Killing Pythagoras (Mediterranean Prize Winner 2015)

by Marcos Chicot

  Alive…

  Unexpectedly, he took a deep breath, an agonized gasp like a drowning man snatched from the black waters of death. An intense wave of pleasure and pain shot through every muscle in his body.

  He opened his eyes, brought his hands to his face, and examined them in the warm, dim light.

  Marvelous…

  He turned his hands over slowly, fascinated, watching how they closed and opened again, and then looked down at the rest of his corporeal sheath.

  He stood up with difficulty. His mind continued to unfold, adjusting to his return to time and space. The life force of his eternal rancor slowly filled him, and he savored its bitter taste. Desire for revenge howled within him like an enormous conflagration…but he was in no hurry.

  He was immortal.

  Men knew him by different names, but it didn’t matter what they called him. His dark heart held one vital desire: that all nations from the four corners of the earth fall at his feet and know him as their god.

  Their only god. Hatred pulled his lips back, revealing his teeth. And my kingdom will endure forever and ever.

  He inhaled deeply and closed his eyes, mentally taking the measure of his surroundings: stone walls, a table, a chair. He was alone in the room.

  He exhaled slowly and filled his lungs once more, then held his breath, honing the abilities his corporeal form allowed him. After a few seconds, he suddenly unleashed the power of his mind, projecting it like a flash of lightning so that it simultaneously illuminated the rest of the rooms.

  Around him, the temperature dropped abruptly.

  He nodded slowly, grunting with satisfaction, and walked to the exit, showing no trace of his initial clumsiness. Within him, old hatred mingled with new, impregnating every fiber of his being with malevolent pleasure.

  On the other side of the threshold was a man with his back to him, standing guard.

  A mere mortal, he thought with a mixture of indifference and contempt.

  A cold smile spread over his face as he approached the guard from behind.

  CHAPTER 1

  Carthage, 507 B.C.

  Ariadne of Croton, daughter of Pythagoras and wife of Akenon, held out her hand to take the parchment.

  As she was about to touch it, her fingers recoiled as if they had grazed a red-hot iron. She held her breath. The messenger hadn’t said who it was from, and it was folded in such a way that concealed its contents unless the wax seal was broken. However, on the outside of the parchment, a powerful symbol jumped out at her.

  The pentacle.

  She took the message, her eyes fixed on the five-pointed star, the sacred symbol whose esoteric significance was reserved for the chosen ones. The clouds that covered the sky above her burned with the crimson flames of sunset, tinting the world in a blood-red hue. In a reverie, Ariadne ran her fingers over the shape. The dark sense of foreboding that had been growing inside her writhed like a wild beast trying to escape its cage. With trembling hands, she turned the parchment over, broke the seal, and began to read.

  Each word smote her heart as her eyes raced over the lines, anxious and fearful of reaching the end… When that terrible message ended, her breathing was no more than a faint thread.

  The world around her began to fade, as if darkness were emerging from the parchment to devour her.

  Just a few hours earlier, Ariadne had been getting ready to go with Akenon and little Sinuhe—her two-and-a-half-year-old son—for a leisurely walk around the aristocratic quarter of Carthage. She sat down on a low wool-upholstered bench, in front of a valuable cedar chest, placed her ivory comb on the chest and adjusted the diadem in her wavy, honey-colored hair. Then she picked up a hand mirror and looked at her reflection in the polished bronze surface. Even though she didn’t usually bother much about her appearance, she smiled in satisfaction.

  There was nothing to suggest that when the sun set, an unthinkable horror would devastate their lives.

  She held the mirror away from her, tilting it so it would reflect most of her body.

  It’s more noticeable than with Sinuhe, she thought, stroking the already noticeable curve of her four-month-old pregnancy.

  A deep voice spoke behind her.

  “You’re irresistible.”

  Startled, Ariadne turned around. Akenon was leaning against the stone door frame, watching her with a teasing smile. He approached until he was standing behind her, brushed her hair delicately to one side, and nuzzled the nape of her neck, giving her a love bite that made her shiver. Akenon wrapped her in his strong arms and caressed her belly through the tunic.

  “I love your curves when you’re pregnant,” he purred.

  His hands began to wander upwards from Ariadne’s abdomen, and she pushed him away, laughing.

  “Kush is waiting for us with Sinuhe.” She brandished the bronze mirror at him. “You’ll have to wait a few hours.”

  Kush was the servant who looked after little Sinuhe. The Egyptian army had made him a slave two decades ago, during one of their many skirmishes with the peoples of the south, to whom the Egyptians referred as Kush. The slave had been given the same name in mockery of his people, as if to say all of them were slaves of Egypt. Shortly after he was sold, however, Egypt had fallen under the yoke of the Persian Empire, whereas the kingdom of Kush still had its freedom. Maybe because of that, Kush wore his name proudly, and had never mentioned another.

  “Very well,” Akenon answered Ariadne, removing his hands and making a face of suffering resignation. “I’ll go see if…”

  “Mama!”

  Sinuhe careened across the cement floor, bumping into Ariadne’s leg and hugging it tightly. He raised his head and lifted his arms to her with an imploring look in his green eyes.

  Overflowing with maternal love, Ariadne picked him up with some difficulty.

  “Come here… Oof, this little man is heavy! Soon you’ll be the one picking me up.” She tickled him and Sinuhe laughed, hiding his face in his mother’s neck.

  Akenon watched the scene in silence, suddenly becoming aware of the foolish grin pasted on his face. He tried to hide it, surprised at how his life had changed in such a short time. Up to the age of forty-five, he had led a relatively solitary existence and had never been in a relationship for longer than a few months. He had spent his entire life as an investigator, first as a police officer in Egypt and then as a private eye in Carthage, making a comfortable living, but never able to save enough to take more than a couple months off work.

  Everything changed three years ago, he mused.

  After an investigation he had undertaken in Magna Graecia for the philosopher Pythagoras he had returned to Carthage, accompanied by the philosopher’s elder daughter Ariadne. A few months later he had married her, and they had had a son. The ship that brought them to Carthage also carried the gold he had obtained from that investigation: more than they could spend over several lifetimes.

  Though I nearly didn’t make it back. Akenon unconsciously traced the crooked line of his nose with a finger. During that investigation in Magna Graecia, he had been locked up and beaten within an inch of his life. Fortunately, the long-term effects had been limited to his somewhat crooked nose and some scars on his face and neck that weren’t too noticeable.

  Ariadne put Sinuhe down.

  “Let me have a good look at you.” She stood back from her son. “Turn around.”

  Sinuhe giggled, embarrassed, as he turned. He was wearing a new tunic of pleated white linen similar to Akenon’s, in the fashion followed by noble Carthaginians, although his only reached his knees.

  There’s no denying they’re father and son, thought Ariadne. In that tunic, Sinuhe was a miniature version of Akenon. The same bronze skin, the same curly black hair—even many of his gestures were a childish echo of Akenon’s. The only striking difference was his eyes, which were the deep green of Ariadne’s.

  “You haven’t got your sandals on!” she suddenly exclaimed.

  “Like Kuch,” replied
Sinuhe in his baby voice, nodding determinedly.

  “But Kush’s feet are hard.” Ariadne leaned over Sinuhe, her hands on her hips. “You know you have to put on your sandals if you want to go out.”

  Sinuhe frowned and made a comical face of concentration. He didn’t want to put them on, but neither did he want his parents to leave him behind.

  He made a quick decision.

  “Kuch,” he shouted, running out, “I have to put on my sandals.”

  Five minutes later, they left their house.

  As she strolled beside Akenon, Ariadne glanced behind her. Little Sinuhe lagged a few yards behind, Kush by his side, watching the ground for something interesting to pick up. The Kushite was around forty, six and a half feet tall, with jet-black skin that contrasted with his large, blue eyes. He was barefoot and wore a loincloth, according to the custom among slaves and the lower classes in Carthage. He was watching Sinuhe with his usual relaxed expression, his mouth slightly open, showing his limited intelligence, though he was kind-hearted and always ready with a smile. He could understand the Carthaginian language, though his ability to speak it was rudimentary. Still, his previous owner had recommended him as a caregiver for small children. He had told them he thought Kush had been separated from an infant of his own when he was made a slave at least twenty years earlier. “Maybe that’s why he always cared for my children as if they were his own,” he had added. “But my children have left home now, and since then, Kush has withered like a plant without water.”

  Ariadne looked forward, but immediately turned around again. A strange sense of unease had just constricted her throat, and she paused, struggling to catch her breath. Her little boy was still walking beside Kush. She looked further behind, at the two-story house that had been their home for the past two years. The foundations and pilasters were made of limestone from the Carthaginian quarries. The brick walls were whitewashed, and a pretty balustrade ran round the edge of the roof. The building looked solid, something which Ariadne usually found reassuring. However, she felt anxious now as she observed the house and its surroundings.

  “What’s happening?” she wondered.

  It had been a long time since she had felt a similar sensation. She was Pythagoras’ daughter and had reached the level of master in the Pythagorean School. Her natural abilities, combined with the advanced mathematical and spiritual teachings she had received from her father, had finely honed her perception, allowing her to penetrate beyond ordinary people’s facial expressions and know their true natures—or know if they were lying. She had also inherited from Pythagoras the ability to foresee certain events. During her previous pregnancy, she had noticed that this skill had become sharper, and with this one she felt even more intuitive, as if reality and the present were a page in a book and she was allowed to lift the corner and catch a glimpse of what was written on the next page.

  After a moment’s hesitation, she continued walking.

  “Is something wrong?” asked Akenon.

  I’m afraid there is, thought Ariadne, but she shook her head in silence, and kept walking, a worried look on her face.

  End of excerpt from Lord of Minds

  Acknowledgments

  The following people helped me enormously during the long process of editing my novel:

  First of all, my parents, José Manuel and Milagros, who were always the first to return the various drafts of my manuscript, covered in red ink. Next, in alphabetical order: Jesús Álvarez-Miranda, Carmen Blanco, Olga Chicot, Lara Díaz, Arturo Esteban, Natalia García de Soto, Paco González, Javier Garrido, Máximo Garrido, Julián Lirio, María Maestro, Antonio Martín, Carlos Pérez-Benayas, Fernando Rossique, Cynthia Torres, and Tatiana Zaragoza. I would also like to thank the translator, Anamaría Crowe Serrano, and the translation editor, Anne Crawford, for their Herculean labors on the English edition.

  Killing Pythagoras would be a much poorer book were it not for all these people.

  Last but not least, I’d like to thank my daughter Lucía for brightening each and every day with her inexhaustible affection and goodness.

  xxxwww.marcoschicot.comxxx

  Notes

  [1] A regular tetrahedron is a three-dimensional object whose four sides are equilateral triangles. Pythagoreans considered it very important to an understanding of the geometric method of construction of the world. Back

  [2] The regular dodecahedron is a three-dimensional object whose twelve sides are regular pentagons. For Pythagoreans, it was the most important object of all, as well as the most complex. Back

  [3] For the sake of simplicity, numbers here will be written using our modern-day system of positional notation and decimal places. In almost all ancient cultures, the systems of notation used made arithmetical calculation much more laborious than it is today. Moreover, fractions were used in place of decimals, which had not yet been discovered. Back

  [4] Archimedes claimed it was between 3 10/71 and 3 1/7. Back

  [5] It should be remembered that, during Pythagoras’ time, the closest known approximation to Pi—which they referred to as the quotient—had only been calculated to the first decimal place: 3.1. Back

  [6] The result—and the method—mentioned by Glaucus is correct. It would take almost two millennia, until 1400 A.D., for the Indian mathematician, Madhava, to go beyond this approximation, obtaining eleven decimal places. Back

  [7] The square root of 2 (1.4142135623…) is the number which, when multiplied by itself, is 2. It is an irrational number, that is, it has an infinite number of decimal places and cannot be expressed as a fraction of any whole number. During Pythagoras’ time, irrational numbers were unknown, and the best approximation to the square root of 2 was a fraction giving five correct decimal places. Back

  [8] 7/5=1.4 and 10/7=1.428… By finding the mean (adding the fractions and dividing the result by 2—(7/5+10/7)/2)—we get the mid-point, which is the fraction 99/70=1.41428… As we can see, this greatly improves the approximation to the square root of 2, taking it from one correct decimal place, with 7/5, to four decimal places, with 99/70. If we repeat the process, we get 19601/13860=1.414213564…which gives eight correct decimal places. Using this simple process, with each step the number of correct decimal places grows exponentially. Back

  [9] A class of crustaceans, such as the barnacle. Back

  [10] During the mathematical research I did for the book, I also developed the method for calculating the square root of 2 attributed to Daaruk in the novel. To my disappointment, I discovered afterwards that at least part of this method has been known for some time, though it seems that the Pythagoreans would have considered it an important discovery. On my website, I also explain this method and some corollaries not mentioned in the novel. Back