A New York Lawyer in the Court of Pericles

by David Schenck

  But I remember meeting a guy from Boston years ago and I could hardly understand him, also a cabdriver in Ireland who had spoken to me for the full 20 minute ride to the airport (what is with these chatty cabdrivers?) and I’d only understood that he was no fan of George Bush. And all of us had been native English speakers.

  So, I repeated “Athens” and he repeated “Athens” and finally I think we both realized this was the limit of our communication.

  “Dorothea?” I tried. But this was met with a blank.

  “Cabdriver?” Blank.

  “My friends?”

  “Friends” he repeated oddly, but enthusiastically.

  Then he reached out and grabbed the front of my suit jacket. It was rumpled – car accident, sleeping in my clothes – and a little dirty. He rubbed it between his fingers. And said …. Something.

  “It’s OK, no need to worry. I have clean clothes at the hotel. I just need to get to Athens and everything will be fine.”

  “Athens” he repeated, not letting go of my jacket.

  Before we could get into another round of who’s on first, the woman approached with a clay tumbler. She held it out to me and I think she said “water?”

  I was suddenly wildly thirsty. I took the tumbler with a thanks and drained it practically in one go.

  Now that I had another audience member I tried again to see if we could communicate.

  “Hi, I’m Robert, I was with Dorothea and the cabdriver last night. Where are they? Are they ok? I need to get to Athens, or at least make a phone call. My cell can’t get a signal here. Is there a phone?”

  “Athens” they both repeated. It was almost comic. Almost.

  Then suddenly I had a bright idea. I pulled out my cell phone. They stared. I put it to my ear and mimed making a phone call. Nothing. I turned it on to show them the no signal and as I turned it to them they both jumped back in surprise. The woman backed away as if it would bite her and the man stared at it as if it was the strangest thing he has ever seen.

  OK, enough of this! We couldn’t communicate, and I needed to get to Athens. Neither the cabdriver nor Dorothea were my problem. They were with family. Nobody here spoke the kind of Greek I spoke, but nearby there must be somebody who I could talk to who could, at least, let me make a call!

  I took a step towards the stairs (also towards the woman) – she let out a small shriek and she turned and ran.

  I put away my phone and brushing past the man, I started for the stairs.

  Once downstairs in the courtyard I could see several open rooms and one closed door. Assuming the closed one to be the front door, I went to it. There was an odd type of latching system that took me a moment to figure out. While I was fumbling with the door, the man, still on the gallery above, saw what I was doing and started to shout. I made out the word “NO!” but nothing else.

  I assumed that he was worried that the cabdriver or Dorothea would come by looking for me, but at the moment, I was more concerned about calling someone on my team to explain my absence and figure out how to get back to Athens. For all I knew, the entire Athens police force was out looking for me. I was, after all, an “international banker” and we were less than popular in Greece at the moment. There’d been riots.

  Besides, the cabdriver and Dorothea had essentially abandoned me. I really couldn’t waste any more time.

  So, I opened the door and walked into the street outside. I was so surprised that there was a street and a house across the street and people in the street that I really didn’t look around too closely. I had thought I was in an old farm house and so, of course, I had expected a farm outside.

  Once I looked around a little more, I was even more surprised. Shocked really. There were people in the streets, a fair number, and they were all dressed pretty much like the people in the house. Short belted dresses or robe type things and all with sandals. In fact, the whole place was like a reenactment museum. Was there a “Colonial Athens”?

  I stopped an old woman with a mule loaded with a large clay jar. “Excuse me,” I started in my most careful Greek, “I need to get to a phone. Or a cab back to Athens. Can you help me?”

  “Athens?” she said.

  I think I was about to lose my temper when I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was the man from inside the house. He was talking to me fast and clearly he was worried and excited. He was pulling me back towards the house.

  But, I wasn’t interested in going back to the house. I wanted to find a phone! I shook off his hand and started walking down the street. He followed, but at a short distance.

  I stopped a few more people with no success. It was crazy. How could nobody speak Greek this close to Athens, even in a weird rural village where people still used mules (there were a surprising number of mules). Was this, in fact, a reenactment museum? Were they all acting and unwilling to break character even to help someone in distress?

  I walked, wandering more or less without direction, hoping to reach a paved road or find a telephone or something. The man from the house followed diligently.

  I came across an open square. It looked like a marketplace with stalls and tables and people buying and selling. Hundreds of people. All dressed in old fashioned clothes. If this was a reenactment museum it was the best in the world. And I seemed to be the only visitor. As I thought this I looked behind me. The man from the house was there, but so was a fair sized crowd of people. Apparently following me. If this was a museum, I, apparently, was the star exhibit.

  And then I looked up. There was the Acropolis. I’d seen this view, more or less exactly, from near my hotel (which had a lovely view of the Acropolis). Only the buildings were complete.

  I was rooted in my spot. While it might have been possible to construct this museum and staff it with these hundreds of actors and construct a copy of the Parthenon and other buildings (there’s a replica in Nashville, Tennessee), it would be impossible to build a full size replica of the Acropolis. I mean, it’s a god damn mountain!

  What was going on?

  Let me digress for a moment and talk about dental floss. Yep, dental floss.

  I once bought a package of dental floss. My usual kind. A package of dental floss would usually last me about a month. Sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more. This particular brand had a little plastic window build into the container so you could see how much floss was left. But, for some unknown reason, they made the window dark blue, so you (or at least I) couldn’t actually see how much floss was left. But all this was normal. I opened the floss and used it, just like usual, day after day.

  Then one day, I thought, “that’s weird, I’ve been using this floss for a long time now. More than a month, much more.” So, I started to pay attention, how long would it last? What if it never ran out? This went on for months. I started to think it was a violation of the law against creation of matter and energy.

  Here is the important point: If it was a violation of the laws of physics, even just the never-ending dental floss, it would change everything. I would have to reevaluate everything I thought I knew. When faced with undeniable facts that seems to violate the laws of nature, we don’t have any choice but to accept them. Or I might have been crazy.

  Of course, the dental floss eventually DID run out. They probably just accidentally spooled extra floss on the spool. No need to reevaluate anything and my sanity seemed safe.

  At least until I found myself at the foot of the Acropolis looking up at a newly constructed Parthenon.

  I was in daze. Trying to make sense of the situation. What were the options?

  1) I had been in an accident. It was more than possible I was in a coma or on drugs and this was a dream. It didn’t feel like a dream, too sequential, nothing changing form or location. But what did I know? I had never been in a coma before, maybe coma dreams are different.

  2) The insanity option. This seemed unlikely. I had no history of any mental problems. And if this was a hallucination, it was a very orderly hallucination. The sam
e reasons it was unlikely to be a dream argued against it being a hallucination.

  In favor of it being a hallucination were my interactions with other people. They seemed confused by my behavior, they found me odd, and we had difficulty communicating. Kind of what I imagine people in the midst of a psychotic break must experience. So, crazy? Maybe.

  3) The dental floss never ends. This was real. I was back in time or in a parallel universe. How? Who knows? Everything we think we know is wrong.

  Are there other options? Maybe. Maybe I was dead and this was some kind of afterlife. I don’t really believe in that kind of thing, but I didn’t believe in THIS kind of thing either.

  In the end I decided it didn’t matter. If I was dreaming, I was in the dream and had to live the dream until it ended. If I was crazy, I was in the crazy and had to live the crazy until it ended. And if I was in a real weird place, I was in a real weird place and had to live in the weird place until it ended.

  I’m a lawyer and making pragmatic, what is obtainable, decisions in difficult situations is part of my makeup.

  But, it made no sense! How had I gotten here? If it was some kind of time travel/multiverse hopping thing, aside from the impossible physics, why was I in Athens and not Megara? The last place I had been was Megara. This argues in favor of the dream/coma/crazy explanations. I didn’t know Megara well and it might have been easier for my unconscious to imagine ancient Athens (which I also didn’t know well…). And what about the cabdriver and Dorothea? This seemed to argue in favor of it being a real experience. I probably would have brought them with me into a dream/hallucination, at least the pretty Dorothea. But as I said, it didn’t matter.

  Try as I might to remember that the explanation was irrelevant, I never could stop myself from occasionally getting lost trying to figure it out. It makes no sense. The dental floss never runs out…

  After a few minutes, the man from the house (Isodemos, I later found out, was his name) came forward and placed his hand on my elbow and I let him guide me back to the house.

  Suddenly my phone sounded! It’s hard to express my excitement. I must have wandered into an area with service and (of course) someone from the bank team was trying to call me!

  I excitedly pulled out my phone, and checked, but no, it was just a calendar reminder. My brother’s birthday was in a week. Of course, my calendar alert sounds nothing like my ringtone, but wishful thinking… I started to laugh almost hysterically.

  Isodemos, who had jumped away at the sound and appearance of the cell, mastered his fear, and gently guided me along the road back.

  When we reached the house again, I gave him a weak smile of thanks. And he again jumped back in fear.

  Despite my decision to act as if everything I saw was real and not worry about how or why, I basically spent the next few days catatonic. But each morning when I failed to wake up in my hotel room or a hospital, my decision to accept my situation (for now) became more real.

  Chapter 3

  The planets, including the Earth, orbit the sun. The form of these orbits are ellipses, like the shape of a cross section of an eggshell, longwise (see section on gravity).

  Book of Questionable Facts - 1028

  They brought me food several times a day. Some kind of, I can only call it, gruel (please sir, can I have some more?). Wet and lumpy and relatively flavorless. Sometimes fruit or rough bread and some kind of fresh cheese. I had little appetite. And they otherwise pretty much left me alone. The woman (her name was Koré) was clearly afraid of me and the man only a little less so. At first I would give them a smile and thanks for bringing me food or taking away the chamber pot (the less said the better), but my smile never stopped frightening them. I was confused by this, until I realized, they had never seen anyone with straight white teeth before. I eventually learned to smile with my lips closed.

  There were others in the household, I could hear them, but they never entered my little room.

  After 3 or 4 days of this, I opened my door and walked out. It was early in the morning, Koré was in the courtyard doing something and a small boy (maybe 5 or 6) who I hadn’t seen before was playing near her. I called out to her and when she saw me she ran and got Isodemos. He came up the stairs and walked to me.

  “OK” I said. “I need to learn to talk.”

  “Talk” he repeated.

  So, with hand gestures and simple words I got across to him that I was interested in learning the language. He smiled and seemed happy to help. He beckoned me downstairs and led me to a large room with tiled floors, 3 beds and a few stools and low tables.

  He motioned me to one of the beds and pulled up a stool and we started on language lessons. At one point the boy wandered in, but on seeing us (me?) he turned and ran off.

  The language lessons went pretty fast. He was speaking Greek and I knew Greek, we just spoke different dialects. The pronunciations were different but not, now that I understood the situation, that different. Many words seemed to have drifted in meaning but we made good progress.

  Over the next few weeks, I became fairly proficient in the language. And I learned a lot about my current situation.

  I learned that I was in the house of Megakreon a non-citizen, or metic, resident of Athens. Megakreon was a merchant, trading primarily in olive oil and cloth. He was currently away on a trading trip to Greek cities in Asia Minor (I remember from middle school that this means Turkey. Thanks Ms. Pazler!). Where demand for Athenian olive oil was high and they had access to exotic fabrics from the east.

  I had been found by some men on the beach a few miles from the city center and brought to the house of Megakreon because of my clothing. The men were right, Megakreon was very interested in me because of my suit. No one in Athens had ever seen cloth like this (it was a nice suit). And Megakreon had bought me from the men.

  Isodemos (and also Koré) were slaves of the household. I was also considered a slave since Megakreon had purchased me.

  I objected that I wasn’t a slave (and using my lawyer logic) and I hadn’t been the property of the men who found me, so, since one can’t sell what he doesn’t own, the sale was void.

  Isodemos replied that I was clearly a foreigner who entered the city illegally and had been sold fairly. If I could prove that I was a freeman and had entered the city legally, I could be freed.

  Of course I couldn’t prove anything of the sort.

  Isodemos pointed out that the punishment for a foreigner entering the city illegally was slavery, so best to stay in the household of Megakreon who wasn’t such a bad master all in all.

  Then Isodemos said, of course, if I was a magician or a god or son of a god in disguise, all I would need to do would be to demonstrate my power and I would be set free.

  I was about to deny being a god or in any way related to a god, when I remembered the fateful words of Dr. Peter Venkmen in Ghostbusters “Ray, if someone asks you if you’re a god, you say yes!” I didn’t want to say yes and be forced to demonstrate my powers (which were basically limited to my rapidly dying cell phone). So, I just smiled and nodded. He jerked back at my smile, as always, and I think took it as a “yes”.

  The other members of the household were Megakreon’s son Philon (the boy I had seen) who was 5, and another slave, a man named Tros. Tros managed most of Megakreon’s business in the city and was frequently away visiting olive groves to negotiate the purchase of the oil. Megakreon’s wife, Philon’s mother, had died in childbirth last year and the household was managed by Koré.

  Isodemos was responsible for the tutoring of Philon and the general needs of the household, such as carrying water from the well or buying food from the Agora (the marketplace where I had first realized I wasn’t in Kansas anymore).

  Megakreon was very interested in finding out where he could buy my fabrics. Megakreon had told Isodemos to get my source and threatened him with a severe beating if he failed (and Megakreon was one of the good slave owners!).

  Isodemos begged me to tell him with genuine
fear. Megakreon should be home within a week and he would be very angry if Isodemos had failed. Also Megakreon would beat me if I failed to tell him.

  I asked him the year and he told me it was the year of Archon Theodorus and about 40 years after the war with Persia. It meant nothing to me. He talked for a long while about various important people, but the only name he mentioned that I knew was Pericles. I remember that he had been king of Athens a long time ago.

  When I asked about how long Pericles had been king, Isodemos told me that Pericles was a general and not king at all and that Athens was a democracy. Although our owner (OWNER!) wasn’t a citizen and couldn’t participate. And, of course, neither could we.

  This seemed to argue that maybe this was some kind of parallel universe rather than the past, but who knows. My grasp of ancient Greek history was pretty loose and I do know that it was a democracy. It definitely argued against it being a dream or my being crazy – because why would I change facts that I knew about the past? Or maybe that’s how crazy works.

  It was a lot to take in. And I was shocked and angry to be considered a slave. But just like I realized that I had no choice but to accept that I was in a different world, I soon realized that I had to live within that world. My knowledge of the history of slavery in the US told me that any society dependent on slaves would have extensive and harsh systems to ensure rebellious slaves didn’t stay rebellious for long.

  Chapter 4

  The length of a year is approximately 365.25 days. To deal with this extra .25 day each year add an extra day to the calendar every 4th year. But this is just an approximate measure so, every 125 years skip the extra day.

  Book of Questionable Facts - 84

  As the days crept by I was consumed with dread. Megakreon would return any day now and he would expect something from me. What would I tell him? I certainly couldn’t tell him that he could buy a nice tailored suit in New York – with only a 4000 year wait!