The Orpheus Descent

by Tom Harper

  We were in a high place. Perhaps I thought no one could hear us. Perhaps the dazzling false sun of Athena’s shield blinded me to the dangers of discussing tyranny in a tyrant’s palace with the tyrant’s brother-in-law. The truth is, I wanted to trust him.

  Dion looked down. Perhaps he’d never heard anyone speak so plainly before.

  ‘Is this your first time in Syracuse?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s the same everywhere.’ Like one of Archytas’ mathematical laws, the same numbers always add up.

  ‘They said you didn’t care about politics.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘You obviously think about it a lot.’

  ‘Because I hate it.’

  ‘That’s different. Not caring for something isn’t the same as not caring about it.’

  ‘How old are you?’ I asked.

  ‘Nineteen.’

  ‘All you’ve ever known is your brother-in-law’s rule. I’ve seen both sides of the coin. When I was twenty-three, my uncle had the same idea as Dionysius.’

  Strange to think, in that year Dionysius had already taken power in Syracuse. The tyrant and I are almost exactly the same age. When I compare the callow, unsure youth I was with the brutal confidence he must have had to overthrow the polis at twenty-one, I think we might as well be different species.

  ‘My uncle didn’t last long,’ I said. ‘But he left me with enough taste of tyranny to last a lifetime. Five years later, his enemies executed Socrates, and I knew the world was irredeemable.’

  I looked out to sea, thinking of all the miles between me and Athens. ‘Socrates thought if you avoided public life and cultivated virtue, that was what mattered. He opted out. The sophists who justify rapacious self-interest are just flattering the system. Democrats make it a free-for-all; tyrants keep it under their thumbs. But it’s still broken.’

  ‘So what’s the solution?’

  He’d turned to look at me. His face glowed gold with the reflected light from Athena’s shield, but it was the hunger in his eyes that really shone. He wanted to know – and he thought I could tell him. Was this the way I once looked at Socrates? Surely Socrates never felt as awkward as I did then. He loved the attention.

  ‘We have to go deeper. The selfishness that the sophists teach is just Heraclitus on a human scale. Have you read Heraclitus?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘He said there’s nothing constant in the universe. Everything’s in flux. And if you believe that, self-interest makes perfect sense. There’s nothing but ourselves to pin our behaviour on.’

  I could see from his face he understood intuitively.

  ‘There has to be something else. Something fundamental to the universe that’s outside ourselves.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There’s a man in Taras called Archytas. He thinks that fundamental thing is mathematics. Mathematics refutes Heraclitus: it proves there are things which are constant in the world. A triangle is always a triangle; two and two always make four. A string twice as long as another always makes the octave.’

  ‘Hard to argue with.’ Our eyes met. He’d heard the catch in my voice.

  ‘Archytas is on the right track. But nobody’s going to change their life to solve an equation. Music can change our mood, but it doesn’t change our life. At best, it’s a metaphor.’

  I remembered Diotima. Either our senses aren’t made to appreciate perfection – or else the perfect world that mathematics describes isn’t our world.

  ‘Pythagoras discovered that music is mathematics turned into sound. There are laws behind it, truths. If the strings obey those laws, the result is harmony. If we could only find the same laws for ourselves, society would be harmonious and the result would be …’

  ‘ … Virtuous?’ he suggested.

  ‘Beautiful.’

  ‘So what are these laws?’

  The song in my ears stopped suddenly. A cloud covered the sun on Athena’s shield, and the world became less bright.

  ‘I haven’t got there yet.’ I rubbed my eyes. ‘When I do, perhaps there’ll be no more tyrants.’

  ‘Is that what you’re going to teach my nephew?’ A smile with a warning behind it. ‘That would be brave.’

  ‘Socrates said that courage is what happens when you get rid of wrong thinking. For him, wisdom was a sort of cleansing process, stripping away error until you got to truth.’

  It was a wistful sort of thought. It reminded me why I’d come to Italy in the first place.

  ‘A friend of mine came here from Athens. Agathon. Did you see him?’

  Dion scratched at a loose piece of stone in the balustrade. ‘He wasn’t here long. He wanted money; Dionysius wouldn’t give it to him.’

  ‘You’d have enjoyed speaking to him.’ Agathon was nearer Dion’s age: I could imagine the two of them in the gymnasium, sharing a couch, taking long earnest walks along the coast. Ridiculously, the thought made me hot with jealousy.

  ‘And Dionysius just let him go?’

  ‘Why not? He’s not some monster who devours everyone who enters his castle. He’s a man trying to get things done.’

  The piece of stone came free. Dion turned it over in his hand, then tossed it over the edge. I didn’t hear it hit the ground.

  ‘Were you using Aesop’s fables to teach my nephew?’ he asked.

  ‘It was the best I could come up with.’

  ‘Do you know the story of the old lion and the fox?’

  ‘It’s a long time since I read Aesop all the way through.’

  ‘You should read it.’ It seemed important to him. ‘The lion’s teeth had fallen out and his claws were blunt. His legs were tired; if he chased prey, it easily got away. So he made sure the other animals all knew how weak he’d become, then retreated to his cave. One by one, the animals came in to offer their sympathy. And the lion, who wasn’t as feeble as he’d let on, ate them all up.

  ‘One day, a fox came to the cave. The lion saw the shadow by the door and asked, “Why don’t you come in?”

  ‘“It’s terribly kind of you,” said the fox, “but no. I can see lots of tracks going in, and none coming out.”’

  I laughed. ‘Why are you telling me that? If you’re warning me not to go into the lion’s cave, it’s too late.’

  Dion didn’t laugh with me. ‘Aesop says the moral is: take warning from the misfortunes of others.’

  I didn’t understand why he’d told me that. But the sun had gone in, and Dion was looking over his shoulder like a man who has to be somewhere else.

  ‘It’s easy to talk about these things in bright high places. But be careful when you go down. There are a lot of corners in the palace, and you never know who’s listening in the shadows.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’m not as brave as Socrates.’

  He smiled. ‘But Socrates never left Athens.’

  The guards had gone when I came down, though it didn’t make any difference. I’d seen Ortygia’s defences, the rings of walls and water: I knew I wouldn’t escape. Perhaps that was what Dion had wanted me to see.

  I sat down on a bench. A slave appeared, unasked, and offered me cool well-water. I drank it thirstily, spilling some over my tunic. Even behind a cloud, the sun baked the courtyard and the high walls trapped the heat. I felt light-headed. This time yesterday I’d been a prisoner in the cave. Now, I was tutor to the tyrant’s son. At least in the quarries you know who your enemies are.

  ‘Do you mind if I join you?’

  A fat man had appeared: balding, sweating heavily in his thick formal robe. Even with his size, he moved precariously, like a bird with a damaged wing. Without waiting, he lowered himself onto the bench.

  ‘“See how men blame the gods for what is after all nothing but their own folly,”’ he said unexpectedly. He said every word carefully, looking me right in the eye.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Leon,’ he introduced himself, as if he hadn’t spoken that strange line from Homer. ‘Just back fro
m a trip to the country. You must be our new Athenian.’

  ‘Don’t hold that against me.’

  His laugh exploded like someone dropping a plate. He mopped his brow. ‘Dear me, no. As it happens, I have plenty of friends in Athens.’

  The laughter dried up as suddenly as it had erupted. He shot me a penetrating look.

  ‘Did you bring any letters?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Really?’ He jerked his head to one side, as if trying to clear wax from his ear. ‘You’re tutoring the boy, I hear.’

  I nodded.

  ‘A bright pupil?’

  ‘I’m sure one day he’ll be the mirror of his father.’

  Another eruption of laughter. ‘Very well put. Very apt. Your reputation does you justice.’ He sucked his finger. ‘You’re sure you didn’t bring any letters?’

  ‘None.’ And then, though it wasn’t relevant: ‘I was shipwrecked on the way here.’

  ‘Ah.’ He nodded vigorously, as if that solved a mystery he’d been puzzling at for hours. ‘How is Athens?’

  ‘The same as always.’

  ‘And you’re enjoying your stay in Syracuse?’

  ‘I was brought here against my will, beaten, and held in the quarries for a week. Other than that, it’s very pleasant.’

  He looked shocked. ‘That’s terrible. Did they find the letters?’

  ‘I didn’t have any letters,’ I repeated wearily.

  ‘That was lucky.’

  And with that, he left me.

  I had nowhere to go, so I stayed on the bench. The sun had come out again; bees rummaged around the flowers and the world was a long way away. I’d almost fallen asleep when urgent footsteps brought it back with a jolt.

  It was Dion again – but not the smiling, earnest boy who’d talked philosophy on top of the temple. When he stopped, water pooled around his feet. Had he been swimming?

  ‘What is it?’

  He wouldn’t meet my eye. ‘It’s your friend.’

  ‘Euphemus?’

  ‘Agathon.’

  Twenty-two

  Jonah – Athens

  He stared at the phone, shaking and glowing in his hand like some exotic fish trawled from the depths of the ocean. Around him, Athens sprawled away through the windows of the glass box.

  The phone stopped moving when he answered it. The voice on the other end reminded him of something he’d almost forgotten, like sniffing rain at the end of a long dry summer.

  ‘I’m glad you came. I wasn’t sure you’d remember.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Don’t you remember?’

  ‘Did you call me in London? Two nights ago?’

  A sigh, as if he’d disappointed her somehow. ‘Did they drug you that thoroughly?’

  Listening to her made him wonder if he was back in his dream. ‘Nobody drugged me. I just had too much to drink.’

  ‘Alcohol’s a drug. They don’t even have to inject it.’

  He had no answer to that. ‘Did you tell me to come to Athens?’

  ‘You’re here, aren’t you?’

  Talking with this woman whose name he didn’t know, he wasn’t sure of anything. He looked out the window to get his bearings, and came eye to eye with the Acropolis. Suddenly, it looked absurd – as if he was in a film, and the director had called for the most obvious establishing shot to show the audience that Jonah was in Athens. Except in a film, the Acropolis would be a backdrop stretched across the studio wall.

  ‘Are you there?’

  ‘Still here.’ He’d been studying the Acropolis, looking for creases. The haze in the air made it wobble and shimmer. He wondered if it was the infamous Athenian smog – or tear gas.

  ‘Are you going to tell me who you are?’

  ‘Do you know Elefsina? It’s an archaeological site, on the coast beyond Piraeus.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Meet me there at twelve. Make sure they don’t follow you.’

  ‘Who?’ No answer. ‘Why would I go there? I don’t even know who you are?’

  ‘Then come and find out.’

  ‘How will I recognise you?’

  ‘I’ll know who you are.’

  In another world, Jonah wouldn’t have been sitting on a bus lumbering through suburban Athens on the strength of an anonymous phone call. He wouldn’t even have been in Greece. But that world didn’t exist any more. Its destruction had been seamless, but irreversible. He remembered the empty gates in the field at Sibari, the chill on his shoulders as he stepped through. Was that when it changed?

  The bus rattled down a long, straight street full of tyre-change garages and hardware shops. Even at his stop, nothing said ‘ancient site’ except the driver shouting at him in Greek and pointing down a nondescript side street. At the end, a man in a kiosk sold him a ticket that was covered in dust, admitting him to a large, open square surrounded by broken pieces of tombs and buildings. Column stumps marked the remains of a monumental gateway that had been cut down. A scrubby hill rose behind it, topped by a clock tower that said twelve o’clock.

  Beyond the ruined gate, a path wound around the side of the hill to yet more ruins. Lily would have known where to go. She would have cast an eye over the ruins and brought the whole thing alive, pulling the stones up out of the dust until he could see them in their original glory. He wished she was there.

  ‘Are you looking for a guide?’

  She seemed to have appeared from nowhere – he was positive there’d been no one there a second ago. Even now, right in front of him, there was something temporary about her, like a bird that might fly away at any moment. Large sunglasses and a baseball cap shaded her face. It was a warm day, touching thirty degrees, but she wore a long-sleeved cardigan buttoned all the way up, and lightweight trousers. About all he could say for sure was that she seemed slim, small-breasted, and delicate. She barely came up to his chin.

  A dizzying sense of déjà vu hit Jonah, like the feeling he’d had the day he met Lily. Not recognition – he couldn’t see anything to recognise – but familiarity. A sort of harmony resonating between them.

  ‘Are you looking for a guide?’ she said again. She spoke perfect English, a hint of an American accent. Was it the voice from the phone? Suddenly, he found he couldn’t remember how it had sounded at all.

  ‘Did you ask me to come here?’

  The low cap hid her face completely. ‘I’m a guide.’

  Two possibilities. Either she was the person he was supposed to be meeting, or she wasn’t. If she was, and wanted to play coy, so be it. If she wasn’t, at least it would pass the time. Maybe he’d learn something.

  Two hypotheses, as Adam would have said. All he could do was let the evidence stack up until one turned out to be false.

  ‘OK.’

  He followed her over the threshold.

  ‘There are three parts to this mystery. The loss, the search, and the ascent.’

  She’d led him up the path that curved round the hillside, past a cave, onto a wide terrace that overlooked the sea and the island of Salamis. It had once been one of the holiest sites in Greece. Now, tankers and freighters clogged the sound; gantry-cranes and chimneys jagged the horizon, tangled with pipes and smoke from an oil refinery. Across the water, the twin horns of the mountain on Salamis made a perfect crescent against the sky. They reminded Jonah of the mountain at Sibari.

  ‘In ancient Greece, you had the public religion that people grew up with – gods like Zeus, Athena, Poseidon and so on. And then you had the mystery religions, secret rituals you had to be initiated into. The mysteries of Eleusis were the most famous of all. They ran for something like a thousand years, from dark-age Greece right through the Roman period, until Christianity finally killed them off.’

  ‘What was the mystery?’

  ‘Nobody ever said. Once a year, the worshippers walked the twenty kilometres here from Athens. They came into this shrine, where the priests performed the ritual. They saw sacred objects, and were taught sacred t
ruths. It transformed their understanding of the world.’

  ‘OK.’

  They walked across the terrace. Half of it had been cut into the side of the hill, the other half built out on a massive stone platform towards the sea. His guide pointed to one of the column bases poking up through the earth and dead grass.

  ‘The building was supposed to be like a forest, full of columns. They crammed the initiates in here a thousand at a time. They’d been fasting for days; they’d walked twenty kilometres in the heat; they were in the dark, disoriented, dazed. There was smoke, incense, torches. Some scholars think they might have taken psychotropic drugs, like magic mushrooms.’

  For a moment, he was back in the house in Oxford, the beds and sofas, the blood and the snow. He imagined how different it would have been here at Eleusis: the dark cavern, flickering lights, sweaty bodies jammed together, waiting for the moment when the god would come down and touch their souls. And music. There must have been music. He wondered what it had sounded like.

  Rows of banked benches ran along the back of the terrace, cut out of the cliff like steps. The guide sat down.

  ‘No one’s found out what the rituals involved, exactly. But the basis for them was the cult of Demeter. Do you want to hear the story?’

  She was looking away, across the terrace and out to sea. The cap and glasses still hid her face; she’d said nothing that wasn’t appropriate to a tour guide. But the longer he spent with her, the more sure he became that she was who he’d come to meet. There was a mystery about her, something hidden, waiting to be taken out of its box and revealed at the right time.

  ‘Tell me the story.’

  She curled her legs under her on the stone. ‘There was a maiden who was the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, the goddess of the harvest. She was a wild girl who lived in the shady depths of the forest, a child of nature. Ivy wrapped itself in her hair; at night, the grasses lay down for her mattress and trees knitted together their branches to shelter her. All the gods wanted to marry her but her mother refused them. The King of the Underworld, Hades, wanted her too, but he knew she’d never agree to come down to the underworld. She was life, and living things need the sun.