Demons

by Bill Nagelkerke

  ‘Exhausting but it’s good. Thanks for inviting

  me.’

  ‘I’m glad I did. I’m glad you came.’

  ‘Can I ask you something?’ said Chris.

  ‘Ask away.’ In the mood I was in I would have listened to anything, agreed to nearly anything.

  ‘You know the Tower of the Winds?’ Chris said.

  ‘The Tower of the Winds? No. What is it? Something ancient I suppose?’

  ‘Andrea!’

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t, honest,’ I yawned. I was tired. Thank God there was a weekend to follow. A glorious, blissful long sleep-in in the morning.

  ‘The Horologium. I’m going to be writing an essay about it, remember?’

  ‘Oh yes. I remember that. I didn’t know it had another name. You never said.’

  ‘Maybe I didn’t. Well, the Tower of the Winds is one of the few almost completely intact buildings in the ancient world. It’s a small masterpiece.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it Chris.’

  ‘You don’t have to,’ said Chris, alert again, past the point of exhaustion I suspected. ‘All you have to do is look at a picture of it to know. I’ve got one with me.’

  ‘You’re joking?’

  ‘No, seriously.’ He reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out some carefully folded pieces of paper.

  An extract from Chris’s notebook

  The Tower of the winds

  Situated in the agora (where our word agora-phobic comes from), or market place, of ancient Athens. Octagonal marble tower, encircled by a frieze of the eight winds. Inside, remains of a reservoir and

  an astronomical water clock. Constructed by

  Andronikos of Kyrrhos. The clock inside the tower was operated by a water-driven wheel on which the constellations were represented, and across it a metal wire representing the horizon. The clock showed which constellations were rising and setting, day and night.

  A metaphor for miracles

  ‘Doesn’t look much,’ I said.

  Truth was, it didn’t. The photo showed a squat, crumbly, marble-white ruin, in amongst trees and other ruins. ‘What did you say was so special about it? It doesn’t even look like a tower. Not what I’d consider a tower.’

  ‘Lots of things make it special,’ said Chris, developing that intense look I’d witnessed only a couple of times before, including the day when we’d read, and discussed, The Bacchae together on the hills.

  ‘This isn’t going to turn into a lecture, is it?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ll try not to let it,’ Chris said, a bit miffed. ‘I just wanted to share something with you that’s important to me.’

  ‘OK,’ I said nobly. ‘Carry on.’

  He did.

  ‘Like I said, it’s one of the most complete ruins in the Agora.’

  I had to smile. ‘Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?’

  ‘Yes and no. Sure, it’s just a shadow of what it once was, the carvings are broken, bits are missing, but the essential structure’s there. Archaeologists have been inside, they’ve been able to reconstruct the

  inner workings. See,’ - and he showed me another

  picture, a cutaway diagram of the Tower this time. - ‘this is how it worked. It looked like magic to the ordinary Greek but behind its construction was a scientific, rational, thinking mind.’

  ‘Unlike the religious mind?’ I asked leaping to the conclusion that I was about to hear another sermon on the topic of religion. ‘Chris, is all this meant to prove how silly I was to have believed in God?’

  He shook his head emphatically, impatiently. ‘No, no, that’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m just trying to show you why I’m the way I am.’

  ‘All right then.’

  ‘The way I see it, The Tower of the Winds is like a metaphor for a miracle when it wasn’t anything like. Unless you knew how the clock device worked’ - and here Chris jabbed at an intricate line-drawing showing pipes, floats, drains, pulleys, counterweights - ‘you might actually believe the whole thing was operated by the gods rather than it being a very clever piece of engineering.’

  ‘So what are you saying Chris? That religion’s just a few cogs and drive shafts and that people who do believe in God are complete idiots. I’ve just overheard Shane Moore say much the same thing, but using far fewer words.’

  ‘Shane who?’

  ‘Never mind. Tell me, why would anyone have gone to all the trouble of trying to swindle the Mr Average Ancient Greek?’

  ‘They didn’t set out to, not deliberately,’ said Chris. ‘But if you came say from the countryside just outside Athens and didn’t know anything other than the old rural superstitions well, you’d think the Tower

  of the Winds was pretty amazing, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Until you discovered the truth.’

  ‘But then it became even more amazing,’ said Chris. ‘See what I mean?’

  ‘I guess,’ I said.

  ‘So my problem,’ said Chris, ‘if you can call it a problem, is that I’ve always known too much to be religious.’

  ‘That,’ I said, ‘sounds pretty arrogant.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it to come out that way,’ Chris said. ‘To most people it won’t ever matter knowing or not knowing that the Tower of the Winds existed. But it matters to me. I know it existed. I care it existed. If it hadn’t existed I might have been a completely different person.’

  ‘Gullible like me?’

  ‘Of course not. Don’t be silly.’

  I guess I sort of did understand what he was getting at. It was less to do with knowing facts and more to do with passion, belief, commitment. It was knowing that the knowing mattered.

  ‘You know that the guy who built the Tower was called Andronikos, don’t you?’

  ‘Yep,’ I said.

  ‘Well, it’s close to Andrea isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it? I guess.’

  ‘So could I call you Andy? A sort of private nickname. Short for Andrea and Andronikos.’

  ‘Is that what you’ve been leading up to asking?’ I said. ‘Why would you want to call me Andy?’

  ‘Because then you’d be both contemporary and classical. Have a foot in both worlds, like me.’

  A living link between past and present. Andy. A boy’s name. It took a bit of thinking about.

  ‘Oh why not,’ I said at last, remembering Mum’s

  litany of nuns, many of them with names of male saints. ‘It’s my birthday after all. Might as well be born again with a new name.’

  Second thoughts

  At some early hour in the morning the people who were staying overnight unpacked their sleeping bags and spread them around the marquee, on mattresses that our hosts had provided or using their own if they’d brought one. No one bothered to get changed. We just crawled inside our bags as we were.

  ‘It’s like being on a marae,’ said Chris, shortly before he dropped off. ‘Not that I’ve stayed overnight in one but I’m sure this is what it would be like.’

  ‘Surrounded by the ancestors,’ I murmured.

  ‘Yeah.’

  It was strange going to sleep in the same space as Chris. Him on one side of me, Mum and Dad on the other.

  ‘Night,’ we said to each other.

  ‘Happy birthday Andrea,’ they all said to me again. ‘For yesterday!’

  Yesterday, already gone, had been a happy day but today had started on a worrying note. Despite feeling so tired, I couldn’t fall asleep as quickly as everyone else. My mind whirled, sifting and sorting the events of the past few hours.

  I felt pleased Chris had taken the time to reveal something about himself to me but, in doing so, he had revealed more to me about me. I couldn’t honestly any longer say that I had the same commitment to, and passion in, something outside myself, not as he did. Once, I guessed, it had been religion, my Catholic belief. A sense of a greater purpose, a God working the machinery of the Tower

  of the Winds that was the world.


  But that was gone, wasn’t it? And it hadn’t been replaced with anything else.

  Looking up at the roof of the tent I fingered my bone pendant hopefully, wondering about my ancestors and where they were. As I stared through half-closed eyes at the softly billowing folds of material above me, I visualised its plain, creamy surface transforming and transformed into Michelangelo’s luscious frescoed ceiling, at the centre of which Adam and God strained towards each other.

  Even when I closed my eyes, the vision stayed with me.

  Time in between

  The year unrolled like one of the scrolls Ms Shapiro said had been the ancient world’s equivalent of our modern book. The memory of St Pat’s day receded and I gradually became more optimistic again that I had made, and was continuing to make, the right choices in my life. Chris and I continued going out regularly, a few more walks until the summer turned into late autumn and ice began clinging to the hill tracks. Movies, coffee bars and takeaways after that. We became two of Pizza2Go’s staunchest customers.

  At school our faint hearts had built up some resistance and we had actually started to talk seriously about entering the University’s Classics Competition and what we’d have to do to be up there with the top schools.

  But the future or, in my case, the absence of a definite future continued to remain a question mark. I hadn’t made any choices about that yet. After school finished what then? Chris was definitely going to uni,

  he said. Do a degree in Classics. What else?

  ‘We could do the same papers,’ he said en-thusiastically.

  But I stayed undecided. I didn’t know if uni was going to be for me or not. By way of encouragement Chris took me to the University’s Classics Department one lunchtime to see a fragment from the Horologium, which they kept under glass in their small museum collection. It was a piece they had just bought, he said, and he was hugely excited about it.

  I got all wound up on his behalf, so much so that when we stood at the entrance to the room where the precious piece was kept my heart was bouncing up and down like a yo-yo on a string. And, after all that build-up, it turned out to be nothing more than a minute corner of the base of the Tower, looking like a chip of modern-day broken concrete.

  ‘Don’t be crazy,’ Chris said, when I said as much to him. ‘Look. See the writing there.’

  I had to peer really hard to see any writing, eventually glimpsing what looked like a faint squiggly line in the stone.

  ‘It’s an ancient piece of graffiti,’ he said in reverential awe, almost as if he’d been standing in a church.

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yes. They think it was carved by a Roman tourist in Greece.’

  ‘A modern day tourist?’

  ‘No! An Ancient Roman of course. They had their OE like everyone else.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. Of course. I should have re-membered Becs had said her randy souvenir was a copy of a copy of a copy, going way back.

  ‘What does it say? Can you tell?’

  ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘But the experts think they’ve sussed it out, even though it’s only a fragment and the bit it was joined onto has disappeared. I think it’s meant to go, A strong wind often turns into a gentle breeze.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like graffiti,’ I said. ‘Not as we know it. More poetic than anything.’

  ‘People wrote all sorts of things on ancient buildings,’ said Chris. ‘Some of it was quite serious and poetic, like this.’

  ‘Hmm,’ I said.

  ‘It’s as much the idea that we’re making a connection with the distant past,’ he went on. ‘It was so long ago yet it’s still right here in front of us today. The Roman tourist lives.’

  ‘I understand,’ I said. ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Let’s do it,’ he said, momentarily startling me into a different train of thought. ‘Let’s come here and study together.’

  At that precise moment I loved him so much I almost said yes. ‘Maybe,’ was what I did say. ‘I’ll think about it Chris. I still have time to decide.’

  The way to a man’s heart

  Chris’s September birthday came around fast and I couldn’t decide what to get him for a present. I’d been into a gift shop called Ankh and had nearly bought a small replica of an Egyptian sarcophagus but changed my mind the second I handed it over at the counter. I’d never thought to ask if Chris was as keen on things Egyptian as he was on things Greek.

  ‘Take him out for a meal instead,’ said Mum when I told her my problem.

  ‘A takeaway wouldn’t be anything special,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t mean a takeaway, for heaven’s sake,’ Mum said. ‘Go somewhere special.’

  ‘Expensive you mean?’ I said.

  “More expensive than Pizza2Go,’ said Mum.

  ‘I’ve saved up a bit,’ I said. ‘I suppose I could afford it.’

  ‘Well then,’ said Mum. ‘Is he worth it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  The South Bank Restaurant

  ‘I’ll pick you up at around eight,’ I said.

  ‘It’s my turn to drive,’ said Chris.

  ‘It’s your birthday. I’m driving us. Besides, my parents don’t seem to mind if I borrow the car, not like your father does.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Chris. ‘The usual?’

  ‘No. I’m taking you somewhere special. I’ve got enough for a posh restaurant. I’ve booked and everything.’

  ‘Isn’t that being a bit presumptuous? How do you know I’ll cope with a posh place?’

  I checked to see if he was being serious. I couldn’t tell. ‘Like I said, it’s your birthday. I’m allowed to be presumptuous.’

  ‘If you say so. But won’t it cost a bomb?’

  ‘I said I’ve got enough.’

  ‘You don’t earn much as a Wednesday night checkout chick,’ he said. ‘Better save it for something more important.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like uni.’

  ‘Don’t be mad Chris. I could never afford to pay for uni with what I earn. No, I’ve decided I want to splash out on a meal. Unless you really don’t like the idea.’

  ‘I do,’ Chris said. ‘I think it’s a lovely, kind, generous idea, just as lovely, kind and generous as you are. And as long as you think I’m worth it.’

  ‘You are, as long as you keep saying things like that.’

  Warnings

  I’d chosen the South Bank. It hadn’t been open very long. It was opposite the river in the old Memorial Chambers.

  When I came to collect Chris his father answered the door. I’d met him a few times by now and he’d never been what I’d call friendly. He often worked long hours, Chris had said by way of explanation, at his job as a Council planner. Designing roads, traffic intersections, that sort of thing.

  ‘Oh hello Andrea,’ he said. ‘We weren’t expecting you yet.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’m early.’

  I was excited and nervous about going out to a proper restaurant. It was something Mum and Dad hardly ever did and when they did it was usually just the two of them.

  I hadn’t given any thought to what I was going to wear and I’d ended up asking Becs, of all people, if I could borrow something off her.

  She’d invited me to her place and let me try on several outfits. ‘That’s the one,’ she said giving me a long, intent going over as I came out of her room dressed in a slinky, black, off-the-shoulder number. ‘Beautiful. Shows off all your curves and bumps to perfection.’

  ‘I don’t want to show them off,’ I said, very

  conscious of my short hair and my wide hips.

  ‘Childbearing,’ Gran had once called them, for no apparent reason. And when I’d recently looked in one of Dad’s books about early Ireland I’d seen a picture of a bell-shaped fertility goddess who I thought I closely resembled. ‘Pinhead’ days all over again.

  ‘And even if I did they’re not worth showing off,’ I said.

  ‘You’ve got no idea,
’ said Becs, sounding seriously and unexpectedly genuine for once, ‘how fab you look. Just don’t let Ms Shapiro see you kitted out like this.’

  ‘Becs! She’s an ordinary lesbian not a predator for goodness sake.’

  ‘I know that she is and that she isn’t. I was just kidding.’

  I’d often wondered why Becs had been so anti-Ms Shapiro. Today, though, she sounded almost sorry that she had behaved that way towards her. I stole a glance at Becs but her face gave nothing away. What really was going on in her head?

  ‘I don’t want to look fab,’ I said. ‘I just want to look like me.’

  ‘And what does ‘you’ really look like?’ said Becs. ‘People have different looks for different occasions. And for different people. But suit yourself,’ she said. ‘Maybe you should go to the Op Shop and ask for a twin set and pearls.’

  In the end, against my better judgement, I stuck with the slinky black.

  ‘Knock him dead,’ said Becs, sounding her usual brazen self. This time it didn’t bother me as much as it might have earlier in the year. I was beginning to wonder if there was another, secret Becs hiding

  behind her usual, everyday self.

  ‘Chris is just in the shower,’ said his father. ‘He’ll be

  ready soon. Come and sit down.’

  I followed him into the dining room.

  ‘Um,’ - he seemed unusually nervous - ‘I have to go out myself soon but seeing as you’re early maybe I’ll just take the opportunity of having a quiet word with you.’

  ‘A quiet word?’

  ‘Yes. Look, I don’t want to spoil things but this may be the only chance I get to . . .’ He dithered a moment longer, unsure whether we should sit or stand. ‘Look, sit down,’ he decided at last. ‘Andrea . . . I’m not sure how I can put this without sounding, well, mean-spirited perhaps or you taking it the wrong way but . . . I wonder if you and Christopher really know what you’re doing?’

  Hearing Chris called Christopher was almost as weird as being called Andy by him, although I was getting used to the latter.