“We have Bibles compiled from memory. It’s surprising how much people knew, and of course I had this and could fill in some pieces nobody remembered.” I took it from him and leafed through it. It was printed on the same Bible paper I remembered from my childhood, with the initials of verses printed in red.
“So what do you want me to read?”
“Jerome’s prefaces. Of course nobody had memorized those.” He smiled. “Nobody else. But ever since I heard about Ficino’s death, I’ve been longing to re-read Jerome’s preface to Job, where he talks about the difficulties of translation.”
I turned the pages until I came to it. I had never read it, and reading it aloud now I laughed when I reached Jerome’s comparison of translating to wrestling an eel, which gets more slippery the harder you try to hold on. When I came to the end of the preface, I kept on reading. I had not read Job since I was a girl, and I was surprised how much it still meant to me. We both had tears in our eyes when I stopped reading.
“Come to Florentia and have dinner,” I said, handing him back the book.
“Keep it,” he said. “It’s no use to me now. Even if you don’t want to read it, you can enjoy all of Jerome’s snarky prefaces, where he calls people who prefer other translations barking dogs.”
“Do you still think Athene’s perfect?” I asked. “Because I find a great deal of comfort in thinking that she isn’t, and that the gods have limited natures and limited reach. Believing that allows for things going wrong and not being part of anybody’s plan.”
“I keep trying to understand,” he said, getting up. “If we became like angels, we would see how perfect she is. Don’t you remember how wonderful she was when she was here?”
“Wonderful, yes, absolutely. But wonderful is not at all the same thing as perfect. Come on, let’s go and eat before the food is all gone. I’ll read to you some more tomorrow if you want. I assume you have plenty of people to take dictation.”
By lunchtime the next day we had a consensus—a two-thirds majority—for helping the Lucians. We weren’t prepared to give them the Excellence, though obviously we’d have to use it. Details remained to be agreed on, especially on religious issues. I set up a number of committees. I pushed Aristomache, Ikaros, Aurelius, Manlius and Pytheas onto the committee on religion, and swore privately never to go near it myself. There was also consensus that any individual Lucians who wanted to return to the Remnant City would be welcome, and any who met the immigration criteria for the other cities would be welcome to apply there. The Lucians offered reciprocal agreements, but I didn’t think many of us would want to emigrate there.
After lunch came the choral ode. Pytheas had written it, and his son Phaedrus was conducting it. It took place out of doors, in the agora, so that as many people as possible could hear it. It was Pytheas’s best work, powerful and moving, especially with the massed voices echoing around the space. The song was about peace. I’d never really considered that peace isn’t just the absence of war but an active positive force. It must be one of Plato’s Forms, I thought.
At the end of the ode, there was a consensus for hearing it again, so we did. This time many people were joining in with the final chorus, making the commitment to fight to defend peace.
We went back into the Chamber in a very different mood. I was preparing to begin on the question of art raids when a messenger came in to the Chamber. It was Sophoniba, a Young One, one of the Florentine troop. “The head of Victory is back,” she said, panting. She had been running.
“Back?” I asked. “What do you mean?”
“Back in the temple of Victory just outside the walls, where it used to be. And the strangest thing is that the gravel courtyard was raked this morning and there are no marks on it at all. It’s as if the gods brought it back.”
“Was it with the returned art?” The returned art was on display in the agora and the colonnades around it, forming an impromptu art exhibition which everyone had been enjoying in their spare moments. I’d been spending my spare moments reading to Ikaros, so I hadn’t had time for it myself.
“No,” Pytheas said. “I looked closely, as you’d expect. The head of Victory wasn’t there. But you say now it’s back in the temple?”
“That’s right,” Sophoniba said. “It’s the strangest thing.”
We all trooped out to see it, and there indeed it was, where it had always been, serene, victorious, mysterious, in the niche against the back wall. Pytheas started to sing his ode again, and although the choir had dispersed many people joined in.
“It’s a Mystery,” Aurelius said to me as we were walking back.
“I certainly can’t understand it.”
“Do you think it was Sophia?” Manlius whispered behind us.
“I can’t think who else it could have been,” Sophoniba said. “There wasn’t a mark on the gravel, and it shows every mark.”
“If she’s still paying attention, what must she think of us!” Manlius said.
Back in the Chamber, the debate on art raids then resumed.
Pytheas began. “After the Last Debate, when the new cities were founded, we all agreed that we couldn’t divide the technology because we didn’t understand it well enough to move things, and all of it was needed here to function properly. We might have agreed to divide it with our brothers and sisters in any case, had it not been absolutely necessary to the lives of Crocus and Sixty-One. Their vital need for electricity was more important than anything. Secondly, the electricity keeps the library at a constant temperature, which isn’t just a comfort for us but a necessity for the preservation and safety of the books. That’s why we printed additional copies for the libraries in the other cities but kept the originals here.” He looked at the Lucians, all sitting in a group on the left-hand side now. “You weren’t present for that debate, but I feel sure you’d have agreed if you had been.”
There were nods among them, and some hands raised in other parts of the room, which I ignored. If people wanted to point out that the books were traded rather than given away, that would divert the argument. Let them wait.
“Then when the envoys of Psyche suggested dividing up our art, it seemed at first to be the same thing. It was an easy mistake to make. But it wasn’t at all the same. Art can be divided in a way that technology cannot. We can travel to look at art. Nobody’s life was being endangered if the art left the City, nor was the art itself endangered. We wanted to keep it because we loved it, but that was the same reason why our brothers and sisters in other cities wanted to own it. We fought over it. Nothing could have been more foolish than war over art. And we’re all tired of it. All the cities have brought back what was taken, and we’ve been enjoying seeing it again. I propose that we distribute art to all the cities according to population, and bring it back here to redistribute it again every five years, at a great festival of art, where new art can also be seen and enjoyed. Simmea,” he choked as he said her name, took a deep breath and said it again, louder. “Simmea always said that we should be making more art instead of squabbling over the art we have. She loved the Botticellis in Florentia with all her soul. But there are nine of them. If four of them had gone, one to each of the other cities, she’d still be here to love the five that were left.”
He sat down. Among the forest of hands, only one was raised among the Lucians: Auge. Curious, I called on her.
“We didn’t take any art on the Goodness. We made our own art in the Lucian cities. We haven’t talked about it, but we’re not here to demand our share of original art for our cities, and it might be at risk going by sea, and we wouldn’t want that. I’m horrified at the art raids you’ve been describing. I can’t believe Simmea died in one—actually died! Simmea, whose own original work was so wonderful. The kiton I wore when I lived here has long since worn out, but I cut off the piece of embroidery Simmea did along the hem and I still have it framed on the wall above my daughter’s bed. But what I stood up to say is that I’m a sculptor. If you agree to share your art as Pytheas suggested, I’ll do an original piece of stonework for each of your cities, on any subject you like. The people of Sokratea have already commissioned me to do a statue of Sokrates as he appeared in the Last Debate. I’ll do that for free, and whatever else equivalently for the other four cities—statues or bas reliefs, whatever you want.”