by Tom Harper
Alexander can’t speak from beyond the grave, I realise. He isn’t in it yet. He’ll still be lying out for the mourners to pay their respects.
A morbid curiosity overcomes me. I never knew him in life. Perhaps seeing him in death will give me knowledge.
In Rome, denied recognition, the Christians squeezed their churches into converted shops, warehouses, even private homes. When Constantine built his new city, he endowed it with plenty of churches – but the Christian congregation has grown so fast they’ve overflowed and resorted to the old expedients. The Church of Saint John fills the ground floor of a tenement block near the city walls that used to be a bathhouse. Planks cover the holes where the pools used to be; the Triton on the wall has been defaced, and the sea nymphs painted over, though they’ve kept a few of the fish. Whoever decided that Alexander should be laid out here didn’t want to encourage his mourners.
On a Monday morning, the church is almost deserted. I’m glad there’s no one to see me: I feel awkward enough trespassing in their sanctuary. Alexander’s body lies on an ivory litter at the front of the church. Candles burn at the four corners; incense smokes from a brazier at his feet. He’s dressed in a plain white robe, feet towards the door and a white cloth covering his face. I remember the weapon that killed him, the blood and hair matted on the bust, and hesitate. I never used to be this squeamish.
I pull back the cloth and wince. The undertaker’s tried his best, but only made it worse. Bloodstains mottle the beard and the skin’s floury where a cosmetic’s been applied. Worst of all is the forehead. It’s been smashed in, a single overwhelming blow that shattered the skull and tore a bloody gash in the skin. There are small perforations where the undertaker tried to sew it shut before abandoning the effort.
I reach out two fingers and pull back the eyelids. A clear liquid oozes out like tears – a salve that the undertaker’s used to hold the eyes shut. A pair of deep brown eyes gaze up at me with what looks like surprise.
And suddenly the surprise is mine. I’ve known him more than half my life. The tutor at the wedding chasing after the boy who’d climbed up on the bridal bed; and again, in the tent on campaign in Italy, bent over a table teaching the boy Greek, while Constantine pondered his god’s intentions. I would have seen him dozens of times around Constantine’s household, and never paid him the least attention. Did I know his name? I must have done.
He also tutored one of my sons, apparently.
Strange that I should have forgotten him. Like turning the house inside out for a lost coin, only to find it in your purse all along.
The smells of incense and embalming fluid have seeped into my stomach. Dark spots blot my vision; I need air. Leaving Alexander’s face uncovered, I run to the door. There’s a square at the end of the road with a plane tree. If I can just sit down in the shade a few minutes I’ll be fine. I’ll –
‘Gaius Valerius?’
I can’t ignore him – I’ve almost run into him. I step back and see a man in a formal gown, sparkling eyes and a smile too wide for the horrors inside. The man I met in Symmachus’s garden.
‘Porfyrius?’
‘I came to pay my respects to Bishop Alexander.’ He sees my ashen face and breaks off. ‘Are you …?’
‘I need to sit down.’
He steers me to his litter. I don’t lie down – I’d feel I was lying on my own funeral bier. I sit awkwardly on the edge of the platform, in the shade of the canopy, while one of the slaves fetches water from a fountain.
‘What are you doing here?’ I ask.
‘Paying my respects to Alexander.’
‘You went to see him in the library.’ My voice is shaky, still grappling with the memories. ‘Did you know him well?’
‘He helped me understand the truth of the Christian religion.’
I don’t hide my surprise. ‘I thought … as a friend of Symmachus …’
‘Aurelius Symmachus is a Stoic.’ A wry smile. ‘Outward things cannot touch his soul.’
‘He was less accommodating thirty years ago.’
‘We all were.’ His eyes lose focus for a moment, then return. ‘Do you want to know the truth, Valerius? Thirty years ago I persecuted the Christians just as furiously as Symmachus. That was my first encounter with Alexander, and it wasn’t pleasant.’
The web I drew around the dead bishop takes on another strand. ‘What made you change your mind?’
‘I saw the sign of God’s truth.’
It’s impossible to know if he’s serious. He never stops smiling; every word he says has a subjective quality, as if he’s merely testing how it sounds. I try to imagine that smiling face standing over a brazier, digging his iron into the coals.
He shrugs. ‘I was a former proconsul who’d slipped off the path of honour, and I was ambitious.’ A quick look to see if I understand. ‘There was a scandal – perhaps you heard? Carmen et error – a poem and a mistake, as Ovid said. The next thing I knew, I was sitting in a small house on the edge of the world, in the shadow of Trajan’s Danube wall, contemplating my errors. Ten whole years I spent there.’ A sigh, a shrug. ‘At least I wrote a lot of poems. And I met Alexander.’
‘Why was he there?’
‘A religious dispute.’
He kicks at a loose stone in the road. ‘You can imagine how awful it was – the persecutor and his victim, thrown together again after all those years. And yet, we became friends. Unlikely, I know, but Alexander was extraordinary. I’d tried to make a martyr of him and now he became a saint. He never mentioned what had happened. I waited and I waited – it drove me mad. I analysed every gesture, every word he said, convinced it was part of some trap. One day, I couldn’t bear it any more. I asked him straight out if he remembered me.’
His voice drops. ‘He forgave me everything. Not the grudging forgiveness you might get from a friend you’d done wrong, lording his generosity over you. No rebuke, no lecture. He said, “I forgive you,” and that was all. He never mentioned it again.’
And a lot of good it did him, the cruel voice inside me retorts. A picture flashes in my mind of the white corpse laid out on the bier. I can smell embalming fluid on my fingers. I feel ashamed, and resent it.
Porfyrius stretches. ‘Do you know what Alexander wrote in one of his books? “In order to rule the world, we have to have the perfect virtue of one rather than the weakness of many.”’
‘He was speaking about Constantine?’
‘He was speaking about God. But what is true of God serves for His creation. For too long we had too many gods and too many emperors and we suffered for it. With Constantine, we have one God, one ruler, one empire united. No division, no hatred, no war. Who couldn’t believe in that?’
That raises my eyebrows. ‘No war? You know Constantine’s massing his army for a campaign against Persia as we speak.’
I stand up from the litter, driven by a surge of anger I thought I’d mastered. ‘You want to know why I didn’t convert, when everyone from the Emperor to the bathhouse attendant did?’
Porfyrius waits politely. That only makes me angrier.
‘The hypocrisy. You preach peace, forgiveness, eternal life – and then you end up like Alexander, laid out on a slab with your eyes glued shut.’
Porfyrius laughs and laughs. ‘Do you think you won’t end up like that too?’
XIX
Pristina, Kosovo – Present Day
ABBY CROSSED THE railway tracks at the bottom end of town and started climbing the hill opposite. The streets were quiet that early on a Sunday morning: no children playing, no traffic. Low cloud pressed over the valley and rendered the air milky white. She’d spent the night in a hotel, one that wasn’t much used by internationals, biting her lip each time the lift next to her room made a sound. As soon as she could pretend it was decent, she’d slipped out the back entrance.
. OMPF was the Office of Missing Persons and Forensics – or had been, until it was rebranded as the Department of Forensic Medicine a year ago. Michael
had never been one to take notice of bureaucratic reshuffling. Levin, she guessed, was Shai Levin, Chief Forensic Anthropologist. Abby had met him a dozen times over the years, different encounters in different parts of the world, though she doubted she’d left much of an impression.Levin, OMPF, Michael’s diary had said
She’d been to a party at his house with Michael back in June. He lived in one of the freshly painted villas that climbed the slope opposite the main town, where the foreign proconsuls lived and lorded it over the city they administered. The higher you went, the nicer the houses got and the more elaborate the embassies became. At the very top of the hill, tucked behind the ridge out of sight of the diplomats, stood the ultimate authority: Camp Film City, headquarters for NATO’s mission keeping peace in the restive province. No one could mistake the hierarchy.
Abby walked past the diplomatic cars parked on the kerb, climbed the steps to the private villa and rang the bell. She hoped it was the right door.
‘Can I help?’
Shai Levin stood in the doorway, wearing an untucked white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, cargo trousers and bare feet. He had olive skin, curly dark hair and soft dark eyes that gave no hint of the horrors he witnessed every day. His manner was mild and polite, his English faintly accented. Among international aid workers, he was something of a legend. People who didn’t know better often called him a saint, to which he invariably smiled and pointed out he was Jewish.
‘Abby Cormac,’ she introduced herself. ‘I work in Justice.’
She’d wondered how far her notoriety had spread. The look on Levin’s face told her everything she needed to know.
‘You were together with Michael Lascaris, from Customs, right? I’m so sorry – I heard what happened.’
What else did you hear? A grey KFOR helicopter flew low overhead, circling in to land at Film City. Abby edged closer to the door.
‘I was looking through some of Michael’s things. I think he met you not long before he died.’
Levin nodded. ‘I guess that’s right.’
‘I’m trying to find out why he was killed.’
A shadow crossed Levin’s face, the look of someone receiving a long-expected diagnosis. He seemed to hesitate a second, then opened the door wider.
‘Come on in.’
He led her into the living room, modern and open-plan, with hardwood floors and full-length windows giving an uninterrupted panorama down on to the city. She admired it from a leather sofa while he made tea. Even to an uninvited guest, the room exuded calm.
He laid two cups of tea on the mahogany coffee table. ‘Have you been to see the police?’
‘I will.’ Lying to Levin felt like swearing in church. She only really knew him by reputation, but that was plenty. Cambodia, Haiti, Bosnia, Rwanda, Iraq – wherever bodies lay buried in inconceivable numbers, Levin was the man with a shovel in the mud, piecing them together, making them human again.
‘What did Michael want to see you about?’
‘We were friends from Bosnia. Back in ’98, there was a landowner who wouldn’t give us clearance to excavate on his land, even though we were pretty sure there was a grave there. Michael turned up and made it happen. We crossed paths every so often after that, different postings, different places. It’s a small world – you know how it goes.’
‘And what did he want the last time you saw him?’
Levin looked uncomfortable. ‘Abby, I know this must have been hell for you, but – you need to speak to the police.’
‘They think I was involved. I wasn’t,’ she added. ‘I got shot. That was about it.’ A thought occurred to her. ‘Did the police speak to you?’
‘Just a few questions. I told them he was a good guy. I didn’t know him well.’
‘But he went to you just before he died.’ How many ways do I have to say this? ‘All I’m doing is trying to find out the truth. I thought you might help.’
Levin had been staring out the window at the panorama below. Now he looked up, meeting her gaze with sad, sympathetic eyes.
‘Michael came to see me at the lab. He had something he wanted my advice on. Professionally.’
She knew what Levin’s professional interests were. ‘A body?’
‘I shouldn’t say.’
‘For God’s sake,’ she pleaded. ‘You’re supposed to be in charge of finding dead people. Giving answers. You must get widows and orphans like me every day wanting to know what happened. Just treat me like one of them.’
‘There are channels,’ Levin murmured, but more for his own sake than hers. He stirred his tea, then stood, as if a decision had been made.
‘It’s easier if I show you.’
He drove her down the hill and across town to the hospital. Even on a Sunday morning, traffic was heavy.
‘You probably don’t remember, but I was in Iraq at the same time as you. Mahaweel.’ Shyly, the plain girl talking to the captain of the football team. ‘We met a couple of times.’
‘I remember. You were on the war crimes team – I heard good things about you. Now you’re pushing papers with EULEX. What happened?’
It wasn’t a new question, and she had a good stock of answers. A new challenge, time for a change, fresh opportunities. But she knew Levin wouldn’t buy it. She didn’t want to insult him with platitudes.
‘I gave up.’
‘Iraq?’
She shook her head. ‘I could deal with Iraq. It was such an epic disaster it was hard to blame anyone for what happened. Anyone who was there, I mean. Politicians, you expect to screw things up.’
He was waiting for her to say more. To her surprise, she found she wanted to. It was easy talking to him.
‘It happened in Congo,’ she said softly. She stared out the window at the triangular tower of Radio Kosovo, the well-dressed young Kosovars heading out for their Sunday strolls in the surrounding park. ‘A village called Kibala. I was there when a Hutu militia arrived one night. It’s a big mining area – lots of rare metals. The militias try to control the trade to fund themselves.’
Levin nodded.
‘Anyway, this militia decided the villagers hadn’t been paying them enough tribute. The UN knew there was a danger. They’d sent a battalion of Korean peacekeepers to keep an eye on things. I went to their base – I pleaded with their commander to go and secure the village. He turned me down point-blank. Then he told me to stay in the compound – said it was too dangerous to be out there.’ She heard her voice rising, shaking with the emotion. ‘For God’s sake, those men were trained and armed to the teeth. All the militia had were machetes and cocaine. Those peacekeepers could have run them out of town in five minutes. Instead, they left the villagers to their fate. Mostly women and children – all the men were off working in the mines. All I could do was listen to the screams.’
‘Let me guess,’ said Levin. ‘No one ever heard about it.’
‘Some people said it was economic. The metals from that part of the world go into a lot of mobile phones, apparently. Maybe the Koreans had orders not to disrupt the supply chain.’ She shrugged. ‘Maybe not. After the fact, people get so hung up on why something was allowed to happen. But there are always a million reasons not to do anything. You don’t have to be corrupt, or cowardly, or inept. You just stay in bed and lock the door. When you’ve done that once …’
‘… it’s hard to ever leave again,’ Levin finished. ‘I know.’
He turned right. Abby glanced in the wing mirror to see if anyone had followed them.
‘How do you do it?’ she asked. ‘Keep going. There’s so much evil in the world, and whatever we do to hold it back, it just keeps coming. Doesn’t it ever get to you?’
Levin stared at the road and didn’t answer.
‘Come on,’ she pressed. ‘I told you my story.’
‘I haven’t got a story.’
‘Your secret, then.’
‘No secret. I guess it’s just …’ He pulled over as an ambulance fought its way past them towards the h
ospital. ‘If you don’t bury the dead, they stick around.’
‘Are we talking about ghosts?’
She’d meant it as a joke. To her surprise, Levin answered seriously.
‘Not like kids on Halloween in white sheets. But if something exists in the mind, then it exists, right?’
He frowned, unsatisfied with his answer. ‘If we don’t bury the dead properly, with reverence and dignity, then they haunt us. Check back through history. We’re the first great civilisation that doesn’t know how to deal with its dead. For us, it’s just a logistical problem, making sure they don’t take up too much space. Land’s valuable, right? But a person doesn’t just exist in his own body. There’s a piece of him in everyone who knows him, that doesn’t die with the body. And it’s those fragments that stay to haunt you if you don’t give them a proper burial.’ He laughed softly. ‘I sound like I’ve been drinking. Short answer: if you’re working with the dead, you don’t fool yourself the work’s ever going to finish. I guess that’s how I keep going.’
The Department of Forensic Medicine was one squat brown building among many at the sprawling hospital. Abby got out of the car and looked around. Her old office, EULEX headquarters, was just down the road, on the other side of a straggle of trees. Even on a Sunday morning she was nervous about being so close. A couple of doctors in white coats walked past, and she turned her head away. Levin saw, but didn’t comment.
He led her inside and down a flight of stairs into the basement. A knot began tightening in her stomach. It was all too familiar: the blistered paint, the scuffed tiles, the smells of nicotine and disinfectant leached into the walls. Her breaths came faster as she remembered waking up in Podgorica. From somewhere in the depths of the hospital she could hear the monotone beep of a cardiac machine like a dripping tap. Or was that just her imagination?
If something exists in the mind, then it exists, right?
Levin opened a strong steel door. The swimming-pool tang of chlorine blew out at her. At least the EU had paid for a refurb here. The tiles were gloss white, the ceiling lights painfully bright after the dim corridor. On one wall a bank of metal doors like bread ovens hummed quietly.