by Tobias Hill
The door was unlocked. He went in blindly, not caring to mind himself in the dark. The place stank of incense. After a while he could make out an altarpiece. A row of unlit lamps, the olive oil to fuel them congealed in plastic bottles. Matches. His hands were shaking as he opened the box. He broke three sticks before he got a lamp to take. The chapel flickered around him. On the wall, a superman rode forth in his chariot of fire. Below him, men fell to their knees in the untilled fields.
He pulled out a wooden chair and sat. There was a clattering somewhere, and he wondered if it were rats before he realised it was his own teeth. His thoughts moved sluggishly. He wondered if he should thank God. He wondered if he should have gone back. It seemed too late now, and beyond him. He wouldn’t have gone back now if he could.
It was some time–he didn’t know how long–before the downpour slowed. When the sound of it on the tiles had almost ceased he went outside and stood under the eaves.
The rain was moving off westwards. Out of nothing the sun had appeared. He stepped out of the shelter, shivering. There were rainbows across the valley, bent low between mountains and clouds.
He began to follow the track upwards again. The mud treacherous underfoot. The mud full of olives and shotgun shells. A labyrinth of puddles and tractor ruts. The river shining miles below. Goat bells ringing in the high pastures. The shirt drying on his back. The sun on his head a blessing.
And then voices ahead. A question like birdsong, asked and asked again in answer. A green plateau between green hills. A guerrilla encampment among the trees. People rising up from the ground, sudden and strange as centaurs. Eberhard there among them, his face cold as he turned away. A blonde girl in blue jeans and Terminator shades. A thing like a pyramid at the edge of the heights, a ruin like something flown up from Mexico. A woman waving a hat, a ridiculous floppy sunhat, calling out across the grass and wild tulips and cyclamen.
–Is that you? Is that Ben Mercer? Oh, Ben, you made it! We’re so glad you made it! We’ve been waiting for you so long!
VII
Shovelmonkey Number Five
–Ben! the woman in the floppy hat said again, as if it were the most adorable name in the world. –It’s Missy! Missy Stanton. It’s so good to see you. Where have you been?
–Waiting? he said (how stupid he sounded; his lips were numb).
–Waiting? she said, and she laughed, hugging him, holding him back, as if they were relatives who hadn’t met in years, as if she meant to kiss him or shake some sense into him; as if it was not Where have you been? she meant to say but Where have you been all my life?
–Waiting for what? Couldn’t they find a cab? Did you walk all the way up here? Why? Look at you, you are so trashed.
–Trashed, he said, and laughed with her, his voice queer as an echo. –Yes, I’m afraid I am.
–Oh, we better get you dry. You better get out of the wind. Are you okay?
–Really, don’t worry, I’m just–
–Your clothes! The guys can lend you something, I guess. You’re about Jason’s size…are you sure you’re alright?
She was wringing her hands. It was not something he remembered actually seeing anyone do. The quaintness of it embarrassed him for her. No, look, I’m really fine, he began to say, but as he spoke the wind picked up, glossing the grass flat and bright, pressing his clothes against his skin, his teeth chattering and locking on No, the cold going right through him, as if his flesh had become porous, and the last pleasure faded from Missy’s face.
–No you’re not, are you? Oh dear, oh no…we’ll get you under cover. You’ll be better in no time, I promise. Guys? Guys!
She had turned away from him to call across the uplands. There were excavations at each end of the plateau, and people all along it. Already they had started down in twos and threes. For a moment he felt the indignity of it–his arrival a joke, the opposite of everything he had hoped for–and then there was only the release and surrender of relief.
He caught sight of Eberhard again, the girl in the Terminator shades walking beside him, their heads bent together in rapid conversation. A second girl was tagging along behind them, a more disconsolate figure, pale and wan in a Hello Kitty T-shirt. Then they were all around him, almost a dozen of them, all except Missy holding back, as if he were an exotic animal, a creature that might prove curious or distasteful or even, somehow, dangerous.
–It was further than I thought, he said, a tame apology to no one in particular, and Missy took his arm.
–Guys, this is Ben Mercer, the one I was telling you about. He ran into some hitches getting up here. Jason, can you lend him something dry? Oh, tea! Do we have–
–We drank it all this morning, the blonde girl said, and Missy turned on her.
–Oh gosh, you can make some more, Eleschen, can’t you?
–Well, sure.
Her gaze–Eleschen’s–stayed on him as she shrugged. Her look was politely curious; no more and no warmer than that. Her accent was some kind of American: there was a burr to it he didn’t recognise. She was striking: so thin, and her eyes such a glorious blue, that the rest of her seemed faint by contrast. The light seemed to shine through her, like the gold of the cups from the tombs at Amyclai.
–What happened to him? an English voice asked behind him, and then they were speaking all over one another, arguing over him, as if he were an artefact of doubtful provenance, their voices coming and going so quickly that he gave up listening. There was a sign beside him–CAUTION! DEEP EXCAVATION!–and he leaned against it, losing track of everything except his own fatigue, his body so weighed down with rain it was as if it had saturated him, not only his clothes and hair but his bones and blood, his organs hanging heavy in their allotted places.
–He just got a bit lost, is all. I don’t know why he tried to walk, I said to get a cab–
–Is he sick? He looks sick.
–He doesn’t look sick, don’t be silly.
–What kind of sick?
–Looks fine to me.
–Talis iste meus stupor nil uidet, nihil audit…
Laughter–a girl’s–as cool as a wind chime. A shudder went through him. When it passed he found that their excitement had begun to annoy him. He shook his head, as if to extricate himself from them all, and realised that someone was cupping his chin, Missy staring into his eyes.
–…Ben?
–I’m alright, he said, pettishly, though his teeth were threatening to chatter again. –Let go of me.
–Alright, okay, let’s get him into the Findhut–
Another voice, measured and familiar. –No. Any of the cars will be warmer.
–Yes, that’s…thank you, Eberhard. Jason, will you…no, the other arm. Thank you, Max. Jason.
–Alright, keep your bloody knickers on.
–And can someone open…and there we are!
The thunk-thunk of car doors closing. Blissful silence. The smell of leatherette. He closed his eyes and let the warmth leach into him. The car was a suntrap. Now and then he could hear the buffeting of the wind. The vehicle rocking gently, as if he were drifting out to sea.
When his eyes opened again he was unsure whether he had slept. The daylight did not seem to have altered, but he felt alarmed, as if he had dozed off in a lecture. He could see Missy outside, bent over a mobile, and two of the others beyond her, the blonde girl–Eleschen–and a skinheaded man with an acne-scarred face and the squat build of a wrestler, the two of them looking off towards the eastern mountains.
He had found them, at least. At least he had that to his credit. He had found Therapne, the Sparta of the Ancients. Then the humiliation of it all began to come back to him, and he groaned out loud at the recollection.
He was propped up in the back seat of a hatchback, leaning against a heap of stuff. Ziplock bags, Tupperware, a tripod sieve folded in on itself. A pile of clothes, less esoteric and faintly erotic; a pair of jeans, a white bra, a sky-blue T-shirt with a Disney bunny and a message. All This And My Dad
dy’s Rich.
–Don’t get ideas.
A boy was sitting in the driver’s seat. He was so still it was as if he had suddenly appeared, prodigious as a rabbit snatched from a hat. His face was rabbity, too, almost hare-lipped, though he had done his best to hide the fact. He wore a lived-in Hawaiian shirt, a frayed T-shirt poking from under it, a diver’s watch and a goatee, although the beard was new and coming in unevenly, a surf-dude’s mange. He was tanned and dusty, so dusty it was hard to tell where the tan ended and the dust began. His smile was wolfish and not entirely pleasant, as if he were in on a joke he wasn’t yet willing to share.
–Ideas? he said, and the boy nodded at the clothes.
–Natsuko’s. Don’t get your hopes up though. First time I saw her I thought the same thing.
–What was that? he said, and the boy snorted.
–If you don’t know I ain’t going to tell you.
His accent was that of London or one of its countless suburban satellites. There was something about him which reminded Ben of the street markets where his father and uncles worked. A wide-boy slyness: an impishness. The boy turned away, hunching over himself: there was the scritch of a lighter, and then he was holding out his free hand between the seats, breathing out smoke with the syllables of his name.
–Jason.
–Ben.
–I know, Stanton told us about you, he said, and drew on his cigarette, eyes running narrowly over Ben, like those of a tailor or a boxer.
–I hope she was nice.
–She’s always nice.
–What did she say?
–That we’d be getting a new shovelmonkey. Which made all us mooks happy, of course, more monkeys meaning less shovelling. That was quite an entrance, by the way.
–Was it?
He heard the catch in his own voice and hated it. He saw Jason’s grin widen.
–Don’t worry about it. Listen, there should be a towel back there. She goes for a swim most mornings. There it is, look. Go on, she won’t mind.
There was still a smell to the towel, complicated and not unpleasant: perfume, chlorine, a female tang. As he scrubbed at his hair Jason passed back a sports bag and a gigantic thermos flask emblazoned all over with the green clovers of the Panathinaikos football team.
–Tea. Made it myself. Hope you take sugar. There’s wellies in the van if you feel up to working.
He opened the bag. A tie-dyed T-shirt with a silhouette of Indiana Jones and another slogan, LORD OF THE TROWELS; a garish tangerine Fred Perry sweatshirt; army surplus trousers; two pairs of socks; a paisley handkerchief. Jason’s shed skin.
–Couldn’t find you a hat but the hankie’ll do. Wise Shovelmonkey Number Five say, never go digging without a hankie on your head. It’s all clean, he added, as if he were a salesman and cleanliness a not-to-be-expected bonus.
–Thanks.
–Couldn’t find you any waterproofs either. You have got your own waterproofs? No, you haven’t. Bloody hell. Haven’t done this much, have you?
–Not much.
–First time?
–Not quite, he said, defensively, and began to change. His body felt damp and unkempt as his clothes. He could feel Jason still watching him, as if he had been laid on for his amusement.
–So, you know Eb.
–Eberhard? A bit.
–Small world. Friends?
–Pretty much.
–Yeah, right.
–Why ask if you know different?
–More fun that way, isn’t it?
Their eyes met again across the seats. There was no real aggression in Jason, only a fierce mocking antagonism. Go on, his eyes said. Lose it with me. What a laugh that’ll be! What a riot!
–You should’ve seen his face when Stanton told us you were coming.
He worked at the clothes in silence, gingerly sullen, waiting for the inevitable; for Jason to start in again.
–What’s the story, then?
–There is no story.
–Course there is. You don’t know us, you don’t have mates here, and you don’t know how to dig. What made this shithole seem like a good idea?
–It doesn’t look that bad.
–No? You wait, Jason muttered, examining his cigarette as if it were defective. –It’s like the Foreign Legion here, no one joins up unless they have to. How’d you get wind of us?
–I don’t remember.
–Come on, don’t get sulky.
–Don’t get sarky then, he said, rising to the bait despite himself, and Jason cackled and put up his hands.
–No more sark, then. On my life.
–Eberhard said there was something going on down here, and I wasn’t–
–Eb told you about us?
There it was again, that Us. He had heard that before. There was something Eberhard had said, that night in Metamorphosis, his Us carrying this same light weight.
–He just said there was a dig.
–And so here you are.
Jason was still smiling, the expression barely faltering. His cigarette had gone out unnoticed. His eyes were very white in his dust-tanned face.
–What’s wrong with that?
Jason cocked an eyebrow and glanced at his watch. –Not like Eb to be so chatty, that’s all. Well, you’re all kitted out now. Stanton said to tell you to take it easy. Have a sit down and a nice cup of tea. Come and have a dig later if you think you’re hard enough. Not that I would if I were you. Enjoy it while it lasts, mate. Lie back and think of England. I’ll see you later, alright? No rest for the wicked shovelmonkey.
He winked and held out his hand again, waiting an age for Ben to take it, then mockingly formal, a customs officer returning a passport.
–Welcome to Sparta, Mr Mercer. We do hope you enjoy your stay.
He lay back and thought of England. He had been gone for a month. It felt like no time and like forever. A part of him still waited there and yet it was impossible to imagine himself back into that distance.
He remembered Oxford that last morning. The fog going out through the streets to the rivers, the Thames and the Cherwell, the Evenlode and the Ock. And the city always secretive and all the more so at that hour, as it slept, its acres full of unseen courts and cloisters, its lodgings and stairs full of lives held in waiting, pending morning.
He thought of Emine and her letter and then–sharper, sharper–of Nessie, a month older without him to see it. He wondered how long it would be before she began to forget his face, as he had half-forgotten his own father’s. He tried to remember hers. It was clear until the moment he sought it. The harder he tried the fainter it became. She faded away from him like the fog.
He drank sweet tea and watched the dig. He had studied Therapne at Oxford and had refreshed his reading in Athens, but the reality drew him out of himself. He recognised the lay of the land, the hills and saddle that ran between them. He knew the history of the ruins on each, the palaces and shrines and graves built one atop the other, like corals, the living on the dead. But the green of the slopes in the sunlight, and the flash of spring flowers; and beyond the ziggurat-steps of the Menelaion, the clear air across the valley, and the city below, and the mountains beyond the city, white-capped, momentous…it was spectacular. Nothing he had ever read had thought to mention that.
The archaeological encampment was startling only in its ugliness. Mud everywhere. Muck and dust. A Transit van and assorted cars sat gathered under a stand of cypress. A Containex toilet cabin stood askew. Four men worked at two pits nearby with all the subtlety of road-diggers. A third pit lay empty, its clean-swept terraced depths as meticulous as any excavation he had seen during his stints of Oxford fieldwork. Halfway along the saddle stood two wooden huts, high-eaved, double-doored, expensive things with styrene windows. Incongruous striped awnings had been added to their lee-sides. Folding tables and chairs stood under them. At the top of the second knoll, by the Menelaion, Jason stood over the tripod of a surveyor’s laser plummet, almost motionless, his he
ad bent to the readout. On the furthest rise stood a chapel, much smaller than the one in which he had sheltered, a tiny thing with a wide sheltering roof and a bell hung under the sweep of the eaves.
There were only three women: the girl he supposed must be Natsuko, the one called Eleschen and Missy herself. Their work often seemed to draw them to the huts, although Missy was everywhere, boundlessly energetic, digging and sifting, washing and hauling. The seven men came and went, all of them out of sight at times in the pits. He saw Eberhard stalking between ruins, and the wrestler below the shrine, lying flat out, his head and arms underground. The others looked to him like Greeks, their clothes more formal and less youthful than those of the foreigners, their faces clean-shaven and sun-leathered and worn.
No one seemed to be telling anyone what to do. That too was unexpected. The excavations he had taken part in at Oxford had been controlled in the extreme, their hierarchies military in their severity. He saw Missy give an order only once, one of the Greeks going to fetch wheelbarrows from the nearest hut. Otherwise they all went about their business as if according to some unspoken agreement, without a word to their overseer. Eberhard and Natsuko worked alone, Sauer in splendid isolation, the girl hunched miserably over the worktables under the awnings. Then it rained again and for a few minutes they did work together, pulling sheeting across one distant trench, abruptly as organised as sailors, the sky above and beyond them marbled with clouds.
He found a site plan in the back of the car, the dig hand-drawn in pencil with more skill than he could ever have achieved himself. There were the saddle and the three miniature peaks, North Hill, Aëtós Hill, Elijah’s Knoll. The surrounding acres were crowded with the arcane names of ruins and a hundred years of excavations, the ground dug and reburied decade after decade, the new pits with faint working titles of their own like the names of old villages–Long Hearth, Bronze Trench, East Midden–and all around and over them contour lines and context numbers and stratigraphical notations, the design in its entirety so busy and crosswritten it was as if it had been encrypted.