The Oracle (30 page)

Norman interrupted, afraid that he would go too far. ‘Michel, please. This is not what we’re here for.’

Karamanlis seemed shaken. ‘I didn’t want it to turn out that way,’ he said with an uncertain voice. ‘The situation degenerated before I could do anything about it.’

‘That’s none of our concern,’ said Norman. ‘The only reason we asked to meet you was to fully understand the meaning of the death messages. You were the only person who had the necessary information. We could have avoided such a disagreeable meeting had you told me everything at Sidirokastro.’ A deep, tense silence fell between them. The waiter passed and asked if he could bring them something, but the three pale, distracted men, motionless as mannequins, though sitting around the same table, seemed as distant as planets in the icy immensity of space. He got no reply, and slipped away unnoticed and a little cowed.

‘You said that my father was against what happened,’ Norman began again. ‘That he tried to oppose it. I don’t want your pity, and he’s dead already. But at least make sure you’re telling me the fucking truth.’

‘It is the truth. Your father was so angry he would have killed me. The only thing I can imagine is that Setti saw him standing behind me when he was brought to the cell, and connected him to what was happening. What I cannot understand, and I think about it day and night, is how Setti could have found out who he was and killed him ten years later in a forest in Yugoslavian Macedonia. I don’t know what to think: it’s almost like someone else has orchestrated the whole thing to cast the blame on a man who died ten years ago.’

‘You tried to make me believe at Sidirokastro that you weren’t responsible for Claudio Setti’s death,’ said Norman.

‘That’s right,’ said Karamanlis. ‘The last time I saw him he was still alive. Later I was informed by the secret services that Claudio Setti was dead. But I’m still at a loss as to who else could be behind this.’

Michel seemed to awaken from his apparent torpor. ‘Don’t be deceived. All of those messages come from a single place and they are all pronounced by a dead soul: Agamemnon’s ghost talking to Odysseus in Hades, Melissa’s spirit called up by the Oracle of the Dead. That’s the meaning behind the words: they come from a dead man, speaking from the other world, where you thought you had buried him. Claudio’s sending the messages and he wants us on the banks of the Acheron. There we’ll find out what death he has in mind for us.’

Karamanlis stood up. ‘Well, he’s not scaring me,’ he said. ‘I’ve been in situations much worse than this. My men were not butchered by a ghost. A man who kills can be killed – he’s not invulnerable. If there’s anything more you know and haven’t told me, you’d better come clean now, otherwise you go down your road and I’ll take mine. I don’t know what you’re planning on doing, but it doesn’t concern me. If you want my advice, leave. Go home. Who’s dead is dead and there’s no bringing them back to life. What’s done is done. Leave and let me solve this my way. It’ll be better all around. If what you say is true, you’re no safer than I am. You were the only ones who knew where he was that day with the girl, and he knows that. By now he knows that for sure.’

He tapped his index finger on the table peremptorily.

‘Leave Athens and Greece now, while you’re still in time,’ he said. Then he turned his back on them and left.

T
HREE DAYS LATER
, in Istanbul, Claudio Setti was approached by a young boy as he sat drinking a cup of tea in a
çayone
at Galata bridge. ‘The commander said to bring you these,’ he said, handing him an envelope and disappearing without waiting for a tip or a reply. Claudio opened the envelope and found a black and white photograph depicting Michel sitting at a table in a bar talking to Karamanlis. He felt a sharp pain in his chest and tears rose to his eyes. He stood up and walked towards the railing: below him the water of the Golden Horn twinkled with a myriad reflections as great ships sailed past. Storms of seagulls dived in, fighting with shrill cries over the garbage thrown in by the little restaurants and stands facing the water between the spans of the bridge. In the distance, he could see the endless Asian shoreline. He threw the picture in and watched it until it sank.

‘Güle güle, arkadash,
’ he murmured in Turkish. ‘Goodbye, my friend.’

He returned to his table and went back to sipping his tea. His gaze was even now, his eyes clear and dry, staring at a fixed point in the sky, just like those of the emaciated barefooted old man sitting on the ground next to him, exhausted by age, covered with rags.

M
IREILLE DECIDED TO
join Michel in Greece, because none of the reasons he gave for staying away from his own country for so long convinced her. Those words that Icarus had found for her had disturbed her deeply: what could Michel want with such a macabre story? And what was he hiding from her? When she had suggested again that she come to Athens with the results of her research, he had firmly refused and told her in no uncertain terms to stay put.

When her father realized that she was leaving for Greece to join Michel, he decided it was time to tell her straight out what the family thought of their relationship: not only was Michel’s family not up to the standards of Saint-Cyr, it wasn’t his family to start with. The Charriers had adopted him from an orphanage in Château Mouton: Michel was in reality a ‘mouton’, or lost sheep, as the foundlings were derisively called. Mireille had to understand that such a background would never do for the family, especially if it became public knowledge. Unknown parents could mean anything: Michel might even be the son of a prostitute. Count Saint-Cyr was neither insolent nor condescending, but very effective in pointing out the insurmountable problems Michel would cause for the family.

Mireille in turn was neither insolent nor condescending. She let her father know in clear terms that she would not give up Michel for any reason in the world. If he would have her, she would marry him even if he didn’t have a cent, because he was brilliant, successful and intelligent, and she had her own work as an assistant professor with a decent salary. There was nothing that the family could do to keep them apart. And that was the end of that.

At this point the Count, in order to prevent his daughter from making a decision she would some day regret, pulled out his trump card, which he imagined would resolve the situation once and for all.

‘Please don’t misjudge my intentions, dear,’ he began. ‘I’ve done this for your own good. I used my influence to see the papers which accompanied the child when he was left at the orphanage—’

Mireille, who had been admirably controlling her temper, burst into a fit of rage: ‘And you call yourself a gentleman? Oh my God, I can’t believe how low you’ve stooped to break us up. Whatever you’ve found, let me tell you that Michel should be ashamed to marry into a family like ours!’

‘Mireille, I will not allow you—’

‘Fine, father. Now that I’ve told you what I think, tell me what you’ve found. I’m curious to know just what kind of original sin has made my man unworthy of the Saint-Cyrs.’

‘Well, since you asked, your man, as you call him, was born from the union of an Arab woman and an Italian soldier imprisoned by the English during the war. He managed to escape and found shelter with a Bedouin tribe at the Siwa oasis. That’s where the child was born. Then the mother died of typhus and the soldier went to Algiers, where he enrolled in the foreign legion. The child was brought to France and admitted to the orphanage. Now you know . . .’

Mireille shook her head. ‘Half Italian and half Bedouin. The worst you can imagine, right, Daddy? Well now that you’ve told me, I hope you’re satisfied, and I hope you’ll be interested to know that I couldn’t give a damn. Actually, now I understand just where he got his fabulous virility from.’

The Count became furious at this provocation and raised his hand to slap her, but Mireille continued to gaze impassively into his eyes. ‘Just try to touch me and you’ll never see me again,’ she said. ‘I’m serious.’ She spoke with such determination that her father’s hand dropped and he lowered his head, defeated if not resigned.

‘Well, I’m leaving,’ announced Mireille after a moment or two. ‘Try to get over your hypocrisy in the meantime, if you can.’

Her family’s vileness made her feel even closer to Michel, and the misfortunes of his childhood made her love him even more deeply. She felt a strong desire to embrace him, to smell the dry fragrance of his skin which reminded her of the forests at the beach in Sète and the wind-beaten bushes in the Camargue where they had so often gone horse riding or driven around in his absurd Deux-Chevaux. But at that moment she had no idea even where to look for him. He had left at the University the phone number of a hotel in Parga, a little city in Epirus, near the archaeological site of Ephira, where he planned to be at the beginning of November.

Mireille went up to her room and took the keys of Michel’s apartment on rue des Orfèvres. She would spend the night there so she could at least dream of being held in his arms. She wanted to be close to his things, listen to his music, leaf through his books, take a bath in his tub.

She had a sandwich and a glass of Beaujolais nouveau at a bar in the centre of town, then went to Michel’s apartment. The door to the bedroom was slightly ajar: she couldn’t help but think how he was always a little shy about getting undressed in front of her, and how he always forgot to take off his socks before his trousers.

She went into the kitchen, twisted the gas valve and put on a pot of coffee, then went into his study. Everything was in perfect order except for his work desk, crowded, as always, with an infinite heap of papers, books, sketches, notes, maps, answered and unanswered letters, articles, rulers, pencils and markers.

She took a look at the mess and realized that somehow there was meaning in the madness. It all seemed to revolve around a central point, and that point seemed to be a sheet of tracing paper on which a single straight line was drawn, marked off by letters of the alphabet: a D on top, a T a little further down and an S at the end. Between the first two letters a cross marked the word ‘Ephira’, and there was a heading at the top of the page: ‘The axis of Harvatis’. Ephira. She’d just heard that name, hadn’t she? Wasn’t that the place Michel was supposed to be at in a short time? That’s right, the hotel he’d left the phone number for.

She could hear the coffee percolating on the flame and went to pour herself a cup of excellent Italian espresso. Now that she knew that Michel was half Italian, she thought that his taste for espresso coffee must be genetic. Otherwise he was so French! She went back into the study and sat down to sip the coffee, still staring at the line.

She lifted her head and noticed a map of ancient Greece and the eastern Mediterranean –
Graecia Antiqua Cum Oris Maris Agei
– hanging on the wall. Was the line traced over that map? She got closer and clearly saw Ephira on the coast facing the Ionian islands, north of the gulf of Ambracia. Ephira . . . that was it! The Oracle of the Dead was at Ephira, where Periander had evoked the ghost of his wife Melissa! That’s where she’d heard it. She still had a copy of the passage from Herodotus in her purse. What was Michel going to do there?

She swallowed the last sip of coffee, walked over to the desk, freed the tracing paper from all the other things lying around it, then placed it over the map on the wall. She lined up the little cross marked Ephira with the same name on the map, then patiently started turning the sheet until all the letters matched up with places on the map. ‘D’ was for Dodona, the prophetic sanctuary of Zeus, the most ancient oracle of the Greek world; ‘T’ stood for Tainaron, the central promontory of the Peloponnesus, Cape Tenaros; and at the end, much further south, in the north African desert, ‘S’ lined up with Siwa, the oasis of the oracle of Ammon. This was Harvatis’s axis? What could it possibly mean? What on earth could unite such far-flung places?

She returned to the table and started exploring, taking care to put each thing back in its exact place in the general mess. She found a notebook with a bibliographic reference written in it: ‘Periklis Harvatis, “Hypothesis on the necromantic rite in the
Odyssey
, Book XI”.’ Okay, something about this Harvatis, a good start. She started to skim what Michel had written: a kind of outline, she supposed, of what was in the article.

She became fascinated: Harvatis’s theory was that the rite for calling up the spirits of the dead as described in the eleventh book of the
Odyssey
was the same rite used in the Necromantion of Ephira as early as the Mycenaean age. In other words, the rite set on the shores of the Ocean in Homer’s poem – when Odysseus seeks to learn his destiny by calling up the Shades of the Dead – could actually have taken place in Epirus, at the mouth of the Acheron. The ‘city of the Cimmerians’ mentioned by the poet could be identified as the Cimmerian promontory, just a mile from Ephira.

Michel had written a couple of notes alongside, under the heading ‘The prophecy of Tiresias’: