by Jay Amberg
“He’s just a guy…I don’t really know him.” Serkan shakes his head. “Where’d you get them?”
“The Ministry… The police, Serkan.” His mother’s voice is sounding to him like ice. When he was young, this was even worse than the fire of her outbursts.
“I told you, I don’t really know the guy.”
Boroğlu takes a cigarette from her pack. “You know who he is.”
“Kind of…”
“Kind of?” She mimics him again. “Whatever you’re doing, the government’s got you under surveillance.”
“No… Not me, they don’t!”
“Don’t be stupid!” She taps the photographs with her cigarette. “An investigator gave these to us. If something illegal is going on, which there must be, who’ll take the fall? Who, Serkan? That rich, connected boy? Or you?”
He doesn’t answer.
Boroğlu lights her cigarette and inhales deeply. “What were you doing in my room, Serkan?” she asks. Smoke escapes her mouth and nostrils.
“I wasn’t… What do you mean?” He runs his forefinger along the rim of his cup, but the tea is too hot to drink.
Elif bites her lower lip. Her grandmother stares at the photographs.
“I can smell that you were in there,” Boroğlu says.
“Wha…? Nothing.” His voice sounds to him like it’s going to crack like it did when he was twelve. “I wasn’t doing anything.”
Boroğlu fixes him with her gaze. “The safe’s lock was at a different setting.”
Elif’s eyes fill as she says, “The guy came to my studio, Serkan.” She blinks back tears, but her tone is firm.
“What?” Though he already knows that, he shakes his head to fake confusion. “No…” His concern, though, is real as he looks into his sister’s eyes.
“You heard her,” Boroğlu says.
“Did…did he threaten you?”
“Not exactly.” Elif’s eyes harden. “Implicitly.”
Boroğlu’s mother does not say anything, but she looks intently at her daughter and her grandchildren as each speaks.
Serkan continues to shake his head. “What’d he do?”
“Tried to buy my soul.”
He winces. “Huh?”
“He tried to get me to sell what’s not for sale.” She keeps staring at him. “Kept offering me more money.”
Serkan’s stomach sinks. He feels like she somehow knows the depths to which he is plunging. He has always thought that he was the smarter sibling, even though she did better in school. And he was smarter out there on the street, in the world. But now they’re in territory he’s less sure about. Elif needs to stop staring at him, though her look is not a righteous glare like their mother’s. Not at all. But she is looking into him, and it’s even more unnerving.
“You’ve really done it this time,” Boroğlu says. She takes a long draw on her cigarette, exhales slowly, and only then looks at him again. “We might be able to fix this, but you’ve got to be honest with us. The whole truth. For a change.”
He nods, but he can’t tell them everything. Not about his after-hours tours to kinky clubs. And certainly not the part about taking the five thousand dollars from the arrogant prick for the introduction to Jack and Clare—and to spy on his mother. But he can’t think of any credible way to explain why he was trying to crack her safe. All three women are staring at him, burning holes. His palms are clammy, and the back of his neck prickles.
“The truth, Serkan!” Boroğlu says, her voice severe.
“It’s the only way we can help you,” Elif adds.
“That day…,” his grandmother whispers as she taps one of the photographs. “I saw him when…” She shivers, and her breathing becomes shallow. “Maybe not him… Him but not him.” Her family turns toward her. “The morning of the bomb…the attack on the funicular…I saw him in town!”
37
ROME; 192 CE
As the Great Fire smolders, Galen of Pergamon trudges up the Sacred Way next to the Horrea Piperataria, the immense warehouse that was, until a week before, the commercial heart of the Roman Empire. Soot covers his toga, and damp ash blackens his sandals and feet. A storm has finally doused the flames, but the pungent smell of burnt incense and spices hangs in the air. The odor is so strong that even he, one of the most rational men in this city of three million, can’t help but think he is attending a funeral—and he certainly is, at least that of his own material wealth.
While he was moving his residence to a new estate in Campania, he stored his gold coins, fine silverware, and medical records, including the lists of debts owed to him, in this colossal warehouse. He did so because it had a military guard and, of greater import, it could not burn. The entire structure, one of the largest in the world, was built of stone. Only the doors were wood. What neither he nor any other of Rome’s wealthiest patricians and merchants considered was that when the Great Fire reached the area, the stone buildings would serve as ovens for the almost five thousand tons of incense and spices stored there.
A collapsing roof somewhere to Galen’s right thunders, and the ground shudders. A cloud of black smoke and ash darkens the sky. A bent old man near him wails as he hobbles away. But there is no longer danger except for those foolhardy enough to be inside the warehouse digging through the thick, sodden, still-simmering ash for remnants of their lost fortunes. He will no doubt have to treat some wretched merchants whose hands are scorched by their desire to retrieve that which cannot be.
Galen wipes sweat and grime from his bald head. The bitter taste of ash clings to his throat and mouth. His own greatest loss is not gold or silver or a list of debtors. He has dedicated his life to learning—medicine, of course, but also philosophy and the arts. He has recently, even at age sixty-two, been training himself in a variety of medical and philosophical fields, and the conflagration has consumed many of his books and much of his research. The complete manuscripts of his first two books of On Composition of Drugs According to Kind are smoke sent skyward to gods he does not believe exist. Gone too are the rare medical substances and ingredients he acquired while acting as personal physician to the emperor Marcus Aurelius. And the medical remedies gathered from around the world—all smoke. And all irreplaceable. The unique collection of medical instruments that he had designed for the various surgeries he and no one else was able to perform has, no doubt, melted to sludge, perhaps even vaporized by the immeasurable heat. Even his study of the vocabulary he collected from ancient Athenian comedies is lost to the world. Much of what he has left—all of the classical Athenian manuscripts his forefathers saved, his own early medical treatises and those he collected during his travels, and the Attalid Dynasty art and statuary—is in Pergamon awaiting his return, which in this moment he feels might never occur.
He recognizes that what matters most—his life, his very soul—has not been scorched by the fire. Still, the weight of his personal loss presses in on him as he looks up the Sacred Way at the devastation. Beyond the Horrea Piperataria—the Temple of Peace, housing untold treasure from conquests abroad, among them the menorah from the razed Hebrew Temple in Jerusalem—is demolished. The round Temple of Vesta, the very soul of Rome, is now desecrated debris, and the Imperial Palace, charred rubble. He understands in a way few others will that his own calamity, as deep and pervasive as it is, pales in comparison to the city’s catastrophe. This greatest of cities will, he believes, never recover its full glory.
He is the personal physician to the current emperor, Commodus, a man who is anything but the stoic his father was. Marcus Aurelius charged Galen with the task of keeping his heir healthy. And he has attended well to all of the heir’s physical ailments for more than two decades now. But the current emperor’s mental state is more precarious—and far more difficult to treat. As Commodus’s vast personal wealth and power have increased, he ha
s become ever more narcissistic and delusional. He has even taken to dressing like Hercules and fighting as a gladiator in the Colosseum. He is convinced he is invincible and that, in any case, Galen can instantly heal any wounds he might suffer. All Romans of every rank know, of course, that the Great Hercules’s foes must always, inevitably be vanquished.
And now, even before the ashes have cooled, Commodus has begun ranting about rebuilding the city in his own image. In his megalomania, he has declared himself the new Romulus and plans to rename the city after himself. Although Rome’s wealth has been decimated by the Great Fire, the emperor rages on.
38
BERGAMA
At half past nine in the morning, Özlem Boroğlu descends the stone steps to her house’s cellar. She passes through her kitchen to the dark pantry that, dug into the acropolis hillside, stays cool even on these hot mornings. Pulling hard, she shifts the old wooden cabinet used to store her mother’s pickles and tomatoes. She lowers herself to one knee, jimmies free a stone the size of two loaves of ekmek stacked one on the other, reaches into the darkness, and grasps the aluminum tube. Holding the tube carefully, almost reverently, she rises to her feet, crosses back through the kitchen, and climbs the stairs first to the courtyard and then to her rooftop garden.
Boroğlu places the tube on the linen cloth she has spread on the glass-top table. Earlier, she moved her cigarettes, lighter, notebook, and cup of tea to the patio’s ledge near her mother’s herbs. She also swept the patio after the night’s contentious family meeting, as much to clear her mind as to clean the space. Serkan left early in the morning for Istanbul, and Elif returned to her work at the studio. Serkan was not completely forthright with her, and she, for her part, withheld a lot of information as well. She did, however, give him the copy of Galen of Pergamon’s last letter that she was keeping in her office safe. She also provided him with photocopies of twenty pages from her current notebook, but her notes—written in her personal, idiosyncratic and, therefore, almost indecipherable language—will not help the execrable Hamits.
She is close to the Galen cache, weeks or, if she has been lucky, only days away. She has only returned to the area near Kapıkaya twice since Elif introduced her to the old woman. She brought the woman oranges the first time and chocolate the second. On the first visit, she searched downstream and found a site that has real possibilities. Only a few andesite blocks protruded from the rocky terrain, but the view back toward Pergamon’s Acropolis was clear and direct. There was also nearby a huge stone that might once have been part of a mausoleum. On her second visit, a site upstream was not as promising, but still needs to be investigated further. She did not spend much time at either site, except to log their exact coordinates. Far more time-consuming was her search in Bergama for land deeds and in the German Archaeological Institute’s office for early records to determine if either site had ever been worked. In the institute’s old-fashioned library near her house, the meticulous German records revealed that the lower site had been surveyed in 1911 but never excavated. The upper site was never mentioned at all.
Galen’s reference to the scent of pine led Boroğlu out of the Kaikos Valley into the hills rising to Kapıkaya, and poor little Mehmet’s possession of the Hadrian Aureus confirmed that she is on the right track. And now, she has these two specific sites. She even gave Serkan the detailed geological map of the valley around Pergamon that she had painstakingly made. Let the Hamits dither around on their extensive land holdings in the valley. They, especially Mustafa, the overeducated, pompous son, have no real understanding of archeology and no chance of finding Galen’s treasure on their own. The Hamits have always stolen artifacts or gypped poor farmers or bullied and even killed competitors—never themselves doing the painstaking labor archeology requires.
Boroğlu sits at the table, wipes her hands on the edge of the linen cloth, puts on clean white gloves, and breathes deeply three times. She then uncaps the tube and slides out the rolled parchment. This is only the third time she has ever touched the letter. As soon as she received it as an anonymous gift, she understood its cultural significance. She photographed the document, took the necessary steps to preserve it, and hid it in the cellar’s pantry. Holding the parchment written by Galen steals her breath. She feels, as she has needed to after her son’s betrayal, the bolt of energy that possession of ancient documents has provided over the years. When she unrolls the parchment, her hands quiver and her eyes water. Warmth spreads through her body. As she reads, she barely breathes at all.
Aeneas, son of my Beloved friend, I am returning to Pergamon, the home of my birth and the city I love. Rome is the greatest city in the world, but it has never been my home. I have had an extraordinary life, but now I am old and do not have long to live. I miss your father, a great friend and patron, whom I knew well as a boy. I have travelled the world in search of treatments and medications. My thirst for knowledge, which began at a very early age, has never been and will never be quenched. I have been the personal physician to emperors, and I have outlived those emperors and also my contemporaries. Very few of the Empire’s doctors were competent, and their outdated ideas and outmoded procedures have died with them. I have been the Finest of the Roman physicians, and my discoveries, my treatments, and my medications must live on for a thousand years.
Now, I want only to live out my final days at my Paternal villa in the presence of my father’s collections of art and literature. I desire to gaze again at the beauty of our native sky and to smell once more the rich scent of pine. I am bringing with me my writings, those books that survived Rome’s great fire, and my personal library of medical texts. I will combine my works with those of my father’s Athenian philosophers and dramatists and all those manuscripts that his father and grandfather saved when that lust-besotted fool, Marc Antony, presented the Pergamon library to the megalomaniacal Cleopatra in Alexandria. When I arrive, we will also take from safe storage the Attalid Dynasty’s bronze statues of the conquered Galatians that my father saved when the Temple of Athena was constructed. I am bringing with me my designs for a permanent home for all of these collections. The building will be splendid, a museum befitting the treasures it will house. The Library of Pergamon will again be renowned. The learned will again come to Pergamon to further their education just as I once did at Alexandria.
My mind and soul remain strong, but my body has become worn. My villa in Campania is beautiful, but I still miss Pergamon, the Temple of Trajan, which as you may remember, my father built, the majesty of the Great Altar dedicated to Zeus, and the theater where your father and I enjoyed the classical Athenian comedies with their wonderful play on words. Even more deeply, I miss the Aesklepion’s healing spring waters, the sacred dogs and the snakes that resided in the tunnels, the evening light flowing above the healing rooms, and the fragrance of roses in bloom.
I would like to die where my father died. I want to release my soul where he released his. He was my first and greatest teacher. He sent me on my life’s journey, for which I remain infinitely grateful. I trust that my father’s villa is still kept up well. I have been faithful in sending funds to keep it thriving. I look forward to seeing you and your family.
The voyage at this time of year may, indeed, be difficult, but I cannot wait. If I do not survive the journey, leave my father’s treasures in their chambers. It is better that they be lost to the ages than that they be looted or sold off or otherwise degraded by men.
39
BERGAMA
Özlem Boroğlu breathes deeply, stares at the letter for another moment, and then slips the parchment back into the tube and caps it again. Although she realized that the words would be identical to those she read a hundred times on the photocopy, she expected, yearned for, even craved a greater message, something that would lead her to the cache. Galen believed he received messages from Aesklepios and from his own soul—messages that helped him heal himself and others, m
essages that informed his practice, messages that merged into his writing—messages that guided him.
But here in this moment, nothing. She shakes her head. Light drips through the trellis and vines. Artifacts have spoken to her at times during her career, but this letter is as mute as its photocopies. She has gleaned enough from the letter to know where the villa is not, but she is still missing something that would lead her to the cache. The day is heating up, and her tea has cooled. She needs a cigarette.
As she takes off the gloves, stands, and turns toward the ledge, her mother comes out onto the patio. Boroğlu takes her lighter and the pack of cigarettes from the ledge, taps one out, and lights it. Her mother, wearing a loose purple şalvar, a blue blouse, and a red floral headscarf, holds an empty cloth shopping bag.
“You’re working?” her mother asks.
Boroğlu exhales slowly through her nose. Her mother’s words sound to her more like an accusation than a question. Of course she’s working. She’s always working, and her mother knows it. “What?” she says. It’s not a question either.
Her mother lays the empty shopping bag on the table. “You didn’t say goodbye to Serkan.”
Carrying her notebook and the ashtray, Boroğlu returns to the table and sits down. “I was asleep. I’d been up much of the night with him.”
“Yes.” Her mother nods and then glances at the notebook on the table. “Are you sure you should have let him go?”
It isn’t a real question either. “How was I supposed to stop him?”
“You sent him back.” The skin of her mother’s face is wrinkled and her crow’s feet deep, but her blue eyes are intensely bright. “It’s dangerous.”
