On Etruscan Time

by Tracy Barrett

“Sì,” she said. “When I and Ettore and your mother studied at the university in Roma together, your mother learned antique languages like that.” Her quick finger-snap made Hector jump. “She has a facility for languages. We have found some things with letters on them, and we hope to find more. With your mother here—”

  “With me here, what?” She came into the kitchen, still in her bathrobe. She poured herself a tiny cup of coffee and sat next to Hector. She spread a roll thickly with strawberry jam and took a bite.

  “Ah, Betsy,” Susanna said. “Did you sleep well?”

  “No,” she said around her bread. “It will take a few days. Right, Heck?” He nodded.

  “We were talking about your facility for antique languages.”

  “Ancient languages,” she corrected. “Hector inherited it, I think, at least for Italian. On the plane he could repeat back to me all sorts of things in Italian, when I just said them to him once.”

  “Bravo, ’Ector,” Susanna said. “I wish I had a facility. And I hope you still have yours, Betsy.”

  “I don’t know.” His mother put down her coffee cup. “After years of teaching nothing but beginning Latin and Greek, I haven’t been able to test it for a long time.”

  “Well, we’ll test you,” Susanna said, and she winked at Hector. “What is the original of the name of this town?”

  “Sporfieri?” Hector’s mother frowned in thought. “Let’s see—spor; that part’s easy.”

  “Why is that easy?” Hector asked.

  “Spur is Etruscan for city,” she explained. “We don’t know a whole lot of words, but that one’s certain. Now about the fieri part.” She frowned in concentration, her head tilted to one side as though listening. She murmured, “Fieri—could that be fler?” she asked, looking at Susanna, who shrugged. “Why would they name this place that?”

  “Name it what?” Hector asked.

  “To turn into fieri in Italian,” his mother went on, “the original Etruscan word must have been something like fleris. Maybe it was flere, which meant god. That could mean this was a holy city. But I don’t think so. If it were some kind of sacred place, we probably would have heard about it before, and the Etruscan town under Sporfieri isn’t mentioned by any writers. It’s like it never existed.”

  “But—” Hector started. His mother went on as though she hadn’t heard him. As usual.

  “Or the Etruscan word could be fler, ‘sacrifice.’ But why would they name their whole town after sacrifice? They were doing them all the time, in every city, not just this one. So why name this particular town City of Sacrifice?”

  “Maybe something was not usual about the sacrifices they made here,” Susanna said.

  “What about those bones?” Hector asked. Finally they looked at him, as though surprised he could talk. “Maybe they sacrificed people,” he said.

  3

  The two women looked at each other. “Well,” his mother said thoughtfully, “that would explain why no one mentions the town. If it was associated with something so terrible, maybe they were trying to forget it. And Susi, you know, some people say the Etruscans did perform human sacrifice. Remember that temple near Cortona, that one with the sphinxes devouring people? An article I read said that the statues could represent human sacrifice.”

  “I don’t know,” Susanna said doubtfully. “Professor Carberry says it, but nobody else.”

  “True,” Hector’s mother said, “but if a scholar of his standing—”

  The door opened and Ettore’s head poked around. “Permesso?”

  “Caffè?” Susanna asked, waving at the coffee pot.

  “Sì, grazie,” he said, and poured himself a cup. Weren’t they going to talk about the bones anymore? It was always the same. Just when things got interesting, the subject changed.

  After breakfast, the adults took off at a brisk walk, talking quickly in Italian, and Hector followed slowly on the bumpy street made of flat, dark stones.

  Now that the sun was up, the sky was bright blue and he could see that the houses were different shades of tan. They weren’t very tall, and their shutters were closed against the sun, which was already warm after the night’s chill. In the doorways, heavyset women in dark, tight dresses sat on folding chairs, talking to each other as they knitted or cut up vegetables. They didn’t look too friendly, but when Hector passed by, they said, “Ciao” or “Buongiorno.” When he answered in careful Italian they broke into smiles that made them look nicer. One or two even patted his shoulder and said, “Bravo!” at his Italian.

  The road of smooth, flat stones went down and down. In a few places the adults in front of him took a shortcut on worn, gray steps that cut straight through the curves, instead of going back and forth like the road did. Hector followed at an ever-increasing distance. The steps were uneven and steep, and there was nothing to hold on to. He saw his mother run her hand down the house wall next to her to keep her balance, so he did the same. The stone was cold and felt wet under his touch, although his hand was dry when he took it off.

  The third set of stairs ended in an arched opening in the dark stone wall that encircled the base of the hill, enclosing the town. The adults had already gone through it, and he quickened his pace so he could catch up, then stumbled on the black paving stones. He didn’t fall, but he stopped for a second to regain his balance, then went on more carefully, watching his step. He emerged from the semidarkness into the brightness of the early-summer morning.

  After blinking a few times as his eyes adjusted to the light, Hector saw that he was in a shallow valley. Rows of neon-orange sticks poked out of the ground, with strings attaching them to each other. Near one of these strings, Hector’s mother stood with her hands on her hips, looking down into a hole in the ground and nodding while Ettore pointed into it and said something. Susanna interrupted, asking a question in a high, excited voice.

  Hector turned and looked back toward the village squatting solidly on its hill. Another group of adults was coming out of the arched opening in the wall and heading toward them. The morning light slanting down the valley made their shadows look like small-headed giants moving bumpily across the field. He suddenly felt shy and didn’t want to have to talk to them, even if they spoke English, so he trotted down to where his mother was now lowering herself into a rectangular trench.

  “These are the same as the ones you’ve had analyzed?” she asked. Ettore nodded.

  “Sì, sì,” he said. “We got the results by fax. Preliminary, but they seem sure.”

  “So they’re definitely human?”

  A grunt of assent.

  The other people—the archaeologists, he supposed—had reached the dig area. There were six or eight of them, and most looked younger than Ettore and Susanna. They were dressed for the heat and the women’s hair was tied back. Some were speaking English, some what sounded like German, and some Italian. He could pick out the Italian, even from this distance—the sounds were much rounder than in the other languages. They clustered, talking and laughing, at the door of a metal shed a short distance away. They went into the shed one at a time, emerging with small boxes.

  Hector stood aside as Ettore introduced the people to his mother. She shook hands with each of them and then said something that made them laugh. They split up into different groups and started working. Some dug in the trenches, while others measured a piece of ground and marked off a square with string. They settled down, only occasionally calling out to each other. Someone turned on a radio that blared American music.

  His mother was obviously too involved in what she was doing to pay any attention to him. So what was he supposed to do all day? All summer? He turned and looked down the path they had taken from the town—it went along the side of the dig and then disappeared around a little hill.

  Odd-shaped trees stood all around. One kind had a tall, branchless trunk that suddenly burst into a flat green canopy at the top, and another was long and skinny, its branches so tight that you couldn’t see individual limb
s. Just like umbrellas, he thought, some open and some shut.

  Away on his left was a stand of silvery green trees. They were small, with leaves so close together that they created a dense shadow on the ground.

  “Those are olive trees,” said Ettore, who had appeared at his elbow.

  “Olives grow on trees?” Hector asked.

  “Certainly,” Ettore said. “Where did you think they grew?”

  Hector shrugged. He had never really thought about it. They tasted as if they were made in a factory.

  “And there”—Ettore pointed past the olive trees—“are some grapevines, for the wine.”

  Hector didn’t know what to say next. He glanced over at Ettore, who was looking at him thoughtfully.

  “So, what are you going to do?”

  “About what?” Hector asked.

  “About today,” Ettore answered. “Are you going to watch?” Hector shrugged. “Maybe,” Ettore said, “maybe I could have you do some work. Would you like that?”

  “What kind of work?”

  “You could be an archaeologist,” Ettore answered. “You could be a—what do you call an apprendista, someone who works and learns at the same time?”

  “An intern?”

  “Something like that,” Ettore said. “But more young, usually.”

  “Apprentice?”

  “Ecco,” Ettore answered. “Would you like to be an apprentice archaeologist?”

  “Sure,” Hector said. “That would be great.”

  “Okay,” Ettore said. “First I have to ask Susi. But I’m sure she’ll agree.” And he walked over to where Susanna was talking with Hector’s mother.

  Hector felt a surge of excitement. It had never occurred to him that he would actually get to do some archaeology. Suddenly the summer didn’t look so bleak. What if he found a statue? A gold necklace? A house with paintings on the walls, like in Pompeii?

  Ettore came back. “It’s okay,” he said. “Usually our apprentices are college students, but your mother says you’re good at following directions, when you want to. True?”

  “I guess so,” Hector said. “What do I do first?”

  Ettore showed him the toolshed and found him some spare instruments. He told Hector how important it was to stop and get Ettore or Susanna to look at anything he found before he moved it, and how fragile a lot of the old things were.

  “First, look for a while,” he said. “Then, maybe this afternoon, you can start work.” So as Ettore responded to someone who called his name, Hector wandered around the dig, looking in one trench after another.

  It was fascinating, what they were doing. One man was shaking dirt in a sieve. Another used a cloth to wipe a piece of what looked like a broken plate and then showed it to the woman next to him, who exclaimed at it before carefully sliding it into a plastic bag. Most of the people were sitting in trenches, scraping or brushing at the walls or floor. Ettore was pointing at something and talking to a freckled woman who was holding something that looked like a dentist’s tool. She nodded as she scraped at the wall of the trench, saying, “Sì, sì, d’accordo.”

  Ettore glanced up and saw Hector. He smiled, his homely face crinkling as he squinted into the sun.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “It looks so neat,” Hector said. “What are they finding in there?” The tomb of a powerful king? A treasure trove?

  “We’re mostly getting broken pots in this place.” Oh. Broken pots.

  “We think it must have been like a garbage place,” Ettore went on. “You see how it’s far away from where people lived, so they didn’t have to smell it from their houses.”

  Hector leaned over the edge, trying to see what was in there, and nearly lost his balance. Ettore grabbed his arm.

  “Attento!” he said. “You’ll fall and break some bones. Yours will heal, but the ones we have found don’t know how to do that anymore.” Hector backed up. All he could see in the trench were some knobby gray things. How could anyone tell what was something old and what was just ordinary stuff that you find in the ground?

  This trench was only one of many, each with ruler-straight edges, marked off by the strings he’d seen earlier. On the orange stakes, numbers were written in black marker.

  “We’ll leave this place to Susanna,” Ettore said. “She won’t let anyone else touch the bones until she’s finished with them.”

  “What’s she going to do with them?” Hector asked.

  “Remove them carefully, making notes and taking pictures to show in what position they are,” he answered, leading Hector away from the trenches, down the path. “That way maybe someone can tell how the owner of the bones died and why his body was thrown in the garbage instead of being buried. The Etruscans, like all ancient peoples, were very careful to bury their dead in the correct way. It’s one of the things that societies care about the most. So it’s strange for a person to be treated like garbage, or like an animal.”

  Worse than an animal, Hector thought, remembering how carefully his father had buried their old dog, Zephyr, in their backyard last winter. The people in this village must have really hated the person whose bones Ettore had found.

  Ettore stopped in the shade of a small tree. They were in a flat place not far from the trenches, where no one had dug anything.

  “Susanna says you should start here,” Ettore said. “We don’t usually find things in places like this, and we don’t think that the village came out in this direction. So you don’t have to worry that you will accidentally ruin something. I can show you how to dig with care, and when you have proven to me that you know how to do it, Susi will let you in the trench.” He handed Hector a small, pointed trowel, a fat paintbrush, a flat-bottomed sieve, and a notebook and stubby pencil.

  “Now watch,” he instructed, and with the point of his trowel began scraping at the red dirt. When he hit something hard, he worked around it, brushing away the loosened soil, until a rock slowly showed its shape.

  “Just a stone,” he said, pulling it out and tossing it aside. “But if it were something that looked interesting, you would stop and call me. You would make a note about where you found it and then sketch it.”

  “I’m not too good at drawing,” Hector said.

  “That’s okay,” Ettore assured him. “We have an artist who will make a good picture. And a photographer. You just need to show enough of what it looks like so that we can identify it later.”

  “How do I know if it’s something interesting?”

  “Well, if it looks as if a person made it. Like if there’s a straight line. Or—” He sketched a shape in the air with his hands.

  “A right angle? Like the corner of a square?”

  “Exactly. You hardly ever find right angles and straight lines in nature. Or circles. So tell me if you find something round, except a golf ball or something like that. Also if you find something of a color that isn’t the same as the dirt.”

  “Or if it’s made of gold.”

  Ettore laughed. “Right, if it’s gold then certainly stop and call me. And I will call Susanna, and she will call the newspapers. Now you take a turn.”

  Hector picked up the tools. The dirt was harder than he had thought and at first he scraped either too hard or not hard enough, but soon he was getting approving nods from Ettore. Small puffs of dust flew into the air, leaving grit in his teeth.

  “The dirt down in the trench is a little different from this,” Ettore said, “but you’re learning the technique. Just practice for a while. And remember, call me if you find something interesting.” He went back to his own work.

  So Hector scraped and brushed, uncovering a few more rocks and a tree root. It wasn’t very hard work, but it was hot in the sun, and it was getting kind of boring. A rivulet of sweat ran into his eye, stinging. All this work for a piece of a pot? What a long summer this was going to be. For a moment his mind wandered to the green hills of home, where his friends were probably staying up all night watching videos and sp
ending all day at the lake.

  Then, in the little hole he had dug, he felt a scrape against the tip of his trowel. He dropped it and picked up the brush. He swept dirt away from whatever it was, and something flashed at him so brightly that he had to squint to keep tears from coming to his eyes. What could be shining like that, under the dirt?

  He put up his hand to shield his face from the blinding light. He felt a small twitch of fear deep in his belly, but stronger than the fear, stronger than the pain to his eyes, was an overwhelming desire to hold the thing that glowed. He felt like he was dying of thirst and the light was a glass of cold water. Like he was six years old and the shining thing was the best Christmas present in the world. He wanted it desperately, without knowing why or even what it was.

  Carefully, he used the trowel to loosen the last bit of earth. He dropped the trowel and picked up the brush, smoothing away the powdery red dirt.

  And the thing was revealed.

  4

  Hector reached toward the light, which was making his closed eyelids glow deep red, and his fingers curved around something smooth and cold and round.

  As he gripped it, he was struck by how quiet everything was. Evidently somebody had turned off the radio, and the archaeologists must be too busy to talk. Still, out in the country like this, it was odd not to hear birds singing. And the leaves weren’t rustling, even though a light breeze brushed against his skin. The only sound—and it was one he had not heard before—was the faint strumming of some stringed instrument, like a guitar, only muted. It seemed to come from all around him, and the notes excited him, although he couldn’t have said why.

  When he cautiously opened his eyes again, the bright light from the stone had gone out. It must have dazzled his eyes, though, because the colors around him were muted, gray and white. The olive trees seemed almost transparent—he could practically see the hills through them. He turned to look back at the dig and rubbed his eyes. The toolshed looked like a shadow, and he would swear that he saw the faint outline of another, larger building near it. And who were those people walking around? They didn’t look like the archaeologists. Were there really people there, or was it some trick of the light? He couldn’t tell for sure.