by Jay Amberg
“In your dreams?”
“Yes. No! Not just in dreams! He talks to me! Speaks in my ear! ‘It’s too much!’ he says. ‘Too difficult!’”
Galen runs his fingers through his beard. “What is?”
The man gasps. His eyes go wide. “His job! Holding up the heavens! It’s too much.”
One of the Aesklepion’s sacred dogs wanders into the chamber. Tail wagging, it sniffs the patient who is too distraught to notice.
“But your dream?” Galen asks. “Last night’s dream that has brought me here?” The dog comes to him and licks his right hand.
The man starts to shiver. “He’s giving up! I saw him! His face was contorted. Veins in his head and neck bulged. Moaning, he shut his eyes. His shoulders slumped, and his hands dropped! He’s letting go! And…”
“And?” Galen scratches the dog behind it ears.
The patient grasps Galen’s wrist. “That’s when I woke up.”
“Screaming?”
Shaking his head, the man lets go of Galen, shrinks into himself. “I don’t remember…” His voice becomes a weak whisper. “That’s what they tell me…” His spirit withers before Galen’s eyes.
“You were screaming,” Galen says, his tone reportorial not judgmental. “For a long time. Hysterically. Woke other patients.”
The man swallows hard. “My throat is sore,” he admits. He grips Galen’s arm even more tightly. “Help me,” he croaks. “You can! You’re the only one! Please, help me!” This man, whom Galen once saw as robust, whimpers, “Please!”
“I will,” Galen answers. His work is renowned throughout the Roman Empire. If anyone can help, he can. “I’ll prescribe a course of treatment for you.” He has already sent one of his slaves to get the ingredients for his secret calming potion. The dog curls at his feet. “And I promise that Atlas will continue his work,” he adds, as though it were a fact that Atlas existed and diligently performed his duty.
The man sobs. Tears run down through the stubble on his flaccid cheeks.
Galen listens to the water streaming from the nearby fountains. “Do you hear anything?” he asks. “Tell me what you hear.”
Pinching his forearms, the man murmurs, “I hear…Atlas is moaning… He’s trying to tell me…”
“I am the only other one here with you.”
“There’s someone else. There’s groaning. Atlas is groaning under the weight.”
“The only other one who could be here is Aesklepios.”
“Aesklepios?”
“This is his sacred ground. His healing power resides here.”
“I know. I know.” The man is weeping. “But it’s not him.”
“Has he ever spoken to you?”
“No. Never.”
“Well, he does to me.” And, indeed, he does—in Galen’s dreams. Galen’s reputation is, justifiably, built on his ability to note symptoms and to notice patterns and to make inferences and to predict the course of disease and to discern which treatments and curatives will work and which will not. And, of course, to debunk all that is specious—omens and auguries and astrology and divination through the entrails of birds. But he also believes that our highest rational soul resides in us and speaks to us, especially through our dreams. Some dreams are clear messages from the soul, from the gods. And some of his own dreams have come from his ancestral god, Aesklepios. The practice of medicine and the work of Aesklepios are not in his mind antithetical. Healing always involves both the body and the spirit. They are two sides of the same Aureus. “He spoke to my father and told him that I should become a doctor. And he saved my life when I was twenty-seven. Came to me in two dreams and gave me a cure, showed me how to cure myself.”
The man’s head is shaking as he shivers and pinches himself, raising welts on his forearms. “It’s too late! It’s all over!”
“And while you’re here, Aesklepios will speak to you. You just have to listen. You must accept the treatments and—”
A muscular, dark-haired young man wearing a toga fringed with scarlet stands at the entrance to the chamber. A parchment is rolled in his right hand. The dog stands, ears pinned back, but does not growl.
“No!” the patient screams. “Dis Pater! It’s not time! I’m not ready! No!”
Galen, who left instructions that no one should interrupt this session, shouts, “Be gone!”
The young man remains standing, silent, in the archway.
“I said…” And in this instant, Galen realizes that the messenger has come for him, not the patient. This is the summons from Emperor Marcus Aurelius that he has dreaded. This is the summons back to Rome, back into the service of the Empire. He should be gratified to become the emperor’s personal physician. It is the highest honor that a doctor can receive in Rome’s society—and brings with it great wealth and exalted status. But Galen loves this, his father’s treasured city, and he fears that his duty to the emperor will take him into harm’s way—not just the unending treachery of the Roman aristocrats but worse, far worse. Wars with the northern Germanic tribes in some godforsaken frozen forest. Or the plague that soldiers returning from Aquileia are spreading through the empire and bringing back to the Eternal City. The churning within him, the perturbation of his soul that suddenly grips him, is not at all like the psychosis of his patient. It is the product of the rational recognition that he will not be able to stay in Pergamon to finish his classical studies or, even more importantly, to complete his tribute to his father and to the culture of this city that he loves so deeply.
32
KAPIKAYA, TURKEY
Özlem Boroğlu follows her daughter Elif down the trail toward the old stone bridge that crosses the stream. Both mother and daughter wear hiking boots, long pants, and long-sleeved shirts. Özlem has on her floppy black hat. Two water bottles are clipped to Elif’s backpack. At first light, they started out from Bergama along the road that leads up to little Mehmet’s village in the pine forest, but they parked the Dacia less than five kilometers out of town on a steep incline in a wooded, sparsely inhabited area. They hiked down through the woods along a winding path that has taken them into this valley a long way from the road. The sun is beginning to rise above the crest of the rocky escarpment to the east, but the morning is still cool. The scent of pine is strong.
The stone bridge is neither large nor elaborate. Moss covers much of the stonework almost to the capstone. Somewhere out of sight upstream, an axe is striking wood. Closer, a cock crows by a ramshackle white cottage with orange roofing tiles. A large tan dog starts to amble over, but a rodent skittering by an old cement trough steals its attention. Barking, it gives chase but isn’t nearly quick enough. The stream is murky beneath the bridge, but not far downstream it runs fast and white over the rocks.
Elif stops at the foot of the bridge to let her mother catch up. They talked little on the way here. Elif learned early in life to let her mother have her second morning cup of coffee and her third cigarette before attempting any meaningful conversation. She and her mother have not hiked together in more than a decade, but Boroğlu asked Elif to guide her to Kapıkaya, the ancient sanctuary dedicated to Cybele, the Earth Mother. Elif agreed because the area is isolated and the terrain unusually rough—and someone no longer used to making difficult ascents clearly shouldn’t go alone.
Once a year on the vernal equinox, Elif and a couple of her friends make the climb to Kapıkaya because she believes the cave there and the spring are holy. Any relics—terra-cotta figures, ceramic vessels, lamps, and coins—are long gone, taken by diggers, legal and illegal, but the sightline back to Pergamon’s acropolis is still clear. The site’s inaccessibility has in a sense saved it from further exploitation and destruction. In fact, Elif believes that three years ago she was the only visitor to the site. Boroğlu, who has only climbed to the site once, seventeen years ago, did not
explain to her daughter why she wants to go now. But Elif knew that, given the situation, she had to accompany her, whatever the reason.
The stone bridge, which has no walls or rails, is wide enough for a cow but not for a car. Although the two women could cross together, Elif lets her mother go first, before again taking the lead. The path forks almost immediately, and they follow the higher trail that heads up through the pine forest and around the jagged peak that stands between this valley and Kapıkaya. After only twenty minutes, Boroğlu calls for Elif to stop. She takes off her hat and fans her face that is already sweaty. Elif unclips both water bottles and hands the pink one to her mother. She herself drinks from the green bottle.
Boroğlu takes a series of deep breaths, looks up the steeply rising trail, and says, “Enough.”
Elif cocks her head. It is getting warmer, but it’s not yet hot.
“Let’s head back!” Boroğlu says.
Elif wipes her mouth but doesn’t answer. Her mother has never given up this easily on anything.
The two women stare at each other until Boroğlu says, “I mean it.”
“I thought you wanted to visit Kapıkaya.”
Boroğlu pulls her red lighter and her pack of cigarettes from her shirt pocket.
“Mom, don’t!” Elif says. “Please don’t.”
“I’ll be careful. I’m always careful.”
“I know that, Mom, but…the forest…”
They stare at each other again. Birds are calling, and, though the sound of the axe is no longer audible, somewhere in the distance downstream a chain saw is revving. Finally, Boroğlu says, “All right,” and puts the cigarettes and lighter back in her pocket.
“Why are we here, Mom?” Elif’s tone is not petulant, but there’s an edge in her voice. A day away from her studio is, at this point, a day lost.
Boroğlu glances around. “I need to see the area.”
“And you’ve seen enough of it already?”
“No, but we don’t need to go farther.”
“Why are we really here?”
“To look around.”
“For what?”
Boroğlu looks into her daughter’s eyes for the first time. “The remains of a villa.”
Elif shakes her head. “Out here?”
“Near the stream. Maybe.” Boroğlu waves at the trail ahead. “I don’t know. But not farther up. Not more remote.” Her hand goes to her pocket, but she doesn’t take out her cigarettes. “Back along the stream, I think.”
Elif clips her water bottle. “You should’ve told me the truth.”
As Boroğlu hands the pink bottle back, she says, “You wouldn’t have come.” Her tone is matter-of-fact.
Elif doesn’t answer. Her mother is probably right. If she had not mentioned Kapıkaya, Elif would not likely have agreed to come. Her mother’s obsession with unearthing human artifacts is hers alone; Elif’s work is focused on the earth itself and on creating images that might hold meaning. Their only juncture is ancient sites, like Kapıkaya, that are, at least for her, sacred. Without saying anything more, she turns back down the trail.
33
KAPIKAYA
Still not speaking, mother and daughter backtrack to the fork above the bridge, where they pause again by the trunk of an uprooted tree. Someone has carefully arranged stones of various sizes and colors among the exposed roots, creating both a trail marker and a cairn. Slipped in among the torn and gnarled roots are a large gray stone, two pale white rocks the size of loaves of bread, and numerous smaller stones—gray and beige, golden and speckled. Elif walks down toward the stream, examines the ground, and selects a flat, russet rock about the size of her mother’s lighter. She returns, studies the roots, and places the rock in a niche where a root corkscrews into air. Finally, she runs her fingers over a bright white shard wedged into a smaller space and then turns back to her mother and asks, “A villa?”
“Yes. Built in the second century. Well outside Pergamon.”
“But up here? Not down in the valley?”
“It’s cooler up here. The water’s clean.”
“And?” That’s not enough evidence for one of her mother’s archeological hunches. And her mother, in her work and in her family life, always knew more than she told others.
Boroğlu doesn’t answer. Nor does she look into Elif’s eyes.
“That damned letter you got!” Elif says, scolding herself in her mind. “What did the letter say?” She really doesn’t have any idea.
Boroğlu takes off her hat, wipes the back of her hand across her forehead, and gazes downstream.
“Mom, what did the letter say?”
Boroğlu runs her index finger along her hat’s rim. “That Galen’s villa, the villa his father built, was outside the city.”
“And?”
“Elsewhere, Galen wrote that his father had been drained by his constant civic responsibilities, Pergamon’s day-to-day administrative and bureaucratic duties. He built the villa to get away.”
“But why are you looking up here?”
“Others are looking in the valley.”
Elif smiles to herself. She and Serkan used to joke about their mother’s many unstated rules. Number seventeen was “Never Do as Others Do.”
“But that doesn’t—”
“Stop cross-examining me!” Boroğlu snaps.
“You invited me! If we’re going to go on, you need to…” Elif’s eyes lock in on her mother’s face. She knows neither to push her mother too hard nor to surrender. “I need to know.”
Boroğlu waves her hat like a fan. “Little Mehmet had with him on the funicular something he found from Galen’s time. Or his grandfather had found.”
“What?”
Boroğlu hesitates. She has told no one. “A coin. Roman. Gold. Very rare.”
“Who told you that?”
“I saw it!”
Elif pauses again, thinking about who might have shown her mother an ancient Roman gold coin. Boroğlu puts her hat on, a signal that the conversation is finished, at least for her.
“But why bring me?” Elif tries to hold her gaze. “Why trick me into coming?”
“Because, my dear,” Boroğlu says, her tone becoming less combative, but still resentful, “you’ve become better at reading the earth than I ever was.”
Elif scrunches her face. She and her mother look at the world far differently—the earth itself, people, life. Everything, it sometimes seems. An artist is not an archeologist. Her mother looks for what is dead and buried; Elif feels for what is living. Her mother searches. In her sculpting, except for the current project, which has required almost a dozen models so far, Elif waits and becomes, at least sometimes, connected—a conduit. “I don’t know about that,” she says finally.
“I do,” Boroğlu retorts. Then she sags, as though she is tired, and says, “Walk with me. For a couple of hours at least.”
Elif takes a long, deep breath. Her mother’s abrupt mood shifts worry her. Although she and her mother can’t possibly recover the openness of their walks when Elif was a child and her mother was flying high about her team’s Allianoi discoveries, it was those walks, that sense of wonder, that started her on her own journey. She looks back down at the bridge. Beyond it on the other side of the stream near the cottage with the orange tile roof, an old woman is loading firewood into a blue, plastic laundry basket.
“Wait here, Mom,” Elif says as she begins to hike down toward the stream. When Boroğlu follows her across the bridge, Elif pauses and looks back into her mother’s eyes that glare at her.
The old woman lifts the laundry basket, swings it over her right shoulder, and then, holding it with both hands, leans forward and starts for the cottage. Her large, tan dog trots along ahead of her. When she sees the two women app
roaching, she stops by three solar panels set at an angle in the scrub grass. An orange electrical cord leads from the panels toward the building. The dog ambles over to Elif who scratches it behind its ears with both hands.
“Hello, Child,” the stout old woman says to Elif. Her paisley headscarf is tied tightly. A black sweater covers her mammoth drooping breasts, and her baggy şalvar has a purple floral pattern.
“Hello, Mother,” Elif says. “May I help you?”
“No… Yes, thank you, my child,” the woman says as her round face breaks into a gap-toothed smile.
Elif reaches out and takes the basket with both hands. Her shoulders slump with the weight.
The old woman’s eyes well.
“This is Özlem, my mother,” Elif says.
Boroğlu takes off her hat and nods. The dog sniffs at Boroğlu and then returns to Elif.
The three women and the dog head around to the far side of the building where a corrugated metal roof shades a small cast-iron cooking stove, two brown plastic chairs, and a clutter of cooking equipment. The woman squats on a cinder block next to the stove. As Elif sets the basket near her, she looks up, her eyes welling again. A cooking grate and utensils hang from hooks driven into the cottage’s white-washed, cinder block wall. Half a dozen ears of corn hang from the roof as do three white plastic bags. A large, metal cooking pot placed below the edge of the roof serves as a cistern. Boroğlu stands by a row of metal buckets filled with earth and growing herbs. Five chickens mill and cluck off to her right.
“I am alone,” the woman says to Boroğlu as tears begin to serpentine among her wrinkles. She takes a split log from the basket, uses it to stir the embers glowing in the stove, and then carefully sets the log among them. “Your daughter visits me sometimes. Brings me gifts. Statues I keep inside. And chocolate.”
Boroğlu looks at Elif and says, “Yes, she is a good child.”
For once, Elif can’t hear any irony in her mother’s voice.
Waving her pudgy, age-spotted hand at the two plastic chairs, the woman asks, “Can you stay? Sit with me?”
