by Tom Pollack
Alexiou, the thick-bearded taverna owner, let out a shrill whistle for silence, and the noisy hum of the patrons subsided.
“You all know Sostratos,” he declared, gesturing to a soldier in his midthirties who was clearly the leader of the group. “As a boy he was the finest athlete in Piraeus. Menestheus chose him personally to lead our detachment at Troy. Now he has returned in glory! Hear his news!”
Sostratos, who was obviously not accustomed to speaking in public, was edged forcefully by Alexiou to the center of the crowd, which eagerly pressed forward to hear his tidings. Scanning the rows of faces, he hesitantly raised his goblet of wine. Taking a sip to fortify himself, he announced some shocking news:
“Friends of Athens and of Greece, you are the first to know…Troy has fallen! We return home not on furlough but as victors! Troy is ours. The long war is over!”
As Sostratos thrust his cup aloft, it was knocked from his hands by the embrace of delirious onlookers, whose deafening cheers might have been heard in Athens, some six miles away.
Cain and Tanith remained late at the tavern until the full story could be pieced together. Sostratos and his troops recounted the master stratagem of the Trojan horse, the inspired ruse devised by Odysseus, king of the western island of Ithaca. Under the guise of a sacrificial offering to the gods, the wooden horse had concealed in its belly an elite corps of Greek troops. The Trojans, tricked into believing that the Greeks had abandoned the siege, had dragged the monstrous equine image inside the city’s gates, thus permitting the Greek saboteurs to exit by night and open the city gates to their comrades’ invading force. The vengeful Greek assailants burned the wealthiest city in Asia Minor to the ground, butchering its king and queen along with many of the inhabitants and enslaving thousands of others. Troy was no more.
On the way home through dark lanes, Tanith asked Cain what he thought of the news.
“It is an almost unbelievable story,” he replied. “And yet, for that very reason, it will probably be told for decades to come. We can both tell it, my love. You are a far more compelling storyteller than that fellow Sostratos.”
“As are you, my handsome pupil. Perhaps we have found a new calling together!” She wove her arm around his waist and brought him close as they strolled slowly through the night.
CHAPTER 31
Athens, circa 1225 BC
IN THE YEARS THAT followed, Cain continued to work at the fishing docks, and Tanith was hired by a local merchant to help keep his accounts. Their income was nominal, but it was enough to support their modest lifestyle. They supplemented their wages with Cain’s occasional appearances as a bard. His new vocation as a singer of epic tales gave him great satisfaction.
After that first evening in the taverna when he had heard the narrative of Sostratos, Cain added more stories to his repertoire about the Trojan War and the return journeys of the Greek heroes. In this venture, Tanith was a partner behind the scenes. In endless rehearsals, she critiqued Cain’s arrangement of the tales and his presentation. He sang the stories in prose, interspersing the narrative with dialogue and using a lyre for musical accompaniment. His audiences were small—seldom over a hundred listeners at any one performance. But they were enthusiastic, and like the patrons of musicians of every time and place, they gladly rewarded a pleasing singer with coins.
With their income on a solid footing, Cain designed a meager savings plan, which he hoped would suffice to buy their rented house from the owner one day. There had been no wedding ceremony, since neither of them had relatives in Greece, but all the townspeople of Piraeus accepted Cain and Tanith as man and wife by common law.
One fresh spring morning five years after the first veterans’ return to Greece, the couple found themselves on horseback headed for Athens. Lilies and iris dotted the roadside, a gentle breeze caressed the trees, and a brilliant blue sky heralded the return of the sailing season. Tanith was bent on shopping for a new table for their dining room, while Cain sought a new seven-stringed lyre, as his old instrument had become almost impossible to tune.
They broke the six-mile journey almost exactly halfway at a small, roadside shrine to the goddess Aphrodite. During their years in Greece, Tanith had retained her devotion to this deity, whose mythology and rituals so closely resembled those of her native Phoenician goddess Astarte.
As they approached the shrine, Tanith turned to Cain.
“Let us stop here for a prayer,” she said. “Will you come inside with me?”
Cain smiled but shook his head. “You know how I feel about the Greek gods, my dearest. The Egyptian ones, as well. An unbeliever like me will contaminate your prayers. You go inside, and I will tend the horses. When she sees you, Aphrodite will smile. If she sees me, she will frown.”
Tanith dismounted and disappeared inside the small temple, while Cain led the horses to the shade of a tall olive tree. He knew the goal of her prayer. Ever since their arrival in Greece, Tanith had often broached her desire to bear Cain a child—hints that Cain, well knowing from Ahiram about her barrenness, had gently deflected. But Tanith seemed determined. She really believed, Cain thought, that supernatural intervention from Aphrodite could remedy her condition.
“But why not pray for such a thing?” Cain asked himself. While he was no believer in Aphrodite, he was forced to admit from experience that, for the real God, nothing should be impossible. And so, sitting under the tree with the horses quietly quenching their thirst from a small stream, he closed his eyes and muttered a prayer to the God whom he had seldom addressed over all the centuries.
“May she achieve her wish, Almighty One. May my beloved conceive and bear our child.”
As he said these words, Tanith, with her devotions concluded earlier than he expected, was at his side.
“You, too, were praying after all?” she asked softly.
Cain felt embarrassed but was bound to respond.
“Yes, my beloved,” he admitted. “But my prayers were to a different God. A deity more powerful than Aphrodite. I asked that your wish would come true.”
Tanith smiled with pleasure at the thought that her “unbelieving” husband had offered a prayer. The two mounted their horses and set out again for Athens.
***
Several months later, in high summer, Tanith complained of feeling nauseous. Initially, both she and Cain were hopeful that their prayers had been answered. However, her condition soon worsened. Tanith began to show an intense aversion to bright light, and when her symptoms grew to include headache and drowsiness, Cain’s anxiety increased and he called a healer. The diagnosis was ominous.
“I am not completely certain,” said the doctor, a tall, soft-spoken man with salt-and-pepper hair and a hooked nose. “But what exposure has she had to plants and animals recently? Does she spend any time at all outdoors?”
Although she knew that Greek women were seldom to be seen outside the house, Tanith replied candidly in her own behalf. “Yes, I love growing plants in our courtyard. You have seen my flowers. Are they not beautiful?”
The healer nodded his head gravely. “They are worthy of Pan and all his companions of the forest,” he said. “But unfortunately, illness sometimes lurks beneath beauty. I fear your flowering plants may have betrayed you, lady.”
As Tanith covered her face with her hands, Cain led the healer into the courtyard. Locking eyes with him, Cain demanded, “What betrayal do you mean?”
“She has all the symptoms of brain fever,” he replied. “It is triggered by the bite of a tiny insect. Once the tick bearing the infection has passed it to a human being, very little can be done. Just try to keep her as comfortable as you can,” he said, putting his hand on Cain’s shoulder briefly before walking slowly toward the courtyard gate.
Cain was left alone in the courtyard, and it seemed that the bright flowers surrounding him had lost all their color.
***
When he reflected later on his loss, Cain decided that Tanith knew her fate that very afternoon. Despit
e his pretexts about a minor infection that would heal with time, he realized that it was futile to try to beguile the woman he loved so passionately.
Yet the two of them passed the final weeks of Tanith’s life in a strange aura of make-believe. Since to say otherwise would cause them to break down in despair, they both assured each other that she would recover. Cain thought of the prayers, both hers and his, at the shrine of Aphrodite. He remembered with tears the deaths of his family in Egypt. Once again, the ways and purposes of God were a bitter mystery to him.
Tanith’s death was quiet. Just before dawn she exhaled her last breath. Leaning down to kiss her lips, Cain raised her hand and placed it on his breast. “I shall never forget you, my darling,” he murmured, as hot tears scalded his cheeks.
Funeral rites were prompt. After taking Tanith’s body to be cremated in Piraeus, Cain bore the ashes out beyond the entrance to the harbor, accompanied by a flotilla carrying not only his fellow fishermen but also many of his loyal audience members. Cain scattered Tanith’s remains into the sapphire of the Saronic Gulf, while his fellow mourners adorned the waters with thousands of white flower petals. It was fitting, Cain thought, that Tanith would rejoin Ahiram in this way. The sea had been home to both father and daughter, and now it would be just a bit deeper with his tears.
CHAPTER 32
Greece, circa 750 BC
“TIME HEALS ALL WOUNDS.”
Cain had heard the Greek proverb numerous times, but it was centuries after Tanith’s death until he could bring himself to acknowledge its truth. To assuage his grief, he immersed himself ever more deeply in other times and places. Now oral history and the entertainment of a live audience became his main interest, eclipsing his work at the fishing docks and leading to a string of ever more gratifying successes. Because so many of his listeners in the port of Athens were transients from other parts of the Greek world, word of his artistry spread. Invitations began to stream in for Cain to travel abroad, and he became widely known as the “Athenian bard.”
During the period after Tanith’s death, all of Greece experienced a significant cultural decline due to the ravages of the plague. Population diminished, trade contracted, and the art of writing was lost. But the people’s appetite for entertainment never waned, possibly because storytelling was a welcome distraction from the harsher realities of life. Cain—and his storytelling—were at the center of this desire.
Athens eventually began to grow again, from a small settlement into a vibrant metropolis. As Cain moved around the Mediterranean to conceal his secret, he saw fresh evidence of an upswing in Greek society and culture. Most notably, cities in Greece were founding colonies abroad, especially to the west in Sicily and southern Italy, but also on the western coast of Asia Minor. The region of Magna Graecia, “Great Greece,” was being born.
It was in the context of this burgeoning empire that Cain became increasingly aware that his longevity, while presenting personal challenges, provided a singular benefit to the wider human world.
He was keeping history alive.
***
In the mid-seventh century BC, Cain journeyed to the island of Chios at the request of the local inhabitants. By now, his stories of the Trojan War had become so widely acclaimed that his performance fees sufficed to sustain him. A stone’s throw from the Anatolian coast of Asia Minor, Chios was close to the ancient site of Troy, and the island’s inhabitants had always maintained a lively interest in the storied conflict that unfolded four centuries before.
As he often did, Cain performed his tales in a taverna during the early evening, and then continued, depending on the particular narration, later into the night. The performances in Chios, as he later recalled, were especially notable in one respect. Each time Cain began his tales, he was met by the piercing stare of a twelve-year-old boy, seated in the front row of the audience. Children were not a rarity at such performances, since fathers often brought their sons along to enjoy the tales of bygone times. But there was something exceptional about the intense concentration displayed by this youngster.
After the conclusion of his fourth and final performance, Cain strode over to the sandy-haired boy, who was escorted by a tutor, and asked his name.
“I am called Homer,” said the boy.
“You are from this island?” inquired Cain.
“Yes, I am from Chios, but I would see other shores if the gods grant me the chance.”
Cain ruffled the boy’s long, curly hair. “May your wish be granted,” he said gently. “And may you, too, become a singer of tales!”
***
With the ever-increasing popularity of the Trojan War stories, Cain’s travel schedule expanded. It seemed as if the public’s appetite for the glory days of Greece and the age of heroes was insatiable.
Some years after the visit to Chios, he was invited to perform in the new Greek settlements in southern Italy and on the island of Sicily. There, he especially enjoyed Croton, a new city on the Italian peninsula already renowned for its excellent physicians, and also Syracuse, a Corinthian colony in southeastern Sicily that boasted a spectacular site and a superb harbor. After three months of strenuous travel and oral performance, he returned to the house in the port of Athens.
Despite his fatigue from the long sea journey, Cain was loath to decline an invitation from Leandros, the owner of a new taverna, who was intensely eager to attract an enthusiastic clientele. Therefore, two nights after his return, Cain arrived at Taverna Yassou with his lyre, assuming that the crowd inside would be eagerly anticipating his appearance.
But the spotlight that evening shone elsewhere. Leandros had hedged his bets.
“Oh, he’s just a warm-up act for you!” the pudgy innkeeper squeezed Cain’s shoulder in reassurance.
“Who’s your other storyteller, then?” Cain asked.
“A man from Chios. His name is Homer. A fresh talent, but he’s captured the Aegean. I was lucky to get him here. But, of course, you are the king of storytelling in Athens. Not to worry, my friend!”
However, listening to Homer’s presentation, Cain did worry.
The young boy Cain first met thirty years earlier had developed into a charismatic bard. His resonant voice was spellbinding, the music from his instrument hypnotic. And, most remarkable of all, Homer was telling the story entirely in poetry—verse with a six-beat line that conveyed the emotions of the characters and events far more suggestively and vividly than prose narrative could ever hope to achieve. Transported back to the island of Chios in his mind, Cain now visualized himself sitting in the front row with an unwavering gaze, the same way the boy had done in childhood.
After an interval, Cain rendered his own performance. He was gratified to see Homer sitting in the front row. They were competitors, to be sure, but also colleagues, at least in Cain’s mind. Yet he worried that Homer would think it strange that he showed no signs of aging. Perhaps, after this long interval, the rival singer’s memories would be somewhat blurred. Nevertheless, Cain took the precaution of wearing a cloak and a broad-brimmed hat, ostensibly for warmth on this cool evening. At the conclusion of Cain’s performance, Homer waved the Athenian bard to his table.
“A splendid performance!” Homer exclaimed. As Cain acknowledged the accolade in a muted tone, he noticed that Homer’s clouded eyes were staring a bit off to the left. It was only then that he realized that the visiting bard, whose beard was streaked with traces of gray, had become blind.
“So, you have become a singer of tales! I well remember the curly-headed boy on Chios.” Cain now relaxed as they sat down together.
“You were an inspiration to me then,” Homer responded. “I still remember your recital with gratitude. But I knew that something else was missing. I wanted the verse and the meter, as well as the words and the music, to be part of the story, part of the performance. Other epic singers came to Chios. They had the six-beat line, and I became their apprentice.”
“Where did that verse line come from?” asked Cain.
>
“No one knows for sure, but many of the singers I met said they thought it had come down from the time of the war itself.”
“How are you able to sing the same song in exactly the same way at each performance?” asked Cain.
“I can’t claim that every performance is identical to every other. But the verse line helps me to fix my thoughts in place. There are certain rhythmical groups of words that recur time and again. Once I know their positions in the line, I am able to handle the components of each verse more easily. I am able to tell the events of each story episode in the proper order. Every performance is one part memory, one part improvisation.”
It had never occurred to Cain, given his own powers of recollection, that poetry could aid in the process of memorization. His affinity for Homer grew.
“But what if you could make your best performances permanent? What if you could set them down for future generations?”
Homer shrugged sadly. “The Mycenaeans of whom we sing possessed writing,” he said. “We have lost the art.”
“No, my friend. The art is there to be reinvented. Let me show you. Come outside to the courtyard.”
Away from the crowd, Cain scratched Phoenician letters in the clay soil of the taverna’s courtyard. Then he took Homer’s hand and lightly rubbed his fingers over the indentations.
“It would not take much to adapt these Phoenician letters to Greek,” Cain told him. “The most important changes you would need are new symbols for vowel sounds.” He sketched two examples, epsilon for short e and iota for i. “If your songs are recorded for posterity this way, Homer, they will be nothing short of immortal.”
The singer of tales replied slowly, quizzically.
“But then, if audiences can read these tales, performance will languish and die, will it not? Bards like us will not be necessary.”
