by Tobias Hill
–A little bird tells me you’re leaving.
Evening, the kitchen laid back after the day’s sunshine. Later they would regret the warmth, unaccustomed to it; but at sunset everything was slow and sweet, as if the oil in its plastic casks had risen up and submerged them all.
–Laconia, the bird says. Is that right, Englishman?
–That’s right.
–Such a shame. Like the singer says, I hate to see you go, but I love to watch you leave.
He had been trying to gather up what he knew of Sparta. He worked at the knowledge as he worked at the mixing bowl in his grip. Each fact was like a tooth loose against the tongue; each one would hang close but would not quite come free.
Tomorrow he would go to the British School library. He would have the morning to read and the coach ride in which to write. With time in Sparta, it might be enough to begin work again on his thesis.
Letters had come, too. One from Emine, and a card signed by Ness, delivered, as arranged, to the post office on Constitution Square. He would read those too, when he was ready.
–A great city, Nikos said, A noble city, Sparta.
–You’ll send us a postcard? Modest asked, and Ben had to smile.
–They used to say Spartan women were beautiful.
–Then send us a hundred postcards!
–If they used to say it they might all be grandmothers by now.
–That’s true. I don’t need a hundred postcards of grandmothers.
Small talk. The comfort of silence. He was making egg and lemon sauce, whisking the water and whites to a foam, beating in juice and yolks and bloodwarm stock. He worked carefully, easing the elements together. Bats were hunting in the yard, black rags flitting through the light.
–When I was a kid, Kostandin said, I could still hear them. Now I can hardly see them.
–When I was a kid, Florent said, My mother tell us they are the angels of mice.
Laughter without malice. This is how it should end, he thought. I should leave now, tonight, when I feel as if I could stay forever. And then Nikos was rising from his spot by the door, coming to stand at his shoulder.
–Sparta. A great history, that place has. But you know that. My father says you know all about the history of my country. He says you are a clever fellow. Is it true?
The mixture was turning an alchemical yellow, brighter than either the yolks or the lemons. Almost there. A little more broth. One more yolk. He reached through Nikos’s long shadow.
–Is that true, Englishman? You never said.
–Your father is wrong.
He cracked the last egg into a tea cup, lifted the yolk out whole, rolled it free of the white, slid it down his fingers into the mix. He began to beat harder, leaning into the motion.
–My father is never wrong. You and me, we have something in common. We have brains in our heads. Not like these others. Modest, here, he has nothing in his head but dirty pictures. There is nothing but cock between his ears. What can we do for him? I know. Let’s tell him a few things, you and me. Let’s teach him about the glory of Sparta. Okay? I’ll start. Once upon a time, Sparta and Athens were mortal enemies. The Spartans could not be beaten on land, and we were masters of the sea. Then we got too greedy. We tried to conquer a rich city far away, but we were defeated. The clever Spartans built their own ships, and our scattered fleets were hunted down. Am I doing well?
–I’m busy, Nikos.
–No, no! Now it’s your turn. When the Spartans caught our sailors, what is it they did to them?
He stopped beating. His heart was going faster than he would have liked. His fingers were glued-up with egg whites. And there was something wrong with the mix, a resistance to his work, the whisk clogging up with something. A snag of solidity, as if the stock had been too warm or trickled in too impatiently, so that the eggs had cooked too soon.
–Did they kill them?
–That’s not right.
He drew out the whisk. Bits of matter clung to the wires, grey-pink. He laid the whisk to one side and bent closer, trying to work it out. The colour of the mixture had changed, too. It was no longer shining but dull, the plastic yellow tinged with brown.
–Come on. What did they do to them, Englishman?
–Leave him, Nikos.
–What’s up with you? We’re just telling Modest a story.
–It’s Ben’s last night.
–Are you telling me what to do?
–No.
–Are you ordering me?
–Come on.
–ARE YOU TELLING ME–
–Their hands, he said. They cut off their hands.
He stood looking down into the bowl. A flaw of blood rose to the surface. At first it was only a crack in the yellow, gaudy as a lava lamp. Then it became a bubble, breaking and spreading. More blood than he would have imagined possible.
He heard Nikos exclaim and step back. In the blood’s wake the foetus itself was rising up. It was big, almost ready to be born, its skin already a stubble of wet feathers. Its form had been beaten to a bulging rag of flesh, the symmetry flayed out of it. It was bodiless, headless, natureless, protoplasmic. It was a thing transfigured.
Dear Ben,
I hope you are well. I am writing and hoping this reaches you soon. We are all fine here. Nessie has a cough but it’s nothing, all her friends have it too like a fashion. She misses you. Papa came to stay for a few days. He sends his regards. He also wishes you well.
It is still cold but some of the trees are coming into their leaves. By summer they will all be the same green, but now they are young and every new green is different.
Ben, the papers have come through. Actually they came through the week after you left. Our situation was not difficult so it did not take so long. So it is done now. I wanted to tell you on the phone but you need to know and you haven’t rung, and maybe this is better.
I wanted to say I am sorry. I am not apologising for anything. I mean I am sorry for us. It is hard to write these things, but easier to write them than to say them to your face.
Here is something else I would not say. I know you still love me. If I could still love you I would. It would be better for all of us.
Ring me. It is terrible that we did not say goodbye. It is not the way we should be. I feel like I have lost touch with you. It feels as if you are so far away from us. When you said you were going away I didn’t know it would be like this. Ring me or write. Will you still come home this summer?
Emine.
Dear Nessie,
Here is a picture of a dolphin. As you can see I drew it myself (as you know, your dad is a terrible liar).
In Greece the dolphins are famous and everyone loves them. They are friendly as dogs and swim along with the ships. Maybe they think the ships will race with them? Maybe they think the sailors will throw them some dolphin-friendly tuna? You will have to write and explain it to me.
I am not on a ship, but I am on a bus. The bus is so big it has its own TV and toilet. You would like the TV, it shows nothing but old films. The bus has a sign of three magpies on the side. Magpies are the birds for which you say, One for Sorrow, Two for Joy…Three means a girl, which makes me think of you.
Now the driver has turned off the TV. I don’t think he likes old films as much as you do. Outside I can see mountains on one side and sea on the other. The sea here is blue as a picture. I have been looking but I haven’t seen any dolphins and now I’m running out of room, so I must write like this. I’ll be back in the summer–don’t forget. Today I am going from the place called Athens (silly name!) to a place called Sparta. If you ask Mummy or Sinny for a map you will be able to see exactly where I am. When I have an address in Sparta I’ll send it to you and they can help you write back to me.
Love xxx
Feb 29th 2004
Dear Emine,
From Nessie’s card you know where I am. All that matters is what I’ve told her. Don’t worry about me. I’ve got work in Sparta, an excavation
there. By the time you get this I’ll be up to my neck in ancient pigsties.
We’re divorced, then. That’s good. I don’t want it not to be. I hope you’re happy. I know what that sounds like & I don’t mean it like that. I wish you
When we talk we say nothing these days but it is much harder to write nothing. What else can I say? We’ve just stopped at the Corinth Canal. The men are all smoking while the women head off for a group piss. The bar is full of fat bikers and old-timers. The old-timers wear Kangol caps and one has only one sock on. The bikers watch football and eat doughnuts. I’m writing these postcards and some fresh notes on Sparta. I hope they might help with my thesis. I miss you.
Things to make you laugh:
A boy who believed bats were mouse-angels.
A girl called Butterfly.
A T-shirt: AGED TO PERFECTION.
Now I can imagine you are smiling, so I’ll stop. Take care. Don’t worry about me. I’ll see you soon,
Ben.
Athens. The mountains and the sea. The blue battlefields of Salamis. Plains wasted with factories. Sunlight catching him like a speed camera.
Olive trees silver in the last sun. Olive trunks full of lumps and rumps, love handles, sumo thighs, double chins, breasts and warts and genitals, whittled slits, murder holes, clefts and crevices, wing-bones and filigrees. Olive groves full of secret things: car wrecks, gypsies and horses, shoulders of ruin.
A dog in a ditch, dead and swollen as a fruit. The Corinth Canal, deep and sleek as a gun. The smell of grilled meat at the truck-stop at sunset.
ETNIKISMOS
KKE
ALBANIAN ETNIKE LEGIONE
Derelicts sat in the doorways of derelicts. A green tanker in a petrol station. Cats outside a kafeneion, every old man their sugar-daddy. A street full of motorbikes. A street full of statuary. A square full of lights and dancing children.
Dusk. An owl quartering the fields. The far-silent fields of the night. The empty habitations and hollow realms.
Mountains. Cold translating the glass. Snow holding its position. Deadfall under hemlocks. Dead trunks and stumps of pine. The obduracy of winter. Reproach and uninhabitation.
The road down. A whiff of woodsmoke. Hunting shops still open. Light spilled across ruts. Hardware shops still open. Windows full of knives, handsaws, sickles, machetes, gutters, throat-cutters.
A last treacherous turn, the old woman in the next seat white-eyed and praying. And then the plain opening out. The land opening itself like hands. The soft darkness of trees. The city picked out in small lights. The mountains beyond and behind blocking out half the stars.
Hollow Lacedaemonia.
V
Notes Towards a Thesis
Storytellers have many motivations. The truth is not always one of them. Archaeology offers the historian a firmer ground: but Sparta has always resisted the archaeologist. It is not an Athens, with its Parthenon and its Tower of the Winds, its philosophies and histories. It is not a Mycenae, with its human face of sheet gold. In Laconia the rewards of excavation are rare and cryptic. Precious little has been brought to light through the centuries, though there has been no shortage of those who meant to do the glorious up-bringing.
Half a millennium after its decline and fall the Romans came in search of Sparta. They would sail to Gythion, buy their souvenirs of purple murex and porphyry, and ride the twenty miles north to the city of King Leonidas. They found something there, if not quite what they were looking for. Sparta still stood, but the heart had gone out of it. It had been stripped of its strength ages before. Without strength its people had no dignity.
At one sanctuary the Spartans built a theatre for their imperial masters. By way of entertainment, young boys were flogged to death at the altar of Artemis-Orthia. Afterwards, the visitors might go to see the swan’s egg from which Helen of Troy was born. The only Sparta the Romans discovered was an amusement, an assemblage of sideshows, of the cruel and ludicrous, a mythical beast stitched up from old carcasses: a parody for tourists who cared no less or knew no better.
Cyriac of Ancona visited Sparta in the fifteenth century. Merchant, diplomat and scholar, he came to mourn the people who had driven back the Persian Empire. What he found were fields and fields of ruins–the whole valley full of them–and fallen and failing powers. Greece then was a fading moon in the dying system of Constantinople, Sparta a force long since spent, sacked by King Alaric of the Western Goths a thousand years before. The Ottomans were massing in the footsteps of the Persians. Cyriac’s Sparta was a forgotten town lost in the Far East of Christendom, barely Christian itself, braced against Islam, ruled by the Despot of Morea from the walled heights of Mystras.
Cyriac looked for what was lost. It was another four hundred years before anyone dug for it. Mercifully little was discovered. At that time there was little distinction between the archaeologist and his more avaricious counterparts: the antiquarian, the treasure hunter, the grave robber, the tomb raider. There were excavations at Therapne in 1833 and 1841, and again at the turn of the century. Schliemann of Troy and Tsountas of Mycenae came and went, sniffing for Homeric gold and finding nothing to their satisfaction. The Americans tried their luck but returned to Athens with no glory for their troubles.
In 1904 the British School struck out across Laconia. In photographs they sit in trilbys and riding boots, arms folded or akimbo, pipes stuck in their gobs, their coolies sinking trenches with the hunger of oil prospectors. They reached Sparta in 1906, excavating the Sanctuary of Athena of the Bronze House that year.
According to the legends Odysseus built the Bronze House to celebrate the winning of Penelope, his Spartan bride. Herodotus, too, tells a good story of the House. A Spartan regent, accused of treachery, sought shelter from reprisal there. By custom he could not be forced from a sacred building. But the Spartans were a patient people. The elders ruled that the regent be immured. His body was brought out on the brink of death, that the goddess be spared his corruption.
The stories proved richer than the archaeology. Little bronze was gleaned from the Bronze House. An excavation like that would be big news now. Now, even a single shard of pottery can be dated by thermoluminescence, the residues of wine traced to their place of origin, the fats on its innards studied, the ecofacts of pollens analysed, the style interpreted, the technology of the firing gauged, the sediments that buried it–century after century–dated like the rings of trees; the trees that grow in those sediments–conifer and angiosperm–opened and read like secret messages. A century ago, a potsherd was a fillip, an X marking the spot where true treasures might be buried. Now there are as many secrets in one shard as Schliemann found in all his Trojan gold.
In 1906 the British abandoned the Bronze House. They moved down from the acropolis to the banks of the Eurotas river and began new excavations there. They had a stab at the Sanctuary of Artemis-Orthia, where the Romans had once watched spectacles of blood. Their renewed hope is plain in the five years they spent there, their increasing frustration in the brutality of their work.
These two last [altars] had to be destroyed to get down to the lower levels, and it was, in fact, only when the Archaic altar was found that the broken remains of the Roman altar were recognised for what they were…
More often, in the wake of the Second World War, it was the Greeks themselves who explored the ruins of Laconia. Most of the foreigners had come and gone, moving on to richer hunting grounds. The French came to root in the rubble. The Dutch sieved the rivers and ransacked old middens, and the British–always the British–did all of that and came again to dig at the Basilica of Nikon the Repenter. An Orthodox missionary, the Repenter had come to convert the Lacedaemonians, many of whom still worshipped the old gods a thousand years after the death of Christ. As proof of the power of his beliefs, Nikon offered to cure a plague if the Lacedaemonians drove out the Jews who had lived among them for many centuries. Which they did. The people heeded me, the Repenter wrote, and loved me as incense…
&n
bsp; One hundred and eighty years of archaeology, and what has been found of Sparta?
Nothing that proves the presence of a great city. Nothing but wooden masks, bone flutes, stirrup jars. Bars of lead. The head of a god. Only the golden cups unearthed near Amyclai possess any sense of grandeur. The gold of those vessels is so pure and thin it seems as if the light shines through it. But the cups were discovered in a beehive tomb, a burial place of the Mycenaeans. They are as old as the legends of Helen and Menelaus. They were made half a millennium before the great ascendancy of Sparta.
There is no hint of magnificence. There is no proof of the city the world sat up and noticed, the seat of power to which King Croesus and the High Priest of Jerusalem appealed for help from far-off Lydia and Judaea. It is as if the Spartans crawled away and died, taking with them all trace of themselves. As if they were never there at all.
It is a mystery archaeology has failed to solve. No one has found anything better than the fictions of fable and story. Sparta is all secrets and no answers, all actions without substance. All rumours and chatterings and whispers.
Oh most detested of mortals among all humanity,
Inhabitants of Sparta, council-house of trickery,
Masters of lies, weavers of webs of evil,
Thinking crooked things, nothing healthy, but always
Devious…are you not found out always saying
One thing with the tongue, while thinking another?…
No longer–maiden voices sweet-calling, sounds of allurement–
Can my limbs bear me up. Oh I wish, I wish I could be a seabird,
Who with sea kingfishers skims the blossom of the sea
With a heart free of care. Sea-coloured, sacred bird of the waters…