities. Development of cereal crops and herds ensures ample food supply, resulting in population explosion. Domestication of animals requiring 1) male kill-off strategies 2) castration of majority of males.

  Chapter 2: Evidence for Gynocentrism

  Organisation of early Neolithic settlements mirrors organisation of the herd. Spread of human castration practices 6200-4500 BCE mirroring historical development of animal castration. Mortuary evidence at Francthi Cave, Catal Hoyuk Level V. Scarcity of adult male skeletons; Infant male skeletons greatly outnumber infant female; Absence of male figurines; Grave goods – important burials overwhelmingly female.

  Chapter 3: The Iconic Evidence

  No males represented after Level V1 at Catal Hoyuk. Bulls’ or cows’ horns in the sacral chambers? The case for the horned benches as loci for cult sacrifice. The chamber walls: clay breasts with nipples of vulture-beaks and weasel skulls. Discussion of Melanie Klein’s concept of the ‘bad breast.’ Inculcation of fear and awe of the Great Mother. Arguments for a symbolic transfer of potency from the wild bull to the domesticating theoi. The matriarchal oikos linked to bull-cults and bucrania.

  Chapter 4: Death and the Harvest in the Near East

  ‘‘The Last Sheaf’’ sacrifice for the ripe corn – killing of reaper with spades and hoes. Bones of Adonis/Tammuz ground in mill. Body-parts kept in seed-storage bins. Young dying vegetation gods – Tammuz, Osiris, Dionysus, Attis, Orpheus at Eleusis. Anat/Astarte ‘‘plaques’’ with depictions of seeds. Yearly ceremony of ‘‘Osiris beds’’ attested since Pre-Dynastic Egypt.

  Chapter 5: The Sickle Moon and the Horned Mother Goddess

  Canaanite Anat, the Heifer. Ugaritic Anath. Ashera of Palestine. Ishtar of Uruk. Hathor the Cow-Goddess. Akakallis of Crete. Sickles and castration tropes from Gaia to Anat. The ‘‘sickle of adamant’’ used by Kronos to castrate Ouranos. Canaanite Harvest Hymn of Anat: ‘‘with a sickle she winnows him’’. Miniature clay cult-sickles in t
he Cretan zerinthos.

  Chapter 6: The Dedication of Potency: Drones, Priests and Scribes

  ‘‘Asinnu’’ as followers of Inanna – ‘‘maker of eunuchs’’. Isis and Osiris. Essenes eunuch priests of Ephesian Artemis, head priest Megabyzos or King Bee. Statue of Artemis hung with offerings of bulls’ testicles. Eunuchs and ‘‘officers’’ in the Old Testament. Arab essendelees. Scythian enarees in high political and military office. Phrygian Kybele and the Mysteries of Attis. Ouranian Aphrodite in her castrating bee-form. Thracian cult of Dionysus. Freud’s search for the phylogenetic or species memory of the ‘‘castration complex’’.

  Chapter 7: Kouretes and Korybants

  Idean Dactyls – Mount Ida in Crete or Mount Ida in Phrygia? Kouretes/Korybants of Rhea/Kybele. Kybele = kybilis, the double axe. Willets: Kouretes founded Knossos and initiated cult of Kybele, Kouretic cults of Crete and Thracian cult of Dionysus substantially the same. Kouretes as protectors of infant Zeus in the Idean cave, aided by sacred bees or meliai. Ida and Adrasteia nymphoi and ‘‘honey-nurses’’ to Zeus. Kouretes in myth first to domesticate cattle and discover the art of bee-keeping.

  Chapter 8: The Kouros as Eniautos or Year-Spirit

  Periodicity – yearly death and resurrection of the young god. Minos as ennearos – ‘‘9 year’’ or ‘‘full-grown’’ king? Inititation of the Kouros as eniautos. Rituals and rites of the Kouretic cult: the dromenon – mimic death and resurrection in the womb-cave of the zerinthos; Mimetic dance of the hyporchema at the July Kronia festival; Sacramental feast of the omophagia; Hymn of the Kouretes, ‘‘for fields of fruit, and for hives to bring increase’’.

  Chapter 9: Kouretes and Adorants

  Artemis as Kourotrophos. Apollo and Artemis as Kouros and Great Mother. The bull-sacrifice on the Hagia Triada sarcophagus. Kouretes as ministrants of the Potnia Theron, Mistress of the Animals. The fruits and flowers of the eiresione carried by the Kouros. Discussion of the dedicatory posture of the eniautos/adorant. The hieros gamos or ritual marriage. Selection rituals of the eniautos: 1) by foot-race 2) by bull in the tavrokatharpsia 3) by bees in the melipnois or kerinthophagia. Inauguration of the new Year-King at the festival of the Kronia.