by Mika Waltari
The Etruscan
Mika Waltari
The Etruscan
Mika Waltari
Book One
Delphi
1.
I, Lars Turms the immortal, awakened to spring and saw that the land had once again burst into bloom.
I looked around my beautiful dwelling, saw the gold and silver, the bronze statues, the red-figured vases and the painted walls. Yet I felt no pride, for how can one who is immortal truly possess anything?
Prom among the myriad precious objects I took up a cheap clay vessel and for the first time in many years poured its contents into my palm and counted them. They were the stones of my life.
Then I returned the vessel with its pebbles to the feet of the goddess and struck a bronze gong. Servants entered silently, painted my face, hands and arms sacred red and clothed me in the sacred robe.
Because I did what I did for my own sake and not for my city or my people, I did not let myself be borne on the ceremonial litter but walked on my own feet through the city. When people saw my painted face and hands they stepped aside, children paused in their games, and a girl by the gate ceased playing her pipes.
I stepped out of the gate and descended into the valley along the same path that I once had followed. The sky was a radiant blue, birdsong echoed in my ears and the doves of the goddess cooed. The people toiling in the fields paused respectfully at sight of me, then turned their backs once more and continued their work.
I did not choose the easy road to the holy mountain, that which was used by the stonecutters, but the sacred stairs flanked by painted wooden pillars. They were steep stairs and I ascended them backward, looking down on my city the while, but although I stumbled many times, I did not fall. Even my attendants, who would have steadied me, were afraid, for never before had anyone ascended the holy mountain in such a manner.
When I reached the sacred path the sun was at its zenith. Silently I passed the entrances to the tombs with their stone mounds, and passed also my father’s tomb before I reached the summit.
Before me in every direction stretched my vast land with its fertile valleys and wooded hills. To the north gleamed the dark blue waters of my lake, from the west rose the tranquil cone that was the goddess’ mountain, and opposite it the eternal dwellings of the deceased. All this had I found, all this had I known.
I looked about for an omen and saw on the ground the newly fallen feather of a dove. I picked it up, and as I did so saw beside it a small reddish pebble. This too I took into my hand. It was the last stone.
Then I stamped the ground lightly with my foot. “This is the place for my tomb,” I said. “Hew it from the mountain and ornament it as befits my state.”
My bedazzled eyes saw shapeless beings of light streaking through the skies as I had seen them only on rare occasions in the past. I raised my arms before me, palms down, and a moment later that indescribable sound which a man hears but once in his lifetime echoed through the cloudless sky. It was as the voice of a thousand trumpets, quivering through land and air, paralyzing the limbs but swelling the heart.
My attendants sank to the ground and covered their faces, but I touched my forehead, extended my other hand into space, and greeted the gods.
“Farewell, my era. The century of the gods has ended and another has begun, new in deeds, new in customs, new in thoughts.”
To my attendants I said, “Arise and rejoice that you have been privileged to hear the divine sound of the changing era. It means that all who last heard it are dead and none among the living will hear it again. Only the yet unborn will have that privilege.”
They still shook, as did I, with the trembling that comes to a person only once. Clutching the last stone of my life, I again stamped on the site of my tomb. As I did so a violent gust of wind swept over me, and I doubted no longer but knew that some day I would return. Some day I would rise from the tomb new of limb, to hear the roar of the wind under a cloudless sky, to smell the resinous fragrance of the pines in my nostrils and see the blue mound of the goddess’s mountain before my eyes. If I remembered to do so, I would choose from among the treasures in my tomb only the humblest clay vessel, pour the pebbles into my palm, hold them one by one, and relive my past life.
Slowly I returned to my city and dwelling along the path over which I had come. The pebble I dropped into the black clay vessel before the goddess, then covered my face with my hands and wept. I, Turms the immortal, shed the final tears of my mortal being and yearned for the life that I had lived.
2.
It was the night of the full moon and the beginning of the spring festival. But when my attendants sought to wash the sacred color from my face and hands, to anoint me and to place a wreath of flowers around my neck, I sent them away.
“Take of my flour and bake the cakes of the gods,” I said. “Choose sacrificial animals from my herd and also give gifts to the poor. Dance the sacrificial dances and play the games of the gods according to custom. But I myself shall retire to solitude.” Nevertheless, I asked both augurs, both interpreters of lightning and both sacrificial priests to make certain that all was done as custom decreed.
I myself burned incense in my room until the air was heavy with the smoke of the gods. Then I stretched out on the triple mattress of my couch, crossed my arms tightly across my chest, and let the moon shine on my face. I sank into a sleep which was not sleep until my limbs became immobile. Then it was that the goddess’s black dog came into my dream, but no longer barking and wild-eyed as before. It came gently, leaped into my lap, and licked my face. In my dream I spoke to it
“I will not have you in your underworld guise, goddess. You have given me unwanted wealth and power that I have not craved. There are no earthly riches with which you could tempt me to content myself with you.”
Her black dog vanished from my lap and the feeling of oppression passed. Then the arms of my lunar body, transparent in the moonlight, reached upward. Again I rejected the goddess. “Not even in my heavenly shape will I worship you,” I said.
My lunar body ceased to delude me. Instead, my guardian spirit, a winged being fairer than the fairest human, took shape before my eyes. She was more alive than any mortal as she approached and seated herself on the edge of my couch with a smile.
“Touch me with your hand,” I implored, “that I may know you at last. I am tired of lusting for all that is earthly and desire only you.”
“Not yet,” she replied. “But some day you will know me. Whomever you have loved on earth you have loved only me in her. We two, you and I, are inseparable but always apart until that moment when I can take you in my arms and bear you away on my powerful wings.”
“It is not your wings that I long for but you yourself,” I said. “I want to hold you in my arms. If not in this life, then in some future life I shall compel you to assume a human shape so that I may discover you with human eyes. Only for that reason do I want to return.”
Her slender fingers caressed my throat. “What a dreadful liar you are, Turms,” she murmured.
I gazed on her flawless beauty, human yet flamelike. “Tell me your name that I may know you,” I pleaded.
“And how domineering you are,” she smiled. “Even if you knew it you could not rule me. But do not fear. When I finally take you in my arms I shall whisper my name in your ear, although you probably will have forgotten it when you awaken to the thunder of immortality.” “I don’t want to forget it,” I protested. “You have done so in the past,” she declared.
No longer able to resist, I extended my arms to embrace her. They closed over nothing, although I still saw her alive before me. Gradually the objects in the room became visible through her being. I sprang up with a start, my fingers clutching at moonbeams. Disconsola
tely I paced the room, touching the various objects, but my arms lacked strength to lift even the smallest. Again a feeling of oppression came over me and I struck the gong with my fist to summon a human companion. But no sound emanated from it.
When I awakened I was lying on the couch with my arms crossed tightly over my chest. Finding that I could move my limbs, I sat on the edge of the couch and hid my face in my hands.
Through the incense and the terrifying moonlight I tasted the metallic flavor of immortality and smelled its icy scent. Its cold flame nickered before my eyes, its thunder roared in my ears.
I rose defiantly, flung wide my arms and shouted, “I do not fear you, Chimera. I still live the life of a human. Not an immortal but a human among my own kind.”
But I could not forget. I spoke again to her who ever hovered around me invisibly, protecting me with her wings.
“I confess that all I have done of my own selfish will has been wrong and harmful to myself as well as to others. Only in following your guidance, unknowingly and as one who walks in his sleep, have I unerringly done the right thing. But I must still learn for myself what I am and why I am thus.”
Having clarified that, I taunted her. “It is true that you have done your utmost to make me believe, but I do not. So much a human am I still, I will believe only when I awaken in some other life to the roar of the storm and remember and know myself. When that happens I shall be your equal. Then we can better dictate our terms to each other.”
I took the clay vessel from the feet of the goddess, took one pebble after another in my palm and remembered. And having remembered, I wrote down everything to the best of my ability.
3.
The majority of men never stoop to pluck a pebble from the ground and save it as a symbol of the end of one era and the beginning of another. Thus it is forgivable if relatives place in the vessel a heap of pebbles equaling in number the years and months of the deceased. In that case the pebbles reveal his age but nothing else. He has lived the ordinary life of a human and been content.
Nations also have their eras, known as the centuries of the gods. Thus we immortals know that the twelve Etruscan peoples and cities have been allotted ten cycles in which to live and die. We refer to them as lasting one thousand years because it is easy to say, but the length of a cycle may not necessarily be even one hundred years. It may be more or even less. We know only its beginning and its end from the unmistakable sign we receive.
A man seeks the certainty that cannot be had. Thus the soothsayers compare the liver of a sacrificed animal with a clay model which is divided into compartments, each bearing the name of a particular deity. Divine knowledge is lacking, therefore they are fallible.
Similarly, there are priests who have learned many rules of divining from the flight of birds. But when they are confronted by a sign with which they are not familiar they become confused and make their predictions blindly. I will not even mention the interpreters of lightning who ascend the holy mountains before a storm and confidently interpret the thunderbolts according to color and position in the vault of heaven, which they have quartered and orientated and divided into sixteen celestial regions.
But I shall say no more, for thus it must ever be. Everything grows rigid, everything ossifies, everything ages. Nothing is sadder than obsolescent and withering knowledge, fallible human knowledge instead of divine perception. A man can learn much, but learning is not knowledge. The only fountainheads of true knowledge are inward certainty and divine perception.
There are divine objects of such potency that the sick are healed by touching them. There are objects which protect their bearers and others which harm. There are sacred places which are recognized as sacred although no altar or votive stone marks their site. There are also seers who are able to view the past by holding an object. But no matter how convincingly they speak to earn their porridge and oil, it is impossible to know how much of what they say is true, how much merely dream or fabrication. Not even they themselves know. To that I can testify, for I myself have the same gift.
Nevertheless, something is retained in objects which have been used and loved by people for a long time and which are associated with good or evil. Something beyond the object itself. But all this is vague and dreamlike and fully as illusory as it is true. In the same manner a man’s senses mislead him if they are fed only by his lust, the lust to see, to hear, to touch, to smell, to taste. No two persons ever see or taste the same thing in the same way. Nor does the same person hear or touch the same thing in the same way at different times. Something which is pleasing and desirable at this moment may in a short time be repulsive and worthless. Therefore a person who believes only in his senses lies to himself throughout his life.
But as I write this I know that I do so only because I am old and worn out, because life tastes bitter and the world offers nothing for which I yearn. In my earlier years I would not have written thus, although whatever I would have put down would have been equally true.
Why, then, should I write at all?
I write to conquer time and to know myself. But can I conquer time? That I will never know because I do not know whether writing which has been erased can survive. Thus I shall be content to write only that I may know myself.
But first of all I shall take in my hand a smooth black pebble and write how I had my first presentiment of what I really was, rather than that which I merely believed myself to be.
4.
It happened on the road to Delphi amidst gloomy mountains. When we had left the shore, lightning had flashed in the distant west above the mountain peaks, and upon our reaching the village the people warned the pilgrims against continuing the journey. It was autumn, they said, and a storm was about to break. Landslides might close the road or torrents sweep away the traveler.
But I, Turms, was on my way to be judged by the oracle at Delphi. Athenian soldiers had rescued me and granted me asylum on one of their ships when the people of Ephesus for the second time in my life had tried to stone me to death. Thus I did not stop to await the passing of the storm. The villagers lived off the pilgrims, stopping them coming and going under many pretexts. They prepared good food, offered comfortable beds and sold keepsakes of wood, bone and stone that they had made. I did not believe their warnings, for I was not afraid of storms or lightning.
Driven by guilt, I continued my journey alone. The air cooled, clouds rolled down the mountains, lightning began to flash around me. Deafening claps of thunder echoed ceaselessly through the valleys. Lightning cleft the boulders, rain and hail beat my body, squalls almost swept me into the gorges, stones scratched my elbows and knees.
But I felt no pain. While the lightning blazed around me as though to reveal its awesome strength, ecstasy gripped me for the first time in my life. Without realizing what I did I began to dance along the road to Delphi. My feet danced and my arms moved, not in a dance that I had learned from others, but in a dance that moved and lived in me. My whole body moved in joyous ecstasy.
Then it was that I knew myself for the first time. No evil could befall me, nothing could do me harm. As I danced on the road to Delphi the words of a strange language burst from my lips, words that I did not know. Even the rhythm of the song was strange, as were the steps of the dance.
Beyond the mountain wall I saw the oval valley of Delphi blackened by clouds and blurred by rain. Then the storm ended, the clouds rolled away and the sun shone upon the buildings, the monuments and the holy temple of Delphi. Alone and without guidance I found the sacred fountain, laid my pack on the ground, divested myself of my muddy garments, and dived into the purifying waters. The rain had made the round pool murky, but the water pouring from the lions’ maws cleansed my hair and body. I stepped naked into the sunlight and the ecstasy still lingered, so that my limbs were like fire and I felt no cold.
Seeing the temple servants hastening toward me with fluttering robes and heads bound with sacred ribbons, I glanced upward. There, towering above everything
and mightier even than the temple, was the black cliff over whose edge the guilty were flung. Black birds hovered over the gorge in the wake of the storm. I began running up the terraces toward the temple between the statues and monuments, disregarding the sacred way.
Before the temple I laid my hand on the massive altar and shouted, “I, Turms of Ephesus, evoke the protection of the deity and submit to the judgment of the oracle!”
I raised my eyes and on the frieze of the temple saw Artemis racing with her dog and Dionysus feasting. I knew then that I had farther to go. The servants tried to stop me but I pulled away and ran into the temple. Through the forecourt, by the giant silver urns, the costly statues and votive offerings I ran. In the innermost chamber I saw the eternal flame at a small altar and beside it the Omphalos, the center of the earth, black from the smoke of the centuries. On that sacred stone I laid my hand and surrendered to divine protection.
An indescribable feeling of peace emanated from the stone, and I looked around me, unafraid. I saw the holy tomb of Dionysus, the eagles of the great deity in the temple shadows above me, and knew that I was safe. The servants dared not enter. Here I would encounter only the priests, the consecrated, the interpreters of the divine word.
Alerted by the servants, the four holy men came in haste, adjusting their headbands and gathering their robes around them. Their faces were wry, their eyes swollen from sleep. They lived already on the threshold of winter, and they expected few pilgrims. That day, because of the storm, they had expected no one. Thus my arrival had disturbed them.
So long as I lay naked on the floor of the inner shrine with both arms around the Omphalos, they could not use violence on me. Nor were they anxious to lay hands on me before they had learned my identity.