Let Slip The Princesses of War (17 page)

I stand up, or almost stand up and rap my head on the surprisingly low ceiling.   I sit back down and suddenly woozy, I lay back down and, no surprise here, pass out again. 

I wake up again and this time the room is less than completely dark, there is a light coming through the door.  I check my cell, 4:14 PM; still no signal and the battery is low.

Back through the process, sitting, carefully standing, bent over to avoid the ceiling and, really without moving, I push open the door.  Light floods my eyes and for a few moments I’m blind.  Then, I duck down and pass through the doorway.  I feel pretty steady. 

I’m on a 2
nd
floor gallery overlooking a courtyard.  This seems to confirm my guess that I’m at the farm house of the driver’s mother. 

There is a woman down in the courtyard, she looks to be in her late 50’s or early 60’s – could be the mother – she is dressed in what, I imagine, must have been the fashion here for thousands of years, a kind of short dress, belted and actual Greek sandals.  It’s like my own personal reenactment museum. 
Colonial Williamsburg
but with Greeks!

I call down to her “Hello” I say in English, then a second later in Greek. “Where are Dorothea and the cabdriver?” I really have to ask his name.  There is some kind of bond you form with people who have been both drunk and in a crash with you. 

She looks up at me and seems surprised to see me.  Maybe the driver didn’t mention me?  Without a word, she disappears into one of the doors and returns a few moments later with a man.  Not the driver.  Someone else, also dressed in some odd clothing, also wearing sandals, maybe late 30’s.  He starts to climb the stairs to my floor.  As he is climbing I say to him “Hi, I’m Robert, I was with the cabdriver and Dorothea last night when we had the accident.  Are they ok?  Where are they?  I need to make a phone call and get to Athens as soon as possible.”

He said something I didn’t catch as he rounds the gallery towards me.  When we were face to face he repeated himself (or maybe said something different).  It sounded like Greek, similar sounds and even some words that almost sounded like words I should know, but I couldn’t understand a thing he said.

So, I repeated myself, slowly and pronouncing each word as carefully as I could.  He seemed confused.  But a look of recognition crossed his face at the word Athens.  So, I repeated it.  “Athens.  I need to get to Athens.” Accompanied with the proper hand signals. Finger pointing at my chest at “I” and making some kind of gesture to convey “go”. 

He repeated with a strange accent “Athens”.   Was it possible that the accent was so different that we couldn’t communicate this close to Athens?  The driver and I had done fine, the rest of the family at the restaurant too. 

But I remember meeting a guy from Boston years ago and I could hardly understand him, also a cabdriver in Ireland who had spoken to me for the full 20 minute ride to the airport (what is with these chatty cabdrivers?) and I’d only understood that he was no fan of George Bush.  And all of us had been native English speakers. 

So, I repeated “Athens” and he repeated “Athens” and finally I think we both realized this was the limit of our communication. 

“Dorothea?” I tried.  But this was met with a blank.

“Cabdriver?” Blank.

“My friends?”

“Friends” he repeated oddly, but enthusiastically. 

Then he reached out and grabbed the front of my suit jacket.  It was rumpled – car accident, sleeping in my clothes – and a little dirty.  He rubbed it between his fingers.  And said …. Something.

“It’s OK, no need to worry.  I have clean clothes at the hotel.  I just need to get to Athens and everything will be fine.”

“Athens” he repeated, not letting go of my jacket.

Before we could get into another round of
who’s on first
,
the woman approached with a clay tumbler.  She held it out to me and I think she said “water?”

I was suddenly wildly thirsty.  I took the tumbler with a thanks and drained it practically in one go. 

Now that I had another audience member I tried again to see if we could communicate. 

“Hi, I’m Robert, I was with Dorothea and the cabdriver last night.  Where are they?  Are they ok?  I need to get to Athens, or at least make a phone call.  My cell can’t get a signal here.  Is there a phone?”

“Athens” they both repeated.  It was almost comic.  Almost. 

Then suddenly I had a bright idea.  I pulled out my cell phone.  They stared.  I put it to my ear and mimed making a phone call.  Nothing.  I turned it on to show them the
no signal
and as I turned it to them they both jumped back in surprise.  The woman backed away as if it would bite her and the man stared at it as if it was the strangest thing he has ever seen. 

OK, enough of this!  We couldn’t communicate, and I needed to get to Athens.  Neither the cabdriver nor Dorothea were my problem.  They were with family.  Nobody here spoke the kind of Greek I spoke, but nearby there must be somebody who I could talk to who could, at least, let me make a call! 

I took a step towards the stairs (also towards the woman) – she let out a small shriek and she turned and ran. 

I put away my phone and brushing past the man, I started for the stairs. 

Once downstairs in the courtyard I could see several open rooms and one closed door.  Assuming the closed one to be the front door, I went to it.  There was an odd type of latching system that took me a moment to figure out.  While I was fumbling with the door, the man, still on the gallery above, saw what I was doing and started to shout.  I made out the word “NO!” but nothing else. 

I assumed that he was worried that the cabdriver or Dorothea would come by looking for me, but at the moment, I was more concerned about calling someone on my team to explain my absence and figure out how to get back to Athens.  For all I knew, the entire Athens police force was out looking for me.  I was, after all, an “international banker” and we were less than popular in Greece at the moment.  There’d been riots.

Besides, the cabdriver and Dorothea had essentially abandoned me.  I really couldn’t waste any more time. 

So, I opened the door and walked into the street outside.  I was so surprised that there was a street and a house across the street and people in the street that I really didn’t look around too closely.  I had thought I was in an old farm house and so, of course, I had expected a farm outside.

Once I looked around a little more, I was even more surprised.  Shocked really.  There were people in the streets, a fair number, and they were all dressed pretty much like the people in the house.  Short belted dresses or robe type things and all with sandals.  In fact, the whole place was like a reenactment museum.  Was there a “Colonial Athens”?

I stopped an old woman with a mule loaded with a large clay jar.  “Excuse me,” I started in my most careful Greek, “I need to get to a phone.  Or a cab back to Athens.  Can you help me?”

“Athens?” she said. 

I think I was about to lose my temper when I felt a hand on my shoulder.  It was the man from inside the house.  He was talking to me fast and clearly he was worried and excited.  He was pulling me back towards the house. 

But, I wasn’t interested in going back to the house.  I wanted to find a phone!  I shook off his hand and started walking down the street.  He followed, but at a short distance. 

I stopped a few more people with no success.  It was crazy.  How could nobody speak Greek this close to Athens, even in a weird rural village where people still used mules (there were a surprising number of mules).  Was this, in fact, a reenactment museum?  Were they all acting and unwilling to break character even to help someone in distress? 

I walked, wandering more or less without direction, hoping to reach a paved road or find a telephone or something.  The man from the house followed diligently. 

I came across an open square.  It looked like a marketplace with stalls and tables and people buying and selling.  Hundreds of people.  All dressed in old fashioned clothes.  If this was a reenactment museum it was the best in the world.  And I seemed to be the only visitor. As I thought this I looked behind me. The man from the house was there, but so was a fair sized crowd of people.  Apparently following me.  If this was a museum, I, apparently, was the star exhibit.

And then I looked up.  There was the
Acropolis
.  I’d seen this view, more or less exactly, from near my hotel (which had a lovely view of the Acropolis).  Only the buildings were complete. 

I was rooted in my spot.  While it might have been possible to construct this museum and staff it with these hundreds of actors and construct a copy of the
Parthenon
and other buildings (there’s a replica in
Nashville, Tennessee
), it would be impossible to build a full size replica of the Acropolis.  I mean, it’s a god damn mountain!  

What was going on?

Let me digress for a moment and talk about dental floss.  Yep, dental floss. 

I once bought a package of dental floss.  My usual kind.  A package of dental floss would usually last me about a month.  Sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more.  This particular brand had a little plastic window build into the container so you could see how much floss was left.  But, for some unknown reason, they made the window dark blue, so you (or at least I) couldn’t actually see how much floss was left.  But all this was normal.  I opened the floss and used it, just like usual, day after day. 

Then one day, I thought, “that’s weird, I’ve been using this floss for a long time now.  More than a month, much more.” So, I started to pay attention, how long would it last?  What if it never ran out?  This went on for months.  I started to think it was a violation of the law against creation of matter and energy. 

Here is the important point: If it was a violation of the laws of physics, even just the never-ending dental floss, it would change everything.  I would have to reevaluate everything I thought I knew.  When faced with undeniable facts that seems to violate the laws of nature, we don’t have any choice but to accept them.  Or I might have been crazy.

Of course, the dental floss eventually DID run out.  They probably just accidentally spooled extra floss on the spool.  No need to reevaluate anything and my sanity seemed safe.

At least until I found myself at the foot of the Acropolis looking up at a newly constructed Parthenon.

I was in daze. Trying to make sense of the situation.  What were the options? 

1)              I had been in an accident.  It was more than possible I was in a coma or on drugs and this was a dream.  It didn’t feel like a dream, too sequential, nothing changing form or location.  But what did I know?  I had never been in a coma before, maybe coma dreams are different.

2)              The insanity option.  This seemed unlikely.  I had no history of any mental problems.  And if this was a hallucination, it was a very orderly hallucination.  The same reasons it was unlikely to be a dream argued against it being a hallucination. 

In favor of it being a hallucination were my interactions with other people.  They seemed confused by my behavior, they found me odd, and we had difficulty communicating. Kind of what I imagine people in the midst of a psychotic break must experience.  So, crazy?  Maybe.

3)              The dental floss never ends.  This was real.  I was back in time or in a parallel universe.  How?  Who knows?  Everything we think we know is wrong.

Are there other options?  Maybe.  Maybe I was dead and this was some kind of afterlife. I don’t really believe in that kind of thing, but I didn’t believe in THIS kind of thing either.

In the end I decided it didn’t matter.  If I was dreaming, I was in the dream and had to live the dream until it ended.  If I was crazy, I was in the crazy and had to live the crazy until it ended. And if I was in a real weird place, I was in a real weird place and had to live in the weird place until it ended. 

I’m a lawyer and making pragmatic, what is obtainable, decisions in difficult situations is part of my makeup.

But, it made no sense!  How had I gotten here?  If it was some kind of time travel/multiverse hopping thing, aside from the impossible physics, why was I in Athens and not Megara? The last place I had been was Megara.  This argues in favor of the dream/coma/crazy explanations.  I didn’t know Megara well and it might have been easier for my unconscious to imagine ancient Athens (which I also didn’t know well…).  And what about the cabdriver and Dorothea?  This seemed to argue in favor of it being a real experience.  I probably would have brought them with me into a dream/hallucination, at least the pretty Dorothea.  But as I said, it didn’t matter. 

Try as I might to remember that the explanation was irrelevant, I never could stop myself from occasionally getting lost trying to figure it out.  It makes no sense.  The dental floss never runs out…

After a few minutes, the man from the house (Isodemos, I later found out, was his name) came forward and placed his hand on my elbow and I let him guide me back to the house.