The Orpheus Descent (22 page)

‘I guess you’ve met him too.’

Here is Timaeus, from Locris in Italy, a city which has fine laws, and who is himself in the first rank of his fellow-citizens; he has held the most important and honourable offices in his own state, and, I believe, has scaled the heights of all philosophy.

Plato
, Timaeus
(
20
)

Another city, another port. Locris occupied a sandy coastal strip beneath the high mountains which marched towards the sea. The sun was hotter here, the air thicker. The moment you stopped moving, swarms of flies descended. In that heat, I suppose they struggled to tell the living from the dead.

The city was a blur. The block that fell from the yard only glanced me: they said that was lucky, though I didn’t feel lucky. I felt like one of those Homeric heroes who’d got on the wrong side of Achilles, my brains dashed out of my skull. The bandage on my head kept coming loose and flopping down over my face like a veil, though at least that protected my eyes from the dazzling sun. Bolts of pain shot through my skull every time I moved.

I almost fell in the sea as I stumbled down the gangplank off the ship. Euphemus caught me. As we entered Locris through the massive walls, I began to understand why the flies flocked here. There were temples everywhere, altars sticky with blood. All Italians live in the shadow of the dark goddess: in Locris, she’s closer than ever. We passed two temples to Aphrodite, heavily decorated and thronged with women. Golden figures gleamed within, while white doves pecked corn off the precinct floor. The statues in the front flaunted all Aphrodite’s charms. I tried not to look, but couldn’t help myself – like some bursting adolescent staring at the
porne
down by the city gates. They made me think of …

Agathon
, I reminded myself, trying to get a grip on my delirious thoughts. I’d come for Agathon.

There’s a man in Locris, a Pythagorean called Timaeus. Agathon had been trying to buy a book from him, but he wanted too much money.

Diotima told me that, sitting in the ruins of Sybaris, silhouetted against the water. I remembered the curve of her breasts under her transparent gown at dinner, breasts like ivory, the nipples small and upturned and—

Agathon
.

I knew the routine by now, as well as Sisyphus knew his boulder. Taras, Thurii, now Locris: go to the agora, ask for Agathon, draw a blank. Once I’d established no one knew him, I decided to look for Timaeus.

If you still want the book, find me before the end of the month. I will be on the porch of the Great Temple.

Our ship had cargo to unload – it wouldn’t sail until the next morning – so Euphemus offered to come with me. I clenched my teeth and willed him to go away, but he wanted to see the temple.

‘It’s the most famous temple in Italy. I’d hate to miss it.’

I climbed the hill, wrapped in a cloud of pain and heat and despair. Flies nibbled the blood that had seeped through my bandage. By the time we’d come to the top of the town, I stank with sweat and the bandage was the only thing holding my skull together.

The building was magnificent. It stood on a terrace on the edge of a ravine, a little way beyond the city walls. In spring, I could imagine torrents of meltwater foaming down off the mountains; now, the river was just a trickle among bone-white stones. Thick columns like tree-trunks supported a vast pediment. Caryatids, Persephone’s handmaidens, watched me with cold eyes as they held up the roof.

The Guardians. Watching, all-knowing.
My burned-out eyes made them sway on their pedestals. I imagined them stepping down, shrugging off their burden and letting the temple fall in on me. Their stony faces said they could do it without a flicker of guilt.

Hushed voices murmured around me like flowing water as we stepped into the shade of the portico: whispered hymns, desperate prayers. Worshippers, mostly women, passed by, carrying their offerings into the sanctuary. Some came out crying, others beaming with joy. The air was sticky with blood and wine and pomegranate juice.

I did a lap of the colonnade, trying not to trip over the stray women and dogs. I didn’t see anyone who fitted my picture of what a Pythagorean bookseller should look like, so I accosted a priest on his way into the temple and asked him if he knew Timaeus.

He didn’t. But the name got a reaction: over the priest’s shoulder, I saw a slumped head suddenly jerk up. A filthy, hooded beggar, lying against the temple wall.

I knelt down beside him. The fly that had been crawling up his arm buzzed away indignantly.

‘Do you know who Timaeus is?’

I wished I stayed standing. He stank rotten. His fingernails were black, and he had strange growths coming off his feet. Even in the shade, he kept his hood so low it hid his eyes completely. The only detail I had of his face was the straggling orange beard that escaped the hood, too long and too thin. Behind the beard, his lips never stopped squirming, as if he had something horrible in his mouth he couldn’t get down and couldn’t get out.

‘Timaeus.’ He giggled as he said the name. ‘I knew Timaeus.’

‘Where is he?’ I looked at the crowds around us. ‘Can you point him out?’

He extended a filthy finger, swinging it around like a drunk. I tried to see where he was pointing, until suddenly he reversed his hand and planted the finger on his own chest.

‘You’re Timaeus.’

He didn’t deny it.

‘I’m looking for a friend. Agathon. He wanted to buy a book from you.’

‘Do you want the book?’

‘I want Agathon. Is he here?’

The hooded face swivelled theatrically, first right, then all the way round in an arc.

‘Not
here
,’ I said impatiently. ‘I meant, in Locris.’

His head dropped as if his neck had snapped. He stared at his feet.

‘Is that a no?’

No answer.

‘But you know who I’m talking about. Was he here recently?’

‘There is no
was
or
will be
. Only
is
.’

‘Where did he go?’

More silence. Then, as if someone had turned a key to unlock him, he suddenly spat out, ‘Down over the mountain. No escape, no escape that way. Nine years we kept that siege, against Ilium’s windy walls. And for what?’

‘Rhegion?’ guessed Euphemus. He’d kept his distance, standing well back from the beggar like something he didn’t want to step in.

‘Yes.’ Timaeus seized on it eagerly. ‘Yes, yes – Rhegion. He went to Rhegion.’

‘Why would he go there?’ Dimos had told me about Rhegion – the city on the tip of Italy that the tyrant Dionysius had spent two years trying to batter into submission. ‘Is it even possible to get in?’

‘In, yes. Out?’ A splenetic laugh that devolved into a wet fit of coughing. ‘Against that dreadful path, I hold you back. Stay away. Stay away. Nothing comes back that way.’

‘Then why did Agathon go there?’

Timaeus held up his hands and stared at his palms, jerking his head from side to side in a crazy parody of reading.

‘For the book?’ I interpreted.

‘What was the book?’ Euphemus asked.

He cupped his hands in a wide bowl. ‘
The Krater
. We called it
The Krater
.’

‘What’s in it?’

Abruptly, he slapped his hands hard against his face. ‘Secrets.’

‘Pythagorean secrets?’

‘He wouldn’t pay the price.’

Now we were getting to the heart of the matter. I held out my purse, right in front of his face so he couldn’t miss it.

‘I can pay.’

He craned forward. From under his hood, I felt his gaze hook onto me.

‘How much do you think it is worth?’ he asked slyly.

‘Agathon said it was a hundred drachmas.’

‘More!’ he barked.

I considered my finances. ‘I could go to a hundred and ten?’

‘No book’s worth that,’ Euphemus objected.

‘Only a fool thinks he knows the price of wisdom,’ Timaeus told him.

‘If you’re trying to say—’

Timaeus’ hand moved for the purse. I snatched it back, then realised he was pushing it away anyway.

‘Knowledge is cheap,’ he sneered. ‘Cheap as dying. But not the book, not at any price.’

‘You won’t sell it?’

‘Can’t.’

‘Why not?’ And then, making a leap: ‘You don’t have it. You sold it.’

A hissing chuckle, like a kettle boiling, told me I’d got it right. ‘To Agathon?’

More hissing – but no answer.

‘Who bought it?’

He giggled. ‘A Lydian trickster, a sorcerer, with golden hair and perfumed locks, and the flush of wine on his face.’ A flash of anger and a sudden roaring voice. ‘
I’ll cut off his head if I find him!
’

I tried to ignore the theatrics. ‘Did he have a name? Is he here in Locris?’

‘Told you. You guide yourself with blind eyes, deaf ears.’

He was quoting Parmenides at me, I realised. If I’d been thinking more clearly, I might have asked how a raving beggar knew such esoteric philosophy. But my head hurt, and I was fed up with his half-truths and babbled nonsense. I wanted to look him in the eye. I reached forward and yanked back his hood.

His scream tore open the temple, loud enough – it seemed – to crack the stone goddesses. I leapt back. Timaeus writhed on the floor, howling like a dog and clutching his eyes. Or, at least, the part of his face where his eyes should have been. In the split second when I pulled back the hood, I’d seen there was nothing there except horrible knots of scar tissue.

Someone or something had burned his eyes away.

* * *

‘You’re not seriously going to Rhegion?’

Euphemus stared at me across the table in the wineshop. I wished he’d keep his voice down. Timaeus’ screams were still ringing in my ears.

‘Haven’t you listened to anything they’ve told us since we landed in Italy?’ he persisted. ‘Rhegion’s at war. Dionysius the tyrant has his army camped around it and he’s choking it to death. You won’t get within ten miles of the gates.’

I didn’t want to talk to Euphemus.

‘I know you think you’re better than this world. But reality won’t go away just because you ignore it. You know what they’ll do if they capture you sneaking into the city? They’ll sell you as a slave, or send you to the stone quarries of Syracuse. Have you read Thucydides’ book? He’s very eloquent on the subject.’

‘I have to go.’

‘For Agathon? You’ve visited every colony in Italy looking for him. Did you ever think that if he wanted to see you, he could have made the slightest effort to help you find him?’

‘He might be in trouble.’

‘He’ll be in trouble if he’s gone to Rhegion. And so will you.’

My whole head seemed to have shrunk in, boiled dry by the heat. I had nothing to say. And nor, finally, did Euphemus. Except:

‘I’m going to Syracuse. If you end up in the quarries there, don’t think I’ll be able to help you.’

I took out Dimos’ purse, still heavy with the unspent coins. ‘How much do you want?’

‘What?’

‘For what you’ve spent on our trip since Taras. How much?’

If I’d cared about his good opinion, the disgust on his face would have cut deep.

‘I know you think all I care about is money. So let me prove you wrong.’ He stood to go.

‘Wait.’ I fumbled in the bottom of the purse. Among the flat-pressed coins, the pebble had a solid reality that made it easy to find. ‘Take this.’

I held out the shipwreck stone in my palm. Euphemus hesitated.

‘It worked before,’ I pointed out.

He still couldn’t tell if I was mocking him. ‘Won’t you need it to get back to Athens?’

‘I can swim.’

He swept it off the table.

‘I hope you find Agathon. And I hope he’s worth it.’

Euphemus had one thing right: getting to Rhegion by sea was impossible. The Syracusan fleet had it blockaded. I asked around the harbour, but even a hundred drachmas couldn’t tempt anyone.

‘Go over the mountain,’ one leather-tanned captain told me from the deck of his boat. ‘It’s the only way.’

‘Is there a road?’

He shook his head and spat on the deck. ‘But I know someone who can take you.’

Locris had become a bad dream. The next thing I knew, I was standing in an alley behind the merchant’s stoa, negotiating with three scarred men who looked like murderers and stank of goats. With a bloodied head and wine on my breath, I fitted right in.

‘Three days over the mountain to Rhegion,’ the leader told me. He was called Polus. ‘What are you bringing?’

‘Just what I’m carrying.’

He looked surprised – which I understood when we assembled outside the city. We were four men, a boy and twenty donkeys, backs breaking under the weight of the sacks loaded onto them.

‘Lots of hungry people in Rhegion,’ Polus said, by way of explanation. ‘They’ve been locked nearly two years. A hungry man pays a lot to eat.’

Why would Agathon go there?
Why would he even think he could? Had he paid smugglers to take him over the mountain too? What possessed him? Did he think he could raise money for a book that Timaeus had already sold?

If I’d stopped to consider any of those questions, I probably wouldn’t have gone. But my head hurt too much to think about it. Instead, I stared up at the mountain and the sun hanging off its shoulder. Perhaps things would be clearer from the top.

Any Athenian – any Greek – lives with mountains from the day he’s born. But familiarity doesn’t make us comfortable. We huddle in the narrow plains; we’d rather take to the sea than climb. Mountains are hard, cruel places. Thin air makes hearts cold. Artemis the huntress lives there; so does Dionysius, the god of wine and frenzy. It was on a mountain that King Pentheus’ own mother ripped him to pieces, and where Oedipus’ father left him to die.

The sea’s dangerous, but we risk it because there’s always movement, always the promise of change. Mountains confront us with the eternal and offer no way out.

Those, roughly, were the thoughts I had as I trudged up the mountains with the donkeys. My guides were terse as Spartans and left me to myself; once I’d persuaded myself they weren’t going to murder me, I forgot about them. The clop of hooves, the panting of breathless men and beasts, the hiss of insects chirping in the grass were the only conversation I had.