The Orpheus Descent (26 page)

‘There’s always the quarries if you prefer.’

‘I’d be happy to teach you whatever I can.’

‘Not me.’
I know what I know
, his face said.
The rest can go to hell.
He didn’t bring philosophers and poets here to learn from them, but to own them.

‘I was thinking of my son. Perhaps you can make something of him.’

I nodded. What else could I do?

‘They say Socrates often debated whether virtue and wisdom could be taught. Now’s your chance to find out. It’s fair to say your life depends on it.’

He clapped me on the shoulder and bared his teeth, delighted with himself. He could quote Homer and Euripides, or debate laws and constitutions with a subtle intelligence. But at that moment, I realised, I was in the hands of a psychopath.

And what had he done with Agathon?

The last ten seconds of his old life ticked away on the sofa – ten blank seconds while his mind warmed up out of sleep, before he remembered. He felt a brief, almost euphoric moment of weightlessness as every atom of his body twisted itself to the gravity of this new world he’d dropped into.

Then it hit.
She’s not coming back.

He looked around. His phone lay on the floor by the sofa. His wallet sat on the table, the credit cards spilling out. Had he been robbed? He rubbed his eyes and glanced at the door. Still locked and chained.

Was there someone else in the flat?

‘Hello?’ he called. No one answered. He looked into the other rooms; he even pulled open the bedroom cupboards just in case. No one there.

On the carpet, the phone beeped reproachfully. Jonah pawed the screen.

Three new voicemails, one new e-mail
, it told him.

He listened to the messages first. Yesterday, he’d have had his heart in his mouth hoping for Lily. Today, the hope was gone.

Julian:
Hope you got back all right. Look after yourself.

Charis:
So sorry about Lily, darling. Would you like to come and stay with me and Bill in the country for the weekend?

Richard:
Glad to hear Lily’s safe. I’ll tell the police.

Julian must have told them after he’d gone. Anger flared inside him; he felt embarrassed that Julian had been spreading rumours about him.

It’s not a rumour if it’s a fact
, said the cruel voice in his head.

For thoroughness, he looked at the e-mail as well.
Flight Reservation Confirmation
, the subject said.

If he hadn’t still been a little drunk, he’d have deleted it straight away as a scam. Instead, he tapped on it.

He read it through three times. First, because his tired eyes struggled to read the tiny screen; then because he must have read it wrong; then because it made no sense.

It said he had a flight to Athens booked that afternoon. He kept reading, waiting for the hook. A request for him to confirm his bank details, or wire ten thousand dollars to a travel agent in Nigeria. There was none of that.

Your card ending xxxx-
0427
has been charged the full non-refundable amount.

He picked up one of the cards from the table and read the last four silver numbers.

0427
.

Did I do this?

Panic. He dropped the phone and jumped up. The moment he stood, a hundred-ton weight in his brain knocked him back. He looked at the scattered beer cans and the vodka bottle, as if their pattern might hold some meaning. He needed to remember, but the heaviness in his skull crushed all thought. And he was dying of thirst.

The fridge was empty. He ran the tap as cold as it would go and poured a glass of water, drained it, poured another.

Dreams and memories dribbled back. The phone ringing. Running down a dark tunnel, pursued by a force that would devour him if he once looked back. Someone asking,
Can you come to Athens?
Swimming in blue water, stretching for Lily’s hand but she was always out of reach.

I know who took your wife.

That must have been the dream. Lily hadn’t really been taken. She’d run off and left him, the way marriages ended every day. Eventually she’d get in touch, they’d call lawyers, meet other people and move on.

But the Lily of his dreams, the Lily he’d married, would never leave him. He scraped the credit card over his stubble like a razor. He’d believed the dream enough to book a flight. Why stop now, just because he’d woken up?

He thought of a line that Adam once gave him, from an ancient philosopher called Heraclitus.
Awake, we see our dreams; but whenever we go to sleep, we see death.
He’d used it in a song.

For the second time in his life, he had nothing in the world but a broken heart and a ticket to Athens. He went to the bedroom and threw some clothes in a bag.

There were moments, writing songs, when it all came together. When all the false starts and wrong notes suddenly resolved into something vital and true. One moment he was stumbling through chaos; the next, it all made sense. He could glimpse the whole – not every detail, but the essence of the thing. Just a glimpse, and long hard hours ahead to capture it. But enough to know where he was going.

The phone call had been one of those moments. A single word that tied it all together.
Athens.

Lily flew to Athens the week before she disappeared.

Adam was based in Athens and came back with her.

The Eikasia Foundation’s headquarters was in Athens.

If you rationalised it, there was nothing there. Lily went to meet the people who were funding the dig; Adam came back to deal with firing Sandi. No great mystery. Except that right afterwards, Lily vanished.

If they wanted Lily off their case, they’d give her a plane ticket and a payoff and an NDA.

He was looking in the wrong place. A meteorite had hit his world, and he was trying to understand it by staring at the rubble at his feet. He needed to look up. Whatever happened in Sibari, it had come from Athens.

In the heat of the night, in the grip of alcohol and emotion, it had been so real he could almost touch it. In the cool of the morning, exposed to daylight, he could see how shabby the argument was. But by then it was too late. The joy of the modern age was that however drunk, however dumb, however deluded you might be, with a credit card and a few taps on a screen, you could have whatever you wanted straight away. Even if it was crazy.

Jonah touched down in Athens at eight o’clock local time. A lone border guard waved the queue through, barely glancing at the passports. The crowds had gone: Jonah’s flight seemed to be the only one. His footsteps echoed down the empty corridors. In the long baggage hall, carousels turned but no bags came.

He left the other passengers waiting for their luggage and went through customs. He called Adam from the arrivals hall, using the number Julian had given him.

‘Yes?’ It was a long time since he’d heard Adam’s voice – he’d forgotten how much it unnerved him. Cool, hard and clear, not coloured by any sort of accent or emotion. Disembodied by the phone, it existed in a sort of pure, acousmatic sound-state.

‘It’s Jonah.’

A long pause. Talking to Adam was like dealing with one of those chess-playing computers, calculating every possible sequence twenty moves ahead.

‘I heard Lily turned up. That’s good news.’

They all know
,
he realised.

‘There was a text message. She hasn’t actually come back.’

‘No,’ Adam agreed.

‘I’m in Athens. I want to talk to you.’

A longer pause.

‘OK.’

‘A bed for the night would be good too.’

‘Of course.’

‘Can I come by?’ With anyone else, he’d have added an apology. With Adam, there was no embarrassment. Only problems and solutions.

‘OK.’

‘Where’s your house? I’ll get a cab.’

‘They’re on strike. Trains are no good, either.’ Problems and solutions. ‘I’ll come and get you.’

‘You don’t have to …’

But he’d already hung up.

Jonah wasn’t there for Adam’s symposium: he had to work. One of the bar staff had called in sick; his manager told Jonah to cover the shift or lose his job. He didn’t get out until almost midnight, onto freezing, empty streets and a light snow falling. He almost went straight home.

But he wanted to see Lily, and he’d promised Adam. He walked down St Giles’, head bowed against the snow, to the row of high terraces where Adam lived with Richard and Julian.

He thought the party must have finished. The house was dark, all the curtains drawn; no music, no conversation. He pressed the bell and heard it chime inside the house, but no one answered. Snow fell in the streetlights and gathered on his scarf.

He rang and knocked again. He tried calling the house phone – he could hear it ringing through the windows, on and on into the winter’s night – but nobody picked up.

Just as he was about to hang up and go home, Julian answered. ‘Who is this?’

‘It’s Jonah.’

‘Jonah?’ His voice sounded slurry and dazed, as if he’d just woken up.

‘I’m standing on the mat getting snowed on – can you open the door?’

‘I don’t think you should come in.’

‘What do you mean? Is Lily there?’

‘She’s … Christ.’ The voice trailed off. ‘I’ll come down.’

Julian opened the door wearing nothing but a pair of chinos. His belt ends flopped limp and loose; his hair was a mess.

‘It’s a bad time.’ He sounded high. Jonah sniffed the air for pot.

‘What’s going on? Where’s Lily?’

‘I don’t think she’s really—’

Jonah pushed past him, up the stairs to the first-floor living room. Soft light glowed inside, but when he tried the door, something blocked it. He had to squeeze round to get in.

The room stank of incense, sweat and vomit. Three single beds and a sofa had been crammed into a square around the edge of the room, draped with blankets. That was what had blocked the door. The whole room was lit by candles. A joss stick smoked on the bookshelf, and a sock dangled from the ceiling to stifle the smoke alarm. A bowl of olives lay overturned on the floor, next to a Pyrex casserole dish half-full of wine, and a kitchen knife. Dark stains marked the cream carpet. Was that wine? Blood? It was too dark to tell, and he couldn’t find the light switch. The lyre stood in the corner, untouched.

‘Jonah, darling?’

Charis lay sprawled on one of the beds. She was wearing what looked like her gap-year sari, though it had unravelled in some disorder. He could see the dark smudge of a nipple where one breast had slipped out of the dress. She didn’t seem to care. Her eyes were open but they didn’t move; red lipstick was smeared around her mouth.

Richard sat on the bed opposite, head in his hands, dressed in a toga that had fallen off his shoulder. Even by candlelight, his hairless chest looked pasty-white.

‘What the
fuck
happened here?’

‘He spiked the wine,’ Richard said.

‘
What?
’

A spasm went through Richard’s body, like a frog in a biology class. ‘He didn’t tell us.’

‘Where’s Lily?’

‘He didn’t tell us.’ Richard groaned and put his head back in his hands.

‘Upstairs,’ Charis said from the couch behind him. ‘She’s with Adam.’

He took the stairs two at a time – three flights, to the very top. Adam’s room looked empty without its bed. In the blue light of a lava lamp, Lily sat hunched up against the bare wall, cradling Adam’s head in her lap. She was wearing what she called her Aphrodite dress: a wispy, sleeveless number she’d bought in Greece. Adam was naked.

Her tired, weeping eyes looked up and saw Jonah. She had a scratch on her cheek.

‘Can you get him a glass of water? He needs to drink.’

Jonah didn’t move. As his eyes got used to the dimness, they made out long streaks that looked like blood caked up Adam’s arms. He didn’t really process it. All he could see was Lily.

‘What—?’

‘It’s not what you think,’ said Lily.

Jonah ran.

Afterwards, no one spoke about it – at least, not that Jonah ever heard. The secret to their type-A, fast-tracked Oxbridge lives, he realised, was selective memory, and they were ruthlessly good at it. When you aimed to climb so high up the ladder, there was no point looking back; if emotional baggage weighed you down, you discarded it. At the same time, you couldn’t just cut off your friends. So you made-believe, and nothing bad ever happened for long.

But he always wondered about the others, and what they really remembered.

The silver Audi arrived outside the airport forty-five minutes later.

Jonah pulled up an imaginary photo of Adam as a student, and tried to match it to the man in front of him. The long black hair had been shaved back to the scalp: people who didn’t know him well wondered if he’d had cancer. As far as Jonah knew, there was no medical reason. He’d just shed it one day, along with ten kilos, like a theorem being pruned back to its truest expression. Occam’s razor, Richard called it. They’d had to explain that one to him.

But the dress sense hadn’t changed. He got out of the car wearing a tight black V-neck T-shirt, loose black cargo trousers and black boots. The eyes were the same too – except, perhaps, more so. With no hair or fat to distract, you couldn’t escape them. Watery grey, examining the world with withering intensity.

He saw Jonah and got out of the car. He moved gracefully, like a dancer. Jonah knew some people were convinced he was gay.

His handshake was firm like ice. ‘Short notice.’

‘Julian got me drunk. It seemed a good idea.’

Adam accepted it without judgement. ‘She isn’t here.’

The announcement came so unexpectedly it took Jonah a moment to process it. Then, because it seemed like the logical reply: ‘Do you know where she is?’

‘No. You’re not the only one worried about her.’

He pointed to Jonah’s bag. ‘Is that all your luggage?’

Jonah knew, because Lily once told him, that the airport stood near the site of the Battle of Marathon, where nine thousand Athenians held back the full weight of the Persian empire. After the battle, the Greeks’ fastest runner, Pheidippides, ran back to the city to deliver the news. The distance was twenty-six miles, three hundred and eighty-five yards, and he’d just fought a battle: he died as soon as he got there. No one recorded his time.