'He objects that he's never been interested in such things. The uncle, however, brings out a box full of documents: among them are the originals of birth certificates, purchase agreements, faded letters, ribbons, dried flowers, funeral notices, copies of parish registers. The meaning of my work, he says, was to know where I came from and therefore where I'm going.
'What can a few dates and names of long-dead people possibly tell you?' he asks his uncle. His uncle leans close to him and whispers, "They speak to me. They're not dead, they just move in a different space."
'The following week he hires a taxi to take all the documents away. When they are carrying out the last carton and he's getting ready to pay the driver, he notices an enormous raven perched on a pile of dirt and paving- stones, observing him. He understands that he is being given a sign but he doesn't understand what it means. Am I boring you?'
'How could you possibly bore me?'
'In any case, it was you who led me to do this story.'
'Me?'
'By being the way you are.'
'What is the way I am?'
'Mysterious.'
She kissed him.
'It's only after the uncle dies that he starts work. He finds his uncle's final piece of paper, the one that brings him closest to some kind of beginning, although twelve generations means nothing in the history of any family. On the tip of the tree is the name Agrippa Sever, born on the fourth of November in the hamlet of Chiliene, in the region
of Ellis. He copies this information down. He doesn't know what country to look for the region of Ellis in, but he can imagine the era. A Gothic castle perched on an inaccessible rocky promontory, a stony road along which a pair of oxen are pulling a heavy wagon.
'The hamlet of Chiliene, as he discovers by checking old maps, is now called Kyllene, and is situated on a northwestern promontory of the Péloponnèse. He will have to go there if he wants to continue his investigation. When he arrives, he tries to make enquiries at the parish church but he draws a blank. The priest no longer has the register from that period. He takes him out to the cemetery, but he can't find a single grave older than one hundred and fifty years, not a single headstone that suggests the name he is looking for. The priest sends him to the district town on the edge of the sea.'
'You've seen it?'
'Perhaps, in a movie. Or I dreamt about it. Stone buildings, cobbled streets, everything white, pink oleander blooming in the gardens, figs and olives ripening. Dark-skinned, black-haired children are playing in the narrow streets. A donkey is pulling a two-wheeled cart to the top of a hill.
'He asks about the archives, but no one understands him. They take him into a bar where several sailors and some young women are sitting. They offer him wine. Then he's astonished to see the carving of a raven sitting on a ledge beside the door. He realizes his trip will not be in vain. And sure enough, the next day in the archives, he finds the name he's been looking for. He also discovers that the grandfather of this man came here with the army of the Venetian doge.'
'So he has to go to Italy?'
'Yes. Suddenly, he gets the fever. He aches to discover more ancestors. The Italian soldier's name was Severus. What if this man was related to the dynasty of Roman emperors? The idea obsesses him. Not so much because he longs to be the descendant of a line of unremarkable emperors, but he sees something that he can hold on to. But how is he to bridge a gap of thousands of years? Back to a time when barbarians were rampaging through Europe,
devastating towns and countries, when even kings and princes seemed to emerge from darkness, and their descendants seemed to vanish into it once more?
'He continues his journey backwards in time, though it becomes more and more difficult. He chats up unknown archivists. He talks his way into monasteries, rectories, libraries. He writes letters. Some of his correspondents treat him as an eccentric; others think that they might be able to get something out of him, if not money then at least something valuable.
'The sons visit him again. They find that his studio is now empty. Only a few blocks of unworked wood remain, and the carving of a bird with its wings outstretched. They try to persuade their father to give up. They shout at him: you've gone mad, you should get help. He throws them out.
'He probably should seek a doctor's help, but instead he continues his search. In his life now there passes a procession of landscapes, cities, rectories, monasteries. Almost illegible documents flash before his eyes. The letters seem to dance and recompose themselves into words and names. Other landscapes and other people enter his life, people long since lost, of whom only a name remained, yet he sees them. Once, he sees them as if in a wedding procession, dressed in ancient costumes, walking to the sounds of Gregorian chant to a small church set on a white rock. At other times he sees his ancestors in a band of warriors filing along a jungle path and dancing half-naked around fires. He hears the hunters cheer when they strike down their prey. The images increase. At first they come to him only at night, then they begin appearing by day as well. He looks at the sea and suddenly sees a line of warships — triremes— nearing the shore. Or, from the window of an inn, he catches a glimpse of twelve lictors in togas. Once he notices that he is being watched from a distance by a hairy man with a low, sloping, simian forehead. The man is gripping a club in his enormous right hand. He stops to allow the man to catch up with him, but he merely circles around him, as though skirting a circle whose perimeter he cannot enter. This happens several days in a row, until one
night the man finally appears by his bedside. He asks the man what he wants, but he knows the man will not reply: he is from a different space, and is of a different essence. He is merely a shadow of someone more ancient from whom he is descended.
'Then the shadows visit him more frequently. They come to him in his studio. They sit around in corners, or at night they stand around his bed and sometimes he can hear them whispering among themselves. Sometimes he can understand fragments of sentences, and he jumps out of bed and, with his left hand, scribbles down what they are apparently trying to tell him: If I have at last found mercy before thy face. . nearer to thee, our Lord, nearer to the fire. . clay from clay, ashes from ashes, dust from dust, life from death. . O, bow down to the powerful and lead our souls into. . Sometimes he even tries to sketch the faces. The wild, hairy faces of the men and the bare faces of the women. Their low foreheads, flattened noses and tiny chins give them a savage, almost animal look. Their names too begin to sound stranger and stranger. They are short and often remind him of the cry of birds, the sounds of animals or the howling of the wind. He learns that SiSiSi was the friend of Tektek, but when, for how long and where he lived, he cannot discover. He tries to summon him forth again, but none of the shadows ever returns, as though they have to make room for others. They begin to behave with more and more abandon, their sentences become less coherent, then they utter single words, then stuttering syllables, and finally they seem to interpolate animal yelps among the syllables. The savage howling of ancient beasts of prey, the deep throaty roar of bears and, almost constantly now, the hiss of approaching snakes and the slurping yawn of mussels and clams. It's exhausting. He still tries to sketch the outlines of these shadows but he can no longer perceive their shapes. Perhaps they no longer have a shape, perhaps their shapes are decayed by time; he can only see coloured, blurred spots that fly and circle around him.