The Orpheus Descent

by Tom Harper

  But nowhere to run once you’re cornered. I tucked the letter into my Heraclitus, not fast enough to escape notice.

  ‘What are you reading?’

  ‘Heraclitus.’

  ‘What does he say?’

  ‘He says the sea is a paradox: both good and bad.’

  ‘Good for fish, bad for people.’ Euphemus peered over the side. ‘I do hope we don’t end up with the fish. I have my doubts about the captain, you know.’

  I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to talk to him. Euphemus folded himself carefully and sat cross-legged on the deck beside me. The narcissus smell blossomed.

  ‘If you need anything else to read, I’d be happy to lend you something. I’ve written a little book myself – you probably know it – On Virtue.’

  ‘Didn’t you ever hear the expression, “Write what you know”?’

  He laughed and smiled, though the two didn’t quite connect. ‘Very quick. You know, I saw you at the Isthmian games when you won the wrestling title. You were quick then, too.’

  I accepted the compliment with a nod.

  ‘And they tell me you knew Socrates.’

  They tell me. They always do: men like Philebus who snipe and gossip and mistake it for knowledge.

  ‘A long time ago.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  I shifted my weight on the deck. ‘The wisest man who ever lived.’

  ‘Everyone says that.’

  ‘Now that he’s safely dead.’

  ‘I mean, what was he really like?’

  I didn’t answer. I can no more describe Socrates than I can the surface of the sun. Even if I squint, it hurts too much to look.

  ‘What takes you to Italy?’ I asked.

  Changing the subject got me another smile. He had one for every occasion. ‘I’m bored with Athens. I’ve had a better offer.’

  He waited for me to take the bait. When I stayed silent, he carried on anyway.

  ‘I’m going to Sicily. The tyrant of Syracuse fancies himself as a patron of the arts. He’ll pay top price for anyone who’ll come to his court. Particularly someone with my skills.’

  ‘Which are … ?’

  ‘I’m a teacher of virtue – like your Socrates. As I’m sure you know perfectly well.’ He eyed me suspiciously, a dog wary of having his tail tweaked.

  ‘Are you any good?’

  No hesitation. ‘The best. Virtue is my trade, and I teach it better and faster than any man in the business. If you attend my lectures, the very first day you’ll go home a better man than when you came; and better on the second day than on the first; and better every day after that than the one before.’

  I pretended to be impressed, though it was obviously a well-rehearsed patter. ‘Can virtue really be taught? I always thought it was inherent in a man’s character?’

  ‘Of course it’s inherent. But it’s no good trapped inside. It needs a teacher like me to draw it out, buff it up a bit.’

  ‘And do you think,’ I concluded, ‘that prostituting yourself to a tyrant is the best thing for a self-styled teacher of virtue to do?’

  It was clumsy, but I’ve seen his type preening in the agora or the gymnasiums so often that I have no patience. I wanted to make him go away. But Euphemus had another smile ready: indulgent, and just a little disappointed.

  ‘I’d say that a sophist who only taught good men to be better would be wasting his talents. Much better to try and make a bad man good. Your uncle, for example, could have used a dose of my teaching.’

  My uncle. Fifteen years ago, he led the coup which overthrew a democratic government and sold out Athens to our arch-enemies, the Spartans. His junta barely lasted a year – but long enough for the blood of all the people he murdered and tortured to leave an indelible stain. For a family which traces itself back to Solon the Lawgiver, it wasn’t our proudest moment.

  I rolled up my scroll, got to my feet and stalked off. Which is to say I lurched across the heaving deck, managed not to fall over, and dropped in a heap next to a coiled rope about ten feet away.

  It’s always a mistake to argue with a sophist.

  A red sky bled the horizon that evening, and the wind freshened. I took Glaucon’s shipwreck stone out of its pouch and turned it in my fingers as I stared out across the wine-dark sea. In the distance, a hazy shape broke the line of the waves.

  ‘Is that a sail?’ Euphemus’ voice, pitched high with anxiety. ‘I heard there are pirates near here. Should we perhaps keep a little more distance?’

  The Master stepped up to the rail beside me.

  ‘Not pirates,’ he declared.

  ‘That’s a relief.’

  ‘It’s the mouth of Hell.’

  He cackled, and took a swig from the bottle in his hand. When a loose rope snapped in the breeze, Euphemus actually jumped.

  The Master laughed again. ‘Cape Tainaron,’ he explained. ‘Where Orpheus went down.’

  I peered into the twilight. Now that I knew, it was obviously just a lump of land, a hillside blurred in the blue haze. Yet it still held me in thrall. This is the place, the Voice of Desire whispered in me. The cave where Orpheus went down to Hades to play his lyre and charm the gods into releasing his wife.

  Legendary nonsense, the Voice of Reason replied. But it couldn’t stop me looking, trying to find the dark mouth of a cave in the hillside. All I saw was spots in front of my eyes.

  I stole a glance at Euphemus. Even he looked less certain than usual.

  ‘Does that mean we’re close to where we’re going?’ he asked hopefully.

  ‘It’s where we’re all going in the end.’

  ‘That’s not exactly … ’

  The Master shook his bottle towards the headland, now fading into the darkness behind us, then dropped it in the water. The waves swallowed it.

  ‘How close we are – only the gods know that.’

  Our ship was called Calliste, after the sea nymph. Whoever named her must have been an incurable optimist, or blind, for there was nothing nymph-like in her swollen, functional body. She didn’t dance through the waves: she waddled. It needed a gale to move her faster than a crawl, and at the least hint of a wave she rolled so hard I feared she’d tip us all into the sea. Every night, I lay listening to the ship creak, and imagined the planks pulling apart, letting the ocean flood in. Every night I dreamed my drowning dream.

  The sea still terrified me. But what the poets fail to capture when they write about danger and torment, is how something terrifying can also be utterly monotonous. The Trojan War lasted ten years: there’s a reason Homer only wrote about a few weeks of it.

  During the days, I read. I read Herodotus and Thucydides, Pittacus and Simonides. I forced my way through Heraclitus without throwing him overboard. And when all those were exhausted, I read Euphemus. He’d left it on my blanket roll that first evening after we spoke.

  I tried not to let him catch me reading it. But, like a dog, he had an unerring nose for his own mess. He gave me half an hour; then there was the narcissus scent breathing over my shoulder.

  ‘I see you’ve picked up my little pamphlet.’

  He waited awkwardly, wanting the compliment and wanting it to come spontaneously. I left him hanging.

  ‘And …?’ he prompted at last.

  ‘It’s called On Virtue.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘But in it, you say there’s no such thing as virtue.’ I scrolled through the text. ‘The only law that nature gives is life and death. Life comes from what helps us; death from what hinders us. Nature commands us, therefore, to help ourselves and pursue pleasure if we want to live. You sound like Heraclitus.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Not in a good way. If the only law is selfishness, then how can a man be good?’

  Triumph spilled over his face. ‘He can’t. That’s my point. All we can do is react to our circumstances according to nature. And the only truth that nature gives us is: survive.’

  I could feel my blood he
ating up, my voice getting louder. Socrates, who would have stood at the gates of Hades looking amiably puzzled, always teased me that I didn’t have the temper for debate. Not that he did any better when they put him on trial.

  ‘If there’s no such thing as virtue, how can you claim you teach men to be good?’

  ‘It depends what you mean by good.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t.’ I was rising to his bait; I couldn’t help myself. ‘If we can’t agree on what goodness is – if it’s just every man’s self-interest – then what is there to teach?’

  ‘You’re assuming that there’s some fixed measure of goodness that we can rate every man against. A scale of one to seven. I say that man is the measure, and goodness is just a quality. A man isn’t simply good of himself – he’s good at something.’

  ‘But by that reasoning, a thief could be good – if he was good at stealing things.’

  ‘He’d be a good thief,’ Euphemus agreed.

  ‘But not a good man.’

  ‘He could be.’ A sophist’s trick is never to lose patience, never stop smiling. ‘You remember we agreed that nature’s law is that a man should pursue his desires.’

  ‘I didn’t agree anything.’

  ‘So to be a good man is to be good at getting what you want. A good thief is good at getting what he wants. Therefore – a good man.’

  ‘And virtue has nothing to do with that?’

  ‘Of course it does – it’s essential.’

  I eyed him suspiciously. ‘How?’

  ‘You have to play by society’s rules to get ahead. A man with a bad reputation will never get as far as a man known for his morals. If everyone knew the man stole, they’d lock him up and he’d no longer be any good as a thief.’

  His diabolical amorality left me dizzier than the ship ever had. In his terms, bad was good and worse was better.

  ‘So that’s all you teach your clients? How to appear good, never mind the reality?’

  ‘Appearances are reality – and none of my customers has ever complained.’ He chuckled. ‘I teach men to be good at getting what they want. At using words to sway juries and legislators. At framing arguments to win. At charming boys, and prospective in-laws. In case that doesn’t work, I even teach martial arts.’

  My arms twitched to give him a martial arts lesson of my own. Somehow, he seemed to have robbed me of every other weapon.

  ‘Is there anything you can’t do?’

  He missed the sarcasm and puffed out his chest. He cocked his head, stroking his chin as he fathomed the vastness of his own competence. Then, with a sheepish grin, he nodded to the heaving sea.

  ‘I can’t swim.’

  It would be easy to dismiss Euphemus as a complete fraud. But give him more credit than that. I think he honestly believes what he’s saying, his world of change and strife and greed that’s only restrained by fear. It’s philosophically rigorous in its total amorality – more so, in truth, than anything I can offer.

  Having to concede the philosophical high ground to Euphemus makes me want to throw myself overboard.

  It’s not just that I can’t stand him. His system offends me. It sounds so persuasive, almost reasonable, but all it explains is itself. It can’t account for the things we know to be true and good. The glow of helping a stranger in distress, and the beauty of the sun setting over Cape Sounion. The strength of a soldier dragging his comrade back from the carnage of a failed assault. The lift of your heart when you hear a friend at the door.

  I don’t want to live in a world defined by Euphemus’ brutal constraints. It’s a world without love or beauty. A world with no hope for improvement.

  Wanting something to be true isn’t an intellectually coherent position.

  We were eight days at sea, and I’d be happy to report that by the end of the voyage, Euphemus and I had resolved our philosophical differences through discussion and reached a conclusive friendship. If I’d been Socrates, I’m sure that’s exactly what would have happened. But every day, I found something new to loathe. In fact, I thought, looking out over the stern one evening, I would happily have endured twice as long on that ship to be rid of Euphemus.

  I admit I was complacent. The most dangerous part of the trip, the stretch over open water from Corfu to Italy, had passed in a day and a night with a calm sea and a fair wind. When dawn broke and we saw the Italian shore off our bow, I poured a cup of wine over the ship’s altar and thanked the gods for our safe passage. Surely now the worst was over?

  It was an idle fancy – I never said a word. But the gods have ways of listening in to our souls. The waves chattered under the hull, whispering my thoughts down into the coldest depths where the gods heard them. And laughed.

  We doubled the cape and coasted towards Taras, the first port of call, where Agathon was waiting. Not that the gods seemed in any hurry to deliver me. Ever since we entered the bay, all life had gone out of the air. The heat rose over us like a blanket; the wind barely moved us. The whole ship sweated the smells of wood and tar, while olive oil boiled out of the hold and made every surface slick to touch.

  I sat in the shade of the sail and watched the shoreline creep by. I came of age when Athens’ imperial pretensions had sunk once and for all on the rock of her own hubris, so I never had to fight abroad. Nearing forty, the furthest I’d ever travelled to now was Olympia, for the games. I stared at the coast, the deserted beaches and thick forests choking the shore. I thought of Agathon’s letter.

  Italy is a strange place, full of wonders and dangers.

  The air stirred. A breeze crept up and chilled the sweat on the back of my neck. The day suddenly seemed darker. The sail filled and snapped taut. A flinty tang charged the air, spelling rain.

  Night came quickly that evening. Euphemus came out on deck and stared up at the sky.

  ‘No stars.’ He turned to the Master. ‘Do you think that’s a bad sign?’

  The Master looked sober. That, I thought, was a bad sign. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

  ‘Should we anchor nearer the coast for the night?’ Euphemus persisted. ‘Wouldn’t that be safer?’

  The Master put down his chin and spat into the sea. ‘The wind’s wrong. If we go any closer, it’ll drive us onto the shore.’

  The waves were rising. The ship, never still, now heaved and fell like a galloping horse. I slipped the shipwreck stone out of its pouch and rubbed it between my fingers. It was smooth as glass: I wondered how many other anxious hands had polished it on other voyages. Logically, if I was holding it now, it must have worked for them.

  I’m not sure you can apply logic to the concept of a life-saving pebble.

  The Master slapped Euphemus on the back. ‘We can’t be more than a few leagues from Taras. If we make harbour, there’s no safer anchorage.’

  I stared over the side, willing the land to appear out of the darkness. I knew it must be there. But no fires showed, and no moon broke the clouds. The only light in the world was the tiny oil lamp spluttering on the roof of the deckhouse, where two sailors had now joined the steersman in trying to wrestle the steering oar straight.

  If they can’t see the land, and they can’t see the stars, how do they know where to go?

  Heavy rain began to fall. Waves broke over the deck and snatched at my legs, knocking me to my knees. I was trapped in chaos, one more fragment in a world of strife. Every time I moved, the ship did its best to shake me off, bucking like a titan trying to loose his chains. The wind screamed through the rigging. At the stern, I could hear the master bellowing at the helmsman as they fought the steering oar. Lightning forked the sky. Moments later, thunder replied, drowning all noise so that the wind, the storm, the sea and the ship seemed to move in dumbshow silence.

  And then it stopped.

  A vast groan shuddered through the ship. All of us were flung to the deck like leaves from a tree. The lamp spilled and went out. I heard a shriek overhead, and a rattle like drums. In the perfect darkness, something big and brutal swung thr
ough the air and struck the ship with a crash, pinning me to the deck. I thrashed around, but couldn’t move. Were my legs crushed?

  I wanted to lie still – but nothing could be still in that fury. A wave raced over the deck and slapped me in the face. My eyes stung, I gagged on salt water. I tried to spit it out, but another wave chased in and forced it down my throat.

  It was my drowning nightmare made real. I put out my hand, searching the chaos for a single thing I could hold onto. All I touched was turbulence. Water and air boiled through my fingers: I raged at the injustice, that waves and wind could hit me hard as rocks, yet melt away when I tried to grasp them.

  Something snaked out of the darkness and wrapped itself around my wrist. I tried to shake it off, but firm fingers dug into my skin.

  ‘She’s going down,’ a sailor’s voice shouted.

  He dragged me up the sloping deck. Something slithered off me, and I realised it hadn’t been the mast that had crushed me but the sail, smothering me with its sodden canvas. I got up onto my knees and crawled forward. The further I climbed, the further the deck seemed to tip me back.

  I felt the edge of the ship, now upright like a blade, and reached for the rail. It wasn’t there, but I managed to get a grip on the hull just as another wave broke over the side.

  Out in the water, a frantic voice was screaming for help. I don’t know how I heard it over the storm – perhaps some trick of the wind, or an echo off the waves – but for an instant it was so clear he could have been beside me. Euphemus.

  A flash of a conversation. My sarcastic question: Is there anything you can’t do? And his disarming answer.

  I can’t swim.

  I’d been here before. I leapt off the ship, and plunged into my dream.

  Four

  Jonah – Sibari

  He’d been dreaming of the sea, though it vanished the moment he woke. He lay on the bed, deciphering his surroundings. The hotel sheet had twisted around him; the water glass on the bedside table had fallen over and spilled on the floor. Did he do that? He didn’t think he’d been asleep more than five minutes.