by Tobias Hill
–Yes.
–Are you laughing at me?
She shook her head again. The smile had gone. Her eyes were still on him, unafraid, but gauging him.
–No?
–No. Or.
–Or?
–Maybe a little.
The door behind her opened. He sat back, too quickly for it to seem incidental, not quickly enough for Eleschen to have missed it. She was dressed in a halter top and a bronze-brown hippy skirt, her face and shoulders still flushed from bathing, her hair turbanned in a ragged orange Disney towel. Wile E. Coyote chasing Road Runner upside-down around her scalp. One ear was free, pushed wide, elfin. She looked so different from the Eleschen of the dig–the Terminator shades and mountain boots–that he did a double-take, even though he had expected her.
She was smiling, mouth and eyes, the expression fading as she saw him. Deflating, as though she had hoped for someone else.
–What are you doing here?
–I don’t know yet, he said, and, in a half-hearted effort to legitimise his presence, Chrystos brought me.
–Natsuko.
Her name was a reprimand, low with disappointment. Natsuko ducked her head.
–You were busy.
–Busy, right. Did you know it was Ben?
–The intercom is broken.
–So then it could have been anyone!
–But I’m not anyone. So that’s alright.
Her eyes glided back to him, bluer than blue. The clothes made her look less American, somehow, more European, her eyes Austrian postcard skies.
–I suppose Missy thought I might help out…
–She didn’t tell us.
–She didn’t tell me. Look, I don’t mind. I’ll just take myself back to bed, I could do with the sleep, actually–
–No. She was rubbing her forehead, as if he were bringing on a headache. –No, don’t be silly. You ought to stay, now you’re here. Anyhow, it’s raining.
–Thanks.
–Don’t be cross. I didn’t expect you, is all. Anyhow Stanton’s right, you’ll be useful. There’s always too much for us. The guys don’t like it. No mud or glory. Do you know your way around a lab?
–I should be able to get by.
Eleschen was talking over him, closing the door with a roll of her hip, tucking away that elfin ear, coming around the table to show him the cabinets, the computers, laying a proprietorial hand on the memento mori of the shoulder bone.
–Ask before you touch anything. We keep a lot in context, and we have the Findhut, but it’s only got a padlock and we have to be careful. We keep the real treasure here, what there is of it, plus the database and paper trail. Too, we can do the basic measurements and chemical analyses. We send out for the hard-core tech, electron microscopy, X-ray microprobes. Stanton has us using Harris matrices, and she also has some new ideas on ceramic seriation and palynology…is any of this making sense to you?
It all made sense. She was talking fast, pressing him to fail, he thought, but it was elementary, a busman’s holiday after the backbreaking week of excavation. He sat beside her, measuring and bagging finds, labelling them according to Missy’s quirky system of annotation, adding tallies and entries to a ream of pre-existing notes, the two of them taking turns to weigh relics on a jeweller’s electric scales.
All three of them wore the surgical gloves, as if they sat around an operating table. The Tupperwares lay open between them, their contents exposed to the anglepoise lamps. The parturient curves of amphorae. The butchered remains of animal bones. The lips of vessels.
Minute by minute the atmosphere eased. There was no talk beyond the necessary. The stereo was still playing, though the music had switched from Radiohead to something he didn’t recognise, a wordless synthetic soundtrack, shallow and soothing.
The skylight brightened. He noticed it only when he sat back, needing to piss, and looking round saw the way it caught Eleschen’s hair. Here and there a strand had escaped her turban. She sat utterly motionless, absorbed in the bones in her hands, but the breeze from the staircase caught the strands. It moved them as the sunlight illuminated them, burning them white as filaments.
She was beautiful. She was so beautiful that it made her almost asexual. Immaculate. There was no fecundity to her. It was hard to look at her, even to sit beside her, without dwelling on it. She was classically beautiful: Classically beautiful, like a statue carved from Pentelic marble. She had that paleness and those proportions.
He remembered learning–years ago–that the Hellenes had painted their statues. The lurid pigments had faded over the course of centuries. It was a discovery that had deeply disappointed him. It had seemed almost outrageous to him. As a boy he had believed that the ancient statues were perfect without adornment. Their austerity had been, for him, an inextricable element of their beauty. The features of gods and monsters, the dying and the victorious, all as unimpeachable as ice.
A shiver went through him. The lab was chilly, though he could hear the bakery workers moving around downstairs. He could smell the bread and feel the heat of the ovens through the floor. He wanted his coat, but it embarrassed him that the girls seemed so oblivious. It was cold enough that he could sense Eleschen’s warmth, her arm an arm’s width from his own.
There was a smell that rose from her, too, not of anything he would have expected–soap or skin or perfume–but a faintly unpleasant odour, a chemical rankness, and remembering the lice he glanced up straight into Natsuko’s chiding eyes.
–Do you think I sound French? Eleschen said abruptly, and Natsuko broke off the gaze.
–French?
–When I speak Greek. My accent. Themeus says I sound like the French. Do you think so?
–I didn’t notice. What did he think–
–He was just trying to flatter her. He is one of Eleschen’s admirers, Natsuko said, eyes brimming with amusement, and Eleschen tsked.
–I don’t see why you’re so jealous. I’m sure you have admirers too. Don’t you think she has admirers, Ben?
He floundered under their attention. Their laughter, when it came, was almost a relief.
–Ben, you’re squirming!
–I’m just a bit cold.
–Sure you are. We’re just teasing. Just having fun. So, anyway. Eberhard says you’re at Oxford?
–More or less.
–Do you like it there?
–Not really.
–No? I always thought it sounded nice. Ivory towers. Tea and crumpets. Romantic evenings round the bar heater.
He cleared his throat, still uncomfortable with the conversation, though he had wanted it, had been hoping for the past hour that one of them would talk to him again.
–It has its ups.
–Oh, she said, as if an intermittence of ups were a disappointment. Then, –Do you like doing this?
–What?
–When we have all the pieces washed and laid out and we’re getting to understand them, putting them back together, don’t you love it? It’s the most incredible thing. It’s a jigsaw puzzle, except puzzles don’t mean anything and this does.
–I do think of it like that, he said, Sometimes, but she pursed her lips and laughed, as if he left her unconvinced.
–Well I do, all the time. I remember the first time I did something like this. Like archaeology. We were playing near the highway, where we weren’t supposed to be. I found this doll. She was one of those wind-up models. She had a pretty dress and a string in her chest and when you pulled the string she cried like a baby. I guess some little girl had dropped her out of a car. I was little enough to still have dolls too, but I knew my parents wouldn’t let me keep this one. She was…well, old and dirty, but I wanted her. I hid her out by the water tower. Whenever I wanted to play with her I went out there. I thought a lot about the other little girl. I wanted to know who she was, how come she lost her doll. There was no label I could see. I decided to take her apart. I thought maybe there’s something inside that would say where
she was from. I stole a knife from home and some dressmaker’s scissors and I cut her open. And inside there was this thing.
She stopped. She was frowning but still smiling, as if she had begun the story for her own amusement, and now discovered it to be less than satisfactory in that regard.
–What thing? Natsuko said, and Eleschen roused herself and shook her head at them.
–A record player. It was in her chest. It was right behind where the string went in. You don’t believe me but it’s true. There was this tiny turntable and a record and a needle. The record was about the size of a nickel and it was real rusty. We didn’t have a record player but I knew what they were. When you pulled the string the record played the sound of the baby crying. It was strange seeing it there. It felt like I had cut her open and there was a heart inside. And on the record there were numbers and a name. It said Anna. And you know, for the longest time I really believed that that was the name of the little girl. But of course it wasn’t. It was the doll’s name. It was just the name the makers gave the doll.
She stopped. In the silence that followed Natsuko stood up, knelt down, and from somewhere under the table brought out a thermos.
–I have some tea.
–Is it Japanese? Eleschen said, and Natsuko nodded. –Not for me.
–It’s good for you.
–I said I don’t want any.
A look passed between the two girls, their mutual regard cool and intimate and beyond those things incomprehensible to him.
–Ben?
He drank the tea. He could feel them both half-watching, could half-see them doing so, in the uncertain periphery of his vision.
–So, Eleschen said, Ben, are you from there? Oxford?
–London.
–You’re lucky. That must be exciting.
–El is from Athens, Natsuko said, and Eleschen laughed.
–Not the real one! Athens, Hicksville. America’s full of them, and Spartas too. I wasn’t from there anyhow, I was just studying there. Politics and anthropology, plus some music on the side. A regular Da Vinci, that’s me. I don’t know what I was thinking. I wanted to learn everything I could find back then, I was just grabbing everything I could. That was before I knew what I really wanted to do with my life. So how come you’re here? I mean if you’re at Oxford?
–I’m taking time out. A deferment.
–How long for?
–It depends.
–On what?
–On things, he said, clumsily evasive. He soldiered on, wanting to deflect the conversation rather than out of any real interest. –What about Eberhard?
–Eberhard?
–Did he defer too?
–How would I know? she asked pettishly, and not waiting for an answer–disinterested, bringing the subject to an end–picked up the bone in front of her. –Laco is bugging me. I don’t get her.
–Who’s Laco?
She pointed the bone at the skull.
–Ben, Laco, Laco, Ben. It’s a stupid name, it’s meant for a dog but Jason chose it and it stuck. This is the skeleton Max found.
He took the armbone from her. He weighed it lightly on both palms, a slender human relic. It was unexpectedly heavy.
–You don’t notice anything?
–I don’t know. It’s quite large, compared to the skull–
Eleschen smiled coolly, as if she had told a riddle which he had solved too easily.
–You’re warm. Try again.
He looked at the skull. Now that he did so properly he could see that its balance was subtly off. The teeth, the mandible and the skunt bones of the face were all normal, full-grown. It was only the cranium that was wrong. The vault that had once held a brain was too narrow, too low. He must have been aware of it, he realised, to have thought that the ulna was too large in comparison.
–She’s deformed, isn’t she?
–Right. Her brain case is too small, poor dear. Her brain will have been too, of course. She’s near enough to average that she probably got by. She must have looked normal at birth or she wouldn’t have been allowed to live. Guess why.
The blue of her eyes had turned fierce, not angry but challenging again.
–Something genetic, I suppose–
–Hah! Nope! Last chance, wise guy.
He shrugged, happy to concede, happier when Eleschen smiled, the ferocity vanishing instantly.
–It’s mercury. She’s full of it. The deformity means she was exposed in the womb, but the traces are so strong when she died that she must have been poisoned again in childhood or adult life. Mercury’s horrible. It’s indestructible, the body’s really bad at getting rid of it, and it’s more toxic than arsenic. Not that Laco knew that. That’s what I don’t like. Laco shouldn’t know about mercury. She’s over three thousand years old. The Chinese and the Egyptians were using mercury back then, in medicines and burials, but not the Greeks. If there was natural mercury up at the site, like cinnabar, then maybe she might have gotten it that way, but no one’s ever found that. So Laco doesn’t fit. She’s going to make us all look really stupid. That’s what’s bugging me.
–Maybe she’s important. I mean, if they were using mercury in Egypt, it’s not so far–
–I just don’t understand her. She’s a surprise. I hate surprises.
She put the armbone down. Her eyes lingered on it. She was rubbing the fingers and thumb of one gloved hand together, absently, as if recalling the poison in the bone.
–Understanding is a funny word, isn’t it?
–In what way?
–I mean funny strange. It’s what we look for and what we do. We go down into the past in order to look up at the present. We only understand it when we stand under it.
She smiled at him sideways. Her teeth were even, stainless, perfect. –Don’t you think so?
–I never thought about it, he said, and realising it, You sound like Eberhard.
She made a face. –Like I’m that smart.
–But you do, he said, I mean you are; but she had gone back to her work, and he returned unwillingly to his own tasks before pushing his stool back to stand.
–Washroom’s through there, if that’s what you want. Watch out for the roaches. We think it must be the bakery. Anyhow we can’t get rid of them.
He saw no roaches, though he heard their faint skitter as he opened the door. He peeled off his gloves, relieved himself, splashed water on his hands and face, and didn’t register that he was hearing more than two voices until he was already opening the laboratory door.
Jason craned round to look at him from the sofa. Eberhard was still standing by the stairwell. All four of them were talking at the same time, and all stopped as he came in.
–Hello, he said into the silence, and for a moment it seemed that no one would answer before Eberhard nodded and began unbuttoning his coat.
–How are you, Benjamin?
He closed the door behind him. The things he had imagined Eberhard saying came back to him in a rush that he pushed away, out of memory.
Why is it that you followed me?
– I’m alright. It’s just Ben, by the way.
–Ben it is. You’re finding things–?
–Fine.
–Good, good. I’m glad you’re settling in.
He smiled as if he believed it. Eleschen was avoiding his eyes. Natsuko was hunched over her papers, as if trying to make herself as inconspicuous as possible: an animal flattening its ears. Jason was still smiling up at him, the expression hungry.
He edged between them to his place. There were two more tubs of pottery to be sorted, eight fragments of a wine-mixing bowl and a dozen pieces of white clay with a scribble burnish, significant in their age and foreign origins. Each potsherd bore a dot of nail polish on its inner surface, a provisional marking: blue glitter on the mixing bowl, coral pink on the white clay. He wondered abstractedly which make-up belonged to whom as he picked up one of the latter and let it settle on the scales, digits flickering on the display.
–You’ve been making friends, I hear, Eberhard said, his voice disembodied, still somewhere behind him.
–Have I?
No one seemed surprised that he sounded surprised.
–Dr Stanton seems to think so.
–Yes, she’s good company. You don’t seem to like her much.
–We like her well enough, Eberhard said, coming round, leaning by the computers, watching him work. Freed from the excavation he was dressed as he had always been at Oxford, his ironed casual-ware putting years on him. –And the Maxis brothers, you seem friendly with them also.
–Chrystos, anyway.
–Not Giorgios?
–Not so much, he said, and Jason made a sound, tcheh, halfway between a snigger and a sneer. –What?
–Nothing.
–It doesn’t sound like nothing, he said, and looked up, knowing what Jason’s expression would be–secretive, satisfied–before he faced it.
–You should be careful about the friends you choose.
–Why, what’s wrong with them?
–Depends who you ask.
–He did not ask you, Natsuko said, but Jason’s voice overrode hers, rising into an ostentatious, rhythmical oration.
–You are old, Father Giorgios, the young man said, and your beard is incredibly white. But you fought in the war and we don’t know who for. Tell me, sir, do you sleep well at night?
–What does that mean?
–Nothing, Eleschen said tersely. Jason’s just being idiotic as usual. He’ll go away if you ignore him.
A lull. Jason lounging back on the davenport, infuriatingly pleased with himself; Eberhard opening the mail, a pile of parcels from the Fifth Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities. Some small talk about the possibilities for lunch, the chat passing around him as if he were no longer there. The stereo was still playing, though the music had changed again to a track with heavier bass and a more insistent beat. Eleschen leaned over and switched it off.
–Anyway, he said doggedly into the silence, He’s not that old.
–No?
–No, not nearly. Come on, he can’t be more than fifty. He wouldn’t even have been born then.
–When?
–In the war.
–Which one?
–Which one did you mean?
