The Last Cato

by Matilde Asensi

  Farag came over and stood beside me. “At sunset, from the tomb of the 192 Athenians to the tax collector. Run and get there before dawn…”

  “Why do you punctuate it the way it is in the prayer?” I added. “Take out the periods and the sentence works better.”

  “You’re right. Let’s see. At sunset, hmm… At sunset, run from the tomb of the 192 Athenians to the tax collector and get there before dawn. As a supplicant, knock seven times on the door. In Greek, ‘calling at the door’ and ‘knocking at the door’ mean the same thing.”

  “That’s very good. The translation is correct.”

  “Are you sure, Doctor? Because I don’t understand that part about running from the 192 Athenians to the tax collector. Hope you don’t mind me saying so.”

  “I think we ought to go have lunch and continue later,” Farag proposed. “We’re worn out. We’ll do better if we rest, get back our energy, and refresh our brains. What do you think?”

  “I agree,” I chimed in. “Come on, Captain. Let’s stop for a while.”

  “You two go ahead. I have some things to do.”

  “Like what?” I asked, grabbing my jacket off the back of the chair.

  “I could say it’s a personal matter,” he answered in a grouchy tone of voice. “But I want to investigate those Athenians and their tax collector.”

  As we were walking down the stairs to the dining room, I couldn’t help remembering everything my brother told me about Captain Glauser-Röist. I was about to tell Farag, but thought better of it. That kind of information shouldn’t be circulated, at least not by me. I preferred to be the final destination for information, not a way station.

  When I emerged from my thoughts, seated across the table from the professor, I realized that his turquoise blue eyes were studying me; but I was unable to meet his gaze. During lunch I evaded their burning look, while I desperately tried to keep my voice completely normal. I admit, even though I fought with all my might, that that night I found him… very handsome. I don’t know if it was the way his hair fell over his forehead or the way he gestured or how he smiled. As we headed back to the office where the charming Glauser-Röist was waiting for us (Farag was bringing him back some lunch), I felt weak in the knees. I wanted to flee, go back home, run away and never see him again. I closed my eyes in a desperate attempt to take refuge in God, but I couldn’t.

  “Are you okay, Basileia?”

  “I want to end this odious adventure once and for all and get back to Rome!” I exclaimed with all my soul.

  “Ah!” His voice sounded sad. “That was the last answer I expected!”

  When we returned to the office, Glauser-Röist was speedily typing instructions into the computer.

  “How’s it going, Kaspar?”

  “I’m onto something,” he muttered without looking away from the screen. “Look at those sheets. You’re going to love them.”

  I picked up a pile of papers lying on the tray of the printer and read the titles: “The Tumulus of Marathon,” “The Original Route of the Marathon,” “Fidipides’ Race,” “The City of Pikermiy,” and, to my surprise, two pages in Greek, “Timbos Maratonesono” and “Maratonas.”

  “What does all this mean?” I asked, alarmed.

  “It means you’re going to have to run the marathon in Greece, Doctor.”

  “Run forty-two kilometers?” My voice couldn’t have been any shriller.

  “Actually, no,” the Rock said, furrowing his brow and pursing his lips. “Just thirty-nine. The race they run today doesn’t match the one Fidipides ran in 490 B.C. to announce the Athenian victory over the Persians on the plains of Marathon. As the International Olympic Committee explains on its Web page, the modern trajectory of fortytwo kilometers was established in 1908, at the Olympic Games in London. It’s the distance between Windsor Castle and the stadium in White City, at the western part of the city, where the Olympic Games were held. Between the town of Marathon and the city of Athens, there were only thirty-nine kilometers.”

  “I don’t want to argue,” Farag said, falling back into the Arab accent he’d almost lost over the last couple weeks, “but didn’t Fidipides die as soon as he delivered the good news?”

  “Yes, but not on account of the race, Professor—on account of his battle wounds. Fidipides had already run 166 kilometers several times, carrying messages back and forth between Athens and Sparta.”

  “Well… How do the 192 Athenians figure into this?”

  “In Marathon there are two gigantic tombs, or tumuli,” the Rock explained as he consulted the nine pages feeding out of the printer. “Those tombs contain the bodies of those who died in the famous battle: 6,400 Persians on one side and 192 Athenians on the other. That’s the figure Herodotus mentions. According to that passage, we should start at sunset, at the tumuli of the Athenians, and arrive in Athens before dawn. I’m still not clear about the destination in Athens: the tax collector.”

  “Maybe the solution to the test in Jerusalem is the clue for the test in Athens.”

  “Yes, Doctor. That’s why Dante combines both circles in Canto XVII.”

  “Are they going to mark us with the cross?”

  “Don’t worry. They will.”

  “So we’re running off to Greece!” laughed Farag.

  “As soon as we settle the matter of the tax collector.”

  “I’m scared,” I moaned, taking a seat, reading the papers in my hands. Knowing the captain, I wasn’t going to get to say good-bye to my brother.

  “Have you searched for the term tax collector in Greek, Kaspar?”

  “No. The keyboard won’t let me. I need to download some updates for my browser so I can write the searches in other alphabets.”

  He worked for a while as he gulped down the lunch we’d brought him. Meanwhile, Farag and I read the pages on the marathon. I, who’d never done the slightest physical exercise, who led the most sedentary life in the world and who’d never felt drawn to any type of sport, was studying very carefully the details of the historic race I’d have to run very soon. But I didn’t know how to run! I told myself, anguished. Stupid Staurofilakes! Why did they think you could run thirty-nine kilometers in one night? In the dark! Did they think I was Abebe Bikil? * I’d probably die alone on some solitary hilltop in the cold light of the moon, with wild animals as my only companions. And for what? To get another lovely tattoo on my body?

  Finally the captain announced he was ready to copy the Greek text from the Internet search engines that recognized it. I took his place at the computer. It was hard, because the Latin letters on the keyboard didn’t match the Greek letters that popped up on the screen. But I quickly got the hang of it, and could manage prettily easily. I didn’t have the slightest idea what I was doing, because as soon as I typed in êáðíéêáéñåéáò (kapnicareias), the captain sat back down and took over the reins of the computer. Since he still needed my help to know what the pages on the monitor said, we looked like we were playing musical chairs.

  Classical and Byzantine Greek are significantly different from modern Greek. There were many words or entire constructions I didn’t understand, and I had to ask Farag for help. Between the two of us, we managed to translate what was on the screen. Almost at midnight, a Greek search engine named Hellas gave us a vital clue. A brief note at the foot of the (virtual) page indicated that it had only found a few references, but also that it had twelve similar pages we could also consult. Naturally, we accepted. One of the brief descriptions was of a very lovely Byzantine church, in the heart of Athens, called Kapnikarea. The page explained that Kapnikarea Church was known as the Church of the Princess because it was attributed to Empress Irene, who ruled in Byzantium between A.D. 797 and 802. Its real founder was a rich man who collected taxes on fine furniture. He named the church after his profession: kapnikarea, tax collector.

  So there it was: We knew the source and the destination. All we had to do was travel to Greece, to beautiful Athens, cradle of human thought. Glau
ser-Röist was on the phone all night giving instructions, getting information, and, with the help of the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece, organizing the next several days of our lives. The next day we were leaving the region considered Roman Catholic and plunging into the Eastern Christian world. If everything went as we hoped, after Athens, the city where we would run the race against sloth, we would visit greedy Constantinople, gluttonous Alexandria, and lustful Antioch.

  The flight from Tel Aviv to Athens’s Hellinikon Airport in the small Alitalia Westwind lasted nearly three hours. We worked hard during the flight to prepare for the fourth cornice of Purgatory, located midway up the summit.

  Exonerated by the third angel of a new P, free of the weight of the sin of wrath, Dante feels nimble and asks his guide a lot of questions. As in the previous circle, very little actually referred to the test. Half of Canto XVII and all of Canto XVIII were spent explaining serious questions about love. Virgil explains that the three large circles they had passed through purge sins—pride, envy, and wrath—that wish one’s fellow man ill. They are tied to a type of happiness achieved at the expense of other people’s humiliation and pain. On the other hand, in the three smaller circles that remained, the sins—greed, gluttony, and lust— only harm oneself.

  “O my sweet father, what offense is purged

  here on this terrace? Though our steps have stopped,

  don’t you stop speaking to me.” So he said:

  “That love of good which failed to satisfy

  the call of duty, here is fortified:

  the oar once sluggish now is plied with zeal.”

  As they wander around the cornice, they get caught up in another long discussion about the nature of love and its positive and negative effects on mankind. This only lasts for forty-five tercets, after Virgil settles the argument by mentioning humans’ free will. After that, a mob of lazy penitents appears:

  And I, having been privileged to reap

  Such clear, plain answers to my questioning,

  Let my thoughts wander vaguely, sleepily;

  but this somnolent mood did not last long,

  for suddenly we heard a rush of souls

  coming around the mount behind our backs.

  […]And then they were upon us—that entire,

  Enormous mass of spirits on the run;

  Two out in front were shouting as they wept:

  “Mary in haste ran to the hills,” cried one,*

  the other: “Caesar, Ilerda to subdue,

  thrust at Marseilles, and then rushed down to Spain.”

  “Faster! faster, we have no time to waste,

  for time is love,” cried others from behind,

  “strive to do good, that grace may bloom again.”

  As before, Virgil asks the souls where to find the opening to the next cornice. One of them, who runs by without stopping, encourages Virgil and Dante to follow them, for they will show them the path. But the poets stay where they are, surprised at how the spirits, who were lazy in life, were now lost in the distance, running as fast as the wind. Exhausted from that day’s hike, Dante falls into a deep slumber thinking about what he has seen. That dream serves as a transition between the cantos and the circles and ends the fourth cornice of Purgatory.

  We arrived at the Hellinikon airport at noon; the official car from His Beatitude the archbishop of Athens, Christodoulous Paraskeviades, awaited us. We were driven to our hotel, the Grande Bretagne, right on Plateia Syntagmatos, next to the Greek parliament building. The trip from the airport was long and the entrance to the city surprising. Athens was like an old town that had grown very large and had no desire to reveal its nature as a historic capital of Europe, until you reached the depths of its heart. Only when you saw the Parthenon greeting travelers from atop the Acropolis did you realize that it was the city of the goddess Athena, the city of Pericles, Socrates, Plato, and Fidias; the city beloved by the Roman emperor Hadrian and by the English poet Lord Byron. Even the air seemed different, charged with unimaginable secrets—of history, beauty, culture—that cloaked the withered, musty neighborhoods that now comprised Athens.

  A porter in green livery and cap kindly opened the car doors and unloaded our luggage. The hotel was very old; the enormous reception area was decorated with multicolored marble and silver lamps. The manager himself met us, as if we were heads of state. He accompanied us deferentially to a meeting room on the first floor. At the door was a large group of high-ranking Orthodox prelates wearing long beards and impressive medallions. Comfortably seated in a corner, His Beatitude Christodoulos awaited us.

  The archbishop’s pleasant look and vigor surprised me. He couldn’t have been more than sixty years old, and was very well preserved. His beard was still pretty dark, and his gaze was friendly. He stood up as soon as he saw us, and walked over, wearing a wide smile.

  “I am delighted to welcome you to Greece!” he said in very correct Italian. “I wish you to know our deepest gratitude for what you are doing for Christian churches.”

  Setting protocol aside, Archbishop Christodoulos introduced the rest of the clergy. Among them was a good part of the Synod of the Greek Church (I couldn’t differentiate between the various Orthodox ranks by their vestments and medals): His Eminence, the metropolitan of Staoi and Meteroa, Seraphim (it isn’t customary to include last names when one occupies a high religious post); the metropolitan of Kaisariani, Vyron, and Ymittos, Daniel; the metropolitan of Mesogaia and Lavreotiki, Agatjhonikos; Their Eminences, the metropolitans of Megara and Salamis, of Chalkis, of Thessaloitis and Fanariofarsala, of Mitilene, Erossos, and Plomrion, of… In all, a long list of venerable metropolitans, archimandrites, and bishops with majestic names. If the meeting we’d had in Jerusalem seemed over the top, the product of the patriarch’s curiosity, the meeting in that room in the Grande Bretagne was even more amazing. Without ever intending to, we’d become heroes.

  Those priests had enormous expectations for us. Despite our protests, Captain Glauser-Röist finally felt obliged to explain the risky adventures we’d lived through, omitting the details relating to the Staurofilakes. We didn’t trust anyone. It wasn’t crazy to think that in that agreeable assemblage there could be an infiltrator. He also didn’t explain what the test in Athens—set for that very night—consisted of, even though they asked repeatedly. On the plane, we discussed the need to keep it secret, so that the meddling of some curious person wouldn’t spoil our plan. Naturally, we would tell His Beatitude Christodoulos as well as some members of the synod close to him. No one else would know that at sunset that day, three strange runners, more librarians than athletes—two of them, at least—would leave their sweat on the ground of Attica to earn the right to keep risking their lives.

  We were invited to a magnificent lunch in the hotel banquet room. I was like a kid when it came to the taramosalata and the mousaka, the souvlakia with tzatziki—small pieces of roasted pork seasoned with lemon, herbs, and olive oil, accompanied by the famous sauce made with yogurt, pepper, garlic, and mint—and the original kleftico. Especially delicious were the incomparable Greek breads made with raisins, spices, greens, olives, or cheeses. For dessert, a little freska frouta. Who could ask for anything more? Mediterranean cuisine is the best in the world. Farag proved that by eating enough for three or four people.

  When we were free of protocol and the bearded clergy had left, we set to work as quickly as possible, for we still had a lot to do. His Beatitude Christodoulos wanted to stay all afternoon, watching us prepare for the test and organize the race. The presence of such a prestigious person turned out to be quite the opposite of an obstacle. As soon as members of the synod and the bishops from the archdiocese left, His Beatitude revealed a jovial, youthful, athletic spirit. He had more energy than Farag, the captain, and me put together.

  His Beatitude told us that the first Olympic Games of the modern era took place in Greece in April 1896. They hadn’t been celebrated for more than fifteen hundred years. The winner of the maratho
n race was a twenty-three-year-old Greek shepherd almost a meter sixty centimeters tall named Spyros Louis. Spyros, who became a national hero back then, ran the distance between Marathon and the Olympic stadium in Athens in two hours fifty-eight minutes and fifty seconds.

  “Was he a professional runner?” I asked, engrossed. I had the deep conviction, not just a doubt or insecurity, that I wouldn’t pass this test. I knew I’d never run thirty-nine kilometers. It was empirically impossible.

  “Oh no!” His Beatitude answered with a wide, proud smile. “Spyros participated in the race by chance. At the time, he was a soldier in the Greek army. His colonel convinced him to enter at the last minute. He ran well, but he hadn’t had any training or preparation. He started his running career in the most important Greek race in history. After all, we weren’t going to let a foreigner win the race!”

  Spyros didn’t receive any gold medal for his feat. In those first Olympics, they didn’t give the medals to champions. But he got a monthly pension of one hundred drachmas for the rest of his life. He also asked for and received a cart and horse to work his fields.

  “Do you know the best part?” His Beatitude added with pride. “Forty years later, he was the Greek delegation’s standard-bearer at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936. He placed a crown of laurels, the symbol of peace, in Adolf Hitler’s hands.”

  “But Spyros wasn’t an athlete, right?”

  “No, Sister, he wasn’t.”

  “If he wasn’t an athlete and it took nearly three hours to run the thirty-nine kilometers, how long will it take us?” I asked, looking at the captain.

  “It’s not that simple, Doctor.”

  The Rock opened a billfold-size notebook full of notes and flipped past several pages until he found what he was looking for. “Today is May 29. According to the information the archdiocese gave me, the sun will set in Athens at 8:56 p.m. So we will have nine hours and six minutes to complete the test.”

  “Oh, that’s much better!” exclaimed Farag. He seemed so relieved we all turned to look at him in surprise. “What’s wrong? I didn’t think I could pass this test!” He, like me, had kept his fear a secret until that very moment.