I rubbed at my nose. A final look in the mirror before coming out had let me think the spots were going. But was there now a third coming up? ‘Do remind me, Martin,’ I said, ‘to arrange a pension of the eighth grade. I will seal the order myself, though search me how it will be paid. You can also see if any of the remaining interpreters is worth promoting.’
‘I must assure you, Alaric,’ the Dispensator said as we paused for a moment within the Propylaea, ‘that you are doing the right thing.’
I didn’t bother answering.
But, now there was no one to overhear us in Latin, he raised his voice. ‘You must consider,’ he said, ‘that every stroke of what you are vulgar enough to call luck has come your way precisely because, when called upon to do the right thing, that is what — however protestingly — you have always done.’
I could have laughed in his face. Instead, I wished I’d stayed in my bed the night before last. Better still, I wished I’d never got out of my chair on the Piraeus road. There’s much to be said for ignorance, especially of facts that only get in the way of what absolutely has to be done.
Chapter 32
I stood looking at the cenotaph of Euripides. Except that the continuous rains of the summer had left every plant an unautumnal green, the Piraeus road was now as I’d first imagined it. Giving up on the residency slaves, Martin and his wife had finally got all my fine clothes into order, and I’d come out to see the interpreter in one of my thinner tunics. Athens was far north of Alexandria, and the heat even of a good noonday in October didn’t compare. Despite the moderate freshness, though, I was happy to stand here hatless and without any cloak. Though not many, there were now passers-by. None recognised me, and the few looks I got were simple interest in the incongruous match of my colouring and the finest white silk.
‘Do you remember the game we used to play in Alexandria?’ I asked in Latin. ‘I mean the one where we’d stand ourselves in such and such a place, and try to imagine what it must have looked like at such and such a time in the past?’
He left off his nervous inspection of the few passers-by on the road and nodded.
‘Well,’ I went on with the artificial brightness of a man who needs to jolly someone out of total funk, ‘I tried to play it yesterday on the Acropolis. Then, worse luck, I had Priscus beside me, and it didn’t quite work. Here’s a fine place for the game, though — don’t you agree?’
I got another abstracted nod, and took this as an assent.
‘The monument would have gone up after the Spartans had been eased out and the Long Walls were being rebuilt. So far as I can tell, the city walls then would have been about a hundred yards back along the road, rather than their present quarter mile. If you looked back, you’d surely have seen scaffolding on some of the Acropolis buildings, and their marble, if still unpainted, would have shone much whiter than it does now. The crowd here must have included Plato. Xenophon too might have been here — or would he then have been in exile? I can’t remember the dates.’
Martin opened his mouth, and I waited for some authoritative correction. Instead, he fell back into glumness.
‘Everything back then would have been fresh,’ I pressed on. ‘All the words spoken would have been in a natural and unlaboured Greek — neither the gibberish of the modern locals, nor the stilted and almost paranoid Attic of the educated moderns. Wouldn’t it be a grand thing to speak a civilised language that was also natural? Try to imagine your Celtic or my English, but able to express all the subtleties of Greek. Native fluency in a perfect language: hardly surprising, wouldn’t you agree, that the ancients excel the moderns in all composition — indeed, in all thought?’
No answer.
‘What would have been most different, however, was the spirit of those gathered here.’
That got me one of Martin’s pained looks. He turned and, taking care not to trip over one of the ruts left by a thousand years of cartwheels, walked diagonally across the road. He knelt before a very recent shrine and raised both arms in silent prayer. I stood behind him and waited for his devotional fit to pass.
‘I’ve been thinking about the locals,’ I said.
Martin didn’t look round.
‘Let me put this to you. We know that all animals have more young than survive to maturity. This includes human animals. We can suppose that those who do survive are better fitted to their surroundings than those who don’t. We can further suppose random variations in every generation — sometimes deformities and weaknesses, sometimes improvements that mean better chances of survival and reproduction. Granting that people show some resemblance to their parents, we may conclude a gradual adaptation of whole groups to their circumstances.’
Martin did now look round. ‘And how does this fit in with the known story of creation?’ he asked in a low mumble. ‘Every form that God created in the first six days he surely fixed until Judgement Day.’
Another hypothesis, I thought, not for setting down in writing. I smiled reassuringly. ‘It is as you say,’ I replied. ‘However, since the lower classes we’ve seen shuffling about Athens bear no resemblance to the ancients or to any barbarian race we know to have passed by in the past few centuries, it’s worth asking if these people are an adaptation to changed circumstances. Adaptations can surely be degenerations as well as improvements. Let us assume that heavy taxes and a drift of the more able into distant military service or the Church. .’
I trailed off. Martin had gone back to his long prayer. I heard a dry cough behind me. I turned and looked at the Dispensator. He’d now put on his best robes and a hat with a very wide brim. ‘You really didn’t need to come out with us,’ I said. ‘Once I’d got her inside the walls, it was my intention to give the child over for burial.’ I could have asked what had taken him so long. I must have read every inscription five times as I stood here in the sun. But I didn’t ask.
‘Your voice carries far along this road,’ the Dispensator said in his chilliest, most disapproving voice. ‘It is fortunate you speak in Latin, and there are so few in any event to hear your bold speculations.’
I shrugged.
He looked at the Euripides monument. ‘I take it this is the grave of someone from the famous past?’
I nodded.
‘Well, if I lack your ability to read these men in their own language, I will remind you that their minds were no more “rational” than those of the moderns. They were both bloody and superstitious. Even if you choose to mock it, the Christian Faith is an improvement on what they believed. A single, omnipotent God the Creator is less childish than the ludicrous pantheon of the Old Faith. You know that Plato believed all manner of nonsense, and his preaching of reason only served to promote deliberately muddy thinking among his followers.’
I smiled and suggested that we might start about our business, now we were all together.
But the Dispensator stepped closer to the monument and traced a few words of the inscription with his forefinger. I saw a faint movement of his lips — whether of recognition or disapproval I couldn’t say. But the name Euripides is much the same in Latin and Greek characters, and it was repeated in many grammatical forms. He sniffed and stood back. He now stared thoughtfully at Martin, who had stood up for a respectful bow. ‘Even if they hadn’t rejected Him,’ he said, ‘Christ wasn’t sent for the Jews. He wasn’t sent for the Greeks and Romans. He came as Messenger for a universal faith. And, whether or not you like His message, you are still one of its beneficiaries. You’re a barbarian, Alaric.’ I tried not to frown. ‘A good head and an eye for the main chance have got you further than I’d ever have supposed when you first presented yourself in my office. But you’re a barbarian — Aelric,’ he said, relishing the difficulty of sounding my real name. ‘A thousand years ago, neither learning nor intellectual brilliance would have let you cross the line these people drew around themselves. My own ancestors — may God eventually take mercy on their damned souls — might have granted you citizenship, and then forgotten your origins for the sake of your grandsons. So far as these ancients were concerned, you would at best have been a beautiful but inferior object of use. It is Christ, and Christ only, who has blurred what otherwise would have been an absolute line.’