The Athenian Murders (4 page)

'I'm not cold, Master Diagoras.'

The man fondly stroked the undulating muscles of his pupil's left arm. 'Are you sure? Your skin is icy, my poor child ... and you seem to be trembling.'

Emboldened by affection for the boy, he moved a little closer and, with a gentle, almost motherly movement of the fingers, he brushed aside the chestnut curls flopping over his forehead. Once again he marvelled at the flawless beauty of his face, the loveliness of the honey-coloured eyes staring at him, blinking. He said: 'Listen, my child. Your classmates and I have noticed that something is the matter. You haven't been yourself lately'

'No, Master, I...'

'Listen,' insisted the man softly. He stroked the youth's smooth oval face, taking his chin in his hand as carefully as he would a goblet of pure gold. 'You are my best student, and a teacher knows his best student well. For a month now nothing seems to have interested you, you haven't taken part in dialogues - Wait, don't interrupt. You've grown distant with your classmates, Tramachus. Of course something is the matter, my child. But tell me what it is, and I swear before the gods that I will help you, for my energies are considerable. I won't tell anyone if you don't wish me to. You have my word. Do confide in me.'

The boy's brown eyes, open very wide (perhaps too wide), were fixed on the man's. For a moment all was stillness and silence. Then the boy moved his lips - pink, moist and cold - as if about to speak. But he said nothing. He continued to stare, eyes bulging like small ivory heads with huge black pupils. The man saw something strange there and was so absorbed that he hardly noticed the young man step back, still holding his gaze, his white body still rigid, lips tense . . .

The man stood motionless for a long time after the young man had fled.

'He was terrified,' said Diagoras, after a deep silence.

Heracles took another fig from the bowl. Thunder shook in the distance like the sinuous vibration of a rattlesnake. 'How do you know? Did he tell you?'

'No. I told you, such was my confusion that he ran away before I could say another word ... But, though I lack your ability to read men's faces, I have seen fear too many times not to recognise it. Tramachus' fear was more terrible than any I have ever seen. His eyes contained nothing else. When it was revealed to me, I didn't know what to do. It was as if ... as if the terror in his eyes turned me to stone. When I looked round, he'd disappeared. I never saw him again. The following day one of his friends told me he had gone hunting. I was a little surprised, since his state of mind the evening before did not seem conducive to the enjoyment of such a pastime, but...'

'Who told you he had gone hunting?' Heracles interrupted, seizing the head of another fig from among the many poking over the edge of the bowl.

'Euneos, one of his closest friends. And Antisus, son of Praxinoe.'

'Both students at the Academy?'

'Yes.'

'Fine. Please go on.'

Diagoras ran his hand over his head (on the shadow on the wall, a creature slithered over the slimy surface of a sphere) and said: 'I wanted to talk to Antisus and Euneos that day. I found them at the gymnasium.'

Hands rising, writhing, playing in a shower of tiny scales; wet, slender arms; multiple laughter, banter interspersed with the sound of water, eyelids tightly closed, heads raised; a shove, and, again, laughter spilling forth. From above, the image brings to mind a flower formed of adolescent bodies, or a single body with several heads; arms like undulating petals; slimy, multiple nakedness caressed by steam; a tongue of water sliding slickly from the mouth of a gargoyle; the flower of flesh moves, gestures sinuously
...
A thick breath of steam suddenly clouds our view.
⁹

⁹
This strange paragraph, which would seem to be a poetic description of the young men having a shower at the gymnasium, contains, in concise summary and strongly emphasised, almost all the eidetic elements of Chapter Two: 'damp', 'head' and 'undulation', among others. Also noteworthy is the repetition of 'multiple' and the word 'scales', which appeared earlier on. The 'flower of flesh' image is, I believe, simply a metaphor and has nothing to do with the eidesis.
(T's N.)

The vapour clears. We see a small room - a changing room, judging by the collection of tunics and robes hanging on the whitewashed walls - and several young male bodies in varying degrees of undress; one of them lies face down on a couch, quite naked, and avid dark-skinned hands slide over it, slowly massaging the muscles. There is laughter: the young men jest after their shower. The hiss of steam from the cauldrons

of boiling water diminishes until it ceases. The curtain at the door is drawn back, and
the multiple laughter stops. A tall, thin man, with a shiny bald head and neatly trimmed beard, greets the young men, who hasten to answer. The man speaks. They listen, continuing their various activities: dressing, undressing, rubbing their well-formed bodies with cloths, oiling their undulating muscles.

The man addresses two of the young men in particular -one, pink-cheeked, with thick black hair, is bending down, tying his sandals, while the other is the naked ephebe who is being massaged. His face (we can see it now) is extremely beautiful.

The room, like the bodies, exudes heat. Then a snake of mist swirls before our eyes, and the vision disappears.

'I asked about Tramachus,' explained Diagoras. 'At first they didn't quite understand what I wanted, though they both admitted that their friend had changed, but they didn't know why. Then Lisilus, another Academy student who happened to be there, made an incredible revelation: for some months, in secret, Tramachus had been seeing a hetaera from Piraeus called Yasintra. 'Perhaps it is she who has changed him, Master,' he added spitefully. Antisus and Euneos reluctantly confirmed the existence of the relationship. I was astounded, and, in some ways, hurt. But I was also relieved: that my pupil should keep from me his shameful visits to a prostitute in the port was indeed worrying, considering his distinguished education, but I reflected that if the problem amounted to nothing more there was no need to worry. I decided to speak to him again, at a more propitious moment, and to discuss reasonably how his spirit had erred.'

Diagoras paused. Heracles Pontor lit a wall lamp, and the shadows of their

heads multiplied: Heracles' truncated triangles moving, together, on the adobe wall, and Diagoras' circles, thoughtful, still, their perfect outline marred by the hair spilling over his head, and by the neatly trimmed beard. When Diagoras resumed his story, his voice was barely audible: 'But... that night, almost at dawn, the border guards

knocked at my door
...
A goatherd had found his body in the forest, near Lycabettus, and notified the guard
...
Once they'd identified him, they called me, as there was no man at his house to receive the news and his uncle Daminus was out of the City
...'

He paused again. The distant storm and the sound of another fig being smoothly beheaded could be heard. His face was contorted, each word now a great effort. He said: 'Strange as you may find it, I felt guilty
...
If I'd gained his trust that afternoon, and persuaded him to tell me what was the matter . . . maybe he
wouldn't have gone hunting . . . and he would still be alive.' He looked up at his obese interlocutor, who sat listening, leaning back in his chair, looking so tranquil he might have been about to fall asleep. 'I confess I have spent the past two days tortured by the thought that Tramachus may have decided upon his fateful hunting trip to escape me and my tactless questions ... So, this afternoon, I made a decision: I have to find out why he was so terrified, and how I could have helped . . . That's why I've come to you. In Athens, the saying goes that to know the future you need the oracle of Delphi, but to know the past you simply need the Decipherer of Enigmas ...
'

'That's ridiculous!' exclaimed Heracles.

His unexpected reaction startled Diagoras. Heracles stood up quickly, dragging all the shadows of his head after him, and paced briskly about the cold, damp room, thick fingers stroking the sticky fig he'd just taken from the bowl. He went on irritably: 'I only decipher the past if it's something I can see - a text, an object, a face. But you talk of memories, impressions and ... opinions! What kind of guidance can they provide? You say that for a month your disciple had seemed "preoccupied", but what does that mean?' He raised an arm abruptly. 'Just before you entered the room, I was staring at that crack, and it might have seemed that I too was "preoccupied"! You claim you saw terror in his eyes. Terror! I ask you this: was terror written out in Ionic characters in his pupils? Is the word "fear" engraved in the lines on our forehead? Is it a line like that crack on the wall? A thousand different emotions might have produced the expression that you attribute to fear alone!'

Diagoras replied, a little uneasily: 'I know what I saw. Tramachus was terrified.'

'You know what you
thought
you saw,' pointed out Heracles. 'Knowing the truth is knowing how much of the truth we can know.'

'Socrates, Plato's teacher, believed something similar,' admitted Diagoras. 'He said that all he knew was that he knew nothing. In fact, we all agree. But the mind too has eyes and with it we can see things that our physical eyes cannot.'

'Is that so?' Heracles stopped abruptly. 'Very well, then, tell me what you see here.' He held something up quickly to Diagoras' face: a dark green, sticky head protruded from between his thick fingers.

'A fig,' said Diagoras, after a moment of surprise.

'A fig like any other?'

'Yes. It looks intact. It has a good colour. An ordinary fig.' 'Ah! That's the difference between you and me!' cried Heracles triumphantly. 'I look at this fig and am of the opinion that it
seems
like an ordinary fig. I may even believe that it is
very likely
an ordinary fig, but I stop there. If I want to know more, I have to open it up ... as I did with this one while you were speaking.'

He gently parted the two halves of the fig that he'd been holding together: in a single sinuous movement, multiple tiny heads rose up angrily from its dark interior, emitting a very faint hiss. Diagoras' face contorted in disgust. Heracles said: 'And when I do so . . . I'm not as surprised as you when the truth turns out to be different from what I expected!'

He put the fig back together and placed it on the table. Suddenly calm again, as at the beginning of the conversation, the Decipherer went on: 'I pick them out myself at a metic's stall in the Agora. He's a good man and almost never cheats me, I assure you - he knows very well that I'm an expert when it comes to figs. But nature sometimes plays tricks.'

Diagoras was flushed again. He cried: 'Are you going to accept the job, or would you rather go on about that fig?'

'Please understand, I can't take on something like this.' The Decipherer picked up the krater and poured a cup of thick, undiluted wine. 'I'd be betraying myself. What have I to go on? Mere suppositions . . . and not even my own, but yours.' He shook his head. 'Impossible. Would you care for some wine?'

But Diagoras was already standing, straight as a reed. His cheeks were flushed a deep red. 'No, I wouldn't. Nor do I want to take any more of your time. I realise now I was wrong to ask you. I'm sorry. We have both done our duty - I in setting out my offer, and you in rejecting it. I bid you a good evening'

'Wait,' said Heracles casually, as if Diagoras had left something behind. 'I said I couldn't take on
your
job, but if you'd like to pay me for a job of
my own,
I'd be happy to accept your money.'

'Is this some kind of joke?'

The heads of Heracles' eyes emitted multiple glints of mockery as if all he had said up till then had, indeed, been nothing but an immense joke. He explained: "The night the soldiers brought Tramachus' body, an old madman named Candaulus roused the whole neighbourhood. Like everyone else, I went outside to find out what was going on, and I saw the corpse. A doctor, Aschilos, was examining it, but the incompetent fool couldn't see beyond his own beard. I, however, did see
something
that I thought strange. I'd forgotten all about it, until now.' He stroked his beard thoughtfully. Then, as if he'd suddenly come to a decision, he cried: 'Yes, I accept! I will solve the mystery of your disciple, Diagoras, but not because of what you
thought
you saw when you spoke to him, but because of what I
saw
when I looked at his corpse!'

The Decipherer would answer none of the multiple questions that had formed in Diagoras' head, saying only: 'Let's not discuss the fig until we've opened it up. I may be mistaken, so I'd rather say nothing more for now. But trust me, Diagoras: if I solve
my
enigma, it's likely that yours, too, will be solved. If you like, I'll visit you to discuss my fee.'