Read Online The Orpheus Descent by Tom Harper - Free Book Online Page B

‘He stayed with me.’
    I didn’t understand the past tense. ‘
Stayed?
’
    ‘He had to leave suddenly.’
    ‘He’s supposed to meet me here.’
    ‘Why did he go?’ asked Euphemus, alert to scandal.
    ‘Where did he go?’ I wanted to know.
    ‘I imagine he went back to Thurii. He had a friend there.’
    I have been staying with Dimos in Thurii.
‘My stepbrother, Dimos.’ My mind spun, thrown off by the unexpected news. ‘Is it far from here?’
    Archytas’ shrewd eyes examined me. They seemed to be saying something, but I couldn’t work out what.
    ‘You can walk to Thurii in three days. By boat, it’s quicker.’
    ‘We’re not going in another boat,’ said Euphemus, emphatically.
    I didn’t know where I was going. Just walking to town had exhausted me again. I didn’t have anything except the clothes on my back (and those were borrowed from Eurytus); I couldn’t afford lunch, let alone a passage to Thurii. And there were things about Agathon that Archytas seemed unwilling to say, that I was desperate to know.
    Archytas must have read it all in my eyes. He took mercy on me.
    ‘It’s too late to set off now. You can stay in my house tonight.’
    Archytas’ house, near the agora, dwarfed anything you’d see in Athens, big enough that Euphemus and I were given separate rooms. Archytas excused himself with business in town; Euphemus invited himself along, no doubt hoping to tout for business. I lay on the bed and stretched out, trying to unknot my battered muscles.
    I flexed my fingers around the end of the mattress. To my surprise, instead of soft cloth, my hand felt something brittle and hard that crinkled under my touch. I pulled it out.
    It was a scroll, battered and dented. I unrolled the first column’s worth to see what it was.
    The Way of Truth
, by Parmenides.
    Of course I’ve studied Parmenides, but never with much success. He writes his philosophy in such dense, elusive language it’s impossible to know what to think. Half of me – the Voice of Desire – is utterly seduced by the dark fantasies and vivid images. The other half – the Voice of Reason – insists that if he had anything worth saying, he’d just get it out.
    I lay on the bed and turned through the scroll. I wondered who had left it there.
    The path you came down is far from the well-trodden roads of mortals. But it was not cruel Fate who brought you here, but Truth and Justice, in order for you to learn everything there is to know.
    There are two paths of enquiry – the way that
is
, and the way that
is not
. And one is impossible, for you cannot travel the way that
is not,
and nothing that goes down that road comes back.
    Perhaps it was reading him on Italian soil, where his ideas germinated. Perhaps the shocks of the last two days had cracked my rational defences. Whatever it was, I found the Voice of Reason unusually submissive as I read it.
    Do not let habit drag you into the well-worn rut,
    Guiding yourself with blind eyes, deaf ears and a dumb tongue,
    But use reason; by thought, look clearly on things which though they are not there
    Are there.
    I was still looking at the manuscript, trying to see things that might or might not be there, when I heard commotion downstairs, and Archytas’ strong voice issuing orders to his slaves. I went down.
    Archytas was in the
andron
, the men’s quarters. Like the man himself, the decoration was spare and masculine: black-and-white tiles tessellating triangles on the floor; a few fine pieces of dinnerware hanging from the whitewashed walls, and bronze armour displayed in an alcove.
    I walked through the door and was almost bowled over as a small boy barrelled into my knees, bounced off, and wriggled through my legs. I stepped back, just in time to avoid another child hurling himself after the first. In the corner, by a chest, a naked baby sat on the floor, tugging at a wheeled wooden duck that quacked as it rolled.
    ‘Have I come into the nursery?’ I wondered