The Orpheus Descent (11 page)

Socrates: And, by and large, can people tell whether an action is good or not?

Me: Some, I suppose.

Socrates: Perhaps people who can’t tell right from wrong have something equivalent to being tone deaf. A sort of moral deafness.

Me: Euphemus certainly suffers from it.

Socrates: He’s making the same mistake as Heraclitus. He makes deductions based on what he sees in the world – and because he sees so much chaos, he deduces there are no rules.

Me: So you’re saying there
are
moral laws too? Laws which govern the things that people know are right and wrong, even if they don’t understand why?

Socrates: Listen to Parmenides:
Use reason to look clearly on things which though they are not there, are there.

Me: I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what these rules are?

Socrates: There’s a long way to go yet.

Socrates loved walking. He loved to walk and talk, and walk and think, up and down and around every street in Athens.
Walking is good for thinking
, he said, though it never worked for me. My thoughts don’t flow until my body is settled, with a pen in my hand and a fresh tablet on the desk.

But perhaps I understand the attraction now. So often with Socrates, I left feeling that I’d travelled a great distance without ever reaching a destination.

At least walking guarantees you’ll get somewhere.

Further south, the scenery began to change. Mountain peaks broke the monotony of the ridge on the horizon. The road grew empty, the settlements fewer and further apart. At night, I heard wolves howling in the distance – or perhaps it was the wild tribes of the interior. Sadly, it didn’t intimidate Euphemus. He told me early and proudly that one of his best courtroom tricks was to speak without seeming to breathe, so that the opposing advocate couldn’t get a word in. It was a skill he demonstrated ad nauseam.

‘Why do you despise the world so much?’

We were climbing over a spur of a mountain, part of the ridge that guarded the plain of Thurii. I’d blanked him out: it was only when he went quiet that I realised he actually wanted me to say something. He repeated the question.

‘I don’t despise the world.’

‘Then why are you so hostile to the sophists?’

‘I hate to tell you this, but despising sophists isn’t the same as despising the world.’

‘But it’s our worldliness that offends you. While philosophers sit on their mountaintops drawing triangles, we’re down in the law courts and the Assembly wrestling with the problems of real life.’

‘
Real
life?’ I echoed. ‘There’s nothing real about it. You don’t try to explain the world: you argue it whichever way you’re paid. You’ll happily claim that black is white, bad is good and the weaker argument is actually stronger.’

‘If enough people can be made to believe that, then perhaps the weaker argument isn’t as weak as you suppose.’

‘It’s not a question of being weak or strong. It’s about true and false.’

He smiled indulgently. ‘Do you think that anyone would believe something he knew was untrue?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Then if something’s demonstrably untrue, how could I possibly persuade anyone otherwise?’

I backtracked. ‘Socrates said at his trial, “Anyone who really cares about justice, and wants to stay alive for any length of time, needs to keep out of public life.”’

‘“
Socrates said …
” You go around quoting him like Homer. Why don’t you just say what
you
think?’

I rounded on him. ‘What
I
think? Do you really want to know?’

‘Very much.’

‘I grew up being told that it was the best men who should rule the state because
we
were the best educated. That
we
were the only ones wise and clever enough to really understand justice. Then
we
took charge – as you know – and butchered our opponents like sheep. Anyone who disagreed, anyone who argued – and once those were out of the way, anyone
we
didn’t like the look of. No trials, just daggers in the night. They even tried to force Socrates to carry out an execution, just so they could discredit him.’

They also came to me
. Not
for
me,
to
me. They played on my vanity. They made me think that the killings and torture were necessary evils to protect Athens, that soon the cancer would be cut away and then we could heal the city. They flattered me that I could use my learning, if only I would help them, to set up the sort of perfect society we’d always talked about.

And the worst of it, my eternal shame, is that I was tempted. When they offered me the blade, I very nearly took it. I saw the surgeon’s scalpel, not the murderer’s knife. I was blinded. Only Socrates had the wisdom to help me see through the illusion.

‘And then the democracy was restored. The new men said we should let the past lie; they passed an amnesty law. It all seemed very just. But they still needed a scapegoat, a sacrifice to appease the people. They executed Socrates, which even the junta didn’t dare to, because democrats hate having their hypocrisy exposed even more than tyrants. And do you know who did the dirty work? Who brought the charges against Socrates? A poet, a businessman and a sophist.

‘That’s why I despise your
real
world. Because men fight over it like a tug of war, trying to pull it to their advantage without any regard for what’s really
true
.’

A second later, I realised I’d conceded Euphemus’ original point. But if he noticed, the look on my face made him think better of mentioning it.

At the side of the road, a boundary stone said we were ten miles from Thurii.

For any philosopher thinking of taking up a public career, Pythagoras’ life offers a cautionary tale.

One hundred and fifty-odd years ago, he sailed out of the east in a blaze of mystery and settled in the Greek colony at Croton, towards the southwestern end of Italy. Pupils flocked to him. In short order, most of the city’s eminent citizens had signed up to his school, including a local strongman called Milo. Pythagoras taught ascetism, contemplation and mathematics. When his zealous pupils noticed that their local rivals, the Sybarites, lived a decidedly un-Pythagorean life of hedonistic luxury, they destroyed Sybaris.

But not everyone took to Pythagoras. Government by the wise is necessarily elitist: the unwise and foolish feel excluded, and tend to resent it. And there’s never any shortage of fools. One night, Pythagoras’ enemies in Croton rose up, burned down his home and massacred his followers. Pythagoras barely escaped. He lived out the rest of his days in exile, not far from Taras. You can still see his house from the road, though it’s now built into a temple complex.

We passed it on the second day, and I insisted on dragging Euphemus over to have a look.

‘Where did Pythagoras get his wisdom from?’ I asked aloud, remembering Agathon’s question to Archytas. ‘You hear a lot about his students and followers, but nothing about his teachers.’

Euphemus studied the plain little house. Next to the stout-pillared temple, it didn’t look like much more than a lamp store.

‘I met a man from Croton, once, on Crete. He told a tale that Pythagoras went down to the underworld, like Orpheus, but instead of bringing back a woman, he brought back wisdom.’

I remembered the tomb that Agathon had cracked open, the gaping hole in the hillside. ‘What could you possibly learn that would be worth that journey?’

Euphemus shrugged. ‘It’s just superstition.’

* * *

On a dark day when the clouds raced low, we reached Thurii. I saw it from far off, a city on the plain, hemmed in by mountains and the grey sea. As we crossed the bridge over the Cratus, past the white temple to Artemis that marked the city limits, Euphemus pointed to the river below. Thick weeds billowed in the stream, clutching the fragments of fallen columns that littered the riverbed like the bones of a lost army.

‘The drowned city of Sybaris. Say what you like about the Pythagoreans, but you don’t want to get on the wrong side of them.’

Thunder rolled down off the mountains and rumbled across the plain. The clouds closed ranks like a shield wall. Raindrops punched rings in the river surface.

Euphemus looked at the sky. ‘It’s going to be bad.’

By the time we reached the city walls, we were both wet as fish. I had to shout to the gateman to make myself heard.

‘Dimos’ house?’

The storm had swept the streets bare. We hurried down the broad avenue, past empty shops and grand temples. Dim figures crowded under the porticoes like the shades of Hades; above, carved monsters crouched on the gutters and spat streams of water at us.

‘The city’s going to be drowned again if we’re not careful,’ Euphemus bellowed in my ear.

‘At least we’re not at sea.’

Lightning flashed, thunder hard on its heels. With a bray of terror, one of our mules jerked his bridle out of my hand and galloped down the street out of sight. There was no point trying to catch him. Euphemus and I dragged the other mule another hundred yards, to the house the gateman had described.

A slave opened the door, hanging back to avoid the rain spattering the threshold.

‘Is this Dimos’ house?’

The slave nodded.

‘Is Agathon here?’

‘For all the gods’ sakes.’ Euphemus elbowed me out of the way, pushed past the slave and shook himself off like a dog. ‘Does it matter? Let’s get out of this rain.’

We stood in the hall while the slave fetched water and washed the mud off our feet. Another slave went to find his master. A third had the thankless task of unloading our mule in the rain. Soon Euphemus’ baggage was dripping another puddle onto the floor.

‘Welcome,’ said a not-terribly-welcoming voice. A body eclipsed the lamp at the end of the corridor: a stout man with sloped shoulders and oily grey hair. He dug his thumbs into his belt, rocked back a little and considered us, like a bale of goods landed unexpectedly outside a warehouse.

‘Do we have business?’

‘Don’t you recognise your own brother?’

Sort of
. There’s no blood shared between us. His father married my mother, a second marriage for both of them. Dimos was fifteen years my senior and out of the house before I could remember. His father named him in a fit of enthusiasm for the Democracy, which gave the wags of Athens plenty of material when the rest of the family threw in their lot with the dictators. Dimos, who has nothing in common with the common man, found it so unbearable he emigrated.

‘And this is Euphemus, the famous sophist and rhetorician.’

If Euphemus had any use at all, I’d hoped he could at least impress my stepbrother. But Dimos barely registered him. ‘My house isn’t an inn for you and your idle friends,’ he muttered as he led us down the corridor. ‘I’m still recovering from the last one you sent here.’

The cold was forgotten. ‘Agathon?’

‘Some would say you’re taking advantage.’

‘Is he here?’

‘Not any more.’

‘When did he leave?’

‘A month ago.’

I stopped on the threshold of the
andron
. ‘But that’s impossible. He was in Taras two weeks ago.’

‘Then that’s where he must have gone.’ He dropped heavily onto a bench and leaned back. ‘Wine! I was glad to get him out of the house.’

‘His host in Taras said he’d come back here.’

‘He could have gone to the moon for all I care. He’s not welcome here.’

His face had gone a vivid red; his shoulders twitched with anger. It seemed an excessive reaction. I put it down to the shock of finding me on his doorstep.

I tried to be nice. ‘It’s good to see you, brother. You look well.’

That wasn’t entirely true. In Athens, when he was young and I was younger, Dimos lived a gilded life: handsome, rich, desirable. Thirty years later, some of the gold has definitely worn off. Scratched and dented, you can see the lead underneath.

‘No one warned me you were coming,’ he grumbled. A slave brought cups of warmed wine. ‘What are you doing in Italy?’

I didn’t dare mention Agathon again. ‘I wanted to study.’

‘You’ll find no philosophy here.’ Dimos is one of those Athenians who emigrated chiefly so he could tell the colonists how much better things are at home. ‘And your friend?’

‘He’s going to work for the tyrant of Syracuse.’

Euphemus made an awkward bow from his couch, like a starfish curling up. ‘Allow me to thank you for your generous hospitality …’

I was sick of the sound of Euphemus’ voice. I drank the wine and listened to the storm, and thought of a hole in the ground that was the last place anyone had seen Agathon.

At Wandsworth police station, a heavy-set constable took him to an interview room and gave him a cup of coffee. She said her name was Ruth. The fluorescent lights flickered and burned as she took his details.

‘Profession?’

‘Musician. I play in a band.’

She looked up. ‘Should I have heard of you?’

He guessed not. Their first album had kindled a small blaze of hype: a profile in the
NME
, a fawning write-up in
Uncut
and a sniffier notice from
The Face
. A couple of singles had lingered around the lower echelons of the charts: they might have broken the Top
20
if they’d sold their song for a mobile phone ad, but Jonah had refused. At the time, he thought it meant they had integrity. But the label had lost interest, and suddenly they weren’t a hot new band but just another group trying to be heard above the noise. The songs got better, the fans were as loyal as ever – but, year by year, it became clear they were never going to make the leap.

‘We once toured with LCD Soundsystem,’ he offered.

‘I’ll take that as a “No”,’ she said, smiling as if it were a joke. ‘Moving on …’

Ruth asked the same questions as the Foreign Office, and got the same answers.

‘So as far as you’re aware, the last time anyone saw her was yesterday morning.’

‘Or afternoon. She got her things from the hotel. The receptionist might have seen her …’ He tailed off, thinking of all the things he could have done differently, the questions he’d have asked in Italy if he’d known Lily wouldn’t be here.