The Athenian Murders (35 page)

A noise startled him. Ponsica was trying to get up. As she turned, two thick lines of blood ran from the eye openings of the mask. The white, artificial face striped with red was terrifying. It can't be, thought Heracles. I broke several of her ribs. She must be dying. She shouldn't be moving. He recalled the fable of the merciless automatons created by the inventor Daedalus. Ponsica's movements reminded him of a broken mechanical device - she would rest on one hand, sit up, fall over again, lean on her hand again, in a jerking pantomime. At last, perhaps realising the futility of her attempts, she grabbed the dagger and began draggin
g herself with relentless deter
mination towards Heracles. Parallel trails of humours spewed from her eyes.

'Why do you hate me so much, Ponsica?' asked Heracles.

She stopped at his feet, her breath seething in her chest, and raised the dagger, trembling, in one last hopeless attempt. Her strength failed and the knife fell to the floor with a clatter. She gave a deep sigh that ended in a furious grunt, and lay there, even her breathing seeming to express rage, still refusing to admit defeat. Heracles gazed at her in wonder. Cautiously, he moved closer, like a hunter uncertain that his prey is dead. Before ending her life, he wanted to understand. He bent down and removed the mask. He examined the face, marbled with scars, and the conspicuously ravaged eyes. She was opening and closing her mouth like a fish.

'When did you start hating me?'

It was like asking when she had decided to become a human being, a free woman, because it struck him suddenly that her hatred had, like the will of a powerful king, released her from slavery. He remembered the day he saw her in the market, alone, ignored by buyers; and the years of efficient service, the silent gestures, the docile behaviour, her compliance when he requested - ordered - that she wear a mask. He could find no hint, no moment in all that time that might explain it, or have led him to suspect.

'Ponsica,' he whispered in her ear, 'tell me why. You can still move your hands.'

She was struggling for breath. The devastated face, in profile - eyes like embryo birds or snakes crushed in their shells -was horrifying. But Heracles was watching only for a reply. He worried that she might die without answering. He saw that her left hand was scratching at the floor, but there were no words. He looked at the other hand, now no longer holding the dagger. There were no words.

During the terrible silence, he thought: When was it? When were you granted your freedom, or when did you find it yourself? Perhaps you really went to Eleusis, like so many others, and came across them there . . . He leaned over a little further and noticed the same smell he had found on the breath of Eumarchus' and Antisus' corpses, though not on Euneos'. Of course, he remembered, Euneos stank of wine.

Suddenly he heard the beating of a heart. His own? Hers? Perhaps hers, as she was dying. Her suffering must be atrocious, but she doesn't seem to care. He moved away from the heartbeats. The memory of his recurring nightmare overcame him once more, but this time it gripped his troubled mind as if a waking state were the light needed to end the deep gloom. He saw the torn-out heart, the hand gripping it; he could make out the soldier and he understood his words at last.

And he remembered what he had forgotten, the small detail that the dream had been screaming at him fiercely, incomprehensibly, from the start.

Throughout Ponsica's long agony, Heracles stood motionlessbeside her, staring into space. By the time she died, the new day had dawned and rays of sun crossed the dimly lit bedroom. But still Heracles did not move.
¹²⁰

¹²⁰
_{I’ve
saved your life}

Heracles Pontor, my old friend! I can't quite believe it, but I think I've saved your life, and I weep at the thought. As I translated, I wrote down my own cry of alarm, and you heard it. Of course, one might think that I read the text beforehand and then, when I came to translate it, wrote the word a line before it appeared, but I swear that's not what happened; at least, not consciously . . . And now, what have you remembered? Why don't I remember it, too? I should have realised, like you, but...

Important things have happened. My jailer has just left. I was translating Chapter Ten when he made his usual abrupt entrance, wearing the smiling mask and
black cloak, as always. He paced one way then the other, before asking: 'How is it going?'

'I've finished Chapter Ten. The eidesis refers to Hippolyta's Girdle, and the women warriors, the Amazons. But,' I added, 'I'm in it, too.'

'Really?'

'You know it better than anyone,' I said.

The mask, with its permanent smile, stared at me. 'I've already told you, I haven't added any text to the novel,' he insisted.

I breathed deeply, and looked over my notes. 'When Heracles is lying with the dancer Yasintra, his body is described as 'slim'. But, as the reader knows, Heracles is very fat.'

'So?'

'I'm slim.'

His laughter, through the mask, sounded forced. When he stopped laughing, he said:
'Leptos
in Greek means "slim" but also "subtle", as you know. And any reader would understand that what is referred to here is Heracles Pontor's subtle intelligence, not his girth ... The sentence is, as I recall, literally: "Subtle Heracles tensed his body." He's called "subtle Heracles" in the same way Homer describes Ulysses as "cunning" .. .' He laughed again. 'Of course it
suits
you,
to translate
leptos
as "slim", and I can imagine why! But don't worry, you're not the only one: each person reads what he wants to read. Words are just a set of symbols that adapt to suit us.'

He similarly demolished the rest of my supposed evidence -
Heracles, too, could have had a 'receding hairline', and mention of a 'black' beard (like mine), instead of a 'silver' one, could have been due to an error on the copyist's part. The scar on the left
cheek, memento of a 'childhood fight', so like one I have, was probably a 'coincidence', and the same went for the ring on the middle finger of the left hand.

'Thousands of people have scars and wear rings,' he said. 'The thing is, you admire the protagonist and want to be like him, no matter what. . . particularly at the most interesting times. All readers have the same arrogance; you all assume the text was written with you in mind, and when you read it, you imagine the scene in your own way!' His voice suddenly matched the mask's expression. 'I'm sure you
had a good time
while you were reading those paragraphs, didn't you? Don't look at me like that, it's not unusual!'

Making the most of my uncomfortable silence, he leaned over and read the note that I was writing when he arrived. 'What's this? You "saved his life"?' he said incredulously, standing behind me. 'These eidetic novels are really powerful! Strange, a work written so long ago . . . and it still arouses such strong feelings!'

But his laughter ceased abruptly when I said: 'Perhaps it wasn't written
so long ago.'

It felt good to strike back!

For a moment he peered at me inscrutably through the eye holes in the mask, before spitting out: 'What do you mean?'

'According to Montalo, the papyrus on which this chapter was written smelt of a woman, and had the texture of a "breast" and an "athlete's arm". In its way, the ridiculous note is eidetic, too, it represents the "woman-man" or "woman warrior" in the Labour of the Girdle of Hippolyta. Looking back, we find similar examples in the descriptions of the papyrus for each chapter . . .'

'And what do you deduce from that?'

"That Montalo's role is
part of the text.'
I smiled at his silence. 'His few footnotes have nothing to do with the style: they're eidetic, they reinforce the images in the book. It always surprised me that an erudite man like Montalo never noticed that
The Athenian Murders
was eidetic. But now I know that
he knew,
and he was playing with the eidesis
in the same way
the author does in the novel.'

'I can see you've given this a lot of thought,' he said. 'Anything else?'

'The Athenian Murders,
as we know it, is a
bogus
novel. Now I understand why nobody has ever heard of it. We only have Montalo's edition, not the original. The book's written with a possible translator in mind, and is full of devices and traps that could only have been devised by another, similarly gifted or better, writer . . . The only explanation I can think of is ... that Montalo
wrote it!

The mask said nothing. I went on, implacable: 'The original of
The Athenian Murders
didn't disappear
-
Montalo's edition is the original!'

'And why would Montalo have written something like this?' my jailer asked neutrally.

'Because he went insane,' I answered. 'He was obsessed with eidetic novels. He thought they could prove Plato's Theory of Ideas, and therefore demonstrate that the world, life, the universe are reasonable and just. But he failed. He went mad, and wrote an eidetic novel himself, using his knowledge of Greek and the techniques of eidesis.
The work was intended for his colleagues. It was a way of saying: "Look! Ideas exist! Here they are! Come on! Find the final key!'"

'But Montalo didn't know what the key was,' retorted my jailer. 'I locked him up.'

I stared into the black eye holes and said: 'That's enough lies, Montalo.'

Heracles Pontor himself couldn't have done better!

'In spite of everything,' I added, for he said nothing, 'you've played an intelligent game. You passed off an old tramp as Montalo's corpse ... I prefer to believe that you found him dead and dressed him in your ripped clothes, copying the trick you thought up for Euneos' murder. Once you'd officially been declared dead, you started
operating in the shadows. You wrote the novel with a possible translator in mind. When you found out I'd been commissioned to translate it, you kept an eye on me. You added bogus pages to confuse me, to make me become obsessed with the text, since, as you yourself put it, "You can't become obsessed with something without feeling you're part of it." And finally, you kidnapped me and locked me in here. Maybe this is the cellar of your house ... or the place you've been hiding since you faked your death ... So what do you want from me? The same thing you've always wanted: to prove the existence of Ideas! If I manage to find the images that
you've
hidden in
your
book, then that means Ideas exist independently of whoever thinks them. Isn't that so?'

After an extremely long silence during which my face, like his, was a smiling mask, he said, stressing every word: 'Translator,
stay
in the
cave
of your footnotes. Don't try to escape
up into the text.
You're not a Decipherer of Enigmas, however much you'd like to be ... You're just a translator. So
carry on translating]'

'Why should I restrict myself to being just a translator, when you don't stick to being a
reader?'
I said defiantly. 'Since you're the author of the novel, I'm free to imitate the characters!'

'I'm not the author of
The Athetiian Murders!
the mask said, moaned almost.

And he left, slamming the door behind him. I feel better. I think I've won this round.
(T.'s
N.)

XI
¹²¹

The man descended the steep stone steps to the place where death awaited. It was an underground chamber, lit by oil lamps, consisting of a small vestibule and a central corridor lined with cells. The smell pervading it was, however, not the smell of death but that of the preceding moment - agony. Thedifference between the two was subtle, thought the man, but any dog could have distinguished between them. He found it logical that it should reek thus, for it was the jail where prisoners sentenced to death awaited execution.

¹²¹
I was woken by the furious barking of dogs. I can still hear them; they sound quite close. I wonder if my jailer is trying to scare me, or whether it's just a coincidence (one thing is certain, at least: he wasn't lying when he said he owned dogs). But there's a third, rather strange, possibility: I've got two chapters left to translate, with a Labour of Hercules in each; if they're in the right order, this one - Chapter Eleven - should refer to the dog Cerberus, while the last one should be the Apple of the Hesperides. In the Labour of Cerberus, Hercules goes down to the Underworld to capture the many-headed
dog
fiercely guarding its gates. Surely my masked jailer isn't trying to create an eidesis with
reality?
Incidentally, Montalo notes that the papyrus is 'torn and di
rty and smells of dead dog'. (T
.'sN.)