by Tobias Hill
Its swaddled face gazed up at him. He could see the hollows of Kiron’s eyes.
–Natsuko, he said, Oh, Natsuko; but he had begun to cry, and his teeth to chatter, mangling the name, muddling it into a nothing.
He pushed the head away from him. The bag straps tangled with his feet. He was stumbling out into the road. He was tripping forward and vomiting into the gutter. He could hear the telephone ringing. His lover calling him.
And now? Now he was running away again. Running away, like the coward he was. He was still on all fours. How silly, he thought. How wretched I am!
He could hear applause–was Eberhard there with him?–and then the sound was lost in the crescendo of a car horn. Headlights swung into his face and past him. He went on, crabwise, like a dog wounded in traffic. He looked up at all the people who were looking back at him.
Get away from me, he tried to say, but the only word that would come was her name. And yet it seemed her name was enough, because the evening crowd was parting, its human elements stepping back from him.
He got to his feet. Strangers still moved around him, keeping their distance.
There was still something he could do for them. He found his breath and began to speak. He was telling them what was happening, he was telling them everything he had to tell, everything he understood, he had no more secrets from anyone.
No one was listening to him. He clenched his teeth in despair. He did not have time to convince them. Soon Natsuko would come for him. The thought filled him with terror.
There was the car, its doors still thrown wide, like arms. He began to walk away from it. People closed around him, but no one moved with him. He was among them but alone within them.
Where was he going? Where could he go?
He would go away from them all. He had already left Natsuko, hadn’t he? And wasn’t she the last? Nothing else would be so hard. It would be better to be alone. He would hurt no one then, it wouldn’t matter what violence he brought with him, and, somewhere, one day, he would find somewhere to rest. There would still be somewhere for him, some dark and unexpected place.
The crowd began to thin. There were sirens in the distance, but he was approaching quieter streets. The loneliness of the crowd gave way to a deeper loneliness. He turned down a narrow way, lowering his head, watching the plod of his feet. His heart began to calm.
And as he walked it came to him that he was leaving even himself behind. He could no longer feel his extremities, nor the blood-beat of his heart.
It was as if he had run so far, and so fast, that he had escaped himself. He had thought that impossible, once. He was leaving his body in his wake. Or no, that wasn’t quite right. It was as if he looked down on a body as it abandoned him.
That was it. And that was right.
He walked on, alone.
Acknowledgements
Victoria Hobbs, Julian Loose, Jean Vaché, Caroline Hill, Amelia Hill, Stephen Page, Rachel Alexander, Zoe Pagnamenta, Walter Donohue, ASB, Bomi Odufunade, Catherine Argand, Chris and Jen Hamilton-Emery, Denise Johnstone-Burt, Sam Edenborough, XB, Pip Pank, Anthony Thwaite, Professor Mary Beard, Cricklewood at large, and the Company of the Luckless.
Baronessa Beatrice Monti della Corte, for Bruce Chatwin’s tower.
Drue Heinz, for a conversation on Lake Como.
Eton College, Newnham College, and the Royal Literary Fund.
Professor Richard Jenkyns, for good advice on harps and gods.
Terry Buckley. It’s all your fault, you know.
Hannah, always.
About the Author
TOBIAS HILL’s collection of short stories, Skin (1997), won the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award, and he has twice been short-listed for the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. The author of The Love of Stones, Hill is the Royal Society of Literature Fellow at Sussex University and lives in London.
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INTERNATIONAL PRAISE FOR The Hidden
“It takes confidence to embark on a novel requiring a fully imagined archaeological dig in Sparta to support an elaborate mystery along the lines of The Magus or The Secret History while also fueling a sustained meditation on the special ethics of terrorism in ancient and modern times. And to carry it o? takes serious skills: a light-handed mastery of large amounts of technical and historical data, a gift for patterning human conflict into the suspense systems of a thriller, and an unflagging ability to produce the hard-edged descriptive detail that lends credibility to situations that might otherwise stretch belief. On the evidence of The Hidden, Hill clearly possesses these skills in abundance…. Rooms, streets, skies, passing landscapes are evoked throughout with a poet’s eye and ear that make even the briefest glances flash into life…. The ingenious plot twists of The Hidden are satisfying to follow, and the book’s constant sifting of the present through the past is done with admirable intelligence. But what lingers more than anything are these quick, sure, playfully notational passages. You don’t often see writing as lively as this.”
—The Guardian
“Tobias Hill’s fourth novel enters the rich territory of our engagement with the ancient, with spine-tingling results…. Hill uses every element of setting—the midafternoon heat of the dig, the alcohol-fueled evenings, the cries of jackals at night—to build momentum…. Apart from everything else that this novel is—a beautifully paced thriller; a meditation on loss, guilt, obsession—it is also one of the finest novels written so far about this, our age of terror.”
—The Observer (London)
“Secrets, codes, joltingly painful discoveries: the themes which underpinned Tobias Hill’s previous novels…are back to full advantage in his new book The Hidden, a tightly wrought, fast-paced literary thriller set in southern Greece…. Superbly realized…. Hill is a poet as well as a novelist, and his prose is always evocative, fresh, and exact…. This dark and tense novel renders that experience of discovery and disillusionment with elegantly chilling skill.”
—The Times Literary Supplement (London)
“Archaeology and a search for the elusive Spartans is a perfect topic for [Hill]…. The Hidden is above all is a superb portrait of modern Greece. As he moves between Athens and the Peloponnese, Hill’s brilliance lies in capturing the contradictions of a country he knows well…. His novel confronts the beauty and brutality of a country which has its roots in antiquity and its face turned to the Balkans…. As good as it gets.”
—The Independent (London)
“[Hill’s] prose contains many vivid traces of his poetry…. Exquisite and arresting images…. Hill’s eye for detail is superb and he never confuses relevance with truth…. This is a wonderful novel: elegant yet savage, restrained yet full-throttled, illuminated by the sort of brilliance that leaves you short of breath.”
—Daily Telegraph (London)
“The Hidden is a cunningly contrived novel about a post-9/11 world in which there can be no certainties and no real solutions.”
—Daily Express
“Resonant with classical myth, this is a rich, rewarding story of the outsider—the existential loner searching for his place in the world.”
—The Daily Mail (London)
“Gripping.”
—Tatler (London)
“[An] elegant, sinister novel…. Grippingly good.”
—Marie Claire (UK)
“I loved Tobias Hill’s The Hidden…. A treasure trove of information about the Spartans. That facet of it, alone, is worth the read…. Chilling parallels…. The novel’s been crafted, polished, cared for—and it shows. It’s a wonderful read, from a born writer.”
—Hampstead and Highgate Express
“A tense, charged tale of ancient secrets and modern conflicts.”
—Telegraph
ALSO BY TOBIAS HILL
Fiction
Skin
Underground
The Love of Stones
The Cryptogra
pher
Poetry
Year of the Dog
Midnight in the City of Clocks
Zoo
Nocturne in Chrome and Sunset Yellow
Credits
Cover design by Robin Bilardello
Cover photograph © Katya Evdokimova
Copyright
THE HIDDEN. Copyright © 2009 by Tobias Hill. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition September 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-194305-8
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