The Orpheus Descent

by Tom Harper

  He put the glass down. ‘Do you know the concept of the shadow worlds?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Perhaps you have heard its more popular name – multiple universes.’

  ‘I’m not really into science fiction.’

  ‘This is science, not fiction. Experiments have shown that there are an infinite number of particles in this universe which we can never perceive, which exert no perceptible influence on the world we know except in the smallest fringes of experiments. All our telescopes, microscopes, spectrometers, colliders and other tools can only ever find one billionth of the matter in this galaxy.’

  ‘Does this have anything to do with Lily?’

  ‘Similarly with mathematics. Physicists tell us that the world is governed by numbers. They think this is a novel insight, but in fact it is as old as Pythagoras. And as wrong. The mathematician Gödel has shown that no mathematical model, however complex, can comprehend all possibilities of numbers, because they are part of a living universe.

  ‘My point is that we live in a reductive, materialist world. We think everything is explained by things we can touch and count – yet even those we cannot properly know. Since the ancient times, we have always been lowering our sights. From Gods to men, from men to animals, to cells, nucleitides, atoms, particles. We sink into the mud of our own making, and wonder why we cannot get out. The universe plays us a symphony, and all we listen to is the squeak of the piano pedal. And we think that is everything there is to understand. Have you seen what is happening in Athens?’

  Jonah rubbed the cut on his forehead. ‘First hand.’

  ‘It is terrible – but also inevitable. My country led the world into the age of civilisation. Now we are leading it out again. What is happening in Greece is only the logical culmination of centuries of Western thought, that the only purpose to life is material gain. If we decide that humans are merely animals, then eventually we will end up living like animals.’

  Jonah said nothing. He wished he hadn’t drunk the wine quite so quickly.

  ‘Plato defined man as a soul in a body, but because we cannot measure the soul we dismiss it. All we are left with is the body, and bodies are fragile, unstable things. They make a fragile, unstable world. To make something stronger, we must build it on the eternal. The soul.’

  ‘But …’ Jonah shook his head, trying to focus on what mattered. ‘What does all this have to do with the tablet? With Lily?’

  ‘When Plato went to Italy, he found something that blew open his thinking like a hydrogen bomb. Instead of just the piano pedal, suddenly he could hear the whole orchestra. He understood how to see not just the flickering phenomena of the visible world, but the permanent architecture of the universe. I believe this thing is still there, waiting to be discovered. And I believe that the Sybaris tablet shows the way.’

  ‘But there are other tablets. I saw one in the British Museum, for God’s sake.’

  Maroussis reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out a slim, silver cigarette case. He laid it on the table and snapped it open.

  ‘Here is another.’

  Jonah leaned forward. Inside the case, a thin piece of gold foil gleamed in the terrace lights. The tiny letters spelled out their ancient message. Promising – what?

  ‘Is this the Sybaris tablet?’

  ‘No.’ Maroussis snapped the case shut. The golden light disappeared. ‘Only your wife knows where it is. Unless she has told my son.’

  Whether it was the wine, or lack of sleep, or the sheer impossibility of the situation, Jonah had listened to Maroussis’ visions as if drifting under a spell. The mention of Ari snapped him out of it. He remembered why he’d come.

  ‘What did he do with Lily?’

  ‘When he left here, he returned to Italy.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  A shake of the head. ‘I understand you are a musician, Mr Barnes. Do you like Bach?’

  He’d had enough of the old man’s evasions. ‘Where is she?’ he said again.

  ‘I suppose you would not. Most young men find him too mathematical. Not enough of the passion.’ A chuckle. ‘So, he is not Elvis Presley. It takes an old man to understand his art.’

  Jonah stood. He looked for the jagged piece of broken glass, but it had vanished. The waiter must have cleared it away without him noticing.

  ‘Bach is a master of the canon form. You know this? Like your English song, “Row Row Row Your Boat”.’ He hummed a couple of bars. ‘The tune is a simple figure. It is only through repetition that you learn its full complexities – and it needs a genius like Bach to reveal them. Like a magician. He takes the theme and ties it in so many knots you do not know where you are. And then, with the lightest tug of the string, the knot comes apart and you are back where you began. Except now, for the first time, you understand where you are.’

  ‘Where is she?’ He’d become the theme, endlessly repeating while Maroussis spun his inversions around him.

  ‘Life is but a dream, Mr Barnes. Is that not what your song says? It is time to wake up.’

  Thirty-one

  My first law will be about the robbing of temples, just in case anyone should dare to commit such a heinous crime. I can’t conceive that any well-brought-up citizen would ever do such a thing; but slaves, and foreigners, and foreigners’ slaves, might be tempted.

  Plato, Laws

  The moon had begun to shrink again. Only a fraction, shaved off the side: at a casual glance, you might think it was still full. But the circle had changed; it was no longer perfect. Every night, it would deform a bit more until it vanished completely.

  Perhaps the world is like that moon. So close to perfect, you’d hardly notice if you didn’t concentrate.

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

  But even reduced, the moon shone brightly enough. If I’d been walking home from a dinner party I’d have been glad of the help. Given that I was sneaking around a tyrant’s castle trying to burgle his treasury, I wished it would go away. It sat obstinately in the cloudless sky like a – anyway, as it was – pouring down its light on lovers and thieves, exposing our crimes in black and white.

  The philosopher Anaxagoras claims that the moon has no light of its own, but derives its brightness from the hidden sun. If so, what does that make the moonlit world? Is it a poor cousin, a second-hand place lit by second-hand light? Is that why the moon makes men mad: the unreality of it all?

  I must be mad. It’s past midnight and I’m out of my room, stealing across the citadel from pillar to pillar, like Odysseus sneaking into Troy to get the palladion. I’m not a spy, and my military service was twenty years ago. It seems quite likely I’ll get caught. Dionysius killed and tortured Agathon for less.

  I can’t even plead ignorance. I know the odds, the probable outcome, and I’m doing it anyway. That’s the madness. An irresistible voice is driving me on: I have to know what the book says. Diotima said that madness can be a blessing and a gift. I’m not so sure. It was madness that made the Bacchante tear her own son apart, and Heracles kill his children.

  Is it the book I want – or Diotima? Is there some sort of equivalence in my mind – if I get one I’ll have the other? I don’t know. The music in my soul is playing out of control, fast and dangerous; scattered notes, snatches of tunes, wild beats that erupt from nowhere and then disappear. As if someone’s taken the sound out of the air, torn it up and thrown it into my ears anyhow.

  All I know for sure is that I’d better not get caught.

  The night sounds of the palace echoed the crazy music in my head. Boots, watchwords, hinges and bolts; fragments of conversations far too close. When an owl hooted, I almost surrendered. I crept around the exercise yard, across a broad garden, through the shadows at the foot of a watchtower and towards the main square. No gates or guards stood in my way. The weakness of an impregnable citadel, if you can call it that, is that it’s too easy to be
lieve your enemies are on the outside.

  I reached the two temples and stood in front of them, like a prisoner before his judges. The moonlight reversed reality: the fluted pillars shone airily, while the shadows between them looked solid as iron. On the pediment, Athena’s golden shield had transmuted into silver.

  With the moon up, I couldn’t approach the temple without being seen. I cowered in my corner, clinging to the shadows.

  This is madness, said the Voice of Reason.

  You’ve come too far to go back, said the Voice of Will.

  What’s in the book? said the Voice of Desire.

  The voices almost paralysed me. Then I heard real voices, and the jangle of armed men on the move. I ran across the square, into the shadows between the columns. I pressed myself against the stone and prayed they hadn’t seen me.

  The guards crossed the square. Perhaps, if I’d listened, I’d have noticed more than just two guards doing the rounds, or heard some tell-tale piece of conversation. But all I cared about then was: where are they? I tracked their progress by sound, holding my breath each time I thought they might be coming nearer, letting it sigh out each time they drifted away.

  And then they were gone. I listened to be sure, counted to twenty, then approached the great doors and pushed. I’d hoped they were just for show, that on Ortygia Dionysius had no need for locks. Who would be mad enough to steal from the tyrant in his lair? Even if you did get something, no moneychanger or goldsmith in Sicily would risk handling it.

  The doors didn’t move. Even here, Dionysius wasn’t so naïve. I don’t know why I’d ever expected he would be. I kicked them in frustration and hurt my toe.

  I remembered the way the island’s doors had flown open the night before at Diotima’s command. Then, I’d been flying. Now, I was tiptoeing around, terrified of every shadow. It was like a day at the theatre: first the drama, then the satyr play. I could almost hear the audience laughing.

  I took a slow lap around the temple, feeling the sanctuary walls for any kind of door or window. The columns soared around me like a cage. By the time I came around to the front again, the Voice of Will lay cowering in a corner, while the Voice of Reason delivered a thorough kicking. If I could get back to my room undetected, I’d have got off lightly.

  What about the other one? said the Voice of Desire.

  I looked at the temple of the Goddess next door, shoulder to shoulder with Athena’s and shrouded in scaffolding. Almost close enough that you could step from one to the other.

  It’s further than it looks, warned the Voice of Reason. But suddenly I was thirty feet in the air and climbing. The ladders creaked, the scaffolding swayed. When I glanced down, the moonlight left no doubt how far I could fall.

  I reached to steady myself and felt the warm, smooth glaze of a roof tile. I’d reached the top. Breathing hard, I looked across at the Temple of Athena.

  From the ground, it looked as though the two temples almost touched. Up here, the gap between them yawned like a chasm. Even a flying leap wouldn’t make it.

  The temple next door was slightly higher than this one. I could see under the lip of the roof and, tucked under the eaves, a narrow walkway, invisible from below.

  Try a ladder, said the Voice of Desire.

  I found the last ladder I’d come up by and hoisted it through the hole in the floor. It knocked and clattered against the scaffolding, startling a pigeon nesting in the roof. I hoped it hadn’t disturbed anyone else. I swung it out into the void and pushed it towards the walkway on Athena’s temple.

  It reached.

  You see, whispered the Voice of Desire, the gods are with us.

  The gods lead us on to destroy us, answered the Voice of Reason. But I wasn’t listening: I was on my knees, crawling across the narrow ladder. It sagged under my weight, lower and lower as I edged out; every time I moved, I could feel it tilt as if it was trying to shake me off.

  And then I put out my hand and felt stone. Almost kicking over the ladder in my hurry, I hauled myself over the little parapet and dropped onto the solid base of the walkway under the eaves.

  I was on Athena’s temple. I offered a heartfelt prayer and hoped she’d watch out for a lost Athenian.

  But I was still outside the main sanctuary. I looked along the narrow gantry I’d landed on and saw a yellow light, halfway down, glowing on the rafters. I hurried along to it.

  The light came from a high window set into the sanctuary wall. Oil smoke warmed my face as I peered in. Far below, a sacred flame burned unattended in the floor. Behind it, Athena stood on her plinth in her armour, her face bowed away from me. Painted gods and heroes struck poses on the walls.

  And even in the depths of night, I saw it all as clear as day. Not from the single flame, but by the reflection of the light off the thousands of plates and cups, bowls and caskets, statues, weapons, ingots, bangles and furniture piled around the room – every piece solid gold.

  But all I wanted was the book – and even that was worth nothing if I couldn’t reach it. Whether the window was just for ventilation, so the smoke didn’t poison the priest, or whether Dionysius was so paranoid he even spied on the goddess, I don’t know. But it wasn’t meant as a way in. And I was a long way up.

  I leaned through the window and peered down. The wall dropped away below me: sheer, but not smooth. Wide stone bars stuck out from the wall, almost like the rungs of a ladder. It took me a moment to realise they were marble frames around the paintings. I tried to work out how many there were, how far apart and how far down. Would they take my weight?

  The Voice of Reason said it would never work. The Voice of Desire said I had to try. I turned around and manoeuvred my legs through the window, then slid through until I was dangling by my arms. My feet felt for the ledge and only touched air. I slid down a little more. Still nothing.

  I lowered myself another couple of inches, as far as I possibly could. Now I was hanging by my fingertips, ten small pads of skin supporting the weight of a grown man. The weight of a life. And still there was nothing beneath me. The goddess watched from her plinth but did nothing to help. Her face said, You’ve made your choice. I hung there in perfect silence. Even the Voice of Desire had gone quiet.

  Parmenides says that nothing can come from nothing. But sometimes, by stretching out your toe as far as it can reach, you might just find something after all. Resistance – the pushback of an object insisting, I exist.

  I let go and slid down. The ledge rose against my foot, took my weight and held it. Pressing myself against the wall, flat as a fish, I tried to catch my breath so I could whisper a prayer of thanks to the goddess. Her cold face, almost level with mine, didn’t acknowledge me – except perhaps the slightest raised eyebrow to say, Don’t thank me yet.

  There were two tiers of paintings, each framed in marble. Getting down without losing my grip or my balance was an ordeal, and the lower level was still above head height. I dropped the last few feet – there was no alternative – and landed on a set of golden plates with a crash like cymbals that echoed around the closed room.

  I looked back up at the way I’d come. From the floor, the window was almost impossible to pick out, high above the topmost ledge. I’d never haul myself back up that way.

  As I dropped my gaze back down the wall, I couldn’t help noticing the extraordinary quality of the paintings. If I hadn’t touched the paint myself as I scrambled down, I’d have sworn some were sculptures. Three baby centaurs suckling their mother seemed to stick their bottoms out of the frame; Atlas’ face, as he held up the whole weight of the world, was so miserable I wanted to offer to share his burden. I remembered Dion telling me they were by the great Zeuxis himself.

  There’s a story they tell about Zeuxis, I don’t know if it’s true. That he and his arch rival arranged a contest to see who was the better painter. Zeuxis painted a bunch of grapes so real that birds flew down from the trees to peck at them. Confident he’d won, he told his rival to unveil his own entry. The rival i
nvited Zeuxis to do it himself. Zeuxis stood in front of the picture, reached for the curtain that covered it – and came away with paint on his hand. The curtain was the picture.

  Never mind that, said the Voice of Desire. Find the book.

  I turned and started digging through the treasure, trying to be as quiet as possible. It wasn’t easy: a million drachmas in gold makes quite a noise. Even old King Croesus would have felt poor in that room.

  Think, I told myself. You wouldn’t keep manuscripts with the dinner service. I worked my way towards the back. In the shadows behind the statue, a dozen or more heavy chests lined the walls. I opened one – not locked – and felt around inside. Thick fabrics, lumpy with the jewels sewn onto them. I tried another one and found more of the same. Unwanted gifts, I suppose. For all Dionysius’ faults, and his fabulous wealth, his personal tastes were commendably austere.

  I opened the third chest and knew I was close. The sweet, grassy smell of manuscripts blew out of the open box. I reached in and heard a soft rustling as I moved the rolls, like the wind blowing through the papyrus at Cyane’s lake.

  The statue blocked the light. I dragged the chest back to the sacred flame, making a horrible noise. I began pulling out scrolls, unwinding a few inches to check the contents, hoping the recent additions were near the top.

  The fifth scroll I tried was it. No different to any of the others, nothing obvious to say why it should be worth a hundred drachmas and a man’s life. Not illustrated, or wound on a golden spindle. I held it up to the light, hardly able to breathe.

  This is the testimony of Timaeus of Locris. He entered the crater which has neither bottom nor base; he went down to the furthest place, the inmost depths of the earth; he passed by the guardians and the sacred spring; and after years below, he returned to the land of the living.