Wayward Son (27 page)

After an interval, Cain rendered his own performance. He was gratified to see Homer sitting in the front row. They were competitors, to be sure, but also colleagues, at least in Cain’s mind. Yet he worried that Homer would think it strange that he showed no signs of aging. Perhaps, after this long interval, the rival singer’s memories would be somewhat blurred. Nevertheless, Cain took the precaution of wearing a cloak and a broad-brimmed hat, ostensibly for warmth on this cool evening. At the conclusion of Cain’s performance, Homer waved the Athenian bard to his table.

“A splendid performance!” Homer exclaimed. As Cain acknowledged the accolade in a muted tone, he noticed that Homer’s clouded eyes were staring a bit off to the left. It was only then that he realized that the visiting bard, whose beard was streaked with traces of gray, had become blind.

“So, you
have
become a singer of tales! I well remember the curly-headed boy on Chios.” Cain now relaxed as they sat down together.

“You were an inspiration to me then,” Homer responded. “I still remember your recital with gratitude. But I knew that something else was missing. I wanted the verse and the meter, as well as the words and the music, to be part of the story, part of the performance. Other epic singers came to Chios. They had the six-beat line, and I became their apprentice.”

“Where did that verse line come from?” asked Cain.

“No one knows for sure, but many of the singers I met said they thought it had come down from the time of the war itself.”

“How are you able to sing the same song in exactly the same way at each performance?” asked Cain.

“I can’t claim that every performance is identical to every other. But the verse line helps me to fix my thoughts in place. There are certain rhythmical groups of words that recur time and again. Once I know their positions in the line, I am able to handle the components of each verse more easily. I am able to tell the events of each story episode in the proper order. Every performance is one part memory, one part improvisation.”

It had never occurred to Cain, given his own powers of recollection, that poetry could aid in the process of memorization. His affinity for Homer grew.

“But what if you could make your best performances permanent? What if you could set them down for future generations?”

Homer shrugged sadly. “The Mycenaeans of whom we sing possessed writing,” he said. “We have lost the art.”

“No, my friend. The art is there to be reinvented. Let me show you. Come outside to the courtyard.”

Away from the crowd, Cain scratched Phoenician letters in the clay soil of the taverna’s courtyard. Then he took Homer’s hand and lightly rubbed his fingers over the indentations.

“It would not take much to adapt these Phoenician letters to Greek,” Cain told him. “The most important changes you would need are new symbols for vowel sounds.” He sketched two examples,
epsilon
for short
e
and
iota
for
i
. “If your songs are recorded for posterity this way, Homer, they will be nothing short of immortal.”

The singer of tales replied slowly, quizzically.

“But then, if audiences can read these tales, performance will languish and die, will it not? Bards like us will not be necessary.”

Cain sighed. “Even with progress,” he said, “there is always a price to pay.”

***

During Homer’s three-month visit to Athens, the two men talked every day, sometimes for hours. Homer’s approach to the epic story of Troy fascinated Cain.

“I did not set out to recount the whole war,” Homer explained. “How could a singer include everything that happened in ten years’ time? And I am not a cheerleader for the Greeks. The backbone of my
Iliad
is the quarrel between two leaders with different values.”

“And that’s why you started out with the verses about the ‘wrath of Achilles’?” Cain asked. They had spent much of their time together refining the new alphabetic system of writing. Now, absentmindedly, Cain traced the alphabetic letters for the first line of Homer’s epic poem in the sand.

Menin aeide thea Peleiadeo Achilleos

Sing, Muse, of the wrath of Achilles, son of Peleus…

“Exactly. I also wanted to use the war as a backdrop for what every man, Greek or Trojan, must come to terms with—his own mortality.”

Cain betrayed no emotion, although inwardly he registered the irony of his own position. “Your poem is not really a history, then, but something else?” he hazarded.

“Yes, my friend. But I would not know precisely what to call it. I don’t think the word has yet been invented.” Somehow his statement conveyed modesty, not arrogance.

“What about the homeward journeys of the Greek heroes after the fall of Troy? Have you sung tales about those voyages?” Cain inquired.

“I once heard a story about the wanderings of Odysseus, but it was so full of gaps I could not piece it together. It would not make a song in my mind.”

“I also have heard of Odysseus’s journeys,” replied Cain. “And I too have been a wanderer. Let us compare what we know.”

Cain called for a flagon of wine and two cups. And so it was that, on a sunny afternoon by the sea, Homer’s
Odyssey
was born.

CHAPTER 33

Rome, Near the Vatican: Present Day

“YES, NOTOMBO?” CARDINAL RAVATTI responded to the blinking intercom light on his desk. Late on a Sunday morning, the office of the Vatican’s Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology was as hushed as the catacombs that lay within its jurisdiction.

“I’ve just spoken to the airport, Eminenza,” his assistant reported. “There’s a backlog on helicopter flights departing from Fiumicino, but I have secured the necessary approvals to depart instead from the Vatican heliport. We can leave in half an hour.”

“This monsignor will go places,” thought Ravatti, as a chopper with the yellow-and-white papal insignia hovered appealingly in his mind’s eye. But all he said was, “Good work, Monsignor. Let’s pass the time with a cappuccino in my office. I have already called the kitchen.”

“Thank you. I’ll be in as soon as I finalize our clearance into Ercolano. Apparently there has been some activity from Vesuvius that is disrupting the local airspace.”

Before Notombo’s arrival, Ravatti withdrew several photographs from the top drawer of his ornate sixteenth-century marble desk. Spreading the pictures out on the gleaming surface, he placed beside them a color printout of the image e-mailed from Silvio Sforza a few minutes beforehand.

“
Ebbene, se non č vero, č certamente ben trovato
,” Ravatti murmured to himself. “So, even if it’s not true, it surely hangs together.”

When Notombo entered, followed by a white-jacketed waiter with a tray bearing the coffees and assorted biscotti, Ravatti motioned the monsignor to one of the chairs on the other side of the desk. As he waited for the servant to withdraw, he savored the rich aroma of the frothy beverages.

After the door clicked shut, the cardinal leaned forward and spoke with the affection of an uncle. “Gabriel, before we fly to Ercolano I want to share some background. One day, you may well be sitting in this chair, my friend. But for now, this is strictly confidential, you understand?”

Notombo, taken aback, sat up very straight. Ravatti had addressed him by his first name. He had also speculated favorably on his future. It was rare in the notoriously secretive Vatican for a cardinal to be so willing to share a confidence.

“
Assolutamente
, Eminenza,” he reassured his mentor.

Ravatti pointed to the first photograph on the desk. “Do you know what this is?”

The monsignor looked at the picture momentarily, his eyes widening.

“I gather they did not cover this when you were at Harvard. It is an antikythera mechanism, Gabriel. I hasten to add that, aside from its name, no one knows its purpose, including me. But I have a special connection with this intriguing gadget. Over forty years ago, when I was fresh out of seminary, my superiors sent me to a dig in Libya for further on-site training. It was there that I first met Silvio Sforza. We were fledgling archaeologists, flush with all the enthusiasm we needed to conquer the world.”

“Were you digging at
Leptis Magna
?” inquired Notombo. The site, eighty miles east of the modern-day Libyan capital at Tripoli, was one of the most renowned in the ancient Roman world.

“Correct, my friend. Silvio and I discovered the device almost completely intact. It lay in the hold of a buried ship in an ancient dry dock, a few hundred meters inland from the Mediterranean. Possibly a powerful desert sandstorm covered it so that it was lost to time.”

“How old is the device?”

“Coins found in the wreck indicated a date of about 250 BC. There is only one other surviving antikythera mechanism, discovered more than a century ago by sponge divers near the island of Antikythera. It is now in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.”

“It looks remarkably intricate,” observed Notombo, as he peered at the dozens of miniaturized interlocking gears.

“It has been described as the world’s first mechanical computer. But despite the minute lettering in Greek and Phoenician, which may be some sort of instruction manual, nobody really knows what it was used for. It could have been a navigation device, or possibly a calendar. It might have been an instrument for astronomical observations.”

Extracting a powerful magnifying glass from his desk, Ravatti handed it to Notombo. “Now, look carefully at the narrow rectangle in the lower right-hand corner. What do you see?”

“It looks to be some sort of mark. It’s quite different from the alphabetic lettering elsewhere.”

“Correct again. When Silvio and I found the device, we noticed the difference immediately. We speculated that the mark was some sort of signature—perhaps a personal symbol used by the maker. Similar, possibly, to the individualized crests you find today on signet rings or coats of arms. As you know, signing artifacts of many kinds was a common practice in the ancient world.”

“What happened to the device? Where is it now, Eminenza?”

Ravatti sighed. “Before Silvio and I could study it further, our superiors ordered it boxed up and sent to Rome. Here, too, it was lost to time for many years, due to a cataloging error in the Vatican Museums.”

“A cataloging error?” Notombo raised an eyebrow.

“Well, that is the
official
explanation. In any case, it only surfaced less than a year ago. Of course, I contacted Silvio immediately. He suggested that we send it to the Getty Museum in California for further analysis, since they are experts in such matters and possess all the latest technology.”

“Isn’t it a bit unusual for the Vatican to deploy outside assistance in a matter such as this?” Notombo asked.

“Typically, yes. But because I head the Pontifical Commission, a loan to the Getty was not difficult to arrange. They are studying the piece now,” Ravatti told him. “But that’s not the end of the story.”

They sipped their cappuccinos appreciatively. Then the cardinal resumed.

“For many years, I had only my memory of the artist’s mark to rely on. We had no digital cameras in those days. But the mark, if that’s what it was, had made a very powerful impression. So you can imagine my amazement when I saw this.”

Ravatti gestured to the second photograph, which Notombo dutifully inspected.

“More than twenty years after I worked at Leptis Magna, this stunning map came into the Vatican collections. The material is exquisite: silk paper. The chart is of ancient
Xi’an
, the capital of the First Emperor of China. From what we can tell, it is astonishingly accurate. From the silk paper and the inks, it is estimated that the map was fashioned just a few decades before the birth of Christ.”

“Where did it come to light?” Notombo asked eagerly.

“You’d never guess. It was found in the late 1980s, slightly singed, inside a metal tube recovered from the basement of a first-century AD estate right here on the
Palatine Hill
. The cellar was apparently situated above the entrance to a catacomb. That’s how our Pontifical Commission got involved. From a stone with the name carved on it, archaeologists have established that the place belonged to a nobleman named Marcus Flavius Pictor.”

Notombo’s expression betrayed his astonishment.

“Yes, I know. It does seem supremely unlikely to encounter such a possession in Rome,” the cardinal told him. “Yet we are certain there were trade contacts between ancient Rome and China, even in those days. Now, please use the magnifying glass to examine the lower right-hand corner of the picture.”

“The identical artist’s mark!” exclaimed the monsignor.

“When I first saw it, I was confounded. So baffled, in fact, that I confided in a senior colleague, Cardinal Luigi Bertoli. You wouldn’t remember him. He died in 1990. He was archpriest of Santa Maria Maggiore, the basilica right around the corner from here. I was not yet a cardinal, and he was one of my kindest mentors. After I summarized the story and showed him some photographs, he invited me to lunch. We went to a small trattoria in the
Piazza del Popolo
.

“‘I have something to show you, Sandro, before we sit down,’ Luigi told me.

“We strolled from the restaurant across to the center of the piazza. When we were in the shadow of the obelisk, he pointed to its northern face.

“‘Now, look very carefully at the lower right corner. Describe to me what you see there.’

“I could not believe my eyes.” Ravatti slid the third photograph, a telephoto snapshot of the base of the obelisk’s northern face, over toward Notombo, who scrutinized it carefully.

Notombo let out a low whistle. “You have ruled out a
graffito
, Eminenza?”