by Tobias Hill
A breeze came in off the sea, bringing with it the smell of the harbour, leafing through the headlines. Eberhard straightened them but no longer looked at them. He sat as if alone, making no move to talk.
New Algerian Terror Threat. 9/11 Blow to Bush. Violence Mars Athens Football Game.
–The hat suits you, Ben said, when the silence began to weigh on him, and Eberhard jerked back to life, his hand going to the Panama.
–Yes? It was my father’s. I always liked it myself. He presented it to me to celebrate my Oxford Fellowship. That pleased him very much.
–He must be proud of you.
–Must he? Eberhard said, and took off the hat. –I’ll tell you something, Ben. People often assume my parents are dead. It’s a gross assumption, don’t you think? I find it offensive, but I know I must encourage it. For example, I know that I tend to speak of them in the past tense. I think I do it because we’re no longer close. My father and I, especially, are similar in many ways, but we have grown apart. We hold such different beliefs. He had his plans for me, but they are no longer the plans I have for myself.
–I’m sorry, he said, awkwardly, out of his depth, wishing only for the shallows, for lightness, as he so often did with Eberhard. –Sorry about the walk, too.
–Don’t be, please. I’m just glad nothing seems to be broken.
–I’d have liked to have seen the old castle.
–There’s not really much to see. It’s only the view that’s impressive.
The sun had gone down. A tanker was moored out in the harbour, its lights plumb-lines across the water. A few small yachts were coming in soundlessly towards the marina. Eberhard was looking out at the dim shape of Sphacteria.
–I heard you talking, he said, surprising himself at least as much as Eberhard, whose head turned only lazily, eyes still focussed on the distance.
–Talking?
–Last night, on the balcony.
–I see. I can’t recall that anything scandalous was said…?
–Why can’t you go back to Gythion?
–We had some trouble there. Jason got into an argument. I wasn’t there to see it. I believe he was thrown out of a shop.
–When?
–A couple of months ago, I suppose. Some time before you joined us. We hired a boat down there. Plenty of wind and too much rain. I did the same thing as a boy.
The wind caught at Eberhard’s hair. He pushed the last thin strands out of his eyes and smiled again.
–You sound unhappy, Ben.
–No, I’m not. Not at all.
–Good. I didn’t think you were. You must tell me, if you are.
–Sometimes you leave me out.
–Out of what?
–If I knew that I wouldn’t be left out, would I?
–Don’t be angry. We are trying.
–But you keep things from me. Like the jackals.
–How did we keep them from you?
–You lied to me. You said it was just a hunt–
–I’m not sure I ever said that–
–We killed it so the locals wouldn’t. You didn’t want anyone up by the caves. That was all it was. That was why it died.
No reply. Eberhard, chin on hand, one knuckle pressed to his lips, as if stopping an answer. Ben leaned closer to him.
–That’s why we killed it, isn’t it?
–There’s no use pitying it. It would have been killed anyway.
–But there’s something up there.
–There are lots of things up there, I’m sure. There are so many caves–
–Are you playing games with me?
A man at an adjacent table broke into sudden raucous laughter, and Eberhard looked sharply round at his English bulk and noise before replying. –I told you. I don’t play games.
–Chrystos thinks that’s all it is. A game. Missy too.
Eberhard sat back. He spread his hands on the table as if they were winning cards. –Let them think.
–But you do, don’t you? That’s what you do. You let them think it’s just a game. You play at playing Spartans because no one cares about a game.
–In a way. Yes, in a way. Do you trust me, Ben?
–You all keep asking me that. I would. I want to. I would if you trusted me.
–Quite right. That is the question. Do we trust you? Natsuko does. Jason does. Eleschen is open to it. And Max does not, but then Max is religious in his distrust of everyone…
–Is there something in the caves?
–Yes.
–There’s something there.
–I just said so. Yes.
For a moment it was as if he had fallen again, the air going out of him. He took a deep breath and sat back. He experienced a moment of clean clear triumph. Honoured: that was how he felt. As if he had just received some quiet, long-sought word of praise.
Eberhard was nodding at him, unruffled and amused. –So now we trust one another. I always knew we would. You always had that quality. You’re one of those who seems to be searching for a place in which to put your trust. A destination. Some people find that search painful. It becomes a burden to them, to not believe in anything. You had your marriage once, at least–
–What is it?
–It’s not easy to describe.
–What period? Is it Classical?
Eberhard laughed and shook his head. He had turned to watch the ebullient Englishman again: when he looked back at Ben his eyes were bright with agitation. He leaned forward, whispering, more eager than Ben had ever seen him, ironing down the paper tablecloth under his winning hands.
–It’s priceless.
–Tell me what it is.
–No. Much better for you to see it yourself.
–You’ll show me?
–Yes.
–When we get back?
–When we get back. You’ve earned that chance, Ben. I’m sure the others will agree.
–Promise?
–I promise to put it to them, though we’ve discussed it often enough. I know their feelings. Now, in the meantime, I’d like another drink. A Scotch, if you can find one, two if you’ll join me. Would you mind?
Somehow they lacked the time to make it back to the secret beach. In the morning Natsuko persuaded him to go with her to matins and the liturgy, all of them except Jason making the breathtaking climb up to the white domed church, the lustrous, candled gloom inside almost as mysterious to him as it had been in childhood, pungent with beeswax and myrrh, the priest a young man smiling shyly through his paternal beard, giving out blessings for travellers and the dying, for new cars and rain. Jason was still in bed when they returned, and they pottered around till past noon, abandoning their church clothes, Eleschen luxuriant and louche in her too-short hotel dressing gown, Ben yawning and bone-idle and magnificently bruised, all of them except Eberhard playing Texas Hold ’Em under Jason’s drowsy tutelage before migrating down to the square for an afternoon measured out in beers, frappés, taverna wine, and platters of sweet hot fried squid at a breezy end-of-jetty table.
It was eight before they left, and long past midnight when Ben woke and saw mountains against the stars, the Parnon and Taygetos familiar and inimitable as any Westminster skyline. Their black ring closed in on him, no longer threatening or confining. The streets outside, the small-time shops, the colonnades, the hotel steps, all of it known and intimate, sheltering and welcoming.
The bruises blossomed. By morning he was marked from hip bone to sternum, the blood seeping under the skin, the contusions ripening into shades of toadstool green and Wedgwood blue. Two tiger-stripes still shadowed his ribs like X-ray images. For five days he worked with Natsuko at the Findhut, Missy refusing to allow him down into the pits.
Those first days after Pylos he thought of the cave all the time. The need to see it ate at him. But Eberhard did not come for him, did nothing, would barely speak of it, frowning the only time that Ben reminded him of it, muttering a sharp Not yet, his face closing like a helmed mask, as if it we
re unpardonable to mention the cave at all.
He would be doing something else–inventorying mussel shells, cleaning Dark Age bones–when it would come back to him, vivid as the sight of blood, shocking not just in itself, in something being concealed, but in the way it brought to light the substance of his deeper thoughts. The longing to see the cave was always in his system, subliminal, subcutaneous, intracerebral. It waited in the back of his mind for some memory to trigger it–mountains, shadows, sunlight, pain–like an addiction, or an infection.
Priceless, Eberhard had said, under the oriental planes. There had been no time, that night, for Ben to think about what that meant. But even that one word was shocking in its way, that single detail, so unexpected in the harsh light it cast on all of them.
It was a fine line, the one that lay between the passion of the archaeologist and that of the collector. Intellectual passion: passionate avarice. The best archaeologists would skirt the line, flirt with it, but would never cross it. Now and then, in archives, at sites, Ben had seen the avidity in the eyes of those who risked falling for beauty. The inscription on a Moghul ruby; the gold ropes of a Celtic torc; the miracle of Seahenge. It was always seen as a fall, that step, in the world of discourse on ancient things. It was the greatest offence, that descent from thought into desire.
It’s priceless.
He took Natsuko out. There was a place in New Mystras which Eleschen said would be perfect.
It was a mild evening, a foreshadowing of summer. They drank outside while the meal was made, the wine flavoured with saffron, the slopes around them dissonant with unseen mountain streams.
She wanted to talk and he let her. She told him about Japan. Her parents owned a vending machine firm, a franchise with operators across the Kyushu region. There were machines for videos and magazines, food and drink and cigarettes: they had grown rich on cold beer, hot noodles and soft porn. Natsuko had been close to them until the age of twelve; then she had begun to be ashamed of them. Their wealth was selfish and tasteless. They had abandoned their own parents’ religion and traditions. The shame had grown as she had herself, not coming and going as the familial embarrassments of her friends did, the school-gate ignominies of overweening mothers and fathers in low-grade company cars. Her parents cherished her, and she hated herself for hating them. She had moved out as soon as she could, going to college in Nagoya.
Her first passionate love affair had been with a professor there. He had inspired in her a zeal for all things European, the arts especially, the list of icons seeming to Ben unpredictably nostalgic–Pheidias and the Beatles, Aesop and Aristotle, Beethoven and Housman–the fervour for them and their worlds drawing her first to Berlin and Rome and finally to Athens.
–And Sparta.
–I am very lucky. It is a special place.
–I know. I feel that too.
–Do you?
–I talked to Eberhard in Pylos. Did he tell you?
She went quiet in that way she had, like an animal stilling itself to avoid attention.
–You don’t want to talk about it.
–I don’t think I should. They did not say I could.
–Do you always do what they say?
–Always. Almost.
–I won’t mention it, then. Not if you don’t want me to.
Her face was indefinite in the dusk. So pale as to be luminous, so faint as to be ambiguous.
–Are you smiling?
–Maybe.
–It’s hard to tell out here. I don’t know what I’m missing. Let’s go inside.
–Not yet. Please, I like it here.
–Alright.
The smell of grilled meat came to him on the breeze. He felt a craving, simple and instinctual.
I love you, he began to say, but she reached across to him just then, putting her hand against his lips.
–You don’t know what I was going to say, he said, but he thought she did.
–I don’t need you to say it.
–What if I want to?
–No. It’s like a wish. You’ll ruin it.
–Tell me then.
–No! That’s the same.
–Tell me, if you think it’s true, he said, and she shook her head and bent closer, smiling: he could see it now. –Alright. Are you happy, then?
–Yes.
–Happy to be with me?
–Yes. I am so proud of you.
April had begun.
In the mornings when he left, and at night when he returned, the town was listless, the hoteliers and shopkeepers impatient and distracted, the crowds in the squares on hold, the avenues holding their breath. Easter was almost upon them. Everything waited.
Overnight–so it seemed to him at first–the impatience reached the excavation. From Pylos they had carried back a residue of high spirits, of languorous euphoria, that lasted all of three days. By Thursday morning it was gone. A new mood took its place.
He noticed it first in his friends. The general expectancy seemed to have intensified in them. Missy showed no symptoms, was desultory and drawn, but Eleschen was excitable, energised by unlikely things–a new outlying pit beyond the shepherds’ path; the first find there of a pig’s skull. Even Natsuko was quiet that morning when they woke and vague all day at the hut. Max was not to be disturbed, burying himself in work, and when not working in newspapers, snapping pages flat in the wind. And the tempers of the others frayed, suddenly and without warning, Jason talking a mile a minute one moment and snarling the next, Eberhard cold and aloof if anyone dared speak to him.
It frustrated him at first, the way that Sauer made him wait. Then it became bewildering, his impatience cooling into unease. A new distance had grown between them, between him and all of them, even between him and Natsuko, not the old unfriendliness so much as a fresh watchfulness. It frightened him that he might lose them and never understand why. He wondered if they had argued over Eberhard’s promise to him, or if their thoughts were simply elsewhere and left no time for him. But then sometimes it seemed to him that the mood wasn’t new at all, that their tensions had been building for longer than he knew, and all that had happened overnight was the moment of his own apprehension.
On Friday he was still slow rising, and so cantankerous with pain, bickering over pointless things, that it was no surprise to him when Natsuko took herself off to pick up Jason and Eleschen, threatening to come back for him only if he stopped nagging.
He had only just got down to the lobby, could see the car waiting, was on his sheepish way out to the street, when Marina called him back to the desk, tapping a note in her palm.
–For you.
–Are you sure?
–Po-po-po! said the cockatoo, its pink crest flaring up like something venomous, and Marina clicked her nails at its cage.
–Of course I’m sure. Now finally you get messages you don’t want them any more?
It was a postcard of the Parthenon with the Elgin Marbles frieze biroed in. The message was writ large, the handwriting cursive and soft-edged, as Emine’s was, though it was not hers.
Dear Ben,
Athens’s rocks!
Want to come for dinner? I know you’re busy these days but I want to pick your brains. Are you free tonight? Otherwise anytime is fine. Just you, hope that’s OK, because my place is real small.
You probably don’t know where I am. I’m here ~
9 Cosmos Apartments, 42 Oreas Elenis ~
which is down by the bus station. Leave room for moussaka,
love Missy XX
The car horn sounded twice. He folded the card away before he opened the street door and waved down to Natsuko, kissing her hard as he got in, losing himself in the rush and noise of the morning and the four of them.
Only as they came up to Therapne, pulling in by Missy’s car, did he think of her again. She was right, after all. He had never been to her place, hadn’t known where it was, had never thought to ask. Really, he had never thought of Missy living anywhere.
&n
bsp; –Ben! You found me! Come on in, don’t mind the mess, I don’t know where I get this junk, it just follows me everywhere, like a goddamn junky albatross…listen, the food’s not ready yet, so can you be an angel and start getting drunk for me? There’s wine out on the table there. It’s red, is that alright for you? My family’s all allergic, so red’s always a treat for me. I won’t be too long, okay?
It was a small flat, four floors up in a prefabricated block, the stairs and walkways outside windblown and rusted, and the room he entered low-ceilinged, a television droning indistinctly through the partition walls. The table had been laid for two. A gaudy waxed tablecloth, a halfhearted poinsettia and a faded equipage of posters all failed in their efforts to brighten the cramped charmlessness of the place. He had expected something else–if not the space of Eleschen’s then the scholarly grace of Eberhard’s–and he kept quiet as he managed the wine, embarrassed into silence.
–Did I put the corkscrew out?
–I found it.
–Sweet! Pour me too. So was Pylos good? It sounded swell. Wish I could have gone with you all.
The living room and kitchen were connected by a serving counter. Through it he could see Missy peering into a mini-oven, her face lit up raw and anxious by its elements.
–What about Athens?
–Oh, you know. I’m not really a city girl. Anyhow I got our funding. Laco went down real well, she got them all excited. The Gods of the Deep Pockets smiled on us. Mercury’s worth its weight in gold when it turns up in the Late Helladic. You come back next season, I’ll have a hole with your name on it.
–That’s great, he said, mechanically polite, Congratulations.
–Thanks! Are you hungry, Ben?
He drifted over to the posters, glass in hand. They were student staples, mostly, their corners stained and pin-pocked from years of migration. Audrey Hepburn in opera gloves. Kurt Cobain with wings. Muhammad Ali in the ring, towering over his enemies.
–Ben?
–Starving.
The Lion Gate of Mycenae. A child’s guide to hieroglyphs. Einstein, with the electrocuted hair and the kindly eyes, seated at a writing desk above a line of florid text.
