A Cat At the End of the World, page 9
Scatterwind
CATS CAME WITH houses, wheat, and mice. Humans weren’t the first ones to store away food for winter, crows did it too, burying food in a thousand spots, and memorizing each one. Only humans—slowly and accidentally—came up with agriculture, and once they took it seriously, had plenty of food. They stored this food in the houses they’d built, or in storage barns they’d built next to the houses. As opposed to the crows, humans didn’t take care of who might be watching them. Because crows, once they notice someone is watching, pretend to bury their food: they dig as if, but leave nothing behind. Humans, since they always thought no one else understood anything, paid no attention to who might be watching. Of course, everyone was watching, especially the mice who lived in the houses anyway. Cats also kept an eye on things since they were keeping an eye on the mice.
People of course had no idea what was going on. They paid no attention to the cats nor did they notice that the cats stole toward the houses at night and went into the barns. It turned out that they didn’t mind, because cats weren’t interested in wheat. Cats hated wheat, it made them feel sick; they caught mice and baby rats, and humans saw that they shared a line of interest. Cats befriended humans by doing what came to them naturally. At first they were mere acquaintances, then some children made friends with kittens and the kittens got used to human scent. When they grew up, they stayed close to their friends’ homes. They were simply there and no task could be given to them except for the ones they did anyway. No one had a reason to tie a cat on a leash because that would stop them from hunting. No one had a reason to teach cats anything apart from what they were already doing, and they saw that cats didn’t want any lessons. There was no reason to stick cats in a cage or close them off in a pen. People didn’t pay attention to whether the cats might leave. They were of no use when tied or trapped, so they didn’t bother. They could be around and hunt mice, or they could leave. Cats remained free. They were there, but were not part of the property.
I saw that humans had the problem that once they owned something it ceased to have any mystery. Every secret vanishes from things possessed. This didn’t happen with cats. Because no one, in fact, owned a cat.
Ships Sail At Dawn
THE NIGHTS WERE getting warmer. Those first days after running away, Kalia thought of the summer as a salvation, because then he’d be able to sleep wherever he liked.
But now he didn’t feel like leaving Mikro’s stable even if it was getting a little stuffy. Zoi had told him several times, in muted tones, that he needed to take advantage of the summer and leave Syracuse, at least to one of the nearby towns, somewhere no one could recognize him. He nodded, but he was no longer looking forward to summer.
Zoi read his palm and told him he’d have a long life, in a beautiful and distant place, and that Miu would travel with him. Kalia was not at all glad to hear this, and Zoi said she was only joking, and that she couldn’t read palms.
He later asked, “Zoi, if I were to leave, what would happen to you?” He said it as if he were looking after her.
“I’ll be fine, don’t worry,” she said with a sparkling smile.
“But what happens when you don’t see someone again?”
“Perhaps you’ll forget me a tiny bit.”
One night he woke from a dream. Miu was out wandering around and he whispered the dream to Mikro. He’d gone far and moved with the wind. When he wanted to speak in his dream, he realized that his language no longer existed and he was watching everything from the air, which was what he was made of. He saw Mikro from up above, among the pines, and he saw Miu, who was looking up at the sky as if she was not alive, and then he saw her again walking, except that he, Kalia, was not alive; he had been dead for so long that it seemed impossible to imagine he’d ever walked on the ground. Then he heard a whisper: “Kalia?” That was not part of the dream.
“Kalia?”
Mikro was now looking out of the hole in his door. Kalia looked up from below. He could see, he thought, someone’s legs in the darkness.
“It’s me, Menda.”
Kalia crawled under Mikro’s door. Menda was waiting for him down the little street and they went to the poor market, which, now empty, had taken on the color of the moon. They sat on a shaded step. Just like when he set out to bathe in the sea at dawn, Syracuse felt dead in the bleak silence, but this never frightened him. It was when he most felt it belonged to him.
“You can’t stay here, you know that,” Menda said.
“I don’t know,” he said.
He’d already heard it from Zoi. But it seemed that this was his home.
“What if you get sick?”
Kalia thought of the nights when he huddled next to Mikro and pulled him closer. Mikro slept standing up, but when Kalia kept pulling him closer, he understood, and for a few nights, when Kalia shivered, Mikro lay down and kept Kalia warm in the corner.
And maybe because he couldn’t afford to get sick, this winter he’d had fewer sniffles than ever.
“The nights are warmer now,” he said.
“But what will happen next winter? And people get sick in the summer too.”
Kalia felt sure he would not fall ill in the summer, and next winter seemed so far it may as well never come.
“The ships sail at dawn,” Menda said at the empty market, where everything echoed louder, and then everything fell very silent.
Kalia watched her face as she caught her breath from up above, from the source of the moonlight. Those ships that she had mentioned, it was as if they made a line in her throat and she covered her face with her hands. Kalia saw a cat’s silhouette on the other side of the market, it could have been Miu. Better she not come close, he thought, because as far as Menda was concerned, everything that had happened was her fault.
“The ships sail at dawn,” Menda said after clearing her throat. “They are going to places where everything related to Syracuse is far away.”
“To Egypt?”
Menda was startled. “No. They go north. Master Sabas calls it the Sea of Chronos. Some think it’s the end of the world, but I know it isn’t.”
Kalia was afraid of those words and wanted not to hear them.
“They go to Liburnia.”
“Your Liburnia?” He sat up.
Menda gazed toward the sea, which shimmered in the distance, reflecting the moonlight, and she wished to reach farther with her eyes; she lifted her chin as if she wanted to look over a wall that time had built.
“Yes, there,” said Menda. “There your slavery will be a distant thing.”
Kalia hadn’t quite understood and repeated, “Your Liburnia?”
Yes, my Liburnia, thought Menda. It had been shrinking in her mind for decades, cut off; it had become like something imagined. But now Kalia could go back there and everything burst into life again: her bay, loved ones, their names. If they’re alive, they’ll have changed—time had passed behind the frozen image.
“Up there your slavery will be a thing of the past. Like down here, where my freedom is a thing of the past. When they brought me here and when I said I was not a slave, it didn’t matter. So you will return to Liburnia, but it will be the other way around: you’ll be free. We’ll swap places,” she said.
She said she was gifting him her freedom from Liburnia, the life that had been taken from her; may he know in his heart that he was free and may he know to never look back. She said she was glad that the cat had shown up and that he had punched Pigras. Kalia watched her in disbelief.
“They need to take you on board and then everything will fall into place,” she said. “Maybe that’s why the cat turned up, maybe it was sent.”
Kalia was stunned. “You think someone sent Miu to me?” he asked.
“Latra,” she said. “Latra could have done it.”
He thought something strange was happening to Menda. She had mentioned Latra before, but he’d never seen her. Perhaps the ships will be invisible too?
“Latra is, you know, like Apollo. Only in Liburnia the sky belongs to women.”
“You think that Miu came from Liburnia?”
Menda thought about it. Perhaps she ought to tell him that was true and then he wouldn’t rush to Egypt. But she knew she’d be lying because there were no cats in Liburnia, or at least she’d never seen any.
“I had prayed to Latra to return me to Liburnia,” Menda said. “Then, later, I prayed to her to let me see my family one last time. And years and years have passed, and my mother has never heard from me. I was angry with Latra and the sky became empty for me. But when you ran away, I called her again. And tonight master Sabas came and told me about the ships. I don’t know, Kalia, who has been sent from where, but if you go back there free, the circle will be complete.”
Kalia looked at her. “Sabas knows about the ships?”
Menda thought maybe she shouldn’t have mentioned Sabas, but yes, he’d told her the whole thing because he too wanted Kalia to board one. There were many things that Kalia didn’t know, too many things to talk about in a single night sitting in egg-white moonlight. She had thought she’d tell him everything one day in the future, when he could grasp it. But he ran away with the cat and those ships sail at dawn. Menda said that Sabas told her this because she was from Liburnia.
“They’ll be making an apoikia there. You know what that is? It’s a home away from home. You’ll build a city. You who sail on those ships. That is a distant home, apoikia.”
Kalia looked at her, his eyes and mouth wide open. She’d told him too many unimaginable things, she’d confused him with Latra and other details, and she was gripped by fear that he wouldn’t go to the port. Kalia felt a quiet pain in his head, his temples throbbed, he felt something large behind Menda’s words that had made his shoulders contract. He’d have to leave at dawn, that’s what he had heard.
“Those who first build a colony get first bids on a home,” Menda continued. “And their children too. Here, the only thing awaiting you is punishment.”
She said she knew how hard it must be for him to leave, said it was difficult for her too, and he could hear it in her strained voice. She said he was her only grandson, and she’d never spoken those words to him before; she mentioned Liburnian words that he learned from her—that he didn’t even know were Liburnian—said that other Greeks didn’t know such things and that was why he’d have an easier time there. She said he must never tell anyone he was a slave, ever; told him to tell them on the ship that he had come from Gela, that his father died as a soldier, that his mother was dead, that he was sent by a good man who had fed him, that he knows how to read and write, and they’d believe that he was from a good family; she asked him to repeat all this.
She told him to board the largest ship because that was where Oikistes would be; he was the boss and if he took him on board, no one could kick him out. She asked him to repeat: Oikistes.
She had brought him a clean tunic. She told him to wash in the sea at the crack of dawn and dress in a clean tunic.
“Get there as if you’re attending a celebration, let that be their first impression of you, then they’ll remember you like this.”
As Menda spoke Miu turned up. She brushed against Kalia and sniffed Menda.
“You remember me, eh? You’ve grown nicely,” she said and touched Miu with her hand.
“Can animals board the ships?” Kalia asked.
“Please don’t not go because of her,” Menda said. She then looked at him and understood. She thought awhile and said, “If they take you, they’ll let her on too, she’s not heavy. Others will be taking animals, and plants, and all the things they think they won’t find there. They’ll have to take a lot of food, and there are always mice.”
“Okay,” said Kalia with a tight throat. He felt that Menda was pushing him away from Syracuse, and from Mikro, and from his home.
Menda said that she would like to go too, but she was old and they wouldn’t take her. She stroked his head and then hugged him so that he would not see her face, which was grimacing under the moonlight as if the light was too strong. Then Menda showed him a small canvas bag with a dozen coins in it. She told him to spend this only if he had to.
“If they don’t let you on the ship, give a coin to those that stop you.”
Once she had given him the coins, Kalia felt that his departure was real.
“When should I come back?” he asked.
Menda watched him murkily. She felt as if she could see in time, and in front of her shone a young man with Kalia’s face, up there, by the sea of her memories. The fact she could see him so clearly in the future was a good omen, she thought.
“If you get captured by the Liburnians, tell them you’re one of them and that Latra had come in the shape of an animal to bring you back home. Then they will see you’re not like the others.”
Kalia thought that he might not have to try that hard since he’d like to be like the others, but was not.
“And one more thing: my daughter was called Voltisa,” said Menda. “It’s a beautiful name, Voltisa, so remember it.”
Kalia nodded. He’d heard that name before because Menda had spoken it several times in her sleep.
He asked again, “When shall I be back?”
“Not straightaway, Kalia. By the time you build the city, your deeds here should be forgotten.”
“Then I’ll be able to come back?”
“Yes, when you build the city,” she said so that he had this vision.
The more visions of the future he had, the better the chances for him to survive, she felt.
He said, “You know, Zoi will be worried about where we are. Tell Zoi that Miu and I have gone to build a city.”
Menda nodded silently. She stood up then, made a circle above him with her hands, and said, “Surround yourself with white light, Kalia.” She hugged him again, squeezed him tight, and left, saying, “Safe journey, take care, you and Miu. I will be with you in spirit. Never forget that.”
Kalia thought that Menda was already heavy on her feet, as if she carried a burden, and he wished to go after her and help her somehow, but he knew he had to go to Mikro, say goodbye.
Menda, Papyrus
BEFORE GOING HOME, Menda went to Arethusa Spring. Once upon a time, she’d found the bag of coins she gifted to Kalia next to that spring. There had been an outbreak of fighting inside Syracuse, there was a long drought, and a confusing uprising, the wells and food stocks were drying up, and she had come to get water in Ortigia at the crack of dawn, at Arethusa Spring. There was no one there, and the bag sat under a papyrus bush, which grew by the spring. The sight of it filled her with fear. Maybe it was the dirty profit of the slave trade, maybe the pocket money of a rich man’s son, or the salary of some poor soldier; it was probably forgotten by a drunk quenching his thirst at Arethusa Spring at night—perhaps one of the two men she’d seen flat out on the street nearby. Or perhaps the person who had not gone back to get their money was dead?
She put the bag in her pocket and delayed going back, waited there in a dead silence because it was already full daylight. She was frightened by the fact that no one else came to get water, as well as by what she had done. Everything seemed to be standing still, and she stood with the money in her pocket and said to herself, “I’ll wait a little longer. If someone turns up, I’ll see if they are looking for something.”
No one came to the spring. People had disappeared and only the shrieks of seagulls could be heard. Then a one-armed soldier turned up and she didn’t want to look at him, so she listened to his footsteps and watched his shadow as he approached. His shadow paused, it seemed that his shadow was studying her, and then he shouted, “Get out of here!” In the street where the two men had lain, there was nobody.
She was afraid of having taken that bag, until today. Now that was over too.
She had gone off her path home and here she was, washing her face at Arethusa Spring. She could even go back to Mikro’s stable again and tell Kalia everything he didn’t know. What a burden, she thought, that she should decide who he is through such an act. Because who a person is depends on what they know. This way, his thoughts of himself were unclear, but also weightless. This way, Kalia was a light soul. And if she told him he might turn bitter and rancorous.
Sabas would be watching at dawn, she knew. Sabas would be hidden somewhere, watching to see if Kalia boarded the ship.
“Kalia is my grandson, Latra. He already knows plenty about the violence of the masters, but he isn’t bitter. Just let him board, Latra.”
Scatterwind
I KNEW NOTHING about Latra. I’d heard plenty about Greek deities but I have never met them. Just like the Carthaginian gods. Neither had I met the gods of the peoples I had known earlier, and everyone had plenty of them.
At first I was a little scared—what if I meet one of the gods, how would they treat me? Even though I’m a totally technical type, I still fall into the category of invisible creatures in the air, which could, I thought, make them angry. Because according to everything I’d heard, I concluded that gods were capricious and did not like competition. I was convinced that it was a question of time when I would, wandering about in the air, bump into one of them who’d shout, “What are you doing here, you idiot? Who gave you permission?” But I was lucky. It never happened. It’s like driving without a license for thousands of years and never seeing a police car. I was simply lucky.
It’s possible that the gods and I were in parallel worlds. So many people have seen them and spoken to them, some almost every day. Gods understood language, I realized. Had my “I” been a little bigger, I could have thought that I too was a kind of minor god. It’s possible that some might have respected me. But I did not feel like a god to myself at all. I also had no desire for people to respect me, particularly not falsely, that would really be a pain. I mean, it’s totally clear to me that I have longevity, but I am not at all sure that I am eternal. It seems to me, I might have mentioned it, that I am nearing the end, which is why I have started talking.
CATS CAME WITH houses, wheat, and mice. Humans weren’t the first ones to store away food for winter, crows did it too, burying food in a thousand spots, and memorizing each one. Only humans—slowly and accidentally—came up with agriculture, and once they took it seriously, had plenty of food. They stored this food in the houses they’d built, or in storage barns they’d built next to the houses. As opposed to the crows, humans didn’t take care of who might be watching them. Because crows, once they notice someone is watching, pretend to bury their food: they dig as if, but leave nothing behind. Humans, since they always thought no one else understood anything, paid no attention to who might be watching. Of course, everyone was watching, especially the mice who lived in the houses anyway. Cats also kept an eye on things since they were keeping an eye on the mice.
People of course had no idea what was going on. They paid no attention to the cats nor did they notice that the cats stole toward the houses at night and went into the barns. It turned out that they didn’t mind, because cats weren’t interested in wheat. Cats hated wheat, it made them feel sick; they caught mice and baby rats, and humans saw that they shared a line of interest. Cats befriended humans by doing what came to them naturally. At first they were mere acquaintances, then some children made friends with kittens and the kittens got used to human scent. When they grew up, they stayed close to their friends’ homes. They were simply there and no task could be given to them except for the ones they did anyway. No one had a reason to tie a cat on a leash because that would stop them from hunting. No one had a reason to teach cats anything apart from what they were already doing, and they saw that cats didn’t want any lessons. There was no reason to stick cats in a cage or close them off in a pen. People didn’t pay attention to whether the cats might leave. They were of no use when tied or trapped, so they didn’t bother. They could be around and hunt mice, or they could leave. Cats remained free. They were there, but were not part of the property.
I saw that humans had the problem that once they owned something it ceased to have any mystery. Every secret vanishes from things possessed. This didn’t happen with cats. Because no one, in fact, owned a cat.
Ships Sail At Dawn
THE NIGHTS WERE getting warmer. Those first days after running away, Kalia thought of the summer as a salvation, because then he’d be able to sleep wherever he liked.
But now he didn’t feel like leaving Mikro’s stable even if it was getting a little stuffy. Zoi had told him several times, in muted tones, that he needed to take advantage of the summer and leave Syracuse, at least to one of the nearby towns, somewhere no one could recognize him. He nodded, but he was no longer looking forward to summer.
Zoi read his palm and told him he’d have a long life, in a beautiful and distant place, and that Miu would travel with him. Kalia was not at all glad to hear this, and Zoi said she was only joking, and that she couldn’t read palms.
He later asked, “Zoi, if I were to leave, what would happen to you?” He said it as if he were looking after her.
“I’ll be fine, don’t worry,” she said with a sparkling smile.
“But what happens when you don’t see someone again?”
“Perhaps you’ll forget me a tiny bit.”
One night he woke from a dream. Miu was out wandering around and he whispered the dream to Mikro. He’d gone far and moved with the wind. When he wanted to speak in his dream, he realized that his language no longer existed and he was watching everything from the air, which was what he was made of. He saw Mikro from up above, among the pines, and he saw Miu, who was looking up at the sky as if she was not alive, and then he saw her again walking, except that he, Kalia, was not alive; he had been dead for so long that it seemed impossible to imagine he’d ever walked on the ground. Then he heard a whisper: “Kalia?” That was not part of the dream.
“Kalia?”
Mikro was now looking out of the hole in his door. Kalia looked up from below. He could see, he thought, someone’s legs in the darkness.
“It’s me, Menda.”
Kalia crawled under Mikro’s door. Menda was waiting for him down the little street and they went to the poor market, which, now empty, had taken on the color of the moon. They sat on a shaded step. Just like when he set out to bathe in the sea at dawn, Syracuse felt dead in the bleak silence, but this never frightened him. It was when he most felt it belonged to him.
“You can’t stay here, you know that,” Menda said.
“I don’t know,” he said.
He’d already heard it from Zoi. But it seemed that this was his home.
“What if you get sick?”
Kalia thought of the nights when he huddled next to Mikro and pulled him closer. Mikro slept standing up, but when Kalia kept pulling him closer, he understood, and for a few nights, when Kalia shivered, Mikro lay down and kept Kalia warm in the corner.
And maybe because he couldn’t afford to get sick, this winter he’d had fewer sniffles than ever.
“The nights are warmer now,” he said.
“But what will happen next winter? And people get sick in the summer too.”
Kalia felt sure he would not fall ill in the summer, and next winter seemed so far it may as well never come.
“The ships sail at dawn,” Menda said at the empty market, where everything echoed louder, and then everything fell very silent.
Kalia watched her face as she caught her breath from up above, from the source of the moonlight. Those ships that she had mentioned, it was as if they made a line in her throat and she covered her face with her hands. Kalia saw a cat’s silhouette on the other side of the market, it could have been Miu. Better she not come close, he thought, because as far as Menda was concerned, everything that had happened was her fault.
“The ships sail at dawn,” Menda said after clearing her throat. “They are going to places where everything related to Syracuse is far away.”
“To Egypt?”
Menda was startled. “No. They go north. Master Sabas calls it the Sea of Chronos. Some think it’s the end of the world, but I know it isn’t.”
Kalia was afraid of those words and wanted not to hear them.
“They go to Liburnia.”
“Your Liburnia?” He sat up.
Menda gazed toward the sea, which shimmered in the distance, reflecting the moonlight, and she wished to reach farther with her eyes; she lifted her chin as if she wanted to look over a wall that time had built.
“Yes, there,” said Menda. “There your slavery will be a distant thing.”
Kalia hadn’t quite understood and repeated, “Your Liburnia?”
Yes, my Liburnia, thought Menda. It had been shrinking in her mind for decades, cut off; it had become like something imagined. But now Kalia could go back there and everything burst into life again: her bay, loved ones, their names. If they’re alive, they’ll have changed—time had passed behind the frozen image.
“Up there your slavery will be a thing of the past. Like down here, where my freedom is a thing of the past. When they brought me here and when I said I was not a slave, it didn’t matter. So you will return to Liburnia, but it will be the other way around: you’ll be free. We’ll swap places,” she said.
She said she was gifting him her freedom from Liburnia, the life that had been taken from her; may he know in his heart that he was free and may he know to never look back. She said she was glad that the cat had shown up and that he had punched Pigras. Kalia watched her in disbelief.
“They need to take you on board and then everything will fall into place,” she said. “Maybe that’s why the cat turned up, maybe it was sent.”
Kalia was stunned. “You think someone sent Miu to me?” he asked.
“Latra,” she said. “Latra could have done it.”
He thought something strange was happening to Menda. She had mentioned Latra before, but he’d never seen her. Perhaps the ships will be invisible too?
“Latra is, you know, like Apollo. Only in Liburnia the sky belongs to women.”
“You think that Miu came from Liburnia?”
Menda thought about it. Perhaps she ought to tell him that was true and then he wouldn’t rush to Egypt. But she knew she’d be lying because there were no cats in Liburnia, or at least she’d never seen any.
“I had prayed to Latra to return me to Liburnia,” Menda said. “Then, later, I prayed to her to let me see my family one last time. And years and years have passed, and my mother has never heard from me. I was angry with Latra and the sky became empty for me. But when you ran away, I called her again. And tonight master Sabas came and told me about the ships. I don’t know, Kalia, who has been sent from where, but if you go back there free, the circle will be complete.”
Kalia looked at her. “Sabas knows about the ships?”
Menda thought maybe she shouldn’t have mentioned Sabas, but yes, he’d told her the whole thing because he too wanted Kalia to board one. There were many things that Kalia didn’t know, too many things to talk about in a single night sitting in egg-white moonlight. She had thought she’d tell him everything one day in the future, when he could grasp it. But he ran away with the cat and those ships sail at dawn. Menda said that Sabas told her this because she was from Liburnia.
“They’ll be making an apoikia there. You know what that is? It’s a home away from home. You’ll build a city. You who sail on those ships. That is a distant home, apoikia.”
Kalia looked at her, his eyes and mouth wide open. She’d told him too many unimaginable things, she’d confused him with Latra and other details, and she was gripped by fear that he wouldn’t go to the port. Kalia felt a quiet pain in his head, his temples throbbed, he felt something large behind Menda’s words that had made his shoulders contract. He’d have to leave at dawn, that’s what he had heard.
“Those who first build a colony get first bids on a home,” Menda continued. “And their children too. Here, the only thing awaiting you is punishment.”
She said she knew how hard it must be for him to leave, said it was difficult for her too, and he could hear it in her strained voice. She said he was her only grandson, and she’d never spoken those words to him before; she mentioned Liburnian words that he learned from her—that he didn’t even know were Liburnian—said that other Greeks didn’t know such things and that was why he’d have an easier time there. She said he must never tell anyone he was a slave, ever; told him to tell them on the ship that he had come from Gela, that his father died as a soldier, that his mother was dead, that he was sent by a good man who had fed him, that he knows how to read and write, and they’d believe that he was from a good family; she asked him to repeat all this.
She told him to board the largest ship because that was where Oikistes would be; he was the boss and if he took him on board, no one could kick him out. She asked him to repeat: Oikistes.
She had brought him a clean tunic. She told him to wash in the sea at the crack of dawn and dress in a clean tunic.
“Get there as if you’re attending a celebration, let that be their first impression of you, then they’ll remember you like this.”
As Menda spoke Miu turned up. She brushed against Kalia and sniffed Menda.
“You remember me, eh? You’ve grown nicely,” she said and touched Miu with her hand.
“Can animals board the ships?” Kalia asked.
“Please don’t not go because of her,” Menda said. She then looked at him and understood. She thought awhile and said, “If they take you, they’ll let her on too, she’s not heavy. Others will be taking animals, and plants, and all the things they think they won’t find there. They’ll have to take a lot of food, and there are always mice.”
“Okay,” said Kalia with a tight throat. He felt that Menda was pushing him away from Syracuse, and from Mikro, and from his home.
Menda said that she would like to go too, but she was old and they wouldn’t take her. She stroked his head and then hugged him so that he would not see her face, which was grimacing under the moonlight as if the light was too strong. Then Menda showed him a small canvas bag with a dozen coins in it. She told him to spend this only if he had to.
“If they don’t let you on the ship, give a coin to those that stop you.”
Once she had given him the coins, Kalia felt that his departure was real.
“When should I come back?” he asked.
Menda watched him murkily. She felt as if she could see in time, and in front of her shone a young man with Kalia’s face, up there, by the sea of her memories. The fact she could see him so clearly in the future was a good omen, she thought.
“If you get captured by the Liburnians, tell them you’re one of them and that Latra had come in the shape of an animal to bring you back home. Then they will see you’re not like the others.”
Kalia thought that he might not have to try that hard since he’d like to be like the others, but was not.
“And one more thing: my daughter was called Voltisa,” said Menda. “It’s a beautiful name, Voltisa, so remember it.”
Kalia nodded. He’d heard that name before because Menda had spoken it several times in her sleep.
He asked again, “When shall I be back?”
“Not straightaway, Kalia. By the time you build the city, your deeds here should be forgotten.”
“Then I’ll be able to come back?”
“Yes, when you build the city,” she said so that he had this vision.
The more visions of the future he had, the better the chances for him to survive, she felt.
He said, “You know, Zoi will be worried about where we are. Tell Zoi that Miu and I have gone to build a city.”
Menda nodded silently. She stood up then, made a circle above him with her hands, and said, “Surround yourself with white light, Kalia.” She hugged him again, squeezed him tight, and left, saying, “Safe journey, take care, you and Miu. I will be with you in spirit. Never forget that.”
Kalia thought that Menda was already heavy on her feet, as if she carried a burden, and he wished to go after her and help her somehow, but he knew he had to go to Mikro, say goodbye.
Menda, Papyrus
BEFORE GOING HOME, Menda went to Arethusa Spring. Once upon a time, she’d found the bag of coins she gifted to Kalia next to that spring. There had been an outbreak of fighting inside Syracuse, there was a long drought, and a confusing uprising, the wells and food stocks were drying up, and she had come to get water in Ortigia at the crack of dawn, at Arethusa Spring. There was no one there, and the bag sat under a papyrus bush, which grew by the spring. The sight of it filled her with fear. Maybe it was the dirty profit of the slave trade, maybe the pocket money of a rich man’s son, or the salary of some poor soldier; it was probably forgotten by a drunk quenching his thirst at Arethusa Spring at night—perhaps one of the two men she’d seen flat out on the street nearby. Or perhaps the person who had not gone back to get their money was dead?
She put the bag in her pocket and delayed going back, waited there in a dead silence because it was already full daylight. She was frightened by the fact that no one else came to get water, as well as by what she had done. Everything seemed to be standing still, and she stood with the money in her pocket and said to herself, “I’ll wait a little longer. If someone turns up, I’ll see if they are looking for something.”
No one came to the spring. People had disappeared and only the shrieks of seagulls could be heard. Then a one-armed soldier turned up and she didn’t want to look at him, so she listened to his footsteps and watched his shadow as he approached. His shadow paused, it seemed that his shadow was studying her, and then he shouted, “Get out of here!” In the street where the two men had lain, there was nobody.
She was afraid of having taken that bag, until today. Now that was over too.
She had gone off her path home and here she was, washing her face at Arethusa Spring. She could even go back to Mikro’s stable again and tell Kalia everything he didn’t know. What a burden, she thought, that she should decide who he is through such an act. Because who a person is depends on what they know. This way, his thoughts of himself were unclear, but also weightless. This way, Kalia was a light soul. And if she told him he might turn bitter and rancorous.
Sabas would be watching at dawn, she knew. Sabas would be hidden somewhere, watching to see if Kalia boarded the ship.
“Kalia is my grandson, Latra. He already knows plenty about the violence of the masters, but he isn’t bitter. Just let him board, Latra.”
Scatterwind
I KNEW NOTHING about Latra. I’d heard plenty about Greek deities but I have never met them. Just like the Carthaginian gods. Neither had I met the gods of the peoples I had known earlier, and everyone had plenty of them.
At first I was a little scared—what if I meet one of the gods, how would they treat me? Even though I’m a totally technical type, I still fall into the category of invisible creatures in the air, which could, I thought, make them angry. Because according to everything I’d heard, I concluded that gods were capricious and did not like competition. I was convinced that it was a question of time when I would, wandering about in the air, bump into one of them who’d shout, “What are you doing here, you idiot? Who gave you permission?” But I was lucky. It never happened. It’s like driving without a license for thousands of years and never seeing a police car. I was simply lucky.
It’s possible that the gods and I were in parallel worlds. So many people have seen them and spoken to them, some almost every day. Gods understood language, I realized. Had my “I” been a little bigger, I could have thought that I too was a kind of minor god. It’s possible that some might have respected me. But I did not feel like a god to myself at all. I also had no desire for people to respect me, particularly not falsely, that would really be a pain. I mean, it’s totally clear to me that I have longevity, but I am not at all sure that I am eternal. It seems to me, I might have mentioned it, that I am nearing the end, which is why I have started talking.
