I dithered a moment at the foot of the stairs. I thought of calling up. Instead, I listened hard. No sound. I pinched the wick of my own lamp and waited for it to stop smoking. I set a foot on the first of the marble steps — and pulled straight back. Since I was now relying on the dim light from above, I couldn’t see if it was seed corn or little ceramic beads that had been scattered over the stairs. But it was one of those devices I’d used back home when I needed to plot in some language a spy might reasonably be expected to understand. I held my breath and listened for any sound at all from upstairs. It was pointless with that continual drumbeat of the rain. I bent forward and let my fingers play lightly over the coating on the first and second and on every other step I could reach. It was the sort of cheap beads you put on a string and give to children — or that people wear prominently on their fine church-going clothes to show off their humility. Bare feet wouldn’t crunch on this as boots or even sandals would, but would still make some noise. And little beads would most certainly hurt those ever so civilised and well-pumiced feet. I bent forward again and swept a little space where I could step. Keeping as quiet as I could, I went slowly upstairs, taking the steps two at a time.
Still alone, I stood amid the wreckage of what had once been a very fine library. One side of its hundred-foot length was taken up with a series of glazed windows. I’d looked up at these from the courtyard and guessed that they meant a library. The unrendered bricks of the big central dome had the sort of reflected gleam on them that said they were of glass. By day, the whole room must have been as light as the open air. The dome was supported by four columns of many-coloured marble. These had once been sheathed over their middle third in bronze. There was still bronze to cover the capitals where they supported the dome. There were even a few traces of gold leaf on the elegant scrolling of the capitals. The middle sheathing, though, was long since gone. Only a paler colour for the marble, and the dark peg holes, showed what had been there. Much of the panelled ceiling that surrounded the dome had come down. Where the plaster still adhered, there were elaborate painting of stars and of gods of the Old Faith, each head within a bright nimbus.
Back in the days of Herodes — perhaps till quite recently — the library may have contained one of the finest collections in the Empire. Judging from the bookracks that remained, and from where others must once have been, it didn’t seem unreasonable to guess twenty, perhaps thirty, thousand individual rolls.
But I’ve said I was standing amid wreckage. The four-inch by four partitions in the racks were mostly empty. Many of the smaller racks had been overturned. Chairs lay broken on the floor. Tables had collapsed under various weights. As ever, pieces of glass had come loose from their lead framework, and rain had made its own contribution to the damage. The lighting I’d seen was towards the far end of the room. It was enough to be noticed from quite a distance, though not to give a detailed view of anything. But, even in the dimness, I could see the sad desolation of a grand library. Then there were the continuing flashes of lightning. Between the intense whiteness that blanks out everything, and the sudden darkness before eyes can readjust to the normal light, there is the tiniest moment of illumination. In one of those moments, I looked into what might be a good summary of what Athens had finally become.
Close by one of the good windows, there was a table that could still be used. It had a chair set to it. Here the lamps were burning — half a dozen of them in an iron holder. As I walked forward into the room, my feet crunched on an area of mosaic tiles that had come loose on the floor. I stopped and looked down to see if there was broken glass there as well. No, it was just dozens of loose stones that had once been the face of one of the Muses. There was no broken glass to worry about. But some of the stones looked sharp. I stepped back and took a longer route to the table.
There was a taper by the lamps. Cupping this in my hands against the draught that came from every direction, I carried a flame to my own lamp and pressed down the windshield. These lamps had been filled with the cheapest grade of oil, and they let off a nasty, acrid smell along with their rather dim light. But their combined light made a soft and almost welcoming glow. I stood up straight and looked across at the stained murals on the far wall. They showed Athens as it had been at some time in the past; the still unfinished Temple of Jupiter suggested the city in its grandest days. I’d come back for a proper look by day.
I stood behind the chair and turned my attention to the books that lay on the table. One of these was a roll of the ancient kind. The glue had failed, and the individual sheets of papyrus had mostly separated from each other. I picked one of them up and held it close by the lamps. The bright, aromatic smell of the decaying reeds took me straight back to the time I’d spent in what remained of the great library of Alexandria. Once I’d focused on the light and often faded ink strokes of whatever scribe had produced it, so did the text. It was from the fourth book of the life King Ptolemy had written of his friend Alexander, and this sheet carried his account of the council of war held by the Persian King just before his final defeat. I’d read the whole of this in Alexandria, and it was thrilling stuff. More than this, it had a ring of truth. To be sure, you couldn’t trust any of the passages where Ptolemy himself was in action — but the King had been in a position to get at the full truth about all that had happened, and he’d mostly told the truth unless his own interest was concerned. The last few lines of the page had crumbled, and the next I could find took up the story when Alexander was approaching Persepolis.
I looked harder and compared the sheets. I’d been right. The council of war was Ptolemy, sure enough. Persepolis was in a different hand and in a more florid style. It might have been Arrian. It might have been some other late author, who’d rewritten Ptolemy and padded his effort with tales of inherent absurdity. This sheet had Alexander in conversation with an owl who was relaying a message from Athena. Vaguely interested, I pushed the two sheets together. There were of slightly different sizes. By all appearances, the reader had gathered up what he could find of Alexander and was going through it all in no particular order.
The other main work on the table was a huge book of the modern sort. Writing on parchment can be much smaller than on papyrus, and it was hard in this light to see what the book was. Noting how high it was heaped with cushions, I sat on the chair and moved my lamp so close that I had to take care to avoid spilling oil on the pages. I looked up from the wavering text and gave a contemptuous sniff. I found myself staring into a marble bust of Polybius. At some point, this had been knocked from its plinth and then replaced, minus nose and the lower part of its beard. What was left of its features seemed, in the flickering dimness of the lamps, to be twisting into the sneer I could feel spreading over my own face. I looked down again at the text and read with closer attention:
Now these points being conceded to us, the further point is also clear to any one, that, as Moses says darkness was before the creation of light, so also in the case of the Son (if, according to the heretical statement, the Father ‘made Him at that time when He willed’), before He made Him, that Light which the Son is was not; and, light not yet being, it is impossible that its opposite should not be. For we learn also from the other instances that nothing that comes from the Creator is at random, but that which was lacking is added by creation to existing things. Thus it is quite clear that if God did make the Son, He made Him by reason of a deficiency in the nature of things. As, then, while sensible light was still lacking, there was darkness, and darkness would certainly have prevailed had light not come into being, so also, when the Son ‘as yet was not,’ the very and true Light, and all else that the Son is, did not exist. For even according to the evidence of heresy, that which exists has no need of coming into being; if therefore He made Him, He assuredly made that which did not exist. .