The Orpheus Descent

by Tom Harper

  He flipped back to the cover. Plato’s Republic. Not exactly beach reading, he guessed: she must have had it for work.

  As the cover flapped open, an inscription on the inside caught his eye.

  To Lily—

  Love is Truth, Adam

  A dull ache, like heartburn, passed through him. It must be an old book: she hadn’t seen Adam in years. He wondered why she’d brought it to Italy.

  Another pang – and he realised it wasn’t anything more complicated than hunger coming back with a vengeance. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast, a rest-stop somewhere up near Naples. At least he could do something about that.

  He put down the book, got up and splashed water on his face. His T-shirt was filthy, and he had no clothes in the room, so he went down to the van and dug out something fresh. He looked into the lobby to see if he could use their phone to call Lily, but the receptionist was away.

  He found the dig crew at the back of the hotel, on a terrace overlooking the marina. They sat out at a long table, laughing and flirting in the glow of the fairy lights strung along the rails. Richard sat at the head. There was no seat for Jonah.

  ‘Weren’t sure if you were coming. I’ll get them to lay another place.’

  Jonah loitered awkwardly while the volunteers shuffled along and a new chair was fetched. His presence seemed to cramp the conversation.

  ‘I spoke to the office,’ Richard said. ‘They were very sympathetic. They’ve booked you onto the first flight out of Bari tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Has Lily called?’ He felt desperate without his phone, locked out of his life. He needed to hear from her.

  ‘She’ll be on the plane now, I suppose.’ Richard looked into the sky, as if they might see Lily’s flight winking among the stars.

  Jonah tore open a piece of bread and stuffed it in his mouth. Yacht lights shone off the water; on the far side of the marina he could see an enormous motor-cruiser lit up like a stage.

  Antipasti plates had arrived. Richard reached over and speared a sun-blushed tomato, clumsily. Jonah had to grab his wine glass to stop it knocking over.

  Another kick of anger hit him as he remembered the phone. The one time he needed to speak to Lily more than ever, and he was impotent. He couldn’t call her family, their friends … all their numbers were in the phone. Hers was the only one he knew by heart – and she wasn’t answering.

  ‘Lily didn’t say anything about her mother before she left?’

  ‘Not a thing.’ Oil oozed out of the tomato as Richard bit into it, dribbling onto his pink shirt. He’d always been a careless eater. ‘She just said she was going to the lab.’

  Across the marina, a car pulled up on the dock beside the cruiser. Vast and black, it looked like the Mercedes that had nearly run Jonah off the road. There couldn’t be two cars that size in the area.

  He kept watching as four men got out of the car. Even at a distance, there was something predatory in the way they moved: spread out, heads turning slowly as if they anticipated danger. Two climbed the gangplank and disappeared inside the boat. Two others returned to the car and pulled a large package out of the back. It needed both of them to lift it.

  Along the table, Jonah heard one of the volunteers make a crack about Mafia. Others laughed, some nervously. This was southern Italy, after all.

  But one of the men looked familiar. So much had happened to him that day that it took a moment for the answer to come. He was dressed differently, too: a black shirt and jeans, not the white T-shirt with the alligator on the chest.

  It was the plumber who’d come to fix the shower – the shower that worked perfectly well. So what was he doing here?

  Nothing made sense. He pushed back his chair and stood. Blood rushed out of his head, he swayed and grabbed the table. The students looked at him as if he was drunk. Fragments of foreign conversations kicked around him like dust.

  ‘It’s so bling.’

  ‘Sandi didn’t think so.’

  ‘Ari’s such a creep.’

  As he turned, he caught the woman at the next table staring at him – not a casual glance, but full bore. She was strikingly beautiful: black hair cut straight across the fringe, delicate features made golden in the fairy lights. A lotus-flower tattoo blossomed on her bare shoulder. He had the nagging feeling he knew her from somewhere, though it might just have been implicit in her too-familiar gaze. Maybe a gig?

  She looked back at her food and he decided he’d imagined it. Every night, for the last six weeks, he’d seen hundreds of faces flashed up at him as the lights framed them for an instant. Subliminal overload. Somewhere, his brain probably stored them all. It would explain why he felt déjà vu so often.

  But unless he’d imagined the whole incident with the plumber, the man on the dock was no false memory. He ran out of the hotel, down the street. The resort was staggered around the marinas, the condos and hotels built on long fingers divided by moorings. The dock opposite was only fifty yards across the water, but to reach it without swimming was most of a mile. He ran it in ten minutes and felt like throwing up before he was halfway there.

  Two blocks away, a macho rumble told him he was too late. He tried to run faster, but the harder he tried, the slower he seemed to go. The engines throttled up; he heard the gassy sound of propellers churning water. He reached the dock just in time to see the lights on the fly-bridge floating away into the night. The wake glowed luminous white; across the transom, he read the name NESTIS.

  A blazing white light picked him up. The Mercedes had been waiting in the shadows; now it came to life. The driver, invisible behind the lights, gunned the engine, then dropped the clutch so suddenly the whole three-ton car leaped forward. The light swamped him: for a moment, Jonah thought it would run him right into the water.

  The car stopped at the last minute, executed a sharp three-point turn and raced away. Jonah’s eyes swam. Behind him, he heard running footsteps.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’ Richard’s face was red as a balloon. His shirt-tails flapped untucked, and one of his shoelaces had come undone. He doubled over, clutching a stitch. ‘Jesus.’

  ‘I thought …’ What? The energy drained out of him. Had he really seen the plumber on the dock – in the dark, over the water? Or was his overtired mind just throwing up images at him? More déjà vu.

  A bird swooped over the marina. Across the harbour, he saw the others watching from the hotel terrace. A billion miles away. He realised how ridiculous he must look to them. The water was still, only a few gentle waves lapping the pilings to show the boat had ever been there.

  Richard tucked in his shirt and wiped the sweat off his glasses.

  ‘It’ll all be fine tomorrow.’

  Seven

  A stranger who makes his way into the major cities, and persuades the best young men there to associate with him, must take extreme care. Jealousy is quickly aroused, and he can attract a lot of hostility and conspiracies against himself.

  Plato, Protagoras

  I was drowning again. I thrashed for the surface, but the water was thick and my arms barely moved. I screamed. The sea rushed in, filling me up until I no longer felt it because I had become it.

  I was breathing water. It flowed through me, calming my panic. Now when I looked up I could see the sun, a white orb shimmering through the waves. Even underwater, it burned my eyes. I had to reach it. I started to float upwards, but however fast I rose, the sun never came any closer.

  Now I was on land. Black clouds plated the sky, scudding over the plain, and a forked mountain loomed in the distance. The goddess approached me across a flower-strewn meadow, barefoot. The wind blew her dress taut against her marble skin; the ivy in her hair rustled. Her face was solemn, beautiful but hard as stone. When I woke up, drenched in sweat, I knew she’d just told me something vital.

  I wracked my brains, but I couldn’t remember what.

  * * *

  Eurytus was eager to get rid of us. After a quick breakfast, we set off for Ta
ras. My first impression of Italy, beyond the beach and the forest, surprised me. I’d expected a primal wilderness: instead, neat lines of olive and citrus trees divided the holdings, with thick wheat growing green in between. The road was good, the houses well-kept – we could have been near Thebes. Except that a high plateau walled off the horizon, laying a sharp line across the limit of civilisation. And, when we reached Taras – across a causeway through a salt marsh – the walls were thick, the mortar still white. You couldn’t forget that this colony still clung to the fringes of a wild, unknown country.

  The city stood on a neck of land between the sea and an inland lagoon, natural defences that also made a superb harbour (if only our ship had reached it). Eurytus led us through busy streets, with handsome temples and houses squeezed close together. He, too, was less wild than I’d first assumed: plenty of respectable-looking men greeted him in the streets and paused to talk business, more and more often as we entered the agora.

  He steered us across the plaza to a fountain of Poseidon standing in a chariot drawn by four dolphins. Opposite him, almost as high, a man in a blue cloak stood on the steps of the Assembly house, deep in debate with a score of men around him. Some were dressed like soldiers, some like merchants and some like lawyers – but all of them looked important.

  Eurytus pushed through the crowd to the man at the top and managed to get his attention. He whispered in his ear, pointing out me and Euphemus. A moment later, the man excused himself and came down. The others pretended to continue their conversation, though I saw every pair of eyes latch onto us.

  ‘These are the castaways,’ was the apologetic introduction Eurytus gave us. ‘This is Archytas.’

  He was tall and civilised, with strong arms and the clipped stride you get from marching in formation with a hoplite shield banging against your knees. I found out later he was the same age as me, though he looked older. His hair was streaked a handsome grey, and the shrewd eyes that examined me seemed to have seen and understood more than I ever would.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘Tell me your country, your nation and your city, and all the places you have wandered.’

  Quoting Homer doesn’t impress me, though I’m sure it’s exactly the sort of thing Euphemus loves. Before he could reply in kind, I said, ‘We came from Athens. Our ship was wrecked.’

  ‘And what brought you to Italy?’

  A simple enough question. But behind him, I could see twenty heads leaning forward to hear my answer.

  ‘I came to look for a friend.’

  ‘Agathon,’ Eurytus said. He and Archytas shared a look.

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘A mutual acquaintance introduced us,’ said Archytas. ‘He stayed with me.’

  I didn’t understand the past tense. ‘Stayed?’

  ‘He had to leave suddenly.’

  ‘He’s supposed to meet me here.’

  ‘Why did he go?’ asked Euphemus, alert to scandal.

  ‘Where did he go?’ I wanted to know.

  ‘I imagine he went back to Thurii. He had a friend there.’

  I have been staying with Dimos in Thurii. ‘My stepbrother, Dimos.’ My mind spun, thrown off by the unexpected news. ‘Is it far from here?’

  Archytas’ shrewd eyes examined me. They seemed to be saying something, but I couldn’t work out what.

  ‘You can walk to Thurii in three days. By boat, it’s quicker.’

  ‘We’re not going in another boat,’ said Euphemus, emphatically.

  I didn’t know where I was going. Just walking to town had exhausted me again. I didn’t have anything except the clothes on my back (and those were borrowed from Eurytus); I couldn’t afford lunch, let alone a passage to Thurii. And there were things about Agathon that Archytas seemed unwilling to say, that I was desperate to know.

  Archytas must have read it all in my eyes. He took mercy on me.

  ‘It’s too late to set off now. You can stay in my house tonight.’

  Archytas’ house, near the agora, dwarfed anything you’d see in Athens, big enough that Euphemus and I were given separate rooms. Archytas excused himself with business in town; Euphemus invited himself along, no doubt hoping to tout for business. I lay on the bed and stretched out, trying to unknot my battered muscles.

  I flexed my fingers around the end of the mattress. To my surprise, instead of soft cloth, my hand felt something brittle and hard that crinkled under my touch. I pulled it out.

  It was a scroll, battered and dented. I unrolled the first column’s worth to see what it was.

  The Way of Truth, by Parmenides.

  Of course I’ve studied Parmenides, but never with much success. He writes his philosophy in such dense, elusive language it’s impossible to know what to think. Half of me – the Voice of Desire – is utterly seduced by the dark fantasies and vivid images. The other half – the Voice of Reason – insists that if he had anything worth saying, he’d just get it out.

  I lay on the bed and turned through the scroll. I wondered who had left it there.

  The path you came down is far from the well-trodden roads of mortals. But it was not cruel Fate who brought you here, but Truth and Justice, in order for you to learn everything there is to know.

  There are two paths of enquiry – the way that is, and the way that is not. And one is impossible, for you cannot travel the way that is not, and nothing that goes down that road comes back.

  Perhaps it was reading him on Italian soil, where his ideas germinated. Perhaps the shocks of the last two days had cracked my rational defences. Whatever it was, I found the Voice of Reason unusually submissive as I read it.

  Do not let habit drag you into the well-worn rut,

  Guiding yourself with blind eyes, deaf ears and a dumb tongue,

  But use reason; by thought, look clearly on things which though they are not there

  Are there.

  I was still looking at the manuscript, trying to see things that might or might not be there, when I heard commotion downstairs, and Archytas’ strong voice issuing orders to his slaves. I went down.

  Archytas was in the andron, the men’s quarters. Like the man himself, the decoration was spare and masculine: black-and-white tiles tessellating triangles on the floor; a few fine pieces of dinnerware hanging from the whitewashed walls, and bronze armour displayed in an alcove.

  I walked through the door and was almost bowled over as a small boy barrelled into my knees, bounced off, and wriggled through my legs. I stepped back, just in time to avoid another child hurling himself after the first. In the corner, by a chest, a naked baby sat on the floor, tugging at a wheeled wooden duck that quacked as it rolled.

  ‘Have I come into the nursery?’ I wondered aloud.

  ‘Children keep us young,’ Archytas said. ‘Sometimes they see things more clearly than grown-ups.’

  He tickled the baby’s cheek as a slave woman bundled it away. I handed him the scroll. ‘I found this in my bedroom. I think it belongs in your library.’

  Archytas checked the title. ‘I wondered where it had gone.’

  ‘It fell behind the bed.’ I paused. ‘Did Agathon have that room before me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Again, Agathon’s name was like sand on a fire. All the light went out of him and the warmth cooled. This time, I decided to poke around to see what I could stir up.

  ‘Tell me about Agathon. Is he well?’

  ‘The last time I saw him.’

  ‘You said he left in a hurry.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why did he go?’

  ‘He didn’t tell me.’

  The bitterness in his answer practically invited the next question. ‘Had you argued?’

  He picked up the duck and examined the underside, tightening one of the wheels. ‘Is Agathon a close friend of yours?’

  ‘The best friend I have.’

  I could see him wondering how to interpret that. If I’m honest, I’m not sure myself. On one level, it’s entirely true that Agath
on is my dearest friend, the one I love best. When I talk to him, it can feel as if my soul is on my lips. But it’s also true that he can be wilful, evasive, cruel, and often gives the impression he wouldn’t notice if you came or went. Like asking you to cross the sea to meet him, and then leaving before you get there.

  ‘I know Agathon’s sometimes difficult,’ I offered, trying to make an opening. ‘He gets impatient.’

  Archytas nodded slowly.

  ‘Was he bored of waiting?’

  ‘He thought I could teach him something I wouldn’t tell him.’

  I didn’t understand. Agathon had come to Taras to meet me off the boat, not to study.

  So why isn’t he here?

  I looked at the armour on the wall. It was nicely made, but not impractical. Light pooled in the hollows where dents had been hammered out, and the cuts scored into the leather greaves were too deep to have come from drills and sparring.

  ‘Was Agathon interested in warfare?’ Unlikely: he’s the most peaceful man I know. ‘Politics?’

  ‘Philosophy.’

  He laughed at my obvious surprise. ‘Not all philosophers are shoeless loiterers haranguing strangers.’

  I remembered the way the men in the agora had deferred to him – even the older ones. ‘I didn’t realise you were a philosopher. I thought you were somebody …’

  ‘Important?’

  ‘Respectable.’

  ‘I’m the captain of the city’s defences, if you count that as important.’ He smiled. ‘In Italy, philosophy isn’t incompatible with other occupations. You can even be respectable.’

  That was a whole different conversation I would love to have had. But not now.

  ‘What did Agathon want from you?’

  ‘He’d become fascinated by Pythagoras.’

  I stared at my host. In every pore of his being, he couldn’t have looked more different from Eurytus. ‘Are you a Pythagorean?’

  ‘I’m a mathematician.’

  ‘Like Eurytus?’

  ‘We both believe that the key to the world is numbers. But he thinks that the numbers themselves are what matters. He looks at the particulars and thinks he can make rules from them, some sort of meaning. I’m doing the opposite.’