The Fall of Troy

by Peter Ackroyd

  “You have not answered my question, dear Sophia.”

  “Do you not see that I am smiling? That is my answer to you.”

  “A very charming answer.” He walked over to her quickly, took her hand and kissed it. “If we continue like this, we will satisfy each other.”

  TWO

  The Obermanns left Piraeus on the overnight steamer; the captain of the Zeus had assigned his own valet to them for the short journey to the Dardanelles, but, by the time the young man had brought them coffee, just before dawn, Obermann was already pacing the deck and peering towards the east. “Where is my wife? She must see the dawn.”

  “I am already with you, Heinrich.” Her voice came out of the shadows. “I also wish to see the dawn.”

  “You have never known the sea until now. There. Look there.” The edge of the world was limned with light, and a red glow seemed to spread along the horizon. “The light is glorious. But when the circle of the sun appears, there is a wholly different sensation. There is a revelation.” He shielded his eyes from the wind. “That is where our future lies, Sophia. We are sailing towards Troy.”

  “We are sailing away from home.”

  “Home is here. With me. I am your home. Look now. Have you ever seen such a colour before? The rising sun will sit upon a throne of blood.” He turned to the valet. “Bring our breakfast on to the deck. We must feast on this. Such majesty.”

  Within a few minutes the boy brought out a plate of cold boiled hens’ eggs. To Sophia’s astonishment, Obermann took one and swallowed it whole. Then he took another. “When I was a child in Mecklenburg,” he said, drinking down a cup of thick black coffee, “I dreamed of buried treasure. There was a small hill in our village. It was surrounded by a ditch and was no doubt a prehistoric burial place. You have no idea how many ancient tombs are still to be found in Europe, but nobody bothers with them. What we call hünengrab.”

  He rarely used German in her company, but, three days earlier, he had addressed a German couple in Syntagma Square; he seemed to her then to change his identity: he somehow became older, and smaller.

  “But in our legends it was known that in this hill a robber-knight had buried his beloved child in a golden cradle. Oh, we were surrounded by treasures. There was a pond beside our schoolhouse, out of which a maiden was believed to rise each midnight, holding a silver bowl. Many times my father bitterly lamented his poverty. And I would say to him, ‘Papa, why do you not dig up the golden cradle and the silver bowl? Then we will be rich.’ He never replied. In our poverty he wished us to keep our fairy stories.” To Sophia it seemed that his eyes were brimming with tears. But then he swallowed another egg. “I have always believed that my father poisoned my mother. Does that shock you? Yet I still loved him. I will tell you the story one day.”

  Sophia retreated to the cabin, on the excuse that she wished to find a handkerchief, and she sat down upon the narrow bed. She saw the Aegean stretching ahead, stirred now by a north-easterly wind, and knew that she had to begin her life again in the company of a stranger.

  Obermann came back into the cabin. “My dearest Sophia, I have upset you. I have not been considerate. Forgive me.”

  “What is there to forgive, Heinrich?”

  “We should not dwell upon the past.” He burst out laughing. “But who am I to say this? I am an archaeologist!” Then he took her up in his arms and, in the tiny space, danced a waltz with her to imagined music. And she thought, as she danced, “Well, at least I shall not be bored with you.”

  By the middle of the morning they had passed the island of Khios, and Sophia glimpsed the coast of Turkey lying eastwards. She could see small settlements—fishing villages, no doubt—and she could hear the barking of dogs. She did not mind the motion of the sea; if anything, it comforted her. This ceaseless rocking was like a cradling. “Do you see there, Sophia, that bay? That is where the princess Hesione was exposed to the attacks of the sea-monster sent by Neptune. Do you see the promontory of black rock? That is where Hercules saved her. There is the trench he built.” There was a ridge leading inland from the promontory.

  “You believe these stories, Heinrich.”

  “There is truth to them. We live in a hard age. An age of iron. We need these stories. We should give thanks that they survive.” He went over to the rail and watched the seagulls as they flew beside the boat. “This is the path that Helle and Phryxus took when they flew on the ram with the golden fleece. How I loved that story! They crossed the Aegean Sea, as we do, north-eastwards. You did not know the region was so blessed? How could you know such things? Half the stories of the world begin here. That is why I came. See how the birds dip their wings in the current of the wind. Helle grew frightened by the waves beneath her, and fell away from the golden fleece. The water where she drowned became known as the Hellespont.”

  “There is no need to worry, Heinrich. I will never fall.”

  “You have no fear of great heights?”

  “I have no fear of falling. That was the cause of her distress.”

  “You rewrite the myths of your own country! You are a splendid creature!”

  An English clergyman, with a black ebony cane, was standing close to the rail of the deck; he had been listening eagerly to their conversation. “Do I have the great good fortune of addressing Herr Obermann?”

  “You do.”

  “I attended your lecture at Burlington House last year. It was a revelation, sir.”

  He was very tall, and seemed to lean forward as he spoke. He had a low resonant voice, and a curious weakness in his eyes that made him blink continually. “I was a Grecian at university, Herr Obermann, but in that hour I learned more of Greece than in the whole of my previous life.”

  “Oh! Do you hear that, Sophia? This reverend sir is my disciple!”

  “Harding, sir. Decimus Harding.”

  Obermann had given three lectures at the Society of Antiquaries in Burlington House on the origins of the Greek race, which he traced to the ancient settlers of northern Europe. He told how the tribes of hunter-gatherers had moved down upon the virgin soil of Asia Minor and Anatolia, where they learned the arts of farming. There emerged villages based upon the ties of kinship, where simple pottery was manufactured and where mats or baskets were woven. Some of these villages began to gather together and, over a thousand years, they grew naturally into small towns. He had a vision of the world where all people were embarked upon a long journey. All phases of world history were in equilibrium. In these towns distinctions of wealth and strength became evident; there arose leaders and ruling families who built large houses or fortified dwellings. Over many generations the towns became cities.

  For Obermann the city was the high point of the world, the destination to which all people travelled. The Greek city-state, the polis, was thus the product of thousands of years of striving and competition. “I think of a street in sixth-century Athens or Corinth,” he had told the Society of Antiquaries, “as a street in London or Paris or New York! It is the same civilisation. Yet forgive me. I speak as if a thousand years might pass in a moment, but archaeology tells us a different story. A moment of fear when a hoard of jewellery is hidden beneath a stone, a moment of peril when fire blackens the walls of a house, a moment of death when an arrowhead pierces a skull—these are the moments that an archaeologist uncovers. For the people who lived and suffered there were no thousands of years, only the brief span of a human lifetime in which little of any consequence may have occurred.” There was an interruption of coughing in several parts of the room. “The shards of broken pottery that I find scattered all over the earth are signs of ordinary human existence that hardly seems to alter. And yet how vast are the changes seen by the ancient historian! That is the task of the archaeologist—to bring together the infinitely great and the infinitely small. How can a moment’s thoughtfulness or anxiety, fading upon a face almost as soon as it has arisen, be connected with the creation of a pyramid or a great wall? There is the paradox, gentlemen.”


  It had become clear to Decimus Harding, among others in the audience, that Obermann had left to one side the question of religion. But then he began to talk of shamans and witch-doctors, in which direction the clergyman was happy to follow him. Harding imagined himself, for a moment, dancing around his parishioners in Broad Street, Oxford, dressed only in a loin-cloth.

  “I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Reverend Harding. The English love my work. They treat me like a lord!” He rolled out the last phrase, in imitation of an English accent. “You know that Mr. Gladstone came to hear me on the subject of Homer? It was a great moment in my life.”

  “Mr. Gladstone is a scholar.”

  “Of course he is. He perfectly accepts my theories. He understands that I am about to solve the greatest mystery in the world. ‘If I could accompany you to Troy,’ he said to me, ‘I would give five years of my life.’ This is from your prime minister!”

  “I do not doubt it.”

  Harding had a large mole upon his left cheek. Sophia tried to ignore it, but could not resist hasty little glances.

  “Do not doubt. There, Sophia, do you see the small island ahead of us? That is where Achilles came to meet Polyxena.” He turned back to Decimus Harding, and put his hand upon the clergyman’s shoulder. “The English revere me. In France they believe Troy to be mythical. The French are in love with theory and with thin air. The Germans have no vision. I will not set foot in Berlin again until I am as old as Methuselah!” He took Harding’s arm, much to the clergyman’s discomfort, and walked with him along the deck. “Only in England do they love Troy. The English believe it will be found. They love warriors.”

  “They love poets more.”

  “Nonsense. They are a warrior nation. You will dine with us before we disembark.”

  Their luncheon, of watery soup and boiled meats, was served in the narrow dining salon on the upper deck. Decimus Harding and the Obermanns sat at one end of a long table, where Obermann was now holding up a bottle. “This, Mr. Harding, is your best English pale ale. I bring it with me everywhere. It is the best cure for constipation known to mankind!” The clergyman glanced at the other passengers. “I was constipated for thirty years, and nothing would move it. Every medicine and potion I tried made it worse, even the famous Carlsberg waters. Then I found English pale ale. I have been trumpeting ever since!”

  Harding felt his teeth with his tongue, then swallowed very hard. He was horrified by the volume of Obermann’s voice. He glanced quickly at Sophia. She sat looking out to sea, taking care to appear unmoved.

  “You see, Harding, it is called Truman’s. Now I am a true man!” He leaned over to his wife and brushed a fleck of soot from her embroidered jacket. “Am I not, Frau Obermann?”

  The clergyman looked down at his plate, on which he had left the remains of some meat and some oily pommes frites. “You were asking me, Herr Obermann, about Frederick Pottle.” Ever since Obermann had discovered that Decimus Harding was a clergyman of Oxford he had been questioning him about the various professors and scholars of that university.

  “Pottle has always been my enemy,” Obermann replied. “He would burn me, stab me, crucify me, anything at all. He utterly refuses to believe that Hissarlik is the site of Homer’s Troy, when it is obvious to any man of sense.”

  “Pottle, my dear sir, is quite mad.” Decimus Harding shifted in his seat. This was the kind of conversation he understood and enjoyed. “I have heard that he has been consigned to a lunatic asylum for the last several months.”

  “Excellent! It is where he belongs.”

  “He believes himself to be a steam-pump.” To his colleagues Decimus Harding was known to be an incorrigible, and quite unreliable, teller of stories. But with his low distinguished voice, and his height, he seemed to Obermann to be the essence of an English gentleman. “Apparently he is in danger of blowing up.” Harding had a slight drawl that he used to great effect.

  “This is what happens to all of my enemies. Pottle has written a pamphlet, suggesting that the Homeric poems are situated at Bournabashi. It is incredible! Immediately I rebutted his argument point by point, but he was so foolish as to give a lecture on the subject. A steam-pump, you say?” Harding nodded. In fact, at that moment, Frederick Pottle was showing a party of young ladies from the Roehampton Literary Institute around the chapel of Oriel College. “And tell me now of Aspinall. He is still Keeper of Antiquities?”

  “Poor Aspinall is drinking, my dear sir. He is a very disappointed man.” Harding looked at Obermann, his eyes glittering. “He had to be escorted out of the Ashmolean.”

  “I am sorry to hear it. He spoke to me of an honorary doctorate.”

  “I am sorry for his poor wife. She finds him lying on the threshold. Insensible.”

  “Marriage can be a dangerous business. Is that not so, Sophia?”

  She was still gazing out at the Aegean, considering once more the indefinite form that her future had taken. She had always known that she would be married eventually—that was her parents’ wish—but she never dreamed that she would be sailing away from Greece with a German husband who spoke in public about his bowels. She could see now that the Zeus was coming into harbour; the cries of the seagulls were mixed with the whistles and the blare of the steamer’s funnels. Obermann jumped up from the table and bowed to Decimus Harding. “You are going on to Constantinople, Reverend? Very good. As soon as you arrive, you must visit the museum. Give my respects to Ahmed Nedin, the curator of antiquities. He is a first-rate chap.” He gave the phrase an English pronunciation. “Come, Sophia. We must supervise the luggage.” With his wife following, he strode out of the narrow salon. Decimus Harding watched them leave with the strangest smile of triumph.

  THREE

  Herr Professor! Professor Obermann!” A young man, who seemed to Sophia to be Slavic in appearance, was waving from the wooden landing-stage of Kannakale.

  Obermann raised his right arm above his head. “They like to call me ‘Professor.’ I see no harm in it.”

  “Are you not a professor?”

  “I have no formal title. I am a professor by deeds, not by words. Come. The gangway is being lowered.”

  Their luggage was carried before them by four of the ship’s porters, bowed low by the weight of boxes and valises, while all around Sophia could smell the atmosphere of an unfamiliar country. The port had the savour of spices, and of goats, but she sensed something else. She was vulnerable here. This was a place that might do her harm. The other passengers, disembarking, were surrounded by porters and by sellers of almond-nuts and pomegranates and dried frogs; they screamed and shouted in what was for Sophia an unintelligible language. But they seemed to know, or recognise, her husband; they held back as the young man who had hailed him made his way through the crowd.

  “Well met, Telemachus. May I have the honour of introducing you to Frau Obermann?”

  The young man bowed, but when she held out her hand to him, he put it up to his lips without kissing it. She sensed that he distrusted, or disliked, her. How could that be?

  “Where are your manners, Telemachus? Frau Obermann is our Greek deity now. She has come to claim back her old city!”

  “No, Heinrich.” For some reason the sentiment alarmed her. “I am only your wife.”

  “Do you hear the modesty of the Greek woman, Telemachus? The husband, be he old or young, is everything to her. Heaven and earth have a secondary interest! Where is our cart?”

  She had not expected this. The luggage was hauled by Telemachus on to the back of an ancient wagon that might have been taken from a farmyard; its wheels had no spokes, but were made of solid discs of wood carved into shape. Obermann helped her into the vehicle where two planks, running cross-wise and covered by rugs, were used as seats or benches. At the bottom of the cart she saw traces of straw and dung. “I would have ordered you a golden chariot, Sophia, but they are all occupied at the moment.” The driver wore the peculiar fez of the region, the base wrapped in white li
nen, and Sophia noticed that the rim of linen was stained with the marks of sweat. He prodded the two horses with a tapering stick, and they began their slow journey through the narrow streets of Kannakale. She sat beside her husband, who was smiling broadly and taking off his white Panama hat to greet various shopkeepers whom they passed. Three children ran after the cart calling, “Hakim! Hakim!”

  “What are they saying, Heinrich?”

  “I am a great doctor to them on the plain. I have a large medicine box for any conceivable sickness, so they come to me. I cure them.”

  “I did not know that you were trained in medicine.”

  “Trained? Of course not. It is what the English call ‘common sense.’ I see a child with fever. I give him two drops of quinine. I see anaemia, and I prescribe the iron powder. I see vomiting, and I give them chalk and laudanum. They have none of our European diseases such as measles. They lead healthy lives, like their ancestors. I cannot find the old plane tree under which the father of medicine received the sick. I am not Hippocrates. But I work upon the same people.”

  “Are you not afraid of spreading European disease?”

  “Me? Nonsense! I am the healthiest man on earth! Good day to you, sir!” He lifted his hat to a man dressed in a Western suit. “And, besides, my patients bring me gifts. They bring me coins and vases taken out of the soil. I am a magnet. I attract the finds!” He seemed to lose himself in contemplation.

  Telemachus was sitting at the front of the cart, beside the driver, and Sophia leaned forward to tap him on the shoulder. “You are Greek?”

  “Me? Oh, no, Madame. I am from St. Petersburg.” He still evinced the same curious coldness.

  “But your name is Greek.”

  “Telemachus is the name the professor has given to me. My real name is Leonid. Leonid Pluyshin.”

  “He is the son of a colleague I left in Russia,” Obermann said. “He is a wily banker, and so I called his son Telemachus.”