At the midsection of the city, Cephalus crossed over the thin river Eridanus and into the south Kydathenaion. A single torch burned inside the marbled Shrine of Artemis like a candle flickering within a bony skull. The Twine saw no one, except for a man and woman embracing under the sculptured roof of a vestibule. He paused for a moment, staring at them, and walked on. Winding along one crooked street after another between the stuccoed walls, his sandals becoming increasingly caked in dirt and debris, Cephalus finally stopped at the doorway of a modest, one-story house made of sundried bricks. This residence was his, one of the two that he maintained in different parts of the city.
The Twine did not use the knocker, a ring in a lion’s mouth, but instead whispered, “Hallah.” He waited. After some moments, an ancient, blind man opened the door and let him into the dim entry way. At the sound of the door, a dog shot through the house. It leaped onto Cephalus, licked his face pathetically, and rolled over on its back, waiting to have its belly scratched. Despite its frenzied excitement, the animal had not let out a single bark or whine, for it had been trained to silence since birth.
“Sweet Hermes,” said Cephalus, stooping to rub his dog’s belly. “Did you miss me?” The dog rolled from one side to another, panting in ecstasy and wagging its tail.
“I didn’t know when you were returning, Master,” said the blind slave, Hallah, “but I lit the lamps as always. We have some Sicilian cheese, a manchet, and honey cakes in the kitchen.”
“It’s good to see you, old Hallah,” said Cephalus. “I will be going out tonight, but back before dawn.” The blind slave nodded.
Still standing in the entry, the Twine carefully removed his dirty shoes, hat, and mantle and placed them on a wooden bench. Then he proceeded into the small but immaculately kept court, counterclockwise around its stone altar to Zeus. Hermes followed closely, pressing his body against the legs of his master. The open court let into three small rooms, no larger than the slave’s room off the entry, their entrances just openings in the wall without curtains or doors. Into one of these at the rear of the court Cephalus entered, his sleeping and bathing room, containing little more than a simple bed in a wood frame and two oil lamps hanging on chains from the ceiling. He dropped his sack heavily to the floor and stripped off the remainder of his clothes.
The money first. Money was clean but could be soiled by human hands and bodies. He removed the two bars of silver from the sack and poured water over them, began scrubbing the silver with wood ashes and a bronze scraper. The water flowed over his feet, across the stone floor, and into a drainage hole in the corner. He repeated. Water, wood ashes, more scraping. The old slave shuffled into the little room with hot water in a bronze vessel, which he gropingly placed on a brazier containing burning coals. Cephalus patted him on the shoulder in acknowledgment and continued to work on the ten-mina bars, scrubbing them, scrubbing them. When at last they shone in the lamp light, he rinsed them with olive oil and perfume. There would be two more to wash at the end of the night.
Next, himself. He poured the hot water on his body, then began scrubbing his skin with the wood ashes, scraping with the bronze tool. He scrubbed harder, he wanted to flay off his outer layer of skin, the filth and the blood of the city, he wanted to become as clean and as pure as the two bars of silver gleaming in the lamp light on his bed. Wood ashes and olive oil formed a thick paste all over his body, rising over the contours of the powerful muscles in his arms and chest. Then again the scrubbing and scouring, metal against skin, soundless. Gradually, the paste of wood ashes and olive oil became mixed with dirt and skin peelings. He doused himself with another pitcher of warm water. Now his skin was burning and raw and red, even his privates. He was becoming clean, he was becoming ready to go out again into the city, to do the work. The work was not part of his body, was outside his body. One final time, he covered his body with the paste of wood ashes and oil and went at himself with the bronze scraper, wincing in silence at the pain. When he was finished, he washed himself off with the warm water and gingerly rubbed a thin layer of olive oil and perfume on his bare body. Later, Hallah would scrub the stone floor.
It was near midnight. With Hermes hugging his side, the Twine walked naked back to the court and into the next room. He stood thinking. On a table, maps of the city and outlying areas, documents in Greek, Egyptian, Assyrian. Neatly folded in two inlaid chests were tunics of various lengths and colors, padded vests, beards and hairpieces, clay noses, hats. He selected a clean, white tunic and mantle, thick sandals, a skullcap, dressed slowly and carefully like a man about to make a speech before the Assembly. However, he would not be in public tonight. He would work in the streets and in the prison, where it would be dark. The prison he had visited many times before, after bribing the jailors.
From a tiny and delicate stone vase, its bore hole no wider than a little finger, Cephalus removed a short length of twine. The coiled string, extraordinarily thin for its strength, he wrapped around his wrist. A small chest yielded a serrated Persian dagger. The dagger he used only when necessary, the dagger created rivulets of blood.
Cephalus placed his equipment in a purse around his neck, inside his mantle, then went out into the night. For a moment, he stood listening in the street just beyond his front door. Other houses stood against his in a continuous snake of gray stucco. The houses were dark and silent. He knew everything about his neighbors, knew their occupations, their movements in the city, their wives and children and slaves, their mistresses. They knew nothing of him. To them, he was a dim traveler and trader who quietly appeared and vanished, employed one blind slave, never had guests. The situation was identical at his other house in the city, also with its one slave and one dog.
It was raining. The heavy, charcoal sky had finally started to empty.
The Twine listened. Southwest, the distant voices of young men, drifting like a scent of pimpernel. He pulled his mantle tightly around his shoulders and headed in that direction. When he reached the Street to the Temple of Zeus, he followed it away from the temple, in a northerly direction, toward the voices. The houses were dark cliffs on each side of the road, he was hurtling through a tunnel, he was a thrown rock, making no sound, a stone unfeeling to water and rain. He moved off the main road onto a small, crooked street. Streets curled into streets like snakes in a pit. Without looking, without listening, he knew that he was not followed, that he was alone, a single dark rock moving through space. The voices were louder, were close by. He ducked into another street, crouched next to a dark public fountain, and saw them, saw their torches. Three. He could see their faces, flickering in the light of the torches. He could see their mouths and new beards. They paused at a corner and drank, passing around a curved vessel. When they resumed walking, he followed behind them, invisibly. Their torches illuminated the brick walls of houses, weeds, stones in the road, their own bodies. But none of the light fell upon him. He was a dark rock, clean and untouched by the light. He removed the twine from his purse, wrapped it around his wrist in two loose turns.
Now he was close behind the three puppies. None of their light touched him. The youths were laughing and drinking as they walked. They reeked of wine. The street was narrow, and one of the three walked a few paces behind, a bulky young man with long curls. Soundlessly Cephalus flew to him, slipped the twine over his head, pulled him against the dark wall of a house. The body slid quietly to the ground, and the assassin glided into an intersecting street. Then another, and another. The Twine was many streets distant when the other two youths discovered their companion lying still in the road and began screaming.
The prison was almost due west now, only a few stades away, but the assassin headed north and over the Eridanus. He had more work before going to the prison. He would create a random path of death, a confusion of meaning, odd angles. He was working well now, he was flowing. The houses were sleeping. A woman’s voice, singing softly, floated through the streets, possibly a slave woman relaxing after her day’s chores, perhaps a woma
n pacing a courtyard unable to sleep, or a woman serenading her lover in bed. What did it matter? Cephalus listened briefly, then for no reason turned off onto another road. Ahead, he detected the tiny risings and fallings of a dark layered mound, the form of a sleeping slave at watch over a doorway. The assassin suffocated him easily with his own mantle.
Steady rain now. The rain was good, it was clean. But the roads and passageways were thick with mud. Cephalus crossed south over the Eridanus, then headed into the agora.
The prison was three hundred feet southwest of the agora in a district of marble workshops, a one-story rectangular building. Slowly, Cephalus circled the building, avoiding the dark puddles by instinct, periodically placing his ear to the wall. After some time, he heard breathing. That there were two prisoners and a jailor within those walls he already knew. He knew also the location of the eight cells, the central corridor, the southerly courtyard, the warren of four jailors’ quarters.
But he was not yet ready to enter. First he would watch and he would wait. He sat under a plane tree near the front entrance. His body merged with the trunk and vanished. He knew little of the man he was to kill inside the prison. A teacher, one of the sophists. He would be the older of the two prisoners, short and balding. The other prisoner, a Megarian, was in his twenties. Only one needed to die tonight, he would spare the Megarian if possible. The sophist would be just a dark form on a bed, a prone tangle of arms and legs, a mantle with a mouth and a throat.
He listened. Rain. A twig snapped. A dog barked. It was time. He readied his dagger, wrapped the twine around his wrist. He was working well.
Carefully, the assassin let himself into the front door, which was never bolted, and moved silently down the dark central corridor. He stood at the entrance to the jailors’ quarters on his left, four small rooms. In one of the rooms a torch burned. After some moments, he could hear the jailor’s breathing in the southwest quarter. The jailor was not sleeping. The assassin crept into the unlit northwest room, adjacent to where the jailor sat in a chair, and peered through the small open doorway. The jailor, his face partly lit by the flickering torch, was preoccupied with the dissection of an owl’s pellet. On the table in front of him lay bits of bone, fur, chitin, and half the skeleton of a small rodent meticulously reassembled. The jailor whittled at the pellet with his knife, blew away some chitin, and worked out another small piece of bone. Cephalus took out his dagger and noiselessly moved along the wall of the room. When he had succeeded in getting behind the jailor, he put the dagger away and took out his twine. In one motion, he jumped forward, slipped the twine over the jailor’s head, and strangled him.
From his purse the assassin removed a tiny oil lamp made of ivory and ignited it with the torch mounted on the wall. He returned to the central corridor. Very carefully, he unbolted the third cell on his right. A prisoner in chains lay sleeping on a bed in the corner. Cephalus approached him and dimly illumined his face with the small light from his lamp.
The assassin returned to the door, silently rebolted it, and walked to the cell of the sophist. Again, he carefully unbolted the door, letting it swing open. The cell was square, fifteen feet on a side. On the back wall, the sophist slept on his bed, an easy suffocation. His chains hung down to the floor.
Holding his lamp in one hand, the assassin approached the sleeping old man. He had covered half the distance across the stone floor when he was surprised to hear a rustle behind him and then a sudden burning pain in his back and another across his throat and warm liquid on his neck, he dropped his lamp to the floor and the floor rushed up to meet him, a dark sandaled foot, cool stone on his face, one distant gasp.
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To: Alexander Chalmers
[email protected] From: Bill Chalmers
[email protected] Subject: Sunday
Dear Galahad,
It’s break time at a meeting I’m at in Cambridge, and the lounge area has lots of computersj online. So I’m doing the nerdy thing. Did you have fun at the mall last night with Brad? Thanx for Anytus2. Socrates is a self righteous snob, don’t you think? I never knew that. Im ipreseed that your were able to copy the college course. How did you do it? No, better not tel me. I’ve got some free time Sunday afternooon. How about we fence? Love, Lancelot
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>>> MAIL 50.02.04
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Dear Sire,
Be prepareed to meet youro doom, tomorrow, next to the moat.
I didn;t know wwhere your were/. The mall last night sucked. TWo girls were supposet to meet Brad and met at Bannana Republick. We waited about two hours for them b ut they didn’t show.
I’lls send yo more Plato stuff. I didn;t know I could t htat. I really liked the jailor who rubed his facce agaisnt the bull’s hide and licked the salt thing. The assassin was really cool. What a sicko. I nevr expected him to get wiped out.
FYI, there are 378 tiles in the floor in fornt of Banana REpublic.
Love, Galahad
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FIRST TESTS
On Thursday, July 3, Bill had his MRI.
The following Wednesday, a day that the rain sliced through the air in great slanted blades and flooded his basement, Bill met with his physician to discuss the results. Petrov at once offered his opinion that the MRI examination had revealed no tumors or plaques. The films and results were apparently contained within a large manila folder, which the physician waved in the air but did not open. He could see “nothing even slightly askew” in the MRI test. Of course, the images would be subjected to further analysis. But at this stage, there were no indications. Excellent, they could advance to blood work. The numbness was still present, was it? Yes, yes. They were making progress, they would begin the next round of examinations. Subject, of course, to the approval of Bill’s HMO. If Bill could please call the office in a day or two, he would be notified of the dates of the next tests.
Over the following week, Bill’s feet became numb. This condition he confirmed one morning by slamming them, one at a time, into the concrete embankment at the Alewife garage. He felt nothing. That night, splotchy blue bruises appeared on his ankles and toes. Melissa regarded them with horror. “What were you doing to yourself?” she exclaimed and turned off the television. “A medical examination,” said Bill.
Melissa began ransacking the medicine cabinet, looking for ointments and bandages, tossing bottles and tubes onto the floor. Liquids spilled. “Anybody can smash themselves up,” she said, mopping with a towel. “What are you doing to yourself? Oh God, Bill.” She started to cry. “I can’t believe it’s your feet now. It’s getting worse. What are we going to do? … I want you to see a neurologist. Please see a neurologist. Please. Please.” She gently dried off his feet and began applying a salve.
Melissa started a prescription of Valium to help her sleep, ten milligrams each night. In bed, under the covers, she would touch her husband all over his body, trying to ascertain for herself whether the numbness had spread or contracted. Eventually, she would doze off in a drug-induced sleep, her inhales and exhales falling across the house like a quiet, dark snow. Then he would hear a tapping, tiny at first but gaining in volume, the sound of her fingernails on the headboard.
When walking, he had the strange sensation that the ground moved while he was at rest, as if he were a fixed point in space, watching the planet slide by beneath him. No longer was he connected to the earth. He floated. Since childhood, he had wanted to float in the air like a bird. Now, he detested it.
On Friday, July 11, he had blood tests. A CAT scan July 15. On July 17, he received the results of his blood te
sts in the mail: CA: 9.2, PO4: 3.2, GLU: 97, BUN: 22, CREAT: 1.3, BUNICR: 17, URIC: 4.0, CHOL: 198, TRIG: 147, TP: 7.7, ALB: 4.9, GLOB: 2.8, A/G: 1.8, ALKP: 70, LDH: 122, SGOT: 26, SGPT: 15, BILI: 0.6, BILI D: 0.3, BILI I: 0.3, NA: 142, K: 4.0, CL: 102, CO2: 31, ANION: 9, FE: 109. Attached was a short note, with the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School logos at the top: “Dear Mr. Chalmers, as you can see, everything is normal here, including the TSH, a very sensitive test for thyroid function. I can find no explanation in your blood for the numbness. Onwards and upwards. Sincerely, Armand Petrov, M.D.”
At four o’clock on Monday, July 21, Bill went to see a neurologist. The neurologist, an obese man who muttered each sentence to himself before repeating it for the rest of the world, measured electrical currents, muscle masses and strengths. He conducted these experiments in his office, which smelled of ozone and alcohol. Along three walls of the cramped room were rubber hammers and tuning forks, needles, blood-pressure cuffs, coils of wires, electrodes, oscilloscopes and ophthalmoscopes, computers. Bill shuddered to think what fees the man charged. “Let me see you make a funny face. Let me see you make a funny face,” said the neurologist, and he screwed up his own face by way of demonstration. No loss of muscular control there. He wiped tissues on Bill’s cheeks, arms, and legs to test his sensations. He examined the cranial nerves and eyes. A peculiar dullness of expression was noted, but the retina appeared normal, the vision was good, the pupils responded correctly. He hammered Bill’s elbows, his forearms, his knees, his hands. Next, the vibrating tuning fork. How many seconds did Bill feel the vibrations? Two? Three? The neurologist stroked pins along the fingertips to the hands, up the arms to the shoulder, down the legs to the feet. “You are completely numb in your feet, hands, and arms.” It was 4:45. Then he wheeled out the electromyography machine, a pedestaled computer with a protruding arm from which hung wires and metallic disks. These he fastened to different parts of Bill’s body and administered electrical shocks. “Silence,” he suddenly boomed, without any muttered forewarning. Curves wobbled across the oscilloscope. The neurologist stuck small needles into different muscles of the feet and hands, gauging the feeble electrical currents. He scowled. He twisted his huge body this way and that as he studied the waveforms and graphs. Finally, with a toss of his hand, he consigned everything to his two frightened assistants. “I see nothing unusual, Mr. Chalmers.” “Nothing?” said Bill miserably, rubbing at the gooey electrode gel remaining on his arms and legs. “How can you see nothing? I am numb. Numb. Numb. I have a problem. I want to be treated.” The neurologist sighed and wiped a bit of dust from the corner of his eye. “Nerve conduction velocities are around fifty meters per second. Distal latencies are between three and four milliseconds at seven centimeters. Amplitudes are satisfactory.” He shook his massive head without expression. “My apologies, but I cannot find any problem. My apologies, but I cannot …”