The fall of Troy : a novel

243 Pages·2008·0.78 MB·English

by  Ackroyd

CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY PETER ACKROYD
COPYRIGHT
ONE
H
e fell down heavily on his knees, took her hand and brought it up to his
mouth. “I kiss the hand of the future Mrs. Obermann.” He spoke in English.
Neither she nor her parents understood German, and he disliked speaking
demotic Greek. He considered it vulgar.
Sophia Chrysanthis looked down at his bald head, and noticed a small scar.
“You have been wounded, Heinrich.”
“A fragment of the statue of Zeus. On the island of Ithaca. That is where I
found the palace of Odysseus, the wanderer. I discovered the chamber where his
wife, Penelope, had woven her endless tapestry. She was always faithful to him.
You will be my Penelope, Sophia.”
“I hope you do not travel as far as Odysseus.”
“You will never leave my side.” He rose, with difficulty, and bowed to her
parents, who were standing together by the window. “I will utter prayers for you
every day. If I live to be a thousand years old, I will never forget you.” Outside,
in the dusty light, the horses and carriages passed along the avenues; he
glimpsed three women, holding up parasols to protect themselves from the bright
sun of the early Athenian spring, chattering together as they walked upon the
cobbles. They were dressed in pale green, with white veils and bonnets, and he
knew at once that they were sisters. “This is an auspicious day. Your daughter
will be a partner in my labours. She will be cherished by Greece.”
“She has no greater desire than to be your wife, Herr Obermann.” Madame
Chrysanthis gave a slight nod, as if making some formal remark for duty’s sake.
“We have taught her that a wife is but the shadow of her husband.”
“The women in Germany would not believe you.”
“That is why you are not marrying a German.”
Obermann laughed. He already knew that Madame was a formidable woman,
and he hoped that her daughter had inherited her sterner virtues. “But my wife
will be my partner in uncovering the lost past of her country. She will stand
within the walls of Troy!”
“Sophia has a passion for learning. That is true.” Colonel Chrysanthis deemed
it necessary to enter the conversation: the future of his only child was, after all,
being discussed. “Ever since your first letter to us she has been reading Homer to
me.”
“She draws up maps of the battle lines,” Madame Chrysanthis said.
“This is all good. All excellent.” Obermann had once more taken Sophia by
the hand. “She is another Athene, as learned as she is beautiful.”
“I will not be a goddess, Heinrich.”
“I cannot wait to bring you to the plain of Troy. To show you the place where
Hector and Achilles fought. To show you the palace of Priam. And the walls
where the Trojan women watched their warriors in battle with the invader,
Agamemnon, and his soldiers. It will stir your blood, Sophia.”
“It was a long time ago, Heinrich.”
“Not for me. It is eternal. Beyond time.”
“I do not know if I will be able to see so far.”
“My wife will see everything.”
A he had led her into the courtyard of the house, cool in the shadows
FEW DAYS EARLIER
of the evening, and sat with her on the marble bench there. “I must have you,
Sophia. Once I have come to a conclusion I cannot be moved. I am unshakeable.
As soon as I saw your photograph, I knew that I was yours.”
“So you chose me without reason?”
“We do things because we do them. There is no necessary explanation. Your
Greek dramatists knew this. Homer knew it.”
“I thought that you wanted me because I am a woman who reads Homer.”
“That is a part of it. There we are already married. But there is also fate,
Sophia. As hard and as desperate as life.”
T was conducted in the little church of Hagios Georgios, set back from
HE CEREMONY
the Odos Ermou in a small square, while the servants of the Chrysanthis
household prepared the wedding feast. There was much discussion among them
about the relative merits of bride and groom. The maids considered him too old
for Sophia. She was in her mid-twenties, whereas Herr Obermann must be fifty,
no, more than fifty. He would soon be stout, and he wore pebble glasses; he was
short, too, with a great round head like a cannon ball.
“He speaks too loud,” Maria Karmeniou said. “You can hear his voice
booming through the house.”
“It is the German manner,” Nikola Zannis explained. “They are strong.
Impatient.”
The butler and the valet took his part. Miss Chrysanthis was young—and
some even called her beautiful—but she had a shocking temper like her mother.
She had been as sweet to him as the honey of Hybla, but they prophesied that
this would not last long after the wedding night. It was agreed by all of them,
however, that Herr Obermann must have paid a very large dowry for his new
wife. And, for this, they were grateful. In recent months their employers had
pared down costs so much that they had had little opportunity of cheating them.
The feast itself was lavish, of course, with all the sweet pastries and dainty
confections that are usual on such occasions. Obermann drank a great deal of
wine, and even called out for Bavarian beer; but there was none on the premises.
Then before the meal was over, against all custom, he stood up and made a
speech. He began by praising the beauty of Greek women, as exemplified by
Madame Chrysanthis, who had presided over the most charming meal since
Aphrodite dined with Zephyrus and the Nereides. Her consort, the great man
Colonel Chrysanthis, the pride of the National Patriotic Army, who had fought
so valiantly against the Asiatics, was especially worthy of praise; but he
deserved most thanks for producing out of his powerful loins his most splendid
daughter. “Will you raise your glasses to the young lady whom I have the
honour to call Frau Obermann?” He picked up his own glass for the toast. “She
will be my comrade in the field. Thanks to the exertions of her parents, she is a
lover of learning. She has been an admirer of the Homeric poems since her
earliest childhood, and has expressed to me her heartfelt sympathy with my task.
When I return to the plain of Troy, as I shall do very shortly, I shall take with me
a blessing greater than the Palladion that protected the old city!” At this point he
began to recite from memory the passage of the Iliad in which the goddess,
flashing-eyed Athene, in-stils courage and hope into the breast of mighty
Diomedes. Only Sophia could understand a word of the ancient Greek. The
others listened in perplexed silence as Obermann continued his oration.
When the meal was over, he danced wildly in the courtyard of the Chrysanthis
house. Sophia stood with the other married women as he leaped into the air and
threw out his arms, in imitation of the Turkish peasants whom he had seen in the
small villages near Troy. He began to sweat dreadfully, and his bald head
seemed to be melting in the rays of the afternoon sun. And Sophia thought, how
can I love a man who dances so badly?
That night, after he and Sophia had retired to the marital chamber—the bed
strewn with flowers, according to custom—the servant on that floor was
awakened by the sound of howling. She hurried down the corridor and put her
ear to the door of the Obermanns’ chamber. The howling had stopped. But then
she heard Herr Obermann singing, and there was a noise like that of feet banging
on the wooden floor. She crossed herself, and went back to her room. She could
not have known that this was a German marching song.
A the next morning, to her parents’ evident surprise, Sophia greedily
T BREAKFAST
consumed all the bread and dates in front of her; she ate the cheeses and the
potted tongue, and even nibbled at the olives, which she normally despised. She
had in the past condemned them as “peasant food,” but now she seemed to take a
certain pleasure in biting into their taut black skin. Her husband ate very quickly,
as was his habit, looking around at the others with wary eyes. He devoured his
food as if it were about to be snatched from him. Now, for the first time, Sophia
remonstrated with him. “You will do harm to your constitution, Heinrich. You
eat too fast.”
“There is nothing wrong with my constitution. I am tough. I am energetic.
Who else do you know to swim in the sea at dawn? Or ride an hour before
breakfast?” He rose early each morning and greeted the rising sun, stretching out
his arms and welcoming “the rosy-fingered dawn,” rhododaktulos eos; then he
would ride down to the harbour at Cophos and plunge into the waters of the
Saronic Gulf, to the amusement of the sailors and fishermen, who did not
consider the sea to be a place of recreation. “And who are you to advise me
about my health, Sophia? You drink too much coffee. It poisons the kidneys.
Our children will be dwarves.”
“Do you wish to see the Gazette?” the colonel asked him.
“No. It is barbaric Greek. Wait. Let me read the shipping news.”
H to his parents-in-law in the days immediately after the wedding;
E GREW LESS COURTEOUS
with his wife, he also seemed less restrained. The struggle was over. He had
gained, as always, the object he desired. It soon became clear, too, that he was
impatient to leave. Every morning he looked in the shipping columns, to
discover what ships had arrived and departed from Piraeus. He received
telegrams every day from Constantinople and Kannakale; he read them eagerly,
and tore them into little pieces. Then, at the end of their first week of marriage,
he had visited the shipping agent and booked himself and his wife on the passage
by steam-boat to the Dardanelles.
When he informed Sophia of this decision, she wept.
“Come now,” he said, “this is your new life.”
“I have never left Greece before, Heinrich. You must allow me a few tears.”
“It is only natural in a woman. I grant you that. But Frau Obermann does not
shed tears.”
She looked at him for a moment, then wiped her eyes. “You will never see
them again.”
“Good. And now to business. We leave on Monday morning aboard the Zeus.
I have taken an additional cabin for our luggage.”
“And how long will we be gone?”
“Some months. The rains do not begin until December.”
He had spoken to her already about his excavations at Hissarlik. He had left
them in the charge of his Russian assistant; but, from the first days of his
courtship of Sophia, he had been eager to return. “You ask me why it has
become my obsession,” he said to her one evening. “Why? Why is it considered
to be the first city? Why is it the vision of the poets? Why has it haunted
mankind for three thousand years? I do not know the answer to these things.”
She realised soon enough that he did not enjoy being questioned, on that or
any other subject; but, after a few glasses of wine, he would invariably furnish
her with all the information she required. “Do you know the Cypriot proverb,
Sophia,” he had asked her a week before the wedding, “‘Son of a priest,
grandson of the devil’?” He chuckled. “My father was a Lutheran pastor.”
“I have heard the saying.”
“It is true! But he was not an ordinary minister. He told me of trolls and
fairies. Of ghosts and demons. Of treasure buried in the bowels of the earth.”
“Is that what you are digging up?”
“No. I am digging for science, not for reward. And then, when I was about six
years old, he began reading Homer to me. I did not understand the Greek, of
course, but it was the music of the verse I loved. I became aware of the sound
and the pattern. That is how I learned Arabic. And French, Greek, Russian,
English, all of them came rolling off my tongue.”