Irini sat with her elbows holding the paper tablecloth that the wind was trying to blow from under the rubber band that secured it. "Acheron, the end of the world of the living, the river between this life and life hereafter, where the threshold to the realm of the dead was thought to be. What a perfect place to commercialize a myth! A few charlatans, actors and workers got together and built a meeting place for the living and the dead up there on the hill. Even Homer mentioned it."
Irini took the brown, felt-tipped pen that she carried around her neck on a thin leather string and drew a series of rectangles on the tablecloth. "They built a labyrinth of small rooms without windows. They had to be dark inside in order to increase the powers of concentration and cleanse the soul. This was accompanied by a special diet to which some drug was added, probably ergot. And the pilgrims were expected to prepare themselves for the great moment when they would meet their dead. The need to see their relatives once again was enormous-perhaps out of affection for their loved ones-but more than likely for other reasons. Often the deceased had taken a secret to the grave, and the pilgrims used this method to try and entice it from him. Secrets such as where he had hidden his money or whether he had left valuables behind somewhere."
My father cast a very dubious glance at the rectangles. "Bring the Frau Doktor another gla.s.s of wine!" he said to Nikos; he did not like the way the boy worshipped Irini, absorbing every word she said. He didn"t think much of science.
"The priests filled their bellies with the meat of the animals used in the sacrificial ritual. The occupants of the rooms went hungry." Irini tapped her felt-tipped pen on the labyrinth. "Professor Dakaris, who was the first to excavate the grounds forty years ago, had tons of decomposed blood carted away. The earth around it must have been literally soaked in blood.
"It is said that the customers took three weeks before they achieved the necessary degree of cleanliness to be guided one after the other through the labyrinth. If darkness, fasting and drugs didn"t work, they used cold water, ritual stonings and the ashes from cremated bones. They were even more resourceful with the acoustics, using-as a back-up effect-mysterious noises in the darkness, whispering voices and bloodcurdling screams."
Irini drew a large rectangle. "After all that, the candidate was led into a vast, completely dark hall in the cellar. The room must have given the impression of great breadth and s.p.a.ce after the small chambers of the labyrinth. This was the anteroom to Hades. At the other end of the vault, a form, lit up with the aid of mirrors and covered in white, was lowered by means of a stage elevator-parts of the machinery have actually been found. The figure stood at the entrance to the underworld and waited to be questioned by the pilgrim. Whether the dead ever answered is not known.
"The customer, nevertheless, in the meantime completely disoriented and on the verge of madness, was prepared to recognize in the strange form anyone or anything and was satisfied with any cryptic answer in order to escape this purgatory and catch a glimpse of sunlight once again."
"It all seems very dubious to me," said my father, "the mysterious goings-on attributed to a few old stones." He stuck his chin out aggressively. "Acheron, the end of the world of the living, you think, eh? Greeks have always lived north of Acheron. I know the families in the mountains, good Greek families, who lived there before this Homer. Who was he, anyway? Was he from Athens?"
"I don"t know," Irini said and absently stroked her bracelet-a basilisk with emerald eyes, which seemed to be devouring its own tail, "perhaps from Asia Minor."
"A Turk!" Father snorted and ruffled his mustache, which looked as if a fly had been glued under his nose. "What does he know about our country?" He brushed Homer from the table like a dried-out olive pit. The end of the world of the living was always much farther north, he a.s.sured them, not at Acheron but farther north in Albania. And the whole story sounded to him like a typical scoundrel"s tale. "However," he said and patted her conciliatingly on the shoulder, "it"s your profession to excavate old stones and make up stories about them." I stared through the widely cut sleeve of her light blue linen dress and contemplated with fascination one of her firm, small, tanned b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She looked so young with her slender figure, her white-blond hair cut short-younger than a young girl. The wrinkles around her mouth and eyes indicated that she was older, but when she laughed, they were forgotten.
The archaeologists and their crew worked until one o"clock, had a break and then resumed work at four o"clock. It didn"t take me long to realize that Irini drove down to the beach on her motor scooter during the midday break when the weather was good. Once I followed her on my bike. I crawled through the underbrush and reeds. She was lying no more than five or six meters away. She was naked except for a broad-brimmed straw hat to shade the book she was reading, and her small b.u.t.tocks were as brown as her legs and back. I was terribly excited and had my bathing trunks halfway down. The only sound to be heard was the dry rustling of the reeds. The suffocating heat made it difficult for me to breathe. For a moment I toyed with the mad idea of just appearing before her naked. A donkey snorted nearby. I turned around in shock. It was tethered to a pomegranate tree in full bloom. It shook its head, trying to get rid of its halter, and looked at me indifferently.
"That"s not the way to go about it, young man," she said, standing before me and smiling. In her nakedness, with her face shaded by the straw hat, she looked even more like a young girl. "Either you pull up your trunks and get out of here, or you take them off altogether."
She was a patient teacher. The first time was terrible. I was in such a hurry that it seemed as though a pack of panting dogs, foaming at the jaws, would come out of the rushes to attack me at any moment. Smiling, she wiped the grains of sand from my cheeks, while I lay beside her completely out of breath, overcome at my own daring and her unexpected favors.
We often met down at the beach. I stole away almost every day at noon when there were not many guests. I brought bread and cheese and fruit. I watched her eat, but seldom ate with her.
"Why don"t you eat anything?" she asked.
"I"ve already eaten," I lied. Why? Was it the excitement that choked me so that I couldn"t eat? Perhaps I was subconsciously making a kind of sacrificial offering-a few pieces of goat"s cheese spread out on paper spotted with oil, a few olives, grapes and bread in order to appease the G.o.ds and keep the miracle going. She ate with great relish. We made love, swam in the ocean, lay in the sun and made love again.
Sometime or other, Nikos must have noticed something and secretly followed me.
"I"ve been watching you and the Frau Doktor," he whispered, his face as white as a ghost"s and his lips trembling. I punched him in the chest so that he fell to the ground. "You f.u.c.ked her," he hissed, filled with hate. "I"m going to tell Father."
I knew that he was open to bribery. He always needed money for some accessory or other for his home computer. I offered him one thousand drachmas, he demanded two thousand. I gave the money to him without hesitation, as I knew what punishment to expect from my father"s firm hand. Nevertheless, when my father finally did hear about it, he broke out into loud laughter, and when Mother complained about Irini, referring to her as "that horrible person, that Germinada," he laughed even louder.
"Did she seduce you... ?" Nikos asked and stared at me.
I held my fist under his nose and said, "Get lost!" The whole village got to know about it somehow or other. All of them had a good laugh, the men that is, especially the older men. I hated my brother because of it, although-who knows?-he might not have told anyone. Perhaps others spied on me. But I hated him most of all because he shared a secret that belonged to me and Irini.
The miracle didn"t last. In the fall, the archaeologists returned to Athens. I never saw Irini again. I wrote more than a dozen pa.s.sionate love letters, but never sent them. I still have them today. The next year, a postcard arrived. Irini was at some excavations on Cyprus. "Dear Katsuranis Family," she wrote. My name was not on the card. Father tacked the card to the wall behind the bar like a trophy. Sometime later, the card disappeared. Mother probably tore it down. At times she looked at me as if I had done something outrageous. However, when I lowered my eyes in shame, she smiled.
Sometimes I drove down to the beach and found it terribly empty or desecrated by strangers.
"Has the old Nekyomanteion absolutely nothing in common with the new one?" Alexandros asked.
I shook my head.
"Have Dimitrios and Nikos still not arrived?" Helena called from the hotel.
"No!" I called up to her. "I think they"ve closed the bridge down there in Stratos-it"s in danger of collapsing! They"ll probably have to take the road via Astakos, Prebeza."
"Everything is ruined. Everything! Everything!" Helena cried in reply. "The whole world is ruined."
"A few ugly concrete blocks are not the world. That"s the poetic justice of nature."
"Lichens are eating the concrete," Alexandros said.
"Yes, a mutated lichen. They call it the "Klondike Strain" because it appeared for the first time in Alaska."
"Why don"t they just eradicate it?"
"My dear young man, that would cost more than the whole world can afford. And besides, I couldn"t care less if that ugly building disappeared." I pointed to the hotel up on the hill. "With such enormous quant.i.ties of concrete to feed on, this organism can reproduce itself at an alarming rate. It can"t be stopped."
"But all those bridges, the tunnels, the skysc.r.a.pers... ?"
I shrugged my shoulders. "We don"t need them in order to survive. And if we build anything, we"ll use bricks or stones. Buildings made of rocks and stones are far more beautiful."
Alexandros stared at me in amazement. The spirit of my brother Nikos. Many were secretly glad that inland waterways were falling into disuse, long stretches of highways and ambitious bridge constructions were crumbling, and that the ugly concrete buildings of the rich were being condemned by lichens-all of which made expensive repairs necessary. People in this part of the world, however, still clung naively to the belief that technical progress at all costs must be desirable. The lichens were yet another obstacle to the course of progress. Do you really believe, Apostoles, that we could do without progress? No, but I don"t want it to be controlled by people who are only interested in what is technologically feasible, and whose only other characteristic is bad taste.
"They"re coming," Eurydice called as she came running to us, out of breath. She turned around and ran to the parking lot.
A dark red Mazda Electric rolled up. Dimitrios and Nikos got out. The children surrounded them. I got up. Leandros and Helena appeared in the doorway.
"Come on up to the terrace! It"s warm today," Helena called. "Why don"t you park the car in the shade, Dimitrios?"
"There won"t be any shade there in an hour, Helena. It"ll be there, where the car is now," Dimitrios said and kissed her on the cheek.
"How do you men always know when and where there"ll be shade?" she asked and pushed a lock of hair back behind her ear. She wore her hair in an old-fashioned way-plaited and pinned up on the back of her head in a bun. "You men always have time to watch the course of the sun, while we women have to work every day, the whole year from dawn to dusk- Sat.u.r.days, Sundays, until we drop dead. I"ll drop dead working, that"s for sure!" Oh Sister, I thought, if only you had a little bit of Mother"s pride, of her understanding. But Helena belonged to those who always complain about their hard lot and yet have no other interests in life.
Leandros, her husband, stood nearby looking guilty, holding his spadelike hands over his stomach.
"Sit down! Sit down!" she called. "I haven"t finished yet. Apostoles, bring some ouzo, fetch some wine! Are you hungry?" Without waiting for an answer, she bustled back into the house.
An octopus lay in the gla.s.s cooler, its plasticlike flesh spotted with age. The suckers looked like tiny, violet-colored disks stuck to the skin, their edges finely honed. It had lived its eight lives. The ends of its tentacles, limp in death, hung through the wire shelf of the cooler. Life reduced to a lump of protein.
Can it be brought back to life?
The bottle of wine was cold and slippery, and I almost dropped it. I rinsed out some gla.s.ses.
Obstacles-nothing but obstacles! How full of hope the world was in those days! It must have been shortly after the turn of the century. Multimanna! A project of biblical dimensions! A project to surpa.s.s all projects! The miraculous creation of bread. The feeding of ten thousand... no, ten million, one hundred million, the starving billions of the world. An electronic victory over hunger. Protein recorded on a magnetic disk, then reproduced using inanimate material, from carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, sulphur and G.o.d knows what atoms-using a computer matrix and mixing them all together in the turbulence chamber. Unlimited cans of food, the packaging integrated into the program. Multimanna. The ultimate victory over hunger! Bread for the world in the form of electronically synthesized chicken-food for the Indians as well as the Sudanese, Mexicans, Pakistanis and the Hottentots-no ridiculous religious tabu to prevent real ma.s.s production; MIDAS was expensive, very expensive, and only worthwhile on a large scale. Naturally, the new technology also produced something for the palates of the rich-exquisite menus by the best cooks in the world, composed in the studio. The fresh aroma and touch of creative genius stored forever on disks. Recorded haute cuisine. The cost, of course, exorbitant-the technical equipment alone would cost a fortune.
Then long, disappointed faces. The guinea pigs developed symptoms of poisoning. They died by the thousands, while others, fed with the same Multimanna enjoyed the best of health. Mysterious, poisonous substances, distorted groups of molecules, deposits of mutated atoms, the emergence of deadly compounds.
"Mistakes in the running of the program," said the scientists of CalTech and NASA. An improved scanning of the matrix and better computers for the reconstruction of molecular structure would eliminate such malfunctions-would make it possible to produce copies of living creatures, of human beings (Multimanna was only a sideline as Teflon-coated frying pans were to the Apollo project). It was all only a quant.i.tative problem of storage capacity and data transmission.
I was fascinated by the idea of outwitting time by means of timeless copies. Two lovers-whose copies meet again and again-as young as we were then, Irini. A simultaneous program over millennia. A minor detail for a computer.
"What is MIDAS?" I asked Nikos.
He looked at me in amazement.
"No, I really don"t know," I a.s.sured him.
"Molecular Integrating and Digital a.s.sembling System," he said. "It uses the same principle as the television screen, only extremely complicated and three dimensional. Each atom of a molecule in a specifically delineated area of s.p.a.ce is measured and the data are stored. Using these data-a.n.a.logous to the two-dimensional television screen-a three-dimensional copy is created. This takes place in a turbulence chamber which contains the atoms necessary for composing a copy. A series of computer-induced magnetic fields restructures the matter in exactly the same form as the original. The speed of reproduction depends on the complexity of the molecular pattern. While a coin can probably be reproduced in seconds, it will take hours, if not days, to create a human being."
And NASA was counting on it. One could put unmanned observatories with MIDAS equipment on board into orbit around each planet, send unmanned s.p.a.ceships to Alpha Centauri, to Barnard"s Star, to Sirius- and send the crews later, at the speed of light, after the s.p.a.ceships had reached their destinations.
Nikos called up the flight paths on the screen of his computer. They bounced out of the solar system, threaded their way through far-off gravitational fields and looped themselves around the distant suns like la.s.sos made of green light. He watched the scientists appear on the screen and hurry to the equipment in order to measure and catalog the marvels of the universe.
"This is the victory of mankind over s.p.a.ce and time," Nikos said.
His eyes were a clear light blue, the eyes of Nordic conquerors or slaves. They often appear unexpectedly in our people, generations later, flashing like aquamarines from the depths of dark stone. I always hated his eyes. I never liked him anyway.
And then there were those others, the skeptics. They always said that it would never be possible to achieve the hi-fi quality that such living cells need. Enzymic and neural disturbances, poisons, carcinogens and deformities could not be avoided. Copies of the living organisms would not be viable.
I had a vision of a s.p.a.ceship, floating through s.p.a.ce like the raft of the Medusa, delirious survivors still clinging to the wreckage, everywhere the silence of death and decay. Figures covered in blood staggered wailing through the pa.s.sageways. Others, oblivious to everything around them, sat slumped over their equipment, cursing those who had done this to them-who had sent them on this voyage of no return.
They had already long since created a pitiful name for them: Morituri -the doomed ones-heroes of science who saw the stars and then died. The MIDAS technicians, however, with their unerring instinct for the right word, called them "data mutants."
Then a man called Horace Simonson appeared, a mathematician, who proved that an error rate of so and so many per thousand was the lower limit, as the recording process itself interfered with the molecular structure. The copy, no matter how accurate the reproduction, was always subject to a number of errors-a sort of Heisenberg"s uncertainty principle of bioelectronics. This meant poisoned chicken meat for the starving, crippled, hemorrhage-p.r.o.ne astronauts, incapable of performing their mission and-even worse-terrible surprises at exclusive parties (unless you followed the old tradition of having someone try your food first or enjoyed playing Russian roulette).
Congress canceled the funds for further research. This was Nekyomanteion"s chance. The company acquired the patent for the recording and copying procedure for twelve billion dollars. The U.S. Government had already invested more than ten times this amount. The so-called Lazarus Act stipulated that only copies of persons proven dead could be made (on legal and identification grounds). Electronic immortality and temporary resurrection were now feasible. Of course, it was typical American sensationalism to establish a subsidiary of the world-renowned corporation on the very spot where, two and a half millennia ago, the old Nekyomanteion had actually flourished.
The stone floor under the vine leaves was spotted with sun. Sun-dappled faces turned to greet me. Dimitrios, my older brother, had come up from Patras with Nikos. They were sitting around the table. Leandros, Helena"s husband, had joined them. A letter, held down by a stone, lay before him on the table. Beside him, his two children.
Dimitrios, small and wiry, also had a mustache like a fat black fly over his upper lip. He"s getting more and more like Father, I thought.
Nikos, wore an elegant dark suit and vest with a light gray tie, a heavy ring with an onyx stone on his finger and, on his wrist, a minicomputer. His black beard was well kept.
"You"re looking well," I said.
"Sounds as if you are trying to b.u.t.ter me up into doing you a favor," he said, his white teeth glistening.
"Don"t worry."
"Do you know who I was thinking of today, Apostoles?" he asked.
"I"ll never be able to guess, Nikolakis."
"Do you remember that German Frau Doktor, Irini?"
"Vaguely."
"Do you think she"s still alive?"
"Why not?" I asked with more vehemence than intended. "She was very young at the time."
Nikos wouldn"t look at me. He pretended to be studying his folded hands, grinning to himself. "She ought to be about eighty now."
Helena"s husband looked at us imploringly. His broad shoulders had become stooped under the burden of his wife"s constant nagging. His hands, not capable of fighting back, lay on the wine-stained table in front of him, his gla.s.s of wine half-empty. There was no use answering.
"They have now closed the bridge at Stratos," Dimitrios said. "They obviously can"t cope."
I couldn"t help smiling.
"I can"t imagine what there is to grin about," he said. "They blew up four skysc.r.a.pers in Patras last week, because they were in danger of collapsing. One of them was the Sheraton Hotel."
"That horrible monstrosity in the Peloponnesus," I said.
"But where is this all going to end?"
"Whitewashing it would be a good idea," Alexandros said.
"Shut up!" his father said.
"He"s right," Nikos replied. "Whitewashing disinfects, but there are better ways of going about it. It would cost over 200 billion drachmas to treat all the concrete buildings in Greece. Not only that, we would have to use strong poisons. And the environmentalists..." He shrugged his shoulders in resignation.
Leandros finished his gla.s.s of wine.
"Bring us another bottle of wine," he said to Alexandros.
"Mother says you shouldn"t drink so much," the boy replied. Nikos grinned at his brother-in-law.
"Keep your smart mouth shut!" his father shot back at him in a surge of protest and self-a.s.sertion.
"But I want to hear what Uncle Nikos has to say," Alexandros grumbled.
"He"ll save what he has to say for when you return."
"How"s business?" I asked Dimitrios.
"There"s no question of business anymore," he sighed. "When the Germans still came, the Austrians, the English, the Swedes-we sold wine and ouzo. Hah! Business was booming! But today..."-he opened his arms in resignation-"we can"t even feed the grapes to the pigs. These d.a.m.n Arabs don"t drink any alcohol, don"t eat any pork." He shook his head sadly. "I don"t know what to make of people who drink tea all day and stare out at the ocean with a look of suffering on their faces."
"What"s in the letter?" Nikos asked. "Strictly speaking, that"s why we"re here, you know."