Time Travelers Never Die (25 page)

Two or three letters took issue with her conclusions, and one quibbled with the dates of two of Aeschylus’s plays. As if it mattered.

Penguin Group wanted a blurb for a Margaret Seaborn book on Archimedes. That would be an easy assignment: Seaborn was always reliable. And the University of Kansas wanted her to speak at their graduation next year.

Eventually, she worked her way back to the manila envelope, which was sealed with tape. It wasn’t
too
heavy. Not book-length, at least. She couldn’t find her letter opener—Aspasia was not good at putting things back where they belonged—and eventually she had to get a knife from the kitchen.

The envelope did indeed contain a manuscript, but it was in
Greek
. Classical Greek. And the title startled her:
Achilles
. By Sophocles.

Someone’s idea of a joke.

There was an accompanying note. Hand-printed.

No signature.

There was nothing else.

It was, of course, a hoax. And what a pity. Tempting her with one of the lost plays. If only—

She looked at the list of characters. There were five: Achilles, the priest Trainor, Polyxena, Paris, and Apollo. And, naturally, a chorus.

She dropped the note and the manuscript into the trash.

ASPASIA
had an afternoon class. It would require some preparation, and she also had to meet with one of her graduate students. A stack of essays waited in a bookcase.

She sighed, retrieved them, and started on the first one. It was an analysis of
The Odyssey
. The student was trying to show it had been created by a woman. And, in any case, by someone other than the author of
The Iliad
. Nothing new there.

The second was a commentary on the development of the epic. Its Bronze Age beginnings. Its popularity in the preliterate world. A third essay listed the author’s suggestions for six additional epics to complete the Trojan cycle. Paris makes off with Helen. Agamemnon rallies the troops but has to sacrifice his daughter. And so on.

She wondered if the lost epics had been as powerful as the two that had survived. Most experts thought not. If they’d been lost, the reasoning went, it was because they deserved to be lost.

Nonsense.

How nice it would be to find one of the other works in the cycle. Perhaps stashed in a trunk in an attic in Athens. Or maybe it would come in the mail.

Like Sophocles.

The trash can stood beside the computer table. She looked at it. Allowed her irritation free rein. That someone would play this kind of joke.

She fished the manuscript out.

Scene one was set in the chapel of Apollo.

The chapel would have been located outside the walls of Troy so that soldiers from both sides could worship there. One version of the story maintained that Achilles had violated the chapel by killing the young Troilus within its walls.

In the play, it is early evening, and Achilles stands with the Greek priest Trainor just outside the chapel door, reluctant to enter because of his crime, wishing there were a way to appease the god, when he sees the beautiful Polyxena. “Who is she?” he asks Trainor.

“The daughter of Priam,” he replies. “She comes here every evening now. To pray for an end to the conflict.”

Achilles remarks that those prayers are probably in vain. But, in the manner of classical drama, he is hopelessly in love with Polyxena from the first moment. When he approaches her, however, she asks, “Are you not Achilles, destroyer of my people?”

It’s not a good start for a romance. But the hero is smitten with her. And of course no one could accuse Achilles of being shy. In a moving scene on the edge of the Trojan plain, he wins her love.

Polyxena sees an opportunity to use her influence with him to stop the war. But she blunders by taking her brother Paris into her confidence. And Paris sees an opportunity to take Achilles out of play. “I must talk with him,” says Paris. “Can you have him meet me in the chapel?”

Polyxena assures him she can manage it. When she exits, Paris looks out at the audience. “I would not betray my sister. Nor strike from the dark, which is a coward’s way. Yet it is the only way to bring him down. The Acheans without Achilles would be hawks without talons. They would still bite, but they would draw no blood.” It is a heartbreaking decision.

Aspasia’s heart was picking up. It might not be Sophocles, but it was surprisingly good.

Achilles is also weary of the unending war. But he does not trust Paris. “It is the will of the gods,” says Trainor, who shares the general impatience with the fighting. “They have provided a path whereby you might win back the favor of Apollo.”

Ultimately, Achilles accedes to the rendezvous and enters the chapel. Paris is waiting in the shadows with his bow. And Apollo guides the arrow. Polyxena collapses over the dying Achilles, rages against her brother’s betrayal, and brandishes a dagger. She cradles her lover’s now-lifeless body and raises the weapon. “Let us go together from this dark place,” she tells him.

Paris, seeing what she is about to do, pleads with her, but she cannot be appeased. She plunges the dagger into her breast and, within moments, Paris follows her lead.

The narrative, and the staging of the action, is very much in Sophocles’ mode. And the language is classical Greek. Aspasia doubted there were three or four people in the United States who could have gotten the details right. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble.

 

 

SHE
called Miles Greenberg, who taught programming. He was an easygoing guy, recently divorced, lonely, but glad to be out of a marriage that had never worked. “Got a problem, Miles.”

“I have a copy of a play that someone claims was written by Sophocles. Is there some software that can do an analysis?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t know. It’s anonymous.”

“Yes.”

“No. It’s not an obvious forgery.”

“Probably.”

“Of course.”

“For Shakespeare.”

“Okay.”

“Seven.”

She was due at school and reluctantly decided to put the issue aside until evening. It is, she told herself, a fake. Don’t get your hopes up. If it weren’t, why on earth would they have sent it anonymously?

At the end of the day, she got tied up in a faculty meeting. Consequently, it was almost dark before she got home. She came in the door, the place lit up, and she dropped her bag on the nearest chair. She had a message waiting from Miles:
“Aspasia, I have the software. Call me when you can.”

 

 

IT
was Miles’s busy season, so it was almost a week before they could get together. For Aspasia, it was a difficult time. She read and reread the
Achilles
. And yes, it
did
have the power of Sophoclean drama, the classic confrontation in which the moral course is unclear, and any decision might easily prove lethal.

She wanted this to be what it pretended to be. If she actually held in her hands one of the lost plays, it would give her life a level of meaning for which she could never have hoped. And because she so desperately wanted it to be true, she knew she could not manage an objective judgment.

The reality was that she could probably have produced a play of this calibre herself. All that was needed was a command of the language and a familiarity with classical dramatic technique. One could not read a work of literature and safely assign greatness to it. That was something that came only with time. With the approbation of generations. All she knew at this point was that the play
touched
her, that it struck her sensibilities as
Antigone
had, and
Oedipus at Colonus
.

She told herself to relax and tried to forget the manuscript. She made no effort to do an English translation. That would mean she was taking it seriously, and only an idiot would do that.

Still, emotionally, she moved into that nondescript chapel outside the Trojan wall. She saw it as it would have been, had it existed at all: a modest stone structure with a statue of Apollo near the altar, the whole illuminated by a series of flickering candles or oil lamps. A handful of worshippers would be kneeling before the god, heads bent, praying that they might return from the endless conflict to their families. And in back, hidden among the shadows, would be Paris, waiting with that notched arrow.

Finally, Miles showed up with the software. It was called Reading the Syntax. It wasn’t the original Shakespearean program, but something more recent that was being used in classrooms in an effort to help students become creative writers. It analyzed
their
work. “But,” he said, “I can’t see that it won’t be just as effective. And we can adjust it for classical Greek.”

Miles was in his thirties, with dark hair and good features. His eyebrows were always raised, giving him a permanently surprised look. He was endlessly enthusiastic about computers, and, given the least encouragement, would talk endlessly about the latest technological achievement.

Aspasia had already scanned the seven extant plays into the computer. Miles sat down and loaded the software. Then he asked some questions about Greek verbs and sentence structure and relative pronouns and so on. He entered her responses, directed it to compare the
Achilles
to the other seven, and to establish a degree of likelihood that all eight came from the same author. He looked up at her, said “Good luck,” and clicked on START. “Shouldn’t take long,” he said.

The system hummed and beeped for a minute or so. Then it provided a few bars of Rachmaninoff, signifying that the process was complete.

PROBABILITY ONE AUTHOR: 87%

“There you go,” said Miles.

Oh God, let it be so. “But, if I were trying to imitate Sophocles, I bet I could produce a strong similarity, too.”

“Maybe,” said Miles. “I don’t know. Not my area of expertise.”

Yeah. How do you measure genius?

She looked again at the letter that had accompanied the manuscript:
If you’d like to see more . . .

What else did they have?

After Miles left, she began translating
Achilles
into English.

FOUR
days after she’d posted the translation, another package arrived. Again, with no return address. This one mailed from Cherry Hill, New Jersey. She had the letter opener ready this time.