Just then a man entered the house, “Mama, where are you?” He said in Greek.
“That’s my son.” The old woman said to them in English. “I’m in here! With guests!” She shouted back to him in Greek.
The living room door opened and a man in his late 40s entered the room. He was tall with dark hair and piercing blue eyes. At around 6 feet tall, he towered over his mother.
“Mama, who are your guests?” He said in Greek.
“They’re people who are interested in Pandora. I’m just telling them what we know.”
“We talked about this. You can’t keep telling this crazy story. I found a book with a story in it but that’s all it is, a story.” He said to his mother. Iris didn’t need to speak Greek to know he wasn’t happy.
“What are they saying?” Iris said quietly to Luca.
“He’s not happy she’s talking to us about the story he found.”
“You found the story?” Iris said in English to the son.
“You speak English?” Said the son.
“Yes, I don’t speak Greek, sorry.” Iris replied.
“Alessandro, these people are related to us, they’re also tracing their family history and have found us. Isn’t that wonderful?” Lydia said but in English now.
“Yes, I found the story but it was just a story. It was titled as family stories but I think they were just stories made up by the family, not about the family and things that really happened to them.”
“So why the Pandora connection?” Luca asked, again in English. “You still haven’t mentioned that.
“In the story Pyrrha, Pandora’s daughter, had six children after the flood. The gods saw what Pandora had done to the world by opening the jar and decided that since they were giving humanity another chance after the flood, they needed something to put the hope into the world that had been trapped by Pandora. So, they gave the grandchildren of Pandora another jar. But this jar let only hope out, a tiny bit every day. And it was the responsibility of Pandora’s family to share this hope with the world. It was decided that one person would be responsible for the jar at a time but they wouldn’t be able to release the hope into the world indefinitely. Eventually, the evils of the world would take over the jar and try to claw back the hope that had been released. They don’t want hope in the world, they want the world to be a sad, depressing place full of anger and fear.” Lydia paused and Luca shot Iris a sceptical look.
“The story says that the jar was passed down through the generations of Pandora’s family, they gave it the nickname The Gift Giver.”
“That’s the name of the ship that came from here to Venice.” Iris said.
“Exactly!” Lydia said excitedly. “And we can trace the family who owned the ship directly back to us!”
“Yes, but that could just be a coincidence.” Luca replied.
“But you did find that story about the captain of the ship, he carried a box around with him, remember?” Iris said.
“Yes, but that could have been anything.” Luca said. “So he had a box that he carried around with him, it could have been any number of things that a ship’s captain would need to keep safe on a voyage.”
“I found that story too.” Said Alessandro. “They could be connected but the original story from ancient Greece said a jar and this story said a box.”
“The original translation made Pandora’s jar a box, maybe the same thing happened?” Luca said.
“Yes, that’s true but we’re debating something fictional. This can’t be true; we’re talking about a mythical object from the gods given to people at the beginning of humanity. There’s just no way that would be possible.” Alessandro said.
“Why can’t it be possible?” The old lady said. “There’s evidence of the jar or box or whatever you want to call it being passed down through the generations directly from Pandora’s descendants. There are details of it in our family’s history a thousand years or more later. It proves we are descendants of Pandora.”
“Mama! I’ve told you! This does NOT mean that we are related to Pandora! It’s ridiculous and you’re one person away from being accused of fraud. You can’t keep taking money from tourists who are interested in an old myth and feeding them this sparsely connected story.” The emotion on his face ranged from anger to concern to pity.
“Ah but you do think it’s connected!” The old woman retorted.
“No mother! I don’t! I’ve had enough! It’s great that you advertising this ridiculous story brought us new family members but you can’t keep doing this. Since dad died, I know you’ve been lonely but you can’t keep going on like this. You can’t put 2 and 2 together and make 20 euros.”
“How dare you! What are you trying to say? That your father dying has just made me a crazy old woman? Or what? That I’m lonely, so I’m scamming tourists to try to stop myself from being alone?” she spat.
“Mama, that’s not…”
“Maybe if you were around more, I wouldn’t be so lonely. Maybe if you came to see me more than once a month with a couple of days’ worth of groceries, I wouldn’t need to invite strangers into my home, maybe I could afford to live without donations from strangers to see the information I have on our family.”
“Mama...”
“Don’t you mama me! I didn’t raise you to treat your elders like this. I didn’t raise you to treat your own mother like this! I’ve read through what you found, I’ve done my own research and I may not have a concrete link to Pandora but it’s more than most people have. And if she was real, if she really was the first woman then someone has to be descended from her, that’s just how genetics works.”
“Mama enough! I’m not trying to be rude, I’m not trying to ignore you and I try my best to see you as much as I can but please, people are starting to talk about you, the neighbours have asked me if you’re starting to go senile.”
“Senile?! There’s nothing wrong with my mental health!” Lydia said with indignation.
“You’re telling people we’re related to Pandora because of a story about a magical box that was apparently in our family because of two stories from thousands of years ago! Do you not understand how crazy that is?!” The old woman’s face started to crumple, the anger in her son’s voice had clearly hurt her.
“It’s not crazy.” Iris said. Luca put his hand on her arm.
“Iris, it’s probably best not to get involved.” He whispered.
“Thank you.” Alessandro said to Luca, turning back to his mother. “Mama, you can’t keep doing this.”
“No, really, it’s not crazy.” Said Iris, a little louder this time.
“I think you should go. My mother doesn’t need some stranger telling her that her crazy theories are what, correct?” Alessandro said, turning to face Iris.
“Yes. They’re correct.” Everyone turned to look at Iris.
“You’re just as crazy as she is!” Said Alessandro.
“Hey, don’t talk to her like that!” Luca said, stepping in front of her.
“I’ll speak to her however I like in my own mother’s house!”
“She’s not crazy and neither am I! The box exists! Well, it’s not a box anymore, it’s a cabinet.”
“What?” Luca said, briefly turning around to face Iris again.
“It’s a cabinet.” Iris said calmly.
“And how would you know that?” Luca asked gently.
“Because I own it. The crazy jar or box or whatever you want to call it. I have it.”
“A cabinet?” Said Alessandro with apparent disdain. “Really? Why are you here? Who are you?”
“I’m a very distant relation like he is.” She said, motioning to Luca. “We came here because we’ve been researching our family tree. Which is true but I’ve also been looking for the origins of this bedside cabinet my mother gave me. It’s just like you said in the story you found in Athens. Every day it gives me something and it helps me do a good deed or it helps me out just when I need it. Then one day it starts
giving out things that go bad and it has to be passed on in the family. It’s been passed down through my family for generations and now it’s mine. But I don’t have anyone to give it to, I’m not married, I don’t have any kids and I’m an only child. The only family I had in the world until a few days ago when I met Luca, was my mother.”
“What?” Luca said, turning to face her. “This story is real?”
“You’re telling me that my mother is right?” Alessandro said in disbelief.
“Yes, I am.” Iris repeated.
“I’ll go make some coffee.” Lydia said. “I think you should all sit down.”
The old woman went to the kitchen as the others sat down. Iris sat in one of the chairs next to the fireplace, facing the others on the sofa. They sat in silence until Lydia returned with a tray a few minutes later. She put the tray down on the table in between them all, pushing aside the documents they were looking at earlier. Lydia filled the cups with coffee and motioned for them all to take a cup.
Iris took the one next to her and added some sugar and milk, before sitting back in her chair. Once they all had their coffee she tentatively began to speak.
“So… I know that I sound crazy. I know that it sounds completely unbelievable and that’s exactly how I felt when my mother first told me but it’s all true. I didn’t know that the cabinet came from Pandora’s children. I didn’t even know that we’re descended from Pandora until we got here today. I set out 3 weeks ago to find out where this cabinet came from. I hired a company back in the UK to fill in my family tree for me and they managed to get back to the 1800s to a guy that came from Italy. It meant nothing to me until I saw his picture from the 1850s. The cabinet that now sits next to my bed is in the picture behind him.” She pulled a slightly crumpled picture from her bag and passed it to Luca.
“So that’s why you came to Italy and how you found me?” He said.
“Yes. The woman in the library told me you were a local historian and that the family I was researching was your family too. She called you, I met you at your house and you know the rest.”
“We don’t.” Alessandro interjected. “We don’t know anything about either of you. Coming here and telling us you’ve got some magical cabinet that grants you wishes every day!”
“It doesn’t grant wishes. I have no control over it. I get given something every day and I find out what it’s for at some point in the day.”
“And you? You’re in on this?” Alessandro said to Luca.
“No, I most certainly am not in on whatever this is. As Iris said, we met when the woman from my local library called and told me someone was looking into my family tree. As far as I’m aware, there’s nothing special about my family, our family I suppose it is.”
“I didn’t think there was either until I got this cabinet. Like I said, I met you and then you said you’d traced our family tree back to Greece.” Iris said.
“The story about the ship and the captain. That’s why you wanted to come here, to Greece.” Luca said, turning to the son and the old woman. “We found a ship called the gift giver that had a trade route from here to Venice. I had already connected our family to Venice in the 8th Century and this ship took us back further. I hadn’t thought much of it until I met Iris. Then she said that she had the time to come here and see what she could find and I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to get more research done.”
“Did you know?” Alessandro asked, talking directly to Luca.
“About the cabinet? No. This is the first time I’ve heard about it.” Luca said.
The old woman looked at Iris and a smile slowly spreads across her face. “You’re telling the truth, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am.” Iris nods.
Chapter 28
“So you have a magical cabinet that, according to a story from our family history, was a gift given to the grandchildren of Pandora by the Gods, to release hope into the world. The hope that was trapped in by Pandora when she opened her jar and closed the lid prematurely.” Alessandro said.
“Yes, basically.” Iris confirmed what he was saying with a nod and a forced smile.
“So, you’re saying that the cabinet was once a wooden box, meant for Pandora’s grandchildren?” Luca asked. “It has been passed down the bloodline of Pandora because Pandora herself wasn’t supposed to open the jar. This thing is a punishment, maybe, for her descendants whereby they MUST open the box, every single day?”
“Yes. As I’ve already said.” Iris said, slightly irritated by the repetitive nature of their questions.
“That explains why it has to pass through the family and why it starts good and ends badly, because hope was accidentally trapped in Pandora's box when she closed the lid before it could get out. But all the bad things and the evils of the world were let out. This bedside cabinet gives hope every day, to let it out into the world a little bit at a time.” Lydia said enthusiastically.
“Yes! I suppose it does!” Iris agreed.
“When the evils catch up to you, it’s time to pass the jar on and then the hope can come through the next person, through another human conduit. The better the person, the longer they can spread hope in the world. I wonder if it works on your character. As in the worse a person is before they get the jar, the less time they’ll have to spread hope. Everyone has light and dark, good and bad in them, maybe this is the Gods way of getting out that hope one piece at a time. The hope the owner of the cabinet puts out into the world has a ripple effect and inspires those they help to help others” Lydia continued, before her son interrupted once again.
“Ok, so what now?” Alessandro asked.
“What do you mean?” Iris looked to Alessandro.
“Well, you said that eventually, the good stuff stops because the evils of the world essentially catch up with you. Then you have to give the jar, cabinet, to someone else in the family.”
“Yes. I’ll have to give it to someone eventually.”
“Can you give it away when it’s giving good things?” Lydia asked.
“I don’t know, as far as I know, no-one has tried to give it away when it’s giving out good things.”
“Why would they?” Luca piped up. “If you’ve got this magic box giving you stuff every day, why would you give that away?”
“So,” Lydia said, turning back to Iris. “What’s your next step? Now that you know where the cabinet comes from, what’s next? Is that all you wanted?”
“I don’t really know. I mean, I wanted to know where the cabinet came from so I could hopefully get rid of it or stop the magic or whatever. I wasn’t sure if it was some kind of curse or what but I was hoping it would have a relatively easy ending. And it turns out that it’s from the gods? What am I supposed to do with that?” Iris sank down in the chair and took a sip of her coffee.
“So, you do want to get rid of it?” Alessandro asked.
“Yes but permanently. Only I don’t even know if that’s possible now.”
“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.” Lydia said. “That’s a quote from Pericles from 400 something BCE. I think he knew something we didn’t.”
“I don’t understand.” Luca said, the confusion showed on his face.
“Well, he said that you leave behind what you give to others and if you have this cabinet that gives a gift every day, you have an opportunity every day to weave hope into the lives of others. Isn’t that what the point of the cabinet is, according to the story Alessandro found?” Lydia offered.
“That makes sense.” Said Luca. “So, you think he might have known about the cabinet too? Or jar as I’m assuming it was then. And why is it changing form?”
“It’s possible he knew. Pericles was from Athens too, he was also a politician or statesman, whatever you want to call them. His family was very prominent and goes back to Alcmaeon.”
“Sorry…” Iris interrupted. “Who is Pericles?”
“He was a very p
rominent statesman and General around 450ish BC. He built the Parthenon in Athens.” Luca told her.
“And Alcmaeon?” Iris asked.
“He was a philosopher and physiologist in Croton in Italy. He was the first person to dissect human bodies I believe. He was alive around 600-500BC give or take. So, a few hundred years before Pericles in 400 something BC.” Luca answered again.
“Yes, earlier than Pericles but we can trace our family back to Pandora, via the statesmen in Athens, as our family were statesmen for a long time.” Lydia stated matter of factly.
“Here.” Alessandro gave Luca and Iris a piece of paper. “Here is the family tree we’ve created and the one that we found during our research.
Pandora
↓
Pyrrha and Deucalion
↓
Amphictyon
↓
Aetolus of Aetolia – great-great-grandson of Amphictyon
↓
Calydon and Aeolia
↓
Agenor and Epicaste
↓
Euryte and Porthaon
↓
Oeneus and althaea
↓
Meleager and Cleopatra
↓
Polydora and Protesilaus
“But wasn’t Protesilaus’ wife Laodamia?” Luca interrupted. “There’s a story about how the gods had pity on her and brought him back from the underworld to see her. Then after he returned to the underworld, she had a statue of him made but went a bit crazy and ended up killing herself?”
“Yes, but according to The Cypria, which is a lost epic poem that comes before the Iliad detailing the trojan war, his wife was actually Polydora. There are a few Polydoras in mythology but this one was the daughter of Meleager and Cleopatra.” Alessandro explained.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of her. What did she do? What’s her story?” Luca asked.
“I don’t know her full story but what I do know is that she and Protesilaus did have a child together. A girl called Calliope. And Calliope got married and had children and they got married and had children and somewhere along the way, someone made a family tree.” Alessandro said.
The Bedside Cabinet: The Cabinet Mystery Book 1 Page 12