The Athenian Murders (40 page)

He stirred the bowl of liquid vigorously and went on: 'The brotherhood is Thracian in origin, but it now operates mainly in Macedonia. Did you know that Euripides, the celebrated poet, belonged to it in his final years?' He glanced at Heracles, eyebrows raised, no doubt expecting him to show surprise, but the Decipherer gazed back impassively. 'Yes, Euripides himself! He came across our religion and embraced it. He drank
kyon
and was killed by other cult members. As you know, the legend goes that he was torn to pieces by dogs, but it's simply a symbolic way of describing a Lykaion sacrifice. And Heraclitus, the philosopher of Ephesus, who believed that violence and discord are not only necessary to man but desirable, was said to have been devoured by a pack of dogs. He, too, belonged to our sect!'

'Menaechmus mentioned both,' nodded Heracles.

'Indeed, they were brothers of Lykaion.'

Crantor added, as if some idea or related subject of conversation had come to him suddenly: 'Euripides' was quite a strange case. All his life, he shied away, artistically and intellectually, from man's instinctive nature, writing insipid, rationalist plays. In old age, during his voluntary exile to the court of King Archelaus of Macedonia, disillusioned with the hypocrisy of his Athenian homeland, he came across Lykaion. In those days, the brotherhood hadn't reached Attica, but flourished in regions to the north. At Archelaus' court, Euripides witnessed the rites of Lykaion, and was transformed. He wrote a play, a tragedy, quite unlike his previous work -
Bacchantes,
in praise of fury, dance and orgiastic pleasure. He intended it torepay his debt to primitive theatre, which belongs to Dionysus. Poets still wonder how on earth the old master wrote such a thing at the end of his life. But they don't realise that it was his most heartfelt work!'
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Montalo has just said: 'Don't you think
Bacchantes
could be an eidetic work? Blood, fury, madness - it's all there. Perhaps Euripides was describing a Lykaion ritual in eidesis.'

'I can't believe Master Euripides went that insane!' I retorted. (T.'sN.)

'The drug makes you insane,' said Heracles wearily. 'Nobody in their right mind would want to be mutilated by others.'

'So you think it's just the
kyon?'
Crantor gazed at the steaming liquid in the bowl. Tiny golden droplets hung from the rim. 'I believe it's something we have inside us, all of us. The
kyon
enables us to feel it, certainly, but...' He tapped his chest. 'It's here, Heracles. Inside you, too. It can't be translated into words. One can't philosophise about it. It's absurd, if you like, irrational, enraging . . . but
real.
That's the secret we're going to teach all men.' He came closer to Heracles, and his face - a huge shadow - broke into a wide smile. 'Anyway, you know I don't like discussions. We'll find out soon enough whether it's the
kyon,
won't we?'

Heracles tugged at the ropes tied to the golden nails. He felt stiff and weak, but he didn't think the drug had had any effect on him. He looked up at Crantor's craggy face and said: 'You're wrong, Crantor. This isn't a secret that humanity wants to learn. I don't believe in prophecies or oracles, but if I were to predict one thing, I'd say that Athens will be the birthplace of a new kind of man. A man who fights with his eyes and mind, not hishands. A man who will translate the texts of his forebears, and learn from them.'

Crantor listened with eyes wide, as if he were about to burst out laughing.

'The only violence I predict will be in the imagination,' Heracles went on. 'Both men and women will be able to read and write, and will form guilds of learned translators who will edit and decipher the works of our contemporaries. And, as they translate the writings left by others, they will find out about the world before the reign of reason. Neither you nor I will see it, Crantor, but man is advancing towards Reason, not Instinct.'
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135
Heracles' predictions have come true! Perhaps this is the key to the novel!

Montalo stares at me in silence. 'Carry on translating,' he says. (T.'sN.)

'No,' said Crantor, smiling. 'You're the one who's wrong.'

With a strange look on his face, he seemed to be staring not at Heracles but at somebody behind him, set into the rock, or perhaps beneath his feet, at invisible depths, though Heracles could not be sure in the growing darkness.

Crantor, in fact, was looking at you.
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'Strange,' I note. 'A change to the second person again ...' 'Carry on translating!' my kidnapper interrupts anxiously, as if
we have come to a crucial point in the text.
(T.'s N.)

He said: "These translators that you prophesy will discover nothing, because they won't exist, Heracles. Philosophy will never triumph over instinct.' Raising his voice, he went on: 'Heracles appears to defeat the monsters, but between the lines, in texts, in fine speeches, in logical reasoning, in the thoughts ofmen,
the Hydra raises its multiple heads, the terrifying lion roars and the bronze hoofs of the flesh-eating mares thunder.
Human nature is not
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¹³⁷
What's the matter?' Montalo asks. 'These words of
Crantor's,
I'm trembling. 'What about them?' 'My father ... I remember . ..'

'Yes!' Montalo urges me on. 'Yes! Your father, what?' 'He wrote a poem a long time ago.'

Montalo urges me on again. I try to remember. This is the first stanza of my father's

poem, as I remember it:

The Hydra raises its many heads,

The terrifying lion roars, and the bronze hoofs

Of the flesh-eating mares thunder.

'It's the opening of one of my father's poems!'

I declare, astounded. Montalo looks sad for a moment. He nods and murmurs, 'I know the rest:

The theories and ideas of men sometimes

Seem like the exploits of Hercules,

In a perpetual struggle with creatures

That oppose his noble reason.

But I sometimes picture my poor soul

As a translator locked up by a madman,

Forced to decipher an absurd text,

Struggling to find meaning.

And you, final Truth, Platonic Idea –

In your beauty and fragility

So like a lily in the hands of a young girl –

How you cry for help once you realise

That your own non-being will bury you!

Oh Hercules, how futile are your exploits,

For I know men who love monsters,

Who give themselves up with delight to the sacrifice,

Making of the bites their religion!

The bull roars amidst the blood,

The hound barks and spews flames,

The serpent still eagerly watches

Over the golden apples in the garden.

I've written out the whole poem. I'm rereading it. I remember it. 'It's one of my father's poems!'

Montalo looks down. What will he say? He says: 'It's a poem by Philotextus of Chersonnese. Do you remember him?'

'The writer who appears in Chapter Seven at the dinner with the tutors at the Academy?'

'That's right. Philotextus used his own poem as inspiration for the eidetic images contained in
The Athenian Murders:
the Labours of Hercules, the girl with the lily, the translator ...'

'But then . . .'

Montalo nods, his face inscrutable. 'Yes.
The Athenian Murders
was written by Philotextus of Chersonnese,' he says. 'Don't ask me how I know, the fact is, I just do. But please continue with your translation. There's still a little more before the end.' (T.'s
N.)

'Human nature is not a text to which a translator can find a final key, Heracles, or even a set of invisible ideas. So defeating the monsters is futile, for they lurk
within
you.
The
kyon
will awaken them soon. Can you feel them shifting in your entrails yet?'

Heracles was about to make a sarcastic reply when he heard a groan in the darkness beyond the brazier, coming from one of the vague shapes at the foot of the wall opposite. Although he couldn't see who it was, he recognised the voice immediately.

'Diagoras!' he said. 'What have you done to him?'

'Nothing he ha
sn't done to himself’
replied Crantor. 'He drank
kyon . . .
and I assure you we were all surprised at how quickly it took effect.' He raised his voice and added, mocking: 'Oh, our noble Platonist philosopher! The great idealist! What rage against himself he had inside, by Zeus!'

Cerberus - a pale shape circling Crantor - provided a furious accompaniment to his master's words. His barks formed chains of echoes. Crantor bent down and stroked him affectionately. 'No, no ... Calm down, Cerberus ... It's all right

Meanwhile, Heracles tugged sharply at the rope tied to one of the gold nails. It gave slightly. Encouraged, he pulled again and, soundlessly, the nail came out of the wall. Crantor was still attending to his dog. Heracles had to be quick now. But when he tried to move his free hand, he found that the fingers wouldn't obey him - they were frozen, filled from root to tip with an army of tiny snakes that had multiplied beneath the skin. So he pulled as hard as he could at the other gold nail.

As it gave way, Crantor turned round.

Heracles Pontor was a short, fat man. In addition, his aching arms now hung, useless, at his sides like broken tools. He realised immediately that his only hope lay in using one of the nearby objects as a weapon. His eyes selected the poker protruding from the embers. But it was too far away, and Crantor, now bearing down upon him furiously, would block his path. So, in a heartbeat, or the blink of an eye, during which time stopped and thought ceased, the Decipherer realised, without even looking to check, that the golden nails were still hanging from the ropes tied to his wrists. When Crantor's shadow grew so large that it engulfed Heracles' entire body, he swiftly raised his right arm and described a quick, violent semicircle in the air.

Perhaps Crantor expected the blow to come from Heracles' fist, for when he saw it pass without hitting him, he did not dodge and so received the nail full in the face. Heracles wasn't sure exactly where he'd struck, but he heard the pain. He lunged, eyes fixed on the poker, but a sharp kick to his chest winded him. He collapsed on his side and rolled like a ripe fruit that had fallen from a tree.

During the torment that followed, he recalled how he had competed in the pancratium in his youth. He even remembered the names of some of his opponents. Scenes, images of triumph and defeat filled his memory... But his thoughts fragmented ... Sentences lost coherence ... They became loose words ...

Cowering and shielding his head, he endured his punishment. When the rocks that were Crantor's feet ceased kicking him, he breathed in and smelt blood. The blows had swept him like a flabby piece of rubbish against one of the walls. Crantor was speaking, but Heracles couldn't make out what he was saying - a savage, terrifying child was shouting foreign words in his ear, dribbling sickening, bitter saliva over his face. He recognised Cerberus. He turned his head and half opened his eyes. The dog, right beside his face, was a loud, wrinkled mask with empty sockets. He seemed like a ghost of himself. Beyond, across an infinite expanse of pain, Crantor stood with his back to him. Was he saying something? Heracles couldn't be sure, for Cerberus was a barrier of noise between him and all other sounds. Why was Crantor no longer kicking him? Why wasn't he finishing him off?

He thought of something. It wasn't a good plan, but by then nothing was good. He grabbed the dog's puny body with both hands. Unused to being handled by strangers, it struggled, like a baby that appeared to consist predominantly of two rows of very sharp teeth. Heracles held his frantic prey well away as he lifted it. Crantor must have heard the change of tone in the dog's barking, for he turned and started shouting. For a moment Heracles allowed himself to recall that he hadn't been a bad discus thrower.

Like a soft bundle tossed playfully by a child, Cerberus crashed into the brazier, knocking it and the bowl over. When the embers, spread over the ground like the slow juice from a volcano, came into contact with the animal's coat, the barking again changed. Smeared with flames, the dog rolled across the floor. Heracles hadn't thrown it very hard, but the added momentum came from the movements of the animal itself - it was a furious whirl of embers. Its howls, surrounded by echoes, pierced Heracles' ears like golden needles. As he had guessed, Crantor hesitated only a moment between attacking him again and rescuing the dog, and decided immediately to rescue the dog.